Mastering Power, Seduction, and Human Psychology with Robert Greene | EP 200

a lot of manipulators and narcissists do is they pretend to be interested in you but there's something kind of dead in their eyes when you're excited your eyes dilate when you're really excited about somebody and you smile your whole face lights up your cheeks go up but a fake smile is when I entered the work world I was very naive I thought like you that everyone was going to work very hard and try and get the right results Lo and beh it's all about politicking so from very early on I was aware that people wear masks in an Ideal World wouldn't it be better to figure out a job where you didn't have to do that you show me that Ideal World and I'll move to it I mean it's not the world we live in mostly I'm just working on my new book I'm thinking it's going to be my major work that is summarizing a lot of how I feel about life in general we are animals after all and we have animal roots and we have a connection we're obsessed since since childhood with animals you have your lamb there I have my cats you know and so entering that Consciousness I have a chapter on childhood about accessing I say childhood was a lot of the pain that we feel as we get older is that we experienced something different we were when we were children we experienced something more open our minds were more open life was more intense and as we get older we miss that and it causes US problems and I have a chapter about how to enter your childhood not just by becoming immature but but creating that kind of Mind and Spirit and Consciousness that you had as a child I have a chapter on paganism which I discussed with your father we had a very interesting discussion about that about the Pagan Consciousness because um I've studied a lot of ancient cultures and how interesting are ancestors how they thought about the universe this is I don't know if that's giving you an idea I mean I could go through all of the chapters but that's no that that gives me a bit of an idea when are you uh planning on launching or releasing the book or for for pre-order let's say and then release well um there's 12 chapters I've written eight I'm on the ninth chapter at the very slow pace that I'm going I'll probably finish next early next year maybe in time to come out in 2025 the fall of 2025 but probably more likely I can't believe it 2026 I take a very long time to write a book sometimes five or six years so the pre-orders at the earliest would be in 2025 okay great well good luck with that thank you I need luck yeah writing is really something okay I have a whole bunch of questions for you um some of them some of them I want to cover they're similar topics to what we talked about last time but I found them really interesting so I want to go back to some of those but a bunch of them are new so can we start with oh this we didn't cover yet um you talk about mentors quite a bit how do you look for a mentor well um it depends on what field you're in and who you are as an individual but to generalize a little bit think of a mentor as kind of a second parent that you have so we don't get to choose our parents you're fortunate to have a brilliant parent but we don't choose our parents and so the mentor is the chance where you get to choose somebody to be like that surrogate father or mother you never really had and so it's more than just you don't want to just find somebody who's the most brilliant person in their field but there's no emotional connection there has to be a kind of an emotional contact between you a back and forth an exchange so I often tell people go through a process where you think that is somebody I would like to become in five or 10 years I would like to be you know accomplishing the same kind of things their Spirit their sense of humor their openness they the way they think is something I feel a connection to that in in a kind of an intuitive way and so you find a mentor that way where there's so I I had in my book Mastery there was a woman Yoki matoka who's I considered a brilliant um master of robotic intelligence who I interviewed she was looking for a mentor at MIT she's always been kind of a rebellious person she played tennis as a young woman and her her her Idol was was John mackenro and so she was looking for a mentor who had the same kind of rebellious Spirit as her so there's a there's a kind of similarity in spirit that's how you find them then the next question is how do you get them how do you how do you initiate communication and contact with them yeah okay I think I've heard of that woman I think I was considering interviewing her for the podcast she sounds really interesting yeah yeah just a month ago that's coincidental that's funny hey guys I've partnered with meric health a very cool teleah Health company for health optimization I only advertise things I actually use otherwise people wouldn't trust me anymore not that I trust people and normally I kind of hate doctors not all of them the ones I have on the podcast I like a lot but mer Health has been so great you know I'm on the lion diet for serious autoimmune issues but I keep an eye on the blood work anyway because it's a new diet it's restrictive and because I'm allergic to everything was exposed to mold etc etc there's something wrong with me no harm in blood work as long as you don't go down a dangerous Rabbit Hole of treating blood work rather than symptoms anyway mer health is a tella Health company that Derek Monroe actually introduced me to that does in-depth hormone panels as well as a ton of other blood work if you need blood work tested properly check them out they're better than just going to a random Clinic a lot of the blood work you get tested at a regular doctor's office doesn't go in depth especially with hormones but also with other blood markers the doctors that work with Merck are very in the know about lifestyle optimization and can prescribe hormones peptides high quality vitamins and supplements I use them my dad uses them my husb husband uses them my brother uses them I basically had my blood done and then spread them throughout my family they do your blood work then they thoroughly explain the markers and suggest treatments if you want to try the same hormone panel I got done when my hormones and vitamins tanked when I lived in a place with mold like bad strains of mold in the HVAC you guys have heard about it you're probably sick of mold go to mer health.com and if you can't spell that the link is in the bio and the description anyway I honestly really like them and so many people have hormone problems nowadays if you look the statistics uh that could be fixed with some supplements or hormone therapy and they could feel so much better quite easily so check them out at meric health.com Mela code MP for 10% off at checkout they're pinned in the description they're in the bio I trust these guys enjoy the rest of the episode are you planning on writing in your new book anything about anxiety or have you written anything about anxiety before anxiety well it's kind of something that I I discuss peripherally in all of my books and I discuss it a little bit in Sublime I mean it's related to our relationship to death I I believe um so we have layers of emotions in each of us we we only we're only generally aware of the surface so I feel angry or excitement I'm just aware of what initially triggered it but deep down inside in your unconscious there were something there was something else underneath it that triggered that emotion right so anxiety is the same thing and underneath it in deep deep layers is your fear of death so if you're Fe if you're not confronting your mortality the fact that your your life is short that you're going to die someday then the all these kind little roots of of anxiety start sprouting up inside of you and you become afraid of other things and anxiety becomes kind of generalized because you're not dealing with the most basic reality which is your mortality right and so then there are other factors that you're not dealing with as well so I think anxiety is is is like we all feel it I feel it a lot I I happen to have come from a parents a mother who's very very anxious all the time and she kind of ingrained that in me so I have a lot of anxiety and there can be a productive side to anxiety if you know how to deal with it but the problem most people have is they don't analyze their emotions they don't know why am I feeling anxious what is it in this particular moment that's triggering it or what is lying underneath it you know so when I'm writing a book I'm extremely anxious because I don't think it's right I'm not getting the right answer here what I've written is not is superficial and so I use that anxiety to make me go deeper and deeper and deeper deeper into what I'm working on so you can make it something productive if you understand where it comes from but as I say Underneath It All are you able are you think are you aware of of the shortness of your life are you aware that at some point you're going to die and that people are going to be leaving you left right and Center as you get older are you confronting the basic fear that is that all humans have felt for for Millennia if you're not confronting that then anxiety will always be with you interesting fear of death do you think it can also be brought on by the fear of pain or do you think that also relates to the fear of death I feel like a lot of my anxiety when I like you said dig deeper you know I'll get angry about something and then I'll realize I'm just a I'm not actually angry I'm sad and then I I'll realize I'm not sad I'm scared and like you go deeper and deeper um but do you think it can also be fear of pain or do you think that's actually just fear of death at the bottom as well well what what what is the nature of your particular anxiety what tends to trigger your anxiety and how does it relate to pain in that way well I think I think I've got two two things if I get down to the bottom that that make me quite anxious and a lot of it has to do with me being sick when I was a kid I know yeah and so I've got a lot of trauma associated with hospitals that I really can't I'm like still having trouble getting through and then I have some trauma associated with past relationships that's come up I had a baby recently I had a baby two months ago wow congratulations thank you his name is George wow um and I have I've got some Trauma from just other relationships I have Trauma from like my dad getting sick and taking care of him and watching that yeah and so I'll be completely fine and then sometimes something will bubble up something will trigger me and I don't even like the word trigger because it's but but I will get triggered and I'll get immediately I'll get very angry about something that I shouldn't really be angry about and then I'll realize that was an overreaction why am I angry oh I'm not angry I'm sad and like I said then I'll realize I'm not sad I'm scared like at the bottom of it and then it'll be because it was something related to a figure of authority in a medical setting that really freaks me out or that's about as much as I've figured out I'm sure that there's more to it but um but it's crazy I think I think the older I get the more I understand that your mind is way more complicated than it feels when you're younger when you just have these like sad angry happy emotions like especially as many like when years pass and things build up it's just it's wild so I kind of well I don't know if that made any sense or if that was just a bunch of garbled words but no no no it makes a lot of sense but um you know it's life is inevit pain is inevitable in life right you're going to feel physical pain and you're certainly going to feel emotional and psychological pain if you ever have to deal with human beings on any level right I write a lot about there you know people are slippery they're evasive they never quite ever do what you want they hurt you Etc so pain is inevitable and it's how do you deal with it if you're always kind of trying to push it away and run away from it as you say fear is lying underneath that so you don't want to confront your pain so you try and mask it you try and medicate it with with with drugs or or alcohol or something or you try to medicate it with some kind of addiction anything to kind of hide it so the ne what you want to do with your emotions first of all let's get the idea that emotions are never simple as you very wisely point out it's never just pain or fear there's there's other things going on you know when you feel an emotion it's mixed with all sorts of other things as well and it passes very very quickly so your fear quickly Fades into something like excitement and then it fades into something like depression and then it comes you it's moving around okay so your emotions are complicated but you want to develop the ability to stop and say why am I feeling the in this moment what is at the root of it right and so one thing that you have to understand is pain is inevitable in life so I want to develop the ability to confront it and to embrace it and to not run away from it and say I am strong enough and there's actually something great about feeling pain so you want to be able to actually feel the emotion and not try and run away from it so pain is a signal from your if it's from your body that something is wrong and you have to correct it but if the pain is emotional and psychological it's also a signal that you have have to deal with this particular issue it's a it's a way that you can use to toughen yourself up and to not be so fragile and to realize that I can handle this pain if I run into it if I don't run away from it and I run into it and I confront it and I try and deal with it in the moment that's how I would look at it yeah so you have to get to the point where you're okay with it like basically exposure therapy like you you can't keep running away I I found with things that I've gone through that I've actually gone through and then they're behind me now if I wrote about them in like serious detail as if I was kind of reliving them a number of times until it was easy to write about them then eventually I would stop thinking about them writing was extremely effective for me more than I think definitely more than thinking about it that doesn't work very well um more than talking about it writing about it numerous times seem to help well there's there's a lot of wisdom in that so you know when you're thought when you're inside your head at all you just have these Loop of think the thoughts that go round and round and round and they kind of Torment you and they haunt you and they never get anywhere right yeah and and we're a culture that depends so much on talking on talking therapy and that also doesn't really get you any because it just makes you constantly inside of yourself and what you've done by writing it down is you've taken what's inside of your head and you've made it external you put it on a piece of paper so it's no longer in your head it's actually out there in the world yeah looking at the object of what you wrote is very therapeutic is very liberating as opposed to always having it circling around in your brain or just simply talking about it there's a lot of power I believe in taking a journal or any kind of any anything that you want to write in and writing about your experiences writing about why you're afraid and sometimes what happens is you start writing and you go off on these tangents and then you realize there's something else involved that's going on here it's a very free flowing process and it's a very beautiful process so I think what you're doing there is is is very wise yeah I haven't thought about the fact that you're actually physically putting something on paper and it could be thought of removing it from yourself I like that as opposed to talking I I like that yeah um I mean a lot of people just do excuse me do it on the computer which is fine I'm very old-fashioned I like actually taking a book with an actual pen and writing it down so it's physically it's your hand that's moving it and it's not just all virtual and you have it on paper there is something very powerful about that um but yeah I I mean we've I don't know about you but we've all a lot of us have been through the kind of therapy where you see a therapist and you talk it through yeah can be good but so much of that it doesn't seem to leave anywhere you can spend years and years and years and you go round and round and round in the same circles right but having the ability to put it out on paper or to express it artistically to create a novel or a book or or a piece of film or maybe what you do with your podcast it gets it outside of you and out there in the world and it doesn't haunt you it doesn't torment you as it as it would if it's always just inside I think therapy is probably tricky for some people and works for other people like I know for me I I started therapy when I was when I was 12 because I was extremely depressed and I was on medication and they were the doctors were like you should see a a therapist and I just I had a hilarious number of therapists in a row that just didn't work in hilarious ways like terrible terrible ways but the first one her husband got brain cancer which is just terrible and she couldn't handle it so she talked to me about it I was 12 and it was just like her room was full of I was too old for it too she only saw chronically ill depressed kids so you'd go into the doctor's office and it'd be full of kids that were really hurt in wheelchairs and like really disabled and I looked normal even though I had arthritis everywhere I looked like a normal kid so it was like scary going in there and then her her office was covered in frogs little stuffed animal frogs it was just like yeah anyway that was the first one and then after that I kept making them cry I'd tell them what was going on and they'd cry and I was just like this isn't be like no it's okay everything's fine I'm fine look I'm here I'm fine anyway so I they needed therapist yeah well maybe those those are the people that go into therapy you know I think you should write a book about this experiences it would be very funny and very interesting going back on all of the therapists that you've had and your early experiences oh man I have Mo I have most of a book done I just haven't finished it cuz like the last couple years four or five years were hard so I'm not like ready to pour that out yet it's still swirling around soon though I think I'm almost ready if you guys ever consume alcohol ever it should probably be vodka but that's not what I'm talking about right now please try my supplement I drink probably once a month other than pregnancy and breastfeeding and things which puts a kibos total kibos in drinking I don't drink 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impacts with this magical supplement you guys know I don't push supplements because most of them are a complete waste of money you just pee them out this one isn't it has no fillers or extra ingredients and we have a 30-day money back guarantee so you're safe you could even try it and then complain and get your money back even if it works don't do that though please but uh give it a shot Fuller health.com code mp15 for 15% off enjoy the rest of this episode okay you talked about you talked about human beings being slippery so sure yeah I had the naive idea uh growing up that people everybody else was exactly like me that's just what I thought everybody else was like I didn't realize people differ so greatly I just I didn't know that till I was probably 24 I didn't understand it it's hard to understand somebody else so um I didn't realize how what percentage of the population is slippery so how do you how do you teach people to identify Slippery People are there behaviors that you can look out for so you realize what's going on before you intertwine yourselves with them well the first thing you have to realize this is a lot about wrote about in my book about human nature is we all have this quality so we all have slippery Tendencies I know that if people are confronting me in certain ways and I and I don't like it I'll have it like a slippery strategy for avoiding them because I don't like well it's a bad quality in me but I'm admitting it I don't like overt conflict I don't like overt confrontation so I it's important to recognize that we all have these Tendencies and not get so righteous about it right but then there are people who are super slippery who are much more slippery than I am and the m and the main thing to understand is that people have patterns so if somebody does something once where you find them talking behind your back or you find them not showing up for an appointment or not doing what they promised that they were going to do for you which is typical slippery passive aggressive behavior your first tendency would be what's going on here that something isn't right and then maybe you might ask them about it and they'll have some excuse going well I'm sorry you know I was caught up in traffic or I've been very busy or whatever and you go okay that's fine you have to stop and go if somebody is like that once it is probably part of a pattern right so if somebody is late once they probably are doing it chronically and it's not a sign that they're just disorganized that they live in a place where there's a lot of traffic it's a sign where they're they don't completely respect you they're they're much more they think they are so much more important their time is so much more important than yours if people don't answer your emails maybe they do have a good excuse so you give them a little bit of leeway you go okay I'll let it happen once but if it happens again and again and again then you know that something else is going on so you recognize the pattern and you understand that people never or very rarely do something once so if they're doing this kind of evasive Behavior where they're or they're um a lot of Envy where people act like they're your friend and they they love you and they're they're just so into your life and they want to hear everything about you but then they do something that's that strikes you as odd that seems like they're kind of hurting you or they're sharing your secrets or they're betraying you in some way a lot of that will stem from Envy so they they became your friend they became so close because secretly they don't really like you they feel like you got something that that they should have that you don't really deserve it so you have to be able to not be so naive is the main lesson here when people do something that strikes you as sort of odd or potentially hurtful right um don't just accept their excuses or don't just let pass it by but analyze it and look at them and try and see if it's something in their character that they might that there might be something else going on because people who are who are toxic or who are evasive or who are passive aggressive the problem that that we have is they generally try to present a very pleasant genial friendly front and we don't recognize it and that Charming front kind of deceives us and then if they do something that we don't like our first instinct will be to blame ourselves or maybe it was something that I did and I want you to like have some distance from the social realm and look at it as if it's like a boxing ring where people are punching each other right and kind of step back and analyze what people are doing analyzing their moves and seeing the patterns there and not getting so emotional but having some Detachment and analyzing the patterns that you can see in their behavior did it take you a while to like to figure that out is that how you viewed people when you were say below the age of 20 or did you have things happen to you in life and then you realized that this is what people were like well I think a lot of it is your your early parenting and you and you're if you're if you're a child and you feel at all vulnerable like you're you're not getting quite what you want you become very sensitive to people people and their motives and their behavior because you're afraid of being hurt so a lot of very empathetic people later in life I found in my experience had parenting that was there was something a little bit off about it and they had to be very attentive to the adults around them to make sure that they weren't hurt right so you develop a kind of sensitiveness but I will admit that when I was 22 23 and I entered the work world I was very naive I thought like you that everyone's was going to be like me that they were going to work very hard and try and get the right results and that thinking and ideas is What mattered and getting getting what the results that you wanted and then lo and behold it's all about politicking about who who's friendlier with the boss about who's got this kind of office about all this kind of [ __ ] that I just thought was ridiculous in fact it kind of ended up inspiring my first book the 48 Laws of Power so I was naive too but because I had that childhood where I was very sensitive to people I don't like getting hurt I was very keen on observing what this is what is going on and I was very much seeing these kind of power games that people were playing you know and um I didn't think that people were as innocent as they protested I've always had an idea of analyzing things and I like to understand what's going on underneath so from very early on I was aware that people wear masks they pretend to be something that they're not because that's what it means as a human being when you're social when you're out in the world you're never exactly who you are you're wearing a kind of a mask so how you are with your father and how you are with the public or with other people it changes with each different person that you interact with right so I've always been aware of these masks that people wear and um what is going on beneath that friendly smile or that continual frown or that kind of fake laughter is there some is there a pain behind it a lot of smiling and laughter is actually quite painful and you have to be sensitive and you have to think about it and you have to use some of your intuitive powers and your empathy to kind of it's not all just intellectual a lot of it is is feeling what other people are feeling it and kind of seeing you know what I say like that fake smile and what's behind it yeah I think I I realized I mean intuition is a better word I've been calling it Vibe but Vibes fine uh I used to pick up on that before I realized what it was just being uncomfortable around certain people and being like what's making me uncomfortable nothing should be making me uncomfortable maybe it's something that's wrong with me and eventually something would fold and I'd be like oh that's what I was picking up on um but I I thought intuition and the whole vibe thing and picking up on things that you couldn't I guess articulate properly I thought that I thought that was all [ __ ] I guess for a while I don't anymore but like for quite a while I did why do why do you think it was [ __ ] I think it was because I couldn't articulate it like if you you walk into a room and you can tell two people are arguing but no one said anything that feeling that's in the air yeah exactly like of course it also it's also possible I was on anti-depressants for a long time and I think that kind of screws with your perception so so maybe that played a role a a lot I've noticed with a lot of women for instance who get into very bad relationships and they talk they come to me for advice Etc and a lot of times they had a feeling when they first met man that something wasn't right with him right but then they forgot about it they didn't listen to that little voice that little in that Vibe if you will that there was something about this man that was maybe narcissistic that was maybe a touch violent that was maybe you know whatever you want to call it and then he Charmed them in some way and and and he he put on a smile and he said all the right things but that first moment where the where you catch something about a person before you get emotionally involved with them is very very telling and you have to listen to it because it's real that feeling in the air about people I mean think of it this way we are animals that have roots that go back millions of years okay and as human beings we spent in our Evolution hundreds of thousands of years without words without language and we were very much a social animal we were attuned to people's feelings we had no words to communicate them but we understood just by looking at them there was something wrong or there was a danger in the environment we have that ability it's very powerful it's built inside of us that feeling in the air that you sense when you went into a room and people you know have been arguing is real there's something going on but it's not something you can verbalize you have to trust that feeling and go lean into it and go what is that and not just push it away and go it's just woo woo it's it's not science because it is it is actually very accurate yeah I completely agree I completely agree I I mean I think people are talking about it now more and taking it more seriously but your example of telling women that if they feel that something's off to follow that instinct that's ex extremely valuable yeah because I've heard it time and again they'll say you know when I first met him I had this weird feeling and then and then I thought well maybe I'm wrong you know maybe I'm was like I had a bad relationship before maybe I was just projecting it onto him yes that's possible but more likely you were sensing something that is actually very real about this person and then you forgot about it or you repressed it because you you wanted to have that relationship and so you when you get emotionally involved with a person it's very very difficult to analyze them to step back and go what is their character what is really going on here and I'm not saying you need to be this cold person that is always analyzing everything people do that'll make you miserable but having the ability to occasionally step back and let go of your emotions and just look at the person I can't tell you how powerful that can be how liberating it can be how it can save you from entering a relationship that will end up costing you emotionally for years and years and years it's a very very important skill to develop is there a difference between power and and just manipulation well um that's a good question I mean uh in the in the 48 Laws of Power um most of the techniques or not most but a fair amount of them have to do with manipulation but not all of it has to do with manipulation so you know it's like you're you're a lot of the power in life comes from within you it's not about pushing people around and crushing them and and seducing them it's about your yourself and how you carry yourself so a lot of the laws of power in in that particular book have to do with your attitude towards yourself right so have a chapter in there excuse me called excuse me act like a king to be treated like one so if you think of yourself as a king or a queen or somebody very powerful that deserves great things in life other people pick up on that and it makes them go well I'm going to treat that way that's not really to me a manipulation that's just how you feel about yourself right so always say less than necessary which is a very powerful technique is you tend to talk too much and when you talk too much you reveal your insecurities you reveal the fact that you can't control yourself you you reveal weakness so being able to control what you say I don't see that as a manipulation if you're trying to actively deceive people with your words that is manipulation but training yourself to maybe talk less and think more instead of reacting is very powerful you know and so creating an era of mystery or recreating yourself how you present yourself to the world because we are all actors you could see that as manipulation but I see it is very human you know children when we're children we love to play games we love to play roles we like to wear costumes and pretend we're a firefighter or or you know whatever it is that we like to pretend that we are so it's a very human thing to play a role and to act and and to put on a facade you might see that as manipulation I just see that as human and the fact that you can control how other people see you is very very powerful you could look at everything that humans do as a manipulation and I find that very reductionist because I don't think that's true but I I think a lot of the things that I think are power have to do with how you control yourself how you see yourself how you're able to not just always be emotional and reacting to things self-mastery if you want to think of self-mastery as a manipulation you could do that but I don't I don't see it that way do you suggest implementing these strategies differently in like the workplace and in relationships like showing significant other yourself that's beneficial right but showing the workplace your innermost feelings is inappropriate very very true but then there are times where it crosses over I mean you know the problem with human beings is we're so rigid and dogmatic where we think it's always a or b and and and it's not it's more fluid like that so in your personal relationships sometimes you want to keep a little bit of Mystery you don't want that partner of yours to know everything about you right because then you become so familiar that there's no fantasy involved right and if they stop fantasizing about you they'll find something else to fantasize about another human for instance right so even with your personal relationships you want a touch of of of mystery you don't a little bit of Reserve things that that will surprise them about you is very very powerful ful okay but yes what you say is very true so in the work world and this is a problem that people have in the world today because of social media they're so used to revealing everything about themselves what they had for breakfast who where they vacationed who who they're dating all this other stuff that when they enter the Work World they just they don't know how to turn that off and they just become the same person and it's not good it's not being a social human human being in the work world you're playing a role you're playing a particular game you're trying to fit in you're trying to get things done in a certain way you're wearing a mask you're playing a game you're playing a role it doesn't have to be who you are personally so it's very important to differentiate your friendships from the work world and and the power world it's a very important thing to learn do you think if you put on these masks they end up incorporating into who you are at some point anyway well it's a good point and that happens to people if you notice somebody as they get into their 40s and they played this particular role in life they were like whatever job they were and they were always kind of wearing that mask that by the time they're 45 they can't take it off their face is kind of frozen into that look that they've had at the work world or whatever right so the key is you have dis distance from yourself right so if you go in the work world and you have to smile a lot and you have to tell people that you love their ideas even though you think their ideas suck and you have to do all the kind of gamesmanship you have some distance and you go I know I'm playing a role okay I'm not taking this so seriously that I actually feel what I'm telling people I know what I'm up to and if you do that then you retain your spirit you retain your soul you know when you're a child you know that you're playing a role you know that you're not really a fireman you know you're not really an NBA player you know you're not really the president or whatever you're playing a game you have to have a little bit of distance from yourself and not take everything personally because if you don't then as you say as you get older and you get in your 30s and 40s and 50s that mask actually becomes who you are and it could be very frightening wouldn't it in an Ideal World wouldn't it be better to figure out a job where you didn't have to do that where you could be more of yourself you show me you show me that Ideal World and I'll move to it I mean that's not the world we live in yes you know um I've reached a point now where I don't have to wear so many masks anymore of course I have to wear a little bit of a mask I'm not completely being who I am here in my house with you right now but I'm being very I'd say I'm being 90% authentic okay just to put a number on it all right but um sorry I forgot where I was going with this um but yeah I've reached a point I've reached a point with my work where I don't have to pretend so much which is a great thing right and being an entrepreneur allows you that freedom so not having to work for other people is a most powerful thing you can do you as as an entrepreneur running your own podcast running your own business business you don't have to play so many of those games anymore you probably have to play a little bit of them you have employees Etc but you have to play less and less of them so the larger the group of people you work with the more you have to wear those masks and the more dangerous it becomes the more you become your own boss and you don't have to play all those political games with people the more power that you have to not and to to be more of who you are I mean look we love like icons in our culture like rock stars or or people like that who we feel are being authentic right like you you take any kind of of of popular music icon out there and we go they're able to just be who they are they just have this person this this authenticity it's because they can do that because that's where their power is they can make money okay you know that would be the ideal world but we don't live in that Ideal World okay that makes sense to me that makes sense so a lot of the yeah societal positions people are put in they they have to put on a mask in order to fit that position yeah yeah okay okay that makes sense like whatever a TSA agent is whatever that mask that is a horrible mask yeah or or or the doctors that you don't like oh yeah you know how they they just sit at the computer and they just type they don't even look at you in the eye and then they just tell you things as if they're God imagine imagine that that's who they are for 20 30 years that's who they are when they go home at night to their children or to their wife or or husband they you know they can't take it off so or the TSA agent they definitely aren't going to have a wife or husband if they keep that mask on maybe they could marry each other okay okay here this is a fun one um are there are there quick signs you can pick up on uh to allow you to recognize that you're being manipulated well um it depends on on on on the kind of manipulation that's going on so is it is it a sexual seduction is it that kind of manipulation is it someone trying to steal their money from you is it somebody trying to charm you so a lot of the scenarios that I've personally had to deal with is a consultant will be the following because there these are all different kinds of scenarios and they're all a little bit different so you have a business and um you realize that it's too much for you the business is growing you need a partner right so you start looking for a partner and you find person a male or female and you you interview him or her let's just say him so I don't have to go through all that gender jumping and and he's like he's so he's very pleasant and nice got a great resume he's smiling and everything wonderful um and then you hire him and then lo and behold he turns out to be very lazy he turns out to be out for himself he turns out that he can't take any kind of criticism which I must tell you the worst character flaw you can ever deal with with people are those who cannot take criticism it'll just drive you crazy right it'll send you to an early grade I I completely age age okay so you've hired this person and they're making your life miserable and then they give me a call they go Robert what can I do well I say the best thing you should have done was to recognize beforehand that they were playing a game okay so you want to recognize these types before you get emotionally involved with them and you can test them so I often tell this is going back to the scenario of looking for a business partner you give them an interview and you you ask them a question that's totally off base that's totally from Left Field you surprise them there's no way they could have prepared for it they can't expect it how do they react you know because they they've trained themselves like a monkey to respond everything correctly and you've thrown them a curve do they get all stressed and they try and cover it up with Bluster or do they go sit back and go you know I never thought of that before that's an interesting question I'm not really quite sure how to answer it if they do that you've hit somebody that's good right they shown that they have the ability to not always feel like they're right so you test people you push them before you get involved with them but in other scenarios you have to trust that's that initial feeling that you get from people you know in my laws of human nature I have a chapter on nonverbal communication and something that you probably thought was a little bit woo woo when you were 20 for but is actually I think very powerful right so people who are really narcissistic we all have a touch of narcissism I certainly have a good dose of narcissism in myself we all have it we're all self-absorbed there are those deep narcissists out there and boy can they be painful and boy can they be manipulative right their body language reveals it and I talk about how study their face and what a lot of manip ators and and narcissists do is they seem they pretend to be interested in you right but there's something kind of dead in their eyes they're not they're pretending they're wearing the role their their mouth seems to say things that are are are empathetic but their eyes are dead I don't know if you've ever had that experience but I've worked for somebody who was like that and I noticed it right away he wasn't really ever looking at me even though he was saying things that seem to give that impression I'm sorry go ahead that's creepy is it like so I I've come across a number of people that had they gave me kind of like shark eye Vibes they're like lizard eyes just something was just a little bit it was just a little bit creepy that's the vibe it gave me was Shar or lizard like eyes I've come across a couple people like that well eyes are are very telling very like as they say it's the windows to the soul um and so you know when you when somebody is genuinely interested and excited about you their eyes dilate they open there are things about ourselves we cannot control I don't care if you're Hitler or whomever there are things about your face you cannot control and you cannot control the dilation of your eyes so those lizard eyes you're talking about they're very narrow they're very pointed like that M maybe that was it when you're you're excited your eyes dilate when you're really excited about somebody and you smile your whole face lights up your cheeks go up but a fake smilees yeah very tense there's nothing happening here or here yeah okay okay attuning to that will show you that people are saying something and they're not being genuine and that's one sign of of manipulation and then I know this will sound very self-aggrandizing but if you read the 48 Laws of Power and you read The Art of Seduction and you know the tools that a Seducer will use on you you can be very aware in the moment if they're using that on you right so in the second half of the law of Art of Seduction I have 24 strategies uh in seduction starting from when you first meet somebody to the very end when you have consummated a relationship and um and so for instance one of the chapters in there is about isolating the other person so you take them away from your their family your family and you um you you alienate them from your family saying or your their friends saying those people are awful right that's a sign that they're trying to isolate you and it's a classic seductive technique and it's a manipulation and it can be very dangerous so if you read the these books like mine um you'll see the strategies that people who manipulate in s and you'll recognize them right away a lot of women have written to me saying that the book helped them see before they got trapped in of a of a typical kind of destructive male Seducer pickup artist they could see right through them because they read the book so do people ever Implement those strategies in order to get what they want but in a healthy way cuz you can seduce somebody at the beginning of a relationship and it's a bit you know this the beginning of a relationship it's more fun it's more exciting than it is a little bit later on and there are techniques that you wouldn't necessarily Implement throughout the relationship is that still a manipulation or is that like where's the line between bad and normal well it's for what purpose are are you um are you trying like um take this person and and make them your slave do you want them to submit to you do you want them to be at your beckon call you know like your dish rag or do you genuine so a really a healthy seduction involves a back and forth so in every relationship in every kind of Seduction or relationship it's never 5050 I'm afraid very rarely is the interest on one side and the other exactly the same there's always a little bit of tension where somebody is more interested than the other person and it can go back and forth and back and forth which is very common but it has to be relatively equal so if the other person just wants sex out of you which is you know which would be the unhealthy uh relationship unless you unless that's what you want as well if that's all they want out of you right they're not really in love with you they're not really interested in you they're using you for a purpose okay so a healthy seduction is I'm in love with the other person I actually really want them and and they feel it and they want me and then I use some of these tactics that I mentioned so um the woman I'm with now we we've been together for for quite a while she's she went out so I can tell you the story right now um when I first was dating her this is before I wrote The Art of Seduction mind you um I knew that I had um all of these women friends who were very beautiful right and it was my birthday and I had invited these you know like six or seven very beautiful women to have birthday dinner at this restaurant and so in the back of my mind I go I'm going to invite this other woman that I I'm now with to this party and I knew that seeing me surrounded by all these women would get her competitive and would make it look like I was somebody desirable now she recognizes this afterwards that this is what happened and she laughs about it and she she doesn't quite think that I was being as clever as I pretend to be as I'm telling you we have a disagreement about that because I think that was being quite clever but um you know I was genuinely interested in her I was in love with her I wanted her you know to go out with me so I used a little bit of trickery but seduction and love and relationships there there's a bit of theater involved it's it's not real life we don't want to go out with somebody who just wears shorts and and and and clogs and a t-shirt right we we dress up we go to a nice place we take someone to a restaurant we take them to the theater to to whatever there's theater involved and we people in the world today we're craving some as I said the beginning subline we're craving experiences we're craving to be taken out of our boring mundane day-to-day lives we want something Mythic we want something Larger than Life so if you're doing that in your seduction and it's out of the the goodness of your heart because you really truly interested in that person I've seen that as completely healthy completely within completely legal and sedu in seduction terms have you seen anything about these Apple Vision Pro speaking of keeping people in their own heads and kind of isolated do you have any feelings about the new Apple Vision Pro um well you know Michaela I'm kind of an older person I'm probably more like your father's age so that kind of stuff just doesn't appeal to me and um I'm an unver virtual person I want to see people in the flesh I want to come I want to meet them I want to talk to them I want maybe touch them within bounds etc etc I don't like all of the virtuality it drives me crazy and um because the what is to me what is the most powerful thing that human beings possess I ask you what would you say oh okay let me think give me like 15 seconds yeah it's not really fair for me to put you on the spot no no no no no I've got I got a couple of answers I have my own answer but okay go on I I would say I think it's probably the ability to love I'm going to go with that okay well that's related to what I'm saying to what I'm thinking I'm thinking that the most important brain power that you have is your imagination your ability to see this is what could happen with these particular materials oh yeah that's amazing yes this is the world I have but I can see other things I can imagine possibly I can imagine a book I can imagine what a building whatever when you're a child you develop your imagination by playing games with other people etc etc in various different ways when you live in a world where everything is pushed on you where everything you have no room for your imagination they are the ones programming your brain giving you these images giving you this virtual feeling making you see all of these things instead of the real world enhancing because I know the the Apple Pro it has this feature where it actually enhances the environment um you know then your brain is rotting you're not learning how to use your own imagination and so so in in my new book the chapter I just wrote was about history and our relationship to the past and I'm someone like I know your father is I'm absolutely obsessed with history and our ancestors and things that happened in the past I think it's the most incredible trip you could be on is to is to journey into the past and I write these sections where I take you inside of cities in the ancient world like the city of Babylon in the 7th Century BC and I say imagine you're there and what it would be like it would be absolutely incredible it would blow your mind learn to exercise your imagination and don't have everything put on you through technology where they're they're programming your brain they're not programming your iPhone or your or your Apple Pro they're literally inside your head they're programming your thoughts and they're they're curtailing your imagination so I think it's that stuff is kind of dangerous but I'm an old guy so what am I going to do I I'm more I think I'm more positively predisposed to it just but I can see the dangers for some people for sure I feel like they'd have to be used very wisely in very specific situations in order to be beneficial we got a pair to try them out oh and it's so they're too heavy right now there's a battery attached to them so they're not I don't think they're usable at the moment they're like you'd end up with a headache and neck pain and things but I had it on for about 10 minutes and my husband and I both had headaches afterwards I think cuz the screen is so close but looking through them is insane you get like 15t theaters and it's really but it also makes reality look a little bit off like that feeling you get when you look at somebody who has kind of lizard eyes like their eyes don't match up with their smile that's kind of what looking through the glasses looked like like tables and things are just a tiny bit not real it's it was kind of creepy interesting but creepy in some ways I would compare porn to that yeah yeah in the world of porn all the women have gigantic breasts they're all like shaped a certain way they're all long-legged they're all incredible like this and so guys when they see actual women in the world they're kind of disappointed when they take their clothes off you don't look like a porn star you're living in this kind of virtual world where everything is enhanced right and then the real world looks kind of disappointing to you I don't know if I'm if if I'm making sense at all here oh no you you are and I I feel like for people who are maybe born into this and experience the virtual world at a younger age it's going to be much more difficult for them obviously if you started that at a young age I don't know it was very interesting to look at you know I can see how somebody could get addicted to having a 15ot screen right in front of you I heard watching movies is is pretty intense on this thing where it's like like beautiful screen you've ever seen in your life it's so real but so that that sounded kind of interesting to me but I don't know I don't know if I'd be into it maybe when it gets less heavy and it doesn't leave you with a headache that would help yeah okay I'm going to ask you one last question and I'm going to let you go sort of mesmerized by your Lamb by the way thank you is there any relationship to that lamb kind of I so I don't know if you know this I I'm on an all meat diet I only eat meat I know yeah so I'm still only eating meat and for a period of time I only ate lamb and so you'd think I wouldn't have a painting of the lamb but I'm very grateful that I was able to eat something that didn't make me ill and so my husband bought me the this painting of the lamb um and it's so cute yeah but it's more of a grateful thing than a like haha I eat lamb it's more like thank God Lambs were around or I'd be very ill for a period of time that's very good that's yeah I understand that yeah okay last question yep um how did the collaboration with 50 Cent In the 50th law initi app well um very simply he he it started in like late 2005 he had um he had been a huge fan of the 48 Laws of Power he discovered it like a couple years after he had recorded his first album and he found the book extremely helpful in dealing with the music business which is a very very sh very shark infested environment and um and he also had read The Art of Seduction which had been out and he found that very useful because 50 is is an incredible Seducer and I can say that because I've been in rooms with him on the telephone talking to various celebrities and seducing them he could charm any woman on this planet he's actually brilliant at it and he even Charmed my mother you know my 97y old mother when he met her at a book signing so he's very seductive he read The Art of Seduction he wanted to meet me and he had a at that point he was launching a series of books so he might have been thinking about a book at the time I had no idea so um I was you know they were inviting me to New York to meet him and I yeah sure why not I mean uh that could be fun I'm all into like new and weird experiences in my life but I must admit I was a little bit intimidated because I'm not a huge hip-hop fan I like hip-hop but 50 was like my favorite I thought I really liked his music because I like the edge on it I like the kind of rawness I I found it very appealing so I was intimidated by him was he GNA be disappointed in me is he gonna be like so thuggish that I'm gon to be you know shaking in my shoes in front of him so I was a little bit worried I flew to New York and I met him in the back room of a steakhous on Madison Avenue um Me by myself me little white boy by himself he he's surrounded with his aun tourage so I was already feeling a little worried I sat down next to him and first of all I was noticing the bling was insane he had a diamond bracelet on that was just unbelievable I had no idea how much it was worth but it's incredible it's like that's all I can look at was that diamond bracelet um he was so nice he was so friendly he was so open and then it ended up later as we became friends and we worked on the book that he said he was a little nervous meeting me me because he was expecting this kind of older Henry Kissinger type guy who was so powerful that he would I would just stare at him and he would melt so he was a little bit nervous so we were both thinking the other person was not who they were because he's actually a very sweet nice down toe person and I'm I guess I would have to say I'm maybe more of the same but I'll let other people say that anyway so we got along really well it was a nice Rapport and I got to thinking he didn't say Robert let's do something together but I got to thinking you know um two people from the opposite ends of of our country me you know middle-aged Los Angeles boy you know very middle middle class I'm sorry middle class I didn't mean middle age very middle class background in Los Angeles my father was a Salesman his whole life but you know a comfortable Life 50 Southside Queen his mother was killed when he was when he was like 9 years old she was a a hustler he became he deal dealt crack when he was nine years old the two opposite ends of the spectrum what if we put our minds together and wrote a book how interesting that would be how it would show America that all these all this identity stuff all these walls that people put up between people it's just [ __ ] we're humans we all have the same aspirations we all the same we think in the same way let's put our two brains together and so he he was open to it and the idea was I was going to spend a few months with him and decide what is 50's source of power in life you know where where is this and as I was with him it didn't take me three three months took me like one month I realized it's his lack of fear and I don't mean in a thuggish way I mean he's not afraid of failure he's not afraid of being criticized he's not afraid of doing something different and odd he's not afraid of of of um confronting people Etc and that fearlessness is is incredibly powerful because if you think about it how did somebody from this these horrible circumstances differentiate himself from all the other people in his neighborhood his hood and how did he become who he was and I sort of traced it back to this quality that he was not afraid of failing he was not afraid of learning he was not afraid of of of on and on and on and so um we we spent these six months together I followed him around I had the most amazing experiences some of which I can't even repeat um and uh I saw a whole world that I've you know I've never had had any access to before and then I wrote we wrote this book together based a lot of it on his stories and about things in history history about the power that you can have in life when you're not afraid wow that's amazing yeah do you do you think just before you go do you think his ability to not be afraid was brought on by the fact that he experienced what must have caused so much fear when he was so young that everything else in comparison just was inconsequential well yeah but you know a lot of people in the hood have the same experience but they don't end up him but what happed really happening to him was when he was I don't know how old maybe 21 or so um from an old drug dealing days CU he kind of left the drug dealing behind an old beef somebody came up to him while he was sitting in a car and shot him nine times from like this range and the bullets went through the side of his mouth right and he nearly died he came this close to dying and he had a classic near-death experience which we talk about in the book and um when you've gone through a near-death experience and I have gone one through one recently a lot of things that matter to you beforehand don't matter anymore right why should I be afraid of this little ply person who's bothering me when I nearly died it doesn't matter it gives you a sense of scale and proportion these are the things that matter not you know not this little emergency that happen so I saw him for instance was a crisis in in gunit that's that's this company where he was um launching a a video and it got um released on the internet PIR it on the internet before the release and all of his managers were freaking out they were so angry they were gonna like what it's our whole roll out of this of this song and and the album's gotten ruined and what are we going to do we're gonna Sue blah blah blah blah I saw him in this meeting he let them get all hysterical he was completely calm he was just a pillar of calmness and he said look I'm going to tell you what we're going to do I'm not going to try and imitate his voice because I can't do it I'm GNA tell you what we're going to do we're GNA turn this into something great right we're gonna turn this into an opportunity and he says we're gonna stage something and we're gonna have it put on social media that when 50 heard about this he got so angry he took the flat screen TV off the off the wall and he smashed it and he took somebody phone and he threw it around there and he had this incredible tantrum and he was so angry and they filmed it and they put it on social media and it it went viral and it was like the best publicity he turned this terrible thing into a publicity opportunity that's how his mind works and we have a chapter in the book called Turn [ __ ] into sugar which is a hustling experience you turn any kind of [ __ ] into sugar which is what he did then in order to do that you have to be Not Afraid not afraid of oh maybe maybe what I'm doing isn't right maybe the producers aren't going to be happy maybe the company the record company no [ __ ] it all I don't care pardon my language we're gonna we're gonna do it anyway so that's very cool yeah that must have been a wild experience yeah I can't imagine oh believe me I I I can tell you things you know maybe when I meet you in private I'll tell you but yeah all good he's he's he's a great person I have respect and we're still friends we still talk that's very cool well thank you Robert very much for talking to me again it really yeah really nice to catch up good luck with your book you'll have me on again maybe if I'm lucky 100% okay yeah and if you're ever in um Scottdale if you ever come to Scottsdale I'm in Scottdale so we can record in person yeah if you end up doing any type of tour or anything okay um Scottdale is near Phoenix right yeah yeah like right next door 20 minutes yeah yeah still is beautiful yeah I love I've been there a few times yeah I will let you know and if you're ever recording in La you let me know okay perfect thank you again go out and have some lamb definit oh I'm not eating lamb anymore if I eat lamb again I don't ever want to eat lamb again I eat so much lamb I'm back on beef oh okay all right we'll go out forap some beef okay that sounds good thanks I'll talk to you soon all right say hello to your father for me I will I will bye bye [Music] bye

Channel: Mikhaila Peterson

Views: 96,632

Keywords: mikhaila peterson, mp peterson, mikhaela peterson, mikhayla peterson, michaela peterson, mikhaila podcast, jordan peterson daughter, power, manipulation, workplace, office, politics

Id: cG7c0aZofSg

Length: 71min 35sec (4295 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024