The Manipulation Expert: “You’re Being Manipulated!”, “Use Jealousy To Manipulate People!” & “How To Know If Someone Hates You!”

0:00:04 you need this skill if there’s somebody in your life and you don’t know whether they’re a snake
0:00:10 or they’re genuinely your friend approach them from an angle and surprise them and for a second
0:00:16 you detect what we call you you should become aware of that Robert Green is one of the best-selling
0:00:21 authors in history an internationally renowned expert on power strategies he’s been referenced in
0:00:28 songs by Jay-Z Kanye West the godfather of power seduction and mastery we have this idea that if I
0:00:34 apply myself fairly hard I should be successful but I kept noticing this blind spot that people had
0:00:40 they were terrible in dealing with people and if you’re not careful and constantly misreading people
0:00:44 they could manipulate you they could wound you but if you follow the process that I lay out it
0:00:49 will be the best defense you could ever have in your life you know all the tricks people are playing
0:00:56 on you we have to learn to look behind people’s masks being a human being means we lie but you
0:01:02 know what doesn’t lie body language eyes are hard to lie the smile tells you a hundred different
0:01:07 things if you know how to read it but the problem that you have is you think it’s a natural skill
0:01:13 I’m a human being I know how to read people you don’t you’re operating in darkness but I do believe
0:01:21 everybody has that potential so the first thing you do is frenemies do we will have frenemies yes
0:01:28 they sabotage you hurt you and you don’t want them in your life and one common sign of a frenemy is
0:01:36 quick one quick favor to ask from you there is one simple way that you can support our show
0:01:40 and that is by hitting that follow button on this app that you’re listening to the show on right now
0:01:48 this year in 2024 we’re trying really really hard to level up everything we’re doing and the only
0:01:52 free thing I’ll ever ask from you is to hit that follow button on this app it helps the show more
0:01:56 than I could probably articulate and it allows us enables us to keep doing what we’re doing here
0:01:58 I appreciate it Dealey on to the show
0:02:11 Robert you wrote a book about human nature in 2018 called the laws of human nature
0:02:19 why did you write that book well it’s the fruit of a lot of experiences that I’ve had
0:02:26 so I wrote the 48 laws of power and prior to that book I was somebody never had any power in life
0:02:32 I was sort of a failure you know I had gone through so many different jobs and then all of a
0:02:37 sudden I write this one book and people are coming to me for advice it’s kind of shocking
0:02:45 right and I started noticing a trend and the trend is we live in this intense technological age
0:02:52 where we have so much power at our fingertips right and it’s so easy to get attention and
0:02:58 on and on and we have this idea that everything in life should be easy it’s all about just
0:03:05 well if I apply myself really hard I should be successful but I kept noticing this blind spot
0:03:11 that people had they were terrible in dealing with people they were making all of these mistakes
0:03:16 everybody wears a mask you wear a mask I wear a mask when we’re out in the public realm
0:03:23 we don’t exactly say what we think right we’re all a bit strategic and if you’re not careful
0:03:29 you’re constantly saying the wrong things you’re constantly misreading people you’re doing things
0:03:34 at your job that you think are going to impress but they have the opposite effect and then something
0:03:40 bad happens and you’re confused and you’re emotional it was like this circle atmosphere of pain
0:03:46 around the globe of people suffering because they don’t know how to handle the people in their lives
0:03:52 and because we’re so virtual and we’re so locked in our phones they were becoming worse and worse
0:03:58 at reading other people at understanding them you know when I’m sitting across from you I can
0:04:02 see your body language I can see your non-verbals I can see all sorts of things I can deal with you
0:04:10 as a human but when I spend 95% of my time behind a screen you know and that’s even how I date
0:04:17 basic human skills of understanding of connecting of empathy of reading they’re getting hopelessly
0:04:23 degraded that’s my long-winded answer for why I wrote that book. If there’s someone listening
0:04:27 out there and they can relate to certain parts of what you’ve just said maybe it’s a lack of
0:04:34 their own self-awareness or maybe they have poor sort of awareness of others is there a starting
0:04:39 place to reversing that is there maybe a most important skill that we need to master at the
0:04:43 foundation of that transformation? Yeah it’s very simple it’s to get down on your hands and knees
0:04:48 and realize you’re bad at dealing with people the problem that you have is you think that it’s a
0:04:54 natural skill yeah I’m okay at it I just kind of wing it I understand what I’m doing I’m a human
0:05:00 being I know how to read people etc you don’t you’re operating in darkness you’re groping around
0:05:07 just realize first of all that you need this skill and once you realize that the first thing you do
0:05:12 is you look inward you look at your own nature you look at the things that I write about in the
0:05:19 book about narcissism about irrationality and instead of searching for the people around you
0:05:26 that fit those categories look at yourself so it all begins with self-awareness you are the best
0:05:33 subject of human nature so when I was writing this book it was actually quite painful so I’m
0:05:38 writing a chapter on narcissism one of the longest chapters in the book because it’s a very important
0:05:44 subject and I’m telling myself Robert you’re quite a narcissist you didn’t think of yourself that way
0:05:50 but you have all of these classic tendencies that you’re writing about in the book it was painful
0:05:54 but in order to come to understand narcissism and other people I had to sort of understand it
0:06:01 to myself so step number one is I need this knowledge I’m actually not very good with dealing
0:06:07 with people it’s caused me problems go back and review the problems and mistakes you’ve made
0:06:14 mistakes I’ve made as well many many times and then when you realize that you want this knowledge
0:06:19 then you begin by looking inward but if you think that that it’s not needed that you’re not it’s
0:06:24 just always kind of interesting or maybe I’ll sort of dabble in it it won’t mean anything to you
0:06:30 you have to feel that pain that you’ve been through in life and it’s kind of an ongoing pain
0:06:35 it’s one that I still have even though I wrote the book where I misread people where I inadvertently
0:06:40 hurt them when I didn’t mean to hurt them you know and I feel that and I suffer from it and so
0:06:46 the pain that you feel the emotions that this turns out motivate you then to become better at
0:06:52 understanding other people what if you find things in yourself like you said that you don’t like
0:06:57 you find narcissism in yourself you find darkness in yourself what are we meant to do with that are
0:07:06 we meant to heal it resolve it you meant to look at it you meant to confront it um I mean I have in
0:07:12 the book a quote from the great writer Anton check of it people can’t begin to change themselves
0:07:17 until they know who they are until they understand themselves right so we all want to change we all
0:07:23 want to be better at ourselves but until we know who we are until we realize our flaws and our
0:07:30 weaknesses so the main law of human nature if I could summarize it is we don’t like to look at
0:07:35 ourselves it’s always the other person they’re the ones with the problem they’re the ones who are
0:07:40 aggressive or passive aggressive they’re the ones who feel envy they’re the ones who are rational
0:07:47 but me no no I’m a paragon of virtue I’m always moral I’m always good I’m always smart etc so
0:07:54 it’s the the point isn’t to beat yourself up and go damn I’m an awful human being we’re all humans
0:08:00 come from the same source we all have the same ancestors are we all have the same flaws in our
0:08:06 brain it’s not like you’re exceptional it’s not like you’re the one person that doesn’t have a
0:08:12 narcissism that doesn’t have self-absorption so realizing that you’re connected to all these
0:08:18 people that we all have these flaws and weaknesses it’s actually not a bad thing it’s a good thing
0:08:23 and then by examining yourself deeply you can begin to change some of these things you know
0:08:29 it’s just like you I don’t go like oh damn it I’m a narcissist I’m self-absorbed I think a lot
0:08:35 about myself I love talking about myself which is something I’m afraid I do like to do right the
0:08:42 point isn’t well oh well I’m just depressed it’s nothing I can do once I’m aware of it I can begin
0:08:48 to change it but if I’m always repressive if I’m always thinking no I’m good I don’t have those
0:08:52 problems then if you can’t see them how can you change them how can you deal with them how can
0:08:57 you become a better person how can you change those qualities that you don’t want one of the
0:09:03 most important things in the laws of human nature is that you have patterns that you are compulsive
0:09:09 it comes from your character these patterns that you see in your intimate relationships
0:09:13 you always fall for the wrong person or you sometimes fall for the wrong person you see it
0:09:19 in your work world I make these mistakes I get fired for this reason etc etc and they’re good
0:09:25 patterns but we tend to repeat over and over and over again these these compulsive behavior
0:09:31 being aware of these patterns and being aware of these things you can now begin to you can have
0:09:38 the power to change them a lot of people climb the mountain of awareness and they get I was
0:09:41 thinking about people in my life that I’ve climbed the mountain of awareness and in my own life
0:09:46 he’ll things that I’m aware of darkness within me that I’m aware of or challenges or patterns I’m
0:09:53 aware of taking the next step from so I think becoming aware is painful and then doing something
0:10:00 about it is difficult it’s painful because there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance associated with
0:10:06 figuring out that you’re not who you want to be you know and then doing something about it requires
0:10:13 breaking what feels like old neurological pathways in my brain you know trigger you think
0:10:20 about the habit cycle how breaking that is difficult I look at it very differently I’m afraid
0:10:26 so I think actually it’s worse when you’re not aware of who you are when you walk around in
0:10:32 this world with all of these false ideas about who you are you don’t even know who you are you’re
0:10:37 wearing this mask you’re not authentic you’re behaving in the world as if you’re somebody else
0:10:43 and you’re not aware of that but it’s causing you pain it’s making you suffer because you’re not
0:10:49 aware of the real person that you are you’re not authentic and coming to terms with some of these
0:10:55 dark qualities is actually a very enlightening experience it’s actually can be euphoric you go
0:11:02 I am an animal I’m not this saint I’m not this paragon that I thought it was I’m an animal with
0:11:09 flaws I can embrace that we’re all like that and it’s a good thing and feeling like you have this
0:11:14 and you’re coming to terms with it I have a chapter on the dark side of human nature
0:11:21 everybody has a shadow side I have it you have it right and seeing that shadow side
0:11:25 which is something you’ve been repressing since childhood and dealing with it and confronting
0:11:32 with it is actually one of the most wonderful experiences you can have in life because repressing
0:11:38 all of these things is what is making you miserable in life but coming to terms with who you are and
0:11:45 being aware of it is actually liberating you know what does it come from our dark side where you
0:11:54 talk about in chapter nine of the book well I think it comes from childhood so when you’re a child
0:11:59 when you’re three or four years old you’re like this complete person I compare it to like this
0:12:06 round ball you have good qualities you have loving qualities you love your parents perhaps
0:12:13 you love your siblings perhaps but you also have these other darker qualities this kind of aggressive
0:12:19 impulses you sometimes you hit people sometimes you say nasty things right but you’re a complete
0:12:24 person it’s natural it’s who you are it’s how you were born it’s like a round ball and it’s complete
0:12:32 and then slowly year by year month by month you have to cut off that dark side that back side of
0:12:38 yours in school you’re told don’t ever show that part of you your parents are come on you’ve got
0:12:44 to be a nice you got to get along we want want to be proud of you all of those aggressive impulses
0:12:50 that you have all of those feelings where you the way you felt envy about somebody whatever
0:12:57 you wish you had what your your brother or sister had so they all go underground right you force them
0:13:02 down you don’t want to deal with them but they’re still there because you’re a human being those
0:13:07 emotions don’t leave you they just get pushed down and they go into the back side of your head
0:13:12 that round ball now becomes cut off it’s like the moon with a dark side and a front side and when
0:13:18 you’re out in the public in your work or in social situation you’re only showing people that bright
0:13:24 happy side the good side and you’re doing the damnedest to conceal all of that dark energy inside of
0:13:32 you and then suddenly because you’re not aware of it it comes out in explosions very typical thing
0:13:38 is you suddenly get angry and you burst out with an angry email or you yell at somebody you say
0:13:45 something kind of nasty and then you look back and you go where did that come from that that’s not
0:13:50 really me i’m not really like that i feel ashamed about that but what you must realize is that’s
0:13:54 part of your shadow that’s speaking it’s coming out you’re just not aware of it you’re trying to
0:14:02 control it too much and i say the best thing in life to do is not to take out this dark side and
0:14:08 just throw it around the world and be nasty and aggressive that won’t work but you have to find
0:14:14 ways to take that energy because that dark side contains a lot of energy a lot of power and use
0:14:22 it and channel it into ways that are productive so i happen to be someone who has a fair amount
0:14:29 of aggression i have to admit i’m extremely competitive right even in card games i don’t
0:14:36 like losing so i’ve channeled it into my books i take all that energy and i put it into making the
0:14:43 best books that i can into ambition so if you’re ambitious channeling that energy into becoming
0:14:51 the best and beating the competition is is is a productive way of using that dark energy if you
0:14:57 feel angry about a cause or something that pisses you off about the world some injustices instead
0:15:02 of whining about it etc you go out and you do something you do something you you get involved
0:15:08 in a movement or whatever you channel that energy into something productive that’s the way to deal
0:15:13 with the dark side and that’s you can’t go throughout life imagining that you’re the same
0:15:19 because you’re not you have these qualities in your book about the strategies of war
0:15:27 the second strategy of war that you write about is do not fight the last war and when i read that
0:15:35 what i understood it to kind of mean was about not being rigid you know how does one dismantle
0:15:41 their the prison of convention that they live in so for that lawyer or for that person that’s
0:15:46 working in the financial district who is you know 47 and they’re a law they’re a stockbroker and
0:15:54 they’re miserable um they have somewhat been imprisoned by their own identity which is like
0:15:59 a set of ideas from the past and i’m really obsessed with how we get out of the way of our own
0:16:04 identity so that we can live our most fulfilling lives because even me you know there’s and probably
0:16:10 even you i’ve created this perception of who i am and i’m like following the instructions every day
0:16:15 yeah it’s a trap you know you can’t fall into that so one of the laws of power that i have
0:16:20 one that i think is very important i think it’s a lot 25 or 26 i don’t remember the number
0:16:29 it’s recreate yourself so the moment people start um uh know who you are they they identify
0:16:34 they create your identity oh robert green is this person who writes these dark macchevelli
0:16:39 manipulative books then i’m trapped i’m trapped by their perception of me and i always have to be
0:16:45 like a little dog performing for them right and i don’t want to fall into that trap you have to
0:16:51 recreate yourself you have to use your personality and who you are as clay that you are molding
0:16:59 you’re like an artist and so you change yourself for each person that’s different so for me it means
0:17:07 i don’t write 48 laws of power part two i write now a book that’s not like the 48 laws of power at
0:17:13 all for you it’s doing your podcast but changing it up or maybe you do a different podcast or maybe
0:17:19 you do go into a different career center maybe become a ceo or an entrepreneur in a different
0:17:26 direction i was recently on andrew huberman’s podcast right one of the most successful podcasts
0:17:35 besides yours in the world and um he i don’t want to sound like bragging but the book mastery
0:17:40 helped him a lot because he was a professor i believe at stanford i hope i have it right
0:17:45 everything was going well he was on a fast track in in neuroscience but he was miserable
0:17:51 he hated the politicking he hated all the bullshit that you have to go through in academia
0:17:56 and then he read the book and he goes i don’t know how old he was he must have been
0:18:01 in his early 30s he goes i don’t want to do this i want to change i want to recreate myself
0:18:07 he decided to go into podcasting and to take all of his knowledge about science and neuroscience
0:18:12 and bring it into a different medium and so that’s that’s extremely powerful because if you
0:18:18 stayed in academia he would have gone down the path that we’re talking about it sounds a little
0:18:25 sexier than being in finance in your 47 but being stuck in academia when it doesn’t fit
0:18:31 you with all the nasty politics that go on in universities etc that is a path for misery if
0:18:38 he doesn’t fit so you have to kind of go through this process all the time and not let other people
0:18:43 tell you who you are in the case of andrew huberman who transitioned from an academic to a
0:18:51 podcaster it’s quite a feat because there’s lots of forces that try and hold our existing identity
0:18:59 in place a lot of people and to sort of cross the chasm get past all of that force that says no
0:19:03 we want you to stay with us andrew we want you to be an academic who do you think you are
0:19:08 being a podcaster you know that that force i’m so intrigued by because everyone regardless of
0:19:12 where they are now if they’re going to try and venture to somewhere else a better place
0:19:18 they’re going to encounter that um how does one work through that what is that how do we
0:19:23 understand that force that’s trying to keep us down it usually happens when you’re successful
0:19:27 that people start giving you these identities that kind of define who you are
0:19:35 and if you’re okay with it that’s fine you know if it doesn’t but i’m a big believer in listening
0:19:41 to your own pain and listening to your own frustration so when you feel frustrated in life
0:19:45 you have to go through a process you have to look at it and you have to go what is the source of it
0:19:50 normally the first thing you’ll do is you’ll blame other people you’ll blame the world
0:19:56 you’ll blame your your spouse your children whatever right and you won’t really look at what
0:20:03 it is why you’re frustrated and if you look at it deeply enough and you go i’m really frustrated
0:20:10 because i’m not enjoying my work i’m making money i’m going there every day and i’m going
0:20:16 through the motions and i’m successful and people admire me but i’m not happy i’m frustrated i’m
0:20:22 upset you’ve got to lean into that pain you’ve got to lean into what frustrates you and go
0:20:30 i can’t go on another five years like this because the mind and the body are tied in
0:20:36 there’s no difference that they’re all we’re all one we’re all a unity and so when you start having
0:20:41 these frustrations these desires that are not you’re not acting upon it creates physical problems
0:20:46 you’re not aware of why suddenly your blood pressure is rising why suddenly your back is
0:20:52 having pain like i’m having right now it’s all interconnected and when you’re not doing something
0:20:58 that you that you’re not engaged with your whole being goes out of whack everything doesn’t work
0:21:04 you’ve got to listen to it you’ve got to understand it and you’ve got to go i want some joy and some
0:21:10 excitement in my life i want a challenge it takes some fearlessness because leaving
0:21:17 a prestigious job at stanford we’ve got money i don’t know if he had tenure or not or perhaps he
0:21:22 did you know it takes some guts because you’re leaving something that that that’s that you know
0:21:29 that’s that it’s a convention that’s stable etc etc but you’ve got to go it’s not worth the price
0:21:36 it’s not who i am i’m going to suffer for down the road and so you know let’s say he decided to go
0:21:43 into podcasting and it failed all right so be it then he learns that and he he’s somebody who’s
0:21:49 very smart he would have figured out another way to another direction to go in if my book the 48
0:21:53 laws of power hadn’t been a success i don’t know what would have happened to me but hopefully i
0:21:58 would have figured out another way to go you know because i also had to drop a career direction that
0:22:04 i was going in but you’ve got to try you’ve got to be able to try and you’ve got to go say yourself
0:22:13 it’s actually a great thing in your 30s let’s say to go i need something new i need something
0:22:19 completely different i need a new challenge i’m going to drop this i’m going to start something
0:22:24 you won’t believe the energy that will suddenly rise up in you right you’ll suddenly feel invigorated
0:22:31 you suddenly feel youthful again i’m not stuck in this thing i can try something else i’m so
0:22:36 intrigued by two things within that one of them was going back to the case of andrew who left
0:22:41 stanford and became a podcaster was my brain you said um he’s an intelligent guy he would have
0:22:48 figured it out if he’d failed my brain also was saying he could have always gone back and there’s
0:22:51 a real illusion sometimes i think in most of our lives where we don’t realize that if we
0:22:58 mess up in this thing as i think jeff bezos calls it this is probably a type two decision where we
0:23:02 can walk back through the door but it’s this sort of illusion that we’re going to really lose something
0:23:06 great if we fail that stops us taking that first step and the other thing i was curious about is
0:23:11 this idea that pain is is a catalyst for change and do people need to get to that point in their
0:23:16 lives where they go i’m just so sick of this to change can someone change before they get there
0:23:24 unfortunately not sometimes the bottom has to drop out before you realize what you really
0:23:31 want and what you really you know need to get in life i wish it weren’t that way but um feeling
0:23:37 like you’re suffering and that you need a change and that if you go on this way bad things are
0:23:43 going to happen is the greatest motivator of all because if you’re moderately discontented with
0:23:50 your job you’re going to constantly be justifying it to yourself going uh it’s all right it’ll get
0:23:56 better i’ll get there’ll be a new boss or i can always move from this job to another company
0:24:01 similar you’ll justify you’ll never get out of it and the trap will just close in on you
0:24:07 and you’ll never get out of it right so those moments where damn it i hate this i can’t go on
0:24:11 you know i’m i’m heading to suicide i’m heading to depression i’m heading to drinking
0:24:18 i’m hitting bottom i don’t like where i’m going it doesn’t have to be quite so drastic i know i’m
0:24:25 exaggerating but you have to feel a degree of pain and frustration to say i need to make a major
0:24:32 change in my life you know the other thing i say is in the same book you were quoting on in about
0:24:40 warfare i have what’s called the death ground strategy where you feel like so he’s going into
0:24:46 podcasting and if you go in with the attitude well if i fail i’ll just go scurrying back to
0:24:52 stanford that’s a recipe for failure in itself already your attitude is already half-assed
0:24:58 you’re already half into it you go to yourself i’ve got to i’ve cutting my ties at stanford
0:25:04 if this podcast doesn’t work i’m not going back it gives you the energy the motivation the desire
0:25:09 to actually make it successful but if you’re always going through life kind of with half
0:25:15 measures going well if i start this business and it fails i’ll go back to living with my parents
0:25:20 and and i’ll and i’ll do this other job you’re not going to put your full energy into it you’re
0:25:26 not going to give all of yourself into it and it’s probably going to fail it’s really um it’s
0:25:32 so true um it reminded me of something i was reading in one of the psychology journals about
0:25:38 a study they did with participants where they asked them to do a puzzle and offered them a
0:25:43 delicious snack as the reward and then in one group they said um this is the only way to
0:25:47 get the snack if you do this puzzle and then in the other group they said by the way the same
0:25:51 snack is also available in the vending machine down the hall and then the people in the second
0:25:56 group where they had a plan b were less committed to doing the puzzle spent less time trying to solve
0:26:02 it and did worse in the puzzle and it’s this idea that a plan b actually psychologically does distract
0:26:08 you yeah from your plan a yeah we’re we’re animals right we have we have a certain nature
0:26:15 which is what i talk about in human nature and our earliest ancestors to go back to something
0:26:24 i was talking about our brilliance the power of our species is we are actually very physically weak
0:26:31 compared to like chimpanzees and cheetahs and lions etc etc but we use our brain and feeling
0:26:38 the necessity feeling that we’re going to die unless we don’t solve these problems right if
0:26:42 we don’t use our brains if we don’t create tools if we don’t work together as a team we’re gonna
0:26:48 we’re gonna we’re gonna die we won’t survive is what makes us inventive it’s what makes us creative
0:26:54 it’s almost like a barometric pressure i like that’s the metaphor i like to use what’s that when
0:27:01 you feel that pressure inside of you and it’s very heavy like in like weather that’s very you know
0:27:05 heavy and thick you’re motivated you feel it i’ve got to get up in the morning i’ve got to do this
0:27:11 i’ve got to accomplish this when that pressure goes away and and you don’t feel any pressure in
0:27:16 your life you can do anything and there’s no consequences for it you’ll just waste time you’ll
0:27:22 waste years you’ll waste months you’ll never accomplish anything you give somebody a deadline
0:27:29 right they’ll accomplish in two months what it would take somebody two years to do without a
0:27:35 deadline it’s that necessity it’s that sense of there’s a there’s a sword at my back i’ve got
0:27:40 to get it done it makes you get things done it gives you the energy let’s get richard i try and
0:27:45 to quote somebody you talk about that in the strategy um the book about the strategies of all
0:27:51 the chapter four or strategy number four is about creating a sense of urgency and desperation
0:27:58 and when i was reading that i was thinking to be fair i don’t know any great leader that isn’t
0:28:03 a little bit urgent and a little bit desperate and even if they feign that desperation to galvanize
0:28:09 people there’s something about creating urgency and desperation in your life that is an incredible
0:28:14 tailwind is there any practical ways that you think the average person can create a
0:28:18 the required sense of urgency in their life so they can get things done
0:28:26 well it’s kind of like a level here so you need challenges in your life that’s what that’s sort
0:28:31 of what the death ground is about you’re challenged you better rise up to it if the challenge is too
0:28:38 great if you’re like i’m i’m 24 and i’ve never written a book but i’m going to write the best
0:28:42 book ever you’re going to fail because it’s too far above you you’re never going to reach it
0:28:48 if it’s too low you’re never going to have the energy it’s too easy it’s not going to motivate
0:28:54 you but there’s a sweet spot i don’t know i’m just you know just drawing it here be like here
0:29:00 where it’s a challenge it’s above what you can do can do right now it’s not so far above that
0:29:06 you can’t possibly do it but it’s enough of a challenge to mean god i better get my act together
0:29:12 i better get the energy to get together i better you know change my habits i’ve got to get up earlier
0:29:18 i’ve got to work harder it’s not like i have to get up at four enforce myself and work out etc
0:29:23 i can get up at six six three an hour earlier and i’m going to meet this challenge it’s a little bit
0:29:30 above my level that’s a powerful way of motivating yourself you need challenges you need constant
0:29:34 challenges in life or you’re going to or you’re going to stagnate it’s just the law of nature
0:29:41 you talk about false purpose as well yeah what is false purpose and how do we know the difference
0:29:47 your purpose in life is something that you’re born with it’s like your destiny this is what you
0:29:52 were meant to accomplish this was what you were meant to be which were meant to do and we were
0:29:59 going through we were talking about that in terms of your childhood etc right but we humans
0:30:04 are not born with that purpose engraved in our heads we don’t wake up when we’re seven go that’s
0:30:12 my purpose if it were that easy it would be that simple right but because we don’t have any direction
0:30:18 you know animals don’t wake up in the morning if they’re not nocturnal and go what am i going to
0:30:23 do today i can go here i can hunt for this animal i can hunt for that animal i can eat this no they
0:30:30 don’t they operate by instinct they don’t they have a purpose it’s it’s automatic almost okay
0:30:37 we don’t have that we have to find our purpose and because it’s so deep it and so important
0:30:44 that if we don’t find it through this authentic process i’m talking about we’ll find it somewhere
0:30:50 else because we need a purpose in life we need something to live for what will that be it will
0:30:56 be drugs it’ll be some kind of cult that i have to join it will be some kind of political movement
0:31:02 where i can get out all of my anger and vent all of my frustrations you know it’ll be on and on
0:31:08 and on it’s something that has nothing to do with who you are personally but it’s something that you
0:31:15 can believe in and can give you a sense of purpose but it’s not really who you are it’s like a drug
0:31:20 it’s drugging you into believing that you have a purpose but it’s not the real purpose that you
0:31:27 were born for that’s what i mean by false purpose and when we find our purpose if we are able to
0:31:34 unlucky enough to discover it what’s the variance and what someone’s capable of that’s found their
0:31:38 purpose versus someone that hasn’t do you think like what’s the difference in how they show
0:31:44 up how they deliver the results they create the impact they have when you find your purpose
0:31:51 it’s like everything falls into place right you don’t need to you don’t need to almost do anything
0:31:57 you’ll find whatever you need to find good things will come to you i know that sounds woo
0:32:03 i know that sounds mystical but i definitely believe it right and so it’s not like you have
0:32:09 to try so hard yes you have to learn skills yes you have to apply yourself yes you have to work hard
0:32:17 etc etc etc but things just go so much more smoothly when you have it so for instance one thing that
0:32:23 happens when you have a sense of purpose and i hate it’s something that i feel um so i i know
0:32:31 my narcissism is coming out again um i know what i don’t want that’s you don’t know the power of
0:32:36 that you can’t imagine how powerful that is so people come to me all the time with robert we can
0:32:41 make a lot of money doing this we could try this we can let’s make a tv show out of the 48 laws of
0:32:48 power let’s do this let’s do that let’s make a game i’m not interested it’s not my purpose no i don’t
0:32:55 want it if i didn’t have that radar i’d be spreading myself out into eight different venues and i’d be
0:33:01 you know all of my energy would be would be scattered i wouldn’t have that focus and i’d
0:33:05 probably end up being pretty miserable because i would have lost my purpose but when you have a
0:33:09 sense of purpose it’s like no i don’t want to do that i don’t want to do that i don’t want to i want
0:33:15 to do this yeah it can be rigid you have to be a little bit flexible so if somebody comes to me
0:33:21 and goes robert what about this i’m open to it that sounds moderately interesting all right maybe
0:33:27 i’ll try it you know and i and i do open things things like that i’m going to be doing in a month
0:33:34 i’m going to be recording a french version of you know the masterclass there’s a french version
0:33:39 of that so you know i’m not so rigid where i can only write books i can try other things because i
0:33:46 can see value in it and it interests me it’s a challenge being able to say no is so important and
0:33:52 it’s so empowering and that’s what a sense of purpose will give you among other things there’s
0:34:00 a quote that says something like distractions come dressed up as opportunities and to even know
0:34:04 what a distraction is you first must understand what your goal and what your purpose is or else
0:34:08 it’s impossible to distinguish between a distraction robert go let’s go start a game
0:34:13 or an opportunity which sounds much more like that mastermind thing and i think about this all
0:34:19 the time you know the more clear i am on the goal and what my purpose is the much easier it is to
0:34:23 understand what a distraction is versus an opportunity because they do look the same when
0:34:30 they come into my inbox yes well the other thing i do is i kind of game it out so somebody comes
0:34:35 to me and they go let’s do a television show the 48 laws of power and believe me i’ve been through
0:34:43 that about 85 times people coming to me that and we have even attempted it but i go i’ve worked
0:34:48 in hollywood i’ve worked in television before before i’ve had my books i know the process
0:34:55 i know how miserable it can be i know how you have no power i’m a writer now where i write books
0:35:01 and i have all the power i have all the control you go into hollywood you go into television or
0:35:07 film 85 you know 800 other people join in and they all have their ideas and they change this
0:35:13 that you have no power and and it’s meetings and meetings and meetings and talk talk talk talk talk
0:35:19 i game it out and i go i don’t want to get into that trap i don’t want to be spending a year
0:35:24 having meeting after meeting after meeting hearing about this possibly having a change by
0:35:29 this producer i game it out and i go no i don’t want to do it can you do that when you’re younger
0:35:35 kind of 21 year old no yeah takes a lot of takes a fair amount of experience in life because when
0:35:41 you’re 21 everything looks great and exciting man yeah i’ll do that why not yeah it’ll be fun i’ll
0:35:45 meet some i’ll meet some hot girls i’ll do this and the other great you know let’s set it set it
0:35:51 you know you you don’t you don’t have that radar you everything looks exciting and enticing it takes
0:35:57 the pain i keep going back to that of things that you wasted your time in and things that fail
0:36:03 the things that you didn’t like to teach you the ability to say no and to save your energy for what
0:36:12 you really love should a young person just be saying yes to everything you know the problem that
0:36:16 we have is everything is has to be this way or that way has to be black or white and it’s not
0:36:21 like that it’s kind of in between you can learn to dance in life you don’t have to go this way
0:36:30 or that way you can kind of do both so the best advice i give people is your 20s the best years
0:36:36 of your life actually i think the 30s are but let’s just say for for arguments like your 20s
0:36:41 you’re young you probably look pretty good you’re healthy you know you’ve got all these
0:36:46 things going on for you i want you to have some fun and i want you to have adventures i don’t
0:36:53 want you to be 22 and go and get a job at goldman sacks for the rest of your life so you need fun
0:36:59 you need adventure you need some looseness you know you want some experiences but it has to have
0:37:05 some direction to it it can’t just be i’m going to write poetry i’m going to do rock and roll i’m
0:37:10 going to go and learn chemistry i’m going to you know become you know this and the other no connection
0:37:16 at all between all of these things just trying everything for the sake of novelty that’s a recipe
0:37:22 for not being successful because what you want to happen is you’re 30 years old now you’ve let
0:37:28 your 20s are behind you it’s usually a time of reckoning where you go shit i’m not so young anymore
0:37:34 okay you know i’m getting older all right i’ve had my fun i’ve had adventure i’m ready for
0:37:40 something serious and i’ve learned some real skills in life i’ve for me personally i learned how to
0:37:48 write um or whatever it is you didn’t just go try 80 different things you you you kind of had
0:37:53 four or five that you did you experimented with all right now i know what i love now i can go down
0:38:00 that path and in mastery i often tell the story to people of one of the masters i interviewed
0:38:05 was paul graham who is the man who started y combinator you probably heard of y combinator
0:38:14 he was somebody who got into ai when he was like 18 19 years old he was like at mit i believe right
0:38:21 back in the late 70s when nobody was even thinking about it okay he was a hacker because his father
0:38:26 was it was a scientist who had computers back in the 70s and he learned how to hack early on
0:38:34 okay so he went down the process of going into academia of of going into programs of computer
0:38:41 computer programming etc etc and he was on a track just like huberman at mit to become a professor
0:38:47 to become proficient in it and he hated it it was soul sucking he didn’t like the politics he didn’t
0:38:53 like dealing with the people he didn’t like academia so we quit and he became a painter
0:38:59 because that’s he loved design and he loved visuals he comes back to new york he’s living
0:39:06 in a loft he’s painting he’s happy and if he’s not making any money and then he hears an advertisement
0:39:14 on the radio for i i think it was maybe netscape one of the earliest um you know internet whatever
0:39:21 you call it and they’re saying the future in for computers is being able to sell buy and sell
0:39:27 products on the internet he ends up creating the first i think what the prototype for all the
0:39:33 things that we have now yahoo ended up buying it for like five million dollars and then the rest
0:39:41 is history he spent his twenties trying something out learning real skills he went somewhere else
0:39:46 there is something that he loved and then he’s 30 and he combines the two together and he’s he’s a
0:39:53 classic example because he he gets very bored easily so why a combinator is worth billions of
0:39:59 dollars extremely successful he sells and gets into something else because he likes riding etc
0:40:04 he’s always he’s kind of a prototype for a lot of what we’re talking about we’ve spoken a lot about
0:40:09 self-awareness and self and all those kinds of things what about other people you know
0:40:14 the only thing that seems to stand in the way of all of our goals in life are other people
0:40:19 so if i if i want to become exceptional understanding the human nature of other
0:40:25 people and using it in my favor where do i start there what are the sort of foundations of being
0:40:32 great at using other people’s human nature to my advantage that sounds very narcissistic and very
0:40:41 awful but it’s it’s it’s what it is it is what it is exactly people as i said the main mistake
0:40:47 we make in dealing with other people and it’s and it’s a common mistake that i make as well is we
0:40:55 take the appearances for reality we take their masks for how they appear to us for their politeness
0:41:01 for their smiles for their saying oh i loved you etc for the reality and we have to learn
0:41:08 that to look behind people’s masks we have to learn what’s really really going on behind them
0:41:14 and we have to learn some basics about human nature people like to believe that they’re essentially
0:41:20 good you know saintly virtuous however you want to it people want to believe that they’re intelligent
0:41:25 they’re you never want to feel like i’m not stupid i’m intelligent and the other third thing is that
0:41:30 they’re that they’re willpower that they’re in control of their lives they do things because
0:41:37 they decided to do it to tell to make people feel insecure about their intelligence right to make
0:41:41 them feel like they’re not moral or they’re not good to make them feel like they do things not
0:41:45 because they choose to it because they were forced to or because they they’re not aware of themselves
0:41:50 they hate that they’re going to hate you they’re going to resent you they’re going to resist you
0:41:58 knowing some basics about people like that gives you the power to use that for influence
0:42:07 for persuasion okay understanding envy in the human world and on social media envy is just an
0:42:12 is like a nuclear bomb it’s just exploded our tendency to feel envy to compare ourselves to
0:42:20 other people you’ve got to use that for power this great power in that in a marketing publicity sense
0:42:25 virality what getting other people to be interested in what other people are doing that’s how things
0:42:30 sell themselves if you try and tell people what they should buy as opposed to look at
0:42:36 what other people are doing i want to join in on that right knowing about these basic qualities in
0:42:40 human nature about how we would like to compare ourselves how we have these certain opinions
0:42:48 about ourselves etc etc gives you all of this power to take that human nature and use it for
0:42:55 whatever purposes you want for good or unfortunately some people use it for bad do we have to lie to
0:43:00 be successful and i say this because through reading some of your work i i heard sentences
0:43:06 such as you should keep your true intentions hidden in social situations um you say a lot about
0:43:11 like kind of cloaking yourself in various ways you talk about showing up as an actor that sometimes
0:43:16 we do need to show up as an actor in our lives so in order to be truly successful i know it’s a
0:43:23 little bit of a difficult question but do we have to lie looks even being a human being means we lie
0:43:30 right the moment you open your mouth and you speak you are essentially not telling the truth
0:43:38 you know what doesn’t lie body language nonverbal communication the way you smile
0:43:46 the look in your eyes you can’t lie about that but children three or four years old are already
0:43:51 learning to craft what they say to mommy or daddy to get what they want they’re very clever they’re
0:43:57 very strategic right they know that if they if they say that they what they exactly want they
0:44:03 won’t get it they learn to kind of whine and complain and put a certain tone in their voice
0:44:12 and to be an actor a social animal like we are we are actors in life get over this idea about
0:44:18 guilting about about it i’m so sick of that we are actors we are descended from chimpanzees
0:44:24 chimpanzees are consummate actors read the literature on that they know how to deceive
0:44:31 incredibly well and they don’t even have language to deceive right so we are actors the moment you
0:44:38 go out in the public you’re not telling people oh you’re fat you’re ugly you’re writing sucks
0:44:45 i don’t like what you’re wearing you never do that you’re an actor when you see your father
0:44:50 you act a certain way when you see a little kid you act a certain way when you see a little kitty
0:44:56 cat you have a certain tone in your voice when you deal with your boss the person who pays for the
0:45:01 for your podcast i don’t know if there is such a person you wear your act a different way you’re
0:45:07 constantly changing how who you are and how you act one moment you’re Robert De Niro the next
0:45:12 moment you’re i don’t know what other actor you are but you’re you’re changing your roles depending
0:45:19 on who you’re dealing with i’m so tired of people not recognizing this fact that we are all actors
0:45:24 that we are constantly deceiving yes there are differences there are qualities of lying
0:45:31 you know i understand that there’s donald trump lying and there’s the lying of the everyday white
0:45:37 lies in which we have to say certain things to get ahead etc there are degrees i understand that
0:45:42 and some lying can be very harmful and very counterproductive in the end
0:45:49 but the moment you enter the world and the moment you open your mouth you are in some ways
0:45:55 already an actor and you are already using forms of deception why can’t we be ourselves
0:46:05 because it would irritate people because it would great you know i don’t know about you but i
0:46:12 appreciate politeness right i go somewhere and i know someone’s being polite i know that they’re
0:46:17 not necessarily meaning it but it’s nice right it’s kind of smooth it kind of makes everything
0:46:23 sort of smooth if people weren’t polite it i’ll be grating and like two pieces of metal constantly
0:46:27 hitting each other it’d be so annoying you’d want to kill yourself or do you want to kill
0:46:33 people you become a killer a murderer you know social life depends on that kind of smoothness
0:46:40 there’s interactions so we need that to some degree if we were just always telling people
0:46:46 what we really thought our world would collapse tomorrow what about showing our weakness i’ve
0:46:53 got this quote from you that says if you are weak and ask for little little is what you will get
0:47:01 but if you act strong making firm even outrageous demands you will create the opposite impression
0:47:07 people will think that you are confident and that it must be based on something real
0:47:15 you will earn their respect which in turn will translate to real leverage well it’s it’s about
0:47:22 certain situations so i don’t want you to apply that idea to everything in life and some people
0:47:25 make the mistake when they read the 48 laws of power they think well i’m going to use that
0:47:33 everywhere no it applies to certain situations so let’s say you’re negotiating and i know i dealt
0:47:41 with this myself i’m actually a fairly timid person by nature but i’ve learned to cultivate
0:47:46 the opposite so if you’re negotiating a price for what you want for your time for your services
0:47:52 and you’re not very confident and you kind of ask for a little that’s what you’re going to get
0:47:56 because people aren’t going to they’re assuming that you’re that you’re not really
0:48:04 up to the task you say all right 20 000 is enough that’s what they’ll give you but if you raise your
0:48:09 price high and you say it with the right voice and you believe in it they’re going to go wow that
0:48:14 person is is confident and if they turn you down that’s fine because somebody else will give you
0:48:21 that price if you you set your own value by what you believe about yourself if you think that you’re
0:48:27 worthless if you’re not very good at it other people pick that up as you were talking i was
0:48:32 thinking about adam newman from wework and this conversation i heard with him in the founder of
0:48:38 softbank in the back of a taxi where adam newman’s asking for a billion and then the owner of softbank
0:48:44 this very eccentric chinese very rich asian man goes do you know adam the only problem with you
0:48:49 is that you’re not ambitious enough and he writes him a check i believe for like five
0:48:54 or ten billion dollars in the back of this taxi after like something like 12 minutes
0:49:00 of being with him and i always thought about that and thought jesus what if i just started asking life
0:49:06 for way more if i just multiplied all of these emails that i send and requests i make by 10
0:49:12 what would happen to my life over this course of 10 years well yeah i’m probably you probably would
0:49:21 have gotten a lot more than you got and without asking for that um yeah because we’re creatures
0:49:27 that as i said before we look at the appearances of things look it’s it’s very very easy metaphor here
0:49:35 you go into a social situation like a party and you go up to somebody who’s kind of nervous
0:49:40 and insecure and anxious and i’m not criticizing that because we all have insecurities i have many
0:49:46 of them myself but you go up to somebody like that and it makes you feel kind of nervous
0:49:53 and insecure right and you’re kind of fumbling for words and it kind of goes a bit of awkwardness
0:49:59 happens reverse that and you go up to somebody else and they’re kind of confident they look you
0:50:05 in the eye you know their voice is strong their body language is strong they connect to you
0:50:10 whoa you think it brings out that part of you was like that you might be intimidated
0:50:17 but it also might bring out your own kind of confident self i remember being around 50 cent
0:50:26 who’s a very charismatic confident to the point of um ridiculousness and it was very infectious
0:50:30 i felt that way after being around him for a couple hours i was with him for several months
0:50:38 it rubbed off on me right we have these kind of viral contagious effects by people so if you
0:50:45 project strength and confidence you know and i understand it’s a little different for women
0:50:51 which is an interesting subject because sometimes projecting that for a woman will rub the wrong
0:50:57 way because people will think that and it’s terrible quality thing about us that women are
0:51:03 judged by a different standard where that’ll seem like they’re a bitch or something like that so i
0:51:08 understand there are nuances here and that the game is different for women as it is for people
0:51:15 of other ethnicities as well you know so it’s not just one way or the other but to the degree
0:51:22 even for the woman that you have this air of confidence that you believe in what you’re doing
0:51:28 that you believe you’re worth it it projects itself to other people you don’t have to scream
0:51:34 and shout you don’t have to demand ten billion dollars but if you feel confident if you feel
0:51:39 you’re worth this amount of money it will project outward to other people body language
0:51:44 yeah i’m gonna talk about that does it you know you said earlier it’s one of the things we can’t
0:51:50 lie about is there anything that you still look for in today when you’re trying to read someone
0:51:57 their body language are there certain cues is that postures or well you know you got it in
0:52:03 reading nonverbal communication it’s a different form of intelligence it’s not algorithms it’s not
0:52:12 formulaic it’s human it’s emotional it’s empathetic it’s a reading without words it’s attuning
0:52:19 yourself to other people so i attune myself to people’s emotions to the vibe that they give off
0:52:26 in an overall sense a gestalt is one thing that i like to do so if i had to give it a word i would
0:52:33 say anxious or i would have to say outgoing and extroverted or i would have to say impatient or
0:52:39 whatever there’s an energy that kind of defines them it’s a word and that word is not precise
0:52:47 but there is an overall feel that i get from a person and then i’m always looking at specifics
0:52:55 it’s not like i’m sitting there consciously in my head going through a checklist i’m just feeling
0:53:03 certain things and i’m feeling that the eyes are kind of dead they’re not engaging with me
0:53:10 and you can’t put that into words but you know the feeling so when someone’s looking at you
0:53:16 but they’re not really looking at you you know what that feels like don’t you and a lot of
0:53:23 psychopathic people a lot of narcissists do that so part of their face pretends to be interested
0:53:27 in you they are looking at you in the eye but they’re not really looking at you they’re thinking
0:53:32 of something else they’re seeing in you what they can get out of you they’re seeing you as an object
0:53:43 right eyes are hard to lie they tell you something now actors very skilled actors can kind of create
0:53:49 some of these impressions but one thing that they can’t fake is the tone in their voice
0:53:54 and actors will tell you that it’s the hardest thing to actually consciously control
0:54:01 so the voice of a person tells you a lot about their confidence levels tells you a lot about
0:54:07 you know how just about their general emotional tone about their character about who they are
0:54:16 it’s very difficult to fake and when it’s hesitant when it’s like stammering when it’s not
0:54:20 you know you can kind of sense something from people’s voice and it’s very hard to fake
0:54:27 and then the smile the smile tells you a hundred different things if you know how to read it
0:54:35 there’s the authentic smile which i’m not going to fake right now but well i just it lights up
0:54:41 the whole face you know like you really feel joy you can’t you don’t care if i get your eyes go up
0:54:47 your cheeks go up everything kind of connects together right the fake smiles
0:54:54 you know yeah we’ve all seen the fakes just when the mouth goes up from the rest of the face doesn’t
0:55:02 bother steven i really like you you’re really wonderful you know most of the time most smiles
0:55:07 are fake but you can kind of when you see the genuine smile and you go that’s what caused the
0:55:13 genuine smile you should become aware of that and then body language tells you a lot like
0:55:20 is somebody when they’re talking to you and you’re standing up at a party is their body kind
0:55:24 of facing another direction while they’re talking to you are they kind of looking out there at way
0:55:29 while they’re talking to you that means they’re not really interested in you they’re not really
0:55:36 engaged in you right also when you catch people by surprise and they don’t have the time to put
0:55:42 on a fake smile i often tell people to do this like there’s somebody in your office and you
0:55:48 don’t know whether they’re a snake or they’re actually genuinely your friend you suspect go
0:55:56 either way you kind of approach them from an angle right and you surprise them and you come
0:56:01 up to them you go they look at you and for a second you detect what we call a micro expression of
0:56:10 of disdain and then they put on the smile that micro expression which scientists psychologists
0:56:15 have studied last for like less than a second much less than a second you have to be able to read it
0:56:21 but it reveals whether they actually like you or they’re totally false they can’t fake it so
0:56:28 if you come to straight on though oh hi steven i love it great to see you they come to oh they
0:56:34 kind of pretend then they try and act and you you can get clues like that there’s so many ways to
0:56:40 read body language it’s such a fascinating subject i could go on for hours about how important is it
0:56:45 you know you’re talking about colleagues and team members there and earlier you said that people are
0:56:52 contagious how important do you think it is to the success of our lives and i pause there because
0:56:56 success means it’s a personal thing it’s a professional thing to surround ourselves with
0:57:04 the right group of people and to be intentional about that it’s very important um i have a chapter
0:57:11 in excuse me in the 48 laws of power about infection and i think it’s an experience many of us have
0:57:22 had where you’re around somebody who seems at first glance to be very interesting and they
0:57:28 they become your friend maybe they’re very dramatic and they have all these stories to tell
0:57:36 and they seem almost slightly larger than life and you engage with them and then you become friends
0:57:44 and then slowly slowly slowly it becomes clear that that they’re a little bit nuts right they’re
0:57:50 always talking about how this person screwed them how that person screwed them how this boyfriend
0:57:55 or girlfriend was so awful and so nasty you’re going to read you’re going to realize is this true
0:58:00 or is it maybe there that the problem they are the problem but now they’re your friend and now
0:58:05 you’re emotionally attached to them and now they have room to play all these kind of games on you
0:58:10 and all of their drama starts infecting you and it’s like god damn i want to get away from this
0:58:16 person but i can’t they’ve infected you with their negative energy and it gets under your skin
0:58:23 and so you have to avoid people like that you have to read before you get involved with them
0:58:27 that they are a drama queen or a drama king because there’s just as many men out there who have this
0:58:35 quality you have to see that they are that they play the victim of all of everybody else but
0:58:41 actually they kind of bring it on to themselves some people are genuinely unfortunate bad things
0:58:46 have happened to them and it’s not their fault i’m never saying it’s a misconception about that
0:58:51 chapter that you should avoid everybody who’s unfortunate there are people and a lot of people
0:58:59 out there who circumstances have put made them you know in their what’s going on it’s not their fault
0:59:04 right but there are other people you have to recognize that the bad things that happen to them
0:59:09 are things that they have brought on because they have this infecting power it comes from
0:59:16 deep insecurity you don’t want them in your life being around insecure people will make you insecure
0:59:23 being around confident people who kind of know what they’re doing who’ve got their act together
0:59:28 who are trying to make things and accomplish things because there’s so many people out there
0:59:33 who talk and talk and talk but never do anything being around people who do things who get things
0:59:38 done who’ve made a business who’ve made this that or the other their goal to be around because
0:59:47 they’ll infect you with their positive energy frenemies yeah do we all have frenemies and how
0:59:55 do we spot frenemies well hopefully we all don’t have them but in the laws of human nature and in
1:00:01 several of my books i talk about the phenomenon of envy which is very very powerful human trait
1:00:07 it has roots very ancient roots we know that in hunter-gatherers societies
1:00:14 from thousands of years ago envy was a real problem and so they create all kinds of rituals
1:00:19 to avoid envy where the moment somebody in a tribe received a gift they had to give it to
1:00:25 other members so they wouldn’t face envy because facing envy you could be murdered for it so you
1:00:31 learned all of these rituals and we’ve noticed that chimpanzees feel envy you give some one of the
1:00:36 higher up chimps because they’re very hierarchical a grape and also in all the other chimps are very
1:00:42 wanting that grape as well and they feel envy and etc etc so it’s an extremely human emotion
1:00:49 the thing that we don’t realize though that the people most likely to feel envy first of all we
1:00:55 all feel envy we’re all comparing ourselves to other people i feel it all the time right now
1:01:04 i envy ryan holiday because he’s you know so 30 years younger he’s sold so many books you know
1:01:09 he’s got all this great stuff i i know i know what envy is like i feel it we all feel small
1:01:16 degrees of envy but there are people i call it passive envy but active envy means people act
1:01:23 on it they do something to hurt you they sabotage you in some way frenemies are the classic scenario
1:01:31 so somebody who feels envious of you ends up befriending you and consciously they may not
1:01:37 be even aware of that they think well i would do want to like them but unconsciously they feel
1:01:43 envy they think that you have success that you don’t necessarily they deserve that you have
1:01:51 what they want right they become your friend and they charm you etc etc and then lo and behold
1:01:56 you start noticing all kinds of behavior that’s very ugly that you weren’t expecting because
1:02:01 you’re they’re your friend they start saying bitchy comments that get under your skin
1:02:08 that make you feel insecure they take things from you they act in ways that are hurtful
1:02:14 but because they’re your friend your first instinct is to blame yourself well maybe it’s
1:02:19 my fault that they’ve done this maybe i’m actually to blame for what for what they’re saying etc etc
1:02:28 so i believe behind the frenemies phenomenon is this this phenomena of envy where the person
1:02:33 secretly wants what you have and they’re becoming your friends so that they can wound you
1:02:40 and what’s best to do is to recognize that and one common sign of a frenemy of somebody
1:02:48 who’s befriending you out of envy is they’re in a rush to be your friend normally we like to take
1:02:54 it a little bit slow we just don’t let anybody into our lives we like to vet them a little bit
1:03:00 forehand right we don’t trust everybody but the person who feels envy is like i love you you’re
1:03:04 fantastic i want to be your friend we got to hang out let’s go out for dinner the next night
1:03:10 etc etc they’re in a hurry that’s a sign that something else is going on because that’s not
1:03:16 natural what about when friends become frenemies because sometimes through the process of us
1:03:23 changing yes you might inspire that envy yes like your status changes we’ve all had to deal
1:03:29 with that i’ve had to deal with that as well you have success and you you came from a background
1:03:35 where where you weren’t so successful and your friends are still there and they envy you and
1:03:42 they’re not very nice to you and uh you know it’s it’s not a good quality and i’ve i’ve i’ve i’ve
1:03:48 understand the quality i understand where it comes from and i’ve i’ve wrote about it in human nature
1:03:56 where we’re all aware of the of the of the what we call schadenfreude schadenfreude means you
1:04:04 take pleasure in other people’s pain so you hear a friend didn’t get the job that they wanted to get
1:04:11 and you go oh i’m sorry but deep down inside you’re kind of kind of happy you know we all go
1:04:18 through that right the opposite is mitfreude it’s an expression that needs your coin which means
1:04:24 you feel joy for other people i like to try and cultivate some of the higher qualities in life
1:04:30 so if something good happens to somebody i’ve my first thing is i might feel a twinge of envy but
1:04:37 then i go it’s great for them i’m actually very happy i’m excited i share their joy in what has
1:04:42 happened right but it’s not natural so when somebody that you know and you’ve known for a
1:04:49 long time has success in life your first thing is to be they didn’t deserve it they kind of cheated
1:04:55 their way to it okay as we talked about in the very beginning you confront that ugly emotion
1:04:59 yourself and you go that’s not who i want to be and you go i’m going to make myself feel the
1:05:06 opposite i’m going to make myself feel happy for their success it’s not natural and most people
1:05:12 don’t go through that and i know personally from people i knew before i had any success in life
1:05:19 they’re the ones that give me the fewest amount of compliments for my books they never read my
1:05:24 books in the first place they’re very spare with their with what they say they’ve got a pinched
1:05:29 look on their face whereas people i’ve never met before in my life give me all kinds of compliments
1:05:36 why is that because they’re envious they’re upset are you are you threatening them because they see
1:05:41 themselves like you because they knew you and you’re from where they were from so you’re even
1:05:44 more threatening you’re holding up a mirror to them in a way that makes them feel even more
1:05:49 uncomfortable well they’re not going to feel that way so what people will go through in that sense
1:05:59 is and this is how i i i i think through oh robert saw himself out he wrote a book that’s evil
1:06:04 that’s nasty that manipulative i didn’t think he was like that i thought he was this nice person
1:06:09 oh i don’t like his book is ugly they’ll go through that process they’ll stay my friend
1:06:16 because we’ve had years and years together it’s very very common i at least i know that
1:06:21 they go they do that with my books even though my later books aren’t like the 48 laws of power
1:06:26 they still have it in the grain that this guy who used to be so sweet and nice wrote these nasty
1:06:32 evil manipulative Machiavellian books he sold out what is it at the heart of the 48 laws of power
1:06:42 that some people are triggered by like what is that what what was the single most triggering
1:06:48 concept or the most um controversial or the concept that people just had a surface level
1:06:53 allergic reaction to onsite without even really reading it they just oh i don’t know
1:06:58 yeah they read the back of the book they read the names of the laws and they go oh that’s
1:07:06 that’s ugly and a lot of times they’ve had to deal with ugly people in their lives and so that’s
1:07:12 when i see i see the authentic disgust reaction i understand it that they had to deal with someone
1:07:18 who is very manipulative and they find it disgusting of course when i get to have a
1:07:24 rational discussion with them and i calm down their emotional reaction i said look if you
1:07:28 had the 48 laws of power before this person manipulated you they would have never been
1:07:33 able to manipulate you that book is the best defense you could ever have in your life it’s
1:07:38 like a shield once you’ve read it you know all the tricks people are playing on you right they
1:07:43 know they’re posing as a friend and acting like a spy right they’re concealing their intentions
1:07:49 you know etc etc it’s showing you all of these tricks okay but that’s when they calm down and
1:07:59 able to say that but the idea that we’re not angels that we don’t all have the the best
1:08:07 intentions in life that i’m writing a manual that they think for how to manipulate how to deceive
1:08:15 how to con people triggers people very much a lot of people who’ve who’ve who’ve suffered in life
1:08:21 who’ve had a lot of pain understand that there’s irony in the book they don’t read it the same way
1:08:25 they read it knowing yeah i’ve had this happen this is what people are like i’m okay with that
1:08:32 i’m cool with it and i must say i don’t know if this will come off wrong but a lot of the readers
1:08:37 who responded most positively to the 48 laws of power early on were african americans people
1:08:44 like 50 people in the hip hop business etc they didn’t have any illusions about human nature about
1:08:52 how good we are because they’ve seen the side all throughout their lives right 50 said when he got
1:08:57 into the record business he was shocked at how political people were how manipulative they were
1:09:05 so they weren’t having that same reaction they weren’t having the guilty reaction like oh that
1:09:09 i don’t want to read about that why do we why do we even have to discuss that that’s not that’s not
1:09:14 positive that’s not helpful that’s i think a lot of what triggered people it’s funny because i was
1:09:19 speaking to a cia agent agent recently and he said something at the end of our conversation to me
1:09:23 he said you know one of the things i’ve come to learn from being in the cia is that i no longer
1:09:31 believe that equality is possible and he said equality equality yeah because that’s just not
1:09:36 the way that the human world works and we all pretend we want equality we all pretend we want
1:09:40 everyone to be equal but if you look at every game we play whether we’re politicians or we’re
1:09:45 business people or whatever it’s all about hierarchies and power and getting ahead even
1:09:51 that the sheer nature of being a politician is campaigning to get into a position of you know
1:09:56 objective power and i wanted to know what you thought about that well i mean there’s some
1:10:01 truth to it in the sense of there’s something in our nature that is hierarchical that has
1:10:12 deep roots in us but i do believe in one form of equality um and that is everybody at their birth
1:10:17 has the possibility for following the path that i talk about in mastery for being great
1:10:23 for fulfilling their destiny for being the unique individual that they are at birth
1:10:31 so everybody is born with a dna that will never be replicated in the past or in the future right
1:10:36 there is a uniqueness about every person and and there’s a uniqueness about your parents about your
1:10:43 background about your early years right and that uniqueness is a seed that if you play if you
1:10:48 cultivate it and you and you use it and you know your purpose and you you mine it for power
1:10:55 in mastery i interviewed one of the master i interviewed was a woman named temple grandon
1:11:03 who was born with severe autism at the age of two she was about to be committed to a hospital
1:11:11 for the rest of her life she was she was like almost like in a walking coma so for some reason
1:11:17 they got her a teacher to teach her language and she started emerging a little bit and then slowly
1:11:23 she blossomed and she realized because it was something common to a lot of autistic people
1:11:29 that she had an incredible connection to animals and a lot of autistic people have that she couldn’t
1:11:34 connect to people they were so tricky and deceptive she she didn’t know how to deal with them but animals
1:11:42 give her a horse a dog a cow she felt like she was one of them she ended up following that path
1:11:49 and becoming a high level animal behavioral scientist who um she was born with autism
1:11:56 about to be committed for a hospital and it she achieved incredible success in life as a scientist
1:12:02 i do honestly and i’m not faking i do honestly believe that everyone has that potential
1:12:10 but it it’s not equal in the outcomes of that there are a lot of people the majority people
1:12:17 don’t follow that path but i do believe everybody has that potential is that potential
1:12:24 like objective greatness or is it our own subjective greatness i i can become the greatest
1:12:30 version of steven or do you believe that everyone could become great in the context of you know
1:12:34 the very best in the world like you know steve jobs or no they’re not gonna you don’t have to
1:12:42 be the very best in in the world i mean i uh when my mastery came out we were uh the new york times
1:12:50 wanted to do a story about my house in the home section okay well why but all right i never get
1:12:56 any publicity from mainstream media so okay fine so i had to quickly upgrade my house because they
1:13:01 were gonna come over the photo photographers and we got a man over to do the tile work on my patio
1:13:12 which would look like hell and i i told people this guy was a true master he wasn’t like making
1:13:19 six figures nobody would ever write an article about him he will die and no one will ever know that
1:13:24 but i could see in the quiet quality and how well he understood it and the care that he took in it
1:13:31 and how much he enjoyed you know creating a beautiful effect with tile work that he was a master
1:13:36 it doesn’t have to be the best ever you don’t have to be famous and successful
1:13:42 there are grades of this there are degrees of it some people is just being a great parent
1:13:46 they’re very social they’re very empathetic and they’re not maybe going to become
1:13:53 an extremely successful finance person but they’re really good at raising their children
1:13:59 and they put to put a lot of effort and care into it that’s fantastic you don’t have to be
1:14:05 famous you don’t have to be steve jobs there are levels of it right but the sense of this was
1:14:12 what i was meant to accomplish and i’m following it and i’m happy what i do i feel fulfilled by
1:14:20 my work and i can go on doing it i take it seriously i care about it i do believe that
1:14:25 that anybody can have that level of power in their life i think i struggle with that if i’m
1:14:33 being honest yeah please on a personal level i struggle with enough being enough and also i
1:14:38 think i’ve grown up in the generation where there’s so much comparison everywhere we look when we
1:14:44 open up our phones and instagram that you kind of always are led to believe that you’re not quite
1:14:48 there yet now i’ve contended with the idea that maybe that’s a good thing because it drives you
1:14:53 forward it’s that pressure you described it’s that creates the urgency that desperation so maybe i
1:14:59 should never believe i’m there yet but then also i wonder am i going to defer happiness off into
1:15:05 the future because i think it’s behind some kind of accomplishment or job title or you know success
1:15:12 in my life and you know when i hear about that tyler i go that person that was tiling your patio
1:15:18 i’m really jealous because they sound contempt with much less than would make me contempt
1:15:26 what is the correct correct answer is it to be the happy tyler who’s tiling the patio or is it to be
1:15:37 the impatient steve jobs that’s striving for the personal computer well it depends on who you are
1:15:44 we’re all individuals we all have our unique energies it’s the fact that you engage you love
1:15:48 that you’re emotionally connected to it that it gives you a sense of fulfillment that you’re not
1:15:55 looking over your shoulder oh i could be doing this instead i’m fine with that i doesn’t have to be
1:16:01 the steve jobs who’s continually dissatisfied who’s fousty and who always has to have more
1:16:07 i’m not against that either i don’t know why we have to be so judgmental if people
1:16:11 are following the path and they are in love with what they do
1:16:16 and have a genuine connection to it i’m not going to judge it because they’re not famous
1:16:22 or because they’re not trying to be the greatest the michael jordan of tiling or whatever etc
1:16:28 i think it’s fine and you you’re not happy you want to you want to crush it you want to be
1:16:35 have the number one podcast that’s fine as well why can’t we have you know that kind of diversity
1:16:41 in our world the most important thing for both those types of people the the people that have
1:16:46 that sort of insatiable sense of ambition but also the people that are contempt with whatever
1:16:50 they’re doing in their lives from what i heard there is they both love what they’re doing
1:16:55 and they both have those cool components that you described earlier like they both feel
1:17:00 the challenge in their work still and that challenge might be okay i’m going to do a
1:17:03 big apatio today or it might be i’m going to launch a billion dollar business tomorrow
1:17:10 for someone else and it’s really about those cool components of like challenge meaning purpose
1:17:19 yeah yeah because what you don’t want is you don’t want to be in your 50s in your 60s facing death
1:17:24 you know because your days are numbered who knows how long you’re going to live and you’re
1:17:30 going to go damn it i could have done something with my life when i was a child i had these dreams
1:17:36 i thought i was going to be really great at it and i never realized it i went off on these other
1:17:43 paths i was lost i thought i was happy but but i never really fulfilled any of those childhood
1:17:49 dreams or those fantasies you know it’s a terrible terrible feeling and i want people to avoid that
1:17:54 as long as it’s something that engages you that’s connected to that child that you were
1:17:59 it’s something that you love and that you you could create these challenges for you
1:18:09 is death a motivator for you well um it certainly is now you know because um
1:18:15 my days are are literally numbered you reach a certain age and you know you can literally count
1:18:22 the numbers of the days that might be left to you and i nearly died several years ago with my stroke
1:18:31 came this close to dying you know i was driving my car and if my wife hadn’t suddenly seen something
1:18:36 i wouldn’t be talking to you here right now either i would have crashed and died or i would
1:18:43 have had such bad brain damage that i’d be a vegetable so i know about death i feel it in my
1:18:51 body every day i wake up i do my morning meditation i’m aware there’s a practice that i have in my
1:18:59 meditation where this could be my last thought i could die 10 seconds from now what do i want in
1:19:05 my head in those last seconds do i want to have some petty little thought about somebody who did
1:19:11 this or said that or do i want to have something else greater in my head i’m constantly aware
1:19:18 of my mortality and with the book that i’m writing it’s always it’s always in my mind
1:19:25 because frankly i’m aware that i might die before i finish the book so now i’ve written two-thirds
1:19:33 of it if i die tomorrow the book can be published and that’s okay i can live with that but you know
1:19:39 i’m in a hurry to get it done because i know it could happen at any moment you know and it almost
1:19:47 happened to me so i’m continually aware of it but not in a bad sense in a way of it kind of
1:19:57 makes gives meaning to my life it makes me aware of how you know valuable each moment is and how
1:20:02 things that everybody i look out my window i see people doing things that i can’t do anymore
1:20:10 and i go they take it all for granted they walk around unaware of their mortality of how their
1:20:19 body could break down at any day now i’m aware of it so i’m not going to feel envy because i my
1:20:25 mind is at a different level i’m aware of the of the ephemeral nature of life and it makes
1:20:29 everything kind of beautiful to me makes me appreciate everything around me i don’t mean to
1:20:35 be too saccharine about this because it could come off that way because there is a dark side to it
1:20:41 and i definitely in my dreams and in my thoughts i have a lot of that darkness but
1:20:49 i believe the awareness of death is a beautiful beautiful thing it’s it’s it’s it makes everything
1:20:58 intense and makes everything aglow with that awareness if you were my age i’ve just turned 31
1:21:05 wow you’re a kid jesus christ man i hate you
1:21:14 i was 31 i was the biggest loser and it’s amazing if i could transplant
1:21:20 that awareness from your head to my head it’s hard that you’ve got from the life you’ve lived but
1:21:26 also from that stroke incident and the perspective of your mortality that it gave you and the
1:21:30 ephemerality of life that it showed you how do you think i would live my life differently
1:21:36 how would you have lived your life differently when you were 31 uh you know i i make a point
1:21:42 of i never go through that exercise because i believe in something called amorphati which means
1:21:47 love of your fate everything happened for a purpose i wouldn’t have done anything differently
1:21:53 if i had to go back because it all led to the right things so if i’d been in a hurry when i was 22
1:21:58 to be successful as a writer i would have never been able to write the books that i wrote
1:22:03 would have all gone askew who knows where i would have ended up i’m very very happy with
1:22:11 i don’t regret anything but if you’re young what often happens is because your life the pattern
1:22:18 of your life if you think of it as a weaving is only like for you is only like a third woven right
1:22:23 for me it’s like two-thirds woven so i can see all of these patterns that you can’t see
1:22:32 in your life but at your stage you know you tend to think i’ve got all of this time ahead of me
1:22:38 i’m so young i can do this i can i can go travel here i can do this business and that business
1:22:44 etc you don’t feel that sense of urgency you don’t realize that tomorrow you can be hit by a car
1:22:50 tomorrow you can suddenly be diagnosed with cancer people are dying now in their 30s and 40s i read
1:22:55 unfortunately when you get older a bad habit is you start reading the obituary pages
1:23:03 i don’t know why um and you start reading about people a lot of people who are in their 40s and
1:23:09 50s are dying left right and center today for various reasons it can happen and what it does
1:23:16 to you is it says i only have so much time i wanted to accomplish this one thing that i’ve
1:23:21 been putting off okay you wrote your book maybe there’s something else that you’ve always wanted
1:23:27 to do but you have never done and you’re kind of putting it off a sense of urgency a sense that
1:23:34 your time is relatively short is a good thing the other thing is it makes as i said it makes
1:23:43 everything a little more intense a little more aglow is the word i like to use so i used to swim
1:23:50 like three days a week and i would swim long distances and i loved it it was my greatest
1:23:57 therapy i just love getting out of my head and just going being in the water okay but i never
1:24:02 appreciated it until now when i can’t do it so i want you to appreciate you going to the gym
1:24:09 having your health to be able to do these things don’t look at it like take it for granted
1:24:15 and it pisses me off that young people take all this stuff for granted they think that i’m privileged
1:24:20 because i have this success that when you’re young you have all those privileges you have your health
1:24:26 you have other things that are going to could be taken away from you don’t take for granted
1:24:31 these things in your life that you have that are not going to last forever think in those terms
1:24:36 and think of of how more intense everything around you becomes when you have that mindset
1:24:39 one of the things i think i worry that i take for granted is my
1:24:47 romantic relationship with my partner and you know hearing your story of being in that car
1:24:52 that day it’s literally evident that your romantic partner can save your life
1:25:00 she did and um yeah uh you know we’ve been together for a while i’m not going to say how
1:25:09 many years because she doesn’t like hearing that because um so you know we have a deep rich past
1:25:13 and it and it’s a wonderful thing and she saved my life and saving someone’s life
1:25:21 man it really is important it really means a lot of changes things and in my book that i’m writing now
1:25:27 i wrote a chapter on love which is something i’ve never written about obviously written about
1:25:34 seduction etc but i’ve never written about love and i wrote about the the incredible the sublime
1:25:40 quality that you can have when you allow yourself to go deeper and deeper and deeper into that
1:25:46 falling process where you get rid of your your ego you get rid of your defenses you get rid
1:25:52 of all the resistance and you just let yourself fall fall fall fall fall and you connect to someone
1:25:58 on that deeper deeper level it’s as i say it’s it’s a chapter on the sublime because it’s a very
1:26:04 sublime experience and the reason i wrote it is i feel like people are missing that now
1:26:13 because they’re so they don’t want to be vulnerable they don’t want any pain and falling for another
1:26:19 person and letting go of your defenses opens you up to pain right and we just want to we don’t want
1:26:27 to experience that we want to be invulnerable and it’s like cutting off all the richest experiences
1:26:34 in life and so i wrote that chapter addressing that and say let go of your defenses let go of
1:26:41 your resistance let yourself go into that process of falling like feel what it feels like to have
1:26:47 your ego dissolved in the presence of another person and care more about them than you care about
1:26:57 yourself you mentioned a second ago dark thoughts and dark dreams we all have dark thoughts our
1:27:02 dark thoughts are our own how do you go about dealing with dark thoughts and what are those
1:27:13 dark thoughts that you’re able to share well you know in my dreams i’ll be doing all kinds of weird
1:27:21 things a lot of times they’ll be guilt like did i actually murder that person or the police
1:27:26 actually after me damn it what’s going to happen what’s going to happen in my reputation then i
1:27:35 wake up you know so all that kind of stuff happens but also doubts about myself and depression and
1:27:43 about i’ve dealt with my whole life with feelings of like not being very worthy like even doubting
1:27:52 my success doubting that my work is any good doubting that i deserve it i had you know a lot
1:28:01 of periods in my life where i wasn’t successful and um i kind of had it ingrained in me that i
1:28:06 could do better i can do better i can do better i wasn’t a good parent to myself i was very tough
1:28:12 on myself and a lot of my dark thoughts are i’m still very tough on myself and it’s like
1:28:21 you know the other dark thoughts that i have is i can’t do the things that i used to be able to do
1:28:28 is life even worth living when you can’t like hike when you can’t swim when you can’t
1:28:38 go out on your bicycle when you can’t travel normally do i is it really worth it you know
1:28:45 maybe maybe death wouldn’t be so bad compared to that i go through that and then i go yeah i talk
1:28:53 myself out of it again and again and again but my dark thoughts are about about myself and my doubts
1:29:00 and about the state of my body as it is right now kind of thing if i said to you that i had those
1:29:07 same doubts about you know if i was if we were identical in every way and i said Robert i’m
1:29:10 having a lot of doubts about i can’t go out on my bicycle i can’t do the things i used to do
1:29:15 i’m wondering if life is worth living and i asked you for advice said i don’t know what to do about
1:29:21 this self-doubt i have about these books that i’ve written what would you say to me well um i would
1:29:28 say um there’s a lot of people who talk a lot in life who bullshit their way who say they’ve
1:29:34 accomplished this on the other and they’ve never done anything you have a book out there that you
1:29:40 can be very proud of that you can die tomorrow and it’s like a memento that will live on forever
1:29:46 and you’ve accomplished it you’ve accomplished this stuff with your podcast you’ve actually made
1:29:54 things so focus on that focus on the fact that so many people never get out of bed in an amount
1:30:03 to anything so you’ve built things you’ve accomplished things focus on that and then about your body
1:30:11 well you know when you’re dead it’s it’s all gone who knows what lot what there is on the other side
1:30:19 but just think of of the insanity of what it means to be alive and that’s another chapter in my in
1:30:27 my new book the odds against you steven of ever being born are absolutely insane and i describe
1:30:33 those odds in the book and i go through from the very first cells that ever from life forming a
1:30:42 planet earth to the evolution leading to us sitting here is unbelievable so that you are alive is an
1:30:49 incredible astounding thing and you have to think about that and you have to think about just seeing
1:30:57 the sky just being aware is is an amazing thing so i often think about people who are suicidal
1:31:02 there are a lot of people like that in life particularly nowadays and i know because i went
1:31:09 through that period most strongly in my early to mid 30s as i was contemplating the lack of success
1:31:18 in my life um you know and what kept me going was i still believe that i could accomplish something so
1:31:24 even in my darkest moments i managed to pull myself out but then i i think of people who maybe
1:31:31 don’t have that energy who were kind of going down that hole and i know from my own experience that
1:31:37 hearing somebody tell them that life is is incredibly amazing fact won’t have any effect on
1:31:43 them right because it’s it doesn’t connect to them emotionally and i often think how could i connect
1:31:48 to them emotionally how could i make it clear to them that there’s something there that that’s
1:31:55 worth preserving i don’t have the answer here today but i think about that all the time like how
1:32:01 would i deal with somebody who is suicidal and i get people writing me like that and we’ve had
1:32:06 i’ve had relatives in those situations before so that’s something i think a lot about
1:32:14 it’s it’s a difficult question to answer what you have to say to that person in that situation
1:32:20 to get them to believe in the sublime to get them to believe that there’s life is worth living
1:32:28 i ponder whether what maybe you need to do is to get them to take the first step to
1:32:34 create evidence for themselves somehow whatever that small first step that’s great that’s that’s
1:32:40 spot on that’s exactly what you have to do they they have to come to the realization themselves
1:32:46 and through some action that you get them to do which makes them gives them a little bit of an
1:32:52 ounce of belief in themselves then the spiral can turn around so i think you’re right it has
1:32:57 to be come from them and it has to come through something that they actually do all the talk in
1:33:04 the world won’t really help them what that is is something that i you know i would like to think
1:33:09 about it and it’s and it depends on the individual but that i think that is the way to do it you’re
1:33:15 writing this book at the moment called the sublime right are you writing that book because of this
1:33:20 situation you found yourself in after having the stroke and and going through that journey of saying
1:33:27 why is life worth living and going in search of the sublime that we all have inherently well to be
1:33:34 honest with you about 20 years ago i had the idea for the book i read a book on the subject and i got
1:33:40 excited about it because they were explaining it as it’s a kind of experience that’s very hard to
1:33:48 verbalize that goes outside of what we normally experience and i got very excited by the idea
1:33:56 and i plan to write that book and then around after war that was going to be my fourth book
1:34:02 and my agent was getting all prepared to sell it and then i got hooked into 50 cent i did that
1:34:08 book instead i put on the back burner and then mastery came up and i got hooked into that and
1:34:15 suddenly it kind of got pushed aside and then in in human nature first of all the last chapter in
1:34:22 the 50 cent book is on the sublime it’s about death and what 50 and facing it then the last chapter
1:34:30 in human nature is about the sublime it’s about death and mortality and the irony is that two
1:34:37 and a half months after finishing that chapter in the book i i nearly died but what i had planned
1:34:45 originally was i was going to go to the goby desert and walk across the goby desert i was
1:34:52 going to go swim with wales you know literally wales in new zealand i was going to go to tierra
1:34:56 del fuego i was going to have all of these sublime experiences and write about them
1:35:05 and now i can’t do any of that right all i can do is sit in my my little room in my house
1:35:13 at my desk and write the book it’s all in my head the book is so much better because of that
1:35:20 so it’s changed i can’t go to the goby desert i can’t swim with whether i drown i can’t go to
1:35:27 tierra del fuego i could only sit in my office look at the birds go through the books that i’m reading
1:35:32 and write the book keeping in mind other people and what’s going on in the world in their life
1:35:39 and my limitations so ironically the book has become better because i had to go through this
1:35:45 experience but nearly dying was going little bells were going off in my head all right it’s time to
1:35:50 write that book you’re not putting it off any longer and has it forced you to find the sublime
1:35:59 in the everyday life well obviously i mean i’m writing right now a chapter on what i call the
1:36:08 daemon which is an ancient greek concept that all of us are born with like a guardian spirit
1:36:14 right i know it sounds very mystical but a lot of psychologists contemporary psychologists have
1:36:20 written about the daemon phenomena the idea that you have a second self a kind of higher self
1:36:25 that in some ways guiding you and has a lot to do with some of the things we’ve talked about
1:36:31 purpose etc and i have to think about i have to think about it in terms of my own life i have to
1:36:37 think about is there something else inside of me that’s communicating to me what does that mean
1:36:42 how does that connect with other ideas about the universe i get to read books about it
1:36:48 it’s a very very exciting process it’s it’s keeping me alive right now and then you know
1:36:55 i write a chapter about animals and what’s sublime about interspecies communication
1:37:00 and now i get to look at my cat i don’t look at my cat or i don’t look at the birds the same way
1:37:06 as i did before i wrote that chapter so it’s changing me and it’s lifting me out of the kind of
1:37:12 people who have strokes we all have to go through terrible diseases all of us unfortunately
1:37:20 unless we die by an accident cancer etc strokes the number one thing that happens is is terrible
1:37:27 depression to suddenly lose your body and what you can do and so this has kept me out of that
1:37:33 depression i have to say you said that all of your books have been kind of focused on different
1:37:37 subjects and that’s very much the case there’s sometimes three lines between the different
1:37:41 books but they’re all very much focused on a variety of different subjects if there was
1:37:50 a message that kind of brings all of your work together if this was your last day on earth
1:37:54 what would the message that you would want to leave the world with be
1:38:01 wow it’s a really good question um
1:38:10 a lot of my books have to do with um the reality of our life
1:38:18 and and what not not what we want to believe not our our fake ideas about it
1:38:25 not our illusions etc but what life is really really like this is the human animals this is
1:38:31 how they behave this is what will seduce them this what was what will turn them off this is how
1:38:37 strategies will get us what we want in life this is how you can master your subject not
1:38:41 the bullshit thing that people tell you about mastery where you can take a drug where you
1:38:47 can hack your way to mastery this is the truth this is the reality so all of my books the through
1:38:55 line is this is what the world is really like it’s not ugly it’s not beautiful it just is
1:39:02 and it’s great to just relate to the world as it is to see things as they are it kind of is
1:39:09 liberating and in a way it is kind of beautiful to just connect to the reality and not being
1:39:14 inside of your wishes about why can’t people be more like this why can’t somebody tell me this
1:39:18 why can’t they give me this why can’t i be successful blah blah blah getting rid of your
1:39:24 illusions and just looking at the way life is it’s sort of i guess would be the through
1:39:29 through line of all of my books do you see life as a bit of a game and is that a healthier way to
1:39:35 view life a game where we need to learn the rules and then play the game versus fight against
1:39:44 the injustice of the rules of the game yeah it’s all a game definitely there was a great
1:39:53 man on the left named Saul Alinsky who wrote a book called rules for radicals he was a strategist
1:40:01 for union organizing and he hated he would hate the world today with people with all of their
1:40:05 virtual signaling and everything he said if you want to change life if you believe that
1:40:12 there’s injustice you have to be a strategist it’s warfare you have to organize you have to
1:40:18 understand the rules that will lead to actual change in this world and whenever you enter the
1:40:26 realm of rules and strategy it is like a game you know and so yeah i believe that i believe
1:40:32 people with all their moralistic ideas who think just because they believe that something is right
1:40:40 that it that it it will get get what they want they’re just living in it the fools you have to
1:40:46 strategize if you don’t you’re just bullshitting you just pretend you just virtue signaling you
1:40:52 want people to see you as a saint if you’re not willing to get your hands dirty and to organize
1:40:58 and to say i’ve got to take this a b c do you have to figure out the process of getting there
1:41:04 then all you’re doing is just playing a game of appearances as opposed to the real game of
1:41:08 getting things done in life what is the opposite of that strategy you’re talking about so i’m
1:41:15 trying to figure out the the average person that is currently not strategizing in their life what
1:41:25 are they doing well um you know everybody i guess you could say everybody has a strategy
1:41:32 but their strategies are extremely ineffective their strategies are full of illusions so human
1:41:38 beings have to strategize because to wake up in the morning and to go i’ve got to make breakfast
1:41:42 you got to strategize how you’re going to cook and what you’re going to make and what you’re
1:41:47 going to do the day what you’re going to wear you know it’s human it’s human nature it’s just
1:41:55 people do it very very badly and they do it badly because they’re so emotional now i’m not against
1:42:00 emotions and emotions play a huge role and i’m writing a lot about it in my new book but the
1:42:05 ability to get things done you have to be in control of your emotions you have to take a step back
1:42:13 and you have to go i’m not going to react this person is pressuring me they’re saying these
1:42:21 things my natural tendency is to react get my back up and bite back no i’m a step back i’m going to
1:42:26 go what’s going to make them shut the fuck up what’s going to make them get out of my life what’s
1:42:32 going to make what’s going to get rid of them what’s going to defeat them if they’re an adversary
1:42:36 all right i made that decision not to react to get emotional all right now i have to think
1:42:43 if i do this they’re going to react this way but if i surprise them with this angle they won’t
1:42:48 know what to do and they’ll they’ll react in a different way and i’ll be in control of the situation
1:42:55 i strategize i go through a process of of gaming out the possibilities here and that’s to be a
1:43:02 strategist the opposite is a book that i meant to write after seduction which is a book about
1:43:09 human stupidity to not be strategic is to be stupid and and stupid stupid people create more
1:43:15 damage in this life than anybody else with their bad strategies their bad wars the bad things they
1:43:23 lead people into their bad politics etc so that’s the opposite of strategy stupidity i also head
1:43:29 within there that sort of emotion being emotionally driven is very much it doesn’t allow you to have
1:43:34 effective strategies because you’ll get caught up in yeah you’ll get personal things personal
1:43:38 things and yeah and things that probably don’t matter that ability to rise above though i think
1:43:43 we all want to master that i would love to master the ability to rise above in all situations at
1:43:50 all times well you can when you’re younger it’s harder because because you’ve got your hormones
1:43:55 you’ve got all that energy go out that adrenaline it’s harder you get older gets a little bit easier
1:43:59 do you have a system that you use just to detach yourself from the emotion sometimes
1:44:10 well i’m not always good at it so i’ve learned to not react emotionally when people say something
1:44:18 that i think is going to be triggering i just don’t do anything i go into my zen mode oh it’s
1:44:23 just it’s just life it’s just words it’s just verbiage it doesn’t matter doesn’t mean anything to me
1:44:31 i’m neutral i’m unaffected i’m in my citadel goodbye fine it’s okay if i get angry and i write
1:44:37 that email which i still do i don’t send it i put it in my draft box i look at it a week later
1:44:44 the hook was i thinking about i’m glad you didn’t send that you know you delay your reactions but
1:44:50 mostly i’ve trained myself and i must say my meditation practices help me to not react when
1:44:56 people say things that are so annoying that that get under my skin i just go that’s them
1:45:02 it’s not me they’re another human being they have a bad idea i don’t care it’s not my bad idea
1:45:07 it’s their life as you know weep are a sponsor of this podcast and i’m an investor in the company
1:45:11 and last month i had the chance to sit down with christin holmes she’s the vp of performance at
1:45:16 woop and i learned so much from our conversation about circadian rhythms and things like sleep
1:45:20 studies show that for every 45 minutes of sleep debt that you accrue that your decision making
1:45:27 ability will drop by up to 10% and when you’re chronically underslept you’ll only be a fraction
1:45:32 of the person the fraction of the boss partner friend manager that you can be that’s why i’m
1:45:37 obsessed with woop which not just tracks but coaches you on how to get better at sleep
1:45:42 so you can bring your best to everything that you choose to do if you’re not convinced you can try
1:45:50 woop for 30 days completely risk-free with zero commitment just by going to join dot woop dot
1:45:57 com slash ceo that’s join dot woop dot com slash ceo and let me know how you get on if you don’t
1:46:04 like it there’s no commitment join dot woop dot com slash ceo earlier you mentioned the opposite
1:46:10 of strategy with stupidity so let’s talk about politics it’s a really interesting time in politics
1:46:16 at the moment i’m really obsessed with us politics in particular because it’s more like a reality show
1:46:22 over here than um in the uk it’s quite boring it is very boring over there i must admit this year
1:46:27 trump is running for reelection against biden the country seems to be very divided for a number of
1:46:32 different reasons it feels i don’t know i just feel like it’s more divided than ever i do feel like
1:46:36 the left has moved further left than ever before to the point that i i struggled to resonate with
1:46:42 that side and i still don’t resonate with the the right so i kind of feel a bit trapped what do
1:46:46 you think of everything that’s going on and how does your kind of work inform what’s happening
1:46:56 and everything in between well we all have biases and i’ve come from more of the the liberal side
1:47:06 the left side i’ve actually rather extreme when i was younger so i have that bias so i’m not really
1:47:12 going to be objective so let’s get that out of the way right you know i have my emotional reactions
1:47:22 my triggering by what i see but um i’m very concerned about the overall spirit the overall
1:47:31 zeitgeist so i worked as um i know this will sound like i’m going in in a tangent but bear with me
1:47:36 i was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company american apparel
1:47:43 and i was brought on there because i was friends with the ceo but he thought of me as a strategist
1:47:49 because he loved the 48 laws of power and i started seeing that things were kind of going downhill
1:47:59 and i sort of had my finger on what the problem was the problem was our our demographic was
1:48:05 mostly young women the ages 18 to 24 and it’s a very difficult demographic to deal with because
1:48:13 their tastes change very quickly they’re very viral etc etc and so what worked early on with
1:48:20 american apparel it was slowly becoming a cliche right and it wasn’t going to translate well
1:48:26 to a new generation coming up which ended up being gen z so i had the idea of like
1:48:32 we need to have these retreats these yearly things where we step back from the day-to-day
1:48:37 business and we think about the brand where we’re going how we’re going to adapt we’re not going
1:48:44 to change it but we’re going to adapt etc etc i presented to ceo oh no we don’t need that
1:48:50 what i came away with was that the reason businesses are so awful large businesses
1:48:56 why they suck why they’re never successful why they’re so damn annoying is because they’re always
1:49:01 dealing with the quarterly report for these publicly traded businesses right they can’t
1:49:07 have a long-term vision because they can’t afford it they have to deal with what wall street will
1:49:12 say to that quarterly report and and you know what what what what the investors are how they’re
1:49:17 going to react to sit there and step back and think about where you’re going to be in a year or two
1:49:23 we might not even exist in a year or two so forget it well politics is the same thing you’ve got to
1:49:29 win elections you’re facing every couple of years every four years you don’t have the luxury of
1:49:35 thinking of the larger picture and that’s what we’re suffering from right now because if you
1:49:43 look at the political situation in america nobody has any loyalty to anything so in my age when i
1:49:50 grew up you were a democrat you were a republican and you had kind of roots and you believed in that
1:49:56 because well the democratic party was for the working class we were for the unions we were for
1:50:02 the common guy the little guy the fdr mentality even to some extent kennedy and johnson the
1:50:08 republicans we were for big business for lower taxes blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
1:50:15 you had a sense of connection to it now people have no connection at all to any particular party
1:50:22 which is fine i don’t i don’t but what that means is it’s so volatile so somebody will vote for obama
1:50:28 then they’ll vote for trump then they’ll vote for biden and then they’ll vote for trump again and
1:50:34 there are plenty people in that situation they have no roots they’re not connected to anything
1:50:41 and it’s not people’s fault it’s our politics fault they’re not creating a sense of what it means
1:50:50 to be an american what is it can you give us a story a myth about what it means to be an american
1:50:56 2024 that will connect us that will kind of give us a sense of what is beautiful about our country
1:51:02 because there are beautiful things about it it’s possible it’s very possible to create that kind
1:51:08 of a vision if you can step back and you can think in the longer term all right maybe it’s hard
1:51:13 to do that for america but what is it for the goddamn democratic party what does it mean to be
1:51:18 a democrat what does it mean to be allowed to be a republican it just means to be a lap dog for
1:51:22 donald trump to believe everything he does but the democrats have their own problems their own
1:51:30 issues it doesn’t you can’t have a party that’s just against everything what are you for i often
1:51:34 tell people i’m sick of hearing what you hate i’m sick of hearing what you’re against i’m sick of
1:51:39 hearing what you’re complaining tell me what you want tell me what you’re for tell me your vision
1:51:45 of what a great country would be like but you can’t they can’t do that because they’re only
1:51:50 in this bubble of what i hate what i’m against it’s what i’m trying to protect etc etc so there’s
1:51:57 got to be a politician that rises up at some point that has a vision that’s not just a demagogue
1:52:03 there’s not just a charismatic that’s looking out for themself they can connect the dots they can say
1:52:09 this is what it means to be in this party this is our vision this is what connects this is the glue
1:52:16 yeah they’re going to be little separate parts of it okay but we’re the party of the of the working
1:52:23 class right we’re the party that’s going to protect people protect make life easier for them or we’re
1:52:31 the party of business etc etc i don’t care what it is but create a vision a sense of who you are
1:52:39 of what it connects to hit people in their heart in there you see trump succeeds because he hasn’t
1:52:45 an emotional visceral effect on people and he’s very good at it the democrats can’t learn that
1:52:52 it’s always about a laundry list of we’re going to a b c d and e we’re going to hit the numbers
1:52:56 we’re going to reduce inflation we’re going to create this amount of jobs etc it’s all in the
1:53:02 head it’s not in here you’ve got to create you got to connect to people viscerally emotionally
1:53:08 you have to create a myth that will connect people even within their disparate little niches
1:53:13 and it’s possible because to believe it’s impossible it goes against the grain of history
1:53:19 somebody will emerge i might be dead when it happens who will go through that some process
1:53:26 for that because otherwise everything will fall apart robert we have a closing tradition on this
1:53:32 podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest i didn’t prepare it’s okay i’m
1:53:38 sure i’m sure you can come up with one about the sublime maybe i don’t know we’ll see the question
1:53:47 for you is okay and you’re not allowed to say nothing if you could change one thing from your
1:53:58 last 10 years what would it be and why well i would have i would have prevented my stroke
1:54:05 i would have realized that i was burning myself out writing the laws of human nature i would have
1:54:13 taken it slower i would have realized that my body has limits and i would have i would have been
1:54:20 easier on myself and not put myself because that book was very stressful and very difficult
1:54:27 i would have taken it slower i would have gone at a different pace and i wouldn’t have had my stroke
1:54:36 and i’d be so much happier do you think you could have prevented your stroke yeah definitely i mean
1:54:44 it was a weird set of circumstances um but the stress of writing the human nature kind of grant
1:54:51 ground me down and then i had kind of high blood pressure already and then i took a trip to new
1:54:57 york where i forgot my blood pressure medication and then i was hiking in a park and a wasp stung
1:55:04 me here and five days later this whole area got inflamed to red i was itching i couldn’t stand it
1:55:11 went to the doctor they prescribed me basically a steroid which raised my blood pressure to the
1:55:18 roof and then when i had the stroke my blood clot was exactly where that wasp sting was in my neck
1:55:26 so if i hadn’t worn myself into the ground if i hadn’t forgotten my blood pressure medication
1:55:32 if i hadn’t if that doctor hadn’t prescribed to me that nasty prednisone if i had just been more
1:55:40 careful like that i probably wouldn’t have had stroke are you able to forgive that sequence of
1:55:47 events and the people involved yeah i have to i’ve forgiven the wasp you know that wasp maybe
1:55:52 died because of me because i don’t know if wasps die when they sting bees do but i’ve forgiven the
1:55:59 wasp um i’ve walked past that spot where the wasps stung me and given my little prayer to it and said
1:56:05 i’m sorry about your little life etc and yeah i’ve i’ve forgiven uh i’ve gotten over that
1:56:14 and i’ve made my peace with it you know what it was meant to happen amorphati it was my fate
1:56:20 and probably it happened for a good reason i mean i’m right now contradicting my answer
1:56:27 that person’s question but so what is this life because the way i think about it is
1:56:34 i was kind of reckless with what i thought i could do and probably if i hadn’t had my stroke i
1:56:39 probably would have something else bad would have happened because i i didn’t realize my physical
1:56:45 limits i probably would have and so i’m alive i have my brain and i’m writing this next book
1:56:52 so it happened for a reason if that bee wasn’t there that day wasp sorry that’s my correction
1:56:58 if that wasp no pressure sick please if that wasp wasn’t there that day and i say this
1:57:03 because i’ve been reading a few books recently about how throughout human history these tiny
1:57:09 little events like the nagasaki where they drop the bombs and all of these tiny little events with a
1:57:14 cloud that flew over the butterfly effect all of the little butterfly effect things is there anything
1:57:21 from the how these tiny seemingly insignificant chance events can have massive consequences
1:57:25 you’re gonna make me cry because what if there was like a little bit of wind and the wasp
1:57:33 didn’t come directly in my path yeah i know it’s horrifying but is there anything because
1:57:40 that’s the nature of the world we live in where tiny little things that we cannot predict can
1:57:47 determine our lives in huge ways can sway our lives in huge ways is there anything that we can
1:57:53 do about it no there’s nothing you can do about it you you know it’s it’s it’s ryan holliday we’ll
1:57:59 talk to you about it you what you can do is the stoic philosophy is how you react to it
1:58:04 mentally you can’t change the physical circumstance but you can change how you think about it and how
1:58:11 you react robert thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and i’m so very very excited for
1:58:16 your upcoming book because if it’s anything like your past books it’s really something worth waiting
1:58:20 for and that’s nice to hear thank you before we start recording you told me about the process
1:58:24 you’ve going through you spent four years writing this upcoming book sublime so far it’s been four
1:58:30 and a half it’ll be another year and a half so that’ll be six total years i it’s so incredible
1:58:39 it’s so inspiring to me well keep this in mind steven i can’t type so um i used to be a fast
1:58:46 typist and i can’t go up take a hike to clear my head so everything it’s not like it takes double
1:58:53 takes like it’s like one and a half times more i have to write things out by hand i have to edit
1:58:59 by hand i have to dictate into the computer i have to edit with one hand i have to clear my
1:59:05 mind without hiking so everything takes one and a half times more that’s probably so probably
1:59:09 would have been like a four or five year book but as you said about your cycle when you slow
1:59:14 things down sometimes you enjoy the more and you make better yes i think you’re right and
1:59:19 probably the slower cooking will make a better book exactly right i can’t wait i hope everyone
1:59:24 has your existing books because they’re all um as everyone’s witness today they’re all based on
1:59:31 challenging but important enduring wisdom every single one of them and i think we need
1:59:35 more challenging wisdom in our society these days well thank you so thank you so much robert
1:59:40 you’re a real um you’re welcome here to many thank you so much okay thank you steven thank you for
1:59:56 inviting me back
2:00:04 you