letter

The maximum power hidden within me
Evolution of Mastery
The Key to Mastery

Chapter 1: Discover Your Life's Purpose

When we do something that fits our personality perfectly, we can sense a certain power.
This is when the words you want to express come out so easily, or the body movements you want come out so naturally, that it seems as if someone just threw them at you.
The reason why that power weakens as we live is because it succumbs to some other power.
For various reasons, we end up choosing jobs or careers that don't suit us at all, such as high-paying jobs or comfortable and stable jobs.
True desires and interests gradually fade, and true happiness and fulfillment come from somewhere other than what you are doing now.
But the journey to discovering your life's mission and achieving mastery can begin again at any point in life.
The invisible power within you is always there, waiting for you to draw it out.


Invisible inner strength
The Key to Mastery
Strategies for Finding Your Purpose in Life
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Chapter 2: The Ideal Training Method for Mastering

In the lives of great masters, past and present, we can find specific periods when the fundamental competencies that will serve as the foundation for future achievements are formed and developed.
This period can be likened to the caterpillar stage of a butterfly.
This period of training often gets little attention from later generations and is often forgotten.
But beneath the surface, their minds are undergoing a rebirth, containing all the seeds of future success.
In fact, if you look closely at the lives of masters, you can see some common patterns regardless of the various fields they belong to.
The story is that you can discover a kind of ideal training method to reach mastery.


First transformation
The Key to Mastery
The three stages of training
Strategies for an Ideal Practice
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Chapter 3: Stand on the Shoulders of Giants_The Ladder of a Teacher

Learning requires humility.
We must acknowledge that there are people who have much deeper insight into certain fields than we do.
Their superiority comes not from any innate talent or privilege, but from experience accumulated over a long period of time.
The most effective way to acquire practical knowledge when taking your first steps in a particular field is to learn from a teacher whose authority you can readily submit to.
Life is short, and the time and energy you can devote to it is limited.
If you have a mentor to point you in the right direction, you can accomplish in five years what would take you ten years to do on your own.


Alchemy of Knowledge
The Key to Mastery
Strategies for strengthening your relationship with your teacher
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Chapter 4: The Art of Overcoming the Obstructions and Schemes of Foolish Fools

We constantly encounter 'fools' in our lives.
The world is full of foolish fools, so there is no way to avoid them.
They prioritize immediate matters and short-term gains.
They rarely actually achieve anything, and they go out of their way to hinder others from achieving anything.
We often get excited and enthusiastic about issues that don't really matter, and ignore issues that are important in the long run.
Above all, fools tend to try to bring you down to their level.
But it is impossible for you to make them take your side or change their behavior.
You'll be wasting your precious time and emotional energy for nothing.
If you can, ignore them.
But the wisest course of action is to go one step further and use their foolishness to your advantage.


Go inside and think
The Key to Mastery
Strategies for Developing Social Intelligence
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Chapter 5: Awaken Your Multidimensional Mind: Training Your Creativity Muscles

It is not age or lack of talent that stifles creative energy.
It is our very soul and attitude that suffocates it.
We begin to become comfortable with the knowledge we have acquired during our training.
We become afraid to try new ideas and avoid the effort required to do so.
But in the end, you have to pay a big price.
It means becoming the owner of a dead spirit that has lost its spirit of challenge and novelty.
We reach our limits in our own fields and lose control of our destiny.
Because you become a not-so-great person who can be easily replaced by someone else.
But keep in mind:
We all have the potential to rekindle our innate creative energy.
It has absolutely nothing to do with age.
When we reclaim this creative energy, both our souls and our professional careers will be completely transformed.

Second transformation
The Key to Mastery
Strategies for the Creative Execution Phase
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Chapter 6: Mastery: The Blissful Combination of Intuition and Reason

We all have the capacity to achieve higher-order intelligence, enabling us to anticipate world trends with a broader perspective and respond quickly and accurately to any situation.
The way to develop such abilities is to awaken your innate inclination and focus deeply on one area without worrying about what others think.
Our brains are built to acquire this power.
If you faithfully follow your inner inclination and pursue that ultimate goal, you will naturally be able to reach mastery, a higher level of intelligence.


Third transformation
The Key to Mastery
Strategies for Reaching Mastery
Flip it over

Biographies of living masters
Acknowledgements
References

Robert Greene, the world-renowned bestselling author of 『The Laws of Power』 and 『The Art of War』
'The law that allows anyone to become a master in their field'!

You too can soon discover the ultimate power hidden within you, 'Mastery'!
Even the most ordinary person will experience the power called 'mastery' at least once in their life.
Robert Greene named the power that maximizes human potential as 'mastery', and for most people, it is usually demonstrated in situations where a 'deadline' is set.

It's like this.
You are working on a task that will be very difficult if you don't get it done by tonight.
I don't even care about other little things.
There is only breathless concentration until that deadline.
As time goes by, you demonstrate incredible abilities you never imagined, and barely manage to complete the given task just minutes before the deadline.
And then, looking back, you say, 'How did I accomplish such an amazing feat?' and 'Oh my God, is this really something I accomplished?'
This is the experience of mastery.
Even ordinary office workers have probably had this experience once or twice.
The question is, can we summon and use such superhuman power, mastery, whenever and wherever we want?
We call people who can easily bring out the 'maximum power hidden within them' and produce outstanding results even in everyday life 'masters.'

Chess master Bobby Fischer once said of the state:
“Not only can you preview the various moves that will be made on the chessboard, you can also discover the hidden force fields behind them and predict the direction of the game.”
Pianist Glenn Gould also expressed the same sentiment:

“When playing, you no longer have to worry about the score or parts of the music, but can see the overall structure of the piece and express it.”
It's similar to the feeling of climbing a mountain and suddenly encountering a plateau that opens up before your eyes, and the 'big picture' of your field comes into view at a glance.
In baseball, when the hitting sensation reaches its peak, it is often said that 'the baseball looks like a basketball or a watermelon.'
Einstein expressed this experience of 'expanding one's horizons' this way:

“One day, I suddenly discovered a completely new perspective on the universe, not just through simple questions and answers, but through intuitive visual images.”
So in China, this kind of 'mastery' was also called 'Tao'.
It is a state of enlightenment achieved after long training, which is often mystified in martial arts films.
The moment everything is condensed within them and they can freely draw on their skills and experiences, they no longer gain the sense of being a part, but of being a 'whole'.
So, when people say they have 'good intuition' or 'excellent intuition', it's a phrase that fits those who have achieved mastery.
Robert Greene, who has introduced strategies and methodologies suitable for modern society by drawing on various situations and wisdom from classics and historical figures and events through his international bestsellers 『The Art of War』 and 『The Laws of Power』, has explored the method of achieving 'mastery' in 『The Laws of Mastery』.
After five years of research into the great masters of world history and the geniuses of modern society, he was able to meticulously extract the rules for achieving mastery, and he introduces these methods in this book.

Mastery doesn't come from genius or talent.
Many people mistakenly believe that 'Mastery' is a power that only certain so-called 'legendary' geniuses can obtain.
If that were the case, this book would not have needed to be published.
However, Robert Greene asserts that 'mastery' is not something that only geniuses possess, but rather a power that anyone can develop by choosing a field according to certain rules and undergoing appropriate training in that field.

Mozart, a groundbreaking genius in the history of music, was not a genius, but rather he reached a level that will be remembered in world history by stepping on the 'laws of mastery' introduced in this book.
Because Mozart created his original works at such a young age, people often mistake him for a genius born from heaven.
However, it was more than ten years after he began composing that Mozart began to write original works.
During those ten years of training, Mozart developed his own inner strength through the various methods introduced in this book, and finally achieved the 'mastery' that allowed him to achieve unparalleled achievements in his field.

When people see celebrities who are gaining fame and status at a young age and acting like they have it all, they quickly conclude that it is due to their genius and become frustrated.
However, even so-called geniuses like Mozart and Einstein steadily went through a period of 'training', not shortening or skipping it.
Therefore, anyone can achieve 'mastery' and achieve outstanding results in their field by faithfully following the process described in this book, the 'Law of Mastery'.
You must go through a 'voluntary training period' that can be called the 'butterfly larva stage' to obtain 'Mastery'.

There are no exceptions to this rule.
Moreover, the masters who go through this training period are not much different from ordinary people.
He doesn't seem to be particularly outstanding compared to the average people around him.
Rather, it even makes it look a bit less distant.
But Robert Greene says that beneath the surface of this "training period," their minds are undergoing a regenerative transformation, preparing all the seeds that will become the seed of future great achievements.


If you've been working in the field for more than 10 years, it's time for mastery to emerge!
So now let's look at just a few of the tips presented in this book for achieving mastery.

Have you ever experienced the "compensation acceleration cycle"? If you're a skilled driver, you've already experienced it.
Anything is difficult and challenging when you first learn it.
You probably remember when you first learned to drive, you were so focused on the roads and cars that spread out before your eyes that you broke out in a cold sweat.
But what about now?
You can enjoy driving while listening to music and chatting with the person next to you.
This is the experience of the reward-accelerating cycle, where practice becomes easier and more fun the more you practice, so you can practice longer, which in turn leads to further improvement and makes practice even more enjoyable.

When you learn a job well in any field, you experience an accelerating reward cycle.
Minor skills are ingrained in me and are developed without me even realizing it.
Whether it's riding a bike or typing on a word processor, your skills improve through that process.
In any field, 'proficiency' is a reward for effort.
And this experience will occur several times during the process of reaching mastery.

On the other hand, if ‘skill’ continues for a long time, it becomes stagnant.
In order to improve your skills, you must naturally take on new challenges, which means you will encounter resistance.
However, people avoid this 'resistance' because they hate the boredom and frustration it brings, and they only choose to repeat what they are good at.
When that happens, your skills stagnate.
Robert Green advises that if you deliberately identify the part you don't like doing and focus on practicing it more, your skills will improve rapidly.
The reason why students in school only study subjects they are good at and enjoy is because they hate resistance, and the same goes for the reason why people in the workplace are reluctant to introduce innovation and prefer to maintain long-standing practices.
This is exactly how 'resistance practice', which involves willingly finding the 'resistance' that creates 'stagnation' and practicing it more intensively, is essential for acquiring mastery.

Robert Greene also offers advice that is perfect for the era of the 'creative economy'.
For example, these are the comments:
Regardless of the field, truly creative people are able to put their 'ego' aside for a moment and experience the objects and phenomena before them as they are, withholding definitive judgment.
He calls for breaking away from conventional thinking, pointing out that "the pursuit of certainty is the greatest disease the mind can suffer from."
In that way, I encourage you to pay attention to the 'anomalous anomaly'.
From a conventional perspective or perspective, exceptional events such as mutations are anomalous anomalies.
According to the author, these anomalous anomalies often foretell the future, but people are often caught up in convention and overlook them.
Just as when Seo Taiji's music emerged as a leader in the era, some people thought it was 'strange, strange, and clumsy music.'

This book systematically contains numerous methods and advice on how to achieve mastery.
The power of intuition and reason combined, the moment when one acquires a high level of intelligence after focusing on a field for a long time, the law has been established so that we too can attain that power and realm.

Robert Greene says:

“You may not see anything now, but something is definitely happening in the dirt, beneath the ground.
Don't let go of the strings that connect you to your life's mission.
If you don't let go of that string, you will be able to make the right choices in life, even if unconsciously.
“Over time, mastery will come to you.”
The 'Nananibeol' finds the nerve center of its prey in a very short moment and inserts its venom into it.
It shows a level of speed and sophistication that the observer cannot imagine.
You may have been amazed by the amazing skills of the 'masters' of everyday life who are popularly broadcast on TV.
Even after working for a long time, you may feel frustrated because you are not seeing any tangible results.
Even if you study hard, your grades may not be very good.
But surely, invisible changes are taking place in you right now.
Beneath the invisible surface, you are preparing for a new and reborn transformation.
If you put in a lot of effort in any field for a long time, mastery will come to you.
This book will bring that time forward and reduce the wasted time.
Turn the pages and meet the master.