What is this book about?
The daily laws are a result of twenty-five years of intense research on the subject of power, persuasion, strategy, mastery, and human nature. It is a distillation of knowledge from all the books, interviews, and talks of Robert Greene designed to reverse these toxic patterns and to reconnect us to reality.
This book is divided into 366 small parts that can be read in a pick-and-choose manner or skipping around as you desire. But as you read, take notes as often as you can to relate entries to your own experiences of the past and the present.
The daily laws: 366 meditations on power, persuasion, and seduction: Book Summary
Our brain evolved in a highly sensitive environment to detect any changes in the weather, anticipating the presence of predators and finding opportunities for where food might lie.
We have the same brain designed for the same purpose. The dangers in our environment have been more subtle. Now we don’t have to fear tigers but rather the tricky, psychological, and social games others play.
Our culture fills our head with what human nature should be like, rather than what they are actually like. We think we are victims and we are not responsible for anything that happens to us.
Discovering your calling
We express ourselves in a different way in childhood. The forces within us come from a deeper place than our consciousness. The first step to move towards mastery is to connect with that innate force and let it guide your life. you were obsessed with something as a child for a reason. Reconnect with it.
What you need to find is already within you. You have nothing to create and nothing to dig.
You don’t have to tie yourself to a particular position. You don’t have to abandon the skills and experience you have gained, but find a new way to apply them. Avoid having rigid goals and dreams.
Don’t be desperate about anything. Be relaxed. Concentrate on maintaining a high sense of purpose and the success will flow to you naturally. Don’t be embarrassed about being different. Being different is a superpower. Embrace your strangeness and Guse things together to become an anomaly. Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That’s your source of superpower.
Resist the temptation to be like others. Instead, direct yourself towards the small things that you are good at and expand outwards
Do something that makes you feel at the peak of your being today. Think back on the moments when you felt deeply and personally connected to an activity. Those activities are the signs of your true purpose.
- Work at what connects to you emotionally and ideas will come to you naturally.
- Stop being too nice. Start caring less about what people think of. You must offent and even hurt people who block your path who have ugly values.
- You are not here to merely gratify your impulse and consume what others have made but to make, contribute and serve a higher purpose.
- Mastery is salvation. You must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive.
- Life is simpe. Depending on others is misery. Depending on yourself is a superpower.
- Embrace negative experiences and take some good out of them.
- Always break tasks into smaller bites. Each day and week, you must have microgoals. Periodically return to your original vision to get clarity and inspire you forward.
- Stop fixing what other people are saying or doing. Change yourself littl by little. Ask: What would you work on if no body was looking?
- Magic shortcuts and simple formula doesn’t exist.
- You journey to mastery is not a linera path. Youmust see it as a path with twist and turns.
- Allow yourself to learn who you are. You become who you are by learning who you are.
- Your journey to mastery is hard. It will take time. Trust the process. Time is essential ingredient of mastery
- Your lifes calling will not come simply. Experiment with different skills, and options related to your personality.
Transforming yourself
When you want to learn something, motivation is the key. Also, you learn more by doing things, by practice. Not by reading books or taking tutorials. you learn by doing something over and over and over. Don’t be afraid of failure. You learn best through your failures.
- Find a master to apprentic under, but instead of thinking about how much they can give you, think how you you can help them with their work
- Don’t become addicte dot money, fame or attention. Value learning above anything else.
- Acquire as many skils as you can. The ability to later combine these skills is the best path to mastery.
- Live like a builder. Believe that you are producing something tangible that affects people in some direc, concrete way.
- Life is short, and your time for learning and creativity is limited. Choose the right mentor and propel forward in life.
- The more we do it, the easier it becomes. Everything worth doing has a learning curve. When it gets hard, remember the goal: reaching the cycle of accelerated returns.
- The brain learns through constant repitition not reading books, taking tests or maybe writing essays.
- To attain mastery, you must adopt resistance practice. It means to go in the opposite direction of al of your natural tendencies when it comes to practice.
- Concentrated practice can never fail you. Put an hour of concentrated practice everyday.
- Master the tiny details and everything will fall into place
- Time is a critical variable. Take one thing off your plate today to make more time for your life’s task.
- Strive to be the only one who can do what you do and make fate of those who hire you tied with yours that they can’t possbily get rid of you.
- Find people who are pragamatic and visionary and absorb their spirit of getting things done. Priortize spending more time with them.
- Be relentless in your pursuit of expansion. Whenever you feel like you are settling into some circle, force yourself to shake things up and look for new challenges.
- Often you must force yourself to initiate actions and experiments before you think you are ready. Try the thing you don’t think you’re quite ready for.
- Don’t be your masters copy. Follow his example, not his path. Demonstrate your difference and establish your own style.
Activating skills and attaining mastery
- Retain the craftsman spirit. Keep in mind: the work is the only thing that matters.
- Creativity comes from giving yourself time to dream and wander to start out in a loose and unfocused manner.
- People are perpetually locked in the present. But, the person with the more global perspective wins. You have to expand your gaze.
- We all have the inner creative force that wants to be active. Let it do what it wants to do- Explore, entertain, and embrace new ideas.
- Life is definded by movement. What doesn’t move is dead. Respond to the movement and let teh mind be fluid.
- Don’t be plagued. Don’t stop wandering. Constantly remind yourself how little you know and how mysterious the world remains
- Be patient and follow the process. Take the long view
- Knowledge is always progressing. Don’t let your ego fool you. You are always knowledge’s inferior
- It’s not your work that will bear fruits, it’s the intensity of your attention
- Mind and body are interconnected. Feeling energized influneces our mood and vice-versa. This influences our work in many different ways
- To rise to the level of mastery requires intense dedication. If you don’t have intense desire, you won’t get it.
- People are dying for the new. By creating something new, you own your audience and attain the ultimate position of power.
- The more skills you learn, the broader and richer is your brain.
- Listen to your frustration. Walk away when you are blocked. Do something else. The brain will eventually lead you back.
- Don’t get comfortable. Take risks. Change. try learning about a field you don’t know anything about. Or stepping into a viewpoint you’ve never considered.
- Avoid fixing only what is present. Ponder on what is absent.
- Get into the flow state. Get rid of yourself of the distractions and cheap pleasures. Lose yourself in the work.
