Mastery by Robert Greene – A Summary (Part V)

Chapter V Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative Active

“…Several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainities, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…”

-          John Keats

In childhood, our minds were completely open, and we entertained all kinds of surprising, original ideas. Our heads teemed with questions about the world around us. Not yet having commanded language, we thought in ways that were preverbal – in images and sensations. This is the ORIGINAL MIND. We cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world.

We no longer look at things as they are, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked. This is our CONVENTIONAL MIND.

Masters and those who display a high level of creative energy are simply people who manage to retain a sizeable portion of their childhood spirit despite the pressures and demands of adulthood.

Masters not only retain the spirit of the Original Mind, but they add to it their years of apprenticeship and an ability to focus deeply on problems or ideas. This leads to high-level creativity. Some people maintain their childlike spirit and spontaneity, but their creative energy is dissipated in a thousand directions, and they never have the patience and discipline to endure an extended apprenticeship.  Others have the discipline to accumulate vast amounts of knowledge and become experts in their field, but they have no flexibility of spirit, so their ideas never stray beyond the conventional and they never become truly creative. Masters manage to blend the two and create the DIMENSIONAL MIND. This mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.

The Dimensional Mind has two requirements:

1)      High level of knowledge about a field or subject

2)      Openness and flexibility to use this knowledge in new and original ways.

To awaken the Dimensional Mind, we need to follow these steps and avoid the following pitfalls:

Step 1 Choose the right Creative Task

Creative activity involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds. It needs time and effort. It entails years of experimentation, and the need to maintain a high level of focus. We need to have patience and faith that what we are doing will yield something important.

The emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. To aid in this process, it is often wise to choose somethingthatr appeals to your sense of unconventionality and calls up latent feelings of rebelliousness. Keep two things in mind:

1)      The task you choose must be realistic. To reach your goal, you may have to learn a few new things.

2)      You must let go of your need for comfort and security. If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.

Step 2 Creative Strategies

The mind tightens up over time because of two reasons:

a)      We entertain same thoughts and ways of thinking for sake of consistency, familiarity and reduced effort.

b)      Whenever we work hard at a problem or idea, our minds naturally narrow their focus because of the strain and effort involved.

This means that the further we progress on our creative task, the fewer alternative possibilities or viewpoints we tend to consider.

A.      Cultivate Negative Capability

The ability to endure and even embrace mysteries and uncertainties was called by Keats as Negative Capability. We must be capable of negating our ego. Truly creative people in all fields can temporarily suspend their ego and simply experience what they are seeing, without the need to assert a judgment, for as long as possible.

 

In the arts and letters, your thoughts will congeal around political dogma or pre-digested ways of looking at the world, and what you will often end up expressing is an opinion rather than a truthful observation about reality. To Keats, William Shakespeare was the ideal because he did not judge his characters, but instead opened himself up to their worlds and expressed the reality of even those who were considered evil. The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces. And so it is best to keep this in mind and not grow too fond of your ideas or too certain of their truth.

 

B.      Allow for Serendipity

The brain is constantly searching for similarities, differences and relationships between what it processes. Feed this natural inclination by letting go of conscious control and allow chance to enter into the process. When we are in a more relaxed state, our attention naturally broadens and we take in more stimuli. Serendipity are the chance associations and discoveries that we were not expecting. To allow this to happen:

a)      Widen your search. Look at more than necessary in research stage. It may seem tiring and inefficient but you must trust this process.

b)      Maintain an openness and looseness of spirit. In momrents of great tension and searching, you allow yourself moments of release. You take walks, engage in activities outside your work (Einstein played the violin), or think about something else, no matter how trivial. “Chance favours only the prepared mind” – Pasteur.

Serendipity strategies can be interesting devices in the arts too. Writer Anthony Burgess, trying to free his mind up from the same stale ideas, decided on several occasions to choose random words in a reference book and use them to guide the plot of a novel, according to the order and associations of words. Once he had completely haphazard starting points, his conscious mind took over and he worked them into extremely well crafted novels with surprising structures.

To help yourself cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times and note down idea/ observation the moment it comes. Keep notebook by bedside to note ideas that come during fringe awareness. In this notebook, you record any scrap of thought that occurs to you, and include drawings, quotes from other books, anything at all. In general, you must adopt a more analogical way of thinking, taking greater advantage of the associative powers of the mind.

C.      Alternate the mind through “the current”

The Current is an intensification of the most elementary powers of human consciousness. Most often in our culture, on one side, people run rampant with speculations never taking time to entertain possible explanations while on the other side, people, particularly in academia or in the sciences, accumulate mountains of information but never venture to speculate on larger ramifications of this information or connect it all into a theory. They are afraid to speculate because it seems unscientific and subjective, failing to understand that speculation is the way to see the invisible. Scientists must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination, says physicist Max Planck.

 

D.      Alter your Perspective

Creative people are those who can look at a phenomenon from several different angles, noticing something we miss because we only look straight on. We should not rush to generalize and label. We should subvert the following patterns:

 

1)      Looking at the ‘what’ instead of the ‘how’

If the book we are creating is not working out, we focus on the uninspired writing or the misguided concept behind it. Although we think we are rational when we think in this way, most often problems are more complicated and holistic; we are simplifying them, based on the law that the mind always looks for shorthands.

 

To look at the ‘how’ instead of the ‘what’ means focusing on the structure – how the parts relate to the whole. With the book, it may not be working out because it is organised poorly, the faulty organisation a reflection of ideas that have not been thought out. Our minds are a jumble, and this is reflected in the work. Thinking in this way, we are forced to go more deeply into the parts and how they relate to the overall concept; improving the structure will improve the writing.

 

Our minds naturally tend to separate things out, to think in terms of nouns instead of verbs. In general you want to pay greater attention to the relationship between things, because that will give you a greater feel for the picture as a whole.

 

2)      Rushing to generalities and ignoring details

Immersing yourself in details will combat the generalizing tendencies of the brain and bring you closer to reality. Make sure, however, that you do not become lost in the details and lose sight of how they reflect the whole and fit into a larger idea.

 

3)      Confirming paradigms and ignoring anomalies

We routinely look for patterns that confirm the paradigms we already believe in. we must turn ourselves into a detective and deliberately uncover and look at the very anomalies that people tend to disregard.

 

4)      Fixating on what is present, ignoring what is absent

The ability to alter our perspective is a function of our imagination. We have to learn how to imagine more possibilities than we generally consider, being as loose and radical with this process as we can. This pertains as much to inventors and businesspeople as it does to artists.

 

As you work to free up your mind and give it the power to alter its perspective, remember the following: the emotions we experience at any time have an inordinate influence on how we perceive the world. So, if you are experiencing a lot of resistance and setbacks in your work, try to see this as in fact something that is quite positive and productive. These difficulties will make you tougher and more aware of the flaws you need to correct. In physical exercise, resistance is a way to make the body stronger, and it is the same with the mind.

 

E) Revert to Primal forms of Intelligence

 

While language is a good thing, it has made us lose our connection to the senses – sight, smell, touch – that once played such a vital role in our intelligence. If there are no words for certain concepts, we tend to not think of them. And so language is a tool that is often too tight and constricting, compared to the multi-layered powers of intelligence we naturally possess.

 

“The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced and combined.” – Albert Einstein.

 

As opposed to words, which can be impersonal and rigid, a visualization is something we create, something that serves our particular needs of the moment and can represent an idea in a way that is more fluid and real than simply words. The use of images, diagrams, and models can help reveal to you patterns in your thinking and new directions you can take that you would find hard to imagine exclusively in words. To Leonardo da Vinci, drawing and thinking were synonymous.

 

The German writer, Friedrich Schiller, had a drawer full of rotten apples in the desk from which he worked. He found the stench delightful and he found that he did his most creative work while inhaling the fumes. When doing his deepest thinking about the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein liked to hold on to a rubber ball that he would periodically squeeze in tandem with the straining of his mind. Writer Samuel Johnson had a cat and a slice of orange on his desk whenever he worked. These sensual cues stimulated him for his work.

 

These aids to the creative process are related to the phenomenon of synaesthesia – stimulation of one sense provokes another. What this means is that this smell/ touch gets them ready to alternate ways of thinking, creating and sensing the world. They allow themselves a broader range of sense experience.

 

Step 3. The Creative Breakthrough – Tension and Insight

 

The feeling that we have endless time to complete our work has an insidious and debilitating effect on our minds. Our attention and thoughts become diffused. Faced with the slenderest amount of time to reach the end, the mind rises to the level you require. If you don’t have such deadlines, manufacture them for yourself.

 

Emotional Pitfalls

 

The 6 common pitfalls when we arrive at the Creative-Active phase in our career are:

 

1)      Complacency (constantly remind yourself of how little you know)

2)      Conservatism (make creativity rather than comfort your goal)

3)      Dependency (don’t look for approval – develop internal standards and a high degree of independence)

4)      Impatience (don’t hurry to the end or warm up old ideas – enjoy rigorous practice, push past your limits and resist the easy way out)

5)      Grandiosity (work must motivate you not praise – don’t allow ego to inflate)

6)      Inflexibility (be naïve and optimistic of your capability while you keep doubting your achievements and subject it to self-criticism)

Mastery by Robert Greene – A Summary (Part IV)

Chapter IV See People as they are: Social Intelligence

The greatest obstacle to the pursuit of mastery comes from the emotional drain we experience in dealing with the resistance and manipulations of the people around us. Social Intelligence is the ability to see people in the most realistic light possible. Navigating smoothly the social environment, we have more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills. Success attained without this intelligence is not true mastery, and will not last.

When interacting with people, view them from a detached position and do not get emotional. Focus completely on the people and cut off your own insecurities and desires from the equation. Have complete and radical acceptance of human nature just as how one accepts the thorns on a rose. To get upset or try to alter them is futile – it will only make them bitter and resentful.

“You must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its kind of nature permits, rather than to hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This is the truest sense of the maxim – Live and let live… To become indignant at (people’s) conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter.”

-          Arthur Schopenhauer

Benjamin Franklin was hopelessly naïve and completely misread the intentions of people around him. After facing many problems, he took efforts to gain social intelligence and that became the turning point of his career. With tranquil and productive social relations, he could focus more of his time and attention to writing, to questions of science, ti his endless inventions – to mastery.

Your view of people is dominated by the Naïve Perspective. Following Franklin’s example, you can reach this awareness by reviewing your past, paying particular attention to any battles, mistakes, tensions, or disappointments on the social front. If you look at these events from the Naïve Perspective, you will focus only on what other people have done to you – the mistreatments you endured fr5om them, the slights or injuries you felt. Instead you must turn this around and begin with yourself – how you saw in others qualities they did not possess, or how you ignored signs of a dark side to their nature. In doing this, you will be able to see the discrepancy between your illusions about who they are and the reality, and the role you played in creating this discrepancy. If you look closely enough, you can often perceive in your relationships with bosses or superiors re-enactments of the childhood family dynamic – the idealizing or demonizing that has become habitual.

Adjust your attitude but do not become cynical. The best attitude is one of supreme acceptance. Observe the human comedy and be as tolerant as possible. Social intelligence contains two components – general knowledge of human nature and specific knowledge of human nature. The deep analysis of these two components need to be read in full and practised as they are too valuable to be summarised.

Strategies for acquiring Social Intelligence

1.       Speak through your work

Understand that your work is the single greatest means at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence. By being efficient and detail oriented in what you do, you demonstrate that you are thinking of the group at large and advancing its cause. By making what you write or present clear and easy to follow, you show your care for the audience or public at large. By involving other people in your projects and gracefully accepting their feedback, you reveal your comfort with the group dynamic. 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 manoeuvring 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 others who make a lot of noise but produce nothing.

 

2.       Craft the appropriate persona

Understand that people will tend to judge you based on your outward appearance. If you are not careful and simply assume that it is best to be yourself, they will begin to ascribe to you all kinds of qualities that have little to do with who you are but correspond to what they want to see. All of this can confuse you, make you feel insecure, and consume your attention. Internalizing their judgements, you will find it hard to focus on your work. Your only protection is to turn this around by consciously moulding these appearances, creating the image that suits you, and controlling people’s judgments. At times you will find it appropriate to stand back and create some mystery around you, heightening your presence. At other times you will want to be more direct and impose a more specific appearance. In general, you never settle on one image or give people the power to completely figure you out. You are always one step ahead of the public.

 

Creating such a persona is not evil or demonic. We all wear masks in the social arena, playing different roles in different environments. You are simply becoming more conscious of the process. Play to the public. Give them something compelling and pleasurable to witness.

 

3.       See yourself as others see you

We all have social flaws like that we talk too much or are too honest in our criticisms of people offense too easily when others do not respond positively to our ideas. If we repeat instances of such behaviour often enough, we tend to offend people without ever really knowing why.

 

We need to learn to see ourselves objectively. To do this, we should look at negative events in the past unemotionally. Dissect these occurrences and see what you did that either triggered or worsened the dynamic. In looking at several such incidents, we might begin to see a pattern that indicates a particular flaw in our character. We can also elicit opinions from those we trust about our behaviour, making certain to first reassure them that we want their criticisms.

 

4.       Suffer fools gladly

Fools have a different scale of values. They place importance on short term matters – grabbing immediate money, getting attention from the public or media, and looking good. They are ruled by their ego and insecurities. They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. When they criticize, they always emphasize matters that are irrelevant to the overall picture or argument. They are more interested in career or position than in the truth. You can distinguish them by how little they get done, or by how hard they make it for others to get results. They lack a certain common sense, getting worked up about things that are not really important while ignoring problems that will spell doom in the long term.

 

The natural tendency with fools is to lower yourself to their level. They annoy you, get under your skin, and draw you into a battle. In the process, you feel petty and confused. You simply waste valuable time and emotional energy.

 

In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture. Smile at their antics and tolerate their presence as you would a foolish child. Avoid the madness of trying to change them. It is all part of human comedy, and it is nothing to get upset about or lose sleep over. If they are causing you trouble, you must neutralize the harm they do by keeping a steady eye on your goals and what is important, and ignoring them if you can.

Reversal

“It is a great folly to hope that other men will harmonize with us; I have never hoped this. I have always regarded each man as an independent individual, whom I endeavoured to understand with all his peculiarities, but from whom I desired no further sympathy. In this way have I been enabled to converse with every man, and thus alone is produced the knowledge of various characters and the dexterity necessary for the conduct of life."

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

 

Mastery by Robert Greene – A Summary (Part III)

Chapter III Absorb the Master’s Power: The Mentor Dynamic

Though it is rare luck to actually find a successful writer to mentor you, agents and publishers can be a huge help. Similarly, Greene says, if your circumstances limit your contacts, books can serve as temporary mentors. In such a case you will want to convert such books and writers into living mentors as much as possible. You personalize their voice, interact with the material, taking notes or writing in the margins. You analyse what they write and try to make it come alive – the spirit and not just the letter of their work.

 

To reach mastery requires some toughness and a constant connection to reality. As an apprentice, it can be hard for us to challenge ourselves on our own in the proper way, and to get a clear sense of our own weaknesses. Developing discipline through challenging situations and perhaps suffering along the way are no longer values that are promoted in our culture. People are increasingly reluctant to tell each other the truth about themselves – their weaknesses, their inadequacies, flaws in their work. This is abusive in the long run. It makes it hard for people to gauge where they are or to develop self-discipline. It makes them unsuited for the rigors of the journey to mastery. It weakens people’s will.

Strategies for deepening the mentor dynamic

1.       Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations

2.       Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror

3.       Transfigure their ideas

4.       Create a back-and-forth dynamic

Reversal

Thomas Alva Edison had no schools or teachers in his life. He turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science. In every city he spent time in, he frequented the public library. when he found Michael Faraday's two-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity, he followed all the experiments laid out in it and absorbed Faraday’s philosophical approach to science. Faraday became his role model.

 

Through books, experiments and practical experience at various jobs, Edison gave himself a rigorous education that lasted about 10 years. What made this successful was his relentless desire to learn through whatever crossed his path, as well as his self-discipline. He had developed the habit of overcoming his lack of an organized education by sheer determination and persistence.

If you are forced into this path, you must follow Edison’s example by developing extreme self-reliance. You become your own teacher and mentor. You push yourself to learn from every possible source. You read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. As much as possible, you try to apply your knowledge in some form of experiment or practice. You find for yourself second degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as role models. Reading and reflecting on their experiences, you can gain some guidance.

Mastery by Robert Greene – A Summary (Part I)

 Mastery by Robert Greene – A Summary (Part I)

I have reviewed this book before but after the second reading, I realised that the concepts within its pages are intense and the ideas too many that having a summary would definitely help me.

Disclaimer: This summary is my interpretation of the book to suit my pursuits, dreams and goals.

 

Introduction

We all are born with the capability to do what we please. We hold the key to our fortunes but the skill to mould that capability ‘into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated,’ says Wolfgang Goethe. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt.

“Why do we need mastery? Why work years when you can achieve so much power with so little effort? Technology will solve everything.” Do not have this passivity. Do not believe the moral stance that says, ‘mastery and power are evil’. You will unconsciously lower your sights as to what you can accomplish in life. This can diminish your levels of effort and discipline below the point of effectiveness. Do not listen more to others than to your own voice. Do not choose a career based on what peers and parents tell you or on what seems lucrative. Lack of true desire will catch up with you and your work will become mechanical. So,

a)      See your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive. The passive ironic attitude is not cool or romantic, but pathetic and destructive.

b)      People get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life. Work to see how far you can extend control of your circumstances and create the kind of mind you desire.

As you progress, old ideas and perspectives die off; as new powers are unleashed, you are initiated into higher levels of seeing the world. Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.

“The geniuses all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman who first learns to construct the parts properly before he ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Section I Discover your calling: The Life’s Task

“Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.” – Leonardo da Vinci.

The way to mastery can begin at any point in life. The process of realizing your Life’s Task comes in 3 stages:

1)      You must connect or reconnect with your inclinations - that sense of uniqueness. This step is inward. Clear away confusing voices (parents and peers) and look for an underlying pattern, a core to your character that you must understand as deeply as possible.

 

2)      Look at the career path you already on or are about to begin. The choice of this path – or redirection of it – is critical. Talking about work-life balance seems illogical as work forms a large part of life. To see work as a means to earn money to seek pleasure in the hours after work is a sad way of experiencing life. Work should be inspiring and engaging. (I have some reservations with this view of Greene. Isn’t it said that an artist works better on a filled stomach? Also, this may be more applicable when you start out in life as a 15-18 year old not as a married with kids 30+ year old. I’m not going into the arguments as this is just a summary and not an analysis.)

 

3)      Finally, you must see your career more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.

 

Ø  Begin by choosing a field or position that roughly corresponds to your inclinations. Don’t start with something too lofty or too ambitious.

Ø  Make a living and establish some confidence. Discover side routes that attract you and discard ones that leave you cold. Keep expanding your skill base.

Ø  Eventually, you will hit upon a particular field, niche, or opportunity that suits you perfectly. You will recognise it when you find it because it will spark that childlike sense of wonder and excitement; it will feel right.

Ø  Once found, everything will fall in place. You will learn more quickly and more deeply. Your skill level will reach a point where you will be able to claim your independence from within the group you work for and move out on your own.

Ø  You will no longer be subject to the whims of tyrannical bosses or scheming peers.

What we lack most in the modern world is a sense of a larger purpose to our lives. “Become who you are by learning who you are” – Pindar.

Strategies for finding your Life’s Task

“Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations!” Wolfgang Goethe

1)      Return to your origins – The primal inclination strategy

In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.

 

2)      Occupy the perfect niche – The Darwinian strategy

Choose a niche that corresponds to your deepest inclinations – one that you can dominate. It is not a simple process to find such a niche. It requires patience and a particular strategy:

Ø  Choose a field that corresponds to your interests.

Ø  From there, you can look for side paths that attract you and move into a narrower field. You keep doing this till you hit an unoccupied niche.

Ø  Or, you master one field, then another and create a new field combining both or you make novel connections between them.

 

3)      Avoid the false path- The rebellion strategy

Do not choose a path for money, fame, attention, etc. Don’t act out anxieties and the need to please parents. Scoff at the need for attention and approval – they will lead you astray. Let your sense of rebellion fill you with energy and purpose.

 

4)      Let go of the past – The adaptation strategy

If change is forced on you, do not overreact or feel sorry for yourself. Don’t abandon the skills and experience gained but find a new way to apply them. These creative readjustments might lead to a superior path.

 

5)      Find your way back – The life-or-death strategy

No good can ever come from deviating from the path you are destinied to follow. Don’t deviate on the lure of money. It will take you further away from the path. Keep your focus on 5-10 years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there is full of challenges and pleasures.

 

Reversal

Ignore weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. Direct yourself towards the simple things you are good at rather than making grand plans for the future. Concentrate on becoming proficient in these skills and develop confidence. Learn the value of discipline and reap the rewards.

“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an anunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am… if not this vivid or sure, the call may have been more like gentle pushings in the stream in which you drifted unknowingly to a particular spot on the bank. Looking back, you sense that fate had a hand in it… A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed, it may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim… extraordinary people display calling most evidently. Perhaps that’s why they fascinate. Perhaps, too, they are extraordinary because their calling comes through so clearly and they are so loyal to it… extraordinary people bear the better witness because they show what ordinary mortals simply can’t. We seem to have less motivation and more distraction. Yet our destiny is driven by the same universal engine. Extraordinary people are not a different category; the workings of this engine in them are simply more transparent…”

-          James Hillman  

 

 

 

Book Review: Mastery by Robert Greene

Robert Greene has always fascinated me. His ideas and knowledge shared in ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ and ‘The Art of Seduction’ thrilled me. I wouldn’t say that I actually followed the ideas in the book as I had never been mad about power or had the need to seduce someone. However, I enjoyed reading the book as it is a voyage into human psychology and how it all works together. So, when I saw ‘Mastery’ on the shelves at Connexions (Chennai), I picked it up immediately. One, I admire Greene’s books. Two, Connexions is my most favourite bookshop and it is one of the traditions I uphold during every Chennai visit – each family member picks up at least one book there. (I know it is cheaper to shop at flipkart.com or infibeam.com or at least Crossword or Landmark. Still, I do this because all the stand alone book shops around the country are slowly disappearing and I am disappointed at that!)

The book far surpassed all my expectations. It was enlightening and inspiring. Greene speaks about how we can gain mastery over whatever life’s task we choose for ourselves.

“We are merely born with the capability to do it. The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.”

“Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive – pleasure, love- can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift us out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!

– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

With any skill we want to acquire, there is always a period of excitement in the beginning and then we realize how much hard work is there ahead of us. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt.

Greene explains the steps to mastery:

1) Discover your calling: The Life’s Task
2) Submit to Reality: The Ideal Apprenticeship
3) Absorb the master’s power: The Mentor Dynamic
4) See People as they are: Social Intelligence
5) Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active

Out of all the steps, I loved the second one the most. Now days, the principle of Apprenticeship is slowly dying away. No one wants to accept that someone is better than them. No one wants to live with and serve another just to watch and learn their skill. However, this is not how we can attain mastery. The Gurukul system advocated the principle of learning by observing and repeating with humbleness and discipline. How wonderful it would be if we had some such skill transference programme for writers too??!

Greene says that there are three essential steps in apprenticeship, each one overlapping the other. They are

1) Deep Observation (The Passive Mode)
2) Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode) and
3) Experimentation (The Active Mode).

In the Practice Mode, Greene says apprentices of yester years worked on materials for a time that would amount to more than 10,000 hours. This was enough for them to establish exceptional skill level at the craft. This seems to be the amount of quality practice time that is needed for someone to reach a high level of skill and it applies to composers, chess players, writers, and athletes, among others. This generally adds up to 7 to 10 years of sustained, solid practice – roughly the period of traditional apprenticeship.

Greene makes some interesting observations about the basic principles of skills themselves. Firstly, you must begin with one skill that serves as foundation for acquiring others. You must not multitask. Secondly, the initial stages of learning a skill invariably involve tedium. You need to accept and embrace this. Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits in the learning process. However, you need to cultivate the ability to handle the tedium with discipline. In the end, our brain gets hard-wired and we can perform the task with less conscious control. Hardwiring cannot occur if you are constantly distracted, moving from one task to another. It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it.

Greene has described a challenging but clear course that we can pursue to achieve mastery in our chosen field. He makes the path interesting by sharing the stories and behaviours of Einstein, Darwin, Mozart, Da Vinci, Keats, Ford and many others.

A must read.

The Elements of Style (Book Review)

I love good English and aspire to attain the high standards that the language demands. This book is just another step in that direction.

In just 80 small pages, the authors have captured all that one needs to know to write well in the English Language. I bought the book after Stephen King endorsed for it in his book 'On Writing'.

I would strongly recommend this book for teachers, students, writers, businessmen and anyone else who needs to write in English.

Becoming A Writer - Book Review

Becoming A Writer
By Dorothea Brande

This little book published in 1934 is relevant to all writers across the globe even today. The book will help you reassess yourself and be a wake-up call to make you get up and get doing!

My biggest enemy has been and continues to be laziness. And the first person to rudely awaken me from my state of stupor has been Brande. Her 'either do it or quit being a writer' command has spurred me to action many a time. I have read and reread the book so many times and have found fresh energy and inspiration each time I turn towards it.

Some insights from the book I found highly useful:

1. Brande urges us to write the first thing every morning. No loo, no tea, no talk, no newspaper, no book - just write!

2. Brande asks us to fix a writing appointment with ourselves every morning for just 15 minutes. Say, for example, you fix an appointment to write at 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., you need to write irrespective of whatever comes at that time. You might even need to lock yourself up in the bathroom to write undisturbed at that time but you need to do it.

The above two points are stressed upon by Brande and she asks you to quit being a writer if you cannot follow through with this. Apart from that, the book also has some more interesting ideas about:

3. Cultivating a writer's temperament and lifestyle

4. How to read as a writer

5. Whether to take advice from others? When?

6. How to and how not to imitate other writers?

7. And lots more...

Also, the most valuable thing that Brande teaches in the book is the writer's magic - how to unleash the genius within you to bring originality and creativity in your work.

The first book I would recommend every writer to read.

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