The 50th Law Read online

  The 50th Law

  50 Cent and Robert Greene

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  See Things for What They Are-Intense Realism

  Chapter 2

  Make Everything Your Own—Self-Reliance

  Chapter 3

  Turn Shit into Sugar—Opportunism

  Chapter 4

  Keep Moving—Calculated Momentum

  Chapter 5

  Know When to Be Bad—Aggression

  Chapter 6

  Lead from the Front—Authority

  Chapter 7

  Know Your Environment from the Inside Out—Connection

  Chapter 8

  Respect the Process—Mastery

  Chapter 9

  Push Beyond Your Limits—Self-Belief

  Chapter 10

  Confront Your Mortality—the Sublime

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by 50 Cent and Robert Greene

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Foreword

  I first met 50 Cent in the winter of 2006. He had been a fan of my book The 48 Laws of Power, and he was interested in collaborating on a book project. In the meeting, we talked about war, terrorism, the music business. What struck me most was that we had a remarkably similar way of looking at the world, one that transcended the great differences in our backgrounds. For instance, in discussing the power games he was experiencing at that time in the music business, we both looked past people’s benign explanations for their behavior and tried to figure out what they were really up to. He developed this way of thinking on the dangerous streets of Southside Queens where it was a necessary life skill; I came to it by reading a lot of history and observing the crafty maneuvers of various people in Hollywood, where I worked for many years. The perspective, however, is the same.

  We left the meeting that day with an open-ended idea about a future project. As I pondered the possible theme of this book over the following months, I became increasingly intrigued by the idea of bringing our two worlds together. What excites me about America is its social mobility, people continually rising from the bottom to the top and altering the culture in the process. On another level, however, we remain a nation that lives in social ghettos. Celebrities generally congregate around other celebrities; academics and intellectuals are cloistered in their worlds; people like to associate with those of their kind. If we leave these narrow worlds, it is usually as an observer or tourist of another way of life. What seemed an interesting possibility here was to ignore our surface differences as much as possible and collaborate on the level of ideas—illuminating some truths about human nature that go beyond class or ethnicity.

  With an open mind and the idea of figuring out what this book could be, I hung out with Fifty throughout much of 2007. I was given almost complete access to his world. I followed him on numerous high-powered business meetings, sitting quietly in a corner and observing him in action. One day I witnessed a raucous fistfight in his office between two of his employees, with Fifty having to personally break it up. I observed a fake crisis that he manufactured for the press for publicity purposes. I followed him as he mingled with other stars, friends from the hood, European royalty, and political figures. I visited his childhood home in Southside Queens, hung out with his friends from his hustling days, and got a sense of what it could be like to grow up in that world. And the more I witnessed him in action on all these fronts, the more it struck me that Fifty was a walking, living example of the historical figures I had written about in my three books. He is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.

  While writing about the various power players in history, I developed the theory that the source of their success could almost always be traced to one single skill or unique quality that separated them from others. For Napoleon, it was his remarkable ability to absorb a massive amount of detail and organize it in his mind. This allowed him to almost always know more than his rival generals about what was going on. After observing Fifty and talking to him about his past, I decided that the source of his power is his utter fearlessness.

  This quality does not manifest itself in yelling or obvious intimidation tactics. Any time Fifty acts that way in public it is pure theater. Behind the scenes, he is cool and calculating. His lack of fear is displayed in his attitude and his actions. He has seen and lived through too many dangerous encounters on the streets to be remotely fazed by anything in the corporate world. If a deal is not to his liking, he will walk away and not care. If he needs to play a little rough and dirty with an adversary, he goes at it without a second thought. He feels supreme confidence in himself. Living in a world where most people are generally timid and conservative, he always has the advantage of being willing to do more, to take risks, and to be unconventional. Coming from an environment in which he never expected to live past the age of twenty-five, he feels like he has nothing to lose, and this brings him tremendous power.

  The more I thought of this unique strength of his, the more it seemed inspiring and instructive. I could see myself benefiting from his example and overcoming my own fears. I decided that fearlessness in all its varieties would be the subject of the book.

  The process for writing The 50th Law was simple. In observing and talking to Fifty, I noticed certain patterns of behavior and themes that would eventually turn into the ten chapters of this book. Once I determined these themes, I discussed them with him, and together we shaped them further. We talked about overcoming the fear of death, the ability to embrace chaos and change, the mental alchemy you can effect by thinking of any adversity as an opportunity for power. We related these ideas to our own experiences and to the world at large. I then expanded on these discussions with my own research, combining the example of Fifty with stories of other people throughout history who have displayed the same fearless quality.

  In the end, this is a book about a particular philosophy of life that can be summed up as follows—your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live. It is our hope that The 50th Law will inspire you to discover this power for yourself.

  Introduction

  SO OVER YOU IS THE GREATEST ENEMY A MAN CAN HAVE AND THAT IS FEAR. I KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE AFRAID TO LISTEN TO THE TRUTH—YOU HAVE BEEN RAISED ON FEAR AND LIES. BUT I AM GOING TO PREACH TO YOU THE TRUTH UNTIL YOU ARE FREE OF THAT FEAR….

  —Malcolm X

  The Fearful Attitude

  In the beginning, fear was a basic, simple emotion for the human animal. We confronted something overwhelming—the imminent threat of death in the form of wars, plagues, and natural disasters—and we felt fear. As for any animal, this emotion had a protective function—it allowed us to take notice of a danger and retreat in time. For us humans, it served an additional, positive purpose—we could remember the source of the threat and protect ourselves better the next time. Civilization depended on this ability to foresee and forestall dangers from the environment. Out of fear, we also developed religion and various belief systems to comfort us. Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious.

  Over time, however, something strange began to happen. The actual terrors that we faced began to lessen in intensity as we gained increasing control over our environment. But instead of our fears lessening as well, they began to multiply in number. We started to worry about our status in society—whether people liked us, or how we fit into the group. We became anxious for our livelihoods, the future of our families and children, our personal health, and the aging process. Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and re
al, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. It was as if the thousands of years of feeling fear in the face of nature could not go away—we had to find something at which to direct our anxiety, no matter how small or improbable.

  In the evolution of fear, a decisive moment occurred in the nineteenth century when people in advertising and journalism discovered that if they framed their stories and appeals with fear, they could capture our attention. It is an emotion we find hard to resist or control, and so they constantly shifted our focus to new possible sources of anxiety: the latest health scare, the new crime wave, a social faux pas we might be committing, and endless hazards in the environment of which we were not aware. With the increasing sophistication of the media and the visceral quality of the imagery, they have been able to give us the feeling that we are fragile creatures in an environment full of danger—even though we live in a world infinitely safer and more predictable than anything our ancestors knew. With their help, our anxieties have only increased.

  Fear is not designed for such a purpose. Its function is to stimulate powerful physical responses, allowing an animal to retreat in time. After the event, it is supposed to go away. An animal that cannot not let go of its fears once the threat is gone will find it hard to eat and sleep. We are the animal that cannot get rid of its fears and when so many of them lay inside of us, these fears tend to color how we view the world. We shift from feeling fear because of some threat, to having a fearful attitude towards life itself. We come to see almost every event in terms of risk. We exaggerate the dangers and our vulnerability. We instantly focus on the adversity that is always possible. We are generally unaware of this phenomenon because we accept it as normal. In times of prosperity, we have the luxury of fretting over things. But in times of trouble, this fearful attitude becomes particularly pernicious. Such moments are when we need to solve problems, deal with reality, and move forward, but fear is a call to retreat and retrench.

  This is precisely what Franklin Delano Roosevelt confronted when he took office in 1933. The Great Depression that had begun with the stock market crash of 1929 was now at its worst. But what struck Roosevelt was not the actual economic factors but the mood of the public. It seemed to him that people were not only more fearful than necessary but that their fears were making it harder to surmount adversity. In his inaugural address to the country, he said that he would not ignore such obvious realities as the collapse of the economy and that he would not preach a naive optimism. But he implored his listeners to remember that the country had faced worse things in its past, periods such as the Civil War. What had brought us out of such moments was our pioneer spirit, our determination and resolve. This is what it means to be an American.

  Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic—as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on. “So, first of all,” he told the audience, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

  What Roosevelt sketched out in his speech is the knife’s edge that separates failure from success in life. That edge is your attitude, which has the power to help shape your reality. If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crisis or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. And in fact, through his inspiring leadership, FDR was able to help the country shift its mind-set and confront the Depression with a more enterprising spirit.

  Today we seem to face new problems and crises that test our national mettle. But just as FDR made the comparison to even worse times in the past, we can say that what we are facing is not as bad as the perils of the 1930s and the subsequent war years. In fact, the reality of twenty-first-century America is something more like the following: our physical environment is safer and more secure than any other moment in our history. We live in the most prosperous country in the world. In the past only white males could play the power game. Now millions upon millions of minorities and women have been given entrance to the arena, forever altering the dynamic—making us the most socially advanced country in that regard. Advances in technology have opened up all kinds of new opportunities; old business models are dissolving, leaving the field wide open for innovation. It is a time of sweeping change and revolution.

  We face certain challenges as well. The world has become more competitive; the economy has undeniable vulnerabilities and is in need of reinvention. As in all situations, the determining factor will be our attitude, how we choose to look at this reality. If we give in to the fear, we will give disproportionate attention to the negative and manufacture the very adverse circumstances that we dread. If we go the opposite direction, cultivating a fearless approach to life, attacking everything with boldness and energy, then we will create a much different dynamic.

  Understand: we are all too afraid—of offending people, of stirring up conflict, of standing out from the crowd, of taking bold action. For thousands of years our relationship to this emotion has evolved—from a primitive fear of nature, to generalized anxiety about the future, to the fearful attitude that now dominates us. As rational, productive adults we are called upon to finally overcome this downward trend and to evolve beyond our fears.

  The Fearless Type

  THE VERY FIRST THING I REMEMBER IN MY EARLY CHILDHOOD IS A FLAME, A BLUE FLAME JUMPING OFF A GAS STOVE SOMEBODY LIT…. I WAS THREE YEARS OLD…. I FELT FEAR, REAL FEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. BUT I REMEMBER IT ALSO LIKE SOME KIND OF ADVENTURE, SOME KIND OF WEIRD JOY, TOO. I GUESS THAT EXPERIENCE TOOK ME SOMEPLACE IN MY HEAD I HADN’T BEEN BEFORE. TO SOME FRONTIER, THE EDGE, MAYBE, OF EVERYTHING POSSIBLE…THE FEAR I HAD WAS ALMOST LIKE AN INVITATION, A CHALLENGE TO GO FORWARD INTO SOMETHING I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT. THAT’S WHERE I THINK MY PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE…STARTED, WITH THAT MOMENT…. IN MY MIND I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED AND THOUGHT SINCE THEN THAT MY MOTION HAD TO BE FORWARD, AWAY FROM THE HEAT OF THAT FLAME.

  —Miles Davis

  There are two ways of dealing with fear—one passive, the other active. In the passive mode, we seek to avoid the situation that causes us anxiety. This could translate into postponing any decisions in which we might hurt people’s feelings. It could mean opting for everything to be safe and comfortable in our daily lives, so no amount of messiness can enter. When we are in this mode it is because we feel that we are fragile and would be damaged by an encounter with the thing we dread.

  The active variety is something most of us have experienced at some point in our lives: the risky or difficult situation that we fear is thrust upon us. It could be a natural disaster, a death of someone close to us, or a reversal in fortune in which we lose something. Often in these moments we find an inner strength that surprises us. What we feared is not so bad. We cannot avoid it and have to find a way to overcome our fear or suffer real consequences. Such moments are oddly therapeutic because finally we are confronting something real—not an imagined fear scenario fed to us by the media. We can let go of this fear. The problem is that such moments tend to not last very long or repeat themselves too often. They can quickly lose their value and we return to the passive, avoidance mode.

  When we live in relatively comfortable circumstances, the environment does not press on us with obvious dangers, violence, or limitations to our movement. Our main goal then is to maintain the comfort and security we have, and so we become more sensitive to the slightest risk or threat to the status quo. We find it harder to tolerate feelings of fear because they are more vague and troubling—so we remain in the passive mode.

  Throughout history, however, there are people who have lived in much tighter c
ircumstances, dangers pressing in on them on a daily basis. These types must confront their fears in the active mode again and again and again. This could be growing up in extreme poverty; facing death on the battlefield or leading an army in war; living through tumultuous, revolutionary periods; being a leader in a time of crisis; suffering personal loss or tragedy; or having a brush with death. Countless people grow up in or with such circumstances and their spirit is crushed by adversity. But a few rise above. It is their only positive choice—they must confront these daily fears and overcome them, or submit to the downward pull. They are toughened and hardened to the point of steel.

  Understand: no one is born this way. It is unnatural to not feel fear. It is a process that requires challenges and tests. What separates those who go under and those who rise above adversity is the strength of their will and their hunger for power.

  At some point, this defensive position of overcoming fears converts to an offensive one—a fearless attitude. Such types learn the value not only of being unafraid but also of attacking life with a sense of boldness and urgency and an unconventional approach, creating new models instead of following old ones. They see the great power this brings them and it soon becomes their dominant mind-set.

  We find these types in all cultures and all time periods—from Socrates and the Stoics to Cornelius Vanderbilt and Abraham Lincoln.

  Napoleon Bonaparte represents a classic fearless type. He began his career in the military just as the French Revolution exploded. At this critical moment in his life, he had to experience one of the most chaotic and terrifying periods in history. He faced endless dangers on the battlefield as a new kind of warfare was emerging, and he navigated through innumerable political intrigues in which one wrong move could lead to the guillotine. He emerged from all of this with a fearless spirit, embracing the chaos of the times and the vast changes going on in the art of war. And in one of his innumerable campaigns, he expressed the words that could serve as the motto for all fearless types.