Motivation Daily by Motiversity - MASTER Your DARK SIDE And TAKE CONTROL Over Your Life | Robert Greene

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Robert Greene, New York Times Best Selling Author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, Mastery and more, shares life changing advice on mastering your dark side and taking control of your life."You must become aware of your own dark side. In being conscious of it you can control and channel the creative energies that lurk in your unconscious."- Robert GreeneWe had the pleasure of interviewing New York Times best selling author Robert Greene. In the interview we asked him questions to understand people’s drives and motivations, and how power and strategy can help you seize your destiny and take control of your life.Speaker:Robert GreeneInterview Host:Tyler WayeMusic:Epidemic Sound Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The link is in the description. Humans are fascinated with what we repressed. And so by hitting that nerve, that little thing that we don't really want to talk about, but we're secretly fascinated by, I think that's what kind of led to the success of the book. But I've always been fascinated by the dark side of human nature. People generally bring to anything in life, their own psychology, their own mindset. But for most people, most people in this world are naive.

Most people don't understand the 48 laws of power. They don't understand that you want to talk less to appear more powerful. And that naivete is what gets you into a lot of trouble in life. I was one of those people who was a bit naive and didn't understand this kind of secret language that people in power have. But I don't want to be in the position which a lot of people make a mistake of in life, of constantly repeating the same success of formula. I've always followed the laws of power, which has changed things up, enter action with boldness, don't be afraid to do things differently, adapt your strategy to the circumstance. So every book represents a new challenge to me, a new subject. It's never too late. It's better to start earlier on in life. I mean, I wrote a

book mastery that deals with that subject. The early you figure it out, the better off you are. But it can happen later in life. Now, I figured out in an early age that I wanted to write. I didn't know what I wanted to write, but I loved words and I love writing. And if I didn't have that connection when I was eight years old all the way into high school and college, I would have been a lost soul. And I empathize with a lot of people who don't have that feeling when they're eight or 18 or in their 20s. But I've tried to tell people, everybody has it. You're just not listening to yourself. You've lost touch with who you are. the core of your being.

You're on social media too much. You're listening to what other people are telling you. You're listening to what your parents told you you should be doing in life. Listen to what your friends think is cool. You're listening to what the culture is all about, you know, the entertainment industry, etc. You've got to cut all that shit out. You've got to listen to yourself. What makes you different is your strength is your source of power.

You've lost touch with it. Let's go back and try and find it. That's the whole problem. How do you find it? Well, it's a process. What's your advice for young people? Well, don't be too hard on yourself and be patient. It's a kind of a mix that you have to go through, a bit of a dance.

So on the one hand, you want to be serious about life. Life doesn't go on forever. Your youth will be over in 10, 12 years. You better believe it. It goes faster than you can imagine. So take it seriously. You want to realize what your life's task is. You want to develop those skills that will make it so when you're in your 30s, things will come together as they fortunately did for me.

It's a common story that 31, 32 is that year where things turn around for people. But on the other hand, you don't want to be so damn serious, so damn linear in your thinking, I've got to head down this path to make this amount of money, et cetera. You're young. Have some fun, have some adventure, have some excitement. but at the same time also have that sense of discipline, that sense of purpose. You can do both things at the same time. Now, the circumstances now, it's easy for me, a boomer, I have to admit that, to preach to you

when you have to gone through like two, you've gone through a pandemic, what looks like to be a recession, and then if you're a millennia, you went through another, you went through the crash in 08. It's easy for me to preach. you're dealing with really difficult circumstances. And there's what they call what the great resignation now, is that it? Right. So a lot of people are rethinking their lives. They don't want to work at crap jobs just to get by.

And I applaud that 100%, right? That's great. So you want to think about working for yourself is the ultimate position in this world. And even though times are difficult, even though it may seem like just a dream, there's so much potential out there for entrepreneurial spirit, for creating your own startup, for creating your own podcast, for going your own path in life.

You don't have to follow other people. It's not like it was when I was growing up. There were things that were better back then, but there were things that were a lot worse, right? You have so many more options. It's just that you're not going to reach them. You're not going to be happy in this short time that you have to be alive unless you take it seriously, unless you learn skills and develop and go through an apprenticeship in your 20s, etc. So if you can balance those two and still have some fun and adventure and excitement,

just don't listen to your parents go, I've got to be making $100,000 when I'm 23 and go to law school and do all this stuff. You're going to burn out. So kind of understand. I guess the main thing I would say is know who you are, know what you're deep down your core, what you love, what you hate, and what you were destined to create in this world. That's like the most important process you can go through. You have to be patient. It's not going to come like a light bulb in your head.

Ah, I was meant to do this. I was meant to write the 48 laws of power. That's not how it works. It takes time. To do anything in life takes time and hours and patience and work. I recommend starting a journal and such and writing down some of the things that I think are important to you. So I like to tell people to go back to their earliest. childhood memories of things that really excited them before they got mixed up with

parents and teachers and all that other people telling them stuff you know like for me it was words and language it just was entranced by the sound of language itself right it's like music to me I was a bit old I have to say for writing my first book and having this career change I was basically in my late 30s you know so I had a lot of bad experiences I had a lot of of tough things that I had gone through. So that kind of informed me and it kind of went funneled into this book. It was sort of a mix of circumstance and good luck and I was able to draw upon everything that I had learned in all of my skills in life. So sometimes you hit upon something, it feels right,

you know, like working in Hollywood, I was never comfortable. It didn't feel right. I'm kind of an entrepreneur at heart. I like working for myself. I don't like working for other people. I like to control what I do. Some of that's a bit negative, whatever. But writing this book, I could control everything. I was the master of my own domain. I didn't have people breathing down my neck, changing everything that I did. I was able to write about what I love, a subject that interests me. I was able to bring all my interest in history. I'm basically a failed novelist. So I'm able to now narrate stories in my own way, etc. It was like a perfect fit.

And so going from that, I decided to kind of continue in that vein, you know. But I don't want to be in a position which a lot of people make a mistake of in life, of constantly repeating the same success of formula. So a lot of writers who have a successful book, they then kind of rate part two. They redo the same idea. And they kind of recycle things because they figure, I don't want to disappoint my audience. I have to continue, you know, pleasing them. They were pleased with the first one. I've always followed the laws of power, which has changed things up, enter action with boldness.

Don't be afraid to do things differently. Adapt your strategy to the circumstance. So every book represents a new challenge to me, a new subject, whether it's seduction or warrant strategy or mastering a field or human nature kind of thing. And so it represents a challenge, but it also represents I get to use the kind of format that I've created that fits me so perfectly. If you are somebody who's word-oriented and you end up going into a field that's about math or about numbers, you're in for a lot of pain in life, right? So you've got to figure that kind of what I call primal connection to some kind of field. You have to look at the things that you love and the things that you hate, right? So early on entering the work world, I figured out that I don't like working for other people. I hate to say it.

Some of it may be, maybe I'm anti-social in my core. I don't know, I hope not. But I don't like working for other people. I don't like all the politics, all the crap you have to put up with. I realized early on I should gotta be working for myself, right? So what you don't like is very instructive to you. You're looking at things that are very powerful inside of you that are emotional, they're not intellectual, their feelings, their emotions, they're visceral things that you connect to.

I know it doesn't come easy. It's a process and you have to be patient, but you have to put in the work. The process of looking inward is absolutely essential, but you cannot disconnect yourself from your teachers, your mentors, your colleagues. You could have all the skill in the world and know your life's task brilliantly. But if you continually alienate people by your boorish behavior, by your insensitivity, all of the skill level in the world will be completely neutralized by your own mistakes. You know, I was frustrated, I was depressed, because I knew deep down that I could do something.

I was different from other people. I had different experiences, you know, and I knew that there was something I needed to express. There was a purpose to how my life had unfolded, but I couldn't find it. I had tried everything. I had every form of writing, every possible endeavor. you can imagine it just didn't click. So I was very deeply frustrated and the frustration I tell people is a good thing. Negative emotions are trying to teach you something. They're trying to teach you the opposite. Something else is going on. Frustration, if I was simply, what would be worse than

frustration would be despair giving up. No hope, but frustration is a sign that you haven't given up. You know you can do something, but you haven't figured it out. So when you have them, kind of feelings, look at them and there's something positive in that. The most elemental law of human nature is that we deny that we have it. It's always the other people. I, oh, I'm not a narcissist, I'm not aggressive. Oh, I don't have a dark side. No, I'm not irrational.

No, no, none of those things, right? So we want to deny it. But it's so insanely irrational. We all come from the same origins. We can trace it back. They've done it genetically to like one woman, the source of home. almost sapiens like hundreds of thousands of years ago, were all cut from the same cloth. No matter our culture, no matter our gender, no matter any, our period in history, we all

have the same genetic components. We all went through the same evolutionary process, the same brains wired in the same way. So if some people are deep, what I call deep narcissists, no doubt, and they're toxic and they're difficult. But if some people have that, how is it that other people don't have any of it? That's not possible. There must be something within all of us that would make us all prone to becoming deep narcissists. But some people, it triggers, it makes them fall into that deepness.

Others were able to save ourselves, right? But if aggression is something that's built into human nature, and I try and go through the whole history of it, right? So you're wanting to exclude yourself. So I mean, I get, I, I, people have posted comments on YouTube about my ranting about narcissism. They go, well, Robert, you're a snake oil salesman. That's absolutely ridiculous.

I'm not a narcissist. You know, 0.05% of people are known to be narcissists. I can bet you that the person saying that is a narcissist, right? Because the fact that you want to deny that you have this quality is a sign, is a sense of a sure sign that you have it. You're in denial. You're trying to shine a great light on yourself. Look, I'm superior.

I'm the one person in the world on this planet that doesn't have it. Man, you're a narcissist, right? That is a sure sign of it. So stop denying it. Laws of human nature should be a painful book to read. It was a painful book to write because it throws a mirror on yourself.

It makes you come to terms with some of your own nooks and crannies that you don't want to look. into, right? You don't want to come to terms with the fact that you feel envy. But envy is the most common human emotion of them all. There's a deep history of it. I go into it in the book. Our hunter-gathering ancestors, chimpanzees are prone to feeling envy. You feel it 50 times during the day, particularly on social media. You're just denying it. If you deny all of these qualities, How can you ever change yourself? You think that you're a Gandhi,

but how can you be a Gandhi if you won't like look at yourself and change yourself, right? The only way you can become good or kind of overcome some of these qualities is by looking at it, seeing the reality, and then confronting it and then trying to change it.