by Tim Brunson DCH
What is it like to be really good at something? Some people call the best athletes, scientists, scholars, authors, and craftsmen masters. So, let me rephrase my original question. What does it take to be a master or to achieve mastery in a skill or profession?
You may think that you have to be the smartest. This is not true. Quite to the contrary. Some of the world's most prestigious masters have an IQ of less then 50. Some even have an IQ less than 25. By the way, some one with an IQ less than 50 is clinically termed an imbecile or idiot, two terms that are not necessarily politically correct.
Just after the First World War, Lewis Tremont, a young Stanford University psychologist conducted a study which involved California school districts testing their students to find their brightest kids. He was looking for children with IQ's over 130. By the way, Einstein's IQ was only 150. (If you finished high school or got accepted into a typical state university, you probably are at least in the 90 – 110 range.) Tremont followed these students into adulthood. It is interesting what he found out. Only 20% of these geniuses became successful and/or rich. On the other end, 20% became failures. The other 60% were just average.
You may think that you to become a master you have to be at the top of your class or get a maximum score on the math portion of the SAT or ACT. This probably means that you are certain to get admitted to the top school or one of the top schools in the US. Then obviously the top minds in science and math would all be from the same school. Take Harvard University, for instance. Wouldn't it make sense that that school would dominate the Noble prize? Not so.
The truth is that of the last 54 winners of the Nobel prizes for medicine or science only 3 came from Harvard. For instance Harvard University normally gets 6,300 applicants for each freshman class. Only about 1,700 get admitted to what is known to what is regarded as best university in the world. Frankly, even if you max your entrance exams and are valedictorian of your class, you have no assurance that you are good enough for admission. So, you would think that Harvard would dominate the more technical Noble Prizes. Not so. They do have more Nobel Prize winners than any other university. Bur of the last 54 medicine and science winners, they only account for 3. Therefore, if you don't have to be the smartest to be a master or the most successful in your profession, then what does it take?
Let's look at some of the most brilliant masters who have ever lived. They are idiots. That's right, we know them as idiot savants. People such as the Rain Man, Kim Peek, are calendar calculators who can quote 7,600 books, and play symphonies after one hearing.
There are many other prestigious savants. In fact, savantism is found in 9.8% of autistic children according to Dr. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin psychiatrist who has studied the syndrome. However, one important point that Treffert makes is that although their brain dysfunction may give them what he calls an "island of intelligence". However, that alone does not fully explain their amazing intelligence. What Treffert has maintained for the past several decades is that once their talent is discovered, it takes extensive nurturing to unleash it's potential. Is this limited to savants? I am happy to say it is not.
Consider this. The mothers of students of a small Lakeside School Seattle once took the proceeds from a rummage sale to purchase a ASR-33 teletype terminal and a small block of time on a General Electric computer. Several of the eighth graders were excited about the new toy. When they got older, as high school students some of them started hanging around the computer labs at the University of Washington. A couple of these kids got accepted to Harvard, but one of them dropped out to write software for micro computers. His company was named Microsoft. By the time Bill Gates got into Harvard he had already spent over 10,000 hours programming. 10,000 hours seems to be a number that represents mastery.
Here's another example. Like many recording want-a-be's, once there were four young musicians who attempted to start a band. In there efforts to graduate from their garage to paid gigs, they found out that there was a need for bands in the brothel district in Hamburg, Germany. The only catch was that they had to play eight hours a day, seven days a week. Well, by the time the clocked 10,000 hours of performance, these four lads from Liverpool wrote, produced, and recorded a song about Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band.
So, it is not the smartest people to be successful. Although having a minimum intelligence seems to be a requirement for most of us who are not savants. You do not need to graduate from the best schools. Although receiving an adequate education appears to be an advantage. What it takes is three things. First, it takes passion. This can either found by self-discovery or found by a mentor such as a teacher, parent, or even a Scout master. Second, this passion must be nurtured. Third, this nurturing must result in a significant amount of practice. In Germany, one of my teachers said "Ubung mackt den Miester", which very loosely translates into "practice makes perfect". I remember someone telling me that one day he was in New York City. Seeing a young person carrying what appeared to be a violin case, he asked them how you get to Carnegie Hall. The young musician replied, "Practice, Practice, Practice."
No. It is not enough to be the smartest kid in the class. Or go to the best school. It is, however, important to find passion, to nurture that passion, and practice, practice, practice. So, I ask you at the time and place you find yourself in life today, there absolutely must be something that you have passion for. Ask yourself have a nurtured that interest. And, have I practiced, practiced, practiced. Depending on your answers to those questions, surprisingly you might find yourself closer than you think to true mastery. Maybe you are master already.
The International Hypnosis Research Institute is a member supported project involving integrative health care specialists from around the world. We provide information and educational resources to clinicians. Dr. Brunson is the author of over 150 self-help and clinical CD's and MP3's.
Posted: 01/23/2009
