1 Robert Greene: How to Master Anything and Achieve Greatness

Today I’m launching something I’m very excited about. It’s called The School of Greatness. I’m constantly connecting with inspiring individuals such as creative entrepreneurs, world class athletes, and interesting celebrities. I love hearing their story about how they’ve achieved greatness and wanted to share their message to a broader audience. For that, I’ve created this Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hello everyone and welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, I'm an author, lifestyle entrepreneur, former pro athlete and world record holder in football. My goal with the School of Greatness is to share with you stories from the most inspiring business minds, world-class athletes and influential celebrities on the planet to help you find out what makes great people great. So please leave us a review over on iTunes and join us on the web at schoolofgreatness.com to be notified of each episode when it comes out. Now let's get after it.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  Hey everyone, I am very excited to finally be hosting this show for you and it's my goal to release a new show every two weeks, but my first group of interviews are all coming out this first week. I am constantly inspired by the interesting people I meet and it's my goal to share these relationships with you and the world through this podcast. And our first guest is Robert Greene, perhaps the premier student of what it means to be great. His work has proven immensely influential from the start as an international bestseller with The 48 Laws of Power, in which he dives through 3,000 years of history and studies and has sold a couple million copies all over the world.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  The book was popular in the hip-hop community for entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes and actors like 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Will Smith amongst many others. He has since written other bestselling books like The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War and The 50th Law with 50 Cent. Robert is incredibly influential and this interview had our guest crying and left me with a profound admiration for his work and his greatness. This episode is about an hour and a half long and we don't anticipate to continue to have this long of episodes, but Robert is such an excellent guest that it would have been a shame to cut the interview short.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  As you begin, you'll see that this show gets progressively more interesting. So without further ado, I present Mr. Robert Greene.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for coming on the show, Robert.

• 2:30Robert Greene?

  Well, thank you very much for having me, Lewis. I'm excited.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I'm very excited. Now, what, first off, before we actually get into some of the content, why did you decide to cover this topic of mastery?

• 2:41Robert Greene?

  Well, prior to this book, I had been working for, let's say, 13 years or so researching power in all of its different forms, from great political figures to seducers, to artists, etc. And then I had the opportunity to actually interact with a living power figure, 50 Cent. And I noticed that all these people sort of shared something, that there was something, that a quality that they all had. It wasn't anything physical, it was something about how their minds operated. And I just thought, if I could figure out what it is that these

• 3:23Robert Greene?

  people shared, it would be like the ultimate book. It would be like the ultimate secret to power itself. I could reduce it to something relatively simple, a process that these people went through to, I say, attain sort of a superior level of intelligence. And once you have this intelligence, basically, the world is yours to conquer. If you have setbacks, as they're inevitable in life, you'll know how to get back on your feet. It's just like the key to everything. So I wanted to share this knowledge that I had from so much research with my readers.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Now, can you tell a little bit more about your national with 50 Cent? I think that's pretty cool that you actually wrote a book with him. And how much time did you get to spend with him, and what did you really learn about how we got to where he is?

• 4:12Robert Greene?

  Well, he contacted me. The 48 Laws of Power is really big in the hip-hop community. And he was just curious to meet me. And we met in the back room of a steakhouse in New York City back in 2006, I think it was. It was kind of intimidating, because I was the only sort of white guy there.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  You have a huge entourage.

• 4:36Robert Greene?

  He had a huge entourage. It was kind of like something out of The Godfather. But it ended up, we hit it off really well. We, you wouldn't think of looking at us because, you know, we don't look similar or anything. But we got along really well. We shared a kind of interest in strategy and warfare. We like to talk about sports and power maneuvers and what people are really up to. And in the music business, what this executive is doing and why, you know, it fits him with the 48 Laws. But we connected really well on that.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:06Robert Greene?

  And so we decided to do a book together. I spent about, I, I, six months, for six months, I was pretty much hanging out with him.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:14Robert Greene?

  I'd go back and forth, back to LA, but I was in New York a lot.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:18Robert Greene?

  I would hang out with him in all his meetings. I went to his house and hang out, hung out at his strange mansion in Connecticut that he bought from Mike Tyson.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 5:27Robert Greene?

  And then I went to Vegas a lot with him, you know, partied with him. Neither of us are like real party animals, but, you know, so we got a lot, we got to know each other pretty well, you know.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:41Robert Greene?

  And being around him, you know, I was sort of considering, I never got to be around Napoleon Bonaparte, I'm not that old. And I thought, this is my chance to be around a real kind of, I call him the Napoleon Bonaparte of hip-hop, to really see in real time, you know, what a power figure is like.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:59Robert Greene?

  And he was amazing. And I deduced from that time that the secret to 50 is his fearlessness, and that's what the 50th Law is about.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Amazing. That's, I'm sure you have tons of stories you could write. Six months basically shadowing him. And did you live there as well, or were you just kind of like, you know?

• 6:16Robert Greene?

  No, I mean, I did, I did spend a few nights at the, at the mansion in Connecticut.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 6:22Robert Greene?

  Um, but no, I'd go back to my apartment in New York. But I was pretty much, they gave me incredible access to him. And I'd be in, I'd be in all the meetings, and I saw how he handled himself. And, you know, he, he really embodies like a lot of the laws of power, and the art of seduction, and the strategies of war, and mastery. So it was exciting, yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Wow, that's amazing. I'm gonna have to ask you later more about that. But let's go into the six keys of mastery, the secret to ultimate power over yourself and your craft.

• 6:54Robert Greene?

  The path to power is surprisingly simple. Tell me a little bit more about that. Well, you know, we have this myth that people who are highly successful or high achievers, that maybe there's something that they had good luck, or they have a large brain, or there's something genetically freakish about them, you know, it could be Steve Jobs, or 50 Cent, or Leonardo da Vinci, or anybody else. Or their parents were successful, or had money, or something like that, right? Or they just inherited a large brain, or something. But in fact, I discovered, I firmly believe, I've been researching this for years, it's not that at all. It's a process that people go through. And it's a very rational process. It's a process that I can describe to you in great detail.

• 7:39Robert Greene?

  It follows various steps that kind of go chronologically. And once you know this process, it's really, really empowering. It makes you so much more conscious of what you're doing. And so basically, I'm taking all of these great masters that I've studied, and I'm sort of deducing from their stories this path that they followed. From a great apprenticeship, to working with mentors, to working with other people, et cetera. And I think knowing about this can help you, give you incredible clarity about your own career, where you are now, and where you're headed. Very cool. So what follows are the keys to this path?

• 8:24Robert Greene?

  Yeah, the thing that I'm trying to tell you is that you possess the, all of the tools that you need for success and achievement. It's right there. It's basically, you've inherited a brain that evolved over millions of years, and it has this latent power of mastery. I describe in the book how this power evolved over the course of millions of years. But it's there in you. You have the tools. It doesn't matter if you were born in poverty, if you never went to a good school, if you've had bad luck. The tool is there at any moment, even in your twenties, thirties, or forties.

• 9:06Robert Greene?

  It's all a question of learning how to use this tool, how to awaken this power. It's latent in you, and I'm gonna show you, you know, how to basically exploit this.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  So a lot of people say, you know, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you're saying that it doesn't matter how old you are in anything, you can actually master. Is it any craft, or is it any skill, or is it... we're limited to certain things?

• 9:29Robert Greene?

  You know, I thought the other day, I'm not really particularly good with my hands. My father was really good with his hands. He could build anything. I sort of translated that to building books.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:40Robert Greene?

  I thought, well, you know, what if I spent now, like, the next ten years as a craftsman, just learning how to carpentry? I bet you I could actually master it. The problem is that I'm not as interested in it as I'm interested in writing books.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:53Robert Greene?

  So you can't master any craft if your heart isn't in it, because you're gonna peter out after five or six years. You have to find something that's in your powerhouse, something that appeals to you. But if you have that, if there is something that appeals to you, and of course, everybody has these interests and then these, what I call, these natural inclinations. Once you work with that, yes, you can master anything. The attitude that you can't teach a dog new tricks, if you feel that way, then it's gonna become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:25Robert Greene?

  You're gonna feel like, I can't master anything. I have no ability to learn skills. You're already three steps behind, so a lot of it is your attitude.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Right. Now, when I read this quote here, "Everyone holds his fortune in his own hand, like a sculptor, the raw materials, you will fashion into a figure." When I read that, you know, I think of some of the self-help type of books and, you know, authors who talk about, you know, paint a picture in your mind of how you want your life to look, about how you wanna be this way. And there is a way to, like, think of a certain things, but really, there's a process to follow through and actually where to becoming great at something, or having something look a certain way. Is that correct?

• 11:07Robert Greene?

  Right.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And that's the process we're about to talk about? Kind of these steps that you talk about in your book?

• 11:12Robert Greene?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Because you can't just say, "I want to have this." And paint your picture like in this quote here, but uh, you can paint that picture, but then you have to take the steps, right?

• 11:21Robert Greene?

  Uh, you have to do both.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:23Robert Greene?

  So uh, if you just start going into an apprenticeship and learning things without a sense of direction, without really knowing who you are.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:31Robert Greene?

  If you listen to your parents, to your friends, and you end up in law school or business, but it doesn't suit you, um, then all of the six steps are meaningless.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:41Robert Greene?

  If you know what you want to be, if you know you're gonna be a rock star or a football player or something, but you have no patience and you can't go through this process and you, you're, you're, you just want power and fame and attention right now, then you're, you're screwed as well. So you need both. You need a sense of direction purpose and you need some discipline. I call it self-mastery and, and we're gonna teach you self-mastery.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Awesome. So what's uh, how do you discover your calling then? How do you figure out what your life's task is? You know, some people, we were talking before this, this interview, but I was talking about some people have, you know, they want to find their purpose or they want to leave a legacy, but you talk about the life's task, which I think is very interesting, but how does someone discover this?

• 12:24Robert Greene?

  Well, it's, it's like you, you already know it. It's in you uh, already. You knew when you were a child, you had, you were interested in certain things. I know for me personally, I was interested in books and in history. I was just obsessed with history. Uh, I wanted to know how people lived a thousand years ago. And this is when I'm six, seven years old. But everybody out there who's listening to this, you have the same experience. It could have been sports, could have been something physical, it could have been music, airplanes or anything, right? Yeah, uh, uh, it's not that, it's not that you knew exactly who you were gonna be or the career path, you know? Uh, but you, you were drawn to certain actions that fit with you. When you did them, you did them well. It felt right. This is when you're a kid.

• 13:07Robert Greene?

  Now, what happens in life is you, you grow distant from it. I call it a sort of a voice inside of you that drew you to these things, that drew me to history and writing. And that voice starts to get weaker as you get older, as you listen to your parents and they tell you, "You gotta make money." And you listen to your friends and they tell you, "This is cool and that's not cool." And by the time you enter college and then you leave college and you enter the work world, you don't really know who you are. You've lost touch with that. And it's okay to lose touch with that throughout the course of your life. Everybody does. I have myself. But that voice needs to be there so that at some point you can come back to it and you can reconnect with who you are and think deeply and say, this is what I

• 13:49Robert Greene?

  was meant to be doing. And it's not a question of suddenly saying, I'm gonna quit my job and start playing the guitar or anything like that. It's not where you, where everything has to be fun and pleasurable in life. It's more that you're crafting a career path that suits to some degree your interests and that eventually 10, 20 years down the line is gonna lead to you being your own boss, uh, being, you know, able to sort of do whatever you wanna do and bringing out your uniqueness. And so it starts with a bit of sort of reassessing who you are, thinking deeply about it and getting excited about what you're, what you're

• 14:31Robert Greene?

  pursuing. The main thing that we know about the brain is you don't learn deeply enough if you're not engaged in what you're learning. So you could spend 10 years learning law, but if it doesn't excite you, the depth of what you're learning, it just doesn't stick.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:48Robert Greene?

  But if you're excited, you can learn in two years what would take other people 10 years. So it's a just, it's the key to everything. If you don't follow the advice in this chapter, you're gonna burn out and you're gonna find yourself when you're in your 40s, replaced by someone who's younger and cheaper. So.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Interesting. And then was there a moment in your life where you got off your path? And then you did, and then the moment where you've discovered that, okay, writing books about these topics is what I really need to be doing?

• 15:18Robert Greene?

  Well, it's a, you know, I'm, uh, it's an interesting example, um, in that I knew I was gonna be a writer when I was very young, but then I sort of started in journalism and that didn't fit. I didn't like it. And then I got into, I started writing novels and that wasn't working too well. Then I got into Hollywood. So I knew in the general scheme that I wanted to be a writer. This is typical with a lot of people. You know sort of generally what you want, but you're applying it in the wrong way. I was patient, I learned skills, I learned how to research, how to write. And then when I got an opportunity to write a book back in ninety-six, I knew this is it. All of my apprenticeship now could be applied to writing books. This was my life's task, writing the kind of books that I'm doing.

• 16:02Robert Greene?

  So that's a very common path. It can take you many years, just as long as you have an overall sense of purpose and direction. Interesting, very interesting. So we've got a couple of examples here. Want to talk about these examples? Well, I mean, I could talk for twenty years about Da Vinci, and I'm gonna be giving a talk about him. He's the icon of my book. And, you know, he's a great story of someone who in childhood was just drawn to nature and to drawing it on his own without any teachers. He sort of stole paper from his father, who had a lot of paper in the house, and just started drawing. And there's no reason, we can't rationally explain why Da Vinci decided to draw on his own as an eight-year-old, nine-year-old boy.

• 16:43Robert Greene?

  And he ended up staying true to this sort of inclination throughout his life as far as capturing nature and understanding it in a scientific way as well. So he epitomizes this. Freddie Roach is a wonderful example. He's the great boxing trainer, the trainer Manny Pacquiao. And, you know, Freddie started life as a boxer. He was pushed sort of into it by his father. He was boxing since he was six years old. And by the time he was twenty-six, he retired from boxing because he had taken way too many punches. And he wasn't, he was good, but he wasn't that good. And he found, he realized, he got very depressed, began to drink, had a terrible job as a telemarketer in Las Vegas.

• 17:24Robert Greene?

  And then he realized that really what his life's task was, was teaching boxing, was to become a trainer. Not to give up all of the skills that he had developed and go into medicine or something, but to build on his incredible knowledge of boxing, but to actually be a teacher of it. In that case, in that way, he wouldn't have to take the punches, but he could feel like he was in the ring. He was really, he's a competitive person who loves strategy. Being a trainer is the ultimate position. He, when he started becoming a trainer, just a light bulb went on in his head because this is my life's task. So he's also a great example. I think a lot of great coaches were actually good players.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  But not great.

• 18:08Robert Greene?

  Not great. Like Phil Jackson or something like that.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Right, right. And they actually realize, they might go through a stage, well, maybe I'm not supposed to be a player.

• 18:15Robert Greene?

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  But they discover coaching, which I think is interesting because it's still the same topic.

• 18:19Robert Greene?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  But very cool. So we've got right here a submit to reality, the ideal apprenticeship. And what does that, what does that mean?

• 18:29Robert Greene?

  Well, it's called submit to reality because quite frankly, when you leave college or you're young, you're not really, you don't have your feet on the ground. You're not really connected to the real world. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not a judgment, it's just true. I was like that as well. You come out of college or your early years with all sorts of illusions about life, about how, you know, you can do this or that, it's all going to come to you, this is what people are like. In your university years, you learn a certain way to learn, which is very passive with books. And then you get into the work world and man, you're, it's like you're getting hit by, like Mike Tyson or something like that. It's not what you expected. You get blindsided. People are political, manipulative, it's not easy, it's competitive.

• 19:14Robert Greene?

  No one trains you for it. So I'm going to take you through the steps of showing you how you need to approach what I consider your apprenticeship. It can be five, 10 years, something like that. This is the key part of your life. All of your skills, your discipline, your patience, your ability to learn, to sit back and observe other people, to get along with other people and know how to play the political game. It's all developed in this apprenticeship. And if you don't go through a good apprenticeship, then there's nothing's going to save you in life because you've developed the kind of bad habits, you haven't developed life skills. And so if you're downsized or your career takes a wrong turn, you're in trouble, you're at sea, you don't know how to read, adjust.

• 19:57Robert Greene?

  And I'll say one more thing, the key to the apprenticeship in life in the 21st century is skills. Skills, skills and skills. You wanna be accumulating skills, not just one skill, but three, four, five, six or seven. You have to take advantage of the information age, the incredible access to information that you have. In your twenties, you wanna take on, it could be just one job, but it can be three or four jobs. And the more skills you acquire, later in life, you're gonna combine them into some new business that you start or some, something like my weird books or whatever. You're gonna find a way that really reflects who you are. But if you don't develop these skills in this really competitive, hyper-competitive world, forget it.

• 20:42Robert Greene?

  Right. And do you think you have to have an apprenticeship in order to become a master? Uh, it's not that I think about it, that's reality. It's reality. Okay, you know, it doesn't matter what Robert Greene thinks, or Lewis, or anybody out there. It's this is, it's like the voice of God, just except that the voice of God tells you that human beings evolved over so many millions of years, the brain operates a certain way. Information has to be accumulated and then become automatic and stored in the lower parts of your brain so that you can now think of, of, you don't have to think about everything that you do. There's a process that the brain goes through. And if you don't go through it deep enough, uh, you don't develop enough long-term memory.

• 21:26Robert Greene?

  Uh, everything gets short-circuited, you're never gonna be creative enough. If you don't go through it, you have to go through an apprenticeship. Just trust me, okay? Very interesting. So make sure if you haven't gone through one yet, you're going through. Well, you are going through one. Let's just say, let's put it this way. You are going through an apprenticeship. You're just not doing it right, or you're not paying attention, or you're not conscious, you're not crafting it. You're letting circumstances craft it. You wanna consciously mold that apprenticeship like a sculptor molds clay. Very interesting. So what are these examples, what's, what are these related to? Albert Einstein. Well, Albert Einstein is a great example there, because we think of him as just this genius, who just suddenly woke up with a theory of special relativity in general.

• 22:11Robert Greene?

  Albert Einstein, for ten years, went through this insanely rigorous apprenticeship, mostly on his own, thinking night and day about this one problem related to special relativity. And he would go through these thought experiments. He'd be at a party with people and he would still be thinking about it. He'd be walking with friends on a bridge and he'd still be thinking about this experiment. And eventually, after ten years of insanely intense ruminating over this one problem and working out equations, etc., it blossomed into this insanely, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So, he went through the process.

• 22:55Robert Greene?

  He didn't just suddenly wake up as a genius with a large brain. Spent ten years of intense. Yeah. You know, we know the ten thousand hour rule. So Einstein spent ten thousand hours, easily, thinking on his own about this problem, as he worked at the Swiss, the patent office in Switzerland. And then he spent another ten years ruminating on a larger theory of relativity that related to gravity. So, twenty years, twenty thousand hours, yielded two great theories. And I'm not saying anybody could do that, but if you love physics and you went through that sort of intense process, something amazing would come from it. Interesting. And what about Paul Graham? Paul Graham I have is, you know, I hope you guys know about Paul Graham. He created

• 23:40Robert Greene?

  Y Combinator, one of the most amazing businesses on the planet. It's basically an apprenticeship system for people who want to start up a new tech, a tech firm. And Paul Graham, he was a computer engineer, and he's a great model for our age as far as the hacker mentality when it comes to apprenticeship. He didn't really know what he wanted to do. He loved computers, he loved art, he followed both of them, learned an incredible amount of skills in his twenties, going to Harvard as a consultant and then as a painter, etc. And, you know, he didn't really have an exact sense of where he was headed. And suddenly, he hears something on the internet about, from Netscape, about...

• 24:26Robert Greene?

  This Netscape, the internet's gonna be where businesses are gonna start selling their products. Back in that day, nobody had any idea about this. And a light bulb goes on in his head and he goes, "I, I now, I'm gonna be the one that's gonna create the, the first, uh, sort of online, uh, source for, for running a business online." Um, but he had spent his twenties developing so many skills.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:51Robert Greene?

  Knowing what he hated, knowing what he loved, knowing how business can be, businesses should be run, knowing everything about computing, that he was able to now exploit this opportunity and turn it into a, a business he sold for fifty million dollars to Yahoo.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Wow. So, again, about the skills side of things, don't necessarily wanna have all the same skills in one area, but you wanna have a broad sense of skills so you can bring it together, or?

• 25:14Robert Greene?

  Yeah, I mean, that's the age that we're living in. It's not the age that's, uh, [inaudible]. Uh, another person in the book is a woman named Yoki Matsuhoka, an, an incredible genius. And she, uh, learned first electrical engineering, and then she decided to go into robotics. She became a master in robotics. Then she decided to go study neuroscience, and then she became a master in neuroscience. And now with all of that knowledge, those three skills and a couple more, she's on the forefront of this new wave of technology that's gonna change everything that we have about how we live. Making technology more organic and biological, something that connects more to the brain and how the brain operates.

• 25:56Robert Greene?

  She learned all of these skills and now she's in a position to combine them in a, in an unbelievable way. That's the, that's the path you, you really wanna follow.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Hmm. Now, I've had a number of mentors throughout my whole life. I've had a lot of, um, great coaches who've been my mentors in sports. I've had business mentors, kind of just personal life mentors, and I feel like they're, I'm always preaching to my friends, "You gotta, you gotta find a mentor who can help you, you know, accelerate your learning." So, let's talk about, uh, the mentor dynamic.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Why isn't important to have a mentor and how to find the right one?

• 26:33Robert Greene?

  Well, here's the deal. Um, you know, I make the point that there are no shortcuts in life. If you're looking for shortcuts, you know, good luck.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  But you have to accelerate things.

• 26:42Robert Greene?

  Well, okay, so that's my next point. So there are no shortcuts. You've got to go through the process. But there is one way where you can, as you say, accelerate.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:51Robert Greene?

  And that's by finding a mentor. Now, you have to find the right mentor. It has to be someone who's a good fit. You don't choose someone just because they're sexy and have a big name and they're popular and everybody loves them and they're charming. You choose a mentor that fits you, that has some of your same interests, that has a good fit character-wise as well.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 27:15Robert Greene?

  And also that you say, you know, 10 years, 20 years down the line, "I'd like to be sort of like that person." Okay? Um, so you've got to choose the right mentor. But this is what happens if you find the right mentor in life. Their experience, which is much more than yours, becomes your experience. They're able to show you things that you need to do and other side paths you need to avoid. It'll save you years of doing things on your own, where you're going to learn on your own and fail on your own and wasting so many of your valuable years in your twenties or whatever.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 27:49Robert Greene?

  A mentor will show you, "This is exactly where you need to go. These are the skills you need. This is how you do it." The mentor will also provide you incredible feedback, um, in real time. They're going to show you, uh, you know, "This is where your skills lack. This is what you need to practice."

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:07Robert Greene?

  You want a mentor that's going to be a little bit tough on you. You don't want some softie who's just going to say you're... Go out there and choose someone who may have, may seem a little bit mean or tough.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:18Robert Greene?

  Um, it depends. If you're, if you're, if you're thin-skinned, that's not good. But generally, a tough-minded mentor is going to be able to criticize you. In the book, I have a fighter pilot is one of the masters that I have. Cesar Rodriguez, he's called the last American ace. Um, he flew in Desert Storm. He had this guy teaching him, uh, flying at some point, who was just the meanest bastard. He made his life miserable. He made him do the same and it was over and over again. He just hated him. But God, this guy, you know, upped his game incredibly. So you'd like maybe someone a little bit tough. And I say that their power, their way of doing things, their way of thinking,

• 29:00Robert Greene?

  just by being around them, you're gonna be able to absorb these incredible valuable lessons.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:07Robert Greene?

  So, it's not going to shorten your mastery, but it's going to streamline it and maybe accelerate it. I guess it's the same as shortening it.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 29:19Robert Greene?

  But, a very important thing. If you have no mentors in life, if you can't find them, you can find people who are pseudo mentors on writers that you admire, or other figures that you can study. But it's best to get a real-life person in interaction in front of you. One other thing I'll say is, you'd be surprised, people who are powerful that you admire, they are looking for proteges. Don't be intimidated. If you have skills, if you're disciplined, if you have good character, you have a lot to offer someone in a position of power. It's a satisfying relationship also for the mentor involved, so don't be intimidated by that.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Right. I think that, I like the idea of, you know, the tough love. But I think you need to have both because sometimes, I remember having a specific coach in college for football, where he was just always on me, non-stop.

• 30:16Robert Greene?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  But he never showed that he like cared about me.

• 30:19Robert Greene?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Like that I never felt like loved at all. It's just like, "You suck, you're horrible, you gotta do this better." And I remember I left that college just because I felt like he didn't care.

• 30:29Robert Greene?

  Right.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  And he told me later, you know, he really did care, that's why he was still on me. But I think you need to have, find someone who's tough on you, but you know outside of that experience that they're still like there for you and like supportive, right?

• 30:40Robert Greene?

  You're right, that's a very good point. And in the book, I talk about the Zen master who finally found this kind of tough-love mentor.

• 30:50Robert Greene?

  But in the end, once he had achieved enlightenment, this mentor suddenly softened up. So you can sense that if someone's just mean and has no compassion for you, that's, you're right, that's not the right situation. But you feel it from the other person. You can tell whether they truly care. There's one other thing, though. You don't, you have to be careful. Your goal in life is to surpass the mentor. You don't want to get somebody that you admire so much that you're just going to imitate them. Your goal is to be greater than they are, to outdo them, to sort of have them eat your dust, so to speak. You're gonna, you know, be more famous than that person.

• 31:31Robert Greene?

  And you have to have it in the back of your mind so that you just don't become this slavish little protege or disciple. Right. And later, and as the relationship develops, you assert yourself. And you maybe even think that this person's sort of old fashioned and I'm gonna go beyond him. That's another important element. Interesting. So what are these examples here, please? Well, very briefly, Michael Faraday came from poverty, son of a blacksmith, and he rose to become one of the greatest experimental scientists in the history of science. And the story is unbelievable because nobody in England could pursue a career in science unless they went to Oxford or Cambridge or a very fine institution. And in order to go to those institutions, you had to come from the upper classes.

• 32:16Robert Greene?

  Faraday found his way through an amazing process of discipline and a self-apprenticeship. And then he discovered, he found his way to the greatest mentor that he could possibly find, a scientist of the time named Humphry Davy. He just fits everything I just told you about. He developed so many skills that once Davy needed a protege, Faraday was the absolute best person to do it. And through this relationship, he was able to gain this career in science. And Ramachandran, he basically...

• 32:52Robert Greene?

  He's like a lot of people nowadays, or maybe a lot of people nowadays. He didn't feel like he fit anywhere. He was kind of an individualist. He wasn't just someone that just wanted to fit into the nine to five structure of the how science was, you know, where he just got a job. It was like a job. He was sort of a romantic when it came to science. And he managed to find the one man who could be his mentor, who was as weird as he was. And he glommed on to him. And this man changed his life and basically made it who he is.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Interesting, very interesting. So, see people as they are. Let's talk about social intelligence a little bit. And I think this is, for me, this is probably the most important thing, is understanding social intelligence and how to go through life, deal with people with social intelligence.

• 33:39Robert Greene?

  Well, this is the forty-eight laws of power chapter here. And what I didn't want to do is give you the impression, you, the reader out there, that all you need to do is learn skills, practice on your own, become really great at what you're doing, and then that's enough. Because we're social creatures. We're the preeminent social animal on the planet. Everything that we do comes from learning from other people.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:03Robert Greene?

  And if you're not, you could, you could have the most skills in the world. You could go to Harvard, be brilliant. But if you can't deal with people, you're, you're in a lot of trouble.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Scrooge.

• 34:14Robert Greene?

  Yeah. So, I'm showing you that social intelligence plays a key role in mastering. It has a couple of elements, elements of learning how to read people, how to be very intuitive and shut off that interior monologue and pay closer attention to the signals that people are giving off. If you're a master at reading people, it has a great effect on everything that you do. It'll make you socially brilliant, and it'll also give you this more intuitive sense that you'll be able to apply to other aspects of your life. And the other thing is knowing about human nature, not being so naive, understanding

• 34:54Robert Greene?

  the role of envy, passive aggression, people's laziness, how they're gonna steal ideas from you. If you've got these two sides where you know how to read people and you're not so naive, you'll be pretty good. And then, you know, I talk in the book about letting your work... Speak for you. Um, don't get too obsessed uh with the social game as if that's all that matters. Really, the work that you do is actually the best tool that you have for social intelligence. If your work is is good, if it shows attention to detail, if it shows that you're thinking about your audience, if you're writing books that are addressing your readers, that shows that

• 35:37Robert Greene?

  you're socially aware. People will sense it and know it through your work. That's the ultimate application of this this chapter. Um, you know, Benjamin Franklin is the icon of social intelligence. Um, absolutely brilliant man, great writer, scientist, inventor, political figure. Uh, I could go, I'm sure there's things I'm leaving out, but he was also just um so adept at the social game. Um, he knew um how to, when it was necessary, how to mute his own colors. When he first entered politics, he didn't assert himself at all. He sat back and observed everything that was going on around him. He knew how to blend

• 36:20Robert Greene?

  in and dress like other people. And then when he went to France, he knew how to blend into to France and suddenly become someone else. He just was brilliant at it and, you know, I love him dearly. Temple Grandin is a great example because this is a woman born with autism who rose to mastery. And autistic people generally have a harder time because they're not so socially gifted. Uh, and she taught herself how to how to deal with people. She she learned how to social intelligence as if she were learning how to operate a machine. It was kind of Spock-like, but it was brilliant. And it, she's transformed herself into someone who's relatively quite graceful socially, can do lectures well.

• 37:02Robert Greene?

  Um, and it's, you know, it's it's a great story considering what she overcame. Right. And I think uh social intelligence is definitely an art form. Would you say that this is the greatest art form that anyone can master? Well, I wouldn't put it that way, you know. I wanna, I wanna give everything its, its proper proportion and, and its importance. So if you think of social intelligence as the greatest thing that you need, uh, there are a lot of people out there like that and they're kind of, they can, you can turn into a charlatan, into a bullshitter, that someone who thinks that gift of gab and just like, you wanna talk your way out of everything or whatever. Yeah, and we've all met those types. Sure. They're, they're charmers, but they don't deliver.

• 37:45Robert Greene?

  So if you've got the charm, but you can't deliver, you, your, your work is sloppy. That's true. Um, you haven't really developed any skills. You're not conscientious. It really comes down to your character and, and, and how deeply you care about the, the quality of your work. So let's just say it's, you, you can't avoid being socially intelligent. It's extremely important, but it's certainly not by far the most important thing in life. It's one key element in your, in your path to mastery. There's no shortcuts, no shortcuts. So awaken the men, the dimensional mind, the creative actives, what is this all about?

• 38:27Robert Greene?

  Well, once you've put in your 10,000 hours, you've come to an apprenticeship, you've learned from a mentor, you're socially aware. You, you reach a point where you're, you start to, your mind becomes, uh, full of information, full of knowledge, and you start to experiment and be creative, and the mind naturally awakens with this energy. I describe how I can help you enhance that creativity that's going to be awakened, how to be fluid, how to not, you know, a, a problem people have, let's put it this way. You become the product of your education. You, you went to business school, you learned certain things, certain models, and then you're just gonna become this person that's just gonna apply what you learn. You don't think, you, you, you become the prisoner of what you learn.

• 39:12Robert Greene?

  Hmm. Um, and creative people and masters are actually the ones that rewrite the rules that they learned. They're the ones that subvert them, that change them, create something new. So you have to be able to, to, to assert yourself at some point and let go of the things that you learn and be less conventional.

• 39:34Robert Greene?

  And more fluid and I, you know, it's one of the, it's the longest chapter in the book. And if you read that chapter and you don't have an idea about creativity, then I don't know what else to tell you. And Darwin, he's a good icon of that in that, you know, he spent so many years observing things in nature and after 20 years, the theory of relative, not relative, sorry, the theory of evolution and natural selection just sort of exploded in his mind and all of these associations started happening. He's actually an incredibly creative person with, people don't give him credit for. He created the greatest revolution in science and thinking that has ever occurred.

• 40:18Robert Greene?

  Our world will never be the same after what he discovered. And basically, it's the fruit of, of an incredibly laborious apprenticeship. And Teresita Fernandez is an artist who, you know, essentially had, I mean, artists have to obviously be creative. But she sort of is a type of person that had very, very fluid forms of thinking and knew, knows how to get in touch with her unconscious and, you know, so I wouldn't necessarily put these two as the icons in there.

• 40:59Robert Greene?

  I have Mozart, for instance, or a musician like John Coltrane to sort of show you that in music, which we think of perhaps as maybe the most creative art form. These are people that spent years learning the language of music. And by the time they had spent their, their, their youth doing that, they were able to completely revolutionize and create a whole new genre in music. So, the next part you're talking about is how to fuse the intuitive with the rational for mastering. Well, you know, we'll keep this one real short. Basically, I'm fascinated by intuition, high-level intuition. Napoleon Bonaparte is the icon for me.

• 41:43Robert Greene?

  A man who on the battlefield had what they call the kudai. A glance at his eye, he could tell exactly what was happening on the battlefield. He seemed to know exactly where to send his troops. Exactly where a battle would, the key battle would be fought. It was almost like an occult power, but it came from insane rigorous discipline and knowledge of warfare. And after all of that knowledge, he had what I call a high-level intuition. And that's what Bobby Fischer has in chess, Einstein in physics, you know, Mozart in music, on and on and on.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Now, is that, is that similar to social intelligence? Or what's the difference between social intelligence and intuition?

• 42:29Robert Greene?

  Well, the social intelligence, you're developing in one part of it, a kind of intuitive field for people, that you can read them.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:39Robert Greene?

  That's almost sort of an immediate thing that you can develop in a short period of time. You're right to make the connection, this is an intuition, not applied to people, but to your whole field. And I'll say one last thing about it. The world that we live in is really complex. Any field that you go into, if it's business or sports or whatever, is much more complex than it ever used to be. And we can have that discussion, why, but let's just all agree on that. And the problem that you're gonna have is, you're gonna be overwhelmed by the information you need to know.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:09Robert Greene?

  You're never gonna quite master it. You're always gonna feel like, "I need to know more, I don't quite know enough." And it's overwhelming, it's distracting, it's confusing. Mastery, you master the complexity of your field. You went through such an intense apprenticeship, that that field is now internalized, part of your nervous system, hardwired into you. You know what's gonna happen next, you don't have to think deeply, ideas come to you. When you're at that point and you've mastered this complex field, then, as I said, you've got what I call the philosopher's stone, everything you touch will turn into gold.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  I like that, that's pretty cool.

• 43:48Robert Greene?

  You wanna share examples about these two really quick? Well, uh, I'll just say about Cesar Rodriguez, um, is that he's a great story in that this is a guy who didn't come from, you know, a glorious background. His father was in the military. And he sort of, he sort of backed his way into becoming a fighter pilot and ended up, he's a competitive guy who loved it, but he had no natural skill. He was not a golden boy. He was not Tom Cruise in, in Top Gun. Okay, he's, he was one of the other guys who plods along, like a lot of us, like I'm that way. A slow learner, but he, uh, applied himself with such intensity.

• 44:28Robert Greene?

  Uh, he practiced harder than any of the other pilots that slowly, slowly, slowly started rising and up in the, in the hierarchy, getting admitted to fighter pilot school, getting admitted to this level, being promoted here, that ended up, he was, he completely, uh, outpaced, outshone all of the golden boys who first entered with him because they had never developed the discipline and the skill that he had, and he became, and by the time that he flew in Desert Storm, I described this dogfight that he was in, which is essentially, uh, it looked like he was, he was, he was dead. Um, he had such a feel for this plane and for battle.

• 45:09Robert Greene?

  In a millisecond, he made these incredibly, uh, right decisions that saved his life and ended up to turning it around and killing this MiG fighter, that he had this feel for the, the plane that was so intense and so he is sort of epitomized as one of them. Some tuition that he talked about, yeah. Yeah, he had that Napoleonic thing. Yeah. So what's this quote all about? Uh, it's just everything we've been talking about. It's not, it's, look, we're heading into a future that's going to be sober and realistic. It's not a reality show. It's not about glitz and glamour. It's about people who have skills who can solve problems because we have a lot of problems. It's a competitive world. You are like a carpenter or a bricklayer. You're doing something simple. You're learning how to do.

• 45:54Robert Greene?

  Something well, you're making it well, you're a workman at it, and it can be business or whatever. Take that sober approach, stop thinking that everything has to be like sexy and glamorous. It's actually quite sexy and glamorous to be a solid, good workman or workwoman who knows how to solve problems, who knows how to build things well. Ground yourself in that reality and not stop dreaming so much. I think that's sort of what the quote's about.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Interesting, very interesting. Do we have any questions right now for Robert? So, there's not too many times you get to do a Q and A with the Robert Greene, so now is your chance to ask any questions. We'll stick around for about five to fifteen minutes. Uh, he's got a lot going on. He was just in the New York Times today, a nice piece about him, so you guys go check that out. So he's got a lot going on, but uh, for about five to fifteen minutes, if there are some questions worthy of Robert's time, we will uh, we'll go with those, so. Uh, Deb's saying, "This was so uplifting. I've always thought of myself as a failure because of all my experience." So, thank you from Deb. Uh, "Thanks so much," says Mariah.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Um, "My son is in college and was given your book for high school graduation. He's a great fan. What advice would you give to a young eighteen-year-old man?"

• 47:13Robert Greene?

  Well, it uh, it depends, but um, you know, uh, it's, it's very important. I, I obviously think that um, going to university can be, can be very important, but some people aren't necessarily geared for an academic career. And um, the most important thing is for someone to, to find their way to what they want to accomplish in life and to have any degree of clarity about that. And to um, basically have the philosophy uh, that they're gonna learn by doing. And what I mean there is um, a lot of young people, I know I had this problem myself, you get a little bit intimidated.

• 47:57Robert Greene?

  Um, your academic uh, university life tends to make you a little more of a passive.

• 48:04Robert Greene?

  You need to go out there and try your hand at starting your own business or developing skills in some area and be willing to fail, be willing to be criticized and to just practice and practice and get a kind of a tough skin and feedback, et cetera. And, you know, if you go through the university system, that's fine, but don't think of that as the end all or be all to your career. I know that Paul Graham, who runs Y Combinator, which is this, as I said, this incubator for tech startups. He says that people that come from the best schools are not at all necessarily the best entrepreneurs. He found that it's a character thing.

• 48:47Robert Greene?

  If you're persistent and tough and you love what you're doing, it's worth a thousand percent more than a degree from Harvard. So that's sort of my advice.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Interesting, very interesting. Seeing a lot of great people, you know, Brian saying, "Great job. I see Renee." "Yes, it's great. Loved all your books." "Robert Webber, now is excellent," said Jim Rice. So a lot of great feedback and comments coming through. Let's see, you got a question, Tom?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, here's a good one from Carol from Toronto. She says, "Hey, Robert, out of all of the masters that you studied and researched, do you have a personal favorite?"

• 49:24Robert Greene?

  Well, historical research, I'd have to say Leonardo da Vinci because, you know, in war, it was Napoleon and stuff. But the reason I love da Vinci is he seems to be like from another planet. If you go through the lists of his inventions, his discoveries, you know, from building a device that he could fly in and the different kind of, he made this thing where he could open doors and close them automatically and lamps with adjustable lights and new kind of presses for hoists for engineering.

• 50:06Robert Greene?

  The guy was like, where did all of this creativity and power come from? It's almost unbelievable and that's why his name means so much to us. And what I loved was reading about him and discovering... That it all came from this high level of discipline and patience and and his motto in life was in Italian ostinato rigore which means stubborn rigor. He just was stubborn. He just would spend longer learning what he needed to learn than anybody else. And so I just love reading about that.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Interesting. Go ahead, Sean. This is a good one, Robert. Rob Mack asks, what's more important in choosing a career, passion or money? My passion is music, but I see other fields that I can make money.

• 50:59Robert Greene?

  Oh, definitely the passion. I'm glad you raised that. In the apprenticeship phase, I make the point of you want to choose learning over money. So if you're going in for an entry level position somewhere, you don't want to choose a place that's going to necessarily give you a big paycheck. There are lots of problems that happen because of that. You suddenly are under pressure to perform. You're not necessarily ready. You want to choose a place where you're going to learn the most and it may not be the sexiest place or you may have to have half the pay. And in the end, you're going to make much more money than if you follow the path of choosing something because the paycheck is bigger.

• 51:41Robert Greene?

  You're going to find when you're younger that you become addicted to that paycheck and then it's going to be very hard for you to accept earning less money and it's going to sort of set the pattern for your life. And it's interesting, you go from the modern masters, let's say, from Paul Graham to Santiago Calatrava to Steve Jobs, who's not in the book for various reasons, but none of these people were motivated by money. And if you read the Steve Jobs biography, it stands out in black and white, it's repeated a hundred times, he really didn't care about money. He honestly didn't care about it, to the point of it would actually annoy a lot of people he worked with. And look how much money he ended up making in the end.

• 52:25Robert Greene?

  So it's not a matter of just... You know, becoming a guitarist, you have to make a living. You have to make money. But it's a matter of choosing something that's related to music, that interests you in some way deeply, and that stirs your curiosity. You want to learn this. That's so much more important than the paycheck. You also want to develop the life skill of being able to get along with less money when you're younger. It's a valuable lesson that I learned. So that's what I've...

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I spent about a year and a half on my sister's couch with no money and no income, and basically surviving off of her ramen noodle for about a year and a half.

• 53:08Robert Greene?

  And look at you now.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  And I don't need anything. Like, I travel around the country with four suitcases to my possession. It's like I'm happy, you know, to be...

• 53:16Robert Greene?

  Oh, well, one other thing I've said about Freddie Roach. When he was offered to become a trainer, they didn't pay him. So he had to keep his telemarketing job and work nights as a free trainer for, God knows, a couple of years. And I make the point in there that that's often going to happen. Like, you're going to be offered these free internships or whatever. If it's the right place, you really need to take it and think about what you're missing.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  This is a great one. Liz just asks, "What do you think about Machiavelli's approach to whether it is better to be loved or feared?"

• 53:58Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, I'm a great student of Machiavelli. He's my mentor in some ways. And, you know, that's a phrase that's applied to a specific situation, which is a ruler of a country. It's better that the people fear you than love you. Love is not something you can control. They can easily get tired of you and love someone else. But fear is something you can control. And you know, I don't know, it doesn't necessarily apply to mastery. I would say that in the work world, let's put it this way. You don't want people to love you. A lot of young people make this mistake.

• 54:42Robert Greene?

  They think that the game is to get people to like them, to be charming and nice. And that they can control their destiny if their boss likes them and if colleagues like them. It's the same sort of thing that Machiavelli is talking about. You have no control over that. And in fact, being liked is not an important quality at all. It's being needed that is important. Your skills are necessary. They can't fire you because you're not replaceable. Because you have skills, because you've got good character, because you're disciplined, you're conscientious. Then you know, then they need you and you have much more control over your destiny. If it's just that they like you, maybe some point they won't like you. Or they'll find somebody else that they like more.

• 55:26Robert Greene?

  So that's how I would apply that Machiavelli quote.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  A lot of people have asked this question, so I'm just gonna summarize about 10 different questions for you, Robert. But basically, they were all just wondering, what's the best way to go about finding an actual mentor?

• 55:41Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, it depends on each, the field that you're in. And so there's always gonna be someone in that field that you respect. I know it's funny out there, probably in the audience, is Ryan Holiday. He sort of set this up for me. Ryan was sort of my apprentice for a while. And now he's gone on to write his own book and start his own business. And he's gonna be running this planet at some point. And Ryan basically approached me because he liked my books.

• 56:21Robert Greene?

  And I could see that he was someone that had good character and that was really disciplined and worked hard. And had some skills. So I jumped at the opportunity. You wanna look for someone... Who maybe is overworked, has a need for a protege. That's what Freddie Roach did. He found that this guy didn't have anybody else to assist him as a trainer. You want to look for people that have a need for it. And it's a little weird, there has to be a fit where they're going to, it's almost like a parent-child relationship.

• 57:04Robert Greene?

  So there's a little bit of a seduction involved going on here where if you make the mentor feel like they get to now to share their skills and their knowledge and they're passing along something to another generation. It's a very nice feeling.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  It's fulfilling, right?

• 57:20Robert Greene?

  It's very fulfilling. So you've got to find a person that maybe is in that position to do your research.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:27Robert Greene?

  The main thing is do not feel intimidated by their position or their power. People are more in need of a protege and more wanting to have one than you think.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Now, here's a great kind of question that I get all the time. I've got a, you know, a sports business company and a lot of people ask me questions about how to break into the sports industry. So Matthew is saying, I love the presentation. My question is, what if you're in your early 30s, spend eight years in a career that you don't love, but it's very lucrative with a high salary? And you know your passion is in a field where you'd be forced to make a serious financial sacrifice. And you mentioned this briefly, but I guess what do you do when you're, you feel like you're stuck? And again, you can always teach an old dog new tricks. What do you think?

• 58:12Robert Greene?

  Well, you make the break and you make it as soon as you can. And, but you don't make a full break. So whatever that field was, it's hard to do this in the abstract, but whatever that field was. You don't want to turn your back on the skills that you learned. I met recently with a woman who interviewed me, who went into law school, became a lawyer, and she knew it wasn't her passion. And then she got her, she knew that she wanted to be a writer and a journalist. So she got out and became a journalist specializing in law and legal issues. So she could combine the skills that she had developed that were very solid and important and use them in something that she loved more.

• 58:55Robert Greene?

  And now eventually she'll be able to get rid of that law stuff that she's not so interested in and just be a writer. So you want to build on the things that you have, but you have to understand that you, you know, I didn't start writing these books until I was thirty-six, thirty-seven. So it's not, being in your thirties is fine. But the clock is ticking, not the talk is clicking, the clock is ticking. And, you know, you're gonna be, the more you wait, the more addicted you are to that paycheck, the harder it's gonna be. Because you have responsibilities at that point, you may have a family, things like that, right? Exactly. But more than that, it's your ego and your pride and your way of living. And if you wait, you're trapped. Yeah.

• 59:36Robert Greene?

  And you're gonna wake up and not feel like you did anything that fulfilled you deeply. It's gonna become boring to you. So you really gotta, I say, make the break now, but don't completely give up what you've, the skills you've developed. And Donna's kind of saying something similar to that. She said at fifty-six, I've accomplished a lot, but there's more to, but I feel there's more to go in my natural areas of attraction, which is dance, acting, writing, language studies. Do you, what are your suggestions for someone who's, you know, fifties? Well, it sounds like you've been doing the right thing, that you, well, I don't know, but you've learned some amount of skills, you have a lot of experience.

• 1:00:20Robert Greene?

  And just basically what I said about the last question is, you want to find a way to bring all of that experience into something really unique and interesting. So, you know, I make the point that the greatest masters, like a Benjamin Franklin, They have all this experience and mastery and creativity and they're older and wiser. And that's like the ultimate kind of power that you can have because you can be young and master things and very creative, but you really don't know enough about life itself.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:55Robert Greene?

  So you have a lot of life experiences and you want to find a way to bring all of that together into something. I don't know if it's some kind of work of art, some sort of job, it's your passion. If you don't have to worry about making money, if it's, if you're reasonably secure, then be a little bit bold and then try something new. And if it's, you're gonna write a book, write a book that combines all of those things that you just mentioned that you're interested in.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Right. And in your book, you actually talk about kind of like young geniuses or proteges or proteges, I mean. And Dan is talking about here, he's asking question, my daughter's thirteen, is she too young to get started in her mastery apprenticeship or what's a good age for that? Because you don't want to be too smart, too young, or because then you don't develop, right? You mentioned that in more of the chapters here.

• 1:01:41Robert Greene?

  Well, here's what, here's the most important thing for young people, especially at that age, is you want to really, really encourage them to be learning some kind of skill. And the reason for this is simple. So that skill could be sport that they love, chess, music, dancing. Once a child at any age learns the pleasure that they get from developing skill at something, it's a lifelong lesson. So they learned that in the beginning, that first year playing the piano was boring and didn't really like it. The second year started getting kind of fun and they can start playing things that they liked. And the third year became really exciting. When you get a little older in life and you're twenty-two, twenty-three, and then it starts, you're getting a little bored with your work, you remember that. You

• 1:02:26Robert Greene?

  remember, well, if I stick with it, if I go in it long enough, I'll start hitting this, what I call the cycle of accelerated returns, where the practice becomes more pleasurable. If it becomes more pleasurable, you practice harder and it becomes even more pleasurable and you practice even harder. And soon enough, you're Mozart or Tiger Woods.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Without the scandals.

• 1:02:47Robert Greene?

  Without the scandals. I forgot to mention Tiger Woods because he's a, he is, you know, you're not gonna sit there and hit twenty million golf balls unless you love it. And he, and he truly loves it. So. Knowing, it doesn't have to be that she she studies music and then will become a musician, but she's developed this life lesson that learning something pay has a payoff and you can defer immediate pleasure. Uh, we talked about Cesar Rodriguez. When he was in the midst of having to learn how to fly a jet and it was driving him crazy and he thought he was a failure. He remembered back to when he was in high school, he was a football player. He was the quarterback of his team. I've met him, he's he's a pretty short guy, about five foot six, five foot seven.

• 1:03:31Robert Greene?

  You know, you wouldn't think of him as a quarterback. He wasn't physically gifted for the position. He managed to get there and become a successful quarterback through sheer practice. He remembered, ah, by practicing, I may, I surpassed everyone else. The same thing will apply to the pilots of flying a jet. So that's what you want to instill in your thirteen year old.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Right, you made a great example about a basketball player, uh, Bill Bradley as well, about how he was just practicing three to five hours every day, weekends on a cruise ship, like all sorts of crazy stuff, right?

• 1:04:02Robert Greene?

  Yeah, Bill Bradley's a great example. I mean, he was tall, so that helped.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  He was awkward, right?

• 1:04:06Robert Greene?

  He was awkward and he was white. He couldn't jump very high and he wasn't fast and he couldn't dribble really well. But he loved basketball. He loved hearing the swish of the net. He just was addicted. And so he created the most insane practice session I think anyone in the history of sports has ever created. He basically willed himself into becoming a great basketball player. I'm old enough to remember Bill Bradley and this guy was just the smoothest player you ever seen. He could, he had eyes in the back of his head. He could dribble brilliantly. He was just, he just had a feel for the game. It came through this practice that he put himself through. He, he wore glasses that which he couldn't even look down at his feet. So he learned, trained himself to dribble without looking at his feet in between these chairs, day and night and day and night.

• 1:04:50Robert Greene?

  He's a great example of what you can do through, through practice and willpower.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Uh, but Jan is asking, do you know any methods that you can use to find out your life's purpose or your life's task?

• 1:05:02Robert Greene?

  Well, you, you know, it, it, it's, it's a little bit complicated and that's why I wrote a whole chapter on it. Uh, because you don't sometimes know what's truly interests you and what was sort of influenced by others and by what seems cool, et cetera. So you have to kind of go through a little bit of a process. You know that you're attracted to certain kinds of things, certain activities. They present a challenge. We know from neuroscience that when a person is faced with a challenge that's a little bit above them and that they're excited about, they learn and retain what they've learned

• 1:05:44Robert Greene?

  much deeper than someone that's bored, that's tuned out, or that it comes too easy, or is way too difficult. So you want to choose something in life that's a bit of a challenge, that excites you, that makes you curious. And don't think in terms of cliches like, "I love, you know, music," or something really large. When you were a kid, you were interested in certain patterns, in certain ways of doing things. Something excited you about nature, or questions about life. That is the source of something that you want to explore. What excites you in a primal way and makes you deeply curious?

• 1:06:26Robert Greene?

  When you open the newspaper, this is the first article that you, or check online, this is the first article you go to. Right. You know, for me, the moment I see an article about something that, about animals, or dinosaurs, or discoveries about ancient humans, ancestors, my eyes light up, I go straight for it. I can't stand not reading anything like that. What is it about you, if you were to look at a newspaper, which is covering everything, art, home, technology, that draws you, and you have to read that article, and you have to bookmark it and send it to your friends? You're looking for things that just excite you in some primal way.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Interesting. And Sean, while you're getting the next question together, I just saw Sherry Croy just got a copy. Thanks, Sherry. And Paul said he just sent order, just bought three of them, so thanks for that, Paul, and everyone else who's signing up right now. Keep sending in the emails, forwarding along, so we can give you those bonuses. What's the next question, Sean? Maria was curious as to why Steve Jobs was not featured in the book.

• 1:07:30Robert Greene?

  Well, it was mostly a question of logistics. So I interviewed nine contemporary masters. And believe me, if I had the chance to interview Steve Jobs, I would have grabbed it. At the time, I was writing the book, he was very ill. I tried actually to make contact with him and I knew people who knew him. But little did I know that there was a book already underway, the book by Walter Isaacson. So, first of all, Steve Jobs isn't somebody that probably would have agreed to this for various reasons that I have had. Second of all, he was dying at the time, and third, somebody was writing the book. The other option was to use these Isaacson book, but it came out just as I was nearing

• 1:08:14Robert Greene?

  the end of writing mastery, so it wasn't logistically possible. So I read the book recently on my own and I'm gonna give talks about it, I'll write articles. He's just an incredible example, embodiment of all the things I write about. I'll just say one thing about him. He is someone who felt very passionate early on about two things, about computers and about the design of computers, how they interacted with people. And so that, his life's task wasn't computers. He was not a good engineer, that was Steve Wozniak. He was a mediocre engineer. His task wasn't to design computers because he was actually a geek who loved electronics.

• 1:08:59Robert Greene?

  His life's task was to combine these two interests into something that nobody had ever done before, and nobody has done since, which is to make technology like a piece of art, aesthetically pleasing. And look what he managed to accomplish by pursuing that.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing. John asked another interesting question, again, specific to him, but everyone apply these questions to yourself. What advice would you give to a 24-year-old convicted felon who is currently a telemarketer, who is at his parents' house with only a high school education? I wanna make music and inspire people to follow their dreams, what steps could I take? So John, first off, make sure you grab a copy of this book, it'll probably be the best $15 you spend. For your education, but.

• 1:09:49Robert Greene?

  Well, I mean, I liked your story because you've you've gone, you've had some experiences. You've got a story that most twenty four year olds don't know. Um, and so that already i- is actually an advantage. Think of that as an advantage. Think of that as like your education. Instead of university, you might have gone to university.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Real education, hard knocks.

• 1:10:13Robert Greene?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, so don't ever get discouraged. You've got actually a heads up on other people. Um, the other thing is, um, stay at home, live with your parents. Don't worry about money. Don't worry about what other people think about you. And just like spend as much time as you can. I guess you said it was music. I don't know what aspect of of music it is. Um, you know, working like a fiend, developing the the skills in particular thing and somehow finding a way to incorporate your your hard experiences in life. If you're writing music, writing songs that kind of deal with that.

• 1:10:55Robert Greene?

  Um, you know, that reflects some of the things that you learned in in prison. Um, and just, you know, think that you're going to spend the next three years of your life. Uh, not worrying about becoming famous, getting attention, being cool, getting a lot of chicks. You're just thinking about mastering music at some level. Um, and then call me in three years and we'll get together. I'm sure something is going to come of that.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  There you go. Yeah, your your experience may be your greatest gift that you have right now. So, um, hope you're the best, my man. And what's the next question, Sean, that you like?

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Yes, Matt just commented the prison question was so deep and powerful and appreciate that. Everybody really did struggle some good response there. And I also want to point out Julie or Jules Pierce just said, I'm so happy I've attended this webinar and I bought these books. Thank you. There's been tons of great comments that come in like that. Um, Gilbert asked a great question, Robert. He says, one historical figure.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  To read the most, i.e. who has affected you the most, I guess, what historical figure did you read about, maybe you answered that earlier with the Da Vinci?

• 1:12:06Robert Greene?

  Well, I mean, they're all, I don't know if he's referring to mastery per se, they're all like so interesting in each, in each in a different way, but I love the story of Charles Darwin. I know he doesn't seem so sexy, but I wanted to make Charles Darwin sexy, and I'll tell you why. First of all, he seemed like kind of a loser when he was a child. His father thought he was sort of slow witted. All he was interested in was collecting beetles and hunting and riding horses, being outdoors. And people just sort of gave up on the guy. They thought, you know, he's not going to be good at it. His father wanted to be a doctor, he couldn't stand the sight of blood.

• 1:12:48Robert Greene?

  Basically, they gave up and they were going to get him a position in the church where he could just collect a lot of money and they could forget about him. And he gets this offer to go on this five-year voyage around the world as a sort of a naturalist on board. And his father's against it, and nobody knows why he wants to do it. And he decides to take this offer, and it transforms him into, I think, maybe the most brilliant scientist that ever lived. And that was his apprenticeship, five years on a ship among like kind of rough-and-tumble sailors and a captain who was kind of insane, a Bible-thumping captain.

• 1:13:30Robert Greene?

  And he was, he turned into this adventurer, and I liked him because he approached life at his apprenticeship as if it were this insane adventure. And he was going to explore and be fearless and do whatever he could to learn as much as he possible about nature. And based on that apprenticeship that was so rich, um, he made this incredible discovery. And I like it, it's inspirational because he, he wasn't someone that was necessarily naturally gifted. It came from a love of the subject and it came from this sense of adventure that I try and say, that should be the model for your apprenticeship. Your, your twenties are like this voyage that you're taking

• 1:14:13Robert Greene?

  and you're going to be as fearless as possible and try everything out.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Interesting. What, what are the questions we have coming through Sean? And we've, we've gone for about thirty minutes. This is the fastest thirty minutes of Q and A so far. You want to go for a few more?

• 1:14:24Robert Greene?

  No.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Robert, I'm like intrigued. I thought it was just like five minutes, but this is thirty minutes.

• 1:14:29Robert Greene?

  No, I like that.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Still lots of people on. Robert's happy to answer some more questions. So again, try to, try to ask, uh, unique questions that haven't been already asked or answered. Uh, I mean, and, uh,

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, here's, here's an interesting one, Robert, that Lonnie asks. It says, Robert has worked with Fifty Cent and may have some insights into the African-American community. The issue about uselessness of mastery in what is perceived as a racist society is something I come up against when working with African-American youth and encouraging them about techno- technical mastery. Any thoughts on that?

• 1:15:05Robert Greene?

  Well, um, I know, uh, it's, it's a, it's a real kind of, uh, false impression because, um, you know, you go spend time with Fifty or you be around someone like Jay-Z. Uh, these are people who are really disciplined and who take their work really seriously. Fifty himself, uh, never took drugs, doesn't like to drink. He treated hustling as a job because it was the only thing he could get. But he thought of it as like he was an entrepreneur and he was going to learn about business. And then when he got a chance to, to, to do music, he found his, the perfect mass mentor, Jam Esther J., attached himself to the right mentor. And then when he got his first record deal with Columbia,

• 1:15:50Robert Greene?

  He treated that as like his university and so he went to Columbia every day and study all aspects of the record business.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:15:58Robert Greene?

  These are things people don't know about. They think of him just from the image, but the guy is insanely serious and disciplined and wants to learn and actually is kind of a geek when it comes to technology and is one of the first artists to really, really, truly embrace the internet with thisis50.com and what he's done with the internet. So it's the wrong impression to give. African-Americans are among the biggest readers of my books and are people, anybody from a minority who's felt excluded from things like mastery or power in this country

• 1:16:38Robert Greene?

  has an incredible hunger to learn about the world and about what it takes to get ahead and things about mastery and the 48 laws. Countries like India and China and Russia where people haven't had the wealth that we've had, they're highly motivated to learn these things. So it all comes down to your level of motivation. And I have in the book, one of the great masters that ever lived is John Coltrane, the jazz artist, and no one was more serious and disciplined than him. Discipline and seriousness is a human trait, it's not an ethnic trait at all.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Now, I see some more great questions and Sean, I'll let you take the next one after I ask this one, but I think it's Rajiv asks, again, thanks, really great webinar, he says, wanted to know what's some advice on approaching or asking someone to be your mentor. You mentioned a little bit, but what's something you could do to approach?

• 1:17:36Robert Greene?

  Well, you say at the end of that question, especially if they're well-known. Oh, I see.

• 1:17:43Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, the thing about like Michael Faraday is he didn't actually approach the person that became his mentor. He was very clever and indirect. He made it, uh, his work. Uh, he did this project that was so bizarre and revealed that he'd spent two years doing it, that it came to the attention of someone who then brought it to the, to this mentor, who then go, wow, this, this guy's incredible. So if you can, um, do something in your work that will get this attention, or that it can at least become a calling card. So I don't know what your field is. It's, it's hard to speak in the abstract, but let's say, uh, it's a writer, just make it easy for me here.

• 1:18:25Robert Greene?

  Um, and you wanting to interest me in serving as your mentor. If I become aware that you, um, did research on a project and that research was really, really exceptional, and I can see it by sources that you came up with, um, and it comes to my attention, either from you or a third party that you plant, well, God, that's gonna really get my attention, cause, uh, and I'm, I'm gonna hire you. Um, so you want to have something that you can show them that shows that you have interesting experiences that will, that will entice them in, into the, into the relationship. That would be the main thing that you should do. Sure. Uh, what's your next question you got there, Sean?

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  There's a couple of comments actually, real quick. Robert, Maria said, thanks for the response. As an African American, I truly appreciate that response. And Nicole said, as an African American woman, I can attest to Robert's response to that question, I think the one previously about technology and African Americans. She said, I've used, I've used his books to overcome my inherent disadvantages to the point that they don't matter at all.

• 1:19:29Robert Greene?

  Wow, thanks, great to hear it.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then Matt just said, I'm so blown away, this information, information is so transformative. Robert's story of Darwin's five-year voyage immediately brought me to tears and reminds me of my upcoming journey. Thank you so much, guys.

• 1:19:43Robert Greene?

  Oh, you're welcome.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  Thought I'd just share that with you, that's pretty good. So I think this, I don't know if we should keep going, or maybe do one or two more of this, but here's a, uh...

• 1:19:51Robert Greene?

  Let's do, let's do three more. We could probably go all day, but let's just say, let's pick three more and, uh, we'll call it a day then.

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  No one's leaving.

• 1:19:59Robert Greene?

  I know. Oh, I got more. Fifty more, so. I like giving people... Well, if people are giving good questions, then we'll, we'll keep answering a few more. So go ahead, Sean.

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  Alright, um, Paul just asks, "What is your tip?" And this is just, I'm not sure if this is, not really, but I think it's interesting, because a lot of people probably deal with the same battle. "What is your tip to deal with laziness and indifference for a 24-year-old?" I guess it probably could apply to anybody.

• 1:20:27Robert Greene?

  You mean, the person himself is lazy and indifferent?

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  I guess, that's what he's asking.

• 1:20:34Robert Greene?

  Okay, well, I mean...

• 1:20:35Speaker 03

  He's asking to give advice to a friend.

• 1:20:36Robert Greene?

  Yeah, look, it's a signal, if you're lazy, that you're not, you're not interested in what you're doing, obviously, I'm not saying anything earth-shattering there, but you, you, you, it's not about your nature, let's just put it this way, it's not that you're a lazy person, uh, nobody, we, first of all, we all are inherently lazy, we all have a lazy streak, and we also have a streak that wants to do something and be challenged and have our minds engaged. So, you want to feed the engaged, excited, curious part, and you want to find a way to tame that natural lazy part. I have a lazy part, I like to sit and waste time, and then it's 3 o'clock and I have to start writing all of a sudden, so it's, it's a very human

• 1:21:20Robert Greene?

  thing, but your, your, your brain responds to what challenges and excites you. So, the first thing is to realize you're not lazy by nature, it's that you're doing something that doesn't interest you deeply, and you've got to find whatever it is that excites you and makes you curious, and the other thing is, not everything in life is going to be sexy and exciting and wonderful, um, if you're playing a musical instrument, uh, there's going to be years of, of pain that involve, involved in, where you don't feel like you're good enough and it's kind of boring, that's just what life's about, so not everything can be sexy, but if you find something that interests you and you start applying your

• 1:22:02Robert Greene?

  interest in it and learning some skills, you'll be able to surmount tho- those barriers, that boredom, um, and that kind of impatience that you have, because you really, really want to conquer it. If you don't want to conquer it, there's nothing you can do about your laziness, so just realize that that's not really who you are, you just need to find what you need, what, what, what your life's task is. And I see Claude Dean says, uh...

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Please tell Robert that his 50th wall changed my life.

• 1:22:30Robert Greene?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  And also, what are the top three things I should teach my kids at age 10, or ages 8 and 10? What should I make sure that gets done?

• 1:22:40Robert Greene?

  I think I know you, Cladine, you're a Facebook thread. Um, well, it's sort of what I mentioned earlier about the 13-year-old daughter. Um, so you wanna, the, um, there's a quote from, I believe it's good, that says, "If every child was able to follow its inclinations, they would all be geniuses. There would be nothing but geniuses in this world." And Buckminster Fuller said, "Every child is born a genius." Um, and sort of life drums it out of them. So you wanna feed their natural inclinations. I have many stories in there of great parents. Thomas Edison's mother was a really good nurturing mother.

• 1:23:21Robert Greene?

  You can read about her in that chapter where she realized her son was inclined towards science and encouraged him. So figuring out what their inclinations are. If they're interested in something that doesn't interest you, don't impose your ideals on them. If they're interested in business, you know, an eight-year-old business that you love to dance and art, don't assume that they need to learn what you love. Feed what they are naturally drawn to. And then get them to do something in that field where they can develop some skill and get that confidence that comes. Children are the best learner. When you're a child, your brain absorbs information 80 times better than an adult.

• 1:24:05Robert Greene?

  They are machines for learning. You wanna feed their desire to learn by giving them stuff that excites them so that they develop confidence and they know how to gain skills. And so they'll be able to fall upon that forever in their life and they'll have that patience that is a life skill. That's basically what I would say.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Interesting. Um, Brian Kruzeberger asks, "What's Robert's approach to deep practice?"

• 1:24:31Robert Greene?

  I'm not sure what, are you calling it deep practice or deliberate practice? I'm not sure what that concept is.

• 1:24:41Robert Greene?

  In the book and in all the books on acquiring skills, they talk about deliberate practice. And what that means, and I definitely believe in that. What that means is, first of all, expand your idea of what a skill is. You said deliberate practice, same thing, yeah. Okay, okay. First of all, expand your idea of what a skill is. A skill isn't just like learning how to use a hammer, a nail, or shoot a basketball. Writing is a skill, business is a skill, dealing with people is a skill, marketing is a skill. They're all skills, it's just the same model, okay? The thing is, what, the people, the problem that people have is they tend to practice the things that they're already good at and avoid the things that they're not good at.

• 1:25:25Robert Greene?

  If you're a baseball hitter, you're just gonna practice endlessly hitting fastballs because you suck at hitting a curveball and it's more fun to be hitting the balls out. You know, you need to spend 98% of your time practicing hitting curveballs. So deliberate practice means crafting your practice towards what you're not good at and avoiding the problem that people have of having lopsided skills where they're only doing things that they know that they're already good at. And I take that a little further in then talking about Bill Bradley. That's sort of the example for Bill Bradley. You actually even want to practice things that are painful. Pain is good, pain is a good thing.

• 1:26:07Robert Greene?

  First of all, it toughens you, it never, it doesn't become so painful after a while.

• 1:26:14Robert Greene?

  And it's a signal from your brain that this is something that you haven't mastered, that is frustrating you, and you want to overcome that. Because if you feel like you can overcome the pain and the frustration, it gives you such confidence to keep, you know, whenever something comes up that's not good. And pain is good for you. Pain will make you master that thing and will make it turn into a pleasure. So that's sort of how I'd answer that. True. What's the next question you got there, Sean?

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  You know, there's a bunch. I'm just gonna ask a personal one, if that's all right, Robert. I think we've got a list of ones that are on here, some version of it. I think your book, The Forty-Eight Laws of Power, and The Fiftieth Law, and then, I would say, Jim Rohn's Leading Inspired Life have probably been three of the most inspirational or life-changing books for me. Of all the books you read, what do you think are some of the most inspirational or life-changing books that you've read?

• 1:27:09Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, it's a great question. It's just so hard for me because in the since 1996, I've read over, you know, 2,000 books on these things, or something like that. It's, you know, I don't know. I like to read, you know, a lot of philosophy, things that kind of ground me in timeless wisdom. So Machiavelli plays a huge role for me. Not the prince so much, but his other books, The Discourses, and Florentine Histories. I don't know exactly how to answer that. There's some books by Schopenhauer,

• 1:27:51Robert Greene?

  and things on Zen meditation, and Samurai Warriors, and Warfare, The Art of War. I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't have a sexy immediate answer on that one. Because mostly, you know, I'm reading books. Oh, I see Fanny Thayer. Oh, I can go to her question, because I know it. It's, I'm not reading for pleasure, you know. I don't have any time off. So I'm reading books to go into my books. So I'm sorry, I don't have a good answer for you there, Sean.

• 1:28:24Speaker 03

  No, no worries. You mentioned The Art of War, and it's one I've never read, and I've been meaning to read, so I'll go get that. Fanny just said, finally said, "Hi, Robert, I love your book, especially Master, because it made me realize that even at 50, it's not too late to get, to go from what you're passionate about."

• 1:28:39Robert Greene?

  Hey, Fanny, I think I know you. It's great to hear from you.

• 1:28:43Speaker 03

  This is the last one, I think, I'll ask. Rajiv was asking, I think this is a common misconception with The Art of Persuasion, but he says, "How can you get over the feeling that it's wrong, not wrong, to manipulate, seduce someone if it isn't in your character?"

• 1:28:59Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, you have to first expand your idea of what it means to manipulate. It's a loaded word that when we hear, it immediately conjures up something very sinister and ugly. But I maintain in my books, and you can argue with it, but this is what I maintain, is that we humans are naturally manipulative creatures. It's in our primate nature. You're just not so conscious of it. So you know, when you go into your work, you don't say, "Oh my God, you're looking really fat today," or, you know, "That was a really stupid remark."

• 1:29:39Robert Greene?

  So you're tailoring what you say to people to please them, to not insult them. These are sort of low-level manipulations that we all go through. If there's a woman that you want to impress, you take her on a date, you don't just simply dress like a slob and take her to a hamburger joint or something. You go out of your way to impress her.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  Louis does that.

• 1:30:04Robert Greene?

  What'd you say? Oh, Louis does that. You know, Louis just got, oozes charm, so he doesn't need to worry about that. So, you know, these are low-level forms of manipulation, and we don't think anything ugly of that. So if you're not somebody that naturally is a shark, don't try being one. You know, it's not going to be good to practice some of these 48 laws. In fact, the 48 Laws of Power is designed to make you aware of what other people are going to be doing to you. If you're a naive type, I tended to be when I was younger, you need to know maybe that somebody's going to steal your work and put your name on it, or they're going to conceal their intentions.

• 1:30:46Robert Greene?

  So don't, so try and read them, not like an open book, but like a closed book. So, you know, don't be so naive, know about human nature. And if you're not comfortable practicing the more overt forms of manipulation, that's fine, you know? I don't want you to do something that you're not comfortable with. You can get along fine in life without being a manipulative bastard. In fact, the manipulative bastards usually kind of get themselves caught in their own trap. So, you don't have to feel worried about it. It's more that I don't want you to be a naive person who thinks that you can just trust anyone that crosses your path.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  So, with that, Sean, I want to wrap things up and make that the final question. Do you want to say anything before I give the final word to Robert?

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  Sure. Robert, just a huge thanks for coming on to this webinar. I'm pretty sure the content and advice that you gave during the Q and A has been life-changing for a lot of people. So, really appreciate you having you on and I can't recommend it enough.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  I will pass it over to Robert for the final word, but on the back of the book it says, "Follow the path and become a master." So, Robert, final word for you.

• 1:31:58Robert Greene?

  Well, you know, I don't want people to get the impression that this is some intimidating book about Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs, that it's like, you know, I could never accomplish that. I know in a sport like archery, when you're first learning it, they teach you to kind of aim higher than the mark because then you're going to probably hit it. And that's sort of my approach to life. You're going to aim a little bit higher than you think that you can accomplish. You're going to aim at mastery. If you don't get there, you're going to certainly get a lot further than you are right now. You're going to kind of at least be more creative and fluid. So, you know, don't be intimidated by the idea that this mastery is something beyond you. In fact, examples in the book are from everyday people who master their field.

• 1:32:40Robert Greene?

  It is something that's a power that's latent in you and I'm going to show you how to awaken that.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  Wow, what a powerful message, Robert Greene. Thanks so much and I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did. Now, head over to our site at schoolofgreatness.com for a link to buy Robert's book on Amazon and please leave us a review for this podcast over on iTunes. I hope you guys have an amazing next couple of weeks and I'll see you next time on The School of Greatness.