Work that is solid also protects you from the political conniving and malevolence of others—it is hard to argue with the results you produce. If you are experiencing the pressures of political maneuvering within the group, do not lose your head and become consumed with all of the pettiness. By remaining focused and speaking socially through your work, you will both continue to raise your skill level and stand out among all the others who make a lot of noise but produce nothing. The greatest mistake you can make in the initial months of your apprenticeship is to imagine that you have to get attention, impress people, and prove yourself. Let go of the past - don’t be tied to a particular career or position, but rather be committed to your Life’s Task, wherever that may take you. Grandiosity: What must ultimately motivate you is the work itself and the process. Public attention is actually a nuisance and a distraction. Such an attitude is the only defense against falling into the traps set by our ego.

Move toward resistance and pain: Once we get good at part of a skill, we tend to just do that since it’s easy and familiar. We avoid our weaknesses, and that prevents us from learning. Instead, we must follow the “resistance path,” fighting against where we want to go and making it more challenging for ourselves. The works of Robert Greene never fails to impress. Starting from 48 Laws of Power, I think just by simply reading his books I’ve become more knowledgeable, more powerful, wiser, and become more aware of my life tasks to make a change while I’m living in this world. The game you want to play is different: to instead find a niche in the ecology that you can dominate.

We see reflections of the truth we have already assumed. Such feelings of superiority are often unconscious and stem from a fear of what is different or unknown. We are rarely aware of this, and often imagine ourselves to be paragons of impartiality. But if we manage these emotions and keep pushing forward, we start to gain fluency, and we master the basic skills allowing us to take on bigger and better challenges. He also mentions the 10,000 hour rule as the “gold standard” for how long it takes in practice to reach expertise. In his description, Original Mind refers to the state of mind who is just starting to learn anything related to talent, skills, profession. If your mind is in this state, your curiosity will strike and will absorb any relevant information that interests you. It’s just like a newborn baby just learning how to walk, to talk, to create something. Thus the term Original Mind. At this rate, you’re taking apprenticeship to master and harness such talent.

The 48 Laws of Power has been mentioned in songs by Jay Z, Kanye West, and Drake and in videos by The Kid LAROI and Central Cee. [3] [18] [19] [20] [21] Greene has claimed former Cuban President Fidel Castro had also read the book. [1] Fred Sanders has a wonderfully colourless voice- not putting his own emotional stamp on its contents, which for such an informative book is a real benefit. I felt very comfortable listening to him and could concentrate indefinitely- sometimes a narrator begins to grate after a while. I also got great enjoyment out of his pronounciation of 'von Goethe'. Play to your strengths — Supreme Focus: Mastery is like swimming— it is too difficult to move forward when we are creating our own resistance or swimming against the current. Know your strengths and move with them. Transfigure their ideas: As you incorporate the lessons of your master, begin to adapt them to yourself. Don’t purely copy them, think for yourself. You have to surpass them eventually. Cent sits down with CNBC and talks about his new book "The 50th Law". CNBC. October 1, 2009. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021.

4. See People as they Are: Social Intelligence

Dimensional Thinking: You are not in a hurry. You prefer the holistic approach. You look at the object of study from as many angles as possible, giving your thoughts added dimensions. You assume that the parts of any whole interact with one another and cannot be completely separated. In your mind, you get as close to the complicated truth and reality of your object of study as possible. In the process, great mysteries will unravel themselves before your eyes. Many of the most interesting and profound discoveries in science occur when the thinker is not concentrating directly on the problem but is about to drift off to sleep, or get on a bus, or hears a joke—moments of unstrained attention, when something unexpected enters the mental sphere and triggers a new and fertile connection. Such chance associations and discoveries are known as serendipity—the occurrence of something we are not expecting—and although by their nature you cannot force them to happen, you can invite serendipity into the creative process. Flightiness: We like to make a show of how much our decisions are based on rational considerations, but the truth is that we are largely governed by our emotions, which continually color our perceptions. Your false self is the accumulation of all the voices you have internalized from other people—parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from unflattering truths. He makes the distinction here, too, that you shouldn’t let it be separate from your life: “Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live. Instead you want to see your work as something more inspiring, as part of your vocation… Your work then is something connected deeply to who you are, not a separate compartment in your life. You develop then a sense of your vocation.”