What the Samurai Can Teach Us About Self-Improvement

A Seventeenth Century Samurai maxim states:

"A man who has attained mastery of an art reveals it in his every action"

This saying is one of my personal favorites. There is so much depth to its meaning. Allow me to discuss it a little and explain how it will be able to benefit you.

First, a question: What is the single greatest thing that you can do with mastery and excellence? Don't say: "nothing." Everybody is good at something. Just think for a moment.

There will be one thing that you can do perfectly time and time again. It is the thing that is so ridiculously easy for you to do that you can do it with your eyes closed, almost standing on your head - so to speak. It may be a simple thing or it may be something quite complex, but whatever it is you make it look easy.

In fact, you are so good at it you make other people think that they can do it easily too - until they try. It might be a sport like tennis or something as mundane as making scones or cupcakes.

It's amazing how a champion tennis player can make the game look so simple. Or how a master cook can seemingly slap ingredients together and come up with an absolute masterpiece of culinary delight.

So what is it? What are you a master at? Keep that thing in mind while I diverge back to the samurai for a moment - a little bit of history.

The samurai lived by the sword and died by it. They were so adept at reading body movement that they were able to draw their swords and use them with deadly effect against opponents in the mere blink of an eye. Their observations and reflexes were finely honed, principally because their very existence depended on it. But did you know that they were able to transcend their ability with the sword into other arts? Many of them were also master poets. Others were highly skilled calligraphers. Others became very skilled in the art of the tea ceremony. Some became master carpenters.

Have you noticed how these "ancillary" skills are so diametrically opposed to their military expertise with the sword? So how and why did they engage in these things? Could it be that they were "balancing"