The Art of Manliness - Episode #46： Mastery With Robert Greene

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00:00:30.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Well, I am really

00:00:44.480 excited about today's podcast. On the show today, we have Robert Green, the New York Times bestselling

00:00:50.880 author of several books. You've probably heard of some of them. The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of

00:00:55.520 Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law. And his most recent book is called

00:01:01.320 Mastery. And in this book, Robert Green explores what it takes to become a master in any domain

00:01:09.620 or field in life. And he does this by exploring the lives of great men from history, men who

00:01:15.300 achieved mastery in their lifetime, men like da Vinci and Darwin and Henry Ford, and more

00:01:21.920 recent one, Paul Graham. And he talks about what the path that these men followed to become

00:01:27.480 masters in their domain. And so listen in. It's going to be, it's an interesting conversation

00:01:33.160 as Robert Green and I discuss mastery. Well, Robert, welcome to the show.

00:01:39.560 Well, thank you for having me, Brett. My pleasure.

00:01:42.080 So let's talk about mastery, this book of yours. How did it come about? Was it the idea for it sort

00:01:48.020 of an aha inspiration thing? Or was it more of a slow burn?

00:01:55.480 It was both. I'd been starting in 1996, when I began work on the 48 Laws of Power, I've been

00:02:04.580 sort of immersed in the world of power, researching, you know, the most masterful, powerful people

00:02:12.480 in history. And then as my books kind of gained momentum, I started working as a consultant,

00:02:21.440 you know, interacting with very powerful people. And somewhere along the line, maybe around 2005,

00:02:29.220 2006, this idea started brewing in my head that what these people shared was a quality after so

00:02:37.140 many years of working in a field, whether it could be warfare and strategy or the arts or politics,

00:02:45.500 that their minds had elevated to this other level where they had this kind of fingertip feel

00:02:50.180 for what they were doing, a sort of what I ended up calling high-level intuition. And it intrigued me.

00:02:56.380 Nobody really writes a book about this. It's almost as if it doesn't exist, or it's impossible to sort

00:03:04.160 of explain or describe. And I wanted to really explain and describe it. The only, the book that

00:03:10.500 comes closest, perhaps, that some people point out is like outliers, but it didn't really, I didn't

00:03:17.200 find that book satisfying to me, as far as a rational explanation of why people have this high-level

00:03:25.460 creativity and intuition, like a Mozart, or a Darwin, or even today, a Steve Jobs. And so that's,

00:03:33.520 the book was brewing in my head that way. But the aha moment occurred as I began research on it.

00:03:41.360 And I was delving deeply into the biographies of all of these powerful people. And it became clear

00:03:48.740 to me that what they all shared, what was sort of the seed from which all of this grew, was the fact

00:03:57.020 that they pursued what I ended up calling the life's task, that you could take every single one of these

00:04:02.340 masters, past or contemporary. And you could find almost the same narrative, that they were deeply

00:04:09.720 in touch with something about themselves, something that makes them unique, some idea or activity or

00:04:19.640 problem they wanted to solve that could be traced back to their earliest years. And because they were

00:04:25.680 so clear about what they wanted to accomplish, they were able to go through a process, they were able

00:04:33.320 to be patient, to have so much energy and passion for what they were doing, that they would spend the

00:04:39.040 10 or 20 years necessary to reach mastery. And discovering that was sort of my aha.

00:04:46.520 Yeah, well, let's talk, well, we're going to talk more about that process in a bit. And the thing that

00:04:51.160 struck me about your books, you highlight and do go into the biographical sketches of some great

00:04:57.340 individuals from history. You know, you mentioned Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin. And I think most

00:05:04.240 people, when they look at those types of individuals, they think, well, they were just born or destined for

00:05:09.620 that. They're naturally inclined to gain mastery. I mean, is there something to that? Is mastery

00:05:17.320 something genetic? Or is it accessible to anybody who wants to take on the task?

00:05:23.860 Well, it's such an irritating concept to me, this idea that people are born that way. We live in a very

00:05:30.340 scientific world, a very rational world in which we try to explain things, we try to quantify them.

00:05:37.320 And when you reduce it to an argument like people are born that way, it just becomes something purely

00:05:42.820 mystical. How can I, how can anybody argue that way? There's nothing you can verify. But in fact,

00:05:48.320 when you look at the stories of these people, as I did deeply, and other people have, it's not just

00:05:54.260 my research alone, you can trace a very, very definite process that leads to the 10,000 hours,

00:06:03.120 the 20,000 hours, and a genuine change in the level of thinking and consciousness, which we would,

00:06:09.960 I would call, mastery. So there's nothing, it's not a fact that a Mozart is born that way. I worked

00:06:18.560 very hard in the book to completely debunk that. If you come away from my book still believing in

00:06:23.800 that, then you haven't read it. I show you very clearly how a genius like Mozart went through a

00:06:31.600 process, and how intensely he studied, and how his incredible work at an early age came through years

00:06:39.600 of practice. The genetic component, and there is a genetic component, and it's an extremely important

00:06:45.360 genetic component, is that every one of us is physiologically, biologically, neurologically born

00:06:53.160 unique. Our DNA is unique. The way our brains are configured is completely unique. And this shows

00:07:02.780 itself at a very early age, and I believe in everyone, by the fact that we're drawn to particular

00:07:09.920 activities in a way that is completely ourselves, completely individual. And that could be sports,

00:07:17.380 math, science, whatever it is. It's not something obvious when you're four or five years old, and I

00:07:23.420 make it very clear in the book that it's not like you have an epiphany, and when you're five that you're

00:07:28.080 going to be a fireman or a writer or whatever, it's a lot vaguer than that. It's pre-verbal. But

00:07:33.620 these, what I call primal inclinations, exist in every single individual. They're like a genetic marker

00:07:40.480 that this is what makes you unique. Our culture thrives on people who sort of mine this uniqueness

00:07:49.020 and become highly creative. I believe there's actually a purpose for this uniqueness. And so that

00:07:54.900 genetic, that's the genetic component. And masters, geniuses, highly creative people

00:08:01.080 are just simply more in touch with that genetic component, with that uniqueness.

00:08:07.700 They're aware early on that they have this incredible love for music. Or I like recently the

00:08:14.400 example of Tiger Woods. He's 11 months or 14 months old, and he's in the garage of his father who's

00:08:22.440 hitting golf balls, plastic golf balls in the garage, and the baby's eyes are lighting up like,

00:08:29.800 I've got to do this. This is so exciting to me. I believe everybody has those moments, but

00:08:35.760 what separates a genius and a master from others is we lose touch with it. We start hearing what our

00:08:42.660 parents say, what other people say. We lose touch with what makes us different or an individual.

00:08:48.000 And that's the dividing line between genius and not genius.

00:08:53.960 So mastery, it's accessible to everybody. It's democratic. It's accessible to all. Not everyone's

00:09:01.060 going to reach it because not everyone's going to take the steps. But let's talk about kind of the

00:09:05.060 overarching steps. What's the big picture of gaining mastery? What's this process that you discovered

00:09:10.160 with all these individuals? Well, the process is actually relatively simple, but it's not, it's

00:09:22.240 going to take years to get there. And it starts with what I already laid out. And it's the most

00:09:30.400 important step. If you don't take this first step, there's no mastery that will come. And it is being

00:09:35.680 very clear about what makes you different, what excites you in the world, and creating a career

00:09:42.100 path at an early age or even later. It happens to people later in life. It even happened to me later

00:09:47.740 in life. Carving a career path that meshes with something deeply personal, something you want to do,

00:09:55.520 something you want to accomplish. From there, you enter an apprenticeship phase.

00:10:01.140 Generally, it's equivalent to your 20s. But it can, you know, blend into later ages, depends,

00:10:09.600 or it can start earlier. And it's a five to 10 year process. It's been demonstrated in all kinds of

00:10:16.160 interesting studies. It was sort of encapsulated in the Middle Ages in an actual apprenticeship

00:10:23.060 phase that young men usually would go through, generally around seven years. And it basically means

00:10:30.180 the period in which you learn the skills, the rules of the game, and everything else that it's

00:10:37.620 involved in excelling in a particular craft or profession. And I explain in great depth the kind

00:10:44.300 of attitude and mindset that a real master has in this apprenticeship phase. We all go through

00:10:51.280 apprenticeship phase, but some people maximize it. They really exploit it. They learn more deeply.

00:10:56.700 They accumulate a high number of skills. They learn how to fit in and work in a group environment,

00:11:03.300 et cetera, et cetera. So there's a good apprenticeship and there's a bad apprenticeship. And I want to show

00:11:07.800 you how to go through the right one. As part of that apprenticeship, you want to attach yourself to a

00:11:13.860 mentor if possible. And I have a chapter on that subject. The reason I go into that is it's the one

00:11:22.340 thing that will help you shorten the process. If we're talking about 10 to 20,000 hours, 10 to 20 years

00:11:29.520 of working at something, having a person there who can watch you in real time and say, this is what

00:11:36.380 you're good at. This is what you're bad at. These are the mistakes I made. Here's how to avoid them.

00:11:41.560 It's just absolutely invaluable. And I demonstrate in the book how the human brain is designed

00:11:47.400 from learning in that kind of particular relationship. As part of the apprenticeship,

00:11:52.820 I also talk about social intelligence, learning how to work with other people. It's not just

00:11:57.560 being technically proficient at your field and having a lot of knowledge. We are social animals

00:12:03.900 and you have to learn how to work with people. Those are the three components of that apprenticeship

00:12:09.100 phase. I go into very great detail in that. And at a certain point in that phase, you start

00:12:15.880 moving towards the next phase. It's kind of a transitional thing where you begin to experiment

00:12:22.140 with your knowledge that you've gained and become a little more creative with it, entering what I call

00:12:27.760 the creative active phase, which could be anywhere from after 10 years of this apprenticeship or a little

00:12:35.780 bit less. And in that phase, you start taking the knowledge you've accumulated and experimenting with

00:12:42.480 it, trying things out, starting your own project and bringing that individual, that unique quality

00:12:48.740 that you have into play, which was sort of lying dormant during the apprenticeship phase. And I give

00:12:54.680 many examples and stories of how people have used, have maximized this phase because there's a lot of dangers. A lot

00:13:05.360 of people never become creative or experimental with what they've learned. They just become conservative

00:13:11.400 with it. And so I go into detail about what I call creative strategies. And if you stick with this long

00:13:18.660 enough, if you retain that kind of youthful, playful attitude towards what you're studying, but you remain

00:13:27.100 disciplined, after enough time, you enter the final phase of mastery, where you have this intuitive feel. And I describe in

00:13:36.200 detail, where that comes from, why it happens, and how it feels. So that's pretty much the overview of the process that I

00:13:45.880 described.

00:13:46.940 Very good. The part that really stuck out to me, it resonated with me the most in the book was the apprenticeship phase.

00:13:55.500 Yeah. Because the process you lay out in the apprenticeship phase, you get great details,

00:14:01.900 great examples. It seems so contrary to what you see in popular success literature today. You know,

00:14:09.620 today it's all about, you know, how you can hack the system and how you can, you know, get success as

00:14:14.380 fast as you can. But the apprenticeship is a, it's a slow process where it's filled with lots of

00:14:21.740 observation. It's sort of, in a lot of ways, sometimes passive, you know, you have to be

00:14:28.480 learning and reading. I mean, why, why is it so important that you don't take a shortcut? I mean,

00:14:35.020 is it possible to get to the next step without going through the apprenticeship phase?

00:14:39.780 No, it's absolutely 150% impossible. And the idea that you think you can have a shortcut means

00:14:47.440 you're never going to reach mastery. You've got a problem. And I lay out the case that the human

00:14:52.720 brain evolved over, we can make it, it's arbitrary where we begin the process, but five million years

00:14:59.680 ago, our earliest ancestors, and it evolved in a particular way. And it evolved in the direction

00:15:06.360 of the more you focus on something, the longer you spend learning something, the higher level of

00:15:11.520 skill that you have, the more you understand the reality of what you're studying. And that brain

00:15:16.600 evolved that way through all sorts of twists and turns, the invention of language, civilization,

00:15:23.800 et cetera. And the idea that because of technology, because of the internet in the last 10, 20 years,

00:15:31.340 you could somehow bypass 5 million years of evolution is just laughable. And anybody who

00:15:38.340 believes that, I'm sorry to say, but they're losers. And you're, you're moving against what 0.96

00:15:44.080 the science, the evolution, the biology, everything else you're, you're, you're, you're not in touch

00:15:50.880 with reality. And there are a lot of people who are not simply in touch with reality. And the point

00:15:56.560 of it is, um, is that the apprenticeship phase, okay, it's going to take time. Okay. It's slow.

00:16:04.280 Um, but it's also deeply pleasurable. Um, the sense that you're slowly conquering, you're moving

00:16:12.180 past your own limitations is deeply empowering. So just take a simple example. Let's just say you're

00:16:18.480 learning to play the piano. Um, obviously in our world today, what we're learning is going to be a

00:16:24.220 little bit more complex or different, but you're learning the piano in the beginning. It's kind

00:16:30.280 of boring. Um, you're, you're, you're, you're kind of having to repeat the same exercises over and over

00:16:37.040 again. And what you're playing, isn't that interesting. And if you stick with it after six

00:16:41.260 months, you start to play things that are more interesting and because they're more interesting,

00:16:45.380 you practice a little bit harder because you practice a little bit harder, you learn faster

00:16:49.720 and you start entering what I call a cycle of accelerated returns where you're starting to see

00:16:55.320 more and more quickly, the rewards for your work and your discipline. So not only are you learning

00:17:01.040 the piano, but you're mastering yourself. You're overcoming your own impatience, your own weaknesses,

00:17:08.560 you're gaining discipline, patience, the ability to persist at something. You're learning the piano

00:17:15.800 and you're mastering yourself and you feel it, you feel it inside. You feel like you're overcoming

00:17:20.720 this limitation, one barrier after another barrier after another barrier. So that five, 10 years of

00:17:27.400 what some people might say, Oh my God, how boring. I just want to, you know, learn how to do something

00:17:32.780 in six months. It's actually really pleasurable and it's actually a deeply satisfying process. And I want

00:17:40.260 to get people because human beings don't do things that are painful. We, we, we shy away from things that

00:17:47.100 just seem to involve too much pain and people aren't going to go through the process unless they see a reward

00:17:55.260 and there is a reward. And it's something that people have been experiencing for thousands of years. There are

00:18:01.380 incredible rewards to this, but there's also a lot of drudgery involved as well. Um, so I want to get people past the

00:18:09.100 idea that everything has to be immediately pleasurable. The, the fulfillment that you have takes time, but the

00:18:17.420 rewards are much deeper than the reward that you would get from taking a drug or playing a video game.

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00:19:09.060 back to the show.

00:19:10.660 It seems like many of the people that you highlighted in the book, we mentioned a few

00:19:15.040 Mozart or Tiger Woods. They got their start on the path towards mastery at a very young age.

00:19:22.180 Tiger Woods, as young as 14 months. Mozart was what, two or three years old when he began

00:19:27.580 composing music. What about people who don't begin their path towards mastery later in life? Because it is a

00:19:37.320 long process. The apprenticeship phase lasts from five to 10 years. Then you have that phase when

00:19:44.160 you're kind of becoming, being creative with what you've learned. People who get started later in

00:19:49.680 life, you mentioned you got started later in life. How does that process play out? You have such,

00:19:55.620 you know, life is fleeting. You know, how do you take advantage of this process you've laid out when

00:20:00.920 you get started later? Well, what happened with me a little bit is I knew early on in life that I

00:20:08.140 wanted to be a writer. So it's not quite that I was totally at loss at sea here. But I just didn't

00:20:15.840 know what I wanted to write. So I struggled and had a lot of ups and downs. So I began in journalism. I

00:20:22.180 didn't like it. I went into other things. I tried to write fiction. Then I went into Hollywood. And so it

00:20:28.080 wasn't until I was 35, 36, that I was given an opportunity. And it suddenly became clear to me that

00:20:34.960 what I was meant to do was to write the kind of books that I was that I ended up writing. So, you know, I

00:20:41.360 didn't finish the 48 Laws of Power, my first book until I was about 38. So that's a pretty bit much of a later

00:20:47.860 start. Everybody's different. Everybody's unique. And everybody has a different sort of path. So

00:20:54.660 there's the, at one extreme, there are the Mozarts at four years old and Tiger Woods. There are other people

00:21:01.880 who in their college years, it starts to become clear that this is what they love. And they go into that

00:21:08.220 profession. Other people, and I highlight them in the book, go through their 20s. And they're really not very clear

00:21:15.480 about it at all. And there's, there's different types. And there's different ways to approach that.

00:21:22.720 There, I highlight a man, one of the masters, Paul Graham, who's the, the genius behind a company

00:21:30.100 called Y Combinator, which is a apprenticeship system for people who want to do a tech startup,

00:21:36.100 massively successful. And Paul Graham was a total hacker, heavily into computers. And throughout his

00:21:43.200 20s, he didn't really know what it is he wanted to do. He knew he had a love of computers. But what

00:21:50.880 he, what would he, what was he going to do with that? So he kept learning, he kept trying different

00:21:56.000 things. He actually went into art. And then finally, an opportunity came for him to, to develop something

00:22:03.620 for Netscape in the 90s that turned into a $50 million business. But the lesson from him and the

00:22:11.000 lesson for me is that in those early years in the 20s, you're accumulating skills, you're not wasting

00:22:17.600 your time. You're not playing games or trying all sorts of different things that have no connection

00:22:23.700 to you. Have to be aware to some extent of what it is that you love, but you're not exactly sure how to

00:22:30.480 apply it. And that's what you want to be doing in your 20s. You don't have to exactly decide on the

00:22:36.440 exact, on the nature of your, of your career path. If you're in your 40s, or 30s or 40s, and you still

00:22:44.100 haven't figured it out, you're in a different position. It's a little trickier. And I talk about

00:22:51.000 it in interviews and in the book, about how to get back to what it was you were meant to do. You've

00:22:57.400 lost your way, is basically what we have to say here. You ended up in law, for instance, because your

00:23:04.480 parents said that, and because it seemed lucrative. You're now 38. And you're, you're burned out. It

00:23:11.060 doesn't connect to you in any personal way. And you're struggling. You've got to find your way

00:23:16.960 back to what it is that you were meant to do. And I tell people, if you're in your late 30s or early

00:23:23.020 40s, you never want like a 100, 360 or 180 degree change in your career. You don't want to suddenly

00:23:29.300 stop law and pick up the guitar and become a rock star, because that's what you're meant to do. 0.98

00:23:34.740 That's ridiculous. That's not the real world. You want to take the skills you've accumulated in law, 0.90

00:23:40.880 whatever it is, and now begin to apply them in a way that's more suited towards your path. You want to

00:23:46.820 carve a very realistic path that's heading in another direction. And I, I tell people the story,

00:23:53.060 told it several times already, of a woman I met who had that scenario. She went into law.

00:24:00.040 It wasn't right for her. She knew she wanted to be a writer. She realized that in her 30s.

00:24:04.840 So she got out of the legal practice that she was in, and she started to become a law, a legal

00:24:10.680 journalist writing about legal affairs. And from that point, she was now able to slowly move into the

00:24:17.840 direction of becoming a writer writing about anything that she loves. That's the kind of thing

00:24:22.320 I'm talking about. Slow, simple, realistic steps towards getting back to what you were meant to

00:24:29.040 be doing. Very good. So you mentioned earlier that the mentor, finding a mentor is an important part

00:24:36.780 of gaining mastery. And you give some great examples of individuals who basically had to work their tails

00:24:44.880 off in order to get the attention and time of a mentor. Um, any advice to folks out there who are

00:24:52.020 looking to find a mentor, um, what they can do to successfully get that attention in that time?

00:24:58.500 Because, you know, I typically, from my experience, people who you seek out to be your mentor,

00:25:03.860 their time and resource and knowledge is valuable. Um, so how do you, I guess, convince them or persuade

00:25:10.940 them to spend that time and share their knowledge with you?

00:25:16.780 Well, um, there's a lot of things to go over there. I mean, um, I tell people that you don't

00:25:24.060 want to look for a mentor until you're a little bit ready. Uh, it's got to be a situation where both

00:25:32.600 sides have something to give. Obviously the mentor has a lot to give, but do you have something to give?

00:25:38.460 It can't be completely one-sided. In other words, you can't be someone fresh out of college

00:25:43.420 with no skills, no background, no real discipline, nothing but your charm and your smile. That's not

00:25:50.560 enough. The mentor has his or her self-interest and they're not going to simply take the time

00:25:57.160 to, to work in that relationship if you have nothing to offer. And so you want to at least,

00:26:03.420 if you're aiming at somebody that you would like to be your mentor, you have to maybe at least

00:26:08.020 have a couple of, uh, some experience under your belt. You have to be able to come to them and show

00:26:13.400 that you have a track record, that you are disciplined, that you have a good work ethic,

00:26:18.480 that you have references, uh, that you have some skills to offer them, um, that could save them time.

00:26:26.260 Everybody wants to be saved, have time saved for them. That's the number one thing in this world

00:26:31.320 today. If somebody, like I had a mentor, uh, Ryan, I'm sorry, an apprentice, Ryan Holiday,

00:26:37.800 who's now, as you know, has become, on to become a very successful, uh, writer, et cetera.

00:26:43.660 Uh, Ryan approached me, uh, he was a fan of my books and, um, it became very clear very early on,

00:26:52.820 uh, that he was, uh, had real skills. He had skills. He fixed my Wikipedia page. I could see

00:27:00.340 that he loved books and he was, he could read and do the research and stuff. And so I said,

00:27:07.220 yeah, sure. I, you're going to save me time. You're going to make me look better. And it turned

00:27:11.580 into a great relationship. So you want to be able to show someone before you even attempt it

00:27:16.360 that you have some skills that mesh with them and that's going to be mutually beneficial.

00:27:24.100 So that's number one, right off the bat. Number two, don't be afraid of contacting people that you

00:27:30.660 think are powerful or that you, oh, you could go, well, I could never, you know, Mark Cuban,

00:27:35.720 and I could never be his apprentice. Well, you'd be surprised. I mean, that's not necessarily a good

00:27:39.600 example, but you'd be surprised that people, um, who are in positions of power are, are actually

00:27:46.860 interested in having a, uh, an apprentice, a disciple or whatever you want to call it. It's a

00:27:53.280 very satisfying relationship if it works out well. So don't be afraid of, of, of pursuing these people,

00:28:00.560 um, if you have something to offer. But the other thing I tell people is don't look 0.98

00:28:05.660 for the biggest name out there. Um, let's say, let's just take for an example, uh, you, you want

00:28:11.300 to be a writer, uh, and you're looking for someone to apprentice under. Don't go for the, the biggest

00:28:17.200 name or somebody that's a celebrity. Go for the person that meshes that you say five or 10 years

00:28:24.840 down the road. That's who I want to be. I want to be like that person. They're doing something that,

00:28:30.120 that, um, appeals to me, that appeals to me as an individual. I show in the book, a woman, Yoki

00:28:38.100 Matsuoka, who's a robotics engineer who finds herself suddenly at MIT, a very weird conservative

00:28:45.860 environment. And there's one professor there who's a rebel, uh, Rodney Brooks. He's like the bad boy of

00:28:52.780 the department. And she's always been the bad girl. She's always been a rebel, rebel, anti-authoritarian.

00:28:58.600 And that's who she says, he's going to be my mentor because he fits my spirit. And I want to be

00:29:06.040 like Rodney Brooks. And so it ended up being a great relationship. So those are a few important

00:29:13.500 tips. Wait until you have something to offer. Don't be afraid of people that you think are too powerful.

00:29:19.840 You'd be surprised, um, and find a good fit. It's, it's almost like your second parent. So it, they

00:29:27.140 have to fit you psychologically and emotionally, and they have to be someone that you really truly

00:29:33.660 admire and want to be like in five or 10 years. That's great advice. Uh, here's a question that I

00:29:38.700 just remembered I was going to ask. Um, so you talk about how passion is sort of the fuel that drives,

00:29:44.540 uh, this whole process, but I, I, it's, I know you read the blogs and stuff on being successful

00:29:52.340 and it's all about finding your passion, finding your passion and doing what you're passionate

00:29:55.840 about. And I know lots of people who are passionate about what they do, but they never seem to take

00:30:01.160 productive action. Like they never seem to get anywhere with that passion. I mean, what,

00:30:04.460 what are they doing wrong? And how do you harness that passion you have? Um, so it's productive.

00:30:09.440 Well, I'd have to hear what the basic scenario is. Um, you know, some people will say to me, uh,

00:30:19.420 well, let's say you love basketball, but you're born five foot six. What are you going to do? You

00:30:26.260 have a passion for basketball, but you don't have the physical capability, uh, or you have a passion

00:30:32.460 for music, but you weren't born a Mozart. And maybe that's a little bit of what you're talking about

00:30:37.740 there. They're, they're, they're trying it. They're passionate, but they're spinning their

00:30:42.060 wheels. They're not getting anywhere. And the thing is, it's not a direct one-on-one correlation.

00:30:47.780 Like I love basketball. I've got to be a basketball player. There are people like, um, uh, Jeff Van

00:30:55.200 Gundy, who's very short and obviously not physically capable. He became a coach and that's the area that

00:31:02.380 he ended up channeling his great love of basketball. Other people may not end up becoming a Mozart,

00:31:08.700 but they could become a very good teacher, uh, instructor or, or something else. There's some

00:31:15.320 other way of applying it. So if you're spinning your wheels, you're passionate, but you're not

00:31:19.540 getting anywhere. There's probably a bad fit going on. You're probably doing something that you love,

00:31:25.380 but you're not, you don't necessarily have, um, the right materials for doing it exactly the way

00:31:32.000 that you want. Um, I really do maintain, um, that if you're deeply engaged in something, um, and you're

00:31:40.300 really committed to it and you're putting in the time and you're practicing with focus, there's, there's

00:31:46.660 almost nothing that's going to stop you. There's almost nothing that's going to derail you. Um, and what

00:31:52.660 you find with a lot of people is that they're, they're dilettantes. They, they get passionate

00:31:58.260 about something for a year and they do it. And then they, they, they come in, they hit a wall

00:32:04.840 and they don't move past that wall. And so they try something else and they're passionate

00:32:09.080 and then they hit another wall and you look after 10 years and you see the zigzagging path that they've

00:32:15.880 followed. Well, what makes somebody move past the wall is that they really, really are, love what

00:32:22.360 they're doing. They, they have a good fit and they're able to, to move past the frustration

00:32:29.280 and the bad moments and the criticism because they really are committed. They have to get,

00:32:35.560 they want to become proficient at it. They want to discover something about the world and they'll put

00:32:40.800 in, they'll move past it and go to two, three, four, five years of working at it. So I really think

00:32:46.760 that if we boiled it down, we could find that these people who aren't getting anywhere, they have,

00:32:53.080 they're either avoiding the problem. They're afraid of moving past the wall. They're afraid

00:32:59.040 of really being successful and they're being dilettantes. They're, they're putting their feet

00:33:03.560 in the water just a little bit here and over there and over there. And then they can say, well,

00:33:07.620 I never really made it in life. I didn't, you know, this, this stopped me or that stopped me.

00:33:13.020 No, you didn't, you weren't serious enough. You, you, you don't know yourself well enough to figure

00:33:18.240 out exactly what you need to be doing. Is there an individual, because you highlight a whole bunch

00:33:23.780 of individuals in your book, do a lot of biographical sketches. Is there one in particular that stuck out

00:33:29.940 to you the most as, I don't know, best representing the, the path towards mastery or the journey towards

00:33:36.860 mastery? Well, they're all great for me. Um, but let's say to pick one out that I think is, is,

00:33:44.820 is exemplary in an interesting way would be Michael Faraday. Um, he's the greatest, perhaps the greatest

00:33:54.360 experimental scientist of the 19th century. Uh, but what's so interesting about him, he was English,

00:34:00.940 um, was that he was born in poverty, the son of a blacksmith in, in London, uh, the turn of the 19th

00:34:09.200 century. Somebody like that had literally 0% chance of making it. Well, we can't say zero, but we can say

00:34:16.320 0.00001% chance of making it in England at that time, because you couldn't become a scientist

00:34:23.340 in England unless you had gone to a university, which wouldn't then allow you to have access to

00:34:29.440 laboratories and other scientists and libraries. And somebody born as the son of a blacksmith 0.68

00:34:35.700 can't even go to, he never even had formal schooling at all. So there's no chance that he

00:34:42.520 could become a scientist, but he felt like he was destined for something great in that field

00:34:50.540 from very early on. And he managed, let me see here. Um, hello. Hello. Yeah. I saw you broke up there.

00:35:10.800 Yeah. I'm here now. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello. Hello. Yeah. All right. You, you broke up on that

00:35:18.100 last little bit. Okay. I can hear you. Okay. Let me see. Something's going on here. We're getting

00:35:23.120 bad connection. I can hear you now. Can you hear me? I can hear you fine. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

00:35:31.920 You broke up that last, that last little bit. Okay. Well, uh, so what he, what Michael Faraday did was

00:35:40.560 he got a apprenticeship at a bookstore, a bookbinding store, um, that allowed him to have access to the

00:35:47.860 kinds of books that nobody else could have access to. And that allowed him to read all about science,

00:35:52.560 um, and develop a real discipline and skill completely on his own, which then led to, um,

00:36:00.680 getting contact people that access to, to lectures from scientists on and on and on. I described the

00:36:08.240 chain of events that eventually led him to become apprentice for one of the great scientists in

00:36:12.140 England at the time. But the idea is that, uh, there's nothing genetic. He's the son of a very

00:36:17.680 poor blacksmith in a family where nobody else excelled. You can't possibly give me a genetic

00:36:22.740 explanation for the genius of Michael Faraday. His inventions, by the way, were some of the most

00:36:28.640 important in the 19th century and led to, uh, would play the foundation for Albert Einstein's

00:36:34.200 discoveries and for the invention of the first motor, electric motor, et cetera. There's no way

00:36:39.440 you could take Michael Faraday and say, oh, it's genetic. He was born with a larger brain. He was

00:36:44.320 destined for, for this, et cetera. It's absolutely 100% impossible because the guy was born the son

00:36:51.020 of a blacksmith. It was sheer persistence and clarity of what he wanted and clarity of how to get there

00:36:58.880 and sheer drive and willpower. And so that's why I love that example. And he

00:37:05.180 has all of the steps, an incredible apprenticeship, had the perfect mentor, had very high social

00:37:13.820 intelligence and then became very creative and a true master. Very cool. So last question,

00:37:21.020 um, Robert, uh, before I let you go, um, besides buying your book, uh, what can a man do today

00:37:28.140 to begin his path towards mastery? Well, you know, um, the, the, it all begins with that ultimate,

00:37:41.340 most important step of clarity about yourself. Um, it's a couple of things I would say about that.

00:37:50.060 Uh, generally I've been consulting for years and I've worked with people now also since the book came

00:37:56.060 out. And I will say that oftentimes men have a harder time with that introspective process of

00:38:04.940 knowing who they are. Um, a lot of the guys that I talk to, they're in their twenties or thirties and

00:38:11.900 they say, I really don't know, have any idea about what it was I was meant to accomplish almost as if,

00:38:19.020 um, doubting the truth of what I'm talking about. But the, the, the truth is they've become very

00:38:27.100 distant from themselves. They're very alienated from who they are. And it's not some touchy feely,

00:38:33.180 new age kind of crap that I'm peddling here. It's actually really, really important. It's what 0.67

00:38:38.700 makes you powerful and successful. If you really want power, don't think of it as something spiritual.

00:38:44.140 Think of it as something very practical and realistic. And there's a process you can go

00:38:48.380 through to getting more in touch with yourself. And that means, uh, starting a journal and thinking

00:38:53.980 about what it was when you were a child that you were drawn to thinking about the fields and

00:39:00.140 subjects that excite you when you open a newspaper, thinking about what you hate in life. It's going

00:39:06.380 to take three months, four months of some thinking. It doesn't come overnight. You don't suddenly wake

00:39:11.020 up and say, God, this is what I was meant to do. You have to go through a process, but the process

00:39:15.740 is very important and very rewarding. The other thing I would say is you're think of it as like

00:39:22.940 you're connecting to the past. Um, masters are somebody, are people in history who we celebrate

00:39:31.180 for being highly creative. A thousand years ago, these were mostly men who worked with their hands.

00:39:38.540 These were the people who built great cathedrals. These were the masons, um, and architects and designers.

00:39:46.620 They were also in other fields building things. And sometimes they were building a religion or a

00:39:53.340 book or whatever it was. Um, and they ended up becoming incredibly versed and masters of their

00:40:00.460 field. Well, that's the tradition, the past you're going to. As a man, we, we like to make things.

00:40:07.260 We like to build things. We used to like to build things with our hands and we don't live in that kind

00:40:12.460 of world anymore. But, but that's what makes you great. That's what you're tapping in to something

00:40:19.100 very deep and, and, um, physiological about what makes us men. And it's the fact that we like to

00:40:25.500 make things. We like to make things well. And that pertains to a business, to a book, um, to a political

00:40:35.740 party, whatever it is, you're building something. And to build something, you have to know how to build

00:40:41.340 it well. And to build it well, you have to go through the process I described. So think of

00:40:46.140 yourself in that way. Um, and think of yourself as connecting to this deep, deep tradition of

00:40:52.220 mastery that I describe in the book. Very good. Well, this has been a fascinating discussion.

00:40:57.180 Robert Greene, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Brad. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

00:41:04.060 Our guest today was New York Times bestselling author, Robert Greene. He is the author of the book

00:41:08.460 Mastery. And you can find that on amazon.com.

00:41:13.740 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:41:18.620 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And until next time, stay manly.

00:41:38.460 Thank you.

00:41:46.620 Thank you.

00:41:48.620 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #46： Mastery With Robert Greene

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