Rob Riggle was a Marine Corps flight student in Pensacola facing a career crisis when he read Tony Robbins and a self-help book that suggested starting every interaction with a genuine smile. He says about 90 percent of his conversations improved once he made it a habit, and he became more aware of how people read his non-verbal cues.
Let's kind of just talk about where you were in life when this book presented itself.
I had just graduated college. I was a young lieutenant in the Marine Corps. I was living in Pensacola, Florida. I was down in flight school.
Literally sweating your balls off.
Literally. It was bad. It's a hot place to be, especially in a flight suit and with all that survival gear and helmet and all that other stuff. But yeah, that's where I first discovered it. I was on a journey for some sort of self-improvement. I remember specifically because I was struggling with flight school. I was fine. I had my pilot's license when I was in college. Flying wasn't the struggle. Was, do I really want to do this with the rest of my life? It was a little quarter-life crisis, if you will, because I was 24 at the time. And I'm like, do I want to fly for the rest of my life, or do I want to pursue other things? Because I got to make a choice. I'm at a fork in the road where I got to commit to a path here because it's going to take me— it's going to take serious commitment. And so I started reading self-help books. I remember I grabbed Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins, and then I read his Awaken the Giant Within. And then I read this book. And this book I found to be— you know, when you read, when you read things that either resonate with you or you just think there's that, that's true. I don't know why. Just that resonates as very true to me. And maybe it's just because of lived experience or what you observed, but That book, some things in there hit me like a ton of bricks. And I was like, yes. And it seemed very simple, simple guidelines. But what I hadn't done was consciously, actively, with disciplined effort, applied them. And so I made a decision to apply these things. And as soon as I did, It didn't take long. I mean, we're talking a week or two of consistent effort, of applying that, being really conscious about the lessons in here. I noticed awesome things happening.
Can you think of a specific example?
Not a specific, but I can think of a general. My dad is a great man. I think he's a great leader. I think he's a wonderful human being. He had done this his whole life. And I guess I'd kind of done it, but not like he did it. One of the lessons here, it's real simple. It's one word: smile. And he does that. His nickname, Smiling Bob. And he had done it his whole life. It all kind of came to, you know, I was connecting dots finally when I read that. But I started, I started every conversation and every interaction with a smile. And I found about 95% of them, all those interactions went better. I might not got what I wanted. It didn't always work out, but I mean, 9 out of 10 times, I'll take that average. And all I had to do was just start every interaction with a smile. And I found that that allowed for good things to happen.
Yeah.
We live in a world, I think sometimes where people forget, you can start an interaction with someone a lot of ways. And I think nowadays we start most of our interactions with sternness, maybe a furrowed brow, you know, furrowed brow hair and, you know, maybe even body language. There's a lot of ways that things start around here and you, everybody starts to go like this. And then maybe they'll relax. But if you start from more of a place like that, I think you, you, you're off to a better potential.
Do you pay attention to that a lot?
Now I do. I didn't before I read that.
I think also, like, when you're, when you're masculine and you're tall and you have a beard, like, I don't know, I feel like I'm more aware of that because I can be very intimidating and what I feel inside and what other people are experiencing is a world apart.
I agree with that. That took me—
I'm a big teddy bear inside.
Yeah.
But people get intimidated very quick.
And I, I hear you on that. And it took me a while to learn that because it took me a while. And I think this is common to most people's journey. I'm not— it's not an enlightened thing by me, but I went through the world trying to get what I needed and what I needed to get done. I had a task to do today. I'm going to do that task. And at the end of the day, if that task is done, it was a good day. Now, as I matured, as the maturation process, as I matured, I realized the way I get that done may affect other people. And all of a sudden I'm like, why doesn't that guy call anymore? Oh, maybe it was because I steamrolled the situation. Maybe my energy was more than they could handle. Maybe I needed to use a softer touch with certain people. Maybe I need— that stuff never entered my mind. It was all about accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, get the task done, achieve, move on, keep going. And that has its place in the military and maybe in entrepreneurship and some things like that. But I found that if you want to have relationships, you really do have to be more conscious of that.
