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Robert Greene

Mastery Paperback – October 29, 2013

by Robert Greene (Author)

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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.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Greene’s specialty is analyzing the lives and philosophies of historical figures like Sun Tzu and Napoleon, and extracting from them tips on how to manipulate people and situations—a cutthroat worldview that has earned him a devoted following among a like-minded readership of rappers, drug dealers and corporate executives."—The New York Times

"Compelling."—Forbes

"Illuminating."—The Guardian

About the Author

Robert Greene has a degree in classical studies and is the author of several bestselling books, including The 48 Laws of Power, The 33 Strategies of War, The Art of Seduction, and Mastery. He lives in Los Angeles.

Product details

Item Weight : 1.3 pounds
Paperback : 368 pages
ISBN-10 : 014312417X
ISBN-13 : 978-0143124177
Product Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint Edition (October 29, 2013)
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: #3,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- #88 in Business Motivation & Self-Improvement (Books)
- #90 in Motivational Management & Leadership

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IA Manager

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME!

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2019

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I can boil this down for you: consider your interests and bents; choose your career path accordingly; study hard, work hard and you can become very good at what you do.

182 people found this helpful

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M. R. Andrus

I wasted my money on this on a recommendation from another ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2018

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I wasted my money on this on a recommendation from another person. The book is well written and sometimes has interesting biographical facts on the subject persons but over all is the usual self-help drivel. It is filled with countless (I didn't bother to count them) stories about subjects like Edison, Faraday, and Da Vinci but none of these stories lead to a system I can apply to my life.

It is a pattern followed by the self-help writers to fill their tomes with anecdotal story after story that lead nowhere and this book follows that pattern. I kept reading, hoping to find some nuggets but ... nothing.

192 people found this helpful

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Sonia Thompson

This book changed the way I view my work

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2015

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It got me less focused on achieving results quickly, and to focus on letting go of time, and spending time doing what’s necessary to gain an understanding and comprehension of the craft.

And not only did the book lay the foundation of why mastery is important, but Robert Greene also does a beautiful job of weaving through the challenges people on the quest experience - as well as providing a thorough, and proven roadmap of each of the phases someone on this quest must implement.

It’s a life changing book and I highly recommend it.

277 people found this helpful

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Jennifer Gresham

Fantastic! I recommend it to all my clients

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2016

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As a coach, I'm working with people to increase their professional performance. I have a scientific background in this topic and have gotten great results for my clients. But what's clear is that the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving the goals you want in your career are: 1) an impatience that causes you to doubt your ability to achieve your goals, and 2) a lack of feedback on strategy selection and execution that leaves you operating in a vacuum and results in strategy hopping or quitting too early.

Robert Greene's book addresses these issues not just with solutions, but with case studies that allow you to see how these principles work in reality. Henry Ford failed the first time he tried to manufacture a car? Buckminster Fuller was about to commit suicide because he felt like such a failure? Charles Darwin's father thought his son had no future or skills?

This is what real success looks like and I think for many, it will help them put their focus where it must be: on doing the work and finding a mentor or coach who can give you the necessary feedback for mastery. The things we often covet, such as fame or more money, won't get you to mastery directly, and even if you're successful at obtaining them without learning your trade, they won't mean very much (I have worked with plenty who prove that!). Mastery is the goal and this is a great book for getting there.

49 people found this helpful

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Mike Mertens

Powerful work on finding your life's purpose and developing a path to mastery

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2013

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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 interesting
2.) 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 Mode
2.) Skills Acquisition - the Practice Mode
3.) Experimentation - The Active Mode

There 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 environment
2.) Play to your strengths (this is very important - see further thoughts on this below)
3.) Transform yourself through practice
4.) Internalize the details - the life force (Leonardo Da Vinci example)
5.) Widen your vision
6.) Submit to the other - the Inside Out perspective
7.) Synthesize all forms of knowledge

This 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 Harford
3.) 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 [...])

578 people found this helpful

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Orange Monkey

YOUR BEST - AND ONLY FRIEND see page 165

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2017

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If you have this inescapable drive of creating change, unable to tune down your inner voice, pursuing visions of making things better long-term (and thus of course going against conventions) you need this book. You will hear your own thoughts, read about your frustrations and challenges, those seldom or hardly discussed. And you'll be given perspectives and guidance. Learning to choose which battles not to fight, and which you should fight, and how - for your greater goal.

34 people found this helpful

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Ms. Camay

I am a Master!!!

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2017

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This book has encouraged and empowered me at a time when I quit corporate america and stepped out on faith to build my own business and expand my brand. It has given me real world examples of other "Masters" and their craft and told their stories of how they did essentially the same thing I am doing. I am still in the process of reading this book, but love it so far!

20 people found this helpful

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Kanwar Anand

MASTERY : A LONG REVIEW.

Reviewed in India on February 5, 2017

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Robert Greene is more than just insightful. He goes a couple of steps further by giving examples of various successful masters who mastered their craft. Not just this, he also gives examples of people who had passion for their field but burned out. There are so many things one can learn from this book but the elementary structure of the book says there are three phases/leavel in mastery,

1. The Apprentice stage
2. Creative / Active stage
3. Mastery

Most people achieve the first stage but it comes with a set of its own prerequisites. One must find the purpose of their life in order to ensure catapulting themselves to the level of someone aiming for mastery. Nowhere does the author mention “hard work” because when you do something you want to do or be beyond great at there is no real energy required. The initial phases may perturb you or make you want to give up but you must fight the social dynamic surrounding you. Many may have tried a field and failed at it. We must not allow our social convictions to make us settle down. We must look beyond…  Before I sound more jumbled up let me tell you Mastery is not an easy book to read or sit through. It challenged nearly everything but in many ways it has told me the key to unhappiness and resentment. The reason we are unhappy or depressed is because our creative potential remains potential and never sees the flourish it wants to enjoy.

If you start something purely for the purpose of making money, your drive will be limited only for a few years.  However, if something holds your interest and you wish to submerge yourself, initial failure or resounding success, should not matter.   I noticed the book has many quotes but none of the quotes are simple. I had to read them again two or three times, sometimes even more and still did not understand most of those quotes. I felt rather dense.

The author’s examples of people with average intelligence who went on to achieve a lot include - Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Zen Master Hakun, Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, the poet John Keats, Thomas Edison, scientist Michael Faraday, the writer Marcel Proust, the dancer Martha Graham, the jazz legend John Coltrane and the pianist Glenn Gould.

Nothing can be achieved unless you discover your calling. This is also step 1. There are various strategies in finding your life’s calling and I can’t enlist all of them here. He also talks about taking on a person as your mentor. I found this very intriguing. All examples will make for excellent read.   Side Note : When you have a person as your mentor in a certain field, you will save yourself the time invested in making mistakes and learn from all the virtues of your mentor. They will guide you and curb you in a way to the right path. A worthy mentor will not shy from sharing his tricks, secrets and strategies from you; ideally he/she will through live on. You, however, are not bound to take everything the mentor says and may choose certain virtues to instil in your own personality.

The CREATIVE ACTIVE stage requires often times many years of practice and experimenting including various setbacks and failures.
The author forewarns the reader of various creative pitfalls such as “grandiosity” , “inflexiblity” , “dependency” , “Conservatism”, “impatience” and so on. Then he ventures to explain various strategies.

Again there are several examples here, often the author connects the same person as an example in the “Apprentice” phase, then the “Creative/Active” phase and eventually the “mastery phase”  About the chapters and pages on MASTERY - I would like to say - you have to read them for yourself. I found this the most challenging part of the book because though I read it in entirety, the retention was not that high. This is merely because masters are not common people. They flow through extreme waves of consciousness. Let me enlighten you with an example I made of my own -

Supposing you are sitting with Shakespeare in a library and you both are given sheets of paper to fill with literary candour. The way you approach the scenario and the way he will approach will have the difference and education of a hundred or so years because the way he approaches writing is from within and possesses a kind of sorcery not easily understandable by an amateur. The brains of a master are wired differently after years and years of practice and application.

I am not trying to belittle you or make you feel afraid, I am merely stating that this book is not one you can read just once and then let sit. You have to make this your life guide, your life coach. You have to absorb the essence of what the author is saying. This is possibly why I think this is not for everyone. It is far from being just an interesting read. I mean it is more than just that.   Something in me has changed since I began this book. I give it four stars because thats exactly how much I understood the book.  I took close to four weeks to finish it.

143 people found this helpful

L. Tait

OMGenius!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 26, 2017

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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!

64 people found this helpful

Neil

I don't know

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2019

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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.

13 people found this helpful

Carla G

Best self development book I cane across in my life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2017

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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.

20 people found this helpful

Moses

One by Greene is plenty

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2019

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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.

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