The KEY TO POWER Lies In Mastering These LAWS | Robert Greene & Lewis Howes

and I'm telling you the key to success in life is people we're a social animal you know we're like dogs or wolves or whatever chimpanzees we're a social animal and how we interact with people will determine how far we get you can be brilliant at hacking computers or whatever but if you're terrible with people your life is gonna be held so you are you motivated to become somebody supremely skilled at understanding and working at people with people that's the whole point of the book welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast we have Robert Greene in the house good to see my so good to see Luis you are one of the most influential writers over the last two decades with your books 48 laws of power 33 strategies of war the 50th law mastery artists adduction and now the laws of human nature which is going to be a massive hit make sure you guys get this book and probably your best work in your mind that ever a writer do you think this is your best work it's hard to say it's like choosing between your children which is your favorite child you know it's the latest so it is you know I'm very proud of it but the thing was I've been for 20 years over 20 years been writing these books so massive amounts of research and reading but also consulting work with people in business and other areas so I've gathered a lot of intelligence or knowledge about people or what makes them tick and I've seen a lot of mistakes that I've made and other people have made so this is sort of the distillation of all of my years of research and all the things I've experienced Wow you know where's your biggest insecurity in your life would it be when you first started writing books you know 20 years ago to where it is now well I'm very insecure like yeah but I try and turn it into something positive meaning when I finish a book I don't really know if it's good if it's that good or if it's gonna be successful I'm very worried that I'm not connecting to the reader to the audience and so what that does for me is I never kind of rest I'm never comfortable I never assumed wow this is a masterpiece it's gonna do really well and so when I'm writing the book and it's been all my books I'm thinking very very deeply about the reader how's the reader going to assimilate this information will it help him or her will it strike a chord will it resonate with their life what they think of people that they know so I'm trying to connect very very deeply to the reader because I'm insecure because I don't take them for granted I think where a lot of writers and people go wrong is they believe in their own myth they believe that what they've written is so good or that they don't have to make that effort to connect to people you know a lot of professors or experts or people who are in a particular very specific field they assume that their knowledge is you know that other people know what they know and I kind of talked down to the reader and I never try to talk down to the reader I try to elevate the conversation and what would you say is your main security is it a fear of judgment that people may not like your writing or they may not like you or that you're not good enough for what's probably all of it yeah yeah you know I kind of grew up that way my parents were not the type to coddle me or to say you're great Robert or if it came home with straight A's is like that so what they don't care they cared but you can always do better even if I got a perfect score oh yeah yeah okay good that's faster you're gonna go yeah yeah it's kind of a Jewish thing I have to say but so I never felt secure about my work maybe when I was younger you know I tried to write I tried many different forms of writing I tried writing novels and I think in my 20s I was a little more grandiose I believed that what I was writing was really great and it wasn't it kind of sucked so it's been a process of also getting over that kind of youthful exuberance and you know taking more time and thinking more deeply about what you're doing but I have a lot of insecurities I mean that's that's one of them mm-hmm yeah and you talk about detaching from our emotions is there is there more value in detaching from our emotions or because we are emotional and insecure we create better work by holding on to those emotions well that's a great question if you didn't care if you think these books would be as as good as they are well probably the source to get back to your first question the source of my insecurities is I kind of have a desire to please people to impress them I'm just being very honest here and this probably went back to very early on so I've always wanted to get the best grades and be the best pupil in the class but there's a there's a weakness in that it seems great you're getting straight A's you're doing well in sports etc but it's actually an insecurity of a self-doubt when you're trying to please people and maybe you go a little extra hard so in that sense compensating for your insecurities in that way can be a positive thing so my insecurities by itself could destroy me and that I would never give the effort up to make write a book or do something I would actually putting it out yeah because if I doubt myself maybe it's better never to try anything a lot of young people have this problem they have a negative attitude whether they think that well if I don't do anything if I just be a slacker at least I won't fail and I can kind of make I feel myself feel better that I'm the best slacker that there is you know if you don't try too hard you're never gonna fail you're never gonna have the pain of failure so that's the negative side of insecurity but it can also motivate you to try even harder to actually get work done and to make it something really great and to doubt yourself constantly you know which is how I kind of use that right using the doubt to push yourself to put all better work yeah I mean it probably you know I had a we can get to this I had a stroke a couple months ago probably is what led to this and is not a necessarily good thing but I worked so hard on this book five years five session over every word every sentence yeah yeah and I was thinking you know how can I make this more accessible because a lot of the information I had was from kind of heavy sources like psychologists people who are psycho analysts who've studied human nature very deeply and they use a lot of jargon and you can't really figure out exactly what they're saying and I want to make it under readable for the average reader out there so the effort of constantly trying to connect to people is I think comes from an insecurity but it's turned into something positive yeah it's a great question I never had it never been asked this but you know do you feel like it's worth putting out these books that reach millions of people at the detriment of potential health challenges yeah I mean if you asked me if I could have a choice of not writing the book and never having this physical problem I would have chosen writing the book really for sure why is that because I have I may be physically crippled a little bit and I'll get over it but I have this for the rest of my life I can feel really good about myself I could die tomorrow and I'd know that I wrote what I wanted to create I expressed what my life was meant to express so that's a great feeling that even in the worst depression I could have with my body not responding the way I want I can feel a great deal of pride that I actually got this thing done it didn't kill me is there a way to create masterpieces without doing that and staying healthy and peaceful in your minds well you know you'd think I would have because I exercise every day you swim I mean I'm fanatic even now with my stroke I'm exercising every day aerobic Li and eat well and I meditate Wow and I you know I do everything right but it's still it's still led to this yeah it's a good question I think my next book because I am getting older and this happened I'm gonna have to kind of find a better way to do it a little bit to still write something shorter with a lot of work but not maybe take five years right you know three years three years to three years yeah yeah Wow so you're already thinking about the next book yeah in the ambulance on the way home from the hospital I had an idea for my next book what was that well it's very it's very primitive I'm not really totally developed it but it's about how how the bad things in life how negative things are actually I mean it's similar to Ryan's book but it's a different spin on it how they you actually learn more from negative than the positive yeah like you learn this is I thought in the ambulance back home I thought of all of the people I knew who handle adversity terribly I'm not gonna name names some of them are related to me sure who handled adversity really badly I thought I don't want to be them and as I thought about that I thought hmm there's something interesting in that thought like who I don't want to be we never think like that but it's actually very interesting so and it's also getting in touch with learning from your bad experiences but also it's kind of a book about negativity and I know that sounds really bad and negative sure sure but how we're so attached to what we see in life to what's in front of us to what the appearances people have to their masks they wear and I want you to think of what isn't there what you're not seeing what's invisible I kind of go into it in the trick chapter about generations and trends in society and all my books I'm trying to tell people don't accept what you see with your eyes look for something deeper what is the meaning behind this if you're planning a strategy or making a big decision in your life what is it that you're not considering so it's kind of about negative space I know it's very primitive but I can promise you I'll turn it into something shows a beautiful yeah well in sports they always talk about you know you learn more from your losses than your wins that's right you're not everything is fine when you win you're like ah everything's forgiven right like we'll just keep doing it that's what I'm losing that's me like okay we evaluate everything that's right well some people don't so people know know how to do that but you that's how you have to profit from your losses I do that with things I've written that didn't quite work out you know I've written books that I had to completely rewrite that were dead ends like the 50 cent book I had a version of that book that we did together that wasn't working at all and I learned a lot from what I did wrong there I learned for instance the problem of that book in its first version was that I wasn't being myself I was trying to be please him more I've learned to always sort of be myself but I had to learn that by trying to be someone else so that sort of is what you're talking you're saying yeah in this book I think this is fascinating you have all these different laws about human nature and understanding why humans do the things they do why they think what they feel sure in a way and you talk about determining the strength of people's character how do we understand the strength of someone's character whether they're toxic whether they're they have high values besides this you know the things that we can see of like okay they broke their word or they're negative or things like that how do I really determine someone's character well the first thing you have to do is the most important thing is to realize the determining people's character is the most important thing that you have to do in judging them so normally we think if someone's very charming that that's great or if they're really good-looking or if they're very successful so if we're looking let's say we're looking for a business partner or a romantic partner or a colleague to work with we're gonna base our decision on those kinds of appearances like people can be very good at deceiving you with being very charming and flattering or they have a brilliant resume and you'll be seduced by that and what you want to do the first step in that law is to say no that's not how I'm going to judge people my main value is their character and the strength of their character and character something from deep deep deep within the word character comes from the Greek Kairos which means to carve and character is something really deeply carved inside the person it's who they are at their core it creates patterns of behavior that they can't even really control it's who they are genetically it's who they are from the or leave outs of their parents so you want to connect to that you want to see that it's not immediately visible to you because people will disguise their character you want to see that you want to value it more than anything else and what you want are people with strong character and what that means is people they have an expression for metal they call it tensile where metal is stronger if it can give a little bit and it's because if something is too rigid if it breaks it breaks so you want people who are adaptable who could be fluid who aren't weak because that metal isn't weak who have an inner strength and a core to them but they can bend they can learn they can adapt they can change you want to see people who are empathetic you know who know how to get along with other people so if you have two people to choose and one has a glittering resume but the other person understands human nature and is superior in a social sense and it can also has a good work ethic you choose that other person you don't choose necessarily the person with that glittering resume and so the one one of the things you look for our patterns in people in judging their character because people reveal themselves in the past they reveal who they are for their actions they try and disguise it but they reveal it so I say in that chapter nobody ever does anything once so let's say you have a friend who does something kind of nasty to you they talk behind your back then they'll say Oh Robert Robert that was just something came over that isn't me you know I'm sorry about that that just happened whose circumstances made me do that and you'll be likely to believe them but the fact is if they've done that once they've probably done it many times mmm IFS people gossip and you hear them gossiping about other people they'll probably eventually gossip about you so you want to be able to look at people's patterns and look at their past and see trends and understand that if they've done certain things in the past they will continue to do them because we humans have compulsive behavior we were compelled to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again how do we how do we stop that pattern if we recognize it within ourselves my characters been off I've been doing something you know for years a certain way that I don't want to do anymore how do we do it so we can strengthen our character but also say you know and I believe this other person can have a stronger character through breaking a pattern or is it just not possible of course it's possible and at the end of every chapter I show you how you can turn this potentially negative quality into a positive quality so when it comes to you and your own patterns you have to first realize that you have these patterns before you can even begin to break them so awareness yeah honesty this is book about awareness and being honest with yourself if you don't admit that you have these patterns and you can't possibly break them I know in writing books I have two terrible terrible patterns like what well stressing so much over things that aren't that important obsessing stressing obsessing I take note cards for everything that I read all my research and I take way too much too much information I have like thousands of them I'm writing I have to stop missus stop being so such a perfectionist it's it's like you're wasting your time it's been book after book after book I'm very aware of it and I'm very aware of breaking that pattern but you have to see it and be honest with yourself in order to break it you know so that's the first step is seeing the pattern and then not struggling against it not trying to be somebody who you're not but finding a way to use that pattern to use that problem to your advantage similar to what Ryan holiday wrote in his book the obstacle is the way I have an example in the book of an actress Joan Crawford from the Hollywood Classical period and she had a very troubled childhood didn't know her father her mother beat her men abused her etcetera and she managed to take and it was creating terrible patterns in her life and she found a way to turn that around to use all of those disadvantages and make them make herself much stronger and very powerful performer by bringing all of the pain in her childhood into her acting by becoming so focused on the director because she had been abused she was very sensitive to other people she used that sensitivity to focus on the director and other actors to be in tune with them to connect with them to build relationship especially yeah she was very aware of her own weaknesses in her own fragility and she was able to use that as a strength so with other people it's never hopeless I mean some people are toxic I talk a lot of them about toxic characters some people those are the kinds of people that can't really change their patterns are too ingrained and we've all met people like that we've all had to deal with the narcissist who's so deeply self-absorbed there's nothing that's ever gonna save them or pull them out of their way that's self absorption unless they have like a near-death experience or they have someone close to them that's true you know something where that's true big awakening that's true or they get sick or whatever right you're right that happens that does happen sometimes sometimes it does but you have to be honest that there are people out there you can't be naive there are people out there who are toxic who are dangerous who can ruin your life and you hire the wrong person and I've dealt with a lot of in my consulting with a lot of people who hired a business partner who ended up sort of taking the business from them very common scenario you have to not be naive and recognize these toxic types and often it's best not to try and change them because trying to change them entangles you in a lot of their drama and it just it's just never gonna happen you might be trying for years and wasting your time and energy but you know people have to be able to try to change themselves you know they have to be motivated you can help illuminate some of their patterns and their problems and but it has to come from within yeah now you're talking about the law of self-sabotage yeah and you know you could self-sabotage ourselves by attracting toxic people but also what are other ways that we sabotage ourselves well it's this is a chapter about your attitude in life right and the point of that chapter is related to human nature is none of us see the world in the same way so you and I could go watch a movie it's the same movie that we're watching I love it I see something you hate it you see something else you don't experience it the same way we're watching the same world the same reality but we experience it differently everybody you meet is experiencing their world differently than you are so you have an attitude that colors what you see and some people have an attitude that tends towards the negative and I describe a negative attitude to something that's closed so you're not open to new experience you're trying to close that lens you want to you you have certain belief certain ideas about life and you're not willing to change them right because that gives you a sense of security and so you want an attitude that's expansive where you accept people you're not always judging them you're not negative about them you understand that people that can't necessarily help who they are you're open to change you're open to being into having adventure and that kind of attitude kind of gives you a certain degree of freedom so that the worst thing that happened to you and you're able to transform that into something good so what your question was how do we recognize when we're sabotaging ourselves and what's the things we do most to self-sabotage well if we have a setback or a failure in life which is inevitable do we do one of two things do we analyze ourselves and see what we did wrong and how we could change ourselves or do we immediately look outward and blame other people mm-hmm that person screwed me society doesn't like me because of these circumstances I'm I'm screwed and I can never help it it's the world it's not me that's a self sabotaging pattern of behavior because if you're always pointing fingers at other people and blaming them you're never gonna learn from your experiences and your Alba you're gonna end up being quite bitter so that's probably one of the most the main sources of other self sabotaging so you could easily say this stupid bee that stung my neck that caused this blood clot and this high-pressure me I blame the bee for this and I have it screw you bee or you could take responsibility and say well what did I do to my health leading up to the bee sting right no four years and taking full ownership and responsibility yeah that's what you're hearing yeah now the the story and the perception around the experience the way you see that movie playing out well if you having a positive attitude around it and roof being and reflecting about you the role that you played in what happened so we can't we're not in charge of everything that happens in life there are circumstances that are beyond our control right but a lot of what does happen to us is something that we do that we are responsible for their amazing studies about the role of attitude and what happens to you in life so they have this thing called the Pygmalion effect teachers who treat a student as if they are smart and gonna do well those students end up doing well right so how you treat people how you think about yourself has a great impact on what happens to you when doctors prescribed a new medication there's always the same trend that when a new medication has been invented the success rate is like 80 percent three cuz people believe in it because it's new and then like two years later it starts going down because there's none yeah it's a placebo effect so if you believe something is going to work if you believe that you're great and you're do you deserve good things that you are a good student you will end up making those things happen so how you look at yourself will often determine what ends up happening to yourself so if you're talking about so what what causes self-sabotage if you go through life thinking god I'm not really that good you know there's something wrong with me I don't really deserve good things I don't deserve to have a lot of success or to have a lot of money people read that off of you a major theme in this book is that we are masters at reading people's body language and nonverbal behavior so when somebody feels that they don't deserve things it's kind of an off-putting quality in them and it pushes people away so you create self-fulfilling dynamics by how you look at yourself in your attitude I had a chapter in the 48 laws of power called Think Like a king to be treated like one and there's a story of Christopher Columbus who came from dirt poor poverty but imagined that he was royalty and by imagining that people started treating him like that and as they treated him like that he felt even more kind of greater about himself and he was able to convince the King of Portugal to give him these ships when in fact he was sort of a mediocre ad captain so your attitude and how you think about yourself sort of determine how people treat you and what happens in life yeah I you know I would say that we're either you know Lifeson enrollment game and we're either enrolling people in our vision or unenroll people by the way we're showing up our energy our language what do you mean by enrolling I'm rolling you to come on my show yeah and getting you to come on my show because of the energy I put out the relationship we have yeah a connection the platform or unenroll you buy by the way I've treated you over the last six or seven years but yeah the platform being out of integrity or not doing that well you're not gonna be as excited to want to say yes yeah you know I'm work we're influencing people all the time you are influencing people all right yes everything you do people are reading and they're either saying I like that or I don't like yes or I'm indifferent yeah yes is like I'm enrolling you yes or I'm not enrolling you as a No and you talk about the you know the chapter that I really like is about 17% where we got here softens people's resistance no okay yeah the person the persuasive one yeah seven is that one yeah yeah the five strategy is becoming a master persuader at this one yeah right here seven yeah well you Louis don't need to read that chapter you already have had kind of mastered but I think people need to understand this yeah because I think what we just talked about right there is probably one of the most powerful parts of this whole book in my mind and in life is are you enrolling people in your vision and in being the king or queen and getting the ships that you want are you and are you stepping up and enrolling people and getting people to say yes to you yeah or your dreams or hire you or date you or marry you yeah or are you not showing up in a way that people want to say yes to you okay and I feel like key question my whole business has been built on getting people to say yes when I have nothing you know some of my sister's couch 10 years ago yeah no money yeah no skills no degree and it was an energy that I haven't learned how to just get people say yes and yeah more and then building momentum around that so I'd love to talk about this becoming a master persuader and the first thing you talk about is which I think most people aren't doing you say it's a deep and you're listening you had a better listener most people don't have the patience to care about someone else they're so concerned about what they think about that well people always talk about being a better listener and their advice is usually very weak I mean it doesn't ineffective because okay I've become a better listener yeah I'll try that but it's very hard to overcome certain patterns so I tried to tackle the question of why is it that you're not a good listener and at the root of that is you're more interested in yourself than you are in the other person you won't deny that you will say oh no no that's not me that's not me I really like people but the truth is you're more interested in your own thoughts and your own ideas things that you're so certain about your own experiences then about that other person and what they're saying and what's going on inside them if you can flip that around if you can actually feel the motivation to get inside Luis and get inside his head in his experience then you will suddenly will become a better listener that's the key not just telling people to listen more the key is the quality of the listening and the emotion involved so if I feel I want to get inside that other person inside there then suddenly you will start listening what will make you interested in other people well first off is the idea you don't know them normally when you're let's say you're on the first date with someone or or just meeting someone do you have assumptions about them you create a simplified version of who they are and that's what you think you know and that'll stay with you forever instead you want to think that person is more interesting than I imagined I their first appearance isn't really who they are they're like a book that I could read we love going to movies and getting inside other characters and what motivates them being taken along for a ride think of the people that you meet in life is a character in a movie you want to know what motivates them they are more interesting than you think they've had traumas they've had problems from their early childhood they have fantasies they have a shadow a dark side to that person either they're not revealing they're more complicated and interesting than you think so if you're motivated to understand what makes them tick with their experience suddenly you will start listening no so that's the key to me and it's not easy why is it so hard for it because for me it's it's been an easy thing because I've used my insecurities of not feeling like I was smart enough growing up because I was one of the poorer students in school yeah so is like my voice doesn't matter as much let me just ask smart people what they think right and it became a huge advantage for me right because I've learned that being the most interested person in the room you become the most interesting well the key is really so much in the book is are you motivated to change yourself do you want to become successful in life this book is trying to realign your priorities and how you look at the world normally your focus is on yourself and on your work and the techniques in your work you know the skills you have to master and I'm telling you the key to success in life is people we're a social animal you know we're like dogs or wolves or what chimpanzees were a social animal and how we interact with people will determine how far we get you can be brilliant at hacking computers or whatever but if you're terrible with people your life is gonna be hell so you are you motivated to become somebody supremely skilled at understanding and working at people with people that's the whole point of the book you have to buy into that you have to buy into the fact that you're usually bad at dealing with people you're not seeing who they are you're seeing reflections of your own your own fantasies or projections you have to admit that you're not good at dealing with people and you need to improve if you're that if you understand that and you want to change and you're motivated to get out of your shell then you can make that leap I'm in a big advocate of baby steps you're not gonna suddenly transform yourself into Bill Clinton overnight right right remember every thousands of people's names and yeah or suddenly become a great listener so every day you give yourself little tests so you have now lunch with this person who you normally find kind of boring all right for 10 minutes I'm gonna I'm gonna shut off my internal monologue and I'm gonna force myself to listen to them and I'm gonna glean some information some nugget about their character that I never understood before I'm gonna ask them about their childhood I'm not going to be like it's not gonna be that kind of Inquisition where I'm asking them you know penetrating questions but in a relaxed mood I'm gonna find out about something that really motivates them or something deep or some traumatic experience they had you you force yourself day by day to take little baby steps in which you try to learn something about people that you didn't know before yeah and get interested in them and their experiences I think a lot of people are asking the wrong questions too I think you got to start learning to ask different questions like what what do you mean I think a lot of questions are very service see and I know you wanted to keep it relaxed as well you don't need to be like tell me yeah yeah yeah it's also there's ways you can start opening that up and I think for me I know if I want to get the most out of someone I have to give the most myself to start with vulnerability are opening up in surveys I can just expect someone else to open up if I don't but I think certain questions like if you're meeting someone for the first time as opposed to what do you do or where do you work it's what are you most excited about right now yeah or what's something you've been having a challenge with in your life well the thing I tell people to look for because I'm a very big believer in nonverbal communication in the course of a conversation if you if you keep it kind of open and flowing people's eyes will light up when a certain topic is mentioned it could be their children it could be their work it could be their parent it could be something in their life that their whole body language changes they relax I know if you suddenly ask me about the Los Angeles Lakers I would I would be very excited because that's one of my deep passions in life just basketball on the Lakers yeah the people yeah my hometown guy LeBron James oh you're from Cleveland from Ohio Ohio but I how do you feel about this I feel bittersweet because I wish he stayed in Cleveland you did I wanted to win one more there but you know I live in LA now so it's nice that he's here I could go to some games and watch it that's right I didn't get to go watch games and Cleveland so that's right so I'm like you know if he's gonna go anywhere that's right yes right that's good yeah yeah I didn't used to like the Prophet now I love it but no you love it great where in the world yes do you light up about there look at you getting excited talking you can see it if somebody it advertently brought that up they could see like oh wow look at talk for hours about the Lakers you know but there everybody has a topic like that it could be something a little more intellectual or more interesting than sports but look for you're not paying attention to people's body language is another thing so as an observer as a good listener you're not just hearing their words you're looking at their eyes their facial expressions I have a chapter on that how to differentiate between the fake smile and the genuine smile Wow it's very real you know a real smile lights up the whole face it alters how the eyes look you want to see when you get something like that or when you've done the opposite you get that and scowling microexpression but people aren't observant they're there in their own shell they're not seeing people are constantly giving out signs of their likes their diversions you know their values and you're missing them because you're not paying attention it's because we're too obsessed with how we look or what other people are judging about us is yeah why we're closed off or not observant I think it becomes kind of a habit and that's the main part of it that we're worried about how we look and how they're judging us but also part of that habit is you know life is difficult in this world in the modern world we are absorbing too much information on our phones etc and and and and it's very you know competitive world out there so naturally we turn inward naturally we're thinking about ourselves we're thinking about what we need to do you know our own anxieties or they're talking and I'm thinking about [ __ ] I have to I kind of changed that appointment tomorrow kind of thing cuz you're thinking about your own problems etc and naturally so but the whole thing is is my books are all about getting outside of yourself and finding other people more interesting than yourself in some ways yeah I'm always doing that yeah well you don't you don't need this book yeah I know I think you you know for me I do need this book because there's always another level of like what am I missing what am I not seeing and how can I get to where I want to be faster you talk about infect people with yet the proper mood yeah what does that mean and how do we do this well this is a key to influence and persuasion I'm trying to make the case in this book that human nature that we are animals that we have an animal side to our nature that you have to understand and we are extremely vulnerable to the emotions and moods of other people I trace that back to how we evolved as primates and hand the need our ancestors had for understanding the moods of the people in the group or the tribe before language was in so we're extremely vulnerable to the moods and attitudes of other people if someone visits us and they're in a depressed mood it will tend to lower our energy we've all had the experience think of it yourself you go through life and you encounter ten different people and there's always one in those 10 people that kind of makes you feel happy the moment you meet them an old friend or whomever while you're smiling you're laughing though your mood changes then there's one 10 that every time you meet them they feel like man your mood changes in a bad way badly well it's because you're feeling something it's not just the fact that you're a friend there's something nonverbal going on our moods are extremely contagious and so you can persuade people more through you infecting them with your mood than through your words true words are not necessarily the best means of influence energy energy the way you show attitude it's like if there's a negative room or people having a negative conversation there's 10 people and someone enters it with a positive energy and just starts connecting with each person you see the mood lifts in a positive way right but it also be if everyone's having a good time and one person comes down and it's like just being negative and taking everyone down and saying stupid stuff you're like we've all been through that then everyone's mood goes down again goes back to life is an enrollment game you're either enrolling people in the way you want to show up right they're enrolling you and that energy well so this is this should be like a really exciting concept to you but the reader because what it means is you think you can alter people by how you approach them with your energy absolutely right so I mean I wrote about that a lot in the art of seduction Errol Flynn was probably the greatest seducer that ever lived if we counted the number of women he slept with his close to 3,000 Wow and he only died when he was 50 so if you do the math it's really insane he was an unbelievable seducer and I researched this as deeply as I could wide and women would write memoirs about it which there's been they said being around Errol Flynn was like having drunk three martinis he was so relaxed and so comfortable with himself he had a kind of animal spirit where he was just really himself and very comfortable very open that being around him you just you felt all of your resistance and all your defenses just melting away there were other great cities like Duke Ellington was like that so on the level of seduction and and manic male or female how you approach them your mood more than what you say about yourself and your own insecurities will have a much greater impact more than the pickup lines or whatever it's like what I believe so the confidence a relaxed unde offensive quality is will go very far I remember how did he how did he die alcohol Wow he was just he was a major alcoholic he drank himself to death if I was unfulfilled huh he's probably unfulfilled but yeah 3,000 women it could be kind of it gets kind of soulless out gosh yeah he was a great he's a very interesting character but I remember I was in Paris when I was 21 I was living there I was working in a hotel there was a man it was a hotel where all the models stayed and there was this Brazilian man who was obsessed with all the models in the hotel and he was the greatest seducer I've ever seen in my life and one day I was walking down the street with him and some other friends and this other woman came running up she realized he was a seducer and was not had not been honest and was cheating on her and I will never forget how he responded he was so relaxed and so undefensible he didn't apologize he was just this is who I am a more or less in his body language and she completely relaxed and changed you know and I got normally it would have been this yelling match and he completely diffused it with his sort of relaxed attitude you know so it's a whole language that you need to master is how your moods infect other people and I tell people experiment with that yeah normally with this one person you're locked in a dynamic where you always are kind of reacting the same way trying next time approaching them with a completely different mood think something differently about them suddenly force yourself to think that this person is really really like good-looking and exciting and seductive and you'll see that you're thinking of them in a certain way will change how they respond to you those are being defensive and guarded and reactive and a mental yeah and you said you do not judge other people you accept them as they are well that's a key throughout the whole book you're not gonna influence people if you're judging them right that's the key through the whole book the book starts with a quote from Schopenhauer meaning that if you come across people who are bad just think of them as or as talks or just think of them as what kind of mineral that your exceed that you're encountering that you're a scientist people are all different you're not going to change them they are who they are because of their circumstances and instead of judging everyone learn to accept them and to kind of understand that you you are fatal you were flawed and so are they so kind of get rid of your superiority yeah cuz that's not going to influence them if you're trying to persuade them to do something judging them and making them wrong is only gonna make people more defensive right well that's true but the other point is your superior or your sense of superiority is usually not justified mm-hmm I'm making the point in this book the the number one thing about human nature is that we tend to deny that there is such a thing I'm not aggressive I'm not narcissistic I never feel Envy I don't have a bad side to meets other people right right I don't have any of these bad qualms do that with all yeah you have these qualities as well as anyone else if you can be honest with yourself you'll be a little more humble and realize you're not so perfect and not superior which will make you less judgmental about other people yeah and you said you just talked about this but thinking of the person in the best light as their generous and caring or thinking that they're good-looking you know thinking that you help you your energy show up in a different way to potentially persuade them it will alter the dynamic of the conversation right I have a story in there of of in the next chapter of this great Russian writer Chekhov who came from the worst the poorest circumstances his father beat him every day he lived in the most miserable village in Russia and then his family abandoned him to go to Moscow and left him alone in this in his village and he said God I could end up being the most the most bitter person and hating everybody and hating my life and I don't want to let that happen to me this is a chapter about how she had to change her attitude and instead I'm gonna accept my father I'm gonna learn to love him he grew up under terrible circumstances he's beating me because his father beat him I'm gonna understand him and I'm going to accept him and I'm going to love him I'm gonna do the same about my mother I'm gonna do the say about my alcoholic brother and then he moved to Moscow to be with them and he moved into this house with eight people who were miserable fighting bitter hating toxic and his attitude and his acceptance of them completely altered everything he got his father out of the house and into a better job he changed his you know he got his his siblings to start reading and to think of higher things than just their petty feelings he changed the dynamic by how he how he thought of them well one person can change the whole dynamic that's right or the whole dynamic can change the one person that's right and you say that when you want to persuade someone they can't feel like they're being coerced or manipulated they must choose to do whatever it is you want them to do or they must at least experience it as as their choice well this is the key to this particular chapter but it's a key to the whole book is people have what I call a self opinion they have a way that they look at themselves I said there are three universals to this self opinion practically every human being has them number one we all think that were autonomous that when we make a decision we weren't manipulated we did it on our own were independent number two that were intelligent that were smart that we know what we were doing it doesn't mean that you feel like you're an intellectual a plumber thinks that he knows plumbing better than anyone that makes him feel like he's intelligent in his own way and the third is that were good people that we treat people well now none of these might be true but we all tend to believe them that that's who we are then there'll be other components to that oh I'm very independent self-reliant person or I am a great rebel I'm anti-authoritarian etc so you have an opinion about yourself and if someone tries says something that challenges that opinion of yourself inadvertently if they make you feel that you're kind of stupid or that you don't know what you're talking about or that you're you're doing something because you were manipulated that you didn't choose to do it or that you're really not such a good person we will suddenly get extremely defensive and closed off and nothing at you will ever say or do will it change that well you can even turn into hatred or some like bitter feelings most of the time we're going around and we're not doing that but we're not necessarily feeding people's self opinion the number one need that humans have I want you to remember this is to feel validated by other people with all one need though number one need William James the great psychologist so that it's not just me people want to feel recognized and validated by other people we can feel good about ourselves but if we don't get that from other people if they don't validate that we're smart intelligent independent it's hard to feel that so we're all craving that validation constantly constantly if you're able to give people some of that validation if you're able to feed their self opinion without being a flatterer because you know people do have good qualities and you can actually recognize them but if you can validate their self opinion suddenly their defenses down in have room to maneuver them to persuade them to influence them you talk about being ally to their insecurities and you say by by praising and flattery is a great strategy like you just said but not there's praise and strategy but there's manipulation so what's the dance between the two well if you flatter someone and it's clear that that it's you're after something you've already validated theirs so are you already violated their self opinion because it's clear that that you think that there's someone that can be manipulated so you're telling them oh you're not so independent as you think I can I can trick you and that doesn't work if we see through some obvious flattery so like white or someone and then say oh can you do this for me right after well that's that's that's pretty obvious yeah but also if you flatter someone about something that everybody flatters them about that it's clear what you're after that you're you're doing something so you want to find those qualities that no one's been flattering them about but that they feel insecure about uncertain about right no what would that be for you Luis oh man probably like that I'm a good writer you know it's like I believe that I'm a good writer huh but it's like I'm not as good as you you know it's like I'm not as like a right Holliday or so now all of your listeners know that yeah tell me completely exactly so to get to that point though you have to understand people you have to see who they are you have to understand what their insecurities would be generally you don't want to flatter people about what everybody else is flattering them about yeah it's too obvious yeah so sometimes for instance a person will be very is very Machiavellian it's very clever and strategic and if you flatter them about that think you know that you know that's you know who they are etcetera huh you're actually gonna insult them because they don't want to think of themselves as being Machiavellian they think that they're doing these things for a good cause for a good reason so you want to find a different Avenue a different way of approaching them to say wow you won that election and because you you're gonna do great things with it you know flattering their ID their values their sense of goodness the impact you're making yeah how you're helping people yeah yeah I think it's I think it's figuring that out and figuring out what's and the way you do that is by being a good listener I think yeah I know good observer yeah but not just observing the obvious but observing the unobvious right you have to get out of your own self to be interested in someone else yeah all these things are interconnected that we start talking about and then you talk about using people's resistance and stubbornness they are often most people with deeper levels of insecurity and low self opinion well this is tricky this is kind of advanced influence this is like advanced seduction yeah that's where it's basically reverse psychology okay and yet the best example is like a rebellious teenager who doesn't want to do their homework who doesn't want to be told what to do you have to realize that are you telling them what to do feeds into their rebellious nature and just makes them more defensive but if you go with their resistance and go with their feeling of being a rebel you can actually work within their mindset and get them to change and have an example of a student who's thrown out of school because he's not studying hard enough and and the teacher says he's gonna have to do all of this work at home in order to graduate and he's gonna have to study at home but I can't have him in school because he's like dealing drugs etc and the kid is like god damn it I'm not gonna study at all [ __ ] that guy you know I'm just gonna be a slacker and his mother went to an aunt a psychologist who trained her about how to use reverse psychology and said look you try and get him to study we'll make him worse dude try this approach try telling him that the teacher wants him to fail the teacher gave him all of this work knowing that he would succeed because he knows you're a slacker and if you could prove him wrong can you imagine how great that will feel to show that that [ __ ] up so if you study hard and actually graduate you'll make him look like a fool and it worked it worked yeah Wow I mean that's proving people wrong is some of the most powerful energy and fire that I think Redmon's have I think that's that's what's my entire life was proving everyone wrong about like kids who made fun of me and bullies and can I be sexually abused me and all these things I wasn't gonna prove everyone wrong well and it worked a motivator it worked until it didn't until I realized man I'm still suffering inside I'm not fulfilled it wasn't until about five years ago when I started opening up about everything I was insecure about or holding on to and frustrated about when I realized like okay yeah that got me where I'm at and it helped me accomplish a lot of things but I'm still in fulfilled and when I started to say how can I prove people right and lift other people up whether they doubted me or hurt me or not and focused on that energy that's when I be able became so much more fulfilled so much more peaceful and more driven impact more people as opposed to prove a handful of people wrong that's right well the sort of a lot of what I'm talking about in the book is your ability to be aware of yourself and honest with yourself and say that this isn't ultimately fulfilling right and that what I think is this strong thing is actually a weakness of mine and I'm gonna work against that that's sort of the whole point of the book is knowing who you are knowing your weaknesses knowing what has what really motivates you because it was your self-awareness that was able to make you change yeah and my self-awareness in the beginning for thirty years I was like this is the way I need in order for me to achieve was there was a particular experience that provoked this I mean I was sexually abused when I was five by man my brother was in prison for four years and I didn't have friends during that time because the neighborhood parents want to let their kids hang out with me yeah I was you know in the special needs classes all through elementary school and had a tutor through college because I couldn't read and write well so just getting a feeling like very insecure around you know everything I wasn't a good student I didn't learn in the structure that school was built for us I learned from sports so I put all my energy into proving people wrong in sports because I could learn from moving my body from listening to a coach and applying it right then and failing and learning and and that structure was a better format for learning for me what was this something that happened five years ago that oh yeah five years ago I started I went through a I I read about this and my both masks of masculinity and talked about it many times but I had a bad fight I was playing basketball down the street pickup game with a bunch of people and got a bad fight like a real fist fight and blood everywhere and Wow and I had some wakening and right afterwards of fear I was like what did I just do I think I find using the instigator we are both kind of the heirs he hit me first but we're like you know talking trash the whole game and hard fouling and you know playing a hard game but he actually hit me first so that but who knows I instigate diffused this this rejection at anytime I got it backed away I could have been calmer or all these things so that made you reassess yourself yeah it made me realize I'd achieved all these things I was you know successful or whatever with these accomplishments but I was like why am I still angry why am I still right why am I still reactive to this nonsense that's nothing it's a little pick a basketball game and yet I take it so personally yeah and feel like this person is attacking my masculinity my manhood my life my credibility everything well that's why I would defend myself Wow anytime someone said something negative out me either defend myself Wow it's kinda like my whole life though right now I was a joyful happy guy but when that happened it was a trigger well so and my friend was like I don't wanna hang out with you anymore cuz he was there uh-huh it was like every time we play basketball you get in a fight Wow you react or you say something or you shove some or whatever Wow and so I said I need to take a look at my life and I started going to workshops I started doing emotional intelligence I mean I started working a therapist okay she is and I was just like I need to see what's the root of look the key is here's that decision that you were not gonna let this become a pattern that was it and a lot of people could have reacted the opposite way right so what's what makes you different from others is someone could write a whole book about yeah I'm I'm a student of life to you like I always want to learn right I realized that's something that was holding me back like I'd achieved a certain level of success or adults but it's still couldn't sleep at night I was still hurting inside I was fulfilled and I was like well I thought once you achieve these things yeah like you feel better yeah like these are dreams that have had for years that why don't I feel good now well that's a thing yeah and I think it was like I turned 30 I was going through a breakup in a relationship that I moved here for in LA I remember then I was in a business breakup as well with my partner and I was like huh why you know I'm the common denominator for everything going wrong with my life right right like so you saw your own patterns I saw it and and I think that was my you know not near-death experience of like getting in this fight but it was like an awakening well this fight see sometimes it takes something physical like you you could feel the the fist on your face and you the feeling of shame oh these are powerful chemical reactions that you'll feel twenty years from now and so that can wake you up hopefully it doesn't take that much for other people but sometimes it does sometimes it does yeah and luckily you know the guy was the guy was far I mean there was blood everywhere and everything but the police station was right across the street and I was just like I could lose everything like what if this guy and a knife what if the press charges or what that you know it's like what's the point of this you see that this is something I talked about in the book a lot is there's almost like a stranger inside of you a person that acts and you don't even know who they are like in those moments you're not Lewis now who is this and it could happen tomorrow still right where you could get in a situation where that will happen and what or does that come from well there are are things like that in everybody we're certain circumstances certain events will trigger something in you and you'll act in a way that you don't even understand like I never did that before why am I doing this right you know why am i falling in love with the absolute worst woman that I could possibly you know involve in my life why am I taking this career job path that's making me miserable why am I getting into fights why am I suddenly getting angry I'm saying that these are forces inside of you human nature that you don't understand that are compelling you to behave in certain ways and your only way outside is to understand what's going on inside a news Wow and that's why this book is so important you have so many other great chapters in here I want to ask you a couple more questions and then we can wrap it up this one on you know advance with a sense of purpose as a law you talked about the law of aimlessness and I think you know for me having a clear vision or at least a vision that you think is clear for a certain amount of time is one of the most powerful things we can have because if we are aimless then we're screwed I feel like yeah well the problem for human beings is you know an animal a cat or a dog they don't have to wake up in the morning and decide what they're gonna do right Oh am I gonna eat this food am I gonna go for a walk whatever their life is sort of programmed either who they are genetically etc we humans don't have that kind of programming we are not given any kind of natural guidance in life we could wake up and we could not go to work tomorrow we could suddenly do whatever we want if we felt so inclined so we have to create our own sense of purpose and that purpose can't come from the outside if our parents tell us you need to do this this and this or a teacher tells us it's not going to connect to something deep within us and it might work for a while but home we're 25 will feel empty and Hollow because we're not it's not something from within and we learn that yeah so the trick in life is figuring out what you were meant to do I maintain and this is something that I go into great depth and mastery in Chapter one in mastery but I also in this book mr. figure every human is different every human has a different genetic code their brains are wired differently there are parents no two people have the same parents who raised them a certain way you are different you have something very unique about you that uniqueness exists for a purpose if you follow that if you use your uniqueness in some way you will create something probably pretty interesting and pretty great right but if you follow what everyone else is doing you will be like everyone else you will become a lawyer because your parents say you are should and when you're 29 you'll feel you won't feel connected to it and you'll see that they're eight million other lawyers doing the same thing and you'll be 32 and you'll be drinking and you'll look gain weight and you'll lose also and your life will go downhill from there because it's your life yeah my parents would have liked me to become a lawyer Yeah right so you know how do you find that voice I call it a voice that's telling you who you are or what you need to do how do you find it well it's listening first of all so you when you were young you were generally attracted to certain to certain activities or pursuits I call it in in mastery primal inclinations it's a voice inside of you saying you should do this you are attracted to that there's a book that I recommend by a man named Howard Gardner called the five frames of intelligence he mentions that their five forms of intelligence one that has to do with mathematics patterns one is kinetic with sports one is social and do with people want us to do with words there's a fifth one I don't remember everyone has a brain that is inclined towards one of the five that's like your main strength for you it might have been kinetic which was sports and activity and physical action we tend to emphasize in our culture until intellectual as a form of intelligence but being really good with your hands or being really good at sports is a form of intelligence you are naturally drawn to one of these five forms you have to know what that is and when you were very young you felt naturally drawn to certain things when I was a kid I was drawn to words I was obsessed with language and words and I was obsessed with strategy mm-hmm with warfare and war games and sports and so you know eventually that's sort of what I ended up couldn't ended up doing you know Tiger Woods when he was a year and a half old and I saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage and he went berserk he felt this like primal attraction to it I having many examples of famous people you probably had that in your life but as you get older you start listening to your friends and you teacher your parents and you're not hearing that voice anymore and all you're hearing is what other people tell you who you should be what they think is cool and you lose a connection to what makes you unique and what who you are your uniqueness is your source of power the further you deviate from that uniqueness the weaker you will become you'll become like other people Wow so the game in life is to know who you are to gather skills and train yourself and be disciplined and by the time you reach your age of 30 you you have a lot of creative energy and you're able to take all the things that you've learned and create something unique like you did with your school of greatness it I was 36 when I started writing the 48 laws of power so it took me a little bit longer than that well you obsessed a little more of a things that's why perfectionist let's really let that get away yeah well I had a little more failure than most people have took me a little longer I'm a little slow it's okay work in your advantage that's powerful I like that so lean into you're curious the things that you were curious about as a kid and go back into the one of those five things figure out what it is yeah and start pursuing that more I also know what you don't like yeah you don't like working in a group or people where everything's political well then maybe you need to be an entrepreneur work for yourself and start your own business so the things that you dislike show you a lot about who you are mmm I like that a lot because I think a lot of people right now there have too many options yeah I'm passionate about everything how do I know which direction to go yeah and that's like a downfall in itself is just like law figured out how to choose one direction there's people that don't have they don't know what their passion is they're like how do I find my passion and there's people have lots of passions right basically in the same boat they are I'm not doing either anything that's right and it's hard because especially with the internet and all the access to information you can get the excited about so many things go I could direct a film oh I could you know write a screenplay oh I could win a political election etc no you can't you can't do everything you're not meant to do everything in life you are not Leonardo da Vinci there's probably one or two or three things that you need to focus on but you need to find that thing to focus on focusing on one activity is not something that should frighten you we should liberate you because by developing solid skills in one area you now have power to maybe branch out to something else and combine different skills if you are somebody if you're something that gets easily bored in just one straight path you can follow this path of doing different things but you have to master each level before you can advance yeah and and if you are scattered in your passion or your direction or your vision you will influence less people the more powerful we become in one area the more influential you become and with lots of people isn't that right that's right well finish with with this topic and then I'll ask you my final couple questions because there's a lot of people that are looking to build a business or build a following with social media you have a chapter that says make them want to follow you how do we make people want to follow us whether it be offline online you know buying into our business or products or services or books yeah following us on social media listening to our podcast how do we do that well you have to understand human nature that's the key yeah understanding nature yes people don't want to be forced or coerced or manipulated they want to feel that they're coming to something on their own so if you create this podcast and you go out there and you get all this advertising etc and you force people you force yourself down people's throats with your presence yeah yeah yeah yeah this guy's trying to are not so interested but if you create a viral buzz we're sort of you promoting yourself I go outgo while Luis was the best interview but you are you one of the best interviewers around thank you I believe that appreciate a thing and I realized because that was six years ago I remember I'm the one going out and promoting you suddenly that carries so much more power so you have to understand that you don't want so oftentimes this is a chapter about leadership often as a leader your impulse is to yell at people and make them do things do your bidding and that creates defensive resentful bitter people you want them to want to join your force to do to join the group to follow the group's path to you know to get into line on their own honor of their own volition they follow you and so you have to understand that first of all you're dealing with individuals you can't compel you have three people who work for you you can't do the same thing with each person you have to play to their psychology you have to create a cause people don't want to feel like they're doing something for money it makes its kind of soulless and mercenary right if oh I'm going to listen to Lewis's podcast because I'm gonna become a millionaire but you'll get some people but a lot of people will find that kind of empty but if you say I don't you listen to my podcast and you're gonna help humanity you're gonna change the world you're gonna feel great about yourself people are gonna love you you're appealing to things that motivate people right so you have to understand that you have to get them to to to join a cause basically that's that's I mean I have more things in the chapter yeah yeah that's the essence of it yeah you talk also about a dark shadow is that you calling a shadow side or dark shadow the shadow side what is it what is that mean and what is your shadows well your shadow side came out of the basketball court very clear credible Hulk yeah yeah so yeah it's a very important concept basically it means when we were children we were two or three years old we were like a complete individual we felt all this range of emotions anger hate love this joy depression and we tended to express it as children often to all the time right yeah and then our parents intervened say because a child who just does what he wants it is always expressing it can be kind of irritating and you you you want to sleep and you want you have your own cares so you're telling the child stop that behavior stop being like that you know be a good boy be a good girl study harder and so you start to repress certain qualities in yourself in order to please your parents in order to please other people those qualities could be your aggressiveness your natural assertiveness they could be your your kind of dramatic you know tendencies or whatever nature yeah your what your theater needs yeah you kind of repress them you try to be who you something that will please other people and as you repress that other part of your character it goes into what we call the shadow it doesn't disappear nothing ever disappears it just is not immediately visible it forms the dark side of your character there's the moon that we always see in the sky and there's the Dark Side of the Moon that we don't see but the Dark Side of the Moon doesn't exist it's still there just we don't see it everybody has the dark their dark side and it comes from these qualities that they were repressed when they were younger and it will come out later in life in sudden bursts of anger like you on the basketball field all right or it'll come out you know in a relationship for instance you might have felt like your parents didn't really love you and you're worried that that you were worried with a childhood that you're a irrational fear that they would abandon you and then you form a relationship later with a woman and she's slightly cold to you but not for any reason to have to do with you maybe she's in a bad mood you assume that she's about to abandon you because you have that fear and you lash out and you get angry and you like basically instigate a breakup in advance because you don't want to deal with that pain of going through it you don't want to have to be a band you want to be to be the one abandoning right well that's your shadow side coming out everybody has it and you'll notice it when people do something that seems out of character they will lash out they will get angry they will do something self-destructive they will say as we said earlier oh that's not me and if something came over me but no that is them that is their shadow acting out that person on the basketball court wasn't somehow mr. X who suddenly invaded Louis surviving right it was Louis it was more Louis than what we normally see normally we see the nice Pleasant those yeah the real Louis suddenly came out of my desk and you saw it well everybody has that and you want to see that in people you want to see that there anika you want to see their shadow understand that that that they're not as the nice is nice and wonderful as they say they are not to judge them but to be aware and you want to see your own shadow so you can use it so you can be aware of it so you can overwhelm it Wow what's your shadow son that's a good question I've had to deal a little bit with my shadow side now because I suffered a stroke about two months ago and my shadow side is I feel like I'm I have an incredible need to be independent and self-reliant and if I don't feel that way if I feel like I'm trapped that I can't do something I get really angry and really can be vicious and violent so the sense something is stripping or stepping on my independence or autonomy can trigger that Louis how basketball RIA Hall comes out the ho comes out everyone has to suffer that huh well I had to deal with it I've had to deal with the fact that I am dependent that I am like a baby right now that I can I have to rely on people but there are the things that I can do for myself still but there's small things that's part of it then the other shadow side is the hyper perfectionist in me that's always trying to please and make the absolute perfect book you know well they're pretty amazing they're pretty amazing so that it's paying off in some ways but at what cost also was the price you have to pay yeah with that well I guess right yeah but you know as I said before we were the first talking I'll take that price you know because I created something that I wanted to do I did something that means meant a lot to me and I knew I was kind of hurting myself physically but I still did it it's like you're going off to war what will make a man a person man or woman go into battle knowing that you you could die the greater purpose yeah so you give up your body for some football players give up your body for something greater and it's not a bad feeling yeah what's the thing you're most proud of that most people don't know about Wow well that's a good question I try to make you think about the Haitian nobody I'm thinking about thinking of pros well I don't like Tooting my own horn mmm I don't like saying how wonderful I am at all if you had to but the thing that you most probably you know what people assume because I wrote the 48 laws of power they have this image that I'm kind of this [ __ ] mm-hmm I'm sort of this manipulative Machiavellian [ __ ] who goes around trying to get the better of people that I know every trick in the book that if I'm late for a meeting I'm doing that on purpose like GA yeah and actually I'm a really nice person you know I'm kind of a puppy yeah I'm not like that at all you know I can be tough when I have to be but it's kind of my father my father was a really nice person he wasn't weak but he was just really nice so I could I don't know if I'm proud of that but that's sort of a side of me that people don't know I'm not uh not as much an [ __ ] yeah yeah that's good could be proud of being a nice guy your shadow side is the manipulative strategist that's right that's right that is right that's actually more accurate that would be my shadows there yeah what's the question you wish more people would ask you they never ask Wow anytime you get Robert Greene and say wow that's a good sign kaliesha people to ask you wish people would ask you yeah or you wish you could answer more man you see the problem for me is my books cover so many different topics that people generally ask about everything I mean a lot of it has to do with you know because I've spent my whole life listening to other people and writing about other people I don't really talk about myself very much so sort of talking about my own experiences and how I formed myself I did that in a TED talk and it was very difficult for me it's very unnatural mm-hm but in this TED talk I discussed how I arrived at where I am right now and so they I don't get to talk a lot about because I don't like to talk about myself that much but that's for a question I don't get so much how you arrived where you're at right now yeah how I ended up writing little kind of books that I write I remember you telling me about this six years ago where you had done a lot of different things that were all failures ready oh I think were like a newspaper writer or like a screenplay writer and moving all these different things and you were like 70% good at all of them but they weren't really that great yeah and then they all kind of magically showed up at 36 to writing like this different book that no one really wanted but then it was like a big hit yeah I mean the thing was goes back to this thing about uniqueness that we were talking about how I've never felt like I was like other people I've always felt like an oddball I never did what my parents told me to do I left college and went and lived in Europe I'm gonna graduate but I live in Europe and I just wandered around I never listened to what people told me to do and so when it came time to writing this book this man who was my partner in writing it who packaged it he sort of asked me if I had an idea for a book and I kind of explained my ideas about power I decided to make it something very weird and unique different than was in the market and yeah like you could hate the 48 laws of power but you can honestly no one has ever written like that the structure with the stories the sections the quotes the things on the side and I got a lot of grief for that the publishers go I don't think this will work and we want you to change you want to be more like other books and so I've stuck to my guns and I said no I'm gonna go down syncing with Who I am mmm if this works it's because I'm weird and I'm unique and it succeeded so the idea that and then after the 48 laws of power the neg the logical thing was to put 48 laws of power part two and to sort of kind of mine what I'd already done said no I'm gonna go in a new direction so I'm constantly challenging myself and following my own path I'm a weirdo people don't realize maybe how weird I really am only my wife kind of that truly weird I am sure so maybe that's to answer your question I like that how truly strange and weird I am but that's the path to achieving something great is leaning into your uniqueness I think so I mean you could go too far right don't gotta reach the masses and something I could have written poetry or poets right now that are selling good millions of cop okay I repeat core have you seen her yeah she sold millions of copies to books I think we're number one your time best soda poetry pen take that back nobody would've been good for you yeah this is a question I ask at the end it's called the three truths I didn't ask you this last time because I didn't have this question so imagine you live as long as you want there for as many years as you want but at some point you get to choose the day it's the last day for you and you've written every book that you can think of they've all been bestsellers they've all you know millions of copies like you've already done and then some yeah you've done it all and you say okay it's been good like time to go and for whatever reason you got to take all of your work with you so no one has access to your work anymore you've got to bring it with you hypothetical but you get to write down on a piece of paper the three truths from everything that you've learned in your life from all of your books all of your messages your work your insights all your weirdness that you are the three things you know to be true about life and this would be the only thing that you would leave behind for everyone to have Robert Greene's three truths or life lessons what would you say are your truths well there's a weird kind of law that governs the universe which is what you give to the world is sort of what you get right so we are more active than we think we are we are more responsible for what happens to us than we think we are and so the things that have worked for me in life when I've sort of been aware of that and through my attitude through you know like the pattern of my life is kind of foggy with all of the failures but overall there was a there was a reason behind it there was a purpose and I followed that purpose unconsciously maybe consciously to some degree and it led to where I am today but that there is something a feeling that I had that there is something kind of guiding me and I can't put my words I can't put my finger on it something was guiding me to where I ended up today even from when I was five years old so I've always had a feeling of like fate and destiny for better or for worse and it happened so that's that's one the other truth is that is that we tend I tend and other people who tend to be too nice in life too indulgent with other people too nice we don't ask for enough we we we feel like we don't deserve much in life it's and we let people push us around I was pushed around a lot because I was sort of a naive writer type who didn't understand that there are bad people out there so one of the things I had to learn in life and that are the source for my work is that there are bad people out there and you have to recognize that that there are narcissists that there are aggressive people that are are passive-aggressive people that they are envious and you you have to be aware of that and you have to be strong enough to deal with them and by not being able to deal with those kind of people your life can be completely ruined one awful toxic person one bad relationship can ruin you for life you internalize the negative energy so the ability to stand up for yourself and to be aware and to understand that not everyone has the best intentions and that you're going to be more strategic and not always kind of just accepting what people give you was a major source of wisdom for me and all of my books come from a bit of anger you know and I think the reader can feel the anger in them and anger is kind of an intoxicating emotion I even talking to Paul Coates can be a positive emotion when when my writing is angry it's very real and you can feel it so I've been able to take that kind of sense of there are people out there who are hurtful and use that anger and turn it into something positive into a book I was sort of the second cut down yeah final truth final truth well for the world to know well I'd say one thing was kind of religious and the other things I've said and then we'd I did write a book about this but it has to do with the role of fear in my life and what I've been afraid of and I come from a background of my parents were kind of anxious somewhat fearful people and I tend to internalize that and to worry about what will happen next to other people will like me and is the degree that I overcame that fear and did something bold and unusual I've kind of become more of who I am and kind of achieved things so I've always been one to confront my fears like I have great fears now of walking because if I fall it's very easy for me to fall I could be finished you know break something that I can my stroke will know I'll never get over I've got to get over them I got to keep walking and walking and get over my fear I was afraid of being alone or being in a situation I had no control over so when I was 22 years old I went and lived on the island of Crete in Greece in with a backpack and sleeping in caves well I'm kind of being alone and sort of cutting myself off from the world was something I'd greatly feared and I kind of overcame that fear so sort of the ability for me to look up confront when I'm most afraid of has been a great source of power I'm not great at it there's still many fears that that haunt me but instead of kind of giving in to them always kind of confronting them and moving past them to control your fears yeah well cover three you covered three so beautiful make sure you guys get this book the laws of human nature's out right now very powerful I recommend getting a couple copies to give to friends as well because the key to life is relationships and this is the key to understanding people and understanding how to be better in relationships so get this book it's going to transform the way you move through life we can follow you on Instagram Twitter where do you spend time at or where do you always have a website in which everything is followed into I've had it for years its power seduction and war the Anne spelled out calm those are my first three books power seduction an war.com there's a Sun you'll find there a site for mastery and for the new book great and you spending time on social media at all or now yeah and I'm the Facebook and Twitter and Instagram Instagram but I'm not as active as I should be but I'm there what's your handle on Instagram will find and link it up people yeah I don't even know what it is on Twitter I just have it on my phone I wolf I mission call your name so yeah long acknowledge you before I ask the final question own technology Robert for constantly showing up and creating masterpieces because these books truly transform lives and millions of people talk about them read them and they improve their life because of the information that you obsess over whether that's good or bad but your ability to dive into a topic is unbelievable so I acknowledge you for your your care and attention to detail taking the to impact people's lives Thank You Liz I just want to make sure you take care of your health moving forward but it's amazing everything you've done I'm grateful for our friendship over the years yeah yeah yeah and just you know everything that's happening so I saw you and you were just a little you're my first episode yes I appreciate you for giving me my first chance of it was an honor I'm so proud of it thank you thank you the final question is what is your definition of greatness well it's kind of what we've already talked about so I feel like everybody has the potential for greatness and greatness would mean something a little bit larger than what you've already done for going a little bit beyond what you've already created going a little bit past your limits great implies kind of size and largeness and so everybody has the potential for greatness I don't care who you are or or the bad circumstances of your childhood and greatness is realizing your own potential I don't care what that is it could be in being the best possible parent it could be in using your hands and creating some beautiful work of art or some great bit of craftsmanship it could be in writing a book or creating a great podcast but it's something larger than what you were 10 years ago you've expanded your boundaries you've expanded your own limits you've pushed them a little bit further so to me that's greatness I made this a circle I didn't explain it in the book because I said human nature kind of contains us it creates a limit for us we can't become a chimpanzee or a sheep we are human and this is a limiting factor but by knowing the laws of human nature you can begin to explore a little bit further out and become something a little bit more you can take your irrational nature and become more reasonable and rational well go on pushing a little bit past your limits and expanding like a balloon just a little further that's greatness to me not accepting but moving past your own limits while we're green thank you man Thank You Louis great thank you you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 595,900

Rating: 4.87186 out of 5

Keywords: robert greene, lewishowes, the school of greatness, 48 laws of power, mastery, ny times best selling author, power of seduction, self help, 50th law, art of seduction, lewis howes, laws of human nature, self development, personal development, lewis howes interview, robert greene podcast, motivational speech, the 50th law, robert greene interview, inspiration, motivation, self improvement, inspirational video, motivational video, success habits, success advice, success tips

Id: 0yGF_97WX4k

Length: 96min 36sec (5796 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018