'MASTERY' BY ROBERT GREENE

 

This is another wonderful piece by Robert Greene. This book helps us to understand our chosen career  and how to be a master in it.

First the author enjoins us to first discover our passion by doing what we love doing without even been paid for. Choosing our career path based on our life calling and purpose is what distinguishes us from all others.

According to the writer you must find your way to your inclination, exploiting the incredible opportunities of the age that you have been born into. Knowing the critical importance of desire and of your connection to your work, which are the keys to mastery, you can in fact make the passivity of these times work in your favour and serve as a motivating  device in two important ways.

First, you must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive. Secondly, you must convince yourself of the following: people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life. And also, people who are passive create a mental land scape that is rather barren. Because of their limited experiences and action, all kinds of connections in the brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

The writer went further to state that we must not see the process of actualizing mastery as merely linear as we move  through levels of intelligence. Your whole life is a kind of apprenticeship to which you apply your learning skills. Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention. The creativity that you gain in learning a skill so deeply must be constantly refreshed, as you keep forcing your mind back to a state of openness. Even knowledge of your vocation must be revisited throughout the course of your life as changes in circumstance force you to adapt its direction.

The writer also said that in moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and life itself anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The movement that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard earned creativity and others  begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.

The structure of mastery is simple. There are six chapters, moving sequentially through the process. Chapter I is the starting point – discovering your calling, your life’s task. Chapter 2,3 and 4 discuss different elements of the apprenticeship phase (learning skills, working with mentors, acquiring social intelligence). Chapter 5 is devoted to the creative Active phase and chapter 6 to the ultimate goal-mastery. Each chapter begins with the story of an iconic historian figure who exemplifies the chapters overall concept. The section that follows, keys to mastery, gives you a detailed analysis of the phase involve, concrete ideas on how to apply this knowledge to your circumstance, and the mind-set that is necessary to fully exploit these ideas.

This is another great book, very inspiring and full of knowledge that can turn your life around especially when you discover your life’s calling.