This is part of Big Think's lifelong learning
channel on YouTube.
I'm Jason Gotts.
I'm an editor and curriculum developer here
at Big Think.
And today we have the pleasure talking with
Robert Greene, the author of multiple international
best-selling books including The 48 Laws of
Power.
His most recent book Mastery and his Big Think
Mentor Workshop on How to Achieve Mastery
teaches strategy for finding your life's work
and then mentor who can help you master it.
Welcome Robert.
Thank you for having me Jason, my pleasure.
And I would also like to welcome our mentor
members, members of our mentor community Leah
Artis and Pollius Gedrikis.
Gedrikis.
Gedrikis, yes.
Okay, sorry.
Okay, so I'd like to begin with Leah.
She had some questions for Robert about the
videos on Mentor.
Well, first of all thanks guys for hosting
this.
This is super awesome.
I've been a fan of yours for quite some time
Robert.
So it's great to be able to dive into your
most recent work with you via Big Think.
So thank you Jason as well.
The first question I kind of want to kick
off with starts really at the beginning of
the process, figuring out your passion.
And you speak to really tapping into whatever
you were passionate as a child.
And I think it's interesting because when
you're an adult I think it's almost hard to
remember who you were as a child depending
on what you gravitated towards or whatever.
So I wanted to see if there were any other
indicators as an adult say that if you can't
remember what your initial passions where
that can help you figure out what you should
be, you know, really exploring for what you
want to master?
Well, it's a great question.
The thing is it's always really important
to be able to tap into your childhood even
if it seems difficult.
The problem people have nowadays is we're
so instant oriented that the idea that it
could take a few weeks or months of using
a journal or a therapist or talking with someone
just seems outrageous.
Like I have to know this instantly who I was
when I was six years old or this inclination
but it's a process.
And it's a hugely important process because
as you move through life you constantly need
to return to that sense of who you are so
you can judge okay this crisis that I'm facing
is it really important?
Does it really impinge upon who I am?
Do I need to take this sort of possible crap
job or this job that offers a lot of money
but isn't necessarily who I am?
Knowing who you are is such an important skill
in life.
Nobody really talks about it like a skill.
So I would not try to bypass that process
of going into your childhood and figuring
out who you are.
When I do consulting with people now and then,
I'm doing a bit less of it these days, we
spend several days, weeks, trying to go back
and remember certain things.
There's traces there it's not completely buried.
But then there's also signs of stuff in the
present.
So there's going to be subjects and activities
that still elicit that kind of childlike excitement
in you.
If you aren't experiencing that with any subject
then that's kind of sad or a little bit troubling.
But there are people like that but there's
still going to be things where you open the
newspaper, you get online, people bring up
a conversation and your eyes light up and
you want to hear about it, you want to read
about it.
I know for instance for me there's certain
subjects that really get me going particularly
about early humans.
When I look in the newspaper and I see an
article like that there's going to be something
the same for you.
Also you want to look at things that you hate,
that repulse you about the world or jobs that
you really disliked.
You want to think about what is it that I
disliked about it.
You want to get in touch with who you are
that's why I'm telling you to go into the
childhood thing.
Because who you are a lot of the time is a
reflection -- you think you know it but it's
actually a reflection of what other people
have told you.
Your parents, your friends you don't really
know who you are.
But when you were young, when you were six,
seven, eight years old the fact that you were
naturally drawn to music, to sound, to dancing,
to physical activity it's before anybody infected
you with their ideas about who you should
be.
And that's why it's so important to go back
into that process
Awesome, thanks.
You're welcome.
Okay.
Leah did you have other questions that she
wanted to ask Robert?
I thought we would just continue through each
person's questions and then...
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think there's an interesting trend, especially
in America, kind of happening with the way
the workforce is shifting, especially kind
of in the younger generations with more people
gravitating towards entrepreneurship.
I think that might almost be a rejection perhaps
so to speak of those jobs that people don't
necessarily love to be in as we were just
kind of speaking to.
But I think there's an interesting thought
that kind of mastery your work you most recently
done, especially the book.
It's potentially a strong genesis for debate
and the question is do you think that everyone
is truly destined for mastery?
You know, because you can just jump in, yeah.
Well, I address that question in a talk recently
because a lot of journalists will ask me that.
And when they ask me that there's a hint in
there that maybe I'm being cynical, that I
really don't believe it.
That maybe I'm just doing it to sale books
but I really actually sincerely believe it.
I believe very deeply -- it's not a belief
is a fact that everybody is born with that
uniqueness that I talk about in the book.
It's a biological neurological fact.
And it gets obscured over the years as you
start listening to other people and you go
through this alienating process but deep down
inside there's something extremely unique
about you.
There is a famous psychologist from the 60s;
he's not so popular anymore named Abraham
Maslow.
And he had a pyramid of values and he maintained
that the ultimate value for a human being
is to feel that they're fulfilling themselves
that they have creative potential and they're
able to realize that potential.
So who am I or who is anybody else to say
that there are only some people who are destined
for mastery.
You can't go inside their heads, you can see
who they are.
There's the great example in the book I have
I love of Martha Graham who was one of the
greatest masters of all time.
Started a whole new genre of dance and she
said, "You should never ever tell somebody
that they're not talented.
Talent is completely irrelevant factor for
success in life.
It's how much you love what you're doing and
how much energy you put into it and then the
talent will come.
You have natural gifts that can be developed."
So she saying that, I think she said it because
when she was younger people were putting her
down and thought that she had no potential
as a dancer.
And here she became one of the greatest dancers
ever.
I think it's ridiculous for anybody to be
able to say oh only a few people, these people
here they're the ones destined for mastery.
And I deliberately chose Temple Grandin to
profile in mastery, for those who don't know
her she's a woman born with autism who basically
at the age of two or three was going to be
hospitalized for the rest of her life.
She couldn't learn language, etc.
And she's become that incredible scientist
on animal behavior and on the subject of autism
itself.
If someone born with autism can become a master
then I think we can say everybody is destined
for it.
Awesome.
Yeah the point I was going to make from a
lot of the pushback perhaps that even a journalist
give you is if you look at societal roles
and the way our government and economic systems
and what not are structures.
Everybody can be a master in their own way
but we need people to help do the jobs that
aren't necessarily glamorous and take a lot
of love and time and insight.
So I think that's partially what's interesting
I think.
Yes.
Technology is replacing a lot of those extremely
unglamorous jobs.
Some of that's good, some of that's bad.
But then who are you going to say oh this
person growing up in this bad neighborhood
should be one of those people doing those
terrible jobs.
Why can't you say that everybody should explore
this process?
There will always be people in a culture don't
want to go to the process for whatever reason.
They don't feel that drive, they don't feel
the need for it, or they want a comfortable
paycheck.
There will always be people who do that.
I just don't want to be the one to say who
you are.
That's your own personal choice in life.
Absolutely.
A bit of a personal question for you is your
journey as an author and kind of along those
subject lines that you've really pursued and
have been known for started from your own
kind of rejection of corporate roles or, you
know, the alienating work world.
Where do you or what do you think that you
have mastered along the way?
Or where do you think that you have tapped
into who you are meant to be and what do you
think that is besides an author?
Well, besides an author I don't think I've
mastered anything really.
I don't even know I mastered writing but if
I didn't have writing -- I gave a talk recently,
a TED talk in London a couple weeks ago, it
will be online soon.
And I explained I don't usually talk about
myself in that way but I explained my own
weird journey where basically up to the age
of 36 I had nothing really.
I had tried 50 different jobs, more than actually.
But the point of my story that I told to the
TED audience was during those years, the wandering
trying all different jobs, journalism, Hollywood,
construction work, working in a hotel, teaching
English, etc.
I kept writing, I kept searching, I kept saying
I want to try this.
It didn't work.
All right, I'll write a novel; that didn't
work; I'm going to write a play; that didn't
work.
I tried jobs where I would have weird experiences
in life.
I worked in a detective agency and that gave
me ideas about people but didn't lead to the
novel I thought it would lead to.
And then when I got the opportunity to write
a book suddenly everything that I have done
in the past now had value.
So all of those terrible crap jobs that I
had done in my life had exposed me to so many
different kinds of people in so many different
cultures that I had I think an understanding
of psychology that I wouldn't of had if I
just spent my whole life working it at Time
Magazine.
All of the research that I have done for television
to Hollywood taught me how to find the stories
in libraries that I could use for the book.
All of my reading of history gave me the storehouse
of stories I could use for The 48 Laws of
Power.
So, I can't say that I've mastered anything
besides writing.
But the fact that I love writing and I never
gave up and I tried ten different ways of
approaching it gave me all of these different
skills that I can use to write a book.
And I tell people, I'm not trying to use myself
as a paradigm but I tell people that that's
sort of where the future lies.
You try different things out knowing more
or less who you are and what you want to explore.
And in doing that and listening to who you
are and saying I don't like this, I do like
that, you're going to develop a series of
five or six or seven real important skills
that you'll be able to combine in a business,
in an art form, in science that will make
you, you know, a master.
It will make you have a unique set of skills
that will make you irreplaceable.
You won't be that person who's 38 years old
who will then be downsized because they can
get rid of you and replay you with someone
cheaper and younger.
You'll have something extremely unique and
creative and you can't be replaced.
So I don't remember your question anymore.
I hope I answered it.
Absolutely.
Okay.
And that was wonderful.
And I think at this point we'll move on to
Pollius's questions just in the interest of
time.
So go ahead Pollius.
Okay.
And really interesting response.
I found it much similar in my own path for
example.
So I was wondering, in the workshop you talked
a lot about finding a niche, you know a place
where you can become a master of it.
So I wanted to know for example how do you
find such a niche?
When do you know that it's time to move on
to another one?
Are there any indications that it's going
well or that it's not going well or something
like that?
Well, every person is different and it's more
of a feeling.
That's why I talked about sort of getting
in touch with yourself.
I know it sounds kind of new ageie but it's
actually really important.
So I know for instance I was working in journalism
for three or four years, that's probably the
longest I've ever tried at one particular
job.
And I just didn't feel right.
I felt like I was writing articles and I liked
writing but they were only - people would
read it for a week and then it disappeared.
And the impermanence of it bugged me.
I wanted to write something that people would
read for weeks or months or years.
And that feeling meant I had to look to the
future and say can I do this for the next
five or ten years?
That's the kind of process have to go through.
Can you imagine yourself working at this very
narrow position all the way up till the future?
You want to have like possibilities.
Possibilities are the greatest thing in life.
So by the time that man, I met that man who
offered me the idea of the possibility of
writing a book I now had all of this experience
that I could create something interesting.
You want to have that possibility if an opportunity
comes to you in this direction over here,
over here that you can take it and you have
skills to exploit it.
If you stay at that one little funnel job
for three, four, five, six years you're not
going to have that richness of possibilities
as you get older.
You're not going to be 25 or 26 your whole
life so you're going to be 40 is some point.
And maybe thinking ahead how I feel at 40
still doing this job as a writer on a very
narrow field?
Those are kind of the thoughts that you go
through.
As well as there's a difference.
There are people out there who are just restless
and nothing satisfies them.
So every six months they feel compelled to
try something new.
That's a problem, that's a psychological problem.
I'm not talking about changing jobs just for
the sake of it.
It has to come from somewhere deep where you
know that you're meant to do something interesting
and this isn't it.
As opposed to I'm bored; let's try something
new.
So there's a difference there.
I hope you can see what I'm talking about.
Right, right.
The key is having a sense of self-awareness
to know that this is a position that's just
not suited to me.
As opposed to I'm just somebody that can't
devote my energy to one particular thing.
And I have a lot of stories in the book of
people like myself who wandered through life,
like Paul Graham, like Yoky Matsuoka.
They try different things and they see, or
even Ramachandran the neuroscientist.
And they see this isn't working.
But suddenly an opportunity comes to them
where they realize oh this is a direction
I should head in that seems really promising.
And the difference between a master and someone
who isn't is they're willing to experiment
and try this new direction and see if it works.
So truly sounds like the advice is to make
sure that something that resonates from within
yourself?
And to be willing to explore, to have an adventurous
spirit.
So a lot of people are so addicted to the
paycheck that if an opportunity comes to try
something different in an avenue that's more
entrepreneurial or it's a little more of a
risk and they will take it because they're
afraid.
So it's a matter of knowing who you are and
being a little bit bold.
When you're younger you can afford to be bolder
because you don't necessarily have a family
to support and all these other things going
on.
So I'm really advocating having a kind of
an adventurous spirit and to try different
things and to see what resonates with you
and what doesn't.
[10:18:39.7]
Yeah.
I mean if you never try you'll never discover.
And then my second question was, you know,
we were talking about the whole road to mastery.
But then once you achieve mastery I was curious
are there any physiological changes happening
in the body maybe in the brain?
Because we heard a lot about rewiring for
example and things like this.
[0:18:57.1]
No.
No?
Well, I'm not a - you see the thing with the
10,000 hour study, which is a brilliant, is
that they could demonstrate statistically
a change in behavior at 10,000 hours.
Now that's not based on anything where you
can go inside the brain and literally map
the brain and see the change because we haven't
got to that point yet.
It was just based on the evidence of how many
people at 10,000 hours reached this higher
level.
Now subsequently people have gone back and
theorized what happens to the brain after
all of those hours of practice.
I'm saying at 20,000 hours imagine what happened
to the brain at 20,000 hours, which is a level
that Einstein reached by the time he came
to his general theory of relativity.
Or Glenn Gould reached by the age in his 20s
after he'd been playing the piano for so many
years or Mozart or all these different people.
I can't, I don't have a study.
It would be a hard study to do because the
number of people who reach that level of 20,000
hours there's not a huge number.
But I'm speculating that something does happen
to the brain.
And I describe in Chapter 6 what I think happens
to the brain at that point.
You look at like a chess master, like a Bobby
Fischer or I have the boxing trainer Freddie
Roach you've internalized so many moves, there's
so many different patterns in the boxing ring,
you've seen so much that you've internalized
the game itself and you're now like feeling
it.
It's like at your fingertips.
You have an instant in real time you're sort
of seeing the whole dynamic of the game itself
or the battle or the warfare or whatever it
is.
And it's because so many parts of the brain
have become interconnected that you no longer
have to think about something, it's there
in an instant.
I have no study data to prove it.
The proof is the power that certain people
in history have demonstrated when he reached
that 20,000 and let's say even 30,000 hour
point.
Yeah.
It becomes like second nature basically.
Yeah.
I wanted -- so there were two other Mentor
subscribers who wanted to join this conversation,
and for technical reasons weren't able to.
I think I'll ask just one question from each.
So Brett Carney wondered can you achieve mastery
in more than one field?
Or did you encounter examples of people who
did that?
Or is that simply at odds with the concept
of mastery as you intended?
No.
No.
Definitely you can achieve mastery in more
than one field.
What would be interesting to say is could
a musician also master baseball?
I mean take two things that are totally disconnected.
I don't have an example offhand of something
like that, which would be pretty remarkable.
Normally what you see are people mastering
two fields that are somewhat related.
A great example from the book is Paul Graham,
who has the company Y Combinator in Silicon
Valley.
It's basically an incubator system for training
people how to create a tech start up.
And Paul gets a percentage, if their idea
turns into a business he gets a percentage
of it.
Now he's fabulously wealthy because he's been
a hugely successful system.
Well, Paul started off as a computer programmer.
He was an absolute master of programming.
He was a hacker very early on in life.
And because of his programming skills he became,
he started what became the first Viaweb, which
was the first online store application for
starting a business online.
It was huge in 1995; he made $50 million on
that one thing because he was so brilliant
at computer engineering.
He got bored with it and he went to writing.
And he decided to write essays, really incredible
essays that build up a huge following for
him.
Essays about wealth, about entrepreneurial
ship, about philosophy and art etc., and then
finally he fell into this thing called Y Combinator
where people kept saying, "Well you're so
good at starting this one business can you
help us start a business?"
And so he decided to create this thing called
Y Combinator based on the computer model,
which is the more times you try, I'm giving
a really bad definition of it, but the more
times you try something the greater your chances
of finding success at it, finding the right
path.
So his model was to bring in, not just as
an angel investor ten people a year like most
people do, he would try and invest in 300,
he would bring in three or four or 500 young
people every year in his system.
And through doing this with so many different
people he would gain an intensity of knowledge
that would make him a master of figuring out
what is a solid technology idea in three or
four years.
So he's a master at business, and entrepreneurship,
at computer engineering, perhaps writing,
I don't know but they're all kind of related.
He took the model of computer engineering
and hacking and applied it to business and
entrepreneurial ship.
There are many other examples but what I would
be curious, and to answer this person question
would be to find somebody who has mastered
two things that -- Howard Gardner has this
book on the five frames of intelligence.
There's spatial, mechanical, kinetic etc.
To find somebody who has intelligence in different
frames, different types of intelligence master
that would be an incredible thing.
Maybe like a da Vinci would be the one that
come closest to it as someone who's a great
artist and is also a great scientist.
I don't know maybe something like that.
Yeah.
I'm thinking of the people we call polymaths.
And David Foster Wallace, the late David Foster
Wallace popped into my mind as someone who
is a pretty advanced tennis player and then
also quite a brilliant writer and also a fairly
accomplished mathematician I believe also.
I don't know whether it would count as mastery
in all of those.
I bow to you.
I bow to you.
You got the perfect example.
Yeah Polly mastery...
I'm just a fanboy of David Foster Wallace,
that's all.
He's amazing.
I didn't know about the tennis.
I mean you're right somebody like a Benjamin
Franklin.
Polymaths are a great thing with Benjamin
Franklin is a great writer but he was also
a great scientist.
He was also a great politician.
So yeah, there you go.
Thank you.
David Husband was also wanting to join us.
And he asks do you have any suggestions for
how a young apprentice can best approach a
potential mentor?
Or maybe examples from the book how an apprentice
can break the ice with a mentor who's popular,
intimidating, somewhat inaccessible?
Well, what I say in the book is mentors aren't
as inaccessible as you might think; they have
a weak spot.
Generally if you're really high up in your
field there's a loneliness factor where you
don't have as many peers and friends and people
that you can trust and that you can interact
with.
So first of all you should never think that
they're as intimidating as they appear because
they're not.
Most everybody finds the idea of having a
mentor, of having a mentee as something potentially
deeply satisfying.
So you shouldn't be intimidated.
Or you should be less intimidated then you
imagine.
The Second thing is people aren't going to
just become your mentor because they love
you or because you're good-looking or you
got a friendly manner.
They're going to go into that relationship
because you have something to offer.
Now granted being charming can help etc. but
you have real skills.
So I tell people don't start searching for
that important mentor until you have something
you feel like you can offer.
Because you're going to be really intimidated
when you try talk to them because you know
deep down inside you're not ready for this
position.
So I have in the book the greatest story of
them all is Michael Faraday the experimental
scientist in the 19-century and how he got
Humphry Davy to become his mentor, which basically
made his career.
He had spent eight years teaching himself
everything about science to the point where
he was so prepared and Humphrey Davy could
recognize it that he could now serve as a
really valuable mentee or protégé.
So be prepared, be ready.
If you have your eye set on this person be
ready to take a year or two developing the
kind of skills that will interest them in
using you.
The third thing is you want to choose a mentor
for the right reasons.
So just because someone is popular or famous
or has a lot of followers on Twitter that
doesn't make them the best choice for you
as a mentor.
It's almost like it's using your second parent.
And you're not going to choose a parent just
because they're liked or popular or famous.
It has to be an emotional fit.
The mentor relationship is an emotional relationship.
They see you almost as the child or the son
or daughter they never had.
You see them as a parent figure that maybe
you never had.
Because of that emotional connection you open
yourself up to their instruction and they
open themselves up to sharing their secrets
with you.
So you want to make a choice based on someone
who has the right spirit.
For instance in five or ten years I would
like to be like that person.
I would like to have that kind of skill set.
It's not I want to be that popular, I want
to be famous, it's I want to be doing their
kind of work.
That's the key there.
So sometimes you make the wrong choice just
because that person who may not be so famous
who in the same field but has an interesting
set of skills that match what you're thinking
of, that's the better mentor.
And I have in the book the example of the
Yoky Matsuoka who chose Rodney Brooks as her
mentor at MIT at the robotics lab because
he was a rebel and she's a rebel and she liked
his antiauthoritarian attitude and she could
identify with it.
So here she found the perfect antiauthoritarian
mentor to teach her.
That's the kind of thing you're looking out.
So those would be the three main points I
would tell him.
[0:30:28.9]
Great.
So we're coming to the end of our time here.
I want to thank Leah for joining us and Pollius
and give an extra special thanks to Robert
Greene for being with us today.
Thank you.
Thank you guys.
And to the audience out there you've been
watching a Big Think Mentor Google Hang Out
with Robert Greene.
He's the author of Mastery.
And you can visit YouTube.com/user/bigthinkmentor,
one word, to view Robert's popular video workshop
on How to Achieve Mastery in your Life and
Work.
Thank you so much everyone for being with
us today.
Thank you.
Thank you Leah and thank you Pollius.
Great questions, thanks.
Thanks Robert.
Thanks Robert.
You're very welcome.
