Robert Greene teaches us that mastery takes time, it is not an overnight success, but rather a continuous struggle of years that leads to it. People get bored on the path to mastery, and they succumb to distractions and easy shortcuts that become their downfall in the long run when they realize it is too late to follow another path and wish they should have traveled on the path they had left due to persistent labor and hard work. Everyone is unique and has his own qualities and skills, but only a few become masters in their respective fields, and the reason is passion, commitment, and years of patience and struggle.
1. THE IDEAL APPRENTICESHIP AND ITS IMPORTANCE
When you were a child, you learn from the people around you especially your parents, as you grow up, you start learning mathematics, science, history, and other languages, and then you step outside of your home to face real life: the apprenticeship phase when you enter a new career, a new job, and you have no idea how things work, and you just marvel at everything. You wonder how your mind expands and find answers to mysterious questions when you are involved in fields you love. Time passes so quickly, and you do not want to waste a second of your life since learning is fun, and you are enjoying it. Your childhood plays a key role in apprenticeship, if you were raised as a timid and suppressed person, you would doubt your abilities and skills and would miss a lot of opportunities. If you were morals were high and had confidence, you would boldly confront problems and would not hesitate to make critical decisions. You can make wise decisions when you have your fears controlled. A foggy mind always makes useless decisions that lead to a catastrophic end.
2. The Importance of Mentors: Learn to Accumulate Their Skills in Less Time
Life is too short, and it is very challenging for us to learn everything on our own. All the great masters in history had mentors who guided them, carefully evaluated their work, and let them know in which areas they needed further improvements. The path to mastering gets easier and more enjoyable once we know our weaknesses and strengths and the direction to follow. People who did not have mentors did study and explore but were unable to make a name for themselves since they did not know which way they should go and how they could improve themselves. We need mentors to show us the right path so that our precious time does not get wasted in a useless pursuit that just wastes our time and kills our spirits. When you are sure, now you can stay as a dependent person and work on your own, and compete with your mentor, you can let yourself from his chains, and thrive ahead.
3. Learn the Art of Social Intelligence: Do not let others use you
When we are getting ahead in life, we face people who are the opposite of their appearances; they approach us and make us emotional and get what they wanted from us via subtle maneuvers and deceptions. We need to observe people keenly and deeply. Friendly gestures, being too nice, and being humble and caring, are signs of ulterior motives.
“Often the greatest obstacle to our pursuit of mastery comes from the emotional drain we experience in dealing with the resistance and manipulations of the people around us. If we are not careful, our minds become absorbed in endless political intrigues and battles. The principal problem we face in the social arena is our naïve tendency to project onto people our emotional needs and desires of the moment. We misread their intentions and react in ways that cause confusion or conflict. Social intelligence is the ability to see people in the most realistic light possible. By moving past our usual self-absorption, we can learn to focus deeply on others, reading their behavior in the moment, seeing what motivates them, and discerning any possible manipulative tendencies. 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.”
4. Awaken the Dimensional mind: The Simplest Ways
As you get through the apprenticeship phase, you have accumulated a lot of skills and are able now to stand on your own feet and decide for yourself. Once you get stable and conform to a group, your creativity diminishes with time due to following a conventional way of life, and not focusing on what is happening around you. You become self-absorbed and conservative and do not entertain ideas that go against your thoughts, no matter how great they are. Flexibility is important in every stage of life, as children, we were active and curious and would explore everything in detail and were in awe of new things around us; we would look at things from every angle and would struggle to explore them to their depth. As we accumulate much knowledge, we feel that we are enough now, and we do not need more knowledge and the assistance of others to help us in the fields that we have already explored. As long as you keep your mind awake, you explore more and never get tired of learning, but once you get into your comfort zone, your mind comes to a halt, and your knowledge stops there.
5. The Path from Apprenticeship to Mastery: Do Not Succumb To Temptations
The path from apprenticeship to mastery is challenging yet exciting since we accumulate skills and knowledge that boost our confidence and help us solve problems from different angles. We develop an intuitive feeling that helps us explore different networks in our fields. We learn to control our frustrations; we become patient; we fall in love with the process. Once we develop a deep love for our fields, we do not succumb to the easiest path; we adhere to the difficult path that separates us from others who are left somewhere in the middle.
“All of us have access to a higher form of intelligence, one that can allow us to see more of the world, to anticipate trends, to respond with speed and accuracy to any circumstance. This intelligence is cultivated by deeply immersing ourselves in a field of study and staying true to our inclinations, no matter how unconventional our approach might seem to others. Through such intense immersion over many years we come to internalize and gain an intuitive feel for the complicated components of our field. When we fuse this intuitive feel with rational processes, we expand our minds to the outer limits of our potential and are able to see into the secret core of life itself. We then come to have powers that approximate the instinctive force and speed of animals, but with the added reach that our human consciousness brings us. This power is what our brains were designed to attain, and we will be naturally led to this type of intelligence if we follow our inclinations to their ultimate end.”