Mastery

by Robert Greene

Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality.

In the process leading to this ultimate form of power, we can identify three distinct phases or levels. The first is the Apprenticeship; the second is the Creative-Active; the third, Mastery.

In studying the brains of monkeys, they found that particular motor-command neurons will not only fire when they execute a very specific action—such as pulling a lever to get a peanut or taking hold of a banana—but that these neurons will also fire when monkeys observe another performing the same actions. These were soon dubbed mirror neurons.

The less we attempt, the less chances of failure.

people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

First, you must connect or reconnect with your inclinations, that sense of uniqueness.

Second, with this connection established, you must look at the career path you are already on or are about to begin.

These steps are: Deep Observation (The Passive Mode), Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode), and Experimentation (The Active Mode).

First, it is essential that you begin with one skill that you can master, and that serves as a foundation for acquiring others. You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.

Second, the initial stages of learning a skill invariably involve tedium. Yet rather than avoiding this inevitable tedium, you must accept and embrace it. The pain and boredom we experience in the initial stage of learning a skill toughens our minds, much like physical exercise.

Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. You develop patience. Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.

When we work with our hands and build something, we learn how to sequence our actions and how to organize our thoughts.

You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.

It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.

As Calatrava intuited, this should be a part of our apprenticeship. We must make ourselves study as deeply as possible the technology we use, the functioning of the group we work in, the economics of our field, its lifeblood.

In selecting a mentor, you will want to keep in mind your inclinations and Life’s Task, the future position you envision for yourself.

The solution, as Gould discovered, is subtle: Even as we listen and incorporate the ideas of our mentors, we must slowly cultivate some distance from them.

As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Poor is the apprentice who does not surpass his Master.”

in all of his future interactions with people, he would force himself to take an initial step backward and not get emotional. From this more detached position, he would focus completely on the people he was dealing with, cutting off his own insecurities and desires from the equation.

First, there is what we shall call specific knowledge of human nature—namely the ability to read people, to get a feel for how they see the world, and to understand their individuality. Second, there is the general knowledge of human nature, which means accumulating an understanding of the overall patterns of human behavior that transcend us as individuals, including some of the darker qualities we often disregard.

it is interesting to observe how people behave around those in positions of power and authority. They will tend to reveal an anxiety, a resentment, or a sycophantic falseness that betrays something essential about their psychological makeup, something that goes back to their childhoods and that can be read in their body language.

You must avoid the common mistake of making judgments based on your initial impressions of people. Such impressions can sometimes tell you something, but more often they are misleading.

Most of us have these negative qualities—Envy, Conformism, Rigidity, Self-obsessiveness, Laziness, Flightiness, and Passive Aggression—in relatively mild doses.

Through study and observation, we must understand the nature of these Seven Deadly Realities so that we can detect their presence and avoid triggering them in the first place.

There are, however, a few indications you can look for. People who praise you too much or who become overly friendly in the first stages of knowing you are often envious and are getting closer in order to hurt you.

Also, if you detect unusual levels of insecurity in a person, he or she will certainly be more prone to envy.

If you have a gift for a certain skill, you should make a point of occasionally displaying some weakness in another area, avoiding the great danger of appearing too perfect, too talented.

If you are dealing with insecure types, you can display great interest in their work and even turn to them for advice.

You must be particularly careful to never make people feel stupid in your presence. Intelligence is the most sensitive trigger point for envy.

Let your work subtly demonstrate your individual spirit, but when it comes to matters of politics, morals, and values, make a show of adhering to the accepted standards of your environment.

The best strategy is to simply accept rigidity in others, outwardly displaying deference to their need for order. On your own, however, you must work to maintain your open spirit, letting go of bad habits and deliberately cultivating new ideas.

We all wear masks in the social arena, playing different roles to suit the different environments we pass through.

By creating a persona that is mysterious, intriguing, and masterful, you are playing to the public, giving them something compelling and pleasurable to witness.

Even though he was the author of the most famous novel of the day, The Sorrows of Young Werther, nobody seemed particularly interested in his opinions. They found it more interesting to tell the celebrated novelist their own ideas and to see his reaction.

This is The Primary Law of the Creative Dynamic that you must engrave deeply in your mind and never forget: your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work.

This is a corollary of the Law of the Creative Dynamic—the higher the goal, the more energy you will call up from deep within. You will rise to the challenge because you have to, and will discover creative powers in yourself that you never suspected.

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.

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. They are more than ready to find their most cherished opinions contradicted by reality.

serendipity—the occurrence of something we are not expecting—and

The first step is to widen your search as far as possible.

The second step is to maintain an openness and looseness of spirit.

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.

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

Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash.

Anyone who would spend ten years absorbing the techniques and conventions of their field, trying them out, mastering them, exploring and personalizing them, would inevitably find their authentic voice and give birth to something unique and expressive.

whatever you are creating or designing, you must test and use it yourself. Separating out the work will make you lose touch with its functionality.

There is nothing that becomes repetitive and boring more quickly than free expression that is not rooted in reality and discipline.

By constantly reminding yourself of your purpose, you will prevent yourself from fetishizing certain techniques or from becoming overly obsessed with trivial details. In this way you will play into the natural strengths of the human brain, which wants to look for connections on higher and higher levels.

to create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability.