Robert Greene is an American author of books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law with rapper 50 Cent, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.
He was born to Jewish parents and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended the University of California, Berkeley before finishing his degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in classical studies. Before becoming an author, Greene estimates that he worked about 60 to 65 jobs, including as a construction worker, translator, magazine editor, and Hollywood movie writer.
This past week, I watched a podcast episode where School of Greatness founder, Lewis Howes, invited Robert to discuss how people can uncover their inner power. In this article, I give you Robert Greene: 3 Things You Can Learn from Him!
Lesson 1: Robert Greene on Marketing is an Essential Skill
According to Greene, marketing is a skill one must learn regardless of their profession. Greene believes that marketing is how you convince people that you are fit for the job.
Greene mentions how thousands of people go to art school. However, only a few of them turn out to be successful. For him, successful artists understand it is not only being able to draw that will make you successful but also the ability to market and network that contributes to becoming a successful artist.
In other words, successful artists understand that talent will only take you so far in the art industry but knowing to market themselves is what will help them rise in the art industry.
Lesson 2: Not Knowing Your Purpose Has its Consequences
For Greene, not knowing your purpose can lead to making wrong decisions. It could be making an ill-informed financial decision, choosing to go on the wrong career path, picking bad friends etc.
Making wrong decisions can change the trajectory of someone’s life. For example, someone choosing their career path based on what is trending rather than where their strength lies can lead them to becoming miserable for spending long hours in a job that they hate.
Being unaware of your purpose can also lead to you following social media’s standards or the expectations that other people have set for you. For instance, there will be people who will say that because A’s parents were doctors so A should become a doctor to live up to their parents’ legacy.
Following social media standards or other people’s expectations can also lead to people not being themselves. This occurs in many ways. It can be people abandoning things that make them happy so they do not become an outcast in society, people going around flaunting a lifestyle that they can barely afford, people making changes to their appearance to fit into society’s beauty standards etc.
In addition, by making wrong decisions, time passes by. In the sense that years later, people end up regretting the wrong decisions they made but they cannot go back in time to change them.
Lesson 3: Everybody is Unique
Robert Greene believes that people’s uniqueness is their source of power because, at the end of the day, there is only one you that exists. From our biological makeup to the country, we are from to what our hobbies are. These are just a few examples of how people are different from each other.
In incorporating his uniqueness into his life, Robert gave the example of how he chooses to make the writing style of “48 Laws of Power” different from what most books look like. “48 Laws of Power” did not take off immediately but when it took off, it did well on the market. This goes to show how uniqueness can go a long way instead of following the path that everybody does.
Furthermore, Robert sees people’s uniqueness as what they ‘bring to the table’. For him, uniqueness brings diversity because of the different perspectives people bring on different issues and how their uniqueness impacts the way they live their life.
