Robert Greene

New associations

June 1, 2023

Instead of feeling complacent about what you know, you must expand your knowledge to related fields, giving your mind fuel to make new associations between different ideas. You must experiment and look at problems from all possible angles. As your thinking grows more fluid, your mind will grow increasingly dimensional, seeing more and more aspects of reality. In the end, you will turn against the very rules you have internalized, shaping and reforming them to suit your spirit.

~ Robert Greene

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Self-reliant

April 25, 2023

Being self-reliant is critical. To make yourself less dependent on others and so-called experts, you need to expand your repertoire of skills. And you need to feel more confident in your own judgement. Understand: We tend to overestimate other people’s abilities—after all, they’re trying hard to make it look as if they knew what they were doing—and we tend to underestimate our own. You must compensate for this by trusting yourself more and others less.

~ Robert Greene

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Discipline

April 17, 2023

To create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. […] When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured.

~ Robert Greene

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Illusions

February 7, 2023

Let the impermanence of all life-forms sink in. The stability and solidity of the things we see are mere illusions. We must not be afraid of the pangs of sadness that ensue from this perception. The tightness of our emotions, usually so wound up around our own needs and concerns, is now opening up to the world and to the piognancy of life itself, and we should welcome this.

~ Robert Greene

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The quality of your mind

December 31, 2022

You determine the quality of your mind by the nature of your daily thoughts. If they circle around the same obsessions and dramas, you create an arid and monotonous mental landscape, and this secretly makes you miserable. Instead, you must seek to radiate your mind outward, to unleash your imagination and intensify your experience of life. […] You are in fact surrounded every day by endless marvels, and to the degree you let them into your daily consciousness, you expand your mind and reinvigorate its immense powers.

~ Robert Greene

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Emotional turmoil

November 15, 2022

Interactions with people are the major source of emotional turmoil, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The problem is that we are continually judging people, wishing they were something that they are not. We want to change them. We want them to think and act a certain way, most often the way we think and act. And because this is not possible, because everyone is different, we are continually frustrated and upset.

~ Robert Greene

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There are no laws

October 18, 2022

There are no laws. You have to be in the moment. You have to understand the circumstances you’re in. Learning to adapt to each new circumstance means seeing events through your own eyes, and often ignoring the advice that people constantly peddle your way. It means that ultimately you must throw out the laws that others preach, and the books they write to tell you what to do, and the sage advice of the elder.

~ Robert Greene

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Endless dreams

September 24, 2022

While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. […] Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

~ Robert Greene

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Strategy

September 19, 2022

Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.

~ Robert Greene

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The chasm between

September 14, 2022

Too often there is a chasm between our ideas and knowledge on the one hand and our actual experience on the other. We absorb trivia and information that take up mental space but get us nowhere. We read books that divert us but have little relevance to our daily lives. We have lofty ideas that we do not put into practice. We also have many rich experiences that we do not analyze enough, that do not inspire us with ideas, whose lessons we ignore. Strategy requires a constant contact between the two realms.

~ Robert Greene

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Some ironic distance

September 9, 2022

Finally, when it comes to your own self-opinion, try to have some ironic distance from it. Make yourself aware of its existence and how it operates within you. Come to terms with the fact that you are not as free and autonomous as you like to believe. You do conform to the opinions of the groups you belong to; You do buy products because of subliminal influence; You can be manipulated. Realize as well that you are not as good as the idealized image of your self-opinion.

~ Robert Greene

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Mortality

July 31, 2022

The essential power that confronting your mortality will give you—I call it the Sublime. Because it also opens up this idea of how amazing the world is that we live in, and how much we take for granted because we think that we’re going to live forever. It’s an incredibly important concept to me and it’s also very personal in the sense that I came this close to dying myself. I compare it to standing at the shore of some vast ocean. The fear of that dark ocean makes you turn away and retreat. I want you to get into your little boat and I want you to go into that ocean and explore it.

~ Robert Greene

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Our relationship with death

July 23, 2022

We now live in a world where [our relationship with detah] is the complete opposite. We have to repress the very thought of it. We can’t see it anywhere. It’s put into hopitals where it’s sanitized, where it happens behind closed doors. Nobody ever talks about it. Nobody tells you this is probably the most important life skill that you could have—to know how to deal with that fear of mortality. Nobody teaches that. Your parents don’t talk about it. Your girlfriend or boyfriend—they don’t talk about it. Nobody. It’s a dirty little secret. But it’s the only reality we have. We’re all going to die.

~ Robert Greene

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