January 6, 2026 • 21 mins
Mastery is not a gift handed to the “talented", it’s a ruthless process: time, patience, humility, apprenticeship, and the emotional control to not quit when it gets boring. In this review, I break down Greene’s core ideas, why social intelligence matters as much as skill, and how intuition gets forged through long exposure to the craft.
(00:00) — Go against the tide: develop mastery
(00:11) — Why this book, why now
(00:38) — Context: comparing to 48 Laws of Power
(00:57) — Reading experience: chunky, dense, “Greene” style
(02:42) — Power vs Mastery: maturity and intent
(03:24) — Who this book is (and isn’t) for
(04:32) — The myth of talent: process beats “genius”
(06:16) — Core point: mastery is a process
(07:31) — Time, patience, humility IQ (and people quit early)
(08:17) — Freddie Roach: mastery through endurance
(09:52) — The book’s structure: life task → apprenticeship → mastery
(10:37) — “Life task”: curiosity vs passion
(12:18) — Apprenticeship: long, boring, necessary
(13:50) — Mental dynamic: emotional regulation
(14:24) — Social intelligence: skill alone won’t save you
(15:48) — Dimensional mind: intuition + rational
(18:18) — AI analogy + building a “bigger matrix” of insight
(20:44) — Closing: the six steps and the seduction of mastery
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
I want you to develop a different mindset.
(00:02):
I want you to go against the tide of the twenty first century and develop mastery.
Yes. We have
today the book
mastery
by mister Robert Greene,
a book review and one that I haven't done in a while, but it's book reviews and also reading something that isn't fiction. So I was quite motivated to get into this particular book. I've got a whole host of notes and little tab that I've tabulated in this particular book I'm gonna talk to you about, and I think they'd not get into it. There was a lot in this particular book. Now I have read Robert Greene's 48 laws about. So if you haven't, there's some context and some comparisons I'll be doing to that particular book at the same time as this one. So I'll try and refer it much as possible,
(00:51):
to it, but give examples or specifics if you haven't read it, at all before.
But I think we kick off with the actual book being, and, Tim, I'm talking about just a review in general. I will do a bit of a lessons and learnings and then sort of tabs are for in this particular book that you can go to have a separate session,
but it's 300,
plus pages, just over 300 pages, and in usual Robert Greene style the writing is pretty tiny, it's pretty small, and it did take me a hell of a long time to get through it. It wasn't as
(01:21):
populated with text text and information as the power, 40 in laws pop, but it was still like, it's chunky, and you wanna get through it, fairly close together so you can kind of get all the takeaways that come around it. So some of the notes notes are put here from around the the reggae. Firstly, it is well written, and then they need to say Robert Greene writes any books that are not well written, they're quite well structured. The historical kind of, back pointing to a lot of the things throughout the book. I love it,
(01:49):
great, and it is very
green. Right? It's very as as you read it through, as I read it through in any case, there's the usual, you know, red coloring to the titles and to the quotes,
the usage of stories, and man, there's plenty of historical references in this one. Albeit not as many different ones as there was in the
48 Laws of Power, but still there's a a lot of those comparisons
between
(02:10):
the mastery points and the keys and the reversals
to all of the historical context, and that that's a very Robert Greene sort of, thing to do in a book. Obviously I've only read the 48 laws of powers. I can only assume that the others like
the 50 of law and,
war I think are art of war and the other ones well.
(02:30):
Okay, I'm sorry. The 33 strategies of war and the art of seduction I'm assuming are very similar in that sense as well.
The
it's probably less hard bidding than the 48 laws of power. Maybe the example that I would give in this particular book is that the 48 laws of power, I would be,
tentative to give to a semi young person. Like, there'd have to be a certain level of maturity before they were to pick it up and see the
(02:58):
devilish nature that it can bring about to the actual application, how to see it in others. You kind of have to know the world before you start
those things.
Maybe there is some similarities to this one, however,
in the mastery
it's a more of a recipe, more of a a guide, a gentler guide I will say than the direct information of providing the 48 loss of power that you
(03:19):
need to know more of life and its context to apply it in its absolutely best intent, whereas mastery has great comparisons, great flow that
makes it do an easier read than the 48 Laws of Power ever did.
And for me, look,
I'll say it upfront,
this wasn't a
book that I'm gonna be moving forward to say, I would go and recommend everyone to go and read, I think it needs to be a particular character,
(03:45):
sort of an A type, sort of someone who wants to reach mastering something to care about this particular book, I would gift it. I don't know if I reread this book, forty eight Hours of Power,
I reread it, I refer to different parts of the laws in different contexts and asking
AI to summarize some of them and its applications in different things because it's interesting and
(04:05):
its applicability is different, whereas this one, once you read it through, get all the points that Robert is trying to get out, fantastic,
And from that point, I don't know, I'll really go back and never reread unless there was particular points up, not the story cool context, definitely not, and I'll talk about that why in a moment. But the general keys to mastery and the things that it makes sense, puts all of it from another, it's
(04:28):
well intended, makes sense. I've kind of captured it, absorbed it, a lot of it fit within what I already thought in my life, and so there's no real need to go back to it. So that's probably the main crullers.
One of the things I found interesting that one was about why Robert Green wrote this particular
after doing a 48 miles of power. It's really nice that I was finding about it was Green wanted to
(04:49):
dismantle the the myth of talent and gee. It sort of seemed like he read a lot of biographies and doing a lot of interviews, and he himself had some challenges when he was younger in becoming the master.
He kind of found this
continuous
piece of connection or strings or tie things together that led to mastery, and it wasn't through just pure talent or pure genius. However, look, that exists. There are people who are incredibly talented, incredibly,
(05:19):
gifted in certain senses where it's genius via IQ or something else.
Maybe just incredibly lucky, whatever. But those do exist, and I wouldn't put it out of the question that, you know, that is some aspects of the world around that. But what Robert Greene was trying to do in this particular book is more more rather than the external powers,
the actual internal development that can come along in terms of going through the apprenticeship and the creativity and the mentors that you can find and the work ethic and then allowing yourself to become
(05:48):
the
individual. One reaches mastery, they're able to use that rational
state of mind with the intuitive knowledge of a long time and concern there for knowing something really quite deeply. So that's
how this book kinda develops and it's that you can see it very clearly if you've read my books. The differences between
48 laws of power,
(06:08):
with a very external power orientation to it is a very inter internal, much more self help y feeling type of book.
The core points
of mastery,
right, one, mastery is a process not a gift. So kind of going back to that,
continuation that it it's repeated all over the place in this particular book in that,
(06:30):
the examples he gives so one of the key ones that kept popping up and at the back of the book is quite a few of the individuals and names that he brings up in this book. But other than Einstein, I think if I hadn't read this book I've got it but other than Einstein's biography but haven't really read it. And I I I wanna read it to see whether it portrays as a gen as a genius because
(06:50):
in this book, as the description of the story is played out, you can kinda go, oh, yeah. It's more of the process and the space
and the creative nature
that led to the discoveries of general relativity that Albert Einstein was able to do, but it was preceded by a lot of effort, a lot of care, a lot of working in different ways than the existing individuals did to the day. So there was a conglomerating
(07:14):
amount of things that allowed him to do things of the idea that was able to get generated, not purely by the genies. However,
I don't know if Robert always made that call here. I don't always say like, Nick's not genius. It's always a process.
I think you can have both. Yeah. You can have both. But maybe the pros of the bit is a bigger chunk, you know, is 80%
(07:36):
of of what you use, but you can still have those really quite,
highly
intellectual, highly gifted individuals, but
it's mastery is mostly a process, not just a gift.
Robert Adler would say mastery is just fully the process, not the gift. Also, the the time time patience and humiliation
beat out I Q and maybe another part
(07:57):
that wasn't as directly said in here, but it's just that people quit too early. But I'm gonna go, oh, at least that's the energy in the vibe that I kinda got out of it. It's that people quit too goddamn early to achieve the things that they're wanting. A lot of the stories that are portrayed in this particular book to compare to the various titles of the book, Went All Around. You know, this person did this for such a long time or endured or was able to continue doing,
(08:22):
the particular
story on, I believe was
Freddie Coach
Roach?
Freddie Roach.
Completely trying to see if I can find it on the back here.
Freddie Roach. I think I'm right. Like the story of Freddie Boach where, you know, he came from a background of a boxing family
(08:42):
and, you know, his dad pushed him to be a boxer from a very, very young age. He was doing boxing. He was professional file all the way through to, you know, 18 years old and kinda beyond until he started figuring out, though, that he's just not that good as a particular boxer.
Was in a basically all of his life then set back in coaching to try and support, and he was doing it, you know, basically his whole life, but it was towards
(09:04):
as he aged by the wisdom, with the endurance that he retained in being there and all the information that kind of grew out of time, then that all turned out to
him being called a a master, being called out of all the greatest sort of coaches that ever lived. But again, if you were to revert back to when he was 18 or 22,
there was things in his life, practices that he did,
(09:26):
times that had to occur to allow that mastery to come out in the end. So again, it's the time, the endurance, and just not quitting. Like, so if he had quit at 22, 23 or gone and done something else far than boxing, he'd never would have gotten to the point of in particular, it was using,
the technique of the weaknesses of the opponent versus just purely
(09:47):
finding out how the other opponent boxed something, cowling. I don't pay homage to it. I'm not a boxing
fanatic in particular.
Reading the and I'll I'll talk to each particular topic. So the way that the book itself is broken down
is he puts this book by later, Anna. Sorry. Anna,
what I make, this is a book to get,
(10:08):
put towards yourself. So there's the discovering calling. The life task is kind of the big one big call out. Then he goes into submitting the writ, submit to reality, the idea of apprenticeship.
There's the absorbing the master's power, the mentor dynamic, the social intelligence,
the creative active,
and the
good one which I guess gets to
(10:29):
mastery. Fusing the intuitive with the rational which is mastery.
So that's what we all came for so we'll get there slowly eventually.
So the first kind of call out there from those those sections, there's the the life task. Now
this one was probably the one that I least connected with in some ways. So again, the the structures of each one and,
(10:49):
again, this is why it's very, Robert Gris esque is that what each one of these chapters goes with, a little bit of a summary, the hidden fours, the keys to mastery, or essentially what are the keys for this particular section that he's talking about. There's the strategies, and generally the strategies for finding the last task is examples. So in this particular book I talk about Albert Einstein,
John Coltrane, Marie Curie.
(11:11):
There was a whole list of other names. There's Freddie Roach there, and then there's some sort of, accumulated congregation of those particular individuals and what it maps to on finding the last task. And and then usually at the end is a reversal. You know, can you reverse what you've just been talking about? We're just almost gonna look at the officer wait just in case.
And, in the that particular,
(11:31):
life task perspective,
I I kinda found, like, I got the the idea that it was should be pulled from curiosity.
And it's not passion,
but actually inclination as in what are you inclined to do much so much what you're passionate about.
But always this particular idea of life task.
I have a sense, again, in my age where I am right now at life, something hasn't absolutely smacked me in the face and telling me that this is my life task. Not yet. Some of the examples that he gave was
(12:01):
really quite early, you just know what you're gonna do, sometimes a little bit later and like you hear something, you see something and all of a sudden there you go, there's the glace and there's the pull.
I don't know if I'd say there's anything just yet that has the pull. Do I need to have a pull to become a master? Can I just gain skill sets and various things and that leads to mastery?
Probably. So that's the only one that probably didn't connect as deeply as me, but it begins with that, life tasks. The second one is of a big section was the apprenticeships.
(12:26):
So this is, you know,
funny enough you could say it's long, shit, it's boring, it's unattractive, right? It's an unattractive phase. Why? Because it's the the proverbial that's symbolic, not in in logic, but it's the ten thousand hours. It's the doing something, concerted effort, trying to improve as well for a long enough time back in the day in the two hundred, three hundred years ago you have apprenticeships to become a shoe maker or boiler maker or whatever. Even if it was apprenticeship because you would get the skill sets over
(12:55):
seven to ten years time, at which point you would be able to be assessed as, hey. You're good enough to go and run the show and do your own thing and build up apprenticeships underneath you as well. And that continues as kind of a skill building, but that that core piece around apprenticeship is quite interesting in that
most people probably want to achieve things and skills in a in a quick pace.
(13:18):
We live in a world, right, we're in front of 25 at this point where things have become quite easier to
gain in terms of skill set or offset to others like technology, AI, etcetera to do it or other people. So there are aspects that maybe you can offset some of these skills that previously you might have tried to acquire,
a skill sets to become an apprentice and something then become a master and then kind of go meta or at a higher, more upper valley level. But still, the higher up you go on those particular levels, there's still a certain amount of time and effort and wisdom and failing and then learning, but you have to do to become
(13:52):
have not a master, but have enough skin in the game and plays in the long term game to know, to see, to have the finger to feel with something else that Robert talks about in Mastery as well.
The mental dynamic,
pure key piece of Kevin Tookabides was and that he talks about, it's just emotional regulation,
regulating your emotions,
(14:13):
splitting out the rationalness of the emotional, really bisecting into
the why some might have pursued something and
gone the extra mile and why some might have quit in the end before we got there. The the social intelligence was another one of my key favorites from this particular book to be honest.
The the old known up right now is obvious. Human systems,
(14:35):
skill
alone is not enough to succeed in that we live in human systems. And
this is probably a section
that in books that I've read in the past gets missed and I know myself and I talk about, you know, on the podcast about particular things or theories or philosophies, I often get into the topic of like, yes, but then you're living in the social system and the human systems, and you didn't shy away from that conversation, which I found really, really brilliant in that he talked about, yes, it's gonna be politics and there's gonna be social life and there's gonna be the way that just humans are humans. Right? We are mere mortals. We live in the world. We can't just live on a bubble or a theoretical, and so
(15:14):
the the idea around, you know, becoming a master also has to include those social intelligence aspects. It's the social
intelligence creator, but I think there is a term for that, but it's just about knowing how to interact with other humans. And that might be for the favor, for the power, for the ideas, for the generation that comes from the from the entertainment, from the getting you to the next step to be able to pursue particular mastery things and or skill building, if you if you will. And again, there's loads of examples that Robert goes through. It would be a disservice to try to read any of them. There's just so got that many in the particular book. And then the the Dimension Online, which
(15:53):
again looking in today's well, it gave me such a flashback to AI or at least thinking about AI because it's this view of rational thinking plus,
you know,
the earned intuition that comes from it. So again, earned intuition here from
the apprenticeship, from doing the hard things, from doing it for a long time. The thing is it feels,
(16:16):
feels like something is coming. One of the examples they're talking about the tribe of the Brazilian,
one of the tribes in the Amazon
and they talk about how they can predict
hours ahead
a storm coming or even a plane flying. And it is this
who the hell knows what
feelings,
noises,
smells,
(16:36):
changes in the environment that they're feeling to predict what's coming, right? That's part of the earned intuition and and sometimes especially when you look at a master at work. Yeah. I have no clue where this intuition is coming from, but it has evolved over the apprenticeship and the idea of bringing the social
aspects of it and just seeing things work and not work then to the rational mind, and that's to the probably the more hard earned skills as in if someone
(17:02):
knows,
maybe a random example, I gave Ravi and Cummings a book, but a random example would be if you were trying to do mathematics in another
planet, right, and you just saw someone do a what would be considered their one plus money pursuit, but if it was something completely different in another language, in another way to abstract it,
You would have none of the rational thinking, not just the intuitive, but you have none of the rational thinking as to how they got about to this conversation or bad addition that's being done in front of you. That
(17:31):
obviously escalated into mastery levels of whatever skill set.
One of clear example I guess for us at the immortals is the handstand,
balancing.
Karen, I asked him about, you know, the way that he thinks about when he's doing a handstand or try to do a one arm handstand. He might say, well, yeah, rationally I'm thinking about a little pinky kind of has to press against my other finger just in case, you know, there's a little bit of off pressure on my thumb. That would make no rational thinking, sense in my mind because I have no clue. I've never thought about it in those concentric circles. It also makes me think of the art of learning, by Josh Waiskin, which is probably a very aligned or similar type book or that one's more of the practice like Josh Waiskin
(18:10):
actually applying it versus
Robert Greene where it's more of the biographical nature
bringing in story from the past to actually create it as well. So,
oh, I'm sorry. I added the dimensional mind. It made me think of the
various, you know, huge vertices and the matrices that are used in AI in the now you have this weighted things about 30,000
(18:32):
by what a 100,000, you know, matrices that are used for the for the weights or for the rational attention,
calculations. And then maybe you think of that dimensional mind as it's almost kind of like a similar way, you know, you might start with a very small matrix because you only know so much and how many inputs.
And as you learn more things and adapt yourself and gain more skill sets, kinda grows and a matrix grows and so you can start making comparisons and connections between all these different things as time goes on because you you see that over there or a network connects to this word, and that idea connects to this idea. So it was a just in the moment kinda connected me to AI in this general list. I get the book, an eight hour attack for Robert Greene's Mastery of Thought.
(19:12):
It's a very green book. It's a very interesting book. I would gift it to someone,
I found it that as I read it,
if I just smashed out gigantic chunks, I would absorb a lot more of the information. I don't know if this was just this book or just in general that might be the case, but this particular one because it was heavy in concepts, heavy in the stories, and there would be
(19:35):
pages without
genuine breaks. I'll just pick up a random one, and I can see that from, say, page 127,
there would be no breaks in the paragraphs or anything else or sections until a 133.
So to me, there's quite a few pages with no stop. It's just story idea, story idea, absorb, absorb, absorb. So the best way he was doing to big chunks of of sections of this book to be able to really take it on and grasp it properly. That's maybe less of this particular book, more just in general, that's probably a good way to absorb books as you're reading elsewhere. That'll be my review for Robert Greene's Mastery. If you have read this book, it's quite a far bigger book, let me know your thoughts, Throw it in the in the comments, wherever you're listening or, watching this particular one.
(20:16):
If you've got any ideas about the books as well that you're on the review, let me know. You can support us, me and mortalspodcast.com/support,
and there's many ways that you can do it. Obviously, if you've been listening and you're or watching all the way till now, thank you. That's a fantastic way to support us. And as we continue now in 2026,
I think you're gonna find some enjoyable things that we're gonna be releasing as well this year. I'm gonna be putting on quite a lot of effort, so hopefully, it's something that you will also enjoy as well. Immortal Alliance, I hope you're well worn out. Many of us may never reach that level. I know I've had flashes of it, but I'm not considering myself. I've I've attained that level of mastery.
(20:52):
But it's an amazing feeling, and I want to inspire
each and every one of you to reach that level of mastery by going through those six steps, by being patient and disciplined
by being creative and independent
and then finally following you to the end where ideas come to you and you are the master of your field
(21:14):
And so I think the book is designed to lead you and seduce you into following this process.
And that is mastery for you.
I want you to develop a different mindset.
(00:02):
I want you to go against the tide of the twenty first century and develop mastery.
Yes. We have
today the book
mastery
by mister Robert Greene,
a book review and one that I haven't done in a while, but it's book reviews and also reading something that isn't fiction. So I was quite motivated to get into this particular book. I've got a whole host of notes and little tab that I've tabulated in this particular book I'm gonna talk to you about, and I think they'd not get into it. There was a lot in this particular book. Now I have read Robert Greene's 48 laws about. So if you haven't, there's some context and some comparisons I'll be doing to that particular book at the same time as this one. So I'll try and refer it much as possible,
(00:51):
to it, but give examples or specifics if you haven't read it, at all before.
But I think we kick off with the actual book being, and, Tim, I'm talking about just a review in general. I will do a bit of a lessons and learnings and then sort of tabs are for in this particular book that you can go to have a separate session,
but it's 300,
plus pages, just over 300 pages, and in usual Robert Greene style the writing is pretty tiny, it's pretty small, and it did take me a hell of a long time to get through it. It wasn't as
(01:21):
populated with text text and information as the power, 40 in laws pop, but it was still like, it's chunky, and you wanna get through it, fairly close together so you can kind of get all the takeaways that come around it. So some of the notes notes are put here from around the the reggae. Firstly, it is well written, and then they need to say Robert Greene writes any books that are not well written, they're quite well structured. The historical kind of, back pointing to a lot of the things throughout the book. I love it,
(01:49):
great, and it is very
green. Right? It's very as as you read it through, as I read it through in any case, there's the usual, you know, red coloring to the titles and to the quotes,
the usage of stories, and man, there's plenty of historical references in this one. Albeit not as many different ones as there was in the
48 Laws of Power, but still there's a a lot of those comparisons
between
(02:10):
the mastery points and the keys and the reversals
to all of the historical context, and that that's a very Robert Greene sort of, thing to do in a book. Obviously I've only read the 48 laws of powers. I can only assume that the others like
the 50 of law and,
war I think are art of war and the other ones well.
(02:30):
Okay, I'm sorry. The 33 strategies of war and the art of seduction I'm assuming are very similar in that sense as well.
The
it's probably less hard bidding than the 48 laws of power. Maybe the example that I would give in this particular book is that the 48 laws of power, I would be,
tentative to give to a semi young person. Like, there'd have to be a certain level of maturity before they were to pick it up and see the
(02:58):
devilish nature that it can bring about to the actual application, how to see it in others. You kind of have to know the world before you start
those things.
Maybe there is some similarities to this one, however,
in the mastery
it's a more of a recipe, more of a a guide, a gentler guide I will say than the direct information of providing the 48 loss of power that you
(03:19):
need to know more of life and its context to apply it in its absolutely best intent, whereas mastery has great comparisons, great flow that
makes it do an easier read than the 48 Laws of Power ever did.
And for me, look,
I'll say it upfront,
this wasn't a
book that I'm gonna be moving forward to say, I would go and recommend everyone to go and read, I think it needs to be a particular character,
(03:45):
sort of an A type, sort of someone who wants to reach mastering something to care about this particular book, I would gift it. I don't know if I reread this book, forty eight Hours of Power,
I reread it, I refer to different parts of the laws in different contexts and asking
AI to summarize some of them and its applications in different things because it's interesting and
(04:05):
its applicability is different, whereas this one, once you read it through, get all the points that Robert is trying to get out, fantastic,
And from that point, I don't know, I'll really go back and never reread unless there was particular points up, not the story cool context, definitely not, and I'll talk about that why in a moment. But the general keys to mastery and the things that it makes sense, puts all of it from another, it's
(04:28):
well intended, makes sense. I've kind of captured it, absorbed it, a lot of it fit within what I already thought in my life, and so there's no real need to go back to it. So that's probably the main crullers.
One of the things I found interesting that one was about why Robert Green wrote this particular
after doing a 48 miles of power. It's really nice that I was finding about it was Green wanted to
(04:49):
dismantle the the myth of talent and gee. It sort of seemed like he read a lot of biographies and doing a lot of interviews, and he himself had some challenges when he was younger in becoming the master.
He kind of found this
continuous
piece of connection or strings or tie things together that led to mastery, and it wasn't through just pure talent or pure genius. However, look, that exists. There are people who are incredibly talented, incredibly,
(05:19):
gifted in certain senses where it's genius via IQ or something else.
Maybe just incredibly lucky, whatever. But those do exist, and I wouldn't put it out of the question that, you know, that is some aspects of the world around that. But what Robert Greene was trying to do in this particular book is more more rather than the external powers,
the actual internal development that can come along in terms of going through the apprenticeship and the creativity and the mentors that you can find and the work ethic and then allowing yourself to become
(05:48):
the
individual. One reaches mastery, they're able to use that rational
state of mind with the intuitive knowledge of a long time and concern there for knowing something really quite deeply. So that's
how this book kinda develops and it's that you can see it very clearly if you've read my books. The differences between
48 laws of power,
(06:08):
with a very external power orientation to it is a very inter internal, much more self help y feeling type of book.
The core points
of mastery,
right, one, mastery is a process not a gift. So kind of going back to that,
continuation that it it's repeated all over the place in this particular book in that,
(06:30):
the examples he gives so one of the key ones that kept popping up and at the back of the book is quite a few of the individuals and names that he brings up in this book. But other than Einstein, I think if I hadn't read this book I've got it but other than Einstein's biography but haven't really read it. And I I I wanna read it to see whether it portrays as a gen as a genius because
(06:50):
in this book, as the description of the story is played out, you can kinda go, oh, yeah. It's more of the process and the space
and the creative nature
that led to the discoveries of general relativity that Albert Einstein was able to do, but it was preceded by a lot of effort, a lot of care, a lot of working in different ways than the existing individuals did to the day. So there was a conglomerating
(07:14):
amount of things that allowed him to do things of the idea that was able to get generated, not purely by the genies. However,
I don't know if Robert always made that call here. I don't always say like, Nick's not genius. It's always a process.
I think you can have both. Yeah. You can have both. But maybe the pros of the bit is a bigger chunk, you know, is 80%
(07:36):
of of what you use, but you can still have those really quite,
highly
intellectual, highly gifted individuals, but
it's mastery is mostly a process, not just a gift.
Robert Adler would say mastery is just fully the process, not the gift. Also, the the time time patience and humiliation
beat out I Q and maybe another part
(07:57):
that wasn't as directly said in here, but it's just that people quit too early. But I'm gonna go, oh, at least that's the energy in the vibe that I kinda got out of it. It's that people quit too goddamn early to achieve the things that they're wanting. A lot of the stories that are portrayed in this particular book to compare to the various titles of the book, Went All Around. You know, this person did this for such a long time or endured or was able to continue doing,
(08:22):
the particular
story on, I believe was
Freddie Coach
Roach?
Freddie Roach.
Completely trying to see if I can find it on the back here.
Freddie Roach. I think I'm right. Like the story of Freddie Boach where, you know, he came from a background of a boxing family
(08:42):
and, you know, his dad pushed him to be a boxer from a very, very young age. He was doing boxing. He was professional file all the way through to, you know, 18 years old and kinda beyond until he started figuring out, though, that he's just not that good as a particular boxer.
Was in a basically all of his life then set back in coaching to try and support, and he was doing it, you know, basically his whole life, but it was towards
(09:04):
as he aged by the wisdom, with the endurance that he retained in being there and all the information that kind of grew out of time, then that all turned out to
him being called a a master, being called out of all the greatest sort of coaches that ever lived. But again, if you were to revert back to when he was 18 or 22,
there was things in his life, practices that he did,
(09:26):
times that had to occur to allow that mastery to come out in the end. So again, it's the time, the endurance, and just not quitting. Like, so if he had quit at 22, 23 or gone and done something else far than boxing, he'd never would have gotten to the point of in particular, it was using,
the technique of the weaknesses of the opponent versus just purely
(09:47):
finding out how the other opponent boxed something, cowling. I don't pay homage to it. I'm not a boxing
fanatic in particular.
Reading the and I'll I'll talk to each particular topic. So the way that the book itself is broken down
is he puts this book by later, Anna. Sorry. Anna,
what I make, this is a book to get,
(10:08):
put towards yourself. So there's the discovering calling. The life task is kind of the big one big call out. Then he goes into submitting the writ, submit to reality, the idea of apprenticeship.
There's the absorbing the master's power, the mentor dynamic, the social intelligence,
the creative active,
and the
good one which I guess gets to
(10:29):
mastery. Fusing the intuitive with the rational which is mastery.
So that's what we all came for so we'll get there slowly eventually.
So the first kind of call out there from those those sections, there's the the life task. Now
this one was probably the one that I least connected with in some ways. So again, the the structures of each one and,
(10:49):
again, this is why it's very, Robert Gris esque is that what each one of these chapters goes with, a little bit of a summary, the hidden fours, the keys to mastery, or essentially what are the keys for this particular section that he's talking about. There's the strategies, and generally the strategies for finding the last task is examples. So in this particular book I talk about Albert Einstein,
John Coltrane, Marie Curie.
(11:11):
There was a whole list of other names. There's Freddie Roach there, and then there's some sort of, accumulated congregation of those particular individuals and what it maps to on finding the last task. And and then usually at the end is a reversal. You know, can you reverse what you've just been talking about? We're just almost gonna look at the officer wait just in case.
And, in the that particular,
(11:31):
life task perspective,
I I kinda found, like, I got the the idea that it was should be pulled from curiosity.
And it's not passion,
but actually inclination as in what are you inclined to do much so much what you're passionate about.
But always this particular idea of life task.
I have a sense, again, in my age where I am right now at life, something hasn't absolutely smacked me in the face and telling me that this is my life task. Not yet. Some of the examples that he gave was
(12:01):
really quite early, you just know what you're gonna do, sometimes a little bit later and like you hear something, you see something and all of a sudden there you go, there's the glace and there's the pull.
I don't know if I'd say there's anything just yet that has the pull. Do I need to have a pull to become a master? Can I just gain skill sets and various things and that leads to mastery?
Probably. So that's the only one that probably didn't connect as deeply as me, but it begins with that, life tasks. The second one is of a big section was the apprenticeships.
(12:26):
So this is, you know,
funny enough you could say it's long, shit, it's boring, it's unattractive, right? It's an unattractive phase. Why? Because it's the the proverbial that's symbolic, not in in logic, but it's the ten thousand hours. It's the doing something, concerted effort, trying to improve as well for a long enough time back in the day in the two hundred, three hundred years ago you have apprenticeships to become a shoe maker or boiler maker or whatever. Even if it was apprenticeship because you would get the skill sets over
(12:55):
seven to ten years time, at which point you would be able to be assessed as, hey. You're good enough to go and run the show and do your own thing and build up apprenticeships underneath you as well. And that continues as kind of a skill building, but that that core piece around apprenticeship is quite interesting in that
most people probably want to achieve things and skills in a in a quick pace.
(13:18):
We live in a world, right, we're in front of 25 at this point where things have become quite easier to
gain in terms of skill set or offset to others like technology, AI, etcetera to do it or other people. So there are aspects that maybe you can offset some of these skills that previously you might have tried to acquire,
a skill sets to become an apprentice and something then become a master and then kind of go meta or at a higher, more upper valley level. But still, the higher up you go on those particular levels, there's still a certain amount of time and effort and wisdom and failing and then learning, but you have to do to become
(13:52):
have not a master, but have enough skin in the game and plays in the long term game to know, to see, to have the finger to feel with something else that Robert talks about in Mastery as well.
The mental dynamic,
pure key piece of Kevin Tookabides was and that he talks about, it's just emotional regulation,
regulating your emotions,
(14:13):
splitting out the rationalness of the emotional, really bisecting into
the why some might have pursued something and
gone the extra mile and why some might have quit in the end before we got there. The the social intelligence was another one of my key favorites from this particular book to be honest.
The the old known up right now is obvious. Human systems,
(14:35):
skill
alone is not enough to succeed in that we live in human systems. And
this is probably a section
that in books that I've read in the past gets missed and I know myself and I talk about, you know, on the podcast about particular things or theories or philosophies, I often get into the topic of like, yes, but then you're living in the social system and the human systems, and you didn't shy away from that conversation, which I found really, really brilliant in that he talked about, yes, it's gonna be politics and there's gonna be social life and there's gonna be the way that just humans are humans. Right? We are mere mortals. We live in the world. We can't just live on a bubble or a theoretical, and so
(15:14):
the the idea around, you know, becoming a master also has to include those social intelligence aspects. It's the social
intelligence creator, but I think there is a term for that, but it's just about knowing how to interact with other humans. And that might be for the favor, for the power, for the ideas, for the generation that comes from the from the entertainment, from the getting you to the next step to be able to pursue particular mastery things and or skill building, if you if you will. And again, there's loads of examples that Robert goes through. It would be a disservice to try to read any of them. There's just so got that many in the particular book. And then the the Dimension Online, which
(15:53):
again looking in today's well, it gave me such a flashback to AI or at least thinking about AI because it's this view of rational thinking plus,
you know,
the earned intuition that comes from it. So again, earned intuition here from
the apprenticeship, from doing the hard things, from doing it for a long time. The thing is it feels,
(16:16):
feels like something is coming. One of the examples they're talking about the tribe of the Brazilian,
one of the tribes in the Amazon
and they talk about how they can predict
hours ahead
a storm coming or even a plane flying. And it is this
who the hell knows what
feelings,
noises,
smells,
(16:36):
changes in the environment that they're feeling to predict what's coming, right? That's part of the earned intuition and and sometimes especially when you look at a master at work. Yeah. I have no clue where this intuition is coming from, but it has evolved over the apprenticeship and the idea of bringing the social
aspects of it and just seeing things work and not work then to the rational mind, and that's to the probably the more hard earned skills as in if someone
(17:02):
knows,
maybe a random example, I gave Ravi and Cummings a book, but a random example would be if you were trying to do mathematics in another
planet, right, and you just saw someone do a what would be considered their one plus money pursuit, but if it was something completely different in another language, in another way to abstract it,
You would have none of the rational thinking, not just the intuitive, but you have none of the rational thinking as to how they got about to this conversation or bad addition that's being done in front of you. That
(17:31):
obviously escalated into mastery levels of whatever skill set.
One of clear example I guess for us at the immortals is the handstand,
balancing.
Karen, I asked him about, you know, the way that he thinks about when he's doing a handstand or try to do a one arm handstand. He might say, well, yeah, rationally I'm thinking about a little pinky kind of has to press against my other finger just in case, you know, there's a little bit of off pressure on my thumb. That would make no rational thinking, sense in my mind because I have no clue. I've never thought about it in those concentric circles. It also makes me think of the art of learning, by Josh Waiskin, which is probably a very aligned or similar type book or that one's more of the practice like Josh Waiskin
(18:10):
actually applying it versus
Robert Greene where it's more of the biographical nature
bringing in story from the past to actually create it as well. So,
oh, I'm sorry. I added the dimensional mind. It made me think of the
various, you know, huge vertices and the matrices that are used in AI in the now you have this weighted things about 30,000
(18:32):
by what a 100,000, you know, matrices that are used for the for the weights or for the rational attention,
calculations. And then maybe you think of that dimensional mind as it's almost kind of like a similar way, you know, you might start with a very small matrix because you only know so much and how many inputs.
And as you learn more things and adapt yourself and gain more skill sets, kinda grows and a matrix grows and so you can start making comparisons and connections between all these different things as time goes on because you you see that over there or a network connects to this word, and that idea connects to this idea. So it was a just in the moment kinda connected me to AI in this general list. I get the book, an eight hour attack for Robert Greene's Mastery of Thought.
(19:12):
It's a very green book. It's a very interesting book. I would gift it to someone,
I found it that as I read it,
if I just smashed out gigantic chunks, I would absorb a lot more of the information. I don't know if this was just this book or just in general that might be the case, but this particular one because it was heavy in concepts, heavy in the stories, and there would be
(19:35):
pages without
genuine breaks. I'll just pick up a random one, and I can see that from, say, page 127,
there would be no breaks in the paragraphs or anything else or sections until a 133.
So to me, there's quite a few pages with no stop. It's just story idea, story idea, absorb, absorb, absorb. So the best way he was doing to big chunks of of sections of this book to be able to really take it on and grasp it properly. That's maybe less of this particular book, more just in general, that's probably a good way to absorb books as you're reading elsewhere. That'll be my review for Robert Greene's Mastery. If you have read this book, it's quite a far bigger book, let me know your thoughts, Throw it in the in the comments, wherever you're listening or, watching this particular one.
(20:16):
If you've got any ideas about the books as well that you're on the review, let me know. You can support us, me and mortalspodcast.com/support,
and there's many ways that you can do it. Obviously, if you've been listening and you're or watching all the way till now, thank you. That's a fantastic way to support us. And as we continue now in 2026,
I think you're gonna find some enjoyable things that we're gonna be releasing as well this year. I'm gonna be putting on quite a lot of effort, so hopefully, it's something that you will also enjoy as well. Immortal Alliance, I hope you're well worn out. Many of us may never reach that level. I know I've had flashes of it, but I'm not considering myself. I've I've attained that level of mastery.
(20:52):
But it's an amazing feeling, and I want to inspire
each and every one of you to reach that level of mastery by going through those six steps, by being patient and disciplined
by being creative and independent
and then finally following you to the end where ideas come to you and you are the master of your field
(21:14):
And so I think the book is designed to lead you and seduce you into following this process.
And that is mastery for you.
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