Talking Marketing, Zen Mastery & Purpose in Life With Robert Greene — Deconstructing Mastery Ep. 12

and to reach the level of master there actually is a process and somebody has to name you a master and when you become a master there's another master recognizes in you that you have reached that level so we are about to walk into Robert Greene's house right now we got the interview with Robert Greene if you don't know him author of 48 laws of power artist seduction 33 strategies to war laws of human nature he's written some of most popular books ever on manipulation on marketing and influence and you might be like oh some people actually they don't want to read his book because I think it's a humming to learn how to manipulate people and listen you need to know the stuff at the very least to protect yourself against the people who will try and use this stuff against you so you can pick out when they're using their manipulation techniques on your whatever you want to call it what's interesting about Robert from what I understand I've never met him before is that he's nothing like you would expect because he wrote the books he's he's a writer he's an author he's a researcher I don't think he's out there like manipulating people on and on I think he actually started writing this stuff because he was it was being used against him in a workplace and he didn't like it he wanted to understand it so knowledge up let's begin right now Robert thank you so much oh boy yeah yeah all right it was a fine driving I'm really excited I showed you know obviously month my forty a lot of power card and cause you dog you completely true story when I first read that book I was at Michigan State University and I first chapter you'll never outshine the master immediately I was sucked in and there was this girl who I've been really sweet on and I wanted to take her out and she was not accepting my advances that's a that way and I'm on chapter 36 or something I got a text message from her and she wants to meet up and I'm excited let's do it and when the time came to get up with her I was so lost in the book I had to make a choice do I finish the book or do I go on the date uh-huh and I chose to finish the book and set my taxi drives I made up some excuse well that's almost hard to believe it is a true story is it 100 percent interest story and frankly it was I think it was the right decision well because there's a lot of hers but there's not a lot of books I bet you just couldn't put it down that have that impact no it was there was something something about it just uh I don't know I grew up very this is a year energy by the way I don't wanna talk too much about myself but I I just grew up very innocent and maybe ignorant and it just opened my eyes to a lot of things and I think that maybe was something similar with you and what motivated you to TV do you write the book my goal for this though isn't I don't want to asking the questions that everyone asks you don't want to talk about different things that's cool yeah I guess my first question is we were talking before about when you were writing 48 laws and you're in that smaller Santa Monica apartment I make you use the word poori well unless he knows one-bedroom apartment near the beach it wasn't a city or but you know wasn't a head like this yeah I really hadn't made much money it wasn't very successful in my career or anything I would need to say poor but it wasn't very successful sure well so my question then is when you were writing that book what in an average they look like event for Robert Greene I was writing the 48 loss well it's just to give it a little bit of context I was 37 38 years old when I started writing it was older and I had kind of a checkered career in Hollywood and journalism and I was you know I hadn't really made it and I was approached it and I was very sort of frustrated and even depressed because I loved writing and I wanted to be successful but I hadn't found my niche and when I met this man Joe Stauffers who ended up being the producer of the 48 laws just by coincidence we were in Italy on the job together and he gave me he asked me for ideas for a book we were walking along in Venice beautiful city of Venice Italy and I kind of improvised but turned into the 48 laws and eventually you got so excited he decided to pay me while I wrote the book but well the reason I'm giving you the back story is I was in such a desperate State at that point that I realized that either I make this book happen or I'm probably to be a loser in life that could even be suicidal I was really really not a good place so it was kind of like get rich or die trying' type thing you know and and I was so excited by the opportunity and as I started working on the book I realized that it was the right thing it clicked like this was what I was meant to do so you know I was in this small apartment ahna was there my girlfriend she was there she had her own apartment she was in her lungs I had my cat and they she built me a special table to still here so the cat wouldn't keep bothering me while I rode and I just worked and worked and worked and worked and worked I was so motivated I was obsessed and to this day I can't understand how I did it I was younger but I'd wrote that book in two years all of that research and all of that writing I could never do it today I take like five years now to write a book but it's because I was so you know it is like this is it I call it in my 33 strategies of war I call it death ground I don't know if you familiar with that book I was on death ground my back was to the wall if I don't succeed I'm gonna die I'm gonna fail and so I can hardly remember I don't even remember what it was like because I was just working working Christmas birthday etc but I was very very excited and very motivated so was there like a ritual a schedule of writing researching or was it just I I get to work I can't even remember I mean I had so much research to do that you know hundreds of books I went to the UCLA library this is pre Amazon days you know so you had to get you books from the library I obviously bought books I went to a bookstore it said her but I couldn't order an Amazon so good a UCLA a lot which was great I'm a trained researcher I worked in Hollywood as a researcher so you had to do it that was fun I would make massive photocopies of books I would read them and underline them at home and then I would I would write and so you know back then I was exercising like I do now and I would swim at some point during the day were riding my bike along the beach or do my yoga but it was mostly just four or five to six hours a day of writing you know I had a little laptop and I wrote on that bench that she made for me and that's just that was about my whole life for three years yeah little over two years so you mentioned that it was death ground for you totally all it feels to me like a lot of people are in a similar death round right now and right now isn't special out that's probably due every day since no civilization why is it though a lot of people can be in that scenario and they don't take the action or have motivation that you did or someone like 50 cent does when they're in that that scenario well first of all I think almost anybody would be in that scenario if you push them far enough if like there's a very survival was at stake but a lot of people have this bait nough stew their lives they don't really feel that necessity pushing them they don't so I felt I was 38 years old and I felt like or 37 someone there and I felt like you know if this book doesn't succeed I may end up homeless I'm gonna have to go to work back in Hollywood I hated I didn't know and I knew that I had something in me a good book or some I knew I was a good writer you know so I was deeply deeply motivated and I felt incredible pressure to succeed so a lot of people may have whether or not being successful things aren't working out for them but they don't receive it in the same pressurized way yeah you know it's a matter of how you perceive your own life yeah because you could I could I could have thought for instance to explain is better I could have thought Jason well you know maybe in a couple of years I will write another screenplay I'm gonna write a novel or I'll go into I'll go to law school you know maybe I don't need to do this I could have you know a confess I'm young relatively I've got plenty of time okay and you tell yourself it's what you tell yourself see you have plenty of time with the other opportunities you let the ball drop but if you look at this is my one opportunity I could die tomorrow right I don't have much time I you know who knows what I'll be in three years or four years I may not have another opportunity ever again like this season a lot of people don't look at it the same way they have excuses they have the escape routes yes oh my dad will by hey give me money if I'm poor oh you know something else will happen people will help me or I'll find something else but it's not read they're not being realistic they're not looking at what's really going on they're not feeling the pressure that life is imposing on his life is very harsh the world is very competitive and you delude yourself by thinking now you know it'll be easy I could look at some of the internet people I didn't have those illusions amounted to 50 cent it there's a term I always say like the tyranny of comfort and I think that's very prevalent in society cuz like you're saying it doesn't work out I can get this job or do this I could driving uber there's all these options yeah we're available back then you I remember reading a paper from you out of how many years ago you're talking about a philosophical term called radical realism you talk about that a little bit well it's actually I do talk about it but I also I think it's the first chapter of the 50s law which is all about fear and it's you know the problem that a lot of people have in the world today is they find all of their relief all of their pleasure from fantasy and illusion like video games like entertainment like all kinds of fantasies about the girls I'm gonna date things I've been ventures I'm going to have and so they put all of their energy and their sense of pleasure and what is exciting an illusion in fantasy right and reality has seen something kind of ugly and boring you know a reality is I've gotta work gotta make money you know I'm getting older I'm not gonna be young anymore bubble of reality is ugly I wanted to flip it around fantasy and illusion has its place but it's also the place where you get lost it's also the place of drugs of addictions of losing touch with what's really important in life and reality is extremely beautiful you know the reality talked about in all of my books I mean it's the subject of my next book the sublime the fact that you're alive today Jason is a series of coincidences and chance encounters that mathematically are absolutely almost impossible to conceive right like life on Earth startings was almost never happen the whole evolution of animals on this planet leading to human beings almost never happen our ancestors nearly died out on and on and on down the chain the fact that your parents ever met was unlikely and their comparison said so the fact that you're here is insane but that's reality so the world that you see around you these trees these bushes the animals the friends that you have it's incredible that the world is what it is so reality is immensely immensely beautiful and I want you to embrace it I want you to embrace it as radically as possible and see that in the war book I talk about perfect economy as a strategy and what I mean is you have certain means at your disposal and you know an army has so many men in its army or when men and women so many pieces artillery planes etc you have resources you have your energy you have the money that you have you have your own intelligence your experience okay that's your reality right that's who you are you're not you're not Michael Jordan you're not Bill Gates or whatever you are Jason capital or Alex Morocco or whatever whoever you are at the moment right that's who you are you have resources and Max aware of who you are know thyself as the ancient Greeks say know your resources know your strengths know what you can do know how far you can push yourself that's incredibly beautiful that's radical realism that's making the most of what you have of your gifts and your of your faults as well and making the most of them and I the main thing to know about radical realism is switch this idea that Escape is fun escape is not fun actually go in the other direction and embracing the world new circumstances that's what's fun and exciting and working with what you have instead of dreaming of things that you'll never have are there any practices or any things that you've cultivated your life or rituals that you do that you find connecting more to avoiding the skate the moving deeper into what is here now well it's you know some people there may be a genetic component some people just may not be born that way I've always been kind of born that way but you know I meditate every morning I'm doing it now for nine years and that really really connects me because that's all that it's about do you do anything special kind of meditation I do Zen meditation right it's all about emptying the mind and Zen if you understand it it's like the most realistic philosophy it's about connecting yourself to what is truly real in the world right so that process it's also a process of knowing who you're not so a lot of times a good problem that people have right now this ties up with realism is they're not aware of who they are they have a false self they have a self that is created through social media they read Facebook or Instagram or whatever Twitter and they've become a reflection with other people are thinking what other people are doing and they don't know who they are anymore and I want to say knowing yourself knowing who you are is part of this radically illusion it's very empowering so my process has always been not to follow what other people are doing but to always follow my own inclinations within reason because I could be wrong sometimes I do listen to other people but when I write a book to give unit one practice I always go through is this is the book that I want to write am i doing it because it's fun and exciting or am i doing it because I want to make money and people are pressuring me I avoid the one always go towards the other so I'm always examining my choices in life and under the under the light of this is something that I need I want is it important for me not what other people think and what other people want out of me but what I want that's another very important exercise okay you I assume you find when it's what you want the creating in the creation process is infinitely richer and that's better for everyone else yeah yeah I mean I taught you mastery so I keep quoting my own books but no these are I'm sure everyone understands here who's listening at least in my audience knows I like I'm like I'm a book nerd but I really like to read a lot of your books that like that book ten times mastery at least four times like more I haven't read anything to read it but oh but and I'll try to share as much of that with my audience as possible okay so you get you can get books all you want where does my Amazon leaks everywhere around here okay cool what mastery I talked about if you're making something that could be you know a piece of carpentry it could be a book it could be a business that you start the level of excitement that you feel the energy you put into it the love that you have for the work is translated into the end product this is something hard to describe it there's no algorithm that can possibly analyze this it's very vague but I made it I described very clearly a mastery that if you write something out of kind of for money or because somebody else wants you to do it or you're a hired hand IV books like that all the time they don't come alive in the hand let me know you can feel in the word you can feel in the language that the writer isn't connected to the word they're doing it for some other reason you can feel it in the movie you can feel it in a building that was designed where they they're just doing it because you know if someone wanted them to put up a big glass structure or they really like coming at it with their own creative intensity inner person you can see it in the end product right so you know I had a path in life I could have taken a path that I'm gonna write the 48 laws of power thinking what are the other books out there that are successful I'm gonna follow them I'm gonna be like Malcolm glass blah blah blah but then I don't feel that connection to here and it shows up in the book so I said no the book might fail but I'm gonna bring all of my blood all of Who I am into it and I believe it's almost a mystical - Oh magically I believe if I put my love and energy into it the reader will feel it you can sense the energy and the emotion that a person has in their work so I can't remember what your question was but I've no idea what it was I like the answer I like where it went yeah I mean it's very important to feel very excited by the project and if I feel sometimes my energies drags and I'm like oh man I'm getting a little tired just I have to find a way to revive it and I find exercises to do that because I never want the writing to feel like it's coming out of a place which is mechanical yeah because it transfers over like you're talking about people know and frankly I would say most most products today if one is I feel this in my gut and it's pouring through me versus I'm doing this because it's a money grab fortunate most of them probably land in the second category who was probably one of the most successful people ever in modern times who Steve Jobs died one of the wealthiest men in the planet right he didn't care at all about money he was obsessed with design is it he was obsessed to the point where drive people crazy he wanted to make most perfect product and he went to bring all of his energy to put the things that he loved about design and I talked in the books when he was in young kids the same way he was obsessed with the design of electronics right so he put all of them energy in that intensity into became like the iPod which is the first sort and help device that we have you know and it all took off because he wasn't thinking well how long how can I make the most money what's already out there what's the next thing to do who's thinking of what he wanted to do how he saw the future what he was connecting to and I think that translates to almost any kind of business decision as well and so you mentioned before Zen and you know if you check the lineage from you know Buddha all the way down across Japan and China and happens and there's been a golden thread of gurus that have shared this wisdom throughout the ages and you like you know you talk about some of it in in for a loss of power and gurus and things like this what is your take on even if we want to talk about the Zen as like what is your take on the Guru's who shared like Zen wisdom because there's some who are in social media now who teach these principles and I mean if someone's making money off of it while teaching in versus someone who's in a cave and you gotta travel 800 miles up a hill just to see him so he that you're on the head with the state like what how do you see all this what what's your take on that they don't have gurus and Guru is more of an Indian expression they have Zen masters they're called masters and to reach the level of master there actually is a process and somebody has to name you a master you get a certificate and you and when you become a master is another master recognizes in you that you have reach that level and then has a kind it's not a science it's an art but they have a way of recognizing who has truly reached the highest state of enlightenment and for centuries Zen operated in a one-on-one situation where you you dealt with a teacher that you had to you know train under and and in his school in a monastery right and that one-on-one personal connection was extremely important because the master could look you in the eye could ask you a riddle of what's known as a co and like what is the sound of one hand clapping as a famous one what is the dog a Buddha nature or who is the real master etc and he poses this she poses to you and he can see by your body language by how you respond by you the fluidity in your movements back quickly respond whether it's fake or whether it's real that can't you can't get that over the Internet right so um and the thing about Zen is it's an incredibly personal experience so you can't there are no shortcuts to in life let's say enlightenment is your goal I haven't reached in life anyway yeah that's fine you know even let's say enlightenment is your goal right there's no shortcut to it you have to meditate yeah day after day after day after day and eventually it may come do you never know when it will come to you right so it has to be through your own what's called a zazen which is sitting sitting meditation Zen is all about sitting meditation that's the key of it so if people are talking to you on the internet giving clues and tips and there I noticed I have certain on Facebook certain Zen groups that I and people talk to talk to talk to talk and said isn't about talking it's about acting it's about realizing things to yourself through your own actions through your own meditation all this chatter all this talk all this advice they just you have to do it yourself you have to spend time alone you have to follow a few certain basic principles you have to go to a school with a real teacher in a real building not on the Internet so I find a lot of that stuff kind of fake and deceptive deceiving and I think true people who follows it would feel a similar way let's just say that there might be a way to do it I'll need it there might be some value to it but if you if that's the only thing you do with you relying on that I think it's very dangerous so from what I had rather what I've seen a part of of xander and widen recall is is there's no confront using your preferences because the preference creates judgment now there's a good and a bad etc and it feels to me like there's a Facebook group or commentary people talking this is good this is bad well you're not saying you're to me it seems like it's all done yeah yeah well it's called non-discrimination the discriminatory discriminatory mine which is I am here and the world is out there the separation between the subject checked all the other discriminations at the human minds are false there are lesions called my it's called Maya and so you want to get beyond all of that you want to get to everything is one in the end if you ever get to that point and you realize it but you wanted me to drop all of that kind of judgment part of the self because all that judging part of the self is the ego and Zen is about getting rid of the ego can be having an egoless experience have you found meditation should be your favorite tool to get closer to that place it's like the only tool I mean I should spend more time go into a school and I plan on doing is on my list of things and so what they do with the school is they also have instruction a teacher will give you a little lecture I usually don't find those terribly helpful then you have being in a group is very helpful and then you have walking meditation when you walk around in a circle for half an hour an image a disability lot of very exciting interesting and they have special retreats that go on for seven days those would be great tools but since I'm kind of stuck in the house because of my stroke this seated meditation is like my only way but I also read books and when I read books I don't read modern books by giving you kind of self-help I read the most esoteric Zen texts from the eighth century from Chinese patriarchs the early Zen masters the hardest people did to read I find that very inspired in when you read those is that is what is that experience like for you are you reading a page and it takes you 20 minutes because you want to contemplate and reflect on what you're reading well sometimes things certain phrases will just click it to you you never forget them and they enter your meditation and they're there forever so there's the famous Nagarjuna whose of relief Buddhist who's actually wasn't sin and he talks about how the mind separates us from this world that is if ease and I've just never forgot that the world at ease and what it means is birds plants trees you don't feel any anxiety they're not separating themselves from the world everything that they do is at ease even their pain even their suffering they're at ease with the world so phrases will stick in my mind and I'm sort of searching for that do you do you feel that language causes a lot of the separation welcome to word I always think about is the word is not the thing I think about that's why I find so many people are too chatty about something like saying and Zen masters were really angry about that thing you get caught up in words and then language it's like there's a Zen koan about a man who had a really long beard red beard and he put the beard on the right side and then he realized that he couldn't sleep and all of that he says which side of the should I put my beard on and he asked the mass somebody about that and he got contradictory advice he spent his whole life you could never sleep didn't know which side to put his beard on words will do that to you they'll create problems that don't exist you know and you know I mean there are other forms of Western therapy to talk about that like cognitive there to try to get you out of overthinking things you know the Collins then putting a head on top of the head right yeah but language is yeah is a major barrier but then you know you have to use language to get at enlightenment and so they the Zen masters found the perfect means which are these cones you've ever read you go what the hell does that mean so they use language to make you realize that language is kind of useless which is a very ironic thing for Robert Greene to say yeah but you know early on in my books I've always believed this but there is something else that sort of transcends language that is more important and vital and in the forty it loves power I remember writing things about spectacle and colors and creating compelling spectacles playing up people's fantasies cetera or you know just mostly those kind of laws and I remember the editor was saying oh come on you know words are very helpful they're very important and I was sort of arguing with them so it's something that I've been saying in all of my books there are things like if you try to do your marketing they're trying to reach your audience you're not gonna reach them with a bunch of words and Burbidge you can reach them here the feeling is like God with colors with imagery with just an overall mood with music so something very entrenched you might think yeah yeah so I mean in terms of talking about spectacles and symbols and things like that do you or have you seen anything recently in the last few years where you saw it maybe was a marketing campaign or internet thing something were you're like wow that wasn't that wasn't really solid marketing playing or that was a grand spectacle I was I was impressed by that I'm sure there is but you're putting me on the spot and nothing and nothing immediately comes to mind I know what I don't like sorry I don't like things that are kind of pre she and are kind of trying to make you feel guilty right or better like you know use like the whole point about marketing is and I talked about this in seduction a lot if you want to be indirect you don't want to give the people the feeling that you're selling something right you want them to feel that this is something natural but is that what you're saying is true is real right as opposed to imposing yourself and pushing on them an ID and creating trying to deceive them because people nowadays are very cynical and are very sophisticated and they concede through the obvious deceptions of a lot of advertising but a lot of advertising isn't in the actual message it's in the colours it's in the it's in the subtext it's the subliminal messaging and I know I've seen things that I found were very powerful just can't say off the top of my head sure yeah the the thing that always comes to my mind is that buy the best salesman is the one you had no idea that they're selling you see Steve Jobs was this incredible salesperson no one refers to him as a salesperson isn't when you when he gave the talk the presentation meditation even though the marketing campaigns that think different yeah you know all those kinds of things yeah no one thought of Steve Jobs as a salesperson but but that's what he was but you know even someone like like Jesus Christ right his ideas it's lasted for centuries and he's selling ideas it seems kind of bless and this to say that but is it I don't know I mean I don't mean to offend anyone at all I'm saying that there's there's something to the person it's not I'm selling your product it's I'm on a crew I'm a crusader here right and if that's gonna attract I mean a lot a lot of my audience and their marketers and sales people and just so enters and that's what's gonna attract an audience a lot more looking you think of yourself a campaign that you thought was particularly brilliant maybe I could miss fun sure well I don't know if you've seen it but there was an internet marketing campaign four or five years ago that came out are you familiar with ty Lopez yeah so I don't hear in my garage he's on the iPhone he's got the Lamborghini behind him in the garage that's eating that you we were after I'll show you the video real quick to me I thought it was it was incredibly innovative and it utilized existing symbols very well he tapped into something that was already there just flashed on and I thought oh really well I've been looking at it something will come to me later but the minute we yeah yeah are good um so yeah I have a couple a couple of kind of left turns I think we can take now what obviously you working on your new book so but what's got your attention right now what are you kind of deep doubt about right now well even like what is the new book about it could be the new book or is then you swing your read so like what do you kind of like wow that's I want think more into that I'm fascinated by this right now what are you fascinated by right now well a fascinated by my new book I'm kind of going into what I what I'm calling the sublime and sort of peak experiences and that I think are transform a person and make them more creative and make them feel more fulfilled and and it's also related I have this feeling that people are trapped right now in very limited forms of thinking that people are far too conventional they follow what other people are thinking and doing right and so I'm maintaining in this book that as a social animal and um we humans always create limits it's like a circle right this is what our reality is according to our civilization and where we live this is what's right this is what's wrong this is how you should do things this is how you should behave with other people this is how things are should be sis what goes into success etcetera and this becomes like what you assume is reality but the people who are truly that did you truly a brilliant crash those limits they explore beyond that circle we go to that darker outer area beyond are too afraid of right because most people fear so the sublime is about exploring past those limits and breaking those barriers and doing things that nobody else has done before and exploring without fear and see what happens to you and the incredible empowering emotion that comes from that and I'm obsessed with the neuroscience behind that so I'm reading lots of books about the brain and how the brain functions would be a major theme in the book because it's my idea to ground what seems to be something kind of quasi mystical or spiritual there's something very very really scientific because I think science is deeply sublime so like reading several months ago about the black hole that was photographed my god what what insane thing how incredibly brilliant just see thinking about that she completely altered how you go about your daily life they photographed a black hole and that people are trying to say what happens to a person if they pass through that black hole should blow your mind away cuz on I'm accumulating things like that but I'm obsessed with the brain because the brain is the most insane instrument it's far more interesting than a computer or artificial intelligence or anything else ever created and I want to ground this idea how the brain creates our own limits it creates our own reality is the brain operates by patterns by recognizing patterns and by simplifying reality right so what happens to the brain when you go beyond that when you stop when you let go of those patterns a lot of what Zen is about and you reprogram your mind and you're able to think in new ways does that change the neural pathways in the brain does something happen to the brain and yes it does and there's been incredible science about that so I'm very deep about that of the research I'm doing about the the new book yeah and there's several different paths that the new book takes and include you know other things beyond just what I just mentioned the death sentence on my money like that but the peak experience type of thing is that how does that relate or does it relate at all to what it said they were calling what well it it does relate in that you know enlightenment so let's say that the circle that we're talking about that we live in is how our brains are programmed through language to relate to the world there's me and then there's the outside within the subject and the object there's good and there's evil there's dark in there's light okay and enlightenment is a is a breakthrough is a flash of light but you go beyond that little circle and you see something that's truly real and I have an amazing book it's a heavy read it's 700 pages it's called Zen and the brain by James Austin he's a neuroscientist who became obsessed with Zen meditation and reached a very high level of it and he analyzes in depth what happens to the brain after years of meditating and it's buried it's fascinating stuff because in meditation you're basically not giving the brain anything to think about it's called sensory deprivation in essence it's like going into one of those tanks those deprivation tanks when you're meditating you're not looking at anything you're not hearing anything and that kind of breaks through a lot of the programming that the brain sets up so enlightenment is very much related to what I'm talking about here but one of the books that I'm really excited about that I did research is a famous book called touching the void have you heard of that I have not been a movie out of him it's mountain climber who is a young man in his 20s went to this mountain in Peru and in the Andes I think it's approved with a friend and they were climbing this incredibly high peak very few people had climbed and on the way down he had an accident and he basically tore his knee up and in that case it was like forget it you're gonna die because if two people are going down a mountain together the one person who's dragging the other one will kill him they'll both die so it's like you just got to abandon me man and the other guy who is part of his mama try and rescue you and they try and they're getting close and at one point though he falls down a cliff and the other his partner realizes the only way if he keeps falling he's gonna pull me down with him so I have to cut the rope he cuts the rope and the guy falls into this crevasse this deep crevasse it's all black complete total darkness and he's in there for like a week his partner leaves him for dead and goes back and he's like experiencing like this insane void you can't see anything you can't hear anything and what happens to him it's a kind of a form of enlightenment it occurred to him in that moment so their different pathways you can take it's not just through Zen meditation it can occur in a relationship with a person with lava can occur in your work you know in the moment of flow in work when you feel at one with what you're doing it can occur in a social movement you feel like you're creating justice or something the many ways to get at that peak experience but what happens to the brain and how it transform this is pretty much the same process I mean what are your thoughts I'm obviously in the last few years I don't need to become trendy for ayahuasca journeys and things like that and different type of psychedelics but people want me to go on one of those from writing this book and I've been invited and I don't know if you know abri Markus yes yeah he he's interviewed me for friends he's being I believe that ayahuasca wants to initiate me I don't know am i I'm kind of an older guy and you know who knows what that'll do to me I've also had a stroke I'd be a little careful with my brain but when I was younger my early twenties I did a lot of drugs I did peyote at least ten times I did a fair amount of LSD I did mushrooms you know I did have Ashish I ate hashish I was into it because I wanted to explore I wanted to explore and experience reality in a different way and one of my favorite books as a young man was the books of Carlos Castaneda the Don Juan books I don't know you you're probably too young to know about they totally changed my way of thinking the beautiful books anyways so I did a lot of that stuff and it edited I'll never forget it and sometimes when I'm meditating I go I can almost put myself back into those feelings I can almost imagine the excitement I had just looking at things as they are when I'm sitting there on peyote while I'm meditating so I have nothing against that path as long as it's not about the addictions on it's not about the high and get scaping it's more about reality and getting it what's real and who you are and what the world is really like and breaking out of prison of language and all these words so I think it can't be a good tool if you're careful and you go at it the right way there's are you familiar with like neuro-linguistic programming NLP sure yeah one of the creators Richard Bandler talks about how he would have patients or people that would go on these trips and DNA or LSD different things like this and at the peak of those journeys he would create anchors for them then so later at a sober they could fell her off the anchor a lot returned to a similar state instantly well I don't know if that's useful for you all right fit for the Book of Ruth I know I yeah it's just example it sounds like you kind of already when you meditate I I did that and I probably did that when I was taking drugs as well at the time you know but you know I could have easily died as I was very adventurous so you know I do I wouldn't be advocating for parents to be telling their children to go on these adventures but if you do what you're saying you're anchored you have a certain approach to it and it's not about the it's not about the thrill or about the actual drug itself it's about you you and exploring who you aren't finding things out but I had some bad trips this you know could have really done so that's not all it's not all peaches and cream sure sure I have some friends that have been its voice similar bad trips and things like that all right do you care about money well I do I mean um in that you know I I have a lot of I'm I'm not pregnant but I'm doing very well sorry but you know I don't know the exact number of e-books I come to do you know the number of many copies your books of console's worldwide oh no because could cut millions and no yeah cuz cut just like Russia and they never tell you the truth right because they don't want to yeah I think it's Russia I love Russia but no it'll even tell you the truth I've no idea but so what I value money for is to freedom right that it gives me because I remember I was relatively poor for a long time I had like I've calculated like 50 different jobs before I wrote my book I had the worst job you can imagine most soul-crushing jobs I know how unhappy people can be and I know what not having money can do to you they it consumes you you can't be creative you can't think properly um it's not good for your health so I value money for the freedom it gives me the fact that I don't have to worry about things and I can focus on things that are so but I don't value it for all I'd go out and buy a boat now or I can you know get a Lamborghini status reasons yeah I'm not completely not into that I'm into it for the liberation of petty worries about can I pay this bill which I found really different and I have tremendous empathy for people other this is why I wrote mastery for people who have to go through that there's a lot of people a nine-to-five job or etc and how difficult it is to over will come those circumstances and find be creative and fulfill yourself I know how hard it was cuz I've been through that yeah it the bills the bills stress and stuff they can suffocate someone's heart right and obviously you know if you go back to the centuries and you know the history much better than me but you would look for it I don't the work the sponsor but you know someone like Goethe to patriot Galileo he is a patron so he can focus entirely on what he wants to do person alright so what's your advice for someone let's say that they are 24 years old they're there at the cubicle and they see they see about 55 years old and they're like I do not want to end up like they're already disenchanted with the plan never sold as a kid and they had ideas I want you to start up I want to do heart I want to write I want to create boy I got a house mortgage now I got a car I got I got these things I got to do for that person would you advise them drop it all and go to work in your art and your mastery or it find the weights make enough money so you don't have to worry about money so then you're totally free and now you can focus on well it's a great question it's the most important question of all probably I promise there's not a single simple answer because everybody is different and that's their own circumstances one thing is if I could rewind a little bit is if you're a little younger be careful about assuming too much debt because that will really limit your choices in life so be careful with your student loan debt you know you may not get getting $100,000 in debt to graduate from Michigan State with a degree in English what's it gonna get you right so be careful about that all right and maybe don't go that way and then maybe don't get the car so to find another way so keep yourself as free and loose as possible which when you're young is easier okay so that's that's one thing the other thing is you know your time is short right so realize that it's hard to realize that when you're 24 you think you've got these immense vistas of time ahead of you Wow seventies like that years I you know you don't you don't have as much time as you think you do right so you want to be focused okay and so if you take the path of I'm gonna make a lot of money and free myself up and then I'm gonna write poetry review that's a false path that's gonna waste time you're gonna waste your youth on it you're gonna burn yourself out because okay if you could make a lot of money in two years fine but that will probably corrode something in section so let's say through Bitcoin investment in two years you could have made twenty million dollars today and then you can do whatever you want you probably won't do whatever you want because you got this money and you can save it look you see they haven't even you can say you know no I'm just gonna go party all the time that's false bad paths do not take that path do not get seduced by the idea that when you're in you twenty your goal is to make as much money as possible and that will free you up so the goal that what you want is you want to find out you know who you are what you were meant to do within reason so I'm a practical person it's not about quitting your job at the cubicle and suddenly going out and trying to become a rock star or something right you got it you do have bills to pay you have to eat you have to be reasonably comfortable although when you're young you can be a little more loose with these things but within reason you want to have a sense of what you love what excites you in mastery I give you kind of many ways of examining that like going into your childhood what attracted to you when you were a kid and to what excites you now subjects that you read about it online instead of the go wow this is so exciting to have to know more getting in touch with yourself having a journal and writing in that journal this is what I love this is what I hate hate is a very important at emotion of this I hated working for other people I hated office politics I hated being around and Native people I hated it so much and I found a job or I never have to deal with anybody ever again you know I mean publishers but they're they're usually very nice especially absolutely successful yeah exactly so or you could be the opposite I love being around people I can't stand being alone but who are you what do you really like create in this journal you give some time and attention to it is very important it's not a little sight they make you're doing it's not like something you do for timid it's your life it's your future it's gonna make you happy take it seriously write this down get a sense of what that is and kind of map out the potential future some paths to take and the thing is if you don't if you're not excited by what you're doing you will tune out we know this about the brain and when you want when you're motivated to learn you will learn I was took people the example when I was in college I studied French for several years and then I went to Paris and I couldn't speak one sense I was like I didn't understand anything and then I know a French woman I was very interested in man in two weeks I learned more than I learned he was in college so I really needed to learn and I really wanted to and it was important to be able to communicate so when you're motivated when you want when you're desired clicks in you learn so you have to find something that excites you so the path that you could take could be several it could be alright I don't quit my job but on the side I go back to school I take classes that are practical I don't go back and study you know 12th century Italian poetry I study you know startup and how to create a startup or I study marketing it's like something like that and you sort of or you you sort of find a job that's pays less but is more related to what you want to do in life you know if you want to be a writer journalism is a very good start in life because it doesn't pay very well it's kind of a crap job but it teaches you discipline did you know how to work on a deadline teach you how to how to write under pressure how to make something kind of snappy you know what senator he just the good discipline pick things pick environments where you're gonna learn learning skills is gold so gold is not it coin ten million dollars gold is skills and learning and knowledge whether you get it from a mentor a master who you can attach yourself to whether you get it to a job doesn't pay as well gives you opportunities to try things and learn or whether it's not night school community college that's not expensive you don't go after deaded and you can start developing some of these side skills and the other thing is when you're young be adventurous don't be one of these person goes mommy and daddy told me going to law school I better go into law school make a lot of money had a mono focus done sort of monorail path in life we try things out try five different things out see what you love see what you hate be a little bit adventurous you know yeah I talked about it in the book about Paul Graham person who founded Y Combinator right he's a billionaire for sure by now he loved computers he was a hacker back in the 70s when there were no hackers he was a computer geek he went to college he went to MIT he learned artificial intelligence in the first pages of it he decided he hated college he hated academia he did not want to teach so he got out of it and he went to work for a software company he hated he ain't working for people he hated corporations he got out of it he went to art school in Italy and learned how to paint and then came back to New York and was in the loft there's no money in his painting and then he herded advertisement on on the radio for Netscape Navigator never back then you're probably like four years old okay yeah and they were saying the Internet is when people are gonna buy things in the future he got wow I think I could make a lot of money by designing a kind of a website where you can buy things he took all his hacking skills and all the design things he learned from painting and all he learned from artificial intelligence and he created this great website and he sold to Yahoo like 40 million dollars and then he keeps doing this on and on like like stepping-stones after he sells it every he's bored he moves on to something else but what he did was he was adventurous he found what he hated try things out and in the end he was able to combine all of his different skills so for me nothing was wasted in my life think of all the crap jobs that I have I work you know is it working in at Disney as a temp which was the most soul-crushing job I worked in a detective agency it's a Skip tracer tracing down people who had disappeared had one paying the bills terrible terrible job you know I worked for the first online encyclopedia boy was that a miserable job I was a construction worker in Greece went ahead when they ran out of money but all those things I learned about power I learned about manipulation I learned about human nature I learned about good people and negative people you know people you can trust me but you can't all went into the 48 laws about nothing is wasted so if your eyes are open and you're learning which is the gold of in your 20s nothing is wasted if you try a job and it doesn't work out you learn something valuable be adventurous but with some focus is what I would say and accumulate skills it's I look I just have to say because like you you got such a good I think my skills in acquiring the skills and skills are gold model business online where we teach I see something called high income skills and copywriting closing marketing speaking those counters that that's all we teach yeah and we always say you can't run a high income without haiku skills because skills that will build income well it just fits well we'll take out your clip of that and I'll say Green agrees oh yeah well what do you think about the you mentioned that as you are going these experiences in your 20s and you need to really have your ears off your antenna up your eyes open so you're not just going through the motions but you're truly you're pulling out the goal from each of these experiences what about all the people in the 20s were addicted to their cell phones and they're not really experiencing anything because there's no awareness as they're going through this stuff yeah well you know it has it's very dangerous you know I mean I'm noticing it more now I see people as I'm meditating and looking at the window I see people walking their dogs like you know you're not noticing that this is beautiful sunny morning I noticing the coyote walking up the street you just you know like we descended from apes kind of walk like this yeah you know yeah so are you know do you want to be a loser in life we'll go right ahead and become addicted to your cell phone and stop paying attention this is the main lesson in the laws of human nature you're a social animal your skill if you want a high level income skill knowing people knowing understanding psychology being able to get along with people knowing how to motivate them understanding what makes them tick is the most critical skill you'll ever develop in life there's no place you're ever gonna get in life on your own you have to be able to work with people and you have to be really good and brilliant at it I know Steve Jobs wasn't too good at it but he got better at it later in life okay so if you're spending all your time like this you're with you I see people in restaurants now with groups of eight people they're all like that if that moment those hours that are going by like that you're not paying attention to people you're not paying if their body language you're not listening to them you're not getting into the world you're not being social you're not learning what it's like to be social you're not learning about how other people think you're becoming a raging narcissist because you're just enlarging your phone if that's what you want then fine I'm not gonna argue against that you're not gonna get very far in life yeah so are you truly motivated get rid of your goddamn phone for a while i i've interviewed about 20 masters for the book on mastery i didn't use all of them and a common theme was he's extremely successful people many of them didn't even have a smartphone Paul Graham did not have his smartphones yoky Matsuoka was this incredible kind of engineer she had a smartphone but she hardly ever used it or touched it you know some how the trauma the great architect he never had a smart a lot of people who are very successful don't spend time on the internet it's a waste there's value to it I'm not saying be a Luddite but there should be some balance you know and particularly in social situations you you know think of it this way if you want to be a great basketball player you want to be like you especially the three-point shot outside shoot it's repetition right motor repetition creating pathways in the brain over and over and over again social skills are the same thing interacting with people every time you interact with person it's like shooting a 3-point shot you're learning about their body language you're learning about communicating you're learning about language skills you're learning about what makes people charming or not charming etc and it's the only way you're going to develop high level social skills and really make it in life so do you want to spend your life wasting it or do you want to interact with people it's I was at dinner the other night and there was a table it looked like grandmother mother grandchildren all women all of them on the phone and all that young girl's head ear but at the same time on their iPad their phones it's heartbreaking to me yeah because you're missing out on everything yeah yeah it's it's kind of scary and you know Steve Jobs obviously didn't let his kids use the stock yeah yeah he would have died if you saw the uses that people use it was smart what do you what do you think yeah because this is like a new possible thought experiment I'm gonna try though what do you think like da Vinci would think of this the phones like for his own personal self what do you have one use one well if you would he would be totally piqued by the idea of the internet and of the vast amounts of knowledge you could have so that you know you could you'd probably get addicted to surfing learning about Anatomy in the human body you'd be using it for knowledge for learning for science he'd be extremely into that but the other stuff he would find like total junk in Ursus I mean I've often thought about that you know for him his whole ambition was to understand everything call it to become the universal man to have an understanding of science of warfare of perspective of drawing of mathematics of anatomy etc so that he would understand what made life lies and he could try and do it anything like kind of like a magician or an alchemist but his means were so limited you know what you couldn't look up you know the books that he had access to the scientists he could talk to here to do it all on his own had to experiment on his own and he was brilliant at it so he'd be like whoa but his motto in life was ostinato regarding rigorous determination so he was all about discipline persistent and determination so he would hate all the softness in our culture all the fact that people don't do anything to get everything so easily but he would be excited about how he could spend 48 hours and really deepened his knowledge of anatomy really increases knowledge of biology etc so he put it to that purpose but you'd find out most of it 98% of it like junk yeah I don't think you'd have Facebook snapchat Instagram on his smart phone interesting he an instrument that would I would love that all right so as we wrap up here I had a couple questions actually for my Instagram audience that I pulled him I want to see what would they want to ask Robert Green and the first question here was if I'm already successful but I still want mentors how do I go about doing that because he says he wants to network in many MNC under the higher level people in his industry people who are maybe 20 30 years ahead but they are threatened by him his projection because he's already kind of coming up well it's a good question on well you've got to choose the right person you know so I always talk about a mentor it's almost like you get to choose your parents you never got to choose your parents but here you get to choose them and you get one to choose wisely it's also like an intimate relationship you just don't go out and marry the first person you come across you're bit careful about it because it could ruin your future so you want to choose carefully so one thing that you want to consider are people's the person's character so you don't want to this person could be very successful but with success comes a very large ego and very high levels of insecurity you know I talked about in-laws of human nature then Michael Eisner was the CEO of Disney the most powerful man in Hollywood but he was the most insecure little baby in the world he thought Jeffrey Katzenberg the man who was below him but he groomed was trying to take his job which it wasn't it was so insecure a lot of people who are successful were above you how our life that you have to find that out you have to do some research if you know about that it defines some things out about their character and then this day and age in the internet you can find anything else you wanted about them right so you want to look and reading my book on human nature will help you signs of character faults or things that will you don't want to get involved with okay the second thing is you have to be able to offer something to that person that they can't normally get so the law in the laws of power is appeal to people's self-interest right so that person who's 25 years older was very successful you have developed a very particular skill that made you successful well that was marketing or I don't know what it was and older people often don't understand the world as it is now I fall into that category they don't understand Instagram / you understand what's going on in the internet you can offer them access to trends and things that are happening they don't normally have you fill a gap in their skill base right and so suddenly they're interested they're excited but if you choose somebody who's not insecure they're not gonna feel threatened by you or feel like you're after you know you take a look I mean what if someone's in their 50s and they're successful what are they gonna be afraid of what are you gonna possibly do to them you know right so choose this person wisely choose somebody this bit open-minded who's who you want to be 20 years who you find it's kind of you feel affiliated in a spiritual way not just because they have because they're famous and offer them something that they can't get on their own it can be very a very mutually benefiting relationship okay and then the other the other question that would be the last one here is they were asking if Robert Greene could have lunch or dinner either way with anyone alive or deceased who would it be what was like one thing well I mean you know I'd love to have lunch with Napoleon Bonaparte and ask him you know what went wrong why did you lose your way after 1806 and suddenly turn into the opposite of who you were as a young man do you regret are you aware of what you did it transformed you into the greatest general in history into one of the worst generals in history how could you have ten years an incredible success in ten years go in the opposite direction leading to your downfall did you learn from it what can we learn from them you know maybe I'd had lunch with Vladimir Putin and I would look him in the eye on like george w bush and not see into his soul try and see how clever is this is he really as maniacal and his Machiavellian and manipulative as he's he sees as strategic as he is because on the dark side of power which there is and you look at Russia and you look at their disinformation campaigns etc they're brilliant they're absolutely brilliant they've understood something about social media they're far ahead of what other people have understood about section a word in advance could understand the power of this is a political weapon right from the dark side from the from the Darth Vader side of life right and they've done it with other things they're creating a new form of warfare that's extremely powerful China is trying to learn from Russia Russia is terrible and everything else Russians can't build any piece of technology if their life depended on who buys a Russian product but they are all really really good at the manipulative dark side the dirty side of power and strategy and I would like to see he would open up to me I wouldn't write about it if you wouldn't throw me into prisons how much of this is calculated how much it is in control of this is he as clever as I think he is I know people who have met him and talked to him he's very charming etc he's a very charming person in person but I know he's also acting very scary so I don't think I would I be fall under his charm you know be difficult to keep your emotional distance to be able to talk to him and not feel yeah it would be really fascinating I can't just in advance I know IQ drops Oh Robert thank you so much for religion Judaism those great questions thank you you are welcome thank you so much and everyone leave a comment below on what you thought about the interview and if you had any more questions for Robert maybe I'll I'll just redo them a text message or something and there might be more also we're going to put links in the description to all of robert's books and frankly I recommend you buy all of them we can go on Amazon pick the first one it will tell you customers like you also buy and I'll show you get them all trust me on that you will not regret it other than that you got so much thanks for sharing your time hey why don't you have the time you want for yourself yet why does your job keep letting you down it's because you have been developed the high income skills yet to create your own high income empire for yourself and your family so at the link below you now have me as your personal mentor completely free for the next seven days you have a free user name and password I'm gonna get started with you right away and if you love it it's only ten dollars a month after that are you paying more for Spotify and I promise you Spotify is not going to change your life in your business the way that this can never I can do this forever so hit that link and come join us inside right now

Channel: JasonCapital

Views: 32,426

Rating: 4.9461398 out of 5

Keywords: robert greene interview, robert greene interview 2019, robert greene interview 48 laws of power, robert greene interview human nature, robert greene interview laws of human nature, robert greene interview mastery, art of seduce robert greene interview, robert greene, robert greene inspiration, robert greene mastery, robert greene motivation, 48 laws of power, 50th law, jason capital, laws of human nature, the 50th law

Id: zCrlETqqynU

Length: 70min 55sec (4255 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019