People with high levels of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek…. It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.
When personal mastery becomes a discipline-an activity we integrate into our lives-it embodies two underlying movements. The first is continually clarifying what is important to us. The second is continually learning how to see current reality more clearly.
The juxtposition of vision (what was want) and a clear picture of current reality (where we are relative to what we want) generates what we call “creative tension”: a force to bring them together, caused by the natural tendency of tension to seek resolution. The essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives.
“Learning” in this context does not mean acquiring more information, but expanding the ability to produce the results we truly want in life. It is lifelong generative learning.
Personal mastery suggests a special level of proficiency in every aspect of life-personal and professional. People with a high level of personal mastery share several basic characteristics. They have a special sense of purpose that lies behind their visions and goals. For such a person, a vision is a calling rather than simply a good idea. They see “current reality” as an ally, not an enemy. They have learned how to perceive and work with forces of change rather than resist those forces. They are deeply inquisitive, committed to continually seeing reality more and more accurately. They feel connected to others and to life itself. Yet they sacrifice none of their uniqueness.
People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode.
People with a high level of personal mastery are accutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident.

-The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge, (141, 142)