Find Your Inner Power, Embrace Your Weirdness & The Skills You Need To Master w/Robert Greene EP 1193

This is episode number 1193 with New York Times bestselling author, Robert Greene. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now let the class begin. Welcome back, my friend. Today's guest is my friend, Robert Greene. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, the 48 Laws of Power, the Art of Seduction, the 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law and Mastery. And he's also written a new book called the Daily Laws, 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy and Human Nature. If you haven't already listened to our last episode about relationships and love, it's been a game changer. People are sharing this like crazy online. Make sure to check out that episode as well over at lewishouse.com/1174. But in this episode we discuss how to find your inner power when you feel you've lost it. Why you should embrace your inner weirdness. What conversations you should be having with yourself to become more successful. The skills you should master and the skills that are wasting your time. and so much more. And if you're enjoying this at any moment, make sure to spread the message to a friend, pay it forward, text a few people, post it on social media, tag me and Robert Green as well, and get the message out there for someone that you think would be inspired and motivated to keep growing and improving in their life. And I want to give a big shout out to the fan of the week from Weblanco, who said, I have recently listened to several episodes such as with Rachel Rogers, Rob Dyrdek, Roy Vaden, and I also listened to a couple solo with Lewis Howes. And in each of these episodes, I took something away to improve my life. I was inspired and took action after listening. So big thank you for being the fan of the week. And that's what we're trying to do here. We are committed to creating some of the most powerful, educational, and inspiring information on the internet to help you take practical actions to get incredible results in your life. that's what we're all about here at the School of Greatness. So if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Leave us a review on Apple as well when you're done for a chance to be shouted out as a fan of the week as well. Okay, in just a moment, I bring.

You the one and only Robert Greene. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Robert Greene, back in the studio talking about the Daily Laws. I'm super excited about this book. this is the book that you're gonna want to get and give to all your friends because every day is gonna be a powerful message to support you in optimizing your life. So make sure you check out the book, the Daily Laws, 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy and Human Nature, which is all the things we need to know about living a better life, if you ask me. And I think a lot of people feel like they are powerless right now. They don't feel like they have a sense of control over what's happening in the world. They don't feel like they have power within themselves. They're being manipulated by media or by people in their lives or whatever is happening. So what can people do to start the process of gaining inner power if they feel like they're powerless?

Yeah. Well, It all starts with something very simple, which is the power over yourself. If you have no power over yourself, then you're at the whim of everything else in this world, right? So what does that mean to have power over yourself? Well, we can, and this is a lot of what I talk about in the Daily Laws, it begins with something very simple, which is you have to know who you are, right? So you're walking around in this world, you don't know really who you are, you don't know what your needs are, what you really desire in your life because you're a product of social media, you're a product of what other people are telling you you should like, what your parents tell you, what your friends tell you. You don't know who you are, what drives you, what really motivates you deep down. And so you're kind of wandering in life. And when you're unmoored from yourself, everything else will affect you in a way that you cannot control, right? When you're un-what?

From yourself? Unmoored.

What's that mean? When you don't have an anchor. Like a moor is like an anchor. Okay.

So, you- gotta speak in simple terms to me.

Maybe it's my pronunciation.

All right, let's get it. I don't know what the word is.

That's what I was saying. Unmoored, gotcha. So, it's like a boating term. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you don't know like what you were intended to do in life, like what your career was that meshes with you well, right, you're gonna be making all of these wrong decisions and you're gonna, things, people will do things to you that you won't be able to understand why you're reacting the way you're reacting.

Yes.

You'll get lost, you'll end up in blind alleys with your career and you'll go, Man, I'm so helpless. I have no power. I have no control. The world is against me. It's 2021. It's the pandemic. It's the world. No, it's you. It starts inside of you. The real problem is in you, not in the world, right? You don't know who you are. And it's not easy. I have sympathy for people because we're so distracted. We're so much in our phones. We're so much listening to what other people are telling us is cool on Instagram. on TikTok, on Facebook, etc. We're like creatures of media. We've been programmed. We don't know really what drives us anymore. We're so tuned to what other people are telling us is what we should be interested in. So it's not easy. It takes some time. It takes some reflection. And that means that you have to have the ability to step back Be alone, be alone with your thoughts. And as this book is talking about, meditate and reflect on your childhood, on who you are, on the mistakes you've made, on the wrong career paths you've taken, on the wrong relationships you've taken, and begin to construct an image of that real secret inner, the true Lewis Howes that lies buried deep within all the bullsh*t and people have added on to it. If you can't control yourself, if you don't know yourself, you can't control your own emotions, you're going to be reacting to everything that comes your way without having understanding why you're doing that. So when you know yourself, you know, I don't need to get angry about this, because it's not something that touches me personally. It doesn't matter in the end. Whereas if you don't know who you are, everything affects you personally, and you're getting grumpy and insecure and bitter and resentful, you have to start with yourself. It goes back to the ancient Greeks and the Oracle of Delphi, Know thyself, right?

What is the source of our inner power that we maybe aren't even aware of?

Very simple. What makes you an individual? What makes you different? Your uniqueness. That's what the first month in the Daily Laws is about, the month of January. So if you look at people who are successful, you know, you look at a Lewis Howes or you look at a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or whomever, you say to yourself, there's nobody else like them on the planet. You may hate Elon Musk. You think he's an egocentric maniac. But you can't tell me there's another person with that kind of guts. Right. With that kind of confidence and with that kind of vision, right? Okay? Because he's one of a kind, right? And you're going around trying to imitate other people, trying to do what you think other people are doing. You're running away from your source of power. What makes you unique, what makes you even weird, what you may even be afraid of because it's so different from other people, is your source of power. It's what makes you a Superman. or woman or whatever, yes. So I don't want to talk about myself too much because who's interested in that, but I write books that nobody else has the same kind of structure or the same kind of approach. That is my source of power. And very early on it was threatened. I wrote the 48 Laws of Power. We finished it in 1998. The publisher had already purchased it, but they came back and they go, Robert, this book's a little weird.

Yes.

You know, the structure, the things on the side. We want you to change it. We want you to make it more like other books out there. And me and my partner, the guy who packaged it, he backed me up and we said, no, we'll walk away from the deal. We'll find someone else. Because we knew that being different was the key to making this book a success. It could very easily fail. It could have bombed, but it would have failed in the right way, which is being yourself, doing something different, standing out, and not being afraid of what makes you unique.

And how old were you then when you launched that book?

98. I was 39 when it came out.

39. Did you have a lot of success prior that would have shown this would have been a success?

Nope.

So, you weren't some big shot writer that was getting awards and other things?

I was the very opposite of that.

You were the opposite?

Yeah. Well, I mean, very simply, quickly, you know, I graduated college. I wandered around Europe, kind of trying to write the great American novel. I lived in Paris. I lived in Spain. I lived in London. Had all kinds of seductions. I had a great life, a lot of fun. Then I come back to New York. It's time to get serious. I get into journalism. I kind of started off successfully. I worked at Esquire, but then I didn't really like journalism and it kind of wasn't working. And then after four years I go, this isn't right for me. Go back to Europe. I wander around. I try to write another novel. Fail again. I come back to LA to try and make it in the film business. And it doesn't work well. And I'm a failed screenwriter. I work for various film directors, but I can't sell a single one of my screenplays.

Wow.

And here I am, 35-36. You know, I have a lot of skill. I've learned writing for film, I've learned writing for journalism, I've been writing novels. I have skill, I have discipline, I have research ability, but I have nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing. I was a nobody. And this man whom I met, who, you know, I've told the story many times, pitched the idea of the 48 Laws of Power. He thought it was great, but there's a big difference between pitching something and making it happen. But because I had been so disciplined and I'd been writing all this time, I could actually meet his expectations and write a proposal that would get him excited. But I had nothing to back up my answer to your question, nothing to back up my confidence that this book would be good. Just simply having a sense, it's a book about power, and I understood instinctively that power is about kind of going your own way, interaction with boldness. That's going to be one of my chapters. Then I'm going to be all weak and timid about my book and how it has to be like other books, that I'm a hypocrite. So I was bold, we were bold, and it turned out well.

So you were 39 when the book came out. I'm pretty much 40 years old with nothing to show for your life, except for lots of experience, but not a bunch of success or accomplishments.

No, no success. no accomplishments. My parents were starting to give up on me.

So you turned 40 and the book really didn't take off right away, right? Didn't take some time for it to kind of...

It did well. I mean, it got attention, we've got a lot of press for it. It kind of stirred because it's a weird book, kind of stirred up some interest. And it was selling, but it's selling much more now than it did back then.

Really?

Yeah.

20 something years later.

Oh man, we've been, yeah, like during the pandemic, the sales have skyrocketed.

No way.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

So how did you have confidence to claim your inner power after years and years of trying things and not working out the way you wanted, kind of trying something else? How did you stay consistent with your inner power and not lose sight of at least trying new things?

Well, it's a great question and it's not an easy answer. It might even sound a little bit insane, to be honest with you. But deep down inside I always had kind of a weird faith in myself. I always had a sense that there was a destiny that my life was following a certain path, that there was something fated to happen. Maybe it was a little bit grandiose. Maybe it was kind of overconfidence because it would swing up and down. I would go from confidence to the deepest depression. But deep down inside, I never gave up because I knew I had something in me. Now, if the 48 Laws of Power hadn't worked, I don't know if I would have gotten my act together. I might have been crushed by it, to be honest with you. Or maybe I would have picked myself up. I picked myself up 30, 40 other times in the past when people told me, like this one editor, Robert, you're never going to be a good writer. You should go into business or law school. I've been crushed several times and I picked myself up. But I don't know if that might have been the nail in my coffin, literally, at that point. But I had a voice inside of me saying, you can write. I know you can write. I've seen you write, Robert. I've seen you write great things. You've never put it together. You've never made it consistent. But you have a voice. And that inner voice of mine might have gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. So I could barely hear it, but it never left me.

How does someone give themselves more power when they feel defeated?

Well, we're circling back to the original thing, you know? So if you know that you were destined for something, that you were fated for something, that you have a sense that your life had a meaning, a purpose, then you can withstand the traumas, the setbacks, the difficulties, the bull criticism and all the other things, right? So in mastery, I talk about a very simple fact. When you were born, you have this DNA that will never be replicated in the history of the universe. There will never be another person with your exact makeup, Lewis Howes. And on top of that, no one will ever have your exact parents and your upbringing and your early life. So there's only one of you that's ever existed, right? And There's a reason for that. There's a purpose behind it. And the purpose behind it is our culture, the same thing as in nature, thrives by the diversity, the people coming into it with different angles, different perceptions, different ideas. That's what makes a culture creative, etc. It's why the Renaissance was so great. So it is a purpose for you being who you are. Right?

Yes.

And it may not be that you were destined to be Napoleon or a president or whatever, but there is some kind of greatness in you waiting to come out. And it could be just on the level of working with your hands. Working with your hands is a great skill to be a master carpenter, to be a master builder with wood or whatever. That is a form of greatness.

Absolutely.

You were destined to do something like that, and it was in, like a seed was planted at your birth, But if you don't know what that is, then you can't find your way back to it. And if you're 24 and you're in my position and that man who's having his third martini says, Robert, you're never going to be a great writer. Go to business school. I would have gone to business school. I wouldn't be here talking to you. But I kind of sensed deep down inside that I was destined for something else. Right? I talked to a lot of people, particularly in the podcast world, people who began other careers. They went into law, they went into something else. They weren't happy, right? And then they found their way to like creating a podcast and it's taken off, right? It's made their lives. They found their way slowly to something else. It wasn't just any old podcast. It was something that reflected their own strangeness, their own weirdness, but they have discovered something that they were destined to do that makes them different, right?

Yes.

Because there are a million other people who can do the same thing out there in this world. But there's never, there's only one person like you born with your own strangeness, your own inclinations, you know?

Absolutely.

There's the Jimi Hendrix song. I don't quote him often, but he says, I'm going to wave my freak flag high, right? You want to wave your freak flag high. You're a freak, you're weird, you're different, but embrace it. That's your source of power. And when people criticize you and you have setbacks, you'll land back on your feet if you know that. You'll have moments of doubt and depression like I did, but you'll eventually land back on your feet.

Do you think it's possible to accomplish your goals and achieve great things and be a success in whatever the definition is for you without going through multiple failures? Do you think it's possible to just be, just finished school and now the first thing I do, it's just gonna work out and everything just works? Is that possible?

I'd say no. No. Yeah? Because it's just not how life goes, you know? I mean, I could, I mean think of like the greatest athletes in the world, people who are at the top 00000.1% of the top of their profession. They're failing all the time. They're not winning championships every year. Their careers go up and down. Everybody who's successful, you will see ups and downs. We venerate Steve Jobs as perhaps the greatest tech entrepreneur. He went through an incredibly dark period after he founded the company. He got fired from Macintosh. He founded NeXT, which was a failure. He was as depressed as I was. in the mid 90s. He didn't know what was going on. And then he got his career resurrected with Apple on a second go. He had a career that went like that, you know? I mean, you can take any name and you can find the same kind of trajectory. And it's because through failure, you develop some toughness, some inner toughness, right? You develop a thick skin. You're able to take it. Right? Life involves adversity. And if you've only had everything good, the first time something happens that you don't expect, you're just gonna wilt. So I don't care who you are, there's always somebody, you've always, people who were successful have always had some kind of failure of adversity. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to stay on, to rebound.

A lot of people are afraid to create something because they don't want to fail. they're afraid to start, launch, create, whatever it might be, post, because they don't want to fail. What do you think is worse than failure? If failure is actually a good thing for a lot of people to help them learn and grow, what is worse than failing?

Not trying. So, you know, if you fail and, you know, people are laughing at you, et cetera, and you feel kind of, you know, vulnerable to criticism, etc. You take that moment and you learn from it. You learn what you did wrong, right? You learn what didn't work. And then you grow from that. And then the second thing that you create is going to be powerful and it's going to be successful. I'm sorry, I forgot your question.

What is worse than not succeeding?

If you never try, you're never going to learn, right? and a lot of people don't try because they're afraid of that very thing, of actually failing. They'll disguise it as, I'm not ready. I didn't go to the right school. I don't have funding. My daddy isn't rich. You know, people aren't helping me. There's a pandemic. It's bad out there, etc. No. So you're just blaming the fact that you're afraid of failure, right? You're finding excuses. actually, the pandemic is the. It's a terrible, terrible thing. Don't get me wrong. It's 650, 000 people have died. It's insane. But business wise, it's an incredible opportunity for you. There is so much change going on that if you're young and you're. You're smart and you've got some skill, you will create something incredibly brilliant and find your own Niche. So stop whining and stop blaming other. forces and try, even before you're ready, start that business, try something and learn from it. I tried many things and I failed many, many, many, many times before I wrote the 48 Laws of Power. And it taught me a lot about myself. And then I did the 50th Law with 50 Cent. And the first version of the book that we turned in, the publishers didn't really like it. It was my first real failure as a successful writer. It made me go, well, Robert, maybe you're losing a little bit. And then I kind of heard why they didn't like it. It hurt, but I understood. It was a failure, but no one ever will see it. And then I go, okay, I need to make this book more kind of, you know, a certain style that I've done before. All right, I'm gonna stop complaining. I'm gonna produced this book in the eight months that they gave me to redo the whole thing. And I learned from it something that I will never forget about why that book failed. And I've never repeated that mistake again. So you have to learn from your mistakes and you have to be willing to fail. Otherwise, you're never going to develop that kind of thick skin that the world requires.

What's the conversations we should be having with ourself more? to set ourselves up on the path of accomplishing, achieving, and feeling better about who we are and our uniqueness in the world.

Well, one conversation you should be having is very simple. Life is shorter than you think. Okay, you're 25 and you're thinking, Wow, I've got 10 years to figure it all out. I've got all these vistas of time. I'm young, I'm healthy, etc. you don't have nearly as much time as you think you do. It goes very fast.

Really?

So you need a sense of urgency and energy. Like, by the time I'm 30, I'm gonna have to try and start that business. I'm gonna have to do something. I don't have as much time as I think I have, right? And you have to develop some fire inside of you. You have to say, you know, a lot of times, People don't give you deadlines in this world, right? So you could spend your whole 20s and 30s never producing the thing that you dreamed of because no one's pushed you. No one said, you better do this by the time you're 35 or we're throwing you out of the house or whatever. There are no consequences for procrastinating. You have to create those consequences. You have to live on what I call death ground. Death ground means your back is up against the wall, the enemy is coming at you, and it's either defeat them or die, right? And you have to tell yourself, I'd only have so much time, right? The peak creative years for anybody is in their early 30s. Really? I think so. I believe so. And people have borne that out in various studies. Yeah, there's a different kind of creativity that one can have when you reach my advanced age. But the really fluid creative times, and I know it personally, are in your 30s. And they creep up really quickly. And if by the time you're in your mid-30s and you haven't started creating something, man, you're going to be in your 40s and it's almost going to be too late. So you don't have as much time as you think you have. That should be the number one conversation that you have with yourself.

Any other conversations? Besides sense of urgency?

Well, the worst thing in life is to be 55 or 60 and to go, I had potential. I had dreams. When I was a kid, I was going to think I was going to do this. And you've realized none of that, right? So you want to have accomplished something in life, something that you're proud of. It doesn't have to be a book or anything. It could be something that lasts that you're proud of, that gives you a sense of accomplishment, right? Because that carries off into every aspect of your life. It carries off into your relationships. It carries off into how well you sleep at night, etc. So you want to have that in life. You want to accomplish something. What is it? What is it I want to accomplish? What was I meant to accomplish? and how can I start on the process tomorrow? Not next week or next year, tomorrow. Right. Maybe you can't start because you don't have the money, but you can start planning. You can start maybe taking classes or learning skills that you, you know, you can do that tomorrow, Etc.

So what are, what are a couple skills you wish you would have mastered earlier in life that maybe you've mastered now, but Or maybe you haven't yet that you wish you would have.

I wish I had mastered a three-point gem shot.

Okay. Three-point gem shot.

Yeah.

Two-hand shooter, yeah.

No. I don't know. Because when it came time to write that book, I had learned a lot about researching. You know, maybe about like marketing. Because I'm not very good at that, to be honest with you. That's why I rely on people like Ryan Holiday who know their sh*t, as opposed to me who knows nothing. So, I wish I had been a little smarter about things like that, because I was so much in my head into my books and my research writing that I never really paid attention. Which I'd been a little more Hard edge that way.

Learning about promotion and marketing. It's true because my brother who's one of the best jazz violinists in the world.

Really?

Yeah, he's arguably number one in the world of jazz violin. And he said there's so many talented artists that think they're gonna be discovered like in their basement or something. But you have to learn how to master your art and then how to master the art of selling yourself.

Definitely.

Because if no one knows who you are, then you're not gonna have opportunities. You're not gonna be able to monetize your craft, your art, or have, you know, provide a lifestyle for yourself. So, and if no one is aware of your art, then you're doing a disservice to the world by just hiding it for yourself or for a couple of friends.

A lot of artists have that problem, 'cause they think that that kind of sullies the, you know, what they're producing. And, you know, they're afraid of that part of the game. But that's why a lot of artists fail. The ones who are successful know how to play that game of power to some degree. They're not so naive, right?

The game of power, what do you mean by that?

Well, take the art world, for instance, something I know fairly well from people who I've known personally. It's a cutthroat industry, right? The number of kids who go to art school is like hundreds of thousands in the United States. the number of artists who can make a living, you can count them on two hands, right? Okay, so what's going on here? Well, it's that it's really, really difficult to make it. And who are these people who make it? They've learned, they've gotten tough, and they've learned how to market themselves. They learned how to promote. They learned what sells right now, and they've mastered that aspect of the game. Here in Los Angeles, every other person is an actor or a screenwriter wannabe, right? And they think they've got all the talent in the world, but they're not disciplined. They don't take a day-to-day approach and they don't know how to sell themselves. I mean, I deal with that all the time. I've dealt consulting with actors who, who don't know, like in, in just the, the audition aspect, they don't know how to present themselves and sell their skills. They think just their natural ability is enough, but it's not.

So, what a skill is that? The art of selling yourself, marketing, is that just communication skills? Is that understanding human nature and how people think and building them up? Like, what would you say that would be?

It's the whole sandwich there.

It's all of your books combined.

Yes, it is.

Production, power, mastery, all these things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have to understand the power game to some degree. You have to understand that there are people who control your business, your industries. They have more power than others. They have egos. They're insecure. If you don't know how to appeal to them, if you don't know how to appeal to their self-interest, they're not gonna finance you. They're not going to help you. You have to understand the political game. You have to be able to play to what's going to please them. You have to be able to get rid of your ego sometimes and do things that maybe aren't exactly what you want to do, but is the right career move. You also have to know how to package things. And I talk a lot about that in my books in the 48 Laws of Power. You have to understand human psychology. People want drama. They want something that stands out. They want something that's strong. that's forceful, that's impactful, right? And you're sitting here writing something that kind of meanders, it sells it kind of in this half-baked way, et cetera. No, you've got to hit directly. You have to hit people's emotions or emotional animals. And that's sort of the key to marketing is hitting people's emotions, not their intellect, not their ideas, right? I mean, it's the whole thing. You have to understand human nature, you have to understand psychology, you have to understand politics and egos.

You gotta learn a lot in life just to get, you know, anything that's inside of you out and being semi-successful yeah, it's not the craft itself. It's everything else around the craft.

Unfortunately, because, you know, Steve Jobs and. And wozniak. Forget his first name.

Yeah, Steve wozniak.

Wozniak was by far the more brilliant person. He was the most brilliant person with computers of his time in the late 70s, early 80s. Steve Jobs was really very weak when it came to computing and things like that, but look who made it. The person who understood marketing, right?

He understood- Human psychology, marketing, persuasion, the political game, the theatrics of communication.

Theatrics, definitely, right? So talent is important, but it will only get you so far. There are so many talented basketball players just in the United States. But the ones who make it are not always the most talented, but they're the most disciplined of all.

Absolutely. I played with so many athletes better than me on teams that weren't disciplined enough or committed enough just to do the extra effort and work to get to the next level. To be on the field, to stay on the field, to get thrown the ball to, to get the tryouts or whatever it was the next level. and I would just say that I had more commitment than a lot of people that were better than me. And I remember being like, man, there's guys in the pickup games in basketball who were freaks that could have played, but they just didn't lack the discipline and the consistency or the attitude. And so they get kicked off the team because they just had a bad attitude.

Right.

So we've got to learn all these other things for sure. What do you think is the skill that a lot of people master that's actually wasting their time.

I never really thought of that. I mean, you can try too many things in life. You can try to learn too many things, right? And never master one of them, right? So the temptation in our culture is with all the access to information, all the things going on in the media, to think that I'm gonna start picking up the guitar now, and then I'm also gonna learn this, and I'm gonna learn that. So people are kind of trying too many different things, and they're not like learning one thing really, really, really well.

Yes.

And so that's kind of the main fault I see in a lot of people, particularly when they're young, 'Cause it's very difficult when there's so many things out there and there's so many temptations.

I think it's a balance of it because there's a book, I think his name's David Epstein. Do you know David Epstein? He wrote a book called Sports Gene, I think it was called. But he also wrote a book called Range, which talks about all these successful people who actually had a range of skills that later in life, I think I mentioned this before with you, you had a range of all these skills that maybe you did okay at but didn't really optimize fully and succeed at. But the range of skills you had created these weird books. I mean, these weird, powerful books that were different at the time, that were unique. And if you didn't have that range of trying all these things, maybe you wouldn't have created this unique product at the end.

I agree with it, but there's a little element that I would twist there. For instance, I had learned researching skills when I worked in Hollywood and in journalism. And that's actually a skill.

Yes.

You know, I learned how to work libraries like you had no idea how to work a library, right? And I had done it for years.

Oh, man, that's a lot of time and energy.

Yeah. Well, that wasn't like just kind of a semi skill that I possessed. That was a real skill.

Yes.

Right? and the journalism that I had learned was four or five years of writing under a deadline, making things concise and dramatic. I wasn't wildly successful, but I could say it was a skill. So when I combined everything, and then my knowledge of history, et cetera, there was definitely a range, and that range, I totally agree with that writer, but if they were kind of mediocre skills, I don't know how it would have all fallen into place, you know?

So it was all within the ability of writing and researching. It wasn't like, I'm gonna do all these other things that aren't associated with writing.

Exactly.

Gotcha.

Yeah, and for mastery, I interviewed Paul Graham, because I agree with that idea and I advocated learning four or five skills and then combining them in a unique way. But he was like, he's one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs of our time. He started, he went to college and learned hack computer skills. He was going to go into AI early on. Didn't like it, didn't like the politics. He dropped out and he went to Italy to study painting, right? And he studied painting for several years and became really good at it and very much really good at design, etc. Then he came back to New York and he heard an ad on the radio. for Netscape and how the future of the internet was selling products on the internet which no one had ever done before. He goes, maybe I could take my design skills and my knowledge of computers and create something that would be very aesthetically pleasing and very easy to navigate. It ended up being the first kind of online store that Yahoo bought. and on and on. But he was really good at those two things. Steve Jobs was really great at the design element of technology and so forth. So, I'd be a little wary of telling people that you can kind of learn four or five things kind of middling.

-Right.

-'Cause the main thing you want, the main thing that'll get you ahead in life is your level of enthusiasm and excitement.

-Over anything else?

-Yeah, your love of something. so you have to kind of learn and be energized and really excited by it. And if you're just kind of piddling around trying different things, you won't bring that kind of.

A friend of mine years ago, probably 18 years ago, told me that the world makes room for passionate people. And there's a quote by the coach of the Green Bay Packers. What's that?

In Slumbardi.

Yes. That if you're not, if you're not. fired up with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm. Something like that, right? I'm paraphrasing. But if you're not fired up with enthusiasm, then you'll be kicked off the team. Because we need people here who are excited and passionate about what they're doing. Otherwise, what are we doing here? And we're gonna lose if you're not fired up with enthusiasm. So I think that's probably one of the greatest skills, is having the energy to have enthusiasm about what you're doing.

Right.

To get yourself the opportunities over than the mastery of itself with a negative attitude.

Right.

I would say.

Yeah.

It's no fun having someone on your team who's really good at something, but just mean and nasty and dragging and not on time. And what are you just like?

Yeah.

Doesn't matter how talented you are.

Right.

It's the other skills that come along with it.

Right.

What if someone's struggling to accomplish their goals. We've talked about fear a little bit. You know, it's been holding people back from trying and getting out there. But what if they've got their, their goals, they've got the stuff, they're willing to go after it, but they're struggling accomplishing goals. Did you have any strategies or tactics to setting up your life in a way to accomplish goals more?

Yeah, I mean, so I call it kind of a ladder of descending goals. I think that's one of the entries in that book.

Okay.

So what you want is a mix of things. There's a lot of success in life is creating this kind of balance. So you want an overall goal for yourself. Let's say you want to accomplish this business that you want to start, right? But you're not able to get there. You're not able to make the bridge to it. Okay, so you. You say, this is my long-term goal, and then you build a ladder of descending goals of small things to get there. And within that, so let's say your goal is five years, you're gonna start the business, then within that you've got months and you've got weeks and you've got days and you're building small goals that you can reach and are reachable. So I want to start my business. It's really hard out there. There's one thing that I don't think I'm good at. All right, well tomorrow I'm gonna start learning this new skill. I'm gonna go to school. I'm gonna read this book. Give yourself a goal that you can reach in a week, or in two weeks. So what's killing you is you're thinking too long term and you can't get there and it's kind of making it seem like it's impossible. It's killing your spirit. You're too ambitious, you're thinking too far ahead, you need smaller, reachable goals. So your great business, your great book, your great podcast, has other little steps you have to take to get there. Create a step you can reach in a month, a week, or whatever, and reach it. Don't make it too difficult, but don't make it too easy. I always tell people to make it a little bit above what you think you can do, and you'll get there. But if you give yourself a goal in a month that is a step towards creating this larger thing, and you reach it, you'll have a sense of pride and accomplishment. You did something, right?

Yes.

You got part of the way there. And now you know with determination, you're on your way and you can do that again and you can make another smaller goal. And you're not paying attention to five years from now, you're paying attention to tomorrow's goal. Your eyes are focused on these small steps. You don't lose sight of the larger goal because then you'll get mired in details. It's driving you, but your main focus is on reaching what you've set yourself up for a month by month by week by week by week baby steps.

Yes.

If you do something every day and you reach these things, the sense of you've never done anything is what's killing you. You need to have a sense that you actually have something to show for it. You actually have reached part of the way there. Yes. And believe me, when I start a book, it's like, oh my God, I can't do it. How am I going to make it? Well, I start off simply and I go from simple goals and I have a process I go through and I don't worry about three years down the road. I worry about what I'm going to do tomorrow. -Yeah.

-It'S not worrying about the finished product. It's kind of like when you're climbing a mountain. If you're looking up the whole time, you'd be like, this is so far away and you'd be so tired. you'll be like, I can't do this. But if you're just focusing on one step at a time, and then you pause and you look up and you see you've gone farther, then it's more rewarding that way. What should we know about the Daily Laws, your new book? 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature. Why is this going to be helpful for people to chunk on a daily basis something that they can take action on for yourself? What do you think?

Well, okay, so I've been at this Lewis for 25, 26 years now, which is a fairly good chunk of time. And I've learned a lot. And if I could boil down what I think makes a person successful in one sense or one word, I would say it's your attitude in life is the Cutting Edge. Right? It isn't your skill. It isn't all these other things. It's how you look at the world. Right? If you look at the world through the lens that's negative, like nobody likes me, the world is against me, I'm not really good enough, I don't deserve things, that's what you're gonna get in life, right? If you look at the world like this opportunity for me, I'm good, I'm aggressive, I know how to get there, I'm gonna get it, that's what you're gonna get. So how you look at the world is what you're going to get. And the attitude to me, that is the most powerful and the most forceful, particularly nowadays, is a realistic attitude, right? You're able to look at the world. First of all, you're able to look at yourself and assess who you are and not be filled with all these illusions or these insecurities. This is who I am realistically. This is my problems, my weaknesses, my strengths. This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm destined to create. your ability to look at other people realistically and see through their appearances, see through their masks. They pretend to be this but they're actually that and I'm not going to be fooled. I'm not going to be naive and I'm not going to be fooled. I'm going to see into that. This is what the world is like right now. These are the trends. I'm not deceived by all the things in social media. I know what's going on and where the world is headed in three years. You've got this laser focus you're seeing through yourself you're seeing through other people, you're seeing through all the bull in the world, you understand what's happening. You can't fail when you have an attitude like that, right? And you also understand the power of being fearless and taking risks, which is also a part of a realistic attitude. All right, how do you get there, right? Well, it's not easy because we're born with a certain attitude, we're born with things with burdens and baggage from our childhood, etc. It's like a daily process, right? You have to see first your negative attitude where it comes from, the problems with it, what is holding you back. And now you have the power to begin to fashion it to a degree that's going to actually be something strong and powerful. Well, this is what the book is designed for. So I've been covering this for 25 years. It's scattered across six books. right? In Mastery, I talk to you how to be realistic about your career. In Power, I tell you how to be realistic about the power games going on. In War, how to be strategic, you know, human nature, how to see into people. But it's all scattered and it's hard to like find the cohesive thread through all these different books. This book is going to bring it all together. It's going to help you, it's very laser focused, and I talk about it in the introduction, on crafting that hardcore realistic attitude about you, where you're headed in your career, the mistakes you're making about people and their weaknesses and the power games they play, about what it takes to influence and persuade people on and on and on. And you're going to be doing it every day. Now, I know because I meditate every morning. I've been doing it for 11 years now. It saved my life. I can honestly say. Every morning I sit on the pillows for 40 minutes now. I just focus on getting outside of myself and I learn through this process that day by day by day by day change occurs. It doesn't occur in a dramatic way. It doesn't occur like, wow, I'm different now. It almost occurs unconsciously. Things seep into you that you're not even aware of. This book is designed to get under your skin day by day by day by day. You're gonna read it. It's gonna make you think. You're gonna go on to the next day. It's gonna kind of strengthen that idea, come at it from another angle, and slowly it's gonna get under your skin, and it's gonna alter how you look at the world and alter your attitude, and then maybe you'll reread it in a year. That's what it's designed for.

For me, this is the exact type of book that is perfect for me, because it's hard for me to get through a full book, any type of book. But when I can go to one page every day and read something that's going to be powerful to help me improve and give me a tip, a strategy, an idea to improve something in my life, it's the perfect type of book. So make sure you guys get a few copies, the Daily Laws, because your friends are going to enjoy this, especially in a world where for most people it's hard to stay focused long periods of time and keep their attention on something for a week or weeks through an entire book sometimes. I don't want to generalize, but the millennials of the world, this might be a good book for them to get as a gift. So get this, and every day you'll get a page that'll give you some meditations on power, seduction, mastery, strategy, and human nature. It's going to help you improve your life. So make sure you guys check this out. Where are you spending the most time on social media right now?

I probably have become... I have somebody managing my TikTok account.

Yes. That's some good TikToks on there.

Yeah. I don't really spend a lot of time on it, but I have looked at it and that's kind of a new frontier and it's kind of exciting.

Very exciting.

Yeah. And it's not natural to me, but I'm learning it.

Yes.

Because, you know, I'm at that age where it's like TikTok. Well, I don't know. But I'm enthusiastic. I probably spend more time on Instagram, I have to admit.

And you're Robert Green official on Instagram, is that right?

Yeah. I've kind of gone off Facebook like a lot of people. And I've never really been a big Twitterer. Although I do have a Twitter account.

Robert Green there, but Robert Green official.

You'Re posting more on Instagram. Yeah. But I have posts on Twitter as well.

Then I have the TikTok stuff that's going on. Is that just Robert Green?

I don't know.

When they search your name, we'll find it there. We'll link it up on the show notes as well so people can see it there. I want to ask you a question that I've asked you before a few times. This is your fourth or fifth time on now. It's called the three truths. And I have your previous ones here. So I'm curious if it's evolved or changed as you have maybe a different perspective on life now. So the question goes like this, imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away from now. and you continue to accomplish all of your goals and dreams. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you and it's your last day and you have three final things you get to share with the world. These three lessons you would leave behind or three truths you would share with people. And they wouldn't have access to your books, your work or this interview or any of your content. What would be those three truths that you would leave behind?

Whoa. Well, you know, so recently I suffered a stroke like three years ago, came out of the blue. I was totally healthy, swimming, biking, doing everything, you know, and now it's all taken away from me. So the truth is, the first truth is don't take anything for granted. Don't assume that what you have now is going to go on forever. It could be taken away from you tomorrow. And appreciate and love deeply what you have right now. It is an insane gift to be young. I wish I could go back to being young again because that was the most fun time in my life, right? You're in your 20s, you're healthy, you're exciting, you're seducing, you're just having lots of fun. Well, it doesn't last. Well, appreciate it and suck, soak up every second of it because something like this could happen to you tomorrow, particularly with this COVID that we're all living through. So do not take the smallest thing for granted because it could be taken away from you.

That's one.

Well, do not be afraid to face your own kind of weaknesses. And I'm speaking from experience because you're asking me like what's happened recently. And I've had to come to terms with my own limitations because I thought that I could do anything. And it's not just the physical limitation, it's the mental limitations. It's the frustrations that I have. It's the anger with myself. It's like, why can't I... Is there something wrong with me that in my physical therapy I'm not able to strengthen my left arm, etc. And I've been afraid, I think, to confront that and to see that I am my own enemy. I've probably gotten in the way of my own recovery by my attitude, by being impatient, by being in too much of a hurry, right? So I've had to step back and I've had to see, I've had to have some humility. So that's sort of the lesson.

Yes.

I'm not as great as I thought I was, but I can work on that. Now that I know that my impatience is getting in my way, I'm gonna work on that every day. So if at night, I stumble or I drop something, I'm going to calm down. And I'm going through this kind of physical therapy now, which is actually trying to alter my attitude towards my own body. But I'm confronting my own limitations, and it can be at any age, and it's actually helping me get through this kind of ordeal that I'm going through. Wow.

Okay.

Three.

Three.

I guess it's, I hope it doesn't sound too soft, like Robert Greene is not like the 48 Laws of Power anymore, because I am still that hardcore person. Don't worry about me. Or I haven't lost my edge, maybe a little bit. Is the ability to kind of forgive people.

Ooh.

You know? So, and I'm not the most forgiving person. So I had a thing in mastery that's called Suffer Fools Gladly. It's an expression from the Bible. and it means the world is always filled with foolish people, fools, who are stupid, who don't know what they're doing, etc. And your tendency is to get angry and irritated and upset, and instead you need to suffer them, you need to be tolerant towards them, because there are too many of them in this world, right?

Sure.

And I've never been good at that, you know? I've learned like when I'm judging people, et cetera, to sort of it kind of goes to that other one. They're all interrelated. But you know, maybe I'm too quick to judge. Maybe I can understand their problem. Maybe if I've hired this researcher and they're not working out, maybe it's because I'm not explaining myself very well or they've got other issues and I'm not going to maybe try and repair the relationship or keep them on as a researcher, but I'm going to forgive them. I'm not going to carry the weight. I'm not going to carry them around with me. There's this old Buddhist kind of parable where these two monks come up to a river and there's this old woman who can't cross the river and one of the monks, because they can kind of walk across, she's too old, One of the monks puts her on his shoulders and carries her across and lets her go, and she's so grateful. As they walk on, the other monk says, you, know, we're never supposed to do that. As Buddhists, you're not supposed to touch people. You're not supposed to handle them. You violated one of the most important laws of Buddhism. On and on and on, he went criticizing him about it. Finally the guy said, well look, I left that woman on the other side of the river. You're still carrying her right now. right? You're still carrying her mentally with you. Let go. Right? So that's the, I've created for myself a mantra in my daily meditation. It's called let go. Just let go of the rank or let go of the hurts, let go of the past and kind of forgive and kind of be in the moment. I don't know. I'm kind of all over the place. I wish I had, I like it.

It's good. It's powerful. If you want more succinct answers, you can get the book. Every day, there's powerful succinct answers on the Day to the Lord. Make sure you guys get this. Yes, make sure you get this, because it's all of his philosophical ideas and concise moments on a daily basis. Robert, I've got one final question for you. Oh, yeah. But like always, I want to acknowledge you for being my first ever guest on the School of Greatness, for always showing up and being consistent in your life since I've known you and serving people. you're using your uniqueness, your talent, your gifts, your energy to create beautiful pieces of art that serve and help people. And I think it's incredible that you continue to show up and do this. You don't have to anymore, but you keep doing it. Even when you have your own personal challenges that you're facing, you continue to show up to serve. So I acknowledge you for always being the example Even during challenging times for yourself, it's a beautiful thing to see.

And I appreciate your friendship. Thank you, Lewis. Likewise. Of course.

I have very fond memories of that.

First time you came. First time in your house. Your little recording device.

You didn't know really what you were doing. Exactly. You gave me an opportunity.

You said, Hey, I'll interview you. I liked you. I liked your energy. Exactly. And I could see that something was going to come from this. Yeah.

Yeah, and sometimes when you don't know what's gonna happen sometimes, but if you have an enthusiasm and an appreciation and a gratitude and you're having energy, hopefully good things can happen. So I appreciate you being the first one. But I think I also was like, Hey, listen, I wanna sell a bunch of books of yours and we're gonna do this thing and I was excited about selling books for you. And I think it's always important to create a win-win, you know, experience. But I appreciate you taking the chance on me launching the podcast with you as the first guest.

Oh, no, no, no. I enjoyed it. It's very memorable.

Yes, yes. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is kind of what I've talked about before. It's realizing your potential to some degree. So we may not realize 100% of our potential. I certainly haven't realized 100% of my potential. things I probably could have done other more of. But if your potential is to raise a great family and to raise really great kids and you've done it, that's greatness. If your potential is to just build something however small it is, and you realized it and you put, you realized 50-60% of your potential, that is greatness. And then you can to bed at night feeling good and proud of yourself, right? So a lot of it is, it's not the money that matters, it's not the attention that matters, it's the inner feeling you have that you have accomplished something, that you have fulfilled your potential, that you have accomplished some of the dreams that you had as a child for yourself, right? And to have that sense that I have done that, that I have wrote this book, that I created this business, that I started this podcast. That's greatness to me. Of course there are levels of greatness, right? But that's enough for me as well. Just the sense that I was born with this potential and I worked and I realized some of my gifts. I think that's an amazing thing. That's greatness for me.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, You are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.