“Sentence-completion practice is a bit like the anti-AI, in that it is designed to stimulate & enhance your active intelligence & capability, rather than reduce it by handing it over to an LLM”
Dear Integral Meditators,
In this week’s article I describe a way of working that I have been using for many years that is extremely time-effective and accelerates any area that you are trying to achieve mastery in.
It is also a bit like the anti-AI, in that it is designed to stimulate and enhance your active intelligence and capability, rather than reduce it by handing it over to an LLM.
Next couple of week’s there is a special offer of 15% off my Life-fullness life coaching and Mindful Self-Knowledge Programs.
This week’s Wednesday & Saturday meditation classes are the Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation. It’s an opportunity to digest & recalibrate as we move into the final quarter of 2026!
In the spirit of mastery,
Toby
Up until September 9th – Special offer on Toby’s Life-fullness life coaching and Mindful Self-Knowledge Programs
Life-Fullness Integral Coaching Program (LICP) is an integral form of 1:1 coaching with Toby that you can sign up for periods of six-months or three-months at a time. It is mindfulness oriented personal coaching that focuses upon the development of three R’s:
- Re-generate your creative self and curiosity in life
- Re-connect to deeper levels of motivation and meaning within yourself, your relationships and your career
- Re-awakening to a sense of your own inner confidence, energy and personal power
Article: Sentence completion – accelerating your process of mastery
The process of mastery
In his book ‘Mastery’ George Leonard describes the process of becoming a master at anything a journey of peaks and plateaus.
- The peaks are periods where we make rapid progress, like climbing up the steep part of a mountain ascent, we rise fast, and the feeling is exhilarating. These ‘peaks’ are then usually followed by regressions or descents, where we go back to near the level we were at before we ‘peaked’
- The plateaus are the longer, ‘flatter’ extended periods after a peak/regression where we practise repeatedly, often with little visible progress, in order to gradually stabilize the previous ‘peak learnings’
In this process, most of the time is spent on the plateau, which involves steady, patient persistence, and the ability to not feel discouraged by the seeming lack of progress. Life on the plateau is very ‘process oriented’, getting gradually, incrementally better. It’s kind of the opposite of a ‘quick fix-immediate result’ mentality, which is why mastering anything is difficult, and most people give up, even though they are capable of it, if they had the persistence.
Sentence completion – Helping your mind self-organize
One of the things I have found to help my process of mastery is sentence completion. It is a technique I came across in around 2012 in Nathaniel Branden’s work on self-esteem. I order to work on and ‘master’ the creation of self-esteem, he created exercises where you create a sentence stem, and then complete it in 8-10 different ways, as quickly as possible. The effect of this is to invite our conscious and unconscious minds to combine together to develop awareness, insight and integrations around the subject of investigation. In other words, it helps your mind to self-organize, and integrate around the topic, which then increases the overall rate of your subject mastery.
Sentence-completion is an activity that I encourage clients to do quite often in my Life-fullness life coaching, as well as on my Mindful Self-Knowledge Program, as a way of integrating the learning from the sessions.
It is also something that I do for myself. I spent a long-time doing sentence completion around self-esteem mastery, which was Nathaniel Branden main focus, which I thoroughly recommend. Now I do it in any area of my own life where I am trying to master an activity or subject.
For example, I currently have sentence completion processes set up around:
- My effectiveness in daily-living
- My business activities
- My squash game
By doing active sentence completion around these activities, I find that my progress accelerates, and I grow faster. Here are two examples of the first domain, effectiveness in daily living:
Example 1:
Sentence stem: If I want to stay focused & not procrastinate –
Completions:
- I can build capacity for humour
- I can keep smiling at the stress
- I can persist at the list within the list
- I can stand & stretch between work stints
- I can Relax into the stress & direct it
- I can practice witnessing around ‘the drama’
- I can stay motivated by my daughters
- I can combine the how with the why as motivation
- When things get crazy it can all be myself, being the world, doing itself
- I can get my inner family to support each other and marshal their resources
Example 2:
Sentence stem: If I choose the path of skillful acceptance today –
- I will enhance my effortless-effort
- I won’t pretend that I am somewhere that I am not
- I will not be overwhelmed by being overwhelmed
- I will take the time to be present & aware
- I may be more patient
- If I am I need of support, I will be better able to extend it to myself
- I will be more inwardly coherent
- My creative spirit will be in good hands
- I won’t feel alone
- My ego will be quieter & more singular
So, you can see it is quite a simple, time effective way of stimulating insights and helping your mind to self-organize around an activity. The beauty is that once you have done the daily sentence completion, the integration kind of happens ‘by itself’ as a result of the completions.
What areas of your life could you accelerate your process of mastery around with sentence completion today?
Related reading: Re-discovering joy in your thinking – Five aspects of mindful mental mastery
© Toby Ouvry 2026, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram
Integral Meditation Asia
Live workshops & online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching * Meditation Technology