Robert Greene - Mastery

p 179 ~ 

 

The Creative Task

 

You must begin by altering your very concept of creativity and by trying to see it from a new angle. Most often, people associate creativity with something intellectual, a particular way of thinking. 

 

The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self-our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

 

To make a discovery, to invent something that conncects with the public, to fashion a work of art that is meaningful, invevitably requires time and effort. This often entails years of experimentation, various setbacks and failures, and the n eed to maintain a high level of focus. You must have patience and faith that what you are doing will yield something important. 

 

The writer Marcel Proust suffered for years as he struggled to find the subject matter upon which to base a novel. Finally, when he realized that his own life and his own failed attempts to write the great novel was actually the subject he was looking for, it all poured out of him and into one of the greatest novels ever written, In Search of Lost Time. 

 

If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end. If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details. If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated. This applies equally to science and business as to the arts. 

 

You must make the right, the perfect choice for your energies and your inclinations.

 

To aid in this process, it is often wise to chose something that appeals to your sense of unconventionality and calls up latent feelings of rebelliousness. Perhaps what you want to invent or discover is being ignored or ridiculed by others. 

 

 

The task that you choose must be realistic. The knowledge and skills you have gained must be eminently suited to pulling it off. 

To reach your goal you may have to learn a few new things, but you must have mastered the basics and possess a solid enough grasp of the field so that your mind can focus on higher matters. 

 

You must let go of your need for comfort and security. Creative endeavors are by their nature uncertain. You may know your task, but you are never exactly sure where your efforts will lead. If you need everything in your life to be simple and safe, this open-ended nature of the task will fill you with anxiety. 

 

Focus your attention on some need that is not currently being met, on what is absent. 

 

To begin such a thought process is to look at new and available technology in the world and to imagine how it could be applied in a much different way, meeting a need that we sense exists but that is not overly apparent. 

 

 

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날잡고 로버트 그린이 쓴 책은 처음부터 끝까지 다 읽고 싶다. 

 

주옥같은말들, 

 

인생에서 가장 중요한 나의 일을 하는데 있어서 꼭 새겨들어야할 말들.

 

꼭 언젠가 정독하고 싶은책이다.