713 Master the Laws of Human Nature with Robert Greene

This is episode number 713 with number one New York Times best-selling author, Robert Greene. 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. Oprah Winfrey said, the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude. Winston Churchill said, Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. We are blessed to have the one and only Robert Greene in the house today who is going to share a lot and this might be one of the most powerful and informative interviews of a long time because we're talking about the laws of human nature. And the key to life is relationships, the relationships you have with other people around you and the relationship you have with yourself. And if we do not understand how to master those relationships, we will never achieve what we desire in our lives. We need people in our life to achieve and accomplish and make certain things happen. And if we show up in a way that is not convincing and if we don't understand where other people are coming from, then we are missing out on a huge part of life. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert or somewhere in the middle, all of this will be relevant for you and could transform the way everything is done in your life moving forward. And if you don't know who Robert Greene is, he is the number one New York Times bestselling author and known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He's written five international bestsellers, the 48 Laws of Power, which is a mega hit, 2 million copies sold. The Art of Seduction, the 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law, and Mastery. And now he has a new book called the Laws of Human Nature. And I'm telling you guys, I'm looking through this right now. and I'm circling and underlining so many things. It's a game changer. It's like the Bible of understanding how humans think and act. And addition to having a massive following within the business world and a deep following within Washington, DC, his books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest musicians and artists in the world, including Jay-Z, Drake, and 50 Cent, who are all massive fans of Robert Greene. And in this interview, we talk about How we can build masterpieces in our life's work without sacrificing health? And is that possible? Robert just had a stroke two months prior and we dive in and talk about how he went so hard on writing this book that he believes part of it was causing this stroke where he now has to recover and we dive into that. We also talk about how do we really determine someone's character? How can you see behind the mask and figure out if someone has a strong character or not? The quality of listening that you need to do in order to form the most powerful relationships in the world and why most of us are not really listening at all. Also, learning how to accept and understand others instead of just judging people. And a small hint here, if you want people to do anything you want them to do, you can't judge them. We cover the difference between manipulation and persuasion and really we go over the five strategies for becoming a master persuader. this section of the interview is going to blow you away. We talk about understanding your shadow self and how you need to have a dark side and so much more. This is blowing me away. I'm so excited for you to listen to this one. Make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com/713. Tag me on Instagram when you're listening to it right now so I can connect with you because I believe you're going to be nodding your head throughout this entire time saying aha a lot of the time and freaking out about what you're going to about yourself and the people around you. This was backed with five years of research and so many ideas for you to get out of this. I'm super pumped for this. Let me know what you think. All right, guys, a big thank you to our sponsor. And again, I'm super pumped about this. So without further Ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Robert Green.

Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have Robert Greene in the house.

Good to see you, my friend.

So good to see you, Louis. You are one of the most influential writers of the last two decades with your books, 48 Laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law, Mastery, Art of Seduction, and now the Laws of Human Nature, which is going to be a massive hit. Make sure you guys get this book. And probably your best work in your mind ever, right? Do you think this is your best work?

It's hard to say. It's like choosing between your children, which is your favorite child, you know?

Right.

It's the latest. So it is, you know, I'm very proud of it. But the thing was, I've been for 20 years, over 20 years, been writing these books. So massive amounts of research and reading, but also consulting work with people in business and other areas. So I've gathered a lot of intelligence or knowledge about people and what makes them tick. And I've seen a lot of mistakes that I've made and other people have made. So this is sort of the distillation of all of my years of research and all the things I've experienced.

Wow.

Yeah.

Where's your biggest insecurity in your life? Whether it be when you first started writing books, you know, 20 years ago to where it is now?

Well, I'm very insecure. Like, yeah, but I try and turn it into something positive, meaning when I finish a book, I don't really know if it's that good or if it's gonna be successful. I'm very worried that I'm not connecting to the reader, to the audience. And so what that does for me is I never kind of rest. I'm never comfortable. I never assume, wow, this is a masterpiece. It's gonna do really well. And so when I'm writing the book, and it's been in all my books, I'm thinking very, very deeply about the reader. How's the reader going to assimilate this information? Will it help him or her? Will it strike a chord? Will it resonate with their life? Will they think of people that they know? So I'm trying to connect very, very deeply to the reader because I'm insecure, because I don't take them for granted. I think where a lot of writers and people go wrong is they believe in their own myth. They believe that what they've written is so good or that they don't have to make that effort to connect to people. You know, a lot of professors or experts or people who are in a very specific field, they assume that their knowledge is, you know, that other people know what they know. And they kind of talk down to the reader. And I never try to talk down to the reader. I try to elevate the The conversation.

Right.

And what would you say is your main insecurity? Is it a fear of judgment that people may not like your writing or they may not like you or that you're not good enough or what's the-.

Probably all of it.

All of it, yeah.

Yeah.

I kind of grew up that way. My parents were not the type to coddle me or to say, you,'re great, Robert. Or if I came home with straight A's, it's like, ha ha. So what?

They didn't care that much. Oh, wow.

Even if you got a good score. They cared, but oh, you can always do better.

Even if you got a perfect score.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Could have done it faster. You could have done, yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of a Jewish thing, I have to say. So I never felt secure about my work. Maybe when I was younger, I tried to write, I tried many different forms of writing. I tried writing novels. And I think in my 20s, I was a little more grandiose. I believed that what I was writing was really great and it wasn't, it kind of sucked. So it's been a process of also getting over that kind of youthful exuberance and taking more time and thinking more deeply about what you're doing. But I have a lot of insecurities. I mean, that's one of them.

And you talked about detaching from our emotions. Is there more value in detaching from our emotions? or because we are emotional and insecure, we create better work by holding onto those emotions?

Well, that's a great question.

If you didn't care, do you think these books would be as good as they are?

Well, probably the source, to get back to your first question, the source of my insecurity is I kind of have a desire to please people. to impress them. I'm just being very honest here. And this probably went back to very early on, so I've always wanted to get the best grades and be the best pupil in the class. But there's a weakness in that. It seems great. You're getting straight A's, you're doing well in sports, etc. But there's actually an insecurity of a self-doubt where you're trying to please people and maybe you go a little extra hard. So in that sense, Compensating for your insecurities in that way can be a positive thing. So my insecurity by itself could destroy me and that I would never get the effort up to write a book or do something.

It would hold you back from putting it out.

Yeah, because if I doubt myself, maybe it's better never to try anything. A lot of young people have this problem. They have a negative attitude where they think that, well, if I don't do anything, if I just be a slacker, at least I won't fail and I can kind of make myself feel better that I'm the best slacker that there is. If you don't try too hard, you're never going to fail. You're never going to have the pain of failure. So that's the negative side of insecurity. But it can also motivate you to try even harder, to actually get work done and to make it something really great and to doubt yourself constantly, which is how I kind of use that. Right.

Using the doubt to push yourself to put out better work?

Yeah, I mean, it probably, you know, I had a, we can get to this, I had a stroke a couple months ago. Probably is what led to this and is not a necessarily good thing, but I worked so hard on this book.

Five years, five years. Obsessing over it, every word, every sentence.

Yeah, yeah, and I was thinking, how can I make this more accessible? 'Cause a lot of the information I had was from kind of heavy sources, like psychologists, people who were psychoanalysts who've studied human nature very deeply, and they use a lot of jargon and you can't really figure out exactly what they're saying. And I want to make it readable for the average reader out there. So the effort of constantly trying to connect to people is, I think, comes from an insecurity, but it's turned into something positive.

Yeah.

This is a great question. I never had, never been asked this before.

Do you feel like it's worth putting out these books that reach millions of people at the detriment of potential health challenges?

Yeah.

I mean, if you asked me, if I could have a choice of not writing the book and never having this physical problem, I would have chosen writing the book.

Really?

For sure.

Why is that?

Because I may be physically crippled a little bit and I'll get over it. But I have this for the rest of my life. I can feel really good about myself. I could die tomorrow and I know that I wrote what I wanted to create. I expressed what my life was meant to express. So that's a great feeling that even in the worst depression I could have with my body not responding the way I want, I can feel a great deal of pride that I actually got this thing done and it didn't kill me.

Is there a way to create masterpieces without doing that? And staying healthy and peaceful in your mind.

Well, you know, you'd think I would have because I exercise every day.

You swim?

I swim. I mean, I'm a fanatic. Even now with my stroke, I'm exercising every day aerobically. And eat well and I meditate. And I do everything right. But it still led to this. Yeah, it's a good question. I think my next book, because I am getting older and this happened, I'm going to have to find a better way to do it a little bit. To still write something shorter with a lot of work, but not maybe take five years.

Right, take a year and a half, two years, maybe three years.

Three years, maybe two, three years, yeah.

Yeah, wow. So you're already thinking about the next book.

Yeah, in the ambulance on the way home from the hospital, I had an idea for my next book.

Really? What was that?

Well, it's very primitive. I've not really totally developed it. But it's about how the bad things in life, how negative things are actually, I mean, it's similar to Ryan's book, but it's a different spin on it. How you actually learn more from negative than the positive.

Yeah.

Like you learn, I thought in the ambulance back home, I thought of all of the people I knew who handle adversity terribly. I'm not gonna name names.

Sure, sure.

Some of them are related to me.

Sure.

Who handle adversity really badly. And I thought, I don't wanna be them. And as I thought about that, I thought, there's something interesting in that thought, like who I don't wanna be. We never think like that. but it's actually very interesting. And it's also getting in touch with learning from your bad experiences, but also it's kind of a book about negativity. And I know that sounds really bad and negative.

Sure, sure.

But how we're so attached to what we see in life, to what's in front of us, to what the appearances people have, to their masks they wear. And I want you to think of what isn't there, what you're not seeing, what's invisible. I kind of go into it in the chapter about generations and trends in society. And all my books, I'm trying to tell people, don't accept what you see with your eyes. Look for something deeper. What is the meaning behind this? If you're planning a strategy or making a big decision in your life, what is it that you're not considering? So it's kind of about negative space. I know it's very primitive, but I can promise you I'll turn it into something beautiful.

It should be beautiful, yeah. Well, in sports, they always talk about.

You know, you learn more from your.

Losses than your wins. That's right. Everything's fine when you win. You're like, ah, everything's forgiven. That's right.

Like, let's just keep doing it. When you're losing, that's when you're like, okay, we evaluate everything.

That's right.

And you know, some people don't. So people know how to do that, but that's how you have to profit from your losses. I do that with things I've written that didn't quite work out. I've written books that I had to completely rewrite that were dead ends. Like the 50 Cent book, I had a version of that book that we did together that wasn't working at all. And I learned a lot from what I did wrong there. I learned, for instance, the problem of that book in its first version was that I wasn't being myself. I was trying to please him more. and I've learned to always sort of be myself, but I had to learn that by trying to be someone else. So that sort of is what you're talking about.

Interesting, yeah. In this book, I think this is fascinating. You have all these different laws about human nature and understanding why humans do the things they do, why they think, why they feel a certain way. And you talk about determining the strength of people's character How do we understand the strength of someone's character? Whether they're toxic, whether they have high values, besides the things that we can see of like, okay, they broke their word or they're negative or things like that. How do we really determine someone's character?

Well, the first thing you have to do, the most important thing is to realize that determining people's character is the most important thing that you have to do in judging them. So normally we think if someone's very charming that that's great or if they're really good looking or if they're very successful. So if we're looking, let's say we're looking for a business partner or a romantic partner or a colleague to work with, we're gonna base our decision on those kinds of appearances. Like people can be very good at deceiving you with being very charming and flattering or they have a brilliant resume and you'll be seduced by that. And what you want to do, the first step in that law is to say, no, that's not how I'm going to judge people. My main value is their character and the strength of their character. And character is something from deep, deep, deep within. The word character comes from the Greek kharaktēr, which means to carve. And character is something really deeply carved inside the person. It's who they are at their core. It creates patterns of behavior that they can't even really control. It's who they are genetically. It's who they are from the early values of their parents. So you want to connect to that. You want to see that. It's not immediately visible to you because people will disguise their character. You want to see that and you want to value it more than anything else. And what you want are people with strong character. And what that means is people, they have an expression for metal. They call it tensile. where a metal is stronger if it can give a little bit, because if something is too rigid, it breaks. So you want people who are adaptable, who can be fluid, who aren't weak, because that metal isn't weak, who have an inner strength and a core to them, but they can bend, they can learn, they can adapt, they can change. You want to see people who are empathetic, you know, who know how to get along with other people, So, if you have two people to choose and one has a glittering resume, but the other person understands human nature and is superior in a social sense and can also has a good work ethic, you choose that other person. You do not choose necessarily the person with that glittering resume. One of the things you look for are patterns in judging their character. Because people reveal themselves in the past. They reveal who they are through their actions. They try and disguise it, but they reveal it. So I say in that chapter, Nobody ever does anything once. So let's say you have a friend who does something kind of nasty to you. They talk behind your back. Then they'll say, oh, Robert, Robert, that was just, something came over. That is not me. I am sorry about that. That just happened. Circumstances made me do that. And you will be likely to believe them. But the fact is, if they've done that once, they've probably done it many times. If people gossip, and you hear them gossiping about other people, they'll probably eventually gossip about you. So you want to be able to look at people's patterns and look at their past and see trends and understand that if they've done certain things in the past, they will continue to do them because we humans have compulsive behavior. We are compelled to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again.

How do we stop that pattern? If we recognize it within ourselves, my character's been off. I've been doing something for years a certain way that I don't want to do anymore. How do we do it so we can strengthen our character, but also say, you know what? I believe this other person can have a stronger character through breaking a pattern, or is it just not possible?

Of course it is possible. At the end of every chapter, I show you how you can turn this potentially negative quality into a positive quality. So, when it comes to you and your own patterns, you have to first realize that you have these patterns before you can even begin to break them.

-So awareness.

-Yeah, honesty. This is a book about awareness and being honest with yourself. If you do not admit that you have these patterns and you can not possibly break them, I know in writing books, I have terrible, terrible patterns.

Like what?

Well, stressing so much over things that aren't that important.

Obsessing, stressing, yeah.

Obsessing. I take note cards for everything that I read, all my research. And I take way too much information. I have like thousands of them. I'm writing, I have to stop and I say, Stop being such a perfectionist. It's like you're wasting your time. It's been book after book after book. I'm very aware of it and I'm very aware of breaking that pattern. But you have to see it and be honest with yourself in order to break it. So that's the first step, is seeing the pattern and then not struggling against it, not trying to be somebody who you're not, but finding a way to use that pattern, to use that problem to your advantage, similar to what Ryan Holiday wrote in his book, the Obstacle is the Way. I have an example in the book of an actress, Joan Crawford, from the Hollywood classical period. And she had a very troubled childhood. Didn't know her father, her mother beat her, men abused her, et cetera. And she managed to take, and it was creating terrible patterns in her life. And she found a way to turn that around, to use all of those disadvantages and make herself a much stronger and very powerful performer. by bringing all of the pain in her childhood into her acting, by becoming so focused on the director, because she had been abused, she was very sensitive to other people. She used that sensitivity to focus on the director and other actors to be in tune with them.

To connect with them, to build relationship, is that essentially?

Yeah.

She was very aware of her own weaknesses and her own fragility, and she was able to use that as a strength. So with other people, it's never hopeless. I mean, some people are toxic. I talk a lot about toxic characters. Those are the kinds of people who can't really change. Their patterns are too ingrained. And we've all met people like that. We've all had to deal with a narcissist who's so deeply self-absorbed. There's nothing that's ever gonna save them or pull them out of that self-absorption.

Unless they have a near-death experience or they have someone close to them, It's like a big awakening.

That's true.

Or they get sick or whatever, right?

You're right, that happens. That does happen.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it does. But you have to be honest that there are people out there, you can't be naive. There are people out there who are toxic, who are dangerous, who can ruin your life. You hire the wrong person. And I've dealt with a lot of, in my consulting, with a lot of people who hired a business partner who ended up sort of taking the business from them. very common scenario. You have to not be naive and recognize these toxic types. And often it's best not to try and change them because trying to change them entangles you in a lot of their drama.

And it just, it's just never gonna happen. You might be trying for years and wasting your time and energy.

But, you know, people have to be able to change themselves. They have to be motivated. You can help illuminates some of their patterns and their problems. But it has to come from within.

Now you talk about the law of self-sabotage. And self-sabotage ourselves by attracting toxic people, but also what are other ways that we sabotage ourselves?

Well, this is a chapter about your attitude in life. The point of that chapter is related to human nature. is none of us see the world in the same way. So you and I could go watch a movie. It's the same movie that we're watching. I love it. I see something. You hate it. You see something else. You don't experience it the same way. We're watching the same world, the same reality, but we experience it differently. Everybody you meet is experiencing their world differently than you are. So you have an attitude that colors what you see. And some people have an attitude that tends towards the negative. And I describe a negative attitude as something that's closed. So you're not open to new experience. You're trying to close that lens. You have certain beliefs, certain ideas about life, and you're not willing to change them, right? Because that gives you a sense of security. And so you want an attitude that's expansive. where you accept people, you're not always judging them, you're not negative about them, you understand that people can't necessarily help who they are, you're open to change, you're open to having adventure, and that kind of attitude kind of gives you a certain degree of freedom, so that the worst thing that happened to you and you're able to transform that into something good. So your question was, how do we.

Recognize when we're sabotaging ourselves and what's the things we do most to self-sabotage?

Well, if we have a setback or a failure in life, which is inevitable, do we do one of two things? Do we analyze ourselves and see what we did wrong and how we could change ourselves, or do we immediately look outward and blame other people? that person screwed me. Society doesn't like me. Because of these circumstances, I'm screwed and I can never help it. It's the world, it's not me. That's a self-sabotaging pattern of behavior. Because if you're always pointing fingers at other people and blaming them, you're never going to learn from your experiences and you're going to end up being quite bitter. So that's probably one of the main sources of a self-sabotaging So, you could.

Easily say this stupid bee that stung my neck that caused this blood clot and this high pressure in me, I blame the bee for this stroke that I have. Screw you, bee. Or, you could take responsibility and say, well, what did I do to my health leading up to the bee sting for years and taking full ownership and responsibility. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, that's what you're hearing.

Yeah. the story and the perception around the experience, the way you see that movie playing out, having a positive attitude around.

It, being and reflecting about the role that you played in what happened. So we're not in charge of everything that happens in life. There are circumstances that are beyond our control, right? But a lot of what does happen to us is something that we are responsible for. There are amazing studies about the role of attitude and what happens to you in life. So they have this thing called the Pygmalion Effect. Teachers who treat a student as if they are smart and gonna do well, those students end up doing well. So how you treat people, how you think about yourself has a great impact on what happens to you. When doctors prescribe a new medication, There's always the same trend that a new medication has been invented. The success rate is like 80%. Because people believe in it because it's new. And then, like two years later, it starts going down. Really? It's not, yeah. It's a placebo effect. So if you believe something is going to work, if you believe that you are great and you deserve good things, that you are a good student, you will end up making those things happen. so how you look at yourself will often determine what ends up happening to yourself. So if you're talking about what causes self-sabotage, if you go through life thinking, God, I'm not really that good. There's something wrong with me. I don't really deserve good things. I don't deserve to have a lot of success or to have a lot of money. People read that off of you. A major theme in this book is that We are masters at reading people's body language and nonverbal behavior. So when somebody feels that they do not deserve things, it is kind of an off-putting quality in them, and it pushes people away. So you create self-fulfilling dynamics by how you look at yourself and your attitude. I had a chapter in the 48 Laws of Power called, Think Like a King to Be Treated Like One. And there's a story of Christopher Columbus, who came from dirt-poor poverty, but imagined that he was royalty. And by imagining that, people started treating him like that. And as they treated him like that, he felt even more kind of greater about himself. And he was able to convince the king of Portugal to give him these ships, when in fact he was sort of a mediocre admiral captain. So your attitude and how you think about yourself sort of determine how people treat you and what happens in life.

Yeah, I always say that we're either, life's an enrollment game and we're either enrolling people in our vision or unenrolling people by the way we're showing up our energy, our language, what we're not--.

What do you mean by enrolling?

I'm enrolling you to come on my show and getting you to come on my show because of the energy I put out, the relationship we have, the connection, the platform. or I'm unenrolling you by the way I've treated you over the last six or seven years, but the platform being out of integrity or not doing that well, they're not gonna be as excited to want to say yes. We're influencing people all the time.

You are influencing people all the time.

In a positive or negative way, right?

Yes, everything you do, people are reading and they're either saying, I like that or I don't like that, or I'm indifferent.

Yes is like, I'm enrolling you, yes, or I'm not enrolling you, as a no. And you talk about the, you know, the chapter that I really like is.

About- GT: Seven, number seven.

Where are we at here? The persuasive one.

Yeah, seven.

Is that one? Yeah, right here. The five strategies to becoming a master persuader. This one? Yeah, right here, seven, yeah.

Well, you, Louis, don't need to read that chapter because you already have that kind of mastered.

But I think people need to understand this because I think what we just talked about right there is probably one of the most powerful parts of this whole book in my mind and in life is, are you enrolling people in your vision, in being the king or queen, in getting the ships that you want? Are you stepping up and enrolling people and getting people to say yes to you or your dreams or hire you or date you or marry you? Or are you not showing up in a way that people want to say yes to you?

Right.

And I feel like, key question. My whole business has been built on getting people to say yes when I had nothing. You know, I was on my sister's couch 10 years ago. No money, no skills, no degree. And it was an energy that I had to learn how to just get people to say yes. And then the more and then building momentum around that. So I'd love to talk about this becoming a master persuader. And the first thing you talk about is, which I think most people aren't doing, you say is to deepen your listening. and to be a better listener. Most people don't have the patience to care about someone else. They're so concerned about what they think about them.

Well, people always talk about being a better listener and their advice is usually very weak. I mean, it is ineffective because, okay, I've become a better listener. Yeah, I'll try that, but it's very hard to overcome certain patterns. So I tried to tackle the question of, why is it that you're not a good listener? And at the root of that is you're more interested in yourself than you are in the other person. You won't deny that. You will say, oh, no, no, no, that's not me. That's not me. I really like people. But the truth is you're more interested in your own thoughts and your own ideas, things that you're so certain about, your own experiences, than about that other person and what they're saying and what's going on inside them. If you can flip that around, if you can actually feel the motivation to get inside Lewis and get inside his head and his experience, then you will suddenly will become a better listener. That's the key, not just telling people to listen more. The key is the quality of the listening and the emotion involved. So if I feel I want to get inside that other person inside their life, then suddenly you will start listening. What will make you interested in other people? Well, first offers the idea you don't know them. Normally, when you're, let's say you're on a first date with someone or you're just meeting someone, you have assumptions about them. You create a simplified version of who they are and that's what you think, you know, and that'll stay with you forever. Instead, you want to think that person is more interesting than I imagine. Their first appearance isn't really who they are. They're like a book that I could read. We love going to movies and getting inside other characters and what motivates them, being taken along for a ride. Think of the people that you meet in life as a character in a movie. You want to know what motivates them. They are more interesting than you think. They've had traumas, they've had problems from their early childhood. They have fantasies. They have a shadow, a dark side to their personality they're not revealing. They're more complicated and interesting. than you think. So if you're motivated to understand what makes them tick their experience, suddenly you will start listening.

Yeah.

So that's the key to me. And it's not easy.

Why is it so hard for people? Because for me, it's. It's been an easy thing because I've used my insecurity of not feeling like I was smart enough growing up because I was one of the poorest students in school.

Yeah.

So I was like, My voice doesn't matter as much. Let me just ask smart people what they think. And it became a huge advantage for me because I've learned that being the most interested person in the room, you become the most interesting.

Well, the key is really so much in the book is, Are you motivated to change yourself? Do you want to become successful in life? This book is trying to realign your priorities and how you look at the world. Normally, your focus is on yourself and on your work and the techniques in your work, you know, the skills you have to master. And I'm telling you, the key to success in life is people. We're a social animal. We're like dogs or wolves or whatever, chimpanzees. We're a social animal. And how we interact with people will determine how far we get. You can be brilliant at hacking computers or whatever, but if you're terrible with people, your life is going to be hell. So are you motivated to become somebody supremely skilled at understanding and working with people? That's the whole point of the book. You have to buy into that. You have to buy into the fact that you're usually bad at dealing with people. You're not seeing who they are. You're seeing reflections of your own your own fantasies or projections. You have to admit that you're not good at dealing with people and you need to improve. If you understand that and you want to change and you're motivated to get out of your shell, then you can make that leap. I'm a big advocate of baby steps. You're not going to suddenly transform yourself into Bill Clinton overnight.

Right.

Right.

You can remember thousands of people's names and.

Yeah. Or suddenly become a great listener.

So.

Every day you give yourself little tests. So you have now lunch with this person who you normally find kind of boring. All right, for 10 minutes I'm gonna shut off my internal monologue and I'm gonna force myself to listen to them and I'm gonna glean some information, some nugget about their character that I never understood before. I'm gonna ask them about their childhood. It's not gonna be that kind of inquisition where I'm asking them penetrating questions, but in a relaxed mood, I'm going to find out about something that really motivates them or something deep or some traumatic experience they had. You force yourself day by day to take little baby steps in which you try to learn something about people that you didn't know before and get interested in them and their experiences.

I think a lot of people are asking the wrong questions too. I think you got to start learning to ask different questions.

Like what?

I think a lot of questions are very servicey. And I know you wanted to keep it relaxed as well. You don't need to be like, Tell me you're done. But it's also there's ways you can start opening that up. And I think for me, I know if I want to get the most out of someone, I have to give the most myself. I have to start with vulnerability or opening up in certain ways. I can't just expect someone else to open up if I don't. But I think certain questions, like if you're meeting someone for the first time, as opposed to what do you do or where do you work? It's what are you most excited about right now? Or what's something you've been having a challenge with in your life?

Well, the thing I tell people to look for, because I'm a very big believer in nonverbal communication, in the course of a conversation, if you keep it kind of open and flowing, people's eyes will light up when a certain topic is mentioned. It could be their children, it could be their work, It could be their parent. It could be something in their life that their whole body language changes. They relax. I know if you suddenly asked me about the Los Angeles Lakers, I would be excited. I would be very excited because that's one of my deep passions in life is basketball and the Lakers.

Yeah.

But people- you- got my hometown guy, LeBron James.

Oh, you're from Cleveland.

I'm from Ohio. Wow. From Ohio, but I- How do you feel about this? I feel bittersweet because I wish he stayed in Cleveland. Oh, you did. I wanted to win one more there. But, you know, I live in LA now, so it's nice that he's here at least.

Yeah.

And that I can go to some games and watch him.

That's right.

'Cause I didn't get to go watch.

Games in Cleveland, so. That's right. So I'm like, if he's gonna go anywhere, this is the place to be.

That's right.

That's good.

Yeah. Yeah.

I never used to like LaPierre, but now I love him.

But now you love him. Greatest player in the world. Yes. For sure. So you lined up about that. Look at you, you're getting excited talking. You can see it. If somebody inadvertently brought that up, they could see, like, oh, wow, man. I could talk for hours about the Lakers. you know, but everybody has a topic like that. It could be something a little more intellectual, more interesting than sports. But you're not paying attention to people's body language is another thing. So as an observer, as a good listener, you're not just hearing their words. You're looking at their eyes, their facial expressions. I have a chapter on that, how to differentiate between the fake smile and the genuine smile.

Wow.

And it's very real, you know, a real smile lights up the whole face, it alters how the eyes look. You wanna see when you hit something like that, or when you've done the opposite and you get that kind of scowling micro expression, oh, you. That's right. But people aren't observant. They're in their own shell, they're not seeing, people are constantly giving out signs of their likes, their aversions, you know, their values, and you're missing them because you're not paying attention.

Is it 'cause we're too obsessed with how we look? or what other people are judging about us. Is that why we're closed off or not observant?

I think it becomes kind of a habit, and that's the main part of it that we're worried about how we look and how they're judging us. But also part of that habit is, you know, life is difficult in this world, in the modern world. We're absorbing too much information on our phones, et cetera. And it's very competitive world out there. So naturally we turn inward. Naturally we're thinking about ourselves. We're thinking about what we need to do, our own anxieties, or they're talking and I'm thinking about shit, I have to, I can't change that appointment tomorrow kind of thing, because you're thinking about your own problems, etc. And naturally so. But the whole thing is, my books are all about getting outside of yourself. and finding other people more interesting than yourself in some ways.

Yeah, I'm always doing that.

Yeah, you don't need this book.

Yeah, I know, this is great though. I think you, you know, for me, I do need this book because there's always another level of like, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? And how can I get to where I want to be faster? You talk about infect people with the proper mood.

Yeah.

What does that mean and how do we do this?

Well, this is a key to influence and persuasion. I'm trying to make the case in this book about human nature that we are animals, that we have an animal side to our nature that you have to understand. We are extremely vulnerable to the emotions and moods of other people. I trace that back to how we evolved as primates and the need our ancestors had for understanding the moods of the people in the group or the tribe. before language was invented. So we're extremely vulnerable to the moods and attitudes of other people. If someone visits us and they're in a depressed mood, it will tend to lower our energy. We've all had the experience. Think of it yourself. You go through life and you encounter 10 different people, and there's always one in those 10 people that kind of makes you feel happy.

Yeah.

The moment you meet them, an old friend or whomever, well, you're smiling, you're laughing, your mood changes. And there's one in ten that every time you meet them, it's like, man.

Your mood changes in a bad way.

Badly. Well, it's because you're feeling something. It's not just the fact that you're a friend. There's something nonverbal going on. Our moods are extremely contagious. And so you can persuade people more through infecting them with your mood than through your words. -True. -Words are not necessarily the best means of influence.

-Energy. -Energy. -The way you show up. -Attitude. It's like if there's a negative room or people having a negative conversation, there's 10 people, and someone enters it with a positive energy and just starts connecting with each person, you see the mood lift in a positive way. -Right. -But it can also be if everyone's having a good time and one person comes down. -Yeah. - and it's like just being negative and taking everyone down and saying stupid stuff.

You're like, we've all been through that.

Then everyone's mood goes down. Again, it goes back to life as an enrollment game. You're either enrolling people in the way you want to show up or they're enrolling you in that energy.

Well, so this should be a really exciting concept to you, the reader, because what it means is you can change. You can alter people by how you -Approach them with your energy. -Absolutely. -Right? So, I mean, I wrote about that a lot in the Art of Seduction. Errol Flynn was probably the greatest seducer that ever lived. If we counted the number of women he slept with, it's close to 3,000. -Wow. -And he only died when he was 50. So, if you do the math, it's pretty insane. He was an unbelievable seducer. And I researched this as deeply as I could. Why? And women would write, memoirs about it and they would mention their experience. They said being around Errol Flynn was like having drunk three martinis. He was so relaxed and so comfortable with himself. He had a kind of animal spirit where he was just really himself and very comfortable, very open. That being around him, you just, you felt all of your resistance and all your defenses just melting away. There were other great seduces, like Duke Ellington was like that. So, on the level of seduction and male or female, how you approach them, your mood, more than what you say about yourself and your own insecurities, will have a much greater impact.

More than the pickup lines or whatever, it's the energy.

I believe so.

The confidence.

A relaxed, undefensive quality will go very far. I remember, how did he die? Alcohol.

Wow.

He was a major alcoholic. He drank himself to death.

Probably was unfulfilled.

Huh?

He was probably unfulfilled.

Well, yeah, you know, 3,000 women, it could be kind of, it gets kind of soulless after a while.

Oh, my gosh, yeah.

He's a very interesting character. But I remember I was in Paris when I was 21. I was living there. I was working in a hotel. And there was a man, it was a hotel where all the models stayed. And there was this Brazilian man. who was obsessed with all the models in the hotel. And he was the greatest seducer I've ever seen in my life. And one day I was walking down the street with him and some other friends, and this other woman came running up. She realized he was a seducer and had not been honest and was cheating on her. And I will never forget how he responded. He was so relaxed and so undefensive about it. and he didn't apologize. He was just, this is who I am, more or less in his body language. And she completely relaxed and changed, you know, and I thought, God, normally it would have been this yelling match, and he completely diffused it with his sort of relaxed attitude, you know. So it's a whole language that you need to master, is how your moods infect other people. And I tell people, Experiment with that. Normally with this one person, you're locked in a dynamic where you always are kind of reacting the same way. Try next time approaching them with a completely different mood. Think something differently about them. Suddenly force yourself to think that this person is really, really like good looking and exciting and seductive. And you'll see that your thinking of them in a certain way will change how they respond to you.

As opposed to being defensive and guarded and reactive and angry.

-Judgmental.

-Yeah. And you said you do not judge other people, you accept them as they are.

-Well, that is the key throughout the whole book.

-You are not going to influence people.

If you are judging them, right? -That is the key through the whole book. The book starts with a quote from Schopenhauer, meaning that if you come across people who are bad, just think of them as, or as toxic, just think of them as a kind of mineral that you are, encountering that you're a scientist, people are all different. You're not going to change them. They are who they are because of their circumstances. And instead of judging everyone, learn to accept them and to kind of understand that you are flawed and so are they. So kind of get rid of your superiority.

Yeah, because that's not going to influence them. If you're trying to persuade them to do something, judging them and making them wrong is only going to make people more defensive, right?

Well, that's true, but the other point is your sense of superiority is usually not justified. I'm making the point in this book, the number one thing about human nature is that we tend to deny that there is such a thing. I'm not aggressive, I'm not narcissistic, I never feel envy, I don't have a bad side to me. It's the other people. Right. Right, I don't have any of these bad qualities.

We all do that.

We all do that. you have these qualities as well as anyone else. If you can be honest with yourself, you'll be a little more humble and realize you're not so perfect and not superior, which will make you less judgmental about other people.

Yeah.

And you said you just talked about this, but thinking of the person in the best light as they're generous and caring or thinking that they're good looking, you know, thinking that will help you, your energy show up in a different way to potentially persuade them.

It will alter the dynamic of the conversation, right? I have a story in there in the next chapter of this great Russian writer, Chekhov, who came from the poorest circumstances. His father beat him every day. He lived in the most miserable village in Russia. Then his family abandoned him to go to Moscow and left him alone in this village. And he said, God, I could end up being the most bitter person and hating everybody and hating my life. And I don't want to let that happen to me. There's a chapter about how to change your attitude. And instead, I'm going to accept my father. I'm going to learn to love him. He grew up under terrible circumstances. He's beating me because his father beat him. I'm going to understand him and I'm going to accept him and I'm going to love him. I'm gonna do the same about my mother. I'm gonna do the same about my alcoholic brother. And then he moved to Moscow to be with them, and he moved into this house with eight people who were miserable, fighting, bitter, toxic. And his attitude and his acceptance of them completely altered everything. He got his father out of the house and into a better job. He changed his, you know, he got his siblings to start reading and to think of higher things than just their, petty feelings, he changed the dynamic by how he thought of them. -Wow.

-One person can change the whole dynamic.

-That'S right.

-Or the whole dynamic can change the one person.

-That'S right.

-And you say that when you want to persuade someone, they can't feel like they're being coerced or manipulated. They must choose to do whatever it is you want them to do, or they must at least experience it as their choice.

Well, this is the key to this particular chapter, but it's the key to the whole book, is people have what I call a self-opinion. They have a way that they look at themselves. I said there are three universals to the self-opinion. Practically every human being has them. Number one, we all think that we're autonomous, that when we make a decision, we weren't manipulated, we did it on our own, we're independent. Number two, that we're intelligent, that we're smart, that we know what we were doing. It doesn't mean that you feel like you're an intellectual. A plumber thinks that he knows plumbing better than anyone. That makes him feel like he's intelligent in his own way. And the third is that we're good people, that we treat people well. Now, none of these might be true, but we all tend to believe that that's who we are. Then there'll be other components to that. oh, I'm very independent, self-reliant person, or I am a great rebel, I'm anti-authoritarian, etc. So you have an opinion about yourself. And if someone tries, says something that challenges that opinion of yourself inadvertently, if they make you feel that you're kind of stupid or that you don't know what you're talking about, or that you're doing something because you were manipulated, that you didn't choose to do it, or that you are really not such a good person, we will suddenly get extremely defensive and closed off. And nothing you will ever say or do will change that. It can even turn into hatred or some bitter feelings. Most of the time we are going around and we are not doing that, but we are not necessarily feeding people's self-opinion. The number one need that humans have, I want you to remember this, is to feel validated by other people. We all need. The number one need. William James, the great psychologist, said that it is not just me. People want to feel recognized and validated by other people. We can feel good about ourselves, but if we don't get that from other people, if they don't validate that we are smart, intelligent, independent, it is hard to feel that. So we are all craving that validation.

Constantly.

Constantly. If you are able to give people some of that validation, if you're able to feed their self-opinion without being a flatterer, because people do have good qualities and you can actually recognize them. But if you can validate their self-opinion, suddenly their defenses go down and you have room to maneuver them, to persuade them, to influence them.

You're talking about being ally to their insecurities and you say by praising and flattery is a great strategy, like you just said, but not There's praise and strategy, but then there's manipulation. So what's the dance between the two?

Well, if you flatter someone and it's clear that it's your after something, you've already violated their self-opinion because it's clear that you think that there's someone that can be manipulated. So you're telling them, oh, you're not so independent as you think. I can trick you. and that doesn't work if we see through some obvious flattery. So that's- you- can flatter someone and.

Then say, oh, can you do this for me right afterwards?

Well, that's pretty obvious. But also, if you flatter someone about something that everybody flatters them about, then it's clear what you're after, that you're doing something. So you want to find those qualities that no one's been flattering them about. but that they feel insecure about.

Uncertain about.

Right.

And what would that be for you, Louis?

Oh man, probably like that I'm a good writer. You know, it's like, I believe that I'm a good writer, but it's like, I'm not as good as you. You know, it's like I'm not like a Ryan Holiday or. So now all of your listeners know that.

Yeah, tell me, you have a great book, Louis.

I loved reading it.

Your writing is amazing. Hey, you guys. You're on Ryan's list. completely.

Exactly.

So to get to that point though, you have to understand people, you have to see who they are, you have to understand what their insecurities would be. Generally you don't want to flatter people about what everybody else is flattering them about. It's too obvious. So sometimes, for instance, a person will be very, is very Machiavellian. It's very clever and strategic. And if you flatter them about that, thinking that you know who they are, et cetera, you're actually going to insult them because they don't want to think of themselves as being Machiavellian. They think that they're doing these things for a good cause, for a good reason. So you want to find a different avenue, a different way of approaching them to say, wow, you won that election and you're going to do great things with it, you know, flattering their values, their sense of goodness.

The impact you're making and how you're helping people.

Yeah.

I think it's figuring that out and figuring out what's... And the way you do that is by being a good listener, I think, and a good observer.

Yeah.

By not just observing the obvious, but observing the unobvious.

Right.

And you have to get out of your own self to be interested in someone else.

Yeah.

All these things are interconnected that we've been talking about.

And then you talk about using people's resistance and stubbornness. They are often most people with deeper levels of insecurity and low self-opinion.

Well, this is tricky. This is kind of advanced influence.

This is like- Advanced seduction.

Yeah, yes. It's basically reverse psychology. And the best example is like a rebellious teenager who doesn't want to do their homework, who doesn't want to be told what to do, you have to realize that are you telling them what to do feeds into their rebellious nature and just makes them more defensive. But if you go with their resistance and go with their feeling of being a rebel, you can actually work within their mindset and get them to change. Have an example of a student who's thrown out of school because he's not studying hard enough and And the teacher says, he's gonna have to do all of this work at home in order to graduate, and he's gonna have to study at home, but I can't have him in school because he's like dealing drugs, etc. And the kid is like, God damn it, I'm not gonna study at all. Fuck that guy, you know, I'm just gonna be a slacker. And his mother went to a psychologist who trained her about how to use reverse psychology and said, look, you try and get him to study will make him worse. Try this approach. Try telling him that the teacher wants him to fail. The teacher gave him all of this work knowing that he wouldn't succeed because he knows you're a slacker. And if you could prove him wrong, can you imagine how great that will feel to show that asshole up? So if you study hard and actually graduate, you'll make him look like a fool. And it worked.

It worked.

Yeah.

Wow. I mean, proving people wrong is some of the most powerful energy and fire that I think humans have. I think that's, that was my entire life, was proving everyone wrong about like kids who made fun of me and bullies and the guy who sexually abused me and all these things. I was like, I'm gonna prove everyone wrong. And it worked.

Powerful motivator.

It worked. until it didn't. Until I realized, man, I'm still suffering inside and I'm not fulfilled. And it wasn't until about five years ago when I started opening up about everything I was insecure about or holding on to and frustrated about, when I realized like, okay, yeah, that got me to where I'm at and it helped me accomplish a lot of things, but I'm still unfulfilled. And when I started to say, how can I prove people right and lift other people up? whether they doubted me or hurt me or not, and focus on that energy. That's when I became so much more fulfilled, so much more peaceful, and more driven to impact more people as opposed to prove a handful of people wrong.

That's right. Well, a lot of what I'm talking about in the book is your ability to be aware of yourself and honest with yourself and say that this isn't ultimately fulfilling.

Right.

And that what I think is this strong thing is actually a weakness of mine. And I'm going to work against that. That's sort of the whole point of the book is knowing who you are, knowing your weaknesses, knowing what really motivates you. Because it was your self-awareness that was able to make you change.

Yeah.

And my self-awareness in the beginning for 30 years, where I was like, this is the way I need to be in order for me to achieve.

Was there a particular experience that provoked this?

I mean, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man. My brother was in prison for four years and I didn't have friends during that time because the neighborhood parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me. I was, you know, in the special needs classes all through elementary school and had a tutor through college because I couldn't read and write. So just getting, feeling like very insecure around everything. I wasn't a good student. I didn't learn in the the structure that school has built for us. I learned from sports. So I put all my energy into proving people wrong in sports, 'cause I could learn from moving my body, from listening to a coach and applying it right then and failing and learning. And that structure was a better format for learning for me.

But was this something that happened five years ago that triggered- oh yeah, five years ago.

I started, I read about this in my book, the Masculine Masculinity and talked about it many times, but I had a bad fight. I was playing basketball down the street, pickup game with a bunch of people and got a bad fight, like a real fist fight and blood everywhere. And I had this awakening right afterwards of fear. I was like, what did I just do? I didn't get in a fight.

Were you the instigator?

We were both kind of the instigators. He hit me first, but we're like, you know, talking trash the whole game and hard fouling and, you know, playing a hard game, but he actually hit me first so that I could have diffused the situation at any time. I could have backed away. I could have been calmer, all these things.

So that made you reassess yourself?

Yeah.

It made me realize I'd achieved all these things. I was, you know, successful or whatever with these accomplishments, but I was like, why am I still angry? Why am I still.

Right.

Why am I still reactive to this? nonsense.

That's nothing.

It's a little pick a basketball game. And yet I take it so personally.

Yeah.

And feel like this person is attacking my masculinity, my manhood, my life, my credibility, everything.

Wow.

So I would defend myself. Anytime someone said something negative about me, I had to defend myself.

Wow.

It's kind of like my whole life though.

Right.

Now, I was a joyful, happy guy, but when that happened, it was a trigger.

Wow.

And so, and my friend was like, I don't want to hang out with you anymore because he was there. He was like, every time we play basketball, you get in a fight. Wow. Or you react or you say something or you shove someone, whatever. Wow. And so I said, I need to take a look at my life. And I started going to workshops. I started doing emotional intelligence training. I started working with therapists of all different types. And I was just like, I need.

To see what's the root of this. Well, the key is here is that decision that you were not going to let this become a pattern.

That was it.

And a lot of people could have reacted the opposite way. What makes you different from others is someone could write a whole book about. Yeah.

I'm a student of life too. I always want to learn. I realized that's something that was holding me back. I achieved a certain level of success or results, but I still couldn't sleep at night. I was still hurting inside. I was still unfulfilled. And I was like, well, I thought once you achieve these things, Yeah. Like you feel better.

Yeah.

Like these are dreams that I've had for years that why don't I feel good now? Yeah. And I think it was like I turned 30, I was going through a breakup in a relationship that I moved.

Here for in LA.

Yeah, I remember that. I was in a business breakup as well with my partner and I was like, huh, why? You know, I'm the common denominator for.

Everything going wrong in my life.

Right, right, right.

So you saw your own patterns. I saw it.

And I think that was my not near-death experience of like getting in this fight, but it was like an awakening moment.

Well, this fight, See, sometimes it takes something physical, like you could feel the fist on your face and you knew the feeling of shame.

Oh, it's so powerful.

These are powerful chemical reactions that you'll feel 20 years from now, and so that can wake you up. Hopefully it doesn't take that much for other people, but sometimes it does.

Sometimes it does. And luckily, the guy was fine. I mean, there was blood everywhere and everything, but the police station was right across the street, and I was just like, I could lose everything. Like, what if this guy had a knife? What if-- They press charges or whatever, you know, it's like, what's the point of this?

You see, this is something I talk about in the book a lot, is there's almost like a stranger inside of you, a person that acts and you don't even know who they are. Like in those moments, you're not Louis.

No.

Who is this? And it could happen tomorrow still, where you could get in a situation where that will happen. And where does that come from? Well, there are things like that in everybody where certain circumstances, certain events will trigger something in you and you'll act in a way that you don't even understand. Like, I never did that before. Why am I doing this? Why am I falling in love with the absolute worst woman that I could possibly involve in my life? Why am I taking this career job path that's making me miserable? Why am I getting into fights? Why am I suddenly getting angry? I'm saying that these are forces inside of you, human nature, that you don't understand, that are compelling you to behave in certain ways, and your only way outside is to understand what's going on inside of you.

Wow. That's why this book is so important. You have so many other great chapters in here. I want to ask you a couple more questions, and then we can wrap it up. This one on, you know, advance with a sense of purpose is a law. You talk about the law of aimlessness. And I think, you know, for me, having a clear vision or at least a vision that you think is clear for a certain amount of time is one of the most powerful things we can have because if we are aimless, then we're screwed, I feel like.

Yeah. Well, the problem for human beings is, you know, an animal, a cat or a dog, they don't have to wake up in the morning and decide what they're going to do. oh, am I going to eat this food? Am I going to go for a walk? Whatever. Their life is sort of programmed by who they are genetically, etc. We humans don't have that kind of programming. We are not given any kind of natural guidance in life. We could wake up and we could not go to work tomorrow. We could suddenly do whatever we wanted if we felt so inclined. So we have to create our own sense of purpose And that purpose can't come from the outside. If our parents tell us, you need to do this, this and this, or a teacher tells us, it's not going to connect to something deep within us. And it might work for a while, but when we're 25, we'll feel empty and hollow because we're not, it's not something from within and without. It's a path.

Yeah.

So the trick in life is figuring out what you were meant to do. I maintain, and this is something that I go into in great depth in mastery, in chapter one in Mastery, but also in this book, is to figure every human is different. Every human has a different genetic code. Their brains are wired differently. No two people have the same parents who raised them a certain way. You are different. You have something very unique about you. That uniqueness exists for a purpose. If you follow that, if you use your uniqueness in some way, you will create something probably pretty interesting and pretty great. But if you follow what everyone else is doing, you will be like everyone else. You will become a lawyer because your parents say you should. And when you're 29, you won't feel connected to it. And you'll see that there are 8 million other lawyers doing the same thing. And you'll be 32 and you'll be drinking and you'll gain weight and you'll lose all and your life will go downhill from there.

Is this your life?

Could have been. Could have been. My parents would have liked me to become a lawyer or something.

Yeah, right.

So how do you find that voice? I call it a voice that's telling you who you are and what you need to do.

How do you find it?

Well, it's listening, first of all. So when you were young, you were generally attracted to certain activities or pursuits. I call it in mastery, primal inclinations. It's a voice inside of you saying, you should do this, you are attracted to that. There's a book that I recommend by a man named Howard Gardner called the Five Frames of Intelligence. He mentions that there are five forms of intelligence, one that has to do with mathematics patterns, one is kinetic with sports, one is social and do with people, one has to do with words. There's a fifth one I don't remember. Everyone has a brain that is inclined towards one of the five. That's like your main strength. For you it might have been kinetic, which was sports and activity and physical action. We tend to emphasize in our culture intellectual as a form of intelligence. But being really good with your hands or being really good at sports is a form of intelligence. You are naturally drawn to one of these five forms. You have to know what that is. And when you were very young, you felt naturally drawn to certain things. When I was a kid, I was drawn to words. I was obsessed with language and words, and I was obsessed with strategy. with warfare and war games and sports. And so, you know, eventually that's sort of what I ended up doing. You know, Tiger Woods when he was a year and a half old, saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage and he went berserk. He felt this like primal attraction to it. I have many examples of famous people. You probably had that in your life, but as you get older, you start listening to your friends, your teacher, your parents, and you're not hearing that voice anymore. And all you're hearing is what other people tell you who you should be, what they think is cool, and you lose connection to what makes you unique. And who you are, your uniqueness is your source of power. The further you deviate from that uniqueness, the weaker you will become. You will become like other people. So the game in life is to know who you are, to gather skills and train yourself and be disciplined. And by the time you reach your age of 30, you have a lot of creative energy and you're able to take all the things that you've learned and create something unique like you did with your School of Greatness. I was 36 when I started writing the 48 Laws of Power, so it took me a little bit longer than that.

Well, you obsess a little more over things. That's why you're perfectionists. You let that get in the way.

Well, I had a little more failure than most people have. Took me a little longer. I'm a little slow.

It's okay. Working your advantage. that's powerful. I like that. So lean into your curious, the things that you were curious about as a kid and go back into one of those five things, figure out what it is and start pursuing that more.

I also know what you don't like. You don't like working in a group where everything's political. Well, then maybe you need to be an entrepreneur and work for yourself and start your own business. So the things that you dislike show you a lot about who you are.

I like that a lot because I think a lot of people right now, they have too many options.

I'm passionate about everything.

How do I know which direction to go? And that's like a downfall in itself. It's just like, law of figuring out how to choose one direction. There's people that don't have, they don't know what their passion is. They're like, how do I find my passion? And there's people who have lots of passions. They're basically in the same boat.

They are.

You're not doing anything.

That's right. And it's hard because especially with the internet and all the access to information, you can get excited about so many things. Oh, I can direct a film. Oh, I could write a screenplay. Oh, I could win a political election, et cetera. No, you can't. You can't do everything. You're not meant to do everything in life. You are not Leonardo da Vinci. There's probably one or two or three things that you need to focus on, but you need to find that thing to focus on. Focusing on one activity is not something that should frighten you, which should liberate you. Because by developing solid skills in one area, you now have power to maybe branch out to something else and combine different skills. If you aren't somebody, if you're somebody that gets easily bored by just one straight path, you can follow this path of doing different things, but you have to master each level before you can advance.

Yeah, and if you are scattered in your passions or your direction or your vision, you will influence less people. The more powerful you become in one area, the more influential you become with lots of people, isn't that right?

That's right.

We'll finish with this topic and then I'll ask you my final couple questions because there's a lot of people that are looking to build a business or build a following with social media. You have a chapter that says, Make them want to follow you. How do we make people want to follow us, whether it be offline, online, you know, buying into our business, our products, our services, our books, following us on social media, listening to our podcast. How do we do that?

Well, you have to understand human nature.

That's the key.

Yeah.

Understanding human nature.

Yes.

People don't want to be forced or coerced or manipulated. they want to feel that they are coming to something on their own. So if you create this podcast and you go out there and you get all this advertising, et cetera, and you force yourself down people's throats with your presence, they go, Ah, this guy's trying too hard. I'm not so interested. But if you create a viral buzz, where instead of you promoting yourself, I go out and go, Wow, Lewis was the best interviewer, but you are one of the best interviewers around.

-Thank you.

I believe that.

Appreciate it, thank you.

And I realized, because it was six years ago, I remember how good you were.

Yeah, days.

If I'm the one going out and promoting you, suddenly that carries so much more power. So you have to understand that you don't want, oftentimes, this is a chapter about leadership, often as a leader, your impulse is to yell at people and make them do things, do your bidding, and that creates defensive, resentful, bitter people. You want them to want to join your force, to join the group, to follow the group's path, to get into line on their own, of their own volition, they follow you. And so you have to understand that first of all you're dealing with individuals. You can't compel, you have three people who work for you, you can't do the same thing with each person, you have to play to their psychology. You have to create a cause. People don't want to feel like they're doing something for money. It's kind of soulless and mercenary. If, oh, I'm going to listen to Lewis' podcast because I'm going to become a millionaire. Well, you'll get some people, but a lot of people will find that kind of empty. But if you say, you listen to my podcast and you're going to help humanity, you're going to change the world, you're going to feel great about yourself, people are going to love you, you're appealing to things that motivate people. So you have to understand that, you have to get them to join a cause. Basically, I mean, I have more things in the chapter. -Yeah, that's the essence of it.

-Yeah. You talk also about a dark shadow, is that what you call it? Shadow side or dark shadow?

-The shadow side.

-What does that mean and what is your shadow side?

-Well, your shadow side came out on the basketball court very clearly.

-Yes. Incredible Hulk.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a very important concept. Basically it means when we were children, we were two or three years old, we were like a complete individual. We felt all this range of emotions, anger, hate, love, it's joy, depression. And we tended to express it, as children often do.

All the time, right?

Yeah.

And then our parents, intervene and say, because a child who just does what he wants and is always expressing it can be kind of irritating and you want to sleep and you have your own cares. So you're telling the child, stop that behavior, stop being like that. Be a good boy, be a good girl, study harder. And so you start to repress certain qualities in yourself in order to please your parents, in order to please other people. Those qualities could be your aggressiveness, your natural assertiveness. It could be your kind of dramatic tendencies.

Theater of nature, yeah.

Your what?

Your theater nature.

Your theater nature. You kind of repress them. You try to be something that will please other people. And as you repress that other part of your character, it goes into what we call the shadow. It doesn't disappear. Nothing ever disappears. It just is not immediately visible. It forms the dark side of your character. There's the moon that we always see in the sky, then there's the dark side of the moon that we don't see. But the dark side of the moon doesn't exist. It's still there, just we don't see it. Everybody has their dark side. And it comes from these qualities that they were repressed when they were younger. And it will come out later in life in sudden bursts of anger like you on the basketball field. Or it'll come out you know, in a relationship. For instance, you might have felt like your parents didn't really love you and you're worried that you were worried with a child that you had a rational fear that they would abandon you. And then you form a relationship later with a woman and she's slightly cold to you, but not for any reasons that have to do with you. Maybe she's in a bad mood. You assume that she's about to abandon you. because you have that fear and you lash out and you get angry and you like basically instigate a breakup in advance because you don't want to deal with that pain of going through it. You don't want to have to be abandoned. You want to be the one abandoning.

-Right.

-Well, that's your shadow side coming out. Everybody has it. And you'll notice it when people do something that seems out of character. They will lash out. They will get angry. They will do something self-destructive, they will say, as we said earlier, oh, that's not me. You know, something came over me, but no, that is their shadow acting out. That person on the basketball court wasn't somehow Mr. X who suddenly invaded Lewis's body. It was Lewis. It was more Lewis than what we normally see. Normally we see the nice, pleasant Lewis. The real Lewis suddenly came out on that basketball court. and you saw it. Well, everybody has that. And you want to see that in people. You want to see that they're, you want to see their shadow and understand that they're not as nice and wonderful as they say they are. Not to judge them, but to be aware. And you want to see your own shadow so you can use it, so you can be aware of it, so you can overcome it.

Wow, what's your shadow side?

That's a good question. I've had to deal a little bit with my shadow side now because I suffered a stroke about two months ago. And my shadow side is I feel like I have an incredible need to be independent and self-reliant. And if I don't feel that way, if I feel like I'm trapped, that I can't do something, I get really angry and really can be vicious and violent. So the sense that something is stripping or stepping on my independence or autonomy can trigger that Lewis How basketball reality.

The whole comes out.

The hope comes out.

So your wife and everyone has to suffer that huh?

Well, I had to deal with it. I've had to deal with the fact that I am dependent, that I am like a baby right now, that I can't, I have to rely on people, but there are other things that I can do for myself still, but they're small things. That's part of it. And then the other shadow side is the hyper perfectionist in me that's always trying to please and make the absolute perfect book.

Well, they're pretty amazing. They're pretty amazing. So it's paying off in some ways, but, at what cost also? What's the price you have to pay with that shot, I guess, right?

Yeah, but you know, as I said before, when we were first talking, I'll take that price because I created something that I wanted to do. I did something that meant a lot to me. And I knew I was kind of hurting myself physically, but I still did it. It's like you're going off to war. What will make a man, a person, man or woman, go into battle knowing that you could die?

A greater purpose. Yeah.

You give up your body for a football player, so you give up your body for something greater. And that's not a bad feeling.

Yeah. What's the thing you're most proud of that most people don't know about?

Wow. Huh. I don't like tooting my own horn. I don't like seeing how wonderful I am.

If you had to, about the thing that you're most proud of.

Well, you know what? People assume, because I wrote the 48 Laws of Power, they have this image that I'm kind of this asshole, that I'm sort of this manipulative Machiavellian asshole who goes around trying to get the better of people. That I know every trick in the book, that if I'm late for a meeting, I'm doing that on purpose.

Strategy.

And actually, I'm a really nice person. You know, I'm kind of a puppy. I'm not like that at all. You know, I can be tough when I have to be. Compared to my father, my father was a really nice person. He wasn't weak, but he was just really nice. So I don't know if I'm proud of that, but that's sort of a side of me that people don't know. I'm not as much an asshole as.

They think I am. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Good to be proud of being a nice guy. Your shadow side is the manipulative strategist, right?

That's right.

That comes out.

That is right, that's actually more accurate. That would be my shadow side.

There you go. What's the question you wish more people would ask you? They never ask.

Wow.

Anytime you get Robert Greene and say, wow, that's a good sign.

Man, you see the problem for me is my books cover so many different topics that people generally ask about everything. I mean, a lot of it has to do with because I've spent my whole life listening to other people and writing about other people, I don't really talk about myself very much. So sort of talking about my own experiences and how I formed myself. I did that in a TED Talk, and it was very difficult for me. It's very unnatural. But in this TED Talk I discussed how I arrived at where I am right now. And that's something I don't get to talk a lot about because I don't like to talk about myself that much. But that's part of the question I don't get so much.

How you arrived where you're at right now.

Yeah, how I ended up writing the kind of books that I write.

I remember you telling me about this six years ago where you had done a lot of different things that were all failures.

Right.

I think you were like a newspaper writer or like a screenplay writer, you know, all these different things. And you were like 70% good at all of them, but they weren't really that great. And then they all kind of magically showed up at 36 to writing like this different book that no one really wanted. But then it was like a big hit.

Yeah, I mean, the thing was, goes back to the thing about uniqueness that we were talking about. I've never felt like I was like other people. I've always felt like an oddball. I never did what my parents told me to do. I left college and went and lived in Europe. I mean, I graduated, but I lived in Europe and I just wandered around. I never listened to what people told me to do. So when it came time to writing this book, this man who was my partner in writing it, who packaged it, he sort of asked me if I had an idea for a book and I kind of explained my ideas about power. I decided to make it something very weird and unique.

Different than what's in the market.

Yeah, like you can hate the 48 Laws of Power, but you can honestly, no one has ever written a book like that. The structure with the stories, the sections, the quotes, the things on the side. And I got a lot of grief for that. The publishers go, I don't think this will work. And we want you to change it. We want it to be more like other books. And so I stuck to my guns and I said, no, I'm gonna go down sinking with who I am. If this works, it's because I'm weird and I'm unique. And it succeeded. And then after the 48 Laws of Power, the logical thing was to put 48 Laws of Power, Part Two, and just sort of kind of mine what I'd already done. I said, no, I'm gonna go in a new direction. So I'm constantly challenging myself. and following my own path, I'm a weirdo. And people don't realize maybe how weird I really am. Only my wife kind of knows how truly weird I am. So maybe that's to answer your question.

I like that.

How truly strange and weird I am.

But that's the path to achieving something great, is leaning into your uniqueness.

I think so. I mean, you could go too far with that.

Right, right. It's still got to reach the masses in some way.

You could have written poetry.

There are poets right now that are selling millions of copies. Okay. Rupee Kaur, have you seen her?

Yeah.

She sold millions of copies. Two books, I think, were number one.

New York Times bestseller, poetry books. I take that back.

If I had written poetry, I wouldn't have. It wouldn't have been a good for you, yeah. This is a question I ask at the end. It's called the Three Truths. I didn't ask you this last time because I didn't have this question. So imagine you live as long as you want. You live for as many years as you want, but at some point you get to choose the day It's the.

Last day for you.

And you've written every book that you can think of. They've all been best sellers. They've all, you know, millions of copies like you've already done and then some. You've done it all. And you say, okay, it's been good, like time to go. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you so no one has access to your work anymore. You've got to bring it with you. Hypothetical. But you get to write down on a piece of paper the three truths from everything that you've learned in your life, from all of your books, all of your messages, your work, your insights, all your weirdness that you are, the three things you know to be true about life, and this would be the only thing that you would leave behind for everyone to have. Robert Greene's Three Truths or Life Lessons. What would you say are your truths?

There's a weird kind of law that governs the universe, which is, what you give to the world is sort of what you get.

Right?

So we are more active than we think we are. We are more responsible for what happens to us than we think we are. And so the things that have worked for me in life have when I've sort of been aware of that and through my attitude, through the pattern of my life is kind of foggy. with all of the failures. But overall, there was a reason behind it. There was a purpose. And I followed that purpose unconsciously, maybe consciously to some degree. And it led to where I am today. But that there is something, a feeling that I had, that there is something kind of guiding me. And I can't put my words. I can't put my finger on it. Something was guiding me to where I ended up. today, even from when I was five years old. So I've always had a feeling of like fate and destiny for better or for worse, and it happened. So that's one. The other truth is that I tend, and other people tend to be too nice in life, too indulgent with other people, too nice. We don't ask for enough. We feel like we don't deserve much in life, etc. and we let people push us around. I was pushed around a lot because I was sort of a naive writer type who didn't understand that there are bad people out there. So one of the things I had to learn in life and that are the source for my work is that there are bad people out there and you have to recognize that, that there are narcissists, that there are aggressive people, that there are passive aggressive people. they are enviers. And you have to be aware of that and you have to be strong enough to deal with them. And by not being able to deal with those kind of people, your life can be completely ruined. One awful toxic person, one bad relationship can ruin you for life. You internalize the negative energy. So the ability to stand up for yourself and to be aware and to understand that not everyone has the best intentions, that you're going to be more strategic and not always kind of just accepting what people give you. It was a major source of wisdom for me. And all of my books come from a bit of anger, you know? And I think the reader can feel the anger in them. And anger is kind of an intoxicating emotion. I even talk in the book how it can be a positive emotion. When my writing is angry, it's very real and you can feel it. So I've been able to take that kind of sense of there are people out there who are hurtful and use that anger and turn it into something positive, into a book. That was sort of the second. God damn it.

Final truth.

The final truth. I'd say one thing was kind of related to some of the other things I've said. And I did write a book about this, but it has to do with the role of fear in my life and what I've been afraid of. I come from a background of my parents were kind of anxious, somewhat fearful people, and I tend to internalize that. to worry about what will happen next to whether people will like me. And to the degree that I overcame that fear and did something bold and unusual, I've kind of become more of who I am and kind of achieved things. So I've always been one to confront my fears. Like, I have great fears now. of walking because if I fall and it's very easy for me to fall, I could be finished, you know, I'll break something and now I can't, my stroke will, I'll never get over. I've got to get over that and I've got to keep walking and walking and get over my fear. I was afraid of being alone or being in a situation I had no control over. So when I was 22 years old, I went and lived on the island of Crete in Greece with a backpack and sleeping in caves.

Wow.

And kind of being alone and sort of cutting myself off from the world was something I greatly feared. And I kind of overcame that fear. So sort of the ability for me to confront what I'm most afraid of has been a great source of power. I'm not great at it. There are still many fears that that haunt me, but instead of kind of giving in to them, always kind of confronting them and moving past them.

To confront your fears.

Yeah.

Well, that's powerful.

Did I cover three?

You covered three. These are beautiful. Make sure you guys get this book, the Laws of Human Nature. It's out right now. Very powerful. I recommend getting a couple copies to give to friends as well, because the key to life is relationships. And this is the key to understanding people and understanding how to be better in relationships. So get this book. It's going to transform the way you move through life. We can follow you on Instagram, Twitter, where do you spend time at, or where do you live?

We have a website in which everything is funneled into. I've had it for years. It's power, seduction, and war. The and spelled out. .com, those are my first three books.

Powers Seduction and More.com, you'll find there.

A site for mastery and for the new book.

Right.

And are you spending time on social media at all or no?

Yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Instagram, but I'm not as active as I should be, but I'm there.

What's your handle on Instagram? Shit. We'll find it and link it up for people.

Yeah, I don't even know what it is on Twitter, I just have it on my phone.

We'll find it. Probably your name. It's okay. Well, I want to acknowledge you before I ask the final question. I want to acknowledge you, Robert, for constantly showing up and creating masterpieces because these books truly transform lives. Millions of people talk about them, read them, and they improve their life because of the information that you obsess over, whether that's good or bad. But your ability to dive into a topic is unbelievable. So I acknowledge you for your your care and attention to detail to impact people's lives.

Thank you, Liz.

I just wanna make sure you take care of your health moving forward. That's true. But it's amazing everything you've done. I'm grateful for our friendship over the years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And just, you know, everything that's happened.

So, I saw you when you were just a little, oh, we were.

You were my first episode.

Yeah.

And so I appreciate you for giving me my first chance of-- It was an honor.

I'm so proud of you and everything you've done.

Thank you, thank you. The final question. is what is your definition of greatness?

It's kind of what we've already talked about. I feel like everybody has the potential for greatness. And greatness would mean something a little bit larger than what you've already done, for going a little bit beyond what you've already created, going a little bit past your limits. great implies kind of size and largeness. And so everybody has the potential for greatness. I don't care who you are or the bad circumstances of your childhood. And greatness is realizing your own potential. I don't care what that is. It could be in being the best possible parent. It could be in using your hands and creating some beautiful work of art or some great bit of craftsmanship. It could be in writing a book or creating a great podcast. But it's something larger than what you were 10 years ago. You've expanded your boundaries. You've expanded your own limits. You've pushed them a little bit further. So to me, that's greatness. I made this a circle. I didn't explain it in the book. because I said human nature kind of contains us. It creates a limit for us. We can't become a chimpanzee or a sheep. We are human and this is a limiting factor. But by knowing the laws of human nature, you can begin to explore a little bit further out and become something a little bit more. You can take your irrational nature and become more reasonable and rational. Well, going, pushing a little bit past your limits and expanding like a balloon just a little further, that's greatness to me. And not accepting, but moving past your own limits.

Robert Green, thank you, man.

Thank you, Louis. Thank you. That was great. Thank you.

There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. I was blown away and I felt like I could have gone on this interview for hours because we just scratched the surface of what's possible in our understanding human nature and how to master yourself and really understand how to connect with all types of people in all walks of life, to get them to buy into your vision more, to get them to relate to you more, to build better quality relationships with people. Life is about relationships and the quality of your life is dictated and determined based on the quality of your relationships that you have with other people. So how are you showing up? Are you showing up constantly with a negative attitude and constantly surrounded by toxic people? If you have toxic people in your life, you need to reevaluate this, re-listen to this, and learn the steps on how to remove those toxic people from your life and take responsibility for what you've caused to attract them. Make sure you guys pick up a copy of the book. The full link to the book and all the information about Robert is at lewishouse.com/713. So go there, you get links to the book. Tag me on Instagram @lewishouse and let's stay connected. I want to hear your thoughts on this because it is a powerful one. And Oprah Winfrey said at the beginning that the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future. by merely changing his attitude. And Eleanor Roosevelt said, you must do the things you think you cannot do. What is your attitude like today? Are you a positive person? Are you fixated on the negative things that are happening around you that you make excuses about? You have a choice in this moment. on how you want to show up with your attitude. And you must do the things you think you cannot do. Robert Greene talked about the fears that you have, the insecurities you have. Sometimes they feel so overwhelming. You must lean into those fears today. Stop wasting time. Stop playing small. Lean into your fears and start to overcome them. I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.