The Skill of Building Mastery
DBT SkillsWhat is building mastery? I mean, what are we talking about here? Building mastery means that you build your belief in yourself to get things done or do things. So, this is an important skill. Now the question is how do you do it? Okay, here's how you do it. What you want to do is think as if there's a line up here and there's a line here.
Okay? Now this line, anything above that line is impossible to do. So if you try to do something above this line, you're gonna fail. And if you fail, you're gonna feel less a sense of mastery, not more. So don't pick something up here that's impossible. On the other hand if you pick something all the way down here that's super easy, it's not going to help you either.
Okay? So you have to pick something that's not easy and something that's not impossible. So what do you need? You need something in the middle. Okay? And I kid you not, it can be anything. It's anything that for you is somewhat difficult to do but important to do. So I'm gonna give you an example. I, when I moved to Seattle, found out that everybody in Seattle just about not only goes hiking, but they go camping.
I've never been camping in my entire life. So I decided I thought, Well, I wanna fit in. So then I decided to go camping. So I took my sleeping bag and I took my tent, I put on a pair of jeans, things like that, and I went to a campsite. When I got there, I discovered that everybody had campfires. Now, I had never lit a fire in my entire life. So I decided that my first task was going to learn how to light a fire.
So I went and bought a piece of wood, and then I walked around the campsite to watch other people because I didn't have, to tell you the truth, the faintest idea how to do it. So I saw other people do it, so I came back, and I did exactly what they did. And miracle of miracles, I was so excited. I was jumping up and down. You know, it made me feel like, well, there's a chance I could learn how to do this camping stuff.
And I actually ended up for years going camping, and it gave me a real sense, not only of of mastery, but a sense of joy and excitement, and that's what you're looking for.