Master Your Mind & Watch What Happens | Robert Greene

Key Takeaways

I've read all your books and I've always thought that instead of whatever they're teaching at universities, I was like, man, I wish I could just do a four-year degree on like four or six of these Robert Green books cuz they're amazing. Wow. >> And in particular, Mastery, it absolutely changed my life. I read that when I was 20, 22 years old, about 12 years ago, 11 years ago. >> It totally changed my life. It changed my life because >> I thought that being a generalist was the way to go. But according to the book Mastery, it was not. >> Yeah. Well, you know, um, we live in these fantastic times with so much technological power. It's just almost incredible, you know. I mean, yesterday I was working on my new book and I had a question and I just did an AI search and it's just insane what it can do for you. But the problem is the human brain is what it is. It isn't a piece of technology that that somebody developed recently. It's something that has hundreds of thousands of years of development and it has a certain way that it operates and a certain grain to it and you want to go with that grain and you want to be excited by learning and you want to make connections in the brain between different things and you want to be able to focus so deeply on something. I like to think of the brain as this kind of landscape and it can be rich and it can be one where all these different plants are emerging or it can be like a wasteland and if you learn different things and you focus very deeply and you're excited by what you're learning then all of these connections will start happening in the brain. And so if you go through that apprenticeship focused and developing real skills and whatever that is, by the time you finish your apprenticeship, let's say you're 30 years old, you'll be set. You'll be able to create your own business. You'll be very creative. You will laid the groundwork for something really important to happen. But if you're distracted, if you're focusing on a hundred different things, that's not how the human brain functions. We function when we go deep into something. When we bore deep deep deep deep deep into a subject, I know when I'm writing a book, which I'm doing right now, the first attempt that I make at something is very superficial. It's not interesting. You wouldn't believe how bad my writing is on the first go. But I go deep, deep, deep into what I'm thinking. I cross it out. I do something else. I edit it. By the 10th time I go into it, something interesting is happening. So when you focus deeply on something, ideas will come to you and sometimes those ideas will be brilliant. >> How many books do you read um to write one book? So for mastery, how many books did you consume to write that one or 48 laws of power? >> It's hard to estimate, but I it's somewhere around 300 some could be upwards of that. And you know, sometimes if a book is is bad, and believe me, I get I read a lot of bad books. I kind of skim them, you know, oh, this passage is really sucks or this chapter is meaningless, I'll kind of float through it. But if a book is really good and, you know, I can there are some books that are incredible. I'd say maybe about a fifth of them reach that level. I'll focus very deeply. I'll even reread it several times. It's probably why my health suffered and why I had a stroke is because I read too many books. I do too much research. But I want to get at the reality of what I'm writing about. I don't want to be superficial because so many books out there, at least for me, don't really go deep enough into the subject. They're kind of skimming along the surfaces. >> So Sam was talking about mastery and you have this concept of people finding their life life task, their life's task >> and I think that's great. Uh, but I know a lot of people who are maybe in their 30s or 40s who don't know that that is and maybe they feel like it's too late or they're stuck or don't know where to start. Um, could, you know, what's the sort of pocketbook guidance you have for somebody like that who's looking for who who's trying to figure out what that is and what are the tools they could use to figure out that life's task? >> Well, it's a question I get all the time and it's an extremely important question. The idea that I have is that when you were born, your your DNA, there's something completely unique about you. Genetically, there's never going to be anyone in the past or the future who will be like you. Your parents who raised you, they're also unique. So, you are a unique individual. You were so at birth, right? And when you were very young, 2, three, four years old, you were attracted to certain things naturally. I call them primal inclinations. Things that you loved very deeply, that you were drawn to, that you were attracted to. I tell the story in the book of Steve Jobs. He's 7 years old. He's walking with his father in Sunnyvale, California, where he grew up. And he passes by an electronic shop and he's just fascinated by these objects in the window, the design of them, and how beautiful they are. And it was at that moment that he be sort of fell in love with technology, not just as technology as as a machine, but as the design of it because he was a brilliant designer. So I'm saying you had those moments when you were five or 6 years old. But your problem is when you were 18 or 19 or 20, you took a wrong path. You listened to other people. You didn't listen to yourself. You listened to your parents who said, "Robert, you should go to law school." And this is what, you know, some of what my own parents told me. You need to go to business school. You need to go become a doctor. You need to get something practical and make a living. And you're alienated from that deep, deep love of something that you had when you were four or 5 years old or 6 years old or whatever it is. And then you go down a wrong path. So the way is to get back onto that path. And the way is to reconnect with who you are, with what you truly love and what your interests are. And there's a process for that. And I can go into it and I've consulted with many people on this thing. But the problem is you're so in tune with what other people are telling you, you're not listening to yourself. You don't know what makes you unique. And if you look at all of the really successful people in this world, people the great entrepreneurs or in any field, they're one of a kind, right? There's nobody else like a a Kobe Bryant out there, you know, God rest his soul, my favorite basketball player. They're one of a kind. Okay? So, you lost that somehow. And when you're in your 30s, you can get back to it, but what you need to do is you need to be practical in life. You can't just suddenly start all over and go, I've been learning these skills. I went into law school and and I'm not happy with it. You can't now turn around and say, "Well, I'm going to be a poet or I'm gonna be a rock star." You've already learned skills. You have to build on what you have and take it in a direction towards something that you really really love, right? You need to be practical and you may have to compromise a little bit. But when you're in your 30s, you can still do it. And because you're you're young enough and your mind is flexible as you get older, you get rigid. you get set in your ways and it becomes harder and harder and harder to do this process. When you're in your 40s, it's still possible, but get it's getting harder. When you're in your 50s, it's getting almost very very difficult. So, the real lesson for people out there is if you're 20 years old, do not go on that wrong path because it gets very difficult later in life to adjust. But if you're in your 30s, you have to reassess yourself. You have to get a journal and every day you have to write down things about what really excites you in life. What it was when you open a book and you read about something and you go, "Wow, that just attracts me." I know personally whenever I see an article or a story about early humans and how we developed 30, 40, 60,000 years ago, I I can't believe it. I'm so excited. I can't. We were actually like that and look who we are now. You have subjects like that, but you just become alienated from yourself. You're not listening to yourself. You're not listening to that voice in your head.