This is a cool experiment. Want to feel more powerful and capable within the next thirty days, by picking up an easy habit? Have a mastery experience every day.
Do one thing every day that makes you feel accomplished or skilled, because you completed it. A mastery experience could be finishing a big work project, initiating a new project, getting to the gym, or installing the air conditioner. A mastery experience can also be doing something that you didn’t think you could do. (Such as installing the air conditioner! Or installing the air conditioner and choosing not to worry that it could fall out the window and kill someone). A mastery experience can even be any time when you focus on getting better at what you’re best at: devoting uninterrupted time to do work and build your skills. A mastery experience trains your brain to see challenges as opportunities to grow and get shit done.
I’ll get off my high horse: a mastery experience could be finally cleaning out your car. Mastery experiences can feel like seemingly insignificant things, but they make you feel like a boss once you accomplish them. You feel a sense of pride. You radiate a nice glow for the rest of the day.
So, create a system to have mastery experiences and enjoy that glow. Make a commitment to having some kind of mastery experience every day. Set an alarm on your phone and take sixty seconds every evening to consider what you did that day, that helped you grow as a person, that gave you an opportunity to learn something, or that gave you information that you could do something you didn’t think you could do. Make it a daily exercise in bravery… and soon, taking action to create a bigger and better life will start to feel like “just something you do every day.”