When you think about the word “mastery,” what comes to mind? Do you regard it as a kind of expert ability that you acquire after years of training? Like a “master chef,” this use of the term suggests that you can’t exactly obtain this status just by wishing you could.
It might surprise you, then, to learn that psychology takes a very different approach to defining mastery and its relevance to mental health. Tied in with an inner sense of competence, this use of the term implies that you can exercise your abilities to their best, even if you don’t win awards or gain fame.
From this starting point, it might then make sense that the feeling of mastery has the potential to bring about greater well-being and satisfaction with yourself and your life. Indeed, according to a new study by Griffith University’s Adam Novic and colleagues (2023), mastery implies that you have “control over the important forces that affect your life.” What’s more, mastery is “malleable” in its ability to help you reduce stress.
Now that you understand that a sense of mastery is related to a belief in your own powers to control your life, the question becomes one of trying to figure out how to make it part of your psychological storehouse to protect you from stress. Before turning to the specifics of the Australian study, it’s worth trying to see how to apply it to yourself.
Begin by imagining yourself facing what seems like a really challenging task. It can even be as simple as finding a lost object, somewhat small in size, that somehow disappeared without you realizing it. You know for certain that the item is in your household, so it’s not something you dropped outside or forgot to take when you left the last place you were. The object itself doesn’t have to be particularly valuable. Just the idea that you can’t find it causes frustration to build up inside you. One approach to the dilemma would be to start flinging things around everywhere, hoping it will turn up. If you were to engage your sense of mastery, though, you would tell yourself that you have the ability to find it as long as you maintain your composure. After a few minutes of systematic exploration, sure enough, you’re reunited with the lost object.
Being able to achieve such a goal, though insignificant in the larger scheme of things, can strengthen your sense of mastery. You wanted to do something, it was hard, but you did it. This simple formula is enough to give your competence a boost.
Although this example shows a happy ending to a stressful situation, many challenges that people face do not end up getting resolved. In some cases, the problem is unsolvable because it is just too difficult. However, an unhappy ending doesn’t have to erode your sense of mastery. If you know that you’ve tried your best, then you should still manage to avoid becoming despondent. Importantly, according to Novic et al., don’t come to a conclusion that fate somehow conspired against you. Believing in “fatalistic rule” is what can make a bad situation worse.
The Griffith U. research team sought to examine mastery as a predictor of (low) psychological distress in a sample of middle-aged adults, but they believed that its power would become even stronger if it were evaluated along with physical activity. There is ample evidence from prior research that people in their middle years of adulthood who engage in physical activity on a regular basis feel better psychologically. Part of the explanation could be that active individuals know they’re taking steps to prevent disease. Physical activity also has its own emotional reward partly due to what happens when the endorphins “kick in.”
With respect to mastery, being physically active could also help you feel more in control of those forces that can conspire to accelerate age-related losses in the body. This would seem especially important in middle age when some of those losses start to become apparent. Knowing that you’re doing everything you can to stave off the aging process can reinforce that inner sense of control.
Novic et al. built a statistical model predicting the role of mastery and physical activity in contributing to psychological distress, which they measured by having participants rate their levels of anxiety and distress in the past month on a 0-to-4 scale. A well-established mastery scale asked respondents to rate the extent to which they regarded aspects of life as being under personal control or fatalistically ruled (e.g., “What happens to me in the future mostly depends on me.”). To assess physical activity, the research team asked respondents to indicate the total amount of time in the past week they engaged in light to vigorous activities, ranging from walking to aerobics.
The 7,145 Australian adults in the study were between 40 and 64 years old, and the research team also controlled for such influences on the results as gender, country of birth, education, employment status, and living arrangements. Most (83 percent) reported their health as good or excellent.
Turning to the findings, sense of mastery indeed predicted the outcomes of lower psychological distress. However, contrary to the study’s hypotheses, physical activity played no additional role in relating to the outcome. There were several plausible reasons for this, but the bottom line is that the mental adjustments involved in feeling control over your life seem to be enough on their own to keep distress at bay. As the authors concluded, “Mastery is considered a part of one’s self-concept central to managing stressors and can help regulate experiences of psychological distress.” Don’t give up on your exercise routines quite yet, though, because there can also be a connection that needs to elapse over time. The Australian study only included one time of measurement, so such “lagged” effects couldn’t be examined.
Now that the “mystery” has been revealed, and you can see clearly from this large-scale study how much of a role it can play in promoting well-being, it’s time to return to the question of how to establish it in your own life.
In the first place, ask yourself honestly how many times a day you turn to “fate” as an explanation of what’s happening to you. Is it bad luck that you lost that object, or did you lose it because you weren’t paying attention to what you were doing? Even if the loss occurred for some freak reason (the item took a bad bounce when it fell), you can still draw from your inner resources to figure out how to reclaim it.
Next, try to “take the win” when something good happens to you. The flip side of blaming fate when things go wrong is to thank fate when they go right. Instead, why not give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done?
These simple interpretations of your experiences can become the building blocks of a stronger sense of mastery. You can then move on from there to finding ways to exercise your own sense of competence. Do an inventory of your strengths and then use activities based on those strengths to bolster your ability to derive satisfaction from completing them. Again, remember that “mastery” isn’t the goal in the sense of showing your expertise. Throw those standards aside and take pleasure from the activities themselves.
To sum up, mastery can be a solid basis for you to build your sense of control over the forces that run your life. Taking charge of those forces is what ultimately will allow you to experience the fulfillment of exercising your competence.
References
Novic, A. J., Seib, C., & Burton, N. W. (2023). Mastery, physical activity and psychological distress in mid-aged adults. Australian Journal of Psychology, 75(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530.2022.2153623
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