True Mastery Requires a Beginner’s Mind

When Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, was nearing death, he asked his students to promise they would bury him wearing his white belt, the emblem of a beginner. 

Kano knew that death, like true mastery, makes everyone a novice all over again. He wanted to teach his students one more lesson: To understand that even after a lifetime of improvement and achievement, mastery most relies on a beginner’s mind, not upon the confidence of acquired expertise and accomplishment.  

In his work on understanding self-actualization, famed psychologist Abraham Maslow discovered something similar. His research showed that those who had reached peak performance and mastery had returned to a state of child-like curiosity. Maslow called this quality a “second naivete,” in reference to the fact that everyone is born naïve and returns to that state as they reach the highest level of psychological development. 

Reaching one’s full potential, according to Maslow, or “becoming everything one is capable of becoming,” depends on a willingness to accept one’s flaws and misunderstandings with humor and curiosity. Masters explore the fundamentals of high performance with extreme humility, believing that new insights arrive through naïve questions and inquiry. 

This process depends on the unusual self-confidence that only accomplishment can supply. Those with any semblance of mastery have already enjoyed some success. But as life-long learners with exceptional records of achievement, they confront a pivotal choice: Stay comfortable with the knowledge and accomplishments of the success they have already achieved, or presume they are once again at the starting line, knowing very little about how the race is really won. 

The beginner’s mind comes with a price. It requires the “student” to free themselves of worry about external judgments and to operate openly without fear of being seen as a fool. This allows them to see fundamental actions and understandings anew, without the burden of presumption or the blinders of an existing paradigm. 

This is a cost only those who desire self-actualization and true mastery are willing to pay. 

Masterful performers commit to an innocence of learning focused only on understanding and unaffected by external judgments or evaluations. Only by rejecting the need for acceptance and approval can the mindset of a beginner take hold and provide new insights. This is the hard work of extreme excellence, and it isn’t for everyone. 

Rare are the leaders and performers willing to embrace the beginner’s mindset and admit to themselves and the world that they know very little. But for those who take this leap, the potential of true mastery awaits, along with the white belt of naïve curiosity.