Mastery by Robert Greene (PDF)

Description

From the bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power and The Laws of Human Nature, a vital work revealing that the secret to mastery is already within you. Each one of us has within us the potential to be a Master. Learn the secrets of the field you have chosen, submit to a rigorous apprenticeship, absorb the hidden knowledge possessed by those with years of experience, surge past competitors to surpass them in brilliance, and explode established patterns from within. Study the behaviors of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci and the nine contemporary Masters interviewed for this book. The bestseller author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, and The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene has spent a lifetime studying the laws of power. Now, he shares the secret path to greatness. With this seminal text as a guide, readers will learn how to unlock the passion within and become masters.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐One of the best from Robert Greene, must read for everyone who is creative and ambitious.Secrets of Mastery, combined with broaden spectrum of knowledge, well packed in such a good content of the book, easy to read and understand.Molto bravissimo Robert Greene, master and genius author!

⭐This is an extremely powerful work on how to achieve mastery in one’s life. Mastery can be thought of as the unique way each of us can fully actualize our potential for greatness and enjoy a fulfilling life.Achieving Mastery in life is a lot of work but it is the way to a flourishing life (a life of self-fulfillment). Spinoza’s quote “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare” came to mind several times as I read the book. The author provides ideas and strategies that can improve the process for those willing to expend the effort. I plan to re-read and work with the ideas and strategies covered in this book and apply them to my personal context. I also plan to purchase copies of the book for my wife and 2 teenage sons so they can benefit from this material as well.The work begins by discussing how to discover one’s purpose in life. This is unique to each individual and needs to be well thought through. The author gives 5 strategies for finding your life’s task and illustrates these strategies with historical and contemporary figures. Two of the strategies he discusses that really gave me a lot to think about are:1. ) Occupy the perfect niche – the Darwinian strategy. In this strategy you need to find the career niche that best fits your interests and talents and then evolve that niche over time. I found the eaxample of V.S. Ramachandran very interesting2.) Let go of the past – the adaptation strategy. The following quote from this section that really resonated with me:”You must adapt your Life’s Task to these circumstances. You do not hold on to past ways of doing things, because it will ensure you will fall behind and suffer for it. You are flexible and looking to adapt.”The author then covers the Apprentice Phase which he breaks into 3 steps:1.) Deep Observation – the Passive Mode2.) Skills Acquisition – the Practice Mode3.) Experimentation – The Active ModeThere are detailed strategies for completing the ideal appenticeship. These are illustrated by examples. 2 of my favorites in this section were “move toward resistance and pain” as illustrated by the example of Bill Bradley and “apprentice yourself in failure” as illustrated by Henry Ford. All 8 strategies are worth thinking about in detail.The next section covers learning through a Mentor and is one of the best parts of the book. The example of Michael Faraday is used as a great illustration. There are strategies discussed for finding the appropriate mentor(s), knowing when to break away from the mentor and what to do if you cannot find a mentor (the example here is Thomas Edison and there is an interesting tie-back to Faraday). Having a mentor is the most effective way to gain deep knowledge of a field in the least amount of time – it greatly accelerates that path to Mastery.The next section deals with social intelligence and seeing people as they are. Benjamin Franklin is used as an example. There are 7 deadly realities covered in this section (envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness and passive aggression) as well as strategies for acquiring social intelligence.The fifth section is on awakening the dimensional mind. This is where you see more and more aspects of reality and develop ways to become more creative (and not get stuck in the past). There are several strategies on creativity discussed in detail. I found the discussion on ways to alter one’s perspective especially illuminating. These include avoiding:* Looking at the “what” instead of the “how”* Rushing to generalities and ignoring details* Confirming paradigms and ignoring anomalies – (key quote: “…anomalies themselves contain the richest information. They often reveal to us the flaws in our paradigms and open up new ways of looking at the world”)* fixating on what is present, ignoring what is absent (Sherlock Holmes example)The section continues with strategies and examples for this “creative-active” phase. My favorite was a section on Mechanical Intelligence with the Wright Brothers as an example.The Final Section is on Mastery as the fusing of the Intuitive with the Rational. The strategies in this section are very powerful and I will be returning to them again and again. Here are the 7 strategies:1.) Connect to your environment2.) Play to your strengths (this is very important – see further thoughts on this below)3.) Transform yourself through practice4.) Internalize the details – the life force (Leonardo Da Vinci example)5.) Widen your vision6.) Submit to the other – the Inside Out perspective7.) Synthesize all forms of knowledgeThis is a very powerful book filled with a lot of good ideas and strategies. There are ideas I plan to continue to “chew” on and think more deeply about while I work to integrate these ideas and strategies into my personal context.A lot of the book stresses the importance of self-discipline, persevering through difficult challenges, the importance of an adaptive and active mind, independent thinking and integrating all of one’s knowledge. Here are a few recommendations I would make to augment the material covered in this book:1.) For Self-Displine and Willpower (and perseverance): Willpower by Tierney and Baumeister The Power of Habit by Duhigg Grit (see TED Talk by Angela Duckworth and the GRIT assessment as well – Grit Assessment can be found at: available at […])2.) For an adaptive/active mindset (and recovering from failure) Mindset by Carol Dweck Apapt by Tim Harford3.) For a great fictional example of many of the ideas covered in the book, I would recommend Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (Roark as a positive example; Keating as a negative example of what the author calls “the false self”)4.) Other Real world examples Richard Feynman (see his books “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” and “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”5.) Finding your strengths Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath VIA Survey of Character Strengths (available at […])

⭐There are countless self-help books–some good, some trite. Then there are self-help books that revolutionize the genre.Robert Greene’s Mastery is such a book. It’s Greene’s fifth book broadly tackling the art of strategy, and like all his books, it’s entertaining, educational, densely packed with biographies of powerful and interesting people, and almost completely devoid of fluff.Greene’s overarching thesis challenges the conventional notion of “genius” as a genetic gift bestowed upon a handful of individuals–Mozart and Einstein immediately come to mind. To Greene, such a conception of genius is illusory. All “genius,” Greene contends, is acquirable, and all masters, regardless of intrinsic ability, go through roughly the same process on their path towards mastery:1) Finding your Life’s Task. Greene argues that there’s an inner force that guides you towards what you’re “destined” to accomplish. Once you discover your Life’s Task, throw everything at it.2) Finding an ideal apprenticeship–the time when you hone the necessary skills and acquire the discipline vital to mastery.3) Finding the right mentor. This is the key to a fruitful apprenticeship, enabling you to absorb the master’s knowledge and power. Greene cautions that you must know when it’s time to sever ties with your mentor and craft your own path in order to prevent remaining in your mentor’s shadow indefinitely. The goal, Greene advises, it to eventually surpass your mentor.4) Acquiring social intelligence. Social intelligence is an important theme in all of Greene’s books. Quite simply, our personal and professional advancement will invariably stall if we don’t learn to read people and deftly maneuver through the labyrinth of others’ whims, passions, and ambitions.5) “Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active.” This stage involves expanding your knowledge to fields related to your craft, thereby challenging you to “make new associations between different ideas.” Greene believes this is a critical step to optimizing your creative output and achieving mastery.6) Fusing the intuitive with the rational. Greene argues that Einstein’s discoveries can be as much attributed to his intuition as to his mathematical analysis grounded in pure reason. Practice and intimate knowledge of our field foster the integration of intuition with reason.For each stage, Greene outlines concrete steps to take to achieve these goals, including approaching difficult problems from unconventional angles or altering your perspective, embracing the holistic approach–i.e. utilizing and synchronizing the full range of resources and options your environment has to offer.One of the features that distinguishes Mastery from Greene’s two other masterpieces, 33 Strategies of War and 48 Laws of Power, is its greater focus on the biographies of contemporary masters, most of whom are not well known to the general public. Greene delves into the lives of legendary masters like Mozart, Einstein, Goethe, Darwin, and da Vinci, but also of lesser known contemporary masters like software engineer and entrepreneur Paul Graham, animal scientist and inventor Temple Grandin, and linguistic archaeologist Daniel Everett, who cracked the previously thought to be indecipherable language of the reclusive Amazonian tribe, Piraha.Linking the human capacity for mastery to our biology and indeed, metaphysics, Greene writes in a veritably spiritual manner, making Mastery highly compelling and exceedingly motivational.The title Mastery is fitting, since Greene is undoubtedly a master in the art of strategy. It is amusing to hear some of his detractors bemoan the “amoral” nature of his books. Amoral virtues–be it courage, prudence, or temperament–are indispensable to achieving moral ends. A strategically inept well-meaning person will likely fail to achieve any significant good, because he is ill-prepared to deal with endless obstacles that stand in his way. Whereas a person well versed in the art of strategy and equipped with the amoral virtues necessary to overcome such obstacles, has the potential to achieve noble ends.The one area where I could quibble with Greene has to do with the age old debate over the role of nature vs. nurture. Since genetic makeup is a fixed variable outside of our control, it is perhaps pointless to dwell on its role in our development when writing a book about the concrete things we can actually do to better ourselves. Still, I wonder if Greene’s unequivocal dismissal of the traditional interpretation of genius as inherent isn’t to some extent mistaken. Regardless of how many thousands of hours Mozart spent studying his craft, is it really conceivable that any person of sound mind and body could replicate his success?I tend to think that there is something to be said about intrinsic genius; that there are masters who are born with an uncanny and natural ability to perceive things others do not and cannot, no matter how hard they try. Nevertheless, even if Greene errors in downplaying the role DNA plays in cultivating “genius,” it in no way diminishes his strategy for acquiring mastery. Whether all of us can become the Einstein in our field makes little difference. What matters is that we can reach our maximum potential–become men and women in full–by following Greene’s blueprint.

⭐I love reading all these books. Very informational and I’ve collected all of these book by this author. Definitely worth reading and keeping an open mind and take anything with a grain of salt.

⭐I came across this book purely by chance, and having loved his book about power, The 48 Laws of Power (Which I have also reviewed, so I won’t go into it here) I bought the paperback. To my knowledge, there’s an abridged (posh word for shortened) edition, but this is the whole enchilada at well over three hundred pages! It took a while to read, and the print is really small, so it’s best you get the kindle version if your eyes aren’t what they were! So, Monsieur Greene, on this outing, teaches some really valuable lessons on exploring the full potential of the human psyche using past and present masters of their crafts as examples, like Leonardo Da Vinci, Goethe, Faraday and Einstein. It’s totally changed my perspective on life, as Greene suggests that we find our Life’s Task, and not close off our minds to learning new skills and embracing change, whatever our age, instead of getting comfortable, because it’s safe and reassuring. He mentions the importance of mentors, and that, in some cases, we have to mentor ourselves if no such mentors are available to us. And the important stages of learning an apprenticeship, from observation, to breaking free and striking out on your own. I found it really informative and useful, and I came away with two memorable pieces of information, one being that, when you feel you have nothing left to learn in a job or apprenticeship, it’s time to leave, and a great quote by Einstein, who viewed the intuitive mind as a ‘sacred gift’ and the rational mind as ‘a faithful servant.’ He said that ‘we have created a society where we honour the faithful servant and forget the gift’. There’s something for everyone in this gem of a book if you stick with it, and what you can take to the bank is that Greene states that we all have it within ourselves to be masters and modern day geniuses, and that it’s not merely the preserve of those who are ‘naturals’, He illustrates this point by referring to a pilot who was not naturally gifted, who put in the training and the hours to become one of the best, even when the odds were stacked against him, and the dedication of a top basketball player who, while not naturally gifted at the sport relentlessly displayed such dedication, passion and commitment, and the hard work paid off. Greene’s message is clear, to truly get the most out of our lives, we have to push past our comfort zones and see what we are really capable of, with the right inspiration and guidance. Everyone should read this book, and I, for one, am very glad that I did. Well worth its five star rating!

⭐I don’t know what to make of this book because it just feels so long-winded that his point just gets lost in a haze of woolly fluff, so I dont know where the great lessons are… unfortunately, I am a busy person and even though I am only less than a fifth of the way through, I feel as though I have learnt nothing at all so I am going to give up on this book… additionally, there just seems to be so much conjecture about evolution, religion, feelings, inner callings, vocations, power etc; I feel like I am being preached to by the leader of a cult… it’s mindnumbing and much better books with solid evidence and practical steps are Peak by Anders Ericsson and Mindset by Carol Dweck… they are so much better than this.

⭐Similar to Greene’s other writings in that it seems once you’ve read one you’ve pretty much read them all. They seem to follow the same rhetoric.I don’t think I’d read another book by the author but I would recommend that everybody choose at least one book wisely. Depending on what you would to gain, Greene can definitely inspire you and his books do offer valuable pockets of knowledge for those interested in historical figures and insight into their characters.The same concepts and themes are repeated throughout this book as touched upon in his highly regarded ’48 Laws of Power’. These being the only two books by Greene I’ve read. His writing style can sometimes drag on and I was just pushing myself to finish after about half way through. Happy I read this one but not a book I’d read twice.

⭐Best book of self development I have ever read. I just wanted to buy the physical book as I have listened the audio book thats how good it is. It change my life somehow. I wish I could have read this book when I was 15.

⭐I believe that finding our life’s task and pursuing it with all of our energy is the highest path we can possibly undertake. My favourite nonfiction book, Mastery by Robert Greene, is the best introduction to this path of true fulfilment.I cannot reiterate often enough how important this book is for young people. It is empowering, inspiring, and full of great stories about masters from all walks of life. No other book or author comes close.

Keywords

Free Download Mastery in PDF format
Mastery PDF Free Download
Download Mastery 2012 PDF Free
Mastery 2012 PDF Free Download
Download Mastery PDF
Free Download Ebook Mastery