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Don't bring your authentic self to work. I want your professional self. You can bring your authentic self to Thanksgiving meal with your family if
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you'd like to. Your authentic self is about who? Me, me, me, me, me. Everything is what's happening to me.
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What's in it for me? Do you know that you impact other people? You affect other people's lives. You make the work
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environment easier or more taxing. Can someone learn to be a better self-regulator of their emotions?
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Yeah. So, I've been around former SEALs, US Secret Service presidents, and I learned a lot about communication,
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reading people, confidence, and I'll share these things. So, first of all, Ebie Porus is the former US Secret
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Service agent. From guarding presidents to reading liars, she now reveals the strategies she used to make anyone respect you,
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trust you, and give you what you want. I've been around very confident people, and they had a really good circle around
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them in her circle. Because if you're exposing yourself to people and environments that are not good for you, that will actually impact your life
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negatively. You know, I always say be careful who you try to save. Some people will drown you. And then the other thing I would see presidents do is they were
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very good at delegating. So they didn't need to know everything because confident people are okay with not knowing all the information. So your
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brain is like a bathtub. The bathtub can only hold so much water. If you keep warding water in the bathtub, it's going
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to overflow. That's your cognitive load. My bathtub only holds the water it needs to hold in. And another thing that the
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Secret Service has taught us is that that's really important to use your hands because when people don't see hands, it's a sign of untrustworthiness.
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Like you can't trust them. So when you see hands, open hands, I'm no threat. And then there's communication skills,
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manipulation, tactics, and a strategy to make good decisions. And I will go through them, but the two most important
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things are to my regular listeners. I know you don't like it when I ask you to subscribe at the start of these conversations. I don't like saying I don't like it being in there. None of us like it. It's frustrating. Do you know
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what's also frustrating? It's also frustrating when I go into the back end of the YouTube channel and I see that 56% of you that listen frequently to
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this podcast haven't yet subscribed. And so many of you don't even know that you haven't subscribed because I see in the comment section you say to me, you go,
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"I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe." And that actually fuels the show. It's basically like you're making a donation to the show. So that's why I
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ask all the time because it enables us to build and build and build and build and we're going for the long term here.
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So all I'd ask you is if you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team here. Hit the subscribe
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button and we'll continue to build this show for you. That's my promise. Thank you to all of you guys that do subscribe. Means the world to me. Let's
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get on with the show. What is the overarching theme of why people you think are drawn to your your particular message and what part of that message are they drawn to?
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I get bombarded on all social media platforms and in email and it's always like Evie, I have this problem. Please help me. And it can range from
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I have a problem communicating to I'm in an abusive relationship to my brother was murdered and they're saying it's a suicide. It's not. So I get everything.
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And I think what I'm seeing is there are a lot of people that are not doing well. It seems to me that people are tired of
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being told that they have no control over the outcome of their lives and no control over the relationships. Cuz when
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you tell people it's not your fault this happened to you and it's okay that you're this way, which it is, I think
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people don't want to stay there anymore. And so people look to I don't have to I don't
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have to be weak all the time or I don't have to feel weak. You can have a weak moment. It's not the same thing with
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feeling fundamentally weak or insecure or insignificant all the time and then looking at a moment or a situation or moments in your life and saying, "I'm
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this way now because of all these things that happened." And I think for a while that worked. I think for a while people
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were buying it because it's like it's not your fault like you're like this. Now this happened to you here. It's not
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your fault that you don't trust people. this happened to you here? And so because that theme's been going on for so long, what it does is it renders you powerless because it's saying you're
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this way because of all this other stuff and it's not your fault. And that translates to I have no power over it.
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I'm I'm a result of what's happened to me. And that's a powerless state to be, which all it does is keep suppressing you down. So you just stay there instead of saying you know it happened to you
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okay now to where do we go from here and it's wild because I did consultations and mentor sessions for a window of time
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and I would only do either one or three I wouldn't do more than that because what the most important thing I didn't want people to rely on me it's like I'll come in and I'll give you some
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guideposts and but my goal is not to make you reliant on me to keep coming back to me. Three was the max I would do
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with someone. No more than that. Three sessions. Three sessions. Three sessions. Because my goal is if I keep you coming back to
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me, then I'm not helping you. All I'm doing is reorienting you to come to me. I'm going to fix it for you. My goal was always no, you have the ability. I might need to kind of shift things around or
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shake things up a little bit in your mindset, but in the end, you are very well capable. And most people are. They
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just don't learn. They just don't know how to trust themselves. You talked about how using the past to diagnose
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your current self by saying this happened to me so I'm this way is almost it's like a short-term friend in the
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moment because it kind of helps you feel heard and understood and it justifies the way that you are but it ends up
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being a long-term enemy in the context that you're then stuck with the results of who you are for better or for worse. And I was thinking about myself. I was thinking all the ways that I've like
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justified who I am today using something that happened in the past. And actually whenever I do that it makes that
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behavior even if it's the byproduct of it is making me unhappy really hard to change. Like it's very hard to change.
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Like if I say this happened when I was a kid and my my dad was unorganized or whatever and messy so I'm a messy person. It's almost like etching it into cement
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or something. It it you know. Can I ask you a question? Why does it matter? I don't I don't understand why we have
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to psychoanalyze everything we do. I feel we waste so much time in trying to figure out I'm like this today because of this this and this. Sometimes I have
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found there's no clear reason why. There's no there's nothing to to to make sense of. Even sometimes when people try to assess like why does this person treat me this way? Why that? What did I
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do? Why this? Sometimes there are reasons and sometimes that person's just an [ __ ]
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There's nothing analyzed. There's nothing to figure out. there's nothing that I dive deep on. That person, you
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just happen to fall on an [ __ ] And that's okay. Let's move on. So, there's moments where that exists, too. But I feel like we try so hard to figure it
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out that we do more damage. And you know, like I Your brain is like a bathtub. Your cognitive load is like a bathtub. Think of this as a bathtub. If you have a
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bathtub, the bathtub can only hold so much water. If you keep putting water in the bathtub, right, it's going to
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overflow. That's your cognitive load. So, if I have my cognitive load, my bathtub, and I keep putting water,
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water, water, it's going to overflow. It's the same thing when you put stuff in there. I'm going to add more stuff and more stuff and more stuff. Your
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cognitive load is overflowing. It's maxed. You're inefficient. You're sloppy. You're not getting things done
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right. If you are, you're just barely getting there. You're everywhere. You're stressed out. You're fra frazzled
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because you're maxed out. You're beyond maxed out. So everything I do, and I will tell you, I learned this from
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watching presidents. I keep my load light. My bathtub only holds the water it needs to hold in. So it protects you from overextending yourself, stressing
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yourself, and it also keeps you from making bad decisions. You make good decisions. There's something called
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decision fatigue where the more stuff I add, we think the busier I am, the better I am. I'm I'm moving. I'm hustling. I'm doing all this stuff. Look how maxed out I am. Just because you're
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busy, it doesn't mean you're being productive. Those two things are not synonymous. So often people think
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leaders keep adding adding. No. You know what good leaders do? And this is what again I I've learned. They take out of
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that bathtub. They take out. What can I do less of so I can be exceptional at the other things I do? Really great example. This is public knowledge so I can share it. President Barack Obama, he
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had 30 of the same suits. Why? Why do you think? 30 of the same exact suits. So he didn't have to make so many decisions every day. Yeah. He didn't want to sit and figure
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out what he's going to wear. It's a decision he didn't have to make. That keeps his bathtub light. Think
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about all the decisions he had to make every single day. I want a light bathtub. Boop. Take that thing out.
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Lighten your bathtub. So when you're overthinking and overanalyzing and trying to process all this stuff, you
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are maxing out that bathtub. So how can you perform? You don't have infinite resources. You do not have an infinite cognitive load and you do not have an
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infinite emotional load. Don't keep adding. Your job is to take out so that the things you do do, you do exceptionally well and you're much more
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emotionally stable. I think maybe one of the reasons why people are tempted to go back is they think that if they go back
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into their history and understand things, then they can change something in the present that's going to change
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their future. So they think, you know, if I can figure out why I I'm low confidence, what happened to me, then I
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can do something today which is going to change tomorrow. So I guess I would say and again I would
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see this from I've done hundreds of mentor sessions. I would tell them where are you right now? What do you do now
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and what do you want to change now? So, I'm low confidence. I move through the world as if I'm trying to not take
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up too much space. I feel like people are rude to me and I I just have bad luck. I have bad luck with men. I'm I'm pretending I'm a woman. I have bad luck with men. Um and I just feel like people
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don't respect me enough. And also, I just feel like I don't get the credit I deserve. I see everyone around me, Evie,
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getting more credit for doing less work. Okay, so this is great. So, this is probably a person that you cannot help
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number one cuz cuz everything's bad. Everything is bad. And you'll get those from time to time. You get those. Everything's a problem. And if everything's a problem right now, if you
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get that persona, which it does exist. It's it's you get them. That person doesn't want a solution.
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Really? Nope. What do they want? They want me to validate how they feel. That's what they
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want. They don't want a solution. If everything's the problem, think of it this way. If every bar I go to I go to I
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get into fight into a fight, it's not it's not the it's not the bar. So when someone's like, I have this problem,
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this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, they're they're so set in who and how they are, they
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they want to stay there. Often people do want an audience. Often people do want to be told, "I'm so sorry. I'm so I feel
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so bad that happened to you." Sometimes too when bad things happen to us, we get a lot of attention as a result. Let's
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say something really horrific happens. And I've seen it with somebody maybe who had a a severe illness or lost a loved
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one. When you're dealing with something like that, what happens, right? Immediately people come to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They're
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there to support you. You get this bombardment of attention. You feel good, but then eventually people move on with
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their lives. And then you get addicted to where did all that attention go? I want some of it. So what do I do? I look for something else to be a problem so I can get more empathy, more sympathy,
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more attention. And so there are people that get stuck in that cycle. Good people, I I know good people who get
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stuck in that cycle, but I'm also aware of them because every time I speak to them, something's not right. I can't
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help them. I don't even bother trying to help them. One, they don't really ask me. And so I'm very aware. I don't give
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unsolicited advice. It It's wrong. It's not my place. And if they want it, they'll ask. And then even then, I'm always very aware, is this even going to land on this person? Because I'm coming
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back to me. My bathtub's full. So, I can't really invest all that energy in you if it's I don't mean it to be cold,
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but if it's a a waste of time. There's two personas that I'm thinking about. One of them is personal to me,
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and then one of them's personal to one of my friends. And before we started, you said one of the things you like is very specific examples. So, here's a
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specific example. There's someone I know very well, extremely well. I've known them pretty much my whole life. And when
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they came to the UK, they experienced a lot of racial abuse because they came to the UK in like 1994. They lived in an
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area that was all white. And the abuse they experienced was very, very real. The UK, the part of the UK they lived in became more diverse um over the years.
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They've been there for 20, 30 years. And now the race racial abuse has pretty much gone away. But you wouldn't you
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wouldn't think it because when if you met this person who did go through this abuse, so much of their identity became
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formed around that abuse. So even though they now live in an area where there's no abuse, they still find
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a perpetrator. They find perpetrators everywhere. And actually I I've come to believe with this particular person who I know very well that that identity depends upon it. And that's kind of what I was hearing in what you're saying is
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there's I don't think this person could survive if they didn't have a perpetrator anymore. And so much so that they've started finding perpetrators in their own family. And their whole family
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has now almost cut this person off because you know their identity is being a survivor and like a hero heroic
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survivor. And now that the enemy has gone, so much depends on that identity that, you know, this person's at war at home and they don't speak to their kids,
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their grandkids, and they've lost all of their family because they've now convinced that the stepmother is racist
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and the other step, you know, the other um daughter-in-law is racist and this person said this thing which is racist
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or or is abusive towards me. And you see this in a lot of people that you know maybe they did go through something but
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now they need that thing to hold their identity in place. So you reminded me of a story which I'll
00:14:41
tell you but here's the thing. If you're looking for a problem you will always find one.
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You will always find a problem. And that's the thing. So it's the mindset. What do I do about that person if I'm a
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bystander? Nothing. Really? Nothing. I don't try and help them change them. No. Because did he did he or she ask you? No. don't do it.
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Why? Because they're not they don't want it. And you might end up upsetting them anyway. They might get even angrier from
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um from it because they're in a space where they're so emotional and self focused and they want to live there. Do you know too when you sit and you
00:15:16
ruminate like you you it activates parts of the brain that make you feel alive. Think of it this way. You get like you
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get hits. You know how you get dopamine hits? I feel good from certain things. Well, you get a hit when you even when
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you're angry or upset. Do you ever get so upset or angry and you get worked up? What do you adrenaline hit your your cortisol is going up. What do you do? I
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feel alive. I'm here. I'm there. That feels good, too. It's it's a different type of feel, but I feel present. I feel this. I feel like I feel something.
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So, unless somebody comes to you, and I've learned this lesson, and says, "Stephen, I want your advice." I
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wouldn't give it. One, you're going to be exhausted. you're doing so many things, you don't have that ability.
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Two, the person's not they're not there to hear it. So, you also have to have someone who wants your your guidance or advice. So, even when I did mentor sessions or consultations, it probably
00:16:11
like several times where I knew I was like, this is a waste of my time. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to give
00:16:17
you a full refund. I'm not for you. Because I understood. I'm like, this person isn't they're not registering.
00:16:23
There's You did remind me of a story. I remember once I was doing a news story um and I went and I interviewed somebody who was part of the cleanup efforts for
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9/11 right September 11th cleanup e efforts and uh he was doing all this stuff to you know present day to help victims of 9/11 today so I go with my
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camera person or the producer I can't remember we go to set up to interview this person so I have my own I've had my own experience with 911 I worked in the
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World Trade Center That's where New York field office was. I was there on that day. I lost colleagues and friends, but
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this person knows nothing about this. So, I show up and I'm getting them ready and uh we're talking and there's this
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big uh tower tattoo, the towers, 9/11 tattoo. As I'm mikeing up the person, the towers, there was a room in the h home that had all this 9/11 uh
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memorabilia, like a whole room. And I remember being there thinking, okay, this person must have had some really serious trauma exposure. And I'm not trying to minimize. So I spoke to them,
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this person, and he had some kind of injury as well. And I said, "Oh, tell me about it." Well, I was there and um I was injured when I was welding. Something kind of
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fell on my foot and as a result, I had to go on some kind of disability. And I said, "What happened to your foot?" And
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it was uh I think he had lost like his toe or something, his pinky. And I said, "Okay." And I said, "How long were you
00:17:54
there?" "3 days." I said, "Were you there for the day of the event?" "No." "So you weren't there for the day of the event." So your exposure to 9/11 was 3
00:18:05
days and then you got injured. Yes. Okay. So I'm clocking this internally to myself. His whole life was centered
00:18:13
about around the drama, the the the trauma, the the overcoming 9/11. Everything was 911, 911, 911. And it was such an identity space. He was so it was
00:18:26
all like such a horrible thing for him. And I'm thinking, it wasn't to minimize, but I'm thinking,
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how did you build your whole livelihood present day around that small event? But
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that was his identity. I I remember thinking I'm like I did the interview and I had to go. I was like I can't be around this
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because he was just so selffocused on how bad that experience was that everything he did and who he was to the point where you have tattoos on your body of the World Trade Center. And I'm
00:18:56
thinking how is this helping you move forward? There's this concept in psychology called um secondary gain that I was I
00:19:07
was writing a book about. I'm writing this book at the moment. I was I wrote a chapter about secondary gain and it basically says exactly what you're
00:19:13
describing which is there's always a secondary gain from pain. Typically there's like something you benefit from it and the problem is people can get addicted to that and sometimes it's like safety or comfort that you get from it.
00:19:26
Sometimes it's identity and sometimes it's remuneration you know might be money or other rewards. The other
00:19:32
example that I was going to say in terms of personas that I'm aware of is the kid who is in his bedroom and can't leave
00:19:39
his bedroom because he says, you know, there's something wrong with him. He might be clinically obese or have some
00:19:45
kind of other issue. And his family around him are his support network. And I I actually know someone in this situation where they just don't leave their bedroom. And the mother, I think
00:19:56
she's also getting her identity from being the mother with that child who she's propping up. And it was it was interesting that in this particular case with one of my best friends who lives in
00:20:07
the Middle East, when she stopped doing that, when she actually heard something on this podcast and stopped
00:20:13
propping this person up, enabling enabling them, this person got better, very very quickly got better because she basically said, "I'm not going to I can't help anymore. and also don't talk to me about this. I don't have the as
00:20:25
you say like the cognitive energy anymore. This person got better and it made me realize that you know sometimes two people can keep one person trapped.
00:20:32
They can I'm the mother. I'm the savior that is protecting my child who is unwell and
00:20:38
the child is being the cared for um and both of them are getting love and attention and affection from that sort of abusive unhealthy relationship.
00:20:49
A lot of people find themselves there. We think about sometimes the attention you get. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that
00:20:54
happened to you. That's so sad. That can become addicting because you're constantly looking for it. But again, I
00:20:59
I've come to accept people as they are. I also look at it, who am I to tell you to be different. If this is where you
00:21:05
like to live and how you like to live, live it. I think where it becomes a problem for folks is when it bleeds into
00:21:10
your own life. So like with the mom where she had that moment where she's like, I don't want to do this anymore because it's impacting my life. then I
00:21:17
can understand that cuz she's like I don't want to participate in this. But I just have found like I want you to think of it this way like it's like think of a
00:21:28
an iceberg. Think of an iceberg. You see the top of the iceberg, the little blip at the top of the the water and then the
00:21:34
the the big part underneath which is the vast majority of what makes an iceberg. We're like that. When you see another
00:21:40
human being, I want you to think of they got this huge bottom portion of this iceberg that you don't see. And it's who
00:21:45
makes them what they are. So one the things that make you who you are today are all the things that have accumulated over the entire time span of your life. Family is a huge one. Did you have
00:21:56
family? Were they good family? Did you have one parent, both parents? Did you have any parents? Right? Friends, who
00:22:02
were your friends growing up? Who are your friends now? Your experiences, your dramas, your
00:22:07
traumas, all those things make it who you are. Your values, your belief systems, your personality. Do you know that personality in a human being forms
00:22:14
in infancy? So all these things make you up. Even your age, who you are today is
00:22:20
probably v vastly different, Stephen, than who you were 5 years ago versus 10 years ago versus 15 years ago. That's
00:22:26
somebody's iceberg. So when you take all of that, you have that iceberg, do you think you're going to roll in and within
00:22:33
what a couple hours or a couple conversations, you're going to get them to what? Shift. That's what you're up
00:22:38
against. So often people become very upset because they can't change other people and that's where I'm like accept what you had. I give a keynote literally this week and a woman came to me in
00:22:49
tears at the end. This was at a business conference. So this was for business for communication and a very different thing
00:22:55
but she she came up to me afterward. She said I really want a guidance from you. I said sure. What is it? Are you
00:23:02
okay? She said, 'I have a husband and he's very overweight and I've done everything I can uh to try to get him to
00:23:10
change and I want to try to use these influence strategies on him to change him that you talked about. Could you help guide me? I said, how long have you
00:23:16
been dealing with this? She's like, a long time, years. I said, does he want to change? No. She's like, but I try and
00:23:22
I don't want to give up. I said, did you see that part where I t the part where I talked about the iceberg? Remember I
00:23:27
showed you the iceberg and I said, accept people as they are? I said, "He's the iceberg." I said, "It's not him
00:23:35
that's the issue now. It's you. You're not accepting what you have in front of you. That's what he is. Unless you
00:23:41
accept, you can't adapt." So, what you're doing is you're not living in truth. You're living in what I hope he
00:23:47
would be, what he has a potential to be, but not where he actually is now. When you accept where he is now, this is who
00:23:53
he is. This is who he wants to be. The next question is, can you adapt to that? Meaning, are you okay with that?
00:23:59
adapting to his lifestyle and staying with him. That's the thing. What she's trying to do is change him, make him fit
00:24:06
so that she can have what she wants. Wrong. She's trying to solve the wrong problem. He's not changing. This is it.
00:24:14
This is what you've got. The question now is, I accept my problem. I live in truth. This is how my husband wants to
00:24:20
be. Can I adapt my lifestyle so that I can still stay with him, or is that a big of a deal breaker where I have to pull away? She was asking the wrong question because she's scared of the potential
00:24:33
answer or because she's not seeing the truth in her problem. Meaning this is who he is
00:24:39
fundamentally. You've been trying for years to change him and you're trying to make your life better to the point where
00:24:45
you're emotionally upset. Like she was so upset about it. And I said, "But you're trying to solve something that
00:24:51
you can't solve. This is a whole other person. This iceberg, this bottom part, he's not he doesn't want it. He's fixed.
00:24:59
What's happening is PE, this is called adaptability. We want to adapt to our problems. She's not adapting to her problem. She's not accepting what her problem is. The problem is this is my
00:25:10
husband. This is who he is and this is who he wants to be. But I might be worried that he's going to die or something. If he
00:25:16
he very well will. And you know, if you see someone that's about to die, one should intervene. No. But can you intervene? And does he want
00:25:27
you to intervene? He doesn't want her to intervene. And so what matters to you most? Do you want to keep doing this all
00:25:33
day long because that's what she's doing to the point where she's crying when I'm coming off stage? Or do you accept this
00:25:40
is him? This is him. I love him. I can't change him. I accept him as he is now. Am I willing to adapt to the truth of what my relationship is and stay married and be okay or not? She's the one who
00:25:55
needed to adapt, but she couldn't adapt because she wasn't living in truth. It's like, look at it this way. Your partner's cheating on you and you don't
00:26:02
want to know. You don't want to hear it, right? And but you're unhappy you're having all these issues. Part of the
00:26:08
reason you're having these issues is because you can't accept the truth. The majority of people struggle. 99.9% of
00:26:14
people are not adaptable because they don't live in truth. What's the true problem you have? Accept it. Then
00:26:21
decide, okay, now where do I go from here? But people don't accept the truth. It's how I wish it could be, how I would
00:26:28
like it to be, how it was, how it could be. No, what am I dealing with right now? Doesn't mean you have to like it. And this is not agreement. She doesn't have to agree with his lifestyle, but
00:26:40
it's accepting this is who he is now. My choice is do I stay or do I go? How how
00:26:47
much of a pain is this for you? So, you think you should never try and change someone? I think it's wrong to do that to people, especially if
00:26:59
they're showing you repeatedly, I don't want you to do this. Leave me alone. And you also too, Stephen, whether you agree with people's lifestyle choices or not, it is their life. It is not yours.
00:27:12
And so I think that there's also something a bit arrogant when we think we're going to roll in and let me tell
00:27:18
you how I should live. My values and your values could be vastly different to who am I to impose how I think you should be? Who says I'm right?
00:27:30
Who said who says I'm right? I say I'm right based on my own value system. But people are vastly different. How people
00:27:36
see things and what they think is right or wrong, it's not the same. So, I I accept people as they are and I respect them. I may not want to hang out with them because it's just not the circle of
00:27:48
people I want to be. But I also it how narcissistic of is it of me to think I'm going to roll in and change you. It's
00:27:54
kind of like I did interviews, interrogations on terrorists. And when I walked into an interview or interrogation, I did was not delusional
00:28:05
to think that I'm going to walk in and I'm going to tell this person, hey, I'm I'm part of the good guys. I I I just
00:28:12
want, you know, to protect people and America, you know, we're really just trying to do the right thing. This is a
00:28:17
person his iceberg that was set for years. He's thought a certain way. He's he developed who he was 30, 40 years old, whatever it is. this is who he is and I'm going to roll in what and get
00:28:30
you to change your whole mindset. I knew who I had. I accepted who I had. I didn't try to change the narrative. Oh no, I'm this. Oh no, I'm that. I didn't do any of that. But my goal was what am
00:28:42
I trying to get to? I was like, well, I need information on the next attack. I need to know where the next weapons are
00:28:48
coming in. I need to thwart this. So, I need to get him talking. And that's what
00:28:53
I'm looking for. I'm not trying to change his value system. I'd be there all day and all night, weeks. It would
00:28:59
never work. That's what we do. We try to fundamentally change who people are. I have people I care about very much and love and I have tried too. There are times where you love somebody so deeply
00:29:10
and you're like, "Please, especially if it's something that harms them, but I've also learned they don't want it." And
00:29:16
the ironic is sometimes the more you try, the angrier they become with you. Who are you? Right? You're imposing
00:29:22
yourself and your beliefs on somebody else. And they're right. Who am I? Just because I think life should be lived
00:29:28
this way, it does not mean that they believe life should be lived this way. They're probably thinking, "What's wrong
00:29:33
with this? Nothing's wrong with this." It's interesting when I was going through our previous conversations,
00:29:39
Evie, and I was looking at the moments that people replayed the most or enjoyed the most or cut the most or sent to
00:29:45
their friends the most, the overarching thing I learned is that there's a lot of people out there who don't feel very
00:29:52
strong. They feel they don't feel seen. They don't feel respected. They themselves, I think, feel like they're low confidence and they look into a world full of other people who seem to be more confident and have
00:30:04
everything figured out and they can't relate and they feel at some level some of them um a little bit unappreciated.
00:30:11
But I think the bigger point here is about confidence and strength and feeling like yeah, feeling feeling like
00:30:17
I can I can get what I want from life. Okay, we're going to break this down, but I want to ask you a question if it's
00:30:22
okay. Yeah. How do you build your confidence or what's something you do that builds your confidence?
00:30:28
Oh, that's a great question. Um, do you know what's really interesting? When I was 20 years old, I think I thought I was confident, but I don't think I was. And I only kind of figured
00:30:40
this out in hindsight because this is I don't think I've said this before, but between the age of 18 and 20, every girl
00:30:48
that I was interested in and would get some way down the line with would eventually reject me. And then from
00:30:55
about I know people go, "Yeah, because you made a million dollars." No, listen, it wasn't that. Even when I had the
00:31:00
money, I was still having I was still being rejected by women. And then at some point around like 25
00:31:08
to 30, everything changed. And so I always say to my friends, I said to one of my
00:31:14
friends the other day, I was like, I don't know why. I don't know the science of this, but what I do know is that it's very, very hard to fake confidence
00:31:20
because I think it lives in a thousand micro expressions. I was doing everything the book said, and I still
00:31:26
wasn't getting the results in terms of a romantic context. It was like these women could just like figure out at some deeper level that I wasn't it. And I
00:31:33
never knew what I was doing because I guess I can't see myself. Maybe I was texting back too fast. That's kind of what you think. Maybe the way I was
00:31:39
standing. But it it taught me over time that actually you should aim at real confidence. And the real confidence came
00:31:45
when the story in my head about myself was that I was of high value. And I'll share a story. So the reason I said this to my friend literally two weeks ago was because he was dating someone and she
00:31:57
turned around to him. She's a very young girl. He's 35. She was 25. She turned around and said, "Do you know what? I don't think I want to have kids." They'd known each other four months. And his response to that was
00:32:10
like really, really insecure. It was like, "I really want to have kids. I want to have kids." And she ended up dumping him a week later. And I remember
00:32:15
I I said to him, you know, my current girlfriend said the same to me when I was 30. She turned around to me and said, "I'm not sure if I want to have
00:32:21
kids." And in my head, the first thought that came in was, if I'm being completely honest, was
00:32:28
I'm not sure I want to have kids with you yet either. You're still on trial. like I'm still dating you to figure out if you're the right person. So my
00:32:34
response even though I didn't say anything out loud because I just kind of shoulder rolled it was
00:32:40
because I valued myself. My immediate response wasn't to be insecure. It was to think doesn't
00:32:47
matter. I'm still trying to figure out if I want to have kids with you. And I didn't say anything. I just carried on with the, you know, carried on with my day. And it made me think that like,
00:32:54
yeah, it's a thousand tiny things. Confidence is a thousand tiny things, but it exists. So like comes out of this
00:32:59
central source of who you think you are. And I think the to answer your question, the reason why thing that gave me
00:33:05
confidence in my life was I did some things that convinced myself that I was someone worth respecting. I'm going to get to the confidence thing in a moment. I'm actually curious cuz
00:33:16
you said something and I'm wondering, do you think these women like your girlfriend and his
00:33:22
the girl he was dating, do you think they genuinely meant it when they said it? No. My girlfriend's literally told me
00:33:28
I've been with her for seven years now and we're we're planning on having kids right now. She was test. She didn't know
00:33:34
she was. Yes. This is what I said to him on the [ __ ] plane. We were flying on a plane. She didn't know she was.
00:33:40
It was a test. She didn't know she was testing me though. And when people hear it was a test, people will think it was a conscious thing that she'd written down
00:33:47
and she planned it. No, she had been through a bunch of stuff with a bunch of guys who had taken away her freedom. And
00:33:53
so she was her subconscious was testing whether I was one of those guys that was also going to try and restrict her or
00:33:59
control her. But throughout our whole relationship, I was aware of this. So when she those moments where she said, "You know what? I think I might want to
00:34:04
fly back to Bali." I said, "Babe, at any time when you feel like you want to go back to Bali, you go and I'll help you.
00:34:10
I'll help you go back to Bali. You don't have to be in London. You go wherever makes you happy." I'd say it to all the time. I'd say, "You go wherever makes
00:34:16
you happy." And you know what? I would mean it because why would I want to be with someone that wasn't happy? And this
00:34:22
is ultimately what meant that she felt safe, secure, free, and then it flipped. But that would never have happened if I was like my friend who literally feels like
00:34:33
he's up against a clock to find a woman and he needs to find one ASAP cuz he's he's actually 30 3 he's nearly 40 now and he's single. He's like, "Steve, you don't understand. I don't have the
00:34:45
time." So he's trying to rush people down the aisle. Yeah. But so it's it's it's always when
00:34:50
you said that and his circumstance, but you always wonder why would and some people truly don't want to have kids and
00:34:55
there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. But I have found because I've seen it too. When somebody says it, why are you
00:35:00
saying it? And do you genuinely mean it or are you saying it to see the other person's reaction? Are you saying it because you
00:35:08
want to feel better? Because I know some people who maybe did want or do want to have kids and they can't or they can't find a good partner. And so a way that
00:35:15
they make peace with it too is they say that and everybody makes peace with things uh things their own way or some
00:35:22
have had past relationships where the other pe you know their potential partners were turned off by especially
00:35:29
there's like this thing and I don't know if it exists now but where some guys may be turned off because they think women
00:35:34
want a guy who just wants to have kids so I don't want to put off that vibe so I'm going to say this to you so you
00:35:40
don't think that I'm I'm that way. So that's why I always wonder when people say it,
00:35:46
what are they really saying? So in her case, her sisters have never been able to leave their hometown, her
00:35:53
six sisters, because all of them had kids super young. And he actually told me this a couple of months earlier that
00:35:59
she's a little bit unsure about the kids thing because she thinks it would hurt her freedom. So 6 months into their relationship when she comes out with a
00:36:04
statement like that, honestly, what I said to him, I was like, "Bro, like you're 6 months in. Just let it ride. Just bloody hell. Just
00:36:10
carry on. like whatever you were doing in that moment, just carry on doing it and say that's interesting. Keep it moving cuz you know, but but going back
00:36:17
to the point because there's this internal insecurity in him, as much as you could coach someone like that or they could read the books, etc., they're going to be tested in a thousand ways.
00:36:29
So, he's fear-based. So, he's his decisions are being made because he's afraid he won't find
00:36:36
someone. So, he's dealing with something. It's not confidence he's dealing with. He's insecure, but his his
00:36:43
decision is I need to be find somebody now because I'm afraid I won't find somebody or I'm afraid I won't get
00:36:49
married or I'm afraid I won't have kids. So everything is fear-based with him. It's like when you make a decision, you
00:36:55
know, I I can't quit my job because I'm afraid I won't find another job. I can't leave this bad relationship because I'm
00:37:01
afraid I won't find somebody else. Those are fear-based decisions. So everything he's doing is pushed and promoted by
00:37:08
fear. So him dating trying to find someone. It's not cuz he truly does he want to find somebody. Yes. But the bigger drive is I'm afraid I'm not going to find somebody. So I'm trying so hard.
00:37:20
I So all his decisions are fearbased. So that's why his response were fear-based. Being fear-based is not a great place to
00:37:27
be. We all visit it. And it's okay to have fear. Fear is an emotion. But when it becomes your identity and it sticks
00:37:32
around a lot, that means every decision you're made is is throttled by fear. And
00:37:37
so his dating is throttled by the fear that I won't find somebody fast enough. People can tell, can't they? You feel it. You feel You feel it. You feel that energy, right? And it does.
00:37:49
Does Does it repel people? Yeah. So, he had this very emotional reaction. And what did she do? She's like, "I don't
00:37:54
want any part of it." She disappeared because his fear, which he couldn't control, and that was more
00:38:00
self-regulation on his part, not confidence. Self-regulation. Self-regulation is I control my
00:38:05
emotions. So he felt something. He felt panic. Mhm. And he couldn't manage that. He couldn't
00:38:12
like his governor. We all have a governor who manages our emotions. His governor was out to lunch.
00:38:18
Yeah. And so he completely released. So self-regulation is your ability to regulate your emotions. So even though
00:38:23
you're panicking, you're afraid, you're angry, you're sad, there has to be a governor that says, "I know you're
00:38:29
there. Keep it quiet." That's how you regulate your emotions. That's self-regulation. So, because he's
00:38:35
so highly fear-based, he's very poor at that moment at self-regulating his emotions. Can someone learn to be a better self-regulator of their emotions so that they don't ruin their life by reacting
00:38:46
to things all the time? I did. I was very hot-headed growing up. I was just like my father. I'm Greek.
00:38:51
I'm New York. I mean, it was I just had nothing going for me. Uh, I had to learn and I learned in the NYPD. I was very
00:39:00
young and I was very fortunate to be around very premier people. We were talking about your hiring process before how it's slow and drawn out. That hiring process is very slow and drawn out. They
00:39:12
kind they pluck you because the idea is if we put you in here, you better fit well because just one person is going to muck up the whole thing. We don't want we want efficiency. And so I so with
00:39:25
that I was around very highly regulated people, highly intelligent people. And so because I was around very highly
00:39:32
regulated pe people and instructors who kept me in check, uh I clocked it in. So
00:39:39
that's how I was able to manage myself. So who's around you if everybody around you is a loose screw?
00:39:45
Do you still have the amygdala like explosion that like do you still have the mental surge of emotion, but you just on the
00:39:56
outside sort of have leared to keep it in externally. I can do it very well. Sometimes at home with my husband who's also he's also a homeland security special agent, US Secret Service, I
00:40:07
sometimes it's nice to put it down because it's hard to be on all the time. It's hard to self-regulate all the time.
00:40:12
And so there's moments where he'd be like, "Somebody's a little emotional right now." And so I'll check myself.
00:40:18
But there are those safe people that once in a while you I think it's important if to have. But even with him,
00:40:26
you know, you don't want to do that to people because then you make people your dorm hat. Someone came up to me actually the other day and talked about a previous
00:40:32
conversation which is somewhat linked to what we're talking about now. They said, um, hi Stevie, you had that incredible woman on your podcast and she talked
00:40:38
about how you shouldn't bring your authentic self to work and she asked me about that. And that's kind of what you're describing there, which is you're going to be a different person at home.
00:40:50
Don't bring your authentic self to work. I don't want your authentic self to work. I want your professional self. I
00:40:56
want your respectful self. I want your empathetic self. I want your competent self. You can bring your authentic self to Thanksgiving meal with your family if you'd like to. Does that
00:41:07
make sense? You secret service like, "Come in. Everybody be your authenticelves." You don't get high performers. You get sloppiness.
00:41:13
Everybody's doing their own thing. That's not a team. If you're team oriented, you leave your
00:41:20
authentic self here and you bring your genuine self who genuinely cares about the mission, who genuinely cares to do a
00:41:26
good job, who genuinely knows that it's not about you. It's about the collective team. That's who you bring. Your
00:41:31
authentic self is about who? Me, me, me, me, me. I'm all about me. In teams, nobody cares about I don't mean it in a me way. They don't care about you personally. Who? Who are you? What are
00:41:44
you bringing? Are you bringing value? Are you bringing Are you bringing solutions? Are you getting things done?
00:41:50
My authentic self. Could you imagine if I brought my authentic New York self to every interrogation I did? I would
00:41:56
interview people who committed crimes against children. I had one case, three-year-old little girl. She says
00:42:02
about the person who was babysitting her, which was a 16-year-old young man. Young man, he touched me down there.
00:42:08
Three-year-old little girl. So, they call me in to do this interview. um on this young man, this little girl
00:42:15
saying he touched her down there. They're three. They're not really able to communicate. Can you talk to him? So, I'm sitting talking to him this interview and I'm trying to find out
00:42:21
what happened. Well, as I'm talking to him, he starts to reveal more and more. He did touch down there and he did other
00:42:27
things to the point where he confessed he had full-on sex with this little girl between the ages of 3 to four of her
00:42:34
age. He's 16. Could you imagine if I brought my authentic self into that room? What would my authentic self say? What are you thinking? How could you? It's a three-year-old. No, I brought my
00:42:47
professional self. Okay, tell me what happened. Tell me more. Non-judgment poker face. You know why? Because what I think my authentic self is irrelevant. What mattered? Getting information,
00:42:59
getting a confession so I can find out what happened so that investigators could figure out what to do so this little girl wouldn't be victimized
00:43:05
again. That's what I mean by your authentic self. Don't come in and be phony. Nobody wants a phony. But
00:43:12
authentic self has become me me. Everybody check me out. It's me me. I was irrelevant personally. It was what I
00:43:19
was contributing. What was my goal, my task? That's what I mean by authentic self. So when you show up to work,
00:43:25
wherever you work, what are you bringing to bring value to the whole team? Cuz your authentic self could be I'm bringing my problems. I'm bringing my opinions. I'm bringing my judgments. Honestly, nobody cares. I am have lots
00:43:38
of different leaders across my different companies and when I look at the best leaders, one of the things they have in
00:43:44
common is you do feel like they are being honest with you. Are they bringing their full authentic self and all their baggage to work? No. But you feel like you're dealing with
00:43:57
the honest version of them. And I think some of the worst leaders, the ones that really really struggle, you can see that
00:44:03
the team that they're leading just feel like maybe they're manipulating them a little bit or
00:44:09
they're they're not being straight with them or there's something going on. They're acting. You can kind of feel it.
00:44:16
So, I'm wondering how this kind of sits with everything you've just said there cuz you're going into these interrogations
00:44:21
and you're winning them over to some degree because I'm building trust. You're building trust, but you're not
00:44:27
acting. That's a different thing. I'm not being disingenuous. How do you square all of that? You're
00:44:32
like, "No, you're Are you acting or you're not acting?" I'm listening cuz I'm not there for me
00:44:38
and I'm not there to pass judgment. The quickest way to shut people down, even in business, you want to know what's
00:44:43
going on around you all the time. If people are too afraid to say things or don't tell Steven, oh, you don't know
00:44:49
how he's going to react or he's going to get mad, his this, that's a problem. The problem is they're going to be too
00:44:55
afraid to tell you things. You want people to come to you and to give you the bad news to tell you when things
00:45:00
aren't going right because you want to collect intelligence. You're collecting intelligence because when you have the right intelligence, then you can make
00:45:07
the right decisions. But you must need to know what's going on around you. So when you pass judgment and you're telling everybody your opinion and
00:45:13
you're bringing your authentic self, people filter information because they're bringing versions of
00:45:20
themselves that they think you want to hear. We don't want that. I was very neutral. I'm a neutral slate even to this day. I try to be neutral in that I allow people to come to me and people
00:45:31
are very open and they share and it works well for me because I get a good read on people and situation so I can
00:45:37
make good decisions but I don't do a lot of the talking. The vag a good interviewer doesn't say anything.
00:45:44
Good interviewer says less. Don't make it about you. Don't try to guess where people head space is. Ask them you seem
00:45:50
you seem like you're something I said before is upsetting to you. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Uh,
00:45:56
explain to me what it is that you're worried about right now. Describe to me what you're concerned at. We used to call it teed. Tell me, explain,
00:46:01
describe. It's just a way great way to get people talking. Just get them talking. But it going back to what
00:46:08
you're saying. It's just everything is very about me me. We become so identity based that we don't really
00:46:17
we're not connected to the community around us and how we impact others. Everything is what's happening to me.
00:46:23
What's in it for me? Me, me, me. It's like, do you know that you impact other people? You touch other people. You
00:46:30
affect other people's lives. You make other people's day better or worse. You make the work environment easier or more
00:46:37
taxing. You You do that, but everything has become myself. And we've lost that balance of the world does to me, but I also do to
00:46:50
the world. to be effective when you're dealing with these monstrous people that you dealt with, whether it's terrorists
00:46:55
or people that hurt children or whoever else it might be. Is did you have to kind of step outside of
00:47:02
like do you do you have to detach at some deeper level and do you have to see everybody as just a human being? Cuz I'm
00:47:10
I'm wondering how you navigate those spaces when these people have done horrific things. Are you do you did you teach yourself to just be more
00:47:16
empathetic? Dare I say you could be empathetic. So all different crimes have different types of
00:47:25
characteristics. So somebody who's a terrorist, let's say, that's more of an ideology. And they were typically raised
00:47:32
from being very young to feel a certain way. So I understood coming into a room that I'm dealing with someone who's been
00:47:39
groomed from a very young age to see the world a certain way. So that's why I did not bother wasting my time trying to
00:47:46
change the that that that that person's viewpoint. But what about that kid that hurt that
00:47:51
little girl? So with him, that specific one, I spent a lot of time speaking to him and I did
00:47:57
bring empathy. So empathy does not mean I agree with you. I'm trying to understand you. And what turned out with
00:48:03
him is he had been sexually abused himself when he was young. And so all that stuff came out and it did not excuse his behavior or what he did, but
00:48:15
it was genuine. I was genuinely curious. I was genuinely asking him. Um, and at the same time, I needed to find out the truth. Look, there were sometimes I would have somebody across from me and I'm thinking they did it and then
00:48:28
afterward I'm like, they didn't do it. There's there's times where you clear people and that's really important. So
00:48:34
that's why when you would at least when you talk to people and even to this day I I we're all biased but I try not to
00:48:41
come in and project that I really try to give people a fair chance to show me what's happening instead of coming in
00:48:47
with prejudgments. And so you're better at reading their behavior too um when you're talking to people. So with him he revealed a whole bunch what had happened to him. It was sad. It was empathetic.
00:48:59
It did not clear him from what he did. They eventually actually with the confession I got he was eventually tried
00:49:04
as an adult and you know that was very detrimental obviously to his life right it impacted his life but but I I could
00:49:12
have genuine empathy in that moment empathy is I I'm just trying to understand where you are and how you feel that's not sympathy
00:49:20
who's better at spotting lies women or men there's no research that shows one is
00:49:26
better than the other cuz women seem to have a sixth sense and people joke about it in like relationship context, but I generally
00:49:33
feel like I feel like women have a heightened sensitivity. And actually, when you look at some of the studies,
00:49:39
for example, women can smell I think it's testosterone, but men can't smell certain the same or certain hormones on women. So, like from a physiological standpoint, women do seem to be more
00:49:52
sensitive to especially to like pair um to men. There was that study they did where they
00:49:58
got um t-shirts off men after they'd been for a run and the women went down and smelt them and then they I think they had to guess which one was the most attractive and they all pointed the one that had the highest testosterone in it.
00:50:10
So there's things that are going on that we can't see and feel. So I just wondered if your experience men or women were. In my experience, no. And I will say and
00:50:18
this is just a a lot of men were very good at assessing. One of the reasons um look the vast majority of polygraph examiners were male. There were some women and they were very good too. The
00:50:29
vast were male. What males men are good at being more rational. It's actually they were there was a they were trying to figure out if there's a difference in the brain between men's brains and women's brains. And there's not much.
00:50:44
The one thing that they saw is that women have more discernment. So a a female brain tends to activate a little
00:50:49
bit more and they tend to think about something more than the male brain. A male brain may be a bit more impulsive,
00:50:56
right? More actionbased and the female brain may be a bit more let me talk to you, let me try to understand. And
00:51:02
actually if you look at the data for female cops versus male cops, female cops have less complaints against them, made against them, and they tend to think because they're better
00:51:13
communicators. they have less complaints because when you're a cop, you're going to get a complaint. There's no way
00:51:19
you're gonna get them like you're gonna just get them. Um, but women tend to have less female officers tend to have
00:51:26
less complaints and they think that they're just better at dialoguing and deescalating.
00:51:31
On this point about confidence, then you said it didn't sound like my friend had a confidence issue. Do you think confidence is the thing that the people
00:51:39
who do feel like they're not respected in the world need to be aiming at? And in your experience, what what can one do to build their confidence? Let me say this first. I've been around
00:51:49
very steady people, confident people, I suppose. I've never seen anyone or heard
00:51:56
anybody talk about it ever. I've never heard anybody in the circle of where I was, whether it's former SEALs, uh, US Secret Service, the PE that that I've never heard anyone
00:52:08
talk about it. And I think one of the secrets is they don't talk about it. They don't think about it. They don't
00:52:14
give it that much life. They just I just am. I just are. So I think that's one secret where people try to they think about it so much and I think it goes back to what we're saying initially like
00:52:28
stop overanalyzing. Just be just be you just do. But now if you're if you're looking at confident people with things that I notice traits amongst confident
00:52:39
people or steady people uh I they have a strong they have a good circle around them meaning they're very aware and
00:52:46
meticulous of who's around them and who they associate with cuz if you're not if you're around insecure people it it
00:52:52
bleeds on you like you're going to absorb what other people are and if you know if you're the most confident person in the room it's probably not a good
00:53:00
thing. It's it's not a good thing. You want to be around people you learn from. It
00:53:05
can't just be you're at the top and everybody's looking to you. Your bathtub's going to crack. Number one.
00:53:11
The other thing I learned about confidence, research shows law people in law enforcement are perceived to be
00:53:16
highly confident. And one of the reasons they believe it is because they're decision makers. You make decisions on
00:53:23
the spot. Everyday life and death decisions. And there's nobody to turn around to be like, "Hey, can I ask you your opinion on this? What do you think
00:53:29
I should do with this guy wielding this knife? Should I shoot? Should I not? Should I pull out the pepper spray? I
00:53:34
mean, what would you do in this moment? You'd be dead. So, when you're used to making
00:53:39
decisions, whether right or wrong, but when you're used to making those decisions and believing in yourself and
00:53:45
trusting in yourself that you're making the best decision you can with the information you have at that moment,
00:53:50
that builds confidence. Be a decision maker. I think those are the two most important things, having awareness. And
00:53:57
honestly, just show up. Just show up. Don't worry about being confident. Worry about simple things. Show up on time.
00:54:05
I was reading this study about confidence in the victim mindset. It was a study done by Yuggov in 2025 in the
00:54:13
United States. And it said women rated themselves much higher on trustworthiness, honesty, and empathy.
00:54:19
But men rated themselves higher on self-awareness, sense of humor, and confidence. And the gap between
00:54:26
self-reported confidence between men and women was quite significant. It's about 50% of men consider themselves confident
00:54:32
where it's only about 35% of women that consider themselves confident. I'll tell you this, I've never heard uh
00:54:40
I've never heard anybody like from the field of work I came for came from say I feel like I'm an imposttor. You know
00:54:46
that whole imposter syndrome? I've never heard that again. I didn't hear it till after I left the service. Like it's wild
00:54:52
cuz all these things I had no awareness of them because they were never discussed in the circle that we were in.
00:54:58
the so I also think sometimes when we sit and discuss these things to such extent that they actually start to plant
00:55:06
seeds of doubt I'm not saying we shouldn't study and have self-awareness but I think when we over evaluate to
00:55:12
such a degree I we never did that and you know how do you how do you build confidence in I I think about training training there was nobody cheering you on there was nobody like hey pump good
00:55:24
job good job girl good job they were they were trying to get me sent home. You had to fight. You had to claw your
00:55:32
way. You had to claw your way to get that job and then prove that you should be there. They did everything they could
00:55:38
to wean you out, to kick you out. And so I think when you're determined, like you stick, you just stick it out and you're just There was days where I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to get
00:55:50
through today. Or even runs. We would do runs and one of the things they would do just to mess with you. They take you on
00:55:55
on a run for miles and miles and you never knew when it was going to end. That's the worst. At least if you know,
00:56:00
hey, we're going to run from here to here. It's going to be 2 miles, 3 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, whatever. Tell me
00:56:06
what I'm looking at. But it they wouldn't tell you. So you'd start running. And then you'd hit a point like
00:56:11
and you'd think, at least I would. I think, "Oh my god, how am I going to do this?" And you know what I would do? I
00:56:17
would go and I'd be like, "Just make it to that tree." It was just 5t ahead of me. I made it to the tree. make it to
00:56:23
that mailbox. I made it to the mailbox. Just make it to the next tree. And and that's how you do it.
00:56:30
What's right in front of me? But if you look at that whole picture of how am I going to be all of this,
00:56:38
it's so overwhelming and so it's just so hard. It's just going to it's going to kill your confidence. Whether it's like I want to do this, what's the first thing I need to do?
00:56:50
Then the second thing I would think and I'm asking you when you build your businesses right or your company did you
00:56:56
just put one foot in front of the other and just try to do it or did you stop and say you know what Stephen let's have
00:57:02
a conversation I need to be confident before I do this I need to build my confidence did you sit and do that and
00:57:07
once you checked off that confidence bit then you're like okay now I'm ready to do this yeah one of the most incredible things is I I actually didn't know what the
00:57:13
world entrepreneur was I had no idea what it was so I had this idea and I started did trying to figure out how to make the idea happen which looked like 3
00:57:24
months on Google scrolling down searching the word web developer clicking onto people's links and then emailing them saying hey can you build
00:57:30
websites like I so it was this long drawn out process of stumbling forward and had I known I think a lot of
00:57:36
entrepreneurs and founders say this had I known what it would have taken had I known how difficult it was had I not
00:57:41
been so ignorant and naive maybe I would have been demotivated or demoralized to do it but I was 18 left university had
00:57:48
an idea didn't know what the word entrepreneur was. Didn't really even know how you established a company and tried to use the internet to make that
00:57:54
idea happen in like 3 to four months trying to figure out how you name a company just by like googling stuff. So
00:58:00
very much one foot in front of the other. What did you just say? I was ignorant and naive. Yeah, it was useful. It was phenomenally
00:58:06
useful cuz I think if if I was informed it would have been like standing at the foot of Mount Everest, but I couldn't
00:58:11
see the mountain in front of me. So it felt much more easy to climb. And this is in part why people get, you know, I
00:58:17
spoke to Neiel who's a an author of a book called undistractable. And he said a phrase to me which I've always remembered. He said procrastination
00:58:28
is the avoidance of psychological discomfort. So when you have that big essay to do, what you end up doing is taking the path of least resistance, which might be I'll just clean the house and the house gets really tidy because
00:58:41
psychologically that essay feels like Mount Everest. You don't know where to start. You're not well researched on it. So you clean the house instead. And so procrastination is the avoidance of psychological discomfort. And so had I
00:58:53
known how big that mountain was when I was 18, I probably wouldn't have done it because the psychological discomfort
00:58:58
associated with the knowledge would have been so overwhelming. I would have just cleaned my house. And so sometimes,
00:59:04
yeah, it does help. It goes back to a lot of the stuff that we're saying that sometimes overanalyzing and trying to make sense
00:59:10
of things does you a disservice where sometimes if you just let things be and you just move forward to try to execute, the goal is to execute and do. Because
00:59:20
if you sit and trying to analyze everything, how should this be done or that be done? Or if you look at the big big p bigger picture of what it's going
00:59:27
to be like, it's it can be it can kill you. It can kill your confidence. Training, I had no idea what training
00:59:33
was going to be like. Absolutely none. I went in there completely blind, completely clueless. I actually thought
00:59:38
it was going to be like college. Haha. I learned my lesson the hard way. But this I think we need to be a bit more present
00:59:45
and focused and just start executing and making progress. Progress, no matter how
00:59:51
small, is progress as long as you're moving in that direction. But thinking about something, ruminating over something, playing that CD over and over
00:59:58
again, procrastinating, just start. Just go. I spoke to Sir David Brazilford, who's
01:00:03
the guy that turned the British cycling team around. And he told me that when he went in there and those players, those cyclists were like down and out and
01:00:09
depressed and winning nothing. One of the first things he did was ban them from thinking about the podium. And so I
01:00:15
always I came up with this phrase called pedals over podium based on everything he said to me which is he got his riders
01:00:20
to think about the pedals in front of him just the rotation of the pedals and not whether they were cycling fast
01:00:25
enough to win the gold or needed to speed up. And he said to me when he did that it was almost like the riders would
01:00:31
get to the end of the track and they would get off the bike and they could not recall the cycle because they were
01:00:36
so present. They'd almost been in like this hypnotic state, but they ended up producing their best times because what they've done is they removed the
01:00:42
amygdala, all the emotion, the fear, the you know, which burns a lot of energy as a cyclist, I imagine, if you're thinking
01:00:47
too much. And that produced their best times. They went on to become the most successful cycling team of all time, I
01:00:53
believe, and won five out of the six tour to Frances. And that whole idea of like, yeah, just be present, just focus on the next, as you say, step along the
01:01:00
way. I think it's difficult for people because sometimes that first step is so small.
01:01:08
So small that it's it's sometimes a little bit embarrassing. You know, the first step to change your life, the first step to confront an issue in your
01:01:14
life is so sometimes so small that it feels like that can't possibly be the right step to take
01:01:19
because it's hard because it's uncomfortable. What's that like? They call it exposure
01:01:25
therapy. It was Jordan Peterson that said to me, he was like dealing with a guy in that he who wouldn't leave his bedroom and instead of getting him to
01:01:31
like go outside and stuff, he just got him to move the Hoover 10 cm closer today and that was today done. And then the next day he got him to like turn the Hoover on but then turn it off. That was
01:01:42
that day done. And Jordan said to me, he said, "The problem with people with change is the first step is often so
01:01:48
embarrassingly and shame shamefully small that people like don't want to do it. That's like embarrassing to do something so small
01:01:55
because it's a myth. We've been fed a myth that to make big change in your life, you have to make do big decisions.
01:02:01
You have to make make big movement and the big change you create in life, it's through the small movements. You just reminded me of a story. My buddy Don
01:02:07
Saladino, he's like the he does training um for all the you ever watch a lot of those Marvel movies, the DC movies with
01:02:14
all those characters. He trains a lot of them to get them physically fit for the movies. and he was telling me he had a a
01:02:20
story of a I think he was telling me he had a client and who he was just trying to get him to work out and the client
01:02:26
was overweight and having all these issues. And what what the client did what what they they did is the client just tried to create progress. So the
01:02:34
first day what he did was he took his sneakers and he just put them in front of his bed and that was it. And then the
01:02:40
next day he took his shoes and put them outside the door of his bedroom. And then the day after that he took the
01:02:46
shoes and put them in the kitchen. And then the next day he took the shoes and just put them on. And then the day after
01:02:52
that he took the shoes, he walked outside and put them on outside. Then the day after that he took the shoes and
01:02:58
just went to the corner and then came back. And then he went from being severely obese and having um um being
01:03:07
very unhealthy to running marathons. And that's how he did it. You've seen some of the most consequential people ever make decisions, these presidents.
01:03:18
Maybe you can't answer this question. I don't know if you can, but who were the best decision makers and why that you
01:03:23
observed? I'm going to say this, to be the president of United States, it's no small thing. So, for you to get to that
01:03:31
place, you you are exceptional. I I just I say this in a in a neutral way. people get very personal or biased and I I don't just because I served under various
01:03:42
presidencies didn't matter what the party was and I learned so much from all of them but as far as making decisions
01:03:49
there are a couple of things one they had a really good circle around them in her circle like everybody didn't have
01:03:54
access to the president there were layers around the president so everybody didn't have access to them that was
01:04:00
really important but the circle around them was a circle that was there to support them everybody around them was
01:04:05
steady I never saw Uh, I never saw anybody go cry at the White House. I never saw anybody lose their mind. I
01:04:11
never saw anybody get emotionally dregulated. I never saw this. And that was important because that kept them
01:04:19
steady. The other thing was they were very good at delegating. So they didn't need to know everything, but they would
01:04:24
find people who knew more than they did to give them adisement to help make decisions and they would just make
01:04:30
decisions. The other thing I saw and I witnessed, they worked very hard. they worked. I would see presidents sit up. I mean, I think it's okay to say this. I
01:04:41
really don't talk about the people are protected out of out of respect. You know, there's a Greek saying, everybody
01:04:46
loves the everybody loves the treason. Nobody loves a traitor. And so, I'm just always careful not to say, but I would see presidents like I remember President
01:04:58
Bill Clinton, he'd be up till very late hours of the night studying, reading, preparing, just reading. President
01:05:05
Barack Obama. I mean, I'd work midnight shifts sometimes and he was up studying, sitting at his desk, reading, preparing.
01:05:12
They would study. They would spend time studying. So, all those things collectively help you feel like I'm as
01:05:19
informed as I can be by studying myself, by surrounding myself with people who are informing me, who are also steady. And then I make the best decisions I can with the m the information I have in
01:05:31
front of me. Now, one of the things we do, and we all do this, we do a disservice to us when things don't go or work out the way we thought they would.
01:05:38
We beat up on ourselves. I should have known this. I should have this. I should have that. And anytime I start to do
01:05:44
that or I have somebody, and I always say, I'm like, my husband used to say this, too. He's like, you made the best decision you could with what you knew in
01:05:51
that moment. Don't go back and make yourself feel like [ __ ] because you feel you should have chose differently. I've heard Obama say that as well just like I said it pretty much close. He I I heard him talk
01:06:04
about this whole idea of making decisions at 51% certainty when he spoke at this conference I was speaking at in
01:06:10
Sa Paulo a couple of years ago and he was talking about the big decisions in his career like going in and getting Assama bin Laden didn't have 100%
01:06:17
certainty and he said sometimes in life you have to make make a decision with the information you have and be at peace
01:06:23
with the fact that you made the best available decision with the information you had and move move on.
01:06:28
Confident people are okay with not knowing all the information. Yeah, they're okay. I don't need to know. It
01:06:34
doesn't have to be 100% right. Because, and here's the other thing, because we're so scared of making the wrong
01:06:40
decision. And unless you're the president of the United States or and you're in law enforcement and you may shoot the wrong human being, which I
01:06:45
get, but overall, most decisions, not life or death, make a decision and then feel okay with it being wrong, if you're so insecure that you're terrified you're
01:06:56
going to make the wrong decision. Why? Cuz you're going to look dumb. You're going to feel dumb.
01:07:01
confidence. You don't care how you look or how you eat. You're not sit and you're not quantifying. He's going to
01:07:06
think I'm done. She's going to think I look stupid. They're going to think this. And even for yourself,
01:07:12
like you don't tally that. You're okay with making the wrong decision. It's like I'm going to make my choice. I hope
01:07:17
it's the right one. I did the best I could, but I'm comfortable with that. But if you're so worried about it's the
01:07:23
wrong decision, then don't make one. And that's that in and it of itself that confident people don't do that. So the other thing I would see presidents do they had they
01:07:36
had time to themselves meaning like you would see them they would have time where they would be
01:07:41
alone and they would think they weren't they weren't always exposed or surrounded by people. George W. Bush he
01:07:48
would go to Waco to the ranch. That was his roots. That was his place to like I need to kind of find my roots. President
01:07:54
Barack Obama, I spent every holiday in Hawaii. He went home. George Bush Senior, he would split his time between Kenny Bunkport and Texas, Houston. So,
01:08:06
that was another thing. They'd all go home. They'd all go home. I hear from a lot of very successful people that I interview that they all have some kind of meditation practice. And even when I looked at the life of
01:08:20
someone like Steve Jobs and how he was able to continually see around corners and remove the keyboard and remove the
01:08:25
stylus and remove the the iPhone jack and remove Java from our phones and do all of these things that at the time were like crazy talk that
01:08:33
that someone who was motivated by money today would not have done, but someone that could see the future tomorrow could have done. And um you come to learn that he was basically like a yogic like he was he was a meditator.
01:08:46
And what you described there made me think of that which is okay all these successful people seem to be have some
01:08:51
kind of practice where they get out of the trenches and like into their intuition or into the clouds alone so
01:08:59
they have space to stand back from the the painting so they can see the full picture. Do you know what they would all also do?
01:09:05
I can't speak for all of them but a lot of them worked out like their workout was built into their schedule. Uh
01:09:11
President George Bush uh Jr. he would bike he used to actually be a runner. He was a very fast runner. Um because they
01:09:18
would ask for agents to run with him and you when you run when when you would run you have to run with your gear on.
01:09:23
President Clinton was a runner. Then Bush Bush started biking so you had to be a good biker. Where can they run?
01:09:30
Well, President Bush would run the trails when we'd go to Texas or Waco. You're not going to run the streets of Washington DC. So they have the White House has its own internal gym. But they
01:09:43
did they did run. They were very athletic. President Barack Obama every morning gym.
01:09:50
So the part of integrating the body into the mind is key. I saw them all do it and I think that plays a role. It can't just be we separate the mind and body. You
01:10:02
when you physically take I've just seen them all do it and I learned it also as an agent like you're you had to work out
01:10:09
and you had to use your body because also when you use your body and you're moving it and you're you're working it out, you're taking care of it, you feel good. Do you feel like you're doing
01:10:20
something powerful and positive for yourself? And that in and of itself builds confidence and strength.
01:10:27
Just give me a minute of your time and I'll tell you about a device that my team has been using that they won't seem
01:10:33
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01:10:44
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01:10:57
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01:11:22
you'll get 22% off on some of Plaude's products. I was trying to understand what it feels
01:11:29
like to have true a true lack of confidence. Like, how does it feel inside your body? And the research I did
01:11:35
showed there's really four areas that you feel it. The first area is in your body physically like the tightness in
01:11:40
your body body which could be clenched jaw. It could be like that fidgeting you see heart racing all the like fight
01:11:46
orflight responses. The second way you feel it is in the mind self-doubt asking yourself always am I good enough? Kind
01:11:51
of double- guessing yourself running through worst case scenarios ruminating on your past mistakes. The third way is
01:11:57
in your emotions which is this feeling this insecurity that you might be exposed at some point. Um avoiding
01:12:04
speaking out too much or holding yourself back. The and the last way is in behavior which is speaking softly,
01:12:11
rushing your words, avoiding eye contact and apologizing. I don't too much. I feel that's such a waste of time like to spend to sit and analyze
01:12:23
yourself. Now, if you're not a good speaker, I look at it as I want to work on my speech. It's paral linguistics
01:12:29
it's called, right? Uh, I want to try from my uh the best tone I can so that I can speak with authority. Research shows that it's not what you say. People sometimes sit and memorize like what
01:12:41
they're going to say, the words they're going to use when in fact the research shows what you how you say it impacts people
01:12:48
more than what you say. So the way that you speak is clearly resonant with people. Are you aware of
01:12:54
what it is about the way you speak that is making my viewers show up every time you come here in the tens of millions to
01:13:01
hear you speak? When I speak, I own my voice. So there's paral linguistics there. And I learned this from doing the news because if I
01:13:15
don't sound like I know what I'm talking about, then does not matter what I say.
01:13:20
It's what I sound like. So if you know even using the the right part of my voice my my deeper uh tone my authentic tone you know it's very
01:13:34
different. Hi I'm Evie. How are you doing? Okay. One of the things that really makes sure in front of my daughter not to go in a really high
01:13:40
pitched voice because I don't want her growing up talking like this. I want her to grow up having a stronger, deeper
01:13:46
tone voice because the research shows when you own your voice, people respect you and they see you as an authority.
01:13:53
And so I just don't want to inadvertently give her that high-pitch voice, which doesn't mean it's her
01:13:58
natural voice. It's the voice that I've helped cultivate and groom for her to have. So let's just put that right
01:14:04
there. So those are little things that I also have awareness of. I don't want to tell her, hey, speak this way. I'm going
01:14:11
to show her to speak and she's going to she's going to mimic that. So when you look at how you present yourself to
01:14:16
others. So as far as like when I come here, I come here and I look at it this way. This interview is not about me.
01:14:22
You've invited me here what third time. Thank you. I'm super humbled. But this isn't about me. It is about them, the
01:14:28
audience. Right? I don't matter. I'm irrelevant. You're irrelevant. We're two people who are trying to share information that maybe hopefully make the world a better, more wise, more just
01:14:38
place. Maybe it helps makes people's lives a little bit better. That's what matters. They matter. We don't. And so
01:14:46
when you bring that in and you put all your energy on the person you are speaking to because they want to hear
01:14:52
it. And if you put that there, then they feel it. As you said all of that, I was analyzing
01:14:57
the way that you were speaking. And you do a bunch of really interesting things. One of them is that you take silences
01:15:03
that most people would not take. Okay. I'm going to Don't be offended. I'm going to try and Okay. I'm going to
01:15:08
try and show show what I mean. Are you there for you or are you there for them? Most people
01:15:16
wouldn't have taken that silence. There's a certain selfish because silence is taking something from some
01:15:23
someone in a in an interesting way. It's like you've taken some time from someone and people, you know, as it says in
01:15:29
these studies that are low confidence, they rush because they know that I don't want to waste your time. I'm not
01:15:34
that important. So, let me hurry through this. Yeah. So I don't I don't cuz you because you're more important than I am.
01:15:40
100% right. So you I will give kudos to this. I watch presidents speak. Barack Obama again this is something I shared
01:15:46
publicly and I think it's okay. He was brilliant at this. He would watch his speeches. He would speak and he would
01:15:53
take his time. He would do emergency, you know how they would interrupt TV shows or something emergency, you know,
01:15:58
message or breaking news from the White House, whatever. I never saw him rush through anything. I never saw him, you
01:16:03
know, say it himself or think, I better hurry up through this. You know, I'm disrupting Gray's Anatomy. People want
01:16:09
to get back to the show. No, I'm the president of the United States. I have something relevant to say and I'm going
01:16:14
to say it. I'm going to own my time in my voice. I'm not going to waste your time. I'm
01:16:19
going to get to the point. I'm not going to belabor the point. That's different. But I'm get to the point and I'm going
01:16:25
to pause. I'm going to own my time. So when you speak again this is it's how you say it not what you say. You also
01:16:33
want to give people time to absorb what you're saying to feel what you're saying. When you slow down also as a
01:16:38
presenter I am less likely to make mistakes. I am less slightly less likely to say the wrong thing live on camera.
01:16:46
When I do the news I am less likely to do these things and I'm more likely to able to think process and share. And
01:16:52
you're right. How many times do people do presentations and when I do communication for companies, I always
01:16:57
tell them when you're doing your presentations, please don't do this. All right, guys. Just one other thing. Let me put this in here. I don't want to
01:17:02
waste anybody's more time or take up any more time. Just really quickly, what did I just do? I just told you what
01:17:09
I'm about to tell you really isn't that important. So, don't even listen. Why do we do that? I'm here. I'm speaking. what
01:17:16
I have to say. If I'm saying something of value, if I know I'm saying something of value because I'm trying to share and
01:17:23
make the whole system, the process better, then pause. I'm going to pause. I'm going to speak. I'm going to share.
01:17:29
But if I'm talking for myself because I'm insecure. I want people to see me. Everybody needs to know you're sitting
01:17:34
at that table, right? Make yourself known. Make sure they can hear you. Make sure they see you at that meeting. You
01:17:40
just made that about you. You shouldn't be at that table. That's the difference. Command your
01:17:46
voice. Also, the science and research. So, because I know you like science and research, the more we speak, meaning if
01:17:54
we talk a lot and we use a lot of words and we don't get to the point, we are seen as less trustworthy. And people value uh they people will
01:18:05
assess how competent and confident you are in the way you speak. Get to the point, say it with less words, and be
01:18:13
impactful. Command what you say. So, I think what we're trying to say is I command what I say. I'm not as worried
01:18:21
in my head. Am I wrong? Am I right? Am I going to say the wrong thing from time to time? Sure.
01:18:26
Who isn't? But I'm owning my voice. And I think people are so afraid to own their voice. Own your voice. And if you're wrong, if your intention is right and you've
01:18:38
prepared and you're doing your best and you're being genuine, not authentic, you're being genuine, and you genuinely
01:18:44
care about the people you're speaking to, the audience, then it's all okay. You use your hands a lot as well which is I think is a trait of someone who is
01:18:55
feels like they deserve your attention and space and respect because it takes up room to and as you were doing that you were using a good
01:19:07
you know 50 cm either side of you to make the point but it's also just more engaging to watch because you went
01:19:16
and most people wouldn't a lot of people you know it's kind of like It's so there's a couple of things that so
01:19:21
it's really good that you brought that up. One, I'm Greek, so that plays a role. So I try not to be so they're called illustrators when people use
01:19:27
their hands, but yes, there is a strategy to it. One, I learned it from what doing television when I first began
01:19:33
doing the news, which I knew nothing about. Again, I went from a a job where you were supposed to be not in front of
01:19:38
the camera, actually out of the camera because the camera was supposed to catch the president, never you, to being in
01:19:44
front of the camera. friend, the producer I worked with the very first day said, "Let me give you a secret, when you're on camera, just so you know,
01:19:51
the camera sucks like 25% of your energy away. It takes immediately 25% of your energy out. So when the person is watching, you look flatter." You ever watch Zooms?
01:20:02
You ever do Zoom and it looks like everybody's bored out of their mind and you're thinking, "What's going on?" It's not them, it's the camera. It takes
01:20:10
energy. So, if you're trying to engage people, one of the things you can do, first of all, when you speak, people
01:20:15
hear 49% of what you say. So, when you're talking, if you're able to keep their attention, they are hearing half
01:20:21
of what you say. And that's if they're connected to you. So, think about that. Now, I'm trying to speak. And when you
01:20:29
speak, you're also telling a story. So, I can sit like this, which side note, um, when you sit on your hands, it's considered, uh, some people say it's a considered sign of, um, deceit. I'm
01:20:40
hiding my hands. Uh, I'm a liar. Mhm. Um, so when you you people don't see hands, it's a sign of untrustworthy. Uh,
01:20:48
untrustworthiness, like you can't trust them. When you see hands, open hands, I'm no threat. It's kind of like an
01:20:54
psychological thing for prehistoric time, prehistoric times. I see no weapons in your hand. I can trust you.
01:20:59
So that's something I learned as a technique as well in the polygraph room. Always have your hands out. Always be
01:21:04
open. I'm open. I'm here for you. And so I've I've learned to roll that into how
01:21:11
I present because I learned that it's really important to use your hands and you are storytelling. Um and you are
01:21:17
commanding your voice. So all those things combined, you're you're trying to keep also people's attention. So you I
01:21:24
also look at it, I'm trying to keep you engaged in the conversations. So, I can't be lazy and not I have to work
01:21:31
hard to keep you engaged. You're you're also people kind of like they pingpong. Even if somebody you ever go to a
01:21:36
conference and you're like, I'm really going to pay attention. I'm going to really focus and 5 10 minutes you're in there and you lose people. It's not
01:21:43
their fault. What am I going to eat later? Where am I going to go for lunch? Did I send that email? Oh, I have to pick up my dry cleaning later. People
01:21:49
pingpong. So, it's especially today where you're competing with all this noise and there is so much noise out
01:21:54
there. you really are trying hard to keep you people engaged. So you don't have to be long-winded. Speak, engage,
01:22:01
show them that you're there, own your space, and command your words. One of the things I learned from
01:22:07
watching Mr. Beast make content, but also from doing this podcast and sitting with guests that get really high retention cuz like the audience don't
01:22:14
know this, but when every guest comes on the show, we get a graph back from YouTube and the other places that the
01:22:20
podcast appears that shows how many minutes people listened for. And sometimes there's like big swings there between the lowest performing guest and
01:22:31
the highest performing guest on YouTube. There's a 100% gain in retention. So like thinking
01:22:39
back over the last month, the lowest performing guest on the diversity here in terms of how long people listened for
01:22:44
is let's say just arbitrary number people listened for one hour. The highest performing they listened for two
01:22:51
hours. And that's the the range that we see. And when I look at why that is, it's often because it's well, it's
01:22:56
always because of the way that they speak. You're one of the people that has extremely high retention, because of the way that you speak. And Morgan Hel's
01:23:03
another one. And I I was watching Morgan Hel the way he delivers his message. And he basically always starts it with a
01:23:11
curiosity gap or a promise. And Mr. Beast does the same. Mr. Beast's videos don't start with, "Hey, uh, hi, I'm Mr.
01:23:16
Beast. Welcome back to my channel." He immediately shouts a promise in your face which is like I've put a thousand people in that circle. The last one to
01:23:22
leave wins $5 million. And immediately there's this curiosity gap like I want to see the answer. And I just noticed
01:23:28
that in great speakers even on stage when I go to conferences is they they leave me hanging on something that they
01:23:35
haven't yet given me. Somebody once when I began doing keynotes or speaking there was this other speaker and he said to me, he's
01:23:42
like, "Let me give you some advice, kid." I was like, "Sure, I'll take it." I didn't mind. and and he hadn't heard
01:23:48
me speak yet. It was just he was just trying to impart wisdom. He said, "Just because you're an expert doesn't mean
01:23:53
you're interesting and it always stuck with me because there's people, Stephen, that are probably smarter than I am, have more years or time or experience in the US
01:24:03
Secret Service that I do. There's always somebody that's better, smarter, faster, whatever.
01:24:10
But a big part of what plays a role is how you present and how are you sharing that information and are you doing an effective job, right? It's not about let me tell you
01:24:21
how smart I think I am. It's about being able to relay that information in a way that people can
01:24:28
understand and that's digestible. It's how they it's how they process information. Do you know I even learned
01:24:33
to do that in the interview room when I would morandize people. I was trying to assess where they were linguistically
01:24:40
and so I could speak to them in a way that resonated with them. So one of the things I would do is I had Miranda. I
01:24:46
never read Miranda verbally. The Miranda writes in the United States before you interview anybody and I would do this
01:24:52
whether they were an applicant, a suspect, a a victim cuz you never knew how things were going to go. I would Miranda everybody. You know, you have
01:24:58
the right to remain silent, all that. So I had a piece of paper and I would hand it to them and I would say please read
01:25:05
each sentence out loud. So the first sentence would be and I would have them hold it. They would read out loud loud.
01:25:11
I have the right to remain silent and I would ask them do you understand that? I wouldn't read it. They would say it. I
01:25:17
would listen to them and I wanted to hear their speech how they you know like how how it resonated the their language
01:25:24
skills. Then they would sign it. Then we'd finish it and then I would ask them questions that I already knew the answer
01:25:30
to. What's your name? What's your date of birth? Where are you from? I had all of this. I did not need it. But it was a way for me to assess their speech. And
01:25:40
then based on that, I would meet them where they were. I'm not going to speak the way I
01:25:46
normally speak. I'm going to adapt my speech. There's adaptability in a way that's going to resonate with you the
01:25:53
most. So using big hefty words, speaking super fast, especially I'm from New York, like I said, I'd go to the south,
01:26:00
they speak slower. I would have to slow down so I could meet them where they were. So I could speak to them in a way
01:26:06
that resonated with them. It's the listener that matters. I am irrelevant. We don't matter. They matter. Where is
01:26:14
that person? I'm going to meet you there. Also, even when you write, do one of the things I learned in journalism
01:26:19
school, New York Times writes at an eighth grade level to keep it simple so that people can
01:26:26
actually finish the article or even a book. My book, do you know how hard it was to write the book? Not for the content, but to write it in a way that
01:26:34
was easy for people to read, not for people to read a chapter and be like, I need a nap.
01:26:39
Because it's a co it's too cognitive heavy. You want to do things that people can absorb and they don't have to use
01:26:45
all their all their brain power. If it's too hard, if we speak too smart or too complicated, people get tired. So the delivery mechanism in which you give information really matters. You're
01:26:57
talking so that they can understand, so that it's not hard for them to follow you, so that they can follow you easily,
01:27:04
they can stay connected with you, and they're not needing a nap after you're done.
01:27:09
You speak for them, not for you. A lot of people, especially I think podcasters, sometimes like to use bigger words because it makes you sound smarter.
01:27:21
The research shows that actually people see you as less competent. When you use simpler words and you get
01:27:27
to the point and you you use less words in the vocabulary, it actually shows that you're deemed as more competent,
01:27:34
more confident, and more trustworthy. I realized this a couple of years ago when we I was running my New York office for
01:27:39
my old company. And uh there was this young young lady in the team who I'll call my name Sarah. I'll call her Sarah. And Sarah in meetings would um when we
01:27:51
were doing like creative brainstorms for clients. We had Uber was a client. I remember being sat in the Uber brainstorm. Um she would kind of think
01:27:57
out loud. And so she would say, "What about if we did, I don't know, maybe we could do something like um maybe we could do like a pop-up and then we
01:28:03
could" and she was thinking out loud. And then there was this other guy who I can name called Cah Katy. He's a friend of mine still to this day. And he would
01:28:11
never speak. But the minute he started speaking, it was like the the room fell silent because he spoke so infrequently.
01:28:18
We all knew that he was taking the time to think about what he was saying and what he was saying was about to be
01:28:24
really really valuable. And I would witness with Sarah people literally cut her off. They would even be before she had said a word, like the first two
01:28:34
words out of her mouth, they would immediately assume that it was not worth paying attention to because she had developed what I would later call a bad contribution score, which is kind of
01:28:46
like your credit score, but you hurt it when you contribute beyond value, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, she's not. You notice she's so engrossed. And it's not to make to
01:28:58
throw, you know, judgment at her, but that's what happens when you're so engrossed in what you're thinking that
01:29:04
you lose you lose sight of there's 10 other people in this room. And this is when if you're going to open your mouth, open your mouth. Use your pauses, use your silences so that you
01:29:16
can make sure your message is impactful and you're not running through, you know, you're not vomiting everything out, which also makes you look nervous
01:29:22
and lacking confidence. But if you're going to speak, then command what you say. Speak with conviction and don't waste people's time.
01:29:34
You can think of people in your life, right? If you think about all the people you work with, there's ones that overt talk and there's ones that definitely
01:29:39
under talk and then there's ones that like hit the balance just right. And what is the Can you like tell me about
01:29:46
these people and how and if that's even true what I just said? It is true. I think it depends who it
01:29:51
is. If it's someone I'm working with, I'm always kind of like, can we just, you know, in my head I'm like, land the plane, land the plane. Like I just I
01:29:58
don't I have to have like 10 more conversations like these. It's not to be mean, you know, but as you go higher up
01:30:04
or as you're doing more, you have less empathy. Ironically, it's not because you become meaner. It's just I I don't
01:30:09
have the ability. And can I'm going to can I ask you a question actually? Sure. Do you tend to draw people that want to work with you who think they see the
01:30:21
persona Steven here and you're you're guiding people, you're helping people, you're in some way
01:30:28
mentoring people. Do you find that people want to come to work for you because they think you will do that for
01:30:34
them? Do you tend to draw those personalities? Of course. How do you know you have that?
01:30:40
This is a good question. Usually in the interview process, their orientation towards why they're here will be too much about Steve, about too much about me. And it'll be highlighted when they
01:30:52
meet my executives, my team, my chief of staff, my CEOs, whatever. They'll say, they'll always come to me and say, I think this one's a little bit too
01:30:58
interested in you and not the role. And so when I get to meet this person, I'll ask them a very simple question, which is explain to me exactly why this job
01:31:05
appealed to you. And they should be able and in that moment they all their answers should be about the work at
01:31:11
hand, not I read your book and I thought loved your p, you know, it should never be that because as you know from working
01:31:18
with very interesting people, that stuff will fade. And when we go into the trenches, it won't matter whether you
01:31:23
liked my book. like we're here to do work and you have to like love the work. You have it has to be the the work has
01:31:29
to be the thing you're thinking about in the shower. Not not my podcast. And if that if that's the case, then you you'll
01:31:35
be fine here. When I did the hiring for the US Secret Service, I did the polygraphs. Now, I know you can't polygraph people, but
01:31:41
they would we would polygraph people. So, I was like the last line of defense. They'd go through the whole hiring
01:31:46
process, right? Interviews, um panel interviews, exams, there's, you know, uh tests you would have to take. Anyway, so you pass all this stuff, right? And then you get to me. And so I was kind of the
01:31:58
last line of defense. And one of the things I would ask them during the interview, I would ask them kind of like
01:32:06
what you said, why do you want to be a US Secret Service special agent? And I'd typically get two types of answers. Oh,
01:32:12
I think it'd be really interesting challenge. I want to see if I can do it. You know, it would be really, you know,
01:32:18
I I want to see what, you know, if I'm able to do it. And then the other answer I would get typically would be, you know, I want to serve my country. I want to help protect people. I want to do
01:32:29
something bigger than me. Do you know who made it through the hiring process? These guys. These guys who are I, me, I want to learn. I want to challenge. I want to see I can do it. Because they
01:32:41
were so selffocused. They they they not only were they not making it through the hiring process, they wouldn't make it
01:32:46
through training. Yeah. Because these guys were focused on the bigger thing, the role,
01:32:52
and then these guys were focused on themselves, what they could get out of it. So when people are interviewing with you, what can they get out of it? I get
01:32:58
to be around Steven. Me, me, me. There it is. Yeah. This is also just a really good piece of advice for what to aim at in your life,
01:33:10
which is not to aim at the labels, the flashy things, the the ephemeral, the things that will fade after a week, a
01:33:16
month. Actually, this goes back to what a problem my friend has with he goes for people that look really good on the outside. That's part of the reason he's
01:33:23
he's still single. He really cares about what it looks like. And I remember one day him saying to me, you know, I've
01:33:28
just started dating this girl, Steven, but I'm not sure because, you know, I just think if I walked into a restaurant with her on my arm, then I I just don't
01:33:35
know how it would look. And I remember thinking to him, bro, you're so like if that's what you you care about,
01:33:41
you are you're going to struggle. And people care too much about how it looks. How they look. How the job makes them look. How the situation makes them look. Yes. Yes. Although I will say to my
01:33:54
husband sometimes I'm like, "You're lucky you're hot." When we fight, you're lucky you're a good-looking hot man. Cuz
01:33:59
I don't know if we would have survived. So there's moments, Stephen. Truth be told, I'm looking I'm like, "You're lucky you're a good-looking man.
01:34:05
Otherwise, I don't know." So the there's moments where that'll save the relationship. But I digress. I forgot
01:34:11
what you asked me because I took you in a different direction because I was really just curious to see, you know,
01:34:18
because I would see it with like high presidents and I would see it with certain people and I experienced it
01:34:23
myself too. Sometimes you get this Yeah. And I would think you would get it a lot
01:34:29
and that's a really tough thing I would think. I would say though some people that have been extremely successful in my company,
01:34:36
they were also big followers of the show. I'm thinking of you, Cristiana. Cristiana, who is our chief revenue
01:34:43
officer, she told me she's listened to every episode ever. Actually, in her application, she used um in the subject
01:34:50
line like chapter 19 of my book. And then in the email, there was several things that I'd written in my books.
01:34:55
She's an unbelievable performer because actually her career and her life and her passion is also the work. So it can be
01:35:03
both, but it can't be just as you said, it can't just be, oh, I just want to see what the challenge is
01:35:08
like. It, you know what I mean? It can't just be an surface level. Any Is there anything else that that is really pertinent on the point of, you know, that guy backstage that said to you that gave you that advice, which was kind of
01:35:20
a little bit patronizing. It sounded like that. You said it wasn't, but it kind of it didn't take it like that. But I'm also
01:35:26
I also don't get easily offended. To me, I looked at it like like you have to really say something pretty offensive to me to be offended. So, I I think I think my offensive level is probably my
01:35:38
tolerance is higher than others. Is that a good thing? Yes. Because in the job that I came from, you couldn't get you just couldn't get impacted with people
01:35:50
as easy. Like, you have to think of it this way. Like, it would be something stupid, Stephen. Like I probably here in New York once, President Barack Obama,
01:35:56
he went out to dinner and I had to tell somebody standing by the restaurant, "Ma'am, you know, sir, could you please
01:36:01
could just cross the street and stand there cuz we had to clear the area and people lose their minds. You're violating my rights." Phones come out.
01:36:08
They're yelling at you in your face. Now, the New York me or the the the EVE me wants to just like punch him in the throat, go across the street. Like, I don't I don't have time for this. She
01:36:19
can't do that. So when you you have a job where people dislike you because you're law enforcement and they're in your face and when you're
01:36:30
telling them to do something they automatically you have something called reactants. Nobody likes to be told
01:36:36
anything that nobody likes to feel like they don't have control over their lives. So they have reactants which
01:36:41
means immediately they're going to push back. A really good example is COVID people losing their minds, you know,
01:36:48
when they were forced to wear masks. And a big reason it wasn't really the mask. It was that they felt that they had no
01:36:53
autonomy. You're telling me what I have to do and I feel like I have no control. So in law enforcement, you're typically
01:37:00
dealing with this often where you can't offer people a choice. Typically, it's I need you to do this. So when you have
01:37:06
people really escalating and getting in your face and in many situations wanting an altercation, they want to put on you,
01:37:12
they want to put on YouTube, they want to put on social media, you have to manage yourself. Also, in my mind, I'm
01:37:18
like, you're not going to get that from me. So, you do have a higher threshold to tolerate a lot more nonsense. So, if I was someone who was really disrespecting you when you were doing
01:37:30
your job and I was shouting in your face, you told me to get across the street and I started cussing you out and being very personal and trying to sort
01:37:37
of exacerbate the situation. What would be going through your head at that exact moment? I'm now screaming in your face.
01:37:43
I've got my phone out. I'm telling you, you're live on Instagram. What what's what is actually going through your head versus what you're
01:37:50
displaying externally? What I would say is, "Ma'am or sir," whoever it was, I was like, "I appreciate you're
01:37:56
frustrated. However, I'm not able to have you stand here. Could you please go across the street?" And what's going on up here?
01:38:03
How many times I'm going to say this before I force this person across the street before I put handcuffs on them? That's what's happening in my head. So,
01:38:09
in my head, I am doing mathematical equation. How many chances do I give this person before I throw on handcuffs?
01:38:15
Have you ever had someone insult you in a really vicious just like horrible way? Dits, dummy, Barbie, you know, and does does it offend in inside even
01:38:27
if you don't show it? I don't want to say you get used to it, but you don't take it personally cuz they don't know me. Also, when you're in law enforcement, you're
01:38:39
you're seeing people at their worst. You are seeing the worst of humanity. That is one of the toughest jobs even when
01:38:47
even with military a military they go to war war that's atrocious but you go you do your tour and you're out and then
01:38:53
maybe you go back but you get reprieve law enforcement you're doing this for your entire career every single day you
01:39:00
are seeing the worst in humanity people are lying to you they're um committing crimes like you really could lose a lot
01:39:07
of faith you really could become really cynical actually a common trait in law enforcement so you have to be really careful to not become overly cynical cuz
01:39:14
you're seeing the worst of people and they're also bringing out their worst behavior. For whatever reason, people
01:39:19
are not their best the best version of themselves. And again, you're also typically not dealing with the good
01:39:26
citizen. You're dealing with people who are consistently com committing crimes. If you look at crime in general, the vast majority of crime, it's committed by the same group of people. And the
01:39:39
majority of arrests, if you look at the arrests, they're misdemeanors, meaning driving while intoxicated. They're smaller things. Felonies, really serious crimes. These are people who typically
01:39:50
violate the law consistently. So when there this is happening, I we would memorize uh what the US Secret Service did is they taught us to fight with facts. I fight with facts. So, we
01:40:02
actually memorized the title codes like 18 title 18 USC was it 3056 that gave me
01:40:09
the right to um do what I needed to do to secure and protect the president of the United States. And if you were
01:40:15
interfering with that, then the law gave me the right to arrest you if I needed to. I didn't want to arrest anybody. I didn't care. But the law gave me that right cuz now you're impeding in my
01:40:26
ability to do my job. So, one of the things I would do is I would say, "Ma'am, uh, you are right now impeding
01:40:32
with title 18 3056." And I would say the title of what it was, which says that I
01:40:38
have to do X, Y, and Z. So, here's the thing. I don't want to arrest you, but you do need to move across the street.
01:40:43
You can move across the street and I can get somebody somebody to come talk to you or, you know, it's going to
01:40:49
escalate. It's up to you. Most people, Stephen, most listen, but a lot of people like theatrics.
01:40:55
You said it's up to you. That's giving them an element of control, which is good. It's up to me. Look, at the end, they have to do it because I have to do my
01:41:01
job, right? But the majority of time, but you've given them the choice because you've said you can either scrape or
01:41:08
this. Yes. But sometimes you have to repeat it like 15 times to people before you
01:41:13
actually do it. Here's the thing. Once you put hands on people, the last thing you want to do is put hands on people.
01:41:18
The minute you put hands on people, everything breaks bad. They're gonna freak out. Somebody's gonna get hurt. They're gonna It's It's not a good thing. The majority of people I would
01:41:29
arrest after I would arrest them, I'd have to take them to the hospital. Not because I did anything to hurt them, but
01:41:35
my heart hurts. I'm stressed. I have I don't know what's happening. I have a headache. I don't want them to die on me. And the majority of the time, I
01:41:41
would take them to the hospital or they were faking it. I've had people fake heart attacks cuz they thought I'd feel bad and take the cuffs off. And I'm
01:41:47
like, "Okay, are you having a heart attack? Let me put the cuffs on. We're going straight to the hospital." And I would take them to the hospital. So
01:41:52
there's a lot of tactics people would use to also get you to stop. Manipulators, which people can do the
01:41:59
average person, not in this way, but ways people can manipulate you to stop whatever it is you're doing. Let's say
01:42:05
you're trying to find out the truth of something or you're in you're trying to get to you're asking questions and the
01:42:11
person doesn't like it, they may start crying. People would cry when I would arrest them as a way for me to feel
01:42:17
sorry to stop. So often people will use things to get you to feel bad, to leave them alone. Let's say you're going to
01:42:23
fire somebody because for something they did and you're asking them questions and they start crying in the office instead of asking the questions, right? That's a
01:42:30
way to deflect, to get you to feel bad, to stop your line of fire of questions to get you to stop. Very common. Very
01:42:37
common. Crying. It's a manipulation tactic. And there's other things people can do. So people will use certain
01:42:43
things to get you to stop what you're doing. And sometimes people fall fall for it or they'll say things to you,
01:42:49
you're only doing this to me because I'm a woman or because I'm this. And those sometimes, not that they're not true, but a lot of times it can be used as manipulators to get you to back off.
01:43:02
In that scenario, you're being met with emotion. And it appears that you're returning logic because you're talking
01:43:09
about the title code and you could, I guess, return emotion, but it No, no, you own your emotion. Nobody
01:43:15
should provoke you. Nobody. You're Steven Bartlett, dire CEO. Nobody provokes you. You own your response. You
01:43:23
can go in that back room and [ __ ] somebody to, you know, like do it in the mirror, but nobody nobody owns that.
01:43:29
Nobody should take that from you. Who are they to take that from from you? And who are you to surrender it? That's the
01:43:35
way I look at it. You're going to be dealing with people. People are revolving door of all their stuff. And I
01:43:41
do think we see a really heightened emotional state with people. Like people can't not post stuff on social media. Like everybody has to give their opinion on something. And sometimes I'm like stop. Like everybody doesn't need to
01:43:53
know what you're thinking. Like stop posting. We put so much noise out there cuz we think people care. They don't.
01:44:00
It's like even though when you speak I look at social media the same way. What are you contributing to the world? Are
01:44:05
you post it? If you're not, don't post it. Don't put more noise. your contribution points even in your posts
01:44:12
and the things you share with the world. But I look at it this way. You're at a point I understand when you're young up
01:44:17
until you're 25 years old. I give you a free pass cuz that frontal cortex of yours is not developed. You're not
01:44:23
emotionally regulated. But then there comes a point where you have to own your emotions. I had to because I would lose
01:44:29
my job. How do I become unprovokable? Is there a way or is it just by repetitions? It's repetition. If enough people get in your face over time, you learn to manage
01:44:42
your emotions. But if you spent the whole time avoiding people getting in your face, I'm not telling you to go
01:44:47
look for problems, but you shouldn't go out of your your your way to avoid conflict to such a degree where you're
01:44:54
willing to do anything and whatever because you don't want conflict. I don't want conflict. I don't like it. But if
01:44:59
it shows up in my face, I'm going to be there. Yeah. You can also handle people non-emotionally with facts. Okay.
01:45:06
Earlier on you said X, Y, and Z. Could you explain that to me? Even sometimes when some people tell me, you know, I
01:45:12
feel like I'm not valued at work or I think my boss doesn't care about me or I believe this and I want to go talk to my
01:45:18
boss. And I'll tell them, I'm fine with you going talk to your boss. When they would ask me for advice, cuz I never give unsolicited advice. I'm fine with
01:45:25
you going in there, but do not go in there and say, I think, I feel, I believe. Go in there and say, "Hey, I
01:45:32
did this project. I spent x amount of hours on it and I made x amount of money for this company. You know, I I'd like
01:45:38
to put in for a higher position or I'd like to put in for this other project. Go in with the facts.
01:45:44
Facts win. Because it's harder for people to refute facts. I think I should get this. Well, I think you shouldn't. I
01:45:51
believe, you know, you're treating me this way. Well, I believe I'm not. But if you say, "We had this meeting. During
01:45:57
this meeting, you said this and this. Could you explain that to me? Because it seemed as though you didn't trust me in
01:46:03
that meeting or it seemed as though you were upset with me in that meeting, but I'm telling you specifically what I did.
01:46:09
So, I'm bringing it back to that specific fact moment versus now I feel that you treat me this way. It's so
01:46:15
vague and ambiguous. When you go in with very specific things, that's harder to argue. You want to not that I want you
01:46:22
to win an argument, but you really want to make your point and get results. Be very clear and specific. And you know
01:46:28
what? If you're nervous, write it down. I always tell people, write your stuff down. Walk into a meeting if you're
01:46:33
having it with your supervisor. Sir, boss, I don't know if people say sir anymore. I guess I have to say sir. Sir,
01:46:39
I just I took some notes down, so I hope you don't mind. I'm just going to look through it just to make sure I I I speak
01:46:44
clearly and I don't make any mistakes and then go through the points. I actually asked a colleague of mine who
01:46:50
was in a similar situation who wanted to have a conversation with me and their slightly younger colleague of mine um in
01:46:58
their early 20ies. They said they wanted to speak to me about something and my advice to them was actually to write it down in a memo as if you were writing a story cuz I love narrative memos. And
01:47:11
I did that because I wanted them to properly think about what they wanted to say because I knew what would happen is
01:47:17
they'd come in, they'd start sort of like falling over their words a little bit. They might not not fully give me
01:47:23
all the context. And I often do that now, which is in all my meetings um that we do. We kind of stole this from Jeff
01:47:28
Bezos Amazon is I'll have someone write it into even if it's a two-page memo which says like this is the situation.
01:47:35
This is why I'm bringing you this thing in this meeting. This is my proposed solution. this is the decision I need
01:47:42
you know super super clear because in business you often find what you know whe you have two kind of sides of things
01:47:48
either someone walks in and freestyles with their voice and they stumble in the the moment they don't get things out properly or someone comes in with like a
01:47:54
100page PowerPoint presentation which is like vague pictures of things and bullet points and I hate a [ __ ] bullet point
01:48:00
because a bullet point is open to interpretation so is a picture whereas these narrative memos which is what Amazon and Jeff Bezos figured out they
01:48:08
leave no room for ambig iguity and all the context is there and actually sometimes it actually means that they can just send it in in an email
01:48:15
and then you don't have to talk to and then I don't have to do the hour and a half. Dude, it's funny you say that. When I did cases I would always ask and again
01:48:21
not because I knew to do this. I was trained to do this but really good interview is get people to write not a
01:48:27
memo but a statement before you even interview them you know and if it was like the date of the crime
01:48:33
for example tell me what you did from the time you woke up on this date till the time you went to sleep and it would
01:48:39
be a memo of what they did that day or tell me what you know about blah blah blah blah and I would read those statements and I
01:48:46
would know often who was my suspect who wasn't I had one case where baby was a few months baby had a broken arm and it was between the dad and the nanny that police were
01:48:58
looking at and police weren't sure which one it was. We think it's either the nanny or their dad. Now, in a criminal
01:49:05
case, you always want to talk to the the most likely suspect. You don't build your way up. I go to the person who I
01:49:12
likely think did it. I'm going straight to the person, right? I don't want to go to the person I think maybe did it and
01:49:17
then build my way there. I want the one I want the person that I truly believe is my suspect, my offender. So, I get
01:49:24
the statements and I read them both. I read dad's and I read nanny's. I read dad's and I'm like, it's not dad. I knew from the statement it wasn't dad. I read
01:49:34
nanny's. And I knew right away after I read nanny st statement, she did it. Now, you're
01:49:39
going to say, how did you know? The nanny opened up her statement by telling me about her morning, how frustrated it
01:49:46
was, how she was running late. She had two little kids of her own. She was trying to get them out. She was a single
01:49:51
mom. She was stressed out. Then she shows up to work to um take care of this baby. The baby's fussing. The baby's crying. I did this. It didn't work. I did that. It didn't work. So, as she's
01:50:02
telling me the story, she's telling me how hard her day was. And then she turns into how frustrated she was with this baby. I did everything I could to get this baby to stop crying. I think the
01:50:13
baby was is either three or six months old. I'm just I can't remember. And the baby was this and the baby was that. And
01:50:19
then she gets to a part where it says, "Then I gave the baby Tylenol and it went quiet." And I was like, "There it is." That's
01:50:31
when she broke the baby's arm. Who says I gave the baby Tylenol and it went quiet? In that moment, her language had changed so much. I was like, that's
01:50:42
the moment she snapped that baby's arm and the baby passed out from the pain. And so when I get the statement, I call
01:50:50
I call up the the law enforcement entity was the state police cuz they were the ones that asked me to come up and I said, "I want to talk to nanny, not to
01:50:57
dad." And sure enough, nanny comes in. Hour and a half later, I had a confession. I didn't even have to give
01:51:02
her a polygraph. What was interesting is in her statement, it sounded like she was actually self-justifying her
01:51:08
behavior. She was. She absolutely was. I was reading about this thing called cognitive dissonance that you just
01:51:13
mentioned and this idea that we don't like the the gap between the way we're behaving and who we think we are or want
01:51:19
to be. And when I think about myself and you know bad habits that I have or bad habits that my friends have, we all like justify justify I'm too busy so I couldn't go to the gym or there was
01:51:32
nothing else that I that I could grab. So I ate the cookie in the mini bar. Like we have to find a way to justify
01:51:38
it. And then some of us I think we like build our lives around kind of believing our own justifications.
01:51:46
Of course we do. and then we're trapped because in the presence of these crazy justifications, what we're doing makes
01:51:51
sense and it's okay. I think sometimes it's I'm not telling people to feel permanently bad for what they do cuz you don't want to, like we said, you don't want to live in the past and beat yourself up and man, I messed
01:52:03
up and I did this. You will, but I do think it's important to say I did something and I shouldn't have done
01:52:08
this. At least to yourself. How do you stop believing you're in [ __ ] Well, or do you? I think so. I'm very lucky. I have a husband who makes sure that I
01:52:20
don't. He is um but he's a very steady good soundboard, but he's also a former special agent both in US Secret Service and Homeland Security and he was SWAT. So, this is a super steady person. Lost
01:52:34
his father when he was young. I'm only sharing this cuz you're asking. I guess what I'm saying is so I have someone in
01:52:40
my very inner circle who will tell me, "Hey, chucklehead, you might want to think this through." He may not say it like that, but he will call me out on things.
01:52:52
People that care about you will typically call things out on you. Um, now there's ways
01:52:58
to do it and ways not to do it. And there's maybe times where I'm not really keen on the way he does it. But because
01:53:04
I he has good contribution points, good credibility with me, I know if he's saying something that there's validity
01:53:11
to it. If he's going to pause and say, "Hey, I would like you to think about this." It's coming from somewhere. So,
01:53:17
he's built enough trust, I've built enough trust to know that he does that. Now, if you have someone who's always
01:53:23
critiquing you, because that does exist. everything you do is wrong, then that person's not going to, you know, they're not going to resonate. So, I think having people that actually call you out
01:53:36
on your stuff or help point it out that can do it and that you also have to be okay with listening it. So, I'm mature enough and I hope to be I try to be humble enough to say, "Look, tell me the
01:53:48
truth." Or there are times too where as much as a strategic decision maker I like to be there's times where Stephen I'm seeing red. Someone will do something and all I see is red and I
01:54:00
will go to someone that can either either I trust or can help me make a decision with something and I'll say,
01:54:07
you know, it could be my agent, it could be a work thing. I'm like, "Hey, this happened. I'm seeing red. How would you handle this scenario because I'm in an
01:54:15
emotional state and I'm not going to make a good decision. Can I have your guidance advice? And so I will go to
01:54:20
people I trust who will guide me. So that's the biggest thing I think. Call yourself out on your [ __ ] The
01:54:26
minute you start getting emotional and I think there's a pattern, if everything offends you, if everything upsets you,
01:54:34
if you're getting triggered all the time, if you're upset with people or angry with people or you feel the need
01:54:39
to let everybody know through social media or posts or texting, you know what's going on in your life. I want you
01:54:45
to pause and say, why am I doing all of this? What is going on within me that I am feeling that I need to that I see the world this way? It always starts with us. It's always within. So, I think
01:54:58
that's the thing. It's like what's going on within me? And if you have the ability and the maturity and you're in a
01:55:04
space where you can do that and you want that, you can call yourself out on your own [ __ ]
01:55:10
Do you have a lot of friends? No. I did growing up. I was my social butterfly. Um, no. And just so you know, the research shows, Stephen, that as we age,
01:55:24
our inner circle gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I have a lot of acquaintances
01:55:29
and I'm friendly with a lot of people and I network with a lot of people and I like these people. But when I hear the
01:55:36
word friends, I could count my friends on one hand. Do you have a lot of friends? M
01:55:43
you might cuz you might still be at an age where you're kind of in the middle there. For me, I've got like five best friends,
01:55:49
but then I've got all these other people who I've become friends with predominantly through work. Okay. So, I define friends as people you
01:55:57
would give pretty much unconditional trust to. Unconditional. I trust you. I'll tell
01:56:02
you what, more or less. How many would those be? I reckon 10. 10. Unconditional trust. Okay. Jack's one of them. Jack over there is one of them. Known him for 7 years now.
01:56:15
There's nothing I wouldn't trust him with. So that would be a legitimate Yes. That
01:56:21
would be a friend. Mhm. Right. Consistency, length of time, trust, no betrayal. Mhm. That would be a friend. And is this a quality versus quantity game? Do you think the inner circle?
01:56:33
Yeah. Can Why do you need all those people? It's it's it's one thing to have connections and and network and and meet people and hang out, but who you bring into that inner circle,
01:56:46
I think, and I would think even for you, you want to be selective and careful because you also want to make sure people if Steven wasn't Steven,
01:56:58
like what quality friends would they still be? Because sometimes it's also what the package is and people are drawn
01:57:04
to us and that's okay. But I guess what I'm saying is it's quality. Are they generally good
01:57:10
friends? Like if something bad happens and you're like, "I need your help." And they're like, "Let me would they be like, "Let me go get my shovel. Where
01:57:17
are we meeting?" You know, I think that would be the gauge of a friend. But I think sometimes people think a lot of friends are good and a lot of friends are noise.
01:57:27
You can have acquaintances, but like your friend is really somebody who influences you.
01:57:33
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get a 30day free trial. You've used this term low vibration before. Yeah. What is what is what does that mean to you to be low vibration? You can think of it this way. Like
01:59:45
there's some pe I think look at low vibration as when you're around people and it's just you don't want to be
01:59:52
around them. They make you feel bad. Not because they said something necessarily to you, but they're maybe in a victim
01:59:59
mindset. They're always bringing problems. They're always bringing drama. Everything is wrong. Nothing is right.
02:00:05
They are low vibration. Can you be low vibration around because you're low vibration people?
02:00:12
Yes. Because you adopt their habits. You adopt and are influenced by people. Doesn't matter who you are. You can be you can be Steven Bartlett, dire CEO. If you surround yourself with low vibration
02:00:23
people, eventually slowly it's going to bring down your vibration. It's easier for if you're up here, let's say higher vibration. I'm doing really well. I'm I'm I'm I'm excelling in the way I think
02:00:35
emotionally stable. You you're kind of doing really well in life and you're up here and you're around people like down
02:00:42
here and you're thinking, "Oh, I'm going to help pull this person up, right?" It is actually easier for them to pull you
02:00:48
down than it is for you to pull people up. You know, I always say, be careful who you try to save. Some people will
02:00:54
drown you. It's like when we would do uh rescue, search and rescue, they would tell you when you go out in the water,
02:01:00
the most dangerous thing isn't the water. It's the person who's panicking in the water who could kill you. Because
02:01:06
as you get closer to them to save them, what are they doing, Stephen? They're panicking. They're flailing. Then they
02:01:11
see you. What do they do? They grab on to you so they can stay afloat. And you know what they do? They push you down.
02:01:17
You're there to save them. But in their panic and in their loss and in their chaos, what do they do? They push you
02:01:23
down. People are the same way just in relationships. So all I'm saying is I'm not telling you not to be a person who's
02:01:29
going out there to help others, but be selective in how you do it and who you help because then you fall into that
02:01:36
that that space of I'm I'm such a I'm just trying to be a good person. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that. No, you're exposing yourself to
02:01:42
people and environments that are not good for you and that actually impact your life negatively. And so it's not on
02:01:49
them. It's also we have a responsibility to ourselves, Stephen, to make good decisions on where we go, what
02:01:56
relationships we enter, who we're dealing with, and what we're doing. We have a responsibility. So if somebody screws us over, I get it. Every once in
02:02:03
a while, you come across an [ __ ] and it happens. But if it's a consistent thing,
02:02:09
it's also what did I do? What did I allow myself to do that exposed me to this volatility that exposed me to this stuff? It's like crime. If I walk home every night in a sketchy area with the
02:02:20
the lights are dark and there's no lighting and I know there's high crime and it's abandoned area, that choice I'm
02:02:25
making to walk through that neighborhood versus taking a taxi, that will make me more likely to be
02:02:31
what? A victim of crime. But if I take a taxi, I'm less likely to be a victim of crime. I avoid this bad neighborhood. I
02:02:38
avoid this bad area. I guess what I'm saying is you also have a responsibility. We have a responsibility
02:02:43
to navigate the environment we're in and how we engage with people. And it can't
02:02:49
just be he or she screwed me over. It's like what decision did you make? It's not blame, but what decision did you make that exposed you and made you more vulnerable to getting screwed over?
02:03:01
Because there would because typically maybe not all but the majority of times there are signs that we choose to ignore
02:03:08
or we think everybody's our friend and we give them unconditional trust and then something happens and we think why
02:03:14
did that happen? Well, you gave unconditional trust like it was nothing. Your trust should be something people
02:03:19
earn. You don't have to tell them you need to earn my trust. You don't have to say it but internally it's kind of like
02:03:25
you need to earn this cuz it means something to give people trust. You shouldn't you shouldn't just automatically surrender it to you. So
02:03:32
Jack, what's up Jack? Jack over seven years earns trust consistently and over time. And that's why that relationship's the same way. But you are responsible. We are each responsible for ourselves.
02:03:43
So if you keep exposing yourself to low vibration, to chaotic areas, chaotic people, then you are playing a role in the problems that you have.
02:03:55
We live in a culture though where people are do complain a lot. They complain that things aren't fair, that they're not equal, that they're not, you know,
02:04:01
not being treated like they should be treated, etc., etc. And there's there's a lot of that in the the corporate world
02:04:08
because it's allowed. I think it's okay to meet people where they are sometimes and listen to them. I
02:04:15
think it's valid, but it's also when you bend so much, you're also doing a disservice to them because you're helping make excuses for them. they're not delivering and it hurts the work culture and I think you really have to
02:04:28
be careful because a person who comes in with poor performance can really impact the rest of the team and I've had it
02:04:34
like I don't have as many as employees as you have but when I have people that work with me I'm very aware of how their
02:04:41
vibration comes in and impacts the other team. I want high performance and if you're coming in with your low vibration
02:04:47
and your problems and your dramas it doesn't belong at work. What is the defining sort of attitude trait of a low
02:04:54
performer? Just if you just had to pick one, the first thing that comes to mind that pisses you off.
02:04:59
It doesn't piss me off, but when people start telling me about their personal affairs,
02:05:06
and it's not that I'm insensitive person. There's a time and place. So, if you start telling me about how your weekend was with your grandmother or whoever, and I'm sitting there, I'm
02:05:17
like, it's not that I'm insensitive, but it's we're at work. Like, I asked you about
02:05:23
something specific, and you're telling me about this whole story about So, you're making it about you. And I think
02:05:29
that there's a little bit like, did you not pause to think like I'm talking to my supervisor or my boss?
02:05:35
She's super busy. She's expect accepting expecting something from me. Let me share it with her. You know, when you do
02:05:42
that to another person, you take from them all the time. How's that fair to them? At the start of that, you said they would come and talk about themselves, etc. And it reminded me of something you were talking about in your TED talk
02:05:53
where one of the key ideas is that you're not that special. What do you mean when you say you're not that special? You're not that special is
02:06:06
When we make ourselves so self-important which in western culture we have it's very much about the person the identity
02:06:13
of the person you can do anything you can this it's you you I think that's great but what happens is when we get so focused on the singular person and we forget other people is that we think
02:06:26
that we are so special that it's just us and then the rest of the world revolves around us. We're the sun and then
02:06:33
everybody else revolves around us. And when you think you're special, it's not that you become a narcissist or anything like that. That's not how I mean it. What I mean by that is if I am special,
02:06:45
then what also that says is my problems are special. My pain is special. What I'm going through is special. And you
02:06:51
meet those people where it's like, "Oh, no, no, no. This is this is just happening to me." That mindset. And when
02:06:57
you are there, you are alone. And there's nothing that anybody can do to help you even when they give you advice
02:07:03
because you are the exception to everything. When you have that mindset, at least
02:07:08
when I had that mindset, all my problems faded away. As bad as they were, or whatever hardship I was going through,
02:07:15
I'm like, I'm not that special. There's other people going through it far worse than I am. It doesn't minimize what I'm
02:07:20
going through, but it reorients you. You also talk about walking with conviction because predators can spot
02:07:26
prey. Yes. Did you see that through your career that predators, narcissists would go for
02:07:33
certain people? Yes. But even Yes. But in even in regular relationships, why do some
02:07:39
people end up with a bad partner all the time or an abusive partner all the time?
02:07:45
Why don't throw me under the bus, you say? Well, why? Because we tend to draw to us
02:07:54
those folks because we we we look like we're easier targets. We look like they're people they can then mold or
02:08:00
manipulate and we we trust too easily. I'm not telling you not to give trust, but there are certain traits that they
02:08:06
look at. They're not going to go after an alpha type personality. You know, it it's if you look like you're an easy target, if you look like you're easy to take down, if you look like you're
02:08:16
easily going to be thrown off, people see that. They they pay attention. But if they look like you're
02:08:23
a competitor, if they look like you're a counter predator, and you don't even have to be that extreme, but if they look like, hey, this person's going to
02:08:29
push back, I'm going to be careful. Even with some people you talk to, I bet employees, there's some employees that
02:08:35
you're probably more comfortable telling something to cuz they're more easily they're easier to tell it to. They're
02:08:42
softer in tone. Maybe they're not going to push back. They're easier. And then there are other employees where you're like, I have to think about how I say
02:08:48
this cuz this person's a a strong alpha personality. And so I have to approach them a little bit differently. Now people are the same way. We give off cues. We give off vibes. And to some
02:09:00
people we can look like easier targets. Even in crime, crime, they pick their targets. They don't want fair fights. They want I want someone who's going to go down easy. Kids are the most um
02:09:17
overly abused population. Why? Because they're kids. They're the easiest to target. They're
02:09:24
the most vulnerable. Why? So, if I'm such a strong predator, why am I going for kids? Or next, elderly. Why am I
02:09:32
going for elderly? Cuz they're easy for me to conquer. They're easy for me to take down. Predators are not what you
02:09:37
think they are. Even if you look at in recent events, if you look at recent shootings we've had,
02:09:44
when you look at the people that have carried out some of these shootings, there was one recently this week with Charlie Kirk. Look at that shooter. Does
02:09:50
he look like a predator to you? I don't mean it in a cold way. I just Does he look it? There was one before that here
02:09:55
in the United States. It was the Minneapolis school shooting. Did you see that shooter? Does that look like a predator to you?
02:10:04
These predators that we envision in our head that we think are these ruthless, scaryl looking people. They tend to not
02:10:11
be that. They they themselves are not strong. They look for weaker targets because it's easier easier to take out and manipulate. Predators are not these. It's not like what you see in the movie.
02:10:24
The movies like you think you're going to see the scary looking dude. And I'm not saying you're not going to see that from time to time. But these people who
02:10:30
do certain things, who take advantage, they don't look like predators. And you have to be careful because you
02:10:36
inadvertently attract people who look at you and think, "I can manage her. I can
02:10:42
do that. I can mold that. I can shape that. And in the context of work or relationships, if there's my my boss is
02:10:51
shouting at me and constantly berating me or my partner is shouting at me and berating me and I just feel small, I
02:10:59
can't necessarily call for backup. So, is it as simple as saying my choice I just should just leave or is there what
02:11:05
if it's a situation where I can't leave? like it's like family or sometimes in work, you know, you you have to stay because you need to pay your bills or
02:11:16
there's, you know, kids involved and I'm married to this person. So, okay. So, you're saying you cannot leave? Yeah. If I couldn't leave,
02:11:22
I always feel like there's a choice. It may not be the choice you want to make, but you always have a choice. Um because
02:11:29
in those scenarios if you've got let's say and I've had a lot of people come to me and they're
02:11:34
truly abusive relationships. There is no advice I can give you to fix that. That person is just going to abuse you. Let alone from you assaulting them back and then now you're having like god
02:11:47
forbid like somebody's dead which does happen. I I can't fix that. I what I can do is for a person like that and most people don't leave abusive relationships. the the research. I've
02:11:58
talked to a lot of people that work with abused victims. They find that even even when they do leave, the vast majority go
02:12:04
back. So, I think that's a scenario. If you have someone like that in your life, the best thing you could do for them is
02:12:10
listen and just try to keep them as safe as you can. I don't think there is nothing I can do. What are you going to
02:12:17
do? Get a gun and then what? You're going to use it? People, I think, Effie, they they they almost want you to help
02:12:24
them stay in that situation, but change the situation. No, change the person. It's the iceberg
02:12:30
we talked about. They're not accepting the truth of who they have in front of them. We don't accept the truth. I have
02:12:36
this person and this person is horrible to me. They're abusive to me. They're vile to me. And I think if I could just
02:12:42
get them to not be like that, everything would be okay. Okay? Of course it would. But that's not the truth. If you're not
02:12:49
living in truth, you have somebody who's horrible to you. Now, if it's an intimate personal relationship, like a
02:12:55
companion, that's a big thing because you live with that person, there's no getting away from them. They're
02:13:00
typically like if you have a companion or you get married, like you're what? Typically, unless you divorce, you're tied to that person. That's really
02:13:06
rough. Now, let's say it's a parent or a kid, cuz kids can be just as abusive to parents. Actually, you know, the
02:13:13
research shows, at least uh here in the United States, I can't remember the most recent year I looked at it was the Uniform Crime Report. I believe it
02:13:20
showed there was more abuse from child to parent than parent to child relationship wise. I don't mean a
02:13:26
5-year-old hitting their parent. I mean it can be an adult child being abusive to a parent.
02:13:31
Mhm. But let's say you have a scenario like that. Now, there is a point at at some
02:13:37
degree where you can remove yourself either from the parents house. Let's say you live with your parents. I get this sometimes a lot. My parents are like
02:13:43
this or they're like that to me and I'm like, "How old are you?" If you're over the age of 18 and you can work, you have
02:13:49
the ability to find ways to remove yourself. You don't have to cut them out of your life because sometimes for
02:13:55
people it's really, really hard. They love their family as messed up as they are. You can love your family, but you
02:14:00
don't have to like them. Those are two thing different things. I had a scenario like that where there was a certain member of my uh extended family who was
02:14:09
being inappropriate and um I was the first this was when I was younger. I was like 18. I said to my
02:14:15
siblings I said I know you guys are going to stay and tolerate it and you're going to justify it in your own way. That's not the approach I'm going to
02:14:21
take. I'm going to cut them off. And funnily enough, this person treats me the best. They treat me the best. And I
02:14:28
think it's because they realize that my tolerance is so low and I'm willing to walk away and that I don't think family
02:14:33
means that you are bound to this person for life. I do think you still get to choose. I think like all relationships
02:14:38
in your life there should be a certain standard that they have to meet whether they're family, friends, a stranger or a
02:14:43
team of whoever it is that they have to meet like a minimum standard and family for me just don't get a pass on that.
02:14:49
And funnily it meant that my relationship with I've never fallen out with this person. The only reason I said that was because I see them falling out
02:14:54
with everybody else. But and and this was again before the podcast and whatever else, like before my my businesses, I was a broke student, but I
02:15:01
just I for whatever reason, probably some trauma related reason, felt no obligation to keep you in my life just
02:15:08
because we have the same genes. I didn't for me that's like not not a not a high enough bar. And they treated me so well.
02:15:16
That's so interesting because you stood your ground. Yeah. Yeah. And this is where and this is where sometimes we talk about the
02:15:21
bad, you know, how we're talking about the bad things that have happened to us and we carry them through. It's one thing to go through something bad and
02:15:27
then you move through it, right? You moved on. But when you stay in something bad, so like if you if you're in a
02:15:32
relationship and there's continual trauma, there's no you can't move through that cuz you're staying there.
02:15:38
It's not it's not it happened to you and you're staying in this victim mindset. It's like you're still in it. M
02:15:44
chronic abuse, chronic trauma, chronic what, however you want to define it. And abuse can look in differently or
02:15:50
chronically having somebody bully you. That's really bad. That's really bad. There's no strategies. There's no
02:15:56
skills. And I would get those folks and they're like, "Can you help me be more confident, be more this?" And it would come out in the discussions I would have
02:16:03
that they had somebody that was in their life that he was bully bully or abusive. And I would tell them, there are no
02:16:09
skills I can give you that can help you be more confident because I can't I can't counter that. You have someone who is consistently demolishing you. And so you think what
02:16:24
I'm going to tell you to what? Do a power pose and that's going to fix it. Do you feel like you have and I don't
02:16:31
know. I'm asking out of humbleness. I don't know. Do you feel that growing up you had a lot of people that around you
02:16:37
that were either, you know, had a lot of issues or struggles and like that it was
02:16:44
something that you had to push through or climb out to get to where you are? Yeah. I think I think it really only
02:16:50
takes like one person that's close enough, especially if they're above you to basically in my case to make my tolerance level
02:17:02
extremely low. I think people can relate to that cuz I hear people say this all the time like it only takes one parent
02:17:07
that did X or one parent that did this or you know an uncle or an auntie or whatever that you go I'm going to tolerate zero of that. So another thing
02:17:14
in my relationship with my partner is neither of us shout. And I grew up in a house where shouting was the background
02:17:20
noise of every day. Like from morning till night. And so with me and my partner been together for 7 years. We
02:17:26
talk like this. It's not to say we don't argue or we don't have disagreements. We don't get upset or whatever. But there's
02:17:33
never shouting because I just have zero tolerance for that. I would just frankly in my previous relationship when the
02:17:39
shouting began, I would literally just disappear from the space and I'd be in my car driving down the motorway. That was my response because I just because I grew up in a house where that was and my
02:17:49
siblings are all the same. None of them shout or very very calm or very softly spoken because we grew up in an
02:17:55
environment which was the opposite. Funny. So, but that's that's interesting too because it could have gone the other
02:18:01
way. Yeah. And it sometimes does for people. It does. You talked about the abuse. You violence often comes from violence, but sometimes
02:18:07
like peace comes from violence. That's true. This is also why when you said earlier that looking back at your
02:18:12
past and trying to figure out what happened is not necessarily useful because two kids in the same environment
02:18:18
can turn out entirely different and you see that across siblings. There's something interesting you were saying a second ago about we were talking about
02:18:25
like gradual small exposure therapy to change your life for the better, moving the shoes closer to the bed. But then
02:18:31
you also just talked about the gradual exposure therapy of someone breaching your boundaries and becoming an abuser
02:18:38
and how it's like it's like they just every day just move the shoes a little bit closer to the bed. Yes. Yes.
02:18:44
It's interesting. It goes both ways in that regard. when I, you know, with my inner circle, like even with people I
02:18:49
work with, if I start I really pay attention to behavior or if if like this is something small and I don't know if
02:18:55
you're the same way, but like if if you work with me or it well you work for me and I send you an email and you don't respond till 4 days later, massive red
02:19:06
flag for me. And I won't say anything to you. I'll wait and then I'll test it out again with something else and again and
02:19:14
as soon as I see that in my head I'm like we're done. I may not tell you anything but I'll find a way to let you
02:19:19
go. So those are certain things because and that's a little bit like the moving the shoes closer away from the bed where
02:19:26
you'll see people you'll see I'll see somebody do something and I'm like is it a fluke? Mhm. Do they truly miss it or is this kind of
02:19:33
this relaxed attitude? Oh, it's Ebie. She's so Well, I don't know if they think I'm nice but you know, after I do
02:19:40
these podcasts, they're like, "Oh, she's so scary." But but you know, sometimes people will get too relaxed and
02:19:46
comfortable and so it's in a different way. And so I'll test it out and when I see that, I'm like, "No, no, I'm not,
02:19:53
you know, if it's someone I really want to work with, I may address it." But sometimes I don't want to say I don't
02:19:58
invest the time and energy and effort. But sometimes I know I know when to invest that time, energy, and effort and when to say no and I pull out.
02:20:09
Earlier on we talked about Charlie Kirk this week. Uh what week are we in? We're
02:20:14
on Sunday. So yeah, this week he was assassinated um while on a college campus as part of a tour that he was
02:20:20
doing called Prove Me Wrong where he went out onto college campuses and debated his ideas with the college
02:20:27
campus students and a shooter um who has now been found and uh I believe is in prison currently awaiting jail. Jail. Yeah. Their first appearance I
02:20:37
think in court on Tuesday of this week. um shot him in the neck from several hundred yards away. As a former Secret Service agent whose very job was to
02:20:48
ensure that didn't happen to someone, to ensure that someone didn't assassinate them, harm them, keep them safe, etc.
02:20:54
What did you think and feel when you you heard the news? So, I have been covering the Charlie
02:21:00
Kirk assassination in in from the news perspective. So, you're asking me like what assessment can I give you as a
02:21:06
former Secret Service? So, I'll give you something. I'll I'll I'll share with you what I've been covering and if you have a a specific question feel free to ask.
02:21:14
So here's the thing. This is truly unique and exceptional and this is why people calling it a political assassination, right? It is and it isn't. Here's the difference. A
02:21:25
president of the United States is a politician. He's it's understood that things like this will happen, right? And
02:21:32
he has protection. a political appointee like a member of Congress corre because right now members of Congress in the
02:21:38
United States and I think in many parts of the world are very afraid right now because their threats have also increased. So even here in the United
02:21:45
States they're looking to increase the budget on people of Cong in Congress for safety and um protection. It is to some degree understood that
02:21:56
these things will happen over time to people in who are political elected figures. Charlie is uniquely different.
02:22:03
He talked about things, but he wasn't a political figure. Nobody voted for him. He was honestly He had his own Didn't he
02:22:09
have his own podcast? He had a podcast. He was out there. He spoke. He did talks. He shared his opinion. So, he's
02:22:16
no different in a sense than you and I in a sense. And so, what that assassination means is it is fair game now on anybody who has a platform.
02:22:28
That's the difference here. So, it's different. You're not dealing with presidents now, heads of states or people in Congress. You're dealing now
02:22:34
with people who if they share an opinion that you don't like and I perceive it as
02:22:41
a threat, then now I have the ability to retaliate and take a shot. This is this
02:22:47
is going to open up the door to copycat because to try to get certain people like a president of the United States or
02:22:52
a member of Congress or politician or certain people, those are hard targets. Those are hard to get. They're secure.
02:22:58
But now this means anybody who's out there that I don't like and I don't agree with, I can take that target
02:23:06
and and cause harm to those people. We're moving into a space now where everybody is fair game, where I have a voice. Um, even on social media, I would actually sit and go through X before I
02:23:20
would go on air just to get the news updates, see what else was happening. And I would have to sit and filter
02:23:26
through all the hateful comments people were writing, everybody to each other. And then every other five comments was, I'm getting death threats. People are threatening me cuz people were
02:23:36
expressing their opinions online and other people were threatening them. This means that it means you can go
02:23:43
after anybody. And what I'm not saying I would like this to happen, but to me this is a massive red flag because it
02:23:50
means now everybody is extremely vulnerable. And now we're looking to targeting people who have shows, who
02:23:55
have platforms, who maybe do the dues, who share opinions. That is why this is a bother. This is why people should be
02:24:02
concerned. You said copycats. Is is that something that you actually saw when you're in the
02:24:07
Secret Service that if one incident happened it would 100% all it takes is one person to do it another person to be like oh he can do
02:24:14
it I can do it he executed his mission I'm not agreeing with the mission but that shooter was able to do what he
02:24:20
needed to do and he was successful sadly right so someone else is going to see it and they're going to get that idea I'm
02:24:27
speaking at a university on Tuesday so maybe somebody hears something I say on a podcast they don't like it they might
02:24:32
get that idea but also there's a lot of people out there that are just not well. I mean, no, they're not well. I'm going to be
02:24:38
very transparent. People are not well. When So, in the US Secret Service, we had a a unit. It was called the Improtective Intelligence Unit. In that unit is where we would track people who
02:24:50
were presumed to be threats against people who protected. So, how did they get on your radar? They would write
02:24:56
letters. They would show up at multiple events. They would make phone calls, right? There was ways to do that.
02:25:02
Then you have the introduction of social media. So now people are more are they're able to now make threats and say things from the safety of their own home
02:25:13
and not as afraid. It's it's it's a it's a it's a more detached way to attack somebody and now you have to follow
02:25:20
those leads and now there's thousands of these things that come in and even if they even hit your radar and so
02:25:26
everyone's in inundated with tracking people. Now at the time initially those who were looking to cause harm to our protectees typically typically had
02:25:37
severe mental health issues and from time to time it wasn't often the Secret Service would work with the courts to
02:25:43
involuntarily commit somebody if they thought they were that much harm. With social media now the the playing field has changed. One, it allows people
02:25:55
to say things that they would never say to your face. It's allows people now when you absorb the content online, the majority is very
02:26:08
negative. Even though we're talking about this event, everything is typically very ugly online. And so
02:26:14
people escalate. And we've also noticed that there's a lack of empathy. we are less empathetic the
02:26:21
more we have exposure to online stuff because when people text hateful things it doesn't become as a big of a deal
02:26:28
anymore whereas if somebody said it to you it's a bigger deal. So there is a severe mental issue with people and there's also when
02:26:42
you look at behavior typically the things that keep you in check seem to be a little bit more absent today which
02:26:49
also causes people to behave a little bit more inappropriately. So like and this is again just for the research not based on my personal opinion. Family uh when you have strong social bonds to
02:27:02
certain structures you're less likely to cause harm to others. So family is one one social bond that keeps you kind of
02:27:09
like in place like I'm not going to do this cuz it would embarrass my family or hurt my family. Faith or religion,
02:27:15
religious institutions, whatever that religion is that typically keeps people kind of steady. uh certain institutions
02:27:21
like having a a strong bond to maybe a school or certain institutions. There are certain things that keep you less
02:27:28
likely from behaving this way and we do see a little bit of an erosion in those areas and I think that leaks into people's mental cognitive uh issues. One
02:27:40
of the things that I don't think people realize as well on when they're on the internet is that they are in an algorithm. And the algorithm isn't the
02:27:46
real world, but it's actually just the things the way that the algorithm works is it shows you more of the things that you've expressed interest in before. So
02:27:54
my first sort of 10 years of my career was working in social media. So all of the major social platforms, we built one of the most um disruptive social media
02:28:00
companies at the time. So I have a deep understanding of how the algorithm works. In fact, much of our job was to figure out how to how it works to help
02:28:06
our big clients globally reach more people. And I think I think about like my my my my grandfather. My grandfather
02:28:14
will like look at his phone and he'll think what he's seeing is the world. But he doesn't know that dwell time is a
02:28:20
huge factor in what he's going to be shown tomorrow. So if he dwells a little bit more on a particular post, the
02:28:26
algorithm will go, "Ooh, Mr. Bartlett, grandfather Bartlett is interested. So, next time you log in,
02:28:33
we're going to show more of that. And I I learned this really starkly when one of my older relatives downloaded Tik Tok
02:28:39
and um I got like an emergency call from their partner saying, "You we need your help."
02:28:47
She's downloaded Tik Tok and it's like making her crazy. Like it's making her insane because she's seeing now all of
02:28:52
this like vitriol and hate and racist stuff and she thinks the world is like that and she's like preparing to
02:28:58
protest. So I had to funnily enough get her password off her partner and hit this button in the back end of Tik Tok which refreshes your algorithm just wipes out all of your your history and
02:29:09
what I would do is I'd hit that button every single week and eventually she stopped using Tik Tok. She found it boring because it was all now like
02:29:14
XFactor, America's Got Talent videos, people singing, people dancing and I'd go on her phone and I'd watch these like
02:29:20
music videos and I'd like like them and bookmark them and save them because I knew that that's what she would see next time she logged in. I know this sounds
02:29:26
crazy, but that's like people don't realize that what they're seeing is they're pulling something towards them.
02:29:32
And that's how the algorithms work. You pull towards you what you've been historically interested in. So if you're scared about brown people crossing the
02:29:39
the border in dingies, that's all it's going to show you. Pull you more of that stuff and you're going to start thinking that the world
02:29:45
is X, Y, or Zed. And I Yeah. The other thing too when it shows you that stuff, it's almost like being how I
02:29:52
said when you're in law enforcement, you're expo exposed to the worst of people and you have to be really cared not to become cynical. Yeah.
02:29:57
And one of the ways you're also protected is cuz you're with other officers. So there's that team camaraderie. Everybody helps each other.
02:30:04
So now this is the same way. I'm on my phone and I am exposed to the worst of the worst and I'm consuming it. Here's
02:30:10
the difference. I'm by myself. Yeah. And there's nobody there to tether me to be like, "Hey." So, I look at this stuff
02:30:16
and whatever it is I'm looking at that I'm afraid because it depends who I am and what I resonate with. Is it am I
02:30:22
afraid of people crossing the border? Am I afraid of school shootings? Am I afraid of this other group? Right? It's
02:30:28
just what and everything is fearbased. They're tapping into your fear and they make you afraid this other thing is going to harm me. And there's no ability either. I've noticed through social
02:30:40
media, there's no middle ground. It's either you're all the way over here and you're all the way over here. and they
02:30:45
feed on people's fears these algorithms. So this is a graph I found which shows the rise in um school shootings but it's rising it's increasing.
02:30:56
One of the things to keep in mind with this with the school shooting and then we don't know this based on this one are
02:31:02
these mass shootings or just shootings in general. So school shooting is I show up to school I don't like you Stephen I
02:31:08
pull out my gun I shoot you. Technically that's a school shooting. A mass shooting is like what we saw the week before Minneapolis
02:31:19
um and we had that person who showed up to school and who just started shooting randomly. So there's two. So when we
02:31:24
look at shootings, let's let's look at mass. Let's look at mass because if you look at school shootings one-on-one,
02:31:30
those are a bit different and they have to do with the city. But if you look at mass shootings, what can we tell from mass shootings? So, some of the data
02:31:35
shows us typically um that person tends to have some kind of association to the place they go to, the school they went to. Typically, there's some type of connection. Usually, at that point where
02:31:48
they commit to shooting, something in their life happened, right? There's some type of moment, maybe they broke up with
02:31:54
their partner, they lost their job, something that offset that moment. Now, over time, historically, they were
02:31:59
building up to having all these issues. those issues don't go away, but something typically happens where they
02:32:06
decide, I'm going to do this. The other thing is they're planned. So, they either they sit down and decide to plan
02:32:12
this out and they communicate it to somebody in some way or they do it through social media. Another thing that's really interesting, they happen
02:32:18
typically in the mornings. They typically handing happen in the mornings. That person wakes up and says,
02:32:24
"Okay, today's the day I'm going to do it. I've got my plan in place." And they execute it earlier on in the day. The
02:32:29
other thing with mass shootings, mass shootings, not just regular school shootings, in almost all of them, if
02:32:35
dare I say all of them, all those individuals had a history of mental health issues or mental illness. The
02:32:43
other thing too that we see is they had access to weapons. So they were either able to go get a weapon, they knew
02:32:49
somebody who had a weapon, and they were able to get that weapon. One of the things you said a second ago about um
02:32:55
how this is might become more frequent sadly had me thinking about why that would be and what's changed in the world. And one of the things that has changed in the world is that media is now increasingly people. People like us
02:33:09
that have microphones in our kitchens. I mean we're sat in what used to be my kitchen recording this conversation. And
02:33:15
once upon a time to reach this many people you had to be CNN. CNN's a logo. It's hard to shoot at. But in a world
02:33:22
where much of the media is like creatorled or hostled media, it's much easier to have a a target. And I was it
02:33:29
just made me think about I was like, "Oh yeah, of course, of course." You know, but sometimes to the target you if
02:33:35
you're looking at mass shootings now, if you're looking at a target like this Charlie Kirk thing we were talking about, right? Sometimes it's done
02:33:41
because they want notoriety. It's a big thing. So, with um this specific shooting, Charlie Kirk, it's come out now that the individual was actually on Discord after he did the shot, talking
02:33:54
about it with other members on Discord, according to what law enforcement said. Again, I'm just updating as I know it.
02:34:00
It could change, but he was saying he was basically talking with other people and basically saying like he did it and
02:34:06
laughing about it. He was admitting to doing it. Yeah. They were like, "We think you did this." He's like, "Oh, maybe I did it."
02:34:12
Haha. So there's it's become for whatever reason in that world it's seen as a as an acceptable thing to do
02:34:25
a way to create significance in a other way. Yes. I want attention. I want to create significance. And also here's the other
02:34:30
thing. What's happening is we are v villainizing people very easily. We are calling people names. We are villainizing them. And it goes back
02:34:41
to social media clips. people are making even even things that are our our words are our most powerful weapon and we don't realize that when you open your mouth
02:34:52
and you say something and it's what's happening is people aren't saying something because most people are cowards they text it and they post it
02:35:00
because they would never say it to your face and they post it and then what that does is all these these negative things
02:35:07
these these attacks we make towards people become commonplace. So if all I see is negative stuff, this guy's bad,
02:35:14
this guy's this, this guy's that, I start to think it's true, and if you villainize somebody to such a degree, I
02:35:21
think, well, I I'm going to be a hero if I do something about this. Look what a horrible person this is. I heard this
02:35:27
quote once, uh, the bigger the hero, the bigger the villain. I have to make you such a villain so I can feel like a
02:35:34
hero. And this is what happens when you villainize people to such a degree. You create a justification.
02:35:40
I had to do this. Look at how horrible this human being was. Look at all the horrible things people are saying about
02:35:46
them. I am doing the right thing. You just justified it and sold it to yourself. It's the right thing to do.
02:35:51
But today with social media, I can't solely blame them because social media posts and the things people are creating and putting out there is giving justification to other people to do this
02:36:03
stuff. Did you say that your husband was a sniper? He was counter assault. So you and him are both former Secret Service agents.
02:36:14
Correct. So when you see something like the Charlie Kirk assassination happen, I'm I'm so curious as to the conversations in your house about that because you must be looking at this from
02:36:26
so many different perspectives from like how that person could have been more protected, I guess, or how that setup
02:36:32
could have been to mitigate the chances of something like that happening. So with Charlie Kirk, there's nothing they
02:36:39
could have done, let alone put snipers on the rooftop to prevent that or counter snipers rather.
02:36:44
Is that what they would have had to do? But that's what they would have had to do. Okay. There's no and there's no way anybody would have done it. That's what I said.
02:36:50
Like if you're a president or person of Congress or some VIP like that, you're going to get those assets. A person like
02:36:55
Charlie Kirk like you or me, we're not going to get those. Who's going to pay for that? So he had security, but it was
02:37:01
on the ground with him. They're thinking, their type of security thinking, and this is private security.
02:37:06
And again, it's not to to knock them because this is something new. This is new. They're thinking, I need to protect
02:37:12
Charlie from the guy standing at the podium asking a question. All these people pushing up against the rope line
02:37:17
who want to talk to Charlie. So, they're looking at it from this physical sense. It's like, it sounds terrible, but it's
02:37:23
almost like a meat shield. I'm the meat shield between you and them. They're not thinking high ground problems. Nobody
02:37:29
thought, who would have thought? Maybe a Secret Service agent would have, but who would have thought I need to have
02:37:35
snipers on the rooftops or counter snipers on the rooftops to protect from a sniper shooting Charlie Kirk?
02:37:41
He was wearing a bulletproof vest, wasn't he? That's what I've been told. I'm not sure. I don't know if it's 100%
02:37:46
true, so I don't want to say yes or no. I say that because in several of the videos when he's on campus, you see that there's clearly when he's wearing a
02:37:53
t-shirt, you see um vest marks here. And I noticed this many weeks, many many weeks ago. It might be true. Yeah. I just because it's never confirmed. I'm hesitant. So I don't know. It's very
02:38:04
possible. And uh again, it's not a So a ve a a vest like that, it's going to it's going to stop a round from a pistol typically and maybe a shotgun round.
02:38:15
Rifle rounds usually like our counter assault teams in the Secret Service, they actually had an extra ceramic plate
02:38:21
to help prevent those. So you really need like a different type of exposure to protect from a rifle round. Now, in
02:38:27
this scenario with him, the shot, you see it go straight to his neck. And that's the thing with vests. They
02:38:34
protect you here, right? They protect your vital organs. And and even when I would wear mine, it was you lived in the
02:38:40
reality of if I get one to the head, I'm done. Is that your worst nightmare as a Secret
02:38:46
Service agent that something like that happens to the person you're protecting? Correct. It is the worst cuz it means you failed. It's horrible. It's
02:38:53
horrible. I mean, when you would do protection stuff and the person you were protecting, whoever it was, cuz you would protect I've protected everybody
02:38:59
from the president of the United States to former presidents to first ladies to their kids. I had Barbara Pierce Bush
02:39:05
who which was President Bush's daughter. I had her for a while uh to the secretary of treasury to the secretary
02:39:11
of homeland security. These these are all USS protectees and foreign heads of state. When the prime minister of the UK
02:39:17
comes to the United States, they get pro he gets protection. We we work with the team because you don't want anybody
02:39:22
getting assassinated on US soil. So you protect Russia when he comes. Putin you you got to take a bullet for him too. So it's more the mission. So but the thing is it's your responsibility. And so
02:39:36
the whole time I don't want to say you're on edge, but the whole time you're on you're aware. Your mind's moving. Where's my threat? Where's my
02:39:42
threat? Where's my threat? Where's my problem? And then we would have sometimes it would have what they call like wheels up parties, which means your
02:39:48
protectee is up. their wheels up in the plane and that's when people are just like
02:39:53
cuz the stress is so high. You're so on. You're always looking for the threat. There's no we work in shifts but there's
02:40:00
days where I work 16 17our days 18 hour days depending on what my assignment was. It's a lot.
02:40:08
What is the most important thing for the person who clicked on this podcast because they are looking for something
02:40:13
in their life. They want to be more effective in the pursuit of their goals. Whatever their
02:40:19
goals might be, could be professionally, personally, could be, you know, maybe they want to
02:40:24
be an entrepreneur or something. What is the most important thing that we should have talked about in that regard that we didn't talk about?
02:40:31
I don't know what that to say to that. I guess what I would say to them is I think the message is that they're they
02:40:36
are extremely capable and no matter what society is telling, no matter what's happened to them, no matter what excuses
02:40:43
people make for them or maybe they make for themselves, they are much more capable. And so that maybe when they see
02:40:49
someone like you or myself and they think, "Oh, look, they've got it all figured out." It's like we figured it
02:40:55
out the same way everybody else figures it figures it out. So I think Stephen, the most important thing is like we're
02:41:01
not that special. And that means that they can do and achieve what they want. I think that's
02:41:08
the biggest thing. Like you're absolutely capable. Even if you feel inadequate, even if you lack confidence,
02:41:13
even if you've had horrible trauma in your life, whatever it is, despite all that, you are absolutely capable. And it
02:41:20
is your choice. Evie, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves
02:41:26
a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, what brings you the most joy in life? And what are you the most scared of?
02:41:40
The most joy in life is my daughter. I think the biggest joy in my life is her because I think that was something I always wanted to do and to to be a mom.
02:41:52
And so that's the biggest joy. And then at the same time, it's my biggest fear because I want her to be well and
02:41:58
healthy and okay. And I think a consequence of the work I did and even still do because I'm in media and news and I I cover crime. I have seen what
02:42:08
humanity can do. I've seen the good in humanity, but I also have seen the bad things people can do. And so it's hard
02:42:14
sometimes. I I to you want to protect your child, but I also know that um I can't always shield her. I won't be able to shield her in life from everything.
02:42:27
That's scary. Thank you, Evie. I was saying to you before we started recording that everywhere I go, people come up to me
02:42:33
and they talk about you. In a way, that's atypical. So, like, you know, obviously I do a lot of episodes, meet a lot of great people.
02:42:38
Is that really true? I've I swear I don't want to anyone's life cuz that's probably shouldn't do that, but I swear to you the amount of
02:42:45
times I've used you as a case study for what do I use you as a case study for? for how important it is effect like effective
02:42:57
communication is because it because people come up to me all the time and mention you. So obviously I then do that
02:43:04
I'm like why are people always mentioning Evie like I get it you know you're very very successful you've lived this incredible
02:43:09
career but obviously I speak to lots of people that are successful but also why are they always coming up to me and talking about you and asking you know me
02:43:16
to speak to you again etc. I think it's all the things you said. I think you meet them where they are. And I think
02:43:22
you do that in both your communication style. I think the nuance of your message is is is spot on while also being high conviction in certain areas.
02:43:33
And you're relatable. They think you're you're a badass. And I guess that's it. It's it's something you learn from doing these podcasts. You just have certain people who people just they just click
02:43:47
with that you've been on the show and even as the host you can't in hindsight you're trying to like figure it out.
02:43:53
Yeah. But there's something and much of the questions I asked you today are orientated towards finding out
02:43:58
what that something is. But listen a lot of it exists in your book as well. You talk so eloquently and so excessively in
02:44:05
this book bulletproof about the nature of the human condition and what we need to understand about the human condition
02:44:10
to be more effective in our lives in our relationships in our work. So I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out this incredible book becoming
02:44:17
bulletproof life lessons from a secret service agent. Incredible. Thank you so much.
02:44:23
I appreciate you, Stephen. We launched these conversation cards and they sold out and we launched them again
02:44:28
and they sold out again. We launched them again and they sold out again because people love playing these with colleagues at work, with friends at
02:44:34
home, and also with family. And we've also got a big audience that use them as journal prompts. Every single time a
02:44:40
guest comes on the diary of a CEO, they leave a question for the next guest in the diary. And I've sat here with some
02:44:46
of the most incredible people in the world. And they've left all of these questions in the diary. And I've ranked
02:44:51
them from one to three in terms of the depth. One being a starter question. And level three, if you look on the back here, this is a level three, becomes a much deeper question that builds even
02:45:02
more connection. If you turn the cards over and you scan that QR code, you can see who answered the card and watch the video of them answering it in real time. So, if you would like to get your hands
02:45:14
on some of these conversation cards, go to the diary.com or look at the link in the description below. This has always
02:45:20
blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So,
02:45:26
could I ask you for a favor? 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 just that is
02:45:32
by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me
02:45:37
and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll
02:45:42
find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.
02:45:49
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