What I’m Reading Right Now: Mastery by Robert Greene

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

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Hey. What's going on, ladies and gents? What I wanted to do is I wanna start a segment, and I wanna do this segment at least once a month. I might start doing it twice a month, and essentially, it's going to be called what I'm reading. I read a lot of books.

I've found that reading is one of the most important habits you can have, whether it comes to success or personal fulfillment or, you know, just trying to live a really good life. And I think that a lot of people go through life without reading, without taking advantage of the amazing knowledge that's out there. I mean, we live in this crazy time and place where there's so much knowledge available. And, yeah, you can get it from YouTube. Yeah, you can get it from podcasts like this.

But there's something about cracking open a book that is just... It's it's like within us. Right? When you start taking things that have been written and putting into print for thousands of years, you you really start to tap into real wisdom. And so what I wanna do here is I wanna cover some of the books that I've gone through over the past...

Well, I've read a lot of books in 2019, so I'll cover some of the books I'm covering at... Or that I'm reading at the moment so that you guys can get a sense of what I'm putting into my brain, and then hopefully, you can go out there and you can try to do the same thing for yourself. Since I've had Robert Greene on the podcast, I've really immersed myself in his work. And Robert Greene is most noted for writing the 48 Laws of Power. That's a book that a lot of people hold as one of the most important books ever written over the last, you know, fifty years.

It's mentioned in hip hop. It's mentioned across, you know, all types of different popular platforms, and a lot of people swear by that book. But I also want to point out a bunch of Robert Greene's other work, two books in particular. One is the book that he came on to talk about on the recent podcast we did together. That is the Laws of Human Nature.

And what I love about that book is that the subject matter is something that I think translates to almost anything we do. No matter what we do in life, we're gonna have to deal with other human beings. And as Robert Greene would tell you, a lot of times those human beings don't have our best interest in mind, and you have to really pay attention to them. You have to pay attention to the looks they give you, the the the way they look at you when you're talking, the way their bodies, the way their body language presents itself in your presence, and you can get a lot of clues from that. And that's essentially what Robert Greene's book is about, the Laws of Human Nature.

He also goes into depth about understanding your own nature. You know, we're not all angels descended from heaven, even though we'd like to think we are. A lot of times, we hold ourselves in our minds as being really righteous and really, you know, always doing the right thing. But in many cases, we're not. We're often falling short of that ideal.

And, you know, what Robert Greene's trying to get you to do is to understand yourself so that you can make better decisions about what you're gonna do in life, who you're going to surround yourself with, what types of occupations you're going to choose. These are all important factors to consider, and you really do need to know yourself and you need to know others. That goes back to Sun Tzu. Right? You need to know yourself and you need to know the enemy.

So that is one book I highly suggest checking out. It's Robert Greene's longest book, but it's worth the work you'd put into it. There is that choice of whether you're gonna go with audio or whether you're gonna go with the actual book. And audiobooks, they they present this awesome, you know, opportunity to to listen to books while you're while you're working out, while you're training. And every time I cover a book, I'll I'll make my suggestion of whether it'll be a better audiobook or whether it'll be a better print book.

I really think that the Laws of Human Nature is best viewed in print. It's best read in print. The reason for that is because there's gonna be a lot of stuff that you're gonna wanna go over. Once you get through the book, and I highly suggest reading the book, you know, cover to cover like you normally would, but once you get through the book, you wanna keep it around as a reference that you can go back to if you wanna look up certain things, if you're you're trying to refresh yourself on something. It's one of those books, and it's written in the same style as the 48 Laws of Power.

The other book I wanted to talk about today is a book I'm currently reading, and that's also by Robert Greene, and it's called Mastery. And honestly, I wish I read this book a lot longer time ago. I wish I had this book around when I was in my teens or in my early twenties because it covers this idea of mastery. Now what is mastery? Well, it's basically a path to greatness that essentially has been traveled by history's most powerful people.

Right? And what it is, it's your dedication to a particular craft, a particular vocation. Right? And that's one thing for me. I look at my work not as work.

I look at it as a vocation. I look at it as something that is a mission in my life. And in my belief, I believe that that that God has put me into position to do the work that I'm doing. And a lot of you might have differing opinions on that or or anything. That's my belief.

And that's honestly part of what keeps me doing this podcast. Every week, three times a week, publishing episodes, getting them out to you, even when it's not convenient, even when it's immensely boring doing tons and tons of research, even when I've got a million other things going on in my life, And I I I need to take care of, you know, the household. I need to take care of, you know, my clients. I need to take care of all these different things. But I keep doing the podcast because I consider it part of who I am.

Alright? And that's important. And when we're talking about something like mastery, mastering your vocation, it's not gonna be an easy path no matter what you're doing, whether you're you're trying to be a professional athlete, whether you're trying to to build a business, whether you're trying to master your career as a professional, whether you're still in the military and you are trying to master your job there, it's it's it's not gonna be easy. There's gonna be a lot that you have to learn, and you're gonna have to get through this initial part where everything is awkward. Right?

And then you're gonna have to get through the boredom. The boredom of constantly having to learn and constantly having to repeat a lot of the practices that are gonna actually make you into a master. And one of the things you learn by reading this book is that every single one of us, if we want to attain mastery, we need to go through an apprenticeship an apprenticeship phase. Right? And that's a phase where you're just out there, you're learning.

You're trying to put everything together, and you're trying to create a path for yourself by educating yourself as much as possible. And for a lot of us in this day and age, we expect instant success. You know, there's all these courses out there telling you that you can be a master podcaster or a master entrepreneur in eight weeks or less. Right? And it's easy to fall prey to that.

But true mastery comes through consistent work. Consistently trying to devote yourself to your craft. Consistently doing the work that's not all the time sexy, not all the time fun, but but getting it done anyway so that you can get to that point to where the work you're doing seems like it's it's just coming out of your fingertips or coming out of your mouth or coming out of out of your body. And that that's what we're all working towards. And it takes a lot of times.

Experts say it takes up to 10,000 of practice before you can achieve mastery in anything. And I think that there's fewer and fewer of us who are actually going out and trying to get those ten thousand hours in under our belt. The thing about this book is I think it's really important to read, particularly for those of you who might be lost. The other book, The Laws of Human Nature, is for for those of you who really maybe you're dealing with people and you aren't, you know, finding your way with people, which I think a lot of us find ourselves in that situation. Right?

You're gonna need that. But you're also gonna need this. If you're in that position where you don't quite know what to do with your life or you're trying to find yourself or you're on a path right now that you're not certain about, then I highly suggest you take a look at this book, master... Mastery by Robert Greene. And what I'll do is in the show notes, I will link all of these these books so that you guys can get them.

And I think that, you know, they're they're each worth the read, and they're each worth your time. Another book that I read this month is Call Sign Chaos by General Mattis and Bing West, and I just recently had Bing West on the episode, and I've done a full episode on that. I also think that that's another book that could be read in conjunction with both of these books, because with Robert Greene, you're getting, like, the the the highly theoretical picture with a bunch of historical examples of it. And then with General Mattis, with Call Sign Chaos, you're getting the life of somebody who's devoted themselves to a singular focus, becoming the best at his particular profession. And you'll get so much wisdom out of that, but I think you'll get even more wisdom out of that if you've read it in conjunction with some of these Robert Greene books.

So that's what I'm reading this month, guys. Again, I'm gonna make this a regular segment. I'll talk to you guys about what I'm reading, what I'm getting out of it. And again, hopefully, this is valuable for you, and you guys go out and you check these books out for yourself. Couple other things.

Number one, if you're new to this podcast, please head over to iTunes. If you like the show, write us a written rating and review. It it really helps to get this show into the hands of more veterans and more people who are trying to live their best lives. We have been building up slowly but steadily over the past few years. And every day now when I check my downloads, those are growing exponentially.

And the success of the show is largely due to all of you. It's all due to all of you. I just put the stuff out there. You guys are the ones who share. You guys are the ones who write the reviews, and you guys are the ones who listen, and you'll apply this to your lives.

So I couldn't do this without you guys. So please, if you're getting something out of this, please make sure you're writing us a review and sharing these episodes out. The other thing I wanted to mention is that we've got this group at Warrior Soul. It's called the Warrior's Obituary Society. And what I wanted to do, I wanted to create a group for men who were trying to live epic lives.

And I wanted to empower them to live those epic lives, lives worthy of epic obituaries. And the way this group works, when our members come in, they go through an eight week development program. With that development program, they are outlining their vision, they're outlining their goals, and then we're getting into some specifics. We're talking about fitness. We're talking about business and your career.

We're talking about your personal finance. We're talking about your relationships. We're talking about getting your life organized so that you can start to work on those big things that you've always wanted to work on, those important things that you keep putting off over and over again because you think that you don't have time. We're gonna empower you to do that, and we're gonna hold you accountable to it. Once you're through that eight week development program, the the work just begins.

That's when we're getting on a live calls each week. We're listening to you and and seeing where you're at on your goals, and we're also helping you along on your way for each specific goal that you're working on. So if you're interested in that, I'm gonna put a link up on the show notes so you guys can register. You can also DM me on the Warrior Soul Agoge Instagram account, or you can email me at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com, and I will get you everything that you need to know. So hope that has been a helpful episode for you guys.

With that, we're gonna have some more awesome content for you later on this week. I hope you guys are out there killing it, and get out there and live your best lives while you can. Talk to you guys soon. I am out.