Episode · On Purpose with Jay Shetty · 2026-11-02
Jay Shetty & Robert Greene: books mentioned on On Purpose with Jay Shetty (Nov 2026)
Robert Greene: The Surprising Reason You Feel Unhappy Even When Life Is “Good”
Bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power and The Law of the Sublime, Robert Greene, joins Jay to explore why so many of us feel unfulfilled, even when we're achieving everything we thought we wanted.
Jay Shetty recommended The Law of the Sublime by Robert Greene. Robert Greene recommended Frames Of Mind by Howard Gardner, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and discussed Elective Affinities by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, On Self and Social Organization by Charles Horton Cooley, and The Pygmalion Effect by Dan Crown.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
The Law of the Sublime
The Law of the Sublime by Robert Greene is a forthcoming work by the renowned author that explores strategic thinking, power, and human nature.
Recommended“His new book, The Law of the Sublime, explores how to find meaning and fulfillment in a world full of distractions. We're diving into why we're never satisfied, the decisions that hold us back, and how to better understand ourselves and others.”
Where to get it
-
Elective Affinities
Discussed“There's a book by the writer, the German writer Goet, called Elective Affinities, and it's about how certain people have this weird kind of nonverbal affinity with each other.”
Where to get it
-
Frames Of Mind
Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner is a landmark psychology text that introduces the theory of multiple intelligences, arguing that human cognitive capacity is better understood as a set of distinct faculties rather than a single general intelligence score.
Recommended“And I often refer people to a book that I love called The Five Frames of Intelligence by Howard Gardner. And the idea is we think of intelligence as just being this kind of intellectual thing, but that's not at all the case.”
Where to get it
-
On Self and Social Organization
Discussed“One of my favorite thoughts is from Charles Houghton Cooley where he said, the challenge today is I'm not what I think I am, I'm not what you think I am, I am what I think you think I am.”
Where to get it
-
The Pygmalion Effect
Discussed“There's a very powerful and very thought-provoking series of experiments. There was a book called The Pygmalion Effect. And basically the idea is they were studying students in classes and teachers, the relationship between students and teachers.”
Where to get it
-
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a monumental historical novel blending grand military strategy with intimate domestic life against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
Recommended“And you're not doing that because other people are telling you, cool, and it's not relieving your boredom because it's actually kind of boring to learn, but it's leading to something exciting. Similarly, it would be taking up a musical instrument.”
Where to get it
-
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound philosophical novel that explores deep spiritual questions surrounding faith, free will, morality, and the human condition.
Recommended“Similarly, it would be instead of going for your Netflix streaming to pick up a 600-page war and peace, the brothers Karamazov, whatever you like or something contemporary.”
Where to get it
-
Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning is a profound psychological memoir by Viktor E.
Recommended“And I gave him a list of some philosophy of Nietzsche, of Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha, of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, to kind of maybe enrich him.”
Where to get it
-
Siddhartha
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is a philosophical novel that follows a young man's spiritual journey of self-discovery in ancient India.
Recommended“But he wasn't happy, something was missing from his life, and he couldn't pinpoint it, and so he came to me and he said, can you suggest some books for me to read? And I gave him a list of some philosophy of Nietzsche, of Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha,”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (29) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing The 48 Laws of Power
“I'm sitting with the one and only Robert Green, best-selling author of The 48 Laws of Power and one of the leading voices on human nature and success.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“And the sublime, if I could say one thing about it, is when you experience it, and I have, the book is filled with practical exercise. It's not an academic book.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“Well, I have a chapter in the book. It's kind of a counterintuitive chapter called the Daimon Sublime.”
Plugged Mastery
“This chapter that I talk about, the Demons of Limits, related to my book on mastery, the first chapter about your life's task.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“And I had wanted to write a book on the Sublime 20 years ago, but I got distracted. I got the project I did with 50 Cent and things like that and I kept getting sidetracked.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“And so, in writing the book, it was very difficult, it was very frustrating because I had to handwrite the whole book but it felt like something real, something authentic.”
Plugged Mastery
“the key is, and so again I go into this in mastery but also in the new book is you want to have to have it.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“the key is, and so again I go into this in mastery but also in the new book is you want to have to have it.”
Plugged Mastery
“We have to voyage into your childhood. Right? We have to go back to when you were three or four years old because when you were a child you weren't socialized yet.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“what's going to happen is you're going to go into it for three months, you're going to start slowing down, you're going to go, oh, actually, I want to go into this. You're never to go deep enough to develop any kind of skill.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“I talk in the book, emptiness is equivalent to actually to death. So what you're really afraid of in those moments of emptiness is you're not coming to terms with your own mortality.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“You were gifted with this brain, this is something in this sublime book I talk about, you have no idea as you walk around this organ inside of your head, the insane power that it presents.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“We're only experiencing little tidbits of everything on the surface. what I tell people and it's a major theme in the new book is you have to learn to resist your own culture.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“I have a story in the book of the great slave liberator Harriet Tubman during, just before the Civil War and then during the Civil War and you can't imagine worse circumstances for any human being born into slavery on a plantation,”
Plugged The 48 Laws of Power
“I'm given a chance to write the 48 Laws of Power, I want to write a book, I want to contribute, I want to express my ideas, I take it incredibly seriously, because it's my one ticket out of my miserable life that I was leading into my mid to late 30s,”
Plugged The Laws of Human Nature
“In the laws of human nature, I talk about Aristotle Onassis, who in the 60s and 70s was the wealthiest man in the world. He was married to Jacqueline Onassis, the widow of John F. Kennedy, the most sought after woman in the world.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“I get satisfaction not from getting my royalty reports which are very nice and happy and rich. I get the most happiness when people say, Robert your book really helped me, it really saved me from the situation.”
Plugged The Laws of Human Nature
“Is envy always a bad thing or can it actually help you become successful? Well, in the laws of human nature, I have a chapter in envy in all of my books except this new one because it's a very powerful, motivating force.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“Well, in the laws of human nature, I have a chapter in envy in all of my books except this new one because it's a very powerful, motivating force.”
Plugged The 48 Laws of Power
“I wrote a book called The 48 Laws of Power, you might have heard of it. The talented don't often aren't the ones that necessarily end up on top. In fact, often the equation is the reverse, unfortunately.”
Plugged The 48 Laws of Power
“Because I told you, I hated that aspect of working in Hollywood in particular. It was a nightmare. If I had had my book, then it would have saved me a lot. I would have realized this is how you navigate these environments.”
Plugged The Art of Seduction
“It's a classic game of the coquette, of the push and pull, which in the art of seduction I describe as the most powerful seductive type because when they give you attention, you feel excited, and it's wonderful.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“But my advice to you, and I have a chapter in this, about what I call the dynamical sublime, sublimity of overcoming challenges and obstacles and immense discomfort, I'm advising you to get outside your comfort zone,”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“I became aware of how I have a chapter in the book of how strange it is to be alive and how weird the world looks when you have that kind of perspective, right? Now, I'm not telling you to go out there and have a stroke or put yourself where you're going to die.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“It won't be as strong as when you actually die. But at the end of the book, I have a chapter on the death sublime. And I talk about near-death experiences and how insane they are and what they teach us”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“Part of the research of the book is I looked a lot about mountain climbers because they kind of obsessed me, I'm very interested in them, because they have some of the most ecstatic experiences that humans can have.”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“In one of the chapters in the book, I called Awaken to the Strangeness of Being Alive. And I take you through some of the weirdness of evolution for the fact that your brain and your body evolved from single-celled organisms in the ocean 800 million years ago”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“And I say in the book, if we thought about all the steps that led to our existence in the present, we would be erecting temples and churches and we would be worshipping the fact that we are here alive,”
Plugged The Law of the Sublime
“I describe in the book 37,000 years ago, these people who are cave explorers come upon these cave paintings in France that go back to the early Paleolithic, and it's like a drug experience.”