Speaker 1: When you're excited about a project, when you feel alive
Speaker 1: and energized, then the time is a much different experience
Speaker 1: than when you're bored. So you can create your relationship
Speaker 1: to time. Right, so I'm not ready, Well, there's a
Speaker 1: strategy for that. You should always take action a little
Speaker 1: bit before you were ready. It is the advice I
Speaker 1: give several months before you're ready, Go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: Try it because you're going to rise to the occasion. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast
Speaker 1: in the world. Thanks to each and every single one
Speaker 1: of you who come back every week to listen, learn
Speaker 1: and grow. Now you know that the podcast is just
Speaker 1: an excuse for me to reach out to amazing people,
Speaker 1: incredible minds, and the people that I want to sit
Speaker 1: down with the most and pick their brain. And today's
Speaker 1: guest is someone that I've wanted to do that with
Speaker 1: for long time. I remember reading his books years ago.
Speaker 1: We've been in touch for quite some time to try
Speaker 1: and get this scheduled, and today I'm so grateful because
Speaker 1: he's made the effort to be here physically present with
Speaker 1: us in the studio. He's none other than Robert Green,
Speaker 1: the author of some of my favorite books. We have
Speaker 1: The Laws of Human Nature, his new book that's out
Speaker 1: right now called The Daily Laws. I highly recommend that
Speaker 1: you go and grab your copy, and of course the
Speaker 1: greatest one of all time, in my opinion, the forty
Speaker 1: eight Laws of Power. So we're going to be diving
Speaker 1: into these three books today and Robert himself and I
Speaker 1: hope that you'll all be making notes. This is one
Speaker 1: that you want your notebook out for. It's one that
Speaker 1: you want to get your pen and pencil out for.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful, Robert, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here. Thank you so much for having me. Jane,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. No, it's an honor to have you here. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to it me too, me too,
Speaker 1: So I mean, I'll tell everyone the story. Me and
Speaker 1: Robert were about to record three or four months back,
Speaker 1: and we both had a friendly conversation and I think
Speaker 1: you were asking me where I live, and I was
Speaker 1: saying I live in LA and I live in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and you were saying you live in Lost Feelers, and
Speaker 1: we were like, well, we were like fifteen minutes away,
Speaker 1: and so we said, let's do it in person and
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that we made that possible and all
Speaker 1: the effort you took to be here, So thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. I love getting out of the house, so
Speaker 1: it's actually fun for me. Amazing. Well, you know, your
Speaker 1: work is legendary. It's you know, to say it's a
Speaker 1: best selling book or anything as an understatement. Your work
Speaker 1: has impacted the way people think and live and make decisions.
Speaker 1: And people look to your books as law books and textbooks.
Speaker 1: They don't see them as just story books or a
Speaker 1: quick read. Their reference books almost And I guess my
Speaker 1: biggest question to start off is where did your obsession
Speaker 1: with power come from? You know, I guess is you'd
Speaker 1: have to go back to my early childhood. Maybe. You know,
Speaker 1: I felt as a child a little bit helpless around
Speaker 1: my parents. In some ways, I was a very sensitive boy.
Speaker 1: I still have that issue. They were great parents, but
Speaker 1: they weren't the most overtly affectionate, and so I was
Speaker 1: always kind of wondering and observing them and trying to
Speaker 1: be careful around them. They didn't do anything to upset them,
Speaker 1: so I became kind of an observer of people, and
Speaker 1: my main thing was as sort of a protective device
Speaker 1: to not be heard and to be able to have
Speaker 1: a degree of control over the people around me. So
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I was going to get yelled
Speaker 1: at or something like that. And then as I entered
Speaker 1: the work world, you know, I kind of it was
Speaker 1: sort of a rude awakening for me because I had studied,
Speaker 1: you know, literature and languages. My major was Ancient Greek,
Speaker 1: and you know, things that are completely impractical in this world.
Speaker 1: And then I entered the work world with all of
Speaker 1: my dreams, my illusions, my fancies, and it's like slapped
Speaker 1: in the face. This is not what I expected. I
Speaker 1: had many different jobs. I lived in New York. I
Speaker 1: did journalism. Then I lived in Europe. I traveled around
Speaker 1: because I couldn't really find out what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I origin a hotel in Paris. I taught English in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: I did construction work increase on an island in Greece.
Speaker 1: I worked in a television company in London. You name it,
Speaker 1: I did it. And I had all kinds of bosses.
Speaker 1: I saw all kinds of power games and manipulations going on,
Speaker 1: and so taking that knowledge from my childhood observing people,
Speaker 1: seeing how they operate, seeing what's really going on behind
Speaker 1: their minds. Because people wear masks, they don't tell you
Speaker 1: what they're thinking. They don't want to admit that they
Speaker 1: want power, that they want to control you or manipulate
Speaker 1: you in some way. And so I was always kind
Speaker 1: of a decipherer of people and what their real thoughts were.
Speaker 1: And to me, figuring people out is a form of power.
Speaker 1: And then I worked in Hollywood, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the ultimate at power environment, you know, because nobody in
Speaker 1: Hollywood wants to admit that their goal is power. They
Speaker 1: want to make it a worry about art, were about creativity,
Speaker 1: liberal causes, blah blah blah, but really they wanted power.
Speaker 1: It's the most power hungry environment I had ever witnessed.
Speaker 1: I observed a kind of a double face think quality
Speaker 1: going on. On the one hand, they would present this
Speaker 1: front to their employees, to everyone else, but really they
Speaker 1: were practicing all of these games, these kind of power
Speaker 1: games going on. And so that's what sort of inspired
Speaker 1: my first book, The forty eight Laws of Power, because
Speaker 1: my sympathies are more on the side of the underdog.
Speaker 1: I don't have a sympathy for a Hollywood executive, for
Speaker 1: a Michael Ovid's for a CEO of a company. I
Speaker 1: have sympathy for the poor guy like myself who is
Speaker 1: thrown into these environments doesn't understand it is a bit naive, right,
Speaker 1: doesn't know the rules of power that these generally white men,
Speaker 1: at least back in that era, seemed to know instinctively.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to reveal to everyone what goes
Speaker 1: on behind closed doors, the real games of power that
Speaker 1: people play. So it's not that I'm obsessed with it,
Speaker 1: but I feel like people like myself are often too naive.
Speaker 1: They don't understand what they're about to get into, they
Speaker 1: don't understand how rough and brutal the world can be,
Speaker 1: and I actually wanted to kind of help them and
Speaker 1: reveal the kinds of things that I learned the hard way.
Speaker 1: I love that learning journey because so much of what
Speaker 1: we seek at the gifts and gaps from our parents.
Speaker 1: You know, whether they give us a gift and we
Speaker 1: chase that gift, or they have a gap in their parenting.
Speaker 1: We try and fill that gap. And it's amazing how
Speaker 1: everything seems to really really stem from that. Where how
Speaker 1: do you define a power in the way you guide
Speaker 1: people in this book Towards Power, because I think power
Speaker 1: has changed, power has shifted, it meaning has evolved, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what you define as power. Well,
Speaker 1: people have this misconception of power. They think it has
Speaker 1: to do with you know, CEOs and presidents, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of ugly and dirty. I have a much different
Speaker 1: conception of it. It's something that has to do with
Speaker 1: your daily life. Now. I have the idea that much
Speaker 1: in our lives we cannot control. You can throw a
Speaker 1: number out ninety five percent. You can't control disease. You
Speaker 1: control the people that you meet. It's by chance that
Speaker 1: you met your wife and you fell in love and
Speaker 1: you ended up marrying her. You kind of fall into jobs.
Speaker 1: There's much in life that is way beyond your control,
Speaker 1: but there is a margin that you can control, right,
Speaker 1: And it's mostly about your relationships. It has to do
Speaker 1: with your children, your spouse, your partners, your colleagues at work,
Speaker 1: your bosses, and the feeling that you have no control
Speaker 1: over them, that they can do whatever they want, that
Speaker 1: you have an idea and you want to sell it
Speaker 1: to them, or you want somebody to stop their annoying behavior,
Speaker 1: and you can't control them they're completely oblivious, they won't
Speaker 1: listen to anything you say. Is to me, the worst
Speaker 1: feeling for a human being to have. Right where animals
Speaker 1: that need that sense of eye can influence my environment,
Speaker 1: I can influence the people around me, and the sense
Speaker 1: of helplessness is a very, very primal feeling. It's like
Speaker 1: when you take an animal outor if you have dogs
Speaker 1: or cats and you put them on their belly, they
Speaker 1: feel exposed, they feel terrified, and that's when they attack you. Well,
Speaker 1: that position is like being on our belly. I can't
Speaker 1: control my teenage son he's into drugs. My husband or
Speaker 1: my wife isn't listening to me, ah, my boss is
Speaker 1: doing You know, you want the ability to be able
Speaker 1: to at least defend yourself or to have some influence
Speaker 1: or power over them. It's a small margin because there's
Speaker 1: much you can control, but to the degree that you
Speaker 1: can have some of that power and you can. And
Speaker 1: then there's one other aspect, probably the most important aspect
Speaker 1: that I'm forgetting here, is power over yourself self mastery, right,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the problems that you have in life,
Speaker 1: you can't really control yourself. You're subject to all these
Speaker 1: emotions these moods, these things that grab you, that obsess you,
Speaker 1: that possess you. Your mind has these recurrent thoughts. You
Speaker 1: have no self control and it drives you crazy. You
Speaker 1: have a habit you want to get rid of. You
Speaker 1: take some program, some class, and three months later you're
Speaker 1: back at it. Ah, you know what is it? So
Speaker 1: the sense that you can control yourself to a degree
Speaker 1: and the sense that you can have some influence over
Speaker 1: people is power. And the more you have it, the
Speaker 1: greater the feeling you have because you can avoid that
Speaker 1: helplessness that makes all of us kind of crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really love how you grounded that definition of power
Speaker 1: and self mastery because that seems to be where everything
Speaker 1: else loses control. You know, It's like, if we're out
Speaker 1: of control, then everything seems out of control, and so
Speaker 1: so much avow lust or envy or greed or anger
Speaker 1: has the ability to distract and derail us completely when
Speaker 1: there's no self power. Right, And why do you think
Speaker 1: it is? You mentioned that, Why do you think it
Speaker 1: is that we all haven't? And I can relate to this,
Speaker 1: and I think you know when you refer to yourself
Speaker 1: as as someone who struggled, and you know, couldn't figure
Speaker 1: it out and was surprised by what happened. And you know,
Speaker 1: I would say the same that you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up being bullied for being overweight, and I was one
Speaker 1: of a a few Indian people in my entire area that
Speaker 1: I grew up in London. I was in North London,
Speaker 1: so a majority area of Tottenham and would Green, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which are not considered South Asian areas generally. And when
Speaker 1: I look back at that time in my life, I
Speaker 1: also feel like I, at one point in my life
Speaker 1: was an underdog. And why do you think it is
Speaker 1: that so many underdogs have such a negative view of power?
Speaker 1: I feel like so many people today, whether they consider
Speaker 1: themselves underdogs or not, when we think of words like
Speaker 1: power or influence, we think of them as negative things.
Speaker 1: We think of them as being as you said, like
Speaker 1: dirty or toxic or plagued. Why is that? And how
Speaker 1: do you healthily transform your belief round power? Well, that
Speaker 1: was sort of what I wrote the book about, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes from our culture, which I
Speaker 1: think plays a very often a very negative role in
Speaker 1: our lives. It teaches us the wrong kinds of lessons.
Speaker 1: And so back in the days when it was television.
Speaker 1: Now it's whatever you watch and whatever medium. You know.
Speaker 1: All of the villains in the world, where these power
Speaker 1: hungry people in black coats with cars with the windows
Speaker 1: kind of blacked out, you know, and doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of evil, ugly things. That's what we think of as power.
Speaker 1: It's like a cultural trope that we've all digested, you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of machiavellian character who's out kind of destroy people.
Speaker 1: Nobody thinks of power in a positive sense, and it's maddening.
Speaker 1: It drives me crazy. It's incredibly hypocritical when self help
Speaker 1: books are written and they're trying to say that power
Speaker 1: or ambition or influence are ugly things, when the writer
Speaker 1: himself or herself is actually a very powerful person who
Speaker 1: has influence, who has control, is awful. It drove me crazy.
Speaker 1: It's why I wrote the book, you know, so I
Speaker 1: try and tell people, Look, who's one of the great
Speaker 1: saints that we hold up in our culture, Mahatma Gandhi. Right,
Speaker 1: I certainly venerate him as an amazing person. And I
Speaker 1: read very deeply about Gandhi and I wrote about him
Speaker 1: in my third book, The Strategies of War, and his
Speaker 1: goal was to throw the English out of India so
Speaker 1: they could finally experience independence, because the people had been
Speaker 1: subjugated for so long that they had forgotten what it
Speaker 1: meant to be human in a way right, a very
Speaker 1: noble goal, but he realized us quickly on how difficult
Speaker 1: it would be. So he had to be strategic, and
Speaker 1: so he had things like the Salt March, where he
Speaker 1: very much plotted in advance that he knew using his
Speaker 1: method of civil disobedience, where once the police came out,
Speaker 1: you were not to fight, you were to accept them.
Speaker 1: If they beat you, you accepted it. You never fought,
Speaker 1: no violence. But he knew that back in the day
Speaker 1: before television, that the media, the newspapers would cover their
Speaker 1: English bobbies or whomever they were beating these people up,
Speaker 1: and it would play horribly in England because people in
Speaker 1: England thought that they were very liberal and open minded,
Speaker 1: that they weren't these horrifying imperialists. He was strategic. He
Speaker 1: knew that he had to get maximum publicity for very
Speaker 1: ugly confrontations. Years later, Martin Luther King, another icon who
Speaker 1: also practice civil disobedience, utilize the same tactics in his
Speaker 1: campaigns in Selma and Montgomery. At one point if very controversial.
Speaker 1: He had children of the age fourteen involved in this march,
Speaker 1: that they would get beaten up. People were in his
Speaker 1: group castigading. But how could you be like that? He
Speaker 1: knew that that would play on television now to the
Speaker 1: white audiences around America, they'd be horrified. If you want
Speaker 1: power in this way, if you are fighting for a cause,
Speaker 1: if you want some kind of justice, you have to
Speaker 1: be strategic. You have to think like that. You have
Speaker 1: to think in terms of power. People just don't give
Speaker 1: themselves up. You know, if we have the Me Too
Speaker 1: movement now, men are not going to give up all
Speaker 1: their control in a place like Hollywood. You have to
Speaker 1: hit them. You have to be strong, you have to
Speaker 1: be forceful. It's a power game. And I can't stand
Speaker 1: people who are naive, who think that just being themselves,
Speaker 1: just being virtuous, is going to get what they want.
Speaker 1: And like, if you're going to fight for something, you
Speaker 1: have to be able to meet the enemy on their
Speaker 1: terms of power. So that's sort of how I like
Speaker 1: to explain to him. There's nothing unhealthy about Gandhi or
Speaker 1: MLK as far as I know. Yeah, no, thank you,
Speaker 1: so much for sharing that perspective. I definitely feel very
Speaker 1: aligned with that. I've often said to people when people
Speaker 1: have asked me, like Jay, how have you created what
Speaker 1: you've created? Or how are you building your work and businesses?
Speaker 1: And I've always said that to me, sincerity and strategy
Speaker 1: have to go together. Sure that data and intuition have
Speaker 1: to go together, Like it's you can't have one or
Speaker 1: the other. And so to only be sincere and loving
Speaker 1: and compassion and kind, actually a lot may not happen.
Speaker 1: And to only be strategic and influential and powerful, you
Speaker 1: may end up your exactly well beautifully said, like you
Speaker 1: lose your soul. But when you have two together, and
Speaker 1: it is a fine balance, and it is you're always
Speaker 1: juggling both, and you don't get the perfect amount. You're
Speaker 1: always in percentages and proportions. But the idea that you
Speaker 1: can't ignore this side. There's a beautiful quote you reminded
Speaker 1: me of from Martin Luther King where he said those
Speaker 1: who love peace need to learn to organize themselves as
Speaker 1: well as those who love war. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what yeah, and I think that's what we're saying that
Speaker 1: and that's what I saw when I first started to
Speaker 1: share the messages I'd learned from living as a monk
Speaker 1: and the vaders, and that tradition. For me, it was
Speaker 1: if I'm not strategic about this, or if I'm not
Speaker 1: focused or organized about this, then i might as well
Speaker 1: give up now because it's not going to spread itself.
Speaker 1: And so I'm really happy to hear your perspective on that.
Speaker 1: How do the laws become things that you use versus
Speaker 1: getting lost in what we just sort of losing your
Speaker 1: soul in power now driving you? Because I almost feel
Speaker 1: like when you start using the rule the laws, you
Speaker 1: end up feeling a sense of power, and then that
Speaker 1: power can consume you. Often it can become toxic. Some
Speaker 1: people start that way. They start with an agenda and
Speaker 1: they utilize the powers wrongly. But what to speak of
Speaker 1: someone who starts in a more noble cause. But then
Speaker 1: now the laws are using them versus them using the law.
Speaker 1: You have to understand there's an offensive and defensive side
Speaker 1: to the laws, Okay, And I always tell people who
Speaker 1: have these kind of compunctions about crush your enemy totally.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that, neither do I. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you're reading a law and it kind of
Speaker 1: triggers this, Ah, I can't do that. Then it's not
Speaker 1: something you should do anyway. It's it's not gonna fit
Speaker 1: your way of doing it. You have a certain style,
Speaker 1: a certain belief system, certain values. I'm not telling you
Speaker 1: to go outside your values. But look at that law,
Speaker 1: which is probably the ugliest in the whole book. Crush
Speaker 1: your enemy totally, and understand that in the business world
Speaker 1: that law prevails ninety five percent of the time. When
Speaker 1: a company like Google or any tech company has an enemy,
Speaker 1: their goal is to get rid of them completely, to
Speaker 1: buy them out so they have no competitors. Right look
Speaker 1: at Amazon, but even small our business is dealing with rivals.
Speaker 1: It's a dynamic in the business world. So you need
Speaker 1: to be aware of it and not be naive. You
Speaker 1: don't have to practice it, but you need to be
Speaker 1: aware of it. Other laws are just simply trying to
Speaker 1: show you what you know. We're animals that kind of
Speaker 1: base our opinions a lot on what we see and perceive.
Speaker 1: We don't often think too deeply. We kind of take
Speaker 1: people based on their appearances. So there's a law of power,
Speaker 1: and they're called always say less than necessary, very kind
Speaker 1: of common sense law. And the idea is that if
Speaker 1: you're in a meeting with people, that man or woman
Speaker 1: who talks less generally has an aura of power, particularly
Speaker 1: a boss. They seem enigmatic, mysterious, and when they do something,
Speaker 1: say something, everybody's hanging on their words. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: But whereas people who talk a lot give the impression
Speaker 1: that they're weak, they signal weakness. They can't control themselves.
Speaker 1: So they can't control themselves. How can they control anything
Speaker 1: in the business world? Right, So we sense that in people,
Speaker 1: So be aware of that. You're probably talking too much
Speaker 1: in a lot of circumstances, and maybe you can control that.
Speaker 1: And so this is kind of a way of defending
Speaker 1: yourself in an environment where people will tend to see
Speaker 1: you as weak if you can't have any self control. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you see that a law that's ugly that makes
Speaker 1: you skin crawl, you don't want to do it. I
Speaker 1: have no problem with that. There are law of laws
Speaker 1: I don't practice in there, but you need to be
Speaker 1: aware of them. You need to be aware that other
Speaker 1: people are practicing them so that you don't become their victim.
Speaker 1: Then there are other laws that, yes, you should practice
Speaker 1: right like appealing to people's self interest when you're trying
Speaker 1: to influence them or despise the free lunch. We learn
Speaker 1: to pay for things and be generous with your time
Speaker 1: and your money for people. So it depends on the law.
Speaker 1: But I hate it when people say, oh, what an
Speaker 1: evil book. Those are people who haven't read it because
Speaker 1: half the laws are more than half have nothing el
Speaker 1: about them, and the other half are about opening your eyes.
Speaker 1: I'll never say you have to practice this. I'm just
Speaker 1: making you aware of reality of what goes on in
Speaker 1: the world. Is it possible to And I agree with
Speaker 1: you phully. I think if you read the book, you
Speaker 1: can't see as an evil book or controlling or manipulative
Speaker 1: book at all. You know that's and you can tell
Speaker 1: clearly it's not your intention, it's not who you are.
Speaker 1: And that's what I want to ask you. How much
Speaker 1: of a role does intention play in some of this work?
Speaker 1: Because I wonder if you thought about that when you
Speaker 1: were writing it. Do you think about it now in
Speaker 1: terms of how your intention fits in with a law
Speaker 1: or your reason why you're doing it, the cause behind
Speaker 1: the law that you're using. Does that impact or affect
Speaker 1: the quality of the effectiveness of the law. Does it
Speaker 1: make a law work better? Does it doesn't have any power?
Speaker 1: Does intention have any power? You mean, if your intention
Speaker 1: is for something good or for something correct correct, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends. Unfortunately, in the world today, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've had this experience, and we read about it in
Speaker 1: the news, a lot of people who have a dark side,
Speaker 1: whom we might consider rather immoral in their behavior, get
Speaker 1: pretty damn far right, and they use these laws and
Speaker 1: they don't pay any consequences. So there's no kind of
Speaker 1: ultimate justice in this world. Although there might be in
Speaker 1: a religious sense. I don't deny that at all, But
Speaker 1: in a secular world, there's no consequences to pay for it.
Speaker 1: So people, if they have a lot to crush your
Speaker 1: enemy totally and that's their goal, they might end up
Speaker 1: being even better at it than somebody who doesn't really
Speaker 1: want to go there. But then it kind of tries
Speaker 1: it halfheartedly. Right, So I'm not here to say that
Speaker 1: justice and goodness always prevails. But the people who have
Speaker 1: those kind of intentions, the true sharks in the world,
Speaker 1: they don't need my book, right, they know it. It's
Speaker 1: in their DNA. They grew up at the age of
Speaker 1: five or six seven, it's already been implanted in them,
Speaker 1: and I write about that in my last book, The
Speaker 1: Laws of Human Nature. You can see that in certain
Speaker 1: people at a very early age. The great therapist psychoanalyst
Speaker 1: Melanie Kleine identified the greedy baby at the age of
Speaker 1: six months that was already sucking so hard on the
Speaker 1: mother's breast, and she saw that this type of baby
Speaker 1: turned into the type that was actually very aggressive in life.
Speaker 1: So it's in bread very early on. People like that
Speaker 1: have patterns of behavior they cannot control. But those people
Speaker 1: with those kind of intentions who are very manipulative, I
Speaker 1: believe very firmly, they don't get Ultimately they hit a wall.
Speaker 1: They piss so many people off. They don't know the
Speaker 1: soft side of power. They have no self control because
Speaker 1: all they know is grab, grab, grab, push, push push.
Speaker 1: They don't know when to yield, they don't know when
Speaker 1: to step back right. They've only learned one way, and
Speaker 1: so that becomes their down For what I'm hearing from
Speaker 1: you is that the intention, it's in one sense, could
Speaker 1: could weaken it if it wasn't used effectively. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're also saying that if someone does have a positive
Speaker 1: intention or a good intention, then it is likely that
Speaker 1: they may be happier with that power to some degree.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I find so fascinating. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: there's like, yeah, it's the relationship. I guess we both
Speaker 1: know a lot of powerful people who would consider themselves
Speaker 1: to be not happy. Yeah, And I ask myself, then,
Speaker 1: what is the role of power in the world, Because
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people in your situation
Speaker 1: when they didn't feel any power at home, or they
Speaker 1: didn't feel a sense of significance at home, often power
Speaker 1: or significance become pursuits for pleasure and for happiness. But
Speaker 1: power doesn't lead to happiness. What does power lead to? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I completely agree with them, because under
Speaker 1: the way I've defined power where you feel like Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's say you have a spouse who has a
Speaker 1: very annoying pattern of behavior. All right, and in my books,
Speaker 1: I train you being direct and yelling at them never works.
Speaker 1: Never works. You have to learn the art of insinuation
Speaker 1: of persuasion, which often is stepping back, which often involves
Speaker 1: teaching them a lesson mirroring their behavior. Right, And so
Speaker 1: your intention is not ugly or bad. It's that you
Speaker 1: you can't live with this personalist. They alter their behavior, right,
Speaker 1: And so you think about it, you strategize a little bit,
Speaker 1: you take some steps, and it works. Yes, right, I understand.
Speaker 1: So in a relationship, often that you know can spell
Speaker 1: into some degree of power. Or let's say you're in
Speaker 1: a nasty divorce case and there's a child involved, and
Speaker 1: your emotions are to screw that man or woman who
Speaker 1: is so mean to you, and you're going to have
Speaker 1: this nasty fight, and then you realize, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this child that I love is really going to suffer
Speaker 1: from it. And then you step back and you go, no,
Speaker 1: I have to not just react. It's going to lead
Speaker 1: to some an uglier cycle of battles. I need to
Speaker 1: be a little bit more strategic about this. I need
Speaker 1: to pursue this in a softer way, right, And so
Speaker 1: you end up feeling better about yourself. So I'm not
Speaker 1: saying all of the laws are going to make you
Speaker 1: feel better about yourself, but the degree that you can
Speaker 1: control your environment where you're not helpless at work or
Speaker 1: in a relationship or with your children, will give you
Speaker 1: a degree of happiness. It won't fulfill you the way
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the difference here. It will give you a
Speaker 1: sense of satisfaction, It will relieve that anxiety. It won't
Speaker 1: make you fulfill the way your career will if it's
Speaker 1: done properly, but it will help you lose that continual
Speaker 1: gnawing anxiety that you can't change people, that you can't
Speaker 1: change yourself. So I do think there is an element
Speaker 1: of happiness. However you wanted to do do. Yeah, no involved
Speaker 1: with power? No, And I think I think that's why
Speaker 1: going back to your definition of power, and that's why
Speaker 1: I asked I ask you that earlier on. That's that's
Speaker 1: exactly it that when I was referring to my point,
Speaker 1: I was saying that when people have a negative intention
Speaker 1: and their definition of power is warped, then power can
Speaker 1: end up feeling dissatisfying when you get there because it
Speaker 1: didn't really get you what you want to, right, because
Speaker 1: you couldn't force someone to love you, or you couldn't
Speaker 1: force this person. But actually when it was done in
Speaker 1: a in the way you're saying, like, when you realize
Speaker 1: that actually, if I don't exert this power, I'm actually
Speaker 1: using this power to save this situation to enable this
Speaker 1: situation to improve. I think that's if. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's what I was pointing to. And so yeah, we're
Speaker 1: on the same page. There's one a couple of laws
Speaker 1: that I love that I wanted to pick out for you,
Speaker 1: so to just mention a bit, because I think these
Speaker 1: are really really interesting. So this one law twenty nine
Speaker 1: plan all the way to the end, right, And I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you how one actually does that? And
Speaker 1: I know you talk about in the book, which I
Speaker 1: want to say for people, but for today's conversation, i'd
Speaker 1: love to do, how do you plan to the end
Speaker 1: when sometimes it's really hard to know what's next and
Speaker 1: what the end is? And I think so many people
Speaker 1: today are you know, in jobs for less time, they're
Speaker 1: moving quicker, there's so many more opportunities, new technologies. How
Speaker 1: do we What does it mean to plan to the end? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a thought process. So as as you point out
Speaker 1: well enough that things come up that you can foresee circumstances,
Speaker 1: things change and the ending that you plan for doesn't
Speaker 1: happen the way you wanted to, that's fine. But to
Speaker 1: the degree that you go through a mental process and
Speaker 1: you think about the ending, and you have a goal
Speaker 1: in mind, You're going to be much more effective in life.
Speaker 1: So when something comes up you're planning to go here
Speaker 1: and forces you that way, you're are prepared to take
Speaker 1: that circumstance and maybe veer a little closer to the
Speaker 1: point that you want. Right. So, people, the main point
Speaker 1: of that law is that we are all go around
Speaker 1: with these dreams and these thoughts and these plants that
Speaker 1: are so vague. I'm going to write a book, I'm
Speaker 1: going to direct a movie, I'm going to start a
Speaker 1: tech startup. It's going to make billions of dollars, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And then we maybe go through a kind
Speaker 1: of half hearted process. Yeah, my book's going to be
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, my business people like that. Right, And
Speaker 1: then you don't really plan deeply enough, you don't think
Speaker 1: because your plans are infected with wishes. Right. And to me,
Speaker 1: the kind of the model of that is the invasion
Speaker 1: of Iraq by all of these extremely prudent strategic men
Speaker 1: like Dick Cheney, etc. They thought that we would be
Speaker 1: greeted as liberators with people with flowers in their hand,
Speaker 1: and then lo and behole, whoa this nasty nasty war
Speaker 1: in which hundreds of thousands of people have killed ensued.
Speaker 1: They didn't realize that their plans were infected with their dreams,
Speaker 1: with what I call the rosy scenario. So when you're
Speaker 1: going to go sell this movie that you want to,
Speaker 1: you're imagining that people already love it. You've already convinced yourself.
Speaker 1: But you don't realize that people are cold, they're indifferent.
Speaker 1: So if you plan to the end, you think about
Speaker 1: the goal, you think about the other people, you think
Speaker 1: about steps ABCDE to get there, you're more concrete. And
Speaker 1: then when things come up, as Mike Tyson said, everyone
Speaker 1: has a plan until you get hit in the face. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: you get hit in the face. Yeah, all right, I
Speaker 1: got to change my plan a little bit. You're able
Speaker 1: to adapt. But if you're not thinking clearly about the end,
Speaker 1: you're in deep deep doodoo. That book will never get written,
Speaker 1: or if you start it, no one's going to be
Speaker 1: interested in it, etc. You have to plan more deeply,
Speaker 1: and the closer you can visualize the ending and be realistic,
Speaker 1: the greater your chances of success. That's sort of the
Speaker 1: meaning behind Yeah no, that's I that makes complete sense
Speaker 1: and I think we've we've almost lost that ability today.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I rarely hear that, And that's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to pict that one because I feel like
Speaker 1: today and I guess I could see you noding for
Speaker 1: anyone who's not watching the podcast right now, I'm seeing wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the idea we've lost that today. There's so much
Speaker 1: of like, oh, well, just try this for a second,
Speaker 1: and try this for a moment, and give this a go.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like when you don't, you're so right.
Speaker 1: Not only do you not get it done, I feel
Speaker 1: like the hurdles seem much bigger because you just didn't
Speaker 1: comprehend them. Right. But today when people people would argue,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm in through, I would love to
Speaker 1: hear your opinion. A lot of people would say, but Robert,
Speaker 1: if I comprehend them, then I just get disinfused or
Speaker 1: I get I feel limited, and I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's overwhelming. Courage. Discourage, that's the word I was looking for, Yes, discourage.
Speaker 1: I feel so discourage and overwhelmed and it's too much
Speaker 1: for me. So how do you think about the end
Speaker 1: but avoid that feeling? Well, I guess you don't you
Speaker 1: can't avoid that feeling, but you walk through it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you want just the dream? Do you
Speaker 1: just want the the vision of that of the great
Speaker 1: thing you're going to achieve, or do you want the reality? Right?
Speaker 1: And so you know, if you're going to let's say
Speaker 1: you're you want to write a book, I know that's
Speaker 1: very lazy. That's what I do. I'm writing my second
Speaker 1: book right now, so this will be very helpful. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right. It's a pretty enormous thing usually, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're somewhat ambitious, right, and it's going
Speaker 1: to involve a lot of work and thinking and planning. Right.
Speaker 1: But if you overdo the thinking, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: every little thing is planned ahead of time, then the
Speaker 1: process kind of loses its joy and its excitement. It
Speaker 1: seems overplanned. Right, But you want to have a vision.
Speaker 1: Whenever I start a book, I have an overall vision
Speaker 1: of what I want the reader to feel from it,
Speaker 1: what I want them to learn from right, Okay, and
Speaker 1: so then I plot very carefully the ways to get there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's going to be take three or four years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's overwhelming. Yeah, it's daunting. So what you do is
Speaker 1: you back off and you create little micro goals. So
Speaker 1: I have planning all the way the end means to
Speaker 1: the end of July. Right, Yes, I'm going to plan
Speaker 1: to the end of July, and by July thirty first,
Speaker 1: I am going to have written ten pages. I'm going
Speaker 1: to have done this chapter. I've done this research. Then
Speaker 1: maybe if it's then it doesn't seem quite so daunting,
Speaker 1: and then you can maybe extend it out a few
Speaker 1: more months and low and behold the little baby steps
Speaker 1: you take, you're suddenly halfway there. Wow, it's really not
Speaker 1: as difficult as I thought. So you break it down, people,
Speaker 1: it just drives me. Created can only think in terms
Speaker 1: of black and white. Oh, plan all the way the end?
Speaker 1: Oh think about that. No, it's planning all the steps
Speaker 1: along the way. There's a balance involved, right, So if
Speaker 1: you do these little baby steps and you give yourself goals,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have to work on your own
Speaker 1: you're starting your own boss. It's maddening because nobody's pushing you.
Speaker 1: You have to create continual deadlines. I do this to myself.
Speaker 1: By this date, I have to have this much written, right,
Speaker 1: and it kind of engages your spirit to get your
Speaker 1: emotions going. It ricks you realize you have a deadline
Speaker 1: you have to get there, and it energizes you. Whereas
Speaker 1: that vague feeling of oh, I want to write a book, okay,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, it's actually more daunting, is less energy involved,
Speaker 1: because you never feel like that. I call it in
Speaker 1: my war book death ground strategy. When an army's back
Speaker 1: is against a mountain or the ocean, they fight like
Speaker 1: hell to get out of it because there's desperate and
Speaker 1: it's either win or die. You have to have that
Speaker 1: approach with your book or something. If I don't get
Speaker 1: this done by July thirty, first, I'm in trouble. I
Speaker 1: better hurry up and do it. So break it down
Speaker 1: and don't don't always every single day think of, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's going to take so many years, etc.
Speaker 1: That's in the back of your head. You have a vision,
Speaker 1: but you have other little ends that you're continually planning towards. Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think like that's the challenge, right, Like, when
Speaker 1: you're writing the page, you're thinking about the book, and
Speaker 1: when you're writing about a chapter, you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: book launch. And it's like you're thinking about something way
Speaker 1: bigger than what you actually have to do right now.
Speaker 1: But it's the way you do right now that's going
Speaker 1: to get that bigger thing. And I think if all
Speaker 1: you did was wake up, I just have to write
Speaker 1: a page today, which is that microstep you're speaking of,
Speaker 1: then I don't think I have to write a book.
Speaker 1: Writing a book is daunting and overwhelming, but writing a
Speaker 1: page or writing a paragraph, if that's where you're at,
Speaker 1: like wherever you're at a line, you know, like that's
Speaker 1: if that's the case, that baby step is what you
Speaker 1: want to wake up and fix sat And I think
Speaker 1: it's the same with yeah, with anything, whether you're launching
Speaker 1: a podcast, whether you again I'm being lazy, whether whether
Speaker 1: you're launching ay, like you said, launching a company, whether
Speaker 1: you're you know, whether you're starting a new brand or whatever.
Speaker 1: It may be the problem is we're thinking that I
Speaker 1: need to do this, I need to do that thing
Speaker 1: on the front cover of Forbes magazine, and it's like
Speaker 1: that's not what you're doing, Like this is what you're
Speaker 1: doing right, Yeah, I mean people who are great craftsman
Speaker 1: and I have a book called Mastery Yes, which I
Speaker 1: discussed the process of creating something. If you look at
Speaker 1: crafts people, somebody's building a house or an architect. They
Speaker 1: can't sit there and just suddenly have it happened. They
Speaker 1: have to go brick by brick by brick. They have
Speaker 1: to lay a foundation, they have to focus on the foundation,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time they
Speaker 1: have an overall vision of what the house will look like.
Speaker 1: So if you're only focused on the day to day,
Speaker 1: it loses a little bit of spirit. So you need
Speaker 1: to allow yourself a little bit of dreaming. I dream
Speaker 1: all the time. I'm being interviewed by Jay Shetty while
Speaker 1: I'm writing the book. You know I'm having I'm on
Speaker 1: the cover of some other mac great magazine whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: right livesoft to have it because it gives you kind
Speaker 1: of so you need both. Again, you need both. You
Speaker 1: need to balance, yes, but a little bit more towards
Speaker 1: the micro ends and then occasionally, ah, yeah, when it's finished,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have this. It'll be wonderful because that'll keep
Speaker 1: your energy up. Got it. Yeah, I couldn't agree with
Speaker 1: you more. The other one I wanted to pick out.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's obviously as everyone knows there's there's forty
Speaker 1: eight to pick out, So I'm only picking two, and
Speaker 1: we've spoken about a few of them, but you have
Speaker 1: to get the book to read about the rest of them.
Speaker 1: We have master the art of timing. I find that
Speaker 1: one fascinating too, because I think today we're living at
Speaker 1: a time when people either think it's too late, it's
Speaker 1: too early. I'm not sure, it's not my time. These
Speaker 1: are the you know, these are the things I see
Speaker 1: on social media, These are the things I see people express.
Speaker 1: How do you master the art of timing? What does
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, in an abstract philosophical sense, let's pull
Speaker 1: back a sai and time is a human construct. Time
Speaker 1: does not exist in the universe. It's eternal. There's no clocks,
Speaker 1: there's no beginning or end. It's just one massive thing
Speaker 1: of time that goes on forever. Right, We humans have
Speaker 1: created time. So it's a subjective. It's psychological. So you
Speaker 1: know the experience that when you were a child, a
Speaker 1: year seemed like a million years. Oh my god, Now
Speaker 1: a year goes like that. It's subjective, right, So you
Speaker 1: have to understand that first. Okay, So when you're excited
Speaker 1: about a project, when you feel alive and energized, then
Speaker 1: the time is a much different experience than when you're bored.
Speaker 1: So you can create your relationship to time. Right, so
Speaker 1: I'm not ready, Well, there's a strategy for that. You
Speaker 1: should always take action a little bit before you were ready,
Speaker 1: as the advice I give. So if you're not ready
Speaker 1: and it's really a huge task, okay, maybe wait a
Speaker 1: little bit, take steps to get closer to being ready,
Speaker 1: but several months before you're ready, go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: Try it because you're going to rise to the occasion.
Speaker 1: If you feel like you're almost ready and then you start,
Speaker 1: you go. But I better work harder because I know
Speaker 1: that I can do this, Whereas if you think I
Speaker 1: can never do it, you'll just give up. You don't
Speaker 1: want to give up. Right, So I have in the
Speaker 1: book many examples of people who forced time. I call
Speaker 1: it forcing time. So I talk about Julius Caesar and
Speaker 1: the famous crossing the Rubicon. Right, he had an army
Speaker 1: of only like five thousand and facing Pompey, his arch enemy,
Speaker 1: who had an army of hundreds of thousands, and to
Speaker 1: cross the river means he's starting a war. And everyone
Speaker 1: say it's insane. Don't do it, You'll never make it.
Speaker 1: And he goes, the die is cast, and he crossed
Speaker 1: the rubicon. The war was on, and he knew that
Speaker 1: doing that he would have to think every moment, give
Speaker 1: it every all of its intense thinking, and you have
Speaker 1: to reach the conclusion. And he ended up pulling off
Speaker 1: one of the greatest military victories in history. Look at
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, a senator who had only been in office
Speaker 1: for one term. It's two thousand and seven or so,
Speaker 1: and he decides to run for president. Everyone thinks you're insane,
Speaker 1: you're not ready for it. No one's going to believe it.
Speaker 1: You're not. You have enough weight behind you. He goes,
Speaker 1: doing this step will force me to work harder to
Speaker 1: gain that energy. Yes, if he was a state representative,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been time to force it and try
Speaker 1: and make it happen. But he'd already had enough preparation,
Speaker 1: just enough that he knew if he took that step,
Speaker 1: something would happen. The energy, the excitement, people would catch it.
Speaker 1: He would be infectious and it would work. And look
Speaker 1: what it did for him. So you can be overready.
Speaker 1: You should always take action, just a little bit before
Speaker 1: you think that you're you're ready for it, right. So,
Speaker 1: and then the the thing is to realize that with
Speaker 1: time is that you want to feel like you're in
Speaker 1: control of the time that you have, yes, right, So
Speaker 1: I call it a live time versus dead time. Dead
Speaker 1: time is where you work for other people, you have
Speaker 1: no control of it. Your time is not your own,
Speaker 1: it's their time. They possess you. You're almost literally their slave, right,
Speaker 1: And a live time is that your own. You're your
Speaker 1: master of it. You control it. So when you work
Speaker 1: for yourself, which I think is the best position in
Speaker 1: the world to be, and although it's not for everybody,
Speaker 1: you kind of control your own time. Every moment is alive,
Speaker 1: it's precious, right. So for me, I practice this in
Speaker 1: my meditation, in my daily life, particularly since I almost
Speaker 1: lost my life a couple of years ago. Is every
Speaker 1: moment is so valuable to me that time I maybe
Speaker 1: I could be dead tomorrow. And you have to think
Speaker 1: that way. And if you think that your time is limited,
Speaker 1: that you have things to accomplish, businesses, to start books,
Speaker 1: to write pot casts, to start right, you're going to
Speaker 1: force yourself. You're gonna find the energy if you realize
Speaker 1: your time is short and you have to kind of
Speaker 1: force it in a way and not be sitting back
Speaker 1: on your heels and continuing waiting. So I tell people,
Speaker 1: if you have a dream, maybe stop waiting so much.
Speaker 1: Maybe throw yourself across that river and go and take
Speaker 1: the action. And if you fail, you will have learned
Speaker 1: eighty thousand times more than you would have learned in
Speaker 1: business school. You start the tech startup, it fails, don't
Speaker 1: worry about your reputation. You learned the incredible things in it,
Speaker 1: so don't be afraid of failure and be willing to
Speaker 1: always kind of force the time. That's for one of
Speaker 1: the art of it. Yeah, No, that's really well articulated
Speaker 1: and explained. What changed you? You mentioned that what changed
Speaker 1: for you between knowing time was limited and then experiencing
Speaker 1: it and actually feeling with it, Like, because I think
Speaker 1: that's there's I guess there's very few people who have
Speaker 1: that experience because for some people it literally ends up
Speaker 1: being the end from a physical standpoint. But to almost
Speaker 1: have Yeah, what does that feel like? Because I think
Speaker 1: you're someone who already knew that, you knew that you
Speaker 1: lived like that. You wrote this book like you already
Speaker 1: lived like time is limited. I have to write books.
Speaker 1: You write phenomenal books and lots of them. Yeah, what changed?
Speaker 1: What changed in that? Knowing that theoretical about my stroke? Yes? Yes, yes, yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to be cryptic. So you see the
Speaker 1: shirt that I'm wearing? Yeah? Do you see it? Kind
Speaker 1: of a weird little jagged line. I see it. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: this is the shirt that I was wearing when I
Speaker 1: had my stroke. And I was with my wife who
Speaker 1: were driving home, and she saw, whoa, Robert, your face
Speaker 1: is all weird. You're slurring. She was freaking out. She said,
Speaker 1: pull over. That's the last thing I remember. I went unconscious,
Speaker 1: and the ambulance came and they took scissors and they
Speaker 1: cut the shirt right around there. They ripped it off me.
Speaker 1: They threw it in a bag. Then they put something
Speaker 1: into help give oxygen to my brain because it had
Speaker 1: stopped going flowing to my brain. So months later, I
Speaker 1: asked my wife whatever happened to that shirt? I loved
Speaker 1: it because she had given it to me like two
Speaker 1: months before for my birthday. I love that shirt. She
Speaker 1: told me the store and say, oh man. And then
Speaker 1: finally I said, can you like sew it together again?
Speaker 1: Because she's a good sewer. She said, yeah, okay, and
Speaker 1: so she did. And so I wear it and it
Speaker 1: reminds me because when I was this close to dying,
Speaker 1: there was a feeling inside that I had, right, It
Speaker 1: was a feeling that I, it's weird. There was almost
Speaker 1: a taste in my mouth, and there was a feeling
Speaker 1: in my bones, a kind of a softness, like I
Speaker 1: was melting from the inside out. And I could literally
Speaker 1: feel myself moving away from life in that moment just
Speaker 1: before I went unconscious, right, So reminding of it with
Speaker 1: things like so now when I wear the shirt, it's
Speaker 1: like a memento mori. I can re experience that feeling.
Speaker 1: And it's so ironic because two months before I wrote
Speaker 1: the last chapter of Human Nature about confronting your mortality.
Speaker 1: It's not the same it's abstract. This is visceral. This
Speaker 1: is real. And people who have had much more powerful
Speaker 1: near death experiences than I am know that you don't
Speaker 1: emerge from that ever the same. It changes you. Right,
Speaker 1: So now it was an intellectual concept. So now when
Speaker 1: I hear the birds chirping, I look out my window.
Speaker 1: The sun is shining. I almost want to cry. I'm
Speaker 1: here to see it, and I came that close to
Speaker 1: never seeing it again, you know. Or people are irritating me. No,
Speaker 1: I could be dead and they don't. I love them,
Speaker 1: and I can overlook them because they're also mortal. They're
Speaker 1: also going to die. They also have fears. It's just
Speaker 1: changes you emotionally from the inside out. So how can
Speaker 1: people do that who haven't experienced death. It's not easy,
Speaker 1: but you have to make the leap from an intellectual,
Speaker 1: abstract concept to something visceral and emotional. Right, So, even
Speaker 1: before my stroke, I meditate every morning. I would always
Speaker 1: have a practice of meditating on that moment when I'm
Speaker 1: going to die. I imagine myself it's an afternoon, the
Speaker 1: sun is shining, and this is my last day on earth,
Speaker 1: you know. And I could even make myself kind of
Speaker 1: cry as I do that, and I would make myself
Speaker 1: it's something real. Because we go around and we live
Speaker 1: in a culture where death has no meaning. We don't
Speaker 1: see the food that we're eating, the animals being killed.
Speaker 1: People die in hospitals, cloistered away. Whereas our ancestors, they
Speaker 1: sought on the street, they saw the animals being killed.
Speaker 1: It had a presence. You live in this abstract world
Speaker 1: where nothing is real, where your mortality is just like
Speaker 1: something you don't even process. Get over that, Jump over
Speaker 1: that and make that leap. Make it something emotional and visceral.
Speaker 1: It's not gloomy, it's not more, but it's ober rating
Speaker 1: because when you think about your death and it becomes real,
Speaker 1: you realize, I don't have this much time. I better
Speaker 1: work harder, I better appreciate the people in my life,
Speaker 1: a better love the more, I better appreciate every moment
Speaker 1: that I'm alive. And it just opens you up in
Speaker 1: so many ways. So it's one thing to have an
Speaker 1: intellectual so it's another thing to make it more visceral.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm kind of advocating. That's why I love.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful transition into you know, the new new
Speaker 1: book that's how called the Daily Laws because that's a
Speaker 1: daily habit, right, Like that's the only to make that
Speaker 1: law feel real. You need to practice it daily, especially
Speaker 1: if you've not had a near death experience. And I
Speaker 1: know that I've practiced that death meditation often in my life.
Speaker 1: When I don't do every day, I do it more
Speaker 1: when I'm making a big decision. It really helps me
Speaker 1: make big decisions. I remember when I was working in
Speaker 1: the corporate world, but I really wanted to be doing
Speaker 1: what I do today and sitting there asking myself, like,
Speaker 1: how will I feel about this in you know, on
Speaker 1: my deathbed? That's very interesting. I never thought that's very Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, if I stay in the corporate world,
Speaker 1: how will I feel about this when I'm eighty or ninety?
Speaker 1: N Yeah, And then how would I feel about this
Speaker 1: if I tried and failed? And how will I feel
Speaker 1: about it if I tried and it works? Yea? And
Speaker 1: every part of me was just like, you have to
Speaker 1: try this, Like even if it failed, you'll you'll be
Speaker 1: so upset at yourself for being ninety and about to
Speaker 1: die and you didn't try. And so I love that
Speaker 1: and and that's why I love the fact that you've
Speaker 1: taken up the daily laws. Would have been some of
Speaker 1: your daily life changes since that moment you told us
Speaker 1: about that beautiful meditation? Have there been other things? Obviously
Speaker 1: looking at the birds with the sun. What else has
Speaker 1: changed daily for you? I wonder, well, Um, a bit
Speaker 1: of humility? Wow? So um. First of all, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I look at people now who are old or who
Speaker 1: have a disability, and I understand them on a much
Speaker 1: deeper level. I have much greater empathy for people not
Speaker 1: just with a disability, but people who have lost their job,
Speaker 1: who are poor, who have no control over their lives.
Speaker 1: I have greater empathy for them because in the months afterwards,
Speaker 1: I had no control over my body. I couldn't walk.
Speaker 1: I still walk in a very kind of wonky way. Right.
Speaker 1: I was dependent on other people's, dependent on my wife.
Speaker 1: I was dependent on health care caregivers, on therapists, etc.
Speaker 1: And that feeling of depends is on something I like,
Speaker 1: because I like somebody really values independence. So I had
Speaker 1: to deal with myself. I had to get over my
Speaker 1: kind of radical individualism, my radical sense of being totally independent,
Speaker 1: because I was dependent on other people. And I really
Speaker 1: could empathize with others who have that feeling of dependency.
Speaker 1: It's not a good feeling. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to learn to accept it in some way, and it's
Speaker 1: not easy. And so I learn that there were some
Speaker 1: negative qualities that I had that I had to confront,
Speaker 1: like my impatience. Yeah, whenever I had a problem or
Speaker 1: a health issue. I would push past it. Man, Okay,
Speaker 1: I broke my leg. Well, I'm going to do therapy,
Speaker 1: so in two months I'm going to be out and
Speaker 1: I did it right. It doesn't work for this. You
Speaker 1: can't push past what my brain was damaged. I can't
Speaker 1: push past it. I have to accept it, and that's
Speaker 1: not easy for someone who's used to just pushing past
Speaker 1: things like that. So I had to deal with qualities
Speaker 1: that aren't really to me very good. Like I think
Speaker 1: patience is a good thing. I think it's a virtue
Speaker 1: and I think it's positive. And being able to accept
Speaker 1: certain things as you can't control. So I had to
Speaker 1: learn certain things about myself. I had to learn that
Speaker 1: some of the ideas I had were intellectual, where I
Speaker 1: do have empathy for people, but it wasn't as visceral
Speaker 1: as it is now, you know. And then on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis, I've had to like control my impatience.
Speaker 1: My wife can attest I often lose it. So I'm
Speaker 1: no saint and I don't pretend to be. There'll be
Speaker 1: days where I'm like, God, damn it, I can't pick
Speaker 1: up my tooth, preshious driving me crazy. Other days it's like,
Speaker 1: come on, you can do It's okay, calm yourself down.
Speaker 1: Things are okay, right, Everything's going to be all right.
Speaker 1: So I've had to deal with my own issues on
Speaker 1: a very visceral, real level and deal with them in
Speaker 1: a way I've never had to do before. So it's
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing process. Yeah, that's such a special answer.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that. Like, to get into your
Speaker 1: head with what it feels like in humility is such
Speaker 1: a incredible quality and the hardest to learn and the
Speaker 1: most painful to go through. And I remember when we
Speaker 1: were talk about sickness and health and as young monks,
Speaker 1: one of our duties or roles would be to take
Speaker 1: elderly monks to the hospital when they had to get checked.
Speaker 1: And it was part of that routine to make you
Speaker 1: see that because we were like twenty one years old
Speaker 1: and thought we were super human, because because we were like, oh, sleep,
Speaker 1: who needs to sleep? You know? Like food? Who needs food? Like?
Speaker 1: And you thought so highly of yourself, only to realize
Speaker 1: that you were just lucky because of your age. It
Speaker 1: was just the age of the body that you were
Speaker 1: winning on. It wasn't anything else. It wasn't that you
Speaker 1: were more self mastered or disciplined, and being humbled in
Speaker 1: that way was such a you know, to witness what
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like all of these things have been hidden
Speaker 1: in society. They're invisible yea. And when pain becomes invisible,
Speaker 1: we become worse at dealing with it because it's become
Speaker 1: immune to We never see it. So how do we
Speaker 1: know how to deal with it? And so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: grateful that you're sharing so authentically your pain and what
Speaker 1: you're going through, because you know, be very easy for
Speaker 1: you to say, oh, yeah, I'm just living all my
Speaker 1: messages and you know, all of us failed to live
Speaker 1: our own like as in it's not fail, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just hard, like you know, I think about it.
Speaker 1: So with the daily laws, you've got three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty six meditations, you said you meditate daily. What's been
Speaker 1: your daily meditation practice and does it change? Does it
Speaker 1: stayed the same? Oh? I have a very boring daily me.
Speaker 1: I want to hear it. I do Zen Buddhism. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I've been doing it now for eleven years. Every single
Speaker 1: morning I can remember the day I started. And it's
Speaker 1: basically actually sit on it. It's called za Zen. You
Speaker 1: sit on these pillows and you're trying to empty your mind, right,
Speaker 1: and you know you have a process. You learn things
Speaker 1: from masters. I've gone to a Zen center here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I read a lot of books. But it's
Speaker 1: a completely non intellectual process. Right. You can't think your
Speaker 1: way to enlightenment. It will never happen. And that's the
Speaker 1: problem I haven't. Everybody has. Oh this is what I
Speaker 1: need to do. Blah blah blah blah blah. You can't
Speaker 1: do it. It's like this paradox. They describe it zen
Speaker 1: as this red hot ball that you've swallowed and you
Speaker 1: can't get rid of it. You can't throw it up.
Speaker 1: It's there, It's stuck inside of you. The paradox is thinking,
Speaker 1: won't get it there, so how do I get there?
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to reveal the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: I have things called a cohan, which is like it's
Speaker 1: like a little parable and it's a very famous cohan
Speaker 1: in Buddhism. It basically it says this one monk asks
Speaker 1: a zen master does a dog have Buddha nature? And
Speaker 1: the monk and the master applies muh and muh in
Speaker 1: Japanese means nothing or no, but it really means nothing.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, it's nothing. In other words, you can't
Speaker 1: answer the question yes and no have no meaning, right
Speaker 1: because in Buddhism there is no discrimination. The discriminating mind
Speaker 1: is the ultimate form of some sara. So you need
Speaker 1: to like get rid of that and meditate on muh.
Speaker 1: So for five years now, I've been meditating on muh
Speaker 1: only muh what does it mean? And you have no
Speaker 1: idea the richness that will flow from one little syllable
Speaker 1: like that, and meditating it on every day. So my
Speaker 1: meditation is not exciting, it's not variety. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing every day, right, And there are steps I involved
Speaker 1: in it. It's a physical, emotional process less than an
Speaker 1: intellectual one. But that's to give you an idea about it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's beautiful to hear about it, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the idea of I remember the monks that I
Speaker 1: used to live. It would always say that you know this,
Speaker 1: whatever you call it, enlightenment or revelation, whatever whatever word
Speaker 1: you want to give it, it's something that's received, not achieved.
Speaker 1: It would always repeat that to us, it's received, not
Speaker 1: achieved and and you know, as we're all trying to
Speaker 1: achieve it, like I want to have it and I
Speaker 1: want to find it. What do I have do? Whatever?
Speaker 1: To think? And just knowing that it was received gave
Speaker 1: me so much liberation in and of itself. Right, knowing
Speaker 1: that it would be received you as I continue the path,
Speaker 1: and it would be revealed as well as I continue.
Speaker 1: So well, thank you for John. I love it. I
Speaker 1: love hearing about people's daily meditation practices. I wanted to
Speaker 1: pick out a couple of the daily laws because what
Speaker 1: this book beautifully does for everyone is it literally goes
Speaker 1: through every day of the year so you can open
Speaker 1: it out on that day. Why do you think it
Speaker 1: was important to do that? Why was it important to
Speaker 1: have something for July first, or you know, why was
Speaker 1: it important to have August twentieth or whatever it may be. Well,
Speaker 1: we've talked about a little bit earlier about having micro goals.
Speaker 1: So we all have ambitions, we all have dreams and
Speaker 1: goals and desires that we want, and our culture fills
Speaker 1: us with these kind of vague hopes and dreams. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be this, I'm going to be that, But really,
Speaker 1: what gets you to where you want our habits. Our
Speaker 1: daily habits are negative habits that you can't get rid of, smoking, drinking,
Speaker 1: you know, online porn. Whatever your daily habit is, you
Speaker 1: can't get rid of it. But there are other habits that,
Speaker 1: like discipline, like working every day, like taking steps to
Speaker 1: get reach your goals, that are immensely liberating. And you
Speaker 1: can get rid of your bad habits through developing positive habits. Right.
Speaker 1: So the goal here is to focus less on the
Speaker 1: giant dreams and on the everyday process of changing your thinking.
Speaker 1: You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: how does change occur within a person? Right? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean too yeah, because we all experience from ourselves. The
Speaker 1: change rarely happens quickly as we like, we step back,
Speaker 1: we revert to our old habits, etc. What involves what
Speaker 1: kind of consciousness do we have to go through the
Speaker 1: steps to literally change our way of thinking? It requires
Speaker 1: hitting at the roots of things. It requires how you
Speaker 1: think every single day about simple, basic things in your life. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not grand dreams. It's the day to day thoughts
Speaker 1: that consume you, that obsess you. Right, So that's what
Speaker 1: the book is about. Every day is a meditation, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of structured in the beginning to help you
Speaker 1: go through your career, mostly things from mastery about finding
Speaker 1: your life's purpose you're what I call your life's task,
Speaker 1: and how to achieve a level of mastery and whatever
Speaker 1: you do. Then I kind of take you through the
Speaker 1: forty eight laws of power and dealing with toxic people,
Speaker 1: which we inevitably have. No, you're never going to go
Speaker 1: through life without facing toxic, negative people and how you
Speaker 1: deal with them. And it takes you through how to
Speaker 1: have influence and be able to persuade people. And finally
Speaker 1: it ends with learning about human nature, etc. And the
Speaker 1: last month December is so inspired by the book that
Speaker 1: I'm currently writing about The Sublime, about opening your eyes
Speaker 1: to the insanity of just being alive right now in
Speaker 1: this world that we live in. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the process. It goes every day, focusing your mind on
Speaker 1: a thought that hopefully we'll plant little seeds inside of you.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the heart of the middle of that,
Speaker 1: which was like dealing with toxic people. That's actually a
Speaker 1: question I get us so often, so I'm glad I
Speaker 1: get to defer to you in this scenario and put
Speaker 1: you to the task. But the idea of like people,
Speaker 1: I hear this all the time, Jay, I'm stuck in
Speaker 1: a toxic family, My workplace is toxic. I you know,
Speaker 1: and some people are honest enough to say, Jay, I'm
Speaker 1: my mind is just toxic, Like it's not even other people. Right,
Speaker 1: where do you start? Where? Where do you guide people
Speaker 1: in that journey? Yeah, it's obviously something I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about and dealing with my whole life, particularly in all
Speaker 1: my different jobs. I've had a lot of bosses that
Speaker 1: we would qualify as the psychotic boss or no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, that never pleases them kind of thing
Speaker 1: and the best lesson of all. So we can say
Speaker 1: the different kind of toxic type of people. Most often
Speaker 1: they're of the narcissistic variety. They're people who are grandiose,
Speaker 1: are people who are aggressive, passive, aggressive, who feel a
Speaker 1: lot of envy. There's like debridged insecurities on and on
Speaker 1: their many types. But the main thing that you want
Speaker 1: and a lot to develop in life is the ability
Speaker 1: to detect them before you get involved with them. Because
Speaker 1: the way toxic people have learned, they've learned strategies since
Speaker 1: they were six or seven years old how to get power,
Speaker 1: and they embroil you in dramas. They get into your emotions, right,
Speaker 1: They entangle themselves in your life. They don't come at
Speaker 1: you saying I'm toxic, I'm a narcissist, Get away from me.
Speaker 1: They know how to appear charming, they know how to
Speaker 1: be interested in you, they know how to be moderately pleasing, etc.
Speaker 1: They can they can even be charismatic. You get involved
Speaker 1: with them and then it starts to come out, and
Speaker 1: it's too late because you're emotionally entangled with them. They've
Speaker 1: got their roots inside of you, and you're sucked into
Speaker 1: their dramas, and it's really hard to get out, particularly
Speaker 1: in an intimate relationship. That's the worst of all. The
Speaker 1: best thing you want to develop in life is the
Speaker 1: radar to detect them before you get involved with them.
Speaker 1: And it requires a change in how you perceive people.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean I don't want people to become paranoid.
Speaker 1: Everybody out there that I'm dealing with could be talking
Speaker 1: because it's only like five percent of the population or whatever.
Speaker 1: It is, truly like that. But you want to be
Speaker 1: able to see the signs beforehand, right, and you don't
Speaker 1: want to judge people based on their words, based on
Speaker 1: their charming personality, based on their glittering resume. You want
Speaker 1: to be able to judge their character what's deep, deep
Speaker 1: inside of them, right, the things that they are not
Speaker 1: so visible at glance. Right. So you have to train
Speaker 1: how you think about people. You have to observe their
Speaker 1: patterns in life before you met them. If this person
Speaker 1: you're about to get involved in a relationship tells you
Speaker 1: all my wives and girlfriends in the past, they were
Speaker 1: just such blah blah blah blah blah, and then you
Speaker 1: hear that they only last a year or so and
Speaker 1: it was always their fault, your antenna should go up.
Speaker 1: Something is wrong here. This person isn't revealing the truth.
Speaker 1: That's probably coming from something within. In my forty eight
Speaker 1: Laws of Power, I talk about infection, where there are
Speaker 1: people who have an infecting power on you. They've surrounded
Speaker 1: by all kinds of drama. They continually present themselves as
Speaker 1: the victim of other people, whereas in fact they're the
Speaker 1: ones that constantly draw this drama to them because that's
Speaker 1: how they survive. And you're going to find yourself involved
Speaker 1: with them, and it's going to be horrible. To get
Speaker 1: out of the relationship, you're going to feel guilty. So
Speaker 1: develop the power to recognize them before or you get involved.
Speaker 1: And I have in the Laws of human nature tons
Speaker 1: of advice about that, paying attention to people's nonverbal cues.
Speaker 1: To a narcissist tends to have a very animated face,
Speaker 1: but a kind of a deadness in their eyes. They're
Speaker 1: kind of listening to you, but you can hear that
Speaker 1: they're actually thinking about themselves, or they're they're not really
Speaker 1: connecting to you through the eyes. The face is alive,
Speaker 1: but the eyes are dead. Right. There are signs, nonverbal
Speaker 1: cues that will show you that you're dealing with someone
Speaker 1: who's not I hate the words like sociopathic, psychopathic, but
Speaker 1: who is you know, generally very in itself directed. Right.
Speaker 1: The other thing I have to say is it's easy
Speaker 1: to judge and say, oh, the narcissist that talks to people,
Speaker 1: but we all have these qualities. We all have narcissistic qualities.
Speaker 1: We all can be passive aggressive, right, So some of
Speaker 1: it you can recognize in yourself, and there are ways
Speaker 1: the ways to get out of it, but the main
Speaker 1: thing is to not get involved. With these people. If
Speaker 1: you're involved, let's say you have a spouse or whatever.
Speaker 1: The best power you can get is the ability to
Speaker 1: withdraw your emotions from the moment. And God knows that
Speaker 1: is not easy. It's a day to day thing. It's
Speaker 1: a daily process where you have to tell yourself these
Speaker 1: little kind of scripts that you tell yourself, it's not me,
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with me. It's not personal.
Speaker 1: They have issues from early childhood that have given them
Speaker 1: these toxic patterns in life. They're trying to make me
Speaker 1: feel guilty. But it's nothing to do with me. It's
Speaker 1: not personal. Over and over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: every single time. So you have the ability to detach
Speaker 1: yourself emotionally from them on a daily basis. If you're
Speaker 1: in a job and you have a toxic colleague or
Speaker 1: a toxic boss, if you can get away from them,
Speaker 1: if you can quit your job, if you can move
Speaker 1: to another part of the office, do it because it's
Speaker 1: worth it. Not worth collecting ten thousand extra dollars a
Speaker 1: year because with this boss, because it's going to damage
Speaker 1: you emotionally. It's going to take you years to recover.
Speaker 1: Three years with a toxic boss. You may never recover.
Speaker 1: So if you can quit the job, nothing, no job
Speaker 1: is worth that kind of abuse. It's going to hurt you.
Speaker 1: It's going to damage you right and the same in
Speaker 1: a relationship as well. If you can't get out, you
Speaker 1: have to develop a habit of detachment and not taking
Speaker 1: things personally. And oddly enough, when people sense that in you,
Speaker 1: like a toxic persons senses that they can't push your buttons,
Speaker 1: it has a powerful effect on them. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's going to cure them, but they thrive on the
Speaker 1: ability to push your buttons. To see you getting upset
Speaker 1: and angry just makes them so excited in a perverted way.
Speaker 1: The fact that you're not that you're not taking it personally,
Speaker 1: that you're calm, that you're centered, that you're thinking to yourself,
Speaker 1: it's not personal, it's not personal. It's going to have
Speaker 1: a powerful effect on them. You may not end the dynamic,
Speaker 1: but it will have more of an effect that you
Speaker 1: want than constantly falling for their ploys and their games
Speaker 1: are getting emotionally sucked in to their dramas. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: almost like you see the you see the magic trick
Speaker 1: right like or you're seeing like the puppet strings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you go, I'm going to cut these strings off now,
Speaker 1: like you know, And that's like you're saying, it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily solve it, but that person is well aware now
Speaker 1: that that's not going to work on you, right, right,
Speaker 1: And you're so right that that reactivity we have with
Speaker 1: people that it's like they want that drama. They seek
Speaker 1: that drama because that's what gives them their sense of significance.
Speaker 1: And so you're right that it may not stop that,
Speaker 1: but it definitely makes them think, and it definitely makes
Speaker 1: them check themselves in question. They're used to getting away
Speaker 1: with things, they're used to people not seeing through them.
Speaker 1: And just repeat to yourself, talks to people do not
Speaker 1: announce themselves. They do not wear little horns on their
Speaker 1: head saying I'm devilish or whatever they disguise it. So
Speaker 1: a person who is overly charming on that first encounter,
Speaker 1: who's so nice, who's listening to you, who wants to
Speaker 1: help you and please you, that's not natural because we've
Speaker 1: all developed the habit of being slightly wary of strangers.
Speaker 1: And I've learned through my consulting work and my own
Speaker 1: experience that that person who's trying too hard on the
Speaker 1: first encounter. They're generally hiding something, they're generally conceding intentions
Speaker 1: that they don't want to give out right. Their method
Speaker 1: of throwing dust in your eyes is to appear the
Speaker 1: opposite of what they are, and you're going to fall
Speaker 1: for that. So when people try too hard with one
Speaker 1: quality or reveal too much of a single quality, they're
Speaker 1: often concealing the opposite. To be aware of that as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's and that's what you're saying, Like, it's so
Speaker 1: hard to know whether someone is a got an agenda
Speaker 1: or someone who's just truly nice, Like it becomes hard,
Speaker 1: it becomes hard to suggest. I remember when there was
Speaker 1: someone I was building a relationship with and I said
Speaker 1: to them, I was like, you know, I've just really
Speaker 1: got along with them, and they talk about this all
Speaker 1: the time now, and I said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think would be really good friends. And
Speaker 1: they said that they'd never heard anyone say that to them,
Speaker 1: because it just seems so like lame to somebody agree
Speaker 1: to say that to someone. But I've always lived that way.
Speaker 1: So I've always been someone who, like, I will tell
Speaker 1: you exactly what I'm thinking right now, and I will
Speaker 1: in that sense, not exactly what I'm thinking right now,
Speaker 1: but exactly what I'm feeling in a relationship. I've always
Speaker 1: enjoyed communicating because I saw people communicate so badly about
Speaker 1: who they wanted to be friends with and spend time with.
Speaker 1: I was just like, I want to tell this person
Speaker 1: I want to spend time with them, and if they
Speaker 1: don't want to spend time with me, I want to
Speaker 1: hear it now too, because I don't want to go
Speaker 1: home thinking about And that's how I was when I
Speaker 1: started dating. It was like, if I was attracted to someone,
Speaker 1: I would always tell them because I actually preferred the
Speaker 1: failure then the idea of them not knowing and us
Speaker 1: missing out on an opportunity to have a relationship. So
Speaker 1: I guess my question is is there a way of
Speaker 1: knowing if there's some sincerity or or is that just
Speaker 1: an energetic, intuitive thing that comes with time. You know
Speaker 1: this is I have a chapter on non virual communication
Speaker 1: or lots of human nature. We have an animal part
Speaker 1: of us right where we feel certain things about people
Speaker 1: on that first encounter or second encounter. That's not rational,
Speaker 1: that's intuitive, and then we don't trust it. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: And often it happens in a microsecond, in a flash,
Speaker 1: you meet somebody and you sense a chemistry or something
Speaker 1: a little bit wrong. Right, okay, But with you, if
Speaker 1: I met somebody like you who seems very genuine and sincere,
Speaker 1: and I can read it in your face and I
Speaker 1: feel it, I don't need to be wary, but particularly
Speaker 1: with women dealing with men, because quite frankly, the more
Speaker 1: dangerous toxic type will be man. Women will often have
Speaker 1: an intuition, a sense of something isn't quite right, but
Speaker 1: they don't trust it. They go on. But we all
Speaker 1: have that feeling. Trust it, and you could be wrong.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't hurt to be a little bit wary
Speaker 1: of someone. It doesn't mean if someone is being like
Speaker 1: you friendly, I want to be your friend, that you
Speaker 1: have to go running away immediately. It just means maybe
Speaker 1: the ulterior motive here, Yes, I'm reading body language that
Speaker 1: tells me know that they're sincere. I can let down
Speaker 1: my guard, but there'll be a tiny percentage of me
Speaker 1: which in the days to come wants to see which
Speaker 1: is fat because there are people like it's a It's
Speaker 1: a common classic case of envy where a person who
Speaker 1: is envious of you becomes your friend. That's where most
Speaker 1: envy relationships occur is between friends, right, and they make
Speaker 1: a point of being your friend. They're very friendly, they
Speaker 1: love you, they want to help you, they want to
Speaker 1: assist you. Wow, this is great because we never get
Speaker 1: enough of that in life. And then six months down
Speaker 1: the road, they start turning against you, start doing things
Speaker 1: that completely confuse you. Now, probably in your first encounters
Speaker 1: you could have detected something about them already, but people
Speaker 1: can be tricky. So you know, with you, I would
Speaker 1: kind of sense a complete sincerity and I would let
Speaker 1: down my guard. But there are other people that you
Speaker 1: have to be a little bit wary of. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you've cut off contact, but you have a
Speaker 1: little bit of distance and the moment you see behavior
Speaker 1: that kind of contradicts that initial impression, WHOA all right,
Speaker 1: And maybe you don't become for it. You don't get
Speaker 1: involved with them because getting involved with the person like
Speaker 1: that is it's going to cost you a lot in
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah, I can't agree more in that place
Speaker 1: to business love relationships and I've I've made mistakes because
Speaker 1: you fall in love too fast. In each scenario, you
Speaker 1: just you're moving so fast and so quick, and you're
Speaker 1: involved with someone before you even know it, and you
Speaker 1: never get a chance to say, oh, do I notice
Speaker 1: something you know toward about this person? And so no,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. What are the things that Robert we
Speaker 1: talked about, like people not having power, not understanding power,
Speaker 1: developing a power. I guess one of the things that
Speaker 1: you believe destroy someone's power by themselves, So I don't
Speaker 1: mean things like reputation and envious people. And what are
Speaker 1: the ways we destroy our own power? Generally by not
Speaker 1: having the ability to adapt to circumstances. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: go through life and if you're successful or have some success,
Speaker 1: you kind of depend on certain skills, certain strategies that
Speaker 1: get you where you want to be. And then you
Speaker 1: find yourself in a position that's new and circumstances that
Speaker 1: are new, and you keep doing the same thing over
Speaker 1: again and it doesn't work, and you get angry and
Speaker 1: you get frustrated and you blame other people. This guy's
Speaker 1: not listening to me, This isn't working. It's because you're
Speaker 1: not adapting, right, So you need to have this it's
Speaker 1: a kind of a zen or it's Asian strategy mindset
Speaker 1: of every circumstance is different. You have to have a
Speaker 1: sense of flow every thing that you encounter, every problem
Speaker 1: is new. What worked in the past won't work again.
Speaker 1: I need to adapt. I need to be able to
Speaker 1: flow and be fluid and adaptable. That's the main thing
Speaker 1: that trips people up. It's the wall they continually hit.
Speaker 1: And I've seen it time and again in business with CEOs.
Speaker 1: I was on the board of directors of a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company, and people who are very powerful get to
Speaker 1: a position by being very aggressive, by being very charming,
Speaker 1: by being blah blah blah, and then they reach a
Speaker 1: manageria level where they have a huge company and those
Speaker 1: skills don't apply anymore, and they keep trying to push
Speaker 1: those same buttons and it gets them in trouble and
Speaker 1: they hit a wall. So your ability to adapt and
Speaker 1: alter your thinking dependent on your circumstances will make you
Speaker 1: not hit those walls. I think that's the main thing.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that happens is grandiosity kicks in.
Speaker 1: I have a chapter in Human Nature about grandiosity, and
Speaker 1: basically what happens is success is very very dangerous. Success
Speaker 1: is much more dangerous than failure. Failure makes you look
Speaker 1: at yourself. When I failed with my body and after
Speaker 1: my stroke, I had to look at my own limitations.
Speaker 1: Whereas success is like a drug. It's like a continual
Speaker 1: hit of coke or whatever. Wow, I'm a god. People
Speaker 1: love me. Everything I say is wonderful. Everyone's going around thinking, God,
Speaker 1: you're so great, Robert One Yet da da dah. And
Speaker 1: slowly your feet reason low, higher and higher off the ground.
Speaker 1: You lose contact with reality and boom, you fall down.
Speaker 1: Because you don't realize that success often has a great
Speaker 1: degree of luck. You're discounting the luck involved. You're discounting
Speaker 1: the role of other people that helped you to get there.
Speaker 1: You think it's all about you, right, So you take
Speaker 1: actions that aren't calibrated to reality because you think you
Speaker 1: have the Midas touch and you don't. So those are
Speaker 1: some of the main barriers to power. I think, God, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great answers, there's a there's a absolutely brilliant
Speaker 1: I loved what you said earlier about thinking everything every
Speaker 1: situation is new, having fresh eyes and fresh ears to
Speaker 1: to look at a problem, to hear a problem, and
Speaker 1: you're reminded me of a beautiful zen story. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know it. Of the i'll, i'll, I'll do the
Speaker 1: quick version, but the idea of the person who wants
Speaker 1: to cross a river, so they the raft. The raft
Speaker 1: helps them across the river. Now they carry the raft
Speaker 1: wherever they go. And now they come up to a
Speaker 1: wooded forest and they're trying to get through and the
Speaker 1: raft won't let them get through. And they realize they
Speaker 1: have to let go of the raft if they want
Speaker 1: to go through the forest. Yeah. I never thought of that.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, the idea that you get so attached
Speaker 1: to this raft saved my life. I have to keep
Speaker 1: it on me forever, right, Yeah, And you know I
Speaker 1: can relate to so much of that in my life.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I often feel that I allow myself
Speaker 1: to go through a renewal and almost and I don't
Speaker 1: like the word rebranding because it seems so external. It's
Speaker 1: almost like what is the word for an internal rebrand?
Speaker 1: But it's like the idea of I allow myself to
Speaker 1: just be like who do I want to be at
Speaker 1: this stage in my life and what do I truly
Speaker 1: want to dedicate my life too, and this time in
Speaker 1: my life too, And I feel like I'm at that
Speaker 1: stage right now in my life and because I've I've
Speaker 1: far superseded things that I thought I would have done,
Speaker 1: and now I need and want to create the next
Speaker 1: challenge in the next you know, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: something that's big and that's very healthy, that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I look at what's that next big thing that's going
Speaker 1: to make me learn new skills? And what is the
Speaker 1: thing that I want to learn in order to you know.
Speaker 1: And so I'm there right now. And when you were
Speaker 1: saying that, I was nodding along and laughing because I
Speaker 1: can just so relate to that, and and thankfully because
Speaker 1: of good mentors and coaches. You know, it's I'm always
Speaker 1: I'm using success to look inward too, as opposed to
Speaker 1: only failure. And of course there's plenty of failure in
Speaker 1: success too, so you're you're always doing both, but the
Speaker 1: idea is to always look inward. And so yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm actually just sharing that with you because I
Speaker 1: could relate to it so strongly. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: temptation I had after the success of my first book,
Speaker 1: The forty eight Laws, was to kind of keep repeating
Speaker 1: it to do a forty eight lass of power number two,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of writers ended doing because
Speaker 1: they're worried about taking on something different. They've kind of
Speaker 1: created their audience. They better just sort of keep to it.
Speaker 1: With success, you become conservative. I better just do what's
Speaker 1: working right and then but times change. There's a zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: there's a spirit of the times. People have moved on,
Speaker 1: but you haven't, and your forty eight laws of power
Speaker 1: number two won't work, you know, So you need to change.
Speaker 1: And I do that with every book that I write.
Speaker 1: Each book has to be different as to reflect the
Speaker 1: spirit of the times, has to be a challenge. I
Speaker 1: have to learn new skills, I have to go outside
Speaker 1: of my comfort zone. So I think that's sort of
Speaker 1: a similar thing. Yeah, definitely. And I think I saw
Speaker 1: that because I look again what we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: When you study the people you admire in any field,
Speaker 1: or the companies or whatever it may be, you see that,
Speaker 1: you see that constant renewal. And initially it's very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for the audience as well. It's uncomfortable for the community
Speaker 1: because they're not used to changing and they're not used
Speaker 1: to seeing people grow in that way, and and I
Speaker 1: think that discomfort is both on the behalf of the
Speaker 1: individual who's trying to grow and be more of themselves,
Speaker 1: and it's there for the community too. And but but
Speaker 1: it gives birth to something phenomenal, Like you're saying, the
Speaker 1: conservative approach would have never got you there, and so
Speaker 1: I love that idea. And yeah, just it's it's been
Speaker 1: a fun time for me trying to figure out like
Speaker 1: I'm almost enjoying feeling like I'm at the beginning of
Speaker 1: my journey again. Wow. And there's some there's some joy
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, there's some sachredness and specialness of like,
Speaker 1: oh I forgot how this felt. You know, read a
Speaker 1: book on that. That's your book. That's your next book.
Speaker 1: I'm right, my next one already. So this one may
Speaker 1: have to be later down because I read that book tomorrow.
Speaker 1: That's great idea. Wow. Well well yeah, well we'll have
Speaker 1: to we have to, yeah, share notes and collaborate on that,
Speaker 1: because I was saying offline, I want to share this
Speaker 1: with we with me and Robert were talking about this offline,
Speaker 1: but I want to share it with you. Is the
Speaker 1: idea of you know, I'm really enjoying this conversation with Robert,
Speaker 1: because we're almost toggling between the binary and finding the gray,
Speaker 1: and Robert's fantastic at getting and that's what I enjoyed
Speaker 1: talking to you about so much. You're so fantastic at
Speaker 1: getting into these subtle nuances because we, you know, all
Speaker 1: of us try and be like, should we do this
Speaker 1: or should we do this? Like is this the answer?
Speaker 1: Is this the answer? What's the number one thing? And
Speaker 1: it's you know, all of that stuff just sounds good,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean anything. And I feel like today
Speaker 1: we've really, you know, dove into some of those in
Speaker 1: betweens and nuances. So I wanted to share thank you
Speaker 1: for doing that. Is you've been guiding us that way, Robert,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, is there anything that you
Speaker 1: feel you haven't shared or something else on your mind
Speaker 1: or intuitively in your heart they're like, Jay, I have
Speaker 1: to share this on your podcast or anything right now
Speaker 1: that's calling you. Well. The book that I'm working on,
Speaker 1: the Law of the Sublime, which is taking a long time,
Speaker 1: is probably gonna be three years away or so, maybe
Speaker 1: more so. It's almost a little bit too much to
Speaker 1: tease people with now, but it's something. It's very important
Speaker 1: to me because back in two thousand and five, two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, I had meant to write a book
Speaker 1: on the Sublime. It's a concept that fascinates me, and
Speaker 1: I got derailed by other projects. I did a book
Speaker 1: with fifty cent I did Mastery Human Nature, and then
Speaker 1: I had my stroke. And the last chapter of the
Speaker 1: Human Nature is about the Sublime, about confronting mortality, and
Speaker 1: so I go, this is the time to write this
Speaker 1: book because it means so much to me, and it's
Speaker 1: been brewing in me for sixteen years, so there's something
Speaker 1: very personal about it. And the idea is I think
Speaker 1: a problem that a lot of people face today is
Speaker 1: that their minds are locked. They have only one way
Speaker 1: of thinking about things. They've become so conventional, and I
Speaker 1: know it's something. I'm not being judgment because I have
Speaker 1: the same problem, so rigid about this is the way
Speaker 1: the world, this is how things have to be, this
Speaker 1: is how my life has to be. This is what
Speaker 1: meaning is, This is where value is in life. And
Speaker 1: I compare it to like a circle, and being a
Speaker 1: social animal, our thoughts have to sort of stay within
Speaker 1: this circle of what ideas are accepted of what behavior
Speaker 1: is accepted, what conventions and codes there are, And the
Speaker 1: sublime is what lies just outside that circle. What isn't
Speaker 1: really something you're supposed to think, something's supposed to do,
Speaker 1: isn't a behavior or a value necessarily or encouraged to have.
Speaker 1: But when your mind touches it, tickles it a little bit,
Speaker 1: you're like, whoa, it jolts you alive. There's another way
Speaker 1: of thinking, there's another way of being in this world.
Speaker 1: How exciting, right, And that's what makes people search for
Speaker 1: transcendental experiences what Maslow called peak experiences. That's why they
Speaker 1: climb mountains and almost get close to death and falling
Speaker 1: because it gives them that joel of being alive. It
Speaker 1: shakes them up. And so the ultimate thing outside that
Speaker 1: circle is death itself. It's the ultimate unknown, right. And
Speaker 1: the word sublime means up to the threshold of a door,
Speaker 1: and that door is the door to death itself. And
Speaker 1: so when you peek at it and you look at it,
Speaker 1: that's the ultimate in a sublime thought. Right. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's thought of the model. But I have these different
Speaker 1: categories and I want to make you the reader aware
Speaker 1: that you take so much for granted, and I don't
Speaker 1: want this to be in a Polyanish way, because the
Speaker 1: Sublime has an element of terror and darkness and fear involved,
Speaker 1: because death is the paradigm here. But you don't realize
Speaker 1: in your day to day life. I've just written these
Speaker 1: first two chapters and they're in the Daily Laws, so
Speaker 1: you'll see about them, giving you some excerpts from the
Speaker 1: new book. But it's insane that you live in a
Speaker 1: world that the way it is right now. If you
Speaker 1: study the history of the cosmos, and how unlikely it
Speaker 1: is that the Earth ended up being the way it is,
Speaker 1: and how rare it is that they may not be
Speaker 1: life on other planets. If there is the rarity of
Speaker 1: the life that we know of the prog the animals,
Speaker 1: the evolution, the technology that we have, and then if
Speaker 1: you look the course of evolution, and how improbable it
Speaker 1: is that humans ever evolved even existed. If an asteroid
Speaker 1: hadn't hit the planet sixty some million years ago, dinosaurs
Speaker 1: would still be around, on and on, multiplied by the
Speaker 1: seventy thousand generations of Homo sapiens that preceded you. If
Speaker 1: one of so let's say your parents had never met,
Speaker 1: you would not be here, Jay, you'd maybe you'd be
Speaker 1: combined in something else. Okay, and think of the narrow
Speaker 1: possibly that your parents hadn't met. Multiply that by seventy
Speaker 1: thousand other generations trailing all the way to the first
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens. It's astronomical. The odds that you exist, that
Speaker 1: you're breathing, that you're looking at a world with plants
Speaker 1: and animals, etc. Is staggering, and you never think about it.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to make you think about things that
Speaker 1: you never think about in this book, and I want
Speaker 1: you to completely alter and make that going beyond the
Speaker 1: circle sort of more of a daily occurrence for you.
Speaker 1: So that's what's on my mind a lot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that and I look forward to that. I
Speaker 1: purposely didn't dive into it too much because I know
Speaker 1: we need to wait for it, and I hope we
Speaker 1: get to have another conversation when that comes out. But
Speaker 1: now we look forward to that and I can agree
Speaker 1: with you more. The inconceivable is is such a beautiful
Speaker 1: meditation and of itself, to meditate on the inconceivable nature
Speaker 1: of where we are and what's possible and what's around us,
Speaker 1: and it needs to be part of our daily life
Speaker 1: for that entrance into the splendor and how sublime it
Speaker 1: can be. So yeah, I love that and we look
Speaker 1: forward to that. Robert. We end every on Purpose interview
Speaker 1: with the final five. These are the fast five rapid
Speaker 1: five rounds, so answers have to be one word to
Speaker 1: one sentence maximum. I may go off on a tangent,
Speaker 1: but let's see. So, Robert Green, these are your final five.
Speaker 1: The first question is what is the best advice you've
Speaker 1: ever received? I remember years ago my brother in law
Speaker 1: said something about learning to watch the grass grow, basically
Speaker 1: the idea of things only happen over time. And I
Speaker 1: was twenty one at the time and I wasn't listening.
Speaker 1: And I've learned since then that the most beautiful things
Speaker 1: occur slowly and with patience. And if you can sit
Speaker 1: there and watch the grass grows, that's pretty great. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: What's the worst advice you've received? You need to capitalize
Speaker 1: on the forty eight laws of power and make a
Speaker 1: lot of money, which I ignored. That's brilliant. That's a
Speaker 1: great answer. That's a great answer. Third question, what's your
Speaker 1: current purpose? I have certain books I want to write
Speaker 1: that are very mean a lot to me, and I
Speaker 1: want to create them before I die because I know
Speaker 1: that my life is short. I may not have as
Speaker 1: much time as I want, So that's to realize all
Speaker 1: the books that I wanted to write. Question number four
Speaker 1: is what's something that other people value that you don't.
Speaker 1: It's going to sound not right, but I'll say it anyway.
Speaker 1: It's money. I mean I have. It's easy for music
Speaker 1: because I have enough of it and I'm comfortable, but
Speaker 1: it's never been my goal. It's never ruled my life
Speaker 1: doing what I want to do. All that money means
Speaker 1: to me is freedom to do what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I never focus on what I can do to increase
Speaker 1: my bank account, so I don't really value it, and
Speaker 1: it drives my mother crazy. For instance, Thank you for sure,
Speaker 1: I love that. And question number five, If you could
Speaker 1: create one law in the world that everyone had to follow,
Speaker 1: what would it be? Be yourself. Be as weird as
Speaker 1: you want to be. Stop listening to other people and
Speaker 1: doing what they tell you. Just follow what your soul
Speaker 1: tells you what makes you different, and be weird. We
Speaker 1: need more weird people, who are more individuals, who are
Speaker 1: unique who create art and businesses that reflect themselves. So
Speaker 1: just be you, be weird. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
Speaker 1: As they used to say in China. That's beautiful, Robert Green,
Speaker 1: everyone on on Purpose. Make sure you go and follow
Speaker 1: Robert across social media and we'll have the links to
Speaker 1: all of Robert's books in all the descriptions. The Daily
Speaker 1: Laws is out as you're listening to this episode, and
Speaker 1: of course the forty eight Laws of Power and the
Speaker 1: Laws of Human Nature, Mastery and Robert's other books are
Speaker 1: available to Robert. I want to thank you for just
Speaker 1: being such a wonderful guest on the show, for making
Speaker 1: the effort. Just for those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: Robert has traveled here to be here with us in
Speaker 1: the studio despite you know, all the physical challenges that
Speaker 1: he faces on a daily basis, and I really want
Speaker 1: to honor you for that and thank you for that.
Speaker 1: It's it's a real show of your your effort and
Speaker 1: love for what you do and I don't take you
Speaker 1: for granted. I really value it, so thank thank you
Speaker 1: so much for inviting me here, Jay, I was definitely
Speaker 1: worth the trip out of my house, So I really,
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it amazing. Thank you,