The Laws of Human Nature - Robert Greene  ## Metadata - Author: **Robert Greene** - Full Title: The Laws of Human Nature - Category: #books ## Highlights - *Y**ou like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jgpz4e0bd68mt9r7bz7710sy)) ## New highlights added January 11, 2025 at 8:50 AM - bsence and presence have very primal effects upon us. Too much presence suffocates; a degree of absence spurs our interest. We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have—the object projected by our fantasies. Learn to create some mystery around you, to use strategic absence to make people desire your return, to want to possess you. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they are forbidden to have, and they will go crazy with desire. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Overcome this weakness in yourself by embracing your circumstances, your fate. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh9vpk94p4b07aaah8xd4r0g)) - In 1895 eleven-year-old Gabrielle Chanel sat by her mother’s bedside for several days and watched her slowly die from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three. Gabrielle’s life had been hard, but now it could only get worse. She and her siblings had grown up in poverty, shuttled from one relative’s house to another. Their father was an itinerant peddler of goods who hated any kind of ties or responsibility and was rarely at home. Their mother, who often accompanied her husband on the road, was the only comforting force in their lives. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh9vrm0g0xz3wytqc011a1y6)) ## New highlights added January 12, 2025 at 6:46 AM - Chanel did the opposite. She welcomed all sorts of people into her shows and allowed them to take photographs. She knew this would only encourage the many people who made a living out of creating cheap versions of her clothes, but she wanted this. She even invited wealthy women to bring along their seamstresses, who would make sketches of the designs and then create replicas of them. More than making money, what she wanted most of all was to spread her fashions everywhere, to feel herself and her work to be objects of desire by women of all classes and nations. It would be the ultimate revenge for the girl who had grown up ignored, unloved, and shunned. She would clothe millions of women; her look, her imprint would be seen everywhere—as indeed it was a few years after her comeback. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhdfgks90s8jtnaxswsccsev)) ## New highlights added January 12, 2025 at 7:46 AM - You must train yourself to see how they perceive you and the objects you make, as if you were looking at yourself and your work from the outside. This will give you the almost limitless power to shape people’s perceptions about these objects and excite them. People do not want truth and honesty, no matter how much we hear such nonsense endlessly repeated. They want their imaginations to be stimulated and to be taken beyond their banal circumstances. They want fantasy and objects of desire to covet and grope after. Create an air of mystery around you and your work. Associate it with something new, unfamiliar, exotic, progressive, and taboo. Do not define your message but leave it vague. Create an illusion of ubiquity—your object is seen everywhere and desired by others. Then let the covetousness so latent in all humans do the rest, setting off a chain reaction of desire. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhdfqvkx9wjbp047mnz3rbaf)) - Once you sense that you have engaged people’s imagination, that you have your hooks in them, then you must use physical absence and withdrawal. You are not so available. A day or week can go by without your presence. You create a feeling of emptiness inside them, a touch of pain. You occupy increasing amounts of their mental space in these absences. They come to want more of you, not less. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhdhrgce77ham5bwt0s4b8fz)) ## New highlights added January 14, 2025 at 7:15 AM - People’s character is formed in their earliest years and by their daily habits. It is what compels them to repeat certain actions in their lives and fall into negative patterns. Look closely at such patterns and remember that people never do something just once. They will inevitably repeat their behavior. Gauge the relative strength of their character by how well they handle adversity, their ability to adapt and work with other people, their patience and ability to learn. Always gravitate toward those who display signs of strength, and avoid the many toxic types out there. Know thoroughly your own character so you can break your compulsive patterns and take control of your destiny. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhjhh4v0weq9nq15643edvc7)) - Then in 1922 his mother, at the age of thirty-nine, suddenly died. His father never quite recovered from her early death and passed away two years later. Now, at the age of nineteen, young Howard was alone in the world, having lost the two people who had been his closest companions and who had directed every phase of his life. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhjhn20dxj1kdv3q0wgj4rbm)) - The free/autonomous stamp comes from mothers who give their children freedom to discover themselves and are continually sensitive to their needs but also protect them. Dismissing mothers are often distant, even sometimes hostile and rejecting. Such children are stamped with a feeling of abandonment and the idea that they must continually fend for themselves. The enmeshed-ambivalent mothers are not consistent with their attention—sometimes suffocating and overinvolved, other times retreating because of their own problems or anxieties. They can make their children feel as if they have to take care of the person who should be taking care of them. Disorganized mothers send highly conflicting signals to their children, reflecting their own inner chaos and perhaps early emotional traumas. Nothing their children do is right, and such children can develop powerful emotional problems. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhjk3ycnwqz1k1fhznzcw9vv)) ## New highlights added January 15, 2025 at 7:21 AM - And so a unique experiment began in the castle at Porta Giovia. Isolated from the outside world and allowed a tremendous degree of freedom, Caterina could develop herself in any direction she desired. Intellectually she could explore all forms of knowledge. She could indulge herself in all of her natural interests—in her case, fashion and the arts. In her physical training, she could give free rein to her own bold and adventurous spirit. In this early education, she could bring out the many different sides of her character. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhn61ex8t2w7h94wbmgttp2w))