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One can have no smaller or greater

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mastery than mastery of oneself leonardo da vinci welcome to flourish i'm dying

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planet and you're in the right place if you're ready to create inspired life

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and master your own life today we continue through the best-selling book by

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Robert Greene called Mastery.

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And this is coming full circle because there's a deep connection between the

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laws of human nature, which he wrote, and mastery.

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And I love the fact that I actually read Laws of Human Nature's first,

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and I'll put a link in the show notes to that review. But back to you.

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This is all about the apprenticeship stage and why it's important.

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Well, I'm not going going to make something with my hands. What do I have to apprentice for?

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This is for anything and everybody in order to really hone your skills and make those connections.

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But what do you do? Well, it's a two-part process in this particular chapter.

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It's about the principles and the three steps, along with some great strategies on how to get there.

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So let's not delay any further. Here we go.

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The principle is simple and must be ingrained deeply in your mind.

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The goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position,

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a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character.

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The first transformation on your way to mastery.

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And following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, you are finally on your own

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on a voyage in which which you will craft your own future.

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It is the time of youth and adventure, of exploring the world with an open mind and spirit.

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In fact, whenever you must learn a new skill or alter your career path later

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in life, you reconnect with that useful, adventurous part of yourself.

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The first principle on the transformation of mind and character.

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So what are these three steps? So based on this principle of transformation of mind and character in part one

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of this episode, step one is deep observation, the passive mode.

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What does he mean by that? You will be observing two essential realities in this new world.

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First, you will observe the rules and procedures that govern success in the environment.

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In other words, this is how we do things here.

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The second reality you will observe is the power of relationships that exist within groups.

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Who has real control? Through whom do all communications flow?

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Who is on the rise and who is on the the decline.

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He says, you know, you start a new position and you think you have to prove

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yourself, get in there, get going.

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But the strategy is to actually make some observations, understand the politicking that's going on.

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And that's why I mentioned the laws of human nature, because there's a lot more

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complexities than just doing a good job.

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Every task you are given, and no matter how menial, offers opportunities to

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observe this world at work.

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No detail about the people within it is too trivial.

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Everything you see or hear is a sign for you to decode.

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Not necessarily overthinking, but understand there are several critical reasons

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why you must follow this step. First, knowing your environment inside and out will help you navigating it and

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avoiding costly mistakes. You're like a hunter.

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Your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole

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will give you many more options for survival and success.

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Second, the ability to observe any unfamiliar environment will become a critical lifelong skill.

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You will develop a habit of stilling your ego and looking outward instead of inward.

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You will see in any encounter what most people miss because they're thinking of themselves.

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You will cultivate a keen eye for human psychology and strengthen your ability to focus.

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Finally, you will become accustomed to observing first, basing your ideas and

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theories on what you have seen with your eyes and then analyzing what you find.

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This will be a very important skill for the next creative phase in life.

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Be observant, be curious, ask questions. When you're in the learning mode.

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It's really nice if you don't get caught up in the office politics.

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If you don't get caught up in who's in control, you observe and you learn.

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I love that. Number two, step two, skills acquisition, the practice mode.

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Practice toward the acquisition of skills.

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In acquiring requiring any kind of skill, there exists a natural learning process

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that coincides with the functioning of our brain.

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The learning process leads to what we shall call tacit knowledge,

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a feeling for what you are doing that is hard to put into words,

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but easy to demonstrate in action.

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And to understand how this learning process operates, it is useful to look at

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the greatest system ever invented for the training of skills and the achievement of tacit knowledge.

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The apprenticeship system of the Middle Ages.

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So you might be thinking, oh man, I, what?

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Takes seven years to become a doctor. I wanna make money now.

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But if you think about it and you slow down,

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A doctor, for example, is a very specialized field, and then it expands from there.

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So whatever you're going into, whatever you feel your purpose in life is,

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take your time, just like a doctor would, to hone their skills.

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And that was the timeline that was in the Middle Ages as well. Seven years.

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If you want to become a butcher, baker, candlestick maker,

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maker it took time observance to really hone those skills but he's not just

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talking about things you make with your hands when you pass your apprenticeship

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he says after a term of seven years,

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okay at the end of this term the seven-year example he says apprentices would

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have to pass a master test or produce a master work to prove their level of

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skill once passed they were now out elevated to the rank of journeymen and could

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travel where there was work, practicing the craft.

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They had to learn how to focus deeply on their work and not make mistakes.

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And it gives an example in the book here about the Gothic cathedrals of Europe,

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masterpieces of beauty, craftsmanship, and stability, which were all directed

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without blueprints or books.

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These cathedrals represented the accumulated skills of numerous craftsmen and

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engineers. And you're like, what? How did they do that?

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Think about it for a moment. He says, what this means is simple.

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Language, oral, and written is a relatively recent invention.

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Well before that time, our ancestors had to learn various skills,

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tool making, hunting, and so forth. The natural model for learning, largely based on the power of mirror neurons,

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came from watching and intimating others than repeating the action over and over.

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Our brains are highly suited for this form of learning.

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It's how you learn to walk, talk, ride a bicycle.

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You can't read about how to ride a bicycle. The more we do it, the easier it becomes.

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Even with skills that are primarily mental, such as computer programming or

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speaking a foreign language, it remains the case that we learn best through

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practice and repetition, the natural learning process.

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And once you've taken this far enough, you enter a cycle of accelerated returns

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in which to practice becomes easier and more interesting, leading to the ability

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to practice for longer hours.

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First, it is essential that you begin with one skill that you can master and

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that serves as a foundation for acquiring others.

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You must avoid at all costs the idea you can manage learning several skills at a time.

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You need to develop your powers of concentration and understand that trying

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to multitask will be the death of the process.

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Second, the initial stages of learning a skill invariably involve tedium.

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Rather than avoiding this inevitable tedium, you must accept and embrace it.

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The pain and boredom we experience in the initial stage of learning a skill

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toughens our minds, much like physical exercise.

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You will learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child,

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you will succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction.

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You must meet any boredom head on and not try to avoid or repress it.

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Once something is repeated often enough, it becomes hardwired and automatic,

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and the neural pathways for this skill are delegated to other parts of the brain.

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Farther down the cortex those neurons in

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the frontal cortex that we need in the initial stages are

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now freed up to help in learning something else and the area goes back to its

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normal size and he gives a really helpful tip here he says it is better to dedicate

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two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of

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diffused concentration concentration on it.

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You want it to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible.

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Once an action becomes automatic, you now have the mental space to observe yourself as you practice.

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Trying something over and over again grounds you in reality,

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making you deeply aware of your inadequacies and what you can accomplish with more work and effort.

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If you take this far enough, you will naturally enter the cycle of accelerated returns.

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As you learn and gain skills, you can begin to vary what you do,

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finding nuances that you can develop in the work so it becomes more interesting.

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As the cycle accelerates, you can reach a point where your mind is totally absorbed

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in the practice, entering a kind of flow in which everything else is blocked out.

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You become one with the tool or instrument or thing that you are studying.

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Your skill is not something that can be

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put into words it is embedded in your body and

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nervous system it becomes tacit knowledge learning any

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kind of skill deeply prepares you for mastery the sensation of flow of being

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part of the instrument is a precursor to the great pleasures that mastery can

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bring and he says real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges feeling confidence in your abilities,

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gaining fluency and skills and experiencing the power this brings,

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you develop patience.

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In other words, concentrated practice over time cannot fail but produce results.

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Concentrated practice over time cannot fail but produce results. zones.

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And then step three in transforming your mind and character, the active mode.

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This is where you move to a more active mode of experimentation.

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You are observing yourself in action and seeing how you respond to the judgments of others.

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Most people wait too long to take this step, generally out of fear.

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It is always easier to learn the rules and stay within your comfort for its own.

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Often you must force yourself to initiate such actions or experiments before you think you are ready.

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You are testing your character, moving past your fears and developing a sense

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of detachment to your work. Looking at it through the eyes of others.

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You will know when your apprenticeship is over by the feeling that you have

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nothing left to learn in this environment.

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It's time to declare your independence or move to another place to continue

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your apprenticeship and expand your skill base.

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Later in life when you're confronted with a career change

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or need to learn new skills having gone through this process before

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it will become second nature you have

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learned how to learn many people

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might find the notion of an apprenticeship and skill acquisition a quaint relic

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of bygone errors when work making things after all we have entered the information

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and computer age in which technology makes it so we can do without the kinds

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of meaningful tasks that require practice or repetition.

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So many things have become virtual in our lives, making the craftsman model.

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Obsolete, or so the argument goes.

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In truth, however, and if you're into the whole AI thing going on right now, listen to this.

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This idea of the nature of times you're living in is completely completely incorrect, even dangerous.

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The era we have entered is not one in which technology will make everything

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easier, but rather a time of increased complexity that affects every field.

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In business, competition has become globalized and more intense.

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A business person must have a command of a much larger picture than in the past,

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which means more knowledge and skills.

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The future of science does not lie in increased specialization,

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but rather in the combining and cross-fertilization of knowledge in various fields.

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In the arts, tastes and style are changing at an accelerated rate.

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An artist must be on top of this and be capable of creating new forms.

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Always remaining ahead of the curve.

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This often requires having more than just a specialized knowledge of that particular art form.

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It requires knowing other arts, even the sciences, and what is happening in the world.

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In all of these areas, the human brain is asked to do and handle more than ever before.

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We are dealing with several fields of knowledge constantly intersecting with our own.

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And all of this chaos is exponentially increased by the information available through technology.

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What this means is that all of us must possess different forms of knowledge

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and an array of skills in different fields.

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You have minds that are capable of organizing large amounts of information.

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The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.

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And the process of learning skills, no matter how virtual, remain the same. But how do you do that?

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Well, he has some strategies about the apprenticeship. to show.

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And this is part two of the episode.

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So thank you for hanging in there. And if you like the show,

15:50

well, give us a thumbs up. He begins this section with a quote from Marcus Aurelius.

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Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible.

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And if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

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I love that. The first strategy is value learning over money.

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That's a tough one. He says, it's a simple law of human psychology that your

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thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.

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If it is money, you will choose a place for your apprenticeship that offers the biggest paycheck.

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Inevitably, in such a place, you will feel great pressure to prove yourself worthy of such pay.

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Often before you are really really ready. You will be focused on yourself,

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your insecurities, the need to please and impress the right people, and not acquire skills.

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Strategy number two, keep expanding your horizons. If you desire an apprenticeship,

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if you want to learn and set yourself up for mastery, street.

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You have to do it yourself with great energy.

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Continually work to expand your horizons.

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How do you do that? Reading books and materials that go beyond what is required

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is always a good starting point. Being exposed to ideas in the wild world, you will tend to develop a hunger

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for more and more knowledge.

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You will find it harder to remain satisfied in any narrow corner,

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which is precisely the point.

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Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.

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Whenever you feel like you're settling into some circle, force yourself to shake

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things up and look for new challenges. With your mind expanding, you will redefine the limits of your apparent world.

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Soon ideas and opportunities will come to you and your apprenticeship will naturally complete elite itself.

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You have to set yourself up for success.

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I love that he gave the example about reading books because if you have the

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luxury to read, read something that's going to fill your brain, improve your life.

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Before I started reading more difficult books, like the big one of mastery or

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the laws of human nature, I kind of thought I knew a lot.

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Turns out I think I was illiterate. When you start reading and informing yourself,

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the more you know, the more you grow.

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Number three, revert to a feeling of inferiority.

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Well, he says, What prevents people from learning, even something difficult

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as a new language, is not the subject itself.

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The human mind has limitless capabilities, but rather certain learning disabilities

18:50

that tend to fester and grow in our minds as we get older.

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If we feel like we know something, our mind closes off to other possibilities.

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We see reflections of the truth we have already assumed. Such feelings of superiority

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are often unconscious and stem from a fear of what is different or unknown.

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We are rarely aware of this and often imagine ourselves to be paragons of impartiality.

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Children are generally free of these handicaps. Through learning,

19:22

they can bridge the gap and not feel so helpless.

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Their minds are completely open. They pay greater attention. attention.

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He says, understand, when you enter a new environment, your task is to learn

19:35

and absorb as much as possible.

19:38

For that purpose, you must try to revert to a childlike feeling of inferiority,

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the feeling that others know much more than you, and that you are dependent

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upon them to learn and safely navigate your apprenticeship.

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You drop all of your preconceptions about an environment or field,

19:58

any lingering feelings of smugness. You have no fears.

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Just like a child. I love that. Next is trust the process.

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What separates masters from others is often something surprisingly simple.

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Whenever we learn a skill, we frequently reach a point of frustration.

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What we are learning seems beyond our capabilities. giving

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into these feelings we unconsciously quit on ourselves

20:26

before we actually give up when it

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comes to mastering a skill time is the magic ingredient

20:32

assuming your practice proceeds at

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a steady level over days and weeks certain elements of the skill become hard

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wired slowly the entire scale becomes internalized part of your nervous system

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the mind is no longer mired in details but can see the larger picture.

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It is a miraculous sensation and practice will lead you to the point,

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no matter the talent level you were born with.

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The only real impediment to this is yourself and your emotions.

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Boredom, panic, frustration, insecurity, you cannot suppress such emotions.

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They are normal to the process and experienced by everyone, including masters. masters.

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What you can do is have faith in the process.

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The boredom will go away once you enter the cycle.

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And that's why I mentioned the laws of human nature, because I have an entire

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episode just on mastering your emotions.

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And it's not a quick fix. Nothing is. But if that's where you're really struggling,

21:43

I highly recommend you take a look.

21:45

Number five, move toward resistance and campaign.

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That one sounds like a toughie. He says, By nature, we humans shrink from anything

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that seems possibly painful or overtly difficult.

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We bring this natural tendency to our practice of any skill.

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Once we grow adept at some aspect of this skill, generally one that comes more

22:11

easily to us, we prefer to practice this element over and over.

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Our skill becomes lopsided as we avoid our weaknesses. is knowing that in our

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practice we can let down our guard since we are not being watched or under pressure to perform.

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We bring to this a kind of dispersed attention.

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We tend to also be quite conventional in our practice routines.

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We generally follow what others have done, performing the accepted exercises for these skills.

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This is the path of amateurs. To attain mastery, you must must adopt what we

22:47

shall call resistance practice.

22:50

The principle is simple. You go in the opposite direction of all your natural

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tendencies when it comes to practice.

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First, he says, you resist the temptation to be nice to yourself.

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You become your own worst critic. You see your work as if through through the eyes of others.

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By doing this, you recognize your weaknesses, precisely the elements we're not good at.

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Give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain standards,

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constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits.

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In this way, you develop your own standards for excellence, generally higher than those of others.

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In the end, your five hours of intense focus work are the equivalent of 10 for most people.

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Soon enough, you will see the results of such practice and others who will marvel

23:41

at the apparent ease in which you accomplish your deeds.

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So if you can do focused work, you just about five hours, but you know,

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begin with an hour, half an hour, 20 minutes, carve a piece of time for yourself.

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You will see this come true. You will be able to do more work in less time with less effort.

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Than most people around you. Do the work. Put it in there because it will pay off in the long run.

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Okay, the next strategy is apprentice yourself in failure.

24:20

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education.

24:24

They tell you about your own inadequacies. It is hard to find out such things

24:30

from people as they are often political with their praise and criticism.

24:35

Your failures also permit you to see the flaws of your ideas,

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which are only revealed in the execution of them.

24:43

Think of it this way. There are two kinds of failure.

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The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid or because

24:51

you are waiting for the perfect time.

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This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you.

25:00

The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you feel in this

25:06

way, the hit you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn.

25:13

Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.

25:21

In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.

25:26

You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have a golden touch.

25:33

When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning.

25:40

In any case, to apprentice as an entrepreneur, you must act on your ideas as

25:45

early as possible, exposing them to the public, a part of you even hoping that

25:50

you fail. you have everything to gain.

25:53

Yeah, you learn from your failures, but you don't want to repeat them.

25:57

You do not want to make the same mistake twice.

26:00

And Zig Ziglar always said, it's best to learn from others' mistakes.

26:05

Yeah, that would be nice. But us humans seem to think we know what we're we're doing, right?

26:14

Okay, here's the next strategy.

26:17

Combine the how and the what.

26:21

We humans, I love that, we humans live in two worlds.

26:25

First, there's the outer world of appearances, all the forms of things that captivate our eye.

26:30

But hidden from our view is another world, how these things actually function,

26:36

their anatomy or composition, the parts working together and forming the whole.

26:40

This second world is not so immediately captivating.

26:45

It is harder to understand. It is not something visible to the eye,

26:49

but only to the mind that glimpses the reality.

26:52

But this how of things is just as poetic once we understand it.

26:58

It contains the secret of life, of how things move and change.

27:05

We live in a world of a sad separation that began some 500 years ago.

27:10

Music.

27:17

Focusing mostly on the how of things. Others live in the world of appearances,

27:21

using these things but not really understanding how they function.

27:25

Just before this split occurred, it was the ideal of the Renaissance to combine

27:32

these two forms of knowledge.

27:35

Ha! And he says this is why the work of Leonardo da Vinci continues to fascinate

27:40

us and why the Renaissance remains an ideal.

27:43

This more rounded knowledge is in fact the

27:46

way of the future especially now that

27:49

so much more information is available to us

27:53

all this should be part of our apprenticeship how do things work how do decisions

28:02

get made how does the group interact rounding our knowledge in this way will

28:07

give us a deeper feel for reality and heightened and power to alter it.

28:12

Wow, that's exciting, don't you think? I love that.

28:17

And then number eight, advance through trial and error.

28:22

Avoid the trap of following one set career path.

28:25

You are not sure where this will all lead, but you are taking full advantage

28:30

of the openness of information, all the knowledge about skills now at our disposal.

28:35

You see what kind of work suits you and and what you want to avoid at all costs.

28:40

You move by trial and error. This is how you pass your 20s. You're a programmer

28:45

of this wide-ranging apprenticeship within the loose constraints of your personal interests.

28:51

You are not wandering about because you're afraid of commitment,

28:54

but because you are expanding your skill base and your possibilities.

28:58

At a certain point, when you are ready to settle on something,

29:01

ideas and opportunities will inevitably present themselves to you.

29:06

When that happens, all of the skills you have accumulated will prove invaluable.

29:12

You will be the master at combining them in ways that are unique and suited to your individuality.

29:20

I settled on this one place or idea for several years, accumulating in the process

29:25

even more skills that move in a slightly different direction when the time is appropriate. program.

29:30

In this new age, those who follow a rigid singular path in their youth often

29:36

find themselves in a career dead end in their 40s or overwhelmed with boredom.

29:42

The wide-ranging apprenticeship of your 20s will yield the opposite,

29:47

expanding possibilities as you get older.

29:50

The how you do everything is the secret of life.

29:57

But what about, do I really have to go through this?

30:00

Maybe there's some shortcuts I could take. Even the great masters who people

30:05

thought at one time were born with a magical gift, practiced and honed their

30:12

skills and studied and researched.

30:15

So there are no shortcuts or ways to bypass the apprenticeship phase.

30:21

It is the nature of the human brain to require such lengthy exposure to a field.

30:27

Which allows for complex skills to become deeply embedded and freeze the mind

30:33

up for real creative activity.

30:36

The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.

30:45

There is no possible reversal to this process.

30:51

What he means by that is at the end

30:54

of each chapter he does give a reversal or other

30:58

take on whether it's possible there's

31:01

other options and we discussed that in the last chapter so

31:05

keep in mind keep patient and you will live a more inspired life and you will

31:14

master the universe master yourself and become what you You are destined to

31:21

be on this short time we have on this beautiful planet.

31:25

Hit that subscribe button and I will see you in the next chapter.