How To Master Your Dark Side For Success | Robert Greene

so I already told you why this is a special episode for me I really appreciate the fact we're sitting here in your house which is kind of a little surreal I'm like I said exactly the type of house this this is the place I am and sort of imagined you right now so it looks you know what writers often I don't know what it is but I've been to several writers homes and first of all of course there's books everywhere because you're researching everything usually there's some other form of creative expression like a piano like you've got in the corner whether you use it or not but we do when was she's seeing some plays at piano there you go so they're often married or with other creative people and then I figured you must do a lot of your books are you know as big as a phone book half the time or at least a nineties phone book I don't know he'll make maybe they're thinner now yeah and so I know that there's a lot of research and so I know that there's gonna be books records outdoor space for you to walk around is kind of exactly how I imagined because some people come over and they're a bit surprised because they expect they think of me is this kind of extremely wealthy sort of who has a really big obnoxious modern home and they're kind of surprised that it's like this they don't they're expecting that I'm yeah I'm Hollywood celebrity with a large glass house you know modder and let's flatter him they must because they enjoy your work so much they assume you sold so much that you're looking at and have layer now yeah I think the 48 laws of power might have branded you a little bit as like wow if he's using all these he lives in a cave with like nuclear missiles oh right I think that might be part of it you live in a volcano lair kind of thing yeah could be the 48 laws of power I'm just throwing that out there no fur no no no longitudinal study like your your description of what you were anticipating that was pretty pretty accurate yeah I'm just sort of patting myself on the back for having guessed that okay I loved the laws of human nature I read the whole thing in about a week devoured it which is no small task on audible it's about 28 and a half hours long 29 hours I'm sorry yeah you know apology accepted everybody else don't don't worry 29 hours goes by like that it's fine what I loved about this though was not and I think a lot of people grab this from the 48 laws of power they go oh well it's all about manipulation and stuff like that and you hear people who that book was big I think in in a lot of prisons people were passing it around rappers rappers yeah football players and things like that and kind of people that you would expect to be using those levers when I look at the laws of human nature there is a lot of that but I look at it as if we don't understand these laws these are the these are the fundamental concepts that push and pull us as humans right we have to understand this about ourselves so that we're not taken advantage of by others and we also need to understand our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that either we can find out when they're getting triggered or we can possibly eliminate them is that does that sort of jibe with your understanding of of these materials yeah I think it comes from a place of I like to poke holes in people's pretensions I've been doing that for a long time I did that kind of indirectly with the 48 laws because I prior to that book I was working in Hollywood and everyone sort stew pretend they're so liberal so PC they're so angelic in favor of all the right causes and it's not true behind the doors they're their master manipulators they're Machiavellian they're pretty rough and I was really irritated by that stupid image that people have of this film director of that actor and I wanted to show this is what power is really like this is what people are really like to sort of prick that bubble of a pretentiousness and that's that air of superiority and so this book comes from a similar place we're all flawed you know we come from we all evolved from the same roots and we can't control who we are very into a large extent so some of the things that are most obvious and egregious about that like the fact that we feel very powerful emotions they overwhelm us we act stupid when we were overwhelmed by powerful emotions often it's very human and some people like to exempt themselves they go oh I'm not narcissistic that's the other person I'm never aggressive I'm just so sweet it's other people who are aggressive I never feel Envy that's other people on and on and on and I just wanted to attack that because this is who we are it's not to be depressing it's actually if you don't realize if you don't have self-awareness you can't possibly change yourself everybody wants to think they can change themselves that's why self-help books sell so well you know that's why Tony Robbins could sell 120 thousand books in one week as ryan told me but but the thing is a lot of that I believe is nonsense a lot of what's written because it's not realistic you're not seeing who people really are you're not getting I'm digging underneath and getting at what really motivates human behavior so I wanted a very realistic brutal look at the human animal it's not all negative we have some positive traits but once you realize oh I am capable of feeling Envy oh I am irrational at times oh I have a dark side with that awareness you can actually finally start to change yourself instead of going around in circles or deluding yourself that you are changing when in fact you're not yeah I think that answer your question yeah absolutely it does I can't very well attest to the fact that people are emotional and stupid I feel like I have a lot of personal experience with that well so do I even I I'm not exempt from that and we're all pulled by our emotions and we relate to other people based on our emotions to where we're pulled we're not relating to each other personally we're sort of relating to each other based on this emotional feeling that we have that we've built up over decades prior and in the laws of human nature you discussed look the person you're meeting the person you're interacting with they're kind of this wad of coagulated emotional baggage for lack of a better word that's built up from their childhood through their teenage years and then this is what we're projecting onto the world and that's who we're meeting and our day day lives and you you actually said this is liberating why do you feel like that's liberating what is liberating the knowledge the the idea that we're just emotional emotion balls bouncing around the world and not really relating to one another personally on a real level oh I said you mean well the liberating fact is you go around thinking everything is personal wow that person was cold to me in that meeting goddamn they don't like me they're a they're I don't like something's are wrong with her you know you go around everything is personal oh why did he say that why is my mom telling me this blah blah blah and I'm telling you it's not personal that's the liberating fact people are wrapped up in their own emotions their own traumas they're reliving things from their childhood they get angry at you but you're not really the trigger the trigger was something that happened to them when they were 4 or 5 or 20 or whatever so to realize that it's not personal that people are acting out of their own dramas their own traumas their own emotional problems from way back should if you very should kind of take all the burdens away from you so you don't have to react and get take things personally it's extremely liberating to be rid of all of that emotional baggage that you assumed from other people thinking that they're they have something about against you or that they're reacting about you know something personal so that's the liberating aspect but the thing is we're social animals to the core right you wouldn't be here talking without all the millions the billions of people who created language before you without your education without your parents without your teachers they have molded you they have made you who you are so we are not really individuals we are built by other people by being social we're kind of a conglomerate of all these other interactions of relationships and so we're really generally kind of bad at this aspect of life because we don't understand other people we assume that we have we take it like a sort of a snapshot of people they're nice they're not nice they're pleasant they're not Pleasant they're smarter not smart but people are infinitely complicated complex they have a wealth of emotions they're going through things that you are not even beginning to see and if you can begin to pierce their mask and get inside their psychology and understand where they're coming from suddenly the whole game changes and what you say and how you act with them will change as well and you will find your relationships are much more smoother your bonds with people will be much deeper and you'll be able to deal with those ugly toxic types that inevitably cross your path I think being in LA right now which is kind of the West Coast's headquarters of talks is lower human nature if you will yeah oh thank you yes very nice place you have yeah but it's true but we do see a lot of that here we see it in every big city of course I think LA gets a the rap for that on west of the Mississippi yeah and the book actually helps us focus on our higher nature so that we can avoid succumbing to the I feel like the lower nature really pulls on us yeah it's it's sort of the default if we just sit in our inner tube with our hands behind our head and crack open a six-pack of beer the river of dark nature takes us towards that waterfall of the shadow yeah well think of it this way let's say you want to make something in life you want to start a business you want to write a book you want to create a podcast it takes a lot of work and that work isn't fun right it involves a lot of tedious detail it involves dealing with people who aren't listening to you they don't immediately respond to your idea you have to deal with frustration and you have to be disciplined that's not fun right and our default position in life is to always want things to be fun and easy right we take the path of least resistance so when we're children if we weren't educated if we didn't have teachers or parents telling us to study we'd be these monsters I think it was the poet collar egde that compared it to a garden that's never and it just turns into weeds that's what children would become if there was nobody educating him that's who would we would become if there was nobody instilling in us a sense of discipline so when you're working as a 12 year old 13 you're developing a work ethic and discipline you're actually tapping into what I call your higher nature we admire the fact that great buildings were build great bridges and our cities are marvels of Technology and we have museums and all this that was built by people who were masters at their field who delved into the who who you know connected to this higher nature they were disciplined they worked hard they put their energy into their work not into at getting attention and not into their ego and so that is the higher nature that all of us have is the potential and whenever you stop thinking about yourself and start putting your mind into your work or put your mind into other people and their problems you're tapping into that higher nature and it feels good it feels fulfilling it doesn't feel fulfilling to go home smoke pot and play a video game it's kind of fun and it's kind of mindless I don't deny that but the next day you don't feel like there's no sense of accomplishment yeah sure there's no sense of wow I'm doing something I'm building something and we want that feeling so that is the higher nature that I'm talking about and I'm trying to bring that out in this book at the end of every chapter which you could sort of say is slightly negative narcissism irrationality you know on and on the chapter is about kind of a slight flaw in our chemistry right but at the end of each chapter I show how you can take that and turn it around how you can take the lower nature and turn it into something positive right to give you a simple example I believe we humans naturally feel Envy everybody feels Envy we don't like to admit it I'm envious that Ryan sold more you know his higher listed higher on the business best seller on Amazon than I am Ryan Holliday who was just here yeah and you kind of mentored him early on he fixed her Wikipedia page he was a kid yes now who's out shown me yes anyway I can admit that I feel Envy and so I want you to get to that same place and where it comes from is it's the chimpanzee in us it's been shown that primates are very attune to other animals in the in their clan and they're constantly comparing themselves who's the alpha chimp who has more than I have we are by our nature the way our minds were continually comparing ourselves to other people who you know they have a better job they're making more money their book is selling more etc and that's the source of envy right I mean that's deep underneath the source of envy but that constant comparing to people which is so endemic on social media has the potential to be turned into something positive it can turn into the desire to compete and instead of envying what that other person has to actually achieve it for yourself and to emulate great people and try and you know instead of envying something really good writer why don't I become that good writer and sell enough books so I don't have to feel envy this I mean I try to show other ways how that comparing mechanism can actually tap into our higher nature Envy was the chapter that hit me the hardest I actually just scrolled way down in my iPad notes here cuz I thought oh we may or may not get to this okay this chapter really spoke to me and I'm almost ashamed to admit it which actually is something do you predict in the chapter on Envy isn't that it's this emotion where we're so ashamed of it and we're so good at hiding it because we're ashamed of it that even when we feel it we go oh I'm feeling anger I'm feeling self-righteousness I'm feeling my sense of justice wants to take this person down because they're bad right really it's like why does he have a jet and I don't but that can't be it I'm not a child I don't feel that way I don't think that way I must be reaching up for something else because I don't want to think of myself as this lowly envious jerkface you know and I want to think I'm above this so it comes out as another emotion which makes it harder for us to be aware of in the moment and put shine a light on it right and scrub it out right it's particularly insidious and dangerous I think for a lot of people especially people who are achieving something because we're the ones that really and I should just speak for myself we're the ones that really think we're above that we've worked on that that's not an issue for us so we don't have to think about it anymore and yet we're probably the people that feel it's some of the strongest because we're just one rung closer on the ladder what a brass ring is just right within reach for a lot of us well leaders people who attain the heights of power are constantly feeling envy I talk in the book I have a chapter that Michael Eisner is sort of the icon for of grandiosity and he was the man who was so powerful who ran this mega mega entertainment conglomerate who had everything he wanted and he had somebody working for him Jeffrey Katzenberg who was the head of the Disney studio and the an Eisner was riddled with envy for him because he thought the more attention was suddenly going to catch them brew than to me people suddenly saw him as the golden boy and yet he was his boss so bosses are often feeling Envy for people who are below them so if people who are obtaining the heights of power are riddled with envy you know you can imagine what's happening to everybody else right you know oftentimes in life somebody will do kind of a surprisingly ugly nasty turn to us they'll sabotage our work they'll say something ugly behind our back literally manipulate us in some way and we'll get drawn into the emotions of that all and we'll go what an or you know and we don't really understand where it came from and most of the time where it does actually come from is envy yeah and we can't unravel that not because we don't see that originally so I try to show you in the book I don't want to make you paranoid but I make the distinction between active and passive Envy passive Amity is what we feel every day naturally as we look on Facebook and we see other people are having a great vacation we go god they're there life is better than mine damin we feel that every day and we need to admit it it's very human and we don't do it doesn't lead to anything bad necessarily active Envy can happen to anybody but generally there are people who are envy or types and I described them in that chapter and they're prone to feeling such strong Envy that they act on it they not only just sort of feel it they give you a comment that is made that is targeted to make you feel bad right you know like I remember early on when I the 48 laws of power people would say boy Robert you know that book must be selling really well you must be making a lot of money with it and it was sort of a form of praise but the but hidden behind it was this idea that I was kind of soulless that I was writing it for money right too cheap and they're deliberately cheapening yeah your accomplishment by saying but relating it to something base like yeah Oh congrats on winning an Oscar now you'll now you'll get a lot of higher paid roles or right it's like well I did a good job in that but thanks for ignoring that part right and so you know a couple things will happen you'll start to internalize it you go maybe they're right maybe there's something is something wrong with me or you'll kind of attack them or whatever but what you don't realize is that it comes from a place of envy they actually envy you and if you know that you can prepare and make sure that they don't you don't become friends with them and you can also not take it so personally you can see where it's really coming from I had a friend this is an example that you gave in the book as well somebody will praise something after you've lost it and I had a friend who back during the mortgage crisis had an amazing place and I mean we used to go there and hang out and it was really really nice and then he couldn't pay the more he was underwater kind of let that whole thing go and one of our other friends said oh man it was such an amazing house and I thought are you how tone-deaf are you man you know you don't need to kick the guy when he's down and they're like what I was complimenting the house the one he doesn't have anymore that we used to hang out in all the time you don't think that and then we sort of noticed this pattern with this guy where he was actually he didn't enjoy doing nice things with us he resented doing nice things with us and we had to quickly sort of surgically how did you notice this we started to be aware of the pattern because I remember that comment in particular even years later and the same guy the guy who'd lost his house was pretty offended by that because he was feeling a lot of emasculation from not being able to his mortgage right and he was dating a girl at the time who then they broke up and he suspected oh is it because I lost the house and I thought there's probably a million things there but you're focused on that and this guy made a comment about that relationship and then I would go and date somebody and he'd be like oh I didn't know that mr. confident dated ugly women ha ha and I was just like you know he's always kind of just digging right right out from underneath you and people like that will tend to disguise it doesn't disguise it is it's just their humor right there just a sarcastic type oh you took it personally can't you take a joke right you know but it doesn't come from just a jolly Jawad a vivre it comes from you know because an ugly place a place where they want to hurt you and you know we might say well this is kind of minor stuff but you let somebody like that around you a lot with their little barbs all the time it gets under your skin and it starts to weigh you down it kind of gives you some emotional baggage there can be kind of toxic and then there are people who do nasty things from a place of envy that can ruin your life for years you know in the 48 laws of power and his chapter on Envy it was called never appear to perfect and I have the story of this writer whose partner was so envious of him and his success because they were both wanting to be writers it was Joe Orton they ended up murdering him I know that's a little extreme yeah but you know I had the example in this book of the relationship between the writer Mary Shelley and a friend Jane Williams who kind of ruined everything in her life a relationship with her husband and her friends out of envy you know so this can be kind of dangerous what are the examples in the book about how to spot envy and others that I thought was really good was when somebody gives you advice and it sounds really well-reasoned but it's a really bad course of action and you kind of go that doesn't sound like a good idea but he's so convincing right and sometimes it's just counterintuitive advice maybe but other times maybe it's designed to make you fall down the stairs but it's just really well polished well people who are envious you know I trace it to some - childhood there's a great writer Melanie Klein a psychoanalyst who said that there are children who are envious children they're greedy envious children they they envy the attention that other siblings are getting right and they go through life becoming in Viers mmm but they have people like that have learned over the years to disguise their Envy they have to disguise it in some way because if they show it it'll turn people off and they'll have him that you know though they'll be very limited in what they can get and right so these are masters at disguising the signs of their Envy so they'll do things like that they'll tell you give you advice that is meant to kind of confuse you or throw you off or lead you down the wrong path you know on and on there are other you know there are myriad disguises that that end in veers have and I try and show all of them I mean one thing that I think is really critical is that I talk a lot in this book about nonverbal communication because I think it's a huge area in social interactions that we normally don't pay attention to people give off a lot of information by their body language by their looks by their tone of voice and enviers often can be unmasked by their micro expressions by their tone of voice they may be praising you and saying something good but their tone of voice is kind of cold and it's made to make you wonder whether there's there's something else going on or you'll detect so I have an example here of a way to test some test this whether you're dealing with an envier if you say tell them some good news about yourself you'll see a flash of disappointment in their eyes it'll only last like half a second and they'll quickly cover it over or if you say something bad that has happened to you you'll see a slight smile that crosses their face you know or people who gossip a lot that's another kind of disguise of envy you know they're saying bad things about other people and we all love gossip and it's kind of juicy and fun right but it's a way to disguise the fact that they really Envy the people that they're trying to bring down yeah I think there is kind of maybe it's not a fine line but it seems like there's a lot of people who say hey did you hear that Jim got his car towed last week and it's like oh that's kind of funny but then I guess there's sometimes people who go hey did you hear that Jordan is his wife is really ill or something and it's like wow that's bad news for just all-around there's no kind of glimmer there but then you do find some people that they love spreading the really nasty stuff and it's like it's a little uncomfortable I think if you're not that type of person because it's just a little bit too bad of news what's it be shared why think of it if you have a friend and you heard that their podcast or book would ever got some negative reviews nasty reviews would you be the first one to go and tell them well would you be your first reaction your first reaction would be I want to kind of shelter them I don't want them to hear about this or I want to break it to them in a nice way your first reaction isn't goddamn I got to share this bad piece of bad news with them you feel bad for them yeah I guess it depends on how bad the review is but yeah if it's a new show and somebody writes this guy shouldn't be doing a show I'd probably say look you're gonna see this eventually don't listen to this idiot okay there's gonna be 800 people that love what you're doing okay they're gonna hear from the negative well you can tell the difference between that and an envir by the fact that they don't qualify it like that and that the fact that there's a slight almost slight bit of joy that they have in reporting this bad news to you right so I got that I get that all the time with people when somebody is in a hurry to tell me bad news I think there's there's something else going on you know that's interesting in a hurry to tell you bad news I'm thinking of all the people in my life right now that call me on Saturday night to go by the way did you hear about either someone else or hey guess what I've got something that I could have told you on Monday that's gonna be disappointing but I thought I would deliver it to you at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday night just because you're probably in the middle of who are these people yeah I mean I know some people like that know and now I'm like hmm what other things are they're doing because usually these same people they've got kind of clumps of behavior where I go why do I put up with this guy what is this this is a guy blarf to my car for the third time because he can't control his drinking what is with this person right or this is the guy who's always late they clearly don't respect my time and it just so happens to be the same guy who might do the 8 p.m. here's some bad news call yeah and it's strange because they're the same people some of these same people are super generous in other ways but I think they can't help themselves is that possible yes I think that's possible and a lot of that I would call more like the passive Envy type first of all people are complicated so no one ever really feels pure Envy right there's always mixed with other things I want you to get over your simplified idea of people their anger is not just purely anger their love and affection can also be mixed with a bit of resentment and hatred and envy so that people are more complex than you think and I have the story that I used in the book of a woman who befriended this writer in order to kind of sabotage her in the end but mixed in with her desire Envy was actual admiration was actually a bit of affection so that could be doubly confusing that's strange and in fact Envy is most common among friends and among people in the same profession and you don't really expect it from friends you expect something else yeah so the friends that you who were telling you these things they they could still be your friends they could still be nice and Jen but there's also an undercurrent where they're envying your success and in that kind of situation I kind of preach tolerance I don't think you should necessarily break off a relationship or you know think that this person is gonna ruin your life in some way unless you have signs that there's something else going on I believe you should just sort of accept it this is what we were talking about the liberating aspect I'm doing really well me Jordan Harbinger my shows doing well I'm successful etc and maybe they're not doing so well or maybe they have things in their life it's not clicking and they're feeling some Envy mm-hmm all right I'm not gonna take it personally I'm gonna have the appeal to my higher self I'm not gonna get drawn into their drama and getting all emotionally perturbed about it so that's another aspect of that you have the five env types in the book I thought these were fascinating we don't have to go over all of them people can buy the book we're gonna link to it at the show it is a long book we can't possibly go over everything but I loved the idea that there are these different types of envious people or envy errs I don't know if that's a if that's a noun it's weird I used and veers okay great good the more I don't know on the same page there the one that really struck me was the leveller where it's I'm just trying to make sure everyone's getting their fair shake by bringing down the guy who got to the top and some unfair way and I'm like crap that sometimes when my Envy comes out it sometimes comes out like that where I found I loved busting frauds and scammers especially if they're taking people for a ride but I think the origin of that is look at this guy who got a jet by screwing people over it's I'm not just trying to protect the little guy there is a lot of that yeah part of it is look if I were to I could have gotten a jet if I was just an unscrupulous bastard but then I'd be an unscrupulous bastard so I've got it out for that guy right so what you're doing there is you're looking at yourself and you're digging underneath and seeing maybe that the root of it was this little pang of envy that you were feeling and that's very important to be able to do that it's very it's not easy so you have to be kind of brutally honest with yourself it's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable but the love is a type that generally is quite sarcastic can have a very good sense of humor and they seem to have a high sense of justice they're always after the big guy they're for the underdog they want to right this wrong etc and there are people who are genuinely like that who were good at that but it doesn't mix with this kind of savage humor this kind of sarcasm and so a lot of people like this they're just I say envies and veers wear disguises this is a disguise of I just want everybody to be the same I don't like people who are successful because I think they're ripping people off and it could seem kind of like a good appearance you know that's a that's a good person there for the underdog but really at the root of it is some ugly ugly Envy and they can cross your path and you'll find that that's sarcasm is suddenly directed at you and it can kind of you know have an effect a bad effect I've got to keep it in check a lot luckily I over you yeah yeah yeah I've got to keep it in check myself in check a lot I guess and my wife does a good job with that too where huh sometimes she'll be like you've just crossed the line she says it's in a more tactful way but it's kind of like you just crossed the line from being like look at this thing that this person is doing that's bad too you're kind of obsessing over this thing that this person is doing that's bad it doesn't affect you right maybe you should go take a cold shower but the thing is what I want is I don't want people to be weighed down by this book and to feel guilty oh man I'm I'm such a bad person I'm feeling Envy the fact that that happens to you is totally human and totally natural and it shouldn't depress you or make you feel like you've got to completely change yourself just by the fact that you're aware of it is almost enough you know so it won't turn into this sort of ugly act of envy that I'm talking about but most of the people around you who are ugly and Vere's have no self-awareness they don't think of themselves as ever feeling Envy they feel that they're sabotaging you was justified because they've convinced themselves that you're an that deserves something bad but the fact that you can wreck the root of it is already enough to prevent you from going into that deep ugly place so if we can't really get rid of it we can just become aware of it how do we get closer to the to the to what we envy to generate that awareness do you have any idea how we can implement this there's somebody listening right now we're watching right now that's going oh shoot I've done this to my brother sister niece nephew child husband co-worker this is me yeah well what do you exactly I would love to find out how people can shine a light on this and generate self awareness is it just looking or reading the book looking at this interview and going ok I do that because I feel like there's another step in there where people go I'm not doing that that person really is bad I'm not envious well scumbag well I envy him well you have to be first willing to be honest with yourself and to want to change this part of your character but you know look at these sort of strong moments in your life where you really hated somebody and maybe you acted on it or you said something kind of insulting to a person we've all done that and you will tell yourself originally they they triggered it by their actions I'm just gonna say I have done that but they deserved it right I want you to go back and start seeing what might have been a different scenario where you might have felt a pang of envy so as you say even with the con artists who con people there's a degree of God and that guy got away with it that's pretty neat that's pretty interesting you know there's always usually a root of that even with somebody that you hate or really despised for some reason that there's a little spark of envy where you kind of admire the fact that they got away with something that you couldn't get away with so you've got to dig back and look at the actual causes of it but look at those moments in your life in which you felt a very powerful negative emotion towards a person and try and see if step going kind of reverse engineering it you can go back to the moment and see the original sense of envy that you might have had keep this in mind an ancient rider going back like the 7th century BC Hesiod said the Potter envies the Potter the rider envies the rider and what it means is you're gonna envy people who are in the same situation about as you I don't envy my carpenter who got a great new job working on a house cuz I'm terrible with my hands I could care less I'm happy for him but a rider who suddenly 55 on Amazon while I'm in 77 I'm gonna feel envy for so look at the people in your profession you probably you're dislike of that fellow artist or that other podcaster 99% sure that it comes from a place of envy yeah right so those those are those are kind of signs of it and then from there from that place and that degree of honesty I give you tips and strategies for how to alter that env into something another dynamic so for instance you're always envying people who have more than you who are doing better than you but there's billions of people on this planet who are doing a lot worse than you right the opposite of envy is gratitude where you feel grateful for what you had as opposed to envying what other people have and without getting to Pollyannish about it you can always feel great grateful for the fact that you're alive that you're healthy that you've got your brains and your wits about you that you've got a decent job as you have some people in your life why don't you look at the people who have a lot less than you and instead of feeling envy for those who are better why don't you feel grateful for what you have so we downward compare instead of upward to compare yes that that will trigger the gratitude because I think for a lot of us especially in the social media age we're just comparing our I didn't say this a lot to the audience that we're comparing our blooper reel to their highlight reel we're comparing us sitting on the toilet feeling sick you know on a hangover Sunday with someone's Instagram feed where they're in Bali surfing and the weather's been airbrushed and color corrected well well life sucks well that's the other thing I tried it's another tip in there in that chapter people are not nearly as happy as unsuccessful as you think they are they only present those happy moments on Bali in their on their Facebook feed they're not showing the angry little bitter fight that they have with their girlfriend two hours before and when she left you know saying wait you asked I'm leaving you there they're doctoring their image that they present to show the best parts of their life I talk in the book about how you know we all Envy really wealthy people and who is the wealthiest person in the world in the 1960s was Aristotle Onassis and I read about him in this Jackie Jacqueline Kennedy biography he was the most miserable man on the planet he was so insecure he was just a nightmare to deal with so if his billions couldn't buy him just an ounce of happiness and these people that you Envy are not necessarily worth envying right they're not really as happy as you think they are yeah yeah I talked to a lot of people usually I'll get a couple of whiskey's in them or something and I'll say what are you struggling with right now and they usually hesitate to answer but if you get somebody on a good day and you get an honest answer out of them it snaps you right out of your envi box a lot you know and it could be something as simple as I'm really worried about my mother's health and you really oh geez well I'm not so that's good that I don't have to worry about that or or just something like yeah you know my business isn't doing that well and I'm thinking I'm on your yacht right now what are you talking but there's people will worry about all of these things you have no idea because they're not going here's all this stuff that's going wrong in my life but you know you're up you're sitting on their boat they don't want to bore you with it they don't want to bring that out and I think that's been important for me personally to realize especially as we rebuild the business from zero this year that there are I'm going all the progress is so slow it's quick but it's slow and there's other people that have been doing business for eight years instead of eight months that are thinking I wish I could have be at the level where you want to right now that's important to the downward comparison is important because we think why would I downward compare I'm trying to get there not there looking backwards not forwards but it you have to do that to stay grounded well you it's it's a balance it's a game because you could downward compare and get complacent like well you know I'm actually doing fine you want to be challenged you want to see people who are doing better and to emulate and to get up to their level but you don't want that to crush you and to be the only thing that motivates you because that can be kind of ugly and soulless you need to get satisfaction from the work itself but emulating people who have more can be a positive thing as long as it leads to action as long as it leads to pouring your energy into your work and not into bringing other people down right right yeah I completely agree we cultivate rationality to avoid being led around by our emotions which are kind of like this bratty child that seems to me it takes you by the nose and by the nose yeah exactly and the problem is we think we're rational a lot of us do anyway but we're not and it's a learn and practiced skill I think a lot of people think I'm rational I'm very calm I'm not emotionally measured and sometimes those are the most emotional people around because they have no awareness around this yeah it's law number one irrationality it's called master your emotions because I think it's the most dominant trait of the human animal I mean basically I don't want to bore people with science but the neuroscience of emotions is kind of interesting emotions evolved among animals hundreds millions of years ago reptiles actually have a fear response that's they're the first sort of sign of the evolution of emotions so it was a very very ancient system and it's designed to make you aware of a danger or problem in your environment and take action but animals feel an emotion there's a chemical and electrical bioelectrical process that goes in the body adrenaline etc and then it passes they feel fear and five minutes later it's gone we humans inherited this emotional system it's part of our brain it's the lower part of our brain that governs it but we also have thinking and what ends up happening to us is we feel that emotion and we can't get rid of it we feel that fear and it stays with us and we think about that fear and we think about it and it turns into an obsessional thought and it kind of this is what turns us irrational so we think that we have a thought or an idea that just comes from some super or you know out-of-body type of idea that's just perfect and and clear and rational and we came to it but in fact 99% of the time we feel an emotion anger joy excitement and that emotion causes us to think about it and in thinking about it we rationalize it and we come up with some something to justify our emotions so when you think you're being rational you're not being rational at all you're being you're feeling an emotion and you're thinking about it and you're trying to justify it in some in some way you have no access to your emotions you don't know why you feel anger it comes up in a part of your brain that is not connected to your cognitive part of the brain so you don't when you feel that anger it doesn't say your brain is not able to go ah that's I can see clearly down to the source of why I'm angry you have no idea why you're feeling angry you have no idea why you're suddenly excited by things it's a mystery to you and you grab things immediately in your environment to say this is what triggered this is what caused my anger this is what made me excited but you don't know you're not sure about the source of it so your emotions are dominating you all of the time you don't see the source of them you're not aware of what's actually triggering them you have a stranger inside of yourself I call this person the emotional self you don't understand this person you're not seeing it and it's kind of driving your behavior people in marketing understand this more than anyway people who deal with economic behavior they know that people buy things irrationally and then later explain to themselves why they bought it there's a standard bit of wisdom in psychology that if you like something once or bought something once you are continually prone to buying it again and again and again and again but you'll justify it to yourself like I like that product it's a better product when in fact it's not a better product but you are trained to like something once and feel like you were justified in liking it and therefore you have to like it again if you were suddenly confronted with the fact that what you bought was an inferior product it makes you think well maybe I'm stupid maybe I didn't make a rational choice you don't want to think like that so people in marketing know that if they can get you to like something once you'll keep returning over and over and over again we are irrational our buying habits what we like our political choices are governed by our emotions and if you're going around thinking that you're rational that this isn't the case then it's very dangerous the most dangerous people are those who are convinced that they know what is right and are not aware of how much they're being driven by something that they're not aware of so I made this law number one because I want to drum it into your head you are not a rational being rationality is something you earn it's a struggle it takes effort it takes awareness you have to go through steps you have to see your biases I cover in these chapter various biases being aware that you are irrational by nature you can suddenly start becoming rational you can suddenly start finding a different way of dealing with your emotions or not letting them govern your life so for instance we all have the confirmation bias I have it as well when you're trying to write a book or whatever like I do I have a bias towards this is what I think human nature is about so I will go and find the books that confirm what I already believe if I a trump supporter or a Democrat I find the news of the information that will confirm what I already want to believe if you're aware that you had suffering from this confirmation bias then you can begin to operate against it I know that I have a negative view of human nature so what I need to do in my research is compensate for the and read books by people who are more optimistic about human nature so I compensate for my confirmation bias by being aware you can start suddenly becoming a rash rational I can imagine that writing something like the 48 laws of power you might have to come up and be like I need some good news today where can I go and watch see some people while having fun or being happy and not undercutting and backstabbing each other when you're buried in that kind of research yeah actually I had a lot of fun writing the 48 laws of power it wasn't not depressing at all because I was able to get out all of my spitefulness about people I I operate by a lot of anger I have anger yes I do anger and resentment about people particularly as I said earlier about people's holier-than-thou mmm mentality where they think they're so superior I really wanted with some a leveler I really want to pierce that sense of superiority that people have so riding the 48 laws of power was was was great fun for me so we're both Levellers that must be what we get along so that's true I'm not trying to cut anything and it's like at work we're both trying to cut other people I got you yeah yeah it's good to be aware of that it is so interesting and I love the the fact that animals feel fear and it goes away that that was like a brilliant switch that went off when I read that because humans we dwell on that fear not only does it stay with us for a while and influence our actions caused us to do things but we actually use it to write rules about the way we'll react to something the next time it happens right when we have this happen as a kid and we're afraid of I don't know not being seen but it's like this little lion that gets jotted this line of code that gets jotted into your operating system shows up when you're a teenager and then you really lean into athletics so that you get some attention and since you're getting attention you're using it to get women in such getting women is making you feel good so you get addicted to that and then dot dot dot you're trying out for parts and NCIS Chicago and LA said follow those brilliant that's where I took it that's where I took it just because it these little seeds get planted yeah based on my dad was never home so it must mean that I'm not worth seeing well I mean it's the rest of my life trying to prove that I was right look at me I'm on TV now that goes why didn't you become a carpenter do something useful and then you're just you know the rift is still there right I can see that and a lot of people yeah I have an example in there that I used where let's say you're you're a boy and your mother is sign it kind of cold to you right isn't as loving as you'd want it's a bit narcissistic and as a child you experienced that as she was abandoning you she wasn't giving you something that you wanted and it created tremendous fear like you were talking about a three-year-old like an adrenaline rush of fear that you were about to be abandoned by the one person who can keep you safe in the world and then you grow up with this as this person who carries that deep within this continual fear of being abandoned by other people right and that motivates everything that you do and then later you're in a relationship with a woman and she just says something with a sort of an edge of coldness maybe she's in a bad mood and you interpret it she's about to abandon me she's she's losing interest in me and you overreact and you get emotional and you you end up breaking up the relationship you're not aware of all of these little hidden layers of things that are have that occurring inside of you you're not aware of the source that you are the one causing other people to flee you because you're afraid that they're going to abandon you you have to abandon them first so you feel like you're in control it becomes the pattern of your life it's irrational but you don't see it that way you see in that moment when she was acting cold man I'm most rational person in the world I'm anticipating her leaving me what could be more rational than I realize she's gonna abandon me and I'm gonna break it off but you don't realize that it's extremely irrational that it comes from a very emotional place I used to work with somebody that was abandoned by the mother as a child uh-huh and what he would then do is try to control everyone around him which drove us all crazy and as soon as someone started doing what he didn't like he would try to socially isolate them not and by them two things make them feel bad and when that happened to everybody turn-by-turn we just decided how did you his childhood he told us eventually yeah uh-huh and I never really put those two things together but when I read the laws of human nature I went this is what he's doing he's trying to control people so they won't abandon him he's forcing them to feel abandoned when they don't do what he wants because that he he knows that's what hurts the most or at least in his world then he uses that to control but normal or healthier people or people who don't have that programming we don't respond well to that we just go sky is a crazy you see this is the process that I'm asking you to go through when you're reading this book this is how I'm hoping the book will change you you probably already thought this way to a degree but normally you go through life reacting to what just people give you you see that boss who's a control freak and you get emotional and you get sucked into all the drama and you continually responding to the appearances that people present not realizing that something else is going on in their head behind the mask and when you suddenly start to peel away the layers and understand what motivates people and see that that the route could be some childhood trauma or some other issue they're dealing with suddenly it changes right you now have options you now realize I don't have to get emotional maybe this isn't somebody I want to work for you have options in life and that's that's the key to this game instead of always reacting to people in which you have no options that's the only thing you can do is get angry or resentful or envious I'm showing you you can go one of three or four ways you can cut that person out of your life you cannot take them personally and say oh that's just who they are that's fine you can find a way to kind of minimize the damage that they're doing by becoming strategic and taking certain actions to prevent them from harming you on and on and on you have options in life instead of always reacting emotionally I love the idea of resisting emotional pull this is from from the book as well it's like resistance training when you feel I really want to do this with this person or I'm really excited about this I really want to hire this person maybe step back and resist it for a little while because resisting our emotions like lifting weights yeah it's it gets easier after a while it's so tempting in the moment to go no no no we're good this is great I'm gonna sign on the dotted line let's get married in Vegas kind of thing and then that resistance that you build that ability to resist your emotions is actually quite a good skill to have yeah you know I don't want to create a misconception that I suddenly think that I feel that emotions are bad of course yeah it would be ridiculous to say that because our ability to think is interlay is interconnected with our emotions Einstein discovers the theory of relativity because he's so excited and emotionally involved in solving this problem that he's able to think about it so for hour after hour if you're not motivated and love something you're not gonna learn about it emotions play a very valuable part in our life we are very rich emotional enriched animals people like to think that what separates us from a dog or a cat is that we think but actually you could say what separates us from the dog or the cat is that we feel a range of 20/30 emotions that they're not even able to think to process and that's what makes us human so emotions aren't necessarily bad but who is governing the ship there's a metaphor I use in the rationality chapter of the rider on the horse the horse is your emotions it is more powerful the horse is more powerful than the human animal it's faster it's stronger it's more powerful we are the rider on top of it is it the horse that's governing and taking us everywhere we want without is controlling it at all making us get into porn and going into video games and and that damn horse indeed he has wrong people and making bad decisions or are we the rider that has the reins that can master that horse mastering that horse doesn't mean beating it to death and making it stand still you want that horse to move it's it's active it's alive its powerful think of all the things that we've been able to do once we learned how to use horses you know in war etc you want that animal to be able to move but you want to be able to guide it you want reins you want a degree of control you want to be a bit of a master of your emotions so you can use them you use that example of choosing the wrong person to marry like it's I'm gonna marry her in Vegas that you just met and one of the most important chapters in the book is about the ability to judge people's character right the ability to see deep within them and to see that core of their being and what governs their behavior and what makes them repeat the same kind of patterns of behavior over and over again and when you're constantly going around just reacting to what people do looking at their face and getting charmed by them or getting pissed off about them you're not seeing what's really going on and so you'll end up hiring people because they're charming or pleasing or have a good resume or you'll end up marrying someone because they flatter you and they make you feel good about this of the other and then you get into the relationship and you see something really ugly and dark that you hadn't anticipated and you blame them for deceiving you but in fact the source of the problem is you you're not able to judge people's character you're simply reacting to the appearances they present so that's another bit of resistance training that you're talking about how do we assess or begin to assess character via someone's behavior that's a huge question I realize well understand that people I say in this chapter people never do anything once we are compulsive animals that continually repeat the same behavior right I know in writing my books I'm writing my fifth this is my sixth book I'm going damn it I'm not gonna repeat this I'm not gonna make 8,000 note cards with extraneous information I'm gonna stop wasting my time and what do I do I do it again I create even more note cards I fall into the same pattern I can't control it it's compulsive there's something deep within it I could tre trace it back to something in my childhood some insecurities some need to do more than is required in my work but I have patterns I can't control everybody you around you has these kinds of patterns I say that there's something genetic about it it's it's in their DNA it's how their brains are wired they can't help doing certain patterns and it's also their childhood their parents their upbringing the level of attachment with their parents there's something very deeply ingrained in their character and you want to be have the ability to assess it so first of all particularly in a relationship with it with it you're hiring a business partner or a romantic relationship you want to be able you looked at my wife paying attention hopefully she's not paying attention to this part you want to be pay extra attention to patterns you've heard from them in the past if she if Jen tells you that her last boyfriend was such an who abused her and and she got rid of him and then but then you also discover the same thing about the prior one and the one before that you might begin to think that maybe she's not telling the right story maybe it's something having to do with her own behavior there's been causing this right so you want to see patterns that people revealed no one ever is is is completely opaque you can see the patterns and what they've done in the past there are some people who deliberately attract the wrong personal in their life for sure so they can have lots of drama and complain about it and then you'll only see the drama and you'll see them complaining you won't realize that they're actually partially or completely the source of the drama that's going on you do have different types of characters that you outline I don't know if his character is the right word it's kind of like spotting these different archetypes are these people dangerous how do we identify their own yeah I would love to hear more about these archetypes because I think whenever we have categories or characters we can assign it makes assigning them to people a little bit it's easier to put people in buckets than to have all these nebulous values then magnetized them well I'm kind of obsessed with Type typology with figuring out what kind of type a person is and seeing common with other people that I've known in life and that I've read about in history and so I make the case that some people are toxic and what I mean by that is they have deep levels of insecurities and issues stemming from a troubled damaged childhood usually and they have patterns that are pretty negative and destructive they have a need to sabotage other people or to sabotage themselves and they getting involved with someone like that can really ruin your life you get sucked into their dramas they kind of control the dynamic they feed off of controlling you by all of the emotions that they can stir up so I want to give you a kind of a roadmap for identifying some of these toxic types before they become entangled in your life you know see some classic signs of that so I don't know if you wanted to go over some I would love to yeah what's may be the most dangerous or the most common / dangerous that you see well you know I talk in the narcissism chapter about the deep narcissist and I maintain in this book that we're all self absorbed by nature and I explain why we're self-absorbed why we are all narcissists this is a concept that people don't automatically accept in fact I think a lot of people resist we want to think that's the narcissists out there Donald Trump he's a narcissist but I'm not no we're all narcissists we are all on that spectrum we all think first and foremost of ourselves but some people are so low on the spectrum they're so deeply narcissistic that they cannot ever rise up they can't think of other people their need is to constantly have attention so normally our way of dealing with our own self absorption and our own need for attention from other people is to create a self that we love that we respect we like ourselves to some we think that we're worthy of something and whenever something bad happens we're at least able to revert to this idea that we're actually a person that is good that we love the deep narcissist doesn't have that sense they can't get attention or validation or a feeling of security from themselves you can call only come from other people so they become masters at getting attention from being very dramatic from stirring up a lot of trouble so that the tension comes to them and they can be extremely dangerous once you get in twined with them because they're people who are deep narcissists don't view you as a human being they view you as an object for that they can use to further their agendas and so they can they can cause a lot of trouble in their life you wrote that we always have to work with other people when we're influencing somebody or we're relating to somebody we always have to work within their self esteem or their concept of self right there's opinion yeah and if they think they're worthy or or they're not worthy we have to agree with this so if someone thinks I'm not a good person I'm not worthy I have low self esteem we can't convince them otherwise and they'll be attracted to people who confirm this opinion of themselves and I saw this when I used to go out a lot and I used to teach other guys and men and women for that matter of dating skills and things like that and we used to go out to bars early ten years ago on my 20s I actually found this truth out and kind of a it was sort of a sad truth for me because I realized that I would talk to a lot of healthy cool vibrant women and we would have a really great time and I'd make great friends with them and I'd also meet some very unhealthy emotionally unhealthy women who clearly had bad childhoods dated bad guys and if I went there and I was nice and charismatic and did things for them and treated them like a normal human being I was a good friend it didn't work at all but what worked unfortunately and I just couldn't I couldn't do this routinely because it felt too bad and too ugly if you treated them poorly and you didn't show up sometimes and you didn't tell them why and you didn't call them and you didn't you weren't vulnerable and you weren't emotional and you didn't do anything for them there was a certain of women that would respond to that so strongly and I thought oh my gosh this is terrible for you yeah why are you doing this right yeah I see what you mean well the idea that I have in there is that people have an opinion about themselves and you must be extremely aware of this is one of the most critical laws of human nature and I say that there are three universals for this opinion of ourselves we usually like to think that we're autonomous and independent that we make our decisions with our own willpower that we're not forced to doing what we do when I bought that new car I it's because I loved it not because advertising we also like to think that we're intelligent we may not think that we reinstall but we know our field we're not stupid the sense that we are stupid or that people are making fun of our intelligence is pretty difficult for us to to accept and third that were generally a good person we have good intentions we're kind we're angelic we're not mean-spirited or ugly people want to feel those three qualities about themselves and but then there's the flip side there are people who don't have that who feel that they're not worthy that they're not so intelligent that they're not a good person right that's they go they walk around with this opinion and it dominates their thinking it becomes who they are your idea of yourself becomes who you are beyond those three universals there are some other ones like you might think that you are really independent a maverick a rebel rebelled a rebellious type and that's who you are you know right that becomes kind of your attitude towards life you know you're like a brand yeah okay so this defines you and it determines what you choose in life what you buy the people you surround yourself with if you believe that you're you believe in masculinity and in kicking ass and showing that you're tougher than other people but you're also a Christian for whatever reason because you're up you will glom on to ideas of Christianity that reflect that so you'll think Jesus is a warrior God is a is a is a fighter I'm out there kicking ass for Christianity kick ass for Jesus kick ass for Jesus so your self opinion will have determine a lot of what you do and if you go around in life challenging people's opinion of who they are you're gonna have a lot of misery in trouble you won't get very far so if you say something that questions their autonomy and makes them feel like they were manipulated or you say some remark that in an argument you make them feel like they're stupid or you make a remark that makes them feel like they're not a nice person a door will close to you that will never open again you know you will have made a silent enemy right and with this other example with this person this woman who has a negative opinion of themselves if you are saying oh you know you're really great you deserve this letter the other it won't jive with how they think about themselves and they'll think you're a fool they're an idiot right we've all had the experience of feeling depressed and life isn't very fair and we're not doing very well and then someone comes and says oh well come on the sun is shining everything's great you're really wonderful and we don't like to hear that because it's not what we feel right now we feel something else they're trying to almost argue against you know the mood at the moment so you need to be aware that people have their own inner reality their own way of thinking about themselves and instead of inadvertently challenging it you want to validate their opinion of who they are that gives you room now to influence and move them so if you make them feel comfortable if you make them feel that they actually are a good person that they are intelligent that they are autonomous and independent they will lower their resistance to you and now you have room to infiltrate another idea so to take for an example that person that has low self esteem if you don't fight it and you say you're right people that have not treated you well you know you haven't gotten a lot of good things in life your life has been really hard and then they say yeah yeah and and there's a connection they feel like that you're understanding them now you can insinuate a comment that can help try and maybe raise their self-esteem yes that's true but you know you're actually have done this that and the other in your life and it's not so bad if you begin by confirming that they have had a rough time and that they're it's right that they're to feel kind of bad about themselves now you can start saying something else there they're not so resistant to you and they're open to another possibility this is the golden key to unlocking people's natural resistance to you if you always approach them as an individual with their own opinion about themselves you try and unlock it and see how you can validate that opinion and how you can feed what they want to hear there's nothing ugly or manipulative about it because people do need this validation this recognition we're hunkering for it and you're giving it to them it also gives you the power to influence them and move them in the direction that you want a lot of people might think oh it's this is manipulative look listen to him talk he's talking about infiltrating thoughts into people's heads even though he says it's for good it could be easily use it for bad I think one of the insights from the book that I glean was everybody craves influence or power in some way there's a certain group of us maybe the majority to think that that's maybe wrong somehow and then there's a small number of people that think I'm gonna do that I deserve to have that and unfortunately I think a lot of the people that would use this stuff responsibly are in the bucket of folks that say it's wrong to want to be able to influence people to get under their defenses well it's absurd it's this is it's the height of stupidity for people to think that they don't want that they're not being honest with themselves you don't want to go through life unable to influence your children to have no effect on them you don't want to go through life not being able to influence your boss and get them to give you a raise and give that get them to recognize your incredibly good work you don't want to go around not able to influence your colleagues or people that you want to date you want influence stop being such a dishonest lying to yourself everything you do influences people negatively or positively people are reading you day in and day out like a book they're reading your moods your emotions and they're saying I like you I don't like you you are influencing them without realizing you're doing it because we are animals that are responding to people in nonverbal ways right so whether you want to or not you are influencing people you might just be putting them off that's your influence you might be repelling them that's the kind of influence that you have so you its first of all it's happening you're just not in control of it and second of all you're not being honest with yourself do you want a child that you can't tell them what to do that you can't mold to some degree that you can't get rid of their ugly habits you have a spouse who has terrible habits they ignore you all the time you won't you don't want the ability to somehow get them to change give me a break you know I really can't stand that level of dishonesty that people have you want the power to influence people it's an incredibly deep human need to stop lying to yourself and admit it and then you can use this for positive purposes so if I'm just telling you Jordan you know and I and I you think I was being dishonest but I wasn't you're a really great interviewer you have really good sense of empathy you know I can feel like a human connection with you but there was that one moment you know in the interview where I felt you kind of lost it sort of thing and maybe next time you interview you can you could try that well suddenly okay you think I'm being manipulative but I'm trying to help you I'm trying to tell you there was something you did in the interview that wasn't quite right now if I directly said Jordan I didn't like what you did that one time you say Robert as being you know I that I'm not gonna listen but if I say first something real and true that you are a good listener that do you're a great interviewer but here's one thing that you could have changed that might open you up to it it might have an impact on you that's the power I'm telling you you know that anybody can have and it's not ugly or manipulative in closing there's a couple of really good practicals that I think I'd love to leave people with one that I don't even remember what this was in in the book but this just stuck out so much I recited it from memory in my notes if you need a favor don't remind people what you've done for them in the past remind them of what they've done for you in the past so instead of saying hey you owe me one because X Y Z you actually say you've done all these great things for me and sort of programming Riaan form reinforcing that they're so generous yeah right I thought that was a little counterintuitive and interesting well it's a theme in a lot of my books particularly 48 laws of power there's the African proverb that I quote in there that says when you see someone being grateful you will also notice water running uphill I didn't quote it very accurately but the idea is that gratitude is extremely unnatural for the human being you'll find it as often as water running uphill we don't like to feel grateful because in gratitude there's a sense of inferiority like that person we're just this little child that they had to help and pat on the head and give us something that we don't you know they're just patronizing us they're doing something we're not able to get it on our own we don't like to feel that way we like to feel that we can get things on our own that if someone did us a favor it was because we deserved it that we're really a good person so gratitude we're always going around life thinking people should be grateful for what we did for them we lent them money we did this favor for them and then we don't get it and were disappointed but it's extremely rare and uncommon emotion to have so but the the opposite factor is if you're trying to influence somebody so you want them to get to do you a favor instead of reminding them as I said of what you've done for them you remind them of what they've done for you so you're fed their self opinion their self opinion is I'm a great generous kind person I did something good for you now I'm motivated to keep up that opinion you have me and keep doing good things for you do you see the the logic in that yeah this makes a lot of sense right you're really said reinforcing their opinion of the opinions the type of opinion they want to feel about themselves right so you're giving them an opportunity to reinforce the person they want to be which is generous and giving right as opposed to look I did that favor for you meaning I was so much better than you I helped you when you're you were a weak dependent person and you don't want to feel like that you want to feel like oh all right I owe my success or anything good because what you did for me so now I have to do that again I have to feel grateful again and do something for you nobody that's really a turn-off but if you do the opposite way then it's extremely powerful of course you have to set this up so that people have done you favors in the past you know mm-hmm yeah I think that is the Benjamin Franklin Wow he's smart mastery is that where I got that from as I remember that so Benjamin Franklin had this inveterate enemy in Congress or wherever it was who hated his guts and was gonna make life miserable for him and he knew that this guy was a great collector of rare books etc and so he went and lent this book to him right and now that made the guy think that Oh Benjamin Franklin isn't such a bad person because he likes me and because he likes me maybe I should try and like him you know so it's kind of intuitive kind of thing instead of trying really hard to please this man and do things say things to to ingratiate him he did him he lent him this very nice book and made made the guy think that his opinion of Benjamin Franklin was wrong right it was you've got all this great things you've got all these great books I really look up to you I would love if you would be generous and show me this and the guy did and then of course then he has to rationalize the rest of his opinion based on the fact that he did this nice thing for him I must have done that because I liked him so I guess I liked him maybe I should act in accordance with will and if you do favors for other people's to the other way around so all these favors that we're doing for other people are secretly trying to earn their goodwill it's at this whole shows about you know I'd be lying to myself and everyone else if I didn't admit that there's a level of I love doing the show because I love the conversations I do love helping people but I also really like the idea that I'm able to provide this and other people can I can't get it anywhere else and that you know it puts it puts it sort of projects this idea that there's a source of wisdom that I've created with my team here and and that's sort of like I guess that's your side of it that's your self opinion yeah yeah and I like that but it did really did get highlighted when I read the laws of human nature I was looking at all these things I was doing I go you mean maybe this will come from them the best place yeah I don't know if it doesn't come from a good place but reading the laws of human nature will get you to look at the good things you do and think why do I do this but it will definitely get you looking at the bad things you do devices that you have the guilty things that you do the things you're thinking about when you're shaving in the morning that you know you can't tell anyone else about because it makes you look bad it'll make you put those under a microscope but you know I don't want people to think that that's like this something really heavy oh it's awful no it's an entertaining quick read as well well I don't mean that but the sense of knowing being honest with yourself at first it might be painful and some people who reviewed the book and in Amazon they say it's kind of painful because it makes you confront things about yourself you don't want to necessarily confront but I think not being honest with yourself in the end being someone who feels envious being passive-aggressive you're not really happy it's not really fulfilling you're not really getting what you want when you do passive-aggressive digs at people are you're manipulative like that you might get something in the immediate present from it but people are pissed off you've made enemies and it doesn't feel good to be acting in this way so when you're kind of being a hypocrite and pretending that you're so superior smarter and nicer I feel you pay a price for that I feel that causes secret depression I feel it causes you to alienate people that you don't mean to alienate so that you don't have as many friends that the friends that you have the bonds aren't very deep right so being honest with yourself will make you happier I believe in the long run acknowledging that you have a dark side that you have a shadow that you're not as such a great person as you think can actually be a very liberating feeling you know and there are ways to to take that shadow in that darkness and kind of turn it into something else but the sense that I'm happy with who I am I acknowledge that I'm this complete person that I have these qualities that aren't necessarily the best qualities that kind of acceptance is I think a really deep and positive emotion it gives you the chance to work on them to kind of smooth out some of these rough edges that you have and it'll make you a better person it'll make you easier to deal with we've all we humans are really good at smelling out people who are hypocritical right who pretend to be all holier-than-thou saintly and they're not and it's a put off we're attracted to people who are authentic we feel that person may not be a saint but they're really who they are we see that in our culture were attracted to people who are authentic who are not disguising who they're they show their dark side and their good side it's very positive kind of an attractive quality so that's what I'm trying to create in this book I'm not trying to weigh you down with making you feel oh I'm such a miserable worm you know you might be a worm but that's it's better to admit that you're a worm and to kind of move from that and I think people will smell that on you they'll smell that you're being more honest and being more who you really are even worms crawl out of the ground when trains right so maybe this book is the good rain shower that's a good oh yeah if there's one thing I'm good at its metaphors the rest of my skills are pretty mediocre I didn't say that you Robert Greene thank you so much oh thank you Jordan thank you

Channel: THE JORDAN HARBINGER SHOW

Views: 162,153

Rating: 4.8953342 out of 5

Keywords: podcast, interview, best podcast, top rated podcast, lifelong learning, the jordan harbinger show, jordan harbinger, soft skills, social science, social influence, social psychology, personal development, self development, podcast full episode, robert greene, laws of human nature, robert greene interview, robert greene podcast, laws of human nature robert greene, jordan harbinger robert greene, human nature, robert greene interview 2020, robert greene podcast interview

Id: jr_WgvTHjGY

Length: 82min 32sec (4952 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018