12 Laws Of Power For Life - Robert Greene | Modern Wisdom Podcast 383

You have so much time to live. It's your time. You possess it. It's your empire. It's your treasure within you. And it can be 60 years, it could be 20 years. Whatever it is, it's yours. And you can inadvertently give it away by wasting your time, by getting involved in people's trivial fights, by working for other people that you hate. They own your time. You have to show up every day at eight o'clock and you're miserable. They own that thing that is your only real possession. So your goal in life is to realize that that is your treasure, and you don't want to give it away inadvertently to other people. (air whooshing)

Robert Greene, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Chris. My pleasure.

Is it true that you've had more than 80 jobs in your life?

Well, my, my girlfriend and I once counted, and we got into the 60s, right? And then it kind of became a blur. And sometimes I would recall, "I think I had this job in college." And so we just kind of estimated upward. But I can at least count 60, in the 60s, of actual jobs, and there probably is more.

Pretty wide-ranging.

Doesn't say g- great things about me. I was very restless as a young man, couldn't quite find my way. I hated working for other people, more or less. That was sort of the gist of it. And I, now I've kind of found the perfect life because I don't have a boss above me.

You were, was it 36 when you got the book offer for 48 Laws?

Well, I was 36 when I pitched it to, to the man who packaged at Yost Delford, then we sold it, like, a year and a half later. So I was probably 37, somewhere around there. Yeah.

Yeah, it's inspiring for people that are thinking, "I should have my shit together by the time that I'm 30," and still feeling like ...

Totally together, but, you know, yeah. It is, it is inspiring, you know, because the, the lesson that I tell people is that I never gave up. Even in the worst moments where I was very depressed and really were kind of doubting myself, there was a little voice inside of me that kept me pushing, going forward, knowing that I really was, I did have some kind of talent as a writer. I'm not good at anything else in life, but I had some kind of talent as a writer and that it was worth, you know, being, keeping, keeping myself, keeping a spark to hold the light and never giving up. So that was kind of my lesson.

What's so interesting about power in the modern era?

Well, the interesting thing is that people are so damn hypocritical. So it's, I mean, this was the case 25 years ago when I wrote the book, but nobody wants to admit that they're interested in power. They like to package it in all these different forms. "I just want to change the world." "I just want to make a great movie." "I just want to write a great book." Yeah, those, those are motivations for sure, and there's alwa- always a part of it, but come on, admit that you love the sensation of power. You love the fact that you have a degree of control over your own life, that you can, that you can more or less influence the people around you, that you don't feel helpless. But nobody wants to admit it, but everybody is after some form of power in this world. So that's kind of the modern dynamic. Things have gotten much more competitive than they were 30, 40 years ago, but nobody wants to admit that they have a competitive, ambitious nature.