Secret Service Agent: “You Need to Throw People Out of Your Life if They Have These Red Flags.”

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It's naive of us to think that people will not cause you harm because there are some people that will. I know this as a former criminal investigator. He can't live in La La Land. That's reality. But if I know this, I understand this, I'm gonna move through the world in the best way I can. Former Secret Service agent. Journalist. Professor. Interrogator.

The author of Becoming Billieproof.

Please welcome Evie Pompous. The circle of people around you matter. I look at it like this, like you're the bouncer at the door, and you decide who comes in and how long they stay, and then you decide who you need to throw out. If you have someone who has a lot of drama in their life, that's a massive red flag because their drama is going to become your drama.

Right.

How can you really tell if someone is a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath?

When we look at true narcissism, there's criteria you have to meet. Some of the research that I had looked at said one out of 25 people will be one of these.

Really?

One out of 25? The red flags are the behavior signals that people give you. Yes. Don't label the person, label the behavior. Mmm, that's interesting. I went through September 11th. I was in the World Trade Center. I survived.

I was there during it.

I was. I had colleagues who died, friends who died. I'll tell you this, I can't heal from that. I don't know how to heal from something like that. Interesting. But that was truly a moment where I thought, I was like, I'm gonna die. Really? You want to know where the best performers live? They're instrumental.

Right.

My first day on the President's Detail, I walk in, I sit down. It's my first day at the White House.

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Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Evi Pompus back in the house for the third time on the show. I'm so excited because your book, Becoming Bulletproof: Life Lessons from a Secret service agent has helped a lot of people understand the psychology of humanity and human beings in front of them, from family members to friends to relationships to potential work environments. You were a secret service agent for 13 years and you saw a lot. You worked with a lot of the top politicians, you saw a lot, you interviewed and investigated a lot of different individuals, different personality types. And I'm curious, What do you think are the three biggest skills that being a secret service agent gave you that you learned from the service? Three biggest skills that you wish other individuals had those skills as well?

You know, I'll tell you the one big one that stands out. It taught me that the circle of people around you matter. And you need to be very careful about who's in your circle. I look at it like this, like you're the bouncer at the door.

Right?

And you decide who comes in and how long they stay, and then you decide who you need to throw out.

Hmm.

That's big. So in the service, I think what was done there is like they did such a great job in the hiring process. I mean, they spent months and months interviewing you, investigating you, talking to your neighbors, figuring out who you are, if you're gonna fit into the culture, if you're a person of integrity. I went, I used to go to college overseas and one of the colleges I went to, was in Italy. I lived in Rome. I did a semester abroad six months. They sent an agent to my college in Rome to interview my professor to find out what kind of student I was. That's the level of assessment that they do. So when they do that, they're plucking people out and selecting and putting them in this group. And then you get put in there, I get put in there. And so now you're around this caliber of people. and you have to look at your circle, who's it, who's around me? It's not about, this isn't about niceness or kindness. I'm not saying that those things don't matter. They do. You want people who treat you well and with respect, but you also have to look at what are these people doing to me? So, for example, if you have someone who has a lot of drama in their life, that's something, that's a massive red flag. Because their drama is going to become your drama. Right. So you may say, but I don't engage in this stuff. I don't do this stuff. But what you don't realize is their life and their choices bleed into yours. If there's someone in your life that has a lot of chaos or conflict, that stuff is gonna bleed into you. And they'll tell you, oh, I don't like conflict. I don't like trauma. But then you will always see that it's this repetitive thing. And what happens is although they may say that, you can get addicted to that. It gives you your adrenaline shot, it gives you your cortisol shots, it's a booster. And so the same people that say, I don't like it, don't listen.

Watch their behavior.

Look.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look, people will show you and you will see. So that's what I would focus on. And that's the one thing the service was excellent at showing me. They didn't, you know, it's interesting, they didn't tell us this, I just intuitively learned this. So I was steady because I was around other very steady people. I was grounded because the world around me was grounded. I mean, things would happen even in the White House. Every day there was some kind of a serious event in the world, something tragic, a tragedy. So not just us, but also the core element of the White House, the staff, you would see people just become grounded. Let's sit down, what's going on in the world, what just happened, who got bombed, who got attacked, what shooting happened, and you'd see this kind of of synergy of people moving together to figure out what are the next steps, what's the solution? No chaos, no drama, no fun or.

Flight responses from people. We need to do something now.

I've never seen that. I've never seen that. So it's like a really great, I don't wanna say think tank, but it was just a place that you could go and they were expecting it, but you were also in a space where it was understood things are going to go wrong and it is okay.

Interesting.

Where most people are not okay with that, most people design their lives so that nothing goes wrong.

They try to control their lives so things don't go wrong. And when they go wrong, they freak out and they're breakdown.

Yes, because you're thinking, well, why is this happening? Why is that happening rather than this stuff will happen? It is, it will be going on. Now I can mitigate it.

Right?

But that stuff is going to come.

That's what I like about, you know, Navy SEALs, UFC fighters, like they're training for worst case scenarios. They're kind of putting themselves in uncomfortable situations physically, mentally, emotionally, consistently so that they know how to handle challenges. And I think a lot of people just don't set themselves up for challenging times. They try to have comfortable lives and therefore when there is an uncomfortable situation, they're on breakdown.

Yeah, because you think stress is bad. That's what everybody tells you. Relax, go get a massage. Stress is bad. No, a certain level of stress is good. Here's the difference. Stress that is like, let's say you're, we're doing this interview and we're uncomfortable or I'm uncomfortable. I come in and I'm comfortable. I don't like interviews. I don't like doing them. Me coming in, making myself sit down, doing the interview, and overcoming that, that is good stress. That builds resilience. The stress that is not good is chronic stress. So chronic stress is, I have a relationship with someone. They are not healthy. The relationship is not healthy. So every day I'm dealing with chronic stress. Am I gonna get yelled at? Is this person gonna do this to me? That is not good for you and that causes a deterioration in your self-esteem and your psyche and all these different things. That's the difference. And even in training, The way they worked training with all of the type of training, the first day they introduce stress levels to you and then incrementally they increase the dosage.

Really?

Oh, yes. Oh, the stress you endure day one is very different than the stress they're putting on you day 60.

Why is that?

Because they need to help you gradually get there. It's not to say that you're not going to lose people in the beginning. In fact, I started with the NYPD first. I went in as a recruit and my class was 1500 recruits in the NYPD. The first month, I think in ballpark, 300 people quit. 300 people quit. And this is NYPD. I actually thought it was quite tough. And they were putting stress on you. They're making you feel not welcomed. You're lucky to be here. And it was just this stressor to see can you handle it? And they did want people who couldn't or who couldn't understand that, you know, this isn't just about you. And they would say to us, if you can't handle the stress in here, how are you going to handle the stress out on the street? And they would say, where people hate you, because so many people hate police. It's like people hate you. They're in your face. They want to cause you harm. So if you can't handle that out there, you know, then you can't be doing this.

Yeah.

Interesting. Okay. So your circle matters is number one. What was the second thing that the service taught you that you wish everyone understood?

So they taught me to be something that's called instrumental. Instrumental is, let's look at it this way. There's two motivational mindsets actually. It's called sense making. And the research shows one mindset is identity, one mindset is instrumental. An identity person is very self-focused. Now we move through these, by the way. But when I'm identity, I'm using the word I a lot, I this, I feel this way. I'm in an emotional space. I'm very ego centric. So I'm looking at the world as how it affects me. I'm not looking really for solutions or moving forward. I'm really just looking to talk about me, maybe sometimes to talk about my problems, to have somebody comfort me. It's a very emotional state of being. When you're there, you're not being very productive. We all visit identity land from time to time. I'm not saying we don't. But you're stuck. Instrumental is I'm mission focused, I'm goal focused, I have a goal. This is what my goal is, and I'm looking how to get to that place. So if I get feedback on something, right, I'm not gonna take it personally. So if I'm working on a project and the project manager says to me, Evie, this proposal you put together, I didn't like it. Fix it.

Mm-.

Right?

If I'm instrumental, I will hear, He didn't like what I put together. I'm going to fix it because he wants me to make it better. If I am identity, I'm gonna hear he doesn't like me.

You're gonna take it personally.

Those are two different things. So in the service, we were very instrumental. Nobody wants to hear your problems. Nobody cares. Get it done. Nobody cares why this went wrong, how it went wrong. It's fix it. Just get to the solution. So you're very, you're in a state of moving forward. You're in a state of making progress. which was very important because if you don't think like that, lives are on the line.

Well, I mean, if someone's thinking, well, what if I'm working really hard and someone just keeps giving me feedback that they don't see what I'm up to or they don't appreciate the value I'm creating or they're just constantly, it feels like they're nitpicking at me as opposed to just seeing the value I bring. How does someone overcome that identity based sense making and not make it a personal and just focus on being instrumental and service based.

If the feedback you are getting is accurate and correct and true, then you understand they're giving it to me because I have work to do. If it's like you're hurting my feelings, then your identity. And that's fine. It just depends where you want to live. So if you want to know where the best performers live, they're instrumental. My first day on the president's detail, My supervisor, when I walked in, now I'm seven, eight years on already, I'm senior. I walk in, I sit down, it's my first day at the White House, getting ready to start on the president's detail. He sits down and he says, there's the door. He's like, anybody here not want to be here? Anybody confused as to why they don't want to be here? There's the door.

You can walk through it any time.

Anybody? No one's forced to be here. No one's forced to be here. No, no, okay. Good, let's get started. But that's why it was a machine that worked. And that way we were able to problem solve. And nobody's sitting there. Also, you're not putting you ahead of the mission, the goal, my feelings, how I feel. I'm not saying feelings are a bad thing, but you also have to know when you're being driven by pure emotion or mostly emotion, and when you're being goal driven. If you have a mission or a focus or a project or whatever you're doing, and you're getting feedback and you have to have an honest conversation with yourself. Is there truth to what I'm being told? If there is, then this person is helping me trying to make it better.

Well, they're focusing on the goal and the mission, not on you.

You.

Yes.

And they want you to shift what you're doing to accomplish the goal of the mission.

Yes. And do you believe in what you're doing? I did.

Yeah. Yeah.

I used to do the hiring process. And when I would interview somebody, one of the questions I would ask, when I say hiring process, I was a polygraph examiner. Let me caveat that. So to be an agent, you have to take a polygraph and pass it. So I would have to polygraph people. And I did the Northeastern region area. And so when candidates would come in, I would ask them, why do you want to be a special agent? And I typically got two types of answers. One answer was, I want to see what I'm made of. I want to challenge myself. You know, this is like the next step. level in my life, I want to see if I can do this. Okay. The other answer I would typically get was, I want to serve my country. I want to be part of a team. I want to help. I want to do good in the world. Who do you think passed the process?

The second one.

Yes, because the first guy was in it for himself. So the moment things got hard, I'm out. He would give up. It was all about him or her. The second guy was there because they believed in something greater than themselves. They were out for bigger purpose.

Yeah.

So when we say instrumental in being mission focused, what is your end goal in life? If it's just you, it can be. It's gonna be a bit of a struggle. Right.

Can someone change their sense making from identity to instrumental in their 20s, 30s, or 40s? Or is this already so conditioned in a human that it's so much harder to shift into, yes, give me feedback and I'm here for the mission or the goal versus, I'm working so hard and you're not acknowledging me and you're not accepting the work I give, you want me to get better for the mission. Can someone shift that personality trait or is that kind of ingrained in us?

You can, you can. I did. I was like, when I went in, I was super young, it was like 19, 20, 21. Like, I went right out of college. I was just like, I wasn't thinking clearly. So I was a bit more identity and we all are when we're younger, right? Me, me, me, me, me.

Yes.

So, and you move between these two phases also, 'cause there's moments in life where you might have be going through something and you feel very identity or you may have a point where you're like, no, this person's not treating me well, I'm going through this and we may feel down on ourselves. That's okay. Recognize you're an identity right now. I need to live here for a bit. But then I need to move out. I mean, my husband does it to me. He's like, Somebody's an identity a little longer than they should be, huh? That's okay. But you may also see that you may have a habit where one of them is much more prevalent in your life. It's being aware of it and acknowledging it, but also wanting to change it. Some people don't want to change it.

I don't want to.

Some people like the narrative of, I just want it to be about me. that's okay. It's just very limiting for you. You're going to be very frustrated in life and you're going to hit a lot of walls. And you know what? You're going to feel very bad about yourself. Because if you're internalizing everything that's being said to you and done to you as an attack on you or a negative on you, that also tells you, I have a habit of thinking that the world doesn't appreciate me, doesn't see me. doesn't value me.

They're against me or whatever, yeah.

Yeah.

And it's gonna be very hard to accelerate your career in life as well in the workforce. I mean, when I was playing sports and not a team, if you're taking it personally and not just doing whatever it takes to serve the team, the mission of the team to win the game or to win the championship or the season, whatever it is, like you were on the bench, it didn't matter how talented you were, if you had a bad attitude, if you didn't do what was needed or necessary, you're probably not going to play that much and you're going to be frustrated that you're not getting what you want. So you've got to shift it to being service focused on whatever season of life you're in for that goal or that mission, whether it's a career or a relationship or a team or something like that. So that's really interesting that you learned that and I think if people understood it, they'd have a lot more harmony in their life and feel more fulfilled making about mission as opposed to self.

Do you know what the thread that kind of ties the Navy SEALs, Secret Service agents, and even athletes together? We're all coachable. Because we've been trained to focus on the outcome, the team, what's the collective goal. And so we are all willing to listen so that I can perform better and do better so that the overall team performs better.

Yes.

We are much more coachable, and you'll see this inherently, It's a massive trait among certain groups than others.

Yeah, coachability is huge. I'm assuming you couldn't be in the secret service without being coachable.

I mean, the hiring process was massively invasive. If you didn't want anybody in your business, not the job for you. I mean, they show up to your house, they show up to your school, they show up everywhere. I think people typically that come and wanna serve, and you can see who that is. That's beautiful. And that shows. But you also want to make sure that when people come in, that they're coming in for the bigger purpose, and it's not for you because you watched CSI or SVU, no offense to those shows, great shows, or some FBI show and you're like, yeah, I wanna-- Swat. I wanna be that guy. I would just wanna shoot everything up. And it's like, no, no thing. We'll call you.

Right, no thank you. That's interesting. And what was the third skill that you learned that you wish everyone else -And the humility. -Humility. Why humility in the secret service?

-Because you are taught to put other things ahead of yourself. You are taught that you are not that special. And I think in a world where everybody is told, you,'re special, you,'re special. So if that is true, then if I am special, then everybody else isn't.

-Interesting. You know, as a mom, how do you raise you know, a child and giving them confidence and courage to go after their dreams and their talents and actualize their potential while also coaching someone to be humble. How do you do that?

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So, wow, there's, all right, there's a lot of layers. So, my daughter is still very young. She's 18 months now. There's a couple of things I've been doing with her and I'm very conscious. I don't, like probably most parents, I don't like to see her cry or upset. And I have to fight that instinct to help her, to pick her up, to take care of her. So, unless she's hurt, I leave her. -Wow, that's interesting.

-You don't rescue her at every moment. -No, no. -You don't give her candy or give her what she wants 'cause she's throwing a fit.

No, no.

That's the hardest thing for a mom probably to do.

No. I won't, I will let her, well, I also want her to learn how to process her emotions. So if she's having a meltdown, let her have it so she can work through it on her own. If I save her from it or if I give her something to stop it, she's not learned to process it.

Self-soothe.

Yes.

I also like, let's say she comes here and she's trying to grab something and it's out of her reach. But I see she can do it. I will leave her and let her struggle and figure it out. I will let her cry. And you know, I'll tell her, you can do it. You know, I talked to her in Greek, actually.

I'm trying to-- Really?

That's cool. I want her to learn, I speak Greek, so I want her to learn another language.

That's incredible.

I'm glad you're doing that.

Yes. It's a gift. Are you gonna do that if you have children? Only in Spanish.

Only in Spanish. Yes. I mean, Martha will speak to her in Spanish. Yeah. You'll speak to her. So I speak to her in Greek, my mother in Greek speak, and my husband speaks to her in English. And so she's learning both languages at the same time. But I let her struggle. That's great. And as soon as I can, I'm putting a ghee on her, which is her jiu-jitsu outfit. She's going into jiu-jitsu. I think she's too young at 18. I would put her in if I could. I want her to struggle. I want her to learn at a young age to overcome. But then at the same time, She also knows I'm there. So if she needs a hug, I give it to her. I don't deny her a hug. If she needs, you know, a comfort, I don't deny that. So it's a balance. And I do, it's not, there's no perfect formula, but I have this almost conversation in my head, what do we, what's happening here? But because I also, I don't want to create a monster that I can't control later on. You know, and I unleash her in the world and I mean, and I'm also, some people may not like this, but I, when I put her in any kind of sport, I don't want to put her in a sport where she's gonna get a trophy along with everybody else.

What is that teaching kids if everyone gets a trophy?

I want her to learn how to fail and fail well.

How do you fail well?

By not getting pissed off and having a temper tantrum and thinking the world owes you something. And then saying, why did I not get this trophy? How could I have done better? And how can I do better next time so that I can get it and I can earn it? Because I'm not always gonna be around for her.

-Right.

-I'M not. It's just human nature, right? Like the way the world is. Like, she'll have me for a period of time in her life, and after that, she'll be on her own. And I owe her, as a parent, to make sure that she can handle herself when-- her mom's gone or her dad's gone. Right. It's not that tough in my house.

You love it. You love it.

Yes.

Those are great. Three. Those are three great things. Your circle matters. Be instrumental over identity based of sense making and be humble. Have humility.

Yeah.

Right.

I saw this quote or this. This quote in a Time magazine article. that was about a study published in Nature Human Behavior. And it provides evidence for the existence of at least four personality types. And I'm curious what you learned, but I just want to read this out. Four different personality types: average, reserved, self-centered, and role model personality type. Each one of them is based on the extent to which people display five different major character traits including neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. I'm curious, I'm not sure if that's the different personality types that you learned, but how can someone understand what personality type is in front of them of a family member or a friend, someone they're meeting for the first time? Is there any strategies or techniques to learning a personality type of someone that you're meeting?

Okay, so this is a good question. I'm not familiar with this and I've not been taught this, but I've been taught another one with four personality types.

Okay, one of those.

So we're gonna give them animal names.

Okay.

So here's the thing. The researchers behind this are Dr. Emily Allison and Dr. Lawrence Allison, and they actually do Let me see what I'm allowed to say, 'cause I always try to share stuff and not share too much. But they do a lot of research and they actually work very closely with the intelligence communities to include where I came from. So I've done my training there.

Okay.

So these are the four animal archetypes that they talk about. You can be lion, T-Rex, mouse, or monkey. Now, somebody who is lion, is a person who likes to be in control. They wanna set the agenda. Somebody who's T-Rex is someone who typically fights. They're very kind of frank forthright. Sometimes they can come off a little bit blunt. They're fighters, right? Someone who is mouse is someone who will suppress themselves a bit more. They're a little bit more submissive. They can be patient and humble, but they can also become avoidant, right? They can push themselves down to suppress themselves so they can fit in. Maybe they want to be really liked or something like that. And then the other personality type is monkey. It's like, hey, everybody, I'm here. So good to see you. Come here, this and that.

They're all over the place.

They're very warm, they're social, they're engaging. Now those are the animal archetypes. We move through these because you're not one thing and you're different things with different people, by the way, because you can be a very strong personality, maybe at work, but then when you go home, let's say you have an abusive relationship or not healthy one, you can go from being lion to being mouse. So you wanna pay attention to that. Now there's also, I feel like we're in class now, there's also good lion and good mouse. So there's a good wheel and a bad wheel. You can be both of the, you can be this, but be the bad version of it. So if I'm, let's take, I'm T-Rex. I know this, I surrender to it. I intuitively- you- fight her, you're proud of her. I wanna fight. If somebody says something to me, I intuitively wanna fight back. But because I know this, I work very hard to keep it in check. Interesting. I'm aware of it.

So you're the good T-Rex. Most of the time, except for with your husband.

So if I'm a good T-Rex, I'm direct, frank, and forthright. I'll tell you something. But I'm not afraid to tell you something. I'm not afraid to compete. It's called being competing. So let's say you say to me, Louis, that research I told you about, it's the best. This is what they should be teaching. It's bar none, it works for me. And I said to you, you know, Louis, I hear you and I think it's probably it's really good, but I really, the one I use, I believe in this one and this is why. So I'm competing with you. That's okay. A lot of people are so afraid of competing, they think it's ugly, it's conflict, it's confrontation. Right, right, right. But if I were bad T-Rex, which I'm not saying I've never been, I'm dogmatic. I'm, I'm, I'm- this is the only.

Way it has to be.

I'm sarcastic. I'm punitive, right? Oh, so you think you know everything. Oh, so because you're Lewis Howes, you must know it all. That would be bad T-Rex. So there's good versions and bad versions of this. And I think sometimes we can be, like, for example, mouse. I can be mouse. and which you are when you interview people, you actually flip, there's lion and mouse. So when I speak, I'm lying, you sit back, you let me have the floor, you let me speak and explain, right? But you're humble, you're seeking guidance, you're asking questions, you're good mouse. And hopefully most of your people come here are good lion. They're setting the agenda, they're helping give points, they're talking, they're sharing with your viewers. Now, the bad version of that would be, I'm a bully. I'm someone who bullies people. I'm a supervisor or someone who kind of pushes people down. I'm in charge. I'm this, I'm that, I'm the boss. You listen to me. That would be a bad version of lion. And a bad version of mouse would be someone who becomes very weak, submissive, almost avoidant because they're just trying to keep that bully and that stuff off of them. They're too afraid to speak. so those are the four predominant personalities. Which one do you think you are?

I guess I could be a little bit of all of them in different scenarios as well, but I think the, the main one would be the lion, I think. But I could also be a monkey. You know, I can be a monkey because I'm very social and warm and engaging and, you know, just try to do a little bit everything, but.

I think you're probably a good lion.

Good lion, okay, there you go.

Is monkey bad? No, monkey's good. Monkey, well we were monkeys, we were monkeys outside when we first met. Hey, how are you? Good, how are you? So that's social, so when you're a good monkey, I'm social, warm, I'm respectful. Bad monkey is, and you probably for sure get this, hey, you know, I really wanna come on your show. Hey, you know, here's my book. Or hey, here's this guy. Or hey, can you get me tickets to this? Or hey, I saw you in, Success Magazine and I really wanted, can I talk to the editor there? You know, I really, that's bad monkey. Sure, sure. Like people can go into bad monkey. Gotcha. That's a, that's a little bit of a trying too hard to sell, like car salesman again, sorry to the car salesmen. Sure, sure. But that's when the person feels like.

Okay, please like come off of me a little bit. Like it's a, it's a little too pleating.

So how can you decipher which personality type you're in front of if you're just meeting them for the first time? They'll show you. Just pay attention to their behavior. I always say this, shut up. The first day when I went to polygraph training, the instructor got up there and they said, you, wanna be king or queen, reading people, shut up. Give people space to reveal themselves. Stop talking. They'll show you. First of all, people love to speak up, talk about themselves. So let them go. And then you can ask questions. I do this. I actually hate talking about myself. I'll do it on a platform like this because I understand why we're here. But in real life, I don't like talking about myself. I'm more introvert. And I'll say, no, you know, people ask me, oh, Evie, what project are you on? I was like, I'm talking to this production company. We'll see where it goes. What are you doing lately? Oh, wow. Really? You're in accounting? That's amazing. What kind of accounting do you do? Tell me about that. and then I listen. So you'll pick up that person's mannerisms, you'll hear the language that they use, how they speak, and now you have a better idea who's in front of you. I call it, it's 80-20. 80% of the time they speak, 20% of the time you speak.

What if both of you are like that and you want to speak less? And so you both just ask, I'll tell you very little and popping the question back to the other person.

So you bring good monkey out, warm, social, respectful, but you can ask questions, tell me about that, or see what they like to talk about, see what they want to talk about, not what you want to talk about.

What if both individuals are that personality where they're both like, I just want to know what you think. You tell me more about you. No, you tell me more about you.

I think.

No, you tell me more about you.

If you're that, that's actually you're both, you're both mouse.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is kind of like, so both So here's the thing, that's more mouse. So mouse is me saying, Hey, Lou, what do you want to eat later? Oh, I don't know, Abby. What do you want to eat later? Well, I don't know. What do you want to eat later? We're never going to eat. We're never going to eat because neither one of us is making a decision. Yes. So actually in that scenario, we're both being mouse. So when you're mouse, if one person is mouse, then to help the relationship progress, then one person has to become lion. so at that point I'd say, you know what, Louis? Let's do sushi. I love sushi. Let's go do that. You go with sushi and at that point you would chime in. So yes, you would want to move, but these animal archetypes, we move between them. We may be one version more so than another one. So I know I'm a bit more T-Rex after work on it. I believe you're probably more lying just because of all the things you do. You're trying to control everything, control your relationships, your business deals, and so that the ship doesn't leave without you, I could see you being like, from what I know of you, like, Hey, you know, let me slow down.

Let me look at this. Yeah, that's interesting. There's so many different, you're in the TV world, you know, you host and you commentate on a lot of different things in the TV world and the news. Obviously we're talking about your book, Becoming Bulletproof: Life Lessons from a Secret Service Agent. If you guys haven't checked this out yet, make sure you check it out. But it seems to me like the more I open up the news, social media, Netflix, there's just extreme personality type documentaries or docu-series of serial killers or personality types that did horrible things. And that seems to be what's being featured a lot lately. I think people are just fascinated by these horrible stories that happen or murders or things like that, sociopaths, all that different stuff. I'm curious, you know, narcissism, sociopath, psychopath, these personality types are thrown out a lot of these kind of words are thrown out a lot. And people use them freely. You know, that's a narcissist, that's a sociopath. That's a, how can you really tell if someone is a narcissist, a sociopath or a psychopath? Like how can you tell if they have nuances of it or if they are one? Is there a strategy in finding that out?

You know, I am totally on board with you with this because everybody's calling everybody a narcissist. It's like the thing, you don't agree with me, you're a narcissist. You said this to me, you're a narcissist. It's like pull out the DSM-5, which is actually the book that has all the disorders in there. I have a master's in forensic psychology and you not agreeing with someone or rather someone not agreeing with you doesn't mean you label them as a narcissist. And the fact that we label everybody all these things, Just in and of itself, you labeling somebody else's narcissist is narcissistic of you.

Right.

So when we look at true narcissism, there's criteria you have to meet. And there's certain criteria. Lack of empathy is one. They don't feel bad, lack of remorse. Now, when you look at serial killers or people who commit certain types of crime, that falls under antisocial disorder. When people think of antisocial disorder, they think of someone who doesn't like to socialize and doesn't like to be monkey. As we talked about it before, they don't want to be warm and engaging. They kind of are then to themselves. That's not that. Antisocial disorder essentially is a person who lacks empathy. And that's where sociopath or psychopath fall in, although they've moved away from using these terms in actual psychology. The chances of you coming across someone like that, some of the research that I had looked at said one out of 25 people will be one of these. so one out of 25 people will have this tendency, meet this criteria.

It doesn't- A narcissist or sociopath or psych- Sociopath, psychopath. Really? One out of 25.

One out of 25, maybe a little bit of narcissism, but one out of 25. I think narcissism is going up in our culture right now. I think we are seeing a bit more of it. And the reason why I think we're seeing that a lot, a lot is the United States predominantly, I can't speak to other countries as much, is a very identity culture. We're all me, me, me, me, me. I feel like this. My feelings need to be validated. I need this, I need that. And then with that, social media has made us more self-focused rather than outward word focus. So we are more identity. We also have We lack more empathy as well. Social media has also done that. In fact, I just literally on the way here, the news just hit me up NBC and like, hey, we want to do a story. They're looking at college campuses. Crime is going up on college campuses. And they want to know why. One of the reasons why is a lack of connection. I'm an adjunct professor. I teach criminal justice criminology. I have a three-hour block that I do. When I give my students breaks, 'cause I give them, Do you know not one person turns around and says, Hey, how are you? How are you doing today? They all pull out their phones and they do this.

Really?

They don't even get up out of their chair to go on break. I have to tell them, Get up, go walk, go use the bathroom, get some water. So why is that a problem? The problem is I'm not building community. I'm not getting to know you. You're there and I'm here. And so when we don't feel connected to people, we have a lack of empathy. We fear or don't like the other and we are more likely to cause harm to the other. All these things come into play. And social media watching, I do the news, everything's negative. It's true. They're not gonna put anything positive because you, the viewer, don't wanna see it. You wanna see the drama. You wanna see, they're called celebrity cases. The cases, especially crime, they wanna see those cases over and over again. When you're also consuming this stuff on a repetitive basis, it's also not healthy for you. I have a criminal background, right? I've never watched a crime show, ever.

Wow.

I help make them.

Right, right.

But I don't, it's too much. I need a break. I need something else. I will watch something that has nothing to do with that. So you also have to think, what am I feeding my mind? But again, to go back to the sociopathic question, the main thing that we see between sociopath, psychopath, or really antisocial disorder and narcissism is a lack of empathy. I don't feel bad for what I do. It's my inability to feel bad for causing you harm.

So I don't feel bad for what I do to you or what someone is doing to you.

I do to you.

Okay.

I am focused and their very identity, by the way, they are very self-focused. It is me, me, me. So a couple of things to pay attention to. When you hear somebody using the repeated use of I, I, I, I, a little bit of a red flag, right? You can even see it in email. I was trained to look at language and how you can know in language when somebody is very self-focused or even depressed. If you see the repeated use of I, I this, I that, It's either self-focused narcissism or depression. People also who are very depressed are very self-focused. I analyze myself. Another thing that's causing harm, and I think people are coming out with this, is when you sit and you talk about your problems all the time, when you dwell on them, when you analyze them, when you sit there and you've had something bad happen to you and you are trying to dissect that thing to the nth degree, to figure out why it happened. What you're doing is you're feeding your brain and, you know, even spiritually, right? If we bring it to that level, only negative things. You are dwelling and retelling and reliving the harm that's caused to you. And you know, one of the predominant places that happens in is in the therapy room. Because most people, when they go to therapy, what do you do? You talk about everything that's wrong in your life. So you have to take a moment 'Cause I've had people come to me, I need help with this. And when I speak to them, they'll be in years of therapy. And I'll ask them, what do you go for? What do you do when you're in there? I talk about my problems. So if I sit and I always talk about my problems, and I relive them, and I retell them, and then I get emotionally upset, what kind of head space am I in? You know, the Hippocratic oath, I'm Greek, it's do no harm. So I think going to therapy and getting help is a great thing. So long as you understand, why am I going? What's my purpose? And so long as you have a good doctor that says, we're done now. You don't need me anymore.

Yes. That's interesting, you know, because, you know, growing up as a man in, I guess, the Western culture, I wasn't. I was never acceptable to express feelings.

Right.

So it was kind of like an extreme of just don't acknowledge it. Don't talk about it. Don't express it. Don't let it out. let it out through anger or sports or some other strategy to kind of let out your emotions. And by suppressing it for so long and not just talking about it, at least a few times, it made me feel like a lot of pressure. It made me feel like something was boiling inside of me. And as I started talking about the things that were causing me emotional pain or frustration, and figuring out how to integrate the lessons of healing or release and move beyond it, I started to feel better. But if I was constantly reliving a story and feeling emotionally heightened by it, I could assume that wouldn't benefit me long term. But on the flip side, like not talking about it at all might cause me stress or chronic, you know, stress or pain or something else. So I think it's a balance. It's the balance. It's like learning how to communicate it and learning how to release it, but getting a strategy to go beyond.

You know that old saying, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I think that goes for how we live too.

It's not just what we do, it's.

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In a state of moving forward, but if I retell it and retell it and retell it and retell it and relive it, it's like eating McDonald's, no offense to McDonald's.

Yes.

But if I eat McDonald's every day, I'm putting junk in my body, my body is going to show. If I'm retelling every bad event and I'm feeding that to my mind and into my soul on a consistent basis, I'm not going to feel good either. So you control the thoughts that come into your mind. And if you sit in sometimes, Louis, bad things just happen. And sometimes there is no why did it happen? It happened. And sometimes there's no analyzing it and assessing it. To figure out what?

Yeah.

And I say this, I went through September 11th. I was in the World Trade Center. I survived.

You were there during it?

I was. I was there. I had colleagues who died, friends who died. I was almost killed. If I sat and I retold that story and relived it, I would be a mess. How am I ever gonna move past it?

Right.

Or at least let it just be. I'll tell you this. I can't heal from that. I don't know how to heal from something like that. But I've allowed it to be part of what I experienced.

You've accepted it.

Yes, but it also gave me a gift. It made me appreciate life. You know, that day, it was truly, you know, I had probably, I've had a couple of close calls in my life, and because of my career, but that was truly a moment where I thought, I was like, I'm gonna die. Really? When the first tower was coming down, I was by the, the street by the base and we had a triage. We didn't know it was going to collapse.

So you were near, you were in.

The base of the buildings? Yes. Well, I worked in the World Trade Center. Our offices were there. The U.S. Secret Service field office was New York and we were out of there. So I was there from the first.

Plane to the second to the collapse of both towers.

But you were on the ground. You weren't in the building. I, no, I didn't. We were in seven and that's when the first plane hit. So that building collapsed after the towers. In fact, when the towers fell, they fell on seven and then seven eventually burned and collapsed.

Gotcha.

You weren't in the towers? I was not in the tower itself. Okay, gotcha. But when the first plane hit, we went to go help. And then as we were going into the towers, we were trying to go in. The second plane hit. Wow. And then the debris came out and it just landed on top of all of us. It's like it was literally just, you know, luck. Either you got hit by something or you didn't. Until I remember the entrance was blocked. So then we went around. and just people started piling out. And then at that point, we just started triaging people who needed to go into an ambulance, who was just in shock, maybe, and just needed to kind of be pushed out of the vicinity. But as we were doing that, I mean, nobody knew that-- I didn't know the building was going to fall.

Right.

They just thought it was going to.

Be, you know, burning and let's get people out.

But then-- Yes. But then you heard the steel, and even then I remember hearing it thinking, all right, the roof's going to slide off. Because I remember the one plane hit the-- the top part. So I just thought, because debris kept falling the whole time up until that point. But then as the tower began collapsing, and I remember I hunkered down, I was by myself. I just found a corner and I just sat there on the street. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna die. Like, I really thought, oh, yeah. You know? And so I sat there and I remember thinking, I was like, wow, I haven't lived my life. I was like, what if, are you, and you, At least for me, I mean, I don't want to say my life flashed before my eyes, but it did. And I thought about all the things I didn't get to do. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, not yet, not ready to go. But I didn't have a choice. And I just let it be. I was like, you know, I began to pray. That's intuitively, that's where I went. I began to pray. I'm like, well, if it's my time, it's my time.

-Wow.

-But the gift in that was it taught me to appreciate my life. And so now every day, if something happens and even petty things that happen, right? I go bad T-Rex I pause. I'm like, what am I pissed about?

-Right.

-Like, so it gave me a new license on life. But take that trauma, it's trauma, it's tragedy, tragedy, whatever you want to call it. And if I go to therapy and all I do is talk about that on a consistent basis, How well do you think I'm gonna do? How well am I going to recover? I'm not, 'cause I'm gonna relive all those people that died, all those people I couldn't save, how I almost died, how my friends died, how my colleagues died, why did this happen? Why did they do this? Why, why, why, why, why? Even to this point, I go for screening. It's the World Trade Center Health Monitoring Program. Because of the exposure to all that stuff, so many people have died from cancer and all that. I go every year for my screening. Really? In fact, I'm due. I'm due because the chances of me getting cancer and there's an aggravated version of cancer you would, you get, people are getting from that exposure. It's just more, I guess, ferocious and vicious and a typical, not that, you know, my dad died of cancer, but I guess this cancer is a very vicious type of cancer. But even then, so I guess I understood that and I learned that I must let go. Mm-. And I'll never go to who Evvie was before, but I don't want to go to who she was before. I want to take what I experienced and bring that experience into my life. And now I appreciate my life. And I'll tell you this, Louis, if I'm ready to-- I'm ready to go now. Tomorrow, if something happens, tonight something happens, I'm okay.

No.

Because I've lived my life the best I could, and I've done the things that I could. I tried to find and make meaning in my life. I'm okay.

Right. I'm hearing an ambulance go outside as this is happening. This is pretty intense. One of the things that I can really appreciate how you say reliving past painful events and speaking about them and causing yourself more emotional, heightened emotions and stress doesn't really serve you past a certain point.

Yes. that's all I'm saying.

Right.

For me, I'm a big fan of, I call therapy coaching, because I try not to live in the past. I try to say, what can I prepare for the future? What can I do to give me feedback on how to improve to prepare for future challenges that might arise? And my, my therapist, I really call her coach, I'm saying, what are people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s struggling with? that if they did at my age and I can prepare for now, I won't have those struggles. So that's the way I really try to think about it. Not like, oh, this happened to me when I was a kid. I've already done that work. But knowing the traumas from the past and how it affects my personality type now, how can I keep improving and working to overcome potential future challenges now? That's the way I look at it, and that's why it helps me, but.

But you find the positive in it.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's more thinking of like, how can I just keep improving?

Yes. But you also, you know you.

Yeah, exactly.

Best. And you know what works for you.

Right.

And if that's helping you elevate, then that, but it's helping you move forward.

Exactly. It's not keeping me stuck in the past.

Correct.

It's saying, how can I make the most of today and the next day?

Yes, and I think that's differentiation. Does this going keep me stuck in the past? And now has my identity become this past event that happened? 9/11 was one day. So you're gonna tell me the rest of my life is gonna be defined by this one day? What is that, 0.01% of my overall life? But this one day is gonna define everything moving forward.

Why do so many people let one day or one event define their entire life?

'Cause they go back to it and they keep going back to it and you try to make sense of it. I can't make sense of 9/11. Somebody thought it was a good idea to do that. So I'm gonna sit and hyper-analyze and why all that loss of life. And that's just one example. And there's so many other examples, like I've endured, you've endured. In fact, I read this one study, 70% of people have been through some type of trauma or tragedy in their lives. the majority of people have. So we take that and we figure out how to be better and move forward. You know, it's interesting for me, my therapy after that, they actually forced me to go to therapy after that. Secret Service made me go to therapy. They made me sit in this big group where we all told our 9/11 stories. So we went around the room. It was like two days later and I was told by my boss I had to go.

Two days later? That's pretty recent, isn't it?

Yes, because we had to go back out and work. Yeah, there was a process.

-You got to process it and move on.

-It'S like process, talk about your feelings and let's move forward. -Go serve, yeah. -I appreciate them even doing that. So we went around the room and each person told their story. And I will tell you, by the time it came to me, I didn't want to talk about it. It was just so hard to hear everybody. And I gave such an abbreviated version. I was there, the plane hit, the other plane hit, it collapsed, then the other one collapsed. I'm okay. I'm good. And I just-- Wow. But for me, it didn't work. But you know what did work, where my therapy was, after that they asked for volunteers at Ground Zero. And I volunteered, and I spent a couple of weeks down at Ground Zero helping other people who had lost a lot more than I had, and just helping be part of a collective process. That was my therapy.

-Yes.

-And I think maybe had I not had that, Perhaps I would have struggled.

Interesting.

So therapy looks different for different people.

Man, it's so powerful. I think that's-- I always feel some type of therapeutic release when I'm in service. When I'm helping someone that needs something that is struggling or suffering or is challenged in some way, when I can be of support and service, I feel like it is a therapeutic experience. And I think it's really hard to be depressed when you're in service to someone else. It's really hard to be thinking about your own problems. And you can, like you said, you can see, oh man, this person has it way worse than I do. Let me be of service and not diminish what I've been through, but appreciate what I have. And I think that's a powerful thing too.

You can find meaning in everything. Like not meaning in that, why did it happen? Sometimes, why'd it happen? Because it's just a messed up situation because the world's messed up because people do messed up things. because it's naive of us to think that people will not cause you harm because there are some people that will. I know this as a former criminal investigator. You can't live in La La Land. That's reality. But if I know this, I understand this, I'm going to move through the world in the best way I can. And I'm going to, I'm not going to be surprised when people cause me harm. I'm aware of it. I'm not expecting it. But when it does happen, I have the understanding that these people exist in the world. They move through the world and most people that cause you harm don't think they're doing anything to you.

They're not intentionally doing it.

They will validate it. I have interviewed countless people in the interview room. People committed horrible crimes against other people and they will sit down and they will validate or justify to me, I did this, but here's my reason. You can sell anything to yourself. We've all done it. You've hurt people, I've hurt people. And when we did it, we sold it to ourselves a certain way. Well, I'm doing this because of X, Y, and Z. So maybe you sell it to yourself like, well, this is how it works for me. But in the end, you still end up hurting someone else. Yes, it happens. Now, there are varying degrees to that, but I, you can sell anything to yourself and make it okay for you to cause harm to someone else. I would see it with all sorts of crime. Wow. I remember working this big It was a big enough case, but it was a bank case. It was an employee. A lot of the fraud that happens at banks, a lot of it does come internally from employees. So there was one person who worked at the bank and I guess this bank, we won't say what bank it is, this bank would leave their money out. Like they didn't lock the safe, they would leave stock piles of money out. So this person, this employee would steal money and they stole a lot of money over time. and he knew where the cameras were, so there were blind spots where he would take the money and they wouldn't see it. So very actually it was a simple case. So this money's disappearing. I set the person down. Over the years it turned out to be a lot of money and his justification was the way he sold it to himself was if that money was so important to them, why didn't they lock it up?

Oh my gosh.

It obviously wasn't, so I took it. If they cared about their money, they'd lock it up. shame on them. That's how he's told it. You can sell anything to yourself if you want to. And that's how we sell to ourselves when we cause somebody harm. Now they're varying degrees of how much harm we cause. But you have to pause and say, am I causing true harm or is the harm I'm gonna cause enough for me to feel okay because I have to make a certain decision?

You remind me of a story I went through where we had an employee here a few years ago that we had a hundred dollar bill out, and it was gone one day. And we confronted them, and one of the other employees and saw someone else take it. And we're like, did anyone take this or move this? You know, we weren't thinking that anyone stole it, but they just were like, hey, why is this? Where is this? And when we confronted the guy and he pointed at the other person, we confronted him, and he said, Hey, did you take this $100 bill that was out? And he goes, oh, you mean this $100 bill? I go, yeah. He goes, oh, it was just out there. I just thought I could take it. But just like this justification, right? It was like, well, it's not your $100 bill. Like, why are you just taking the money? But that's what this person thought at the bank. Well, it's just out there, so they.

Didn'T care about it, so I'll just take it.

Exactly. That's how he sold it to himself. That's interesting.

But it didn't act like it was a big deal. It was like, oh, it was here.

So I'm just gonna take it from the office.

Because if you cared about it, you.

Would have put it away. It's still stealing.

Did you?

Oh, he was fired that day.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, that day.

He was going to have a moment.

I'm like, what do we do? He was fired that day. Yeah, yeah. There was a number of red flags before that anyways, but that was like.

Okay, you can't steal money, so.

Well, pause.

The red flags are the behavior signals that people give you.

Yes.

So you see these signals, it's the behavior. I think when you brought up narcissism before and all these labels, labeling people, don't label the person, label the behavior. Mm, that's interesting. Label what they show you. What am I seeing in this moment? What is the behavior I'm seeing? That's what you label. And that's what's going to show you what's going on. Because when you label the person, the problem with labeling people is also they're people that we have emotional ties to often. That's my this, that's my that. And so it becomes a little muddy and we can't see clearly. But when you label the behavior, if you can just put aside who the person is and just label what they do, you will see clearly. That's why it's easier for you to give somebody else advice about someone that you don't know. Because you're hearing about what this person did to them. You're hearing about the behavior and you're making a rational assessment based off of the behavior of this other person.

Yeah, not the relationship or the chemicals of love or whatever might be there.

No, you're not introducing all those complexities. All those complexities muddy the water and that's why we make bad decisions sometimes, because we're like, well, it's this person. Forget who the person is. What did they do? If you label the behavior, you'll make better choices.

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