7 Essential Lessons I Learned from "Mastery" by Robert Greene

Hello!

This is my first real, serious, honest, crazy-detailed story for Vocal. I had recently just finished reading a book called Mastery by Robert Greene, a book that I have been trying for the last 3 or 4 years to finish. Life would simply get in the way, and boom, not done. But now, I can proudly say I've finished it, and have taken the time to write this. They are in the order of what I learned as I progressed through the book, so if you have any critiques or suggestions, I am more than happy to hear them out.

Let's get into it, shall we?

Determination

The first lesson I learned from Robert Greene's Mastery is the necessity to have determination. That isn't to say that you have to have some sort of massive, inhuman amount of determination, but you do need to have it. Many large goals we have in life, such as becoming an expert in a field, becoming good enough to play a song or two on an instrument, or just being a more sociable person takes a bit of determination to pull off. If you think about it, there are hundreds (probably thousands) of reasons that will keep you away from achieving goals like these. And if they don't keep you from achieving your goals, the least they will do is make the process take longer than it should.

And a lot of these distractions often are ones that we may or may not realize, such as checking our phones, e-mail, or texting that person who probably doesn't like you back. That's just the external stuff. Even internally, there are other reasons why we won't achieve our goals as soon as we could or would like. We get bored, tired, frustrated, or insecure about how we seem to others. There is an insane number of odds that we encounter that can make it hard to progress. Determination, thus, is necessary to break through barriers. In a later lesson I learned (#4), having a task or goal that seriously matters to you will help bring you through.

In my own experience (and I'll probably bring this up often enough that everyone will eventually know my whole life), when I was finishing my master's degree, let me tell you: I had this 35-something-page paper due a week before the end of the spring semester. In the semester before, I had that same 35-page paper, and then another 35 page paper in the semester before that. So this was my third assigned 35-page paper. To all my doctoral students or other fellow master's degree holders who have had it harder, kudos. But at this point, I was at my limit, completely burned out from writing so much about psychology.

In about a week before the deadline of the last academic paper I'd ever write, I had written absolutely zero words. It was supposed to fully explain the history of one of the many psychological theoretical orientations, of which I chose Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). This style of therapy, created and refined by the late Albert Ellis, was to be explained concisely in its entirety in merely 35 pages. Sure, this sounds simple enough, but I was also expected to go over the theory's weaknesses, statistical effectiveness, and include two other theoretical orientations that would help "bridge the gap" where REBT had faltered. If I remember correctly, the minimum amount of sources I needed to have was 20. Not too awful, if it wasn't my third time writing a small story (and if it wasn't a week before my paper was due).

I sat there on a Sunday evening, all of my sources stacked on top of each other looking back at me. I had one week to write this paper. In that time, it hit me:

If I don't finish this paper, I am going to fail out of graduate school.

All this time—six whole years—would be squandered. I'm a Type A student in my head, but Type B student in execution. I already imagined what it would like to be yelled at by my parents who I know still carried (at the time) some disdain from me switching out of nursing school in my second year of college. But I knew my limits then. And I began to wonder if I was reaching another one of my limits now. I've had sleepless nights. I've stayed up all night to do papers all the time, always cutting it close. I've done it to 12-page research papers, 15-page research papers, hell, even 20-page papers. And I would snag myself an A every time.

But this was different—this was the paper that would earn me that degree, and I had two professors running this class. To me, they were like two gatekeepers to freedom, and they were not going to just let anything pass.

So, on that same Sunday night, I went over to the late-night café on campus that was inside of another residence hall. I ordered myself about 3-5 energy drinks, three orders of boneless honey BBQ chicken, hella ketchup and honey mustard, and sat myself down in a corner by myself. I cracked open my first can of Monster, posting myself on Instagram drinking what I consider to be straight up poison. I quit drinking energy drinks a while back, but when my friends saw me using it, they knew I was serious about something. I ate my food and walked back to my room, armed for one hell of a ride.

I wrote feverishly through the night. I didn't stop for anything except the occasional bathroom break. By the time I had stopped, it was around 11 a.m. on a Monday. This process essentially repeated itself again and again until I fully completed the paper at around 3 p.m. on Friday, two hours before it was due. My Instagram story has those five days archived for me to reflect on and relive for the days to come.

Even though I was in a palpitation-riddled, sleep-deprived, psychology-filled delirium, the only thing that kept me going was the determination to finish. In my head, I didn't have a choice. There was no "last resort". And that kind of thinking gets me going and gets me moving. In the weeks that followed, I landed a healthy A-minus for a grade.

In your own life, it's important to think about the goals you have, and to pull together a mindset that shuts out needless distractions and gets you that laser-focus. For me, it's telling myself that there is no other way out but through. For you, it might be the same thing, or maybe to set aside exactly 30, 60, or 90 minutes each day to dedicate time to your work. Experiment with what works, and implement it with serious intent.

Mentorship

The second lesson I learned from Mastery is the necessity to have some kind of mentor. This could be your classic thought of finding another individual more experienced in your field or hobby, or finding yourself a role model who has a tangible journey that you can follow. Whatever thought came to mind for the word "mentorship," you are probably right—and it couldn't hurt to try out the alternative approach.

Having a role model saves you time from fumbling about in the dark trying to find your voice, style, and appearance. Sure, it's okay to experiment and whatnot, but experimenting all the time and putting what works for you on the side just to "try one other thing" is not a very good idea.

For example, if you are good at working in small bursts, you may want to consider attempting the Pomodoro Technique and work in 25-minute increments. If this works for you and you like it, you don't have to waste time trying out the monastic-style version of Deep Work, where you work with laser-focus for weeks and months, and then relaxing when the season changes.

Years ago in my senior year of high school and early years of college, I remember sometimes being asked in questionnaires or ice-breakers (ugh) who my role model was, or who guides me towards my desired path. My initial response back then would be to say "me," since I genuinely was trying to find my way. I want to be a lot of things—from a polyglot to an animator, as well as a musician and an artist (and you wonder how I wound up doing psychology). Looking back at the responses I gave to those questions, it was a bit naïve and even selfish of me to say it. The reason being is because I thought I knew what I was doing. But in reality I was just following wherever which way my emotions would take me. If on a whim I wanted to write poetry, I would, and if I wanted to play video games, I would.

Video games won out by a landslide in the years to follow, by the way.

I do however, these days, have a role model that is important to me. Gary Vaynerchuk is a person I look up to because of his fluid ability to be both a trailblazer in terms of his attitude, and yet being gentle at the same time. Because of him, I have a vision of what I want to become, both professionally and personally. Tying this back to what I learned from Mastery about mentorship, looking up to Gary has saved me plenty of time. When it comes to achieving mastery, time is of the essence. Luckily, Gary has practically documented every single step of his journey and shares it over and over again in his myriad of videos, and so I have a pretty good idea of how Gary has gotten to where he is today.

What I picked up from Gary is the work ethic he exudes. I won't go into detail about it, but it has given me the tangible tools necessary to get right into doing the work. Now, I am certainly human and I don't condone the "hustle fetish," but I do give it my all when I am sitting at my desk and working. As time has gone on, I figured out parts of myself that work for me that are vastly different from Gary, such as the hours of which I work (afternoons and nights), my preferred goal in life (which is not to buy the New York Jets), and how I choose to portray myself (I prefer a little bit of aesthetic).

Keep in mind that your mentor isn't necessarily someone that you have to meet. They could just be people whose personality or style of approach is tangible enough to be understood well. Once you have a mentor, take on their style—be it their work ethic, personality, etc. Once you feel that you have acquired a firm grasp of their approach, add in your own twist. Like I said earlier, Gary doesn't care too much about how his appearance looks. He's focused on the work. I like to follow a bit of a pattern, and so something like my Instagram page may have a color theme for the month and post order. Whatever you do, be sure to retain your individuality between yourself and your mentor and then implement your spin once you think you've figured it out. The whole point of mentors and role models is to help save you time and get you up to speed. Like I mentioned in the first lesson I learned, there are many odds against you; having a mentor will save you time. And time is your biggest asset.

Social Intelligence

The third lesson I learned from Mastery is the importance of having social intelligence. The perspective that Greene portrays when it comes to social intelligence is nuanced. Depending on where you look, there will be loads of content that will encourage "having XYZ skills so you can get what you want." However, these sorts of skills, while they may work, can leave you at the mercy of others' wills.

For example, if you are willing to do anything and everything to achieve your dreams, you may wind up having a carrot dangled over your head by others, who will coax you to jump through hoops and bend over backward just so you can get what you want. In scenarios like this, you can be easily exploited. As much as I want to deny left and right about how manipulative people can be, it does happen and they do exist.

That being said, Greene suggests seeking out creating genuine connections with other people, and coming from a place of acceptance towards others, specifically being accepting of who people are and where they are at. At the same time, you also want to be mindful that you are not creating a connection with another person because of what you want them to be, or what you see them being capable of. If you were, for example, to become enamored with the potential of what a person could become, then you wind up neglecting the current person that they are now. In essence, take each person as they are, and not who you want them to be.

Greene goes further to explain two types of human behavior that have helped refresh the way I think about social interactions. The first type to be aware of is specific human behavior. These are the decisions and actions a person takes, which gives a telltale sign of the person's morals, motives, and personalities. When observing these kinds of activities, it is important to recognize that people do in fact change over time—some slightly, others grandly—and so when you begin to formulate a tangible frame of reference to this person, be sure not to be rigid in your thinking. Not everyone who is hot-headed remains hot-headed. Those who are even-tempered can certainly lose their cool. With this in mind, use that frame of reference and see the decisions and actions a person takes as a way to further update, validate, or invalidate your thoughts on this person. One other thing to keep in mind about specific human behavior is that individuals who exert an excessive or blatantly overt amount of one characteristic is likely indicative of an ulterior or opposing characteristic beneath the surface. An example of this would be someone who is continuously making jokes about nearly everything to appear extremely friendly may actually be rather mean-spirited.

The second type of human behavior to be aware of is general human behavior. This was a bit easier for me to pick up, and here Greene suggests that there are several human characteristics that everyone exudes to some degree, as well as individuals who exude one or more of these characteristics that are completely out of control. The list of characteristics are envy, rigidity, self-obsession, conformist, and passive aggression. As a student who has studied psychology and has socialized with many a person, I can see these characteristics in almost everyone I've met, myself included. Greene then mentions it would be best to avoid persons who have these kinds of characteristics in severe cases.

I could say that I have been "lucky" to encounter (and then avoid) persons like these. Overly envious people have this sort of self-destructive tendency to magnify the things they don't have and point fingers towards people who do. It becomes this constant conversation that is indirectly about them, despite how much they would talk about others. Very rigid persons are similar to talking to a very predictable person, almost down to the point of being able to write on paper what they would do next. Nothing changes, everything is the same, and if you even tried to change it once, you'd get a fuss from them. Sure, routine is great, but changing absolutely nothing is a bit over the top. As for conformist people, it is pretty much the same thing. Anything that is trendy or is "something everyone else is doing," they're probably doing it. No surprises here either. The folks I once knew who were self-obsessed can surprisingly go on for hours about themselves—it's amazing to see in small doses. Lastly, the passive-aggressive people (aka "petty") are people we probably know in our own lives. They're always somehow wound up in some kind of drama, heavily in a game of tit-for-tat/eye-for-an-eye. As much as I like tea, I do like having peace a lot more. The best thing you can do is avoid people like this.

However, like Greene mentions, everyone has these characteristics to some degree, and you'll eventually have to deal with people who have these personalities, but are not at destructive heights. The best thing you can do is to remain factual when you speak. Demonstrate your truth through consistent action and speech. If you have something to show to demonstrate your value, even better. It is difficult to argue with results or current events when you have the facts, documentation, and work to prove it. This isn't to say that you can't have fun like you normally would socializing, but when conversations become about your journey to mastery, it's best to be serious.

Achieving great social intelligence is hard, and as Greene puts it,

"we are quick to discern the mistakes and defects of others, but when it comes to ourselves we are generally too emotional and insecure to look squarely at our own. Second, people rarely tell us the truth about what it is we do wrong. They are afraid to cause conflict or to be viewed as mean-spirited. And so it becomes very difficult to perceive our flaws, let alone correct them.”

At the end of the day, be accepting of others, be conscientious of others' behaviors as well as your own, and do your best to be factual when conversations become serious, or are about your journey.

It takes a lot of practice to be socially intelligent, and having some kind of mastery here can be a journey in its own right.

A Dimensional Mind

The fourth lesson I picked up from Mastery is the necessity to achieve what Greene calls a Dimensional Mind. To achieve this Dimensional Mind, you have to combine two other mental components, known as the Original Mind and the Conventional Mind.

To keep it brief, the Original Mind is the mind that sees the world with awe and wonder, kind of like watching fireworks, a fountain show, or a Broadway play for the first time. You see the entire experience for what it is and just soak it all in completely, without picking apart the details or rationalizing the experience. Usually, as years go on, this kind of novelty experience becomes difficult to come across.

The Conventional Mind is the one that rationalizes the world through facts and opinions. An example that comes to mind is when I've watched the movie Avatar (the one with the "blue people") for the sixth time and am now fully aware that it's a story similar to Pocahontas, that the Na`vi language has irregular subject-verb agreement compared to English, it is highest-grossing film behind Avengers: Endgame, and that James Cameron needs to hurry up. Here, I've gone over the experience of Avatar with facts and opinions, rather than just the feeling of complete amazement when I watched the film for the first time.

Combining the two minds takes three steps. The first step is simple—the task you are about to take on needs to be important. Like I said at #1 regarding the necessity for having determination, having a task that you care about will make determination come to you much more fluidly. When I was writing that final paper, I cared about the freedom I would have once I finished it, and that gave me the determination to lock myself in and finish it in a few days. Obviously if I cared about it so much, I would've done it sooner, but we're all learning how to do better. I certainly saw myself in a different light after that.

The second and third steps are a bit more complicated, but they are essentially talking about ways to remain creative and keep persevering with a Dimensional Mind so that you can achieve mastery. To make things clear and concrete, I will use the example of attempting to achieve mastery at writing poetry.

The second step encourages you to have a mindset of what Greene calls "Negative Capability," which means to have a non-judgmental perspective of yourself as you progress towards getting better at something. The more Negative Capability you have, the more open you are to making mistakes, feelings of uncertainty/doubt, and the ability to endure the hardship and likelihood of having your world turned upside down. With the poetry example, you can understand that mastering poetry means you will probably write some pretty bad poetry. Your rhymes will be nursery-like, the rhythm and flow will be weird, you're gonna use words just because it rhymes, and you will probably lose in the first round of poetry slams. Your ego will likely take a beating. But having strong Negative Capability means you can handle the heat and the struggle. As you go deeper and deeper into your practice, you refine yourself and your work, cultivating stronger and stronger awareness of where you can improve and capitalize on your strengths. You are also taking account of how your emotions affect the way you work—if you are in a sad mood, you will be better able to write deep-seated emotional poetry, and if you are lovestruck you can probably note all the little details about that someone special to you. As you cultivate all of these things, your mind stays wide open and creative, and your Negative Capability will allow you to endure.

The third step towards a Dimensional Mind is one that I enjoyed learning about the most. It talked about boredom and the fading zeal that occurs when striving towards a goal that is very far away (which is much like mastery). I'll use the example of fitness here, since I have a lot of experience with it myself. Greene mentions that when we are working on a project, we don't usually maintain that continued excitement from the beginning to the end. Usually, when the fire burns out, people tucker out and call it quits. But here is where people who have been down this road of mastery realize that this kind of boredom is also part of the process. To counter the waning excitement, Greene suggests the use of deadlines.

Deadlines are kind of similar to the intensity you feel when you first start a project—the only difference is that the pressure is coming from the end drawing near, rather than the excitement pushing you forward. Ever since I had left school, there were absolutely no deadlines out there to goad me on (except for student loans). I didn't realize how much deadlines have carried me through high school and college. If I hadn't had a deadline, I'd honestly squander the time in-between doing whatever I felt like. When it comes to fitness, I give myself a deadline to ensure that I get some kind of workout in at least once a day, six times a week. When I first started embarking on my fitness journey, I only went to the gym three times a week. Eight months to a year later, I was able to increase the amount and grew comfortable with it.

When setting up a deadline, swear and stand by it—treat it as sacred. If you break it, try again—but remember that the more times you keep breaking your deadlines, the harder it will be to convince yourself. Start easy, and remember too that if you break your deadline, you may want to reflect on if the task you set out to do is something you want.

(Considering the current circumstances we live in and staying home, I have dialed back the workouts to 5 a week.)

This combination of openness for creativity and perseverance through hardship and toil is that Dimensional Mind. The openness is a characteristic of the Original Mind, and the perseverance and use of deadlines are the rational, executing, working side of the Conventional Mind, combined together.

Pitfalls Are Everywhere, Here's Three

The fifth lesson, to me, was likely the easiest of them all to pick up and understand. I learned in detail about the most common emotional pitfalls that hamper progress to mastery. I won't mention them all, but the biggest ones that stood out to me were Impatience, Complacency, and Grandiosity.

Impatience is one we could all probably figure out as to why we don't become adept and masters at what we desire. As Greene puts it, it is the most prevalent pitfall of them all. The reason people stop achieving is because they didn't get to where they wanted to be soon enough, and so they give up. The easiest example I can give (and have experienced myself) is weight loss. In my first attempt at losing weight I had went from around 250 pounds to 170 pounds in a year and a half using a ketogenic diet, and tons of endurance running. It happened super fast, and when I got to 170, I think I ate a slice of bread or some pasta, and boom, I completely lost control. Let me tell you—being on a diet with little to no carbs, and then eating a carb? You will feel it. You will feel the carb. I yo-yo'ed right back up to 250 pounds in less than a year. I was certainly living the dream when I was at that low of a weight, but the return to 250 (and higher) was awful. I lost my grip. But this time, starting since about November 2018, I have consistently gone to the gym, and have been keeping the weight off since. I realized after my first blunder that a weight loss journey is primarily a mental game, as well as a game of patience. Having lost nearly ~60 pounds so far, I intend to keep this weight off for good. Deploying patience in anything you do will allow you to savor the journey as you make your way to getting better and better. In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, the faster you get what you want, the more vulnerable you are to lose it.

Complacency was a notable pitfall, as this is something that can be seen in our superiors or those with a bit of arrogance. The essence of this pitfall is that once we start to think we're getting good at something, we start to think we have a firm grip on the concept completely. Once this happens, there are things like rigidity and complacency that settle in, and we start to think we're basically "too good" or "good enough." While this next bit may seem drastic, Greene mentions that the moment we stop practicing on our path to mastery, we are withering away and wasting time. In some cases, this is true, and I admire the dramatic and seriousness of it, but for others, this can brew up a lot of anxiety and discomfort. What I will say is that your progression should be gradual and with some sort of routine—after all, if you care about it enough, you will make time for it. Take your development seriously, and in the times that you are not working, enjoy yourself. In every moment, be there. Going back to complacency, however, remember that once you think you've gotten pretty good, chances are you're just only getting started.

The last bit of Gradiosity was a remarkable explanation. Greene mentions that "praise generally does harm." I had to think this one over for a bit, and for someone who wouldn't mind being a little bit famous, it began to make sense. While harsh criticism can probably crush someone's spirit, insane amounts of praise can also cause someone to become hooked onto the good feelings received from it. If this happens, a person may continue to create things that please the audience, and deviate away from their path of mastery. This is kind of is a bit difficult to describe in other areas for me, but in terms of fitness, if someone was losing weight and then met someone who liked them so much that they stopped exercising, the journey for them is over. It becomes questionable if the person who was exercising was doing it for themselves or for the sake of praise. The premise here is to remember that when you practice, do it for you—not for external praise. As good as it feels, the depths of your reach towards mastery will feel far better than any sort of praise ever would. To me, praise is liking icing on the cake—sweet, delicious, but not good for you alone.

Reasons For Pursuing Mastery

As I was reading through this book and getting closer to the end, I was beginning to get more and more convinced that I should really just put the book down already and get out there. But Greene manages to perfectly time the content, and moves onto what I considered the sixth lesson from this book—there are good reasons to achieve mastery. He comes up with a healthy list of eight reasons why achieving mastery is necessary. Two of them caught my attention the most, but don't get me wrong when I say that all eight are fantastic reasons.

The two that were most appealing were the development of the authentic voice and alchemical creativity. The authentic voice, most of all, is an important one because I think many of us are inclined to either stand out or fit in. I want to stand out. In this book, achievement of mastery leads to the development of your voice, because you have a full-on grip of what you're trying to do and understand. In terms of poetry or music, once you have achieved a level of advanced skill or mastery, you can begin to create music and prose of your own. Everything will flow together nicely, seem unforced, but at the same time, woven together with intention and makes an impact. This, all at the same time, remains entirely original as well. Finding your authentic voice leads to the birth of your own kind of music, your own kind of poetry, and your own kind of style. To think that one day you may just be so good at something that you wind up developing your style to things that separates you from the crowd is great. Or like after many years of running your own business, you somehow manage to pierce the market or find a niche with little competition. From there, you can take up as much space as you want and run the field and give it a culture and style. On top of this, this constant pursuit of mastery leads you to uncover sides of yourself that you didn't know existed before then. In some way, you wind up amazing yourself in the things you can do and are capable of, and thus surprise yourself and others, too.

The "alchemical creativity" part sounded a bit mystical and/or an attempt to sound arcane, but it made a lot of sense afterward. Considering the notion that achieving or even coming close to mastery takes a great deal of time and determination, reaching alchemical creativity (which can be seen as both a reason and characteristic of mastery) is demonstrated by being able to express contradictions you see in your personality through your work, or contradictions you can see in the world or field at large. Greene makes an example of this, making a commentary about a certain country: "…[whose] culture espouses the ideal of free expression [but] is charged with an oppressive code of political correctness that tamps free expression down."

Another example of a contradiction like this is the ever-skyrocketing costs of college/university, and yet how easily one could access a plethora of free, structured information by visiting free educational websites. Many of the ones we know today like Udemy, Coursera, DuoLingo, KhanAcademy, CodeAcademy, Brilliant, et cetera. Asides from being able to get hands-on experience from something like nursing, much of what one wants to learn can be accessed practically for free. Being able to encounter and embrace different kinds of contradictions can lead to a wealth of content to be understood, shared, and expressed with others. If you can see your work as something that can represent itself as a living commentary, enactment, or realization of the contradictions in modern society or life, you could strike something interesting.

The Feeling of Mastery

The last lesson I took from Mastery is exactly how it feels to achieve mastery itself. It is described as this sudden intuition to read a situation without having to take time to process the facts—in a way, you just know what is going on immediately. While I do not consider myself a master of psychology (despite what my degree says), what I do know about psychology is an awareness of the dynamics in play that make a person who they are today. I can somewhat accurately deduce the reasons behind a person's personality due to the way their parents raised them (or lack thereof), their current living circumstance, how much they are influenced by their culture or role models, current aspirations, demeanor, habits, and friends (or lack thereof). I'm not always right when it comes to figuring people out, but I am pleased with how close I can get. In the same way, Greene describes it is not about what you can see on the surface; it is about what else you can discern about the person/place/thing that isn't readily apparent. Mastery includes having a grasp of all the other factors in play that are having an effect on the event at hand. In the simplest of words, mastery means you just know.

This sort of "knowing," or reasoning, is led by a quick flash of intuition, however, the intuition comes from an intense rational focus. It becomes very cyclical. The reasoning is the factual bit and the intuition is the creative bit. When I read this, I had realized this was an echo of the Dimensional Mind at work, where both the factual and creative side both come together as one. Together, mastery is the zenith of the Dimensional Mind, completely refined to its sharpest point. But to get to this point, it takes a very long time.

To reach it, our years of practice need to be what Greene calls "qualitatively rich." So not only do we go out of our way to pursue knowledge, but we also apply and internalize it as fast as possible. Any setbacks we experience are not to be taken as blows to the ego, but as objective opportunities to see where we can correct ourselves and any fruitless patterns. When we get better and better, we start to question the world around us and the preconceived notions we once had at the beginning, and then later on become experimental in our own ways within the field. We pull knowledge from other fields for a different perspective, or step away from the problem and allow serendipitous knowledge to come to us so that we return refreshed. The book goes into great detail about how to achieve this mastery using different approaches, such as completely focusing on your strengths, fervent practice, or broadening your perspective. There are other ways too, but ultimately it suggests to reach mastery in the way that resonates with you best.

The feeling of working towards mastery, deep down, is supposed to be borderline-obsessive. And no, I'm not kidding. If you think about it, you don't just get to that kind of level without having a little bit of crazy in you. It should be something you feel compelled to do every day. Or, even better, something you can't stop thinking about at least once a day. You can't seem to lose sight of it or shake it off, and even all your ideas seem to stem from it.

All in all, from what I've learned in these seven lessons, achieving mastery goes a lot deeper than just "don't quit, keep going."

It is a process that will bore you, move at an agonizingly slow pace, force you to face your weaknesses, earn you the criticism you probably never asked for, and will make you experience almost anything possible to stop you.

The most interesting thing I read from this book is how Greene says that the false side of you that does not encourage mastery is the one that "talks in clear words," and that the side of you that wants to achieve mastery is the wordless one. It is an inherent desire that pulls at you. There are no words that explain your inherent inclinations. You just do.

If you found these lessons compelling, there is so much more in that book. Just wait until you read it yourself.

— — — — —

If you have gotten this far, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this. My goal is to provide value through my understanding of the books I have read, encouraging others to read, and putting them into categories to help individuals practice improving different parts of their lives. Each category represents a different facet (Soul = awareness of direction and calling, Heart = emotional clarity and regulation, Nerve = reflective and adaptive mindset, and Sinew = deepening relationships with the self and others). In my podcast of "Soul, Heart, Nerve, and Sinew" (SHNS), I talk about books and grade them on which categories these books suit best.

For Mastery, I would consider this primarily under Soul and Nerve, and secondly under Sinew.

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