Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Contents; Introduction; The Ultimate Power; The Evolution of Mastery; Keys to Mastery; I. Discover Your Calling: The Life's Task; The Hidden Force; Keys to Mastery; Strategies for Finding Your Life's Task; 1. Return to your origins-The primal inclination strategy; 2. Occupy the perfect niche-The Darwinian strategy; 3. Avoid the false path-The rebellion strategy; 4. Let go of the past-The adaptation strategy; 5. Find your way back-The life-or-death strategy; Reversal; II. Submit to Reality: The Ideal Apprenticeship; The First Transformation.
Keys to MasteryThe Apprenticeship Phase-The Three Steps or Modes; Step One: Deep Observation-The Passive Mode; Step Two: Skills Acquisition-The Practice Mode; Step Three: Experimentation-The Active Mode; Strategies for Completing the Ideal Apprenticeship; 1. Value learning over money; 2. Keep expanding your horizons; 3. Revert to a feeling of inferiority; 4. Trust the process; 5. Move toward resistance and pain; 6. Apprentice yourself in failure; 7. Combine the "how" and the "what"; 8. Advance through trial and error; Reversal; III. Absorb the Master's Power: The Mentor Dynamic.
The Alchemy of KnowledgeKeys to Mastery; Strategies for Deepening the Mentor Relationship; 1. Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations; 2. Gaze deep into the mentor's mirror; 3. Transfigure their ideas; 4. Create a back-and-forth dynamic; Reversal; IV. See People As They Are: Social Intelligence; Thinking Inside; Keys to Mastery; Specific Knowledge-Reading People; General Knowledge-The Seven Deadly Realities; Envy; Conformism; Rigidity; Self-obsessiveness; Laziness; Flightiness; Passive Aggression; Strategies for Acquiring Social Intelligence; 1. Speak through your work.
2. Craft the appropriate persona3. See yourself as others see you; 4. Suffer fools gladly; Reversal; V. Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active; The Second Transformation; Keys to Mastery; Step One: The Creative Task; Step Two: Creative Strategies; A. Cultivate Negative Capability; B. Allow for Serendipity; C. Alternate the Mind Through "The Current"; D. Alter Your Perspective; Looking at the "what" instead of the "how"; Rushing to generalities and ignoring details; Confirming paradigms and ignoring anomalies; Fixating on what is present, ignoring what is absent.
E. Revert to Primal Forms of IntelligenceStep Three: The Creative Breakthrough-Tension and Insight; Emotional Pitfalls; Complacency; Conservatism; Dependency; Impatience; Grandiosity; Inflexibility; Strategies for the Creative-Active Phase; 1. The Authentic Voice; 2. The Fact of Great Yield; 3. Mechanical Intelligence; 4. Natural Powers; 5. The Open Field; 6. The High End; 7. The Evolutionary Hijack; 8. Dimensional Thinking; 9. Alchemical Creativity and the Unconscious; Reversal; VI. Fuse the Intuitive with the Rational: Mastery; The Third Transformation; Keys to Mastery.

Around the globe, people are facing the same problem - that we are born as individuals but are forced to conform to the rules of society if we want to succeed. To see our uniqueness expressed in our achievements, we must first learn the rules - and then how to change them completely. Charles Darwin began as an underachieving schoolboy, Leonardo da Vinci as an illegitimate outcast. The secret of their eventual greatness lies in a 'rigorous apprenticeship': by paying close and careful attention, they learnt to master the 'hidden codes' which determine ultimate success or failure.