The key to transforming yourself -- Robert Greene at TEDxBrixton

Why do we fixate on the things we can see immediately when we crave change? In this passionate talk Robert Greene shares the key to transforming ourselves and also talks about his own personal transformation and his path to becoming a bestselling author.

About Robert Greene
Robert Greene is the internationally best-selling author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War and The 50th Law (with rapper 50 Cent). His books have been translated into 17 languages. He has worked in New York as an editor and writer at several magazines; and in Hollywood as a story developer and writer. He has lived in Brixton, Paris, and Barcelona; speaks several languages and worked as a translator.
He tweets as @RobertGreene

About TEDx
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

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Closed Caption:

after the publication of my first book
the 48 laws of power
I began to receive requests for advice
from people in every conceivable
profession and at every level of
experience over the years i have now
personally consulted with over a hundred
different people and in so many of the
cases they would cut the following
scenario would play itself out
they would come to me with a specific
problem
a boss from hell business relationship
that had gone turned ugly a promotion
that never came
I would slowly direct their attention
away from the boss and the job and
instead get them to search inside
themselves and try to find the emotional
root of their discontent often as we
talked it out
they would realize that at their core
they felt deeply frustrated their
creativity was not being realized their
careers that somehow taken a wrong turn
what they actually wanted was something
larger a real and substantial change in
their careers and in their lives
it would be at this point that I would
tell them a story about myself about my
own peculiar path to change and
transformation from a highly
unsuccessful writer eking out an
existence in a small one-bedroom
apartment in Santa Monica two
best-selling author seemingly overnight
I have never publicly related this story
before but for this very special
occasion my first TED talk i thought i
would share it with you because it's
actually very relevant to the subject to
change the story goes like this
I had known since age that I wanted to
become a writer
I just couldn't figure out what I wanted
to write
perhaps it was novels or essays or plays
after University I drifted into
journalism as a way to at least make a
living while riding
then one day after several years of
working as a writer and editor
I was having lunch with a man who had
just edited an article i had written for
a magazine after downing his third
martini this editor and older man
finally admitted to me why he had asked
me to lunch
you should seriously consider a
different career he told me that you are
not writer material
your work is too undisciplined your
style is too bizarre your ideas
they're just not relatable to the
average reader go to law school Robert
go to business school
spare yourself the pain at first
these words were like a a punch in the
stomach
but in the months to come I realized
something about myself
I had entered a career that just didn't
really suit me mostly as a way to make a
living and my work reflected this
incompatibility
I had to get out of journalism this
realization initiated a period of
wandering in my life i traveled all
across Europe
I worked every conceivable job I did
construction work in Greece taught
English in Barcelona worked as a hotel
receptionist in Paris a tour guide in
dublin served as a trainee for an
English company making television
documentaries living not far from here
in Brixton
during all of this time i wrote several
novels that never made it past a hundred
pages and dozens of essays that I would
tear up and plays that never got
produced
I wandered back to Los Angeles
California where I was born and raised
I worked in a detective agency
among other hot jobs i entered the film
business working as an assistant to a
director as a researcher and story
developer and screenwriter in these long
years of wandering I had totaled over 50
different jobs by the year nineteen
ninety-five my parents
god bless them we're beginning to get
seriously worried about me
I was 36 years old and I seemed lost and
unable to settle into any thing I too
had moments of doubt but I did not feel
lost
i was searching and exploring and I was
hungry for experiences and I was
continuously writing that same year
while in Italy for yet another job
I met a man there named Yost elfers a
packager and producer of books
one day while we were walking along the
case of Venice Yost asked me if I had
any ideas for a book
suddenly seemingly out of nowhere and
idea just gushed out of me
it was about power confuse me it's about
power
I told us that I was constantly reading
books and history and the stories that i
read of Julius Caesar and the Borgias
and Louie the 14th
these were the exact same stories that i
had personally witnessed with my own
eyes and all of my different jobs only
less bloody
people want power and they want to
disguise this wanting of power and so
they play games they covertly manipulate
and intrigue
all the while presenting a nice even
saintly front
I would expose these games I gave him
numerous examples of what I meant and he
became increasingly excited
he said I should write a treatment and
if it was good enough
he would pay me to live while I wrote
half the book enough to sell it to a
publisher suddenly in writing what would
become the 48 laws of power everything
in my disjointed pass seemed to click
into place like magic like destiny
all of those various writing experiences
the journalism the television theatre
the film had given me the skills to tell
stories and organize my thoughts all of
that reading of history had given me a
vast storehouse of ideas that i could
draw upon and my work as a researcher
had taught me how to find the perfect
anecdote
even those and those different seemingly
random jobs had exposed me to every type
of psychology and to the dark corners of
the human psyche
even the languages I learned while
traveling at taught me patience and
discipline
all of these experiences added up to
rich layers of knowledge and practiced
that it altered me from the inside out
in my own very weird and intuitive way I
had given myself the perfect education
for the writing of the 48 laws of power
the book came out in 1998 and it was a
success
the course of my life was forever
altered
now the moral of this story as I told
the people who had come to me for advice
and as I'm telling you now is the
following
we humans tend to fixate on what we can
see with our eyes it
it is the most animal part of our nature
when we look at the changes and
transformations in other people's lives
we see the good luck that someone had in
meeting a person like Yost with all of
the right connections and the funding we
see the book or the project that brings
the money and the attention
in other words we see the visible signs
of opportunity and success
change in our
wives but we are grasping at an illusion
what really allows for such dramatic
changes are the things that occur on the
inside of a person and are completely
invisible
the slow accumulation of knowledge and
skills
the incremental improvements in work
habits and the ability to withstand
criticism
any change in people's fortune is merely
the visible manifestation of all of that
deep preparation over time by
essentially ignoring this internal
invisible aspect we fail to change
anything fundamental within ourselves
and so in a few years time we reach our
limits yet again we grow frustrated we
crave change
we grabbed something quick and
superficial and we remain prisoners
forever of these recurring patterns in
our lives
the answer
the key to the ability to transform
ourselves is actually insanely simple to
reverse this perspective
stop fixating on what other people are
saying and doing on the money
the connections the outward appearance
of things instead look inward focus on
the smaller internal changes that lay
the groundwork for a much larger change
in Fortune it is the difference between
grasping at an illusion and immersing
yourself in reality and reality is what
will liberate and transform you
here's how this would work in your own
life
consider the fact that each
and every one of you is fundamentally
unique one-of-a-kind your DNA
the particular configuration of your
brain your life experiences in early
childhood this uniqueness manifested
itself by the fact that you felt
particularly drawn to certain subjects
and activities
what I call in my book mastery primal
inclinations
you cannot rationally explain why you
felt so drawn to words or to music or
two particular questions about the world
around you or to social dynamics as you
get older you often lose contact with
these include nations you listen to
parents who urge you to follow a
particular career path
you listen to teachers and alcoholic
magazine editors who tell you what
you're good and bad at you listen two
friends who tell you what's cool and not
cool
at a certain point you can almost become
a stranger to yourself
and so you enter career paths that are
not suited to you emotionally and
intellectually your life's task as i
call it is to return to those
inclination into that uniqueness that
marked each and every one of you at
birth at whatever age you find yourself
you must reflect back on those earliest
incarnations
you must look at those subjects in the
present that continued to spark that
childlike intense curiosity and you and
you must look at those subjects and
activities that you've been forced to do
over the past few years that repel you
that have no emotional resonance
based on these reflections you determine
the direction you must take writing or
music or a particular branch of science
or a form of business or public service
you now have a loose overall framework
within which you can explore and find
those angles and positions that suit you
best
you listen closely to yourself to your
internal radar some parts of that
framework for me journalism in Hollywood
do not feel right
and so you move on slowly narrowing your
path
all the while accumulating skills
most people want simple direct
straight-line path to the perfect
position into success but instead you
must welcome wrong turns and mistakes
they make you aware of your flaws
they widen York's your experiences they
toughened you up if you come to this
process at a later age
you must cultivate a new set of skills
that suit this change in direction
you'll be taking and find a way to blend
them with your previous skills
nothing in this process is ever wasted
in any event the goal that you are after
is learning and the acquisition of
skills not a fat paycheck
now look at what happens to you as you
adopt this very different internally
driven mindset because you are headed in
a direction that resonates with you
personally and emotionally
the hours of practice and study do not
seem so burdensome you can withstand
these are you can sustain your attention
and your interest for much longer
periods
excuse me for much longer periods of
time
what excites you is the learning process
itself
overcoming obstacles increasing your
skill level you are immersed in the
presidents that have constantly
obsessing over the future
and so you pay greater attention to the
work itself into the people around you
developing patients and social
intelligence without forcing the issue a
point is reached
in which you are thoroughly prepared
from within the slightest opportunity
that comes your way
you will now exploit in fact you will
draw opportunities to you because people
will sense how prepared you are
which is I believe what happened to me
with Yost now some of this might sound a
bit mystical but the results of this
process that i'm talking about have been
corroborated by recent scientific
research
most notably the 1995 study by honors
ericsson that yielded the very famous
10,000 hour rule in tracking people who
had devoted years of their lives to
learning chess or music Ericson
discovered that somewhere near that
magical mark of 10,000 hours of practice
the the minds of these people suddenly
became much more creative and fluid the
structures of their brains had been
altered by all of those hours of
practice and at that 10,000 hour mark
we could see a visible transformation in
their performance and their creativity
that is a level you will reach naturally
and organically
if you follow this process far enough
finally what I'm proposing to right now
is in
actually I think rather radical namely
the way to transform yourself is through
your work
now I know this runs counter to our
prevailing cultural prejudices work is
too ugly to boring too banal
self-transformation we think comes
through a spiritual journey therapy a
guru who tells us what to do
intense group experiences and social
experiences and drugs
but most of these are ways of running
away from ourselves and relieving are
chronic boredom
they are not connected to process and so
any changes that occur
don't last instead through our work we
can actually connect to who we are
instead of running away and by entering
that slow organic process we can
actually change ourselves from the
inside out in a way that's very real and
very lasting this process involves the
journey of self-discovery that can be
seen as quite spiritual if you like
and in the end of this process we
contribute something unique and
meaningful to our culture through our
work which is hardly ugly boring or
bangle
thank you very much