The 5 WAYS To Make People INSTANTLY RESPECT YOU | Lewis Howes

I just don't want to try to solve any deal with money when I could have solved it with emotional currency. I'm saving my money.

Thinking positive, it's a fact. People need to think more positive. But every person takes it to how they see it and how they look at it. At the end, it's all about...

Ever since I was about 25, I started paying attention to what I was saying and trying very hard not to say things that it doesn't matter if.

The world likes you.

But it does matter that they respect you. In this video, we bring on some of the most respected individuals in the world to teach you how to gain and earn respect from the people around you. If you enjoy this, please click the like button, make sure to subscribe to our channel and share a comment below on your biggest takeaway. So how do you deal in a negotiation with the kind of person who has to win, who has to get everything they want? They're very controlling, alpha, Right. And it's their way or no way.

Well getting everything they want is actually third on their list. First of all being in control is number one on their list and that's emotionally satisfying. The second thing is the alpha type which is, we refer to that as the assertive. The one thing that's more important to them than actually getting what they want is being respected. and making sure that you know everything about what they're coming from. So, and it's a classic guy who's working for his boss and said, you, know what? My boss didn't do what I wanted him to do, but he heard me out. Or she heard me out. I can live with the direction we're going as long as I know that my boss knows my opinion. And so the assertive type of negotiator, it's really more important to them that they felt that they conducted themselves respectively, that you respected them and that you knew what they were coming from. And once they know those things, they'll actually soften up on what they want.

If they feel disrespected, they'll probably be more frustrated and angry and demanding.

Right, right, right, right.

So you have to be careful.

Because when they're very demanding, what they're really saying to you subtly is, I want you to know how important this is to me.

Right.

I want you to know how important I am.

So how do you meet that person? Just come to them with respect or.

With calm or... You could say, look, you're impressive. You're phenomenal.

You've thought it's all out, this is.

Very... Yeah, I mean, clearly you know where you're coming from, you know what you want. I'm lucky to be talking to you at all. I mean, if we were to sit down with Donald Trump, I would in fact be lucky to be in the same room with him. That'd be the first thing I'd say to him. I'd say, Stroke his ego. You're an American icon. You're the symbol of American business, certainly in New York City. Yeah, stroking her ego is not a bad thing. And it's a version of empathy, because that's how they see themselves. And the emotional recognition, like emotional currency, is not going to solve every deal. I just don't want to try to solve any deal with money when I could have solved it with emotional currency. I'm saving my money.

With emotional empathy, currency, intelligence.

Right, right. My money's too important to me to waste it when I could buy something with satisfaction.

Mmm.

So yeah. I like that. I'm enormously tight with my dollars.

And so many people, well there are especially men in business deals, I feel like there's a lot of alpha men who are trying to get what they want. And so somehow they'll lose money because they're not able to have empathy or they're not able to whatever. They're not able to drop their ego.

Yeah, a lot of money is left on the table over stuff like that. Or what they value themselves out. Price is the most emotional term in a negotiation because you value yourself based on price. But if I can get you to value yourself in another way, Put you on a magazine cover.

I mean, it stroke the ego in some other way.

It used to be you could get Donald Trump in any magazine you wanted to if you put him on the COVID You know, imagine the amount of time, and that used to be his deal. If you wanted to do an article on Donald Trump, the deal was he made the COVID And then he would knock himself out for the people doing the articles on access, anything, answering questions. Imagine how valuable his time was. They got a cover to the magazine anyway. I put somebody on it. Now they're trading something that costs them nothing. And he's giving them dynamic interviews.

And he's promoting them hard and he's sharing them with everyone. He's framing it everywhere. Interesting.

So you're buying Donald Trump with emotional recognition.

So one of the characteristics that make a great negotiator in your field and also how do those translate into the business and relationship world? Just in general outside of?

Well let the other side go first. You know most people have are so so they're burning with their argument. Here's why you should make this deal and they've got that memorized and they're not going to listen to a word you say till they get it out. So trying to talk to them is really like trying to talk to a paranoid schizophrenic. Right. Because they're rehearsing their speech in their head and they're logic. And so they just you just can't get through to them. So you let them go first and another guy, Ned Colelli, former GM of the Dodgers, friend of mine here in town, phenomenal negotiator. He's lectured at my class at USC also. And Ned always likes to let the other side go first. He did the Barry Bonds deal. He's done a ton of deals across the board. and Ned says, well, you know, in a two-hour phone call, there's going to be 90 seconds of solid gold, where the person I'm talking to, based on changes that they made in their tone of voice and the adjectives that they used, I mean, he's got an instinct for it. He couldn't identify. He just says, there's 90 seconds of solid gold. And I'd say, what is that? And we talk it through and he says, well, yeah, it's going to be a change in a tone of voice. It's going to be a different kind of adjective. so Ned wants you to go first because he wants to know what's going to take to make the deal.

What they want.

Right.

Yeah.

What they, what they're burning for or how they characterize what they have.

Or what they're not saying, too, maybe.

Exactly right. What someone has failed to say is often a lot more important than what they have said, which is why I give it a little if thought in advance. All right. What they're gonna, what are they gonna say if they, if they've got this? So I, I actually like to look for more of what they haven't said, what's glaringly missing. And that's going to take, I'm going to need you to walk through it a couple of times before that jumps out of me.

Okay. Okay. Who are the most difficult people to work with then? Would you say it's the alpha people or would you say it's the uncertain people or what type of people are hard to work in negotiation with?

You know, you're talking about a little bit of a tight match that has a has a tendency, it's a little bit based on how bad I want to make the deal. Like, I don't like liars. Or, I don't like, the most difficult people to work with in the long run are people who haven't thought anything through, which is as bad as a liar, only their heart's not in the wrong place.

They don't know what they want, specifically.

Or they don't know how they're going to get this done, which is, again, we go over and over again. I go over and over again. Yes, there's nothing without how. Like, and the person who thinks like, yes, is going to make a deal. Well, yes is not going to make a deal because you've got to have how. How are we going to put this together? And someone who doesn't think things through a lot of times, they're actually kind of dysfunctional on their own side. So they'll make promises they can't keep and they have no idea they can't keep those promises. And so when they take your deal, you think you've done a deal with them, they take it back to their company. Their company goes like, no, we're not doing this. This is a stupid idea. We can't do this. And that happens a lot. In a private sector, I've heard from a number of companies that fully 50% of the deals that they make that don't go through get killed internally because somebody cut a deal for them and they took it back to the company and the company says, no, that violates our terms and conditions. We can't deliver on that basis. So you're dealing with someone who just doesn't have a clue as to what's going on on their side. There are a lot of people like that.

When you're making a business deal, what do you recommend as the amount of time to consider the deal before saying, Yes, let's do it. Like, here's the deal points, here's what you want, here's what I want. Okay, should we sign it right away? Should we give it 24 hours? Should we take it to our team? Should it be a week?

You know, what's like kind of a standard, you think? Unless you've got something in line ahead of time. The company name is a Black Swan Group, because we believe there's black swans in every negotiation, which is something you didn't know that as soon as you.

Found out, it's going to change.

All the parameters.

The deal. Gotcha.

So you sit down at the table to find out the unknowns. And it's impossible to research all the unknowns. Plus a lot of the unknowns, I'll find them a lot faster if I just ask you.

Right.

And I could research for two weeks something that I may be able to get you to tell me about in 10 minutes.

For example, what do you mean something you'd want to ask?

I'm speaking for a long time client. and they have another firm that I've been affiliated with doing a different block. When I found out they were doing that block, I could suddenly reach back through my network to find out what the competing/partnership firm of mine is, what they're charging, or I could just flat out ask them. Well, I need to get the information. A lot of information you got to get by not asking, you got to trigger it. The phrase ask good questions It's really get good information. And a lot of times you won't tell me stuff if I ask, but if I act like I already know, or if there are other ways, hostage negotiators trigger information without asking questions. And hostage negotiators get that information and make you feel good about giving it at the same time.

So give me an example, either in a hostage or a business deal, what that kind of trigger could be.

Well, it's gonna be some sort of a statement I might say, Look, I'm sure my competing company is charging you twice as much as I am.

Oh, and then they'll tell you the answer.

They'll want to correct me.

Oh, actually no, it's the same. Or actually you're getting a better deal.

Never underestimate the other side's desire to correct you.

Wow.

Because it makes people feel powerful and smart. You know, you're gonna want to feel smarter than me. One of my clients is negotiating a deal for a commercial office building. South Carolina and it's almost 100% occupancy. It's in a mixed-use historic area so it means that the building can't be knocked down and nobody can build in it because it's a historic area. And so the building is basically impossible to replace and it's 100% occupancy. It makes no sense to sell the building. So they're genuinely thinking why is the seller selling? First of all you can't ask why. 'Cause why makes people defensive? If I look at you and I say, why did you wear a black shirt? Your instant thought is gonna be like, Do I gotta defend the black shirt?

Why?

I'm doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you need to find out why.

But you can't ask why 'cause it makes people defensive.

Huh, so what would you ask there? Well then again, you don't wanna ask at all because if you're smarter, you change your whys to whats and it's more likely they'll respond if you say, you know what's making the seller wanna sell? So, you know, what is causing them to do that?

Not why are they selling.

But instead, what my student did was he said, well, seems to me the seller's selling a cash cow because of a disbelief in the market fundamentals in the future of the building.

Now, let me correct you. This is why I'm doing it.

Exactly. And the other side would be like, no, no, no. They got a couple buildings that are underwater. Now, I can't imagine a real estate agent answering that question ever. I mean, this is highly confidential prior to the information. You know, my seller is desperate for money is what the answer was. But because it was a correction and people love to correct, they'll correct you without thinking it through. It's an involuntary response, a desire to sound smarter than you and to be right and correct you. which is a burning desire in most people because it makes me feel smart and more powerful. And I'll seize every opportunity to feel smarter and more powerful you at the table.

Gosh, it's like chess.

It's emotional chess.

Emotional chess, I love this.

Emotional chess.

And how do women and men compare as negotiators as counterpowers, either against each other or woman/man, Woman, woman, man, man, is there a difference?

See, I think a powerful woman negotiator, a woman who's really good at negotiations, is almost unstoppable.

Wow.

And I think that the societal reinforcement is constantly trying to pound men into being better negotiators and constantly trying to pound women away from it. And I think the step from sympathy to empathy is a shorter step, and women are socialized to be sympathetic. I don't think that, you know, whether or not it's nature or nurture, I know there's a lot more pressure societally and culturally for women to be like that. And in my class, women pick my style of negotiation up faster than the men do. And the women go to my class, start cutting bigger and better deals faster than the men do.

In business or in life or in just- In both. Gotcha.

So in, in my view, I think.

That, like, after they graduate, they go on to do.

Well, in the class. Okay. You got, you got to negotiate with skin in the game in my class, and almost all of my students are rising star business executives.

So mock negotiations. They're making more, is what you're saying.

No, in real life, man, real life.

Take it out.

My stuff and put it in real life while you're in my class and you got to write about it.

Wow.

And one, you know, I've got everything from a billion dollar Wall Street transaction. people in my class use the tools for. I get at USC, I get a lot of commercial real estate transactions. A lot of people buying commercial real estate that are working on MBAs have gotten a lot of those transactions. My favorite way to say no, which I got, you know, the how question before, the favorite way to say no is how am I supposed to do that? Just real calm, deference, there's great power in deference. you know, that's, and that's what I did. And kidnappings, bank robberies, everything.

How am I supposed to do that?

What if they say, I don't care, figure it out, or she's dead? Well, then you know that you've pushed them as far as you can, and that means you've got to pivot to something else. Now, and, and that's actually where you want to get to. Because the strategy of negotiation is find out you want to max every term, if you can. And the only way to max that is to find out that I've hit you to the full limit without making you angry enough that you slam your hands down and walk away. Because even your reaction to someone or you shoot someone, your reaction to this now is like, look, you got to do it or things are going to go bad. And it was one of my, one of my students here in town is negotiating for, for a luxury client to rent a house in Hollywood Hills. And, you know, 20 grand a month was a rental. They were trying to get the rental.

They were trying to lease.

Trying to get it.

Gotcha. The person said it's 20 grand a month.

Right. And it's for a very well, his client's extremely wealthy. So, you know, and you're negotiating a wealthy market, the other side always thinks you got all the money in the world. And so he just said, How am I supposed to do that? And they said, okay, well, and they shifted the terms, and they cut the price, and they moved a bunch of other terms around. Then they negotiated for a while longer, and then he said, again, on the price, he says, How's my client supposed to pay that? And the realtor says, if your client wants a house, he's got a pet. Bang, you got a deal. When the other side says, if you want it, you have to do it, which will come usually after the second, third time that you said, How am I supposed to do that?

So you knock it down a little more on a car, real estate deal, whatever it is.

Now you've maxed that term. Now you move on to something else, so you make the deal. But you needed to know that you pushed him as far as you could have. Without them storming out, without them saying, Chris Voss is not any fun to deal with. I would never do business with him again. How am I supposed to do that in a differential way? They still feel in control.

You're not saying, Screw you, that's too much. What are you out of your mind? Right.

And if you don't make the deal at that point, then what they say after the fact, they say, you know, I didn't make a deal, but I deal with them again.

Mm.

You know, they're all right to deal with.

Did they get the lease? How much did they get?

Yeah, they got it.

How much, you know?

They knocked it down to less than 20, and then they got some softness on some other terms. And then they cut the deal for the house.

There you go.

I wish I was paying 20 grand a month for a house.

A lot of money for a house. 20 grand a month. Wow. That's a rich student.

Yeah. Well, USA, they get the, you know, the other people that are involved in a lot of lucrative deals.

Yeah, yeah. So you're saying what is the importance of empathy in a negotiation? When I'm hearing you say it's extremely important and that's why you feel like a woman would be a better negotiator in general because they have more empathy.

In general or... Well, it's the shortest. Most people have confused sympathy with empathy.

Okay, what's the difference?

Empathy is I can see you're upset. It's just identifying how you feel. Sympathy is like, wow, I feel bad for you.

Feeling sorry or bad for someone is sympathy.

Sympathy, it is in fact, it doesn't help anybody. Like, I don't care if you feel bad for me. I could care less. So sympathy is not a good thing? Sympathy is a weakness.

As a negotiator.

As a negotiation. Empathy is a good thing? Empathy and tactical empathy, because we've really taken a pass just Empathy in general. Like we've been doing this long enough that I know what I'm looking for before we sit down. I know that I need to find out the stuff that are negative emotions for you because I need to get them out of the way of the deal. And I need to find out the stuff that are positive emotions for you because I want to reinforce that to make the deal. And I know that the negatives are going to be a bigger deal to you than the positives are.

So can you give me an example of this in a business deal?

Well, if I don't like doing business with Donald Trump at all, then if he's annoyed me to the point where I get enough satisfaction keeping money out of his hands, I won't make that deal. Or if I'm in a business deal where the other side, and I've thought about this, like you annoy me so.

Much that I don't want you to get anything.

That I'll take less money to keep you out.

Right.

So how would you eliminate something like that, that negative in the deal so.

That you could... Well then say, if I think that you're negative towards me, I'm going to say, Look, I'm sure it seems like I'm greedy here. If I say to you, I'm sure I'm going to seem very greedy here, that sets me up to ask for a lot of money. Because there's actually science that backs this up now. Identifying a negative diminishes it every time. So if I'm going to make a big grab for the money, you're going to think I'm greedy. And I need to get that out of the way because if I'm too greedy, you're going to get some satisfaction by keeping me from the money, even if you don't get any.

Right.

And so I'm going to say, look, I'm going to seem real greedy here. I'm going to seem like I'm very self-centered and that I'm greedy and that I'm not looking out for you at all. and I'll just let it sit. And you'll take a lot more from me. A lot, a lot, you'll allow me to take more if I've said that in advance.

Up front, really.

Because I've diminished that. Your thought is like, I mean, I could never seem too greedy then. When I make that grab, you're going to say, well, he was honest with me. He told me he wanted a lot of money. He didn't try to say, Hey, look, let's do a win-win deal. Now give me all the money.

Right.

Because if I say I want to do a win-win deal with you, I'm like, hey, I'll be nice to you.

I'll look out for you. And then you try to take 90.

And give me 10.

It's like, oh, it's not a good deal. Yeah.

But when you say it up front.

Then you're more likely to get the deal.

Yeah. And get more of whatever you want. Right? I'm gonna. I'm gonna seem very honest to you. I'm gonna. You're gonna like that. I was honest with you. And you're gonna say after the fact.

Like, look, he was honest. I always knew where he was coming from.

I didn't like the deal, but I did it anyways or whatever.

Yeah.

You don't win by checking off deal, deal, deal. It's about long-term relationships and playing the long game is, is how everyone should be thinking. It should be thinking, never be closing. You know, it's never, not about the clothes. So true. Yeah, it's about the long, long-term value of a relationship.

I feel like that's all I've done, because at the beginning of my kind of Journey, which was 10, 11 years ago, I didn't have anything to offer. I was broke and I had nothing to offer. And I remember being like, I could really get something from everyone right now. But why would they give me something when I have no value to give them? So I started saying, okay, how can I be the champion of everyone's network? And just match them with someone that could really be beneficial to them. If someone needed to hire a sales rep or a marketing person or whatever it was, I was just trying to find people for other people's needs. And I just continued to add that value and that became the value that I could add to people. And over time, They were like, how can I help you back? Like, this has been amazing for me. Like, you introduced me to this person, you helped me here. And I was just like, I don't need anything right now. And I would always just kind of delay the ask until I had a book or something really meaningful that I wanted to, I guess, close on. But the more that I think we do what you say, which is just like delay the ask and don't try to close all the time, just how can you give and give and give? I think that's, You guys do a good job with that too.

Yeah.

So what you hit on is.

That.

Idea of generosity, which is sort of another idea there, being generous. And one of the habits is habitually giving something away at every interaction, whether it's a piece of advice, it's a connection. Don't hold those connections, give them away freely. It could be when you have something simple like a book or a story that you read that you like, send it to someone. You don't just post it for everyone to read. You send it to someone on a one-on-one basis. Think about just habitually giving things away. It pays off with compound interest. You don't know how and you're not doing it so that one day you're going to sell a grip load of books. You're doing it because it becomes a habit and becomes part of your character. and then you don't know how, but you know that that's going to turn into business success, personal growth. And so that's another one of the sort of principles in the book.

So there's 11 habits to becoming a master influencer, right? And persuading people, is that what it is to...

It's all about persuasion.

To buy into your vision, your dream, your products, your company, anything, right? Into you.

Into you. And the idea is that We're all persuasion sort of a loaded word, you know, but we're all persuading all day long. I mean, you're persuaded.

I call it enrollment. We're either enrolling people into our vision or into our requests or they're enrolling us out of it.

That's right.

Yeah.

And it's simple things like you're convincing your girlfriend where to go on vacation.

Or where we're gonna go to for dinner.

Where are you gonna go for dinner? So all day long you're persuading your boss to give you a raise or a company to hire you or someone to publish your book. Like all day long there's micro instances of persuasion. And this is really just about building a personal character and habits to allow enrollment to be more natural and freer. And it's also about being yourself and finding a purpose because that's what gravitates people towards you is really knowing yourself, leaning into your quirks, Being able to be vulnerable. I remember when we did the, we had you at the White House for the It's On Us campaign.

That was crazy.

You stood up and told the story and the whole place was just like in awe that, you know, a macho dude could be that vulnerable to that audience and it opens everyone else up and, you know, Unless you were really comfortable, knew yourself, knew where you were coming from, you wouldn't have the power to do that, you know, which you were able to do.

Yeah, for context, people listening, I was, wasn't Joe Biden was there or something?

Or was it just like, yeah, we did a campaign with Joe Biden called It's On Us, which was to end sexual assault on college campuses. And we brought you and a bunch.

Of influencers to, it's probably a couple hundred people in the room.

A couple hundred people to me. At the White House.

Yeah, Joe Biden's talking. Yeah. And I, and, and someone said, hey, we're gonna ask you guys to, like, make a request on how you're gonna support this campaign.

Yeah.

And so different people stood up, and I felt called in the moment to stand up and share a story for a minute or two about being sexually abused myself and how I didn't think other people should suffer with this or go through this personally because the trauma it creates and what I was gonna stand up for. So, yeah, you've got to be really confident in yourself and.

Right.

Know yourself, like you said.

And be able to be vulnerable. Be able to be vulnerable. Be able to not be perfect. Like we all have flaws, we all have issues, we all have things we're trying to overcome and accomplish, wherever we came from, whatever our background. Leaning into those gives you power. Not trying to push those down and suppress them. Leaning into being vulnerable and things that you're going through, being able to talk about it creates power.

And we were talking about stuff beforehand, which we won't go into here, not public information, but your ability to be vulnerable in the middle of things in your life right now is powerful and allows you to connect with me and Chase who is just connecting with as well. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. That's what it's about.

Yep. Now you got these 11 habits and there's kind of four core principles and then there's kind of sub principles around that. Yeah, yeah. That's right. So the first one is original. What does that mean? To be original?

So that's really about, yeah, being an original, you know, it's that Oscar Wilde quote, be yourself, everyone else is taken. And it's sort of a few habits around how to lean into your authentic self and find your truth. And one of them is the persuasive power of storytelling and really understanding what drives you, how to tell your story. And so there's sort of some workshops in here about how to do that and how to pull out your story.

How to tell better stories.

How to tell better stories and really understanding what your story is and what you stand for. and that's part about being original.

That's interesting. It's an art to learn how to tell stories. It can be very challenging for people. I find it very challenging for me telling stories.

Well, it's kind of your job, isn't it?

It is. But it's still challenging. It's still challenging. You know, for me, I'm good at telling other people's stories.

Right.

But I'm not good at, like, coming up with stories on my own. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm good at, like, telling their story. Right, right. Which I guess is still story. But someone told me one time, you know, facts tell, stories sell. And so if you're a guy or a girl or a person who's got a lot of facts when you're talking to someone, it's not going to sell them or persuade them as much as if you tell a story.

That's right. There's, there's this I go into in the book, but there's a psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, who said the mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. And it's really about that facts and arguments kind of go in one ear and out the other, like stats and numbers and data. It might be important, but stories really matter. When Martin Luther King is talking about he has a dream, that one day his four children will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, he's telling a story, he's telling a dream. He's not talking about socioeconomic numbers and what this population has that this population doesn't have, or the unfair balance. He's making a really big proclamation and he's telling a story, a dream he had. And that's what we remember. That's the power of storytelling to always think about it that way. Okay, you got the power of storytelling.

Power storytelling. You said never be closing, that's part of being original. Because a lot of people are always selling something, right? They're trying to get the sale as opposed to giving and adding value constantly. It's just transaction.

A lot of people. Check, check, check, check. And when you're transaction-based, things come and go. and part of never be closing is also looking at when you, you know, philosophy of like when you hear no, it's just no for now. You know, it's not no, it's not over.

Right.

Like we, I mean, even at work, we will have clients, we won't win the pitch. You stay in that relationship.

Yeah, maybe three, five years later, they come back around.

Six months later, they come back around. Six months.

Yeah, or- They didn't have a good.

Experience and then- Five, who know, five years. I mean, Brendan just won a piece of business that we had pitched. I wanted yesterday that we pitched two years ago.

Really?

So I stayed in touch with the client. All of a sudden someone made a mistake and he was right there and they picked it up. So that's part of that philosophy is it's switching your viewpoint.

And you say another habit is to turn and face the strange. What does that mean?

So turn and face the strange is all about my idol, David Bowie. And so I learned about this concept of being original really from David Bowie. And David Bowie, obviously he was a musician and when he started, his label wanted him to do folk songs like Bob Dylan and he was David Robert Jones and those albums like tanked. No one heard of him. Music was like somebody else. It wasn't him. And so he quit, left the label, went to a Buddhist monastery, studied mime, of all things, strange dude. He started an experimental arts lab, came back, reincarnated as David Bowie, created these stories, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, different albums, and leaned into his, he wasn't afraid to fly his freak flag. Was he man or woman? Was he homosexual, heterosexual? You didn't really know. But that was him, you know, that was him was stirring things up and being himself and now he's, you know, he became one of the best selling artists of all time.

Wow.

By leaning into authenticity and what he stood for and so that's why. Being strange. Being strange.

Turn your face to strange.

Whatever your quirks are.

Yeah.

Lean into your quirks. Like don't try to be what someone else wants you to be. Don't do what the label asks. do what's inside of you.

Well, the people that stand out and become more of who they are, the ones that benefit the most in the future. Yeah. If you're just trying to be like everyone else or just trying to fit in in a certain way. Yeah. You're not really making a mark on, on the world. You're not making a big impact. It's the ones that are willing to be strange and accepted. That's, that's the key. Yeah. I love the show Glee for that reason. Yeah.

It was like, I don't know if.

You ever watched Glee. I watch Glee.

Yeah.

For me, it was one of my favorite shows.

It's all about, like, the weirdo. I saw the Glee concert. No way. I did. I saw the Glee concert.

I'm jealous.

Yeah, I saw the Glee concert. I didn't even know there was a concert.

I would have been amazing.

All the cast was there.

Yeah, the cast performed.

Oh my god. I'm so jealous. That's amazing. But those were all like the kind of the weird outcasts, I guess, of the school.

But they're the ones that like, when.

They finally accepted who they were, that's when they shined. Exactly. So you've got to learn to accept who you are, even if it goes against everyone else. It should go against everyone else.

That's right.

But that's when you're gonna shine the most.

Yeah, yeah.

You talk about being generous. This is another key principle in persuasion.

Yeah.

This is kind of like the old law of reciprocity, like when you give, you know, people feel inclined to want to give back.

Yeah.

So why is, why do you say, you know, give yourself away? The pull of positivity and just a little respect.

So, well they all come from, they're all based on the same concept that you, so some of these habits you inherently have, you inherently had generosity as one of your habits. And so you were connecting people when you didn't know where it would lead, that was just who you were. Other people that don't have that, they can learn that skill. You know, these are all skills that you can practice and learn like anything else. They're muscles that you got to work out. And for me, Generous is all about not expecting anything in return and just giving away. Respect is another form of being generous. And, you know, I cover a study in that, in the book that Harvard Business School, they interviewed 20,000 employees, and the number one thing that they said made for good leadership was respect. It wasn't, it wasn't time off. It wasn't. a raise or money or promotion, the number one driver was respect. And if you respect the people you interact with and work with, I mean that's where the action is.

You'll get more out of that team.

Yeah, if you respect them and see them as peers, that's what is going to level you up.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

I heard these stories about how Steve Jobs was disrespectful to a lot of his product developers that he'd like Throw the phone back in their face or whatever, you know, talk bad about people, but maybe that's just one-off times But maybe he also had a level of.

Respect for them Somehow some other way. Yeah, some other way or maybe he was that one in a million that was such a freaky genius or he.

Had other things other habits that yeah.

You just followed him because you're like I don't like this dude, but yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing.

He's amazing. He's got a vision and he's putting it out there.

He's getting persuasive in other ways Yeah, he was an original though. He was an original for sure.

He was an original. And okay, so we got generous is one of the key habits. Give yourself away. The poll of positivity.

What does that mean? So the poll of positivity is just simply, there's a lot of different ways you can take persuasion. And I cover that sort of covers, there's negative parts of persuasion which are also really effective. Like fear-based persuasion.

Fear-based persuasion. It's like my old football coach in high school or something. It was just like, screamed at you if you dropped the ball, you're like, ah, you know.

Did that was that effective?

It was not effective for me. It wasn't effective. I mean, in some ways it it made me work hard, but it made me constantly stressed. And I don't think you want that out of the people around you. You don't want them to be feeling fearful and stressed.

Right.

By your level of persuasion.

Like, if you don't do this, then I'm gonna scream at you more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so the it just sort of studies like, the impact of negative versus positive persuasion and how positive persuasion wins out in the long run. You know, negative persuasion can certainly have its benefits and be effective. You see it in politics all the time.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, that's all it is.

Crazy.

That's all it is.

It's just fear based attacks.

Yeah.

There was a 1964 Lyndon Johnson ad. It was sort of one of the first. like campaign ads like that that was called Daisy and it shows a girl in a field picking daisies and then a nuclear bomb goes off and then the screen fades to black and it's basically like the world's ending. Like if I don't vote for this dude.

Oh my god.

My family's gonna blow up in a nuclear war.

You know, it's crazy.

That's negative persuasion. It was effective.

It works.

You know, it works because that's fear based. And this just argues that the opposite is is more productive for society.

More sustainable, more healthy.

Gosh, yeah. Yeah.

Politics, it seems like it's gotten a lot worse, right?

People win based on those fear based tactics.

They do.

Yeah. I mean, but I feel like Obama won based on positivity.

He did.

And an image, an ideal of something greater.

That is why he won, right?

Yeah.

He broke through because he wasn't gonna get down to that level. And I mean look how from there to where we are.

It's crazy, right?

The pendulum has swung like so far.

Maybe it's always.

Now it's like name. Now it's like bully name calling.

It's crazy.

Yeah, I know.

It doesn't seem productive, but that's just me.

Yeah.

So you got the be original, you got the generous, you know, this giving mentality when we give of our time, of our energy, of our listening, of our respect. It doesn't have to be constantly giving gifts. No, it can be just our connection. It can be generous with our listening.

That's right. Time, advice, connections, compliments that you think of but you don't say.

Yeah.

You know, you're always doing that. You're like, oh, I should. And then you don't, you know, like. Like, give those messages out there. Like, give that positivity off.

That'll make you more persuasive. That'll make you more persuasive.

Yeah.

And then empathetic, why is empathetic such a key to persuasion and being influential?

So really, the basis of that is about the idea that we are all connected and related, you know, human beings are. We're the universe's only storytellers. We all share 99.9% of the same DNA. But yet, that being said, the world is like, It seems super fractured. And so that's really just trying to understand your audience and there's sort of habits on how to do that and not my dad doesn't have the same beliefs. So we don't we hate we were like complete opposites. You still have you still share so much in common and it's understanding shared values. We all at the end of the day want the same things and so safety love safety love connection human connection. Yeah Yeah, those are sort of the drivers. And how do you understand how to look for those and don't shut people down? Try to be a little bit more open and be empathetic.

Did you ever doubt yourself in terms of your ability and your research and your studies? Did you ever say to yourself, man, if I can't figure this out, then all of my work is for nothing?

Well, no, I never thought it was for nothing, but I certainly I certainly doubted whether or not we were going to be able to figure this out.

Yeah, well if you thought, and at that time you're extremely educated, researched, you've seen a lot. Did that give you a fear of like, well if I can't figure this out, then no one can.

Of course, of course. Well her prognosis was multiple early joint replacements and that was the good news because the bad news is, well how many? and how many can you stand? And when does that kill you? So her real prognosis was plenty of pain with an early death. Because, well, even now, the surgeon who talked to her yesterday said, well, because he talked to her about the risk of amputation in the future, it's like, well, this is the second joint revision. It's like, maybe this will last 15 years. We don't know what the hell's going to happen then. Well, so our response to that is, that's 15 years from now. It's like, who knows? Well, things are better now for how people understand how to replace an ankle than they were. I think it was 10 years ago that she had this one replaced. And it helped. It wasn't perfect. Her hip is perfect. The ankle has always been trouble, but way less trouble than it was. And so, well, you. You struggle forward the best you can. And so I suppose she could adapt to an amputation if that was necessary. But at the moment, it isn't necessary. But multiple amputations is not something to really be looking forward to when you're 16. You know, and they were gonna put her on corticosteroids to control her inflammation, and that would have produced Cushing's disease, and so that makes your face all puffy and it makes you gain weight, and so it's very physically disfiguring. So we decided not to go down that route. And yeah, well, but you know, it's worked out. Thank God. It's quite the miracle. And she had a baby a year ago, and we were never sure that.

Was going to happen.

So congrats. Thank you. Congrats. Yes, that's for sure. So now we have this respite where she's healthy and the last time I saw her she was looking great, like she's just glowing. She's so healthy. I can't believe it. It's just beyond belief.

Congrats on all the hard work you've done to make it a possibility.

You spent a lot of time. We avoided the worst excesses of hell during the catastrophe, so that's something. And it did allow her the space to figure out. And my wife had always thought that diet had a relationship to it. And we investigated that. Like, there's a good literature that shows if you have arthritic symptoms and you stop eating, if you fast, they go away. So that's interesting. It's like, well, food must be causing it. Yeah, but once you start to eat again, no matter what you eat, comes back. It turns out, no, not no matter what, almost no matter what, because she's sensitive to virtually everything. but she isn't sensitive to meat. And so it turns out that if you eat meat, you can live. So that's a big difference between being sensitive to everything and not being sensitive to one thing.

Yeah.

And so. So it's. It's a harsh diet. It's made traveling difficult, although I can eat in restaurants because most restaurants can cook a steak with nothing on it. And that's made things much easier while I'm traveling. But whatever, whatever, it's working. And so thank God for that.

Amazing. Do you believe, do you think, hypothetically, if your daughter was healthy and never had any of these complications, that you would be the man you are impacting people, that the success, the attention you'd be getting, do you think you'd have as much?

Well, I wouldn't have written the 12th chapter, that's for sure.

Do you think in general, you would still be able to have the ideals, the belief, the fortitude that you have to reach people and really impact people's lives.

Yeah, I think so. But I know what you're saying. You know, your question is, well, to what degree is adversity character building? And the answer to that is plenty. But I was already, like I said, and it was the same with my wife. We weren't naive people. You know, I, because I had an extensive clinical practice, I was dealing with, with heavy level adversity always.

It wasn't your daughter, it was your wife.

No, no. But there were other problems in my family and so forth that I dealt with as well. And so we were already, we'd already, I think, garnered most of what we could from confronting adverse situations. Now did that add a different level to it? It probably, it probably fire tested our relationship, our familial, it probably brought our family closer together, all things considered. I saw the same thing happen when my wife's mother died. She died of prefrontal dementia and she developed it quite young, about it started to really manifest itself in early 50s. and she died when she was 70. And she fell apart over, you know, 18 years. And she was very physically healthy. And her husband, who was quite the man about town when he was a young guy, real extrovert, he was a real character in our hometown, he took care of her so well. It was absolutely jaw-dropping every time she slipped, he'd step up to the plate and he took care of her until he couldn't lift her out of her chair anymore. And he was getting old, too. and so she wasn't in an old age home for very long. And then we were around when she died, you know, over the couple of days just before her death. And her family, her sister is a palliative care nurse, her other sister is a pharmacist, and Tammy's had the experiences that I already described. And then her father really stepped up to the plate. So the whole family gathered around for that, and they acted impeccably throughout it, I would say. They took care of their mother very carefully. while she was dying and they pulled together. And one of the consequences of that, which was so interesting, is that although their mother died and that was a terrible loss, their bonds that connected them, all of them, strengthened to the point where I would say that was almost compensation for the loss of their mother. So that was really interesting to see what happens even in a dire circumstance if people do what they can't. Now, I'm not saying that that's going to work for every situation because I know people get cut off at the knees. And sometimes you hit a tragedy that, while it's fatal, you know that you cannot rectify. It's a real catastrophe. But it was very interesting watching that because they were alert and awake around the deathbed, and they weren't fighting with each other at all. There was no familial squabbling because you can imagine that that would happen because everyone's stressed. And then you can just imagine how terrible that would make something that's already awful. There was none of that. They focused their attention on her, you know, they gave her water when she needed it and they watched her and they made this terrible thing the least amount of awful it could be. And it definitely pulled them together. Like that whole family, including me, is closer because of what they went through and also how they went through it. And it's probably the case well, I would say it definitely Advanced the maturity of my son because he was called. And I told him, look, kid, like, you can't add anything to this. We're, we're up to here.

Yeah.

You have to conduct yourself properly because otherwise everything's going to shake and fall. We can't have more of this. You can't bring any end, anything unnecessary into this and.

It was an All-Star.

It was remarkable, and he was only in grade 10 when most of this happened. And your friends are pretty damn important when you're in grade 10, and he stuck around a lot to be helpful. So yeah, it was really good for him, man. Yeah, well, he's a good character. He's quite something. And he was very helpful. He was very helpful to his sister. They had their fights, obviously, while she was often unreasonable and no bloody wonder. you know, well, when you're strung out.

And you can't feel anything but pain.

Yeah, God, she went through so much, like even watching her withdraw from the opiates, because she was on them for.

About a year and a half.

She just quit. Well, as soon as she was done her surgery, she was like, I'm not taking these anymore. And she had formication, which is the sensation of ants crawling under your skin. She had that for like a month. And, oh, God, unbelievable. She was, she just, just sailed through it. It's like, I'm done with these.

Wow.

Yeah.

You guys have been through a lot. Yeah, what's your biggest fear now moving forward in your own life?

Oh, making a mistake at the moment. Because I've been the subject of so much public attention in the last two years and I've been in a situation where even things I didn't say have also almost been fatal because people take them out of context. But my biggest fear has been that I do something careless and that there.

Are.

Serious cascading consequences to it.

You feel like you've done something careless.

Or... Well, everyone's done something careless. But I've been pretty careful. I mean, I was fortunate. So when this political scandal blew up around me in Canada, when I opposed some legislation that I thought was reprehensively constructed. You know, the radicals on the left in particular came after me hard. And but I was fortunate because, you know, they called me every name under the book and went after my character. And, you know, I suppose there was some degree of that was understandable to some degree because if you stand up against something, if you stand up against the radical right, well, maybe you're communist.

Might not.

Probably not, because you don't have to be a communist to not like the radical right. But if you stand up against the radical left, well, maybe you're a Nazi. Well, probably not, but you might be. And so it's certainly in the interest of the people who are proponents of the philosophy of the radical left to assume that you're a Nazi, because then they don't have to deal with you. And so that's what happens. You throw yourself into the fray. People try to localize you, and they do that by saying, well, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, it's like, well, yeah, maybe not, too. And, and, but I already had 250 hours of lectures up on YouTube at that point, so people could actually go and see what I had said, because virtually every word I'd ever said to students in a professional capacity, not, not every word, because I didn't tape every lecture, but I taped multiple years of lectures. And so people went over those with the fine tooth comb, trying to find out if there's anything I'd ever said that was, and they couldn't find anything. And that was because I've been very careful with what I say. 25, I started paying attention to what I was saying and trying very hard not to say things that I would trying very hard not to say things that something in me objected to. So, and well, that seems to have been provided me with a buffer. And so people came to my website because they were interested in, well, before the political stuff blew up, I had a million views on YouTube, which is nothing. A million of anything is a lot. But then when the political scandal started to break, yeah, then people came for them, but stayed for the content. And so, and that's been very useful. Yeah, well, it's been, well, and it's not that surprising. Well, you know, because of what you do, it's like, there's a great hunger for information that is practical and useful and that helps people find meaning in their lives and orient themselves. There's a great hunger for that. And most of my lectures were derived from solid psychology, some of it experimental, some of it biological, some of it from the domains of neuroscience, a lot of it from great clinicians. It's not surprising that people find it helpful because, well, great clinicians were great because they were really helpful. And so to distill that and to offer it to people in a digestible form, to have that have a good effect on them, well, that's what you'd expect. That's what the whole discipline is about. And so that's been great. These public lectures that I've been doing, so I think I've done 50 of them in about 45 different cities now in about three months. And the average theater size is between 2,500 and 3,000 people. and they're unbelievably positive events because people come there and we talk mostly about the political spectrum and why there's room for voices on the left and why there's room for voices on the right and where the parameters of that should be, because both of those can descend into extremism and that's not good. And the role of individual responsibility and individual sovereignty and the necessity for people to develop a vision, the sorts of things that we already talked about. virtually everyone that's coming there, they're not coming for political reasons, even though that's the story you hear from the more ideologically possessed journalist types, because they see the world that way. They can't imagine anything else could possibly be happening. But the people who are coming to these lectures are coming because they are doing everything they possibly can to make their lives better. That's it. And so, and it's lovely to talk to people like that, because it's amazing.

It is.

It's great. It's literally great.

School of Greatness, baby.

Right, exactly.

I've got six minutes to be mindful of your time and your schedule and I want to ask you three final questions, if that's okay.

Yeah, you bet.

So, as much as I would love for you to go on for another few hours on these answers, so I can get to the last question.

I'll do my best.

I wish I could go on longer, so we'll have to have you come back next time you're in LA. The first one is, what is your purpose now? moving forward through everything you've had in your life. What's your purpose moving forward?

Well, I have specific. I'm. I'm. What's my purpose? What am I aiming at? Well, I'm going to. I did a series of biblical lectures last year. I did 15 lectures on Genesis. I'm going to continue doing that. So in November, I'm going to start with the Exodus stories. And what I'd like to do over the next 15 years is make my way through the whole corpus of biblical writing. so that's one major goal. I want to write another book. I've written half of it already, which will be a follow-up to 12 Rules for Life, because I actually had laid out on a site called Quora 40 Rules, and so I'll do that and write another couple of books, I suspect, over the next few years. The touring, I'm going to continue. I have 10 cities coming up in Canada and another 20 in the US, and then 12 in Europe and I'm going to go to Australia in February and then back to Europe I think in April. So there's lots of touring on the horizon and it's for the reasons I already described. I'm having, I don't, the lectures differ every night although there are themes that constantly emerge and I'm using those as an opportunity to have a detailed and engaged discussion with the audience about how we might proceed forward individually and collectively so that we can make things consciously better and why that's associated with necessary meaning and why that's a moral obligation. So it's a dialogue about responsibilities and not rights, even though rights are only important insofar as they set up the space for you to shoulder your proper responsibility. And as a sovereign citizen, you have the responsibility for the integrity of the state resting on your shoulders. And it's something that if you don't take seriously, then the state shakes, and that's not good. And so I'm trying to convey that to people. It's like you have, there's actually something that you need to do. You need to take care of yourself, you need to take care of your family, you need to take care of your community. And if you don't do that, then they'll be hell to pay. And it's on you, right, each of us. And it's, it's hard for people to grasp that while they don't want to, first of all, maybe because they don't want the Responsibility, but then they don't get any meaning, then they suffer, then they get bitter. That's not good. So it's like, which of these are you going to pick? But it's also salutary to people because it's useful for everyone to know that if you don't live up to your potential, that you leave a hole in the fabric of being and it's filled by something approximating hell. And unless that's what you want, then you shouldn't be doing that. And so it's perfectly possible to have a serious discussion with 3,000 people about this, and they're right on board with it all the way. And so that's really something amazing to behold. And one of the things I've realized is, well, these new technologies, the technologies you're using, enable these long-form discussions. Turns out that people are smarter than we thought.

Right.

TV narrowed it, right? It's like 30 seconds. say your complicated thing in 30 seconds. Like, like can't.

Yeah.

And so we were viewing the, the population through this narrow window, and everyone looked kind of stupid. It's like, now the windows fully open. It's like, oh, look at that. You people like 40-hour Netflix specials that are incredibly complex.

Right?

And you like three-hour Joe Rogan discussions that are complicated. you'll follow the whole thing. It's like, oh good, we're smarter than we thought. Thank God for that, because we better be. So, that's where I made my new year's resolution.

That's great. You got it. Love it.

When I tell you, for example, don't think of a pink elephant. You immediately think about it. And all the viewers right now think of a pink elephant. So the same thing, when you watch the number four, you can't think of three. You can't think of five. And I know it's like a poker tail. When you look at it, I know it's a four. I know it's a three. I know it's a two.

I know I.

During the years, I. You practice it enough. It's all about. It's like. It's like playing a piano. You know, everybody can learn to play a piano, but not everybody will read Mozart. So I mastered the whole concept of.

Understanding how people thinks. Now, if it's a. If it's a one through six, it'd.

Be easier than one through a hundred. Same principle, just going to be more sensitive.

So there's a 1 through 100 dice.

So for example, in my show, I have an act where I have someone hold a coin in one of the hands and I guess which hand is the coin. Every time. And it makes the audience laugh because I talk about body language. But somewhere inside their mind they're saying, okay, it's a 50-50 chance. And then I bring 30 people on stage. and now you have 1 to 60 and one of them is holding the coin. And now it's much more difficult, but I'm looking at them and I point to a person and that person usually holds the coin. So it's a real, so it's the same concept, you know, before the, before we started shooting, we talked about magician versus mentalist. And I thought about what to tell you about that when you watch a magician show. you are amazed. You're blown away. Just like here. Oh, my God. How did it happen? How did you know it? What's going on? But you know somewhere deep inside your mind that he didn't kill the girl. So we're in half and then brought her back.

Right.

And you know that when she levitated, you know, it's not something from quantum physics, defying gravity thing. You know, there's a trick. You don't know what is a trick, but you know, it's not real, right? You know, it's an illusion. When you watch a mentalist show, there's another factor of belief because there is, you will ask yourself, is it really true? Not true?

Is it a magnetic dice?

Magnetic dice? Can you do it with my dice?

Right, right.

The answer is yes, but there's lots of more aspects than just wondering. so there's an element of belief, there's element of, of, it's similar a little bit to same thing that happens in our brain when we talk about religious, when someone believes in God or not believe in God, there's, you go out and you ask yourself, is it real or it's not real? It's not just a trick. So that's the main issue between a mentalist and a magician.

Wow.

And there's not many mentalists.

It's not many. How many are there that are World.

Class in your mind?

Not a lot.

I think there's like less than 10 very good ones. Very good ones.

Who's someone that you're inspired by?

We talk about Darren. Darren is amazing. Amazing. From England. We've got another Israeli, Haim Goldenberg from Canada. He's a good friend of mine. There's two in Israel which are very good. I mean, there's, you know, Yuri Geller started the whole concept. You know the name?

No.

Uri Geller in the 70s, Israeli, he took the concept, the first one who took it to the stage, he used to bend spoons with the mind. So every time you think of spoon bend, you have something about that's him. He was the one who did it. He became huge all over the world. He was a personal friend of Michael Jackson and John Lennon and he was consulting them. He used to find oil. That's what, you know, according to what it says, of course. To find oil with his mind, help companies, advice companies. He was the first one the whole concept of taking the power of the mind, bringing to the stage and entertainment. And what I did with it, because I was always very funny, you know, and, you know, I always like to make fun and entertain people. I love the high energy of entertainment, and I love to be creative. So I took the concept and developed lots of creativity around it. And that's what you see in the live shows and the TV shows and all that.

Wow.

That's a lot of fun.

What's something that someone's done that you think has blown you away personally? Because I feel like you've seen it all. You, you know how a lot of people have learned their psychology and things like that.

So, I, you know, well, if, if you think about it again, I go back to Magic. A magician can do four things. Any magician, he can make something appear from nowhere or disappear or. transpose, you know, or levitate. That's it. That's like in lots of different ways. Exactly. So like that's like four pillars. Now with what I do, same four pillars. I can read something, I can influence something or guess something, you know, it's more like a reading. I can predict something or I can make things move like the spoon bending or telekinesis.

Stuff.

Brain power. On that, you build a story. Different, different story. It's like, like, you know, you talk about motivational speaking.

Okay.

Motiv thinking positive. It's. It's a fact. People need to think more positive, but every person takes it to how they see it and how they look at it. At the end, it's all about mindfulness and. And, you know, getting yourself into the right position, but.

Yeah.

Same thing here. There's four elements and I build the story, the crazy story around and I give you in the middle of the story, I give you traps and I give you ideas and I give you, oh, I think I know how we did that and then something came coming to that block. So it's a show, it's a live show. It's to entertain people and when I see and this is the truth, when I see people wondering and here's an interesting thing that I don't think nobody talked about it. What is the sense of wonder? What do you think is a wonder? When someone is wondering, they're curious. But if you left, you went like, oh my God, oh my God. Some people will cry. Some people will go like this. And some people will just, there's a lot, I mean, we know. Laughter, you know, it's universal. This is laughter. Sadness, you know, it's the opposite. Angry, you know, it's like this. Wonder is very individual. If you think of wonder, not everybody will go like this. Not everyone. Some people will go like this. Some people will be like shocked once I had a show and nobody clapped their hands at the end and I was felt so I said, no, you understand they were too shocked.

Oh, wow.

So I had to reprogram the show to get to applause. Applause. So it's very interesting we think about it. And when I see the audience wondering, becoming children again, that's amazing.

Wow.

That's why I do what I do.

Do you feel like you had a good childhood?

Define a good childhood.

Well, you say you want people to be like children again.

That means I believe, you know, I have two children on my own. And, you know, the children, did you see that there's a. There's an amazing scene from the movie the Prestige. You see a magician. You're taking a little bird, and you go like this, and the bird disappears. and the audience goes, oh my god. And the bird appears like in another place. So everybody's like clapping their hands and the little boy is asking, what happened to the first bird? And really the magician had like a mechanic something that he makes sure that he kills the first bird.

Oh no.

Something like that. But children has a sense of wonder, you know, they touch the iron because they're curious and then they get the burn and they, you know, I see my kid is doing something from Lego and he's like, oh, look what I've done, look what I've done. They have this. When we grow up, we start to lose this. You go into the books, you know, you have your work and, you know, everything in the news, and we start to lose this amazing feeling.

Of wonder.

Of wonder. And I'm here to get back. And you see, and you know, I don't want to name dropping, but you know some of the people that I perform for. Absolutely. It doesn't matter who you are. You can be known, rich, poor, everybody's like leveled and they have this sense of wonder, which is amazing. It's a wonderful feeling.

How old are your kids?

Four and two.

And do you perform mentalism on them?

It's hard because mentalism is very... Sometimes it's not visual. It's not like magic visual. Sometimes it's very intellectual, you know?

Something you think about later.

You think about it, so it's hard to express it. you know, working on that.

You're working out with them?

A little bit.

Because you're not like, voila, like there's something exactly.

Exactly.

It's not an art.

Exactly. That's why when I do a big show, even if I do a show for 3,000 people, it, the stage and the screens, it, the production will be modest because it's not going to be explosions and stuff like that. There's a little, of course, lighting and we have screens, we have cameras because it's all about the interaction. But it's not gonna be like, you know, fireworks and stuff like that because it's all about what's happening there. It's not about how big it is, it's how emotional it is.

How important is storytelling in mentalism? That's everything, huh?

That's everything, that's everything.

How did you learn how to tell better stories?

I didn't. I didn't. You know, I just, you know, it's, I'll tell you a little story. I think it was like 10 years ago I did a show and the guy came to me and told me I have a show for a company for a Swatch group in Switzerland, Swatch brand. And I have all the retailers. Do you think it's amazing? You think you can do something connected to the watch? And then I was like, Hmm, it's like, I think I have an idea. And then started infotainment.

Infotainment, yeah.

Infotainment. which is creating this stuff. I said, okay, so I know how to guess things for dice. What if it wasn't a dice? What if it was different messages of a company? And you look at something and say, oh, you're looking at how important is the connection with the workers. And then I would. I find myself talking about the messages, conveying the messages, but in a way that people remembers it.

Right.

So for Swatch, I took 10 people on stage. I told them to one of the acts, hold your hand above your watch, count to three, and I actually stopped all their watches. Stopped completely.

You didn't touch their watches.

I told them I was going like this to them. The watches stopped.

You didn't touch the watches.

The audience goes wild. Never touched the watch. The audience goes wild. One lady from those ten people said, My watch is still working. And I started to act like, No way, what's going on? What's going on? No, no, no. It didn't stop. And I was, let me see, let me see. And I was going like, oh, you have the Swatch. And that was like a moment because then I said, what do you have? What do you have? And I talked about all the other brands.

Wow.

That I could stop, but I could not stop the Swatch.

That's powerful.

And the message was, I can't do it.

That's brilliant.

And it was. a metaphor. Of course, by the way, I could stop any of the watches. I just made it look like I acted as I did. And I saw the owner of Mr. Hayek, he's the owner of... He passed away, but back then he was like, because you had 700 people who sell his watches and now we wanted to say how good is the watch. So then I found myself flying for lots of corporations, Fortune 500 companies. cybersecurity for IBM. I did a competition who is smarter me or Watson? You know, the artificial intelligence. For Google we did something who is faster in searching? The master mentalist or Google, you know? So I create this and I think this works on a principle that if I ask you what were you wearing three weeks ago on Monday, you Nobody knows. But if I ask you what did you do on the day of September 11 when the plane hits the twin towers, you remember exactly what you did.

Can you remember what I was doing?

No, but I remember what I was doing. And they think, why do you remember it? Because it was an emotional impact. Bad, negative one. You remember also the good things. So when I'm doing, when I'm standing in front of a company and I create this sense of wonder, mind tricks, you call it whatever you want, and people are like blown away. But this is connected to the messages of the new product. You're holding the new cybersecurity product that prevents hackers. And while you're holding it, I can't read your mind.

Right.

And people get the metaphor, and everybody remembers the messages. And it's better than any lecture, it's better than any PowerPoint show, because people go home and say, oh, this guy was talking about the new blah, blah, blah of cyber security of the company. And when I hold this, he couldn't read my mind. And when I didn't hold it, he could read my mind. So it talks about.

Right.

This.

What's the riskiest thing you've ever done that you actually.

Because usually, you know, like, it's gonna work, I'm assuming. I'm assuming, like, you know, you've got an influence or.

They used to have a time where I used to. One of the acts in the show, I used to have, like, a. like a Russian roulette. I used to have like four knives, sorry, four like bases and one knife or something like that with the bags.

That's scary.

I used to play with a staple guns that, you know, one of them is loaded, all the rest is not loaded. You mix it up and then I find it and then I took it to the next step. I don't find it, you find it. So you take it and I take it and I go like this and I click it. I did it in a television show in Israel. It was crazy. and then with time I felt I don't think it's for me. It's not about the if I'm right or wrong. If I'm wrong it's very not for me but because this is not it's very authentic, it's very it might go wrong and when I do a live show and I just came back from Miami, it was a two hours live show, things got wrong. Yes, but the audience are not aware.

It's part of the story.

It's part of the story. I'll get back to it later. There was a guy who in the middle of the show, he was like a heckler. He said, what's the name of my kindergarten teacher? Or what's the name of my friend?

It happens.

And I was like, I stopped the show and I was like, I started to tell jokes about him interrupting me. And I said, I'm sorry, the show is going to be extended and I went to him. But at the end of the show, in the end of the show, I wrote the name of this King Gunga the teacher.

Really?

Mrs. Robinson, it was, remember, it was crazy. And everybody's, like, blown away because I have anchors. I know I'm first act, second act, third act. But in between stuff can go, I go crazy.

But people don't remember the failures necessarily because they're so. You've always tied around at the end.

And by the way, this is, I mean, this is, this is, this is, it's like. Philosophical psychology, okay? Let's say that you're holding, I'm just inventing something, you're holding a bill and you ask me to guess the CRM number, okay? And I go, okay, 359699 or whatever, and it's completely correct and the order is a pause. Let's say that I do it and I have a mistake in one digit, what's better? One digit out of the 10 or 8 digits? I don't know.

I'm pretty impressed if someone pulls it.

Out and you get all the 10 digits. But in a show, I think that if I have a mistake, it tells like you're. It's. It's credible. I'm human. I'm like you guys.

It's.

You get. Got it.

There's an act.

You're not perfect.

Exactly. Because then there's something's got to be off. Exactly.

There's some magic behind here. I don't believe. I don't believe you don't know this person.

Exactly.

Sometimes I get. There's an act that I tell someone. to draw something, we're standing back to back and we draw the exact same thing. It's really spectacular, it's really cool. Sometimes I get the picture so good that I'm doing a little off on purpose.

Really?

Yeah, so he did a house and a tree and a sun, so I do a house and a tree but I reverse it. I do pretty close, yeah, yeah. Very, very close and it's, I think it's, Wow. It's stronger. I think it's stronger. It's a little bit not a perfect match. Yes. Unlike a magician that you can go a little bit. It has to be exactly because if not, she's not levitating.

If it's not, it has to be...

So on purpose you'll mess it up. Yeah, I won't mess it up. I go close because I think it.

Shows the credibility of the audience.

But you really have the exact image in your mind. Sometimes. And sometimes not, you know. And sometimes I will not know it and I will play on it in.

A different way and I'll go from a different direction or you'll come back to something else with them and tie it in somehow. 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.

I think my toolkit is people's stories that they tell themselves. I think that's what interests me.

Can you give an example?

Well, so like even just like a magic trick, trick, right?

You are.

When you watch a card trick and you go, you know, he had me pick a card and then he put the card back in the deck and it disappeared and then it was in my pocket, that's impossible. Now that is a story you're telling yourself and you're going from point A to point B to point C, but of course there's like also 8.1, 8.2, you know, but what the magician's doing is just encouraging you to edit the story in such a way that normally all the sleight of hand happens right in front of you, but you don't pay attention because it doesn't seem important. And then the bits that do seem important are the bits that later are going to join up to form the story, right? And they're a little like there's a, when I used to do a lot of this kind of magic and like a thing I'd always say is, so let's say you've got like a deck of cards at the beginning that is in a special order, so you can't shuffle them, but there's a point halfway through the trick where they can shuffle them. I would normally say at that point, okay, let's shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table.

Right?

So they follow that instruction, but it.

Sounds like they've shuffled the cards before to then.

Does that make sense? Shuffle the cards again. Because I say, Shovel the cards again, but this time do it under the table. Now they haven't shuffled the cards before.

Because they were in a special order.

But then later, when they're reconstructing the trick in their head, let alone when they're then telling someone else about the trick. I shovel the card a bunch of times. Yeah, I shoved it at the beginning, you know, and it's like a false memory. that you start to implant. So, so it's just, yeah, you're just working with stories. And so what I do, because I'm like, the sort of magic I do isn't very like, you know, prop-y, it's kind of like more based around suggestion. So it really is, there's also conjuring in it as well. I mean, I'm using magic techniques too, but largely like the bit that interests me and the story is just, yeah, it's people's ongoing perception.

When you meet people, what goes through your mind first? Not trying to ask you like about me, but just in general like what goes through your mind when you see someone? Are you always thinking of like, I wonder if there's a way I could tell them a different story to like create an aha moment or I'm just curious about this individual or are you just kind of not thinking anything?

No, you know what? So the work that I do is like is very sort of controlling. Like I seem to be able to control people's minds or control people people's actions or whatever. I actually think that's a terrible way of living. I'm a big believer in the stoic idea that there's like all the things you can control and then the things you can't control. If you try to start controlling things that you can't, you're just gonna get frustrated and angry and anxious, right? But the only things you can control are your thoughts and your actions and that is it. That is it. So you have this choice. You try and control all this other stuff, or you could just decide that it's fine, that everything else is fine. And the thing is, it always is. It always is. And if you let that thought of, so like, you know, your partner is driving you mad because essentially they handle stress badly and they're putting it all on your head or whatever that is. And it's sort of like you can, you're in charge of how much you maybe do try and help them, or how kindly you can meet them. But essentially, if they handle stress badly and they're having a bad time, you can emotionally separate a little and go, that's okay. It's okay. And in that sort of clarity that comes with that, then you can actually be a better partner and be a better help, as opposed to making it all about you. turning into a huge big thing that you don't need to do. So there are gray areas, but essentially, so it's like, I'm sure sport is the same. So if you're going to, I don't know, tennis, you're going to a game of tennis, if you try and control the thing you can't control, which is the outcome. So if you go in thinking, I must win, I must win this game, then what happens? You start to lose, you become anxious, you don't play as well. Whereas you can go in thinking, I will play as best as I possibly can, the best of my abilities.

And I'm not going to react and.

Be negative and I'm going to control my emotions. It's just a different story. You're in your thought, you're on this side of the line and of course you play better. You do actually play better so the results tend to be better. But you're just trying to keep it on the right side of the line. So there are these, there are kind of, you know, like matters of social injustice that you think, well that's not fine, that needs changing, well fine, but then just emotionally commit yourself to doing your absolute utmost to change that thing, not to an outcome that may, that this may not be the time, that may be like, it's going to be years after you've done your efforts and that's going to change, but you'll do a better job because you'll be less bitter, you'll be less frustrated, you know. So, what I'm saying is in life, I'm like, you know, the least controlling person. Actually, what I think is more important is to have an easy relationship with fate, fortune. The Greeks used to, they really believed in this thing called fortune that, you know, so imagine a graph, right? And I love this image, and it comes up, I read a book on unhappiness, and I just found this a recurring image from the ancient Greeks onwards. So imagine you've got like an X, like a X, your X axis and your Y axis, Right, is it that way or is it that way?

I can't remember.

But so along one axis you've got, say the y-axis is your aims, the things you want to do, the things you want to achieve, right? So that's like that axis. This axis down here is just stuff. It's fortune, it's stuff that life throws back at you, it's stuff you can't control. What we are told again and again and again is if you believe in yourself enough and if you set your goals clearly enough, you can sort of the life you lead, this line will be kind of up here somewhere, really in line with what your goals are. And I mean, that can work sometimes, and that's great when it does. But what you're not then respecting is this stuff that just happens that you don't have under your control. So what happens is like when people, if people, we call people losers now, right? Like they've lost, we used to call them unfortunate. so it's a slightly more sympathetic approach to when things don't go right in people's lives. So what I think is important is that actually what we live is an x equals y line, right? We try and do certain things and we try and pull the line a bit up here and then life pulls back a little bit and you can either let that drive you mad or you can just let that settle in as a kind of that's what life is, right? That's what life is. Which is whether you make your peace with that or not. Are you like a dog that's pulling at the lead and sort of like this all the time, or are you kind of trotting along a bit more harmoniously with it? So this is, I think, a really big thing. And that same idea comes up. Do you know Michael Czekaj-Mihai, who wrote Flow? Yes, yes, yes. So he studied, like, yeah, athletes, musicians, surfers, musicians, chess players. Anyone that had like a Zen state, like a state of flow where they felt this is the best version of me and I'm achieving the most. And what he saw was that they're in this x equals y line of imagine like you've got your skills on this side, you've got the challenges you're facing on this side. When your skills roughly match your challenges, you settle into this flow state, right? You lose any sense of like time and those things are regardless of what the skill is, like a lot of people say, 'I'm not good at anything, you're like, yeah, you're just in the zone, you're in the zone, right? If your skills are greater than the challenges, you kind of get bored. If the challenges are greater than your skills, you get anxious. But there is this X equals Y line. Schopenhauer, like great 18th, 19th century German philosopher said, you know, if you, it gets so relevant today when we're just told, 'Believe in yourself and set your goals.' So if you're playing a game of chess, you start out with a plan, but if you just stick to that plan all your life, if you just stick that plan to the game, it's nonsense because someone else is playing, so you have to adjust. So again, you've kind of got this idea of moving on. Freud, Freud who started psychoanalysis, he wasn't trying to make people happy. He figured life is pretty much unhappy a lot of the time.

Suffering, yeah.

Yeah, so he said, I want to restore what he called natural unhappiness, as opposed to unnatural unhappiness that people have. Natural unhappiness, you call it. And none of this sounds like being in the UK. Yes, like living with our weather in.

The UK and our teeth.

But, you know, and it doesn't sound kind of like you don't sell a lot of books with those kind of, it's a sort of pessimism, it's like a strategic pessimism it's been called, you know, but I think actually it's a little bit of that is valuable. 'Cause otherwise it's like the faith healer that says, if you don't continue to feel better, it's your fault. You've let yourself down 'cause you didn't have enough faith. And if you swap out faith for self-belief, like, I don't know if you're a fan of like, you know, the secret, but it's the same model.

Yeah, yeah.

And it says quite explicitly, if these things don't come to you... It's your fault. It's your fault. It is your fault because you let.

Go of that self-belief.

And it's a recipe, I think, for, anxiety and disaster.

Do you face a lot of anxiety in your life?

I don't. No, I don't. Particularly, I I I I I had the opposite problem that I'm.

I'm.

You're too relaxed. I'm so good at avoiding anxiety. How do you avoid it? Because I just have this natural Constitution that I just avoid stress. But then I don't. I don't.

The difficulty is getting stuff done, then, isn't it?

Like, anxiety is really important because you.

Need a little pressure to complete things. Yeah, that's our signal that.

Something needs changing in life.

You have a deadline, it's like, I've got to do this thing or yeah.

Something'S not working, I want to change. How do you change, you don't change your job, you don't know it's wrong unless you start to, you know, hate your job. You don't cross the road on your own without letting go of your mother's hand first, right? Something has to die in order for something new to live, right? And like, I'm 47, so as you get kind of into the middle bit of life, you start to notice you're kind of like, your ego has to now just settle down and you actually putting yourself in service of something that's bigger than you, like whether it's, you know, your kids or a passion or whatever it is, that those things start to become important. Things have to sort of, you have to let go of some things to move on, to move into growth, but you don't grow unless you embrace some level of anxiety. It's tough. So I find that difficult because I'm to the opposite. and I need to embrace a bit more anxiety probably in life.

Do you feel like, did you used to have a bigger ego at one point? Have you like started to kill the ego off?

Oh, I was a magician. It's just awful. It's embarrassing.

Trying to please people or trying to.

Like... Oh, trying to impress. It's just terrible. The bottom line of magic is look at me, aren't I impressive? That's it. That's all it has to say. It is the quickest, most fraudulent route to impressing people. And there are some wonderful magicians and I love great Magic of course, but there's a lot of grown-up lonely children in that world because you learn to show somebody something that is a cheat, you know, it might be actually really easy and they go you're amazing, you're amazing and that's quite an addictive cycle.

So.

I think I've hopefully let go of some of that but I know I was unbearable, I could Why did you... You didn't have a conversation without doing tricks.

Really? Yeah. Because you wanted that, it was like a drug.

It just felt like, it always felt good. It was that hit. Yeah, and like we don't like people that are trying to be impressive and that was like such an obvious truth that I just hadn't quite realized. We like people that are kind and.

We like people that are nice to be around. Good listeners and yeah.

Yeah. Not always trying to get all the attention or whatever, right? Exactly, yeah. And interestingly we don't like people that necessarily like us because we've always we try and be like people that we try and be like people we admire to get them to like us. And we instinctively try and, you know, be like them. And actually, it's not really what we necessarily are drawn to in people, I don't think.

Why were you so into magic or learning about all this stuff in the first place? I remember hearing a little bit about.

It's a really insecure, like, kid who needed to impress. and feel solid. I was, I saw a hypnotist in my first year at university and I, it kind of, so I was studying law, I was supposed to be a lawyer and I saw this guy and it just ticked all these boxes.

It was performance.

I'd never really thought of myself as performing but I think that I needed that. And the control side of it was like it was it was It was a great show. It wasn't making people look stupid or anything, but it was nonetheless, a bit of me was like all those kids that I found intimidating at school, those kind of sporty, sporty guys. --You'd have to tell me, you'd have to tell me.

--Guys that look like me, big guys.

--Yeah, they're now like the, they're the ones that tend to respond really well to this kind of stuff. So now I'm in control, you know, it was all that kind of stuff.

--It was, and hopefully, hopefully I've grown out of some of that at least. --That's why you got into it in the first place from insecurities. And it was like, absolutely. Yeah. Wow. When did you realize that you had, like, a gift for this? Because I'm. Did you. Were you just all of a sudden funny and interesting and a great Storyteller in the first, like, few months, or did you bomb a lot and get.

Embarrassed even more and it isn't a gift, I don't think. I think it's. It's like, if you have that insecure thing or whatever that makes you start playing the piano.

Right.

Like, probably not everyone's going to play the piano, but. anybody in good in theory, you just got to put in thousands of hours, whatever the figure is today, but not everyone's going to do that.

So.

It clicked for me and it clicked for me. But it was a slow process. I remember one weird seminal moment. I was the guy at university that would hypnotize you, right? That was my thing. So I would, people would come over and I was learning hypnosis. practicing it on people.

Rephrasing every day, just all the time.

Yeah, yeah, all the time, all the time. So, and I would leave, like if they were good, if they responded well, I'd leave them with this suggestion. If you come back and I click my fingers and tell you to go to sleep, you'll go straight back into the sleep state, right? If people are highly suggestible, that will work really well. So, and it just would, you know, speed up the process at certain times. And this guy came one week, and I thought I'd seen him before. So I sat down, I said, Click. I think my fingers go to sleep. And he went out. He went to sleep. He went to sleep. He went, well, it's not sleep, but he went into this kind of... Yeah, yeah. In this relaxed state. But essentially went into a trance. That's what it... Look, he did the, you know, he slumped out. And we did whatever we were doing. I can't remember what it was. Maybe, you know, he wanted to give up smoking or something like that. And then it was only afterwards we were talking about it, and I realized I hadn't met this guy before. So, how did he... Because it's like, I don't know, magic fingers or something, nothing I mean. And I just realized it was just my kind of commitment to that. I did my confidence, my belief that he was going to respond, and the fact he was very suggestible. It was just like a fortuitous coincidence. And that was a moment of going, right, the key to this is not these long scripts that I've been learning, and it's not really the technique as such, it's just something about that person's ongoing experience in the moment, which I am kind of, it's up to me to manage that. So now on stage, I get people up and I shake hands with them and they collapse out on the floor, hypnotized, inverted, whatever that means. There's a whole other discussion as to what it is, but I know that that moment of stepping up on stage is bewildering and then suddenly in all.

Of that, there's lights and they're like, yeah, and they just, yeah, all that.

And desperate for direction. desperate for clear instruction, which is like a gift if you're a hypnotist, because then you know that whatever you say.

Will just unconsciously, you know.

Yeah.

Wow. So I had someone tried to hypnotize me once, and I was like, I want to be hypnotized. I was like, you were too enthusiastic.

Well, I was like, first off, I.

Was like, I never want to be hypnotized. And I'm watching it. This is back in the day. Yeah. Then I met a guy who was like hypnotist, and he was like, you know, well, I'd love to, like, show you and guide you if you I was like, all right, I'll try it. I'm open to it. Like, yeah, I just don't know if it's gonna work. And he's like, well, you need to come to the space that it is going to work. You know, that's what he said to me. He was like, I want you to, you know, you want to be this.

This is something you want.

Like, we're gonna work on it, whatever. And he did the whole, like, arm pull thing or whatever, and it just wasn't working.

Like, and I was trying to.

He's pulling your arms. It was just, like, a quick, like, you know, it was just, like, a little, you know, I don't know. like a little pole where you... Don't break the hand. Yeah. But at the same point, I was like, okay, I'll just like try to like go along with it and really just try to more relax in like the process and just try to like be relaxing, breathe and relax. And he took me through like a prod, like a visualization of like becoming your greatest self. He actually put me through an actually nice process because I love the power of visualization. I've been doing it as an athlete since as long as I can remember. And I believe in the suggestion, the story we tell ourselves, the projection, I would say, this is how I'm gonna show up tomorrow at the game. And I'd walk myself through every move, every play, every whatever it may be, and see myself performing well. And I'd also be putting years of hard work to back it. So it wasn't just like, I'm gonna do great with no work. But we create, we reaffirming that belief. So he put me through a nice little kind of guided visualization meditation, whatever we want to call it. And he was like, I want you to imagine the greatest version of yourself standing right in front of you. And in that moment, I'd actually never heard the way he told it before. Then I was like, wow, I could see myself with 100% confidence, calm, poised, the best looking version of myself, whatever, just standing perfectly, not slouched, just every part of me, the best version. And I was like, wow, I can push myself to be a greater person by seeing it first and then taking the action steps to becoming that.

Yeah.

So I was like, that was a nice little.

As long as you build in this kind of sub clause that. Because, like, people can set these kind of goals that last forever. Joseph Campbell, I'm sure, you know, big writer on myths said, you know, you can spend your life climbing a ladder and then realize you had the ladder against. the wrong wall. You know, there's like, so there's, it's.

I mean, it's why are we climbing the ladder, right?

Yeah.

Why are we climbing this or.

Yeah, we, well, we, yeah, we spend a lot of time focusing on stuff like this. We have this image of this version of ourselves that we're moving towards, and it's always out there somewhere. It's kind of like all those things that, like, well, that, look, it's helpful. Like, if you can have a self-image of course, why not have a great self-image because we tend to make terrible ones, but it's just an image. It's just a picture in the air. It might as well be a good one.

Yeah.

But in the meantime, there's also, like, the here and now, and there's, like, making.

Yeah.

Your relationship to the, to the parts of you that aren't right is. Or, or don't feel right. I'm making peace with that and understanding that in a different way.

If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also check. We've got our free PDF, the Three Secrets to Unlock the Power of youf Mind to Help youp Change youe Life.

Download it right here. Deny a negative that's not there. You plant that baby. That's why you have to know the difference between a denial and a straight.