Mastery Archives - DocMuscles

There is a commonly misquoted phrase that says, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” However, the full quote attributed to William Shakespeare actually reads, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”

Possessing skills in multiple areas is valuable. Today it is even more valuable than in the past. Learning even a little bit about business, philosophy, physics, coding, economics, gardening, ranching, construction, etc. may put you in a position of immediate value in almost any group.

Become a T-shaped person. This is a person who has specialized knowledge and skills in a particular area, as well as the desire and ability to make connections across different disciplines.

I have personally found that expanding my learning in other broad areas of interest have made my expertise in medicine, health and diet so much more rewarding. It is why I have my own ranch with horses, goats, chickens, ducks and dogs. It is why I’ve studied European Swordsmanship and Martial Arts. It was the driver for getting trained in hypnotherapy. And, it is why I love riding motorcycles. All of these interests have played a role in deepening my medical expertise.

“Like chess masters and firefighters, pre-modern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience.

“And, that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands, conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost.

“That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one” (David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World).

It is possible that in an earlier world, where change occurs slowly, specialization represents and provides a significant competitive advantage. However, in today’s ever-changing world, integrating your specialist skills with a variety of other skills becomes a new and powerful competitive advantage.

In a world where you have the freedom to explore the things you’re curious about, don’t limit yourself to just one. Definitely be an expert in one particular field, but don’t be afraid to go out and learn about topics that aren’t directly related to your specialty.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

I was asked, recently, by a friend, “Why do you do that sword fighting thing?”

As I’ve pondered this question, I found my answer in the words of Jack Donovan.

“Strength, courage, mastery, and honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no “higher” virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren’t just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.

“Plato at one point in time compared men to dogs. One of the great tragedies of modernity is the lack of opportunity for men to become what they are, to do what they were bred to do, what their bodies want to do. They could be Plato’s noble puppies, but they are chained to a stake in the ground—left to the madness of barking at shadows in the night, taunted by passing challenges left unresolved and whose outcomes will forever be unknown.

“If you are never truly challenged in a meaningful way and are only required to perform idiot-proofed corporate processes to get your meat and shelter, can you ever truly be engaged enough to call yourself alive, let alone a man?

“Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors”

Sword fighting encompasses it all.

I’ve come to realize that training with the sword, against other men, fulfills a masculine yearning and desire I’ve felt for over 50 years. Why would God include hundreds of chapters of wars and sword fights in the scriptures? Because, the nobility of prophets and kings, their strength, courage, mastery and honor, was often forged at the hilt of a sword.

That’s why I sword fight.

Watch the video below and you can see where sword fighting provides the repeated opposing force, risk, hard work and accountability that are prerequisites of success. Sword fighting is really just rapid short and very exciting lessons on life.