So, Someday, it's a book stirring in me, is the art of thinking, and how to use that kind of process and go deeper into it. And I talked a lot about it in one of my podcasts, which might be the seed of a book. But it's the difference between dead thinking and alive thinking.

Ideas can be either alive or they can be dead. An alive idea is something that enters your brain from an external source, a philosopher, an article, somebody you admire, somebody you hate. And then you absorb it, and you think about it, and you decide, I'm going to turn it around into this, and I'm going to make it alive and make it something that's part of me.

Another part of an alive idea is you have an idea that comes to you about a book or a project or something about the world, and you go, maybe that's not actually true. Maybe the opposite is true. And you go through a process, and you cycle through it on and on, and you reflect on it, and you refine this idea.

And maybe it turns into its opposite. And through the process of reflecting and correcting and revising it, you turn it into something living, something alive within you, on and on and on. And what prevents people from going through that process, which would be the subject of my book, is basically anxiety.

Because I think how you handle anxiety is the most important kind of quality in life. It will determine whether you will be successful, whether you will find your career path, or whether you won't be able to. I don't know if you can follow that idea at all. But anxiety is a signal to you that you don't understand something, that there's a problem out there that you can't resolve.

And so what happens to most people, if you're insecure, is you glom onto something instant and easy to get rid of your feeling of anxiety. I don't understand this problem. Oh, it must be A. A must be the answer, because this person said that, right? And so you don't develop the ability to think.

You don't develop the ability to go to the next level. But if you take that anxiety, and you go, all right, maybe A is an answer. And then you start going through A, and then you go, no, maybe A isn't the answer. Maybe B is the answer. You're able to surmount your anxiety and go past it, come further and further and further.

You don't rush for the first available answer that's out there, right? You're able to go through a process of refining things. And so in your career, if you're anxious for success, if you're anxious for money, you're going to make the wrong choices. But if you're able to deal with that anxiety and say, maybe I have to think more deeply about where I'm going.

I have to come up with other alternatives, then you're going to make a much better choice on and on and on. So if you're a creative person, it's very, very challenging to have that blank piece of paper before you, that book that you haven't written, that film or whatever.

You're filled with a lot of anxiety, and you have to deal with it. And if you're able to turn it into something creative and productive, then great things will happen. You'll create a masterpiece. So the ability to deal with anxiety and to not give in to the most instant gratification that you can get is to me a marker of somebody who will be creative and will invent something as opposed to people who just recycle old and dead ideas.

Amen to that. I was once told that anxiety makes children of us all, and not in the positive sense of being childlike. It regresses us to a mode where we feel a complete lack of control. And I completely agree that being able to manage anxiety and dance with it, since we can't rid ourselves of it, perhaps nor should we, right?

Because it's a signal, as you point out, that we don't understand something, that there's something to get curious about, a process or something out there, or both. I think that really resonates. I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing that, because I think we hear the word flow, and we just all imagine, I even catch myself imagining that when Robert Greene sits down to write, it's like there's a blank sheet, and then he just kind of meditates, and then boom, out come these books.

But if I get realistic for a second, I'm sure that there's a lot of inner turmoil and anxiety. Oh my God, you have no idea. So my process is 95% pain, and maybe 2.5% ecstasy, and I don't know what the other 2.5% would be. So I write a story, because in my new book, and most of my books, I always begin with the story from history, et cetera, and it is so bad.

I can't believe how bad, how flat it is, how it sucks. I'm so embarrassed, I hate myself, and I go and I dig into it, and I start changing the words in it. I start making it a little bit better. The second version, it's kind of palatable, but it still sucks.

If I let it out into the world, it'd be very embarrassing. It's anxious, and my wife can tell you, I'm a miserable being when that happens. Everything looks black to me at that point, and I push through it. So if I gave in to my anxiety, and this happens with a lot of books and writers, I would just put out that second version, which isn't very good.

It isn't very strong. It isn't thought through, because my ideas, when I look at them the first time, I go, that's not real. That's not the actual thing that's going on here, Robert. You've missed the mark. You want to hit what's actually real in that story. So you have to go deeper and deeper and harder and harder and harder.

So I don't just give up and go, here's the chapter. I go, it's got to be better. It's got to be better, until finally, after two months of struggling, it seems like it's gone to the place that I want it to be in, right? But I use that anxiety to keep improving and making it better.

And then when I reach that point, and the story is good enough, and I can let my wife read it, and then my editor, I feel great. I have that 2% moment of joy. But it came through all of that anxiety. But I can tell you, the feeling of fulfillment when I finish a chapter is pretty damn great.

When I finish a book, it's better than any kind of drug experience anyone could ever have. It's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and pushing past all the barriers. So my process involves a lot of anxiety. That's why I'm talking about it, and why I want to write a book about it.