Robert Greene: Use the 48 Laws of power to master life

knowledge for Men episode 3 welcome to knowledge for men.com where boys turn into men where men turn into leaders into Lions the Ferocious few who stand strong a place where you grow to become the man you were born to be it's time to take Massive Action towards the life you want get the health get the relationships business and career you've always dreamed of achieve a level of success and happiness that you've been searching for for so many years life has given you enough and it's time to take a stand and take full control of your

life stand with us as we inter you the most inspiring and successful leaders to give you real world advice to crush life and awaken the sleeping giant inside of [Music] you all right guys let's get the show started I'm here with three-time New York Times best-selling author Robert Green he is best known for his books the 48 Laws of Power Art of Seduction 33 strategies of war and most recently Mastery Robert I'm very happy to have you on the show thank you for having me Andrew my pleasure all right let's go right into your favorite

success quote and why I I got several quotes I do so much research for my books I like the quote of Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli that goes never complain never explain just let your actions speak for themselves then the I love Marcus aelius I have tons of quotes from Marcus aelius head but I use them in my books and one of them is about if two people are in a box ring and and they're going at each other you don't complain about the other person's moves as if maybe they're evil or their intentions are bad you

just accept it as part of the game and that's what life should be like it's like a game it's like chess or a boxing ring you're you're facing your adversaries and you're not worrying about whether they're nice people or their intentions are good you're looking at their actions and you're strategizing accordingly all right I like the quotes and Robert share with the audience your story share with the audience your personal journey of how you got started with what you do well it's it's a mix of a little bit of planning and and a fair amount

of luck but a lot of persistence you know I always wanted to be a writer ever since I was a kid I knew that was what I was destined to be if you can use that word and I wandered a lot I never had a job more than 11 months in my entire life I just tried everything from construction work I lived in Europe did every job in Europe taught English worked in journalism Hollywood television a detective agency an encyclopedia company conduct ditches in Greece and it was all like very interesting experiences and I learned

uh a lot about people and how I saw every kind of power move that you can imagine particularly in Hollywood and then when I was 36 years old so sort of late in life I met a man who packages books and he asked me if I had any ideas for books and all of my life experience just came flooding out of me all the Maneuvers people had played on me on other people and all of my reading of History what I told him turned into the 48 Laws of Power so you can never I can't

say that I plann my life to write the 48 Laws of Power that would be ridiculous but in a weird intuitive way I had prepared myself for some kind of book some kind of movie some sort of project that would have eventually come out of me and it kind of aligns with what I'm talking about in Mastery about the apprenticeship phase i' i' given myself in a weird way sort of the perfect apprenticeship for writing Mastery and after that first book the 48 Laws of Power everything just kind of took off and had gained its

own momentum well you've definitely had your fair share of ups and downs uh with all the different jobs that you've had in different multiple Industries well I've noticed that in your books it seems like you're referencing history quite a lot to prove your points what is the importance of history in your writing well you have this sort of Storehouse in history of all of this incredible drama of these people in our past our heritage who've done amazing Deeds credible discoveries great political Maneuvers great generals like Napoleon and then you have other people who just make

all sorts of incredible mistakes and the lesson that you can learn from Reading history are are just amazing and times change and people change and they didn't have the internet back when Napoleon was a general and things looked differently but human nature is what it is people have egos insecurities you're dealing with the same political stuff the human brain is this is essentially the same and so you can kind of look and see like a laboratory of what people did right what they did wrong and so for me I don't read history just to enjoy

it I read it for lessons everything I read no matter who it is I'm going now what is that saying about me what is that saying about what people are like that's just sort of my Approach so you're looking into history and learning from the mistakes of others well there there's nothing to be you know you can't learn everything from a book and you can't learn everything from history It's a combination but as you said you can you can benefit from the mistakes that other people people have made and you can learn from them and

then it's a it's a combination of things you want to be alive in the moment you want to be looking at what people are doing around the world in in your little circle and at the same time you have all of this knowledge of psychology that you can apply that you've learned from the past so it's not a question of just being brilliant at knowing a lot of history that that's not going to make you successful either yeah I see so you're learning from history and you're taking out the lessons from history and applying them

into the present day and that shows up in your writings to help others yeah no when I you know when I take someone like a Napoleon bonapart who I consider the greatest strategist who ever lived and anybody who's in business or an entrepreneur whatever you know strategy is the is the science of of how to get what you want he's the greatest who ever lived so when I read his story which is an amazing story I want to show the reader that he's a human being in the course of a battle in in very stress

ful moments he was a very creative individual when it came to strategy so I want to say what are the lessons that we can learn from him and one of the main lessons is he's very fluid a very fluid thinker he's not someone who's got these set rules that he has absorbed from from all of military history he's alive in the moment he's he's able to kind of improvise Etc incredibly applicable to the world today so I look at Napoleon and and that's how I look at everybody how could I apply that to our very

complex difficult competitive world that we live in I do respect that being a history buff myself but what is it about power that really intrigues you it seems like power is a main theme in many of your books well it's like the Dirty Little Secret in in our in society you know people will talk about sex they'll talk about every little you know they'll they'll reveal who they are everything but nobody wants to talk about power I was in Hollywood working for film directors I was a writer myself and I saw people were extremely power

hungry that's all they how they measured themselves by am I rising up in Hollywood are people seeing me as a upand cominging director producer what's my reputation my power not about the art or or what they were producing they were obsessed with power but nobody writes about what people do what happens when the door is closed what are the guys leading Google how are their minds functioning we read what's in the newspaper but it's not reality it's not what's really going on the game is different and I've seen the game in all these different jobs

I wanted to expose it because I don't like this kind of hypocrisy that exists where people use these laws but no one is talking about them and I've always and whenever I was a kid and I watch sports for instance I love sports I'm interested in the strategy the mind game you know you you watch like the World Series now I mean my favorite sport is basketball I love football but B you know you watch the World Series it's so mental one team you can sense is is in a Groove and it's it and the

mental part is is incredible and the Strategic level I'm fascinated with that in business in science in sports in any Venture so that's sort of my personal Obsession okay and what do you have to say about the people who view some of your work as as a form of manipulation specifically the 48 Laws of Power and the Art of Seduction well it's very manipulative of people to to say that because there's a lot of first of all there's a lot of the 48 laws that really aren't uh manipulation so there's a law always say less

than necessary which is you know you tend to talk too much people tend to talk too much and when you talk a lot you probably will say something stupid now if you want to call that a manipulation that's kind of stretching it it's just basic common sense it's wisdom that the less you speak the more likely you are to not say something stupid and you also appear kind of powerful that's not a manipulative law I could quote you know half the laws are like that they have to do with kind of persuading people and and

understanding other people's psychology then there are laws that are manipulative yes there's brutal laws like crush your enemy totally there's manipulative laws like pose as a friend but work as a spy things like that I'm simply saying that that's part of the game that's what happens in the real world if you want a book about ethics you can find 3,000 books on the bookshelves right now about what how to be a nice person but that's not what power is about so for instance there's a law in there that is quite manipulative which is get others

to do the work but always take the credit and people go well how can you talk about that that's so evil that's so awful I'm sorry but that's how business Works in Hollywood people people were constantly using what I wrote when I was starting out my name never appeared you watch a newscaster on television you watch a PO politician give a talk they don't write their own talk their own speech they put their name on it we go what a brilliant speech by Barack Obama but somebody else wrote it or some newscaster Bill O'Reilly he's

not doing his own research and writing what he says somebody else is doing it he puts his name on it that's how life is and I'm pointing out that that's how the game is played and if you're not aware of it you're going to get defensive and upset you're going to go damn it why' that guy steal my idea and I'm saying no be smart be strategic so I'm revealing to you how the game is played if you want to call that evil then what you're saying is business is evil and people are evil well

that that's your your conclusion but I want to I want to give it to you straight so you're just pointing it out that this is what's going on in the real world and people should be aware of it yes and be aware and not be so naive I I was naive myself when I entered the work world I I you know had a degree in the humanities and filled with literature which I you know it was a great education but I was naive I didn't understand that people would be doing these kinds of things and

so it was a hard education in life and so a lot of the laws aren't about I don't want you NE you're not going to go out there and crush your enemy totally that's kind of silly concept and if you read the chapter you know I'm not talking about you as a 25-year-old working in Anice office that you're crushing people but I want you to be aware of what others are doing what the people in power might be doing so you're not so naive so you're armed with knowledge maybe later you'll use some of these

laws maybe you won't but you'll understand how how the game is being played you make a good point there and in your books it seems like there's a common theme other than power which is really I'm talking I was talking about the artist deduction and 48 Laws of Power but it seems like there's a common theme amongst all of your books could you share with the audience what that is I'd say it's realism hard I call it hardcore realism or radical realism that's what I used in the 50th law basically we live in a world

where there's a lot of people are just covering things up they're not saying what what's really going on in the world and I just want to give it to you straight so The Art of Seduction my second book uh people were very upset that I use the word victim in there as opposed like the person that you're seducing is your victim but to me seduction is an inherently transgressive naughty Dark Art if you make it a sunny Angelic happy everybody loves each other art it's not seduction anymore it by its nature there is a victim

and so I want to give it to you straight and you know that's sort of what covers all of the books Mastery is a little bit different in some ways it's not as dark and Machiavellian as the other books but it's definitely a realistic look at yourself and your career and chapter two of Mastery is called submit to reality and that sort of pretty much sums it up so it's the same approach but maybe not quite as as Mack of ellian and on the subject of Mastery it's it seems like it does tell you that

you can Master a skill it it can happen you put in your time and it and it will you will get there eventually through hard work but what do you have to say about you know in today like I feel like Generation Y or even you know our generation today it's really about instant gratification yeah we want the results now what are your thoughts on this well it comes down to the following U Point here do you really want Power do you really want to be successful do you really want to master your field if

that's what matters to you then drop the fairy tales about shortcuts and things you can learn in 4 hours hours or four weeks or four months and look at look in the mirror and say it's going to take time it's going to take 10,000 hours I have a plan it doesn't mean you have to do if you read the book you know I'm not saying you have to have one job and it's all like a linear thing a stair way up to Mastery it involves zigzags it involves several skills but overall you have an idea

of where you want to be it's at 10 years from now you Andrew want to have a media Empire you you on the internet or something I don't know what it is but you got you understand that it's going to take time and there's no substitute for experience and skill because sometimes when you're like 21 22 you don't it's harder to understand but maybe if you bring it down to something like music or Sports it's a little easier many people will have had the experience of playing the guitar the piano or playing basketball or or

or some Sport and you know in the beginning you're awful at it you don't understand the rules you you're awkward it's not really fun because it's there's a lot of boring repetition and practice involved and as you get through it and you get past that barrier of a couple of years it starts getting more fun what you thought you knew in the beginning isn't it all what the truth is you understand the inside game the mental aspect you're no longer thinking about each maneuver on the court or whatever you got an overall sense of what's

going on the for music that's a function of time it's not going to happen in that first year so are you someone that really wants to be good at at what you do then accept it accept the reality and make it work for you it works for you if you're patient and you go through it and you know it's going to take 10 years it works against you if you want a shortcut if you want to take some magic pill or read some book then everything that I'm talking about is reversed and you're never going

to get very far in life so it just comes down to are you a realist and understand how the brain works or do you live in a fairy land where you know you can get whatever you want easily okay and what do you have to say about the guys who seem to have cheated this in society guys like you know Instagram four guys sold Instagram for a billion dollars to Facebook and and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg started this in his dorm room and boom hundreds of millions of dollars now he's a billionaire the Young billionaire in

the world I mean what do you have to say about those kind of guys well there's something to be said for that and the the jury is still out on Facebook I mean if you took to me and you had like in a boxing ring you had the Google guys and Zuckerberg meaning Paige and Brin and Zuckerberg and they were facing off in a boxing match I put my money on Google I think it's a better model I think it's going to make more money in the end and these are people who definitely follow the

root of Mastery who spent years at Stanford of going very deeply into algorithms search engines Etc so social media is a little less a little more slippery when it comes to to Mastery but I I maintain in in in all of my books and in the next book that I'm writing that sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is Success early on so there are plenty of stories of people who made Millions when they're 24 25 even before the internet era it happens do they last are they a one hit wonder are they

just going to cash in their their 50 hundred million dollar and that's it um if there if that's it then they're not Masters in my book they they did something interesting I don't think it's pure luck I don't think that somebody after six months comes up with something that's going to be where there's usually a period of preparation and apprenticeship but I want to see whether these people are going to make it past because what happens when you're very successful early on you begin to think that you have the Golden Touch and you're not really

learning from life it's better in my book to have some failure when you're in your 20s than just have a string of success it's it's probably going to go to your head and you're not going to you know you're not going to s be able to sustain it so jury's still out on Zuckerberg he's a brilliant kid no doubt and he's very smart at the political game but I'm still not totally convinced that 10 years from now Facebook is going to be what Google is today that's just how I feel that's an interesting point bringing

Zuckerberg and the Googles in a boxing ring yeah I'll probably go with the Googles too and is Zuckerberg a true master of his trait I mean he's successful financially but we'll see we'll have to see in the future so Mastery is something that takes time well no the model for me there was 50 when I did my book with 50 Cent because in hip-hop it's pretty exaggerated that phenomenon of the one hit wonder there's just like probably 18,000 rappers out there who've had one hits or one album and that's it that's the majority and 50

early on saw that he saw that it kind of can kill you and you know he decided to diversify and make himself a businessman he always thought of himself as a businessman and entrepreneur and spread himself out and be playing the game to last and be smarter about it and you might say well he's not the rapper that he was and that's that's pretty true but he's done very well for himself and is very successful and has lasted that's to me Mastery and so you know we can kind of Judge it on that whether someone

just has one good album or whether they can sustain it over 10 15 20 years and while we're on this topic this would actually be the opposite of someone who gets there really quick but what about if someone's studying a skill for decades and they never Mount to what they really aspire to be and they they're not they're not making progress in their skill they're just stag and no one knows about him well I don't know how many people are there out there like that and it's a good point because maybe we don't know about

them because nobody ever hears about them and I people have written to me saying you know I've been painting as an artist for 25 years and I've been doing it and I've never had any success and all that I it does happen but I think what happens in a lot of these instances is you're not quite in the right field necessarily if you were really in love with what you do it doesn't go stale so a lot of people they learn a skill and they just keep at it and it becomes kind of dead and

conventional and and roote they're a musician and they're just playing the same song over and over again and they're good at it but that's all there's no creativity involved it's not alive anymore so if you choose a field where it is constantly challenging and changing and you're excited and you're alive in the moment and you're learning then I don't think after 20 years you're not going to have something to show for it now maybe you won't be on the level of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or whomever but you're gonna have something you're is you're

going to show for it I I I think of my sister for instance uh who's an artist she works in clay she makes sculptures and pots she's been doing it for 40 years she is incredible she's a total Master of the craft now she's not huge usually successful in the art world for whatever reasons but she her work is incredible and there are people who love it and and and she's able to make a living so there are you know barriers there are things that are going to stop you from being hugely successful but also

I must say money isn't the only barometer of Mastery and I make it over and over again it's kind of you choose a field that you act that has a deep connection to you and you love your work and that's sort of the ultimate satisfaction and usually what happens in those cases is the money will come to you at some point because you're so good at what you do so I think for a lot of people who've been doing playing tennis for 20 years or painting or whatever and there's nothing is happening I think it's

become dead for them it's not something that that that they're Lo loving and they're not learning and it just is like they're they're kind of like a rat going around in a circle or a hamster so then they're in the wrong industry they're in the field what can someone do then to find their passion or find the skill that they want to master well you know it's sort of like a cliche find your passion and I I understand that it's easy and it sounds like something you put on your bumper sticker but it's it's a

little more complicated than that that's why I write books that are 300 some pages it's problem that a lot of people have is they don't know they're not connected to who they are that's sort of the gist of Mastery you're listening so much to people on the on Facebook to your parents to your friends and you're not listening to yourself and you don't no longer know what you like what foods you like what music you really like because you're you're just a a patchwork of other people's opinions and so then you're in your 20s and

your 30s and you go man I don't even know what I like anymore and and people come to me they go I I have no idea what you're talking about my life's task my calling I just well it's because you've gotten really far away from yourself and you got to reconnect and you know people deep down inside you know it you know it by the things that you hate you said you quit your job five months ago six months ago probably because you reached a level of frustration and you realized I don't like this this

isn't for me those kind of walls that you hit they're telling you okay that's not for you now move a little bit move towards what you love you're trying out blogging and pod casting you're probably discovering that you really like it you like the freedom but maybe in two years you'll discover it's not exactly what it is for me you hit another little wall and then you adjust you're going to find it if you keep doing that because you're accumulating skills I don't know what your job was previously to this but you're accumulating skills with

your blogging with your podcasting you'll accumulate more and then someday you'll put it all together with some incredible business so you got to have an awareness of what you hate if all you're thinking about is money you won't be able to make the right choices you'll choose a job because it's comfortable and that's great for a couple of years but then when they downsize you or it's so boring your hair is falling out you're lost you don't know you don't have any you know you don't know have have the right skills it's got to be

you're on a journey you're going to try things out that you think are interesting it fits all right let me work on that it doesn't fit all right I'm going to go in this other direction and by the time you're 32 33 something's going to happen if you play the game right and I have many Masters in the book that I interviewed I interviewed nine contemporary Masters it's always the same story I don't know if you're audience is familiar with Paul Graham um and why combinator but Paul you know was a computer scientist really brilliant

at it a programmer went to Harvard um but he hated uh working as a consultant he hated software he hated working for other people so he got into art because he thought he loved art then he knew he couldn't make a living at Art and then eventually when he's 32 and he's getting tired of being poor he has a great idea for his own business um that ends up being something that he sells to Yahoo for $50 million and he's he's his career takes off after that but when he had that moment at the age

of 32 31 he had already accumulated so many levels of skill that he was ready to make that leap that's where you're you're preparing yourself climbing that stairway so at a certain point you're prepared to make that leap to something pretty awesome all right thanks for including my personal story there and for you when did you find out that writing was something that you wanted to do and that this was your thing writing what did that look like for you when I met that man who was a book packager in 1995 and and he asked

me if I had ideas in books I I had a bit of an aha moment in thinking like wow books are really what I was meant to be doing I don't care if this works out if he doesn't end up helping me with this project um it it isn't journalism it isn't movies in Hollywood or tele ah this is it um and then when I wrote started writing the 48 Laws of Power it was like a perfect fit this was a perfect subject for me and if you notice the book is um looks kind of

peculiar it has a very unusual structure the way it's broken up into sections and the materials on the sides and the images and the quotes that just like poured out of me I mean it just sort of like I I don't know where it came from those kinds of things when that happens you realize that it's it's the right thing you know that's when you know you've hit it good the book may have flopped when you never know but you know that it for you it was the right thing it really resonated with who you

are it reflects your your strange your weirdness what makes you different from other people so there were a couple light bulb moments with that first book and the rest would be history with your three bestselling books and soon to be fourth with Mastery and still sticking on the topic of Mastery what were some of the biggest lessons that you learned when you were writing Mastery well I had a I had one personal lesson that was was pretty interesting essentially I was very late in delivering the book and I had written there's six chapters I had

written the introduction and four chapters so two chapters remained and they were the two most important and longest chapters in the book and as I was getting ready to write the fifth chapter the publisher said you're taking too long we want to publish this in the fall of 2012 and I don't think we're going to make it you either have to finish by this date or we're going to cancel the project or will will postpone it indefinitely and that was a really bad thing for me to postpone it I really needed it to come out

in the fall on the other hand they were essentially giving me about 11 weeks to write half the book and very complicated material and I and I was exhausted from writing the first four chapters and I just said I can't do this man I can't do it but I had no choice if you know my other books you know that in the war book I call it death ground you are on death ground and death ground means when your back is to the wall you're fighting an enemy Army and you're on a beach and behind

you is a wall if you don't defeat them they're going to slaughter you and so because of that you're going to fight that much harder that's death ground I was on death ground and so I summoned up the energy and I worked harder than I've ever worked in my life night and day and it ended up being the greatest thing because the intensity of the experience made me write better made me think better made me more creative made it just very intense and what was weird is the those chapters are about creativity and intuition and

I was experiencing that while I was writing those chapters because I only had a very limited amount of time to write them in and I wasn't going to make the book bad because or make those last two chapters weak I was determined to make them better than the rest of the book but I was living what I was writing about so it was it was like confirming the ideas that I was promulgating as far as being creative and intuitive can you elaborate or or what was the strongest takeaway that you had from that experience well

it's you know we waste a lot of time you know you you can get things done a lot quicker and working with a deadline is a good thing and sometimes when you're forced to get something done you do your best work I mean people in all Fields talk about that it sort of makes you realize that that you have you yourself put a limit on what you can do your brain and your energy you can do an incredible amount but because you're you're you're insecure you're whining you're worried about your health you're worried about this

side or the other you you put a wall you limit yourself and you can do the you can do so much more than you're capable of and I kind of discovered that in writing those last few chapters I had something similar with the 50th law as well but basically the the lesson is when we if if we're excited about something we can accomplish so much more than we think that we can and I think that further proves your point with you have to find the right field you have to find the right industry and for

you that's writing you really enjoy doing that and so you're so easily able to meet that deadline it's just further proof and it's now time that we enter the knowledge round welcome to the knowledge round where the guests will be asked rapid fire questions to give the audience invaluable pieces of wisdom to help transform their lives starting in 3 2 1 Showtime Robert how would you explain Mastery to a newcomer somebody who just picked up your book at a bookstore and you're standing right next to him it's the ultimate form of power it's the greatest

thing you can ever have in life because if you're creative and you're unique and you've mastered your field you have a ticket to whatever you want in life usually in this world you have no real power you're dependent on other people your boss fires you the industry has a downturn if you master your field people come to you you're able to always ride through the tough times you're always in demand there's nobody else who can replace you you're oneof a kind that's the power that that you have and everybody has the potential for it that's

how I explain mastery and what was personally holding you back from becoming the writer that you are today well it wasn't anything personal in me I it wasn't like I was making mistakes I just I hadn't found what I was meant to do and so really it was the opposite I didn't listen to parents and other people who were get who were getting worried about me I listened to myself and said I'm going to find it eventually it'll be a book or something that I'm going to write so I kind of stuck to it and

it was so it just was time time was the only barrier and eventually it came together okay and what's the best advice you've ever received from a mentor I remember years ago this man told me about being able to watch the grass grow I don't know what how the quote is but it's about patience and it's about how you know there's a quote of Emerson that says the the years teach us what the days can and he was basically saying time will sort of show you if you're patiently growing the the grass will get green

things will happen and it just seemed really interesting to me I couldn't understand it but in retrospect it was brilliant brilliant advice particularly to give to someone who's young because when you're young you're so impatient you really want things right away and being able to control that that I think that was I don't know I hadn't thought about that for years you just asked it and I just came back to him telling me that yeah well glad I got it out of you Robert and let's go into books now what is the most influential book

book that you've ever read and why it's hard to say you know I've read thousands of books over the years uh I know that makavelli uh for my work has perhaps had the biggest influence I love the books of Nicolo makavelli because he's he's like that hardcore realist that I'm talking about he if you can imagine seems kind of for me here in 2013 to be writing how I write seems you know fairly normal but to write that kind of in that style back in 1513 exactly 500 years ago interestingly in December it's the 500th

exact anniversary of the writing of the prince to do that 500 years ago was pretty bold pretty ballsy nobody had ever written about power and politicking and human nature like makavelli and when I read that when I was a kid I wow this is this this is really interesting stuff I love how he looks at people so I mean it's hard to to say one book but maybe that one for the books that I've written has been the most influential all right and got a scenario for you Robert imagine you woke up and you were

20 again what would you do how would you spend your time would you do anything differently I I wasted time I wrote the book 48 Laws when I was 36 37 if I had been Smarter with my time if I had been a little more focused I could have done what i' done earlier saved myself four or five years and now you know I wouldn't be quite so old I'd have more books I could write I'd be maybe take life a little more seriously you never have as much time as you think you do it

goes quickly and I maybe would have instead of thinking about that novel I was waned to write I would have written it it would have been terrible when I'm 25 but I would have written it and I never wrote it because I was so worried I think that's what I would do differently I'd take I'd be aware of how quickly things go and work a little harder and not be not waste time so what were you worried about there's a lot of anxiety about is this going to be a great book and that's sort of

what does in people uh particularly in the Arts but it can also happen to you in business you're just worried of failing you want the thing to be so damn good and you want all the success and you don't want any anything to go wrong that you never end up doing it you never end up starting the business you never end up writing the book or or doing what you intended to do so I would get 20 30 pages in and I would give it up oh this isn't good and I'd go on to something

else if I stuck with it and I wrote two three novels and kept writing them I would have ended up probably with something really good but I didn't I kept trying to redo it come up with something else I was impatient okay and here's another one for you what's one action one person can take right now that would get them closer towards their goals it's essentially knowing about yourself and what you want and having a clear set of goals it's really hard to manage your life if you don't have any sense of direction or purpose

you don't know you wake up and you could go A B C D or E and it can you and you just don't know what to do with your time or where to go or whether this job is good or not or whether I should be in this relationship or not and having a sense of clarity not like I'm you know this is exactly where I'll be in five years but a sense of Clarity and that Clarity can only come from knowing something about yourself and what you want in life and who you are and

what makes you different the other piece of advice that's I've already touched upon but maybe I'll hit it home a little harder is a lot of people are afraid to be themselves so if you notice anybody who's successful in any field in business or sports or the Arts there's usually you can say there's nobody else out there like them you know they're one of a kind and you have that potential so I I guess the other thing is to not be so afraid of going in your own direction of doing something that nobody else is

doing or starting a business that's not out there or writing something that's that's what's going to actually make you stand out from the crowd so all right now Robert getting deep if you had to write your obituary today what would it say yeah I guess I I led a pretty blessed life when I think about it I just can't believe how lucky I've been like I you know no really major illnesses knock on wood everything kind of falling into piece to in in together in the right way I just feel really blessed like that so

something about there's that quote of of DiVinci that I love that I put in Mastery and it goes like just as after a day of hard work brings a blessed sleep a life well lived brings a blessed death so the feeling that you kind of did you know you accomplish what you could accomplish you reach your potential makes you feel okay to it's okay to die you know you've done what you wanted to do maybe something to that effect you know and I got another deep one for you what is your philosophy on life trying

to you know come back to that realism is trying to see things as they are and it's it it's not a negative thing it's not like everything that you're looking at realistically is dark or ugly or bad some of it is like looking at just you know the things around you and appreciating them seeing them as they are seeing you know how amazing it is that the life started on the planet three billion years ago if you read my book uh 50th Law chapter 10 on the subblime it's pretty awesome thinking about you know we

were chimps 6,000 years ago and here we are now a lot of thoughts like that can can be very inspiring and make you think wow it's pretty amazing to be alive that's kind of part of this realism thing is is just looking how things are as opposed to all of these abstractions and things that come from other people that aren't who you are or what you know so maybe that would be my philosophy of life and I I do um for over three years now I've been meditating I do the form of Zen meditation I

really got into it from my War book when I did heavily into Zen Buddhism and warfare and that kind of philosophy of a way of looking at life sort of accepting things as they are which is sort of the heart of Zen Buddhism I think is very much appeals and resonates with me and Robert do you have any parting piece of guidance for the thousands of listeners today things things have a way of of coming to you if you play it right and you know you never quite know what that is when you're in the

moment when you're in the present things might look bad or whatever but if you follow some of the things that I'm talking about in in Mastery stuff is going to come to you in a weird way opportunities are going to come to you and you're going to recognize them and you're going to exploit them so it it's hard to realize if you're depressed in the moment or you're feeling down about yourself or about your career if you have a plan and you're kind of moving towards it you don't have to worry so much about what's

happening right now you know things are going to come to you sounds kind of mystical and if you read the book I make it a little less mystical particularly in chapter six but I'm trying to say that you I want you to be the ultimate opportunist in life there's so many opportunities around you but most people aren't seeing them they're not picking them up they're not realizing it if I didn't realize that meeting this man was the opportunity of a life to write the book The 48 Laws of Power I wouldn't be here talking to

you so it's more like preparing yourself for those great moments that come all right Robert and as we're coming to a close what's exciting you today what are you currently working on well I'm I'm basically um about to go to Brazil on Saturday for a book tour that's pretty exciting I'm working on my new book basically in the Mastery I have a chapter on social intelligence and I'm sort of expanding that into a book basically how to understand people human nature how to read people how to know what makes them so weird so you can

figure them out and decode them and not be operating in the dark that's my new book so on that and then we're trying to turn one of either my first or second book into a television project so I'm working on that uh as well which is should be fun that's I'm really interested in that book do you have plans for a release date books take a couple years for me so um you know that that's I just my my only plan is just to stay alive and write it um and it'll be out in a

couple years I I I do plan this this book I'm going to blog a little little bit in advance of the book and not disappear for so many years so I will be teasing the public or my readers with some things from the new book but it will take a couple of years you got a lot of really exciting things going for you with the TV show trip to Brazil got a new book that I'm definitely going to get on well Robert go ahead and give yourself a plug so the audience can get in contact

with you in the future my website is wwww seduction andw war.com the and is spelled out Powers seduction andw war.com there's links to the news website for Mastery we have another site and my Twitter account and my Facebook stuff so maybe that's that's the center of gravity there power seduction and war.com all right I'll put all that in the show notes okay well Robert thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your story your life lessons and about your books and your philosophies with us today thank you and there you have it

that's going to wrap up episode three with Robert Green and Robert's actually one of my favorite authors so to have them on this show in such a short amount of time you know really means a lot to me and it goes to show that for all the listeners who have ideas they have projects that they want to work on or that they put away you know get to it make it happen start taking action and with time you know consistent action action will build up and you can make some incredible things happen for me this

is huge like just getting this podcast up and having Robert Green and the past two guests that I had were amazing so I challenge you to take action on something I know you have something you're thinking about it now and I challenge you to go and do that do the first step you don't have to complete the entire project but take the first step whatever it is you got to make a phone call you got to start writing you got to get some plans you got to hire somebody take that first step and then the

next day do one more step next week take a couple more steps and maybe you take a break maybe you take a break for a few days but then you get back at it you know you reassess what you're doing then you just keep going cuz with time you're going to have you're going to have something there for you you're going to have a nice asset there waiting for you all right well if you do like what this podcast is doing the knowledge for men podcast please I'd appreciate a review on iTunes just rating reviews

it really helps support the rankings of the podcast and uh it allows you know more people to hear it so just a few a few seconds or a minute of your time can really make an impact on a lot of people all right guys until next time thank you for listening to the knowledge for men podcast show it's been a pleasure having you be a part of a thriving community of men who want to crush it in all aspects of life I'm on a mission here to inspire millions of guys and with your help we're

going to make a dent in the universe check out knowledge for men.com for a ton of free content that's designed to help you live a remarkable life again that's knowledge4 men.com I hope to see you there and always remember 2014 is the official year of the crush where we take action to get the life we've always dreamed of this is your host Andrew farby and until next time let's do it