28 Robert Greene Quotes from Mastery To Guide You Towards Your Higher Calling

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Excerpt: These 28 quotes from Mastery will help you learn how to discovery your calling, unlock the passion within, and absorb the master’s power.

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Introduction: Becoming the master of your Life’s Task.

What is a fulfilled life composed of? Fulfilled days.  And if we want to live fulfilled days—day-in and day-out—we need to pay attention to how we’re spending our time.  The great accumulation of minutes and hours turns into days and weeks which turns into months and years which, of course, turns into a lifetime.  And when we boil it down to how we spend the majority of our time on a daily basis, which area will we invest most of our time into?  Our Life’s Task.

Our Life’s Task is our career, our creative work, our mission that puts to use our strengths and aptitudes in order to bring to life our unique visions and goals for the world.  If we choose to do a job or follow a career that frustrates us, stunts our growth, and/or limits our creative potential—we’re going to spend that huge chunk of our life in a miserable way.  If, however, we can cultivate the best of who we are and what we have to give, then that huge chunk of our life will be fulfilled.

In his book, Mastery, Robert Greene gives the reader an in-depth description of how we can do just that. He reveals how we can discover our calling, submit to reality, absorb the Master’s power, see people as they are, awaken the Dimensional Mind, and fuse the intuitive with the rational. It’s an incredibly powerful book that distills the wisdom of the ages to reveal that the secret to mastery is already within you.

Below, you’ll find our list of 28 quotes from Mastery that will give you some of the fundamental insights as to what’s revealed within the book. Take note of where you are on your journey—whether you still need to discover or cultivate your Life’s Task—and pay close attention to the quotes that dig deeper into those areas.  And a fair warning: these quotes are thorough so take your time and save the ones that inspire you. Emphasis added is my own. Good luck!

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The List: 28 Deep and Powerful Robert Greene Quotes from Mastery

#28 — Don’t question why… Trust in nature and start taking action.

“Your true self does not speak in words or banal phrases.  Its voice comes from deep within you, from the substrata of your psyche, from something embedded physically within you.  It emanates from your uniqueness, and it communicates through sensations and powerful desires that seem to transcend you.  You cannot ultimately understand why you are drawn to certain activities or forms of knowledge.   This cannot really be verbalized or explained.  It is simply a fact of nature.  In following this voice you realize your own potential, and satisfy your deepest longings to create and express your uniqueness.   It exists for a purpose, and it is your Life’s Task to bring it to fruition.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#27 — The first move towards mastery is always inward.

“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task—what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live.  In childhood this force was clear to you.  It directed you toward activities and subjects that fit you natural inclinations, that sparked a curiosity that was deep and primal.  In the intervening years, the force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers, to the daily anxieties that wear away at you.  This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique.  The first move toward mastery is always inward—learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force.  Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place.  It is never too late to start this process.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#26 — Focus on strengths more than weaknesses.

“There are many paths to mastery, and if you are persistent you will certainly find one that suits you.  But a key component in the process is determining your mental and psychological strengths and working with them.  To rise to the level of mastery requires many hours of dedicated focus and practice.  You cannot get there if your work brings you no joy and you are constantly struggling to overcome your own weaknesses.  You must look deep within and come to an understanding of these particular strengths and weaknesses you possess, being as realistic as possible.  Knowing your strengths, you can lean on them with utmost intensity.  Once you start in this direction, you will gain momentum.  You will not be burdened by conventions, and you will not be slowed down by having to deal with skills that go against your inclinations and strengths.  In this way, your creative and intuitive powers will be naturally awakened.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#25 — Be a creator rather than a consumer.

“Masters manage to blend the two—discipline and a childlike spirit—together into what we shall call the Dimensional Mind.  Such a mind is not constricted by limited experience or habits.  It can branch out into all directions and make deep contact with reality.  It can explore more dimensions of the world.  The Conventional Mind is passive—it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms.  The Dimensional Mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#24 — Mastery is a never-ending pursuit.

“In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself.  Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement.  The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.  You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it.  This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#23 — Attaining mastery is extremely necessary and positive.

“You must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive.  The world is teeming with problems, many of them of our own creation.  To solve them will require a tremendous amount of effort and creativity.  Relying on genetics, technology, magic, or being nice and natural will not save us.  We require the energy not only to address practical matters, but also to forge new institutions and orders that fit our changed circumstances.  We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#22 — What separates those who attain mastery from those who simply work at a job:

“In our culture we tend to equate thinking and intellectual powers with success and achievement.  In many ways, however, it is an emotional quality that separates those who master a field from the many who simply work at a job.  Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.  Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything.  Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#21 — Setbacks, failures, and hardships are seeds for further cultivation.

“You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trial along the way, as seeds that are being planted for further cultivation, if you know how to grow them.  No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.  By constantly applying yourself to the subject that suits your inclinations and attacking it from many different angles, you are simply enriching the ground for these seeds to take root.  You may not see this process in the present, but it is happening.  Never losing your connection to your Life’s Task, you will unconsciously hit upon the right choices in your life.  Over time, mastery will come to you.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#20 — Remember that there are two kinds of failure:

“There are two kinds of failure.  The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time.  This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you.  The second kind comes from a bold venturesome spirit.  If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn.  Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.  In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.  You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch.  When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning. You have everything to gain.”

Robert Greene, Mastery | More quotes on failure ➜

#19 — Praise is more dangerous than criticism.

“Sometimes greater danger comes from success and praise than from criticism.  If we learn to handle criticism well, it can strengthen us and help us become aware of flaws in our work.  Praise generally does harm.  Ever so slowly, the emphasis shifts from the joy of the creative process to the love of attention and to our ever-inflating ego.  Without realizing it, we alter and shape our work to attract the praise that we crave.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#18 — The way of suffering and doubt is the way.

“Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well.  You must continually start over and challenge yourself.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#17 — You are the only thing holding yourself back.

“The only real impediment to [mastering a skill] is yourself and your emotions—boredom, panic, frustration, insecurity.  You cannot suppress such emotions—they are normal to the process and are experienced by everyone, including Masters.  What you can do is have faith in the process.  The boredom will go away once you enter the cycle.  The panic disappears after repeated exposure.  The frustration is a sign of progress—a signal that your mind is processing complexity and requires more practice.  The insecurities will transform into their opposites when you gain mastery.  Trusting this will all happen, you will allow the natural learning process to move forward, and everything else will fall into place.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#16 — Impatience is the ultimate impediment to success.

“Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash.  What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal.  What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people’s style, or personal rantings that do no really express anything.  Audiences, however, are hard to fool.  They feel the lack of rigor, the imitative quality, the urge to get attention, and they turn their backs, or give the mildest praise that quickly passes.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#15 — Make sure your values are aligned before you start your journey.

“It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.  If it is money, you will choose a place for your apprenticeship that offers the biggest paycheck.  Inevitably, in such a place you will feel greater pressures to prove yourself worthy of such pay, often before you are really ready.  You will be focused on yourself, your insecurities, the need to please and impress the right people, and not on acquiring skills.  It will be too costly for you to make mistakes and learn from them, so you will develop a cautious, conservative approach.  As you progress in life, you will become addicted to the fat paycheck and it will determine where you go, how you think, and what you do.  Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#14 — Never half-ass your work.

“Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work.   If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end.  If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you.  You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it and that they will receive your work in the same lackluster spirit it was created in.  If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details.  If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#13 — Your task as a creative thinker:

“Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large.  Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#12 — The world is dying for more creativity.

“Creativity is by its nature an act of boldness and rebellion.  You are not accepting the status quo or conventional wisdom.  You are playing with the very rules you have learned, experimenting and testing the boundaries.  The world is dying for bolder ideas, for people who are not afraid to speculate and investigate.  Creeping conservatism will narrow your searches, tether you to comfortable ideas, and create a downward spiral—as the creative spark leaves you, you will find yourself clutching even more forcefully to dead ideas, past successes, and the need to maintain your status.  Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#11 — Embrace the challenges as opportunities for transformation.

“In essence, when you practice and develop any skill you transform yourself in the process.  You reveal to yourself new capabilities that were previously latent, that are exposed as you progress.  You develop emotionally.  Your sense of pleasure becomes redefined.  What offers immediate pleasure comes to seem like a distraction, an empty entertainment to help pass the time.  Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings.  You develop patience.  Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.”

Robert Greene, Mastery | More quotes on boredom ➜

#10 — Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

“Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process. The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents—will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?”

Robert Greene, Mastery | More quotes on boredom ➜

#9 — The steep price of becoming too comfortable:

“The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas.  It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent.  To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it is the source of our misery.  What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude.  We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships.  We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires.  To think more flexibly entails a risk—we could fail and be ridiculed.  We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#8 — Practice and learn new skills.  Or else…

“People who do not practice and learn new skills never gain a proper sense of proportion or self-criticism.  They think they can achieve anything without effort and have little contact with reality.  Trying something over and over again grounds you in reality, making you deeply aware of your inadequacies and of what you can accomplish with more work and effort.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#7 — Make the human brain your priority.

“If there is any instrument you must fall in love with and fetishize, it is the human brain—the most miraculous, awe-inspiring, information-processing tool devised in the known universe, with a complexity we can’t even begin to fathom, and with dimensional powers that far outstrip any piece of technology in sophistication and usefulness.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#6 — Brace yourself, because that brain of yours is about to become radically altered.

“When you move toward mastery, your brain becomes radically altered by the years of practice and active experimentation.  It is no longer the simple ecosystem of years gone by.  The brain of a Master is so richly interconnected that it comes to resemble the physical world, and becomes a vibrant ecosystem in which all forms of thinking associate and connect.  This growing similarity between the brain and complex life itself represents the ultimate return to reality.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#5 — Do not fall for the romantic myths and clichés about Mastery.

“Understand: to create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability.  It requires mastering the forms of your field.  Drugs and madness only destroy such powers.  Do not fall for the romantic myths and clichés that abound in culture about creativity—offering us the excuse or panacea that such powers can come cheaply.  When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured.  Creative energy is the fruit of such efforts and nothing else.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#4 — Mastery is a function of focus, time, and deliberate practice.  And an X factor…

“Mastery is not a function of genius or talent.  It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.  But there is another element, an X factor that Masters inevitably possess, that seems mystical but that is accessible to us all.  Whatever field of activity we are involved in, there is generally an accepted path to the top.  It is a path that others have followed, and because we are conformist creatures, most of us opt for this conventional route.  But Masters have a strong inner guiding system and a high level of self-awareness.  What has suited others in the past does not suit them, and they know that trying to fit into a conventional mold would only lead to a dampening of spirit, the reality they seek eluding them.  And so inevitably, these Masters, as they progress on their career paths, make a choice at a key moment in their lives: they decide to forge their own route, one that others will see as unconventional, but that suits their own spirit and rhythms and leads them closer to discovering the hidden truths of their objects of study.  This key choice takes self-confidence and self-awareness—the X factor that is necessary for attaining mastery.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#3 — Keep your focus 5 and 10 years down the road.

“The road to mastery requires patience.  You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts.  The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.  Make your return to the path a resolution you set for yourself, and then tell others about it.  It becomes a matter of shame and embarrassment to deviate from this path.  In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#2 — Remember who you are committed to.

“In dealing with your career and its inevitable changes, you must think in the following way: You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company.  You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression.  It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly.  It is not up to others to protect or help you.  You are on your own.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

#1 — You are born with a Life Task.  Will you ever realize it?

“You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate.  It is who you are to the core.  Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature.  If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.”

Robert Greene, Mastery

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If you enjoyed these quotes from Mastery, then you should definitely read Robert Greene’s book in full. It comes highly recommended.

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