Life Lessons from a Secret Service Agent | Evy Poumpouras in conversation with Hannah MacInnes

one thank you very much for joining us on this very sunny Sunday evening I'm delighted to welcome you all on behalf of the how-to Academy and so please we're still able to bring brilliant speakers to you with the click of a zoom button and and not least our brilliant speaker this evening whose brilliant and rather eye catching blue book and bullet the coming bulletproof life essence from a Secret Service agent is of course inspiration for our events and I'm so thrilled to be in conversation with the UAV having led the most extraordinary life as a Secret Service agent she's now on a mission to help us all to benefit from the lessons she's learned along the way about how to cope with stressful situations the stressful situations that life tends to throw at us and as well as how we can read other people how we can influence how we are perceived and generally try and live a more fearless life or probably to be more accurate a life in which we recognize and know how to control our fear and she really should know her work has taken her from interrogation rooms to protecting past presidents of America including Bill Clinton Barack Obama and to George Bush's and she now she teaches criminology and criminal justice at the City University of New York but I mustn't speak too much taking advice from your book and you've tuned in to hear from her not me and we'll be chatting for around 4045 minutes and then it'll be a chance for questions it's wonderful to see so many of you joining us lots of participants I'm sure you'll have lots of questions so I'll make sure I try and leave a good amount of room for that at the end and thank you so much for joining us and you start your book talking about the rather unimaginable situation you found yourself in in 9/11 which led eventually and you're very humble about this to you being presented with the United States Secret Service Medal of Valor for your heroism but can you tell us a little bit about that experience as you described in the book and what you learned from it chiefly about resilience and about the human spirit yeah wisdom it was a difficult story to share it I initially didn't want to share it but I shared it because I wanted to show probably be the power of resilience and the power that we have even in the most hopeless of situations and the point of the story really wasn't about me it was about finding choices in those moments where we think that we have no choices and I just happened to be there on that day because that there was a building called seven World Trade Center that building collapsed last but that was the office that I worked out of and I happened to be there from the first plane to the collapse of the second tower to you know later on that day and then going to the hospital that night and then going back to Ground Zero to help with the cleanup efforts but what I found is in that in situation I remember you know the moment when that first tower fell that was really truly the moment although the whole situation was dangerous being there from when the planes hit trying to help people but then getting caught in the collapse of the tower I remember that moment were I was like all right well I'm about to die because I really truly it was that moment I was like this is my my time and I may not have a choice and how whether or not I die but I have a I have a choice in how I handle it you know I can be afraid or I can say okay this is what's happening and make peace with it and accept it and face it and it was the same thing with the men and women who were also in the towers and although we don't see it in the media today they usually don't show those pictures there were people jumping from the towers and even those people made a choice as sad as that choice is and it's like okay it's Mayans do I stay in here and burn or do I jump and so for me it's like that story is about power that even when you find yourself in the worst of situations and although you may not change not be able to change that specific situation you have power and how you handle that situation never completely powerless we become powerless when we think well I can't do anything hi this is what it is and it's gonna just completely take me and so it's really about not surrendering to to the chaos and just being able to find a choice and it was also about humanity because the book when I wrote it it's about protecting yourself not just physically but mentally reading people influence strategies and I took I I took all the things that I learned through training and through experience and I said how do I create or how do I help people become the most bulletproof version of themselves but there's so many facets to that there's so many layers that come to being a confident person a resilient person a person who faces fear of course in who embraces confrontation and so I took all those lanes all those layers and I put them in that book and so it's like here it is I you here you go you don't have to go through all the academies I went through take what I learned use it but then also take what you learned and help other people because it's about the humanity of it yeah and and you you know we will explore this in more detail over the course of our conversation but by way of introduction perhaps you could explain what you mean in essence by the bulletproof mindset right so when the book first was coming out everybody wanted me to call it fearless you have to call it fearless you're a fearless person people don't want to be afraid and I everybody the publisher and I I push back rather hard I said I can't call it that because it's not true I worked with some of the most bravest human beings I don't know anybody who wasn't afraid anytime we went to do an arrest warrant or you know or execute a search warrant or arrest somebody or had you have a gun pointed out you were you're pointing a gun at someone else at least here in the US you know our police are our arms you're afraid of the consequences of what might happen there's there is no escaping fear but there is managed that fear and fear is good to some degree fear right now is what keeps you you know when you leave your house that's why you wear your mask be fear of getting you know catching the virus and fear of giving it to other people that is healthy fear and so what I wanted to do is call it becoming bulletproof one because we are always becoming something we are always evolving you are never done becoming strong resilient brave it's an evolution myself included you know I have this saying the moment you think you know everything is the day you become obsolete and the other part of it bulletproof is on the job I wore bulletproof vest a bulletproof vest most the average person may not know this is made out of fabric and there's thin layers of fabric and what they do is they lay the thin layers of fabric layer upon layer upon layer and that is what creates this this thicker fabric there's molding that molds to your body that stops a piercing velocity of a bullet or the slash of a knife and so that is how I saw the book it's like there's no it's not a gimmick you know and I was like I'm not selling a gimmick just do these one or two things and you'll be you'll be fearless because it doesn't doesn't exist it's work yeah and so I said these are all the different layers and I'm going to give you your different layers of Kevlar that's what the fabric is called there's your different layers of Kevlar and when you take all these layers and you master chapter after chapter layer upon layer when you stack them up that is what creates your bulletproof vest that is what makes you the strongest version of you and at the same time accepting your vulnerabilities because even when I wore my vest my head was exposed my legs were exposed my arms were exposed so I wasn't unstoppable but I was harder to stop so I can't make you unstoppable cuz it doesn't exist but I can't help make you harder to stop yeah you say in in very clear words being fearless is and then I guess in the introduction so it wasn't your aim to teach people to be fearless but to master their fear but what about panic there's definitely a difference between fear and panic I think you described panic as fears crazy cousin and and and fear is a healthy response to a perceived threat panic is made likely to make us lose control how do we stop ourselves then from having that panicked response that so many of us have when we have something that makes us frightened one of the best things to help you manage chaos around you because we can we find ourselves in chaotic situations chaotic relationships chaotic pandemics right is stress and I we live in a society at least especially here in the US where we don't want stress we want a stress-free life stress is bad we have given stress a bad name a bad rap that you it is something to avoid but stress is also good like fear so when you are exposed to stress in your life you can either succumb to it or you can learn from it you can learn from anything and so when we went to training and anybody who's gone to any type of elite training academy will tell you when you come in they they expose you to difficult situations they expose you to stressful situations when you're working out it's not let's know this really nice workout and nice and easy people are yelling at you screaming at you they're breaking you down you're not doing 50 jumping jacks you're doing a thousand jumping jacks and you just want to completely collapse it's stress but that stress is what makes you resilient and so you are not the same person the first day you walked in from the day you left the life is like that and so if you look at any difficult circumstance that you face you can say ah this is an opportunity for me to overcome this adversity to become stronger or you can be that person that says oh my God my life is over and you learn nothing from me so introducing and allowing small amounts of stress into your life are good this is especially important for parents especially today's parents we want to shield our children we want to protect them we don't want them to face any type of adversity but what happens is when you don't when they don't rather and then when life does throw challenges their way they completely fall apart there one study here in the United States that says children that grow up in inner-city environments are actually more resilient than children that grow up in outside of the cities in more rural or suburban areas out here because they're not dealing with tough tougher situations and so that and of itself will help guide you so when things happen you don't completely lose it you're like all right I've been here before I've dealt with adversity before I've dealt with stress this is how I managed it and coped it and also when you deal with stress you also see how you you're going to react to it you get to know yourself okay I'm typically a person who wants to fight my way out of a situation well I'm a person who flees things I avoid confrontation and so when you know yourself better then you also can manage yourself better because you know okay I'm typically gonna behave this way and I need to manage that yeah I was gonna come on exactly to what you call the f3 response and how a fundamental lesson in becoming bulletproof is understanding what happens to each and every one of us you know when we become fearful perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that so we typically have three [Music] responses to stress or to a threat fight flight or phrase and so an abbreviation we used to refer to it in my line of work as the f3 response so how somebody gonna respond so some people myself I'm a fight person something happens I'm gonna fight my way out of it you push me my inclination is to push you back you yell at me my inclination is to yell back at you somebody else would be you know what they're being attacked they're gonna run away or somebody's picking an argument with them they're going to avoid it or not say anything at all or you know shut down other people sneeze and this is when you're kind of stuck you don't know whether you should fight you don't know whether you should run and that the stimulus is so overwhelming that you just lock down and that you don't respond and so we each typically have a pattern if you think back to how you've handled difficulties in your life you'll see this pattern you know what typically I'm about you know I want to be aggressive and fight somebody typically I avoid all confrontation as much as possible or I panic I completely freeze up I don't know what to do I should my my mind shuts down my body shuts down so those are the three things money like I can identify which one you are then when something does happen you say okay I'm always the person to fight my way out so if we use me for an example and I use it in the book because I want to be it's truthful and it's candid with people because there's nobody that's perfect there's nobody that's flawless there's nobody that doesn't deal with some level of chaos from the outside or with them but I'm the type of person who is very has the fight response I immediately go on the attack and so when that happens I understand this is what I'm going to do so I will step away from a situation and I will Zig my way through it or let's say something as simple as you get I get in an email from one of my producers and I don't like it I my name is Andrey my initial inclination is like well I'm gonna show you you know a little bit of that keyboard courage that some of us have elders will step away because I know that's not always the right thing to do and that it is an impulsive response and we want to rein in our impulsivity so when you can rein in your impulsivity and say impulsively I want to do this can I hit the pause button and step away and if you can give time time is a beautiful thing time between yourself and the issue or distance put distance between yourself and the problem so that you can come back to it and deal with it or if you're not able to do that then then at least recognize it recognising I'm about to respond to this through my impulsive f3 response which is fight is that the right way I should be handling it we want to be we want to respond to our problems we don't want to react right we want to think through them we want to think and respond we don't want to be reactionary because reactionary is those moments where you think back I shouldn't have done that I shouldn't have said that why did I do that it's a very good example you give about the email I think there are so many people who've learnt you just your impulse is to reply back and and to be you know emotional about it but when you take a step back wait for some time then you can think more clearly but back to your own experience and you know you you know and you feel very much that fear keeps us alive but you also say you know fear can keep us from living and in your own experience you felt that when you were growing up and your parents were incredibly fearful about the various choices you wanted to make and how did that robbed you as you say that fear in your early years you know so we my parents are immigrants from Greece they came from very poor villages they were very poor and so they as most people do move to the u.s. they came for a better life opportunity work but when they came over and when I was born and raised here those years were we were striped with a lot of violence I'm in New York City a lot of violence a lot of crime and we also lived in a very poor economic area we lived in an area where was either were subsidized housing so they were the city's buildings for people who were poor we don't live in poverty but we weren't great so we were somewhere there and when you live in those environments there's drugs there's violence there's fear and so there were so many things growing up that I couldn't play outside I I couldn't you know hang out I couldn't be in the neighborhood or I couldn't do any of those things I literally we were locked down into our little tiny apartment and because of that fear I even placed into a really really good school a high school we here in the United States I tested for it it was one of the top three high schools in all of New York City and I couldn't even go to that because it wasn't a part of it was in Brooklyn I lived in Queens it was Brooklyn so if Queens was horrible according to my parents Brooklyn was even worse and so I couldn't even go to this really this the school for brilliant minds I couldn't grow as a person and so because my mother and my father were so afraid of putting me on a subway or train or even having me go to this other place and so fear can rob us a lot in life to keep us from doing things and sometimes look it it isn't safe but then if you're constantly thinking in such a fear-based way which I I was trying to do I was becoming I was very fearful of everything and rather than seeing the positive is something I would always see well if I do this what's the bad thing that's gonna happen rather than seeing okay what's the positive outcome and so I really worked hard to make sure that I didn't let that become my life because it really could have become my life where I would have been afraid to do so many things so fear transcends not just in the physical sense of being afraid to go outside but in making powerful decisions or taking risks calculated risks healthy risks in your career or in your relationships even something as simple as breaking off about a relationship because you're so afraid of what the unknown is if you do it and then you end up staying somewhere with someone who's not good for you because you're you're more afraid of what it will be like when you're gone because you don't know that but at least if I stay here I kind of know what it is so three or can really it can and we can enhance your life but it can also destroy your life in so many ways and it's about that balance you did you didn't let it stop you at all and ended up in the New York City police force which is an extraordinary thing itself and there was an incredibly you know harsh regime and relentless of mental and physical training you learnt a lot from that what would you say you know with the key things you learned from that struggle because you nearly fell out I think you fell out of line and one of those extraordinary runs but you kept going against some seriously harsh odds yeah so I had no clue what police academy training was like I was very oblivious to it and that was my naiveness it'll be like college nothing like college and I went in and the it was it's a paramilitary style so it's it's mirrored from the military and I really didn't understand that so you're you're doing all this physical stuff combined with mental activities combined with people putting vast amounts of stress on you so my academy class when I went in into the NYPD was 1,500 people so I was in AV it was just a body of her number and part of what they do is because they're trying to filter out the weakness of mind and body they're also trying to filter certain people from being in the Academy they want to make sure you that you're not only able to learn a skill set but you have the right temperament temperament and so they would put so much stress on you and their mindset was well if you can't hack the stress in here how are you gonna manage it on on the street because when you're on the street and people hate you you have to be composed you have to have a certain level of emotional intelligence you can't just react impulsively impulsively so if for me it was hard my first week I wanted to quit I was I remember thinking I made such a huge mistake this was not the right thing to do I didn't even really like law enforcement that much at the time I knew I wanted to change something because even growing up with regard to law enforcement again growing up in the poor community that we were when the police would show up they didn't really pay that much attention to us because there was crime everywhere so it's like okay your house was burglarized okay you were robbed okay this happened to you and so it's not like I had this this mindset of law enforcement I had like wow they're great I want to be one of them but what I did have was I didn't want to feel the way I was and I didn't want to feel helpless I was like you know what I need to figure make myself stronger and at the same time I wanted to help people though because you don't I never followed the money and anything I ever did I followed passion and I think because we were so vulnerable in so many ways and there's no there weren't really people to help us I was like how can I help other people too and so it was a combination of my passion for helping other people sticking up for other people being there for other people and then also making myself powerful in the process less fear-based it feels like I can't ask you well we're talking about you know what it's like training in the u.s. police force obviously at the moment there's an extraordinary situation unfolding and you know when they instill in you such such a you know with this force is quite bullying a quite brutal do you think there's a sense that in a way that leads to situations like this because the the armor the way that the police are trained is not with company sort of compassion so one of the issues with us law enforcement if you look at the UK the UK is a national police force it's one one hierarchy one system words in the United States there are 17,000 law enforcement entities each has their own police chief each has their own training each has their own resources each has their own each has their own and so you see this discrepancy of how its run so one police department won't do this the other police department will do this and so that's one problem there's no uniformity there the other thing is despite some of the training processes and and I can't even speak to all the different ways in which Police Department's recruit I can only speak to the way I was recruited into the NYPD and then later on into the u.s. Secret Service but how what is their process how do they check so for example in the NYPD I had to take a psychology exam and it's something similar to what's called the MMPI - and it basically tests you to see if you have any underlying personality disorders emotional disorders what your temperament is are you narced narcissistic and so they really do their best to try to make sure before they give you a badge and a gun and put you out there on the street that you are capable not just in the skill set but I mean that you have that level of emotional intelligence and health mental health now you're going to have people that that seep through those cracks unfortunately and then it's that percentage that that small percentage that makes everybody look bad and so what you can do is change that from within so when I hear people say the police force the police force and I say join it you can't change it from the outside change it from the inside come in become one of them and you change it from inside this so there's so much we could spend the next this image we could talk about what's going on now but let's let's go back to your experience because you did then go and to be to be accepted into the United States Secret Service again another extraordinary feat and against quite a lot of odds again 90% I think of Special Agent then were met men and you know you said I wanted to be seen as especially not a female Special Agent did that seem possible did you were there times when you felt it was an impossible thing you were trying to do by getting in no because I didn't I didn't think about that and I think maybe it was great that I was so young because I don't think about my gender at all I was like wow I'm gonna apply I applied I pass then I pass another test and I passed another test and I pass another test a year later I get a call hey you're in and so I didn't think oh you know I'm a woman and I should have do this it's gonna be harder for me because I really feel that language is very self-defeating and it can be I'm a woman it can be I'm a specific race I'm a specific ethnicity my sexual orientation it can be anything and I really feel that usually we are the first people us are the first people to put up an obstacle before us not somebody else it's usually us with self-defeating language and a self-defeating narrative so truth I didn't care I didn't think about it I applied I got in kudos to me and then I went to training and I had to perform in training and so yes were there men yes but I guess and my mindset I thought I I was like I belong here yeah I earned this so why shouldn't I be here now sure you're gonna run across people who have a problem and I would argue you know maybe 92% wasn't was men law enforcement just in general the numbers are there's not a lot of women I do think it's probably one is is the mindset that I shouldn't do this job they won't take me they won't hire me I shouldn't even bother applying and then too it won't be right for me like how do you know you know I'm as feminine as they get makeup hair manicures pedicures that's me but I was like but why can't I still be strong and powerful and and resilient and why can't I do this and why can't I protect others so in truth I didn't stop to think about it and I think if I had I would have I would have created all these reasons in my head why shouldn't do it and then rather than getting all my energy and focusing it on training and being successful in competing and making sure I hit the standards I needed I would have rate wasted energy that I didn't have on something else I lightly would have failed because I would have been distracted so to me that's a distraction but you have to perform though too you have to perform you have to be like this is what I have to do this is what I have to execute but you can't be like well I'm a woman I shouldn't I don't have to do as many pull-ups Shh yeah you can have that mindset and well then no one's gonna want to work with you no one's gonna want to hit a door with you no one's gonna want to have you by their side and I just for me I didn't want that I wanted people to want to work with me but then also if you perform and you're doing everything you can and you you're hitting it you're hitting the mark and people still don't like you or want you you have to have the ability to say it's not me it's that person because you're always gonna get resistance for a variety of reasons and you have to be okay with that and actually you say you were you were very sure that you know it would have been easy to mold yourself into a typical male agent stereotype and you'd seen others do that but you wanted to stay true to yourself and I get the impression it feels like actually by doing that there are many qualities you brought that perhaps others didn't have and you say empathy empathy was Queen and is a great strength particularly and in your work in the interrogation rooms I mean in a sense you brought a unique qualities to that so everything is great because and I used it primarily when I did interviews of people suspects victims witnesses because people everybody wants to feel understood and when people feel like you understand that when people feel that you're trying to see things from their perspective and you get them they open up they truly open up it's such a powerful tool that is completely underestimated the best negotiators use it well I think some people think empathy is synonymous with weakness oh I'm too nice I I want to make people afraid of me and I need to intimidate people so just so you know true ago she ators have two primary characteristics and research shows this that if you have competency and warmth those two characteristics combine our definitive of the best negotiators and people who get most of more information from people and have better communication skills those who are perceived as being competent and fear-based where you're you're trying to intimidate other people you're a bit more colder because you think I need to put off this cold persona so people can be afraid of me or respect me those actually don't work in your favor and research has shown that so it's it's it's just really about using it in a mindful way and now you've got somebody who feels understood and then through that when people open up they're more agreeable they like you more and the more willing to say yes to you and both parties leave a negotiation a business deal and interview or whatever it is feeling better in that process going back to the getting in and and how you sort of decided to really you know adapt and and create this mental shield you say to try and and fortify a mental armor between you and the outside world that was your way of being impermeable and and a skill that you used in your professional life in the Secret Service but that you feel very much is one that we should all use in our in our personal life but we aspire to we all aspire to be able to not be affected by the things going on around us but it's easier said than done well will you be affected by things you will but you also are the gatekeeper of what you let in and what you you keep out so you have some level of control so keeping a buffer between yourself and the outside world and but it's something truly it's something you can easy control are you putting yourself in bad situations if you are don't put yourself in those situations do you have a bad boss a bad relationship then then if this person is constantly causing you harm or hurting you why do you choose to stay there we have control well we do what we do we exercise that control you are the gatekeeper so rather than focusing this person did this to me that person did that to me I'm telling you stop trying to worry about them because trying to change people is a very difficult thing to do even with all the influence strategies that I teach in my book I tell people trying to change someone's trying to change their value system their belief and who they fundamentally are forget about it that is hard hard work influencing someone is getting a short-term goal a short-term agenda trying to get a business deal trying to get your kid to do their homework that's short-term but changing somebody's inherent value a whole other story will you have power to say this person is not a good person in my life you push that person out or if you can't minimize that interaction use ways to minimize how you connect with other people that are not good for you if you have a job that is very bad for you you don't like it put in place a process to pull yourself out of that job so you do have control but it's like but we don't observe it we a lot of us like to sit and I'm this has happened to me as well it's just it'll happen to you you just have to catch yourself are you becoming a victim and we get this victim based mindset oh this person's doing this to me that person is doing that to me and then we get stuck in that narrative and we we can't move we can't budge because everybody else has the power well when you create a buffer this mental resilience the shield you control what you let in and what you keep out and then sometimes things will make their way in and when they do hit you you have to say okay I know this just got in let me handle it the best way I can and let me make sure next time that I don't let this mistake happen so rather than saying what can that person do differently or what did that person do wrong the mindset and I do really think this came from training and all the academies I went through it's like well I have this problem rather than blaming this person what could I have done differently so that it doesn't occur again and there's so much power in that rather than just being the mere recipient of what other people do to us that's what you mean when you say you know in order to build up mental resilience we must live in you own reality not feel helpless and want to change that you feel like you're a victim of circumstance I think it's incredibly relevant at the moment of there's a feeling of helplessness I mean hopefully we're coming out a little bit of these last few months but people have lost a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning and you know I'm interested to hear your advice about how we regain that and and how we stop ourselves from from having that out of control helpless feeling when things go wrong and what you mean when you say live in your reality let live in the truth of things the truth is this is where we are now but what's happening is the you're gonna die we're gonna see two types of people come out of this people that overcame and then even thrived use this christ as an opportunity to do something else and thrive or people who completely lost themselves and when we don't live in reality it means I'm living in like I wish things would go back to the way it was I wish things would be different three four four months ago it was a different situation or what am I gonna do later we're not living in the moment of saying okay this is where I am this is my new reality how do I adjust so it's two things acceptance is key accepting where you are now not where you were not where you wish to be where you are now and that is such a huge thing but when people refuse to accept the truth it just stops right there because you're still like I can't wait for it to go back to how it was miss pandemic it's gonna be around for a while where we're seeing this and it's like okay well this is the truth now how do I dress so the how-to Academy going from live events you adapt you're like we're gonna go online but that's you're pivoting you're pivoting you're figuring out how do I make this work versus living in the moment of like I nothing's gonna be the same I just want things to go back I don't want things to be I want things to go and I think that's that's where you struggle your ability to pivot and evolve you have to evolve you know rigid rigid people are the most dangerous people because they can't evolve and you just don't want to be that person but recognize when it's happening and it happens to the best of us it happens to me I catch myself up I'm being rigid I'm not evolving what is my truth okay this is my truth now so how do I make my now how do i pivot and change my routine my environment whatever my situation is how do i dapped so I can move forward acceptance a huge thing and once you can accept then you can adapt so it's flexibility and there are again so many brilliant bits of advice that you offer in general about how to build up that mental resilience but I'm gonna I want to move on so that I can get cuz I can see already a lot of questions piling up so I want to make sure I did cut my everyone's time too short but the other as well as mental resilience you talked about the Secret Service mindset and you you offer much more practical solutions in the book about how to keep yourself safe and yes Secret Service mindset is to always be thinking about things that might go wrong before they happen my question on that and I'm maybe other people would agree or disagree with me this I did if you're always looking over your shoulder for me that is being fearful and and paranoid and there seems to need to be a careful balance because if I start thinking of all the things that might go wrong in a situation it would take all the enjoyment out of it you talk about going to music concerts or being in restaurants and and having your back to the wall but how do you balance between being aware of the possible dangers and also being able to relax and live life you're absolutely right you want to be you don't want to be as paranoid as we were cuz obviously we were hyper paranoid because we were but we had a legitimate reason to be hyper paranoid because we understood what the consequences were so we don't want paranoia we want situational awareness two different things so you I don't want you to be oblivious to your environment I want you to be aware of it situationally aware what's going on around me what's happening you don't want to turn it down I still go to concerts I still go to movies in fact I love the movies this whole pandemics killing me because I can't go to the movies anymore it's just something I love but I still do these things when when I go in to an environment it takes it can take a few seconds depending on where you are I walk in front door back door bathroom because bathroom is a great place to shield yourself it's usually very sturdy and oh there's a table here it's wooden if some they were to happen here I can hide under this table just very simple things or when I go to the movies I sit closer to an emergency exit that's all I may not sit in the middle of the movie theater and the reason why I do that is because you don't know how people are gonna react remember we talked about f3 before and some people completely lose their and you you may you may be prepared to be like I've got it you have all the wherewithal but you just don't know how people gonna act around you and behave and so that's also something to think about so I always think okay I just want to be closer to thee to the door but I'm also thinking to if something were to happen how can I also help others nothing you have to do that but I think that that's a strong thing that you can have where you're like okay I've got a plan for me and if I can help others I will - it's very simple Laurie but when you go to a restaurant my husband I argue who's gonna sit with their back against the wall I just I'm more comfortable and these are very simple things that you can do it's just it's where we turn situational awareness just know what's going on around you because if you're oblivious then you're not gonna see the problem coming so I don't want people to be paranoid I want you to just be aware but if you're not aware make yourself aware if you're walking and you've got your phone and you're doing this I mean you're not aware so if somebody does something to you we are not aware it's really don't live in pyrin paranoia but don't live in la-la land either don't be completely oblivious because it is your responsibility to have awareness it is your responsibility to protect yourself and when you talk about how we should be embracing and not fearing conflict and confrontation you say that the first time we experienced an attack should never be in a real fight so the yet say your advice is to make sure that you get some sort of physical training in in in combat yeah so I here in the United States like I get asked a lot by a lot of the morning shows of the news show these great self-defense techniques tell women what to do especially with women and there's two myths here one we create this narrative that women are more susceptible to violence crying it's actually not true the statistics show actually men are more susceptible to being victims of violent crime women are just more susceptible to being victims of sexual assault so there's one so we create this narratives for women to be afraid women to be afraid which i think is a very bad narrative to create when we actually look at the statistics and actually men should be more afraid because they're usually victims of violent crime the other thing is what I shared with with people is if you've never been in the fight you've never had anybody put hands on you don't let the first time be on the street don't let that first time be for real because you don't know how you're gonna react you don't know what's gonna happen you're gonna be insecure and it's really to help you overcome this insecure mindset and you want simple techniques and strategy so some of these self-defense classes I don't and I can't speak on all of them but a lot of them I don't agree with because they teach very complex moves then unless you practice them over and over and over and over again you're never gonna learn and I tell people I'm not teaching you how to fight you don't want to fight on the street you want to strike and run really simple maneuvers but I also want you to understand like how you gonna react when something happens to you you know we've all situations what we've never been in before and it's the first time maybe it happens to us and we think oh I could have handled that better and it no is my first time so with that what I share is take a class where it's either Brazilian jiu-jitsu which I practice which is about technique and just being comfortable and having somebody put hands on you fight you so that you're aware and so that you know how you're gonna feel or boxing where you're being you know back to back and forth Muay Thai there's so many different things but that I really feel is more important it's it's this ancient Greek saying know thyself you have to know yourself you have to know how you're gonna respond so they can teach you all these nice and fancy self-defense techniques none of which you're gonna remember I promise you when something happens cause you're gonna be out to such a heightened strain stress your brains not gonna be able to think remember those moves but you will remember being like hey I took that class and somebody hit me and I was okay after they hit me I know what it's like I know where to grab someone and push or strike somebody and run and that's why I really promote that because that is the best way to teach people to fight can we talk a little bit more about the interrogation side of your career you seem keen to point out that it's not like the films and how was that side of things different to what the portrayal that we all see in the films and also you know you learnt a lot about the arts of communication from that experience and communication that translates into into everyday situations perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about that - so when I first went into law enforcement I thought I knew how to interview people I didn't it wasn't until later in my career that became a polygraph examiner and I was in ER I was educated properly in the art of interviewing people and we would use interview and interrogation interchangeably because they're the same thing so the stuff you see on TV weight you get in people's faces and they intimidate people and they yell at people and they try to frighten people into talking that doesn't work it looks beautiful on TV it's great on TV but in real life you don't get anything in a true interview or interrogation whichever way it is it's about two people having rapport having a connection and having the ability to get that person to open up and talk to you but when you are constantly telling somebody but they're gonna go to jail they're gonna go to prison that their piece of garbage they're they're less likely to share information people don't and again it's science it's not the world but it's not the world or to me by my instruction it's science has showed us that people respond and open up to people that they perceive as competent and warm and warmth people respond to warmth there was another study done where they asked convicted felons and they asked him how they felt about the person the investigator that interviewed that and we had to basically two categories because the phone's I said I'd like the person that interviewed me I thought that was I really like that person or I didn't like that person he was a jerk or she was a jerk and what they found those people that said that they liked the investigator actually gave either confessions or information or admissions and those who said they did not like the person they they disliked them gave nothing and that's super powerful getting in people's faces is not how you get information and their conversations their conversations sometimes their therapy sessions there's moments where I would sit in a room talking to someone maybe who abused a child and I would have to sit for the first hour hour and a half and go through their life history about what they went through before I could even touch on a different subject on the subject really that I wanted to go into so or people just one event sometimes people are just angry let them be angry let them vent and then come in and talk to them and in a moment where you feel that they can hear you but it's not it's so not like the movies and I think that this is where when we talked about earlier with police saying this is where law enforcement has a lot of work to do where we should look at talking to people and being objective seekers of the truth and not having a biased interpretation of what we think happened or what somebody should say to us or how we should approach people and even in your personal relationships think of times when you come after someone or attack someone or aggressive with someone verbally or cute or you choose someone think about how they respond to you versus how much more information you can get from someone who's willing to talk to you willing to have a conversation with you and open up I can see the questions piling up I'm gonna ask you to end if possible with you you quite rightly say in the book of us you've looked after many presidents and you don't you're not gonna you know give gossip but you have learnt a lot from them about how to be presidential about qualities and and you give wonderful examples of many of them could you perhaps just tell us the lovely story about how you've learnt generosity from Bill Clinton when you were trying to the example you give trying to take him out of one of his after one of his speeches through a kitchen yeah so I get I was assigned him quite a bit because even after he left Washington DC he came up to work and at the time in the beginning my career I was mostly assigned to New York and he loved people probably one of the best communicators I've ever seen I learned so much about communication skills just from watching him and you'd see him shaking hands talking to people and he could walk into a room and there could be a thousand people in that room but if he was talking to somebody whoever he was talking to you it was just him and that person and he would make that person feel like there was nobody else in the room but them and it also meant him taking his time talking to people it wasn't a very superficial hey how are you oh great thanks for coming and moving on he really would talk with people which always made him late I would always be like don't talk to anybody we're on a schedule but to him it was very important and usually as a politician as a president or former president you really want to connect with people and he did such a great job of giving people his time rather than worrying about what his schedule was like well I have to go here next he would he would stop and he would delay himself just to spend time speaking with people his mindset was if you want to talk to me then I'm gonna really extend to you the courtesy of giving you my time and listening to you which is so important and really undervalue today because we'll talk to people you may even say hello to someone within the first five seconds you're thinking what was her name again you can even you know you don't even know what that person's name was because you weren't really present and so I learned the value of being present when you speak to people I learned it from him and I think you tried to push that you tried to get him into a kitchen because he was coming through and he said they had their faces against the window and he still spotted them and then have to say every time we have him moving and going somewhere because we knew so much he loved to connect with people strategically we'd always move people away we'd hide people from him because we knew all he's gonna see them he's gonna want to go say hi and so the once to a story I share is when he was moving into the Hilton coming to give a big events a big speech and I knew I was like I have to get rid of all these people in the kitchen come just passing through the kitchen because I know he's stop and say hello and it it was just it was but it was a constant thing with him I would just try to make people disappear but somehow you would always find them like hey there's somebody stuffed in that closet over there and I'm like yes so am I just gonna ask question is for you and what was the most difficult situation you've been in and how did you use the skills you had learnt oh wow I think maybe in my career because when I loved government and I went into TV and the TV industry which I am now you know doing news and then doing like a TV show co-hosting a show on Bravo and transitioning into the business of me that was difficult because I went from an industry where I wasn't and it was never advocating for myself I was always advocating for others and I found myself going into the business of advocating for myself making deals negotiations figuring out who I should work with why I should work with and also navigating a business that I knew nothing about I think that was really hard I you know it's I know some people might be like oh the physical part but being in the Secret Service working in government there's like a it's like a you do a then you do B then you do see there's like a structure to it well working in the entertainment industry and all these different pronounced personalities and navigating all these people and knowing who's trying to figure out who's truthful who's deceptive who you should work with who's got a better work ethic that's like a whole other ballgame and I felt that that was hard for me initially to navigate into an industry that where now I had to advocate for myself which I had never done before because I came from a background where it was never about you you may change humble you maintained you stayed quiet you didn't really speak a lot as far as in an outward way and so now you're going into a different industry where you have to speak up well you have to where people aren't going to always do the right thing by you first where I came from an industry where my salary was my salary I never had to negotiate it it was good what it was gonna be and now I have to do that so that was a bit that was I think a difficult thing for me too I had to literally evolve and change from who I was then to someone else so they could manage this new business as your lifestyle somebody asks I'm glad they've asked it because I took it off my list at the end but given your experience with past presidents I'm sure you've been expecting this would you want to work for the current one yes if this is history in the making first of all I was Switzerland I didn't vote I never voted and I still don't because even now on TV I just because I started in journalism I was drawn wanted to be neutral but yes I want to see it's you are there and you are seeing history in the making you are seeing what's going on behind the scenes to be in the White House to be when policies are being read and this is where I think people get confused I wasn't there to take a bullet for a person I don't care who it was it was about the office of the presidency and what it symbolized I was serving the the public and one day I was protecting the president one day the first lady then his kids or former presidents or foreign heads of state when foreign heads of state when the Prime Minister of the UK visits the United States because it would protect him u.s. Secret Service and I would have to take a billet just like I would have to take a bullet for the president so it symbolized something bigger there was no pettiness oh oh this person that's petty this is symbolically what your position was what it meant and that you were serving the people of the United States because if a president let's say gets assassinated I don't care who the president is is symbolically it's gonna hurt the government it's gonna hurt the world it's gonna affect so many things and so yes absolutely I would absolutely want to be behind the scenes and see what's going on someone else and I know you you talk about this in a more practical sections about in this digital world we live in how you safeguard me you talk about how practically save God things like our homes but how we safeguard our security and you know you talk about that online how we you know passwords etc this person as national security what do they want to know exactly how individuals protect our digit our security online yeah so it's it's work its work have a I'm gonna tell you probably what you've heard a thousand times before and it just is what it is have a different password for everything your financial institutions and your email accounts and your shopping sites should never have the similar passwords you should you use a minimum of 13 characters I write all my passwords down so I know some people have like these apps on their phones and they store their their passwords on that I don't trust anything surprise surprise I literally have a notepad next to my desk and I write all my passwords down by hand so that means you have to break into my home go through me and steal my passwords rather than hack into my accounts the other thing too this is a huge thing I'm the little camera that you have on your this guy right here get a slider you can get them online I have a slider literally glue it onto your camera and then slide it back and forth do all these small things and be careful what sites you visit be careful also when you're donating money or giving money especially right now there's a lot of charities going on people saying hey give money you should only give money when you're either can pay with a credit card or you get a billing invoice never wire money I never write any checks unless you actually know where that money is going there's so many frauds and scams and sadly they're all in outside countries so if it's happening to you in the United Kingdom you're being defrauded I ninety percent of the time the person who's defrauding you is in another country and that's where law enforcement can't help you so you should really really arm yourself and protect yourself these small things are crucial some the last one I did go to sneak in do you have a first step a first basic step for becoming bulletproof if your fear is an all-consuming one not in a specific area they say I would look at the five closest people around to me and if they are all fear based people if they are similar to that then I would find a new group of people to surround myself with you will be influenced by the people around you so take catalog and notice that the people around you just because somebody's been with you the longest doesn't mean that they should still be around you not all good people are good people so part of the reason I I feel brave is because I was an environment where I was around other brave people and that okay that catch is that's infectious so I really examine who's around you and if they're fair based and weak minded a weak willed no good I'm somehow we've come already to the NV era always seems to go remarkably fast but and to people who are asking in the Q&A box the how-to Academy will send a link to the talk I think in around 24 hours and if you want to buy bulletproof becoming bulletproof there's also a link to where you can buy that from an independent shop so we'll encourage independent booksellers at this time but thank you all very very much for tuning in and thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you so much for having me thank you everybody

Channel: How To Academy Mindset

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Length: 56min 37sec (3397 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020