Mastery (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1)

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Perhaps we'll never know how far the path can go, how much a human being can truly achieve, until we realize that the ultimate reward is not a gold medal but the path itself. The principal problem we face in the social arena is our naïve tendency to project onto people our emotional needs and desires of the moment. Combine the “how” and the “what”: Get a full understanding of the skill, not just the recipes or tools, don’t leave parts of it unlearned. The human individual is equipped to learn and go on learning prodigiously from birth to death, and this is precisely what sets him or her apart from all other known forms of life.

Mastery: You've been a humble student and has attained the knowledge about the internal semantics of your skill, it's time for you to invent something new and substantial with your knowledge.Greene defines mastery as a heightened form of power and intelligence which any of us can attain, and which almost all of us experience from time to time under suitable conditions, such as the urgent need to solve a problem or to meet a deadline. Even so saying, one of the greatest things about being human is the ability to continue to evolve, to learn all throughout our lives. Inflexibility: You must know your field inside and out, and yet be able to question its most entrenched assumptions. Navigating smoothly the social environment, we have more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills. If we don't know who we are, it is because we have not cast off the brainwashing that each of us undergoes in the process of growing up.

To get material on the contemporary masters, of whom there are nine in the book, Greene conducted in-depth interviews with each. The Authentic Voice: “Anyone who would spend ten years absorbing the techniques and conventions of their field, trying them out, mastering them, exploring and personalizing them, would inevitably find their authentic voice and give birth to something unique and expressive. The idea of a Life's Task brought to mind a comparison with Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss, which is also concerned with helping one find one's life mission. In this awareness, the man or woman on the path of mastery sometimes makes a conscious decision to do just that.Learning to embrace and anticipate the plateau in the journey, and feeling excited and looking at the plateau as a chance to learn while we wait for our next spurt of improvement, and waiting on the plateau again, and again.