The SECRET to Mastering Your DARK SIDE | Robert Greene on The Icons

the number one question I get is from you particularly younger people saying I don't really understand what my life's task is I call that a master your life's task please help me Robert you have to be patient it's not going to come like a light bulb in your head ah I was meant to do this I was meant to write the 48 Laws of Power that's not how it works so I like to tell people to go back to their earliest childhood memories of things that really excited them before they got mixed up with parents and teachers and all that other people telling them stuff Robert Greene is an author and master guide for millions of readers and some of them very high profile he's written six International bestsellers that are so powerful they have become legendary the icons a show where we learn life lessons from those who've achieved iconic success in the locations that bring their stories to life my name is Tyler Waite we're in Los Angeles moments from Robert's door I've been looking forward to this conversation Robert Greene welcome to the icons by motiversity thank you for having me Tyler my pleasure it's a pleasure for us as well yeah it took a while to get this whole thing set up it makes it that much sweeter when it happens okay all right hopefully yeah that's right now you wrote books you know now looking back over a couple decades ago you started kind of your your book writing career and they were immediately captivating you started to explore some of the kind of darker side of human nature what do you think Drew down that path well it's a complicated story but mostly I had been working in Hollywood prior to writing that first book and that's what kind of Drew me to the darker side of human nature to be honest um but in general I saw this kind of paradox or this kind of dichotomy in our culture where people don't want to talk about that element pertaining to power to people in power to politics particularly to culture where it's all supposed to be about the art and everything is so elevated so it's like it's a repressed thing you know we'll talk about sex we'll talk about the you know any any kind of Divergent human behavior but power and manipulation ew no I don't want to talk about that and then in this self-help genre which I never really imagined kind of falling into but I guess I have the books tend to kind of soft pedal all of that stuff it's all about it's almost as if we're angels and we're not these kind of primates that are hungry for power and I just saw in my experiences in Hollywood and before Hollywood I had like 50 different jobs in every imaginable field you can you know possible you know I worked a detective agency I worked in construction I taught English I worked in a hotel in Paris Etc I saw all kinds of power moves I saw a lot of that dark side in motion but nobody talks about it maybe novelists in fiction or maybe in film we kind of kind of go into it but humans are fascinated with what we repress right and so by hitting that nerve that little thing that we we don't really want to talk about but we're secretly fascinated by I think that's what kind of led to the success of the book but I've always been fascinated by the Dark Side of human nature and now that it's been some time since you wrote the 48 Laws of Power and obviously you've written a number of books since then but that was really the start kind of publicly um do you do you look back differently on those tools would you offer them differently like this combination of kind of mastering your dark your dark side and also maybe playing defense how do you hope people receive those tools well people generally bring to anything in life their own psychology their own mindset right so if you're already a shark type person if you already manipulative you probably won't really need my book and you probably won't read it but if you do read it you go yeah that's right that's how I operate that's how life is okay but for most people most people in this world are naive like I was when I entered the work world most people don't understand the 48 Laws of Power they don't understand that you want to talk less to appear more powerful they don't understand the dynamic of making people come to you instead of always kind of foisting yourself on others Etc and that naivete is what gets you into a lot of trouble in life right it got me into a lot of trouble law number One never outshine the master I could I could sit here and cry and tell you all kinds of tragic stories about how I how children the master and how miserable it made me right so I was one of those people who was a bit and I even didn't understand this kind of secret language that power that people in power have right so a lot of the book is opening it up this world to everyone right it used to be only white men of a certain age and a certain social background who had access to this kind of knowledge who could have that kind of power and it kind of pissed me off that it was like the secret that nobody wanted to share I wanted to open up I wanted to end all the hypocrisy I wanted everybody to see that this is how things operate behind closed doors Etc so I wrote the book to kind of reveal these secrets right the book is really not not I'm not trying to instruct the Sharks out there and try to make people more manipulative I'm trying to make you less naive in your life and that was sort of the purpose behind the book and since that's the spirit I wrote it in it's interesting to see that that's the spirit that most people take it in I get a lot of emails from readers and most of the emails are God you opened my eyes up to something I never really thought about this has really changed how I look at people and look at the world it doesn't make me paranoid it just makes me more aware of myself and what other peoples are up to so that was sort of the motivation behind the book tell people here because I think that that probably mirrors my experience quite a bit with the book I you know when you read the the title you maybe get an impression and and try to figure out like you know what is this book actually helping me do but then as I picked up the book and started to read it I probably put myself in that naive Camp as well and so it felt like this has really helped me decode something that I know has been happening but I haven't really known how to understand what's been happening and so that's that's pretty cool to hear I've been curious you know now that you look back what do you think has been driving you down this path well you know sometimes in life you just sort of fall into things I didn't really intend when I was a young man when I was 18 and dreaming of my future and being a writer that this would be the kind of book that I would write but my experiences in life kind of put me down a particular path I learned certain lessons and such and um I was given this opportunity to write my first book and I kind of Drew upon all of my experience all the research I had done all of my thoughts that have been going on I was a bit old I have to say for writing my first book and having this career change I was basically in my late 30s you know so I had a lot of bad experiences I had a lot of tough things that I had gone through so that kind of informed me and it kind of went funneled into this book it was sort of a a mix of circumstance and good luck and I was able to draw upon everything that I had learned in all of my skills in life so sometimes you hit upon something feels right you know like working in Hollywood I was never comfortable it didn't feel right I'm I'm kind of an entrepreneur at heart I like working for myself I don't like working for other people I like to control what I do some of that's a bit negative whatever but writing this book I could control everything I was the master of my own domain I didn't have people breathing down my neck changing everything that I did I was able to write about what I love a subject that interests me I was able to bring all my interest in history I was I'm basically a failed novelist so I'm able to now narrate stories in my own way Etc it was like a perfect fit and so going from that I decided to kind of continue in that vein you know but I don't want to I don't want to be in the position which a lot of people make a mistake of in life of constantly repeating the same success of formula so a lot of writers who have a successful book they then kind of read part two they redo the same idea and they kind of recycle things because they figure I don't want to disappoint my audience I have to continue you know pleasing them they were pleased with the first one I've always followed the laws of power which has changed things up interaction with boldness don't be afraid to do things differently adapt your strategy to the circumstance so every book represents a new challenge to me a new subject whether it's seduction or warrant strategy or mastering a field or human nature kind of thing and so it represents a challenge but it also represents I get to use the kind of format that I've created that fits me so perfectly I'm an extremely fortunate and blessed person when I read the newspaper and I see how tough it is out there in the world and how hard people are right now in the particular climate of the work world just get down on my hands and knees and I pray that I'm so lucky and so blessed that I was able to land into this kind of perfect job for myself I wonder how much that is mindset I mean you bring up that term and you're talking about the fact that you know you were you were working hard maybe the circumstances weren't working out as well as you wanted to and then luck arrived and so kind of these two things came together and maybe you framed it as a challenge and now you know everything that you've been going through funneled down to writing that book yeah what would you offer for those there's a lot of our viewers who would be like they're kind of still in that tough circumstances and they're waiting for the luck to arrive and they're wondering you know I've got dreams and the dreams aren't happening fast enough like what advice would you offer them given that maybe your dream started to really materialize in your late 30s well it's never too late it's better to start earlier on in life I mean I wrote a book Mastery that deals with that subject and I try and advise people it's like the number one question I get it's from you particularly younger people sing I don't really understand what my life's task is I call that it master your life's task please help me Robert the earlier you figure it out the better off you are but it can happen later in life now I figured out at an early age that I wanted to write I didn't know what I wanted to write but I Loved Words and I loved writing and if I didn't have that connection when I was eight years old all the way into high school and college I would have been a lost soul and I empathize with a lot of people who don't have that feeling when they're 8 or 18 or in their 20s but I'm trying to tell people everybody has it you're just not listening to yourself you've lost touch with who you are the core of your being you're on social media too much you're listening to what other people are telling you you listen to what your parents told you you should be doing in life listening to what your friends think is cool interesting to what the culture is all about you know the entertainment industry Etc you got to cut all that out you got to listen to yourself you got to be a bit bold and you have to embrace What Makes You Different I say what makes you weird because I know personally I'm a very weird person if you saw me at home you people whoa he talks to his animals like that he's talking to his bottle of shampoo when he's showering that guy's strange I like I don't I don't mind being weird I use it to my advantage I put it in my books you have weirdness to you whoever you are things that you might sometimes be a little bit ashamed or embarrassed or uncomfortable with right but you shouldn't be What Makes You Different what makes you particularly strange if you want to use another word is your strength is your source of power you've lost touch with it let's go back and try and find it and that's the that's that's the whole problem or how do you find it well it's a process you have to be patient it's not going to come like a light bulb in your head ah I was meant to do this I was meant to write the 48 Laws of Power that's not how it works it takes time to do anything in life takes time and hours and patience and work I recommend starting a journal and such and writing down some of the things that I think are important to you so I like to tell people to go go back to their earliest childhood memories of things that really excited them before they got mixed up with parents and teachers and all that other people telling them stuff you know like for me it was words and language it just was entranced by the sound of language itself right it's like music to me you had something like that the book I recommend it's a bit technical but it's a brilliant book called The Five frames of Mind by Howard Gardner the point of this book is that there are five forms of intelligence we normally associate intelligence with intellectuals with our Noam Chomsky with Albert Einstein and he says no intelligence comes in all forms working with your hands is a form of intelligence a carpenter has a high form of intelligence people who referred to athletically use their body that's another form of intelligence there's music there's math there's language you have one of these frames of Mind by the way your brain is wired you have you are inclined towards one of them figure that out if you are somebody who's word oriented and you end up going into a field that's about math or about numbers during for a lot of pain in life right so you've got to figure that kind of what I call Primal connection to some kind of field you have to look at the things that you love and the things that you hate right so early on on entering the work world I figured out that I don't like working for other people I hate to say it some of it maybe maybe I'm anti-social in my car I don't know I hope not but I don't like working for other people I don't like all the politics all the crap you have to put up with I realized early on I just got to be working for myself right so what you don't like is very instructive to you right you're looking at things that are very powerful inside of you that are emotional they're not intellectual they're thoughts they're I'm sorry their feelings their emotions their visceral things that you connect to right I've always been fascinated by our earliest ancestors when I was eight years old I wrote a novel probably the worst novel ever written in the history of mankind and it was about the first human beings on the planet and it was written from the point of view of a vulture watching these humans arrive stupid idea but I was fascinated with early history of our Origins Our Roots When I was very young and that's subject continues to fascinate me if I ever read an article about about neanderthals and all the discoveries going on about their DNA man I could read that forever it's so fascinating you have something like that I know you do and I am completely egalitarian I believe everybody has that when I wrote the book Mastery which is what this book is about to prove my point that everyone has it I interviewed contemporary Masters and one of them is the woman Temple Grandin who was born with high level autism right she was going to be hospitalized for her entire life when she was two or three years old she had the good luck of finding the right teacher who brought her out of her shell and she eventually became a very um respected professor of animal research right she's absolutely brilliant she also studies autism itself if somebody with that kind of disability that kind of thing you know everything stacked against her if she can reach she can figure it out and reach Mastery then I certainly believe everybody has that potential but I know it doesn't come easy it's a process and you have to be patient but you have to put in the work I think that's a really helpful message for people to hear I mean that idea of kind of pursuing what's unique about you and that might help you figure out exactly what your connection is to something much bigger that feels like it's a pull I was having a conversation with our production team this morning mentioning that you know I now essentially speak for a living but grew up so shy so shy I didn't speak to anyone outside my family until I was in my teens and it was always something very unique about me you know when you're in that Shell at that time but it wasn't like I was afraid to speak there was just something else that was happening inside but by pursuing that you know something is materialized and I think that that's an interesting lesson for people who are listening that you've written about a lot of kind of external circumstances strategy seduction power but it sounds like you know if you're thinking about maybe what's getting in the way of somebody pursuing their dreams it's not necessarily about the external it's ready to start focusing on the internal is that is that fair yes it's it's um that's the starting point and it's what's going to make you happy and fulfilled in life but you cannot ignore the social element so in Mastery I'm talking about you have to have high levels of skill to reach those goals that we all want to reach in our career Etc and I truly believe that fulfilling your career Ambitions is going to lead to a high sense of fulfillment in your life although it doesn't mean that you cannot find that through through your family through your children Etc so the master is about your high level of skill right and to do that you have to go through an apprenticeship you have to learn things over and over and over again I've spent my apprenticeship was usually about eight to ten years learning how to write working in journalism in New York working in Hollywood Etc you have to then you know maybe you have perhaps you have a mentor who helps you Etc but another skill that you cannot ignore is the social we're social animals and there are a lot of people in life who ignore that maybe because they're shy and I was very shy as a young man I was mostly very quite introverted as well because they're shy they just simply Lean On Their Own Strength which is learning something really well learning math or learning algorithms or learning how to write Etc and they ignore the social because they're afraid of it but you cannot get ahead in this world as a social animal dependent on other people in every aspect of life unless you treat that as another skill as well so yes the process of looking inward is absolutely essential but you cannot disconnect yourself from your teachers your mentors your colleagues you could have all the skill in the world and know your life's task brilliantly but if you continually alienate people by your boorish Behavior by your insensitivity all the skill level in the world will be completely neutralized by your own mistakes hmm as you as you talk about you know that mixture between inward outward and the fact that we're social animals I think I'm fascinated by our you know our ancestors as well everybody going back to the start of when we started to work what was this all about I mean we talk about fulfillment and career I mean we weren't doing it for money money wasn't invented we were doing it for something else and I think that that's a really powerful driver in people's lives when you go back to that inflection point writing 48 Laws of Power that moment in your career what was the story that was happening in your career at that time and how did that book materialize well you know we're we're going back now to the origins of it we're going back like 27 years and you know so I got to kind of dig into rewind the clock and really have to rewind the clock but um you know I was I was frustrated I was depressed I even have to admit I had moments that were slightly suicidal because I knew deep down that I could do something I was I was different from other people I had different experiences you know and I knew that I there was something I needed to express there was a purpose to the how my life had unfolded but I couldn't find it I tried everything I had every tried every form of writing every possible Endeavor you can imagine it just didn't click so I was very deeply frustrated and the frustration I tell people a good thing negative emotions are trying to teach you something they're trying to teach you the opposite something else is going on frustration if I was simply what would be worse than frustration would be to spare giving up no hope but frustration is a sign that you haven't given up you know you could do something but you haven't figured it out so when you have those kind of feelings look at them and there's something positive in that so I knew that there was something I was meant to do I couldn't figure it out when and so in those circumstances I was fed up with Hollywood I gotta get the hell out of this world I hate it I was invited to Italy by my old college friend I went I was at Berkeley to go to Italy he there was Benetton the company was starting a media school there called Fabrica he said I'll pay you to come to Italy and you're going to help write the catalog that will launch the school like what Italy I'm there no kidding no you don't have to pay me I'll do it so I went there and it was a kind of a miserable another miserable job you're in Italy nothing is miserable you know the food's great you have a cafe you can create coffee great wine everything it's beautiful but the school itself was kind of dysfunctional like so many things in life and I had the Good Fortune there was another man there who changed the course of my life I bless him every day his name is yoast elfers he's a Dutchman I'm still good friends with him Yost is a book packager which is like a book producer and one day the happiest day of my life the opposite of the day of my stroke were walking in Venice Italy beautiful sunny day in the near the Piazza San Marco we just had a great experience in the library and he goes in his dad Jackson for Robert do you have any ideas for a book and I just okay yoast I started improvising and what I improvised was basically a book about power and how timeless it is and I said you know people don't dress like they did in the court of Louis XIV they don't look like Machiavelli or cesari Borge in those outfits they don't stab people with knives but it's the same story it's the same history and I told him as an example of this the story of Nicholas fouquet and Louis XIV which happens to be the opening story of the 48 Laws of Power about how he threw this lavish party to win over Louis XIV look who's Phuket and it was such a successful party that the king Louis thought that his Finance Minister fouquet was after his job that people liked him more than the king he the next day he threw him into prison on on trumped up charges and he was in prison the rest of his life never outshine the master never outshine the king yoast's eyes lit up because I love it he offered to pay me to Live While I wrote the book and we would sell it you know these things happen in life so it's luck that I this guy offered me a job really that I met yoast but it wasn't luck that I had everything was boiling inside of me and I was ready for it if he had asked me when I was 24 I would have never been able to come up with it it just everything fit well it's like the gods had faded for me to have this I don't know to this day it's a mystery to me but it's like the greatest mystery of all I want to take that in so many directions I'd be like one of the things that caught me by surprise as I was reading your books was the level of research and so even to be prepared with a story like that to improvise this idea but I mean it's it's unbelievable but I'm curious if I think back then I appreciate you opening up some of the emotion you were feeling at that stage in your life frustration depression even sometimes beyond that so you you're in that situation you write this book it starts to catch on and one of the things I find interesting about the 40 Laws of Power and I don't know if it's urban legend but there's talk about it being banned in certain prisons and how does that feel when you've you've funneled your life these circumstances down and you've written this thing that obviously matters to people and is compelling and then there's all sorts of talk about it in unusual ways like what's your take on all of that on the prison thing yeah you know I get emails at least once a week from people in prison you're getting more and more of them these days saying how much the book has helped them and um I'm I'm now friends with a lot of rappers I'm not trying to name drop but you know 50 Jeezy cheesy Etc and then I met recently the hottest rapper in London when I was just over in London paper pod or Potter paper anyway um and they all of them had been in prison and Rick Ross Etc done some time in prison and uh I'm deeply empathetic to that kind of predicament people try to use the fact that it's banned to prison or the prisoners are reading it as an indictment against me as if I'm evil as if people who are in prison are inherently evil and we've forgotten some core aspects of religion of of our judeo-christian background for many of us or for all religions which is forgiveness which is the idea of redemption do we believe that people are inherently irredeemably evil there probably are some people like that yes but a lot of people in prison aren't they've had terrible circumstances the quote in the Bible there for the God grace of God go you and I if you have been raised where I saw 50 being raised in South Side Queens in the pressurized circumstances raised by a grandmother who's trying to raise like 11 grandchildren and her own children you know you're on the streets of of Queens you you know and and all the drugs going on you tell me you wouldn't possibly end up in prison so get rid of your moralizing and your air of superiority oh books in prison therefore it's an evil book therefore Robert's evil these are human beings Flesh and Blood you could have ended up like them you know I often imagine what if I had ended up in prison I often think about that you know and people in prison have to the man I met in London Potter paper God I wish I could he was the most amazing person he's fantastic he's 31 years old he's was basically raised by the state he a foster kid he spent half his life in the prison system up until that point and the guy used the prison library to educate himself which is a common theme in prisons he is smarter he's more together than most people who are out of prison right and because the harshness of your circumstances often transforms you people who have it easy in life never have to work on themselves right but people who have the worst circumstances in them they're either crushed by or they use it to develop themselves people like 50 people like Malcolm X others who've gone through the prison system even gone to use the prison system to kind of elevate himself so I I embrace the fact that it that the uh the disaffected the marginalized people in my culture are attracted to the books I've always been attracted to the margins anyway but I wear is a badge of honor I'm afraid I think that's so powerful I I mean I agree I think that what's fascinating about books that talk about you know that really kind of pull back the curtain on how human nature works and when I hear you speak about it it's not like this was you know offered in terms of you know how do you manipulate the world but it was almost written out of a place of compassion like how do we understand what's happening in our own space and when I was digging into the the laws of human nature you bring up terms like narcissism and and you know those who would feel like Ah that's a term that's outside of me I don't I don't connect with that that's not me that's somebody else and this idea get over yourself I mean all of us are on that Spectrum all of us have this connection this innate drive and when you can Embrace that you can understand it but when you hold yourself away from it it feels like it's you know it's it's easy to kind of have this facade on the world or kind of see the world that gets outside of you was that a big important piece of the book very much so so the basic the most Elemental law of human nature is that we deny that we have it right it's always the other people I oh I'm not a narcissist I'm not aggressive oh I don't have a dark side no I'm I'm not irrational no no none of those things right so we want to deny it but it's so insanely irrational we all come from the same Origins we can trace it back they've done it genetically to like one woman the source of homo sapiens like hundreds of thousands of years ago were all Cut From the Same Cloth no matter our culture no matter our gender no matter any our period in history we all have the same genetic components we are all developed went through the same evolutionary process the same brains wired in the same way so if some people are deep what I call Deep narcissists no doubt and they're they're toxic and they're difficult but if one if some people have that how is it that other people don't have any of it that's not possible there must be something within all of us that would make us all prone to becoming deep narcissists but some people it trigger it makes them fall into that deepness others were able to save ourselves right but if aggression is something that's built into human nature and I try and go through the the whole history of it right so you're wanting to exclude yourself so I mean I could i i people have posted comments on YouTube about my ranting about narcissism they they go well Robert you're a snake oil salesman that's absolutely ridiculous I'm not a narcissist you know 0.50.05 percent of people are known to be narcissists I can bet you that the person saying that is a narcissist right because the fact that you want to deny that you have this quality it's a sign is a sure sign that you have it that you're in denial that you're trying to shine a great light on yourself look I'm superior I'm the one person in the world on this planet that doesn't have it man you're a narcissist right that is a sure sign of it so stop denying it loss of human nature should be a painful book to read it was a painful book to write because it throws a mirror on yourself it makes you come to terms with some of your own nooks and crannies that you don't want to look into right you don't want to come to terms with the fact that you feel Envy but Envy is the most common human emotion of them all there's a deep history of it I go into it in the book our hunter-gatherer ancestors chimpanzees are prone to feeling Envy you feel it 50 times during the day particularly on social media you're just denying it If you deny all of these qualities how can you ever change yourself you think that you're a Gandhi but how could you be be a Gandhi if you won't like look at yourself and change yourself right the only way you can become good or or kind of overcome some of these qualities is by looking at it seeing the reality and then confronting it and then trying to change it so if I come to terms which which I did is writing the book that yes Robert you are a narcissist you have definite narcissistic Tendencies more than you thought all right now I'm aware of it and now I can begin to change it come to terms with it it is a difficult thought I it reminds me as you're speaking about some of these negative emotions conversation recently on the show with with Dan pink and he was writing about the power of regret and saying you know when you actually embrace those negative emotions you learn a lot from it so when you're talking about frustration when you Embrace frustration you recognize that you know there's still something that's driving me right it's not fulfilled yet but it's driving me and some of these human nature characteristics that feel you know probably uncomfortable but also really Illuminating one of the things I've heard you talk about before is is deceit and how you can almost get a sense if someone's being deceitful of you with their kind of their reaction to certain statements that you said was that something you started to uncover through this book as well this kind of connection to deceit and Human Nature well I have to admit being honest here I've always been in interested in in deceit I probably was somebody who was pretty good at it in my 20s you know I went through a period like that I wasn't like a a liar or something but I I was kind of an actor and I'm not going to go deep into this story but I lived in Paris when I was 21 I worked in a hotel there as a receptionist in order to get the job I had to pretend that I was Irish I'm actually a middle class Jew from Los Angeles never been in a church in my life you know I don't know what a mass is from anything you know I had to pretend I was Irish it's a long I'm not going to go into it but you pulled this off pulled it off for a year no way I did it dated an Irish girl yeah I got another job and another company still being Irish that's next level yeah yeah yeah but um so it taught me a lot about the art of deception and part of the job part of able to pull it off was I studied I was terrified of being so I'm starting to work in the hotel thinking that I'm speaking French because I speak French that no one will ever know that I'm not really Irish but then I realized English people stay in the hotel Irish people stay in the hotel and they hear this funky ass ax and they they know this guy's a liar I'm going to be revealed and it's going to be so embarrassing and shameful so luckily across the street was an Irish Pub you know one of those fortunate things in life I would go there every day I would study the people in there because there were a lot of Irish immigrants in Paris I would study their mannerisms I'm very good at mimicking hearing the tone of their voice I looked at how they dress their mannerisms I studied it and I got better and better at my accent at first I had to tell people well I kind of spent time in the States you know but then I got so good I could fool Irish people I learned how to dress I learned how to go to church I learned how to all the things that made me seem Irish uh it's a bit embarrassing because it's something you can do when you're 21. I would never do that now I would never feel comfortable doing that now I'm revealing it to you here but um it taught me how easy it is to fool people if you have an air of sincerity and conviction right and I tell people when you look at those around you particularly politicians or people in the news or in the spotlight and they're so full of conviction they're so full of sincerity Etc they're often covering up something else right they're trying to convince themselves of a truth that they know is not true right and so conviction is often a sign of somebody who's in a form of self-deception to lead to deception so the the kind of my early history my early training in becoming a different person and being an actor kind of taught me a lot about human nature and and deception and um I'm not saying I'm a master at it but I'm fascinated by con artists and the whole manipulation of appearances and creating Illusions and I've studied it very deeply so I'm not saying I'm an expert but I understand it quite well and aren't there these kind of like micro Expressions I mean if I you know told you I got a promotion you know if I could really observe how you'd initially react to that there'd be cues isn't that you know kind of a way we can just you know sense about deceit well I've always been very sensitive to that stuff and so it you know I I feel like you you can detect from science and a person's face whether they're sincere or not or what's really going on behind their behind the mask that they're wearing and I wrote about that in the laws of human nature we have that ability because so much of human communication is non-verbal it's a skill that was developed over hundreds of thousands of years by our ancestors before language is invented reading the thoughts of other people so we could get along before we could express things in words we are masters of those picking up those signals you're just not paying attention you're not learning it but it's hard for the face to lie right it's even harder for the voice to lie the voice is the last thing that you can use to lie I know I had my Irish accent but if somebody really saw through it they would see kind of the that was going on and and so it's hard to train the face when you don't really feel Joy when you see you got a promotion and I'm kind of secretly oh Tyler's doing better than me in life damn yes that's great Tyler oh that's wonderful congratulations the the kind of tightness there is just revealing that oh he's doing better than I am kind of thing right whereas wow Tyler that's fantastic I'm really happy for you there's a different look in the face I just didn't do a good job right there but it's a different look in the face right it's spontaneous the face lights up you can detect that from a mile A Million Miles Away the difference you're just not paying attention right the tone of voice when you're nervous and cramped and the throat kind of closes up is a sign of discomfort of anxiety of fear of even Panic so somebody could be trying to say something full of cluster and confidence but if their voice is kind of tightening up it's the other feeling the opposite the voice is very very hard to lie the posture when somebody is talking to you but their feet are pointing in a different direction they're not really they're wanting to get away from you right you know how much the eyes engage whether they're relaxed or slouching their sense of power and Leadership is all in the body this is insane language and great books have been written far greater than my own book on a High extraordinate chapter on it about this language of non-verbal Behavior right posture voice facial expression Etc and ba and actions so actions are a language that you're not paying attention to when someone is continually late for an appointment or continually late in delivering work that they're supposed to deliver that's a sign of passive aggression this is a sign of some kind of character flaw and if they do it once they'll probably do it a second time if they do it a second time something's going on right if their desk is all messy Etc these are signs of something going on internally pay attention to all of these details and it will really help you in life when you came in today you know speaking about emotion and just body language but when you came in today you know and you sat down and you were saying you know I'm wearing this shirt I asked you about the shirt because I knew but no no I said you could reveal something about my body language no but um you know you're wearing a shirt and I'm hoping you can maybe share the story of this shirt um but you're talking about your happiest day of your life with the book but also you know the hardest day of your life which was four years ago today was it not yeah exactly four years August 17 2018. people are hearing story of a shirt and I go God man how boring could that be but basically I was here in La um I was with my girlfriend the time now my wife we just had lunch and I was getting into the car to drive home I'm pulling into traffic and she's seeing all sorts of weird things like my face is falling my voice is getting really weird and I'm kind of looking really strange she starts freaking out she's pull over pull over and no I'm fine I start pulling into traffic I'm driving she forces me over to the side of the road and then she told me later that I tried to get out of the car like I was gonna do something and then I went into a coma and I don't remember anything else she called 9-1-1 and fortunately we were an ambulance came by within five ten minutes and I had a blood clot in my neck so blood wasn't flowing to my brain for a long enough period of time to create damage right so that's a stroke and um first of all I'm frequently alone in life I'm I swim I perform my stroke I would swim every two days or so alone in the pool I hiked a lot I rode my bike a lot I'm alone a lot the fact that I was with her was maybe a five percent chance right that five percent chance meant I'm still alive right the fact that she figured out really quickly something is wrong and called them saved me from brain damage that would be permanent I wouldn't be able to talk to you right now a lot of stroke victims have permanent brain damage I wouldn't be able to write another book I'm very very lucky and so I'm sorry that's story of the shirt so it's part of my stroke my brain doesn't isn't all there um so in order to get to me quickly they took this shirt and they like cut scissors through it and they cut into pieces and they ripped the shirt off and then they stuck a thing in my neck to make the open up the blood clot and get some blood flowing to my brain which saved me and a year and a half afterwards I suddenly remembered this shirt I just had gotten for my birthday a couple months before and I remember I love that show I really liked it it's like so me and I finally asked whatever happened to that shirt and she kind of got this really strange look on her face and she told me the story of the scissors and everything and then I said oh well let me see it and she went she got this awful hospital bag and pulled it out I could see it was in pieces and I felt so awful I said I love this shirt could you like sew it back together for me so you don't want to see that shirt again yes I do it's a constant reminder of what happened you know it's like what they call a Memento Mori it's a memory of death my own fatality my own mortality I want that shirt so she very lovingly sewed it back together it looks kind of frankenstein-like it also looks maybe like high fashion like Carl lager felt himself designed it or something you know but it's not um but you know this is the anniversary of it and um you know it's very weird kind of series of emotions that go through you because I can still sort of feel that coma Sensation that going that nearly dying feeling like I could feel myself dying at the time just before the coma happened just before I fell into a coma and it kind of comes back to me at this time of year now and then to remember the day you know so damn it I had such a good life I was swimming I was so happy I didn't know that I was so happy I took it for granted I'm missing all that man I miss it so badly not to be able to take a hike on the other hand I'm alive I'm breathing I'm talking to you I'm writing another book I'm kind of able to walk I'm able to ride my my tricked up tricycle into the hills of Griffith Park Etc I have a lot to be grateful for so any kind of mixed emotion like that pain and gratitude creates something very powerful and so it's kind of a day for those kind of weird emotions right now thanks for sharing so one of the things that you know strikes you when someone goes through your body of work you know these unbelievable books full of research is you you must have some way to stay highly productive even though you've had success do you have routines rituals that help you you know through the mornings you know to be productive every day well I think to be a writer but almost to have any success in any event field you have to be disciplined and you have to have routines I call them rituals things that I repeat every day that feel comfortable to me that don't feel like they're just boring habits but they're kind of comforting so I begin every morning with a deep meditation I've been doing a form of Zen meditation now for 12 years it's 45 minutes of sitting on pillows and emptying your mind completely that's how I started every single day and then I usually do some form of exercise right after breakfast I go on my bike ride or I do some kind of physical therapy work and then I get down to work um often my best hours are in the afternoon I try not to burn myself out so writing is very intensive trains a lot of your energy so I never do more than three or four hours a day I can't stomach it but in those other periods when I'm not riding I do a lot of research a lot of reading and then you know so my time is structured around that and then lunch at the same time and then dinner my wife and I watch a movie and then basically go to bed there's not much Variety in it the variety comes from the work itself and the thinking it kind of enriches me and makes me feel like I'm having an experience but having discipline and routines is a really really important thing I think for anybody and I you know I've helped people some kind of fashion their own routines in life because you can't just necessarily do what other people do but I think waking up and doing something like emptying your mind or having some kind of meditation practice is extremely valuable tool I started that in I think 2013 every day since then that's the way my morning starts too when you talk about helping others craft a routine so somebody who's you know interested in this they want to have some kind of morning routine what do you ask them or how do you get them focused to figure that out well everything depends on your circumstances if you're working for yourself if you're working at home that's often the hardest because you have to be very self-disciplined and self-motivated and so creating an actual literal routine that you write down that you schedule is very important right so I I advocate the the meditation as a way to kind of start the day to empty things out to empty all the baggage out from the day before and kind of freshen your mind up right and then it depends on I work I talk to people about your energy levels so I am not a morning person right my wife is she wakes up she's bubbling with theories ideas and I am so grumpy and I blah blah blah I ask you I ask people about when do you feel the most energy right and so people are it's the morning you know the nine to twelve some people it's like me four to eight so let's work on that first if you're like me then in the morning kind of do things that are routine like answering emails like paying bills like taking care of of business stuff and then after that you do you have time now in the afternoon to do the the creative stuff I'm also personally a big believer in taking naps I take a nap every day I didn't get to take one here so that's why I was yawning before I had my tea but some people aren't Nappers I understand it but it's a great way of re-energizing yourself in the middle of the day it just depends on your energy and your work and then also journaling is very important for say I'm a writer so I don't want to go anywhere near a journal because please get that pen away from me most if you're not a writer for spending a half hour every day journaling about your day before you go to bed etc a ritual before you go to bed is also good it just depends on who you are your energy your individuality and the kind of work that you do and then we craft a good ritual routine for them we have so many young people who watch this show tune into our content and and they're filled with all sorts of pressures right now all sorts of things that feel distracting what's your advice for the 20 year olds that are out there right now dealing with a world that's very different than potentially how you and I grew up but what's your advice for young people well um it's it's don't be too hard on yourself and um be patient and so it's a kind of a mix that you have to go through a bit of a dance so on the one hand you want to be serious about life you're not life doesn't go on forever your youth will be over in 10 12 years you better believe it it goes faster than you can imagine right okay so take it seriously all right so you can you you want to realize what your life's task is you want to develop those skills that will make it so when you're in your 30s things will come together as they fortunately did for me it's a common story that 3132 is is that year where things turn around for people right but on the other hand you don't want to be so damn serious so damned you know you know linear in your thinking I've got to head down this path to make this amount of money Etc you're young have some fun have some Adventure have some excitement but at the same time also have that sense of discipline and that sense of purpose you can do both things at the same time now the circumstances now it's easy for me a boomer I have to admit that to preach to you when you have to gone through like two you've gone through a pandemic that made what looks like to be a recession and then if you're a millennial you went through another you went through the crash in 08 it's easy for me to preach you're dealing with really difficult circumstances and there's what they call what the great resignation now is that it right so a lot of people are rethinking their lives they don't want to work and crap jobs just to get by and I applaud that a hundred percent right that's great so you want to think about working for yourself is the ultimate position in this world and even though times are difficult even though it may seem like a Just a Dream there's so much potential out there for entrepreneurial spirit for creating your own startup for creating your own podcast for going your own path in life you don't have to follow other people it's not like it was when I was growing up there were things that were better back then but they're things that were a lot worse right you have so many more options it's just that you're not going to reach them you're not going to be happy in this short time that you have to be alive unless you take it seriously unless you learn skills and develop go through an apprenticeship in your 20s Etc so if you can balance those two and still have some fun and adventured excitement like I did I mean I don't want to hold myself up as some model but you know being an Irishman in Paris in my early 20s you know I was having Adventures right so just don't listen to your parents go I got to be making a hundred thousand dollars when I'm 23 and go to law school and do all this stuff you're gonna burn out so kind of understand your I guess the main thing I would say is know who you are know what what you're what you're you know deep down your core but you love what you hate and what you were destined to create in this world that's like the most important process you can go through it sounds like you've helped so many people uncover that life path figure out their gift what do you feel like is your gift oh well I don't know you know I don't want to get too wrapped up in myself here about um you know because I'm sitting here talking on and on about my own life but um I guess what it was um is that I didn't listen to other people at so many turning points in my life I could have been discouraged people could have said get the you know I had somebody say Robert you're never going to be a good writer in life you know you need to go to business school Etc my parents tried to funnel me this way or that way I was stubborn and I was rebellious and I did my own thing and because of that I have kind of a a different voice from other people right and when I look at books out there I'm searching for that voice for that voice it's somebody who's different who has something different to say who speaks in a different tone of voice that has their blood and their personality in their writing and I don't find it often but when I do it's a great thing and so to me success in life is kind of being who you are there's a famous expression of of the great ancient Greek poet pindar about become who you are it's a process of becoming who you actually are and realizing what it is so we talked about my weirdness earlier on and following that has allowed me to craft my own message which is basically about opening your eyes up to the reality of the world and to what people are like but I wasn't I'm not able to do that unless I had ignored what other people tried to foist on me earlier on in life so I don't know if I'm answering your question but that kind of was my gift or my message if I have one because I tell you I'm not good at anything else I can't fix things with my hands I'm a terrible dancer I'm totally toned if I can't sing you know I'm fortunate I found the one thing that I'm good at right so took you 50 jobs but yeah yeah what do you think is your legacy or what do you hope is your legacy well um I hope my legacy is that uh you know I I tried to write things that are timeless right so I don't follow Trends I don't write about things that are going on right now today in the news in the newspaper or on on the internet I write about themes that are to me classic that go back thousands of years that are about what humans are really like with our animal nature Etc so what I'm hoping is that they're 20 30 years from now the book feels Timeless that that is essentially that my legacy that Robert Hit Upon some truth hit upon the reality of what it means to be a human being and it's still relevant as opposed to 30 years from now people go man that book smells like 1998. that's not relevant at all I think it's so passe that would be a big disappointment to me I won't be around to be disappointed I'll be dead buried but my legacy My Hope Is that I hit kind of a core truth or reality about humans and that it stands up the time you know like Machiavelli 500 years later 5 00 yeah 500 which is almost exactly 500 years afterwards his stuff some of it's dated but most of it's like wow that's spot on right that's insane do you know that because he was such a a realist so my if I could even begin to approach part of that I would feel like that that would be my hopefully my legacy that I hit upon the reality of our life in a Timeless way and what's next well I'm doing a very strange book that'll probably surprise me disappoint my readers but I don't it's all right it's a book on what I call the sublime and I hinted at it in um I have a chapter in the book that I did with 50 Cent about uh death and mortality and that is a chapter called the sublime and then in the laws of human nature chapter 18 about good fried chicken mortality is also about the sublime but essentially it's a different tack for me it says maybe I hate to use the word but maybe quasi more spiritual book if you will and essentially I'm saying that it's so strange to be alive it's such a weird thing that you know 30 000 years ago our ancestors were still in basically a stone age our Paleolithic ancestors you know our hunter-gatherers and here we are look at this world right we're like reaching now the with the news telescope the the the web telescope that was launched look at what we're doing who we are just to be alive just to see the world as it is just to have these powers of Consciousness is the strangest trip you could ever be on your life is like this weird Voyage of 80 some years if you're lucky to live that long in a re it's like you're on continually on drugs it should be like that you should be continually waking up going man I'm conscious I'm thinking I'm able to look at at the moon and be aware of it I'm able to read history how weird we don't have those thoughts we grow around we take everything for granted we're immersed in our phones and our little trivial worlds and all the little scandals and things that are happening today that'll be forgotten about three days from now Etc were immersed in banality and triviality when the cosmos is so essentially awesome and there's so many aspects of that awesomeness how idiotic to waste your life mulling over things that are so unimportant when you're you're literally surrounded by all these insane things so each chapter is about the cosmos it's about Evolution it's about your childhood because childhood was the most Sublime period in your life is about our ancient ancestors and Pagan religions and how people thought much differently back then I'm doing a chapter now on the brain and how the brain is the strain the human brain is just the most remarkable thing in the perhaps in the cosmos as far as we know it's complexity it's power it's speed what it can create what it can do but we don't think about it that way we take this for granted we think computers are so much more interesting celebrity chapter on the brain have chapter on animals and animal Consciousness about the last chapter will be a guess what the last chapter is about sublime or is it I mean obviously the theme but where are you going with the last chapter death death it's always the last chapter it's always the last chapter so um you know because people have had near-death experiences I had one not as strong as other people there's nothing more Sublime than that than what you see when you like touched just very briefly on what the sensation is of your life fleeing out of you is a very very Sublime experience so that's what I'm working on it's taking me a long time and I'm trying to hurry up so I can get get the book out because people seem to be interested in it but that's what I'm working on right now hopefully I'm alive to finish it I think I will be though I think so too I don't think it'll disappoint I think it sounds so inspirational yeah Robert you've written about you know so many laws across your books I'm curious if there are three principles that you feel like are most important people to keep in mind and to live by well one of them is the law of power that I've kind of lived by ver you know consciously and inadvertently which is interaction with boldness so most people are just too timid in life they're afraid of failure they're afraid of making mistakes if I never try anything that I never have to put up with criticism I never have to put up with people scrutinizing me right so most people end up being too shy too timid in life and you've got to get over that and you've got to learn how to be bold with your ideas and with your actions so I try to make each one of my books kind of a statement and and impress people with like a strong you know idea and not be afraid of criticism and not being afraid of controversy so boldness has gotten me through life and I think it's critically important in this day and age the second thing is something we've talked about earlier but it's knowing who you are knowing yourself in depth shining that mirror looking inside deep inside of you who you are and what makes you different and going through that process in as profound a way as possible just to know to understand deeply what makes you an individual what separates you from your parents your siblings and your peers and so that it's like having a radar system in you so I know this about me and now this person is offering me this job no that's not who I am that's not suited for me get out of here somebody offers me something else yes that's me okay I'll take it it's like an internal radar system that'll guide you through life the third thing is is knowing about yourself but it's also knowing about people and it seems like an easy thing but the problem most people have is we are self-absorbed we're more interested in our own thoughts and ruminations and our own ideas and thoughts and ideas and experiences of other people we will deny it we'll go we'll die Kicking and Screaming saying no that's not true but it is true it's because you're not listening to other people you're not really fascinated by other people and I'm saying empathy and the ability to truly listen to people and to get inside their skin and understand how they think how they experience the world how it's different to be them and what they're like is a not only a great form of therapy because it gets you outside yourself gets outside of your own self-absorption absorption but it's a very powerful tool it will allow you to understand people on a deep level understand their psychology so you won't be making all kinds of mistakes and saying things exactly the wrong thing to say this person or that person so developing a high level sensitivity to people and it begins with being fascinated by people and their differences in their world and that's to me an extremely important skill in life boldness inaction know yourself be fascinated by other people yeah it's three pretty powerful principles what's the best advice you ever received well I'm not somebody who listens to advice which is a problem but I managed to get do okay without that but I my girlfriend at the time now my wife she said um it was in the 90s the 1990s um not the 1890s and I was in my depressed period of life right and uh I was working in Hollywood and I was miserable I was trying to write screenplays and I was also trying to write theater and fiction Etc and she said Robert you can't have it both ways you can't be trying to make a lot of money and be doing the things that you love you have to do one or the other in life right and then things will happen for you but you're trying to cut it both ways you're trying to become really successful in Hollywood but also be doing things that are really important to you and if you're going to be successful in Hollywood you have to learn to do things that aren't that exciting to you personally so choose one or the other and then when when it came time for the book I kind of realized the wisdom of that and I decided what matters for me here is not making the money is not being a bestseller it's just writing the best book possible right it was like okay here I am this is my one opportunity in life if I if money becomes my motivating factor it changes everything that I do it changes how I write it changes how I approach it it makes me more like other people it it takes away that edge and that boldness factor that I was talking about but if I ignore that and I just do what I love do what excites me you know still keeping in mind that there's a public that's going to read it it's not like I completely ignore that but I do what excites me and and makes me thrilled which is revealing all that dark side of human nature Etc and I do in a way that satisfies me and and kind of gets all my juices flowing and my blood going then maybe it will make money in the end and so I chose that path which she was right and so I think people who read the book understand that this was something that meant something to the writer he put a lot of himself into it he didn't write this book just to make money I think people can smell that in in it in a creative work that it was either done for money or it was done for love so I tell people often particularly in Creative Ventures do what you love and then the money will come to you hopefully if you do it well so that was sort of if I've explained it at all that was sort of the best advice I got it's powerful Robert Greene it was an honor thank you I know that our audience has been looking forward to this conversation for a long time it's been a real pleasure oh thanks so thanks equally here I really enjoyed it the icon is this show and hope you're getting a sense of it now iconic people iconic locations my name is Tyler way stay tuned for what we've got coming next [Music]

Channel: The Icons by Motiversity

Views: 594,874

Keywords: Motivationhub, motivational video, eye opening speech, speech, success, motivational speech, motivation, motivational, inspirational, best motivational video, best motivational speech, Life Advice Will Change Your Future, The Secret to Mastering Your Dark Side, motivationhub robert greene, motivation for success, i got rich when I understood this, how to succceed, Icons, robert greene, the icons, Robert Greene Icons, the dark side, robert green, dark side robert greene, motiversity

Id: LifmoddMgxw

Length: 67min 51sec (4071 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022