Episode #46： Mastery With Robert Greene
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Summary
Robert Green is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law, and his most recent book, Mastery. In this book, Robert Green explores what it takes to become a master in any domain or field in life, and he does this by exploring the lives of great men from history, men who achieved mastery in their lifetime. And he talks about what the path that these men followed to become masters in their domain.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Well, I am really
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excited about today's podcast. On the show today, we have Robert Green, the New York Times bestselling
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author of several books. You've probably heard of some of them. The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of
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Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law. And his most recent book is called
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Mastery. And in this book, Robert Green explores what it takes to become a master in any domain
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or field in life. And he does this by exploring the lives of great men from history, men who
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achieved mastery in their lifetime, men like da Vinci and Darwin and Henry Ford, and more
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recent one, Paul Graham. And he talks about what the path that these men followed to become
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masters in their domain. And so listen in. It's going to be, it's an interesting conversation
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as Robert Green and I discuss mastery. Well, Robert, welcome to the show.
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Well, thank you for having me, Brett. My pleasure.
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So let's talk about mastery, this book of yours. How did it come about? Was it the idea for it sort
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of an aha inspiration thing? Or was it more of a slow burn?
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It was both. I'd been starting in 1996, when I began work on the 48 Laws of Power, I've been
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sort of immersed in the world of power, researching, you know, the most masterful, powerful people
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in history. And then as my books kind of gained momentum, I started working as a consultant,
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you know, interacting with very powerful people. And somewhere along the line, maybe around 2005,
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2006, this idea started brewing in my head that what these people shared was a quality after so
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many years of working in a field, whether it could be warfare and strategy or the arts or politics,
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that their minds had elevated to this other level where they had this kind of fingertip feel
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for what they were doing, a sort of what I ended up calling high-level intuition. And it intrigued me.
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Nobody really writes a book about this. It's almost as if it doesn't exist, or it's impossible to sort
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of explain or describe. And I wanted to really explain and describe it. The only, the book that
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comes closest, perhaps, that some people point out is like outliers, but it didn't really, I didn't
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find that book satisfying to me, as far as a rational explanation of why people have this high-level
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creativity and intuition, like a Mozart, or a Darwin, or even today, a Steve Jobs. And so that's,
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the book was brewing in my head that way. But the aha moment occurred as I began research on it.
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And I was delving deeply into the biographies of all of these powerful people. And it became clear
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to me that what they all shared, what was sort of the seed from which all of this grew, was the fact
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that they pursued what I ended up calling the life's task, that you could take every single one of these
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masters, past or contemporary. And you could find almost the same narrative, that they were deeply
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in touch with something about themselves, something that makes them unique, some idea or activity or
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problem they wanted to solve that could be traced back to their earliest years. And because they were
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so clear about what they wanted to accomplish, they were able to go through a process, they were able
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to be patient, to have so much energy and passion for what they were doing, that they would spend the
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10 or 20 years necessary to reach mastery. And discovering that was sort of my aha.
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Yeah, well, let's talk, well, we're going to talk more about that process in a bit. And the thing that
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struck me about your books, you highlight and do go into the biographical sketches of some great
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individuals from history. You know, you mentioned Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin. And I think most
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people, when they look at those types of individuals, they think, well, they were just born or destined for
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that. They're naturally inclined to gain mastery. I mean, is there something to that? Is mastery
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something genetic? Or is it accessible to anybody who wants to take on the task?
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Well, it's such an irritating concept to me, this idea that people are born that way. We live in a very
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scientific world, a very rational world in which we try to explain things, we try to quantify them.
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And when you reduce it to an argument like people are born that way, it just becomes something purely
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mystical. How can I, how can anybody argue that way? There's nothing you can verify. But in fact,
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when you look at the stories of these people, as I did deeply, and other people have, it's not just
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my research alone, you can trace a very, very definite process that leads to the 10,000 hours,
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the 20,000 hours, and a genuine change in the level of thinking and consciousness, which we would,
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I would call, mastery. So there's nothing, it's not a fact that a Mozart is born that way. I worked
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very hard in the book to completely debunk that. If you come away from my book still believing in
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that, then you haven't read it. I show you very clearly how a genius like Mozart went through a
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process, and how intensely he studied, and how his incredible work at an early age came through years
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of practice. The genetic component, and there is a genetic component, and it's an extremely important
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genetic component, is that every one of us is physiologically, biologically, neurologically born
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unique. Our DNA is unique. The way our brains are configured is completely unique. And this shows
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itself at a very early age, and I believe in everyone, by the fact that we're drawn to particular
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activities in a way that is completely ourselves, completely individual. And that could be sports,
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math, science, whatever it is. It's not something obvious when you're four or five years old, and I
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make it very clear in the book that it's not like you have an epiphany, and when you're five that you're
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going to be a fireman or a writer or whatever, it's a lot vaguer than that. It's pre-verbal. But
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these, what I call primal inclinations, exist in every single individual. They're like a genetic marker
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that this is what makes you unique. Our culture thrives on people who sort of mine this uniqueness
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and become highly creative. I believe there's actually a purpose for this uniqueness. And so that
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genetic, that's the genetic component. And masters, geniuses, highly creative people
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are just simply more in touch with that genetic component, with that uniqueness.
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They're aware early on that they have this incredible love for music. Or I like recently the
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example of Tiger Woods. He's 11 months or 14 months old, and he's in the garage of his father who's
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hitting golf balls, plastic golf balls in the garage, and the baby's eyes are lighting up like,
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I've got to do this. This is so exciting to me. I believe everybody has those moments, but
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what separates a genius and a master from others is we lose touch with it. We start hearing what our
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parents say, what other people say. We lose touch with what makes us different or an individual.
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And that's the dividing line between genius and not genius.
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So mastery, it's accessible to everybody. It's democratic. It's accessible to all. Not everyone's
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going to reach it because not everyone's going to take the steps. But let's talk about kind of the
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overarching steps. What's the big picture of gaining mastery? What's this process that you discovered
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with all these individuals? Well, the process is actually relatively simple, but it's not, it's
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going to take years to get there. And it starts with what I already laid out. And it's the most
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important step. If you don't take this first step, there's no mastery that will come. And it is being
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very clear about what makes you different, what excites you in the world, and creating a career
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path at an early age or even later. It happens to people later in life. It even happened to me later
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in life. Carving a career path that meshes with something deeply personal, something you want to do,
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something you want to accomplish. From there, you enter an apprenticeship phase.
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Generally, it's equivalent to your 20s. But it can, you know, blend into later ages, depends,
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or it can start earlier. And it's a five to 10 year process. It's been demonstrated in all kinds of
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interesting studies. It was sort of encapsulated in the Middle Ages in an actual apprenticeship
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phase that young men usually would go through, generally around seven years. And it basically means
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the period in which you learn the skills, the rules of the game, and everything else that it's
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involved in excelling in a particular craft or profession. And I explain in great depth the kind
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of attitude and mindset that a real master has in this apprenticeship phase. We all go through
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apprenticeship phase, but some people maximize it. They really exploit it. They learn more deeply.
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They accumulate a high number of skills. They learn how to fit in and work in a group environment,
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et cetera, et cetera. So there's a good apprenticeship and there's a bad apprenticeship. And I want to show
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you how to go through the right one. As part of that apprenticeship, you want to attach yourself to a
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mentor if possible. And I have a chapter on that subject. The reason I go into that is it's the one
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thing that will help you shorten the process. If we're talking about 10 to 20,000 hours, 10 to 20 years
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of working at something, having a person there who can watch you in real time and say, this is what
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you're good at. This is what you're bad at. These are the mistakes I made. Here's how to avoid them.
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It's just absolutely invaluable. And I demonstrate in the book how the human brain is designed
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from learning in that kind of particular relationship. As part of the apprenticeship,
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I also talk about social intelligence, learning how to work with other people. It's not just
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being technically proficient at your field and having a lot of knowledge. We are social animals
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and you have to learn how to work with people. Those are the three components of that apprenticeship
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phase. I go into very great detail in that. And at a certain point in that phase, you start
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moving towards the next phase. It's kind of a transitional thing where you begin to experiment
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with your knowledge that you've gained and become a little more creative with it, entering what I call
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the creative active phase, which could be anywhere from after 10 years of this apprenticeship or a little
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bit less. And in that phase, you start taking the knowledge you've accumulated and experimenting with
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it, trying things out, starting your own project and bringing that individual, that unique quality
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that you have into play, which was sort of lying dormant during the apprenticeship phase. And I give
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many examples and stories of how people have used, have maximized this phase because there's a lot of dangers. A lot
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of people never become creative or experimental with what they've learned. They just become conservative
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with it. And so I go into detail about what I call creative strategies. And if you stick with this long
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enough, if you retain that kind of youthful, playful attitude towards what you're studying, but you remain
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disciplined, after enough time, you enter the final phase of mastery, where you have this intuitive feel. And I describe in
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detail, where that comes from, why it happens, and how it feels. So that's pretty much the overview of the process that I
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Very good. The part that really stuck out to me, it resonated with me the most in the book was the apprenticeship phase.
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Yeah. Because the process you lay out in the apprenticeship phase, you get great details,
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great examples. It seems so contrary to what you see in popular success literature today. You know,
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today it's all about, you know, how you can hack the system and how you can, you know, get success as
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fast as you can. But the apprenticeship is a, it's a slow process where it's filled with lots of
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observation. It's sort of, in a lot of ways, sometimes passive, you know, you have to be
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learning and reading. I mean, why, why is it so important that you don't take a shortcut? I mean,
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is it possible to get to the next step without going through the apprenticeship phase?
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No, it's absolutely 150% impossible. And the idea that you think you can have a shortcut means
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you're never going to reach mastery. You've got a problem. And I lay out the case that the human
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brain evolved over, we can make it, it's arbitrary where we begin the process, but five million years
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ago, our earliest ancestors, and it evolved in a particular way. And it evolved in the direction
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of the more you focus on something, the longer you spend learning something, the higher level of
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skill that you have, the more you understand the reality of what you're studying. And that brain
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evolved that way through all sorts of twists and turns, the invention of language, civilization,
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et cetera. And the idea that because of technology, because of the internet in the last 10, 20 years,
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you could somehow bypass 5 million years of evolution is just laughable. And anybody who
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believes that, I'm sorry to say, but they're losers. And you're, you're moving against what
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the science, the evolution, the biology, everything else you're, you're, you're, you're not in touch
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with reality. And there are a lot of people who are not simply in touch with reality. And the point
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of it is, um, is that the apprenticeship phase, okay, it's going to take time. Okay. It's slow.
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Um, but it's also deeply pleasurable. Um, the sense that you're slowly conquering, you're moving
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past your own limitations is deeply empowering. So just take a simple example. Let's just say you're
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learning to play the piano. Um, obviously in our world today, what we're learning is going to be a
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little bit more complex or different, but you're learning the piano in the beginning. It's kind
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of boring. Um, you're, you're, you're, you're kind of having to repeat the same exercises over and over
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again. And what you're playing, isn't that interesting. And if you stick with it after six
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months, you start to play things that are more interesting and because they're more interesting,
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you practice a little bit harder because you practice a little bit harder, you learn faster
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and you start entering what I call a cycle of accelerated returns where you're starting to see
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more and more quickly, the rewards for your work and your discipline. So not only are you learning
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the piano, but you're mastering yourself. You're overcoming your own impatience, your own weaknesses,
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you're gaining discipline, patience, the ability to persist at something. You're learning the piano
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and you're mastering yourself and you feel it, you feel it inside. You feel like you're overcoming
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this limitation, one barrier after another barrier after another barrier. So that five, 10 years of
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what some people might say, Oh my God, how boring. I just want to, you know, learn how to do something
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in six months. It's actually really pleasurable and it's actually a deeply satisfying process. And I want
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to get people because human beings don't do things that are painful. We, we, we shy away from things that
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just seem to involve too much pain and people aren't going to go through the process unless they see a reward
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and there is a reward. And it's something that people have been experiencing for thousands of years. There are
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incredible rewards to this, but there's also a lot of drudgery involved as well. Um, so I want to get people past the
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idea that everything has to be immediately pleasurable. The, the fulfillment that you have takes time, but the
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rewards are much deeper than the reward that you would get from taking a drug or playing a video game.
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It seems like many of the people that you highlighted in the book, we mentioned a few
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Mozart or Tiger Woods. They got their start on the path towards mastery at a very young age.
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Tiger Woods, as young as 14 months. Mozart was what, two or three years old when he began
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composing music. What about people who don't begin their path towards mastery later in life? Because it is a
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long process. The apprenticeship phase lasts from five to 10 years. Then you have that phase when
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you're kind of becoming, being creative with what you've learned. People who get started later in
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life, you mentioned you got started later in life. How does that process play out? You have such,
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you know, life is fleeting. You know, how do you take advantage of this process you've laid out when
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you get started later? Well, what happened with me a little bit is I knew early on in life that I
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wanted to be a writer. So it's not quite that I was totally at loss at sea here. But I just didn't
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know what I wanted to write. So I struggled and had a lot of ups and downs. So I began in journalism. I
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didn't like it. I went into other things. I tried to write fiction. Then I went into Hollywood. And so it
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wasn't until I was 35, 36, that I was given an opportunity. And it suddenly became clear to me that
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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
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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
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start. Everybody's different. Everybody's unique. And everybody has a different sort of path. So
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there's the, at one extreme, there are the Mozarts at four years old and Tiger Woods. There are other people
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who in their college years, it starts to become clear that this is what they love. And they go into that
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profession. Other people, and I highlight them in the book, go through their 20s. And they're really not very clear
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about it at all. And there's, there's different types. And there's different ways to approach that.
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There, I highlight a man, one of the masters, Paul Graham, who's the, the genius behind a company
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called Y Combinator, which is a apprenticeship system for people who want to do a tech startup,
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massively successful. And Paul Graham was a total hacker, heavily into computers. And throughout his
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20s, he didn't really know what it is he wanted to do. He knew he had a love of computers. But what
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he, what would he, what was he going to do with that? So he kept learning, he kept trying different
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things. He actually went into art. And then finally, an opportunity came for him to, to develop something
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for Netscape in the 90s that turned into a $50 million business. But the lesson from him and the
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lesson for me is that in those early years in the 20s, you're accumulating skills, you're not wasting
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your time. You're not playing games or trying all sorts of different things that have no connection
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to you. Have to be aware to some extent of what it is that you love, but you're not exactly sure how to
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apply it. And that's what you want to be doing in your 20s. You don't have to exactly decide on the
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exact, on the nature of your, of your career path. If you're in your 40s, or 30s or 40s, and you still
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haven't figured it out, you're in a different position. It's a little trickier. And I talk about
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it in interviews and in the book, about how to get back to what it was you were meant to do. You've
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lost your way, is basically what we have to say here. You ended up in law, for instance, because your
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parents said that, and because it seemed lucrative. You're now 38. And you're, you're burned out. It
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doesn't connect to you in any personal way. And you're struggling. You've got to find your way
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back to what it is that you were meant to do. And I tell people, if you're in your late 30s or early
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40s, you never want like a 100, 360 or 180 degree change in your career. You don't want to suddenly
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stop law and pick up the guitar and become a rock star, because that's what you're meant to do.
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That's ridiculous. That's not the real world. You want to take the skills you've accumulated in law,
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whatever it is, and now begin to apply them in a way that's more suited towards your path. You want to
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carve a very realistic path that's heading in another direction. And I, I tell people the story,
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told it several times already, of a woman I met who had that scenario. She went into law.
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It wasn't right for her. She knew she wanted to be a writer. She realized that in her 30s.
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So she got out of the legal practice that she was in, and she started to become a law, a legal
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journalist writing about legal affairs. And from that point, she was now able to slowly move into the
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direction of becoming a writer writing about anything that she loves. That's the kind of thing
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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
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off in order to get the attention and time of a mentor. Um, any advice to folks out there who are
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looking to find a mentor, um, what they can do to successfully get that attention in that time?
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Because, you know, I typically, from my experience, people who you seek out to be your mentor,
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their time and resource and knowledge is valuable. Um, so how do you, I guess, convince them or persuade
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them to spend that time and share their knowledge with you?
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Well, um, there's a lot of things to go over there. I mean, um, I tell people that you don't
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want to look for a mentor until you're a little bit ready. Uh, it's got to be a situation where both
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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
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enough. The mentor has his or her self-interest and they're not going to simply take the time
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to, to work in that relationship if you have nothing to offer. And so you want to at least,
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if you're aiming at somebody that you would like to be your mentor, you have to maybe at least
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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
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
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
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
00:41:13.740
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.