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Unknown A
Everybody has narcissistic tendencies and we're all self absorbed, but nobody wants to admit. It's always somebody else. It's always Donald Trump, it's always Elon Musk. But everyone has a manipulative side. There are no saints in this world.
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Unknown B
But can you use it productively?
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Unknown A
Yes, most definitely. There's deep narcissists who are very problematic. There's healthy narcissists, and knowing the distinction between the two will help save you years of misery.
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Unknown B
We're from dealing with a narcissist.
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Unknown A
I want you to do the following. I want you to. Robert Greene is one of the most.
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Unknown B
Influential writers in history.
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Unknown A
Unraveling the secrets of power. Strategy and human psychology are essential for.
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Unknown B
Purpose, resilience and success. What is it about human nature that we just don't want to admit?
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Unknown A
One is that envy is deeply ingrained in all of us. In fact, always wanting to be better and superior to others is the most motivating factor of 90% of human behavior. But if you don't admit it to yourself, that ugly emotion is like a nuclear bomb to all aspects of life. It will seize you by the the throat and make you miserable. But there's also understanding things like we all judge on appearances that everyone has a dark side and that we are all actors. But I will get into the nitty gritty of all of them because it's really about how powerful people use those traits for their success.
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Unknown B
People are lonelier than ever. And when you look at the impact that's having, it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What is the antidote for this?
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Unknown A
I empathize with it very much so because when I was younger, I was losing in the game of life. I was very depressed and even suicidal. But what lifted me out was this.
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Unknown B
Has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, and I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week, we'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much, Robert. At this moment in Time. What do you believe? Your followers, your fans, the people that love your books, what do you believe that they're struggling with the most?
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Unknown B
And I'm asking this question because I imagine you get thousands of DMs and messages from these people. What are the common themes?
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Unknown A
Well, the most common question I get, particularly from people in their 20s, is, is they don't really know where they're headed. They don't know what their career is. What I call in mastery, their life's task. And I talk a lot about it in interviews and in my. In the book Mastery. And I make the point that it's the most important decision in your life. Figuring out what you were destined for, why you were born, what you were created for, what makes you unique. And I say that everything from that realization, that understanding kind of stems from that, your sense of fulfillment, your happiness, everything will come from that one realization. And a lot of young people are very confused right now, and I don't blame them. These are very, very confusing times that they're going through. Much more confusing than anything I had to deal with, particularly, I think, the influence of technology and social media.
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Unknown A
And what I mean by that is to know who you are, to know what you were meant to do in life, why you were born, what makes you unique, requires a lot of reflection on yourself, self awareness, self knowledge. You have to go inward. And when your attention is always focused so much on what other people are doing, what other people are saying, you know, what they think is hot, what they think is cool, you become kind of a stranger to yourself. Right? So when I talk about that concept to them, it's like, it sounds interesting, Robert, but I have no idea what that is. I don't know what my life's task is. Now, that's maybe 30 or 40% of the emails that I get. It's quite high, but it's not all of them. But it is a trend I've noticed with young people who.
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Unknown A
Who are going through, I think, very, very confusing times. And I'm very apathetic to it because I was actually someone who was quite lost in my 20s. And I know the pain that that can cause. Not feeling like your life has any meaning, you know, I think that's something that really is tormenting a lot of young people. What does life mean? What will give me a sense of meaning, right? To what I'm doing, to where I'm headed, to my daily experiences. And not having that is deeply disturbing. I've been through that myself. I think I'm Getting a lot of that kind of feedback in a lot of those emails, among others.
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Unknown B
And is there a strategy that young people or really anybody that feels lost or aimless in their life should and is able to deploy to find their purpose, to find the direction, the thing they should be aiming at?
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Unknown A
Well, you know, you have to get out of this way of thinking that so many people have, which everything has to be simple and linear, and I'm headed in this direction. There's got to be a solution like I'm hacking my way to the truth. Life doesn't work that way. Life is very complex. So I can't give you a single track answer to finding your life purpose, you as an individual. But I can give you kind of clues. I can kind of direct you towards certain paths that have worked for me and that have worked for hundreds of thousands of other people who've become masters or very successful in their field. And the first thing is you have to go inward. So you have to resist the pull that our culture gives you. You have to also really want this. That's probably what it really comes down to.
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Unknown A
Are you unhappy? Are you frustrated? Are you hitting kind of rock bottom? Is this a turning point in your life where you realize, if I keep going this way, in five years, it's going to be really serious. It has to be important to you, and you have to have a sense of urgency. And with that sense of urgency, you have to make some decisions. And one of the decisions that's absolutely essential is to pay less attention to what other people are doing, to pay less attention to what other people are saying, to pay less attention to what people are telling you you should be doing, and to go inward and think about yourself and think about what you love and what your interests are that have nothing to do with what people are doing on social media. The things that grab you, that excites you deeply inside in a way that almost irresistible.
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Unknown A
Now, for me, I can say that it was always been writing okay? And I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing. But there's also things like when I ever read anything that has to do with ancient history, particularly the origins of humanity hundreds of, you know, tens of thousands of years ago, I am so excited. I can't. I can't. I can read every single article about that, every discovery that takes place in Africa about our origins. It just puts my mind in a spin to think that this is who we were a hundred thousand years ago and this is who we are now. I want to know more that's like. It's one of these things that hits you in the gut. Well, the people out there, you have that. There's something like that. You had it when you were a child. You had it when you were 2, 3, 4 years old, 5 years old, and you've lost it because you're listening too much to other people.
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Unknown A
So it's kind of like archeology would be the metaphor. You have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones and those relics and those artifacts from your past, the things that really excite you as well as the things that you hate. Now, if I were to go, you know, kind of do a reverse engineering, which I do with a lot of people who are successful like yourself, I could go back and kind of find that with you, where that hits you, because you had a particular path that led you to doing these podcasts. I know it wasn't a straight line. You deviated. You were in some other job that you hated, and then you slowly found your way. Each of those stories, there's a lesson for people, right? And that's what I compiled in Mastery. But it all begins with a sense of urgency.
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Unknown A
I can't go on this way. I have to find something that I love. When you're 20 or 21, maybe you don't feel that urgency because you're so young. You know, you look good, you have lots of energy, the world's kind of open to you, but you have to be careful because time passes really quickly. Those years in your 20s, they go by faster than you think. And if you've turned 30 and you never thought about this and you've kind of been wandering around trying things, it starts to get a little difficult, much harder for you. So it's better if you have that sense of urgency when you're 21 or 22. And the other thing I would say is you don't learn anything if you're not excited by it. So you have to have a sense of fun and adventure about this. So discovering what your life has can't be this dreary, boring thing that Robert's advocated to.
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Unknown A
Oh, I have to spend time with myself. I have to look into a journal, blah, blah, blah. No, it's fun. It's an adventure trying different things that fit into this general shape of what you were destined for. It's a blast. You know, when I was in my 20s, I had more fun than anybody. I had an amazing time. It was the best years of my life. I was trying all sorts of different things. I was Exploring. I was traveling. I had adventures. So I don't want your life to be boring. I want you to learn. I want you to have adventures. But you have to have a sense of direction, a sense of purpose to guide that kind of those different adventures that you go on.
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Unknown B
Do you think it's harder to find your sense of purpose and what you're deeply connected to as you get older?
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Unknown A
Yeah, I think so. Your mind gets a little bit more rigid. You think you know all of the answers. Right. But what happens with a lot of people I also get correspondence from, or let's say turning 40 or even a little bit older, and they're coming to those crossroads. Is this even much more painful than when you're in your 20s? Because there's a sense of regret, there's a sense that you've wasted your time. And to get back to a path that will suit you can be very difficult, as you mentioned. But there's also another. Another side to that, which is you probably have been learning some skills in your life. You probably have had some experiences that have changed you. Because when you're 21, 22, you don't know the world, you don't know people. You think you know everything, but you don't know anything. Right.
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Unknown A
You've never had any experiences in life. You never had to suffer. Maybe you have, but not really suffering like you do when you get older. Okay, so you're 40. You've had tough experiences, you've been hardened, you've got, you know, you're not so fragile and you've learned things. If you change your mindset at that age and you go, I'm going to take what I have, my experiences, my skills, what I've learned, and I'm going to redirect it towards something more exciting for me, then it will work for you. Right. But as you say, it can be harder because you're more set in your.
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Unknown B
Ways and you've got a life, you've got a networker, you've got a reputation for being this thing, whether it's lawyer, doctor, dentist, whatever it might be. And so there's a element of shedding that might have to occur. Shedding people, shedding a city that you live in, shedding a way that people know you an income. And that's deeply difficult. And I think some people would prefer the certain misery of their current situation to the uncertainty and the shedding that occurs when they go in search of something else.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but I mean, the pain that you feel when you get older and you know we humans have very active minds. We're gifted with the most powerful organ in the entire universe, the human brain. The billions of possible connections in our brain is greater than anything in the entire universe. It is the most amazing instrument and our brains are very active. And when you get older, you and you don't have anything to put your brain onto and things are slowing down. You don't realize that that's making you depressed. You don't realize that the fact that you haven't been able to fulfill what you were meant to fulfill is actually the source of your misery and unhappiness. You will blame it on other people, you will blame it on the world, you will blame it on politics. You won't look at yourself and realize that it comes from you and the sadness comes from you.
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Unknown A
And the fact that you're not maximizing, not exploiting this gift that you were given. So it might be difficult to shed all of that. But I've talked to people, I'd say more like around 30 years old, who say, robert, I'm at this horrible job, you know, I'm in a fast food place or something. I don't remember what it was, or I'm a barista, whatever, you know, I'm so unhappy. I have a wife and I have two kids. What do I do? Right? And so, and I go into their misery a little bit and I say, okay, let's. Let's first figure out something that you think you would really want in life. Something that will have an income because you have to pay for your wife and your children. You can't just go off and write poetry or become a rock star. You have to support yourself and your family.
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Unknown A
What could that possibly be? And we dig. We dig. We dig. I said, all right, we have an answer, a kind of an idea. I want you to do the following. I want you to carve out two hours or as much as you can at night, where you start exploring this field on the Internet and you start considering maybe going to night school, okay, and taking classes that change this course. And then I want you to think of five years where you're going to be a goal five years ahead. And they tell me overnight, just having that has changed them suddenly from their depression. They have hope and they feel a million times better than they have energy just from realizing that there's a possibility. It's going to take hard work, but there is an answer, there is a place to go. And so it changes it when you, when you have some sense of direction.
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Unknown B
There'Ll Be so many people listening to that now. And they'll be thinking, I have a plan, I have an idea. At least a kernel of an idea. But I've spent the last three months, six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking and not.
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Unknown A
Doing and not doing.
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Unknown B
Yeah, people stop me all the time. And I'll say, steve, I'm thinking of starting a podcast. And I'll say, how long you been thinking about this much? Last two and a half years.
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Unknown A
Yeah. You know, I talk in mastery about something called a concept called learning by doing. And back in the Middle Ages, they used to have an apprenticeship that you would go through seven years, you would learn to be a craftsman, right? You'd first go from being an apprentice to a journeyman to a master. By doing things, the brain learns. But if you never do anything, you're never going to learn. So if you suddenly said, I've been thinking about a podcast, I would say, get off your ass and start the podcast tomorrow. And it fails. You have learned so many things. You've learned more in those three months of failure than you have been two years thinking or five years of getting an MBA from some school and putting yourself in massive debt. Learn by doing, learn by failing.
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Unknown B
Why is planning and procrastination that comes with the prolonged planning so tempting for people like, why do we love to plan, plan, plan, plan, plan.
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Unknown A
Because you're afraid of failure, quite honestly. I mean, Freud has a word for it in German, er, folz angst, which means fear of success. Because this is something that afflicts a lot of adolescents. Because if you're successful, you now have responsibility, you now have a reputation, you now have succeeded, and your next venture could fail. Right? There's pressure that comes with trying something and putting your name out there. And if I don't ever try anything, if I don't bother, if I blame the world, I blame my parents, I blame my education system, I blame my partner, this, that and the other. Then you never have to worry, you never have to have that responsibility, you never have to have that fear of success. And that holds people back. So it's easier to not do anything and stay in your little bubble and go, God, if I only.
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Unknown A
If only I had had money, I would have written this great novel. I would do this, this or the other. It's just crap. You're trying to delude yourself and you're afraid of actually putting your neck out on the line. That's what it comes down to. It's a common syndrome of among Adolescents.
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Unknown B
I was reading, I think it was the book the Courage to Be Disliked. And it was talking in one of the sections about how some people would like, they prefer to live in the realm of possibility. And the realm of possibility is the space you live when you declare to the world that you're going to do something and be something and before you actually do it. So when I tell my friends, listen, I'm going to become an actor. For example, the year and a half where I go around saying that I live in the world of possibility where there's been no feedback to disprove me yet, which is nice, but I'm kind of getting the credit for being the type of person that's aspiring to change. And that realm of possibility before you get feedback or try is a very nice place to be.
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Unknown A
For some it is, and it's very addicting and it's kind of a narcotic. But the thing is, so you've got this realm of possibility, you could become anything. I could become an actor, I could become a great novelist, I could become a CEO. I could be Elon Musk the second. But the way the world works is you don't achieve anything unless you have limits. Having limits and hitting that wall and that resistance is what makes you learn. It's what makes you great, is how the human brain functions. And what I mean by that is, let's say you're learning the piano. You can't just start out playing anything and just doing all the notes. It's very limited what you can do, right? And you have to go within those limits and those walls and learn the first things first. And then those walls start to expand a little bit, but you're constantly pressing against limits and those limits make you stronger, stronger.
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Unknown A
It's like when you're swimming. The resistance in the water is what makes your muscles bigger, right? The resistance of limits is what makes your brain bigger, which makes you more successful, makes you learn. But if all you do is live in that nebulous world of possibility, you're never developing, never getting any muscle, you're never getting any strength, you're not developing life skills. It's a tough world, Steven. You know that. People can be very cruel. It can be very mean spirited world. You have to have a thick skin in this world. You have to develop some toughness. And you develop that toughness by trying things out and by failing. And if you fail, you know, like my wife's in the film business and we know a lot of actors, an actor, you know, we think it's all glamorous, but it's actually like 99% rejection. People are constantly rejecting you and rejecting you for things that you have no control over, like your looks, you know?
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Unknown A
And so what separates the actors who succeed and ones who don't are those that have a bit of a tough skin. They don't take that rejection. Oh, I'm so unworthy. I hate myself. Oh, the world's so awful. They go, all right, I'm gonna go on to the next one. I learned what wasn't working there. And you develop some toughness. If you don't develop that toughness, you never get anywhere in life. And you get it by trying and trying and working at it.
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Unknown B
And when you're in that sort of first chapter of your professional life, is there anything from all of the work that you've done, the writing that you've done, that a young person should be trying to acquire? And I say that. Should they be aiming at knowledge, skills, reputation, money, network?
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Unknown A
Definitely not money. Definitely not reputation. Perhaps, I mean, or fame, perhaps. Network can't help. But what you really want to do in this world, in the 21st century, in our decade, is skills. You want to be learning skills. The more skills you have, and I mean true skills. I don't mean trying something out for a year and going on something else for another. I'm getting real skill at something, right? Whether it's in computers, whether it's in the arts, in any field, real skill. And then if you can develop two or three skills by the time you're in your 20s and still have some fun, the world is going to open up to you. Because what you're going to be able to do when you turn 30 is you're gonna go, I can take that skill that I learned in computers. I can take that skill I learned in media and in creating a podcast weather.
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Unknown A
And I can create a business that's gonna combine the two in a way that no one has ever thought of, because I'm a unique person. The world will open up to you. Skills are the gold of the 21st century. And if you seduce by money, if you think about money, you're doomed, because that's not what matters in life. Because let's say you have two job offers. One is at Goldman Sachs, opening position, 150,000 a year, and one is at some startup for 30,000 a year. And you're living in New York, and you're gonna be starving. You're gonna be sharing a miserable little flat somewhere in Bushwick, whatever okay, take the $30,000 a year job because you're going to learn so much, you're going to be hands on. Whereas in that other job you're going to be lost in there, you'll be among hundreds of other young people and you're not going to have responsibilities here, you're going to have responsibility.
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Unknown A
So money is not what matters to you because when you're in your 20s, you can starve, you can live on less food, you can have it a little tough because you're young. I know myself, I was very poor. I lived in London, had a job in London in 1984, I believe. Yeah, 84. And I was making, I think it was 30 pounds a week, maybe it's less than that was my starting salary and my girlfriend at the time, the only thing we could eat was turnips and cauliflower. Cauliflower and cheese was our main dish. But I was 25, I could handle it. So you can handle not making money and learning because that's what's most important.
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Unknown B
I don't think many young people in that first season of life realise how long life is. So, you know, we try and take shortcuts, we try and get to the money as fast as we can. But you're telling me to take a longer road, which is the acquisition of skills, even at the cost of some of the short term rewards that are tempting to post on my Instagram.
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, I mean also, you know, you look at somebody like Steve Jobs, I can relate to that. Because he wasn't interested in money at all. It was never the motivating factor. It's never been my motivating factor. Right. I wanted to have fun and I wanted to be successful and I wanted to be able to write. He wanted to design the most beautiful pieces of technology in the world. It ended up he was like the richest man in the world at the time, but he never cared about money. It wasn't what motivated him. I never cared about money and now I'm not as rich as Steve Jobs, but I'm doing fairly well. Because it'll come to you. If you play the game right, if you learn the skills when you're young and then you develop your own business, by the time you're 35, you'll be making four times what you would have made at that Goldman Sachs job.
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Unknown A
Right. That's, that's, that's how the game is played these days. Starting your own business, being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is the most powerful position you can attain for aim for some people aren't, aren't, you know, destined for that. It's not in their DNA. But to me, that's what we should all be aiming for, to be your own boss. Because personally, I hated working for other people. But being an entrepreneur, starting your own business, one that has a niche in this world, you're going to make all the money that you'll ever need.
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Unknown B
Quite painful being an entrepreneur, though. I think it was actually Elon that said building his businesses is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. And I can relate to some degree, the businesses that I've built over the years and just the immense hardship and uncertainty. And, you know, I guess there's at times a subtle envy for your team members who are unaware of the chaos that one has to endure to make sure everybody's paid on time and, you know, make sure everyone's happy.
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Unknown A
Okay, but the lesson for me in all of that is altering your sense of what pleasure and happiness is. So in the moment, it's painful. Right. And we don't like pain. Nobody likes pain. I don't like pain. Right. But if your sense of what pleasure is and happiness is only like here, from the present moment to here, it's gonna be very hard to get out of that. But if your sense of pleasure and happiness is here, long term. Yeah. Then you've got power, you've got maneuverability, you have room to maneuver, and that's the key of the whole thing.
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Unknown B
So, okay, so you're saying that if I have a short term view on happiness, I expect it today, now and every day, then my life's not gonna be great. But if I expect happiness to be a long term.
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Unknown A
Yeah. So, I mean, look at you now, is what I'm trying to say. You're pretty happy. I imagine you're pretty fulfilled. Right. And you wouldn't have gotten there if, when you were 24, whatever, you just gave up because it was so painful. I better just go grab that easy job working for a bank or something. You'd be miserable now. Whereas, look at you now. That's what I'm trying to open people's minds to follow Stephen Bartlett here. That's the model.
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Unknown B
One of the other things I think helped me get here is my dark side. You talk about dark sides a lot. And when I say my dark side, I mean the insecurity, the shame, the wanting to fit in, all those kinds of things that acted as a driving force. A lot of people have a dark side. I've heard you talk about how all gratuits have a bit of a dark side in them. How do we. How do we channel our dark side so that it's productive and not destructive? I was talking to someone today who is a very successful entrepreneur, and they have their own story of, like, shame, embarrassment, and trying to run away from a sad life they used to have. And that made them successful. But now they work 18 hours a day. They're just, like, almost addicted to their work. So I wonder if it can go too far.
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Unknown B
Yeah, but they say they're happy.
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Unknown A
They do?
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Unknown B
Yeah, they say they're really happy.
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Unknown A
Do you believe it?
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Unknown B
It's hard to distinguish true happiness from the contentment that you get when you are successfully escaping your dark side. Do you know anything about that? Because this individual has successfully ran away from their darkness. And they appear to be in a state of contentment because they're succeeding in their pursuit of running away from their past. But I don't know if that's happiness. A yogi might tell me that happiness is when you stop running.
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Unknown A
Well, you know, I worked for somebody. I was on the board of directors for this company, American Apparel, which no longer exists. And the CEO, Dov Charney, was the founder of the company, an incredible entrepreneur who, from one little shop here in Los Angeles, when I met him, created this empire. And it was incredibly rewarding. And he was, I'd say, a very fulfilled person. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. It was like a demon possessed him. He had to have more. He had to build more buildings. He had to have more American Apparels all over the world. He leveraged himself. And then when the crash occurred in 2007, just before the company, just after the company went public, he was so in debt that the company never recovered. Right. He tried too hard. He didn't know the limits. Okay, so part of this isn't when I said, if money motivates you, then you're going to have that demon, if fame and reputation motivates you.
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Unknown A
And that demon is going to take seize you by the throat and going to make you work 18 hours until everybody eats your dust and you humiliate all your enemies. And you're miserable. Right. So knowing who you are and knowing what matters is going to save you from that kind of demonic possession, because you're actually not going to be very successful if you're like that. You're going to burn yourself out. You're not going to have very good ideas. What happens to a lot of people when they become successful is, first of all, it goes to their head. They think they have the Midas touch. They think they've got, you know, the golden touch. And then their minds start going in this kind of unit, this singular direction. They learn how to do something, and they're just doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it and doing it.
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Unknown A
And they don't know how to learn. They don't know that there's other ways of doing things right. And that's what happens when you become completely possessed and your mind isn't open and isn't free and isn't expanding and you're not creative anymore. To be creative will require you to try something different, to not expand your company endlessly like he did, and instead to take the five branches that you have here in Los Angeles and make the product better and be more creative with it and don't be possessed by money and fame and reputation. That's the answer, I think, there. Does that make sense?
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Unknown B
Yeah, it does. Yeah.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Something that I think many, many persons struggle with, which is in part this idea of focusing on the thing in front of you versus getting too distracted with other opportunities. I want to talk to you about this idea of focus.
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Unknown A
Sure.
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Unknown B
And how important you think it is for mastery. I meet so many young people who will say to me, oh, I'm doing this little crypto thing here, and I've got this hair business here, and I've got this other thing here. What would you say to those people that are trying to become a master in this world as it relates to focus?
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Unknown A
It's funny, because I'm helping the son of an old friend of mine who's got that problem. He's incredibly successful. Hope he's not listening to this. He's 20 years old. He's very wealthy. He's done amazing things, but he's one of those people who spread himself out to all these different things, and I can't find a through line. What connects them all except making money and having connections and stuff. And it's very alluring in this world, particularly, you know, where there's so many possibilities, where you can get on the Internet, you can learn this, that the other people are doing these things. You can get into crypto, you know, you can start your own business here. You can get into. Into the health and fitness world, and then later on try to figure out how to connect them all. But life doesn't work like that. That's not how the brain functions.
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Unknown A
It's not what we were meant for. Because it doesn't start from you. The whole Thing has to start from you. It can't start from the world. It can't start from what other people are doing. It can't start from what's sexy. It has to come from within. If it doesn't come from within, then you're going to be floundering for years and years and years. And so what I've done with this young person whose name I won't mention but I love dearly, is, what is it that really is in your heart? What is it that we really, really love? How can we connect this crypto with this media business that you're starting with the sports world, that you're starting with this fitness thing, what, what connects them all, you know, and to me, I was thinking, I was getting the sense we haven't solved it yet. But he's kind of excited by celebrities and by that world, and that's fine.
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Unknown A
I think there's nothing wrong with that. So I'd say, well, maybe what connects all this is the film business, right? Because the film is pretty wide ranging. To be a producer, to raise money, you're dealing with all kinds of different people. You're networking, you're meeting starlets. You know, it's a glamorous life, but it's focused, okay? So, you know, when you focus on something, the world just kind of opens up, but you have to be focusing on the right thing. So if you were meant to be a writer and then you decide because you want money to go into law school, and then you focus very deeply on law school, what will happen is for a year or two, you'll be able to skid by, but then the wheels will start going slower and slower because you're not interested in it, you're not connected to it.
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Unknown A
You get bored and your focus will start falling to pieces. But if it's something you love, you can focus on that for 7, 8, 10, 12 years and never get bored.
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Unknown B
From observing a certain family member of mine do a very similar thing. Part of it as well is that when she would start one pursuit, starting X business, it would get hard, as it always does. And when you look over at the person across the road, they seem to be having a much easier life with their thing or with their crypto or with their whatever. And they tell you the story of how much money they've made and how easy it was, whatever. So you get tempted into believing that the grass is greener. You pursue that. So now you're doing two things. Now your first thing starts to suffer. And I think especially in the early season of life, when you don't have Elon Musk resources, much of the game is focusing enough on one thing to build those resources so that you have the chance of being able to do it more than one thing or spreading your bets a bit more.
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Unknown B
But in that first season, when you're in resource accumulation phase, I think my early investors in my company, I remember one day emailing my first investor, who's a very successful man, and saying, I've got an idea. And it was an idea other than the one he'd invested in. And I remember the email. I was 18 years old, and he hit me so hard on that email. He was like, if you don't focus on one thing, you will never, ever.
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Unknown A
But you were the one that was interested in this other.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I was trying to.
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Unknown A
He was the one. Yeah.
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Unknown B
So my investor, he was a very successful man. And I emailed him this other idea, which I thought was amazing.
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Unknown A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Unknown B
And he sent me this email back, which was like being hit by a whip. And he was like, if you don't focus on one thing now, you will never be successful, because also you rob yourself, as you said, of the chance of accumulating deep skills.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah. I remember. This is something that wise people know. And if you're young, if you have, like, a mentor like you did who could tell you the truth, the ropes as they are, it will help save you years of misery. I remember when we were in American Apparel, it was the year 2007. The company was just about to go public. I was about to be put on the board of directors, and this man came to me who was like, your investor, and he said, robert, just make sure that Dove doesn't mindlessly expand. Make the brand focused, have it focused on one thing, and then he will be successful. At the time, I thought that was interesting, but I didn't really have the guts to, like, explain that to Dove. But there are people out there who understand the truth of this.
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Unknown A
But the other thing about envy, like you say, you see your other friend doing crypto, and they're having so much fun and making so much money to tell you it's bullshit. They're not having as much fun as you think. Right. People create a front on Instagram or TikTok or wherever. Life seems so glorious, but they're never having as much fun as you might imagine. You know, in. In my book Laws of Human Nature, I talk about Aristotle Onassis, who in the 60s was the wealthiest man in the world. He was married to John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. Jacqueline Onassis, who could be happier than that. He had yachts, etc. He was the most unhappiest miserable person in the world. As Jacqueline Kennedy explained in her autobiography, he was such a mean spirited, unhappy person, yet everybody thought envied him because he had this beautiful wife and all that money.
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Unknown A
The people you envy are not doing nearly as well as you think. So don't let that influence your decisions in life.
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Unknown B
I've never forgotten a certain Jony I've clip that I watched many, many years ago. I think it was, must have been five years ago now where he talks about working with Steve Jobs. And this is what he says in the clip. I've never forgotten it. Never forgotten it.
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Unknown C
This sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this. And it's a struggle to practice. But is this issue of focus? Steve was the most remarkably focused person I've ever met in my life. And the thing with focus is it's not sort of like this thing you aspire to or you decide on Monday, you know what, I'm going to be focused. It is a every minute. Why are we talking about this? This is what we're working on. You can achieve so much when you truly focus. And one of the things that Steve would say, because I think he was concerned that I wasn't, he would say, how many things have you said no to? And I would honestly, I would have these sacrificial things because, I mean, I want to be very honest about it. And so I say I said no to this and no to that.
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Unknown C
And he knew that I wasn't vaguely interested in doing those things anyway, so there was no real sacrifice. What focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea. And you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you're focusing on something else.
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Unknown A
Yeah, Amen. That's, you know, that's the church of focus I agree with completely. I mean, I hate using my own examples because I'm a rare avis, you know, I'm a rare bird. But, you know, I have this book that I'm writing, okay, and it's on a very specific subject. And I get distractions all the time. People want, you know, I can do the speaking engagement in India, where I've never been before, or Egypt, you know, kind of thing, or get involved in this television project. And I'm actually never really seduced by it because I just love writing. But where it really comes down to is I'm writing this book and I. And it's been going really not well. It's because I'm not focused on the actual thing I'm trying to say. So you can bring that level of focus down to the finest, finest point of your business or your writing, whatever.
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Unknown A
What is it you're trying to say? What is it you're trying to accomplish? What is your brand really about? Get into the nitty gritty. Get into that little fine grains of sand and know what that is. So every time I'm writing my chapter and I start writing about something that's not directly relevant to what it's about and what the reader's gonna be interested in, I'm making a mistake, and I make the mistake for several weeks and then I realize it and I pull back. So that level of focus has to have a lot of energy behind it, because you're so in love with what you're doing that when you deviate from it, this little radar inside of your brain goes, you're off, you're off. You got to get back to it, right? And it's painful. But when you do get back to it and when do things do click, it's incredibly pleasurable.
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Unknown A
So the focus for young people, that seems so painful. God damn it. Everyone else is having so much fun, and I'm having to learn this. Just keep telling yourself that you're doing something that your brain is going to reward you with several years down the line. So that friend of yours that seems to be having so much fun, in three years, they're going to be sliding down the ladder, working at some crap job, whereas you're going to be rising up. So just keep your mind on the larger issue there and know that working with what your brain works well with will pay incredible rewards down the line.
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Unknown B
When they talk about compounding returns in life, they always say that it's slow, then it's fast. And even this podcast, if you look at the graph of this podcast for the first three years of me recording in my cupboard on Sunday nights, alone, completely flat, no one's listening. And then by year, maybe I'd say year four or year five, it goes straight up. And that's a consequence of those first three years, were acquiring skills, understanding what people liked and why they liked listening to the show, actually getting better as a talker, a speaker, an interviewer, et cetera. And what most people miss is they miss that internship of the slow, lonely Unrewarding couple of years because they lose focus. No one's clapping, no downloads. I've never seen another route. I've never seen another path there. I've never seen the overnight success.
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Unknown A
Well, I mean, I know I can name five other podcasters have the same story as you've told me that Lewis Howes, Chris Williamson, Jay Shetty, they all have the same story for several years, nothing crickets. And I knew these people when they were just starting out, and then that happens. I remember when I was working with 50 Cent on the book the 50th Law. You know, people look at rap stars and they go, wow, the glamour, the fun, the excitement, the sexiness, the lifestyle. But he said, you know, I knew him because I was with him. Nobody worked harder than 50. He was incredibly disciplined and incredibly focused. And when he made it in the music business, it took incredibly incredible years of difficulty, hardship and failure. But nobody ever sees that. They only see him in concert. And all the glamour and all the fun, they never focus on the years of grit and near failure.
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Unknown B
He got shot.
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Unknown A
He nearly died. His record label dropped him. He had to work his way back up into the music industry from the very bottom until Eminem finally noticed him. But we don't see that in these celebrities. All the grit and the hard work that took them to get there. We just see the success and we get seduced by the success.
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Unknown B
I've heard you reference before Howard Gardner's Frames of Theory of Multiple Intelligences book. In that book, it says that there are five types of logical intelligence, linguistical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, spatial intelligence, and bodily intelligence. And it defines them quite differently. Logical is the ability to reason and solve problems and think in abstract terms, like scientists and mathematicians. Linguistical intelligence is things like writers, lawyers and poets. You're one of those writers. Interpersonal intelligence are leaders, psychologists and teachers. Spatial intelligence are architects, artists and pilots. And lastly, bodial. Intelligence is athletes, dancers and surgeons. How important is it to know your form of intelligence to be successful in life?
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Unknown A
So figuring out what that is is incredibly important. And the reason why I like this book so much is we tend to think of intelligence as intellectual, as, you know, computer programming or mathematics or whatever it is, you know, having a PhD in this field, but that's not intelligence. Intelligence is also bodily intelligence, like somebody like Kobe Bryant in basketball is as intelligent as Albert Einstein, but in a different way. So you have a parent who's always geared towards, you know, going to the best school and being an intellectual giant, and their child wants to do Ballet or sports or something. And you kind of look down on that and you say, no, no, no. You're setting your child up for misery. Recognize what one of these frames are for your child and press on it and let them go in that direction because it's what they're naturally gearing towards.
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Unknown A
It's what's fun, right? So for me, it was linguistic intelligence. Words. I've just. Since I was a child, I just. Words bewitch me. I can't believe that we have words to name things and that these symbols with letters that have sounds, but a lemon isn't a lemon. It's just a word. And I was like, five years old. What the hell can that be? That's so interesting, you know, and that you can take a word apart and spell other words with it. So I knew from very early on that it was words, words, words, words, and I absolutely stink. And one of these intelligence is built. Is mechanical intelligence, knowing how to build things. I'm terrible at that, which is very odd because my father was brilliant at that and he wasn't good at any of the others, and I didn't inherit it. So that goes all.
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Unknown A
You know, that kind of debunks genetics right there. But, you know, so figuring out which one of those and leaning in it and making that direction of your life is so, so important. So if your thing is interpersonal intelligence and you understand that and you're not heading into a job in which you're social and around people, you're going to be so miserable. But if you know that what your thing is, interpersonal intelligence, you've got like a hundred different directions you can head into, you know, that doesn't mean you have to only be a social worker. Just means you have to be a leader of people because you understand, you like being around people, you like working with others, you're very empathetic. There could be a hundred different kinds of jobs. But once you know that, it gives you a sense of direction. It's by far the most important step for people.
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Unknown A
And I always recommend people reading this book because it's very, very important.
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Unknown B
Much of the reason we lose focus, as I've seen in my own friendship group and my own family, is because of envy. How important is it to get control of one's envy? I've heard you describe it as the ugliest emotion.
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Unknown A
Well, it's ugly in the sense of, you know, it's an admission that you feel inferior, that you feel that somebody is better than you are and who wants to Admit that. You know, there's a very famous psychologist named Alfred Adler from the twenties who's a disciple of Freud. He thought this ability of always wanting to be better and superior to others was the most motivating factor of 90% of human behavior. That we always want to feel at least that we're superior in some way, in the sense that we're inferior, creates what he calls an inferiority complex. So it's very, very painful to tell yourself that this person is doing better than you are, or that they're younger and better looking than you are, that their wife is more interesting than you, or their kids are doing better, because it means it's a slight on you, right?
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Unknown A
We are very prone to envy genetically, by the way our brains operate. So it's a known factor that chimpanzees are prone to feeling envy, right? If you give one chimp a banana or a grape and don't give another one, they'll be giving you that kind of evil eye that. The stink eye that we associate with envy. So it's something that's in primates. And what it comes from, I believe, is our brains operate by comparison. That's how we learn. That's how we understand things. We understand that this is a wild animal because it's not that other thing over there. Our brains compare bits of information to decide what is what, what's different from what's the other thing. So our brains are geared towards, towards comparing. And when you create a social animal, we are the most social animal on the planet. And you have that brain that's constantly comparing.
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Unknown A
We're using that mechanism to compare ourselves to other people and always wanting what other people have. And they've noticed in hunter gathering societies from back in 30,000 years ago, the few that still existed in the 20th century, that envy was a huge problem among them. And so that when one person was given a gift, everybody in the tribe was so upset and angry that the person was given, they had to give it to other people so that they wouldn't be the target of envy because it could lead to being murdered, right? So envy is deeply ingrained in all of us. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others, okay, but we don't want to admit it. So if I compare myself to some other writer who I think is having a better life than I am, who's sold more books than me, what I'll do in my mind, instead of saying, he deserves that or she deserves that, because they are actually a better writer, I'll go, they don't really deserve.
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Unknown A
They're a hack. They're just doing that because they know what the public wants, and they're not. I'm going to be. My books are going to be read 100 years from now, but nobody will read their books in five years. I justify it to myself, right? I don't feel envy. No, no, no. I'm not saying that person's superior. In fact, they're actually inferior to me. That's the games that we play when we envy other people. And it's something that. Social media is like a nuclear bomb of envy, right? So 60 years ago, I wouldn't have known what my neighbors or friends from college are doing and how much more money they're making and how happy they are. But now, you know what everybody on the planet is doing and how good they are and how happy they are and the incredible trips they're taking and, you know, the great schools that their children are getting into, on and on and on.
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Unknown A
So it's this machine for manufacturing envy, and it's infesting our political system as well. It's seeping into all aspects of life, but nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to admit it. The main thing with envy is to admit that you feel it. Okay? So I will say, I will get on my hands and I will say, you know what? Sometimes I actually envy ryan Holiday. He's 30 years younger than I am. He's written already more books than I have before I even wrote my first book. He's got a family. He's got these great homes. He's doing really well. Yeah, Sometimes I feel envy. I'll admit it, okay? If you don't admit it to yourself, then it just festers and something ugly will happen. And so what I'm able to do with the feelings of envy that I might have is I think, God, Robert, there's no reason to feel that way, go through a process and go, he's actually deserved all the success he's had.
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Unknown A
You know, he deserves it because he's worked really, really hard and he's a really good person. He's ethical, he deserves it. And so you should be happy for him, which I am. I'm incredibly happy for him. But I have that first little twinge of envy. You have to admit it to yourself. And it's not an easy thing to admit because it means you're admitting you feel inferior for a moment.
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Unknown B
Can you use it productively?
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Unknown A
Yes, most definitely. And I talk in laws of human nature about strategies for doing that. One of Them is there's somebody that you envy in the world. Well, instead of festering with that ugly emotion, make that a spur. Instead of envy, feel what's called emulation, where you feel competitive and you're going to be as good as they are or better than they are. You're going to use that sense of inferiority to motivate you to work harder and harder and harder. Another thing is, so when somebody has failure and we're actually kind of gleeful about it, it's called schadenfreude. Right. The opposite of schadenfreude is a phrase that Nietzsche called mitfreude, which means instead of feeling pleasure in their pain, you feel their pleasure as well. So instead of feeling envy, try and feel happy for the other person. And you'll say, I can't do that.
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Unknown A
But yes, you can. You have to practice it. There's a great psychologist named William James who called it an as if strategy. So just tell yourself that I'm actually happy for their success. And when you do that, it's actually a really great feeling to actually feel good about somebody else. Doing well is a very ennobling feeling. It kind of raises you up instead of lowering you down and making you feel ugly. It makes you feel noble, it makes you feel better about yourself, and it kind of opens up your whole emotional life. So I have other strategies in the book, but those are a couple.
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Unknown B
I was wondering why your book power is still selling unbelievably well. I mean, most books, when they come out, they have their moment and then they're done. But for some reason, what you write in this book is as compelling, tempting, and attractive to people now more than ever. And one would then assume that's because people feel more powerless. And when they see the book, it offers them a promise of something that they so desperately want. Is that an accurate assessment?
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Unknown A
I think it is. I think it is. I mean, I've noticed in the last six years or so, the sales have been higher than they've ever been before. And a lot of it, you know, young people went through the crash of 2008, and they had to deal with the COVID and the pandemic. And in those years where the world seemed upside down, the book was selling better than ever. So I think helplessness and feeling a loss of control and feeling like there might be something out there that can guide me a little bit in this very confusing, anarchic times that we're living through can be very seductive and very appealing. So, I mean, there's always change in our world. There's always chaos. But when the world. When the book came out in 1998, it wasn't nearly as chaotic as it is right now. So I think you're right.
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Unknown A
I do attribute the success not necessarily to my brilliance or the brilliance of the book, but to the fact that people are feeling more and more help.
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Unknown B
Powerless people are lonelier than ever, according to many of the stats. And when you look at the impact that's having on people, it's equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to some reports. They're more likely to live alone. They're more likely to feel lonely, to report to feeling lonely. They're more likely to feel that they have nobody to turn to in a time of crisis, according to some studies as well. They're more addicted than ever before. You can class that in a number of ways. Chemical addictions, but social media addictions and other things. And that's the state of especially young men. It's young women, too, having their own struggles, especially with anxiety and the comparisons and those kind of things we've talked about. But young people generally, and especially young men, are killing themselves at higher rates than ever before. Suicide, as you know, is one of the biggest killers of young men.
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Unknown B
What is the antidote for this, this sense of powerlessness, loneliness, isolation, addiction, aimlessness?
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Unknown A
Well, you know, our tendency would be to bring it down to the individual level. But I think it's also a cultural problem. I think our culture is contributing to it. The kind of aimlessness in our culture where we don't really talk about the skills that are necessary to get ahead. Our culture promotes all kinds of bad values. It emphasizes fame and celebrity. It doesn't talk about discipline. It doesn't give young men a sense of purpose and direction. It doesn't value them. You know, right now, a lot of young men feel like, you know, it's women that are getting all the attention, that why am I, you know, what is my purpose here? So I think it's a cultural problem more than anything else. And when I say that, that kind of absolves individuals, But I don't mean to do that as well, because you are an individual, you live in this culture, and you've got to get yourself out of that kind of hole that this culture is imposing on you.
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Unknown A
And so I have a lot of sympathy for it, because I don't think it's completely your fault that you feel lonely or that you're isolated or that you don't have friends, that you don't know how to socialize. You know, I didn't have this phone in my hand when I was in my formative years. And I had to meet women when I wanted to. You know, at that point in my life in the 70s, when I was in my 20s and so I had to go out there and suffer from rejection. I had to go to bars, I had to go to clubs, I had to put myself out there and meet them. And it was tough. And I learned skills, seduction skills, whatever you want to call them, but just social skills about, you know, women think differently than you, they have different values than you.
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Unknown A
What are their values? Get outside of yourself and think about what it's like to be them, what you can do that's going to please them and get them, how you can enter into their world. You have none of that now, none of that. It's all, you know, swipe, swipe, swipe, yeah. So you're not going out, you're not, you're not developing that muscle, you're not putting yourself in live and interacting with people where you're feeling their body language, their non verbal communication. So no wonder your social skills are atrophying. And as your social skills atrophy, it becomes harder and harder and harder to go out there and put yourself on the line because you're not good at it. So you fall into this hole of becoming lonelier and lonelier because it's harder and harder to get out of it. Okay. So I have tremendous empathy and I would never like preach or blame young men in particular for the problems that they're having.
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Unknown A
And I empathize with it very much so because I myself went through a phase where I felt very, very unhappy and even suicidal when I was younger. And I understand how your life can turn that way. So I don't mean to ever come across as somebody who has all the answers because I think it's cultural. But if you are an individual, you have to see that first of all, it's not a bad thing necessarily to be lonely. Part of the problem of loneliness is it's got this, this, this taboo against it, this bad name. Like it's terrible to be lonely, terrible to be alone, right? So you feel shamed for the fact that you're lonely. But actually it's extremely important in life to be alone sometimes and to be able to be on your own and to think about yourself and to kind of come to terms with who you are and to embrace what makes you different.
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Unknown A
And you can't do that if you feel Ashamed about being lonely or if you can't ever be alone. So knowing how to be alone is very important. It's what will make you successful. It will bring you skills. So don't think of it as something necessarily terribly negative in your life. But the other thing is you have to force yourself. You force yourself to go to the gym to develop muscles and become stronger. You have to force yourself to interact with people and get out of your phone and have real experiences instead of virtual experiences. And if you do that 10 times a month, just like going to the gym 10 times a month, your social skills will get better and better, your social muscle will get better and better, and you'll feel better about interacting with people.
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Unknown B
On that point, I remember law. I think it was law 18.
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Unknown A
I'm just having a look about isolation.
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Unknown B
Do not build fortresses to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous. Solitude is not a defense because it cuts you off from valuable information, allies and opportunities. There's a difference, isn't there, between being lonely and being alone? Because being alone is one thing, but the state of loneliness feels like it's a slightly different proposition.
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Unknown A
Well, it's the difference between you feel very unhappy that you're not connecting to other people or a social animal, right? And you feel like people don't like you, they don't respect you, that you can't interact with them on a level that's meaningful. Whereas the feeling of being alone, for me, wow, I don't have to be around ugly, idiotic people. I can just be by myself. I can read a good book. I don't have to interact with people whose ideas I don't like. I can just be myself and be as weird as I want. Wow, what a relief. I'm so happy being alone now. I'm not like that all the time. It would be terrible. But sometimes I do feel that way. And that's the difference. And that's a good thing. I remember once I was on an airplane and I saw a young woman who was by herself, and I could sense that it was driving her crazy.
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Unknown A
And she had to use her phone to never feel alone, right? Even in the middle, when we're flying over the ocean, she had to, like, somehow connect onto the Internet and be and be sending emails and texts and anything. And I got this kind of desperation in her, this intuition, this feeling that being alone was just horrifying for her, you know? And I think that's not a good thing. I think it's a terrible thing. So, yes, isolation is bad. You need to be You're a social animal. You're meant to be around other people. But if you can't be alone, you can't ever figure out what makes you different and what makes you unique. So you have to be able to play both sides of the game, to.
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Unknown B
Listen to that voice inside. To turning woods. It is hard to turning woods when you never have moments of solitude. I guess when you were. You said you were suicidal. In your earlier years, what lifted you out of that state?
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Unknown A
Well, I had a girlfriend who was very understanding, who helped me a lot. So I wasn't completely alone. And then a little tiny voice inside of me was saying, you are. You have interesting thoughts. You're a strange person, Robert. I've always been strange. I never was like other people. Even in high school, I was always something off about me which could be made me lonely, which can make me be a problem. But I kept saying, there's something different and off about you. Right? And you have skills as a writer. It's going to happen someday. Don't give up, don't give up, don't give up. Keep trying, right? And so finally I'm 35, 36 years old. I was in Italy at the lowest point of my life. And I met this man there who was a book packager Jost Alfers. And he asked me if I had an idea for a book.
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Unknown A
And suddenly just. I almost get emotional just thinking about everything just shifted inside of me. It's like, yeah, I could write a non fiction book. And I just improvised what would turn into the 48 laws of power. He got so excited, he said, I will pay you to write the. I forget what the word is to sell it, you know, and then I'll pay you to live while you write it. And so suddenly it went from darkness to light because I had a purpose. And all of my misery, you know, I could take all of the bad bosses I had all of the horrible psychotic bosses who were so stupid and so political and so manipulative. And I could go, wow, I've got all this material to write. The 48 laws of power, all my worst experiences can go into this book. It all has purpose for it.
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Unknown A
I'm not saying that's going to happen to everybody, but I was literally at that moment before it happened, pretty much near rock bottom. And I asked my wife what would have happened if this didn't turn out. Would I have committed suicide? If I'd just gone the same path and gotten into, done some holpack job, I'd probably be incredibly overweight and alcoholic and I might have already died of a heart attack or maybe I would have found my way to something else. But it was a really, really low point in my life.
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Unknown B
Purpose.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Crazy how it can lift you out of darkness. It can turn the lights on.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Just so unbelievably hard to find for so many people. I mean you're not going to find it in your bedroom necessarily sat there.
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Unknown A
Thinking but you know, opportunities come, you just have to be ready for them. So I had this opportunity that came to me and you might say, well that's lucky, that's never going to happen to me. But it will happen to you. You're just not ready for it, you're just not recognizing it. Some person will cross your path that can lift you out of what you're doing, who could connect you, but you're not paying attention, you're not ready for it. You don't think you deserve it. So there is opportunity every day of the week. It's around you is what I'm trying to say.
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Unknown B
There's so many studies and there's one on TV by I think it was Darren Brown, the illusionist that show certain types of people are pessimistic towards opportunity. And when you do studies where you. And there's one particular study where they have a newspaper and they give it to one group of people, I think a pessimist and one group of people, they're optimists. And the researchers say when you find the 100 pound voucher or $100 voucher, just come back to us. And what happens is they scroll through the newspaper and the pessimists never find it. But on the first page of the newspaper it says stop this dud. Stop. Go to researchers. Now you have $100, the optimists find it. And Dan Brown did a similar thing, the illusionist in the street where he put, I think it was like a 50 pound 100 note in the middle of the street as they were walking down the street.
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Unknown B
And the optimists find it, they see it, but the pessimists just walk right past it. I think it was a warning scratch card potentially. And that really opened my mind to my state, my mental state, my psychology is determining whether I see these opportunities, will totally miss them. And then it's mostly Stan and Sparrow because then I'll think, God, I'm such an unlucky person without realizing that I'm playing a really important role in creating my own fortune or misfortune.
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Unknown A
Right? Yeah. I have a chapter in Thoughts of human nature, about the nature of your attitude creates your circumstances, which is sort of the same thing you're saying, which is there are two kinds of attitudes that I talk about. One is an attitude that's closing, that's constrictive, that's narrow, and there's one that's expansive and open. You could call that pessimistic and optimistic. But the closed attitude is you're only seeing life through this narrow little spectrum where everything is bad, people don't like you, there's hostility all around you. And what that means is you're not seeing reality, you're creating reality. You're creating that reality. You're seeing it, and that's what happens to you. The expansive attitude is, life is amazing. All these incredible things are possible. I have hope any moment there could be an opportunity. And that's not reality either. But you're going to create that reality by feeling that way and taking, seizing an opportunity, the smallest crumb of an opportunity.
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Unknown A
You're going to create those good circumstances. So by your attitude, you create the bad things that happen to you in life.
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Unknown B
One of the sort of adjacent points here about purposelessness, about loneliness, about the struggles and plights of young men in the world that they face and young women, is the conversation around pornography. If you go on many of the social media apps these days, you will be exposed to pretty explicit pornography. And whether you were searching for it or not, there's certain apps in particular where even if I'm scrolling on my feed, certain things will pop up and I go, jesus Christ. Like, you know, I'm at work here. And I was thinking about this more broadly because the studies show that about 80% of men and about 40% of women in the United States use pornography. And I wondered if you had a view on how it robs us of the hard work it takes to form romantic relationships. And if the act of consuming pornography is robbing us of the desire for.
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Unknown A
The real thing, well, it's an addiction. And you have to understand that you are being manipulated, that you're being programmed, that these people have figured out exactly the kinds of things, the kinds of images that are going to hook you. And you're being played. You're a fool. They're playing with you. Just like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook knows all the algorithms to hook you to his to the news feed, you're being played by the images they know how to create and keep you always wanting more. Just like fast food has all these tricks to constantly be eating their Doritos or whatever it is, okay? But the other thing is. So I'm not going to preach and moralize about pornography from a prudish aspect of it because I'm not a prude. But I have a chapter in the book that I'm writing on the sublime, on what I called love sublime and the act of loving, not God, not the universe, but another human being and individual man or woman, gay or straight or whatever it is.
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Unknown A
And how sublime that is. And what it is, is in that relationship, the boundaries between the two of you are allowed to melt, and your ego can soften, and you can feel their world, and they can feel your world, and you have a connection. That, for a social animal, is the highest form of connection. It's superior to a religious connection. I'm sorry. And what it requires is we have the expression falling in love. And it literally is falling. It's like you fall, fall, fall, fall, fall. You're open and you're vulnerable, and you're letting yourself fall. And when you're not, what stops you from doing that is you don't want to be hurt. You don't want to be vulnerable, right? Because if you open yourself to someone else, you're likely to get hurt. And so the moment there's a disagreement between you or there's a moment where a friend says something nasty about this person you're interested in, you stop falling, you cut it off, and that romantic thing ends and dies.
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Unknown A
But if you get past that and you allow yourself to open up completely and you just keep falling, falling and falling, falling, this incredible thing can happen. I describe it to you and I describe it, the dynamics of that and examples of that and why, for a social animal, it's like the ultimate experience. And so pornography is completely robbing you of that. Because love of another human being is a sense of enchantment, right? There's like this spark that's happening, this electricity, and it's. Obviously, sex is involved, so it's a very physical relationship as well, but it goes beyond that. It also has a kind of spiritual component, right? But it's a sense of enchantment where the world becomes alive to. Everything is beautiful in the world in those moments, right? And pornography is disenchanting you from everything. It's making it all mechanical and ugly. And it has no romance to it, has no dimension to it.
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Unknown A
It's almost as if the two humans involved in it or however, are like machine parts, right? They're not human anymore, and there's no human motion involved. There's no kind of spiritual connection. It's depressing. It's really, really depressing when I see it. I feel really sorry that I experienced this and I feel really sorry for the people who are in that industry. I find it really, really ugly and alienating. Now, I'm not, as I said, a prudent. And I could watch a great movie with a love scene in it and it's very exciting and beautiful, but the seduction element, the element of. I saw a movie recently, a Japanese movie by the great director ozu from the 50s, and there was a man who was married and he was about to have an affair with this woman who was kind of seducing him and they had this kiss.
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Unknown A
Wow. I was getting my dudes turned on, but I was getting really excited. It was so full of emotion and energy and it made the sexual element so much more powerful by the element of romance, by the element of something kind of transgressive. There was no nude bodies, there was no sex you ever get to see. But the lead up to it and the nature of the emotions involved made it to me deeply, deeply exciting. And if young men particularly can't have that experience, if everything is so mechanical, is so computerized, it's going to be like AI. It's going to be like AI sex, you know, then you're losing your soul, you're losing your capacity for really falling in love, for really having that kind of dimensional experience, which, by the way, can be extremely physical. And it can only last for three months. I'm not saying it has to be 20 years with one woman or one man, it could be for three months, but it enriches you.
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Unknown A
It makes you more human.
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Unknown B
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Unknown B
But now you can make it yourself at home. So give it a try and we'll see if you still don't like Matcha. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'll give you 40% off our matcha if you try it today. Head to perfecthead.com and use code STEPHEN40. Or if you're in a supermarket, you can get it at Tesco's or Holland and Barra or the Netherlands at Albert Hein. And those of you in the US you can get it on Amazon. The other thing that a couple of psychologists on my podcast before have alluded to on this subject is that they told me about a study with rats where they messed with the part of the rat's brain that is responsible for causing dopamine. And then when they put food in front of the rat's mouth, if the rat was like six inches from the rat's mouth, the rat would starve to death because they'd impacted the rat's dopamine.
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Unknown B
So it no longer had motivation. And they speak of dopamine as this sort of motivation chemical is the thing that gets you to take action. So if you're frying your dopamine receptors by doing these sort of high dopamine activities.
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Unknown A
Oh, right, right.
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Unknown B
I'm wondering if you're going. If we're sort of breeding a culture of lower motivation individuals. And because of this thesis, I was looking at some studies around this, and it does say that constantly exposed to high dopamine activities can lead to dopamine desensitization or deregulation of dopamine receptors. And then this can lead to a significant reduction in your motivation. And there's multiple studies here that point in this direction. So I'm wondering how when I look at some of the stats around purposeless and people having less partners and being more sexless, if there's a through line here that when you make dopamine easy through pornography, we're less likely to go and get up out of our bedroom and take action.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but it's not just pornography. There's too much of that in social media as well, on other levels. So, you know, you have to. We're. You have to understand what it means to be a human being, first of all. And we're physical animals. We can't be in our heads all the time. We think with our bodies, right? We think with the chemicals mixing in our bodies, we're very physical and we're social animals to the core. And that social Animal. What makes us superior is that we connect. I can kind of look at you and I can maybe understand what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and we can have a discussion and our ideas can go back and forth and connect and go to higher levels of understanding or lower levels of disagreement. But that's what it means to be a human being. You're not this fucking AI machine.
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Unknown A
You're not a bot, you're not an algorithm. You're not a little piece of data that Mark Zuckerberg can mix with. You're a human being with a body with physical problems, with hormones, with emotions that are coursing through you. And you have to become a physical creature, which means doing things in the world, taking action, working, building a business, doing things with your hands, you know, exercise, meeting people, be inside of your bodies. And when you're in pornography, you're disembodied, you're not in your body. You might be wanking off, as far as I know. You know, probably are, but you're not really inside of your body in any meaningful way. And so it's like, my hope, if there's any hope, is that. And there's seeds of it in the world now, where young people are going to start getting disgusted with this because the human spirit is still very powerful and it's still like, I don't want to be like this.
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Unknown A
It doesn't feel natural, it doesn't feel right. And at some point, my Hope is in 20, 30 years after I'm probably dead, there'll be a movement where people are going to be so against this that they're going to go in the opposite direction. They're going to be returning to what it means to be a human being. There'll be a rekindling of interest in our past, in the primitive past, in the pagan past. Things I'm writing about in my book right now. And I see things like that sometimes, like in the New York Times, they had an article a few weeks ago about a group of young people in college who hate social media and absolutely refuse it and will not. It's like almost like a fraternity or sorority. They will not allow anybody into their group who ever looks at their phone and go, yay, Yay.
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Unknown A
Right on, brother. I could have, if I'm in college right now, I would join that. Not that I think everything is evil. I have my own phone, et cetera. But if I were young, that sense of this is a nasty world. I want to return to what it means to be a human Being. I want to spark a movement, a revolution that goes back to that. I hope that that's going to happen. I hope that's in the cards.
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Unknown B
What is it about human nature that we just don't want to admit?
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Unknown A
Well, first of all, we don't want to admit where we came from, our primitive roots, that we are animals. You know, that before we invented language, you know, we were living like any other animal in the outdoors, right? And I remember one day I was. I was in Sydney, Australia, about 10, 12 years ago, and they had this amazing zoo. I hate zoos because I'm an animal lover. I think zoos are like prisons. But I wanted to see the strange, exotic animals there. And they had this amazing chimpanzee compound, right, where the chimpanzees could kind of roam around freely. And I was fascinated. And I sat there for like two hours because it was like watching an office in Manhattan or something where there was the alpha male and all the other males were kind of following behind him, like, you know, like the CEO of a company.
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Unknown A
And I was looking around and I noticed all the people were like, giggling and they were so embarrassed, and they couldn't. They were making. They were laughing. That was their reaction because it made them so uncomfortable to see this animal that's so much like a human being, but is also still an animal. They were just so uncomfortable by. It made me realize that we're very, very uncomfortable with that aspect of ourselves, right? The part that we can't really control so much that isn't logical, that isn't rational, that isn't clean, you know, all these civilized things. So we're in deep denial of our animal roots, but we're also in denial of. Of our own nature. So we want to imagine ourselves to be these kind of saintly, moral, rational creatures, always thinking about what's good for other people, you know, and it's just a fairy tale.
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Unknown A
That's not the world as it is, you know, it's the world more like I described in the 48 laws of power, where people are manipulative, where people are playing games. Not everyone, but everyone, has a manipulative side. Everyone has a dark side. We actually are deeply irrational creatures. We don't want to admit it. We don't want to admit the parts of ourself that reflect this kind of animal nature. Our irrationality, our aggression, our. The envy that we feel towards other people. It's always other people who are like that. So I give the example of narcissism, and I try to make the point in the book in narcissism, you know, I make the point that everybody's self absorbed. You know, when you're reading a book and you see your birthday happens to be there, which is a fact, you're like, oh, that's my birthday. Because it's you, your astrological sign.
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Unknown A
That's me. We all are interested in ourselves. We're all self absorbed. Right. And when somebody suddenly talks about us, our ears prick up. I'm not moralizing it. It's just the truth. It's me, it's everyone's. We don't want to admit it. It's always somebody else. It's always Donald Trump who's a narcissist. Always Elon Musk is a narcissist. Everybody has narcissistic tendencies. That's human nature, and we want to deny it.
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Unknown B
And should we be aspiring to not be narcissists? Or does one just accept their narcissistic tendencies and lean into it? Because much of what I read in the book about power is how narcissism seems to get you ahead to some degree.
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Unknown A
That's debatable.
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Unknown B
But I mean, look at some of the people that we've been talking about, but have reached the very top of the professional pyramid in life, the presidents and such. They've got narcissistic traits.
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Unknown A
Sure. And some of them are kind of what I call deep narcissists who are very problematic. And some of them are healthy narcissists. So a lot of artists, or what I would call a healthy narcissist. So a lot of artists aren't necessarily the best people. Right. They're not often, you know, you wouldn't maybe want to be their friend. They're maybe not the most faithful person as far as the partner is concerned, but they put all of that narcissistic energy into their work, and they create beautiful things that contribute to humanity. Steve Jobs was not a very nice person. Right. He was very aggressive, he was very assertive, and he was a control freak. But look what he created. Okay? That's healthy narcissism. What's the first thing they tell you in aa? I've not been in aa, but I know it. It's admitting that you're an alcoholic.
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Unknown A
If you can't admit you're an alcoholic, how are you ever gonna stop being an alcoholic? You first have to admit it. So if you want to stop being a narcissist, you have to get on your hands and knees and admit that you are a narcissist. Because if you deny it, you say everybody else is. You can't look inward. How can you ever change that? And even the most saintly person on this planet, the Mahatma Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, they had definite strong narcissistic tendencies. There are no saints in this world. Everybody have these tendencies. So get off your high horse, look inward and see those traits that are narcissistic within you.
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Unknown B
Where from dealing with a narcissist?
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Unknown A
Well, who isn't in this world today? You're always dealing with a narcissist.
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Unknown B
What do I do about that? Do I. Because I was thinking about some of the rules in your book where you say things like, don't outshine the master. If I'm dealing with a narcissist, should I hide my strengths and my weaknesses in order to sort of pander to them and not outshine them?
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Unknown A
Yes. But as part of law number one is, this is the great thing about being a human being. You can do two things at once. You can be consciously playing the game of, I'm not going to outshine them because he or she's going to fire me because I'm going to make them feel insecure. But at the same time, in my head, I'm going, that person isn't better than me. They don't deserve their position. They're actually kind of incompetent and stupid. And someday, by being loyal and learning from them, I'm going to rise up and I'm being smart because I have to. I'm a social animal. And then at that point, I can just say, get away from me. I don't need you anymore. I'm better than you. You can outshine them, but you play the game. But the worst thing is if you internalize it and go, I actually am inferior.
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Unknown A
I'm not going to outshine because I'm not a good person. I don't deserve it. And then you've internalized this sense of inferiority, and it's going to haunt you the rest of your life. So you can play both sides of the game at the same time.
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Unknown B
You talk about acting in life to get ahead. Do we have to be actors in your view?
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Unknown A
Well, this is where I start getting a little bit cranky, Stephen, because everybody's an actor, right?
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Unknown B
Nobody admits it, though.
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Unknown A
When you're three years old, you're already acting, right? You're crying because you're trying to get your parents attention. You're making trouble with your siblings because you're trying to get something that you want. You're learning to be manipulative. Children are very manipulative. Children are consummate actors. They learn that they can get what they want by behaving a certain way. If I'm an angel, Mommy will give me this and the other thing, even though I know I'm not an angel. We are a social animal. And we have words, we have language. And with words and language, we can say one thing and be another. We can lie, we can deceive. We can tell people, I loved your screenplay. You were fantastic in the movie, man. You're looking so great today. We don't mean any of it, but we can do that because we have words and we can lie about that.
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Unknown A
We are all actors. If everyone went around saying exactly what they felt about the other person, no one would ever get along. We would have killed ourselves off by now. You're always telling the boss the things that they want to hear. You're always telling your partner. You're always kind of hedging exactly what you feel. You're an actor. I don't understand what's so complicated about that. I don't understand why people can't see that they're every day of their life. And in another instance, you're never the same with two different people. The way you are in front of your father as you are in front of your son or in front of a colleague, you're a completely different person. Your jokes are different, your body language is different. You're an actor. Okay, some people are good at it, some people aren't. But you're an actor.
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Unknown B
Well, I think the root of this is there's something ugly about being manipulation, lying, acting. So no one would want to volunteer that they are doing that. But from what I'm inferring from what you said is that in order to get ahead in life, you're going to need to lie a little bit, manipulate and act.
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Unknown A
Well, you are. It's not like you need to be. You are doing that. Even though you may not admit it, you are doing that. You see, the thing is, it's getting back to that scene at the Sydney Zoo where people are deeply uncomfortable with these aspects of their own character and their own personality. And I don't want you to go around thinking, God, it's great to be manipulative. It's great to just screw people over and get what I want and not care about them. No, but it's better to admit that you are capable of manipulation. That you do it often unconsciously and often In a passive aggressive manner. It's better to admit it and it's better to be able to play the game when you have to like always say less than necessary. It's gonna save you a lot of pain. You don't have to go around all your life practicing these things.
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Unknown A
I don't think you want to.
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Unknown B
What was that law?
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Unknown A
Always say less than necessary law number four.
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Unknown B
Can you explain that one to me?
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Unknown A
In looking at powerful people, the person who talks less always gives off a greater aura of power than the people that are yabbering all the time, that are talking, that can't control their tongue. And the idea is if you can't control your mouth, if you just keep talking and talking, it gives an aura to other people that you can't control anything else. You have no self control. And that is very unpowerful aura. And obviously the more you talk, the more you are prone to say something kind of stupid and irrational that you're going to regret. And so powerful people know to command an audience. They sit there, they let other people talk and argue, and then occasionally they utter something that's maybe a little bit ambiguous and goes, whoa, whoa, that's very interesting. Robert said that. What does that mean? You look powerful, right? You give off an air of mystery, you give off an air of control.
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Unknown A
And so a lot of people have a hard time with it because they think, oh, should I just be able to say whatever I want and just talk? Well, no, you don't. Not in the social world, not in the work world. It's going to get you in trouble. Learn to control what you talk and learn that there are moments that saying less is actually much more powerful than just yammering on and on.
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Unknown B
I was through my years of business, running business and stuff, I came up with this idea which I shared with a few people called your contribution score. And much like we have a credit score where if we're reckless with our finances, our credit score gets lowered, I think the same applies for contributions we make in group settings, but just generally the contributions we make. I came to learn this over time because in one of my offices many years ago, in a different company, there was this one individual who in the meeting rooms would, when people were brainstorming, before they thought of what they were going to say, they'd interject and say, what about if we do a, we could do like a pop up with maybe we'll do like. They were thinking out loud. And what I would observe as a CEO is the minute they spoke, it was almost like people rolled their eyes and tried to cut them off because they developed this contribution score which says when X person contributes, it's always ill formed, not productive and takes too long.
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Unknown B
But then there's this other guy who I remember from my Manchester office who he hardly spoke. And every time he spoke it was important. So the minute he starts speaking, it's like the room shifts towards him with bated breath. So there's an art of protecting one's contribution score.
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Unknown A
Yeah, I remember 50. I would go to meetings with him, 50 Cent. Yeah. And he would hardly say anything if people would be trembling. My God, he's not talking, he's not saying he's interested in my ideas. He'd just sit there, wry smile on his face, and then when he'd say something, oh, they would let out of breath, oh, he's saying something. It'd be very short and curt. But he completely commanded the room because he just sat there as if he wasn't really happy with what people were doing and it made them compete to make him happy.
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Unknown B
Interesting. Pretty interesting.
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Unknown A
He's a master of the 48 laws of power.
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Unknown B
The other law that I was thinking a lot about, if we're jumping back to the laws of power, is let others do the work but take the credit. You were faced when I said that.
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Unknown A
Well, you know, some of the 48 laws is irony. And you know, people have to be able to understand and read what's ironic. So, like I have a chapter in there, play on people's need to believe to create a cult, like following. And I'm not really saying go out and create a cult. I'm showing you why you might be in a cult right now. Because this is how cults operate. Okay. So when I worked in Hollywood, I worked at one point for a film director and we had this process where we would sit in a room and we would talk about the story, we would discuss the dialogues of it. I would give all of his dialogue and ideas in there. He'd be writing it down. And I'm not saying half the screenplay, but at least a third or fourth were like my ideas, my contribution, my dialogue.
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Unknown A
I never got a single credit for any of it. It was always his name that was on there. People. Wow, that was so fun. That was really great. I love that line. It's my line. Okay? So I learned this is the law of the jungle. When you're working in, particularly in entertainment and media, people take your work and they put their name on it. So, like when you're watching a Television show with some news broadcast or whatever, or interviewer. Their jokes aren't their own. They didn't write those jokes. They had a team of people writing it. All those great facts that are coming up, a team of researchers are putting it. You never hear their names. You never know who they are. They took their work and they put their name on it. That's the law of the jungle. And the law of the jungle is don't get upset about it.
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Unknown A
It's part of the game. I got upset when that happened. I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. But I got resentful. Nobody's recognizing my work. Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. The adult, if I had been smarter, was, that's just how it is, Robert. Just calm down. At some point, people will see your screenplays or your books or whatever, and you'll be fine. But just. I'm trying to show you this is how the world operates. And don't be so naive and don't think it's not like that.
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Unknown B
And if you had kicked up a fuss, you might have accidentally outshone the master.
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Unknown A
I'd be fired.
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Unknown B
It's interesting because there is an element of this where it can. Where trying to take the credit can really also lead you to being fired. Because I remember back in a previous company that I'd started, had a big team, about 200 people in Manchester, and there was this one kid in his early 20s who would always sulk if in our public company channel, someone just innocently forgot to include his name in credit when credit was being handed out. And it happened maybe once every six months. You just forgot that he had contributed to the project. And that happens in all businesses. People don't kak you sometimes. And I remember hearing that he was outside on the steps, bitching. That's the best way I can describe it. Just like complaining to other younger team members that he hadn't been included in that message. And it developed this horrible reputation for him as someone that was always complaining, always trying to take credit.
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Unknown B
Because it's ugly to be seen as trying to take credit well.
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Unknown A
So if you read the law carefully, it's really about how powerful people use this. So if you're an underling and you do the work, you don't want to take credit for it because it's gonna get you in trouble, right? But powerful people have used for centuries the labor of other people and put their name on it to make themselves look powerful and to make them seem like they've got Endless energy, okay? So you have to apply that law with intelligence. If you're an underling and you're doing some project, it's a group project, don't go out there and take credit for it because people are just gonna laugh at you and you'll make. You're going to make a terrible fool of yourself. So every law has a context, you know, but that's powerful. People use that law. And if you don't think that's how it operates, I'm sorry, but you're in for a world of pain.
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Unknown B
I think there's an overarching thing here which can be discovered in your other book, the Laws of Human Nature, about mastering your emotional self. Because none of these things are going to be possible if you don't have mastery over your emotions. I'm not going to be able to refrain from snatching credit. I'm not going to be able to not outshine my master if I don't have this sort of foundation of emotional control. Is that true? Is emotional control really where this all begins?
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Unknown A
Yes, it is. Self control. Of course, you can take it too far where you have no emotions and you're just a cold fish out there. You know, it's good. Emotions are important. You're not going to write a book, you're not going to start a business unless you're excited, unless you have that emotional energy. So I'm not talking about stifling your emotions. That would be incredibly counterproductive and unpowerful. But there are emotions that are going to get you in trouble, particularly as a social animal. So it's not like you stifle your emotions. You learn how to channel and control them, and you learn that certain behaviors are going to be read as unpowerful, as hysterical, as somebody who can't get things done, as ineffective, incompetent. So as an actor, you learn to sort of present the right front, the right facade, and that requires a degree of emotional control.
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Unknown A
Yes, for sure. It's very important and it's not easy because when you're young, particularly, you're wired to be emotional. And you're going to learn this the hard way, which is how I learned it. I'm trying to teach you some lessons, so maybe you won't make as many mistakes. But it's a hard thing you learn, and you learn it by the mistakes you make. By saying something foolish that costs you your job. By outshining the master that costs you your job.
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Unknown B
You learn it from the mistakes you make. Is there any practices that you Know of that would enable me to increase my self awareness because, you know, we're all going through experiences in life, but it seems that some people are learning from those experiences and becoming more wise and more effective. And then other people are kind of repeating the cycle over and over again. And I think I asked this in particular because you're a writer. So you spend a ton of time thinking, thinking about what's happened to you, your jobs, experiences, your feelings.
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Unknown A
If you do a foolish mistake, there are two ways to go. And the common route is, that asshole, they screwed me over, it's their fault, you know, right? Or I made that mistake. But you know, if circumstances had been better, if I had more money, if this person supported me, it all would have gone well. That's what we naturally do. And that's the kind of person that never learns from life. So your first instinct must always be. And not your first instinct. I correct myself. Your second instinct. Because your first instinct is always going to be that there's a great book. I can't remember what the writer's name was. Mistakes were Made, but not by me. I recommend that book highly. It came out about 10 years ago. I think it's Elliot Aronson, very good book. Anyway, your first instinct always will be it was a mistake, but it wasn't mine.
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Unknown A
I'm not to blame. All right? Everybody does it. I do it. Your second instinct is to step back and go, whoa, wait a minute, that's not right. I'm fooling myself. Actually, I played a role in that, in what happened there. And what is that role that I played? What could I have done differently? Maybe it's very subtle. Maybe it was something in my body language that turned people off, that made them not like me. Or maybe it was something I said or I did that could have changed the circumstances. What is it that I did then you can learn from the experience. And if only 10% of it is your responsibility, at least see it as 30% so that you can learn from it and exaggerate your role in the mistake. Because then you can learn from it. You can understand that, you can correct these mistakes, right?
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Unknown A
So initially you can always blame the other person. Then you're going to step back and you're going to go through this little dance. You're going to go, no, I think I've definitely played a part in what went wrong here.
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Unknown B
Things go wrong and we leap to blame. And once we leap to blame, we often leap to revenge. We want to take revenge. We want to right the wrong that's happened to us. We want to correct the injustice. And you talk about this as part of human nature, but also give us some advice. I think it was in the Law of Power book about. I think it was Law 36. When we feel like we've been wronged, Robert, when we feel like there's been an injustice, what is the best course of action?
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Unknown A
It depends on the wrong and in the injustice.
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Unknown B
So let me give you an example. Someone at work, I heard they said something to my boss and it's cost me my promotion and they're talking about me behind my back and it's annoying me.
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Unknown A
Well, there are several avenues that you can go. Everything depends on circumstances. So if you're going to be a strategist in life, which is what I recommend, you have to look at the particular parameters and not just go through one answer. There's several possibilities here. So number one, maybe you're in an awful job with awful office politics. I have a thing that I get talked about in one of my recent talks of you can scale a culture of a group on a scale of 0 to 100. 100 is what I call a reality group where people are only interested in getting the job done and everything is on results. Zero is where everything is political and everything is personal and everything is about who knows who and how you round knows your way with the boss. Okay, so if you're at a company that's at that 20% level, then get your ass out of there.
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Unknown A
Okay, you have a colleague like that, but there are probably other colleagues like that and that person is probably always causing problems. Do you need to be at this job? Is the main thing you have to first ask yourself. And if you do need it, you need the job, and it's only this one person, then you have to go through a few steps. Number one, is it worth taking personally? What if I not take the hybrid because I hate that phrase, but what if I say it's not really worth it for me to get upset? It's better off in the long run to just act like, you know, it didn't happen and to end up getting the promotion on my own in a different way and proving myself that success is the best revenge, you know, and how can I get there kind of thing ignoring him or her and what they did and only focusing on what you can do to get back to get the promotion that you deserve.
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Unknown A
The third possibility is sticking it to this other person, which is always something that I think is something you might have to consider doing right, which is playing the game back at them. So when you're dealing with people who are unethical, like a Putin kind of type, where they're willing to do anything to get power and you're not, it's asymmetrical warfare. They have more options than you do. Okay, this person that did that to you, they're going to do anything for power and it puts you at a constant disadvantage. What do you do? You have to do what they have in warfare called deterrence strategy. You have to show this person that you're not somebody you can mess with, that you're going to do something to hurt them. But it's controlled and it's a one time thing. You're going to damage their reputation, you're going to spread some nasty rumor about them, but you don't feel like you're lowering yourself.
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Unknown A
It's just, I'm doing it one time to show them that from now on you better not mess with me because dammit, I've got a gun in my back pocket and I can use it. You can't be, you can't just roll over because I can keep doing it to you time and again. So you've got three options and you've got to choose what's the best one. If you hate your job and you can't get around this person, quit. If you don't feel comfortable going the low road and if you think it's a better strategy in the long term for you and your soul and your safety to simply focus on your job and get revenge that way, that's probably the best solution of all. But sometimes you need to have a shot across their bow to say, look, you can't attack me because if you do, there are going to be consequences to pay.
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Unknown B
Because these types of people, they prey on those who seem weakest, right? Predators love prey.
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Unknown A
Yeah. But if you do the option number two and you show that you don't really, that they didn't affect you and you kind of act like it didn't matter sort of thing, but you still work hard and you're still doing your job, they're going to wonder like, hmm, that's pretty impressive. That's interesting. This person has self control and they're maybe going to be afraid of you in that sense by the fact, by the composure that you show them. So everything depends on who you are, your nature and the nature of this Machiavellian character that you're facing, you know, but be alive to the moment and the circumstances and play for the long game. So sometimes the long game means showing that you can mean action because then they're going to leave you alone for the next couple of years.
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Unknown B
When we zoom out what's going on in the world, a lot has changed. A lot has changed. One of the things that's changed is our society, as I think I've heard you say, is less united by some of these great myths of religion and talk about democracy and all these kinds of things. And as a result, people no longer believe in the same ideas because every form of authority is now under question. And you're someone who studies history, you're someone that understands the cycles of history. What cycle of history are we in at this moment in time? And how does one navigate it?
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Unknown A
Well, you have to take a big picture, especially if you're someone like me who studies history a lot. So there are always these moments in history of cycles of chaos where, and it could be caused in the past by a plague, by some terrible war that goes on, like 100 Years War in Europe, where people feel genuinely powerless and helpless and there's a crisis of meaning in the world. And I can point to specific moments in the ancient world, in Asia, in Europe, but it goes on and on. It's a cycle that happens. And when people feel powerless and helpless and there's all this chaos going around them, then they tend to be attracted to authoritarian figures, to easy solutions. They get much more irrational, they're much more likely to fall for cults and for belief systems that offer simple solutions and easy one sentence answers, like make America great again kind of thing, you know.
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Unknown A
Wow, that sounds as simple as easy. Yeah, that's the one. We'll vote for that. Right. So in moments of chaos and helplessness, people are going to grab for something that anchors them, that gives them a sense of meaning. Right. But it's often something very, very dangerous. So we're in a moment like that right now, I think around the world. It's not just the United States, believe it or not, things can happen under the skin and are subtle, like climate change. There are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change, but it's affecting everyone, it's making everyone a bit neurotic. The sense that we can't control our climate. Right. That these disasters are going to keep happening and happening. That's a major sense of helplessness. The global economy, where now your business is at the mercy of something that's going on in Indonesia or Japan or China, is a tremendous sense of, of helplessness and a lack of Control.
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Unknown A
And your political figures don't seem to be responding to you in any way. Like their actions, their talk doesn't lead to the kind of results that you want. So you're very prone to following what demagogues say who offer you, like, easy solutions. Okay, so if you're living in a time like that and it's more dangerous now than in the past because of social media and because of memes and because of the viral effects that are sweeping through humanity. Right. They didn't have that during the bubonic plague, during the Hundred Years War, during the French and Industrial Revolution, which was another period of incredible dramatic change in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. Right. So they didn't have that which is adds to the bruin, makes it much more dangerous. So having a longer view is to say, well, you know, this is a moment, moment of chaos and I'm going to be in control of what I think and what I believe.
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Unknown A
So I'm going to have a degree of distrust of what people are telling me. I'm not going to get so emotional when people start saying this is what's evil, this is what's wrong with the world. And to be very, very, very wary of people with simple solutions who say if we just do this one thing, everything will be great. If we just add tariffs, if we just get rid of all the immigrants, America will be fabulous. These are fairy tales that are being peddled to you. I'm not trying to be political because the other side peddles their own kinds of fairy tales. Believe me, I understand that.
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Unknown B
Can I ask you a question about this book which is kind of linked to what you're saying now? Before the laws of power, what demographic emails you the most about the book?
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Unknown A
Young men.
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Unknown B
Young men voted for Trump. I know you're someone that I sense and from other ministers, from my research, isn't a big fan of Trump. And so what do you say to those people about why you have that position and what the misunderstanding potentially?
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Unknown A
The thing I do want to say is that you want to be able to, to think for yourself. Okay, so let's say you think Trump is the answer he's going to have. He's going to solve all of our problems. Well, be capable of stepping back and going, maybe some of the things he's doing, I don't agree with aren't right. You know, have some discrimination, have some self distance, be able to criticize your own side. So I'm on the left, on the Democratic liberal side. They are buffoons. They are fools. They are absolutely incompetent and I don't afraid to say it. They make terrible mistakes. They blew this election. They're stupid. And it's painful to say that because it's the side that I support. But I do not believe in everything that they promote. They're things I disagree with them on some of their WOKE policies.
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Unknown A
I just find it ludicrous. Okay, so be able to stand back and say, I don't agree with everything he says, have some dignity, have some self worth, say that I can think for myself and not get so emotional. Right. So you think being masculine and being a bro is just say, oh, Robert, F you, you're such an idiot. You're so blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, YouTube comments, because I get them all the time, you know, F you, you can fill in the blanks. Right? That's not being masculine. That's not being tough or strong. That's being an idiot because you're not able to think for yourself. Right. Being emotional isn't masculinity. Masculinity is self control. I'm afraid being masculine is being able to step back and go, this isn't necessarily the right thing to do. I have to think about it. I have to do something that's more productive, that's positive.
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Unknown A
I have to criticize myself. Sometimes weak people can't criticize themselves. So if you're listening to me, at least be willing to say that maybe some of my ideas are wrong. My ideas and your ideas, right? That to me is strength. That to me is a masculine virtue. Being able to criticize your own side and not get always so emotional and overheated and leaving nasty YouTube comments as I'm sure I'm going to get right now.
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Unknown B
You made me reflect on something I read the other day. I think it was on X. It was a study that shows that when the more testosterone you have, again, which we can use as like a proxy for masculinity in studies, you're more likely to think for yourself. So they had two groups of people and they gave one group of people testosterone. I think it was group of men testosterone. They both had to do this test and the ones who had the higher testosterone levels had been given after the artificial testosterone. They were less likely to cave in to external social expectations, which I thought was a proxy. What you're saying, which is right on your masculinity is having the strength of your own convictions and being able to ignore social pressure to conform. You talked about wokeness in the left and how they messed it up.
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Unknown B
I consider myself to be, I'd say, apolitical, but it's more. This sounds like a strange thing to say. I can just see the merits in things on both sides. I really should identify with the stuff. I think, okay, that's good for the economy, that's good for different social classes and stuff. And so I also just have, I think, a very strong negative reaction to the binary choice that you're kind of forced to make.
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Unknown A
Yeah, right. Okay.
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Unknown B
I've always kind of stayed out of it. But in terms of this wokeness and the way that the left have screwed it up, what have they got wrong?
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Unknown A
Well, what's Trump got right?
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Unknown B
I guess.
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Unknown A
Well, I don't know. It's too painful for me to say what Trump got right.
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Unknown B
Well, you've got to be able to.
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Unknown A
I know, but he is. I'll tell you what he gets right and what he's really brilliant at, which is communication and messaging. So the Democrats completely suck at that. Right. They couldn't craft a message to save their life if they were, you know, if everything depended on it. They're just terrible at it. They don't know how to communicate. They don't know how to make a simple message. Now, I said simple messages can be deceptive. But in politics, you have to have something like that. You have to stand for a vision, for something straight, and you have to be strong, and you have to be willing to fight for it. So I do have the ear of some people in the Democratic Party, and I say what you got wrong and what Trump got right is to show the public that you are fighters, that you are strong, that you believe in something, and that you're willing to upset other people, other groups, because you believe in certain things.
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Unknown A
He a large portion of the public, he doesn't care about. He's interested in his base. He doesn't care if he's hated.
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Unknown B
Okay.
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Unknown A
Democrats don't care if you put. If you upset this special interest group or that special interest group. Some people have to hate you. Being hated is a good thing. Stand for something to be willing to fight. You got that all wrong. He got that right. So I can admit that. And he's much better at communicating and messaging. Okay. When it comes to policies, there's a pretty big gulf between us about what I think is good and bad. But I mean, wokeness is. It's an ideology that isn't really connected to everyday life, to what's going on around us. Right. It's kind of a purity test of These are certain things that we hold and you better either if you believe in them, you're on the good side, and if you don't believe them, you're on the wrong side. It's a polarity. It's a black and white binary way of looking at the world.
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Unknown A
And that's not reality. That's not how things are. Things aren't black and white. Things have a gray zone. Yes, there are things that are evil. Murder is evil, you know, social injustice. We can all agree on certain social injustices. Yeah, but it's not like this purity test of if you don't believe in this, you are an evil, bad person. So on the Israel, Palestine issue, for instance, now I happen to be Jewish, right? And I've never been a Zionist my whole life. I'm very happy to be Jewish. I was bar mitzvah and I have nothing against it. And I'm not a practicing religious person in Judaism. I understand because I lost a large part of my ancestry during the Holocaust. It was deeply part of my childhood, very traumatic thing that even my parents were still recovering from. So when it comes to Israel, Palestine, I'm very conflicted because I've met Palestinians who had a terrible impact on me as they describe the horror of what happened to them and how the loss of their land and how deeply what a beautiful country Palestine was and how traumatic it was to lose their home.
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Unknown A
But at the same time, Jews were completely homeless from the Holocaust and they did originate from this land. I can see both sides and it's very painful. And if I were to craft a solution, first of all, I think Netanyahu is a horrible person. But there is a middle ground that could be had where there could be a two state solution. But the woke people, oh God, forget it, man. You're just, you're just, you're in favor of genocide. Get out of here. That's not life, that's not reality. That's not how the world works. It's not how things happen in this world. You're not dealing with the real world. You're just trying to act like you're morally pure. You're not really willing to sacrifice to roll up your sleeves and come up with practical solutions. You just want to yell and rant and act and look like you're the most virtuous person on the planet.
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Unknown B
But isn't this one of the laws of human nature fitting into our tribes? Because I think being in a sort of political middle, wherever I am, you get attacked from both sides because sometimes you'll have a conversation with this person and they'll say, oh, my God, you're right wing. They'll have a conversation with this person and they'll say, oh, my God, you're left wing. And so you just. You never fit. My instinct is tempted. My instinct, my primitive instinct is like, just fucking pick a side, Steven. And at least you have a bunch of people to protect you. You talk about that as well, how having a group of people around you, not being in isolation, offers protection. So it's tempting.
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Unknown A
It's tempting. But you're going to lose your soul, you're going to lose your dignity in the process. So it's fine to be part of a group. I remember I was a young man in 1983. I was on the left for sure. I don't deny it. I went to Nicaragua to report as a journalist on the war going on between the Contras and the Sandinistas. And I was more on the Sandinistas side. And they ended up as things have rolled out. The Sandinistas are truly evil. I mean, Ortega, when he's done in Nicaragua, is truly evil. But at the time, I thought they were pretty great. And I remember one day there was this immense plaza that they had, and I was in Managua, and Managua had just suffered this incredible earthquake. Half the city was in rubble still, but there was this immense plaza. It was filled with everyone because the Pope had come there and, you know, and it was a big deal because Santinisto was like, you know, anti God or something, which wasn't true.
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Unknown A
Anyway, I was there with hundreds of thousands of people. And the feeling of being in the group where everybody was on the same side was so intoxicating. I felt a ripple through me that I've never had in my life again, of just being connected to all of these people. It was so joyous and exciting. But then it's also very dangerous as well. So, you know, I liked having that experience. But as I got older, I go, I don't want to feel like that again, because I think it could be very ugly and dangerous as it ended up turning that way in Nicaragua. You know, it's like a Hitler crowd kind of thing. I'm always fascinated, weirdly enough, as a Jew, by Hitler documentaries. I can watch every single Hitler documentary. It's just riveting to watch, like these Nuremberg rallies. My God, it's like. It's like a drug.
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Unknown A
It's insane. All the people with their torches all marching in the same way with these insignias. Everything you can understand how people would get caught up in that kind of mania. Right. But it's very dangerous. And even that moment in Managua later, when I think back on it, maybe I should have had a little more self distance from that.
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Unknown B
Do you think we're in a similar time now where we. We're getting caught up in mania?
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Unknown A
Yes. We're getting caught up in easy solutions and things that aren't really thought out. I mean, what is human stupidity? Question that has obsessed me for a long time. And in fact, the third book in my series was originally supposed to be the history of human stupidity, but my publishers thought it was too negative a subject and it would have also been too long of a book. But stupidity is the inability to think of the consequences of your actions, to think that you are certain that you know the answers, to take action based on the certainty, but to not think of steps three, four and five that are going to happen as a result. And man, I'm seeing that all over the place on our political map where people take action. It's like our ID is running the world, like adolescence, like, you know, I'll do this, man.
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Unknown A
This will be cool. This will be interesting. You don't realize that you're gonna get in a car wreck because you took this drug and you're driving your car. We're getting a lot of that kind of adolescent mentality. I'm gonna take this action because it's fierce, it's angry, it's gonna solve things. But the consequences down the road five years from now are gonna be horrific. That is human stupidity.
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Unknown B
You said that Trump is deploying the laws of power. What laws of power has Trump successfully deployed?
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Unknown A
Or attention at all cost. He's the master of it. I remember I was on a book tour. I can't remember where. It was some corner of the world. Maybe it was Australia, maybe it was Singapore. And everybody was talking about Donald Trump. It was like the whole world is obsessed with him. I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where anybody's had that kind of power cord attention at all cost. He's the absolute master of it. He's law number 27. Play on people's needy belief to create a cult like following. He has a cult like following right people. Nothing he does can be wrong. He was actually. God is on his side. God is protecting him. That's a cult. I'm sorry, but that's a cult. This is politics, it's not religion. You know, interaction with boldness. He knows how to interaction with boldness.
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Unknown A
Law 28, I believe, or 29. So there's several laws. He creates compelling spectacles, but there are a lot of laws that he violates as well.
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Unknown B
At my company Flight Studio, which is part of my bigger company, Flight Group, we're constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our audiences, whether that's a new show, a product or a project. It's why I launched the conversation cards. I've relied on Shopify before, who's a sponsor of today's podcast, and I'll be using them again for the next big launch, which we'll hear about soon. And I use them because of how easy it is to set up an online store that reaches all of you, no matter where you are in the world. With Shopify, the usual pain points of launching products online disappear completely. No matter the size of your business, Shopify has everything you need to make your business go to the next level and better connect with your customers all over the world. To say thank you to all of you for listening to my show, we're giving you a trial which is just $1 a month.
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Unknown B
You can sign up by going to shopify.com bartlett that's shopify.com bartlett or find the link in the description below. One of the things I was thinking about over the Christmas period was identity and the pitfalls of having identity in life. And it reminds me of Law 48 in the 48 Laws of Power, which is to assume formlessness. What do you think of the subject of identity? Because it's useful to some degree. But it could also be our downfall, as you alluded to at start this conversation. When you say that someone gets to 34 years old and they've almost had like a midlife crisis because they're now like successful. I don't know. Accountant.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
And that's their identity, that's their friendship circle. I'm wondering what your perspective on identity is.
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Unknown A
It's good not to think in such concrete terms of this is who I am. To place labels on it, like I'm a lawyer, like I'm a right wing Trump follower, like I'm an entrepreneur. You're much more than that. Right. There's something else about who you are. Right. You have a soul. I know that's an old fashioned concept, but I believe that people have a soul and it can be their character, their traits that they have that almost they have when they're born. It's what makes them who they are. It's their sense of dignity that they return to that self. But I can't put a label on it. I can't put a word on it. I can't say it's being a lawyer, being white, black, left, right, or whatever. Right. I like to think, and this will sound like I'm John Lennon in Imagine or some sentimental thing like that, but I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, a citizen of the universe.
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Unknown A
So personally, maybe it's just me. I'm interested in every single culture, in every single religion. You know, I am just as much fascinated by the Yoruba religion in West Africa as I am by Buddhism, Islam, et cetera. They all fascinate me. Every country, every culture has something incredibly interesting about it. I've been studying things like the Aztec culture I wrote about extensively in my new book. Just an amazing story, amazing history. It's not me. I'm not ethnically Mexican. I'm not related to it through time or anything, but I'm related to it as a human being, and I identify with it on a very deep level.
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Unknown B
Which poem?
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Unknown A
The sense of magic, the sense of awe in the face of this universe, the incredible sense of spectacle that they created this. And I describe it in my new book. The city that they created, Tenochtitlan, it was one of the greatest, most beautiful cities that ever existed, that mankind has ever created. On a par with Venice, Italy. Completely destroyed by the conquistadors. Nothing of it remains. If you go to Mexico City, you'll see nothing. They destroyed everything but the picture presented by the first conquistadors that arrived there. My God, this is like a fairy tale. It is so beautiful. Their artwork, their culture, their music, just blows me away. When I read about their philosophy, I identify with that. If we only had some distance, we only realized that we all come from the same roots, that there really is no such a thing as an ethnicity, that we all come from the same human beings, that it's all relative, that all the cultures are related, that all human beings are interrelated.
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Unknown A
It's such a simplistic notion, but it kind of destroys all of our separations, all our partisanship, all of our niggly little sense of identity. I don't get my identity from being from California or Los Angeles or being Jewish or being American. I get it from being a human being with this incredible, vast history. Nobody else is going to follow me in this. I know. It's just me. It's my wish. And if human beings in 100 years could believe that it would be so beneficial for us in Some way, it would mean we all have to protect this planet so that we can give it to our children that climate change affects all of us, that we're all in this together. I know I'm sounding not like the guy who wrote the 48 laws of power, so excuse me for that.
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Unknown B
The book you're referring to that you're currently writing and you're getting to the end of, thankfully, is it called the Law of Sublime Love of the Sublime.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
You've progressed with that book since we last spoke. So I'm just wondering if I ask you the question now, what that book is about and why you're writing it. You know, you talked earlier on in this conversation about being really clear on why you're doing something. Why are you writing that book?
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Unknown A
Well, I write my books always with a sense of urgency, like it's going to help people because we're facing a problem. I felt the 48 lost power was at a moment where people were too naive. I felt the Art of Seduction, where people didn't understand about the psychology of dealing with the sexes, et cetera. I wrote the War book because I felt people were terrible at strategy. The 50 cent book is different. But Mastery, because people had lost a sense of how to master profession, human nature, because people were really bad at dealing with people. Now the problem, I think, is our minds are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. We're so absorbed in things that are so unimportant, so banal, so trivial, so stupid. At the same time, science is showing us the most marvelous things you could possibly imagine. You know, about the Big Bang theory.
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Unknown A
We're being able to understand what the first minutes of our universe were like. We're able to take a picture inside of a black hole and understand what's going on in a black hole. We're able to understand the history of Earth. Someday we're going to know how life began. It's insane what science is showing us about this world, about the world that we were living in, about this world that we were born into. And I want to open your eyes and expand your consciousness instead of shrink it to the dimensions of what we're actually facing in this world. How insane it is to be sharing the planet with animals and their strange consciousness, how they think differently about how we could connect to them. We're the only animal that's conscious that we know of, but we can connect to animals on a way that is just insane.
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Unknown A
I call it the interspecies sublime. Right? I'm talking about how Our childhood was a moment of incredible sublimity. How we were so open. Some people had a very painful childhood, but we were very open to the world and very imaginative about how strange it is to be alive that very easily. Dinosaurs could be roaming this planet right now if a meteor hadn't knocked out the dinosaurs 60 some million years ago. Okay. On and on and on I talked about love. You know, I'm writing now about artworks and aesthetics and things that trigger the sublime in us. Nature, death, which will be obviously the last chapter. But I just want you to sense that there is something very strange about being alive in the 21st century and not take it for granted and not just be caught up in everything that's so familiar and conventional and banal.
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Unknown A
And open your eyes, because as you do this, your eyes, emotions open up. You're able to feel different things, your thoughts open up, you're able to have different ideas, you become more creative, your consciousness expands. Anyway, I go on forever because I've been writing the book forever, but that's sort of what it's about.
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Unknown B
And you think it'll be ready by.
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Unknown A
2026 if it isn't, I don't know if I'll still be here because it's literally. It's hard to explain, but I can't type and I can't take a walk and I can't do the things I used to do to kind of decompress. So I have to handwrite everything in two notebooks with sticky pads here and there. It's like. It's like a rat's maze. And then I dictate it on the computer. It's taken me. This will be like. It's going to be like six years of work because the process has been so difficult for me. So my publisher, I've written. I'm going to finish in a few weeks the 10th chapter. I have two left. I'm projecting to finish that by the end of the year, which would give me enough time to have it published in 2026. I hope I break, because if not, I don't know if my body can take it anymore.
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Unknown B
Do you mean that when you say that you're not sure if your body can take anymore?
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Unknown A
I can't, man. I can't take the focus. It's like for three weeks now, I've been going, this isn't working. This isn't working. This isn't working. I'm not sleeping. My stomach is all churning. Okay, I'm getting too old for this. And suddenly I break through and then it comes back, and then it happens again and again. When I start a chapter, the first couple months, I'm relaxed, I'm breathing, I'm fine. Then when I. Near the end of the chapter, I turn into the tightest person you can imagine, and I'm so tight. And then I finish it. And so I can't take much more of this, to be honest with you, because I had a stroke. I'm not a young man anymore. So, you know, I'm not going to be overly dramatic here. I don't want to be a drama queen. I'll live. I'll be fine. But seriously, I couldn't take another, like, two years of this.
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Unknown B
I couldn't make that two years of this book.
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Unknown A
Yeah, no more.
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Unknown B
You're going to write another book, though, aren't you?
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Unknown A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to write a book about kittens or about the Lakers or something easy.
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Unknown B
I don't know, something nice and simple. One of the clips that I saw the other day, that's one of the most viewed clips from you, was about the primary law of human psychology is that people judge based on appearances. This isn't a nice thing to confront, although everybody knows it's true. What does that mean?
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Unknown A
Well, it was a talk that I gave recently in Atlanta, and I was trying to show the game of power as it's played, the rules of the game. And the one thing that I was trying to emphasize is that power is a game of pure psychology. And what I mean by that is when you have sports, you have a game like baseball, it's all statistics and data mostly. Right. So. And there's a winner and there's a loser. They won the game five to nothing, et cetera. Okay, so there are parameters. There's very little psychology involved, although in sports, it's soccer, football, and so there's some psychology, but a lot of it's just playing and winning. But power isn't like that. So when we elect a leader like Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, you might say, oh, he got more votes. But what is your judgment?
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Unknown A
Your decision on voting for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, was it? You spent four hours with a spreadsheet going over all of their economic policies, deciding this is what's going to happen, this is how it's going to be. No, it was based on appearances, on psychology. He seemed like a leader. He seemed like he had more authority. I kind of like his ideas, but you're not going very deeply into it. Right? It's his appearance that mattered. CEOs are often hired because of their optics, because it's not based completely on the amount of money they've made. And I believe I saw this first time when I was on the board of directors. People were hired not on their superior track record, but on their political skills. Often. Yeah.
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Unknown B
Political skills as in their ability to do sort of office politics and stuff like that?
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Unknown A
Yeah, I mean, there was some metrics involved, but a lot of it was optics. Okay, so the idea is the power game. The rule of laws of power are understanding human psychology. Never outshine the master. You're creating the appearance that you respect the master, that they are better than you, that you are going to obey them, you're going to follow them. You're playing that game. Always say less than necessary. You're wearing the mask of somebody powerful who learns to control their tongue and control their behavior. Court attention at all costs. You know, the behavior that will get people to look at you and attend to you. Do not build fortresses. You understand that appearing isolated at somebody is very dangerous. You know how to play the perfect courtier. You create the appearance of power. And that is the power game is creating the appearance of it.
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Unknown A
It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Now, of course, results do matter. They do figure into the picture, I won't deny that. But the main part of the game, the main part of the laws are understanding the role of appearances, being a good actor and knowing how to manage that properly in a group situation.
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Unknown B
So if two people walked in here and one of them had the appearance of power and one of them didn't, what would the person who had the appearance of power be doing? How would they be carrying themselves? How would they be speaking?
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Unknown A
Well, a lot of our idea of a leader and power is non verbal stuff because as I said, we're an animal, we're a social animal. We don't like to understand that, but it's true. And so a lot of it's the body language. So a powerful person in a meeting is kind of relaxed. They're kind of like this. They can put their bodies anywhere. Right. Other person's like all tight and nervous and aware. A powerful person has a directed focus. A weak person is always looking around, touching their hair, touching their face. There's a word for I forget what. It's nonverbal communication, but it's a sign of insecurity. Right. A powerful person is able to look at everybody in the room directly, whereas somebody who's weak is always kind of averting their gaze. There are these Signs of kind of confidence and charisma where you feel you are powerful and it emanates outward.
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Unknown A
Your eyes have that certain gaze. It's unfortunate because for women it's a little bit harder to play that game because some of the things that read as powerful for men, for women should read as powerful, but often read as she's mean, she's a bitch, right? So women have a harder time in playing this game of appearances because they're judged so much on their looks and not about these other things. So it's complicated. But there are these kind of cues that people give off that show that they inwardly feel secure and powerful and it kind of emanates outward. There's a law in there, act like a king to be treated like one. If you feel like you're a king or a queen, people will believe that you are. Right. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And I have a story in there of Christopher Columbus, who was like the son of like a grocer somewhere in like Portugal or whatever, but he convinced all of the kings of Spain that he came from nobility and it was a total con game and they believed to be.
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Unknown A
But he carried himself like that, he believed it and they gave him all this money to go and explore America. That's sort of the iconic story that I use for that.
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Unknown B
So you can't fake it till you make it.
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Unknown A
You can't to a degree. But at some point it'll catch up to you if you can't deliver results. So if it's all just make believe, if it's all just hype, if it's all just appearance and optics, you won't get very far because you have to end up producing. And some of the laws are about that. It's not all about that. So plan all the way to the end is about like getting the results that you want by planning all the way to the end, you know, so it's not just faking it that'll get you somewhere. But at some point you have to produce real confidence.
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Unknown B
The real confidence to be relaxed in your chair, to hold eye contact with somebody. Where does that come from when we think about confidence and power?
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Unknown A
Well, it can come from one of two things. It can kind of come from almost a form of insanity where you believe since you were a child that you were destined for something great. I'm so amazing, I'm so wonderful. And you feel it and it's not completely made up. You actually do get things done, but you have that natural air that like a prince would have Right.
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Unknown B
What if you don't have any confidence? Can you cultivate it?
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Unknown A
Yes, you can. You can. The thing is, the best way to cultivate it is to actually have results that show, to actually have a record to go upon. So you can kind of fake it like Columbus did. But Columbus already had achieved some things when he did that. He'd already had some naval skills, I believe, don't quote me on that. But it's good to have some things to hang your hat on that will help give you that confidence. So it's not completely faked. But William James, the great American psychologist, talked about as if strategies. And it's a very important concept in psychology from the early 20th century. If you believe as if you were confident, as if you are powerful, it will tend to be read that way, right? And so like he had the analogy, if you smile, even though you don't feel like smiling, you'll end up kind of maybe feeling kind of happy.
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Unknown A
So the physical action will create the psychological action which is believed. Because he was very much a believer in the body things starting from the body. So if you believe physically and bodily embodied that you were great, that you deserve this, it will kind of become part of your psychology and it will radiate outward.
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Unknown B
But for those that don't, they just don't have that belief. Can you lie to yourself? Can you tell yourself, I am strong and I am powerful?
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Unknown A
Well, everybody has some good qualities, right? Everybody, I think almost everybody has something that they can, can go back to in the past and go, I was actually very good at that. That was actually a good moment. I actually was, was, you know, scored in that particular moment. And you can think about that. I mean, actors do that all the time in movies when they want to express an emotion, they go back into their past. Like they have to express sadness. They go back and they think about their father who, mother who died, and they call that emotion up. You can call that emotion up of when you did something actually really great. You might have only been in high school when you were on the sports team and you threw the touchdown or something. Okay, Think about that and it'll come back to you. Everybody has something that can be confident about.
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Unknown B
I hope if there was one law that the powerless amongst us who feel powerless or lost in the current world, one law or one fact of human nature that people who are feeling lost and purposeless and adrift right now should be thinking the most about which one springs to mind.
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Unknown A
Well, there's no one shop answer to this kind of thing, but One law that I would highlight is interaction with boldness. And what I mean by that is you, if you're feeling timid, if you're feeling that you're not confident in something, you will start a project and it will fail because you feel that way, because you don't enter into it with the right energy. So if you feel, if you take something and you do something boldly, everybody loves the bold, everybody admires it, even if it's stupid, even if it fails, it will gain you that kind of attention. And so let's say you're thinking about starting a business. Well, just go ahead and do it and be bold about it and start it and be as dramatic as you can and be as confident as you can. And it creates a self fulfilling dynamic. People admire it.
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Unknown A
They don't admire the timid and the insecure. And the guy who spends two years talking about that podcast he's gonna start, they admire that bloke who just decided, all right, I'm gonna start it. I don't care if nobody likes it, fine. You know, I remember this guy interviewed me once. He had a magazine called Bad Ideas and it was a really successful magazine in like the early 2000s. I said, where'd you get that idea? And he said, my mother told me that to start that magazine was a really bad idea, right? So I thought I'd put the title there, you know, and that would be the title of it. And I just went ahead and started and it was very successful because it was great, like marketing gimmick. And it also worked and it was actually full of bad ideas of the book, but very, in a very interesting way.
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Unknown A
So being bold, being different, everybody. Nowadays I'm getting on my goddamn soapbox again. I apologize to everyone about this, but everyone is so similar. Everybody is so afraid. Everyone's trying to be like everybody else. You go out there and you start something that's different. That's you, that's unique, that's loud, that proclaims I'm a different voice on it. You're going to get attention. So I want more bold people in this world. We've got too much fear. You know, that's. I'm not maybe a big admirer of, in some ways of Elon Musk. But dammit, he's always bold and it always works for him. He doesn't start just a minimal business about maybe sending rockets out there. He starts thinking it's going to take him to Mars. He's bold and people love it.
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Unknown B
The world moves out the way of Boldness. I was thinking, as you were speaking, about a memory of mine of being at a festival in New York City called Global Citizen. I was like, Beyonce was performing and stuff, all the biggest names in the world. And my friend was drunk, and we were in the VIP section behind the stage, but we could see that there was this access all areas artists section. And because my friend was drunk, I'd never witnessed anything like it. This guy gets me, takes my hand, goes to me. He walks directly at the two massive security guards with this boldness, this conviction. They just moved out of the way.
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Unknown A
I thought you could say they punched him.
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Unknown B
No, they just moved out of the way because of the way he was walking. They just thought he must be in here, and they moved out of the way. They didn't check his past. They just moved out of the way. And he continued to do that all day. And it was because he was drunky. He's still not about. He used to be alcoholic, so he had this confidence when he was drunk where the world would just, like, move out of his way. And he ended up going in what I believe to be the president of some Asian country's dressing room again, because he was just walking at things. And the way he was walking, it just moved out of his way. But I never forgotten that. Actually, I deployed it today when I went for a run with my girlfriend because I wanted to use a bathroom in a restaurant.
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Unknown B
And I figured that if I just walk with a certain conviction, the staff will let me pass. They'll assume maybe I'm sat here. I ended up walking through a conference. It was like a conference hall in this hotel where they're checking people's badges just because the way I was walking. Let me check mine. And there's a metaphor here for life. And you kind of allude to it in your book about, like, the baldy Wilder. Better. Some of these subheadings I find really cool. Lion circle the hesitant prey. Boldness strikes fear, and fear creates authority. Going halfway with half a heart digs the deeper grave. Hesitation creates gaps. Boldness obliterates them. And audacity separates you from the herd.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Yeah. I want if one thing. If I have one legacy, if I create more bold people in this world, I will be happy. Because we've got too many timid hairs out there. We need more bold lions. Start your business. Write that book. Do it. Just do it, please. And then write me afterwards and either blame me or thank me.
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Unknown B
I wish I'd been bold when I was starting my entrepreneurial career. I Wish someone had said to me, whatever your dream is, Steve, when you describe it to people, times it by 10. Whatever number you're trying to raise in it as an investment.
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Unknown A
Well, that's for sure. In negotiations, you ask for 200,000. That's what you get. You ask for a million, you maybe get 500,000, but it's 300,000 more than you would have gotten if you'd been timid. Always a negotiation. Ask the higher price and mean it. And say it with conviction, right? And make sure you think your price is high. You'll get the higher price.
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Unknown B
It takes a certain confidence, though. And that's really what's, I think, at the heart of the problem. Maybe we just want you to be a bit more drunk.
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Unknown A
That's the lesson. That's law.
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Unknown B
Well, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where they'll ask, guest leaves a question for the next guest, but knowing who they're gonna be, leaving it for. The question that's been left for you is, close your eyes and imagine yourself ten years from now. Where are you? What are you doing? And who are you with?
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Unknown A
I'm hoping that I'm alive and healthy and that my walking has gotten better so that I can take a walk and that I'm with my wife and that we're climbing a mountain, which I haven't been able to do. I loved hiking, and I'm able to do that. I will be crying in that moment because I am so frustrated not being able to do what I love the most. And if that moment arrives in 10 years, God, I don't know how. I don't know. I'll be so joyous, you know, to be able to do something that I love so much and has been taken away from me and to have it back. I'm not asking to be, you know, an athlete or do what I could do before, if I could just take a simple walk up a hill, be so happy. That's what I'm imagining.
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Unknown B
It's a really important lesson because we just take it all so for granted, don't we?
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Unknown A
Please don't. Please don't. And other people I read about who've had experiences like this, who were in an accident at a young age. It's worse because I was already in my early 60s who've had this. It's just like, how do you deal with it? You know, people who are, like, athletic, who are energetic, who are outdoors, and it's all taken away. It's a terrible story. But you learn life skills and you Learn how to deal with it. And then I still have my brain, so I'm able to write a book, thank God. But I really, really want to be able to swim and hike again. God, I'd be so happy.
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Unknown B
Puts everything in perspective. When you tell me that you'd be crying tears of joy to walk up.
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Unknown A
A hill, just to walk up straight up the hill where honestly I am, I would be crying. My wife can attest to that because I'm so frustrated. I'd be so happy, you know? Yeah.
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Unknown B
What would you say to someone like me who is quite clearly because of the privilege that I have of my mobility, are going to be taking it all for granted?
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Unknown A
Well, you know, I want people walk by my window in my office. I've told you. I think it was on my last conversation I mentioned this, so I don't want to keep repeating myself. But I see them walking their dog or riding their bicycle or jogging and go. They don't realize how beautiful that looks to me. They don't appreciate it. And because they don't appreciate it, it doesn't mean that much to me. Them, it means more to me than it does to them. They should be appreciating it. They should be thinking, I think of my neighbor, he's just out in his driveway fixing cars and he's listening to his music. He should be so happy that he's got his body, that he's doing this, that he's in the moment, that he's present, but he's not. I'm the one that's feeling his joy at being like that.
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Unknown A
But you should be feeling that in your everyday activities that you're alive, that you're a human being, that walking you take for granted. Walking. As somebody who can't walk, I know like you're always balancing on one leg. You don't realize that when you walk, the miracle of a human walk is at every moment you're always on one leg. That's a balancing act. And you're able to do that, you're able to run and do it. Don't take that stuff for granted, you know, because I can't. Every step I take, I have to think about balancing on that left leg of mine.
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Unknown B
You had a wasp or a bee sting that resulted in a stroke, which is what pretty much changed your mobility. If you could go back and speak to Robert before that, 20 year old Robert, you could just whisper something to him.
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Unknown A
I would whisper to 20 year old Robert, just don't think about it, Robert. Everything's going to Come out. Okay. You know, don't just be who you are. Don't regret anything. It's all working out for the best. And just, I can't say, like, I would say enjoy the moment, because I was enjoying my 20s immensely, but maybe when I was 34, I would have said, you know, don't give up. It's going to happen. Everything's going to fit into place, and you're going to have an amazing life. You're going to be meeting Stevie Wonder, one of your idols when you were a kid. Bob Dylan is going to be mentioning you in a book and has read your book. The people that you loved when you were a kid. You're going to be meeting, hanging out with 50 cents. You're going to be meeting presidents. You have no idea what's ahead of you.
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Unknown A
Okay. I would have maybe said something like that, but then maybe I would have gotten lazy and I wouldn't have written it because I would have thought, oh, it's all going to happen. So.
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Unknown B
So maybe the doubt and the worry and the.
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Unknown A
Is useful and the neurotic energy. Yeah.
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Unknown B
Robert, thank you so much. We're all very excited for your upcoming book.
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Unknown A
Oh, yeah, so am I.
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Unknown B
So you talk about urgency. We can't wait.
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Unknown A
Okay.
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Unknown B
I'm very much looking forward to it because I know how much you pour into these books and you've expressed how much you sort of agonize over it being exactly what you wanted to say. And not all authors are like that. Some are a little bit more flippant. So I appreciate that so much. I appreciate the time that you spent on my show and the value that you've given my audience. I was looking at some comments earlier, and it's just incredible the impact you've had on people by sharing your own story, talking about the stroke and the gratitude that that's given you for life and the gratitude we need to have. So thank you so unbelievably much.
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Unknown A
Very well. Thank you for the opportunity, for the honor of being on this incredibly exciting podcast of yours. As I say every morning, this is my third time. I've always had, like a. I've always been in a good mood the morning before. I don't know if it's coincidence or if it's something about being on your podcast. So thank you.
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Unknown B
The honor is all mine. Thank you, Robert.
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Unknown A
You're welcome.
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Unknown B
This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us. The free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, and I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.