Mastery

by Robert Greene

relented.

unprecedented

prodigious

If we think deeply about our childhood, not just about our memories of it but how it actually felt, we realize how differently we experienced the world back then. Our minds were completely open, and we entertained all kinds of surprising, original ideas.

Masters not only retain the spirit of the Original Mind, but they add to it their years of apprenticeship and an ability to focus deeply on problems or ideas. This leads to high-level creativity.

Although they have profound knowledge of a subject, their minds remain open to alternative ways of seeing and approaching problems. They are able to ask the kinds of simple questions that most people pass over, but they have the rigor and discipline to follow their investigations all the way to the end.

Some people maintain their childlike spirit and spontaneity, but their creative energy is dissipated in a thousand directions, and they never have the patience and discipline to endure an extended apprenticeship. Others have the discipline to accumulate vast amounts of knowledge and become experts in their field, but they have no flexibility of spirit, so their ideas never stray beyond the conventional and they never become truly creative.

What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude. We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships.

adolescence

tenacious.

The Dimensional Mind has two essential requirements: one, a high level of knowledge about a field or subject; and two, the openness and flexibility to use this knowledge in new and original ways.

Once the mind is freed from having to learn these basics, it can focus on higher, more creative matters.

steps: first, choosing the proper Creative Task, the kind of activity that will maximize our skills and knowledge; second, loosening and opening up the mind through certain Creative Strategies; and third, creating the optimal mental conditions for a Breakthrough or Insight.

Most often, people associate creativity with something intellectual, a particular way of thinking. The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self—our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

You must have patience and

faith that what you are doing will yield something important. You could have the most brilliant mind, teeming with knowledge and ideas, but if you choose the wrong subject or problem to attack, you can run out of energy and interest. In such a case all of your intellectual brilliance will lead to nothing.

The task that you choose to work on must have an o...

the Life’s Task, it must connect to something ...

You will then feel personally committed to solving the problem and will not rest until you do so.

Understand: it is the choice of where to direct his or her creative energy that makes the Master.

your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work.

If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you.

There are two things to keep in mind: First, the task that

you choose must be realistic.

To reach your goal you may have to learn a few new things, but you must have mastered the basics and possess a solid enough grasp of the field so th...

Second, you must let go of your need for comfort and security.

If you need everything in your life to be simple and safe, this open-ended nature of the task will fill you with anxiety.

If you are worried about failure or going through a period of mental and financial instability, then you will violate the Primary Law of the Creative Dynamic, and your worries will be reflected in the results.

Think of yourself as an explorer. You cannot find anything new if you are unwilling to leave the shore.

Think of the mind as a muscle that naturally tightens up over time unless it is consciously worked upon.

The only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgment on what it all means. The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible. As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgments early on.

Truly creative people in all fields can temporarily suspend their ego and simply experience what they are seeing, without the need to assert a judgment, for as long as possible.

To put Negative Capability into practice, you must develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything that crosses your path.

The brain is an instrument developed for making connections.

The brain is constantly searching for similarities, differences, and relationships between what it processes. Your task is to feed this natural inclination, to create the optimal conditions for it to make new and original associations between ideas and experiences. And one of the best ways to accomplish this is by letting go of conscious control and allowing chance to enter into the process.

Many of the most interesting and profound discoveries in science occur when the thinker is not concentrating directly on the problem but is about to drift off to sleep, or get on a bus, or hears a joke—moments of unstrained attention, when something unexpected enters the mental sphere and triggers a new and fertile connection.

serendipity—the

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down.

In this way, you will have the freedom to try out the most absurd ideas.

Thinking in terms of analogies and metaphors can be extremely helpful to the creative process.

In any event, you must train yourself to look constantly for such analogies to reframe and expand your ideas.

The Current is like a mental electrical charge that gains its power through a constant alternation.

“must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination.”

Early in his career, Fuller noticed that many people have great ideas, but are afraid to put them into action in any form.

Our conventional tendency is to look for a single cause or a simple explanation, which then reveals to us how to fix the problem. If the book we are creating is not working out, we focus on the uninspired writing or the misguided concept behind it. Or if the company we work for is not performing well, we look at the products we are designing and marketing. Although we think we are being rational when we think in this way, most often problems are more complicated and holistic; we are simplifying them, based on the law that the mind always looks for shorthands.

jumble,

In general you want to pay greater attention to the relationships between things, because that will give you a greater feel for the picture as a whole.

Our minds are always hurrying to generalize about things, often based on the most minimal amounts of information.

In general, try approaching a problem or idea with a much more open mind.

Think of anomalies as the creative form of such mutations. They often represent the future, but to our eyes they seem strange. By studying them, you can illuminate this future before anyone else.