The 5 LAWS Of Human Nature You Can Use TODAY | Robert Greene & Lewis Howes

Don't accept what you see with your eyes. Look for something deeper. What is the meaning behind this? The dark side has come out because you've repressed it instead of dealing with it. So the idea was you need to- 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-.

The laws of human nature help you understand why people do what they do. And Robert Greene breaks down in this video the advantages to using these laws in your life, your relationships, and your work. If you enjoy this, make sure to subscribe to the channel, leave a like, and comment your biggest takeaways below.

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

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

Well, I would tell people to read chapter eight of the Laws of Human Nature, because I go deeply into that, which is the law about your attitude. And the idea is you have a viewpoint, a perspective. It's like the lens on a camera. And it's through that lens that you view the world and you view people and you view events. And no two people see the same event in the same way, right? And so your attitude, how you look at the world, will determine what you get in life. So if you're focusing on all the obstacles, if you're focusing on the government, if you're focusing on COVID, if you're focusing on this person didn't give me that thing, my parents didn't give me that thing, that's you creating your attitude. You're building it. It's something, it's like a crystallization process. This crystal starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger as each new crystal is added and you crystallize this negative defensive attitude towards life. and that's what you're gonna get. And there's simple examples of that. So if I'm kind of come to this interview and I'm sort of defensive and I don't really feel good about Lewis and I'm not sure what's going to happen, you've picked that up on me because you're a very astute person, you're very sensitive. You pick it up. And so you're not gonna be very friendly to me. So my initial attitude creates a reaction in you which is negative. It starts from me but because Most people are kind of paranoid and don't have that self-awareness. They'll think, God, Louis is such an asshole. I don't know if I can say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I'm not on television. He was such an asshole. He's so cold, why is he? But it's coming from me. You're not realizing it. So you create how people react to you. You create how negative circumstances affect you. So, you know, we have COVID and jobs are being wiped out left, right, and center. you're having to spend a lot of time alone at home. Your life has been massively disrupted, most people. And you can see this as like, God damn it, why did this have to happen? My life is ruined. I'm not going to go anywhere. Blah, blah, blah. You know, and you start maybe drink a little bit. You start putting on some pounds, that COVID, whatever they call it. COVID-15 or whatever.

-It feels like the freshman 15.

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

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

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

To say it again.

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

It have been worse? You're asking me for questions.

Yeah, yeah. Could it have been worse?

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

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

Right.

It seems so big.

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

Yeah.

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

It's really hard when you're in the moment of stress or breakup or chaos or you get fired from your job. You feel like, It's such a big deal. It's so messy, it's so painful. It's hard to think outside of that moment when you're in it. I went through a breakup almost two years ago and I remember feeling like, ah, this is like, this kind of sucks. It's in the moment, you know, people are judging you. And I just kept saying to myself over and over again, I'm gonna have hindsight now. I think this is exactly, I was like, this is around January time. I was like, this might be like six to eight weeks of some like drama or whatever, just gossip. Let me think it's gonna be New Year's Eve one year from today.

Exactly.

Like, what's the lesson I'm gonna learn from this experience? Exactly. How much stronger am I gonna be? How much more humility will I have?

Right.

You know, maybe I'll connect with someone new that'll be a better relation. You know, all these things. I just kept saying, anytime I felt like the moment was bigger than me, let me have hindsight now. In a year, six months, two years, I wanna be on to something else. And people either move on with me or, move out of my life.

That's the perfect example. That's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, honestly, it's hard, as you said. Really hard in that moment. In the moment.

It's very hard.

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

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

Well, I think everybody's different. But in general, if my knowledge of psychology and all the books I've read, is that you pay a price for repressing your emotions. That repressing something eventually comes out. and the great psychologist Carl Jung, he was the one who kind of studied that in great depth. When you repress, for instance, your dark side or your dark emotions, they come out in other ways, right? So trying to always present yourself as this very stoic person when in fact you're not, you're going to pay a price for it. It's going to come out in ways you can't control, right? There's going to be a negative consequences to that. And so, on the other hand, you don't want to be this person who's constantly emoting and telling everybody what you feel like. It's very irritating. You have no self-control and people are judging you. You look like this weak person who can't control your own tongue. You can't control it.

Yeah.

Okay? So I compare it in my books and talks to the metaphor of the rider and the horse, right? So the rider of the horse is your rational brain. And the horse is your emotion. It's the animal part of you. It's what makes you angry or excited or fearful. The rider is what makes you kind of, you know, get things done. If the rider on that horse, I don't know if people have ridden a horse, I used to ride a lot when I was a kid. If you hold the reins too tightly, if you're trying to control the horse and repress it, The horse feels it. It feels it in the way your thighs are constricting it. Horses are very sensitive animals, right? And it won't do anything. It won't follow any of your instructions. It won't go anywhere. Or it will freak out and it will run far away and it'll throw you off the horse. But if you just let the horse go anywhere, the horse also feels that. The horse has been tamed to some extent. This guy has, I have no respect for him. He's not trying to do anything. And the horse will go wherever it wants. you have no control. People who know how to ride horses, they know they have to have a balance. You have to hold the reins not too tightly, but you have to be able to guide the horse. You have to squeeze with the thighs, but not too tightly. You have to feel relaxed. And one with the horse, the horse then gives in, and you can go anywhere. So you want a balance in life. You want to be able to understand your emotions, right? You want to be able to stand why you're angry. why you're fearful, why you're frustrated, and not just give into the emotion, like let the horse go anywhere, so that maybe next time you understand, well, maybe I don't need to feel anger or fear because it's not really related to anything. So you have a balance. You understand the horse, the emotion, and you can control it to some degree, but not over control it or repress it. Because, like, I know if I get angry a lot, I have anger. I could have anger issues. Right? The moments where I give into it, I regret. I sent that angry email to my agent.

Oh man.

The next day, you feel bad.

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

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

Oh, that's nice.

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

Yeah.

But I feel terrible, right? And so you have to go through a process like, Before you send that email, why am I angry? Do your hindsight thing. Will I be feeling angry in three weeks? No. Is it really important? Is it possibly my own fault? When you go through that process, you're not repressing the anger. You're not pushing it down so that it explodes three days later when you yell at somebody who inadvertently crosses your path. That's what happens when you repress it. But you understand it and you let it work for you. You know, okay, I won't write that angry email. But then you can use your anger for other things like writing a book, right? Etc. Or believing in some social cause that's important, etc. So it's a balance.

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 going to 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 going to 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. A lot of professors or experts or people who are in a very specific field, they assume that their knowledge is, 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 conversation.

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.

You know, 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 it came home with straight A's, it was like, ha ha. So what?

They didn't care that much.

Oh wow.

Even if you got a B.

They cared, 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 it, yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of a Jewish thing I have to say. But so I never felt secure about my work. Maybe when I was younger, you know, 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 talk 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 on to 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 that's 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, et cetera. But there's actually an insecurity, 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.

You would hold them 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.

And I was thinking, How can I make this more accessible? Because 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, 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 I eat well and I meditate.

Wow.

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 kind of 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.

Take a year and a half, two years, maybe three years.

Three years, maybe two, three years. 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. You actually learn more from negative than the positive. Like you learn This is, I thought in the ambulance back home, I thought of all of the people I knew who handle adversity terribly. I'm not going to name names. Some of them are related to me. Who handle adversity really badly. And I thought, I don't want to be them. And as I thought about that, I thought, there's something interesting in that thought, like who I don't want to be. We never think like that. But it's actually very interesting.

So.

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. You're not, everything's fine when you win. You're like, ah, everything's forgiven. That's right.

Like, let's just keep doing it. That's right. When you're losing, that's when you're like, okay, we evaluate everything. That's right. Well, some people don't, so people know how to do that, but you, 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. 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 understand.

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 I 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 going to 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, 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 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 don't choose necessarily the person with that glittering resume. And so 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 isn't me. You know, I'm sorry about that. That just happened. Circumstances made me do that. And you'll 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's 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 book about awareness and being honest with yourself. If you don't admit that you have these patterns and you can't 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 Holliday 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, they're 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. Really?

That's self-absorption. Unless they have like a near-death experience or they have someone close to them. That's true. You know, something where 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. 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's just never gonna happen. You might be trying for years and wasting your time and energy.

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

Now you talk about the law of self-sabotage.

Yeah.

And, you know, we could 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, right?

And.

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 had. Screw you, bee. Or you could take responsibility and say, well, what did I do to my health? leading up to the bee sting, you know, for years and taking full ownership and responsibility.

Right.

That's what I'm hearing.

Yeah, that's what you're hearing.

Yeah.

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

Positive attitude around it and ref being and reflecting about you, the role that you played in what happened. So we can't, we're not in charge of everything that happens in life. There are circumstances. that are beyond our control. 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 going to do well those students end up doing well, right? 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 when 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 because 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 don't deserve things, it's 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 captain. So your attitude and how you think about yourself sort of determine how people treat you and what happens in life. Confront your dark side and make it work for for you as opposed to repressing it. So everybody has a dark side. I don't care if you're Mahatma Gandhi or whomever, you have a dark side.

And.

It comes out in ways that you're not even aware of. And I explain in the book where our dark side originates from. As a child, we had a lot of powerful emotions that we couldn't control. We would hit our sister. We would play terrible practical jokes, and I'm talking personally.

I did the same thing, yeah.

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

It's all good.

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

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

Well, that's a great question and it really depends on on who you are. Sometimes those dark energies have more kind of power behind them. They impel you. They do. And love, it just kind of melt, love doesn't necessarily make you wanna write a book, although it can. But for me personally, I'm speaking from personal experience, it wasn't love that made me wanna write a book, it was anger and bitterness, right?

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

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

Right?

That's powerful, yeah.

Yeah.

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

Do you think there's a basketball player or an athlete or someone who could not have dark energy and anger?

Could have love.

Who could be just like, I'm just grateful for my family, my wife, my kids, my health. and I'm just gonna go out and channel my gifts to serve, to inspire because I love the sport. Do you think there's... No. No, you think anger is the way. It's like learning the channel anger.

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

Very powerful.

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

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

We're Ohio, yeah.

Are you a Laker fan?

I'm a Laker fan now because of LeBron. Okay. I'm a LeBron fan. Okay, well me too now. But that guy is driven. Driven, right? You can see it in his face. He doesn't want to lose. He's not going out there with love in his heart. I mean, he's a very generous person. He's a very loving person outside basketball. But on the court, no, I don't think so.

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

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

It's all good.

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

So.

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

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

Well, what would being a prisoner mean?

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

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

How do you keep it alive?

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

Yeah.

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

That's good.

So I'm gonna write the book.

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

Yeah, the Law of the Sublime.

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

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

You know?

What does sublime mean? What is the definition?

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

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

Right.

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

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 and 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? And I feel like, that's a 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 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 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 doesn't ineffective because, okay, I've become a better listener. 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 and 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 off is 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. So, that's the key to me. And it's not easy.

-Why is it so hard for people? Because for me, 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. 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, you know, 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 could 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 fantasies or projections. You have to admit that you're not good at dealing with people and you need to improve. If you're that, 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.

Remember every thousands of people's names 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 going to shut off my internal monologue and I'm going to force myself to listen to them and I'm going to glean some information, some nugget about their character that I never understood before. I'm going to ask them about their childhood. I'm not going to be like, it's not going to 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? What do you mean?

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. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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?

Yeah.

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.

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 then I can go to some.

Games and watch him.

That's right. Because I didn't get to go watch games in Cleveland, so.

That's right. So I'm like, you know, if he's gonna go anywhere, this is where it's gonna 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. Yeah. For sure.

So you light up about that, look at you, you're getting excited talking about it.

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 look for, 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. And it's very real. A real smile lights up the whole face. It alters how the eyes look. You want to see when you've hit something like that, or when you've done the opposite, you get that kind of scowling micro-expression of, oh, fuck you. People aren't observant. They're in their own shell. They're not seeing. People are constantly giving out signs of their likes, their diversions, their values, and you're missing them because you're not paying attention.

Is it because 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, etc. And it's very, you know, competitive world out there. So naturally we turn inward. Naturally we're thinking about ourselves. We're thinking about what we need to do you know, 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, 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, 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. 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. and 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. The moment you meet them, an old friend or whomever, while you're smiling, you're laughing, your mood changes. And there's one in 10 that every time you meet them, they feel like.

Your mood changes in a bad way.

Bad way. Well, it's because you're feeling something. It's not just the fact that you're a friend. There's something non-verbal 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 could also be if everyone's having a good time and one person comes down.

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. Goes back to life isn't 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, this should be like 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 with his close to 3,000. 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 felt all of your resistance and all your defenses just melting away. There were other great siddhas 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 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. He was a great, 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. There was a man, it was a hotel where all the models stayed. 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 defused with his sort of relaxed attitude. 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's a key throughout the whole book.

You're not going to influence people if judging them, right?

That's 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 sort of mineral that you're 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 fatal, 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.

We all, yeah. 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 not superior, which will make you less judgmental about other people.

Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. What do you think is the greatest skill or a couple skills that any 20 to 30 year old can in their 20s should be learning how to master today from the skills of psychology, the skills of human nature, the skills of understanding people. Which skill should that be?

The best thing is to be able to get inside the minds of other people. If you develop that skill, the sky's the limit. Nothing will ever stop you because People are like a mystery. They wear a mask and you don't have any idea what they're thinking. And I have this metaphor in human nature which I never wrote, but imagine a device was created in which some app that you can know the thoughts and feelings of the other person. Do you know the power you would have? It would be insane. Okay, you're not, I can't give you such an app. I can't invent that. But you can develop half of that power by becoming someone of insane empathy. And it's not easy and not everybody's born the same way, but it begins with one very simple step and that is normally you go around more interested in your own thoughts and ideas. You're thinking about your boss, you're thinking about your girlfriend or boyfriend, you're thinking about this person who said this, that or the other and you're locked in your head and it's like a a record like in the old vinyl days going around and around and around the same grooves, right? And even when you're sitting there talking with someone on a date or something, you're thinking about yourself, you're still in there, right? Because you find yourself more interesting than the other person and it's very human, I'm not judging it, but inevitably you think your own dramas, your own ideas, your own problems are essentially more interesting than the other person. So if that's your starting position, you're naturally going to be more absorbed in yourself. You can just switch it around and you tell yourself, the other person is more interesting than me. Their life, their thoughts, their ideas, it's like an undiscovered world. It's like going to Tahiti or something and visiting another culture. They have experiences you've never had. They have a world. that's not your world. It's fascinating. Why do people love movies? They love movies because they get to go inside other people's characters and they get to vicariously live in them. It's voyeurism. You can have that in everyday life. If you switch that thing where you're more interested in other people. And so when you listen to them, you're not listening with the idea of, do they like me? Are they thinking about me? What does it have to do with me? I'm sorry, using that voice. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of a windy voice. What's it about me, me, me, me? Thinking, just in a Zen way, absorb yourself in their words and their energy and think about what they're saying, what's the subtext behind them, what's the body language revealing, what is it that motivates them, what is their inner life like? I can't get inside Lewis Howes thoughts, it's impossible, but I can get inside your moods and emotions. because we humans are very susceptible to the moods of other people. We can feel them. So I can start to, if I'm open enough, I can understand the tone in your voice. I can understand the subtext of what you're saying and I could pick up the emotion behind it and what you're intending. And once I do that, well, then if someone says something, I don't have to take it personally because now I understand that it probably comes from other things that have nothing to do with me. Or I want to persuade them to help me on a project. Well, now I know what their world is like, what their spirit is, what their problems are. I'm gonna mold what I'm saying to get them interested in my idea. Doors open up to you left, right, and center. The whole universe opens up to you once you're able to put yourself in the mindset and the point of view of other people. enter their spirit. That's the single greatest step you can have. So you're about to start your first job and you're all insecure and you're all worried about you and what people think about you. Try and make it's not easy, it's not natural. Try and make that switch and don't think about yourself and try and figure out what is your boss like? What is he or she? What is motivating them? What are their insecurities? What are their doubts? What is this person feeling? And suddenly, you're gonna navigate this social environment in a much different level.

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

By far.

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

No, it's taking this one step, which is other people are more interesting than me. I love going to see movies. That other person is like Hannibal Lecter. I'm sorry, that's not a good choice.

Sure.

Could be, but, or they're like this other character in some other movie. I don't know, choose whichever one you want, right? Beetlejuice.

Beetlejuice. There you go.

Okay. Wow, that was a long time ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, I remember that.

Just thinking of a fascinating character.

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

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

Or as interesting.

Or as interesting.

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

And asking questions allows you to understand it.

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

Tell me about this.

Yeah, so did you love your mother? Did your father be...

They were like, why are you asking me this?

Yeah.

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

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

And their successes and yeah.

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

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If you don't have a goal, you suffer and then you get cruel and bitter and resentful and then you start to actively try to make the world a worse place.