1024 Robert Greene: The Positive Side of Human MANIPULATION (The #1 Skill for SUCCESS)

What is my dark side? And, you know, I had to analyze it and deal with it and think about it and think about how any success I've had in life is because I managed to use those dark emotions in my work and channel them.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former.

Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an.

Inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Writer Aviit Doss said, the quality of our life is directly proportional to the quality of our thoughts. An English poet, Anne Bradstreet said, if we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. If we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. I am so excited we have an incredible guest today. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, the 48 Laws of Power, the Art of Seduction, the 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law, Mastery, the Laws of Human Nature, and many others. Robert Greene was my very first podcast guest on the School of Greatness. He's a good friend of mine and I always get excited when I'm able to sit down with him and analyze the world, our experiences and life. Robert has decades of wisdom and has gone to extreme lengths to get his ideas out into the world. And I got the inside scoop on some of his most intimate thoughts about adversity, overcoming a tragedy, and he even talked about the idea behind his new book he s working on and when we might expect to see it coming out. And in this episode we discuss what lessons he s learned after having a life threatening stroke, how Robert pushes past his limits to get the most out of life currently, how the great leaders of history have bounced back from the most severe tragedies, how your outlook on life affects your experience, and how to stay more positive in the face of adversity. Why defeat and failure are the greatest things that could ever happen to you, and so much more. This is packed with some incredible wisdom that I couldn't get enough of, and I hope you can't get enough of as well. Make sure to share this with someone who you think would be inspired to hear this. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts, as well as leaving us a rating and review. Okay, after this quick message, the one and only Robert Greene.

Welcome back everyone to the School of Greenness Podcast. I am so excited. We have one of my favorite guests back on the show, Robert Greene, who is a New York Times bestseller of many books, the 48 Laws of Power, the Art of Seduction, the 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law, Mastery and the Laws of Human Nature, which is one of my favorites that you've done. So welcome back, my friend. You were the first episode on School of Greatness. Episode one. I think we're at episode 1,020 somewhere around there now. So you're episode one almost eight years ago.

Wow.

I'm so honored. It's fun, man. And we just did our 1,000th episode and we did the top 10 moments of all 1,000s episodes.

And you were the number one moment. Oh, really?

You were the number one moment. Which interview? First one. We talked about the first one. And we talked about how, you know, I launched this with an idea and a dream to inspire people, but I launched it with one episode and one listener and one guest. And you were the first guest. Thankfully you came on. And, you know, more than one person listened, but there was, you launched something and the first person has to buy your book and read it. The first person has to listen. The first person has to watch the movie. Like, you got to start with one. So it's been fun to, Look back now over 250 million downloads, 1000 episodes. We get over 10 million downloads a month and it all started with you. Wow. I feel very humble and very appreciative.

Yeah, I'm very grateful that I could do that for you because you deserve it. Thank you, thank you. Some people, you wonder a little bit. They're kind of, you know, I don't know if they're very substantial, but you deserve it.

I appreciate it. I think my mission's always been, I think we have a lot of similarities in the fact that Well, we don't in the fact that you're way smarter and more talented than me as a writer, but we observe people and we observe history and human behavior.

Yeah.

And we just do it in different ways.

Yeah.

You're great at researching and putting together ideas, complex ideas from the past and present to making something understandable and how we can improve our life. And I think I'm really good at reading human beings.

You are.

And observing environments.

You are.

Observing body language. to try to connect.

I saw that in our last interview when you were interviewing me about the human nature book. Your questions were really pertinent. You really understood. You've obviously been a student of psychology and human behavior for a long time. Thank you.

Appreciate it. My first question is, we had you on a couple years ago, right after you had a stroke, which was, you almost died, right? Your wife was in the car with you. I think you were driving.

I was driving.

Your wife essentially said, pull over because something was wrong. And you were like, no, everything's fine. As you were like, you know, falling over or something. And she essentially saved her life and your life by stopping it, recognizing it. You went to the hospital, you had a stroke, and it's been a two-year recovery of. I saw you last time, and I was, you know, I was really. sad of, you know, your physical well-being because I want to see you healthy. But you've had a pretty positive attitude, I think, in the last couple of years. I'm curious, what has been the biggest lesson for you with going through a massive stroke, where it's hindered your relationships, where it's hindered your physical activity, your ability to work on the things you're passionate about, what's been the big lessons?

Well, I'm a very driven person, so I wasn't going to let this defeat me because the alternative was losing hope and becoming suicidal and I wasn't going to let that happen. Also, I knew I had another book that I really, really wanted to write, so I had to keep living, you know? And I was in a coma for a while and things were a little bit touch and go during that. And I feel like there was something willed inside of me unconsciously that kept me alive. The other weird thing is I spent a lot of my time alone. swimming, hiking, riding. It just so happened just by coincidence that I was driving when my wife was there. And so I have a feeling that I kind of almost was ready to have my stroke once she was there. I can't say that for sure. These are, you know, weird kind of psychic almost kind of thoughts. But I felt like there was some will power in me that was keeping me alive so I could keep going. But the main lesson was, it's been a struggle. I can't say it's been easy. I can't lie and say, I've just figured it all out and I'm this incredible superhuman being. I've had moments where I've cried. I've had moments where I felt like giving up. It's like a daily struggle. And I know a lot of people in this world suffer. They have it a lot worse than I do. I have a comfortable life. I have a lot of money, I have my books, etc. But on the level of my body, just every day has been a struggle. I wake up, can I walk? Will I fall? Can I hold this in my hand? So dependent on other people. I'm a very independent person. So I've had to really, really work on myself and really develop a lot of patience, which I don't have. And the thing is, when you get an illness like this or something happens like that, the natural thing is just to sort of wait it out and wait until your body recovers. And people said, I would have a full recovery two years down the line or so. So the tendency would be just to let it go and let time take its healing process. But I wouldn't let that. I don't know why, but I was like, no, I'm gonna work out every single day. I'm gonna do therapy two or three hours a day. I bought a special bicycle because I can't do a normal bicycle. It's a recumbent bike where you sit down. Man, it's like the hardest thing. You have to get up these incredible hills and like 80-year-old grandmothers are whizzing by me on their bicycle. This is outdoors. Outdoors in Griffith Park, yeah. Wow. But I'm just determined to beat the thing. And sometimes it beats me. So every day it's like a battle, you know? It's like a boxing match. Who's gonna win? but I'm not going to give up. I just keep trying and trying. I'm going to see a new therapist. I'm working on new exercises. I'm working on different parts of my body. I'm trying to build strength in certain muscles so I can start walking normally. Because as you know, working out, swimming and hiking and bicycling, that was like my main way of de-stressing. I loved it. I love being out in nature. I love being alone with my thoughts. and to have that ripped away, it was like having part of your whole body taken away from you. But I'm pretty relentless. That's my lesson. I didn't give up.

Which book of yours that you've written and the lesson in that book have you had to lean back on more than any other lesson or principle from all the books? Which one is like really, ah, that's interesting that I wrote about this five years ago and now I really need to apply it.

Well, the last three books would be more applicable. So there's the book with 50 Cent, the 50th Law, which is about fear and overcoming your fear. And in fact, the last chapter was about the fear of death in that book. And, you know, I've had to deal with a lot of fear. And you don't know what it's like every day you're walking and you don't know the next moment you're gonna fall. I've had several falls. And falls are literally what will do you in. So it's constant fear and I just won't let it affect me. I push past my limits. I do things that I'm not supposed to do. I take hikes, even though I have to hold on to somebody to do it. People think I'm crazy. So I had to deal with my fear. Mastery taught me that repetition, doing something over and over and over again, like any kind of skill, learning a skill like basketball or whatever, leads to something. So every day, just using my left hand instead of my right hand, forcing myself and slowly getting used to it. That taught me a lot. And then the laws of human nature, you know, I have a one thing that when you have a stroke, it affected the right side of my brain, which destroyed the left side of my body. And supposedly when the right side of your brain is damaged, it tends to make you more emotional. And I've definitely become more emotional. So I've had to learn to control. some of my anger, some of my impatience, some of my frustration, and obviously the laws of human nature a lot about that. And the last chapter is about having to deal with death. And so with all of the things I'm dealing with and all the kind of, God damn it, why can't I do that? I have to keep reminding myself, I'm alive. I'm gonna write another book. The birds are out there chirping. It could have been a much different story. Last month, six weeks ago, was the second year anniversary of the stroke. And I had this thought, this could have been the second anniversary of my death. And people would be gathering together, or maybe they wouldn't, maybe they wouldn't, but it would be like the anniversary of my death. But it's not. I've been given a second lease, and I have to think about that every single day.

Isn't that crazy to think that when you die, hopefully people will think nice things about you and every year they'll get together and say, Hey, let's tell a nice story about our friend or that we lost, hopefully. Isn't that crazy to think that someday we're gonna die and someday no one's gonna remember us?

It's a weird thought and it's also like, I wrote about this, I can't remember, I think it was in the 50th law, where enough time passes, nobody remembers you.

No one.

200 years from now, no one will even know who Lewis Howes was or Robert Green. You know? And so all choices of you are gone. Yeah, it's a weird thought.

You might be in a history book or something, maybe.

Maybe. If the planet is still here.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. But this is sort of what my next book is about. You have to be able to take every kind of negative experience or emotion in life and find a way to transmute it into something healthy and positive. So how do you take that thought and turn it into something life affirming and productive? And so my way is, okay, that very well may be. I better make the most of what the time that I have, because in 200 years, I'm nothing, right? Also, through my books, I will have a life that will go on. I will have a legacy. Work on that. Think about people reading you in the future. So I use it any kind of negative thing. This is sort of the idea of Amor Fati that I talked about in my books. Any bad thing that fate brings you, you have to find a way. It's like alchemy, using the philosopher's stone, you transform that into gold through a mental process.

How do you think we can transform ourselves into the the person or the people we want to become when there only seems to be negative experiences in our life. I'm hearing you talk about transmuting negative into a positive. How can we truly transform ourselves into this desired dream life when it seems like everything is out to get me, the government isn't the way I want it to be, my friends are not the right friends? What do you think we can start to do? to transform ourselves?

Well, I would tell people to read chapter eight of the Laws of Human Nature, because I go deeply into that, which is the law about your attitude. And the idea is you have a viewpoint, a perspective. It's like the lens on a camera. And it's through that lens that you view the world and you view people and you view events. And no two people see the same event in the same way.

Right?

And so your attitude, how you look at the world, will determine what you get in life. so if you're focusing on all the obstacles, if you're focusing on the government, if you're focusing on COVID, if you're focusing on this person didn't give me that thing, my parents didn't give me that thing, that's you creating your attitude. You're building it. It's something, it's like a crystallization process. Something this crystal starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger as each new crystal is added and you crystallize this negative defensive attitude towards life, and that's what you're going to get. And there's simple examples of that. So if I'm, if I'm kind of come to this interview and I'm sort of defensive and I don't really feel good about Lewis, I'm not sure what's going to happen. You've picked that up on me because you're a very astute person, you're very sensitive. You pick it up. And so you're not going to be very friendly to me. So my initial attitude creates a reaction in you, which is negative. It starts from me, but because most people are kind of paranoid and don't have that self-awareness they'll think, God, Louis is such an asshole. Pardon? I don't know if I can say that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I'm not on television. He was such an asshole. He's so cold. Why is he? But it's coming from me. You start realizing it. So you create how people react to you. You create how negative circumstances affect you.

Yeah.

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No?

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So, you know, we have COVID and jobs are being wiped out left, right and center. You're having to spend a lot of time alone at home. Your life has been massively disrupted, most people. And you can see this as like, God damn it, why did this have to happen? My life is ruined. I'm not going to go anywhere, blah, blah, blah. And you start maybe drink a little bit, you start putting on some pounds, that COVID, whatever they call it.

COVID-15 or whatever. COVID-15.

Right.

Well, it's understandable. It is a very devastating kind of bomb that exploded here. But on the other hand, you could say, this is an opportunity. I'm not trying to be Pollyannish about it because I'm not a Pollyannish person, as you know. I wrote the 48 Laws of Power. And I don't never have, no one ever has to say that I'm Pollyannish after I wrote that book. But it's an opportunity. And the opportunity is on many levels to rethink your life, to rethink your values, to rethink where you're going, to rethink what your career should be. what your relationship to other people should be. It's a time to reorient yourself to who you are and what you like and what your goals are and what makes you unique. It's a time to read books and enlighten yourself and enrich your mind. So if you take that attitude, then I mean, Ryan Holiday wrote the best book on this subject. I encourage people to read it. The Obstacle Is the Way. If you have that attitude where obstacles are actually the path forward. Nothing's going to stop you, but it's all how you look at things. It's kind of a mental process that you switch to seeing the positive side. So a stroke is like the worst thing that happened to me. It ruined so much, but it's also been a blessing in some ways because it's really made me appreciate my life, appreciate the people around me. And I'm now writing my seventh book. And I you know, I keep having this thought that I could die tomorrow because I, you know, I'm in a very vulnerable state for catching the coronavirus once you've had a stroke. It could happen, you know. I gotta get this book done, man. I am so motivated. I'm working so hard on it because, you know, I see that this is like my great opportunity to express something before I am dead. So it's really just that switch inside of that lens, how you look at the world that will change what you're just talking about.

What are the greats in history? What have they done when they lose a war? They, you know, they're a family member dies, they go through a life-threatening condition. What are the great presidents, rulers, leaders of the past? What do they do in those moments of tragedy that allow them to bounce back and then rebound into something more powerful or greater than before. Is there common themes from the past that you've seen?

Well, Abraham Lincoln faced a lot of that stuff. He dealt with a lot of death early on in his life with his parents and people around him, and he suffered some major setbacks. And then you can think of like Winston Churchill who also dealt with, like he led a campaign, a war campaign, and during World War I that was a major disaster. He was in disgrace and he was a very manic depressive person and he became very, very depressed and he bounced back. A lot of it is getting back to your attitude and towards thinking a particular way. So defeat and failure is the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

To say it again?

Defeat or failure is the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

Why?

Because when you're successful, you tend to not learn anything. You think, Wow, my book, my business got so much, did so well. I've got the Midas touch. Anything I do is going to be great. And look, I've got all these people around me, these sycophants saying, Robert, you're wonderful, you're great. I love what you did. Your book's fantastic, etc., etc. and slowly, slowly, I don't learn anything. And then my next project is a disaster because I've become grandiose, because I'm not really moored in reality. Failure teaches you your limits. It makes you realize what you did wrong. It shows you what you could do differently. So making a personal example, because it's always easier for me to do that, I did a book with 50 Cent called the 50th Law. And the first iteration of that book I wrote, and I've never had this happen before, people weren't really liking it. And then the editor, the publisher, dropped the whole project. And I was facing a major disgrace. 50 was gonna lose faith in me. I lost a project. And it was a big blow to my ego. And I haven't, we all have egos. And so we found a new publisher, and he said, Robert, We'll do the book, but you've got to rethink it, and I need this book in eight months. And I go, you, want me to start all over after a year working on this book, and you want it in eight months? No way. But then I realized, okay, what is it that I did wrong? And he said, you, didn't make the book a Robert Green book. You made it too much about 50 Cent. People want to read you. They want to read about your ideas. They don't want it to be so much about him. They want a combination of the two. but you were being too humble here. And I go, okay. And I listened to him and I wrote the next book and it took me, I worked like a fiend and I got it done in eight months. And I took every lesson to heart about how I can fail. And it taught me very valuable lessons about the books that I write and how I need to have faith in my style and my ideas. and not worry that if I'm working with a celebrity that I have to give him all the attention. Failure taught me this, and success didn't teach me anything. So failure or defeat, you know, great generals in battle, that's what they would learn. But the greatest general in history, I believe, was Napoleon Bonaparte. And Napoleon Bonaparte had 10 years of the greatest success anyone has ever had in military history from 1796 to 1806. He was on the top of the world. He crowned himself emperor. And then he had eight years or ten years of most abysmal failures. It's because it all went to his head. He lost touch with who he was. He lost touch with his own military strategies that were grounded in success. He became too conservative. That's the other thing that success will do. It'll make you conservative. It'll make you think you have to hold on to what you've done. and keep repeating it. And the world success and great things happen by being not conservative, by being open with your ideas and challenging yourself and always trying something new and being willing to change. So that's, I think, the lessons there.

What would you say are three questions we should ask ourselves when we face some type of tragedy, some type of big loss, failure, near-death experience, breakup, what do you think? You said you started becoming introspective and asking yourself and changing your attitude. What three questions should we ask yourself?

Well, I don't know if I can get to three, but I'll start with one. The first one is, could it have been worse?

Could it have been worse? It could have been worse or could it?

Well, you're asking me for questions.

Yeah, yeah. Could it have been worse?

Yeah.

I mean, Let's say, you know, I broke up with the girlfriend and she had very embarrassing pictures of me and she posted them all over the internet. Well, thank God that didn't happen, you know, or I could have died. That's always the last one you always say. Could have been worse. I could be dead. Right? As long as you have your body and your mind together, you can recover. I tell people, and you can recover from the worst possible disaster, even public humiliation you can recover from. Because fortunately nowadays people have short memories and they'll always remember your last success. So things are never as dire as they appear to be. So it's could it have been worse? Or what is the worst scenario that could have happened? Well, luckily that didn't happen.

Yeah.

The next question is like, I would say, what is the lesson I could learn from this? So if it's a breakup with someone, and I've been through them, we all have, it's like instead of thinking that it was just putting blame on her or yourself, it's thinking of, was this the right person for me? There's going to be someone else, right? First of all, maybe I wasn't actually the right person for her, and maybe I was partially to blame for this. So what can I learn about relationships going forward? And what can I learn about what I want from a relationship? Maybe I want something a little more stable, or maybe I need something a little more exciting to sort of see, to be future oriented. And that's really critical because I talk a lot of people who are going through hard times with COVID is always being future oriented. So we tend when we're in the moment of a bad thing like a breakup or a failure or you know, like something like a disaster.

Yeah.

Is we're so enmeshed in the moment and when enmeshed in the moment things seem much larger than they are.

Right.

It seems so big.

Right. But with time and distance, if you look back two years ago, it doesn't seem so big anymore, right? So you need some perspective and you need to understand that two years from now, you'll be on to another business or you'll be on to another relationship and things will be much better. So be future oriented. That's one of the key things, key elements about people who are very successful in life. They're always sort of oriented towards the future. What's the next project? What am I going to be doing in five or ten years? As opposed to obsessed with the past, I think people who have the hardest time in life are so obsessed with the past. That scumbag, he destroyed me. He ruined my last project. They hold on to all this crap. They're so weighed down by the past, their parents, they whine, they complain. People who are future-oriented, I'm on to the next thing. It's like they say in basketball, next man up. Our star player was injured. All right, next player, come on, let's just go. We got to win this game, right?

Yeah.

So that sort of thing is being future oriented and thinking like that.

I started, it's really hard when you're in the moment of stress or breakup or chaos or you get fired from your job. You feel like it's such a big deal. It's so messy, it's so painful. It's hard to think outside of that moment when you're in it. I went to a breakup a cup almost two years ago and I remember feeling like, ah, this is like, this kind of sucks. It's in the moment, you know, people are judging you and I just kept saying to myself over and over again, I'm gonna have hindsight now. I think this is exactly. I was like, this is around January time. I was like, this might be like six to eight weeks of some like drama or whatever, just gossip. Let me think it's gonna be New Year's Eve one year from today. Exactly. Like, what's the lesson I'm gonna learn from this experience? Exactly. how much stronger am I gonna be? How much more humility will I have? You know, maybe I'll connect with someone new that'll be a better relation. You know, all these things. I just kept saying, anytime I felt like the moment was bigger than me, let me have hindsight now. In a year, six months, two years, I wanna be on to something else. And people either move on with me or move out of my life.

That's the perfect example. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, it's hard, as you said, in the moment.

Right. It's very hard.

And so you can't beat yourself up. You can't like, God damn it, why am I like this? Why can't I just be like Robert or Lewis said? I'm not like that. So when things first happen and they're bad, I beat myself up for several weeks, but it only lasts for several weeks and then I pick myself back up. So be patient and understand that right after something bad, you're gonna be depressed. It's okay to be depressed. It's okay to feel bad about yourself, to even blame yourself, but you're gonna pick yourself up and be patient about it, you know? It's a process.

How important is expressing emotions and feelings of the greats that you've studied or the people you've been around? Do they express their emotions and feelings publicly? Do they do it privately? Do they journal? Do they suppress their emotions and just have a positive attitude all the time? What do you think is the importance.

Or lack of importance of repression? Well, I think everybody's different, but in general, if my knowledge of psychology and all the books I've read, is that you pay a price for repressing your emotions. That repressing something eventually comes out. And the great psychologist, Carl Jung, he was the one who kind of studied that in great depth. When you repress, for instance, your dark side or your dark emotions, they come out in other ways. right? So trying to always like present yourself as this very stoic person when in fact you're not, you're going to pay a price for it. It's going to come out in ways you can't control, right? There's going to be a negative consequences to that. And so on the other hand, you don't want to be this person who's constantly emoting and telling everybody what you feel like. It's very irritating. You have no self-control and people are judging you. You look like this weak person who can't control your own tongue. You can't control it. Okay, so I compare it in my books and talks to the metaphor of the rider and the horse. Right? So the rider of the horse is your rational brain and the horse is your emotion. It's the animal part of you. It's what makes you angry or excited or fearful. The rider is what makes you kind of, you know, get things done. If the rider on that horse, I don't know if people have ridden a horse, I used to ride a lot when I was a kid, if you hold the reins too tightly, if you're trying to control the horse and repress it, the horse feels it. It feels it in the way your thighs are constricting it. Horses are very sensitive animals, right? And it won't do anything. It won't follow any of your instructions. It won't go anywhere. Or it will freak out and it will run far away and it'll throw you off the horse. But if you just let the horse go anywhere, the horse also feels that. The horse has been tamed to some extent. This guy has no respect for him. He's not trying to do anything. And the horse will go wherever it wants. You have no control. People who know how to ride horses, they know they have to have a balance. You have to hold the reins not too tightly, but you have to be able to guide the horse. You have to squeeze with the thighs, but not too tightly. You have to feel relaxed. And one with the horse, the horse that gives in, and you can go anywhere. So you want a balance in life. You want to be able to understand your emotions, right? You want to be able to stand why you're angry, why you're fearful, why you're frustrated, and not just give into the emotion, like, let the horse go anywhere, so that maybe next time you understand, well, maybe I don't need to feel anger or fear because it's not really related to anything. So you have a balance. You understand the horse, the emotion, and you can control it to some degree, but not over control it or repress it. Because I know if I get angry a lot, I could have anger issues, right? The moments where I give into it, I regret. I sent that angry email to my agent.

Oh man.

The next day, you feel bad.

Do you apologize a lot after you're angry? Or do you just kind of say, I'm just a grumpy old man now.

Well, I am a grumpy old man, but yeah, I do apologize.

Oh, that's nice.

Apologies are good. It's a good thing to do.

Yeah.

But I feel terrible, right? And so you have to go through a process like before you send that email, why am I angry? Do your hindsight thing. Will I be feeling angry in three weeks?

No. No.

Is it really important? Is it possibly my own fault? When you go through that process, you're not repressing the anger. You're not pushing it down so then it explodes three days later. When you yell at somebody who inadvertently crosses your path, that's what happens. You repress it. But you understand it and you let it work for you. Okay, I won't write that angry email. But then you can use your anger for other things like writing a book, et cetera, or believing in some social cause that's important, et cetera. So it's a balance.

I'm curious about 48 Laws of Power and Laws of Human Nature. this is probably gonna be a hard question, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyways. What was your favorite law from the 48 Laws of Power? Pre-stroke and what would you say is your favorite one now? And same for human nature. Favorite kind of law of human nature pre-stroke that you're like, this is the thing I'm gonna see in my life that I really had Connected to and now something that you lean on or connect to in a different way Wow.

That'S a tough question.

It's hard I get it.

I mean it's somebody yeah well, first.

Thing that comes to mind maybe well.

For me for the 48 laws of power is this this will be kind of symmetrical But law number one was always like the most important one to me never outshine the master and because it was the first law, it was the first successful book I ever had. When I first pitched it to the man who produced the book, I told him the story that initiated the map, Never Outshine the Master. And I had personally violated that law on several occasions, and it caused me a lot of misery and pain in my life.

Why?

Why what?

Why did they cause you a lot of misery and pain by violating the law?

Well, I, this is before I wrote the book. So I had a job in the film business and television show with a very famous person whose name I will not mention. And I was a researcher on it. And I was the best researcher there by far. You know, you would. You count success by how many stories you found and what got actually filmed.

And yours got filmed the most.

I had like a 60 rate or something like that.

Wow.

I knew I was the best, and then I got fired. Why?

Because you were outshining the master.

Well, at the time, I thought she hated my guts. I pissed somebody off, I said the wrong thing, and I was capable of sometimes doing that because I could have an attitude. And I was blaming other people, et cetera. But then it sort of dawning on me, and then later when I wrote the book, it was very clear to me that I had inadvertently made her think that I was felt greater than she was, that I was after her job. Other people were really praising me and not praising her so much. I was getting too much attention. And it happened another time, a second time. Right. I wasn't controlling myself. And so that law had a lot meant a lot to me because it was very painful. Being fired is a very painful experience. I don't know if you've ever been through that.

No, I haven't.

Really?

I mean, I'm not at a job.

Oh.

I mean, I got, I mean, actually, I did get fired. I got fired once by getting in a fist fight on a golf course. I was a grounds crew kid when I was like 14, 13. And we were playing around, this is a long story, we were playing around like throwing leaves at each other and someone punched me in the back of the neck as I'm like throwing leaves at them. So we're raking up like leaves and grass on the golf course. He punched me in the back of the neck and then I just went crazy and got in a fist fight. I only got in two fights, real fights in my life. That was one of them. And we walked back to the grounds crew shed and washed my knuckles off because they were bleeding. And I was just high on adrenaline and the kid who I got in a fight with walks back a couple minutes after me and I couldn't recognize his face.

You touched him that bad.

I mean, it was just like, it was an animalistic reaction when someone punched me. It was just like, you know, I mean, it only lasted for maybe 10 seconds and then someone took us off. There was other people around and kind of broke it up. But it just kind of hit him in the right spot, I guess, and it kind of swelled over his eye, looked like a softball in his eye, and I was just like, wow. And it was really the first time I felt like I had any power as a 13 year old. And the grounds crew, like, leader or the boss, saw him walk up kind of yelling at me and he just goes, you,'re fired. And he like writes a check and gives it to me and he's like, get out of here, never come back. And I was like, so that was my only model.

That was law number one B, never punch a colleague.

Exactly. Never punch anyone. So, but for you, it was stressful and emotional getting fired.

Yeah, I mean you take it personally, et cetera, and you.

And you were like, I was the best.

I was. I mean, I haven't had many jobs. I didn't stay at a job more than a year my whole life. But I always, whenever I had a job, I worked very hard at it. And, you know, I was very conscientious. So that was very painful.

But don't you wanna, I would think if someone's excelling on my team, I'd be like, celebrate them and keep going. Why don't you want that? Or do you not want people to.

Well, Louis, come on.

What do you want people to accelerate?

Didn't read chapter law number one. We all have egos.

I understand, but... Yeah, in a perfect.

World where angels were everywhere and we all just had wings and we were all just all out for other people and for the greater good.

Right.

Yeah. But we happen to live in this planet that's not like that.

I know.

We're descended from primates. We're much different from that. So how do you have egos?

How do you grow without with like how do you improve in a career but not outshine too much so you stay in the career, I guess?

Well, you have to read law number one. But you know, you have to first understand a very basic principle of human psychology. Everybody has an ego and everybody you meet is insecure. They have insecurities, okay? But your boss, the person above you, has even more insecurities and a larger ego than other people. And you don't think so. You're probably aware that they have an ego, but you don't think that they have insecurities because they're the boss, you know? But actually, they're always worried about whether people like them, whether people respect them, whether people think they're doing a good job or not. They're riddled with doubts and they're constantly looking out for people to see their body language, etc. Are you just a guy who really respects me? does he have an attitude, etc. You don't think that. You think, if I just try hard to please the boss, it will work out wonderful, wonderfully. But you might be doing something else. You might be stirring up their insecurities. So you have to always be aware in life of people's insecurities. You know, it's like lesson number one. It's going to save you a lot of painful moments. The people you deal with are riddled with doubts, they're riddled with fears, they have things hanging over them from childhood, they're wondering about themselves, and you inadvertently are feeding their insecurities and you never intended to. And then you find, wow, look what happened, and you don't even understand why it happened that way. So when you're fired for Outshine the Master, you don't know why you were fired. It's very hard to learn a lesson when you don't know why it happened. That's what's so complicated and tricky about people. Because when people do something that's kind of harsh and negative, they never tell you why they're doing it. They always have a cover story, a narrative, right? They have a way of deflecting it as if they aren't to blame. And so you're confused. That's why I wrote the Laws of Human Nature, because you're continually confused, because people never tell you what they're really doing, why they're motivated, why they behave such a way. And you take their words and their appearance for reality, and it's not reality. so it's, you know, that's the source of so much of your painful experiences in life.

Okay, so law number one, never outshine the master was the law that you were really leaning into pre-stroke is there one post-stroke that you think about that. That sticks to you more, that connects to you in a different way now?

Yeah, I would say assume formlessness, which is law number 48. So that's why I said the symmetry.

Ooh, look at you.

I like this. And that's all about kind of being fluid and adapting to circumstances and never having like a concrete form. It's a very military law. Comes from Sun Tzu and like the perfect army doesn't have a form, you can't figure out where they are, what their strategy is. Their strategy has no form. or the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, who said that nobody ever knew what my strategy would be. I was completely formless. So it's a way of being very fluid in life and very open and never doing the same thing twice and adapting what you do to the circumstances around you. And when you have a stroke, it's not easy to do that, right? because your body certainly isn't capable of being fluid. So your mind has to be fluid. I have to retrain myself from not getting stuck in certain ideas and certain patterns of thinking, certain negative things and certain frustrations and certain ways of looking at the world. I have to be fluid and take each day as it comes and adapt myself to this new body that I have.

Yeah.

So I think about that law a lot.

How does someone, you know, you have a book on mastery. How does someone master the art of something if they're always trying something new every day or if they're always formless and reinventing themselves every day or, you know what I mean, from these, the swordsman you're saying, it's like he was always in a new strategy. But if you want to master something, you typically have to do something over and over to master it, correct?

Yeah, well, that's the thing about my books and about the laws. They're about circumstances. So I'm not saying assume formlessness for all you people out there who are 18 years old who are about to enter the work world or 21, just be formless, no.

Master something and then when you've mastered multiple things, you can adapt.

Miyamoto Musashi was fighting for 20 years as a swordsman in life and death battles and he eventually developed this power of his, right? But if he were formless without ever having any experience, he would have been killed in his first sword fight. So, you know, you have to have discipline. You have to assume, like, this is what I'm doing. And this is my career path, as you talk about, as you mentioned in Mastery. And you have to put in the hours, the ten thousand, the twenty thousand hours. And then when you get to the level of a master, like a Bobby Fischer in chess, then you can do anything you want. You're on another level. You can be as formless as possible.

Right?

So, yeah, you're right. I'm not advocating that for just anybody out there, but for me in my situation.

Yeah.

After I've had, you know, the success. And it's also for people who've suffered a major blow like that, like an illness or something, where your habits of thinking can get very set and very rigid, where every day you wake up and go, wow, why do I have to be like this? why couldn't it have happened this differently as opposed to being open to what life brings me every single day and not developing a kind of a defensive, rigid attitude?

One of the things that I love about your journey and story is that you mastered so many different types of writing over 20-30 years. I think you were like first in a newspaper and then a magazine and then screenwriting and then certain types of books and then weird, you know, you did all these different styles of writing that you tried a lot of things, mastered them to a certain point, which gave you the range to kind of write in the way you do now. It gave you the ability to write the way you do now, which I think is interesting. So I like that you say that when you're in your 20s, like find something to hang on to, to master for a few years, then you can go to the next thing, and that'll give you more range.

Well, there's a I don't know if I can remember my metaphor, but it's like you want a path in life when you're 20, 21, 22. But you don't want it to be so rigid because you're going to burn out, you're going to get bored and you're going to give up. You want that path to be like that instead of like this. So you can go this way, you can go this way, you go this way, you go this way. But if your path is like that, you'll never find anything because you'll try everything. so I knew I was to be a writer and I tried eight different forms of writing. You know you want to be a musician, you try writing music, you try learning an instrument, you try performing, producing, you go into entertainment, a lawyer, as a music lawyer, whatever. You try different things. But you know this is what I love in life. If you have no idea what you're going to love and I deal with that because I help consult with people who come to me with that very issue. Robert, I don't know what my life's task is. I never had indication when I was a kid. That's the worst situation to be in. There are ways to solve that, but that's really painful because you have no idea where to go. But you want to have a sense, but you want to be fluid and open so that eventually what happens is you hit upon the right thing, right?

And most of us are never going to hit the right thing in 25.

No, I was 36-37 your age when it happened.

So maybe I'll start to feel like I'm hitting the right thing soon.

Yeah, you found it out a little earlier. You found it out like eight years ago.

Yeah, I think so, but I think it's always evolving and growing and you know, you got to be fluid with it. So, it's funny because I've been consistent with the main thing, which I started a podcast almost eight years ago and I said I'm gonna do it once a week. for a year and see how it goes. See if I like it, learn, but I gotta be consistent enough for a year. Then I did twice a week for the second year. Now we've done three a week for the last five, six years, I guess now. And I've been consistent in one thing, trying to improve. You see me from the first episode to now in the different stages, the leveling out the production, the set, this, you know, everything, the audio quality, video, all these different things, my skills. But also, I wrote a book. I'd never done that before. We did live events. It's like I'm trying new things as well that I'm not that good at the start, but we start to master them over time to create more range and diversity. But I'm still sticking to the main thing as the main thing and evolving as I go.

That's the perfect way to do it because you need challenges in life.

You do.

Um, so, you know, I always look at it this way. If you're, you're here, this is your skill level. A challenge like here is going to really improve you. If the challenge is here, it's too much, you'll fail and it'll have bad consequences. If you're here and you're below your level, you're going to get bored. So the optimum thing is to always choose your next project that's a little bit above you so you can learn and feel excited and challenged. and have that adrenaline rush from trying to meet the challenge and get there and all your energies involved. So that's the proper way to do things in life for me.

So what about the laws of human nature? What was one that you were like, oh, this is my law. This is the one that I love the most right now, for whatever reason, pre-stroke to the one now that you think about more as important for your life?

Well, my favorite chapter was kind of about the dark side of human nature, the shadow. Confront your dark side and make it work for you, as opposed to repressing it. So everybody has a dark side. I don't care if you're Mahatma Gandhi or whomever, you have a dark side, right? And It comes out in ways that you're not even aware of. And I explain in the book where our dark side originates from. You know, as a child, we had a lot of powerful emotions that we couldn't control. We would hit our sister. We would play terrible practical jokes. And I'm talking personally.

You went to terrible- I did the same thing, yeah.

Terrible practical jokes. We'd be kind of mean and aggressive. but also we'd be very loving, which is true as well. We'd be a full range of things. And then you learn as you get older, Robert, you can't hit people in school. Stop that. Don't be like that. Don't play those practical jokes. It's bad. People don't like it. And you get older and older and you start repressing those kind of feelings that are very natural to you, right? Because we all have aggressive impulses. We all, we love our parents, but there's also a side of us that that doesn't like them. We resent them. It's natural. But we have to repress all that because we have to be good social animals. We have to be good little kids. We have to be little angels at school. We have to be angels at work. All this pressure, like, I've got to repress all that. I've got to be this perfect person. I have to be someone who pleases, who's very nice, blah, blah, blah. And then when you're 28, you start becoming addicted to alcohol and you don't know why. you start getting really angry, you have anger issues, you yell at people, you don't know why. You're like a 45-year-old person with a very steady profession. You leave your wife and you run off with a 19-year-old, you know, destroying everything that you've built. The dark side has come out because you've repressed it instead of dealing with it. So the idea was you need to understand your dark side. confront it and make it work for you. And I have a dark side. I have, you know, every chapter in the book, you know, sometimes now I think that my answer wasn't the right answer, but I'll go with it anyway.

It's all good.

In writing the book, I kept having to say, I wrote a chapter on narcissism. Robert, you're a narcissist, you know? I wrote a chapter on the dark side. I go, Robert, you have a dark side. the same thing with the chapter on aggression. And like, what is my dark side? And, you know, I had to analyze it and deal with it and think about it and think about how I, my, any success I've had in life is because I managed to use those, that dark, those dark emotions in my work and channeled them because they have tremendous energy to them. They power you forward. So I had anger coming out of working in Hollywood. I kind of hated the environment. I hated people's hypocrisy. I hated all the sycophancy and all that. I was really angry, but I didn't let the anger turn inward. I channeled it into the 48 Laws of Power. So I used my dark side. And I really liked that law because it showed me that I'm a victim of this, but I also unconsciously learned how to use what I'm writing about. So I kind of drew on my own experience.

Yeah. I love that you talk about this because there's so many great artists that write songs that become hits and, you know, big best-selling books and movies out of pain, right? Out of a breakup, out of a drug addiction, out of rehab, out of whatever this painful thing that happens to them and they express from their pain and it somehow connects to other people in the world to their pain and becomes a hit, whether it be a song or video or movie, do you think anger, resentment, frustration is a greater power to create over love? Or if we came from a place of love, could it be that much more powerful, our creation?

Well, that's a great question and it really depends on who you are. You know, sometimes those those dark energies have more kind of energy, you know, power behind them. They impel you. I do.

And. And.

And love, it just kind of melt. You don't. Love doesn't necessarily make you want to write a book, although it. It can. But for me personally, I'm speaking from personal experience, it wasn't love that made me want to write a book. It was anger and bitterness, right?

I'll show you. Yeah, I'll show you mental.

Whereas, you know, I love this. I love that. Yeah, that's not gonna... And the reason why that happens is people in our day-to-day life are so repressed, we have to be so politically correct. We have to be so pleasant and smiling, et cetera, that when your work expresses anger or expresses pain, People love it. They're drawn to it because finally someone's expressing what I'm feeling but no one else is talking about. You know?

Right?

That's powerful, yeah.

Yeah.

You know the person that I think a lot about in the dark side is Kobe Bryant. I was going to talk to him about it if I could have. Because he confessed this. He had a lot of dark energy. He had a lot of anger and he was so competitive. he wanted to crush you on the basketball court. And he spoke of it in those terms. It wasn't like a friendly little basketball game. This was war. But like Michael Jordan, he transmuted, he channeled this energy into being a good teammate and to just defeating the other team, working as a good player, a colleague with his other teammates. But he learned to channel it early on. It kind of destroyed him. a little bit. It kind of ruined his relationship with Shaq in a way. But then he learned that that dark, that anger, Etc. Was the source of his power. It's kind of like Star Wars and Jedi type thing, you know, and how you, you use that, that dark energy and transform it into something positive.

Do you think there's a basketball player or an athlete or someone who could not have dark energy and anger, could have love, who could be just like, I'm just grateful for my family, my wife, my kids, my health, and I'm just gonna go out and channel my gifts to serve, to inspire, because I love the sport. Do you think there's-- no. No, you think anger is the way. It's like learning to channel anger.

Anger and competitiveness and ambition and the desire to win. You know, is a very powerful motivating factor.

Very powerful.

You know, maybe if you're an ice skater or in a sport like that where you're working in pairs and something.

Dancing or yeah.

Yeah, you don't maybe want to have that kind of issue. I can get that. But like football or basketball or even baseball, you know, I don't think so. And all the grades that I've studied all have pretty much a very similar profile. And there have been examples of players who don't have that drive, who are more kind of into being friendly and nice and loving, and they don't go nearly as far. I'm afraid to say it. The greatest player is LeBron James. He's probably the greatest player. Now you're from Cleveland, right?

I'm from Columbus, but Ohio. Ohio, it's all the same.

We're Ohio, yeah.

Are you a Laker fan?

I'm a Laker fan now because of LeBron. I'm a LeBron fan. Well, me too now. But that guy is driven.

Driven.

Right?

You can see it in his face. He doesn't want to lose. He's not going out there with love in his heart. I mean, he's a very generous person. He's a very loving person outside basketball. But on the court, no, I don't think so. He's an animal.

Yeah, he's an animal on the court. It's interesting, 'cause I was very anger-driven from my teens to my 20s. maybe a little bit in my early 30s, I was driven by anger to compete, to be the best, to win, but it always left me achieving and accomplishing and kind of proving people wrong, but it always left me feeling like still unfulfilled inside. How can someone be driven by anger or frustration, bitterness, and achieve and feel peace at the same time? Is that possible?

Yeah, because that's not the goal in it is not like beating other people and humiliating them. That's the dark side and that's giving into the dark side. The goal is to be the best at your sport, to win a championship, and then to give back to the community, to make a lot of money, and then donate a lot of it or become, you know, like LeBron has done with the schools in Ohio, et cetera, to be a good role model. But when you reach the top, you have that luxury. And so it's more like, what are you doing this for? So when I had my 48 Laws of Power, I'm sorry to talk always about myself, it's kind of the narcissist in me.

It's all good.

I admit it. You know, it wasn't about making fun of all those Hollywood executives who I disliked. Then it wouldn't have been the book that it was. It was, I want to help people. I want to use my energy, my frustrations to show people, that they don't have to suffer the way I suffer, other people suffer in the work world. These are the laws of power. You don't have to be so naive. You can understand that you don't need to ever outshine the master. So I was able to put my energy in there and get some of my yayas out in doing it, but for a higher purpose, to help people. I think that's the difference, right? And so I tell people, you feel anger, But there's a lot of injustice in this world, particularly nowadays, right? A lot of things are just wrong in this world today. And if I were young, my anger would be exploding because there's so much that's wrong. Channel it into a worthy cause, into justice, into leading some kind of movement. That's a brilliant way to take your dark energy and metamorphize it into something really positive. Believe it or not, because in my last book, Martin Luther King was one of my heroes that I wrote about. He had some of those frustrations and some of that anger. He grew up in Atlanta where there wasn't as much racism because he was in a relatively good neighborhood. His father was a preacher. He saw racism, but he was a little bit shielded from it. And then he had his first encounters, particularly when he went up north to Boston, believe it or not, it was in the north that he had his first real encounter. he had a few before that, but. And then he's like, God, he was really angry about it. Really. It really was an eye-opener and he learned that he couldn't give into that kind of emotion. What he was going to do with his life is he was going to use it to help blacks in the south. He's going to return to the south. His path, he thought, was to stay in, in Boston, New England, because it was, like, cushy, etc. But then he realized, no, I've got to take all this. bitterness that I feel, and I've got to go back to the South at the risk of my own life and help my people, you know?

So.

Working for a cause is probably the best way you can channel some of that dark energy.

So how do we be angry about a cause, but not being a prisoner to that thing, that unjust thing that's happening in the world? Is there a way we can still, like, Be angry and in movement and creation mode, but not be a prisoner to that situation.

What would being a prisoner mean?

I think like allowing it to affect you emotionally, to consume you, to control you, to make you focused on that thing all the time as opposed to just being alive.

What is where your energy is? Is it about you? Is it about you and your emotions and your anger or is it about helping people and about the cause. So is it for something greater than yourself? And if it's for something greater than yourself, then you're not a prisoner of it. Got it. Because you're getting outside your own ego and you're actually working to help people. But I can tell you, a lot of social movements and revolutions, if you want to call it, or reform movements, they peter out because they lose energy, they lose a drive, the initial impetus sort of isn't quite there. And you've got to be able to keep it alive, you know?

How do you keep it alive?

Because you feel nothing has changed. The injustice is there. I mean, look at someone like Martin Luther King, what he had to put up with constantly. Constant failures, constant rejection. Everybody, he dealt with so much envy, it was insane. Even people within the movement were constantly belittling and criticizing him. but he kept his eyes focused on the greater prize, the ultimate goal, which is what you want to focus on. But you have to use that energy or it's going to peter out because life will wear you away. You'll get older, you'll relax. You don't want to, you know, you don't want to have to spend so much time doing this, you know, and you, you get soft and the energy dries up and you need that energy every time I write a book. I'm starting from ground zero and I'm going, okay, Robert, what's going to motivate you? What's like something that really irritates you and it makes you angry and pissed off, right?

Yeah.

Okay. Because now feeling that you're going to get over that mountain of writing the book and you're going to feel every time you write a chapter, you're going to feel that emotional kind of thing in your gut and you're going to express it. But I'm not doing it for me. It's because I know it's going to help people. So for my new book, I'm really frustrated and irritated by how limited people are about their thinking. And I'm not blaming people because I have the same problem. It's like the world is this insanely awesome thing to be alive. Do you know what it means to be alive? Do you know how everything had to fall into, you know, go back to the Big Bang, which is what I'm writing about now. and all the little pieces that had to fall into place for life even to happen on Earth. And then for animals and then for a giant asteroid to hit Earth, you know, some 70 million years ago, so the dinosaurs are wiped out. None of this had you wouldn't be here, Lewis wouldn't be here if your parents hadn't met. So your life is like this insanely unlikely thing that ever happened. Do you know how awesome it is? Do you know how awesome it is to look out and see stars in the sky or things around you? and people are not. They're locked in their little banal worlds of social media, etc. They're not opening their minds up to what it means to really be alive and it makes me angry.

That's good.

So I'm gonna write the book.

What's the title of this book? Are you sharing that yet or no?

Yeah, the Law of the Sublime.

So it's about how we can think differently or how we can open our minds to possibilities?

Yeah, it's to reanimate your soul so you feel excited about things. So you feel like, you know, when you were a child, you were curious about so many things. You were open to so many experiences. Things were constantly wowing you. And then you become blasé and kind of cynical. And you don't want new experiences because they kind of mess with your familiar patterns. And then your life kind of closes and closes and closes. And the sublime is opening your mind up as far as possible, as wide as possible. And opening your mind and your spirit like that makes you more creative, makes you more energized, makes you a better human being, et cetera. And so I have to write a book with a sense of purpose. I don't write books for money. I swear on the Bible, I do not write books for money. The money comes in and I'm very happy. It's comfortable. But I don't write going, what's the most marketable book I can do next? It's like, what do I need to express in this moment?

What does sublime mean? What is the definition?

Well, you really want to get into the weeds there. It comes from the Latin word, sublimen, and there are several meanings of it, but the one that I like is the limen is what's called a threshold. It's like a door that leads from one place to another. Right? And sub means right up to. So sublime is right up to the limit. And the way I interpret it is, is that that door is death itself. On the other side is death. And so I draw a kind of, I have a metaphor, it'll be through in the book and on the COVID of a kind of a circle, right? And just, we tend to, our brains tend to work in these kind of conventional patterns, our minds, our thoughts, etc. right? And that circle is the limits that we will not go past. We will not think thoughts beyond that.

We'll stay in the circle. We won't go beyond it.

Right.

Just beyond it is this region of the sublime. And it goes in very different arrows. And each arrow is a chapter. But the main arrow is death itself. And when you go up to that door and you peer on the other side, you see something that's going to shake you up, that's going to transform you like it transformed me, right? You're going to realize how short your life is, how weird it is to be alive, the possibilities of what it means to actually die. Near-death experiences are pretty awesome, amazing things. People have had near-death experiences and they've been completely enlightened by them, right? And so that's the ultimate sublime experiences going up to that threshold of death itself. But there are other experiences that I'm going to be talking about as well.

I'm excited about that. That'll be fun. What about the, I think you mentioned in the laws of human nature, the first one, confront your dark side. What about the one you're thinking about more now that connects to you?

Well, obviously, the chapter on death. Not so much now, but right after my stroke, because that was the last chapter, chapter 18. I finished it pretty much in May of 2018, and I poured a lot of energy into it because I kind of think a lot about mortality, etc. And I really thought, and I did research, and I put a lot into it. And then two and a half months later, it happens.

After the book came out.

After I finished writing the book.

After you finished writing the book, it came out, yeah, gotcha.

Like, what is the irony there? The gods are somehow messing with me, right?

Yeah.

Because the fact that the stroke happened was like a series of chains of events that were pretty unlikely. So it was almost like fated to happen.

Right?

And so I had to reassess. All right, Robert, you wrote that. Is that really true? Is it really true that it alters how we look at other people? Yeah, it does. You were true. But what happened was the chapter was written from an intellectual position, and the experience was not intellectual. It was very real. So when I had my stroke and I was in the hospital and first days, I had this feeling in my stomach of almost like my bones melting, that they were soft, that the inside of my body was soft. And so I later thought that that is the feeling of death that's still in me, this feeling of softness. So death was no longer an idea. It was in my gut, it was in my viscera, it was a feeling. And so, you know, I had to think about that. And I actually did write that, that death is a feeling, it's not an idea. But here it was brought to me in an experiential way.

Wow. I think that experience you had is going to be very powerful for the next book.

I hope so.

Being able to share your experience of being on the brink of death.

Yeah, I'll tell you what, I'm going to mention this in the book, is I had planned on writing this book on the Sublime 14 years ago. It was to be the book I wrote after the war book. And then I got sidelined into different projects. And I had always had the idea when I did this that I was going to go have these incredible, sublime experiences. I was going to go travel to Antarctica to experience it. I was going to go paragliding. I was going to take boats in this area. I was going to... Of all these adventures, I was going to live my book and now I can't do anything. I can't do one fuck, I can barely even go outside the house. So what do I have to do? I have to live in my head. I have to imagine all of it. And I think it's a very good thing because if I had been able to just go around and have all these adventures, I'd look like this kind of privileged kid who could just use his money. But the readers are going to say, I can't go to Antarctica, you know? But everyone who's reading the book is going to be in my position, more or less. You don't have the money or the power to do all these things, but it's in your head, it's how you think about it. So it's altered how I'm going to write the book and how I think about the reader.

I think imagination has got to be one of the most powerful things we can have, the power of our imagination. What did Einstein say about imagination? Something that's more powerful than knowledge or something like that. It's what you were talking about earlier about being able to alchemize something, having an idea that then we can transmute into real life and creation. And I think it's hard to create something meaningful without having a meaningful imagination, which brings you back to being a curious mind from childhood and being able to express yourself and be curious.

Well, I mean, I look at it this way. You know, we're all going through a very difficult time now. A lot of people out there are really suffering. circumstances are very harsh, their work, etc. And the tendency is that you don't imagine what else it could be, what the future could be, what you could be doing with your life. So the lack of imagination is really holding you back. So the idea that I want to plant in people's brain with my next book and in general is things don't have to be the way they are. because you're in this situation in the present doesn't mean it has to be that way in two months or a year from now. There are other possibilities. Try and imagine a different path for your life in a year or what that could be like. Try and imagine a different relationship you can be in if you're stuck in something. But don't keep in this small little circle of thought. So imagination is extremely powerful and extremely important.

You mentioned Martin Luther King as someone you're really inspired by from the past. Who are the top two people that you've researched or written about in any of your books that you really connect with the most as an inspirational leader from the past or a human being?

Well, this person is a little bit more on the devilish side because I have to not act like I'm this, Mother Teresa here. And that would be Machiavelli. Machiavelli was the inspiration for the 48 Laws, somebody I've always loved because he's such a realist. He explains this is not how life should be. This is how life is. This is how people are. This is what the world is like. And when I was 17, I was 16 when I first read the Prince, I was like, wow, I didn't really understand the book. I go, wow, this is powerful. this is really talking to me, this is really saying what it's like with my friends in high school, etc. I could relate to his honesty because so many people are so dishonest. And I love him because he's a man of the Renaissance. People don't understand this about him. He wrote a hardcore book like the Prince, but he also wrote much more intellectual book like the Discourses. He also wrote one of the wickedest plays, comedies ever written in the history of theater, a play so sacrilegious that it shocked everyone at the time. And it's a very funny play called Mandragola. He was like a poet. He was a great seducer of women even though he was physically ugly. He was like a really weird guy. He was interesting. And I loved his stories, right? So he'd be one. And the other one would be from master was Leonardo da Vinci. I mean, these are from the same period. In fact, they probably crossed each other's path. But da Vinci, you know, he was like not human. He thought on a level that was so superior, that was so almost God-like that it fascinated me, you know? There's a theme that I have in my new book, people who are so far ahead of their time that it's uncanny. And I have examples in history of this. People who are 1,000, 500 years ahead of their time. How can that be? You know, is it just coincidence or what is it? And I'm fascinated by it. Well, he was doing drawings of military tanks, of flying planes, of, you know, all kinds of of elaborate technological devices that some have never even been invented, you know? And where did this come from? He was also like one of the first people in history who observed nature just for itself. He loved like plants and flowers and animals without thinking about God or religion. He was one of the first animal lovers in history. I'm an animal lover, right? I love any kind of animal.

You got cats, right?

I have cats, but I love dogs.

Two cats, right?

I have two cats. But I love horses, I love dogs, I love them all. He, people were so cruel to animals back then. Nobody had pets like that.

Yeah, just stray animals.

Cats were just there to kill rats, you know, et cetera. He would go in the marketplace in Florence where birds were being sold. He would buy them and open the cage and let them fly away. He had great empathy for other animals, creatures, who the church said didn't have a soul, but he believed that animals had souls and he was the first person really. So, I'm obsessed with people like that who were so far ahead of their time. He'd be the second guy. Wow.

Is there a woman from the past that you raised?

Cleopatra.

Cleopatra, why?

Well, because I wrote a book about seduction. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm obviously have a side to me that's very into seduction. I wouldn't have written the book, you know? And in my 20s, I was kind of a player, you know? I know it's hard to believe now, but I was. Yeah. I was a bit of a rake. And so. And Cleopatra was kind of like almost my ideal in a way. The one I read about. I haven't met her, obviously, but she was very smart. She was quite an intellectual. I've always been very attracted to very smart women, right? She was very well read. She had the Library of Alexandria there. She'd read all the Greek classics. She was a lot smarter than the men around her. She was a lot smarter than Marc Antony. I wouldn't say she was smarter than Julius Caesar, but she was his equal. And she was insanely good seductress. She was very theatrical. She knew how to create these insane spectacles. And what man wouldn't be impressed by that. You know, she knew that Mark Antony was like this kind of raging sensualist. So she seduces him by creating this insanely decadent barge that floats down the Nile River with all these weird animals on it and people fanning you with giant things and all gold and everything. You know, Mark Antony goes on a tour of all the cities on the Nile with the on this barge and he was totally seduced introduced. She was like constantly putting on this theater and believe it or not, she supposedly wasn't that beautiful. We don't have any images from her, but descriptions said that she had a bit of a nose, etc. But she had, her energy was really interesting, so that would probably be the woman of my choice.

What do you think is the greatest skill or a couple skills that any 20 to 30 year old kind of in their 20s should be to learning how to master today from the skills of psychology, the skills of human nature, the skills of understanding people. Which skill should that be?

The best thing is to be able to get inside the minds of other people. If you develop that skill, the sky's the limit. Nothing will ever stop you because people are like a mystery. They wear a mask. and you don't have any idea what they're thinking. And I have this metaphor in human nature which I never wrote, but imagine a device was created in which some app that you can unknow the thoughts and feelings of the other person. Do you know the power you would have?

Wow.

Be insane. Okay, you're not, I can't give you such an app. I can't invent that. But you can develop half of that power by becoming someone of insane empathy. And it's not easy and not everybody's born the same way, but it begins with a one very simple step and that is normally you go around more interested in your own thoughts and ideas. You're thinking about your boss, you're thinking about your girlfriend or boyfriend, you're thinking about this person who said this, that or the other and you're locked in your head and it's like a a record like in the old vinyl days going around and around and around the same grooves, right? And even when you're sitting there talking with someone on a date or something, you're thinking about yourself, you're still in there, right? Because you find yourself more interesting than the other person and it's very human, I'm not judging it, but inevitably you think your own dramas, your own ideas, your own problems are essentially more interesting than the person. So if that's the that's your starting position, you're naturally going to be more absorbed in yourself. You can just switch it around and you tell yourself the other person is more interesting than me. Their life, their thoughts, their ideas, it's like an undiscovered world. It's like going to Tahiti or something and visiting another culture. They have experiences you've never had. They have a world that's not your world. It's fascinating. Why do people love movies? They love movies because they get to go inside other people's characters and they get to vicariously live in them. It's voyeurism. You can have that in everyday life if you switch that thing where you're more interested in other people. And so when you listen to them, you're not listening with the idea of, do they like me? Are they thinking about me? What does it have to do with me? I'm sorry. that voice, but it's just... you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of a windy voice. What's it about me, me, me, me? Thinking just in a Zen way, absorb yourself in their words and their energy and think about what they're saying, what's the subtext behind them, what's the body language revealing, what is it that motivates them, what is their inner life like? I can't get inside Lewis Howes thoughts, it's impossible. but I can get inside your moods and emotions because we humans are very susceptible to the moods of other people. We can feel them. So I can start to, if I'm open enough, I can understand the tone in your voice. I can understand the subtext of what you're saying, and I could pick up the emotion behind it and what you're intending. And once I do that, well, then if someone says something, I don't have to take it personally. because now I understand that it probably comes from other things that have nothing to do with me.

Yeah.

Or I want them. I want to persuade them to help me on a project. Well, now I know what their world is like, what their spirit is, what their problems are. I'm going to mold what I'm saying to please to get them interested in my idea. Doors open up to you left, right, center. The whole universe opens up to you once you put. You're able to put yourself in the mindset. and the point of view of other people enter their spirit. That's the single greatest step you can have. So you're about to start your first job and you're all insecure and you're all worried about you and what people think about you. Try and make it's not easy, it's not natural. Try and make that switch and don't think about yourself and try and figure out what is your boss like? What is he or she? What are they? What is motivating them? What are their insecurities? What are their doubts? What is this person feeling that, and suddenly you're gonna navigate this social environment in a much different level.

I love this. This is powerful, I think. So to get in the minds of other people would be the greatest skill.

By far.

And the way to do that, I'm hearing you say, is through empathy, through asking interesting questions, through listening.

No, it's taking this one step, which is other people are more interesting than me. I love going to see movies. That other person is like Hannibal Lecter. I'm sorry. That's not. That's not a good choice. Sure. Could be, but. Or they're like this other character in some other movie. I don't know. Choose whichever one you want.

Right.

They're fast.

Beetlejuice. There you go.

Okay.

Wow. That was a long time ago. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just thinking of a fascinating character.

They're like that. They have. They have stories, they have drama, right? Their childhood was probably weird. They come from a culture, from a city, from a background that's not your city or background, and to try and understand it. Now, some people are harder to do that with than others. There are people out there who are like just total a**holes, and you don't really want to have to get into their world, right? You feel like you're getting yourself taking a shower of mud or something, or excrement or whatever. You don't want to get into their world. But even then, it pays if you've got a psychotic boss, it pays to get inside their mind so that you don't take things personally so you can understand where they come from. So even with horrible people, being able to understand who they are will prevent you from taking everything personally.

So having the understanding that other people are more interesting than me, having that framework in your mind allows you to look at them differently.

Or as interesting. Or as fascinating. They have stories to tell. They have a life that's fascinating. They're like a character in a movie. I want to understand it.

And asking questions allows you to understand it.

You have to be careful with questions because if you're so obvious, if you're going, Tell me about this.

Tell me about that.

Yeah.

So did you love your mother? Did your father be... They're like, yeah, why you ask me this?

Yeah.

So how do we get to know them without being intrusive?

Well, it's an art. So, you know, people love to talk about their childhood, right?

And their successes and yeah.

Yeah, but I found like childhood is the main thing. Everyone has this kind of emotional attachment to their experiences as a child, to where they grew up, to their parents, to their family, to their earliest friends. It's got all sorts of emotions surrounding it that are very potent and uncontrollable. So a very kind of slip in question about someone's childhood and then asking a few leading questions and letting them do the talking. So if you're at peppering them with questions, you look like a lawyer or.

Someone who's, or someone like me who just interviews people for a living.

Right. So you want them to do 90% of the time. 90% that it's obvious what you're doing. 80% or so people love to talk, right? If they do 70% of the talking, they're not even aware that they're doing that, but you're letting them talk, you're letting them be the star. But you find a foothold into what excites them and you get them to talk and open up about their childhood and then occasionally a question and then occasionally you go into your own life to sort of show, oh yeah, you had that, I had something very kind of similar. Mirroring people is a slightly manipulative trick. I don't doubt that and I talk about that in seduction, but it's very powerful. They're starting telling you things about their childhood that are powerful and you go, yeah, I had something very similar and you probably have had something similar. That's a really potent way of connecting to people. But you've got to be subtle. It's an art to getting people to talk and open up to finding that thing that lights their face up that gets them excited, you know?

Yeah, I think the book influenced by Cialdini. I don't know if you studied that book, but just likability allows you to is one of his main, I think it's seven or eight keys of influence, but he talks about likability. And the more someone can see that they like you through mirroring or through, we have one thing in common makes them like you more. So, finding that commonality, social proof, there's a bunch of other things. I can't remember all seven of them but yeah, likability is one of the biggest things. It's one of the reasons why I'm just always trying to have fun and just be playful and kind of ease the moment for people so they can feel like, oh, this is relaxing and fun and playful.

-Well, I must admit that's why you're a good interviewer and I know that because I've been with with many bad interviewers who are kind of tense and nervous and defensive and they're insecure, right? And they make you feel that way, but you have an energy that kind of brings out that part of, at least for me, that's good. That likes to yammer.

How does someone not be insecure? An interviewer, someone trying to get a job when they're doing an interview with their potential boss, When you're with someone who's you're inspired by or higher status or an influence position, how do you not be insecure or nervous?

Okay, one simple answer. I mean, there might be exceptions, but it's pretty simple. Do your homework. Be prepared. So, if you go into an interview, you're naturally nervous. But if you've prepared the out of it, you research that person, you know who they are, you know what the company is like, you know what the position is, why the other person was fired, what they're gonna need from you. You're gonna feel a lot less insecure than if you just kind of go in and wing it, right? Okay? So if you're on any kind of project, I talked in the war book about Alfred Hitchcock, the film director. And my wife is a film director. It's a nerve-wracking task. You've got an army of 80 people who are all and insecure and ego-ridden. They're all secretly hoping you fail.

So they can be the director, yeah.

It's a nightmare, right? And Hitchcock would like people were astonished. She'd be on the set. She'd be falling asleep. Oh, really? Okay, yeah, yeah, go ahead. He was like Buddha. He didn't care. He was never upset or anything. People, how could that be? Directors are the most nervous and bitter people. They're so control freaks. It's because he prepared every detail he knew beforehand.

Wow.

He knew every shot that he wanted, what the clothes look like, what the colors, how the framing would be. He storyboarded it in exact detail. And he said that by the time the film was being shot, I was bored because I knew everything that how it was supposed to be. So he could be calm because he was so well prepared. So if you do your homework, it's maybe not going to get rid of all your insecurities and all your nervousness. Yeah, a lot of them. Degree of nervousness is okay. because you have to understand the physiology. Adrenaline is a very powerful emotion and feeling a little bit of doubt and a little bit of fear will drive you and keep you awake and alert. So you don't want to be so confident that you'll just do anything. You want a little bit of tenseness. But if you prepare and you've anticipated the situation, it will get rid of 80% of those doubts that you have.

We were talking about before and I have a couple final questions for you. We were talking about before self-doubt before we started recording. And I'm curious your thoughts on doubt, doubting ourselves and how do we train our minds or our bodies or our life so that doubt doesn't keep us from accomplishing with what we want or keep us from trying something we want. Because I think a lot of people don't do something because they doubt themselves so much from the fear of failure or the fear of success or people judging them. What's your thoughts on this?

Well, the main thing is you have to try something, you have to do something, right? And of course, if you're full of doubt and insecurities, it's going to be very hard. And so what separates the person who is going to learn is on the way to success from somebody who won't will be that person who's 22, 23, they tries it, they do it. They take that job and they write that thing or they do that whatever it is that the other person maybe wouldn't try because they're not afraid of failing. Right? So a certain level of you can't control that because some people are born that way. I don't know if they're born that way, but something about them in their DNA has given them that drive. But if you don't have that drive, if you have your insecurities, understand pain is a very powerful motivating factor. But if you're 22 and you don't try something, you don't feel the pain. So why not? And then you're 23, then you're 24, you're not feeling pain. Then you're 28, you're still not feeling pain. Then you're 32, you're starting to feel a little depressed. And 35, man. And you're 40, you're picking up the bottle, you know, etc. Okay, so understand. that you're 22, that life is very difficult and that you're down a path towards something really, really bad unless you get your act together and try that first thing. Because what happens, people have studied fear, and it's very important. And I know back in 2001, I was in Vienna, Austria, and I was watching. I was in a theater. I was in the middle of this very packed audience, and there was a fire. and people were panicking and running around. And I got such a sense of claustrophobia. It killed, I was like, ah ha. And from then on, I couldn't get on an airplane. I couldn't get in an elevator. I was like developing major claustrophobia, right? And then I went, I saw a therapist and she said, you, got to expose yourself. You got to go back in that elevator.

So true.

You got to go back into that airplane. and then you realize it's not so bad and you'll get over it. But avoiding it, you'll never get over the fear. So take that first step, do whatever it is that you thought you couldn't do and don't be afraid because that is the most important moment in your life. And then you realize it's not so bad. Okay, people are making fun of me, I failed, but they never tried anything. I at least tried it and I have an idea for my next one. It wasn't so bad.

Right.

You know? But if you never make that first step, I don't care the wisdom of Solomon won't be able to help you, right? You'll always be stopping before you can. So you've got to be have the guts to make that first step and then the doors will open for you. It's what I'm hearing you say is.

It'S an experiential event. It's not a theory of, okay, let me think my way out of the fear or the insecurity or the doubt. It's like, no, I have to practice this in experience the feeling of, I failed or someone laughed at me or I tripped and fell, whatever it is, you've got to experience it.

You have a good way of summarizing what I'm saying because you said it better than I did.

Well, this is something I've been fascinated by because I think so many people are doubt themselves and their doubt is what keeps them from going after what they want, getting into the relationship they want, getting out of the relationship they want, you know, getting the job. all these things. And they're afraid of failure, they're afraid of success, and they're afraid of people's opinions or judgment when they take this action. And I tell people that the simplest thing you can do is write a list of your biggest fears and insecurities, circle the top one, the one that scares you the most, and then do that until you feel at peace with it, or at least you can brace it. Essentially become Batman of that fear and live with the bats of that fear, that insecurity.

That's a good way to do it.

Where then it becomes a powerful thing for you. And this is what I did in my teens and 20s from being terrified of public speaking. And I went to public speaking class every single week until I felt like, wow, I feel powerful up here, not powerless.

Right.

And I did it with so many different things that I was insecure about until they became skills as opposed to fears and insecurities. And so I love that you said you've got expose yourself to the fear. You've got to re-go into the elevator or go back to that theater that had the fire and breathe and feel comfortable so you can live your life.

And then we go back to the thought about, you know, that question, could it have been worse?

Yeah.

Well, think of it this way. If you don't try that thing, it's going to be a lot worse for you down the road. You're going to never get anywhere and. And you're gonna feed the pain. will be intense in 15 years. You're not feeling it now, but have that hindsight to realize that the worst thing in life, the worst feeling of all, is the feeling you wasted your potential. That you had dreams and you never even tried them and then you're in your 50s, your 60s, you're facing death. Why was I alive? I didn't do it. I could have done this, that or that. Never even tried. Remind yourself of that. You know, they used to have emperors in ancient Rome would have a slave walking by them and whispering into their ear, you,'re going to die, you're mortal, you might die tomorrow, you might die tomorrow.

Right?

And that was like a reminder of their mortality and that they had to.

Not get so... Wasn't that a story from Marcus Aurelius where he had someone talk to him and say, you,'re just a man or something?

That might be.

Was that who it was? I can't remember, but someone had someone just say every day you're just a man.

Right.

The more powerful he became to kind of keep him more grounded.

Right.

You're just a man or you're going to die.

Or just have that whisper, you're gonna fail. You're gonna, you're gonna be, you're not gonna realize your dreams. You're gonna waste your life. You're wasting your life. You're wasting your life. You're wasting your life. You don't want to feel that way. I know, like, it's hard to It's coming from a position of privilege and I don't deny that. But I was not, I didn't have anybody help me. All my success was pretty much on my own. I worked really hard. But I can tell you this, that prior to my success, I was really unhappy. I was really unhappy. I was very depressed. I even had moments I was suicidal. I felt like I could do something but I wasn't able to do it. And then The ability to write my books now, I don't have that feeling anymore. And it's the greatest thing in the world to not ever feel like, you know, that doubt and that depression. It's like a constant exhilaration.

It's amazing.

I finished it. I wrote that book. I did it. You know, I can feel good about myself. And I want other people to understand that. You may not, it doesn't have to be a grand project. but it has to be something that makes you feel like, you know, because when you're a child, you have these dreams, everybody has these dreams. You're gonna be the best basketball player in history, like me, like I thought I was. Right.

You know, the Jewish kid's gonna be.

A great basketball player. Okay. You know, or I'm gonna be the best this, I'm gonna be a great writer, I'm gonna be blah, blah, blah. And then you get older and you lose those dreams, and it's very depressing, it's very debilitating. and you want to keep some of that child within you alive and some of that ambition, some of that desire to achieve something great. And having ambition is not a bad thing. It's a dirty word today because people think it means you're selfish. But your ambitions can be towards achieving things that help people as well.

What's the greatest fear for you now that you haven't yet conquered or overcome or insecurity that you're still dealing with?

I don't know, Lois. You know, I have, believe it or not, a tremendous fear of failure.

Still, after all these massive hits and millions of book sales, and every time.

You get a-- I'm neurotic and I don't deny it.

Every book is a hit and just changes lives.

Well, it's because, I don't know if it's from my background, I'd come home with straight A's and my parents would go, Eh, okay, so what? What's next? Okay, so it's instilled in me some way. I don't know why, but... So I'm writing my new book, my first chapter, and I'm going, this isn't working. It's too intellectual. It's not going to hit people. It's not relevant to their lives. I have to change it. I have to change it. If I write the book like this, people are going to laugh at me. And I go through that every single time in every single book. Now, I'm able, it's kind of a split personality because in the back of my mind, I know I'm kind of playing a game. But I still play the game and it keeps me motivated and it keeps me working. So I must say, I'm still deathly afraid of failing my readers and of them being disappointed in me going, I thought Robert was this great writer. Look, he's put out this s***. What's wrong with him? He's getting old and soft. I'm still afraid of that.

Wow.

Well, I guess that's why you keep showing up, keep creating. To help you overcome that fear.

Being invited back to this house.

That's it.

That's it.

This has been powerful and I think a lot of people are gonna love this. I want them to, if you're listening right now and something inspired you or you're watching, make sure to send a tweet to Robert Greene, let him know what you enjoyed about this or on Instagram, Robert Greene official, post a story tag Robert so he can see it, even though I'm not sure how active you are on Instagram. But someone's watching there, so you'll get the information and the laws of human nature on Facebook. If you don't have all of Robert's books, make sure to get them right now and also get on your newsletter. I think you have a newsletter, right? Where they can opt in for when the future book comes out. I'm not sure if Ryan probably manages all that for you still, but go to your website which is... PowerSeductionandWar.com the and spilled out. And war.com, go there, get on his newsletter or just go check it every month because the book's coming out hopefully in the next couple of years. But this is going to be your best book yet. I'm already declaring it. I hope so. I'm declaring it because I know you're not going to let yourself down or people who read it down.

You're that neurotic. I am that neurotic. You're that neurotic.

I sure as hell am and I don't deny it. You've got some other interviews we've had on our show. We'll link those up in the show notes if you want to hear Robert's definition of greatness and his three truths, you can go listen to those. Final question for you. What's the question you wish more people would ask you that they don't ask you?

I don't really have, you know, when people put you on the spot like that, you have to be like so quick-witted. I'm not kind of a slow brain.

Is there anything you wish more people would would have discussions about that they don't with you?

Well.

I don't know. I mean, you know, I'm kind of really into the zeitgeist. I wrote a chapter about that in human nature, about the times that we're living through. You know, I tend people tend to think that I'm just interested in individuals and psychology now, but I'm also very interested in our culture. and our society and how it fits into the larger scheme of history. So sometimes people don't ask me so much about that chapter and about what do you think is going on right now in the world today? Where are we? What is the moment that we're in? And how does it compare in the past? Because I've read a lot of history. I'm not bragging because it probably led to my stroke, to be honest with you. You know, thousands of books. and so I have this innate sense of patterns of history, of things that repeat, of things, you know, people go through certain crises. And so it makes me very attuned to the spirit, to the feeling in the air now. So, you know, what do you think.

Is going to happen in the next few years based on history in two minutes? The overview of what you've experienced from all the historical events to what we're facing right now.

Well, I think the human spirit can't deal with too much stagnation. Can't deal with... So on the one hand, we're afraid of change. On the other hand, we're deadly afraid of boredom and stagnation. And things have been stagnant for too long. And we're on the verge of what I think could be a revolutionary generation. It's not carved in stone because social media has kind of disrupted the apple cart, so to speak. but young people are the motors of change in this world. They will create culture, they will create new movements, they will keep the world alive because they enter the world and the world doesn't fit who they are because it was created by boomers or whomever. So they want to mold the world into something that's more like them. So they're the motors of all the changes, all the trends in fashion, all the trends in the arts, in politics, et cetera. But things have been too static for a long time. We live in a situation where the politics and the structures have not really shifted in 50 years. They're ossified. And so I think this human spirit is sick of it. If I were 20 years old, I would be sick of it. I would say, this is not the world that I want to live in. And so I feel like there's going to be an outbreak at some point where people are going to say, I want to live. I want something more alive. I don't want this world is so unequal. I'm somebody who rants against inequalities of wealth, et cetera, and just the kind of rigid social framework that we're living in. I think there will be an outburst. I'm not Nostradamus, so I could be wrong. In five years, people might be laughing at me. But I sense, and other people have written who write about the generational phenomenon, say that the millennials were the crisis generation. And that's always followed by the revolutionary generation, which would be the generation Y or whatever you call them.

Wow.

Or Z. Generation Z.

How should we be preparing ourselves if this comes true? What can we do now for the next couple of years to prepare ourselves?

Well, embrace it. Embrace it. I did a podcast about it and a lot of people were upset going, well, you know, revolutions I mean, come on, look at the Soviet Union or communist China. Revolutions are bad. They're ugly. Look at that. And my response is change is the healthiest thing that can happen, right? Even if it's a change for the worse, it's okay because humans need a vitality. We need things that are different. We need a different landscape, social landscape around us, right? So welcome it. Don't be a defensive little rat who's got to live in their own little hole. and everything has to be the same. The world is changing. It will change without whether you like it or not. Technology will change your world, whether you like it or not. Young people will change the world, whether you like it or not. So it's a lot better to embrace it and feel excited about the opportunities that are coming out. Because if you look at the, just take it from the business point of view, it's a devastated, it's like a hurricane happening. All the businesses that are gone, the entertainment industry, the travel industry, They're devastated.

-Restaurant industry, yeah.

-What happens when that new things are going to spring up, new ideas are going to spring up. There's going to be new ways. I think the future for that kind of world is going to be giving people experiences because they've been locked up in their house for a year. So, like you go to a hotel or a restaurant, you want to give people a little bit of an experience. It's not just something so flat and like on social media, so people feel more alive. There's going to be opportunities you're not even aware of. So be open to the change and be excited about it. That's the main thing to prepare yourself for.

Robert, thank you for always opening up and being honest and real. Every time you come on, thanks for being episode one and now 1000 something. Hope you come back on many other times.

2000 or something.

2000, yeah. Hopefully we'll come back on before then. But your next book will have you back on for sure. If you guys want to hear more about Robert's ideas on the Zeitgeist and what's happening in culture, then let me know and maybe we'll bring you back on sooner in the next six months after the election and everything to see what do you think is going to be happening moving forward and what we can do about it. Robert, thank you so much for this.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, man.

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Make sure to check out previous episodes. You can check out all the show notes over there as well. And we've got some incredible guests coming up here very soon. We just want to keep bringing you the best of the best in the world.

And I want to leave you with.

This quote from Seneca. Fire tests gold. Suffering tests brave men. I don't care where you're at in the world. But when we go through some type of adversity, we have two places we can go next. We can stay in suffering or we can choose to set ourselves free by embracing it, accepting it, learning from it, and improving, changing ourselves for the better. I want to remind you if no.

One'S told you today that you are.

Loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.