Dr Ramani Interview: Why You Should Never Forgive a Narcissist (Here's Why!)

If you look at the research by Elsa Roningstam, and she's at Harvard Medical School, she has written some really neat, really great theoretical and empirically based stuff on narcissism. The biggest problem with narcissism research is it's based on very small sample sizes. So the generalizability of the findings is not so great because there's not a lot of good treatment work done. Because they don't come into treatment, they're 80% more likely to drop out of treatment. So it's hard to do that work. She does believe, though, that there's a potential with a narcissistic individual of what we call a corrective emotional experience, that they have an experience that engages in exactly the kind of rewiring you're talking about. Now, here's where my role in this whole world gets interesting, because I work more with survivors of narcissistic abuse than I work with the actual narcissist. A lot of people out there with stars in their eyes, with Mr. Charisma that they met at the cocktail party with want to believe that they're going to be the corrective emotional experience. The odds of you being the corrective emotional experience is the odds of you winning your sort of your March Madness ticket. Like, it's not going to happen. You're not going to win in Vegas. You're not going to be the corrective emotional experience. The corrective emotional experience is actually something we as therapists can watch unfold. But even during my lunch period Today, I spent 15 minutes talking a narcissist off the ledge because he. He's 48, the girlfriend's 22, and he can't get his head around why she doesn't like spending time with him. And I was like, I can give you a couple reasons, but I'm sorry you're hurt, you know, and so it's that entire, you know, I don't think. And this is the fourth time I've walked him through this rodeo with four different inappropriately young women. And so he's not getting it now. I hate to say it, but sadly, sometimes the corrective emotional experience can be a tragedy. It can be losing someone significant to you. We don't want to program that. Once your kid dies, I'm sure everything's going to turn around for you. Like, we don't want that as an intervention. So it's the question of, does that happen every so often the stars line up. Going to prison can sometimes be that corrective emotional experience. I'd say for about 2 out of 10 narcissists that go to jail or prison, it ends up being a wake up call. Like, I don't want to do that again. And I've let everyone down. So I think that in a very small subset of. Because of the lack of self reflective capacity in narcissists, they don't have the ability. Empathy is equal parts out and in. The out part is me caring. Joe, are you okay? Did you eat enough lunch? Is he, you know, is he bored right now? Like, I'm worried about Joe. I'm worried about all of you. But the in part is, am I reflecting on my contribution to this? Like, am I aware of how I'm reacting? Am I aware of my stuff? They can't do either. They can't do the out, they can't do the in, but so there is some possibility for that. In terms of sensory integration stuff, we could even argue this and extend it to people on the spectrum. Right? There is a lot of argument. Like people say to me, what's the difference between autism spectrum and narcissism? There's a big difference. Okay. People on the spectrum have a processing issue. They cannot uptake and process social interaction and other environmental stimuli the same way because of a central nervous system issue that we're still trying to fully unravel. That said, in a child or an adult with autism spectrum, when the empathic miss is pointed out to them, they do not become defensive, they do not become angry. They very quickly say, I didn't know, and sometimes will express very authentic emotion at the thought that they may have hurt someone. We see this all through the age span and immediately that's when we know. Because I have a lot of folks who come in, women who will say, I don't know if my husband's on the spectrum. I don't know if he's narcissistic. So we'll try some stuff. I'll give him questions to try with him the next week. And we're pretty much able to unplug it. So that processing issue means that they can integrate new information and say, I'm so sorry I hurt you. I just didn't know. And I think that would also go to other sensory integration experiences. Yeah, that would be my guess. That's what I'm wondering about because I've seen that the retraining of sensory integration disorder, but it's a minimum, kind of a two year. You're really on the spectrum. And that survival mentality is number one. It's a two year rewiring process before you kind of go, okay, we can hang out together a little. And it's the same in narcissism. Any published research shows people have been in therapy for 18 months to 24 months. Good luck finding an insurer that's going to pay for that and that. So you've got almost two years of multi time a week therapy and still only a subset of those clients improve. No one's got that kind of access. So on a population level, I'm not clear on how we're going to improve this.

Let me ask you to define narcissism and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths, because I think that'll help with the foundation here.

So I think the key here, number one, what is narcissism? It's a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, inability to manage any kind of disappointment. And that tends to be manifested as rage, chronic validation seeking. But all of this, envy of other people, but all of this, the core of it, and this is what gets forgotten, is that it's all based on a deep, deep insecurity. Everyone looks at the narcissist, they say they're charming, they're confident, they're successful, they're smart. That doesn't mean if you're those things, you're narcissistic. But if it's built on that core insecurity, that's why the person needs to be grandiose and entitled. Because if I was that fragile inside, my temptation would be to protect it. It's like if you broke your arm, what do we do? We put a cast on it. Why? So the arm doesn't get broken again or the bone doesn't get agitated or moved. When you have a broken inside, you're that insecure, you're going to protect it. How do you protect it? I'm the shit. I'm the best. No one's better than me. Why should I have to wait in this line? I'm the best, after all. Everybody move out of my way so I can be the first in line. Why am I not the vip? All of that's protective. All of that is them putting this carapace around this fragile interior. So anything from the outside that cracks it, marital breakup, somebody else beating them at what they do, getting more sales, having more money, having a bigger yacht, having a bigger, having a better whatever that is going to piss them off. And that's where you see the rage and the acting out. That's narcissism. Okay? There's different kinds of narcissism. There's grandiose narcissism, which is sort of textbook. Come to my, you know, come to my palace and be palace y with me. And I'm so great and you're so lucky to be my friend and I'm so beautiful. That's what we classically think of narcissism. But then there's the malignant narcissist, and that is somebody who's downright dangerous. They're malevolent, they're exploitative, they're manipulative, they smell like a psychopath. But you're going to learn in a minute why a malignant narcissist isn't a psychopath. They're slightly different creatures. There are the more vexing, covert narcissists. These are people who don't look like narcissists. They look like victims. The world was never fair to me. I never got a fair shake. You know what? Maybe he succeeded because he got more money to start with than me. I would have been, I would have been better than him if my dad gave me money up front. You know what I'm too good to show up to. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ideas, I'm the next Steve Jobs, like, let the world find me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hang dog and so sad all the time that people often think they're depressed and they come to a therapist's office who thinks they're depressed and treats them for depression for three months and then wonder why they're not getting anywhere. And this person, well, the world is against me. The world is against me. The world is against me. Their grandiosity is, why doesn't the world see how great I am versus the grandiose person who says, look how great I am. And then there's even what we call noble narcissists. These are the people who do lots of charitable work and have these big rescue the elephants, rescue the world, rescue everyone kinds of profiles, but they're doing it solely for validation.

That's the same as a communal narcissist.

No, same as a communal. Same as a communal or noble narcissist. These are the people who you think like, wow, they're saving the world. They're so charitable, they're so wonderful. But then catch them behind closed doors and they treat their partners, their families, anyone one to one. Their staffs. Absolutely. Horribly so they only have empathy when they're on stage or they're saving an elephant.

I Mean, I see so much of that, especially in the stuff that I've done in the nonprofit world. Yeah, it's cosmetic.

It's very cosmetic. Yes. But the work is being done in the name of seeking validation versus for the meaning and the purpose, or just the higher purpose, as you will, of doing the actual work. That's narcissism. I'm sure you're wondering, what's the difference between that and narcissistic personality disorder. There was a wonderful book by Alan Francis called Twilight of American Sanity. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a fantastic book. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder only entered the world of psychiatry in the 1970s. This is a late entry. Freud wrote about it. Otto Rank was the first person who wrote about it. These were early, early analysts and obviously theoreticians, but we didn't make it into a diagnosis until the 70s. Francis was one of the people who wrote about it. When Trump got elected, he wrote this book about narcissism, and he's like, trump doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. Why not? Because in order for something in the dsm, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Health, mental illness, you have to. In order for it to be diagnosis, it either has to be causing the person subjective distress. Think about a depressed person. They're uncomfortable, they can't get out of bed, they feel sad all the time, they're angry. Or it has to be causing them social and occupational impairment. You look at somebody who's got seems to the world a fine marriage, or at least the person thinks it's a fine marriage or relationship. They seem to have perfectly fine kids, at least to the world that looks like that. And the person thinks that, and they're not having any distress, we don't get to diagnose it. Which is why the majority of people with narcissistic traits don't get diagnosed, because nobody ever lays eyes on them. So that's why the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder is about 1 to 5%. I'm spitballing here because we don't have the numbers. The prevalence of narcissism in the American culture is probably closer to 30%, that gap.

So 30% of.

I would guess so, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, it's one in three. But now when we go to psychopathy, we jump the rails. Narcissist insecure. Okay. When the mask gets pulled off the narcissist. And he and I were talking about his program about getting people Ready to go to prison. One of the things he's going to run into most, and this has come up when I've taught at jails and prisons about this to the clinicians there, is that they're so insecure now. The mask is off.

Shame.

You're a bad guy. I was once supposed to do, I think an interview with Steve Madden. I was telling him for this thing on narcissism and he was actually willing to subject himself to talking to me. And then at the 11th hour, I think he had something more interesting to do. Surprise, surprise. But he acknowledged it. He said the thing he was most frightened of was going to jail or going to prison. And he did. And so it shatters them. A psychopath is not insecure. They have no fear, they have no anxiety and they're completely stress resistant, which is why they make, for example, great surgeons, they make great CEOs, they make great anyone who needs to stay completely calm at a time of tremendous danger. Right. So nothing bothers them. That's just why they make great hired assassins. I mean, anything that requires you to be calm, cool and collected, all under conditions that are difficult for people to do them, they're dangerous.

I was watching a show on drug lords and gangsters and mob leaders and stuff, and they were talking about the brain scans and some of these people in fearful situations. For most people it doesn't even register. It doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic thing?

Yeah. So the belief with psychopathy is it's definitely biological and the imaging studies have shown that very clearly there's likely. The genetic piece is still being argued because think about it, far, far more men have been diagnosed with psychopathy than women. So we don't see. There's almost no research on female psychopaths, though we see them. An interesting speculation would be someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Is she a malignant narcissist or is she a psychopath? Like, I've watched everything on her I can. Because you don't see women in these situations much. She's somewhat. I haven't talked to her, so I don't know. Right. But it's that. But the key with a psychopath is they feel no remorse. That's the. If they feel truly no remorse, the narcissist actually does feel some remorse for anything from even smaller time stuff like infidelity to big ticket stuff. I embezzled $20 million. So a madoff type reaction psychopathy, okay, that's a great. Absolutely didn't register. It's like this Is really inconvenient that you're doing this to me. But no circumspect sense of how this impacted other people.

Do they fake it?

As if they.

They fake it. They can fake it. They absolutely can fake it. But it really. It's like an aftermarket thing. Like, about. This was about 10 hours too late. Like, this should have been what you led with. Another one. Was that guy Larry. God, what the hell was this? Larry Nasser. He was one of the physicians in the whole gymnastics issue of all the gymnasts who were sexually abused. I dug deep into that case because he felt so psychopathic. All he's. He never, ever express remorse to the girls and young women he harmed. All he said is, basically, this is a pain in the neck. Why are you wasting so much time? You're hearing similar discourse from a gynecologist who sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. Just know you're inconveniencing me with all these proceedings. I'm like, oh, my God, you've destroyed hundreds of lives. There's no. That doesn't register. A narcissist would show more guilt and shame under those conditions.

So a sociopath. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Sociopath. This is a less articulated condition. A lot of people incorrectly interchangeably use the term psychopath and sociopath. The psychopath is considered to be, again, that calm, cool, callous, calculated, smart person who's just able to barrel through in a remorseless way. And we have much more evidence that that is a central nervous system phenomenon. The sociopath is likely someone who was. And again, criminologists and everyone argue about this, that may be more of something that was created by the environment. Somebody who was beaten up a lot by a father or a caregiver, Somebody who grew up on the streets or under conditions of tremendous, tremendous deprivation or danger. And that under different conditions, the story could have probably gone a little bit differently. They also tend to be more combative. You'll probably see a lot more sociopaths in prison than you will psychopaths. Sociopath gets into a bar fight. A psychopath would never, you know, diminish themselves in that way. They'll find a way to slowly destroy that person's life or kill them and no one will ever know the difference kind of thing. So whereas a sociopath, they'll fight, they'll get into a street fight, they'll get into a bar fight, they're less regulated, they tend to be less successful. The big difference that's been brought up in the literature. The psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, why is this a rule? She did me wrong in a drug deal. Why can't I kill her? Please help me understand this. A sociopath knows he shouldn't kill her and still will.

Interesting.

Yeah. So there's a not knowing. But that said, even though there's a not knowing in psychopathy, psychopathy cannot be used as part of the insanity defense in the United States that has been taken off the table.

What I mean, is there any idea how many people in the United States, as an example are North America, are.

Sociopaths, Psychopaths, I would guess with psychopathy.

Merciful, its problems probably under 2%. It's a pretty low frequency phenomenon. It's rare, it's terrifying. And interestingly, some of the professions, like I was reading some research on the top 10 professions that have psychopaths in them, and amongst those were surgeon, CEO and clergy. Those are the professions that attract psychopaths.

Wow.

Wow.

So statistically speaking, if there's anything there, then there's 30% of this audience and narcissist, then maybe.

Yeah. I mean, I mean again, I don't.

Want to be the ones that you.

Just because I love this group has been amazing. But what you might have find in a group like this because everyone is so successful is sort of what I consider just sub threshold narcissism. Like just enough cockiness to get you into trouble. And I would love to sit with each and every one of you and find out what your close personal relationships are like. Because it may very well be that that's where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky, Joe, because you're you. And you might have gotten 100% entrepreneurs where there's not a single narcissist in the room. Listen, is a little of it going to make you successful in business? Sure. Because if her and I are vying for the same job and I like, oh, she's so sweet. I'm going to give her all the intel. We're in this together. I may not get the job. But if girlfriend's like, girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going, she's like, I'm not telling her everything that you know. Is that narcissism? I think, is that probably a heavy handed use of the word, but that lack of empathy, I mean that to me is what the whole thing sort of hinges on. And then when we talk about the origins of narcissism, I think people can self reflect. But I gotta tell you, so far, my alarms maybe have gone off one and a half times today at the most.

I was gonna ask you about the forgiveness.

Yeah, that's a good note to end on.

Yeah.

Forgiveness is such a tough space because, you know, a lot of the psychological literature describes forgiveness as sort of a major mental illness antidote, mental health antidote. You will feel better if you forgive and you'll feel lighter. And all kinds of peace and reconciliation work and all of that is written around forgiveness. Here's the rub. In the west, we like to put people on a schedule, like, hurry up, forgive, forgive. Everything's going to be so much easier if you just forgive your dad and could we just get over this? No, we cannot put these human processes on a schedule. To me, forgiveness is sort of a two part kind of a process. There's a letting go piece and there's forgiving. Forgiving is a much higher order concept because it involves no longer feeling resentful about what that person did to you. And you know what? Some people are never going to get there there. I work with many, like I said, survivors of child sexual abuse and they say to me, I don't want to forgive the person who did this to me. And they've gone from therapist to therapist that say, you need to forgive. And I said, fuck them. You do not need to forgive the person who did this to you. I want you to let this go because you're carrying this weight. You're making that more of your heavy soul weight. Can we help you put it down and no longer take responsibility for what happened to you and let you move forward, but you don't have to forgive. Forgiveness is very much something we try to sell in the West. It's very much built into religion. But here's the problem with forgiveness. For a narcissist, forgiveness is permission. They're like, this is cool, I cheated on you and you're great. That's permission to do that again. Rarely, sadly, does a narcissist in integrate forgiveness as someone doing the divine for them. If I did something bad and someone forgave me, I'd be Like, oh, my God, thank you. And I mean, you would forever monitor never to make that misstep again, but for all the couples, especially couples. But I've also seen this happen in professional consultations I've done when the narcissist got forgiven, nine times out of ten, they went out and committed the same transgression again, thinking that she forgave me before he forgave me before he or she is going to forgive me again. And then what it does is it screws up your ability to forgive, even in the healthy parts of your life. Because now that very. That incredibly, what I consider honestly divine space has been abuse. So I think forgiveness is personal. It doesn't always happen. And for me, the real goal is letting go. And if you can get to the letting go, which is really a sense of, I am no longer going to carry this burden around. But you know what? I do feel resentful because you changed my life in a permanent way. And I'm not okay with this change. I feel different, and I don't want to feel this. And you made my fucking life a little more unsafe. So, no, I don't forgive you. And my practice is very focused on giving people not forgiven. Let some people come around. And sometimes the best I hope for is letting it go with indifference. They see the cheater on the street ten years later, or they even see the abuser on the street 10 years later. And like, you know what? I didn't feel a thing. And that's when they feel empowered. And then it doesn't even matter. Forgiveness becomes almost irrelevant.

And so there's. There's a lot of physical manifestations of psychological issues, psychosomatic things. What is your belief on that? I mean, it's not. I think so many of the conditions that we have are based on people's response to trauma. And I think the mind has incredible psychosomatic abilities to make you sick if you're stressed out and how much that affects you versus if you're taking care of this vessel and what you generate. I mean, I think we generate poor health in many ways with our thought process, who we hang out with. There's physical toxins that enter the body, from food to chemicals to exposure to things. But there's mental toxins. And I think they. I mean, we try to cover all of that up. And I think it's so many people's. And I see that with addiction. I mean, when you're. When you're an addict, you're going to have. You're going to have Physical pain, you're going to have sickness, there's all kinds of other things that come out of it. So wanted to get your take on that.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're fractal beings. And so in a fractal world, as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm, as we all know, thoughts become things. So our thoughts are actually frequency generating impulses and they emanate into all of time and space. So we can literally use our mind, and I have evidence to show this, that you can actually use your mind to create whatever reality you want. But whatever reality you're creating, because you're creating it using what we call a fractal architecture, it shows up in the smallest scale in your life, and it also shows up in the biggest scale of your life. So as is the microcosm, so is a macrocosm. And your health and how you feel is essentially a microcosm and a macrocosm at the same time. It's a microcosm of your life, but it's a macrocosm of your thoughts. So our emotions play a huge role in our health. And in fact, you know, the Chinese were really good at mapping this out. They're really good at associating emotions with organ systems in our body. So, for example, based on the organ system of complaint that somebody comes to see me with, a lot of times you could look at somebody just from their facial features and know what's going on with them. But when somebody gives me details and I go to and they tell me, hey, I have digestive issues, the first thing we go for is, okay, where is the anxiety in your life? What's causing stress in your life? Because there's emotions associated that if somebody has liver issues, right? Then we go to, where's the resentment and anger in your life? I had a consult just the other day with a lady and she's had liver pain for three years. I'm like, okay, well, when was your divorce? Three years ago. And she hasn't forgiven her husband. And so she's holding on to that and showing up as liver pain. And she's going from doctor to doctor, lab to lab, scan to scan, MRI to CT scan. But that's the thing with the hardware model of healthcare, which is allopathic medicine. If we can't see it, if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist in a software model. It does exist. In fact, what's really cool about our bodies is the software actually builds the hardware. That's what's different between us. And computers. The software in our case builds the hardware and tells the hardware when someone.

Has been deeply betrayed and they lose faith in humans, they quit. They don't trust. They're just badly wounded. What do you say to them?

Yeah, I think that there's different stages of dealing with the pain and the trauma. And it's important to honor what stage you're at because there's different strategies depending on where you're at. Right. In the very beginning, you want to honor the feelings, right? You don't want to label them as good or bad. I think that especially North America, we label the feelings of sadness or anger like bad, and there's extra shame. And I deal with a lot of overachievers. So overachievers have a tendency like, this is terrible. I want it over, like, get me through this. And they want to fast forward out of the pain. Thing is, the pain needs air to breathe. And if you just shove it down, you know this, you know, you've talked about this in your own work, it's going to show up in either another relationship, in another behavior, it's going to come out somehow. So I think the very beginning is just processing and not judging yourself and allowing yourself to go through all of it. Because, you know, I look at it as, whenever I'm crying, I look at it as tears, as pain exiting my body, and I'm like, oh, I'm just expanding my emotional range. How fortunate am I able to feel all of it? Right? And so I really have reframed my approach to how I look at these emotions versus just going to a shame spiral. So I think there's that in the very first stage. And then I think the second stage is, is practicing compassion. And I don't mean this in a fluffy like, oh, just think positive. I mean this as compassion is a muscle that you build and the more you practice it, the stronger it gets. And compassion is very necessary because it is a critical ingredient for forgiveness, letting go and acceptance. And you can't just get to forgiveness of someone else or human beings and the world. If you don't have compassion for yourself first, there's tons of things you can do. Kristin Neff is an amazing thought leader on. She has free guided meditations. Do this every day for 30 days. You will feel a difference. So I think that would be the next thing. And the third part is when you can get into more the cognitive thing. Because it's very easy right now for me to look back and be like, oh, the dots all connected. The worst thing was the best thing. But when you are. If you say that to someone who's just right after a trauma or a breakup or, you know, rejection, that is actually shaming. Don't ever say to someone, you know, just be stronger. It happens for a reason, because they can't cognitively get it at that stage. So I think once they've kind of hit a little stage afterwards, that's when you could start thinking about, okay, where am I accountable? What are the patterns here? How can I start shifting this? You know, how can I use this as a catalyst to transform my life? Because pain is. Is an excellent catalyst. So that's how I would approach that. And I just want to leave. One last thing is whether you're dealing with pain from a professional breakup, a friendship, a relationship, or you've been betrayed, I think one of our coping mechanisms is to close. And so I say that our greatest lesson in this lifetime is to practice opening our hearts. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. And I remind myself that when I feel hurt and I'm like, hell, no. Am I going to allow this person or this event have me close up? And I'm like, I'm just going to open it up even bigger. And I really hope that whatever situation you're in right now in your life, that you can take that and remember that. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

How would you define stress? Because that's what I want to talk with you guys about today.

Stress.

What is it? When's it good? When's it bad? How do you view it? Because I would venture to say most people I talk to, when I hear pain, they use the word stress a lot.

Shall I?

Yeah, you guys are too darn polite. I think you should just talk over each other.

I was sort of waiting for some direction because this is very new to me doing this.

So.

Okay, I'll jump in, Sam, if you're okay with that. Of course. So, look, stress is very misunderstood, I believe, because it's generalized. There are many different types of stress, Whether it's physical stress, nutritional stress, chemical stress, environmental stress, and all of the stresses that are put upon us place demands on our resources. So if I was to define what stress is in general, I would say when the demands put upon us exceed the resources that we have to deal with those demands, then a stressful situation is created. Now, that doesn't mean that it's bad. I mean, large proportions of the world, we've made out stress to be, you know, the baddie. And it's not because stress can actually help us grow if we take that invitation, or it can actually help us diminish if we're not ready or prepared, willingness up for that growth. So the stress in itself I consider is an invitation that we can take one way or the other. The caveat with that is though, that most of us have grown up in a time and over decades and in a society and in a world that actually makes it okay and gives us permission to feel stressful or to feel stressed and to use that as a bit of an excuse as to why we're not giving our best. So we shouldn't make it out to be the bad boy or girl in the classroom. You should look at it in each individual case and understand what it actually is. Then. The final thing I would say on it, which can be quite controversial, is I don't believe that stressors, the things that make us feel stressed are outside of us. Because everything that's outside of us is inanimate. It exists, it's vibrating at an energetic frequency. Absolutely. But in of itself it is not stressful, it is not stress inducing. So what makes it stressful? What makes it stress inducing? When we come along, interpret and perceive what that thing is, we give that thing meaning, have this feeling inside that we think, oh my goodness, I'm not feeling good about that thing. Therefore it's that thing that is making me feel stressed. So then we fail to see that we are responsible. As hard as this may be, we are responsible for our reaction to this stuff and we've got to turn it around. We've got to do a 180 and we've got to say, okay, so it's my response to what's going on that is causing me to feel this way. And here's the kicker. Now we talked about the emotional wounds, bruises and scars from the past. We're carrying those around with us and we're looking into the next situation in life. Ready? Wounded, scarred, bruised. Which means there's the potential then for the to actually be touched, reopened. And all of a sudden we find ourselves back in coping mode, handling mode, managing mode, which in itself is hard work and stressful. So I'll stop there. Hand over to you, Sam.

Every chapter you give people specific strategies on what to do, rituals, things, and they're not complicated. I mean this really is a game changing book. Anyone that reads this and will take it seriously, even semi seriously, is going to get tremendous benefits. So I'd love to kind of break down some of the points. And then people, you need to pick.

Up the book, read it.

You can go very deep with all the areas, but you talk about well being, wisdom, wonder and giving. So let's talk a little bit about each one and how you encompassed it as thrive.

So, well being is obvious because we look around and we see people who are so stressed, they overeat, they undersleep, they do the things that undermine their health. And we see that all around us. And we can do small, small things to course correct that have a huge difference. I mean, when I went from getting, say five hours sleep to getting seven to eight hours sleep, that was huge.

What did you do?

I mean, what did you actually do?

I actually made it a priority. And, you know, there are always things, you know, life always will say, this is important and this is important. You must worry about this and you must worry about that. And we need to sort of turn to life and say, no, this is important. You know, I'm important. So I'm going to prioritize that. And sometimes it means leaving a dinner early, sometimes it means not going somewhere, but I would rather be rested and renewed and recharged. And then, of course, we have technology. I write a lot in the chapter about the impact of technology, which has been in many ways incredibly positive, but also incredibly dangerous when it comes to our addiction to technology. So we have now people who cannot disconnect. And it starts with small tips. One of the tips in the well being chapter is never put your devices by your bed when you sleep. Joe, do you have your devices by your bed?

I swear I do not. I always leave my. I have an iPhone and I leave it downstairs because. Because I know if it's anywhere near me, it has a magnetic force that just pull. I mean, I really think this is for not all people, but for many people definitely like myself, it is literally beyond willpower. It has a pull to it. I mean, technology is addictive. I mean, people cannot stop. And once you get so programmed into it, it makes it even harder and harder. So you have to take. It's kind of like leaving alcohol around for alcoholic. I mean, you just want to drink. Yeah. So I don't keep any phone.

You know, that's rare because whenever I speak, I ask my audience and the majority of people put their phone by their bed and one of their excuses is they needed to wake up in the morning. Right, Right. So I tell them, Pottery Barn, $35. A great looking vintage alarm clock that can wake up in the morning. But we need to be smart because as we say, otherwise you wake up in the middle of the night for whatever reason, you're going to be tempted to look at your data.

Exactly.

So that's like a small, tiny step, but hugely significant in how renewed and recharged we are in the morning. In the same way, when you wake up, can you just take five minutes before you go to your iPhone, just five minutes to sort of set your intention for the day, to just gather yourself, the iPhone will be there.

Right? Exactly. One ritual which I did an interview with earlier today is I started doing transcendental meditation starting last year. And so now most mornings I will do it first thing that I do when I wake up, unless I just can't get it in, then I'll do.

It later in the day. And that's another very important thing on this journey. Let's say you say most mornings on the morning when you don't do it. Here's what is important. Not to judge yourself for not doing it. Because that's the vicious cycle people get to. They start like good new habits and like all of us, we're not 100% there. And then we judge ourselves. And judging ourselves is one of the most negative, toxic things we can do because of course it immediately translates to judging others.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So just accepting that we are imperfect human beings and we'll do the best we can and if we miss the day today, we'll do it tomorrow, etc. Etc.

Well, you know what's interesting about that is that probably the people that drive themselves the most also are the most self critical. The ones that probably achieve tremendous amounts really think they're not achieving enough. And so they do judge themselves continuously and it gets in a vicious cycle that's very important.

Well, I call it the obnoxious roommate living in our head. You know, that voice in our head that puts us down, judges us, tells us we're not good enough. And that's a voice that we all need to grapple with and learn to sort of put it in its proper place, you know, like a child.

Yep, yep. Well, talking, speaking of children, I mean, you have, you have two daughters which you're very proud of. What has this transition meant for your family life for? I mean, how do you, how do you juggle all of the stuff that you've done and you've made this transition and how has it affected your relationship with your family?

Oh, it's been fantastic. It's been, it's been really modeling for them how they can lead their lives. They're 22 and 24. One of them is graduating this year in art history. And she's very, very much a type A personality. So it's very good for her to see, and she has internalized it, the importance of sleep, the importance of slowing down. And my other daughter, you know, went through a very difficult time that I write about in the book when she got involved in drugs in her last year at Yale. And, you know, In March of 2012, I got that call that every parent dreads. You know, mommy, I can't breathe. And I'll never forget that drive to New Haven and taking her out of school and working with her on her recovery. And what really helped me cope with that period was even during this really hard time, I kept being grateful for the fact that she was alive, for the fact that she wanted to get well, for the fact that she had a loving family willing to support her. And now March 5, she's going to celebrate, you know, two years of being sober. That's awesome. And it's. I was very proud of her when she decided to go public with her story to help other young women and men, because I feel that drug addiction is an epidemic, both legal and illegal drugs, and we need to take the step stigma and the shame away from it so that people can talk about it.

You know, I'll try to stop myself from going on a tangent here, but this is a really deep issue with me. I think I've shared this with you before that. When I was 18 years old, at my worst possible state, I weighed 105 pounds from free basing coke for three months straight. So I was addicted to cocaine, and I look like a skeleton.

And.

And I mean, I was very close to getting to where I would probably die. I was so badly addicted, and I literally had to remove myself from the environment where I lived. I went and lived in a trailer for two years. I mean, I literally got clean. And I ended up getting a job at a mental hospital. And then I used to drive all of the patients to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous and NA meetings, Narcotics Anonymous. And I would sit and listen to the stories. It was so wild. And I created a great admiration for 12 step groups because they've helped literally millions of people. But some of the insights I got out of it, which is so much about what you talk about in thrive, is the importance of connection, the importance of community. And Bill W. One of the founders of aa, had this great line where he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And that was such a profound statement. Because. Because there's people that are addicted to chemicals and drugs, then there's behavior. Sex, gambling, food, workaholism, video games, which is electronics. I mean, it is truly an addiction. And even if someone's an atheist, what people are trying to do is connect with something. They're just trying to feel better. And when you feel horrible, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make the pain go away. It's the mechanism you choose to do it. And so there's a lot of self destructive things that people literally go to just to try to make this anxiety and this depression, this angst. And so your daughter coming out is huge. You talking about all this is huge because there are people that are suffering from things that they are looking at all the wrong solutions for and they keep working harder and harder and that doesn't solve it. Sometimes a gym membership and some more sleep will fix, you know, half your problems.

I know. And as they say in aa, you're only as sick as your secrets.

Yeah.

So keeping a secret is one of the biggest problems. And if others share theirs and their own recovery, as you just did now, you know, it makes it easier for people watching to say, you know, I can change, you know, I have that power in me.

Yeah. And you really can. I mean, it is amazing what you can put your body through. And if you really are diligent and you take the right actions and you establish some consistent rituals, your life can absolutely transform. I mean it really. And it can do it well.

It's so resilient, much more resilient than we think.

Yeah. So let's talk about, you know, wisdom. Let's talk about wonder, touch on those.

So wisdom. If you look around, you see many leaders, you know, in politics, in business, in media, very smart, very high IQs, great degrees, making terrible decisions. What they are lacking is not smarts and intelligence, it's wisdom. And I feel we all have in us that place of wisdom, strength, serenity. But most of the time we don't give ourselves the time to connect with it. It's like a deserted, neglected garden. And I think when we give ourselves the time to connect with our own wisdom, with that center in us, our life is transformed. Because so often, I mean, when I look back at my mistakes, so often they're because I ignored little red flags or whisperings or I missed opportunities that were right there, but I was too busy noticing them. So that's really something which I think would transform leadership in any area and our own personal lives.

I mean, I love how you talk about coincidence in the book too.

Yes, that's in the wonder chapter.

Yeah, yeah.

Which talk about that because as you said, whether you, whether you are a believer in a higher power, in God, in whatever, or whether you are not, everybody is at. Everybody has a sense of something beyond our lives. We may not be able to define it, but what makes people connect with that often is just something as simple and trivial as coincidence. Because coincidences cannot be explained intellectually. And even if they're silly, people love them. I mean, people always come up to me and tell me, you won't believe what happened. You know, I saw so and so and I never thought they would be there, etc. Etc. It makes us feel as though there is some kind of design in the universe that we may not be aware of, but it's there. And I think having some trust that there is a purpose in our lives is very important for our well being and it happens to be true. I really believe that. One of my favorite, I have a lot of poetry in the book too because I think there's a lot of poems and pieces of literature that I have loved. And one of my favorites that I have in the book is from the poet Rumi who said, live life as though everything is rigged in your favor because the alternative, which is living life as a victim, feeling, you know, hard done by everything, is just a very painful way to live.

Right.

Well and on top of that, even if you are a victim, and many people are, it's like you say, you get no power out of it, you can't do anything with that. So just having the mindset that you, you actually can, you can guide your own life gives you a much better chance.

Yeah, I mean, I have examples from people in concentration camps. I mean you can't be in a more painful, suffocating environment. And there we have Viktor Frankl. Talk about even there, the one power left to me was to choose my own attitude, to choose what I would feel and think. And that's a huge freedom that we all have.

Yeah, absolutely. And so what I will say is that there are so many examples and you also back up with data supporting everything that you are suggesting and recommending and highlighting in this book. So it's really great. So let's talk about giving. What do you mean by that?

So giving for me is really the one pillar that sort of completes the infrastructure because I think we are meant to be giving creatures. And so when we give it reinforces our own abundance and it really increases our own well being and we now have lot of evidence, a lot of science to prove it. And anecdotally, I know that so often when I'm with very successful men or women, the thing they want to talk about is something they just did that made someone happier. David Letterman said the only time he's really been happy is when he's done something for people they couldn't do for themselves. And again and again we hear the same story. It's real, it's true, and it's just wonderful to have all the science now to prove it. I mean, I feel like a lawyer sometimes. I want to convince people and so.

Well, you do have a debate background.

I have a debate background. But even the biggest skeptics will have a hard time not believing this stuff when they see the overwhelming amount of research, a lot of which is very recent. That is what is interesting. I mean, we are at a turning point. There is something in the zeitgeist that means that when we embark on this journey, we do have the wind on our back.

So becoming antifragile, that is really something that's defined my life. But before I can get to that, I have to tell you, I am not a born entrepreneur. And I know that there are many born entrepreneurs here. And I'm sure I look somewhat like an alien species to you. I did not have a lemon stand growing up. I did not arbitrage baseball cards or candy. I was forced to get a paper route, but I was so lazy that I didn't collect the money. So I actually did the paper route. You get paid half of it just for doing it, but the other half, you have to go door to door. So I did it for half. That is the profound way to which I was lazy as a kid and not at all thinking like a problem solving entrepreneur. But somehow, some way, even with that going against me, I was able to do something to my mind that allowed me to go from, as Joe was saying, scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car. That's a real story. I wish it weren't, but that's a real story. To co founding and building a billion dollar business. Now the question is, what did I do to my mind in order to get to that place? And to tell you that story, I'm going to walk you through exactly what my entrepreneurial journey looked like. So I met two guys who ended up becoming my business partners and they made a pitch to me. Hey, we're starting this technology company, seem like a really bright kid. We've Got a role as a copywriter. Why don't you come on and be the copywriter and then don't think of yourself though as a copywriter. This is a startup. You can have any role in the company that you want. You just have to be become the right person for that role. Now I was just young enough and just dumb enough to believe them. I thought that sounded awesome.

Yay.

So I joined the startup and then began the long and arduous process of getting my ass kicked. And what was happening was I didn't have the skill set to keep up with these guys. My business partners are incredibly bright. Their IQs far outshine my own. And I'm just talking from a pure ability to process raw data. I don't overvalue iq, but I understand that it has certainly its applications and they're just two incredibly bright guys. So here I was. I had this goal in my life and that goal at the time, it's since changed, but that's a whole other 10 minute talk. My goal at that time was to get rich. I wanted to get rich more than just about anything. So I had the ambition to do what I needed to do. But I didn't know what that was. And so I would find myself in discussions with these guys where I would present my case, something that I believed in, something that I thought was right for the business and they would just out argue me and they would out argue me all the time. Now if you're somebody who is foolish enough to pride yourself on being right and this is such an important thing to understand because what you build your self esteem around matters. And the whole punchline of this talk is going to be that how did I go from being broke and having the traditional employees mentality of keeping my head down, doing as little work as possible and avoiding punishment at all costs. The way that I escaped that was by finally realizing the thing that was holding me back. And what was holding me back was I had a fixed mindset. If you know Carol Dweck, I had a fixed mindset. I believed that my talents and intelligence were fixed. That was it. They were as good as they were ever going to be. There was nothing that I could do about it. It was kind of like height. Now I've done nothing to earn my height and yet I can say, hey, I'm six feet tall and I try to stand around people that are shorter than me. I try to avoid NBA players, I try to avoid NFL stars, I try to avoid Tony Robbins. If you've ever stood next to Tony Robbins. That guy is nuts. He's so big. One of the most heart wrenching photos of my life is Tony holding me in a warm embrace, making me look like a child. But the intellect to me was the same way. There was nothing that I could do about it. So it was what it was. And my job was to put myself in situations where I could shine. Now the problem was now I was working with these two guys that I couldn't shine anymore. They were way smarter than me. And it wasn't exactly hard to see that not only were they able to process data more rapidly than I could process data, but they'd been in business for like 15 years before I met them. So now I'm in a position where everything I do makes me feel bad about myself. And so I hatch a plan. I'm going to get really good at arguing and I'm going to debate because I have two choices. I can either remove myself from this situation or I can find a way to feel good, because people are going to feel good about themselves. And when you think about what suicide really is, suicide is the moment when somebody believes they can no longer feel good about themselves. Now it's false, but that's what they believe. And because of that belief, they check out. And why wouldn't you, if it were true, if you could never feel good about yourself again, what would be the point? So I was going to get good at debating and I was going to win some of these arguments and I was going to find that chink in their armor and I was going to explode it so that I could, even if I didn't feel smart about myself, that I could get that reflected back from them, that they thought I was smart. And so I remember the day that it finally happened. We were debating something and I knew their idea was right, which really sucked. But I had gotten so good at arguing that I convinced them to do my idea. And then I thought, oh shit, what have I done? Because if my goal is to get rich, I'm now acting in complete opposition to that goal because I know that their idea is right and I've simply used a trick to get them to go my way. And so I had a values crisis. Values and identity, drive, behavior. And in that moment I wasn't sure who I was, did I want to get rich, was I willing to do what it took to make money?

And.

And if I really did want to get rich, and again, it's changed since then, but that was my focus then, if I really did want to get rich, why on earth did I fight so hard to be right? Because I never said I want to be right. I never said I want to be smart. None of that was happening in my mind. I said, I want to get rich. So here I was, moving myself away from that and I realized I've got to make a decision. If I really am here to achieve my goal, then I need to decide what my goal is. And I can't have both. I can't feel good about myself the way that I defined it, about being smart, about being right and achieve my goals. So I realized I was either going to have to totally abandon self esteem. I actually considered that I'm going to have to totally abandon self esteem, put my head down and just grind it out for a few years with these guys until we can have an exit and I'll be rich and then I can worry about loving myself again or. And this was what changed my life. I could change what I built my self esteem around. Now, unfortunately, I did not have access to Carol Dweck's book, but I realized that instead of fighting to be right, I could put all of my time and attention to identifying the right answer. And once you identify the right answer, you can earn tremendous credibility with your team for saying, hey, I was wrong. That's right. Now I'm going to put all my energy behind that. And so that's what I began to do. And as I began to do that, I found that the only thing that was standing between me and where I wanted to get was a skills gap. Now, that skills gap is what I call mind the gap. And for you Brits, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Mind the gap. That skills gap is everything. Now, the way that you close that skill gap is painful because it starts with the following mantra. I am not yet good enough. It's one of the most controversial things I ever say. Whenever I tweet that out, people freak out. But what I'm saying is, if you're trying to achieve this objective and you do not have the skills to actually accomplish that, you simply are not good enough.

Yet. Yet.

That's just the truth of the situation. It's the math. As Elon Musk says, boil it down to its physics. That's the physics of the situation. But if you have a growth mindset, you know that you can acquire those skills. And once you set about living your life by the following phrase, everything will change. Do and believe. Do and believe only that which moves you towards your goals. And that brings us to becoming antifragile as Joe said, when people hear antifragile, they think resilient. They think tough. But both of those things and every other synonym around there is defined by that thing's ultimate breaking point. It is resilient simply because its breaking point is distant. It is strong simply because it can move a lot of weight before it breaks. But they both have breaking points. If you want to be truly antifragile, the game is the more you realize you're wrong, the more somebody attacks you and tells you you're stupid, the more mistakes you make, you see in that one thing and one thing only, the ability to get better. And when you see in your failures an absolutely fundamental, bedrock foundation piece of your belief system, which is that, oh, dear God, thank you for pointing out how wrong I've been. Thank you for showing me that this mistake was just that, that it's a mistake. Thank you for making it clear I am not actually moving towards my goals right now. I'm not making progress. Because when you can do that, the more people assail you, the more mistakes you make, the more times you fall in your face, the stronger you get, because you respond to that with the acquisition of skills. It's the acquisition of skills that matter. Another talk that I would love to give at some point is the fact that we are all in the matrix. But the matrix is just a metaphor for your mind. And if you have the mind of an entrepreneur and you really can see that acquiring skills will lead you wherever you want want it to, you'll truly become capable of the impossible. Thank you.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.