10, 000 HOURS: Why Mastery STILL matters….

In a couple of years we will not have masters of anything because folks have become preoccupied with cutting corners and the final score vs. the game!

We are living through a time where the outcomes of mastery are glorified, but the process that produces it is tragically avoided. Our culture is enamored with aesthetics, immediacy, and virality….yet fundamentally resistant to the discipline, structure, and repetition that mastery demands. In a landscape saturated with personal brands and performative expertise, everyone wants to be seen as a visionary, but very few are willing to submit to the invisible labor that cultivates true vision. Passion is not a substitute for skill.

Desire is not equivalent to mastery. And enthusiasm, no matter how sincere, does not automatically qualify one to lead.

The obsession with potential has eclipsed our respect for proficiency.

We must reintroduce reverence for craft, for commitment, and for the long journey that is becoming. Because without it, we’re just performing competence and performance can only carry you so far before the façade cracks under the weight of what you haven’t mastered.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate, focused practice to achieve true mastery in any field. Whether it’s music, medicine, spiritual work, design, or writing….cultivating excellence demands time. Repetition. Humility. Studying your field backwards and forward. Becoming fluent in the nuances. Failing publicly and still coming back sharper. It’s the invisible, unglamorous work that nobody claps for but it’s always what separates the masters from the mediocre. Too many people today are trying to build pitch decks without practice, seeking funding without foundations, and demanding attention before developing a real skill set. They feel entitled to an audience, to results, to influence without ever having gone through the fire of refinement. Like ol girl who thought she could get away with stealing my client/follower data that I cultivated over a 9 year span! Ha

And what’s worse? This entitlement often masks deep insecurity.

It’s easier to fake expertise than to admit you’re still a student. It feels easier to post than to practice.

But that shortcut always shows in the longevity of your impact or lack thereof.

Let me make it personal

Nobody can tell me about my gift of reading. Nobody can tell me about my ability to intuitively diagnose the unseen. Why? Because I didn’t just wake up with a gift….I worked it. Sharpened it. Honored it. I put in the time, even when nobody was watching, booking, or clapping. I studied psychology, metaphysics, trauma, history, astrology. I tracked behavioral patterns. I read thousands of souls and recorded the data. My mastery wasn’t built in a thread or a trend. It was built in silence, in prayer, in relentless observation.

My gift has been refined through years of uncelebrated discipline and sacred devotion to a psychological and spiritual art form that most people try to commodify without truly innerstanding.

And that’s where so many are failing.

They want visibility, not mastery.

They want influence, not intimacy with their craft.

They want results, but they don’t want to become the person those results require.

In the book, Mastery, Robert Greene says

“You must see every action and thought as a part of a larger process… a process that will lead you to the ultimate form of power: the power of mastery.”

That process cannot be bypassed.

You can’t affirm your way around it.

You can’t spiritually bypass your own lack of consistency or study.

So before you throw together a pitch deck, launch another program, call yourself a teacher or worse…steal someone else’s hard work….ask yourself this…..Have I really mastered this? Or do I just want the rewards associated with mastery?

Because your work can only rise to the level of your devotion. And no audience, no trend, no algorithm can replace the raw power of someone who’s done the work.

Put in your 10,000 hours.

And then double them.

That’s where the magic lives.