Tag Archives: Robert Greene

You Are What You Love

July 2, 2015 By in The Project Driven Life Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

On the James Altucher podcast recently he interviewed Robert Greene, author of Mastery, and asked him what he says to people who tell him they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.

I was making dinner as I was listening.  I stopped chopping. I had been waiting for the answer to this question my whole life.

Greene said:

“This question always disturbs me because it tells me that these people haven’t been paying attention to their lives. Because if they had been, they would know what they should do,or be.”

I felt shocked. I felt shamed. I felt accused.

Wasn’t I paying attention to my life?

I surely was, but not in the way Greene was implying. He was saying: consciously notice your life.  Notice what you do, and how you feel about it. Take mental notes. Cultivate this habit of noticing, and start early. Like when you’re 10. Then by the time you’re in your late 20s early 30s, you’ll know who you are and what you want to do.

So what do you do if, like me, you are getting to this game late?

I started by making lists.

What You’ll Need

Get a small notebook you can easily carry around with you.

You can also use the Notes app on your phone, too, and I do that a lot, but you’re still going to need a paper notebook.

Now make 2 Lists. A “What I like/love” list and a “What I dislike/hate” list.

100 Things I Love

Sit down and list out 25 things you love as quickly as you can. Nothing is too small, stupid, or trivial. If you love it, list it.

Think about foods you love, drinks, smells, music, places, objects, times of year, times of day, activities. Get at least 25 things down in this first session. Here are some things on my list:

Cinnamon toast; a Bombay Sapphire martini, up, with a twist; the smell of woodsmoke; the song of a thrush; the northern California coast, a new box of crayons; Groundhog Day, kids in line to see Santa, looking down at the ground from a plane. (You can check out my complete list here. Feel free to steal.)

Once you have the first 25, keep going and build this list  to an absolute minimum of 100 things. This could take a while. Give yourself some time, but no longer than a month.

Being on the lookout for things to add to your list will force you to pay attention to your life. It’s hard to get to 100 things.

If you’re really struggling, go out and do things. Put yourself in the middle of life traffic. Be active in the world and notice the things that make you happy and the things that don’t.

50 Things I Hate

Then do the same thing with Things I Hate.  You only have to list out 50 things for this one. (Sadly, sometimes this list comes easier.)

A lot of time I’ll be thinking of something I like, like brie cheese, for instance, and it will remind me how much I don’t like feta.

List foods and music and societal conventions. List hated chores and behaviors. List things that piss you off, aggravate you, repulse you, frustrate and annoy you.

Some examples from my list include: parallel parking, shaving, scotch tape, croutons, vacuuming, the cereal a the bottom of the box. (More here.)

Why Do This?

You are what you love. It’s as simple as that. The more things you love, and are aware that you love, the  more clear you will become to yourself and other people.

Each time you add an item to your “I love this” list, you become clearer. It’s like watching a Polaroid develop.

And if you tend this list for the rest of your life, adding to it and subtracting from it as you change and grow, you will will soon notice how complex you are, how unique, and how you add value.

Even when you add to the hate list you will know a lot about yourself and avoid making mistakes and sabotaging your happiness. If you can create strategies to avoid doing things you hate, and promise yourself never to do any of the things on your hate list as a job unless at gun point, your life will become incredibly better.

Whenever you have a difficult decision to make:  marry this person, take this job, move to this location, have a baby– before you decide, take out your lists. Review yourself. Remind yourself who you are.

So many times the problem isn’t that we don’t know who we are, it’s just that we forget. If you have your lists, and you start feeling lost, you can always refer to your maps and find your way home.

Notice Your Life!

March 28, 2015 By in Books That Changed My Life, Lists Tags: , 1 Comment

I heard an interview recently with the writer Robert Greene who wrote the book Mastery. The interviewer asked him what he says to people who tell him that they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.

My ears really pricked up when I heard that question because this question has been on my “Top 10 List” for most of my life. And his answer shocked me. And chastised me. And embarrassed me.

He said: “This question always disturbs me because it tells me that this person hasn’t been paying attention to his life. Because if they had been, they would know what they should do, or be.”

I felt embarrassed for thinking for so long that my vocation would somehow be “revealed to me.” I felt stupid for mistaking “calling” for something you were supposed to “hear” in your mind,  rather than something you were supposed to be continuously “noticing.”

Calling isn’t something whispered in your ear; it’s the continuous watching of how you act, what you do in your spare time, what you avoid, and perhaps most telling, what you do when you procrastinate.

If you started paying attention to those kinds of things you would know exactly who you are, what your talents were, and what you should be doing for work.

But most of us have not been noticing. We have been sleepwalking through our lives. Either that, or just allowing ourselves to be flippered from thing to thing like some pinball, hitting bumpers, racking up points in some game we aren’t even aware we’re playing.

As a result we can get to a pretty advanced age without knowing who we are and what we ought to be doing.

And this is pathetic. And a waste. And totally unnecessary.

I know so many people who are on the brink of retirement and still don’t know what they should be doing with their lives; they don’t know who they are, or what their gifts are. They are getting close to the end of their lives and they haven’t even come close to maximizing their full human potential.

And that is why they fear death. Or at least the next birthday.

But it’s never too late! Never! Start making lists. List everything you love and everything your hate.

Why do this?

Because these lists will show who you are. If you keep adding to these lists  you will notice trends, and how interesting and complex you are, and where you are a totally unique blend of character traits, and propensities, and weirdnesses. That’s your gift. Then all you have to do is figure out how you can add value to the lives of other people with your special brand.

And when you can add value, you hit the jackpot. You then start living a life of value and purpose. And that’s the whole game.