The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene

2020, book 1: “50 Cent is a person I created. Soon it will be time to destroy him and become someone else.” — 50 Cent

Finished on January 3, 2020

My friend Pierre recommended this book to me and I went and purchased a copy of the audiobook right away. I loved Robert’s book “The 48 Laws of Power” and thought this could be a great complementary book. This book was fantastic. But wow did it ever increase the respect and admiration for 50 Cent and what he has created. There could not have been a better book with which to finish first in 2020.

“The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.” — Oswald Chambers

This was the first thing that I thought of when I heard.

Fears are a kind of prison that confine you to a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

Love this, feel this, believe this.

“Reality is my drug. The more I have of it, the more power I get and the higher I feel.” — 50 Cent

This is what matters most. Critical thinking. It’s a shame that universities don’t teach this more. But then that would require the professors to understand how to think critically themselves, wouldn’t it?

The author says that we were born with the greatest weapon in all of nature: the rational, conscious mind. With it, we can expand our vision far and wide. This gives us the unique capacity to distinguish patterns and events, learn from history, glimpse into the future. And see through appearances.

Every interaction matters. I can learn from anyone and everyone. There is nothing too small for me. There is nothing too big for me. The crazy thing is, the more we make everything matter, the more that the less important experiences begin to fade away.

We need to open up to experience. We need to live as if we don’t know anything and what we do know could be completely false. Force yourself to see the opposite opinion and view things through your enemy’s eyes. See EVERYTHING as a source for education.

Understanding people is essential. We must study human behavior, human emotions, and human conflicts. I love what the author emphasized here, decisions and details reveal a lot. We can find out anything about anyone, we just need to know where to look and how.

Everyone in life is after power and to get it, we all occasionally manipulate and even deceive. That is human nature and there is no shame in it. As part of this approach, we must become a better observer of people. We must hone this in personal interactions and read people and see through them as best we can. Decisions and details reveal a lot. You want to limit emotion and develop a sharp eye that is piercing, objective, and nonjudgmental.

“Mental energy comes from calm and clarity. Not chaos.” — Tim Grover

It’s essential that as people we are able to see through the noise — no matter what. There is never a situation that we should be part of where we cannot maintain our center of balance.

“As a person who cannot be easily ruffled by events, you will attract attention and power.” — Robert Greene

FULL advantage. Not semi-advantage, not only using the good things, God created us the way that He did for a reason and we must, it is our duty, to take full advantage of the incredible free will that God blessed us with.

Our task as an adult is to take full advantage of the autonomy and individuality we were born with. We must overcome the natural dependency of our childhood and see a desire to return to that phase as regressive and dangerous. If we get into this fear, we look outward for salvation and never find it. We will merely move from one dependency to another. We forget the essential truth that all humans are governed by self interest.

Reframe. Period. End of discussion, that’s it. We see this time and time again in the world. The author gave the example of FDR in the early 20th century. The author gave the example of 50 Cent and Ja Rule. We can also look at Peloton, Netflix, Facebook, etc. the list could go on and on. We could also make a sizable list of people and companies that could not effectively reframe bad publicity.

If bad publicity comes your way, think of it as negative attention that could be reframed for your purposes.

If you react rebelliously, that will stir up your base.

If you ignore it, you look guilty.

If you fight it, you seek defensive.

If you go with it and channel it in your direction, you have turned it into an opportunity for positive attention.

I loved this quote. 50 Cent is his persona in the rap game but outside of that, he is certainly a businessman. I’ve admired his mindset and overall person for a while and it was great to gain a deeper insight into who he truly is.

“50 Cent is a person I created. Soon it will be time to destroy him and become someone else.” — 50 Cent

We need all areas. This is so important for any and all levels of success. I think that people need to spend a lot more energy working on these things and ensuring they are ready for anything and everything that comes their way.

Calculated momentum: placing your mind in a ready position, better able to exploit any positive movement in your life. You must practice and master the following four types of flow:

1. Mental flow: knowledge that flows from one category to another, like that of a renaissance man such as Leonardo Da Vinci. We must maintain an openness to discovery and a hunger for knowledge.

2. Emotional flow: counterbalance is essential, we must maintain a sense of steadiness and exemplify grace under pressure.

3. Social flow: the model for any venture that involves groups of people should be to provide a framework based on your knowledge and expertise but allow room for the project to be shaped by those involved in it. They’re motivated and creative which will help give the project more flow and force. In the long run, your ability to gently divert people’s energy in your direction gives you a wider range of control in the shape and outcome of the project.

4. Cultural flow: find a way to periodically reinvent yourself and rediscover the youthful attentiveness to what is happening around you. True people or power, as Machiavellian saw it, are people who can shape their own character, call up the qualities necessary for the circumstance, and know how to bend the circumstance. Those who hold true to some ideal or value without self-examination tend to become the worst tyrants and often force others to conform to their concepts. We must deliberately try different approaches and style than usual. Change and chaos are what we thrive on.

This was something that I struggled with when I first heard it in the book. I have seen that people do certainly operate with flexible moralities though and often times, people’s own interests are always most important to them.

You will always find yourself among the aggressive and passive aggressive who seek to harm you in some way. Before it is too late you must master the art of knowing when and how to be bad using deception, manipulation, and force at the appropriate moments. EVERYONE operates with a flexible morality when it comes to their self interests; you are simply making this more conscious and effective.

I love this. Fearless and strategic. They’re both essential character traits of anyone and everyone who wants to be successful at a large level. We must get the job done. Period.

Talent and good intentions are never enough. You must be fearless and strategic. When you face people’s hostility and indifference you have to be aggressive and push them out of your way by any means necessary and not worry about some people disliking you.

Sounds like the law of attraction here. And besides, when you are always striving to avoid something, aren’t you then spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about that particular thing?

“The way I learned it, the kid in the schoolyard who doesn’t want to fight always leaves with a black eye. If you indicate you’ll do anything to avoid trouble, that’s when you get trouble.” — 50 Cent

Amen. This is a whole mindset shift that many need to undergo. People are not out to get you! They are simply out to fulfill their own personal agenda.

It’s important to develop a perspective that believes life naturally involves conflicting interests. Do not take things personally, people have their own issues and agendas.

Love this, feel this, and see this in action in many capacities.

“A really intelligent man feels what others only know.” — Baron de Montesquieu

Detailed plans… year by year… in his head. This is what it’s all about. It’s not enough to simply dream or think about what’s coming up for us. We need to spend time and energy developing plans and objectives.

At age 11, 50 Cent chose the path of a street hustler. He saw immediately that it was not glamorous at all. It often meant enduring hours in the blistering heat or the bitter cold. He would spend his time working from dawn to dusk, as if street hustling was a job. He would spend the long hours with nothing to do contemplating the future and coming up with detailed plans of what he was going to do year by year.

Wow. This left me in amazement. This is what it means to polish your craft and develop a system that gets it done and gets it done well. 50 Cent also knew very well who we wanted to portray in his music and his messaging has always been consistent.

Columbia records sent 50 Cent and dozens of other rappers to a retreat in upstate New York to write songs. He returned with 36 tracks while others could barely muster at 5 or 6.

On the real though. How can you get good at something if you don’t spend hours upon hours upon hours upon hours on something, the same thing, over and over and over and over and over and over again? You likely can’t.

“Most people can’t handle boredom. That means they can’t stay on one thing at a time until they get good at it and they wonder why they’re unhappy.” — 50 Cent

Isn’t this prevalent in today’s world? I certainly see it all over the place and it’s ridiculous. People need to become comfortable enough with themselves and their own thoughts to be able to sit alone with them.

“All of man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still alone in a room.” — Blaise Pascal

The most important thing that he learned was not from school. What he learned was something that he was only exposed to after being immersed in the justice system of the time. People NEED this. This example is one reason why I’m a fan of unpaid internships in some capacities. You might not be able to land a paid job at a company or maybe they are not able to pay you. But, you can get your foot in the door, learn about how the company is run, and provide value to them throughout it all.

Thurgood Marshall who was the lawyer behind the Brown vs. Board of Education case, was the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court and learned that the social process was just as important as the legal or technical one, which was not something taught in law school yet learning it was the key to functioning within the system and advancing the cause for which he was fighting.

Facts. That’s all I have to say. I’ve seen this time and time again in my own life. I’m more confident than I’ve ever been, I know I am a winner and will continue to create success if it’s God’s will for me and others see that about me as well.

“Your opinion of yourself becomes your reality. If you have all these doubts, then no one will believe in you and everything will go wrong. If you think the opposite, the opposite will happen, it’s that simple.” — 50 Cent

I love ambition. There are so many stories like that of 50 Cent. He came from nothing and created an empire. That’s inspirational, respectable, and amazing. There is no reason why ambition should be something that we look down upon as people, ever.

To those occupying a position of privilege, the ambitiousness of those from below seems like something scary and threatening. You must extricate yourself from this view as much as possible. Ambition is to be seen as beautiful and the driving force behind all human accomplishments.

Love this. We all die. How we die will be different, when we die will be different, and in the same way, what we live for will be different also.

We share the same ultimate fate with everyone (death and thereby all deserve the same degree of compassion.