ers, but those who have had that quality have moved and in-
spired me more.”
He’s right. “A true sense of mastery of the task at hand.” Lead-
ers haven’t simply practiced their vocation or profession. They’ve
mastered it. They’ve learned everything there is to know about it,
and then surrendered to it. For example, the late Fred Astaire
mastered the choreography, and then surrendered to it. He be-
came one with it, so it was impossible to say where he stopped
and the routine began. He was the routine. Franklin Roosevelt
mastered the presidency; Jimmy Carter was mastered by it.
Such mastery requires absolute concentration, the full de-
ployment of oneself. Astaire had it. That’s what got our at -
tention before he did anything. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
galvanized America with a few words. He didn’t simply have a
dream, he was the dream, just as Magic Johnson was the Lakers
and Bill Gates is Microsoft.
The Chinese practice something called wushu, which Mark
Salzman, an American writer who has lived in China, describes
as a means of achieving “perfect form and concentration.
[One’s] movements become instinctive and express a harmony
of mind and body that the Chinese believe is crucial to spiri-
tual as well as physical health. In classical wushu ...the wushu-
jiadevotes most of his training time to the practice of taolu, or
routines... choreographed sequences of movements, one to
twenty minutes in length, that must be carried out according
to strict esthetic, technical and conceptual guidelines.... An
unbroken thread of intent must exist between the movements
of a taolu, like the invisible line that passes through and con-
nects the separate pieces of Chinese calligraphy.”
Salzman quotes his instructor, Pan Qingfui, a master whose
nickname is Iron Fist, as saying, “The eyes are the most
Deploying Yourself: Strike Hard, Try Everything