Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Author Robert Greene on Mastery & Research

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

Robert Greene is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, and his fifth book, Mastery, which takes a deep dive into the lives of historical figures such as Charles Darwin, Mozart, Paul Graham and Henry Ford. This conversation was on the recommendation from Ryan Holiday (if you haven't had the chance to listen to my conversation with him, it is episode 043). The reason I wanted to sit down with Robert is obvious -- but equally as important as his insights, I wanted to understand what led him to be interested in mastery and power. He has a wonderful way of being committed to principles, and at the same time, being cognitively nimble and agile – a fantastic combination to explore ideas, and at the same time being grounded. We talked about everything from Machiavelli to how people have misused his principles on power – to the importance of having a life task._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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and you lose a sense of who you are and what you were meant to do in life. You've got too many voices in your head and you're not hearing yourself. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn, is to learn from people who have dedicated their life efforts to push on the boundaries, to push towards the edges. They have a curiosity that has driven

them to refine and build their craft so that they can articulate the difficult and challenging. And what we want to understand is not necessarily what they've come to understand. That's important. But what it is that they're searching for, how they explain or make sense of the world, their worldview, if you will. And we also want to dig underneath the surface and find what are the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their own craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough.

And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're

trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this conversation is with Robert Green. Robert is the author of New York Times bestseller, The 48 Laws of Power. You might have heard of that book. And if you haven't, it is tucked into the briefcases and backpacks of athletes and businessmen and women all across the globe.

And he also wrote The Art of Seduction. He wrote The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, and his fifth book is on mastery. How fitting. So his book on mastery takes a deep dive into the lives of historical figures such as Charles Darwin, Mozart, Paul Graham, Henry Ford, and he dives into what are the common themes for these masters of craft. And so it's a great conversation. We start off our conversation with the 48 laws of power and his insights there and why power is important. And then we dive into mastery, of course. And this conversation was recommended by Ryan Halliday. And if you haven't heard the conversation between Ryan and I, go back a few episodes

or a few conversations, and I hope you enjoy that one as well. It was fantastic. So the reason I wanted to sit with Robert, it's obvious, this interest that we both have in mastery, but equally as important are his insights. I wanted to understand what led him to be interested in mastery and power. And he has a wonderful way of being committed to principles. He's studied them. He's applied them in his own life. And at the same time, I hope this comes through, that he has an incredible ability to be cognitively nimble and agile and a curiosity to explore. And it's a fantastic combination

for him to be able to explore ideas and at the same time be grounded. We talked about everything from Machiavelli and his influence, the philosophy and teachings from Machiavelli, how that influenced him as a young kid and how people have misused his principles on power. And we also explore the importance of having a life task and why a craft is important. And not that there's a definitive voice on mastery, but it's his take on mastery. It's our conversation on mastery. And my hope is that something that maybe we talk about, you'll find a spark in and extend that conversation in your life, wherever that community is that you find to be important for you. Okay, now with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Robert Green.

Robert, how are you? I'm fine, Michael. Thanks for having me here. Oh, this is going to be great. So, Robert, you've written a book that is in the title of this podcast. Okay. I'm fine, Michael. Thanks for having me here. understand how you got interested in the same thing that I've been fascinated by as well. And if we started way back now, you've written five books, you're on your sixth book. So you understand how to write. I think you think I hope. And but that means you also understand how to think and how to make decisions about words and sentences and that eventually lead to concepts. So I want to start with getting a sense of like where this started for you. And if you could go almost way back and give us a picture of like what childhood was like. And like, are you an only child? Do you have siblings?

No, I have a sister who's older than me, who I'm very close to. Grew up here in Los Angeles, very middle class background. Father was just sort of a salesman. And I got really excited by books. I was a bit of a loner as a kid, but I had friends and I played a lot. My two interests were books and sports I wasn't a great athlete but I played a lot of sports swimming, basketball, etc

but I was always into strategy and games and mind games and I was always fascinated in watching sports the mental aspect of it and then I extended that to people. I'm always with sort of analyzing people. One thing I never really liked was the fact that I felt like there was a game,

there was something else behind what people were pretending to be about. And I wanted to figure out what they were really after. I mean, this goes back to when I was eight, nine years old. Okay. So you, as an eight or nine year old, you were watching other people and had the thought that there was something that was more authentic than what they were demonstrating to the world. Yes. Um, you said, you look at me like, yeah, of course that's what we were doing at nine. Yeah.

And I was even writing, i wrote stories and things like that and you know you can ask my sister will verify the these these things i had a weird a weird mind i was also reading i read machiavelli's the prince when i was about 14 oh that's pretty young to read something like that's really and i was i was reading a lot of war books why would you why would you be because i know that machiavelli and the principles that he espoused inspired one of your books, 48 Losses of Power. Definitely. But why would you pick that up at 14? I was just – I read a lot about war when I was a kid.

I remember once when I was growing up, they would hand you a pamphlet. You would get in the mail and you could order books on it. And my parents thought, OK, go ahead, Robert. And I ordered about 50 books on World War II and battles and warfare. So I was already into like the strategy aspect and the power games that go on. And Machiavelli was just sort of a natural thing. I remember the cover of the book excited me because you're a 14 year old. You're not really, you don't have life experience to really

understand Machiavelli. You have to be 30 or 40 or 50 before you can really understand the concepts behind it. The cover was of a hand and it was like the hand was controlling these different people in his hand and wow that's great and so I just had I grew up in a time in the 60s I'm I was born in 59 where there the older generation there was something kind of false about a lot of their values about what they were doing and I was wanting to figure out you you know, what's really going on here? What's the game that's being played? Why is my father saying this to my mother? I know he doesn't mean that. He's meaning something else, you know? And what would give you the idea that

he actually meant something else? Would he say something to you behind closed doors? Like, you know, whatever. You know, it gets to a point where I talk in mastery about discovering your life's task, what it is you're meant in life. Well, I was meant to be a writer in that I'm not good at a lot of things. As I said, I can't dunk a basketball. I wanted to be able to, but I'm good at observing people. So for whatever reason, I can't say why it was, but I, I am not a, I'm someone that can stand back a bit of an introvert and observe people and see their body language and say, this isn't, there's something else going on behind the facade. And I was doing that at a very early age. Why, how, that's a mystery that I don't know if I could ever figure out.

Okay, but you had that sense as a young man, young boy, that there was something else going on. And the reason I love sports is that it's so upfront. So there's no bullshitting in a game. You either have it or you don't. And the mental aspect of that kind of fascinates me. So someone who's clever, who's like a clever tennis player and is playing a mind game and is making the other person do all of the work, you can see very clearly the kind of mind games and the power games going on in sports. That's also something that kind of grabbed me at an early age.

In your observation of sport, what would be your assessment, if you will, of our current status? OK, about developing craft, developing the body and developing the mind. And if you just took a sport, I don't know, you want to pick maybe basketball, if you will, and thought about where they invest most of their time and talent and where we are wanting more development. What is your assessment? Well, I mean, I could talk for 20 hours on that. You know, I look at something that interests me would be football, drafting a quarterback. And we have something now with the Los Angeles Rams and the Rams drafted Jared Goff. And we have something now with the Los Angeles Rams, and the Rams drafted Jared Goff. And we watched him in preseason, and we were going, I don't know if this guy's got it. Now, it might be premature. And you look at someone like Dak Prescott,

who was taken, I don't know, second round? Was it second round? He was not as high, yeah. It was third round? No, no, he was not as high as Jared. No, but it's much lower. And the guy's killing it. I mean, even the second pick, Carson Wentz. Why? What is it that would make someone, and you know, believe me, football minds, Bill Belichick included, spend years studying this.

So I'm not the only, by far. Why? What makes, because a person like Jared Goff has all, it's the mental aspect. It's the psychological aspect. Because what happens to a quarterback is they can start off great, but they get hit again and again and again. And that plays on the mind. And they start thinking of hits before they get hit. And it affects their game.

And you can watch the Redskins quarterback, Robert Griffin. What happened to him? Great first year, all the physical talent in the world. He couldn't stand, I don't think, I don't think he could stand the physical punishment that was doled out to him and keep his mind together. And a great quarterback, Tom Brady, who's not as physically gifted and is not as big, he can take the pounding and for some reason it doesn't affect the mental part. Why?

What makes one person like that? Are there tests for that? You're the one that would be able to answer the question better than anyone else. It is a fascinating puzzle. Well, if you want to give me a formula, that mental aspect is almost more important than a lot of the physical skills. Yeah, I wouldn't disagree, but I am biased.

Being in the field and having that point of view. But as an observer from your vantage point and having a deep appreciation for how the mind works, you know, without leading the question, here's my observation is that we've done a great job developing. No, no, no. Let me say that differently. We've done a marginally good job developing the body. We've done a pretty good job developing craft as in general, right? So tactics and technique and the strategy that supports it. And then we've done a very average or below average job in training the mind in America, we could say not just in one sport. And so they've

had to figure it out on their own. Athletes have had to figure it out on their own and their teachers have been either a spiritual leader that they've been inspired by, which is more conceptual than it is practical, or their mom and dad, which probably are not advanced in their thinking about training the mind, and or a coach who was taught by his coach, taught by his coach, but very little principle supporting actual ways of thinking. Yeah, as I said, I could go 20 hours on this. I think a lot about Zen Buddhism, because I meditate every day. What does your practice look like? I get up every morning, and before I eat or do anything, I meditate for 35 minutes.

But it's very intense 35 minutes because you're emptying the mind. I've been doing it religiously every morning for over six years now. I wish it had been longer, but you think, oh, 35 minutes. It is intense and it is extremely difficult. You try stilling the mind for that time and you'll find out how incredibly difficult it is. And it's immensely powerful for focusing. I can give you one example. I have a pool table at home. I played for several years. I've had it a long time. I played for several years. I was good, but I was never that good. And then I had to stop for whatever reason. Now I've gone back and I'm 100% better because I can focus and I can concentrate and I can still the mind. The thinking, talking mind is what messes you up and is powerful

influence in sports. You can see it in a golfer who's lining up a 20-foot putt to win. He's thinking. The thinking interrupts the physical process, the mental. You've got muscle memory, you've mastered the craft, but the thinking will mess you up every single time. So I looked at why were samurai warriors obsessed with Zen Buddhism? They were obsessed with Zen Buddhism because a samurai warrior, you think it's bad being Tom Brady or Robert Griffin. You imagine in a sword fight, it's life or death. Tomorrow you will be dead because you were not a good enough sword fighter that'll focus the mind yeah people listening are going oh my god mike and robert sound like they've been thinking about the same things for a long time good yeah we've never talked before so it's just pure

coincidence yeah and so your interest in hostile or rugged environments yeah and the forcing function that they create yeah to demonstrate whether you've got your mind together or not. It sounds like you're interested in that as well. Oh my God. Yes. And that's why, um, just to circle back, that's why Zen warrior of samurai warriors became attracted to the Zen traditions. Yeah. Um, because it could, it could alter that mental aspect. It could give you mental control. It could make you one with the moment. You know, they have that great book, Zen and the Art of Archery. I think that's the title. It is at the highest moment. You're one with that bow or the arrow, whichever it is. You're not thinking anymore. You're in the moment. That's the most powerful point you can

reach in sports and in any kind of endeavor. It's also the end point of mastery. My book, which is designed to bring you towards mastery and giving you the steps there, the end point is an intuitive feel for what you're doing. You no longer have to think. You know, the great quarterbacks, which I read a lot about, like, I think it was John Elway or maybe it was Joe Montana, I think it was Elway, said that you get to a point where the whole game slows down. You know, and when it's slowing down, that means you're not thinking as much. You've got to feel, a fingertip feel for what's going on.

That's mastery, and that's when the thinking part is able to stop. Yeah. So it's the analysis and the judgment and the course correcting mentally that is required to put us in positions to figure things out. And then if we can have the capacity to quiet those down, it's an incredible skill. And that is a skill. And so you've been training it through meditation. Are you doing single training it through meditation are you doing single point mindfulness training or are you doing more contemplative and observing well i'm doing zen pure zen buddhism zazen which is exactly yeah um i there's a there are variations of Zazen, Shikantaza, which is a form of supreme intense emptying of the mind where nothing else is going on. You're not thinking of a koan.

You're not thinking of a particular goal in mind to the point where you're literally in sweat by the time you get to the end of the process. It's a little bit more of what I follow. And I've made, you know, so it's reading, I read books about Zen, but it's mostly Zazen. That's the key to everything. Me too. That was one of my early influences as well. Yeah. And so I was introduced to it in graduate school in my PhD program. And just so happened that across the hall, so it was a traditional psychology program and clinical psychology with a specialization in sport and performance. And across the hall was a Tibetan psychology program. And so it was all these down in San Diego. And it was all these people that looked a little different. They

dressed a little differently. And the, I can't remember the title, but, um, what Dr. Walt Rutherford, I think he was not the president, but maybe he was the vice chair or something of the school. He was a practicing Buddhist monk that also had a psychology background. And he introduced Zazen traditions without even telling us exactly what we're doing. He would just come in and in when he would offer a teacher class and we'd all sit for six minutes. And he would just guide us. We had no idea. I had no idea what I was doing the entire PhD program, really. And he was guiding us through the traditions of Zazen.

So here's a takeaway that I think you'll appreciate. Is that it's focusing as if a loved one depending on you getting it right. That's a level of commitment of focus inside of a traditional zazen or my any sort of mindfulness practice is focusing as if a loved one dependent on you getting this breath right that's an interesting i'm going to maybe try that tomorrow i'm always open to new ideas so i have a variation of that that comes to my mind that I developed that's variation on that. Okay, yeah. Which is, I might very well die in the middle of this meditation.

Or there's a man standing behind me with a very heavy sword. And I could die before I ever kind of reach the state that I want to reach of enlightenment or whatever it is. I better focus on this breath because this could be the last breath. That's a little more abstract. Yours is more kind of real. No, I think, I think they both are. And I think we're both going for the same thing is that we're, we're creating a force function through imagination to create intensity to be all in. Because what you're saying is focusing on every breath as it, as each one happens is

incredibly difficult and powerful technique. And it's hard to get like even two together, three together feels like I really hit a stride, you know, let alone four and five and six. Yeah. So that's exactly. Okay. So you've been practicing for six years. Yeah. Zazen, 35 minutes. Why did you choose 35 minutes? It started out, whatever I could take in theen, 35 minutes. Why did you choose 35 minutes? It started out, whatever I could take in the beginning, 12 minutes. Then I kept increasing it. I've done classes. There's a temple in Los Angeles I've gone to. Usually it's 30 minutes is what people do. And do you classify or categorize yourself as having Buddhist practices as being a Buddhist or this is just a practice that you're using? No, I ascribe as much as I can to it because you can't really divorce it

from the religion and the philosophy. It's hard to say it's a pure religion like Christianity, but there is a faith element and there are practices and there's a philosophy, more a philosophy, that goes back thousands of years. It's beautiful. You can't really divorce it. It's like people who just do yoga as if it's a physical exercise and they try and divorce the actual great tradition, the mental tradition in yoga and the meditation and the pranayama and all that. I think that's wrong. So no, I am embedded in that.

I can't say I live by all the principles, but I try to. Okay, so with that in mind, was that before or after you wrote 48 Laws of Power? After I wrote the 48 Laws of Power. But my interest in Buddhism goes way back and Zen. I have a book of the Zen comments on the Mumon Khan that I've been reading since I was 21. So I've always been fascinated. And I've tried meditating many times before. It just never stuck as a regular practice until over six years ago.

But that's after the 48 Laws. The reason I ask is because 48 Laws of Power, which is a widely read book in business and even sport, like athletes will come up to me all the time and say, hey, have you read this book? And it's a fat, big book. And the first time I saw it, I was like an athlete brought it to me and I said, I haven't. What's what is in that? And it's a large like treatise on the laws of power inspired by Machiavelli. Now, it's so contrastingly different than the principles of Buddhism. It's more like the five rings. I'm sure you've read the five rings. Well, Musashi was a Buddhist, I believe. Samurai, for sure. Well, samurai,

but I believe he was a buddhist um they're not so divorced as you might think come on because when i read them buddhism yes maybe but not zen buddhism okay so the zen part is the is the uh embracing of opposites and the um what were you what would be the capture that i'd try to link your book to? And I'm stretching because there's so... I'll make the connection for you. I love it. Please. I'm trying to train you. Wait, wait. You know what? Let's do this.

Let's go through. Give us 10. 10 of the 48 laws. And just kind of rattle them off so people have some preference. Well, law number one is never outshine the master and then law like 37 is the exact opposite that you have and i can't remember the numbers exactly no there's no exact opposite but everything in life depends on the circumstances and you're you're in and law number 48 is called assume formlessness It's inspired by Sun Tzu.

And the idea is being like water and formless is the highest form of power. And in that chapter, I say, I try and I sort of contradict my entire book and I say there are no laws. You have to be in the moment. You have to understand the circumstance. So it would be wrong to say that some contradict them

because some laws are for when you're starting out somewhere. So there's a law, court attention at all costs. Say it again. Court attention at all costs. And there's a law, 37, 38, called think as you like but behave like others. In other words, don't be too colorful. Don't be such a rebel that people think you're an asshole and they avoid you, a narcissist, in friends. Learn to work with enemies. I'm misquoting a little bit.

Another law called always say less than necessary. Too much talking will get you in trouble. I really appreciate that one because as soon as you say you just one of us starts running on about something, it loses its mystique. Yes. Right? And saying something that is almost divorce of finishing a thought seems to have some sort of elusive, tangential, like, wow, what's next? Exactly. And it also leaves the audience open to interpreting it, which is a very powerful, seductive marketing technique

where you get the other person engaged. Their minds are trying to figure out what you're saying is really powerful. One of the laws, I don't remember the number, which is don't stay too long. Right? I don't know how to paraphrase. I'm paraphrasing wrong. Well, I think you're thinking about use absence to create honor and respect. So the idea of withdrawing, there's this law there's the saying of too much uh circulation makes the price go down if you're out there too much people take you for granted so learn to withdraw sometimes not be so present give make give yourself a little bit of an air of mystery a little bit of an elusive quality will kind of add to your aura and there's also in a relationship

if you're trying to court or seduce a woman, if you're always in her face and you're texting her every five minutes, there's no mystery involved and it's irritating. But if you like spend 48 hours and you don't call her at all, and you leave her on the precipice for a little bit, wow, that has power. So absence has power. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with

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machiavellian piece really does feel like it's a manipulation a control a struggle for power all right yeah so break it down for us all right well here's the circling back to buddhism zen buddhism aspect is um i've discovered i feel like a lot of people in life have terrible problems dealing with politics i myself had a terrible problem working in offices, in jobs, working in Hollywood, working in journalism. I'm a bit naive, and a lot of people are naive. And basically what happens in these situations is nobody trains you for these things, and you get emotional.

You take what somebody said or did personally, and the moment you get wrapped up in the emotions of it, you're done. You're screwed. You have to be able to look at life as if it were the moves on a chessboard. Marcus Aurelius has this great quote about if you're in a boxing ring and the boxer, you know, punches you in the face, you don't go, oh man, that's so unfair. Why are you doing that? you don't go, oh man, that's so unfair. Why are you doing that? You know, come on. No, that's just part of the game. If someone does something to you that's nasty, all right, get back. Get control of your emotions. Don't react. Don't get upset. Look at it as moves on a chessboard. They are moving you. Don't listen to their words

because people will say anything. Look at their moves. Look at their maneuvers. Look at their past actions. Actions tell you who they are, not what they say. That kind of control, that kind of self-control, that kind of looking at it that way is immensely liberating and immensely empowering. Okay, so that's what the book is about. Now, some of the laws are manipulative. I'm not going to run away from that. And a Buddhist would be offended by some of the laws. I don't doubt that. But I noticed the book's been out for 18 years. 95% of the readers who find that book helpful are like myself. They were naive people who don't understand that this is how the game is played.

They're not necessarily going out there and screwing other people. It's they're learning defense. Now there are sharks in the world who use the 48 laws, but I've always maintained that the real sharks in this world don't need the 48 laws of power. They understand it intuitively, but you don't. You know, I think you're onto something with that thought, with that insight. And I don't know if you've been challenged by it or that was the original challenge many times. Have you? Yeah. And I didn't know where the origin of your, um, wanting to write that book was from. So thank you for sharing that. I mean, I could tell you stories when I was in Hollywood where I got screwed because of my naivete. And I said,

never outshine the master. I violated that law and got fired, paid a heavy price for it. So I come from the more of the underdog side of it than anything. Anyway, go on. I'm sorry. Okay. So let me go back to that thought, which was that the people that would misuse the 48 laws of power probably don't need to read the book. So there's a thought in sport and it's probably outside of sport as well, that how do you help a narcissist? You can't train a narcissist on the mental part of the game the way that you help a narcissist this is interesting yeah go on yeah you cannot train a narcissist they don't need it in a matter of fact it's it's you mean in sports if you have if you're dealing with a narcissist athlete they do not that they do not need mental skills training the only thing you need to do is turn on the lights oh and now they're alive and they capture those moments better than

than you can ever imagine. Well, I didn't quite follow that, but I'm sure you know what you're talking about. That's fascinating. Yeah. So narcissism is, you know, the, the disorder of narcissism is that it's the original insult to a person was so tragic that they can no longer separate themselves from other people. Yeah. I write a lot about that in my new book. Oh, do you? Okay. All right. So, so the narcissist, the way you help a narcissist is to turn on the lights and show them that they matter. And so it cures the original insult, if you will. And it's temporary and it's like, but it's like their drug. And so teaching them to be calm, they don't need that. They just need the lights on and they need people to pay attention to them. Yeah, they don't need to do imagery because that's all they do is think about how great they are.

I see. And you've done this before. You've made this. Oh, yeah. You're practical. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's lots of narcissists on the world stage. That would be a great book right there.

Yeah, I know. Just turn the lights on. I'd like to, you know, we don't have time here, but I'd like to mine that further, but we'll go on. Yeah, we could do that. Fascinating. For sure. So, yeah, maybe the title of that is just turn the lights on. And we're seeing that in the public display right now in politics.

Yeah. I know you've got lots of thoughts about that. Speaking of narcissism, yeah. Yes. Yeah, very much so. Okay. So let's go back. So young, middle-aged, not middle-aged.

Well, I am now. No, you aren't. I was talking about your folks, like middle income, curiosity. Middle class, yeah. Yeah, middle class. Curiosity about the thing underneath the mask. And then you had an interest in strategy and war. Yeah.

And then you had an appreciation for writing. Did you go to school to refine your craft or how did that how did you find writing i wanted to be a writer i just didn't know what i wanted to write okay so in college i thought you know i was gonna write novels did you know you were gonna go to college oh sure you did i love books and learning and languages and uh i'm very interested in ancient history so my master my major was ancient greek classics okay i had to go to college because i it was like the last time i'd be able to do some stuff like that without having to earn a living you know i had to go to a public college because my parents couldn't afford a private school okay so um but you know i couldn't and

then afterwards i got into journalism, um, because I had to make a living and I thought, well, maybe I'll be a journalist. Um, but that really wasn't working for me. I was in New York. It wasn't quite, I traveled a lot and lived in different places, but I settled in New York. It wasn't quite working for me. Um, it was a great discipline.

It taught me how to write under pressure. It taught me how to communicate directly to a reader, et cetera, great skill. But it wasn't me. And then I left New York and I wandered around Europe for several years trying to write a novel. Starved practically to death.

Had different jobs all over Europe. Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't run over that one. So you almost starved to death? I mean, my girlfriend and I were living in London at one point. And, you know, we basically had to, like, trick our way into getting a couple extra potatoes from the market. I mean, I always knew at the end of the day I could borrow money from my parents. So it's not as bad as some people who really have nothing left in life. I don't mean to overplay it.

But we were really, I was quite poor at that point. And then I wandered, I left my girlfriend and I wandered around Europe. I got jobs. I taught English in Spain. I did construction work in Greece. I worked in a hotel in Paris. Such a boring life. Were you learning at the time?

Yeah, I learned languages. So that was where my German comes from and French and other languages. And I was writing, trying to write novels, but I was starving. I wasn't clicking. And then I came back to L.A. My father wasn't well, and I moved here basically, and I worked in Hollywood for five, six, seven years. And that's where I saw a lot of manipulation and Machiavellian crap

and things that I thought were pretty ugly. And I tried to fit into Hollywood, but that wasn't working. So basically, the moral of the story was I had to kind of, I knew what I wanted, but I couldn't figure out what exactly it was, but I kept trying. And so I accumulated my 10,000 hours. Okay, so let's go there for a minute. I think I know where you're going. I don't usually talk about this stuff. Yeah, no, no, sorry.

This is it. So you knew what, wait, what did you say? I knew what I wanted, but I didn't, how did you say that? I didn't know what kind of writing, which little niche I was going to fit in. What was the right form of writing for me? It'd be like you love music but you didn't know whether you were good at rap or classical or whatever it was so did you try on a bunch of different styles so you tried punk rock and rock and roll oh well i tried journalism i

tried novels i tried short stories i tried okay so uh screenplays i tried you know that kind of how did you know that you wanted to write and having a mission and a purpose? And like that, that's a really challenging thing for many, many people. Well, you know, you got to know it when you're young. Oh, sorry. That was my phone dropping in the back. Like poltergeist. You know, when you're young. Okay. Well, you did. Yeah. But I think a writer, you should know it when you're young. Oh, a writer. A writer needs to know that. Okay. So many people that I know are still trying to sort out their purpose. And even though they're maybe one of the top 10 best in the world at

something. Sure. That happens a lot. It's amazing. And I'll share this thought. And before I interrupt you too much is that many people are so purpose driven in the thing that they're doing. And they know that that thing that they're doing is going to end and they have no idea what's next. Well, athletes would fit that category pretty well. But let's talk about, if you could, the shaping of a purpose and how to shape purpose. Well, I go a lot, I do a lot of consulting, particularly since Mastery came out, where people come to me and they have no idea. I talk about your life's task. Mine was to write. And at least that gave me guidance. I might have wandered and been a little bit lost

and was starving, but I knew I wanted to write. It gave me guidance and it made me practice a craft. So when it came time to writing my first book, The 48 Laws of Power, I had all of the skills and all of the necessary discipline so I could make that book take off. A lot of people come to me and they go, man, I have no idea what my life's task is. I mean, it sounds great, but it might as well be a foreign language to me. And, you know, some people have a vague presentiment about what that could be. Other people have kind of a bit of clarity, and other people are completely in the dark. And if you're completely in the dark, it takes a different process. It means let's go back to before. What happens a lot in

life is you start listening to your parents, you start listening to your peers, and you lose a sense of who you are and what you were meant to do in life. You've got too many voices in your head and you're not hearing yourself. Okay, so let's do that. Who you are and what you're meant to do. Yeah. To me, they feel like two different things. Do you stitch those together? Who you are and what you were meant to be. Yeah. Or no, I think I heard do.

Maybe I heard the wrong word. What you were meant to do. Yeah. No, I find them inextricably interwoven to the point where you could not possibly take them apart. Because the doing or the act of doing is the act of building who you are. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I agree with that. Yeah.

You do. Yeah. So I think we're saying the same thing. I agree with that. But I see that the who I am can be independent of what I do. Okay. We're getting into platonic. I don't know.

That may be, but I have to think about that. I love that answer. I don't know if I'll ever get an answer from you, but I would love to know your thought about that. And we don't have to do it right now because you don't need to say something that is a work in progress unless you want to take a run at that. Well, I don't really know if we ever really know who we are at our core. And in Buddhism and Zen, there's basically a void

at your center. And you're basically chasing a void. So I don't know if there's some magical thing where you're suddenly going to... But knowing yourself better, knowing what you like and what you don't like better is a possible goal in life. So I don't know if I have belief in this existential quest for discovering who you are, because I don't think you'll ever find out. Okay. And then what is the purpose of refining craft for you or building craft than refining? I'm sorry.

Was this relating to something I've just been saying or just this is a new track? Oh, directly related to that idea. So I'm trying to sort out like who you are and what you do. And then my thought is that what you do is a potentially a way to reveal who you are. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, definitely. Yeah, and then so what would you nod your head to? That's the purpose of having a craft, or is it something else? The purpose of having a craft?

Well, there's two ways to go about that. You have a craft that's not necessarily related to who you are. That has value because it's going to teach you discipline. It's going to get you to understand the process. I'm a great believer in trusting the process, trusting that the brain has these certain powers. But you can only discover it once you start doing something. So practicing a craft, but it's not really what you want to do, has value as long as it doesn't become like 20 years and you've lost your soul. But practicing a craft where it's something that you enjoy has a whole different order.

You're going to learn faster and you're going to go further. I've already forgotten what your question was. No, you're answering the center of it. Oh, in doing the craft you will discover things about yourself you will find out that you're lazy you'll find out that you're not good at this you'll find out that you hate this you'll find out how much tedium you can take how much uh criticism you can take from your teacher what is the word you said tedium tedium what does that mean well uh

you know if something's tedious tedious okay so tedium would be the the noun none of that okay thank you you can take boring routine you'll discover a lot about yourself in in trying to practice something yeah definitely yeah i agree and you'll and you'll. I love this. I need to find out how to pursue it better, smarter, or I hate this. That's also a very important lesson about who you are. So your craft is writing. Yeah. Right. And what is it that you're trying to sort out in writing?

You were inspired as a young person to want to write. And then you went on a journey to figure out the style of writing, journalism versus fiction. And now you're writing books that are deep and rich and not tutorials, but they're concepts that are applied. And then can you answer the question, what is it that you're trying to figure out in your own life? Me? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. you know I've been on a bit of a hate the word but journey where I came back to Buddhism when

I had left it and Zen and in search of that kind of more I know there's an enlightened state that I haven't reached and it's fascinates me so there's that kind of end game but then there's the writing where I'm trying to realize my potential and get express all of the ideas that I know I was meant to express as someone who's different from other people so I my concept of mastery is expressing your uniqueness I feel like for better or worse I'm a strange bird and I want my books to reflect that so So will I get all of my ideas out before I die kind of thing is another aspect of it. So the book I'm writing now is kind of the ultimate expression of a lot of things been swimming in my mind. I'm getting them out. And then I have

another book after that that'll do that. How many more are left? I don't know. It's, uh, when you say that it's much deeper than the words that you even say. Oh, okay. Right. That's good. Yeah. Like the idea that the yearning to express yourself in the most authentic way, that's odd, right? The oddity of your unique and number of one is um almost has a painful tone to it when you say that oh well it's certainly this book that i'm writing now is a lot of pain uh so that maybe maybe that came out in my non-verbals yeah beautiful okay and then do you want to talk about the book you're writing now? Well, the book I'm writing now is based on a chapter in mastery, which I had a chapter on social intelligence, which I'm saying, you know, if you want to master something, sports or whatever, you're a narcissist, whatever it is, well, your career is going to be cut short because of your terrible political people skills. So you can't divorce Matt because we're social animals. You can't divorce the two. And people responded to that

chapter and they said, well, I want to know more about this, Robert, because you kind of, and I got into, I'm writing a whole book about it, but the book is about human nature, the laws of human nature. And I'm trying to say we are animals with a certain nature that has obviously evolved, but so many things haven't changed at all. You put us in a certain circumstance, we react this way just like a dog will or a cat will or whatever. We are prone to envy. We are prone to irrationality. We're prone to thinking along with the group. We're prone to repeating our life falling into patterns, doing the same thing over and over and over again. I want to illuminate these 20 laws

for you so that you have a better understanding of yourself and the people you deal with. Because I have this idea that half the problems in the world stem from the fact that we're constantly misinterpreting what other people are saying or doing. We're operating in fog, and I want to maybe lift the fog a little bit. I love that image that we're operating in the fog. Maybe it's another way. What it conjured up for me is like the non-conscious and the subconscious if you will whatever those are emblems for it's our brains processing of things that are survival mechanisms and or repeated processes over and over again that we make automatic that those keep us safe yes and the interpretation of information

from other people is we're trying to stay safe and i've got this this idea that and i don't think it's a wildly new idea but i i don't i haven't heard anyone say it this way is if you want to pursue your potential you have to override your dna well that's, that's practically the motto of the book, the new book. There you go. Okay. So look, there we go again. This is cool. This is a great conversation. It's about human nature, but you have to overcome human nature to be truly human and great. Yeah. Because the processes are meant to keep us safe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The automatic processes. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth.

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this is now going like almost third person if you will um geez well um sometimes uh people think i'm a nerd i did a book with 50, and he thought I was a nerd. I mean, he didn't mean it pejoratively. We got along. We were great friends. What was the title of the book? The 50th Law. It's a book about fear and overcoming fear.

But, you know, it'll depend on the person you're interviewing, because I can be a bit of a chameleon. So if I'm with someone who's younger, I become younger in talking to them. If I'm with a woman that I'm interested in, I could become completely different than if I'm talking to Bill Gates. So I don't know if they're going to be the ones

that are going to really nail who I am because you'll get 15 different answers. But, you know, maybe I do have a nerdish side, that's for sure. And then on the nerd side, if we pull on that a little further, many people don't want to talk about the dark side of becoming or pursuing potential. And I wonder if you have been able to touch or can articulate the cost that you've experienced in pursuing mastery or potential or high performance in your own life? Well, the cost is, you don't have as much of a life. You get my greatest satisfaction from writing and achieving my goals, but there's a lot of boredom, loneliness. I'm missing out on things. I don't have children. I wish I'd probably too late in life. I have a girlfriend. We've been together for quite a while and probably not going to happen. So I've missed on things because I've been so intense in pursuing something.

So nothing in life is ever totally beautiful. You have to sacrifice something. There's nothing in life you're going to get without a sacrifice. So in trying to become, write the books that I'm doing, I've sacrificed, you know, a social life and other things that enrich other people's lives. So I found my enrichment through my work mostly. And there's a price that you pay for that, you know. And how do you manage it and deal with it? Well, meditating helps a lot. I've discovered that 99% of the problem is thinking.

So I do this thing when I'm meditating. And as I'm meditating, I'm going, well, I'm verbalizing it, but there's a world out there that is completely indifferent to me. There's a hill right in front of my house. that hill doesn't care at all about my emotions my mother my father blah blah blah there are birds out there they don't care there's a whole world out there that has nothing to do with me and when i'm dead i'll have nothing i'll be gone and etc it's thing and then that's like reality it's thinking that messes everything up so that kind of sensation is very calming i don't have to worry about things because life just goes on i keep telling myself in meditation it's just facts things happen people are this way they

can't help it they're just facts facts. Don't get emotional. Just detach yourself. But thinking is what messes you up. So, you know, I can't think many people are not ready to talk about the dark side of pursuing potential. And it's this wonderful aspirational thought like and you articulated your dark side and many people that in these conversations are able to do it. And but we're almost I feel like we're setting people up because the crash and burn for people that either are challenging their children or they try are trying on their own to be the best version of themselves. When it doesn't work out in the craft that they've chosen. Oh, I see what you're going on. Yeah. Like it's hard. It's really hard.

0.004% of people make it into the pros. Oh, well, sports is yes. Yeah. But, you know, sports is a beautiful thing. And fortunately, there are other avenues. So I talk in the book about Freddie Roach, the boxing trainer. He's one of the was just not a good boxer. I mean, he was mediocre, got his head bashed in a lot, was never that good. He had aspirations for being great. He trained since he was four years old. He discovered by hook or by crook, a bit by serendipity, that he was a great teacher. And he became, I think, one of the greatest trainers of our era. Fortunately, if you don't make it in sports, are you good at teaching? Could you become a coach?

Are you good with analytics so you could get into the analytics side? Are you good with the physical part where you could become a physical trainer? I mean, you've got 15 avenues you could pursue. If you're not good enough physically to make it or your career is short you've got a segue into something what is it which one of those other avenues do you connect to are you a sportscaster are you good with people blah blah blah blah beautiful and then what is the the greatest challenge in your craft and or life you know what are the ones that you are challenged most by well um you know two things on the one level i have to maintain my sanity because i am alone a lot

working on the book um so i have you know i exercise every day um because it gets me out of my mind. So I swim, I mountain bike, I hike, or I do a kind of a yoga thing. That really helps me, along with meditation, really helps me deal with the stress. But the main thing is I want to make the book the best thing possible. So each time I start a book, I say, all right, I'm at ground zero. I have no reputation. This book could sell zero copies. It could be a total failure. I have to make it as great as it can be. And so I have to figure out the reality.

So if I'm writing a book about power, I don't want to get into the bullshit of self-help books about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're all nice. Let's do it. I want the reality. What is really how what is power about and you have to do that you have to think and think and think and think and grind into the into the wood or whatever as deeply as you can so i do that with my other books and so this book i'm really i'm writing a chapter on grandiosity and why we have grandiose tendencies and why some people are more grandiose than others. And my initial notes weren't there,

they weren't hitting it. So I've got to think, I want to get to the reality, to the truth of it as close as I can to describe to the reader in a way that hits home. Like, okay, I know when I've connected the bat to the ball and I've hit a home run when I feel like I've understood something. And the challenge is each chapter to try and do that on. And do you know when you've nailed it? Kind of. I mean, I never perfectly nail it, but I got close enough.

And then i let my girlfriend read the chapter and then i sent it to my editor but i know um you know pretty much i've expressed what i've wanted to express how do you get that knowing you know uh you the first draft you get your ideas out they're not good you work on it by the time you get to the fourth or fifth draft you you know, well, I don't think I've left anything out. And I've made it, I've communicated in a dramatic form. So I just did a chapter on envy and the dangers of envy and what it is, but trying to say something new about it, because a lot of people write about envy. And by the time, it's something I think about a lot, I've had, I've dealt with envious people.

By the time I finished it, I go, yeah, all right. I don't think there's anything left. I've said what I needed to say and you know, I can let it go. I see why a mindfulness practice is so valuable to you for a lot of reasons, right? And it's to help with clearing the clutter and distraction so that you can think. Now, is there a word or phrase that guides your life? Well, it's getting to the inside of things and not staying on the outside. So on the outside, things will look a certain way, kind of dead, because you're just seeing the appearances. But when you get on the inside and you kind of see the heart beating,

you understand it, you get inside, you get the reality, you understand what's really moving here. I always am trying to move into the inside. So if I'm writing about human nature, I want to really get inside this human animal and figure it out. Sports is a great thing because the athletes that really make it, it's the same in music or in other ventures in life, have a feel for it.

They're on the inside um you know pele would make these passes as if he had eyes in the back of his head no he had a feel for the whole he was on the inside of the of the game itself this and so you're touching on what is the most crippling for performance ever which is self-criticalness of the way it looks on the outside. Yeah. So that self-criticalness or the obsession of what others might be critiquing, right. It is the crippler of potential and expression of what we're capable of. Can you give me an example of that? Um, which one? The self-critical? Yeah. Well, so the self-critical is the noise, the internal noise that's cutting us that we're not doing good enough.

Oh, I see. Okay. And so it's like that pulls us away from the center of the feeling that you're talking about. Yeah. And so the work is to gate out the noise to get to the signal. And the signal is that intuitive expression, I think. I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

So that's the one uh crippler and then the second is the obsession about what others could be thinking might be thinking of us yes and and then that obsession if it has a worried tone to that they might be critiquing it's all the exterior as opposed to the investment on the interior right and i don't know i don't know another way. And this, this part really frustrates me is that we want, we coaches and leaders and inspirational, whatever. It's like this part of that, those, those professions drive me nuts is they'll just talk. Yeah. They'll just say, believe in yourself. They'll say, well, just feel it. And it drives me bananas. Like, just be positive.

No, you've got to train your mind. And the way to train your mind is you have to do the hard yards to learn about your own mind. And there is no other way other than rich conversation with people that understand something, writing stuff down where you're forced to choose words or listening deeply to your own internal experience. Very good. Yeah. So those are the three ways to do the works. Now you've got to write it, talk about it and, or do some mindfulness work. Right. And then once you have those things with clarity, it's then we need to practice something to get better at the thing that we're trying to get better at, whether it's quieting down or calming ourselves or whatever it might be, or speaking more productively. So I feel like I just went on a rant, which I kind of did.

No, no, no. That was fascinating. That's fascinating. I should be interviewing you. Well, I think we've been thinking about similar things for a long time, and you've been coming from an introspective literature point of view. Well, I do. I do for sure. But I, over the years I've consulted with hundreds of people. So I have a lot of experience dealing with their blocks and, you know, so there, there is a practical side to my, my bullshit. I can tell you. I can tell you. That's good. Okay. So is there, so let's follow the same thought. Is there a word or phrase that cuts to the center of what you understand the most? Well, I think I understand people, uh, on a, on a higher level than other people.

There you go. It's been my life study, uh, ever since I was a five-year-old and aware of weird games being played. And I have an understanding of, I have an intuitive feel for people, their body language, who they are, what their problems are. When I consult in five minutes, I can figure out where your blocks are, what your problems are. So I put in my 10,000 hours on this thinking, et cetera. I think that I understand people on a higher level. What is your favorite question to ask people? My favorite question to ask people? To try to understand them. And maybe there's more than one question you know um i try and um you know one thing that i've learned to circle back a little bit to things i've never quite answered well enough in this interview here um is uh i've learned that

words are not as valuable as we sometimes think. So it's not so much what people say, because we're trained parrots and people will say phrases and things like that, and it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't come from any place real. So I'll ask questions that will maybe trick people to say something they've never thought of before, but it depends on the individual. I don't have a formula. So I want to come at them from a right angle and ask them

something. Okay, loosen them up. The other thing is I follow their body language. You ask a question about their childhood and they don't want to talk about it. Okay. I'm mining information that's in between the lines of what they're saying. So I'm kind of aware in the moment. I don't approach the people I consult with thinking of the last person that I consulted with. I've learned lessons. But I need to discover who they are. I let them talk for the first hour. I watch them.

I don't ask too many questions. I do ask questions, but to get them moving. And from that, I build a sense of maybe who they are and what their problems are and all. So I'm kind of alive to each person that I'm interviewing. Yeah, what a gift. Yeah. You've spent a lot of time, I think, just listening to the process and the selection of how you put words and thoughts together in this conversation is that

you've spent a lot of time trying to tap the source of where something comes from. And so I imagine when you observe that you're, okay, so let me put an asterisk in that thought and say something that as more of a story. Many of my friends are really frustrated with me because I forget what they say. And, and I'm almost not interested in the nuts and bolts of a conversation. And when you, when you and I leave this conversation, I have to listen to it again to, to recall actually what we spoke about, but I will not forget who you are. Okay. So I, so you could say an amazing, dark, wonderful, beautiful, whatever it might be story that's happened to you in your past. And I'll forget the nuances of it, but won't forget that you have a dark side or that you have an aspirational side or you, right. So it's like working to understand what's right below the surface. It sounds like that. That's how I engage in conversation. It sounds like that's what you have done for a long time as well. Yes. And you know, you have to, um, you have to, um, trick people a little bit. You have to play

to their need for attention and to be the star and you can't just bulldoze them and think you, you know, you have to, uh, have some, some little tricks up your sleeve for getting them to loosen up and reveal themselves more. So it's not just people talk because people, as I said, could talk endlessly and you'll never learn anything. That's right. You got to, you know, get inside their mind, their world, their frame of reference and stroke them a little bit, kind of thing. And then you'll have room to maneuver them or to figure things out. So I do actually listen quite deeply.

I try to. It's not easy, but to try and to hear things that maybe I would have normally, before I did meditation, I would have maybe not even heard. Why are you so thoughtful and interested in, is it in the center of the human experience as opposed to the surface? Well, I'm bored by the surface. I have a very active mind. And if I wasn't careful, I'd be an alcoholic or a drug addict.

And I did take drugs when I was younger. And so you have, when you have a... I did not expect that answer from you. That's so good. No, not the drug part, but like, I'm bored and I'd be an addict. Well, there's a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes in one of his stories, in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, where it's the same thing. Why,

Sherlock, are you so obsessed with it? Why are you who you are? And he goes, well, my mind is so active. And if I didn't do this, I would be a cocaine addict or something similar. A very active mind. And I have to put it into something or I'd be in trouble. And just standing on the surface of things is very boring. So if I'm watching a movie, I want to know what's not being spoken, what's the feel of it, what's the gestalt, what's not being said, get underneath, get underneath, get underneath, because it's fun. It makes the mind active. I'm not bored. I don't need cocaine. I got my mind. It's kind of churning there. And I'm figuring things out. I'm having fun. I did this thing, you know, where, like, I watch movies, and I'm watching them in a different spirit than other people are watching it. I'm trying to figure out what's the, what's the

spiritual thing going on here? What's the moment in history that's being captured in this movie? It's just things I can hardly put into words. Well, it makes it so it's not so boring. It's exciting. It's a challenge. And people are the ultimate cipher. You know, everything, we're so into data and technology, et cetera.

And I get that at a point that doesn't interest me as much. People are infinite puzzles. You know, I could, with my girlfriend for 20 years, I still don't understand her. She's a puzzle to me and I have to daily, it's a daily challenge. That's kind of fascinating, you know? So I know I'm not giving you the grand overall picture, but it's probably a little bit boring like that, that I, it keeps my mind active and I love figuring things out. Well, I can appreciate it because I know that our brain is searching novelty and that your mind is

like, if you think about intelligence as the idea that you can manage many things quickly, right. And manage new information and do something with it, that you've got high intelligence there and a brain that's searching newness and novelty. And you have kind of hooked into the gestalt to use that word. And the gestalt for people that might not be familiar with it is the thing that is not being said. Yeah. Right. The overall shape of something. Right. Yeah. And then, okay. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So can I give you some kind of, just kind of not rapid fire, but just some quick hits on a little bit of your, uh, personality,

if you will. Okay. Street smart or analytical. Well, I'm a, I'm a both because, um, my girlfriend and I counted, I've had maybe over 60 different jobs in my life and they run from very proletariat construction and working in a detective agency and waitering etc to more intellectual things so i feel like um i can kind of operate on both levels you have both those okay slow paced environment or fast paced environment for learning i'm probably better in the slow pace okay uh do you follow rules or take risks? I do both. Once again, sometimes the third way is the best. So you have to follow rules in order to learn something and be good at it. And I take risks all the time. The books are major risks in that I could be writing 48 Laws of Power Part Two and make

money off of it. I try some mastery. It was a totally different subject. And I take other risks. So I believe in risks. So both. Do you have a high need for control or lower need or moderate, of course? Probably higher on the control aspect, which is why writing books is appealing because i have complete control but i've learned to let go at times but i'm probably higher on the control end okay intellectually competitive or more physically competitive uh and you can be high on both i'm just competitive are you and are you trying to be better than others or your very best? Which way do you orientate with competitive spirit? Both. Both.

You know, the competitiveness isn't always a healthy thing. I've always been competitive since I was a kid. And I notice sometimes in the swimming pool, if someone's like passing me, I get really annoyed and i kind of pick up my pace kind of thing that's not a very healthy part of competitiveness because it's not really good especially at my age but i um i'm just a very competitive nature yeah and you figured that out from an early age or is this something that happened later in life for you days probably a little bit later because i wasn't good at anything when i was young i was good at games so probably pretty young yeah okay uh self-critical or positive oh uh self-critical

definitely and does that work for you or do you wish that you weren't so no it works for me because otherwise um i wouldn't i wouldn't have high standards. I wouldn't be a perfectionist and what I would create wouldn't work for me. So I wouldn't make it as a writer. I would have had to find another field. Being self-critical has its drawbacks, but it's infinitely preferable if you're trying to pursue something on a high level. Are you a perfectionist? I have those tendencies, yeah.

Okay. Fast decisions or slow decisions? Generally slow decisions, but I can be very intuitive at times. Okay. So where does pressure come from for you? I don't want to fail. I have great fear of failure. And I'm just highly, I'm ambitious and motivated. So the pressure comes pretty much from within. So my publisher will not be breathing down my neck for a deadline, but I'm still working pretty damn hard because I create the pressure, in other words. And then how do you define failure? If there's a fear of it, what is failure for you? Well, on the one hand, you write a book and nobody likes it and it doesn't sell

um but but that's not so much it anymore it's um i didn't quite get what i wanted to express i didn't achieve what i was aiming for so i if mastery mastery is selling well but if it never sells as much as my other books i'd be be fine because I know I nailed it. I said what I wanted to say. I got as close to coming up with the essence of mastery as I could. So I didn't fail. Okay, brilliant. Is there a way that you can define or articulate or shape the concept of mastery that is boiled down to something succinct? Well, it's moving to the inside of something. So when you start a game or let's say you play the piano or you're playing chess, you're on the outside.

And you don't really, you just see the visual surfaces of things and you're learning the rules. And it's very slow and tedious and you don't really have an understanding. You could say the same thing as if you're watching a tennis match and it's the first time, it's just kind of a blur to you. When you go through the process that I lay out, eventually you worm your way into the inside of it and you're feeling the thing as it's alive. Things are alive. They're not dead. They're not. So anything that is alive has an organic essence to it. It's why sports is so fascinating because you can never predict what will happen, because there's the human element, right? And getting inside, you sort of get a feel

for that human element, you get a feel for the heart that's beating what's going on. The chess board, as Bobby Fischer would say, was now in my head. It's no longer a physical thing. I can see moves, 30 moves in advance, whereas most people can only see 5 or 10, because I've internalized the chessboard. I've internalized the piano. I no longer have to think of the keys. The keys are in my head. That is mastery.

You could say the same thing for Einstein with physics. You could say the same thing for a great boxer, for a musician, for a writer. You know something from the inside out, not from it for a while is I don't think it's that different, but I say it differently. OK, so that'll make for an interesting conversation. But artistically playing in the spaces between. OK, so I thought you were I thought you were. No, no, no. I'm trying to absorb. Yeah. So let me keep going. So the idea is that and I'll see if I can map it onto your concept just a little bit, but when you really understand something at a deep level, you play in the nuances

of it. And the nuances are the, is the space between frame a and frame B like, right. And so in between those spaces, the, the pauses between thoughts, the pauses between words, the cadence of a conversation. And then in the physical form, it's like Michael Jordan is no longer ever having to think about tucking his elbow in. He's way beyond that to shoot a free throw. But it's the spaces between that those that do not have mastery of craft, they don't even see. We don't even see the game he's playing. And so what is that game that they're playing? You might say it's an internal game, right?

It's like the intuitive feel, that there's space inside of the thought and the movement and the stitching of the next thought or next movement and expanding that space is where the artist expresses himself wow that's brilliant that's really interesting i'd have to i've never thought of that that way maybe i have but not just the same way i that would take me some good couple hours to ponder and it's very interesting, though. Brilliant, yeah. So maybe we'll go have a drink or something, have some tea or whatever.

I know there's something deeper in there than what I'm getting right now, but I think I have a feel for what you're saying. Let me go with that. It's very deep, very, very deep. It's almost like the spirit as opposed to the physical matter. But it's definitely true that a master is seeing things that other people are not seeing. And that's a very powerful metaphor.

So you picked up on something I don't talk about often, but it's the animation of the spirit that I'm more interested in. So the animation. So we talk about like in Christian faith, we'll talk about the Trinity and in Buddhist and Buddhist faith or even Confucianism or Zoroastrianism, there's something that happens beyond us that is also within us and the Christian faith, the animation of the spirit,

it's the aliveness that happens from within. We cannot touch that aliveness if we're still clunking around with the beginnings of technique. And so it's the animation of the spirit, the artistic animation of the spirit that I think is. Well, you know, I'm a lot into a lot of foreign languages. I've spoken many several languages and the process of when you know you're learning french for instance and in the beginning they're just sort of dead phrases and you're translating them in your mind and then a moment where you comes where the phrases actually come alive in you and you're not thinking them that so the words you're getting the spirit of the words themselves you know so

you can apply that to all sorts of other things and it's triggered a cascade of four or five thoughts that i can't keep uh on top up here i don't know where to go but it's uh it's very that's very very interesting beautiful so So I want to honor your time. Oh, you're still thinking. Yeah, just about the fact that some people are but he's seeing things that we'll never see. It's a fascinating concept. And you know what? I think if I extend this with you just a little bit further is that there's a phrase in sport, it translates out outside of sport as well,

but I think it started in sport is that game recognizes game. Okay. So what does that mean? Game recognizes game that if you've got game, so insert the word mastery masters recognize masters. Oh, right. And so I, if I'm a painter and you're, you're a lyricist, yeah, we can recognize something. And we're like, so game recognizes game. Interesting. Isn't that a cool thought? Yeah. So you don't have to be a master of craft a to only recognize masters in craft day. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So game recognizes game. So I think there's something to try to capture as well about this external recognition that only somebody that is playing in the spaces can almost smell from another person right yeah okay great yeah okay good all

right so um in honor of time this is thank you for being here oh thank you for this has been this has been one of the best interviews i've ever had. It's really great. I miss what you said. Thank you. No, this has been fun. So you know how I'm measuring success in my days? I just got one right now. Is Karch Karai, one of the greatest coaches and athletes. Sorry, volleyball.

Yeah, one of the greatest athletes that ever played the game of volleyball. And we're down in Rio at the Olympics. And we were having a conversation about how many goosebumps you can have a day as a way of winning as a way of capturing like a great day so i just got one right now so i just got another one so i got i'm on two in the last yeah so i know that goosebump feeling yeah it's called pilo or philo erection if you're a nerd you might like that yeah so oh wow so then i'm learning so many new things here. I love competing with other people.

You've got to do a book. You've got so many great ideas that are wanting to be expressed. If I could just figure out how to write, Robert. It can't be that. You can articulate them. What's so hard to put going voice to pen? Form. Okay, but we can take this off

off uh camera at some point but if you just recording your thoughts and all the different things uh get it all out there just vomit it all out um and then have your an assistant put it on paper all your notes that's what i need to do. And I think intuitively I knew that. That's why I started the podcast conversation. I mean, in the course of this conversation, I was thinking three or four times ago, oh, that's what the book he needs to write. Okay. I love it. I owe it to myself and people that would be interested in some of the things I have to say, but more importantly, myself as a forcing function to get deeper clarity. You have some great experiences that you need to get out on paper. You need to organize these thoughts. It would be very valuable.

I feel, I feel when you're saying this, I feel my temperature's heating up a little bit. So yeah. Awesome. Okay. Where can we learn more about what you're up to? Where can people get on the book? Where can we find you and keep connected? Well, I have an older website that'll take you to my newer website, so I might as well just go for that one. The older one is powerseductionandwar.com. Those are my first three books. Okay. Powerseductionandwar. Is there an and? And is spelled out, A-N-D. Okay. Powerseduction three books. Okay. Power, Seduction, and War. Is there an and? And is spelled out. A-N-D.

Okay. Powerseductionandwar.com. And that'll take you to my mastery site as well. I forget the web address for the mastery site. It eludes me. But that'll take you to it. And there's everything is there and ways to contact me. Brilliant.

Are you on social media? Yes, I am. I do Twitter. I'm on Twitter. And that's mostly just me. Brilliant. Are you on social media? Yes, I am. I do Twitter. I'm on Twitter. And that's mostly just Twitter. Okay. Do you know the handle or should we find it on the website?

I think it's... I'll put it in the show notes. It's Robert Green something. Yeah. Okay, we'll find it. We'll find it and I'll put it at the beginning so people can follow you as well.

Okay. Again, Robert, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing the essence of who you are. My pleasure. Yeah. It's a, it's been a gift. And so if you are interested in this conversation and you want more, head over to iTunes and

look for Finding Mastery. And if you write a review about this conversation or other conversations, it just helps us a lot and we'd really appreciate it. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being with us in this conversation. And then you can find us at findingmastery.net. You can find me at Twitter, at Michael Gervais. And then if you're interested to go a little further

on the findingmastery.net forward slash community, we have a Facebook page that's community. I wonder, Robert, if you would be willing to answer some questions on that community page for people. When is that? It's live. It's brilliant. We just put it up and there's thousands of people. You mean now or? No, later. Sure, I'd love to. I can do that from home. Exactly.

Oh, yeah. I'd love to. That'd be fun. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Kind of like a Reddit type thing? Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's a community page and it's a kind of closed loop. Okay. Yeah, and if you want to be part of the community, the Finding Mastery community,

go to findingmastery.net forward slash community. And then lastly, you can find us on Instagram at Finding Mastery. Okay, Robert, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Michael. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you. all right thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you we really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors, and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show.

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