Skip to content

    “You must avoid the common mistake of making judgments based on your initial impressions of people.  Such impressions can sometimes tell you something, but more often they are misleading.  There are several reasons for this.  In our initial encounter you tend to be nervous, less open, and more inward.  You are not really paying attention.  Furthermore, people have trained themselves to appear a certain way; they have a persona they use in public that acts like a second skin to protect them.  Unless you are incredibly perceptive, you will tend to mistake the mask for the reality.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

      “People will say all kinds of things about their motives and intentions; they are used to dressing things up with words.  Their actions, however, say much more about their character, about what is going on underneath the surface.  If they present a harmless front but have acted aggressively on several occasions, give the knowledge of that aggression much greater weight than the surface they present.  In a similar vein, you should take special note of how people respond to stressful situations—often the mask they wear in public falls off in the heat of the moment.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

        “Pay less attention to the words that people say and greater attention to their tone of voice, the look in their eye, their body language—all signals that might reveal a nervousness or excitement that is not expressed verbally.  If you can get people to become emotional, they will reveal a lot more.  Cutting off your interior monologue and paying deep attention, you will pick up cues from them that will register with you as feelings or sensations.  Trust these sensations—they are telling you something that you will often tend to ignore because it is not easy to verbalize.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery