Robert Greene

Using Your Emotions and Dark Side to Do Great Things 

Robert is incredibly knowledgeable about how to handle emotions. It’s important to express your emotions while also not being impulsive and letting your emotions control your actions. 

Robert observed that the relationship between your emotions and rational brain is like that of a horse and its rider. If the rider holds the reins of the horse too tightly, the horse will not go anywhere and will eventually freak out from the rider trying to maintain too much control. Like the rider controlling the horse, our rational brains can’t permanently repress our emotions. The emotions will come out in an unhealthy way. Although it’s unhealthy to repress our emotions, we also can’t give free rein to our emotions either. We need to strike a balance between control and expressing emotions: 

“You have to hold the reins not too tightly, but you have to be able to guide the horse. … Not just give into the emotion, like let the horse go anywhere. So that maybe next time you understand, ‘Well, maybe I don’t need to feel anger or fear because it’s not really related to anything.’… You understand the horse, the emotion, and you can control it to some degree, but not overcontrol it or repress it.” – Robert Greene

If you try to repress your emotions or give them free rein, your emotions will inevitably come out in an unhealthy way. Let’s take anger as an example. If you try to repress your anger entirely and deny that you’re feeling that emotion, it will come out in an unhealthy way. You’ll more than likely direct that anger towards something that didn’t even cause your original emotion. If you don’t control your anger in the moment that you experience it, you might do something impulsive and regrettable because you didn’t let your rational brain control your thinking. In order to control your emotions, you need to strike a balance between your rational brain and the anger that you’re feeling. 

Robert used the example of sending an angry email. Before sending the email, evaluate why you’re feeling that emotion: 

“You have to go through a process before you send that email. ‘Why am I angry? … Will I be feeling angry in three weeks? Is it really important? Is it possibly my own fault?’ When you go through that process, you’re not repressing the anger. … But you understand it, and you let it work for you.” – Robert Greene 

It’s essential for your emotional health to evaluate your emotions rather than giving them full control or repressing them completely. In addition to the importance of not repressing emotions, we should also not repress what Robert refers to as our “dark sides.” According to Robert, everyone has a natural dark side that they typically repress in adulthood: 

“Everybody has a dark side. … Our dark side originates from [our childhood.] As a child, we had a lot of powerful emotions that we couldn’t control. … And you get older, and you start repressing those kinds of feelings that are very natural to you.” – Robert Greene

Everyone has natural impulses as a child that we learn to repress to function in society. You may have been physically aggressive and hit other kids as a child, but you can’t take that with you into adulthood without finding yourself in legal trouble. Even though we can’t give in to our dark sides as adults, we should still learn to address them and express them in healthy ways. Otherwise, they will come out in unhealthy ways. 

“We all have aggressive impulses, … but we have to repress all that because we have to be good social animals. … And then when you’re 28, you start becoming addicted to alcohol, and you don’t know why you start getting really angry. … You yell at people. … [You] destroy everything that you’ve built. The dark side has come out because you’ve repressed it instead of dealing with it. So the idea was you need to understand your dark side, confront it, and make it work for you.” – Robert Greene

We need to avoid repressing our dark sides, or else they’ll come out involuntarily as we age. Robert channels his dark side into his writing. His ability to express his dark side in a healthy, productive way is one of the secrets to his success: 

“Any success I’ve had in life is because I managed to use those dark emotions in my work and channeled them because they have tremendous energy to them. They power you forward.” – Robert Greene

Robert struggled with anger, but he didn’t let his anger consume him and come out in self-destructive ways. He used his anger to write his immensely successful first book, The 48 Laws of Power. He used his dark side to create something positive. 

How can you use your dark side to create something positive? For example, countless people feel anger and frustration about current events, but they can use their dark sides to create real, positive change. 

“There’s a lot of injustice in this world, particularly nowadays. A lot of things are just wrong in this world today. And if I were young, my anger would be exploding because there’s so much that’s wrong. Channel it into a worthy cause and [towards] justice and lead some kind of movement. That’s a brilliant way to take your dark energy and metamorphosize it into something really positive.” – Robert Greene

How can you create positive changes today? Just because there’s a lot wrong in the world doesn’t mean that things need to stay the same. Maybe you feel a great deal of anger about racial injustice in our society. Rather than trying to repress that anger or let it consume you, maybe you should get involved in movements and organizations seeking social justice. Robert observed that Martin Luther King Jr. struggled with anger, but he used his anger to lead a movement and bring America closer to racial equality.

Don’t let your dark side bring negativity in your life — use it to create something positive. 

Getting into Other People’s Heads

Robert has written a great deal about the various tools you can use to become successful. I asked him what the most important tool he would recommend people to use when striving toward greatness, and his answer might surprise you:

“The best thing is to be able to get inside the minds of other people. If you develop that skill, the sky’s the limit. Nothing will ever stop you because people are like a mystery. They wear a mask, and you don’t have any idea what they’re thinking.” – Robert Greene

Getting into people’s minds is a powerful tool for obtaining success in every area of your life. Imagine how much easier it would be to get that dream job or make instant connections with others if you could read their minds. While telepathy may not be possible, you can still develop the skill of understanding other people.

So how can we get into other people’s heads? 

“You can develop … that power by becoming someone [with] insane empathy. And it’s not easy, and not everybody’s born the same way, but it begins with one very simple step. … [You] need to tell yourself the other person is more interesting than me, their life, their thoughts, their ideas. … It’s taking this one step, which is [that] other people are more interesting than me.” – Robert Greene

You need to develop a great deal of empathy and genuinely care about understanding the people around you. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and you found that rather than listening to that person, you were merely thinking about what you were going to say next? Oftentimes, people are stuck in their own heads, and they forget to listen and understand those around them. If you make a conscious effort to be genuinely interested in other people, then you’ll begin to understand them. 

Aside from the fact that you’ll better understand others if you genuinely listen and care about what they say, you’ll also find that you can learn so much from other people. 

“It’s like an undiscovered world. … It’s [like] visiting another culture. They have experiences you’ve never had. They have a world that’s not your world. It’s fascinating. … [People] love movies because they get to go inside other people’s characters, and they get to vicariously live in them. … You could have that in everyday life if you switch that thing where you’re more interested in other people.” – Robert Greene

When you’re with another person, recognize that they have an entirely different perspective than you, and they have fascinating experiences and lessons that you can learn from. When you make a conscious effort to learn everything you can from another person, you’ll begin to understand them. You may not be able to read minds, but you can pick up on someone’s emotions and thought process way more easily.

“I can’t get inside [your] thoughts. It’s impossible, but I can get inside your moods and emotions because we humans are very susceptible to the moods of other people. We can feel them so I can start to … understand the tone in your voice. I can understand the subtext of what you’re saying, and I could pick up the emotion behind it and what you’re intending.” – Robert Greene

Once you genuinely care to understand another person, you can pick up on the inner meaning behind their words and pick up on the emotions that motivate them. When you understand someone’s motivations, you can convince them to help you on your journey to greatness: 

“I want to persuade them to help me on a project. Well, now I know what their world is like, what their spirit is, [and] what their problems are. I’m going to mold what I’m saying to get them interested in my idea. Doors open up to you. The whole universe opens up to you once you’re able to put yourself in the mindset and the point of view of other people. Enter their spirit.” – Robert Greene

Once you develop the ability to be genuinely fascinated by other people and learn who they are and what motivates them, you can use your understanding of other people to persuade them. For example, let’s say that you’re going in for a job interview. Rather than just focusing on how you present yourself, you can focus on understanding the person interviewing you. Don’t merely focus on what you’re going to say next while the interviewer speaks — focus on understanding the interviewer. If you’re able to tap into the interviewer’s motivations and emotions, you’ll have an easier time convincing them that you’re the right candidate for the job.  

When you engage in conversation, are you genuinely listening to other people or merely focusing on yourself? Other people contain limitless information and experiences that you can learn from. Learning from others and understanding them is a major key to becoming successful!

Why You Should Listen to This Robert Greene Podcast Episode Right Now…

Guys, I learned so many incredible things from Robert Greene in this interview. Robert never ceases to impress every time he comes on The School of Greatness. We’ve covered so many different topics relating to success, psychology, and mindset from our three interviews together. Make sure to check out this full episode, our first episode, and Episode 713 of The School of Greatness to learn more from Robert Greene. 

The final question I asked Robert involved humanity and the direction of our society. I asked him where he thinks we’re going in the next five years based on the current historical events that we’re experiencing. His answer was absolutely fascinating and inspiring. 

“I think the human spirit can’t deal with too much stagnation. … And we’re on the verge of what I think could be a revolutionary generation. … We live in a situation [where] the politics and the structures have not really shifted in 50 years. … And so I feel like there’s going to be an outbreak at some point where people are going to say, ‘I don’t want this world that is so unequal.’… I think there will be an outburst.” – Robert Greene

Friends, join me on Episode 1,024 to learn about your attitude shaping your world, handling your emotions, channeling your dark side into something productive, and understanding other people!

 

To Greatness,