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everybody has narcissistic Tendencies and we're all self-absorbed but nobody wants to admit it it's always somebody
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else it's always Donald Trump it's always Elon Musk but everyone has a manipulative side there are no Saints in
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this world but can you use it productively yes most definitely there's deep narcissists who are very
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problematic and there's healthy narcissists and knowing the distinction between the two will help save you years
00:00:22
of misery what if from dealing with a narcissist I want you to do the following I want you to Robert Green is
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one of the most influential writers in history unraveling the secrets of power strategy and human psychology that are
00:00:33
essential for purpose resilience and success what is it about human nature that we just don't want to admit one is
00:00:38
that Envy is deeply ingrained in all of us in fact always wanting to be better and Superior to others it's the most
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motivating factor of 90% of human behavior but if you don't admit it to yourself that ugly emotion is like a
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nuclear bomb to all aspects of life it will seize you by the throat and make you miserable but there's also
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understanding things like we all judge on appearances that everyone has a dark side and that we are all actors and I
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will get into the nitty-gritty of all of them because it's really about how powerful people use those traits for
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their success people are lonelier than ever and when you look at the impact that that's having it's equal to smoking
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15 cigarettes a day what is the antidote for this I empathize with it very much so because when I was younger I was
00:01:23
losing in The Game of Life I was very depressed and even suicidal but what Lifted Me Out was
00:01:31
this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
00:01:37
show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you
00:01:44
can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to
00:01:50
make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that
00:01:56
you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music]
00:02:04
Robert at this moment in time what do you believe your followers your fans the people that love your books what do you believe that they're struggling with the most and I'm asking
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this question because I imagine you get thousands of DMS and messages from these people what are the common themes well
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the the most common question I get particularly from people in their 20s is they don't really know uh where
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they're headed they don't know what their career is what I call in Mastery their life's task and I talk a lot about
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it in interviews and in my in the book Mastery and I make it the point that it is the most important decision in your life figuring out what you were destined for why you were born what you were
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created for what makes you unique and I say that everything from that realization from that understanding kind of stems from that your sense of fulfillment your happiness everything
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will come from that one realization and a lot of young people are very confused right now and I don't
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blame them these are very very confusing times that they're going through much more confusing than anything I had to
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deal with particularly I think the influence of technology and social media and what I mean by that is to know who you are to know what you were meant to do in life what what why you were born
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what makes you unique requires a lot of reflection on yourself self aware Wess self- knowledge you have to go Inward and when your attention is always focused so much on what other people are
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doing what other people are saying you know the what they think is hot what they think is cool you become kind of a
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stranger to yourself right so when I talk about that concept to them it's like it sounds interesting Robert but I
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have no idea what that is I don't know what my my life's task is now that's maybe 30 or 40% of the emails that I get
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it's quite high but it's not all of them but it is a trend I've noticed with young people who are going through I
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think very very confusing times and uh I'm very empathetic to it because I was actually someone who was quite lost in my 20s and I know the pain that that can cause not feeling like your life has any
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meaning you know I think that's something that really is is um tormenting a lot of young people what
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does life mean what will give me a sense of meaning right to what I'm doing to where I'm headed to my daily experiences
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and not having that is deeply disturbing and I've been through that myself I think I'm getting a lot of that kind of
00:04:38
feedback and a lot of those emails among others and is there a strategy that young people or really anybody that feels lost or aimless in their life should and is able to deploy to
00:04:51
find their purpose to find the direction the the thing they should be aiming at well you know you have to get out of
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this this this way of thinking that that so many people have which everything has to be simple and linear and I'm heading
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this direction it's got to be a solution like I'm hacking my way to the truth life doesn't work that way life is very
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complex so I can't give you a single track answer to finding your life purpose you as an individual but I can
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give you kind of Clues I can kind of direct you toward certain paths that have worked for me and that have worked
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for hundreds of thousands of other people who've become Masters or very successful in their field and the first
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thing is you have to go inward so you have to resist the pull that our culture gives you you have to also really want this that's probably what it really comes down to are you unhappy are you
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frustrated are you hitting kind of rock bottom is this a turning point in your life where you realize if I keep going
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this way in 5 years it's going to be really serious okay it has to be important to you and you have to to have
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a sense of urgency and with that sense of urgency you have to make some decisions and one
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of the decisions that's absolutely essential is to pay less attention to what other people are doing to pay less attention to what other people are saying to pay less attention to what
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people are telling you you should be doing and to go Inward and think about yourself and think about what you love
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and what your interests are that have nothing to do with what people are doing on social media the things that grab you
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that excite you deeply inside in a way that's almost irresistible now for me I can say that
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it was always been writing okay and I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing but there's also things like
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when I ever read anything that has to do with ancient history particularly the origins of of humanity hundreds of you
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know tens of thousands of years ago I am so excited I can't I can't I can read every single article about that every discovery that takes place in Africa about our Origins it just puts my mind
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in a spin to think that this is who we were 100,000 years going this is who we are now I want to know more that's like this one of these things that hits you in the gut well the people out there you
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have that there's something like that you had it when you were a child you had it when you were two three four years
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old five years old and you've lost it because you're listening too much to other people so it's kind of like
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archaeology would be the metaphor you have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones and those relics and those
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artifacts from your past the things that really excite you as well as the things that you hate now if I were to go you
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know kind of do a reverse engineering which I do with a lot of people who were successful like yourself I could go back
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and kind of find that with you where that hit you because you had a particular path that led you to doing
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these podcasts I know it wasn't a straight line you deviated you were in some other job that you ated and then
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you slowly found your way each of those stories there's a lesson for people right and that's what
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I compiled in Mastery but it all begins from a sense of urgency I can't go on this way I have to find something that I love when you're 20 or 21 maybe you don't feel that urgency because you're
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so young you know you look good you have lots of energy the world's kind of open to you but you have to be careful
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because time passes really quickly those years in your 20s they go by faster than you think and if you're turned 30 and
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you never thought about this and you're kind of been wandering around trying things it starts to get a little
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difficult much harder for you so it's better if you have that sense of urgency when you're 21 or
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22 and the other thing I would say is you don't learn anything if you're not excited by it so you have to have a sense of fun and Adventure about this so
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discovering what your life's task can't be this dreary boring thing that Roberts advoca you do where you oh I have to
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spend time with myself I have to look you know do a journal blah blah blah no it's fun it's an adventure trying
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different things that fit into this General shape of what you were destined for it's a blast you know when I was in
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my 20s I had more fun than anybody I had an amazing time it was the best years of my life I was trying all sorts of
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different things I was exploring I was traveling had Adventures so I don't want your life to be boring I want you to
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learn I want you to have Adventures but you have to have a sense of direction a sense of purpose to guide that kind of
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those those different Adventures that you go on do you think it's harder to find your sense of purpose and what
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you're deeply connected to as you get older yeah I I think so your your mind gets a little bit more rigid you think you know all of the ansers right but what happens with a lot of people I also
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get corresponden from or let's say turning 40 or even a little bit older and they're coming to those Crossroads is it's even much more painful than when you're in your 20s because there's a
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sense of regret there's a sense that you've wasted your time and to get back to a path that will suit you can be very difficult as you mentioned but there's
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also another another side to that which is you probably have been learning some skills in your life you probably have had some experiences that have changed
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you because when you're 21 22 you don't know the world you don't know people you think you know everything but you don't
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know anything right you've never had any experiences in life you never had to suffer maybe you have but not really
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suffering like you do when you get older okay so you're 40 you've had tough experiences you've been hardened you got you know you're not so fragile and you've learned things if you change your
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mindset at that age and you go I'm going to take what I have my experiences my skills what I've learned and I'm going to redirect it towards something more exciting for me then it will work for
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you right but as you say it can be harder because you're more set in your ways and you've built a life you've
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built a network you've built a reputation for being this thing whether it's lawyer doctor dentist whatever it
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might be and so there's a element of shedding that might have to occur shedding people shedding a city that you live in shedding a a way that people know you an income
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and that's deeply difficult and I think some people would prefer the certain misery of their current situation to the
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uncertainty and the shedding that occurs when they go in search of something else yeah but I mean the pain that you
00:11:43
feel when you get older and you know we have we humans have very active Minds we're gifted with the most powerful organ in the entire universe the human brain the billions of possible
00:11:57
Connections in our brain is greater than anything in the entire universe it is the most amazing instrument and our
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brains are very active and when you get older and you don't have anything to put
00:12:09
your brain onto and things are slowing down you don't realize that that's what's making you depressed you don't
00:12:16
realize that the fact that you haven't been able to fulfill what you were meant to fulfill is actually the source of
00:12:22
your misery and unhappiness you will blame it on other people you will blame it on the world you will blame it on
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politics you won't look at yourself and realize that it comes from you and the sadness comes from you and the fact that
00:12:33
you're not maximizing you're not exploiting this gift that you were given so it might be difficult to shed all of that but I've talked to people I'd say
00:12:46
more like around 30 years old who say Robert I'm at this horrible job you know I'm I'm in a fast food place or something I don't remember what it was or I'm a barista whatever you know I'm
00:12:59
so unhappy I have a wife and I have two kids what do I do right and so I and and
00:13:07
I I go into their misery a little bit and then I say okay let's let's first figure out something that you think
00:13:13
would you would really want in life something that will have an income because you have to pay for your wife
00:13:19
and your children you can't just go off and write poetry or become a rockstar you have to support yourself and your
00:13:25
family what could that possibly be and we dig and we dig and we dig I say all right we have an an answer kind of an
00:13:32
idea I want you to do the following I want you to carve out two hours or as much as you can at night where you start exploring this field on the internet and
00:13:44
you start considering maybe going to night school okay and taking classes that change this course and then I want
00:13:51
you to think of five years where you're going to be a goal five years ahead and they tell me overnight just having that has changed them suddenly from their
00:14:02
depression they have hope and they feel a million times better and they have energy just from realizing that there is
00:14:08
a possibility it's going to take hard work but there is an answer there is a place to go and so it changes it when
00:14:16
you when you have a some sense of direction there'll be so many people listening to that now and they'll be
00:14:22
thinking I have a plan I have an idea or at least a kernel of an idea but I've spent the last 3 months 6 months 12 months 18 months two years thinking
00:14:34
thinking thinking thinking and not doing and not doing yeah people stop me all the time and they'll say Steve I'm thinking of starting a podcast and I'll say like how long have you been thinking about this but for the last two and a
00:14:46
half years yeah you know I talk in Mastery about something a concept called learning by doing and um back in in the
00:14:54
Middle Ages they used to have an apprenticeship that you would go through seven years you would learn to be a
00:15:01
Craftsman right you'd first go from being an apprentice to a journeyman to a Master by doing things the brain learns
00:15:09
but if you never do anything you're never going to learn so if you suddenly said I've been thinking about a podcast
00:15:16
I would say get off your ass and start the podcast tomorrow and it fails you have learned
00:15:23
so many things you've learned more in those three months of failure than you have been two years thinking or five
00:15:30
years of getting a MBA from from some school and putting yourself massive debt learn by doing learn by failing why is planning and procrastination that comes
00:15:41
with the prolonged planning so tempting for people like why do we love to plan plan plan plan plan because you're afraid of failure quite honestly um I
00:15:53
mean Freud has a word for in German air folks anst which means fear of success um because this is something that afflicts a lot of adolescents because if you're successful
00:16:07
you now have responsibility you now have a reputation you now have succeeded and
00:16:12
your next venture could fail right there's pressure that comes with trying something and putting your name out
00:16:19
there and if I don't ever try anything if I don't bother if I blame the world I blame my parents I blame my education
00:16:26
system I blame my partner this that and the together then you never have to worry you never have to have that
00:16:31
responsibility you never have to have that fear of success and that holds people back so it's easier to not do
00:16:38
anything and stay in your little bubble and go God if I only if only I had had money I would have written this great novel I would you know done this this or that the other it's just crap you're
00:16:49
trying to delude yourself and you're afraid of actually putting your neck out on the line that's what it comes down to
00:16:55
it's a common syndrome among adolescents I was reading I think it was the book the courage to be disliked and it was talking in one of the sections about how some people would like they prefer to
00:17:08
live in the like Realm of possibility and the realm of possibility is the space you live when you declare to the
00:17:13
world that you're going to do something and be something and be and before you actually do it so when I tell my friends
00:17:20
listen I'm going to become an actor for example the year and a half where I go around saying that I live in the world
00:17:25
of possibility where there's been no feedback to disprove me yeah yeah which is nice yeah but I'm kind of getting the
00:17:31
credit for being the type of person that's aspiring to change yeah and that like Realm of possibility before you get
00:17:36
feedback or try yeah is a very nice place to be for some it is and it it's very addicting and it's kind of a narcotic but the thing is so you've got this realm of possibility which you
00:17:49
could become anything I could become an actor I could become a great novelist I could become a CEO I could be Elon Musk
00:17:55
II but the way the world works is you don't achieve anything unless you have limits having limits and hitting that wall and that resistance is what makes you learn is what makes you great is how
00:18:07
the human brain functions and what I mean by that is let's say you you're learning the piano you can't just start out playing anything and just doing all the notes
00:18:18
it's very limited what you can do right and you have to you have to go within those limits and those walls and learn
00:18:25
the first things first and then those walls start to expand a little bit but you're constantly pressing against
00:18:30
limits and and those limits make you stronger and stronger it's like when you're swimming the resistance in the
00:18:37
water is what makes your muscles bigger right the resistance of limits is what makes your brain bigger makes you more
00:18:44
successful makes you learn but if all you do is live in that nebulous world of possibility you're never developing
00:18:50
you're never getting any muscle you're never getting any strength you're not developing life skills it's a tough
00:18:57
World Stephen you know that people can be very cruel it can be very a mean-spirited world you have to have a
00:19:03
thick skin in this world you have to develop some toughness and you develop that toughness by trying things out and
00:19:09
by failing and if you fail you know like um my wife's in the film business and we
00:19:16
know a lot of actors an actor you know you think it's all glamorous but it's actually like 99% rejection people are constantly rejecting you and they're
00:19:27
rejecting you for things that are you have no control over like your looks you know and so what separates the actors
00:19:34
who succeed and the ones who don't are those that have a bit of a t tough skin they don't take that rejection oh I'm so
00:19:41
I'm So Unworthy I hate myself oh the world's so awful they go all right I'm going to go on to the next one I learned
00:19:47
what wasn't working there and you develop some toughness if you don't develop that toughness you're never going to get anywhere in life and you
00:19:53
get it by trying and trying and working at it and when you in that sort of first chapter of your professional life is
00:20:01
there anything from all of the work that you've done the writing that you've done that a young person should be trying to
00:20:06
acquire and I say that should they be aiming at knowledge skills reputation money um Network definitely not money definitely not reputation perhaps I mean
00:20:19
um yeah rep or fame um perhaps Network can't help but what you really want to do in this world in the 21st C in our decade is skills you want to be
00:20:32
learning skills the more skills you have and I mean true skills I don't mean trying something out for a year and then going on to something else for another I mean getting real skill at something
00:20:43
right whether it's in computers whether it's in the Arts in any field real skill
00:20:50
and then if you can develop two or three skills by the time you're in your 20s and still have some fun the world is
00:20:56
going to open up to you because what you're going to be able ble to do when you turn 30 is you're going to go I can
00:21:02
take that skill that I learned in computers I can take that skill skill I learned in media and in in creating a
00:21:08
podcast or whatever and I can create a business that's going to combine the two in a way that no one has ever thought of
00:21:14
because I'm a unique person the world will open up to you skills are the gold of the 21st century and if you're seduced by money if you think about money you're doomed because that's not
00:21:28
what matters in life because let's say you have two job offers one is at Goldman Sachs opening position for 150,000 a year and one is at some startup for
00:21:41
30,000 a year and you're living in New York and you're going to be starving you're going to be sharing a miserable
00:21:46
little flat somewhere in Bushwick whatever okay take the $30,000 a year job because you're going to learn so
00:21:53
much you're going to be handson whereas in that other job you're going to be lost in in their you're going to be
00:21:59
among hundreds of other young people and you're not going to have responsibilities here you're going to
00:22:04
have responsibilities so money is not what matters to you because when you're in your 20s you can starve you can live on less food you can have it a little tough because you're young I I know
00:22:16
myself I I lived I was very poor I lived in London had a job in London in 1984 I
00:22:23
believe yeah ' 84 and I was making I think it was was3 a week maybe it's less than that was by starting salary and my girlfriend at the time the
00:22:36
only thing we could eat was turnips and cauliflower cauliflower cheese was our main dish but I was 25 I could handle it so you can handle not making money and
00:22:48
learning because that's what's most important I don't think many young people in that first season of Life
00:22:53
realize how long life is so you know we we try and take shortcuts we try and get
00:22:59
to the money as fast as we can but you're telling me to take a longer road which is the acquisition of skills even
00:23:05
at the cost of some of those short-term rewards that are very tempting to post on my Instagram yeah well I mean um also
00:23:12
you know you look at somebody like Steve Jobs I can relate to that cuz he wasn't
00:23:17
interested in money at all it was never the motivating factor it's never been my motivating factor right I wanted to have
00:23:24
fun and I wanted to be successful and I wanted to be able to write he wanted to design the most beautiful pieces of technology in the world it ended up he was like the richest man of the world at
00:23:35
the time but he never cared about money it wasn't what motivated him I never cared about money and now I'm not as
00:23:43
rich as Steve Jobs but I'm doing fairly well because it'll come to you if you play the game right if you learn the
00:23:49
skills when you're young and then you develop your own business by the time you're 35 you'll be making four times
00:23:56
what you would have made at that Goldman Sachs job right M that's that's the that's how the game is played these days
00:24:03
starting your own business being an entrepreneur being an entrepreneur is the most powerful position you can
00:24:08
attain for aim for some people aren't aren't you know destined for that that's not in their DNA but to me that's what
00:24:15
what we should all be aiming for To Be Your Own Boss because personally I hated working for other people but being an
00:24:22
entrepreneur starting your own business one that has a niche in this world you're going to make all the money that
00:24:28
you'll ever need it's quite painful being an entrepreneur though I think it was actually Elon that said building his
00:24:34
businesses is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss and I can relate to some degree of the businesses that I've built over the years and just the
00:24:42
immense hardship and uncertainty and you know I guess there's at times a subtle Envy for your team members who are unaware of the chaos that one has to
00:24:54
endure to make sure everybody's paid on time and you know make sure everything's
00:24:59
everyone's happy okay but um the lesson for me in all of that is altering your sense of what pleasure and happiness is so in the moment it's painful right and
00:25:14
we don't like pain nobody likes pain I don't like pain right but if your sense of what pleasure is and happiness is only like here from the present moment
00:25:24
to here it's going to be very hard to get out of that but if you're your sense of pleasure and happiness is here long
00:25:31
time yeah then then you've got you've got power you've got maneuverability you have room to maneuver and that's that's the key to the whole thing so ah okay so
00:25:41
you're saying that if I have a short-term view on happiness I I expect it today now and every day yeah then my
00:25:48
life's not going to be great but if I expect happiness to be a longterm yeah so I mean look at you now is what I'm
00:25:53
trying to say you're pretty happy I imagine yeah you're pretty fulfilled right and you wouldn't have gotten there
00:26:00
if when you were 24 or whatever you just gave up because it was so painful I better just go grab that that easy job
00:26:06
working for a bank or something you'd be miserable now whereas look at you now that's what I'm trying to open people's
00:26:12
minds to follow Steven Bartlett here that's that's the model one of the uh things that I think helped me get here is my dark side you talk about dark sides a lot and when I say my dark side
00:26:24
I mean the the insecurity the shame the um the the wanting to fit in all of those kinds of things that acted as a driving force and a lot of people have a do and
00:26:35
I've heard you talk about how all great Achievers have a bit of a dark side in them um H how do
00:26:42
we how do we Channel our dark side so that it's productive and not destructive I was talking to someone the other day who is a very successful entrepreneur and they have their own story of like
00:26:54
shame and embarrassment and TR trying to run away from a certain life they used to have and that made them successful but now
00:27:01
they work 18 hours a day they're just like almost addicted to their work so I wonder if it can go too far I see yeah but they say they're happy they do yeah
00:27:12
they say they're really happy do you believe it it's hard to distinguish true happiness from the contentment that you get when
00:27:25
you are successful escaping your dark side do you know do you know what I mean by that because this individual has
00:27:37
successfully ran away from their darkness and they appear to be in a a state of contentment yeah because they're s succeeding in their pursuit of running away from their past but I don't
00:27:49
know if that's happiness some Yogi might tell me that Happiness is when you stop
00:27:54
running well um you know I I I worked for somebody I was on the board of directors for this company American Apparel which no longer exists and the
00:28:07
CEO Dove Charney was the founder of the company an incredible entrepreneur who from one little shop here in Los Angeles when I met him created this
00:28:19
Empire and it was incredibly rewarding and he was a I'd say a very fulfilled person but he couldn't stop he couldn't stop it was like a demon possessed him
00:28:30
he had to have more he had to have he had to build more buildings he had to have more American apparels all over the
00:28:35
world he leveraged himself and then when the crash occurred in 2007 just before the company just after the company went public he was so in debt that it the company never recovered right he tried
00:28:47
too hard he didn't know the limits okay so part of this isn't when I said If Money motivates you then you're going to have that demon if Fame and reputation
00:28:59
motivates you and that demon is going to take seize you by the throat and going to make you work 18 hours until
00:29:05
Everybody Eats your dust and you humiliate all your enemies and you're miserable right so knowing who you are
00:29:12
and knowing what matters is going to save you from that kind of demonic possession because you're actually not
00:29:19
going to be very successful if you're like that you're going to burn yourself out you're not going to have very good
00:29:25
ideas what happens to a lot of people when they become successful is first of all it goes to their head they think they have the mest touch they think they've got you know the Golden Touch
00:29:35
and then their minds start going in this kind of uni this singular Direction they
00:29:40
learned how to do something and they're just doing it doing it doing it doing it and doing it and they don't know how to learn they don't know that there's other
00:29:47
ways of doing things right and that's what happens when you become completely possessed and your mind isn't open and
00:29:54
isn't free and isn't expanding and you're not creative anymore to be creative will require you to try
00:30:00
something different to not expand your company endlessly like he did and instead to take the five branches that you have here in Los Angeles and make the product better and be more creative
00:30:13
with it and they'll be possessed by money and fame and reputation that's the answer I think there does that make
00:30:19
sense yeah it does yeah yeah something that I think many many a person struggle with which is in part this idea of
00:30:27
focusing on the thing in front of you versus getting too distracted with other opportunities and I wanted to talk to you about this idea of focus sure and how important you think it is for Mastery yeah I mean so many young people
00:30:40
who will say to me oh I'm doing this little crypto thing here and I've got this hair business here and I've got this other thing here what would you say
00:30:47
to those people that are trying to become a master in this world as it relates to
00:30:53
focus it's funny because I'm I'm I'm helping a a the son of an friend of mine who's who's who's got that problem and he's incredibly successful I hope he's not listening to this he's 20 years old
00:31:05
he's very wealthy he's done amazing things but he's one of those people who spread himself out to all these
00:31:11
different things he and I can't find a through line what connects them all except making money and having
00:31:17
connections and stuff and it's very alluring in this world particularly you know where
00:31:24
there's so many possibilities where you can get on the internet you can learn this out of the other people people are doing these things you can get into
00:31:29
crypto you know you can you know start your own business here you can get into into the health and fitness world you
00:31:35
can and then later on try to figure out how to connect them all but it life doesn't work like that that's not how
00:31:41
the brain functions that's not what we were meant for because it doesn't start from you the whole thing has to start from you it can't start from the world it can't start from what other people
00:31:52
are doing it can't start from what's sexy it has to come from within if it doesn't come from within in then you're
00:31:59
going to be floundering for years and years and years and so what I've done with this young person whose name I
00:32:05
won't mention but I love dearly is what is it that really is in your heart what is it that you really really love how can we connect this crypto with this
00:32:17
media business that you're starting with the sports world that you're starting with this Fitness thing what what
00:32:23
connects them all you know and to me I I would was thinking I was getting the sense we haven't solved it yet but he's kind of excited by celebrities and by that world
00:32:37
and that's fine I think there that's there's nothing wrong with that so I'm say well maybe what connects all this is
00:32:43
the film business right because the film is is pretty wide ranging to be a producer to
00:32:49
raise money you're dealing with all kinds of different people you're networking you're meeting starlets you
00:32:54
know it's a glamorous life but it's focused okay okay so you know when you focus on something the world just kind of opens up but you have to be focusing on the
00:33:06
right thing so if you were meant to be a writer and then you decide because you want money to go into law school and then you focus very deeply on law school what will happen is for a year or two
00:33:18
you'll be able to to Skid by but then you'll the wheels will start going slower and slower because you're not
00:33:23
interested in it you're not connected to it you get bored and your focus will start falling to pieces but if it's
00:33:29
something you love you can focus on that for 7 8 10 12 years and never get bored
00:33:36
from observing a certain family member of mine do a very similar thing part of it as well is that when she would start one Pursuit starting X
00:33:48
business it would get hard as it always does and when you look over at the person across the road they seem to be
00:33:56
having a much easier life with their thing or with their crypto or with their whatever and they tell you the story of
00:34:01
how much money they've made and how easy it was whatever so you get tempted into believing that the grass is greener you
00:34:07
pursue that so now you're doing two things now your first thing starts to suffer yeah and I think especially in
00:34:12
the early season of life when you don't have Elon Musk resources much of the game is focusing enough on one thing to
00:34:19
build those resources so that you have the chance of being able to do it more than one thing or spreading your bets a
00:34:24
bit more but in that first season when you're in resource accumulation phase I think my early investors in my company I remember one day emailing my first
00:34:31
investor who's a very successful man and saying I've got an idea and it was an idea other than the one he' invested in
00:34:37
and I remember the email he I was 18 years old and he hit me so hard on that email he was like if you don't focus on
00:34:44
one thing you will never ever you were the one that was interested in this other I was trying to the one yeah so my
00:34:50
investor was a very successful man and I emailed him this other idea which I thought was amazing yeah yeah yeah and he sent me this email back which was
00:34:56
like being hit by a whip and he was like if you don't focus on one thing now you will never be successful cuz also you
00:35:01
rob yourself as you said of the chance of accumulating deep skills yeah yes it is um yeah I remember uh this is something that wise people know and if
00:35:13
you're young if you have like a mentor like you did who could tell you the the truth the ropes as they are it will help
00:35:20
save you years of misery I remember when we were at American Apparel it was the Year 2007 the coming was just about to go public I was about to be put on the
00:35:31
board of directors and this man came to me who was like your investor and he said Robert just make sure that doves
00:35:38
doesn't mindlessly expand make the brand focused have it focused on one thing and
00:35:44
then he will be successful at the time I thought that was interesting but I didn't really have the guts to like
00:35:50
explain that to Dove but there are people out there who understand the truth of this but the other thing about
00:35:56
Envy like you say you see your other friend doing crypto and they're having so much fun and making so much money
00:36:03
tell you it's [ __ ] they're not having as much fun as you think right people create a front on Instagram or or
00:36:11
Tik Tok or wherever where life seems so glorious but they're never having as much fun as you might imagine you know
00:36:18
in in my book laws of human nature I talk about Aristotle Onasis who in the 60s was the wealthiest man in the world he was married to John F Kennedy's Widow
00:36:30
Jacqueline Kennedy Jacqueline Onasis who could who could be happier than that he had Yachts Etc he was the
00:36:37
most unhappiest miserable person in the world as Jacqueline Kennedy explained in
00:36:42
in her autobiography he was such a mean-spirited unhappy person yet everybody thought envied him because he had this beautiful wife and all that money the people you envy are not doing
00:36:53
nearly as well as you think so don't let that influence your decisions in life I
00:36:59
am I've never forgotten a certain Johnny IV clip that I watched many many years ago I think it was must have been five years ago now where he talks about working with Steve Jobs and this is what
00:37:10
he says in the clip and I've never forgotten it never forgotten it this sounds really simplistic but it
00:37:19
still shocks me how few people actually practice this um and it's a struggle to practice but is is this issue of focus um Steve was the most remarkably focused
00:37:33
person I've ever met in my life and um and the thing with focus is it's not sort of like this thing you aspire to or you you decide on Monday you know what I'm going to be
00:37:46
focused it is a every minute a why are we talking about this this is what we're working on you can achieve so much when you truly focus and one of the things
00:37:58
that Steve would say um because I think he was concerned that I wasn't um he would say um how many things have you said no to and I would honestly I would
00:38:10
have these sacrificial things CU I I mean wanted to be very honest about it and so I say oh I said no to this and no to that and um he but he he knew that I
00:38:24
wasn't vaguely interested in doing those things anyway um so there was no real sacrifice what what Focus means is
00:38:31
saying no to something that you with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it but you say no to it because you're
00:38:44
focusing on something else yeah amen that's you know that's the Church of focus I agree with completely I mean I hate using my own examples CU I'm
00:38:56
I'm a raw avice you know I'm a rare bird but um you know I I have this book that
00:39:03
I'm writing okay and it's on a very specific subject and I get distractions all the
00:39:10
time people want you know I can do this speaking engagement in India where I've never been before or Egypt you know kind of thing or get involved in this
00:39:20
television project and I'm actually never really seduced by it because I just love
00:39:26
writing but where it really comes down to is I'm writing this book and I and I'm it's been going really not well it's because I'm not focused on the actual
00:39:38
thing I'm trying to say so you can bring that level of focus down to the finest finest point of your business or your writing or whatever what is it you're
00:39:49
trying to say what is it you're trying to accomplish what is your brand really about get into the nitty-gritty get into
00:39:55
the little fine grains of sand and know what that is so every time I'm writing my
00:40:01
chapter and I start writing about something that's not directly relevant to what it's about and what the reader
00:40:08
is going to be interested in I'm making a mistake and I make the mistake for several weeks and then I realize it and
00:40:13
I pull back so that level of focus has to have a lot of energy behind it because you're so in love with what you're doing that when you deviate from it this little radar inside of your
00:40:26
brain goes you're you're off you're off you got to get back to it right and it's painful
00:40:35
but when you do get back to it and when do things do click it's incredibly pleasurable so the focus for young
00:40:41
people that seems so painful God damn it everyone else is having so much fun and I'm having to learn this just keep
00:40:48
telling yourself that you're doing something that your brain is going to reward you with several years down the
00:40:54
line so that friend of yours that seems to be having so much fun in 3 years they're going to be sliding
00:41:00
down the ladder working at some crap job whereas you're going to be rising up so just keep your mind on the on the on the
00:41:07
larger issue there and know that working with what your brain is works well with
00:41:12
will pay incredible rewards down the line this when they talk about compounding returns in life they always
00:41:17
say that it's slow than it's fast and even this podcast if you look at the graph of this podcast for the first three years of me recording in my
00:41:25
cupboard on Sunday nights alone completely flat no one's listening and then by year maybe I'd say year four or
00:41:31
year five it goes straight up yeah and that's a consequence of those first three years were acquiring skills understanding what people liked and why they like listening to the show and
00:41:43
actually getting better as a talker a speaker an interviewer Etc and what most people Miss is they miss that internship
00:41:51
of the slow lonely unrewarding couple of years because they lose focus no one's clapping no down downloads um I've never seen another route I've never seen another path there I've never seen the
00:42:01
overnight success well I mean I I I know I can name five other podcasters who have the same story as you who've told
00:42:07
me that Lewis house Chris Williamson Jay Shetty they all have the same story for
00:42:13
several years nothing crickets and I knew these people when they were just starting out and and then that happens I
00:42:20
remember when I was working with 50 Cent on the book the 50th law you know people look at at rap stars and they go wow the Glamour the the fun the excitement the sexiness the lifestyle
00:42:35
but he said you know I knew him because I was with him nobody I worked harder than 50 he was incredibly disciplined
00:42:42
and Incredibly focused and when he made it in in the music business it took incredible years of difficulty hardship and failure but nobody ever sees that
00:42:54
they only see him in concert and and all the glamour and all the fun they never focus on the years of grit and near
00:43:01
failure he got shot he nearly died his record label dropped him he had to work his way back up into the music industry
00:43:08
from the very bottom until Eminem finally noticed him um but we don't see that in these celebrities all the grit and the hard work that took them to get there we just see the success and we get
00:43:22
seduced by the success I've heard you referen before Howard Gardner's frames of of Mind theory of multiple
00:43:28
intelligences book and in that book it says that there are five types of intelligences logical intelligence
00:43:34
linguistical intelligence interpersonal intelligence spatial intelligence and bodily intelligence and it defines them quite differently logical is the ability to reason and solve problems and think
00:43:45
in abstract terms like scientists and mathematicians linguistical intelligence is things like writers lawyers and Poets
00:43:51
you're one of those writers interpersonal intelligence are leaders psychologists and teachers spatial
00:43:56
intell are Architects artists and pilots and lastly bodal intelligence is athletes dancers and surgeons how important is it to know your form of intelligence to be successful in life so
00:44:10
figuring out what that is is incredibly important and the reason why I like this
00:44:16
book so much is we tend to think of intelligence as intellectual as you know computer programming or mathematics or whatever it is you know having a a PhD
00:44:29
in this field and but that's not intelligence intelligence is also bodily intelligence like somebody like Kobe Bryant in basketball is is as
00:44:40
intelligent as Albert Einstein but in a different way so you have a parent who's
00:44:46
always geared towards you know going to the best school and and being an intellectual Giant and their child wants
00:44:53
to do ballet or sports or something and you kind kind of look down on that and you say no no no you're setting your
00:45:00
child up for misery recognize what one of these frames are for your child and press on it and let them go in that direction because it's what they're naturally gearing towards it's what's
00:45:11
fun right so if for me it was linguistic intelligence words I've just since I was
00:45:18
a child I just words bewitch me I can't believe that we have words to name things and that they're these symbols with letters that have sounds but a lemon isn't a lemon it's just a word and
00:45:32
I was like 5 years old what the hell can that be that's so interesting you know that you could take a word apart and
00:45:38
spell other words with it so I knew from very early on that it was words words words words and I absolutely stink at
00:45:46
one of these intelligence is is build is mechanical intelligence knowing how to build things I'm terrible at that which
00:45:54
is very odd because my father was brilliant at that and he wasn't good at any of the others and I didn't inherit
00:46:00
it so that goes all you know that kind of debunks genetics right there but you know so figuring out which one of those and and leaning in it and making that the direction of your life is so so
00:46:13
important so if your your thing is interpersonal intelligence and you understand that and yet you're not
00:46:19
heading into a job in which you're social and around people you're going to be so miserable but if you know that
00:46:25
what your thing is inter personal intelligence you've got like a hundred different directions you can handle into
00:46:31
you know that doesn't mean you have to only be a social worker just means you have to be a leader of people because
00:46:37
you understand you like being around people you like working with others you're very empathetic that could be a
00:46:43
hundred different kinds of jobs but once you know that it gives you a sense of direction it's by far the most important
00:46:50
step for people and I always recommend people reading this book because it's very very important much of the reason
00:46:55
we lose focus as I've seen in my own friendship group in my own family is because of
00:47:00
Envy yeah how important is it to get control of one's Envy I've heard you describe it as the ugliest emotion well
00:47:07
it's ugly in the sense of you know it's an admission that you feel inferior that
00:47:15
you feel that somebody is better than you are and who wants to admit that you know there's a very famous psychologist named Alfred Adler from the 20s he was a
00:47:25
disciple of Freud he thought this ability of always wanting to be better and Superior to others was the most
00:47:32
motivating factor of 90% of human behavior that we always want to feel at least that we're Superior in some way
00:47:40
and the sense that we're inferior creates what he calls an inferiority complex so it's very very painful to
00:47:47
tell yourself that this person is doing better than you are or that they're younger and better looking than you are that their wife is is more interesting than you year their kids are doing
00:47:58
better because it means it's a slight on you right we are very prone to Envy genetically by the way our brains operate so it's known factor that
00:48:11
chimpanzees are prone to feeling Envy right if you give one chimp a banana or a grape and don't give another one they'll be giving you that kind of evil eye that we the stink eye that we we
00:48:25
associate with Envy so it's it's something that's in primates and what it comes from I believe is our brains
00:48:32
operate by comparison that's how we learn that's how we understand things we understand that this is a wild animal
00:48:40
because it's not that other thing over there our brains compare bits of information to decide what is what
00:48:46
what's different from what's the other thing so our brains are geared towards towards comparing and when you create a
00:48:52
social animal we are the most social animal on the planet and you have that bra that's constantly comparing we're
00:48:59
using that mechanism to compare ourselves to other people and always wanting what other people have and they've noticed in Hunter Gathering societies from back in 30,000 years ago
00:49:12
the few that still had existed in the 20th century that Envy was a huge problem among them and so that when one
00:49:19
person was given a gift everybody in the tribe was so upset and angry that the person who was giving the gift had to
00:49:25
give it to other people so they wouldn't be the target of Envy because it could lead to being murdered right so Envy is
00:49:32
deeply ingrained in all of us we constantly comparing ourselves to others okay but we don't want to admit it so if
00:49:41
I compare myself to some other writer who I think is having a better life than I am who's sold more books than me what I'll do in my mind instead of saying he
00:49:52
deserves that or she deserves that because they are actually a better writer I'll go
00:49:57
They Don't Really Deserve they're they're they're a hack they're just doing that because they know what the public wants and they're not I'm going
00:50:03
to be my books are going to be read 100 years from now but nobody will read their books in five years I justify it
00:50:09
to myself right I don't feel Envy no no no I'm not saying that person's Superior
00:50:14
in fact they're actually inferior to me that's the games that we play when we Envy other people and it's something
00:50:21
that that social media is like a nuclear bomb of en right so 60 years ago I wouldn't have known what my neighbors or friends from college are doing and how much more money they're making and how
00:50:36
happy they are but now you know what everybody on the planet is doing and how good they are and how happy they are and
00:50:43
the incredible trips they're taking and you know the the great schools that their children are getting into on and
00:50:49
on and on so it's this machine for manufacturing envy and it's infesting our political system as well it's seeping into all aspects of life but nobody wants to talk about it and nobody
00:51:01
wants to admit it the main thing with Envy is to admit that you feel it okay so I will say I will get on my hands and I will say you know what sometimes I actually Envy Ryan
00:51:16
holiday he's 30 years younger than I am he's written already more books than I have he before I even wrote my first book he's got a family he's got these
00:51:30
great homes he's doing really well yeah sometimes I feel Envy I'll admit it okay
00:51:36
if you don't admit it to yourself then it just festers and something ugly will happen and so what I'm able to do with
00:51:43
the feelings of envy that I might have is I think God Robert there's no reason to feel that way go through a process
00:51:50
and go he's actually deserved all all the success he's had you know he deserves because he's worked really really hard and he's a really good person he's ethical he deserves it and so you should
00:52:03
be happy for him which I am I'm incredibly happy for him but I have that first little twinge of envy you have to
00:52:11
admit it to yourself and it's not an easy thing to admit because it means you're admitting you feel inferior for a
00:52:17
moment can you use it productively that Envy yes most definitely and I I talk in
00:52:22
laws of human nature about strategies for doing that one of them is there's somebody that you Envy in the world well instead of festering with
00:52:33
that ugly emotion make that a Spur instead of Envy feel what's called emulation where you're going you feel competitive and you're going to be as good as they are or better than they are
00:52:45
you're going to use that sense of inferiority to motivate you to to work harder and harder and harder another
00:52:52
thing is so when somebody has failure and we're actually kind of gleeful about it it's called shod and Freud right the opposite of shod and Freud is a phrase
00:53:04
that n called midfa which means instead of feeling pleasure in their pain you feel their pleasure as well so instead of feeling Envy try and feel happy for
00:53:17
the other person now you'll say that I I can't do that but yes you can you have to practice it there's a there's a great Psych olist Nam William James who called it an as if strategy so just tell
00:53:30
yourself that I'm actually happy for their success and when you do that it's actually a really great feeling to actually feel good about
00:53:42
somebody else doing well is a very ennobling feeling it kind of raises you up instead of lowering you down and
00:53:49
making you feel ugly it makes you feel Noble it makes you feel better about yourself and it kind of opens up your
00:53:55
whole emotional life so those are I have other strategies in the book but those are a couple I was wondering why your
00:54:03
book power is still selling unbelievably well I mean most books when they come out they have their moment and then they're done but for some reason what
00:54:15
you write in this book is as compelling tempting and attractive to people now more than ever and one would then assume that's because people feel more powerless
00:54:26
And when they see the book it offers them a promise of something that they so desperately want yeah is that an
00:54:32
accurate assessment I think it is I think it is I mean I've noticed um in the last six years or so the sales have been higher than they've ever been before and a lot of it you know young
00:54:47
people went through the the crash of 2008 and they had to deal with the covid and the pandemic and in those years where where the world seemed upside down
00:54:59
the book was selling better than ever so I think helplessness and feeling a loss of
00:55:06
control and feeling like there might be something out there that can guide me a little bit in this very confusing
00:55:12
anarchic times that we're living through can be very seductive and very appealing
00:55:18
so I mean we've always there's always change in our world there's always chaos but when the world when the book came out in 1998 eight it wasn't nearly as
00:55:28
chaotic as it is right now so I I think you're right I do attribute the success not necessarily to my Brilliance or to the Brilliance of the book but to the fact that people are feeling more and
00:55:39
more help powerless people are lonelier than ever according to many of the stats and when
00:55:46
you look at the impact that's having on people it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day According to some
00:55:51
reports um they're more likely to live alone they're more likely to feel lonely report feeling lonely they're more
00:55:57
likely to feel that they have no nobody to turn to in a time of Crisis According to some studies as well yeah um they're
00:56:04
more addicted than ever before you can class that in a number of ways chemical addictions but social media addictions and other things and that's the state of
00:56:13
especially young men you know it's it's young women too are having their own struggles especially with anxiety and the comparisons and those kind of things
00:56:19
we've talked about but young people generally and especially young men are killing themselves at higher rates than
00:56:25
ever before um suicide as you know is one of the biggest killers of young men what is the
00:56:31
antidote for this this sense of powerlessness loneliness isolation addiction aimlessness well you know we our our
00:56:44
tendency would be to bring it down to the individual level but I think it's also a cultural
00:56:49
problem I think our culture is contributing to it um the kind of aimlessness in our culture where we don't really um talk about the skills
00:57:03
that are necessary to get ahead our culture promotes all kinds of bad values it emphasizes Fame and celebrity it doesn't talk about discipline it doesn't
00:57:14
give young men a sense of purpose and Direction it doesn't value them you know right now a lot of young men feel like of you know it's it's women that are getting all the attention that what why
00:57:25
am I you know what is my purpose here so it's I think it's a cultural problem more than anything else and when I say
00:57:32
that that kind of absolves individuals but I don't mean to do that as well because you are an individual you live
00:57:38
in this culture and you've got to get yourself out of that kind of hole that this culture is is imposing on you and
00:57:45
so I have a lot of sympathy for it because I don't think it's completely your your fault that you feel lonely or
00:57:51
that you're isolated or that you don't have friends that you don't know how to socialize
00:57:57
you know I didn't have this phone in my hand when I was in my formative years and I had to meet women when I when I wanted to you know at that point in my life in the 70s when I was in my 20s and
00:58:10
so I had to go out there and suffer from rejection I had to go to bars I had to go to clubs I had to put myself out there and meet them and it was tough and I learned skills seduction skills
00:58:23
whatever you want to call them but just social skills skills about you know women think differently than you they
00:58:29
have different values than you what are their values get outside of yourself and think about what it's like to be them
00:58:34
and what you can do that's going to please them and get them how you can enter into their world you have none of
00:58:41
that now none of that it's all you know um swipe swipe swipe yeah so you're not going out you're not you're not developing that muscle you're not putting yourself in live interacting
00:58:54
with people where you're feeling their body body language their non-verbal communication so no wonder your social
00:59:00
skills are atrophying and as your social skills atrophy it becomes harder and harder and harder to go out there and put yourself on the line because you're not good at it so you you have a you
00:59:11
fall into this hole of becoming lonelier and lonelier because it's harder and harder to get out of it okay so I have
00:59:18
tremendous empathy and I would never like preach or or or or or blame young men in particular for the problem that they're having and I empathize with it very much so because I myself went
00:59:30
through a phase where I felt very very unhappy and even suicidal when I was younger and I understand how your life
00:59:38
can turn that way so I don't mean to ever come across as somebody who has all the answers because I think it's cultural but if you are an
00:59:49
individual you have to see that first of all it's not a bad thing necessar necessarily to be lonely part of the problem of loneliness is it's got this
01:00:02
this this taboo against it this bad name like it's terrible to be lonely terrible to be alone right and so you feel shamed
01:00:11
for the fact that you're lonely but actually it's extremely important in life to be alone sometimes and to be
01:00:18
able to be on your own and to think about yourself and to kind of come to terms with who you are and to embrace
01:00:26
What Makes You Different and you can't do that if you feel ashamed about being lonely or if you can't ever be alone so
01:00:34
knowing how to be alone is very important it's what will make you successful it will bring you skills so
01:00:40
don't think of it as something necessarily terribly negative in your life but the other thing is you have to
01:00:48
force yourself you force yourself to go to the gym to develop muscles and become
01:00:55
stronger you have to force yourself to interact with people and get out of your phone and have real experiences instead
01:01:03
of virtual experiences and if you do that 10 times a month just like going to the gym 10 times a month your social skills will get better and better your your social muscle will get better and
01:01:15
better and you'll feel better about interacting with people on that point you um I remember
01:01:20
law I think it's was law 18 I'm just having a look that isolation yeah do not build fortresses to protect yourself
01:01:27
isolation is dangerous yeah Solitude is not a defense because it cuts you off from valuable information allies and
01:01:39
opportunities there's a difference isn't there between being lonely and being alone because being alone is one thing
01:01:46
but the state of loneliness feels like it's a slightly different proposition well it's the difference between you you feel very unhappy that you're you're not
01:01:59
connecting to other people we're a social animal right and you feel like people don't like you they don't respect you that you can't interact with them on a level that's meaningful whereas the feeling of being
01:02:12
alone for me wow I don't have to be around ugly idiotic people I can just be by myself I
01:02:20
can read a good book I don't have to interact with people whose ideas I don't like I can just be myself and be as
01:02:29
weird as I want wow what a relief I'm so happy being alone now I'm not like that
01:02:34
all the time it would be terrible but sometimes I do feel that way and that's the difference and that's a good thing I
01:02:41
I remember once I was on an airplane and I saw a a young woman who was by herself and I could sense that it was driving her crazy and she had to use her
01:02:52
phone to never feel alone right even in the middle when were flying over the ocean she had to like somehow connect
01:02:59
onto the internet and be and be sending emails and texts and anything and I got this kind of desperation in her this
01:03:06
this intuition this feeling that being alone was just horrifying for her you know and um I
01:03:15
think that's not a good thing I think it's a terrible thing so yes isolation is bad you need to be NE you're a social
01:03:22
animal you're meant to be around other people but if you can't be alone you can't ever figure out what makes you different and What Makes You unique so you have to be able to play both sides
01:03:33
of the game to to listen to that voice yeah inside to turn inwards hard it is hard to turn inwards when you never have moments of solitude I guess when you were you said you were suicidal in your
01:03:44
earlier years yeah what lifted you out of that state well I I had a girlfriend who was very understanding who helped me a lot so I wasn't completely alone
01:03:56
um and then a little tiny voice inside of me was saying you are you have interesting thoughts you're a strange person Robert I've always been strange I never was
01:04:10
like other people in even in high school I was always something off about me which could be made me lonely which
01:04:16
could make me be a problem but I kept saying there's something different and off about you right and you have skills
01:04:25
as a writer it's it's going to happen someday don't give up don't give up don't give up keep trying right and so
01:04:31
finally I'm 35 36 years old I was in Italy at the lowest point of my life and then I met this man there who was a book packager yast
01:04:44
elfers and he asked me if I had an idea for a book and suddenly just I almost get
01:04:51
emotional just thinking about everything just shifted inside of me it's like yeah I could write a a non-fiction book
01:04:59
and I just improvised what would turn into the 48 Laws of Power he got so excited he said I will pay you to write the the the the uh I forget what the
01:05:11
word is to sell it you know and um and then I'll pay you to live while you write it and so suddenly it went from Darkness to to light because I had a
01:05:24
purpose and all of my misery you know I could take all of the Bad Bosses I had all of the horrible psychotic bosses who were so stupid and so political and so
01:05:38
manipulative and I could go wow I've got all this material to write the 48 Laws of Power all my worst experiences can go into this book it all has purpose for it
01:05:49
I'm not saying that's going to happen to everybody but I was literally at that moment before it happened pretty much
01:05:56
near Rock Bottom and I asked my my wife what would have happened if this didn't turn out would I have committed suicide would I I if I'd gone the same path and
01:06:06
gotten into H done some H hack job I'd probably be incredibly overweight and alcoholic and I might have already died of a heart attack or maybe I would have found my way to something else but it
01:06:17
was a really really low point in my life purpose yeah it's crazy how it can lift
01:06:24
you out of Darkness it can turn the lights on yeah it's just so unbelievably hard to find for so many people I mean
01:06:30
you're not going to find it in your bedroom necessarily sat there thinking but you
01:06:36
know opportunities come you just have to be ready for them so I had this opportunity that came to me and you might say well that's lucky that's never going to happen to me but
01:06:49
it will happen to you you're just not ready for it you're just not recognizing it some person will cross your path
01:06:56
that can lift you out of what you're doing who could connect you but you're not paying attention you're not ready
01:07:02
for it you don't think you deserve it so there is opportunity all all the every day of the week you're you're it's around you is what I'm trying to say there's so many studies and there was
01:07:12
one on TV by I think it was Darren Brown The Illusionist that show certain types
01:07:18
of people are pessimistic towards opportunity and when you do studies where you and there's one particular study where they have a newspaper and they give it to one group of people who I think are pessimists and one group of
01:07:29
people that are optimists and the the researchers say when you find the 100 pound voucher $100 voucher just come
01:07:36
back to us and what happens is they scroll through the newspaper and the pessimists never find it but on the
01:07:43
first page of the newspaper it says stop the stud stop go to the researchers now you've won $100 The Optimist find it
01:07:50
well and Darren Brown did a similar thing The Illusionist in the street where he put I think it was a like A50 pound or 100 note in the middle of the
01:07:56
street as they were walking down the street and the optimists find it they see it but the pessimist just walk right
01:08:02
past it yeah I think it was a winning scratch card potentially and that really opened my mind to like my my state my
01:08:07
mental state my psychology is determining whether I see these opportunities yeah or totally miss them
01:08:13
and then it's almost a stard spiral because then I'll think God I'm such an unlucky person right without realizing
01:08:19
that I'm playing a really important role in creating my own fortune or Misfortune right yeah I have a chapter in laws of
01:08:27
human nature about the nature of your attitude creates your circumstances which is sort of the same thing you're
01:08:32
saying which is there are two kinds of attitudes that I talk about one is a clo an attitude that's closing that's constrictive that's narrow and there's one that's expansive and open you could
01:08:46
call that pessimistic and optimistic but the closed um attitude is you're only seeing life through this narrow little Spectrum where everything everything is bad people don't like you there's
01:08:57
hostility all around you and what that means is you're not seeing reality you're creating reality you're creating
01:09:04
that reality you're seeing it and that's what happens to you the expansive attitude is life is amazing all these
01:09:13
incredible things are possible I have hope any moment there could be an opportunity and that's not reality
01:09:20
either but you're going to create that Reality by feeling that way and taking seing an opportunity the the smallest
01:09:27
crumb of an opportunity you're going to create those good circumstances so by your attitude you
01:09:34
create the bad things that happen to you in life one of the um sort of adjacent points here about purposelessness about
01:09:40
loneliness about the struggles and plights of young men in the world that they face and and young women is the
01:09:46
conversation around pornography if you go on many of the social media apps these days you will be exposed to pretty
01:09:52
explicit pornography whether you you researching for or not there's certain apps in particular where even if I'm
01:09:59
scrolling on my feed certain things will pop up and I get Jesus Christ like you know I'm at work here um and I was
01:10:06
thinking about this more broadly because the studies show that about I think it's like 80% of men and about 40% of women in the United States use pornography and
01:10:14
I wondered if you had a view on how it robs us of the of the hard work it takes to form romantic relationships um and if the act of consuming
01:10:25
pornography is robbing us of the desire for the real thing well it it's it's an addiction and you have to understand that you are being manipulated that you are being programmed that these people
01:10:38
have figured out exactly the kinds of things the kinds of images that are going to hook you and you're being played you're a fool they're playing with you just like Mark Zuckerberg and
01:10:50
Facebook knows all the algorithms to hook you to his to to the news feed you're being played by by the images they know how to create and keep you
01:11:01
always wanting more just like fast food has all these tricks to constantly you be eating their Doritos or whatever it
01:11:07
is okay but the other thing is um so I'm not going to preach and moralize about pornography from a a prudish aspect of it because I'm not
01:11:20
approved but I have a chapter in the book that I'm writing on the Sublime on what I called love Sublime and the act of loving not God
01:11:34
not the universe but another human being and individual man or woman gay or straight or whatever it is and how
01:11:41
Sublime that is and what it is is in that relationship the boundaries between the two of you are allowed to melt and your
01:11:52
your ego can soften and you can feel their world and they can feel your world and you have a connection that for a social animal is the highest form of connection it's Superior to a religious
01:12:04
connection I'm sorry um and what it requires is we we have the expression falling in love and it literally is falling it's like you fall fall fall fall fall you're open and You're
01:12:17
vulnerable and you're letting yourself fall and when you're not what stops you from doing that is you don't want to be hurt you don't want to be vulnerable right because if you open yourself to
01:12:31
someone else you're likely to get hurt and so the moment there's a disagreement between you or there's a moment where a friend says something nasty about this person you're interested in you stop
01:12:44
falling you cut it off and that romantic thing ends and dies but if you get past that and you allow yourself to open up
01:12:51
completely and you just keep falling falling and falling and falling this incredible thing can happen and I
01:12:58
describe it to and I describe it the Dynamics of that and examples of that and why for a social animal it's like the ultimate experience and so
01:13:09
pornography is completely robbing you of that because love of another human being
01:13:16
is a sense of Enchantment right there's like this this spark that's happening this electricity
01:13:23
and it's obviously viously sex is involved so it's a very physical relationship as well but it goes beyond
01:13:29
that it also has a kind of spiritual component right but it's a sense of Enchantment Where the world becomes alive to Everything Is Beautiful in the world in those moments right and
01:13:41
pornography is disenchanting you from everything it's making it all mechanical and ugly and and and it it has no
01:13:50
romance to it it has no Dimension to it it's almost as if the two humans involved in it or however are like
01:13:57
machine parts right they're not human anymore and there's no emotion involved there's no kind of spiritual connection it's depressing it's really really
01:14:08
depressing when I see it I feel really sorry that I experienced this and I feel really sorry for the people who are in that industry I find it really really
01:14:20
ugly and alienating now I'm not as a said a prud and I under and I could watch a moov a great movie with a love scene in it and it's very exciting and
01:14:32
beautiful but the seduction element the element of I saw a movie recently a Japanese movie by the great director U from the 50s and there was a man who was married
01:14:46
and he was about to have an affair with this woman who was kind of seducing him and they had this kiss I go I
01:14:54
thought wow W I was getting I use the word turned on but I was getting really excited it was so full of emotion and
01:15:01
energy and it made the sexual element so much more powerful by the element of Romance by the element of something kind of transgressive there was no nude
01:15:12
bodies there was no sex you ever get to see but the leadup to it and the nature of the emotions evolved made it to me deeply deeply exciting and if young men
01:15:25
particular can't have that experience if everything is so mechanical is so computerized it's going to be like AI it's going to be like AI sex you know
01:15:35
then you're losing your soul you're losing your capacity for really falling in love for really having that kind of dimensional experience which by the way can be extremely physical and it can
01:15:48
only last for three months I'm not saying it has to be 20 years with one woman or one man it could be for three
01:15:54
months but it enriches you it create it makes you more human I've invested more than a million
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st40 or if you're in a supermarket you can get it at tesos or Holland and Barrett or in the Netherlands at Albert
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Hine and those of you in the US you can get it on Amazon the other thing that a couple of
01:17:05
psychologists on my podcast before have alluded to on this subject is that they told me about a study with rats where
01:17:12
they messed with the part of the rat's brain that is responsible for causing dopamine and then when they put food in
01:17:20
front of the rat's mouth if the rat was it was like 6 in from the rat's mouth the rat would starve to death because they had impacted the rat's dopamine so it no longer had motivation and they
01:17:32
speak of dopamine as the sort of motivation chemical it's the thing that gets you to take action so if you're
01:17:37
frying your dopamine receptors by doing these sort of high dopamine activities oh right right I'm wondering if you're
01:17:43
going to if we're we're sort of breeding a a culture of lower motivation individuals and because of this Eis I was kind of looking at some some studies around this and it does say that
01:17:55
constant exposure to high dopamine activities can lead to dopamine desensitization or deregulation of
01:18:00
dopamine receptors and then this can lead to a significant reduction in your motivation and there's multiple studies here that um point in this direction so I'm wondering how when I look at some of
01:18:12
the stats around purposeless and people having less partners and being more sexless if there's a through line here
01:18:19
that when you make dopamine easy through pornography we're less likely to go in get up out of our bedroom and take Tak
01:18:25
action yeah but it's not just pornography there's too much of that in in social media as well on on other levels so um you know you have to we're we're you
01:18:39
have to understand what it means to be a human being first of all and we're physical animals we can't be in our heads all the time we we think with our
01:18:51
bodies right we we think with the chemical mixing in our bodies we're very physical and we're social animals to the core and that Social Animal what makes
01:19:02
us Superior is that we connect I can kind of look at you and I can maybe understand what you're feeling what you're thinking and we can have a discussion and our ideas can go back and
01:19:14
forth and connect and go to higher levels of understanding or lower levels of disagreement but that's what it means
01:19:20
to be a human being you're not this [ __ ] AI machine you're you're not a bot you're not an algorithm you're not a
01:19:27
little piece of data that Mark Zuckerberg can mix with you're you're a human being with a body with physical
01:19:34
problems with hormones with emotions that are coursing through you and you have to become a physical creature which means doing things in the world taking
01:19:44
action working building a business doing things with your hands you know exercise
01:19:50
meeting people be inside of your bodies and when you're in pornography you're disembodied you're not in your body you might be wanking off as far as I know you know probably are but you're not
01:20:02
really inside of your body in any meaningful way and so it's like my hope if there's any hope
01:20:12
is that and there's seeds of it in the world now where young people are going to start getting disgusted with this because the human spirit is still very
01:20:22
powerful and it's still like I don't want to be like this it doesn't feel natural it doesn't feel right and
01:20:29
at some point my hope is in 20 30 Years After I'm probably dead there'll be a movement where people are going to be so against this that they're going to go in the opposite direction they're going to
01:20:40
be returning to what it means to be human being there'll be a rekindling of interest in our past in the Primitive
01:20:46
past in the Pagan past things I'm writing about in in my book right now and I've see things like that sometimes
01:20:53
like in the New York times they had an article a few weeks ago about a group of young people in college who hate social
01:21:00
media and absolutely refuse it and will not it's like almost like a fraternity or a sorority they will not allow
01:21:06
anybody into their group who ever looks at their phone they go yay yay right on brother I could have if I'm in college
01:21:13
right now I would join that not that I think everything is evil I have my own phone Etc but if I were young that sense
01:21:20
of this is a nasty world I want to return to what it means to be a human being I want to spark a movement a
01:21:26
revolution that goes back to that I hope that that's going to happen I hope that's in the cards what is it about
01:21:32
human nature that we just don't want to admit well um first of all we don't want to admit um where we came from our our primitive
01:21:43
roots that we are animals you know that before we invented language you know we were living like any other animal on the in the outdoors right and um I remember one day I was I was in
01:21:59
Sydney Australia about 10 12 years ago and they have this amazing zoo I don't I hate zoos because I I'm an animal lover and I think zoos are like prisons but I I wanted to see the strange exotic
01:22:11
animals there and they had this amazing chimpanzee compound right where the chimpanzees could kind of roam around freely and I was fascinated and I sat there for like two hours because it
01:22:24
was like watching an office in Manhattan or something where there was the alpha male and all the other males were kind of following behind him like you know like the CEO of a
01:22:36
company and I was looking around and I noticed all the people were like giggling and they were so embarrassed and they couldn't they were make they were laughing that was their
01:22:48
reaction because it made them so uncomfortable to see this animal that's so much like a human being but is also still an animal they were just so
01:22:59
uncomfortable by it it made me realize that we're very very uncomfortable with that aspect of ourselves right the part
01:23:06
that we can't really control so much that isn't logical that isn't rational that isn't clean doesn't you know all
01:23:13
these civilized things so we're in deep denial of our animal Roots but we're also in denial of our own nature so we
01:23:24
want to imagine ourselves to be these kind of saintly moral rational creatures always thinking about what's good for other people you know and it's just a
01:23:35
fairy tale that's not the world as it is you know it's the world more like I described in the 48 Laws of Power where
01:23:43
people are manipulative where people are playing games not everyone but everyone
01:23:48
has a manipulative side everyone has a dark side we actually are deeply irrational creatures we don't want to admit it we don't want to admit the
01:23:59
parts of the of our self that reflect this kind of animal nature our irrationality our our aggression our um the envy that we feel towards other
01:24:09
people it's always other people who are like that so I give the example of narcissism and I try to make the point in the book in narcissism you know I
01:24:20
make the point that everybody's self-absorbed you know when you're reading book and you see your birthday
01:24:28
happens to be there just a fact you're like whoa that's my birthday because it's you your astrological sign that's
01:24:35
me we all are interested in ourselves we're all self-absorbed right and when we somebody suddenly talks about us our
01:24:43
ears prick up I'm not moralizing it it's just the truth it's me it's it's everyone we don't want to admit it it's always somebody else it's always Donald Trump is the n it's always Elon mus was
01:24:54
narcissist everybody has narcissistic Tendencies that's human nature and and we're we want to deny it and should we
01:25:02
be aspiring to not be narcissists or does one just accept their narcissistic Tendencies and lean into it because much of what I read in the book about power is how narcissism seems to get you
01:25:16
ahead to some degree that's that's that's debatable but um but I mean look at some of the people that you know we we've been talking about that have reached the very top of the professional
01:25:28
pyramid in life you know the presidents and such they've got narcissistic traits sure sure and uh and some of them are
01:25:36
are kind of what I call Deep narcissists who are very problematic and some of them are healthy narcissists so a lot of
01:25:44
artists are what I would call a healthy narcissist so a lot of art artists aren't necessarily the best people right they're not all often you know you wouldn't may want to be their friend
01:25:57
they maybe not the most faithful person as as far as the partner is concerned but they put all of that narcissistic
01:26:03
energy into their work and they create beautiful things that contribute to humanity Steve Jobs was not a very nice
01:26:10
person right he was very aggressive he was very assertive and he was a control freak but look what he created okay that's healthy narcissism what's the
01:26:20
first thing they tell you in AA I've not been an AA but I know it it's admitting
01:26:27
that you're an alcoholic okay if you can't admit you're an alcoholic how are you ever going to stop being an alcoholic but you first have to admit it
01:26:35
so if you want to stop being a narcissist you have to get on your hands and knees and admit that you are a
01:26:41
narcissist because if you deny it and you say everybody else is if you can't look inward how can you ever change that
01:26:48
and even the most saintly person on this planet the Mahatma Gandhi the Martin Luther Kings they had definite strong
01:26:56
narcissistic Tendencies there are no Saints in this world everybody has these have these Tendencies so get off your high horse look Inward and see those
01:27:06
traits that are narcissistic within you what if I'm dealing with a narcissist well who isn't in this world today
01:27:14
you're always dealing with a narcissist what do I do about that do I because I was thinking about some of the laws in your book where you say things like don't outshine the master yeah if I'm dealing with a narcissist should I
01:27:27
hide my strengths and my weaknesses in order to sort of Pander to them and not outshine
01:27:32
them yes but as part of law number one is this is the great thing about being a human being you can do two things at once you can be consciously
01:27:44
playing the game of I'm not going to out China because he's he or she's going to fire me because I'm going to make them
01:27:50
feel insecure but at the same time in my head I'm going I'm not that person isn't better than me
01:27:56
they don't deserve their position they're actually kind of incompetent stupid and Someday by being loyal and
01:28:04
learning from them I'm going to rise up and I'm being smart because I have to I'm a social animal and then at that
01:28:10
point I can just say get away from me I don't need you anymore I'm better than you you can outshine them but you play
01:28:17
the game but the worst thing is if you internalize it and go I actually am inferior I'm not going to outshine because I'm not a good person I don't deserve it and then you've internalized
01:28:29
this sense of inferiority and it's going to haunt you the rest of your life so you can play both sides of the game at
01:28:34
the same time you talk about acting in in life to get ahead do we have to be actors in your view well this is where I start getting a little bit cranky Stephen because everybody's an
01:28:49
actor right nobody admits it though when you're 3 years old you're already acting right you're crying because you're trying to get your parents' attention you're you're making
01:29:02
trouble with your siblings because you're trying to get something that you want you're learning to be manipulative children are very manipulative children
01:29:08
are consummate actors they learn that they can get what they want by behaving a certain way if I'm an angel Mommy will give me this and the other thing even though I know I'm not an
01:29:19
angel we are a social animal and we have words we have language language and with
01:29:25
words and language we can say one thing and be another we can lie we can deceive
01:29:30
we can tell people I loved your screenplay you were fantastic in the mo movie man you're looking so great today
01:29:37
we don't mean any of it but we can do that because we have words and we can lie about that we are all actors if
01:29:44
everyone went around saying exactly what they felt about the other person no one would ever get along we would have
01:29:51
killed ourselves off by now you're always telling the L the things that they want to hear you're always telling
01:29:56
your partner you're always kind of hedging exactly what you feel you're an actor I don't I don't understand what's
01:30:03
so complicated about that I don't understand why people can't see that they're every day of their life and in
01:30:08
another instance you're never the same with two different people the way you are in
01:30:14
front of your father as you are in front of your son or in front of a colleague you're completely different person your jokes are different your body language is different you're an actor okay some
01:30:27
people are good at it some people aren't but you're an actor well I think the root of this is there's something ugly
01:30:34
about being manipulation lying acting so no one would want to volunteer that they are doing that but from what I'm inferring from what you said is that in
01:30:45
order to get ahead in life you're going to need to lie a little bit manipulate and act well you you are it's not like
01:30:52
you need to be you are doing that even though you may not admit it you are doing that you see the thing is it's
01:30:58
getting back to that scene at the Sydney Zoo where people are deeply uncomfortable with these aspects of their own character and their own personality and I don't want you to go
01:31:10
around thinking God it's great to be manipulative it's great to just screw people over and get what I want and not care about them no but it's better to
01:31:22
admit that you are are capable of manipulation that you do it often unconsciously and often in a passive
01:31:29
aggressive manner it's better to admit it and it's better to be able to play the game when you have to like always
01:31:36
say less than necessary is going to save you a lot of pain you don't have to go around all your life practicing these
01:31:43
things I don't think you want to what was that law always say less than necessary can number four can you
01:31:48
explain that one to me in looking at powerful people the person who talks less always gives off a greater Aura of power than the people that are yabbering all the time that are talking that can't
01:32:00
control their tongue and the idea is if you can't control your mouth if you just keep talking and talking it gives it
01:32:07
Aura to other people that you can't control anything else you have no self-control and that is very unpower
01:32:13
Aura and obvious the more you talk the more you are prone to say something kind of stupid and irrational that you're
01:32:20
going to regret and so powerful people know to command an audience they sit there they let other
01:32:28
people talk and argue and then occasionally they utter something that's maybe a little bit ambiguous if goes
01:32:35
whoa oh that's very interesting Robert said that what does that mean you look powerful right you give off an air of
01:32:41
mystery you give off an air of control and so a lot of people have a hard time with it because they think well shouldn't I just be able to say whatever I want and just talk well no you don't
01:32:52
not in the social world not in the work world it's going to get you in trouble learn to control what you talk and learn
01:32:58
that there are moments that saying less is actually much more powerful than just yammering on and on I was um through my
01:33:06
years of business running businesses and stuff I came up with this idea which I've shared with a few people called your contribution score and much like we
01:33:12
have a credit score where if we you know we're Reckless with our finances we our credit score gets lowered um I think the
01:33:18
same applies for the contributions we make in group settings but just generally the contributions we make and
01:33:24
I came to learn this over time because in one of my offices many years ago in a different company there was this one
01:33:29
individual who in the meeting rooms would when people were brainstorming before they'd thought of
01:33:35
what they were going to say they they'd interject and say what about um if we do
01:33:42
a we could do like a popup with maybe we'll do like T you they were thinking out loud and what was what I would observe as the CEO is the minute they spoke
01:33:54
it was almost like people roll rolled their eyes and tried to cut them off because they developed this contribution
01:34:00
score which says when ex person contributes it's always ill formed um not productive and takes too long but then there's this other guy who I remember from my Manchester office who
01:34:12
went he hardly spoke and every time he spoke it wasn't important so the minute he starts speaking it's like the room
01:34:19
shifts towards him like like with baited breath so there's an art of protecting one's contribution score yeah I remember
01:34:26
uh 50 I would go to meetings with him 50 Cent yeah and he would hardly say anything and people would be trembling my God he's not talking he's not saying
01:34:38
he's interested in my ideas he just sit there b was kind of Ry smile on his face and then when he'd say something oh they
01:34:45
would let out of breath oh he's saying something it'd be very short and Curt but he completely commanded the room
01:34:50
because he just sat there as if he wasn't really happy with what people were doing and it made them compete to
01:34:56
make him happy interesting really interesting he he's a master of the 4 the other law that I was thinking a
01:35:06
lot about if we're jumping back to the the laws of power is let others do the work but take the credit you face when I said that well
01:35:19
you know some of the 48 Laws is irony and you know people have to be able to understand and read what's ironic so um like I have a chapter in there
01:35:32
play on people's need to believe to create a cult like following and I'm not really saying go
01:35:38
out and create a cult I'm showing you why you might be in a cult right now because this is how Cults operate okay
01:35:45
so when I worked in Hollywood I worked at one point for a film director and we had this process where we would sit in a room and we would talk
01:35:56
about the the story and we would discuss the dialogue ofu and I would give all of this dialogue and ideas in there and
01:36:03
he'd be WR be writing it down and I'm not saying half the screenplay but at least a third or fourth were like my
01:36:09
ideas my contribution my dialogue I never got a single credit for any of it it was always his name that was on there people go wow bro that was so funny that was really brilliant I love that line
01:36:21
was my line okay okay so I learned this is the law of the Jungle when you're working in particularly in entertainment in media people take your work and they put their name on it so like when you're
01:36:34
watching a television show with some uh news broadcast or whatever or an interviewer their jokes aren't their own they didn't write those jokes they had a team of people writing it all those
01:36:46
great facts that are coming up a team of researchers are putting there you never hear their names you never know who they
01:36:51
are they took the work and they put their name on it that's the law of the Jungle and the law of the Jungle is
01:36:59
don't get upset about it it's part of the game you I got upset when that happened I didn't say anything I didn't do anything but I got resentful nobody's recognizing my work whne whne whne wine
01:37:12
wine the adult if I had been smarter was that's just how it is Robert just calm down at some point people will see your screenplays or your books or whatever and you'll be fine
01:37:24
but just I'm trying to show you this is how the world operates and don't be so naive and don't think it's not like that
01:37:31
and if you had kicked up a fuss you might have accidentally outshone the master of or i' been fired it's
01:37:38
interesting because there is an element of this where it can where like trying to take the credit can really also lead
01:37:43
you to being fired because I'll never I remember back in previous again a previous company that I had started had
01:37:49
a big team about 200 people in Manchester and there was this one kid in his early 20s who would always sulk
01:37:58
if in our like public company Channel someone just innocently forgot to include his name in credit when credit was being handed
01:38:09
out and it would happen maybe once every six months you just like forgot that he had contributed to the project and that
01:38:15
happens in all businesses people don't take you sometimes and I remember hearing that he was outside on the steps
01:38:20
bitching that's the best way I can describe it just like complaining to other younger team members that he hadn't been included in that message and
01:38:27
it developed this horrible Rel um reputation for him as someone that was always complaining and always trying to
01:38:32
take credit because it's ugly to be seen as trying to take credit well so if you read the law
01:38:40
carefully it's really about how powerful people use this so if you're an underling and you do the work don't you
01:38:48
don't want to take credit for it because it's going to get you in trouble right but powerful people
01:38:53
have used for centuries the labor of other people and put their name on it to make themselves look powerful and to
01:39:01
make them seem like they've got endless energy okay so you have to apply that law with intelligence if you're an underling and you're doing some project
01:39:11
it's a group project don't go out there and take credit for it because people are just going to laugh at you and you're going to make you're going to
01:39:17
make a terrible fool of yourself so every law has a context you know but that's that's powerful people use that law and if you don't think that's how it operates I'm sorry but you're in you're
01:39:28
in for a world of pain I think there's an overarching thing here which which can be discovered in your other book the
01:39:34
laws of human nature about mastering your emotional self yeah because none of these things are going to be possible if you don't have Mastery over your emotions I'm not going to be able to refrain from snatching credit I'm not
01:39:47
going to be able to not outshine my master if I don't have this sort of foundation of emotional control is that
01:39:53
true is emotional control really where this all begins yes it it is self-control um of course you can take
01:39:59
it too far where you have no emotions and you're just a cold fish out there you know it's good emotions are important you're not going to write a book you're not going to start a
01:40:10
business unless you're excited unless you have that emotional energy so I'm not talking about stifling your emotions
01:40:16
that would be incredibly counterproductive and unpower but there are emotions that are
01:40:21
going to get you in trouble particularly as a social animal so it's not like you stifle your emotions you learn how to
01:40:29
channel and control them and you learn that certain behaviors are going to be read as unpower as hysterical as somebody who can't get things done as
01:40:41
ineffective incompetent so as an actor you learn to sort of present the right front the right facade and that requires a degree of emotional control yes for sure it's very important and it's not
01:40:55
easy because when you're young particularly you're very em you're wired to be emotional and you're going to
01:41:01
learn this the hard way which is how I learned it I'm trying to teach you some lessons so maybe you won't make as many
01:41:08
mistakes but it's a hard thing you learn and you learn it by the mistakes you make by saying something foolish that
01:41:14
costs you your job by outshining the master that costs you your job you learn it from the mistakes you make is there
01:41:21
any practices that you know of that would enable me to increase my self-awareness because you know I we're all going through experiences in life but it seems that some people are
01:41:31
learning from those experiences and becoming more wise and more effective and then other people are kind of
01:41:37
repeating the cycle over and over again and I think I asked this in particular because you're a writer so you spend a
01:41:43
ton of time thinking thinking about what's happened to you your jobs experiences your
01:41:49
feelings if if if you do a a foolish mistake there are two ways to go and the common
01:41:56
route is that [ __ ] they they screwed me over it's their fault you know right or I made that mistake but you know if circumstances been better if I had more
01:42:10
money if this person supported me it would have all would have gone well that's what we naturally do and that's
01:42:15
the kind of person that never learns from life so your first instinct must always be and not your first instinct I
01:42:22
correct myself your second inct inct because your first instinct is always going to be that there's a great book I
01:42:27
can't remember what the writer's name was mistakes were made but not by me I recommend that book highly it came out about 10 years ago I think it's Elliot Aronson oh yeah I know him uh very good
01:42:40
book anyway your first instinct always will be it was a mistake but I it wasn't my I'm not to blame all right everybody does it I do it your second instinct is
01:42:52
to sit back and whoa wait a minute that's not right i'm fooling myself actually I played a role in that in in what happened there and what is that role that I played what could I have
01:43:04
done differently maybe it's very subtle maybe it was something in my body language that turned people off that
01:43:10
made them not like me or maybe it was something I said or I did that could have changed the circumstances what is
01:43:16
it that I did then you can learn from the experience and if only 10% of it is your responsibility at least see it as 30% so that you can learn from it and
01:43:30
exaggerate your role in the mistake because then you can learn from it you can understand that you can correct
01:43:35
these mistakes right so initially you're going to always blame the other person then you're going to step back and
01:43:40
you're going to go through this little dance you're going to go no I think I I I've definitely played a part in what
01:43:46
went wrong here things go wrong and we leap to blame and once we leap to blame we often
01:43:53
leap to Revenge yeah we want to take revenge we want to write the wrong that's happened to us we want to correct
01:43:59
the Injustice and you talk about this as part of human nature but also give us some advice I think it was in it was actually in the law of power book about um I think it was law
01:44:11
36 when we feel like we've been wronged Robert when we feel like there's been an
01:44:17
injustice what is the best course of action it depends on on on the wrong and in the Injustice so let me give you an example someone at work said I had they
01:44:29
said something to my boss and it's cost me my promotion and they're talking about me behind my back and and it's
01:44:34
annoying me well there are several um avenues that you can go everything depends on
01:44:40
circumstances so if you're going to be a strategist in life is is what I recommend you have to look at the
01:44:48
particular parameters and not just go there's one answer there's several possibilities here here so number one
01:44:55
maybe you're in an awful job with awful office politics I have a a thing that I get
01:45:02
talked about in one of my recent talks um of you can scale a culture of a group on a scale of zero to 100 100 is what I call a Reality Group where people are
01:45:14
only interested in getting the job done and everything is on results zero is where everything is political and everything is personal and everything is about who knows who and how you brown
01:45:25
knows your way with the boss okay so if you're at a company that's at that 20% level then get your ass out of there okay you you have a colleague like that but they're probably other colleagues
01:45:36
like that and that person is probably always causing problems do you need to be at this job is the main thing you
01:45:43
have to first ask yourself and if it you do need it you need the job and it's only this one
01:45:49
person then you have to go through a few steps number one is it worth taking personally what if I not take the high root because I hate that that phrase but
01:46:00
what if I say it's not really worth it for me to get upset it's better off in the long run to just act like um you know it didn't happen and to end up
01:46:13
getting the promotion on my own in a different way and proving myself as success is the best revenge you know and
01:46:20
how can I get there kind of thing ignoring ing him or her and what they did and only focusing on what you can do
01:46:27
to get back to get the promotion that you deserve the third possibility is sticking it to this other person which is always something that I think is is
01:46:38
something you might have to consider doing right which is playing the game back at them so when you're dealing with people who are
01:46:49
unethical like a Putin kind of t Tye where they're willing to do anything to get power and you're not it's asymmetrical Warfare they have more options than you do okay this person
01:47:03
that did that to you they're going to do anything for power and it puts you at a
01:47:09
constant disadvantage what do you do you have to do what they have in Warfare called the deterrent strategy you have
01:47:15
to show this person that you're not somebody you can mess with that you're going to do something to hurt them but
01:47:22
it's controlled and it's a one-time thing you're going to damage their reputation you're going to spread some
01:47:28
nasty rumor about them but it's you don't have to feel like you're lowering yourself it's just I'm doing it one time
01:47:33
to show them that from now on you better not mess with me because damn it I've got a gun in my back pocket and I can
01:47:40
use it you can't be you can't just lay o roll over because they're going to keep doing it to you time and again so you've
01:47:46
got three options and you've got to choose what's the best one if you hate your job and you can't get around the
01:47:52
this person quit if you don't feel comfortable going the low road and if you think it's a better strategy in the long term for you and your soul and your safety to Simply focus on your job and
01:48:05
and get revenge that way that's probably the best solution of all but sometimes you need to have a shot across their bow
01:48:13
to say look you can't attack me because if you do they're going to be consequences to pay because these types
01:48:18
of people they they prey on those who seem weakest right predat say love prey yeah but if you do the option number two and you show that you don't really
01:48:31
that they didn't affect you and you kind of act like it didn't matter sort of thing but you still work hard and you're still doing your job they might they're going to wonder
01:48:43
like hm that's pretty impressive that's interesting this person has self-control and they're may be going to
01:48:49
be afraid of you in that sense by the fact by the closure that you show them so everything depends on who you are your nature and the nature of this this
01:49:01
uh Machiavellian character that you're facing you know but um be alive to the moment and the circumstances and play for the long game so sometimes the long game means showing
01:49:13
that you can mean action because then they're going to leave you alone for the next couple of years when we zoom out on
01:49:20
what's going on in the world um a lot has changed a lot has changed one of the things that's changed is our society as I think I've heard you say is less United by some of these great myths of
01:49:33
religion and you know I've heard you say talk about democracy and all these kinds of things and as a result people no
01:49:38
longer believe in the same ideas because every form of authority is now under question and you someone who studies
01:49:46
history you're someone that understands the cycles of history what cycle of History are we in at this moment in time and how does one navigate it well um you
01:49:57
have to take a big picture um especially if if you're someone like me who studies history a lot so there are always these
01:50:04
moments in history of cycles of chaos where and it could be caused in the past by a plague by some terrible war that goes on like the Hundred Years
01:50:17
War in Europe where um people feel genuinely powerless and helpless and there's a crisis of meaning in the world and I
01:50:29
could point to specific moments in the ancient world in Asia in Europe but it goes on and on it's a cycle that happens and when
01:50:41
people feel powerless and helpless and there's all this chaos going around them then they tend to be attracted to authoritarian figures to easy solutions
01:50:52
that they get much more irrational they're much more likely to fall for Cults and for belief systems that offer
01:50:59
Simple Solutions and easy one sentence answers like make America great again kind of thing you know wow that sounds that's simple it's easy yeah that's we'll vote for that right so in moments
01:51:12
of chaos and helplessness people are going to grab for something that anchors them that gives them a sense of per
01:51:18
meaning right but it's often something very very dangerous us so we're in a moment like that right
01:51:26
now I think around the world it's not just the United States Believe It or Not things can
01:51:32
happen under the skin and and and are subtle like climate change there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change but it's affecting everyone it's making everyone a bit
01:51:43
neurotic the sense that we can't control our climate right that these disasters are going to keep happening and happening that's a major sense of helplessness the global economy where
01:51:57
now your business is at the mercy of something that's going on in Indonesia or Japan or China is a tremendous sense
01:52:04
of helplessness and a lack of control and your political figures don't seem to be responding to you in any way like their actions their talk doesn't lead to the kind of results that you want so
01:52:18
you're very prone to following what demagogues say who offer you like easy solutions okay so if you're living in a time like that and it's more dangerous
01:52:30
now than in the past because of social media and because of memes and because of the viral effects that are sweeping through Humanity right they didn't have
01:52:41
that during the Bubonic plague during the 100 Years War during the French and Industrial Revolution which was another period of incredible dramatic change in Europe at the turn of the 19th century
01:52:55
right so they didn't have that which is adds to the brew and makes it much more dangerous so having a longer view is to say well
01:53:07
you know this is a moment moment of chaos and I'm going to be in control of what I think and what I believe so I'm
01:53:16
going to have a degree of distrust of what people are telling me I'm not going to get so emot when people start saying this is what's evil this is what's wrong with the world
01:53:27
and to be very very very wary of people with Simple Solutions who say if we just
01:53:33
do this one thing everything will be great if we just add tariffs if we just get rid of all the immigrants America
01:53:40
will be fabulous these are fairy tales that are being pedal to you I'm not trying to be political because the other
01:53:46
side pedal their own kinds of fairy tales believe me I understand that can I ask you a question about this book um
01:53:52
which is kind of linked to what you're saying now the 48 Laws of Power what demographic emails you the
01:53:58
most about the book young men young men voted for Trump I know you're someone that I sense and from what I've understood from my research isn't a big fan of trump and so what
01:54:14
what what do you say to those people about why you you have that position and what their misunderstanding potentially the thing uh I do want to say is that
01:54:25
you want to be able to think for yourself okay so let's say you think Trump is the answer he's going to have he's going to solve all of our problems
01:54:36
well be capable of stepping back and going maybe some of the things he's doing I don't agree with aren't right
01:54:44
you know have some discrimination have some self-distance how be able to crit criticize your own side so I'm on on on the left on the Democratic liberal side
01:54:55
they are buffoons they are fools they are absolutely incompetent and I don't afraid to say it they make terrible
01:55:03
mistakes they blew this election they're stupid and it's painful to say that because it's the side that I support but
01:55:10
I do not believe in everything that they Pro promote there are things I disagree with them on them some of their woke
01:55:17
policies I just find her ludicrous okay so be able to say stand back and say I don't agree with everything he says have some dignity have some self-worth say that I can think for myself and not get
01:55:31
so emotional right so you think being masculine and being a bro is just say oh Robert F you you're such an idiot you're so blah blah blah blah blah you know put YouTube comments because I get them all
01:55:45
the time you know F you you you you can fill in the blanks right that's not being masculine that's not being tough or strong that's being an idiot because you're not able to think for yourself
01:55:58
right being emotional isn't masculinity masculinity is self-control I'm afraid being masculine is being able to step back and go this isn't necessarily the right
01:56:11
thing to do I have to think about it I have to do something that's more productive that's positive I have to
01:56:18
criticize myself sometimes weak people can't criticize them himself so if you're listening to me at least be willing to say that maybe some of my
01:56:29
ideas are wrong my ideas and your ideas right that to me is strength that to me is a masculine virtue being able to criticize your own side and not get always so emotional and overheated and
01:56:42
leaving nasty YouTube comments as as I'm sure I'm going to get right now you made me reflect on something I
01:56:50
read the other day I think it was on x and it was a study that shows that when the more testosterone you have again
01:56:56
which we can use as like a proxy for masculinity in studies you're more likely to think for yourself so they had
01:57:03
two groups of um two groups of people and they gave one group of um people testosterone I think it was a group of men testosterone they both had to do this test and the ones who had the
01:57:14
higher testosterone levels had been given like the artificial testosterone they were less likely to cave in to
01:57:20
external social expectation wow which I thought was it's appr proxy for what you're saying which is right on
01:57:26
potentially real masculinity is having the the strength of your own convictions and being able to ignore social pressure
01:57:32
to conform you you talked about wokeness in the left and how they messed it up yeah I consider myself to be I'd say
01:57:39
apolitical but it's more this sounds like a strange thing to say I can just see the merits and things on both sides
01:57:45
so I really struggle to identify with a side I I think okay that's good for the economy that's good for different social
01:57:52
classes and stuff and and so I I also just have I think a a very strong negative reaction to the binary choice that you're kind of forced to make yeah
01:58:03
right I agree I just you know so I just I've always kind of stayed out of it in that regard but in terms of this wokeness and the the way that the left
01:58:10
have screwed it up what have they got wrong well um and what's Trump got right I guess well I don't know it's it's it's too pain for me to say what Trump got right right well you going to be able to
01:58:23
uh I know well he he is I'll tell you what he's he gets right and what he's really brilliant at which is
01:58:29
communication and messaging so the Democrats completely suck at that right they couldn't craft a message to save their life if if they were you know if if everything depended on it they're
01:58:42
just terrible at it they don't know how to communicate they don't know how to make a simple message now I said simple
01:58:49
messages can be deceptive but in politics you have to have something like that you have to stand for a vision for
01:58:55
something straight and you have to be strong and you have to be willing to fight for it so I do have the ear of
01:59:01
some people in the Democratic party and I say what you got wrong and what Trump got right is to show the public that you
01:59:08
are Fighters that you are strong that you believe in something and that you're willing to upset other people other
01:59:15
groups because you believe in certain things he a large portion of the public he doesn't care about he he's interested
01:59:21
in his base he doesn't care if he's hated okay Democrats don't care if you put if you upset this special interest
01:59:28
group or that special interest group some people have to hate you being hated is a good thing stand for something and
01:59:35
be willing to fight you got that all wrong he got that right so I'm can to admit that and he's much better at
01:59:41
communicating and messaging okay when it comes to policies there's there's a pretty big
01:59:48
Gulf between us about what I think is good and bad but I mean wokeness is it it's an ideology that isn't really
02:00:01
connected to Everyday Life to the to to to what's going on around us right it's it's kind of a purity test of these are certain things that we hold and you
02:00:15
better either if you believe in them you're on the good side and if you don't believe them you're on the wrong side
02:00:20
it's a polarity it's a black and white binary way of looking at the world and that's not reality that's not how things
02:00:27
are things aren't black and white things have a gray Zone yes there are things that are evil murder is evil you know
02:00:35
social injustice we can all agree on certain social injustices yeah but it's not like this purity test of if you don't believe in this you are an evil
02:00:45
bad person you know so on the Israel Palestine issue for instance now I happen to be Jewish right um and I've never been a Zionist my whole life I'm
02:00:58
very happy to be Jewish I was Bar Mitzvah and I have nothing against it and I'm I'm not a practicing religious
02:01:05
person in Judaism I understand because I lost a large part of my ancestry during
02:01:13
the Holocaust was deeply part of my childhood a very traumatic thing that my even my parents were still recovering from so when it comes to Israel Palestine I'm very conflicted because
02:01:24
I've met Palestinians who had a terrible impact on me as they describe the horror of
02:01:31
what happened to them and how the loss of their land and How Deeply what a beautiful country Palestine was and how
02:01:38
traumatic it was to lose their home but at the same time Jews were completely homeless from
02:01:45
the Holocaust and they did originate from this land I can see both sides and it's
02:01:51
very painful and if I were to craft a solution first of all I I think Netanyahu is is is a horrible person but there is a middle ground that could be
02:02:03
had where there could be a two-state solution but the woke people oh God forget it man you're just you're just you're you're in favor of genocide get out of here that's not life that's not
02:02:15
reality that's not how the world works it's not how things happen in this world you're not dealing with the real world
02:02:21
you're just trying to act like you're morally pure you're not really willing to sacrifice to roll up your sleeves and
02:02:28
come up with practical Solutions you just want to yell and rant and act and look like you're you're the most
02:02:33
virtuous person on the planet but isn't this one of the laws of human nature fitting into our tribes and
02:02:41
because I think being in the being in the sort of political middle or wherever I am you get attacked from both sides
02:02:47
because sometimes you'll have a conversation with this person and they'll say oh my God you're you're rightwing I'll have a conversation with this person and they'll say oh my God
02:02:54
you're a left wing and so you just you never fit and actually my my instinct is tempted my instinct my sort of like my primitive instinct is like just [ __ ] pick a side Steve and then at least
02:03:05
you'll have you'll have a bunch of people to protect you you talk about that as well how having a group of people around you and not being in
02:03:11
isolation offers protection yeah so it's it's tempting it's tempting but you're going
02:03:17
to lose your soul you're going to lose your dignity in the process so it's fine to be part of a group I
02:03:25
remember uh I was a young man in 1983 I was on the left for sure I don't deny it I went to Nicaragua to report as
02:03:36
a journalist on the war going on between the contas and the sandinistas and I was more on the Sandinista side and they've
02:03:43
ended up as things have rolled out that sandinistas are truly evil I mean Ortega and what he's done to nicaragu is truly
02:03:50
evil but at the time I thought they were pretty great and I remember one day there was
02:03:57
this immense Plaza that they had and I was in managa and magaga had just suffered this incredible earthquake half
02:04:03
the city was in rubble still but there was this immense Plaza was filled with everyone because the pope had come there
02:04:11
and you know and it was a big deal because the sun Denis was like you know anti-god or something which wasn't true anyway I was there with hundreds of
02:04:22
thousands of people and um the feeling of being in the group where everybody was on the same side was so
02:04:34
intoxicating I felt so a ripple through me that I've never had in my life again of just being connected to all of these people it was so joyous and exciting but
02:04:45
then it's also very dangerous as well so you know I like having that experience but as I got older I go I don't want to feel like that again because I think it can turn very ugly and dangerous as it
02:04:58
ended up turning that way in in Nicaragua you know it's like a Hitler crowd kind of thing I'm always fascinated weirdly enough as a Jew by
02:05:10
Hitler documentaries I can watch every single Hitler documentary it's just riveting to watch like these nurburg
02:05:17
rallies my God it's like it's like a drug it's insane all the people with their torches all marching in the same way with these insignias everything you could understand how people will get
02:05:30
caught up in that kind of mania right but it's very dangerous and even that moment in managa later when I think back
02:05:38
on it hm maybe I I should have had a little more self-distance from that do you think we're in a similar time now where we're getting caught up in Mania yes we're getting caught up in in
02:05:52
easy solutions and and things that um aren't really thought out I mean what is human stupidity question that that has um f obsessed me for a long time and in fact
02:06:05
the third book in my series was originally supposed to be the history of human stupidity but my Publishers
02:06:11
thought it was too negative a subject and it would have also been too long of a book um but
02:06:19
stupidity is the inability to think the consequences of your actions to think that you are certain that you know the answers to take action based on this
02:06:29
certainty but to not think of steps three four and five that are going to happen as a result and man I'm seeing
02:06:36
that all over the place on our political map where people take action it's like our ID is is running the world like adolescence like you know I'll do this
02:06:47
man this will be cool this will be interesting you don't realize that you're going to get in a car wreck because you took this drug and you're
02:06:53
driving your car we're getting a lot of that kind of adolescent mentality I'm going to take this action because it's
02:06:59
Fierce it's angry it's going to solve things but the consequences down the road 5 years from now are going to be
02:07:06
horrific that is human stupidity you said that Trump is deploying The Laws of Power what Laws of Power has Trump successfully deployed Court attention at all cost he's the master of it he's I
02:07:21
remember remember uh I was in uh on a book tour I can't remember where it was some
02:07:27
corner of the world maybe it was Australia maybe it was Singapore and everybody was talking about Donald Trump
02:07:34
it was like the whole world is obsessed with him I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where anybody has had
02:07:40
that kind of power Court attention at all cost he's the absolute master of it he's law number 27 play on people's need to belief to create a cult like following he has a cult-like
02:07:54
following right people nothing he does can be wrong he was actually God is on his side God is protecting him that's a cult I'm sorry but that's a cult this is
02:08:05
politics it's not religion you know interaction with boldness he knows how to interaction with boldness law 28 I believe or 29 so there's several laws he
02:08:16
he creates compelling spectacles but there are a lot of laws that he violates as well
02:08:22
at my company flight Studio which is part of my bigger company flight group we're constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our
02:08:28
audiences whether that's a new show a product or a project it's why I launched the conversation cards I've relied on
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02:09:13
find the link in the description below one one of the things I I was thinking about over the Christmas period was um I identity and the pitfalls of having an identity yeah in life and it
02:09:25
reminds me of law 48 in the 48 Laws of Power which is to assume formlessness yeah what do you think of the the subject of identity because it's useful to some degree but it can also be a
02:09:35
downfall as you alluded to at the start of this conversation when you say that you know someone gets to 30 40 years old
02:09:41
and they've almost have like a midlife crisis because they've now they're now like successful I don't know accountant
02:09:50
yeah and that that's their identity that's their Friendship Circle I'm wondering what your perspective on identity is it's good not to think in in
02:10:00
such concrete terms of this is who I am to place labels on it like I'm a lawyer like I'm a right-wing Trump follower like I'm an entrepreneur you're much more than that
02:10:14
right there's something else about who you are right you have a soul I know that's an oldfashioned concept but I believe people have a soul and it can be
02:10:25
their character their traits that they have that almost have they have when they're when they were born it's what
02:10:32
makes them who they are it's their sense of dignity that they return to that self
02:10:37
but I can't put a label on it I can't put a word on it I can't say it's being a lawyer being white black left right or
02:10:45
whatever right I like to think and this will sound like I'm John Lenin in Imagine or
02:10:53
some sentimental thing like that but I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world as a citizen of of the Universe um
02:11:05
so personally maybe it's just me I'm interested in every single culture in every single religion you know I am just as much fascinated by the Yuba religion
02:11:17
in West Africa as I am by Buddhism Islam Etc they all fascinate me every country
02:11:24
every culture has something incredibly interesting about it I've been studying things like the Aztec culture I wrote about extensively in my new book just an
02:11:35
amazing story amazing history it's not me I I'm not ethnically uh Mexican I'm not related to it through time or anything but I'm related to it as a human being and I identify with it
02:11:48
on a very deep level which po the sense of Magic the sense of awe in in the face
02:11:54
of of this universe the incredible sense of spectacle that they created this and I describe it in my new book
02:12:02
the city that they C created tan KN titlan is one of the greatest most beautiful cities that ever existed that mankind has ever created On a par with Venice Italy completely destroyed by The
02:12:15
Conquistadors nothing of it remains if you go to Mexico City you'll see nothing they dest destroyed everything but the
02:12:22
picture presented by the first conis stor that arrived there my God this is like a fairy tale it is so beautiful
02:12:30
their artwork their culture their music just blows me away when I read about their philosophy I identify with that if we only had some distance we only
02:12:42
realized that we all come from the same roots that there really is not such a thing as an ethnicity that we all come
02:12:49
from the same human beings that it's all relative that all the cultures are related that all human beings are interrelated it's such a simplistic
02:13:01
notion but it kind of destroys all of our separations all our partisanship all of our niggly little sense of identity I don't get my identity from being from California or Los Angeles or being
02:13:14
Jewish or being American I get it from being a human being with this incredible vast history no nobody else is going to
02:13:21
follow me in this I know it's just me it's my wish and if human beings in a 100 years could believe that it would be
02:13:29
so beneficial for us in some way it would mean we all have to protect this planet so that we can give it to our children that you know climate change affects all of us that we're all in this
02:13:40
together I know I'm sounding not like the guy who wrote the 48 Laws of Power so excuse me for that the book you're
02:13:48
referring to that you're currently writing and you're getting to the end of thankfully um is
02:13:54
it called the law of sublime law the sublime yeah you've progressed with that book
02:13:59
since we last spoke so I'm just wondering if I ask you the question now what that book is about and why you're
02:14:04
writing it you know you you talked earlier on in this conversation about being really clear on why you're doing
02:14:10
something why are you writing that book well I write my books always with a sense of urgency like it's going to help people cuz we're facing a problem I felt
02:14:22
the 48 Laws of Power was at a moment where people were too naive I felt The Art of Seduction where people didn't
02:14:27
understand about the psychology of dealing with um this the Sexes Etc I wrote the war book because I felt people were terrible at strategy the 50 Cent book is different but Mastery because
02:14:39
people had lost a sense of how to master profession human nature because people were really bad at dealing with people
02:14:46
now the problem I think is our minds are getting smaller smaller and smaller and
02:14:51
smaller and smaller we're so absorbed in things that are so unimportant so banal
02:14:57
so trivial so stupid at the same time science is showing us the most marvelous things you could possibly imagine you know about the Big Bang Theory we're being able to understand what the first
02:15:11
minutes of our universe were like we're able to take a picture inside of a black hole and understand what what's going on
02:15:16
in the black hole we're able to understand the history of Earth someday we going to know how life
02:15:23
began it's insane what science is showing us about this world about the world that we were living in about this world that we were born into and I want to open your eyes and expand your
02:15:35
Consciousness instead of shrink it to the dimensions of what we're actually facing in this world what how insane it
02:15:43
is to be sharing the planet with animals and their strange Consciousness how they think differently but how we can connect
02:15:50
to them we're the only animal that's conscious that we know of but we can connect to animals on a way that is just insane I call it the interspecies
02:16:01
Sublime right I'm talking about how our childhood was a moment of incredible Sublimity how we were so open some people had a very painful child I don't know but we were very open to the world
02:16:13
and very imaginative about how strange it is to be alive that very easily dinosaurs could
02:16:20
be roaming this planet right now if a meteor hadn't knocked out the dinosaurs 60 some million years ago okay on and on and on I talked about love you know um
02:16:33
I'm writing now about artworks and Aesthetics and things that that trigger the sublime in US nature death which
02:16:40
will be the obviously the last chapter but I just want you to sense that there is something very strange about being alive in the 21st centur
02:16:52
and not take it for granted and not just be caught up in everything that's so familiar and conventional and Bal and
02:16:58
open your eyes because as you do this your emotions open up you're able to feel different things your thoughts open up you're able to have different ideas you become more creative your your
02:17:11
Consciousness expands anyway I could go on forever because I've been writing the book forever but that's sort of what it's
02:17:17
about and you think it'll be ready by 2026 if it isn't I don't know if I'll still
02:17:23
be here because I it's literally it's hard to explain Stephen but I can't type and I can't take a walk and I can't do the things that I used to do to kind of
02:17:36
decompress so I have to D I have to handw write everything in two notebooks with sticky pads here and there it's
02:17:43
like it's like a rats Maze and then I dictated it on the computer it's taken me this will be like ends up be like six
02:17:50
years of work because the process has been so difficult for me so my publisher I've
02:17:57
written I'm going to finish in a few weeks the 10th chapter I have two left I'm projecting to finish that by the end
02:18:03
of the year which would give me enough time to have it published in 2026 I hope I pray because if not I
02:18:11
don't know if my body can take it anymore do you mean that when you say that you're not sure if your body can take it anymore yeah I can't man I can't
02:18:17
take the focus it's like for 3 weeks now I've been going this isn't working this
02:18:22
isn't working this isn't working I'm not sleeping my my stomach is all churning okay I'm getting too old for this then suddenly I break through and and then it comes back and then it happens again and
02:18:34
again when I start a chapter the first couple months I'm relaxed I'm breathing I'm fine then when I near the end of the
02:18:40
chapter I turn into the tightest person you can imagine and I'm so tight and then I finish it and so I can't take much more of this to
02:18:50
be honest with you because I had a stroke I'm not a young man anymore so I you know I'm not gonna I'm not going to be overly dramatic here I don't want to be a drama queen I'm gonna I'll live
02:19:02
I'll be fine but seriously I I I can't I couldn't take another like two years and
02:19:07
this would wouldn't I couldn't make that two years of this book yeah no more you're going to write another book
02:19:12
though aren't you oh yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna write a book about kittens or about you know or about the Lakers or
02:19:19
something easy I don't know something nice and simple yeah one of the um the clips that I saw the other day that's
02:19:25
your one of the most viewed clips from you was about the primary law of human psychology is that people judge based on
02:19:35
appearances this isn't a nice thing to confront although everybody knows it's true what does that mean well um I made I mean it was a talk that I gave
02:19:46
recently in Atlanta and I was trying to show the game of power as it's played the rules of the game and um and the one thing that I was trying to emphasize is
02:19:57
that power is a game of pure psychology and what I mean by that is um when you have a sports you have game like baseball it's all statistics
02:20:10
and data mostly right so and there's a winner and there was a loser they won the game five to nothing Etc okay so they're parameters
02:20:21
there's very little psychology involved although in sports and so football and there's some psychology but a lot of
02:20:27
it's just playing and winning but Power isn't like that so when we elect a leader like Donald Trump over kamla Harris you might say oh he got more
02:20:38
votes but what is your judgment your decision on voting for Donald Trump over kamla Harris was it you spent four hours with a spreadsheet going over all of their economic policies deciding this
02:20:50
this is what's going to happen this is how it's going to benefit me no it was based on appearances on psychology he seemed like a leader he
02:20:57
seemed like he had more Authority I kind of like his ideas but you're not going very deeply into it right it's his
02:21:04
appearance that mattered CEOs are often hired because of their Optics because it's not based completely on the amount of money they've made and I believe me I saw this first time when I was on the
02:21:16
board of directors people were hired not on their Superior track record but on their political skills often yeah political skills is in their ability to do sort of office
02:21:28
politics and stuff like that yeah I mean there there was some uh you know metrics involved but a lot of it was Optics okay
02:21:36
so the idea is Success the power game the rule Laws of Power are in understanding human psychology never outshine the master you're creating the
02:21:48
appearance that you respect the master that they are better than you that you are going to obey them you're going to
02:21:55
follow them you're playing that game always say less than necessary you're wearing the mask of somebody powerful
02:22:01
who learns to control their tongue and control their behavior Court attention at all cost you know the behavior that
02:22:08
will get people to look at you and attend to you do not build fortresses you understand that appearing isolated
02:22:15
at somebody is very dangerous you know how to play the perfect courtier you create the appearance of power and that
02:22:22
is the power game is creating the appearance of it it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy now of course
02:22:28
results do matter they do figure into the picture I won't deny that but the main part of the game the main part of
02:22:34
the laws are understanding the role of appearances being a good actor and knowing how to manage that properly in a group situation so two people walked in here and one of them had the appearance
02:22:45
of power and one of them didn't what would the person who had the appearance of power be doing how would they be
02:22:53
carrying themselves how would they be speaking well a lot of of our idea of a leader and power is non-verbal stuff
02:23:01
because as I said we're an animal we're a social animal we don't like to believe understand that but it's true and so a
02:23:07
lot of it's the body language so a powerful person in a meeting is kind of relaxed they're kind of like this they could be they could put their bodies anywhere
02:23:21
right with a other person is like all tight and nervous and aware a powerful person has a directed focus a weak person is always was looking around
02:23:32
touching their hair touching their face it's there's a word for I forget what is in non-verbal communication but
02:23:38
it's a sign of insecurity right a powerful person is able to look at everybody in the room directly whereas somebody who's weak is
02:23:50
always kind of averting their gaze there are these these signs of kind of confidence and Carisma where you feel you are powerful
02:24:02
and it emanates outward your eyes have that certain gaze it's unfortunate because for women it's a little bit harder to play that game because some of the things that read as powerful for men
02:24:15
for women should read as powerful but often read as she's mean she's a [ __ ] right so women have a harder time in playing this game of appearances because they're judged so much on their looks
02:24:28
and not about these other things so um it's complicated but there're these kind of cues that people give off that show that they inwardly feel secure and
02:24:39
powerful and it kind of emanates outward it's there's a law in there act like a king to be treated like one if you feel like you're a king or a queen people will believe that you are
02:24:52
right it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and I have the story in there of Christopher Columbus who was like the
02:24:58
son of of like a a grosser somewhere in like Portugal or whatever but he convinced all of the kings of Spain that he came from nobility and they it was a total con
02:25:11
game and they believed to be but he carried himself like that he believed it and they gave him all this money to go and explore America that's sort of the
02:25:18
iconic story that I use for that so you can fake it till you make it you can to a degree but at some point it'll catch up to you if you can't deliver results so if it's all just make believe
02:25:32
if it's all just hype if it's all just appearance and Optics you won't get very far because you have to end up producing and some of the laws are about that it's not all about that so plan all the way
02:25:44
to the end is about like getting the results that you want by planning all the way to the end you know so it's not
02:25:52
just just Faking It that'll get you somewhere but at some point you have to produce real confidence the real confidence to to be relaxed in your chair to hold eye contact with somebody
02:26:05
where does that come from when we think about confidence and power well it can come from one of two things it can kind
02:26:12
of come from almost a form of insanity where you believe since you were a child that you were DED for something great I'm so amazing I'm so wonderful and you
02:26:24
feel it and it's not completely made up you actually do get things done but you have that natural air that like a a prince would have right what if you
02:26:36
don't have any confidence can can you cultivate it yes you can you can the thing is um the best way to to to cultivate it is to actually have results
02:26:51
that that show to actually have a record to go upon so you can kind of fake it like Columbus did but Columbus already had achieved some things when he did that he'd already had some Naval skills
02:27:04
I believe don't quote me on that but it's good to have some things to hang your hat on that will help give you that confidence so it's not completely faked
02:27:16
but William James the Great American psychologist talked about as if strategies and it's a very important Concept in Psychology from the early 20s Century if you believe as if you were
02:27:31
confident as if you are powerful it will tend to be read that way right and so like he had the analogy if you smile even though you don't feel like
02:27:47
smiling you'll end up kind of maybe feeling kind of happy so the physical action will create the psychological
02:27:54
action was his belief because he was very much believer in the body things starting from the body so if you believe
02:28:00
physically and bodily embodied that you are great that you deserve this it will kind of become part of your psychology
02:28:07
and it will radiate outward but for those that don't they just don't have that belief can you lie to yourself can
02:28:12
you tell yourself I am strong and I am powerful well everybody has some good qualities right everybody I think almost everybody has something that they can can go back to in the past and go I was
02:28:26
actually very good at that that was actually a good moment I actually was was you know scored in that particular
02:28:32
moment and you can think about that I mean actors do that all the time in movies when they want to express an
02:28:40
emotion they go back into their past like they have to express sadness they go back and they think about their father or mother who died and they call that emotion up you can call that
02:28:51
emotion up of when you did something actually really great you might have only been in high school when you were
02:28:57
on the sports team and you you threw the touchdown or something okay think about
02:29:02
that and it'll come back to you everybody has something that they can be confident about I hope if there was one law that the
02:29:09
powerless amongst us who who feel powerless or lost in the current world one law or or one fact of human nature that people who
02:29:22
are feeling lost and purposeless in a drift right now should be thinking the most about which one Springs to mind
02:29:33
well there's there's no one sharp answer to this kind of thing but one law that I
02:29:40
would highlight is interaction with boldness and what I mean by that is you if you're feeling timid if you're feeling that you're not confident in something you will start a project and
02:29:57
it will fail because you feel that way because you don't enter into it with the right energy so if you feel if you take something and you do something boldly
02:30:09
everybody loves the Bold everybody admires it even if it's stupid even if it fails it will gain you that kind of
02:30:16
attention and so let's say you're thinking about starting a business well just go ahead and do it and be bold about it and start it and be as dramatic as you can and be as confident as you
02:30:28
can and it creates a self-fulfilling Dynamic people admire it they don't admire the timid and the insecure and
02:30:36
the guy who spends two years talking about that podcast he's going to start they admired that bloke who just decided
02:30:42
all right I'm going to start it I don't care if nobody likes it fine you know uh
02:30:48
I remember this guy interviewed me once he had a magazine called bad ideas and it was a really successful magazine in
02:30:55
like the early 2000s and I said where did you get that idea and he said my mother told me that to start that
02:31:01
magazine was a really bad idea right so I thought I'd put the title there you know and that would be the title of it and I just went ahead and started it and it was very successful because it was a
02:31:11
great like marketing gimmick and it also worked and it was actually full of bad ideas of the book thing but very in a
02:31:18
very interesting way um so being bold being different everybody nowadays I'm getting on my goddamn Soap Box again and I'm so I apologize to everyone about this but everyone is so
02:31:31
similar everybody is so afraid everyone's trying to be like everybody else you go out there and you start
02:31:38
something that's different that's you that's unique that's loud that proclaims I'm a different voice on it you're going
02:31:44
to get attention so I want more bold people in this world we've got too much fear you you know that's I'm not maybe a
02:31:51
big admirer of in some ways of Elon Musk but damn it he's always bold and it always works for him he doesn't start just a a minimal business about maybe
02:32:02
sending Rockets out there he starts think it's going to take you to the Mars he's bold and people love it the world
02:32:08
moves out the way of boldness I was thinking as you speaking about a memory of mine of being at a festival in New York City called Global citizen I was
02:32:14
like Beyonce was performing and stuff all the biggest names in the world and my friend was drunk
02:32:20
and we were in the like VIP section behind the stage but we could see that there was this access all areas artist
02:32:26
section and because my friend was drunk I've never witnessed anything like it this guy gets me takes my hand goes come
02:32:32
with me he walks directly at the two massive security guards with this boldness this conviction they just move out of the way I thought you going to say they punched him no they just moved
02:32:43
out of the way because of the way he was walking they just thought well he must he must be in here and they moved out of
02:32:49
the way they didn't check past they just moved out of the way and he continued to do that all day and it was because he was drunk he he's done a documentary
02:32:55
about this he used to be an alcoholic so he had this confidence when he was drunk where the world would just like move out
02:33:01
of his way and he ended up going in what I believe to be the president of some Asian country's dressing room again
02:33:08
because he was just walking at things right and the way he he was walking it just moved out of his way right but I've
02:33:14
never forgotten that actually I deployed it today when I went for a run um with my girlfriend cuz I wanted to use a
02:33:19
bathroom in a restaurant and I figured that if I just walk with a certain conviction that the the staff will like
02:33:26
let me pass they'll assume maybe I'm sat here and I ended up walking through a conference uh where you have to like it
02:33:32
was like a conference Hall in this hotel where they're checking people's badges just cuz I was the way I was walking nobody checked mine all right and
02:33:38
there's a metaphor here for life and you kind of allude to it in your book about like the Bolder you are the better um
02:33:44
some of these sub subheadings I find really cool Lion Circle the hesitant prey boldness strikes fear and fear
02:33:51
creates Authority going halfway with half a heart digs the deeper grave hesitation creates gaps boldness
02:33:57
obliterates them yeah and audacity separates you from the her yeah yeah I want if one thing if I have one Legacy if I create more bold people in this
02:34:08
world I will be happy because we've got too many timid hairs out there we need more bold
02:34:15
Lions yeah something start your business write that book do it just do it please
02:34:21
and then write me afterwards and either blame me or thank me I wish I'd been Bolder when I was um starting my
02:34:26
entrepreneurial career I wish someone had said to me whatever your dream is Steve when you describe it to people
02:34:33
times it by 10 whatever number you're trying to raise as an investment that's for sure in
02:34:39
negotiations you ask for 200,000 that's what you get you ask for a million you maybe get 500,000 but it's 300,000 more than you would have gotten if You' been timid always in negotiation ask the
02:34:52
higher price and mean it and say it with conviction right and make sure you think
02:34:58
your price is high you'll get the higher price it takes a certain confidence though and that's really what's I think
02:35:04
at the heart of the problem maybe we just all need to be a bit more drunk that was a joke that's the lesson that's
02:35:11
law well we have a closing tradition on this podcast okay where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not
02:35:17
knowing who they're going to be leaving it for the question that's left for you oh sh is close your
02:35:24
eyes and imagine yourself 10 years from now where are you what are you doing and
02:35:31
who are you with I'm hoping that I'm alive and healthy and that my uh walking has gotten better so that I can take a walk
02:35:44
and that I'm I'm with my wife and that we're climbing a mountain which I haven't been been able to do I loved
02:35:50
hiking and I'm able to do that I will be crying in that moment because I am so frustrated not being able to do what I love the most and if that moment arrives in 10 years God I I don't know how I
02:36:05
don't know I'll be so joyous you know to be able to do something that I love so much and has been taken away from me and
02:36:11
to have it back I'm not asking to be you know an athlete or do what I could do before if I could just take a simple walk up a hill be so happy that's what I'm
02:36:22
imagining it's a really important lesson because we just take it all for granted don't we please don't please don't and
02:36:28
other people I I read about who've had experiences like this who were in an accident at a young age it's worse
02:36:34
because I was already in my early 60s uh who've had this it's just like how do you deal with it you know people who were like athletic who were energetic who were outdoors and then
02:36:47
it's all taken away it's a terrible story but you learn life skills and you learn how to deal with it and then I still have my brain so I'm able to write a book Thank God but I really really
02:36:59
want to be able to swim and Hike again God I'd be so happy yes um puts everything in perspective when you tell me that you'd be in you'd be crying tears of joy to walk up a hill I just to
02:37:11
walk up straight up the hill where I'm the street I am I would be crying I would my wife can can attest to that
02:37:17
because I'm so frustrated I'd be so happy you know yeah what would you say to someone like me who is quite clearly
02:37:24
because of the privilege that I have of my Mobility going to be taking taking it all for granted
02:37:30
and well you know I I walk people walk by my window in my office I've told you I think it was on my last conversation I mentioned this so I don't want to keep repeating myself but I see them walking
02:37:42
their dog or riding their bicycle or jogging and a go they don't realize how beautiful that looks to me they don't appreciate it and because they
02:37:54
don't appreciate it it doesn't mean that much to me them it means more to me than it does to them they should be
02:38:01
appreciating it they should be thinking I think of my neighbor he's just out in his driveway fixing cars and he's listening to his music he should be so
02:38:12
happy that he's got his body that he's doing this that he's in the moment that he's present but he's not I'm the one
02:38:18
that's feeling his Joy at being like that but you should be feeling that in your everyday activities that you're
02:38:25
alive that you're a human being that walking you take for granted walking as somebody who can't walk it I know like you're always balancing on one leg you
02:38:37
don't realize that when you walk the miracle of a human walk is at every moment you're always on one leg that's a balancing act and you're able to do that you're able to run and do it don't don't
02:38:49
take that stuff for granted you know cuz I can't every step I take I have to think about balancing on that left leg
02:38:55
of mine you had a a a wasp or a beasting that resulted in a stroke which is what
02:39:01
pretty much changed your Mobility if you could go back and speak to Robert before that 20-year-old Robert
02:39:10
and you could just whisper something to him I would whisper to 20-year-old Robert
02:39:16
um just don't think about it Robert everything is going to come out okay you you you know don't just be who you are don't regret anything it's all working
02:39:27
out for the best and uh just I can't say like I would say Enjoy the moment because I was enjoying my 20s immensely
02:39:40
but maybe when I was 34 I would have said you know don't give up it's going to happen everything's going to fit into
02:39:47
place and you're going to have an amazing life you're going to be meeting Stevie
02:39:52
Wonder one of your Idols when you were a kid Bob Dylan is going to be mentioning you in a book and has read your book the
02:39:58
people that you loved when you were a kid you're going to be meeting and hanging out with 50 c you're going to be meeting presidents you have no idea
02:40:04
what's ahead of you okay I would maybe said something like that but then maybe I would have gotten lazy and I wouldn't
02:40:10
have written it because I would have thought oh just it's all going to happen so so maybe the doubt and the worry and
02:40:18
the yeah yeah is useful and the neurotic energy yeah Robert thank you so much we're all very very excited for your
02:40:24
upcoming book oh yeah so am I so um you talk about urgency we can't wait okay um
02:40:31
and we're very much looking forward to it because I know how much you pour into these books and you've expressed how much you sort of agonize over it being
02:40:37
exactly what you wanted to say and not all authors are like that um some are a little bit more flippant um so I
02:40:44
appreciate that so much and I appreciate the time that you've spent on my show and the value that you've given my audience they I was looking at some of the comments
02:40:50
earlier and it's just incredible the impact you've had on people by sharing your own story talking about the stroke
02:40:55
and and the gratitude that that's given you for for life and the Gratitude we need to have so thank you so
02:41:01
unbelievably much very welcome thank you for the opportunity for the honor of being on this incredibly exciting podcast of years and as I say every
02:41:08
morning this is my third time I've always had like a I've always been in a good mood the morning before I don't
02:41:13
know if it's a coincidence or if it's something about being on your your podcast so thank you the honor is all
02:41:20
mine thank you Robert you're welcome this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show
02:41:26
regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do
02:41:32
just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and I commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my
02:41:38
power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll
02:41:43
find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much
02:41:49
a [Music]