Speaker 1: Let's be honest. Life is stressful, its work, its relationships
Speaker 1: and the state of the world. But there's a way
Speaker 1: to bring that stress level down. Calm. It's the number
Speaker 1: one app for mental wellness with tons of content to
Speaker 1: manage anxiety, promote concentration, and help you unwind. There's music, meditation,
Speaker 1: a more Calm makes it easy to de stress. You
Speaker 1: can literally do a one minute breathing exercise. Personally, I
Speaker 1: love the soundscapes. Nothing like a little rain on leaves
Speaker 1: to help soothe my nervous system. I've actually been working
Speaker 1: with Calm for a couple of years now, and I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to check out my series on reducing
Speaker 1: overwhelm eight short practices Quick Relief. Right now, listeners of
Speaker 1: On Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calm
Speaker 1: Premium at Calm dot com. Forward slash j that's c
Speaker 1: LM dot com Forward slash jay for forty percent off.
Speaker 1: Calm your Mind, Change your Life.
Speaker 2: We don't really have a self. The self is a
Speaker 2: construction of our minds. There actually is nothing there, and
Speaker 2: that kind of emptiness, eaglelessness, is enlightened with It's a
Speaker 2: beautiful feeling. One of the best selling authors of the
Speaker 2: last twenty years, Robert Green. If you're dealing with your
Speaker 2: own weaknesses and your own emptiness inside, you're going to
Speaker 2: be drawn to people who fill that up. People's perception
Speaker 2: of you can almost become how you perceive yourself if
Speaker 2: you're not careful.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you.
Speaker 1: In the last ninety days, seventy nine point four percent
Speaker 1: of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are
Speaker 1: not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that
Speaker 1: if you want to create a habit, make it easy
Speaker 1: to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a
Speaker 1: habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.
Speaker 1: This would also mean the absolute world to me and
Speaker 1: help help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you
Speaker 1: and the world. Subscribe right now.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 1: Jay Sheety Jay Sheety Sly Jay Sheet. Hey everyone, welcome
Speaker 1: back to on Purpose, the place you come to become
Speaker 1: a happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is one
Speaker 1: of your favorites, someone who's been on the show before.
Speaker 1: You absolutely loved our first episode together, and so I
Speaker 1: had to have him back. He's also one of my
Speaker 1: favorite authors, someone that I've been rereading recently, especially when
Speaker 1: I fell out of love with learning. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about that in a second. Today's guest is Robert Green,
Speaker 1: the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The forty
Speaker 1: Eight Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The Thirty
Speaker 1: three Strategies of War, The fiftieth Law Mastery, The Laws
Speaker 1: of Human Nature, and most recently, of The Daily Laws.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to welcome back to the show, Robert. Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me you, thanks for
Speaker 2: that great introduction.
Speaker 1: Of course, grateful to have you back in the sea.
Speaker 1: And as I was just saying to you offline over Christmas,
Speaker 1: I spent last year touring. I was on stages. We
Speaker 1: did nearly forty cities across ninety days. My book had
Speaker 1: come out. I was really pouring out externally, and whenever
Speaker 1: that happens to me, I always kind of after that
Speaker 1: get a feeling of I need to grow again, I
Speaker 1: need to learn again, I need to nourish myself. And
Speaker 1: I really believe that last Christmas, The Daily Laws of
Speaker 1: Power became my daily read and I have recommended it
Speaker 1: to so many people. My wife started reading it, my
Speaker 1: closest friends have started reading it, and it was just
Speaker 1: such a great book for anyone who's either stuck with reading,
Speaker 1: someone who's kind of like not sure what to read,
Speaker 1: someone who's trying to figure out their direction in life.
Speaker 1: The Daily Laws of Power is a great starting place.
Speaker 2: I'd say, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I've always been a fan of your books, and you
Speaker 1: send me this beautiful limited edition version which I'm getting
Speaker 1: to show off on the show by the forty eight Laws.
Speaker 1: What a phenomenal book. So thank you for being such
Speaker 1: a big part of my learning journey.
Speaker 2: For having me. You're a rock star. But what a
Speaker 2: tour You've been on. A tour like that that sounds
Speaker 2: like fun.
Speaker 1: It was fun. It was fun. We went to Sydney
Speaker 1: and Melbourne and Brisbane, and we went all over India.
Speaker 1: I went to Dubai, I went to Whoa Paris, Berlin.
Speaker 1: It was phenomenal. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: But you could see yourself more of an extrovert or
Speaker 2: an introvert.
Speaker 1: So that's a great question, and I'm going to let
Speaker 1: you define the two for me, because you'll probably have
Speaker 1: some wisdom to share with us. I energize alone, but
Speaker 1: I enjoy connecting with small groups of specific people. So
Speaker 1: I assume I'm overall and introut. But nine nine percent
Speaker 1: of people would say, Jay, you're an extrovert. But if
Speaker 1: I was in a big group of people, I would
Speaker 1: find the one person who I share values with to
Speaker 1: have a deep conversation. I wouldn't be milling around into
Speaker 1: do using myself to everyone. So if that makes any.
Speaker 2: Sense, But do you need to be alone?
Speaker 1: Do you feel I crave alone time A lot? Yes,
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: So you're a mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're under that. Yeah, yeah, that's what it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But I have so many questions for You're over that
Speaker 1: I got into and I'm really coming to you with
Speaker 1: questions that I know a lot of my community and
Speaker 1: audience repeatedly ask and I think your specifically position to
Speaker 1: answer a lot of these. The first one I have
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest things I get asked is Jay,
Speaker 1: how do I deal with negative people? How do I
Speaker 1: deal with negative people in my family? How do I
Speaker 1: deal with negative people in my friends circle? How do
Speaker 1: I deal with negative people at work? In close intimate circles.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of people feel they're dealing with negativity.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it all depends on the details, the
Speaker 2: kind of negative person you're dealing with. There are several
Speaker 2: kind of ways of looking at it's some kind of micrones,
Speaker 2: some kind of much larger. The larger picture is, we
Speaker 2: all have negative traits, we all have dark traits, right,
Speaker 2: and so you kind of if you have this idea
Speaker 2: that it's just humans, human beings are like this. It's
Speaker 2: like a flower or a rock or a tree. It
Speaker 2: has its nature. You know, I just accept it. I
Speaker 2: accept people for who they are and I deal with
Speaker 2: them on that level. I don't judge them, et cetera. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, when you're dealing with negative people, it can
Speaker 2: be very difficult because negative people like to stir up
Speaker 2: a lot of drama around you, around them, and that's
Speaker 2: the kind of power that they get. They like the
Speaker 2: attention that they get from making people upset, from pulling
Speaker 2: on your emotions. Right, So you have to have you
Speaker 2: have to have this kind of larger look at them
Speaker 2: where it's not about me, right, They're dealing with their
Speaker 2: own issues, their own problems. There's a history behind it.
Speaker 2: It could be their parents, it could be their family,
Speaker 2: it could be their spouse, their children, whatever, and they're
Speaker 2: venting it on me in this particular moment. But it's
Speaker 2: not personal. I tell people, don't take everything so personally, right,
Speaker 2: But then you know, so there's all these different levels
Speaker 2: and it all really depends on the specifics because a
Speaker 2: lot of people come to me for advice, but a
Speaker 2: lot of times you're enmeshed with a negative person, like
Speaker 2: it's your boss, it's your spouse, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: And it's very difficult to do what I'm talking about, right,
Speaker 2: And so you have to try and get a little
Speaker 2: bit of distance from them. You have to be able
Speaker 2: to say to yourself, they're not me, right, they have
Speaker 2: their own problems. I'm separate from them. The sense of
Speaker 2: being separate from them is very liberating, right. So they
Speaker 2: have issues and they're trying to drag me into it,
Speaker 2: and they're trying to drag me down. But them, I
Speaker 2: have my own life and I'm not going to get involved.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you need to have empathy, but sometimes you need
Speaker 2: to shut that off. And so the best thing in life, though,
Speaker 2: is That's why I say, there's just so many angles
Speaker 2: to approach this from is if they're like a deep narcissist,
Speaker 2: and that's probably the most common type of negative person
Speaker 2: you deal with in the world today and we all
Speaker 2: have come across this. The power that you have is
Speaker 2: to recognize people like that before you get involved with them,
Speaker 2: and to not get involved with them, right, And so
Speaker 2: they have signs things that you can pick up in advance.
Speaker 2: People who are toxic. I don't know if we're toxic
Speaker 2: and negative are the same here. They don't show it immediately.
Speaker 2: They're good at deceiving you. They can be very charming,
Speaker 2: they can be very dramatic. They pull you in with
Speaker 2: their great stories they have. Sometimes they're even charismatic. A
Speaker 2: lot of important CEOs in the world, people like Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: are raging narcissists. They appear very exciting and you want
Speaker 2: to get to know them, but you have to recognize
Speaker 2: that these are people that are probably going to use you. Right.
Speaker 2: They don't see you as an individual, and the people
Speaker 2: you associate with were very as humans, we're very open
Speaker 2: to the emotions of other people, right, And so the
Speaker 2: people you associate with have a huge role on who
Speaker 2: you are and the energy you have, you know, your
Speaker 2: daily life, et cetera, et cetera, And so you have
Speaker 2: to be very very careful who you let into your life,
Speaker 2: right and God, Jay, I don't know, there's so many
Speaker 2: different angles to approach it from. I tell people that
Speaker 2: don't judge people as far as who you're going to
Speaker 2: let into your life. Don't be deceived by the appearances.
Speaker 2: Don't judge people based on their intelligence, on their charm,
Speaker 2: on whether they're good or bad, et c. Judge them
Speaker 2: on their character, whether they have a weak or a
Speaker 2: strong character.
Speaker 1: What are some of the signals the signs we can
Speaker 1: look out for, because I think what you just said
Speaker 1: is so true that we naturally get attracted to people's appearance, intelligence, charisma,
Speaker 1: access because we haven't really been trained to view character.
Speaker 1: So I remember when I lived in the monastery, the
Speaker 1: highest quality or character trait that was considered the epitome
Speaker 1: of internal emotional evolution was humility. And so when you
Speaker 1: met someone who is humble, and you met someone who
Speaker 1: didn't have false ego, they were considered a high character
Speaker 1: and we were trained in order to understand that. But
Speaker 1: in the modern world, that isn't how the material world works.
Speaker 1: We're almost attracted to people who can come off arrogant
Speaker 1: and show boats. And even if we sense we don't
Speaker 1: like that, we still believe that person has power. And
Speaker 1: so what are things that we have to look out for?
Speaker 2: Well, Also, there are people who appear to be humble,
Speaker 2: but they're not really humble. There's a lot of people
Speaker 2: now who feign humility because it's seen as a positive trait.
Speaker 2: So humans are born actors and you have to kind
Speaker 2: of look behind the mask. So I tell people I
Speaker 2: view it as strong or weak character. A strong character
Speaker 2: is a person who can take criticism right, who can
Speaker 2: work with other people right, who can deal with stressful situations,
Speaker 2: who can handle responsibility, and if there's something goes wrong,
Speaker 2: they take I am to blame for They don't look
Speaker 2: at other people. There's somebody who can rely on you
Speaker 2: lean on them, and there's something there to lean on.
Speaker 2: You can rely on them in situations. A weak character
Speaker 2: is somebody who cannot take criticism. That is probably the
Speaker 2: number one characteristic. The worst trait I think in people,
Speaker 2: and a definite trait of negativity is somebody who can't
Speaker 2: take any kind of criticism right. They're so defensive, So
Speaker 2: that means they can get away with anything, They can
Speaker 2: say anything they want, and there's just like a wall
Speaker 2: of shell around them. Right. So, the ability in a
Speaker 2: work situation, in a relationship to take criticism and not
Speaker 2: be able to use it constructively is an incredibly useful
Speaker 2: and powerful trait to me that reveals strong character. How
Speaker 2: people handle stress is a really good sign of their character.
Speaker 2: So in a work situation, people are good at faking
Speaker 2: it and pretending that they're very strong. But when it
Speaker 2: gets really stressful and there's a lot of pressure on it,
Speaker 2: the mask falls off and they reveal that they can't
Speaker 2: handle it. They're too weak. They're reacting to everything, they
Speaker 2: can't get out of the moment. They're so impatient, you know,
Speaker 2: and fragile. And so the ability to handle stress shows
Speaker 2: that somebody has something strong inside of them, right. How
Speaker 2: they handle power, Right, So, when people are kind of
Speaker 2: climbing up the ladder in a group or in a
Speaker 2: job they generally were, they generally try and pretend like
Speaker 2: they're they're work with the group. But once they have power,
Speaker 2: that all falls off and they can become abusive and
Speaker 2: they feel like they can get away with any things
Speaker 2: that they couldn't get away with before, they treat people
Speaker 2: below them miserably, et cetera. So when people have power,
Speaker 2: how do they handle it? Are they responsible? Do they
Speaker 2: suddenly become somebody different or do they maintain the character
Speaker 2: that they had beforehand? Right? What kind of partners do
Speaker 2: they choose? Do they choose a spouse, a husband, a girlfriend,
Speaker 2: et cetera, somebody that they can push around, somebody that's
Speaker 2: inferior to them so that they can feel better about themselves.
Speaker 2: How do they look when they're playing like a game,
Speaker 2: or they're in outdoor activities or something that has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with work. Are they so competitive they have
Speaker 2: to win it everything, even when it's like outside of
Speaker 2: that kind of environment. You know, these are kind of
Speaker 2: traits that help me sort of judge a person's character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are often the things that we either
Speaker 1: ignore or we actually let them kind of fall by
Speaker 1: the wayside or don't pay enough attention to them because
Speaker 1: we think, oh, no, but they're so smart and they're
Speaker 1: so this, And I wonder how much of guys also, like,
Speaker 1: what does that say about us that we often get
Speaker 1: attracted to the wrong things within people? What does that
Speaker 1: say about us? Does that make us a stronger weak character?
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Jay Shatty and I'm throwed to announce
Speaker 1: my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can
Speaker 1: see my on Purpose podcast live and in person. Join
Speaker 1: me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations
Speaker 1: with surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness
Speaker 1: exper or a CEO or business leader. We'll dive into
Speaker 1: experiences designed to inspire growth, spark learning, and build real connections.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see you there. Tickets are on
Speaker 1: sell now. Head to Jayshetty dot me and get yours today.
Speaker 2: I know that I tend to be I tend to
Speaker 2: get involved with narcissistic people. It's a weakness of mine, right,
Speaker 2: And maybe it's because of my upbringing, and maybe it's
Speaker 2: because I feel a kind of emptiness inside of me,
Speaker 2: and that their charm and the attention that they tend
Speaker 2: to they pretend to give you is kind of enchanting
Speaker 2: or casts a spell on you and it draws you in. Yes,
Speaker 2: so if you're dealing with your own weaknesses and your
Speaker 2: own emptiness inside, you're going to be drawn to people
Speaker 2: who fill that fill that up. Are you going to
Speaker 2: be drawn to causes and charismatic leaders that pretend to
Speaker 2: give you a purpose in your life because you don't
Speaker 2: have a purpose, but have it for you kind of things.
Speaker 2: So a lot of it has to do, yeah, with ourselves,
Speaker 2: and we're attracted to We're even attracted to negative people.
Speaker 2: And there are people who have patterns in their life
Speaker 2: where they deliberately choose the worst kind of person for them,
Speaker 2: right and over and over and over again, because at
Speaker 2: least that makes them feel alive. At least the pain
Speaker 2: of it, you know, gives them a sense of something,
Speaker 2: have something dramatic, and so they deliberately bring on those
Speaker 2: kind of that kind of pain. So it's complicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, when you said that, often we feel an
Speaker 1: emptiness inside and you were saying maybe because if you
Speaker 1: are bringing you felt that emptiness inside as well, have
Speaker 1: you tried to fill that emptiness or is there another solution?
Speaker 2: Well, to me, it's why I wrote the book Mastery.
Speaker 2: The way I fill my emptiness and how I've done
Speaker 2: it since I was a kid is through my work
Speaker 2: and through my ideas and my thinking, and how I'm
Speaker 2: constantly looking for new thoughts and new ways of looking
Speaker 2: at the world. So I find that if I don't,
Speaker 2: if I didn't have my work as kind of some
Speaker 2: people think of work as something that you just have
Speaker 2: to do, right, it's just a way to get money.
Speaker 2: But for me, it's a way to feel like I'm
Speaker 2: a human being, that I am who I am. I
Speaker 2: was destined to write these books, and it gives me
Speaker 2: every day I wake up and I know this is
Speaker 2: what I need to accomplish, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so that's why I read so many books. That's why
Speaker 2: I'm so intrigued by ideas. That's why I'm writing a
Speaker 2: book right now about a subject that very much captivates
Speaker 2: me because it does feel that inner kind of emptiness.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, as someone who meditates and
Speaker 2: practices a form of zen meditation, there is a purpose
Speaker 2: to emptiness right there. It's not necessarily good to be
Speaker 2: always having to fill things up in your brain like
Speaker 2: you're just pouring food into your system. You know, there
Speaker 2: is something actually kind of intrinsically beautiful about the idea
Speaker 2: that there that there is emptiness, that that I don't
Speaker 2: really have a self, that there is actually not that
Speaker 2: there is no such thing as a mind. Actually, it's
Speaker 2: it's an illusion that we create, right, It's something that's
Speaker 2: it's something through words that we have. So that sense
Speaker 2: of emptiness that you know, I'm I don't have an ego,
Speaker 2: or that I'm confronting the world, that I'm just hearing
Speaker 2: and seeing things as they are, it is actually a
Speaker 2: beautiful thing. So you have to kind of have to
Speaker 2: kind of struggle against this idea of always having to
Speaker 2: fill myself up.
Speaker 1: What's something you're saying you like observing humans and humanity.
Speaker 1: What's something that you've observed about humans over time that
Speaker 1: surprised you.
Speaker 2: Well, nothing really surprises me because I read a lot
Speaker 2: of history and I see that things just keep repeating
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. I know though, since
Speaker 2: I had my stroke, and since I've physically weak and
Speaker 2: there are things I can't do anymore, I've actually noticed
Speaker 2: that people respond to me differently, and it's actually very positive.
Speaker 2: So sometimes I can be very negative about people. That's
Speaker 2: kind of my inclination. That's how my mind tends to work,
Speaker 2: which is not necessarily a good thing. We all have
Speaker 2: these attitudes that make us look at the world a
Speaker 2: certain way. I tend to have a negative bent towards
Speaker 2: human nature. But I must say people have been very
Speaker 2: very kind to me since I've had my stroke, and
Speaker 2: it's sad that you have to have an accident like
Speaker 2: that to be able to perceive it. But I've seen
Speaker 2: another side where everyone wants to help me. They kind
Speaker 2: of empathize with the fact that I'm a little bit
Speaker 2: helpless in these situations. And it's also made me kind
Speaker 2: of feel differently about other people who have disabilities with
Speaker 2: things that they can help in their lives. But the
Speaker 2: sense of I'm a little bit helpless and people are
Speaker 2: really eager to try and help me actually is something
Speaker 2: that has kind of surprised me in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I liked what you said there that it's sad
Speaker 1: that someone has to go through something for us to
Speaker 1: then show that sides of ourselves, which means that it's
Speaker 1: always there. It means that it exists inherently within us.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's because why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is that if it's inherently there,
Speaker 1: we don't display it at all times to all people.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, we're all born with the
Speaker 2: capacity for empathy. It's something that It interests me a
Speaker 2: lot because the feeling that I'm connecting very deeply to
Speaker 2: another person, let's say my wife, et cetera, is a
Speaker 2: very overpowering emotion. It gets me out of myself and
Speaker 2: I'm seeing the world through her eyes as opposed to
Speaker 2: me always projecting myself onto her. It's a very moving experience.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you go to a movie and you find
Speaker 2: yourself getting inside the characters. You're getting outside of yourself
Speaker 2: and you're feeling this empathy for them, you're identifying with them.
Speaker 2: These are all very powerful emotions, right, and we all
Speaker 2: have the capacity for that, But the world we live
Speaker 2: in is actually a machinery to deaden those emotions, that
Speaker 2: sense of empathy. Right. It's just puts so much emphasis
Speaker 2: on ourselves, on our individuality, on who we are, Our needs,
Speaker 2: you know, are the attention that we want, that we deserve.
Speaker 2: We're so focused on ourselves that that natural feeling of
Speaker 2: wanting to get inside of another person. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's very strange, Jay, because if you think about it,
Speaker 2: our inner lives are actually quite boring, the same thoughts
Speaker 2: repeat over and over and over again, the same emotions,
Speaker 2: the same preoccupations, the same anxieties and other people. They're
Speaker 2: so different. They have their own worlds, right, They're like,
Speaker 2: it's like traveling to another country. So we should actually
Speaker 2: be much more oriented towards other people. We should have
Speaker 2: a natural interest in their world because it takes us
Speaker 2: out of ourselves. It's like therapy. But it's been deadened
Speaker 2: by so many things in our world, by social media,
Speaker 2: by the pressures we're under, by just modern lifestyle, and
Speaker 2: so that empathetic muscle that everybody has is kind of atrophying.
Speaker 2: And yet there'll be moments where it kind of sparks
Speaker 2: to life and you feel like, God, I want that.
Speaker 2: I want more of that in my life, more of
Speaker 2: that in my world. How do I get it?
Speaker 1: What would you say is you're most repeated thor on
Speaker 1: a daily basis.
Speaker 2: Like what do I need to do today? What's on
Speaker 2: my schedule? You know? So, like I'm meditating in the
Speaker 2: morning and I'm trying to empty my mind and I'm
Speaker 2: going into what's known as a co aan, right, and
Speaker 2: then these thoughts keep bubbling up and they're so annoying,
Speaker 2: and it makes you aware of the machinery of your
Speaker 2: own mind. And so to answer your question, it's always like, oh,
Speaker 2: did you remember that you have to call this person
Speaker 2: this afternoon? Did you remember you have to change that reservation?
Speaker 2: Do you remember that you have to do this? At
Speaker 2: the scheduling things so unimportant, so trivial, Where I'm trying
Speaker 2: to open my mind up to something vast and important,
Speaker 2: it's little things like scheduling and stuff like that. Then
Speaker 2: there will be other thoughts that we repeat, you know,
Speaker 2: like if I saw a movie from images will keep
Speaker 2: popping up from that and such. It makes you aware
Speaker 2: that you're not in control of your own mind. Right.
Speaker 1: How have you found over time with meditation and other practices,
Speaker 1: what have you used in order to start quietening, emptying,
Speaker 1: whatever the right word is for you releasing those thoughts
Speaker 1: so that you can connect with vastness, be creative or
Speaker 1: self express.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's not easy, and it's an ongoing process, and
Speaker 2: I could say I'm maybe ten percent of the way
Speaker 2: where I'd like to be. But first of all, you
Speaker 2: recognize you go through a thing where a thought pops
Speaker 2: up and it's like why am I thinking about that?
Speaker 2: I don't like it. You realize that it's just a thought,
Speaker 2: and what is a thought? Now? I know We're getting
Speaker 2: really weird and metaphysical here it. But it's not real.
Speaker 2: It's a phantom, right, it has no reality. Reality is
Speaker 2: your body, the present moment, the birds outside the sky
Speaker 2: where you are sitting, the fact that you're alive, that
Speaker 2: your blood is pumping. These are real. But that thought
Speaker 2: in your mind is a shadow. It's a phantom. It
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. It has no reality. And so I go
Speaker 2: through this process where don't engage with it, and it's
Speaker 2: really weird because then my mind plays tricks on me
Speaker 2: and it pulls up a thought that's definitely going to
Speaker 2: engage me, right because it wants that. It's like a
Speaker 2: sugar rush, and so I go, okay, no, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to engage with it. And it made me realize
Speaker 2: as I went through that process that this is what
Speaker 2: social media is based on. Social media has mirrored the
Speaker 2: human brain on a large scale. We have thoughts that
Speaker 2: are designed to grab our emotions and make us think
Speaker 2: about them repetitively, over and over again, compulsively. Right, And
Speaker 2: there's probably a purpose behind that, but social media is
Speaker 2: actually a genius at that. It picking out putting up
Speaker 2: things up there. They're going to engage our emotions, so
Speaker 2: we have to pay attention. So I always try, and
Speaker 2: every time that happens, I withdraw and I say, it's
Speaker 2: just a thought, it's not real, it's not who I am.
Speaker 2: This is a very important part of meditation. Your thoughts
Speaker 2: are not who you are. They're a separate part of yourself.
Speaker 2: You are something different from your own thoughts. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that means anything to you.
Speaker 1: It does, it does definitely. And while we are not
Speaker 1: our thoughts and we are not our mind, our thoughts
Speaker 1: become our reality. We find that a repetitive thought turns
Speaker 1: into a habit, that turns into a pattern, that turns
Speaker 1: into an action, becomes our reality. For example, I am
Speaker 1: an unorganized, lazy individual usually translates into oh I forgot
Speaker 1: to send that it didn't happen, because now it's a
Speaker 1: belief that's built up. And so it's so fascinating that
Speaker 1: something that's so so not real becomes so real. And
Speaker 1: I've been really into seeing how thought editing is so
Speaker 1: useful as an activity and an exercise, because I've sound
Speaker 1: so many of my thoughts become my beliefs that become
Speaker 1: my life. And I think a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: realize because they don't realize that their thoughts are like
Speaker 1: clothes that you can change. We do believe that our
Speaker 1: thoughts are real and our reality and whatever we're hearing
Speaker 1: in our head is exactly what is, and we don't
Speaker 1: realize that. Oh it's like looking in your wardrobe and saying,
Speaker 1: I don't like the color green anymore. I'm going to
Speaker 1: change it for blue. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2: Well, there was something I read recently in one of
Speaker 2: the Buddhist books I like to read, that said our
Speaker 2: minds are basically topsy turvy. They're upside down. So the
Speaker 2: reality is we don't really I don't want to get
Speaker 2: too deep into this, but we don't really have a self.
Speaker 2: The self is a construction of our minds. There actually
Speaker 2: is nothing there, and that kind of emptiness, like egolessness
Speaker 2: is Enlightenment is a beautiful feeling and maybe in your
Speaker 2: life you've touched upon it briefly. I know I've touched
Speaker 2: upon it briefly. It's not the reality I have every day,
Speaker 2: but that's the real that's real, and what's not real
Speaker 2: are the thoughts. But everything is turned upside down in
Speaker 2: our worlds, and so these delusionary thoughts of about people,
Speaker 2: about who I am, about my habits, et cetera. They
Speaker 2: become our reality when it's exactly the opposite, right, you
Speaker 2: have to be able to be aware of that. And
Speaker 2: so you know, meditation is all about being aware of
Speaker 2: is becoming aware of these things because we walk around
Speaker 2: like automatons. You know, I'm very into this writer named Gerjeff.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever heard of Gerjeff. He
Speaker 2: was this He's basically from Armenia. He was in the
Speaker 2: beginning of the twentieth century. He was this man who
Speaker 2: was very interested in mysticism, and he traveled throughout Asia
Speaker 2: trying to find the essence of all the different esoteric philosophies,
Speaker 2: and he created his own philosophy and it's very interesting,
Speaker 2: very exciting stuff. He wrote a book called In Search
Speaker 2: of the Miraculous that I highly recommend people, and it's
Speaker 2: not wooh wo stuff. He was a very very practical man.
Speaker 2: He puts it in very practical terms. But his idea
Speaker 2: is that we walk around asleep. We're on automatic pilot constantly.
Speaker 2: We're not really aware that we're breathing, that we're existing,
Speaker 2: We're not aware where our thoughts come from. We're not
Speaker 2: aware of how our body moves, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so it's a process of slowly becoming
Speaker 2: aware of these kinds of things that is really kind
Speaker 2: of I've been doing this fourteen fifteen years now, really
Speaker 2: really kind of changed the course of my life.
Speaker 1: I have to say, Yeah, I love that, and I
Speaker 1: can't wait to read that book now. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more. I feel we're so disconnected from our mind
Speaker 1: and body that we constantly believe that someone outside of
Speaker 1: ourself has the answer for how we feel. And while
Speaker 1: that may be true when you're seeing a doctor or
Speaker 1: a dentist or something of that professional nature, we don't
Speaker 1: really know how our body's been feeling for weeks or
Speaker 1: months until it crashes, and then we've realized that we
Speaker 1: haven't paid enough attention to X or yoz or a
Speaker 1: relationship in the same way has to end in order
Speaker 1: for us to realize that he had lost investment and
Speaker 1: energy or whatever it may be. And we're so far
Speaker 1: away from the self, or at least this version of
Speaker 1: the self, that yeah, we're not really aware. I love
Speaker 1: what you just said. About the idea of how conscious
Speaker 1: are we of the fact that we're breathing, we're here,
Speaker 1: we're present, we're together, versus how much are we living
Speaker 1: up here? Yeah, and it's really interesting, isn't it, Because
Speaker 1: there's almost two realities that we're always dealing and if
Speaker 1: we're getting too heavy, I'm happy to move away from it.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like I've been thinking a lot about how,
Speaker 1: in one sense what's out here is real and in
Speaker 1: one sense what here is in and at the same time,
Speaker 1: actually what's going on here is the real because it
Speaker 1: defines how I interact with everything else, and it can
Speaker 1: help me be a better filter, a bit of a
Speaker 1: chooser selector of the people I'm around and the places
Speaker 1: I visit.
Speaker 2: So you say you have to kind of use the
Speaker 2: mind to be able to become president. It's a process.
Speaker 1: I would say, I'm alluding to that in discovery, not
Speaker 1: in pushing it. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. I agree with
Speaker 2: that definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've been reflecting a lot recently about how most
Speaker 1: of what's happening is in the invisible world, and.
Speaker 2: That that's very interesting. Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1: So I've just been. I was thinking that in one sense,
Speaker 1: you have reality externally the visible world, but how I
Speaker 1: make sense of that visible world is all in the
Speaker 1: invisible space, and ultimately, how I make sense of it
Speaker 1: is the reality that I experience regardless of what's happening
Speaker 1: around me, Which is why we realize that people who well,
Speaker 1: we all are telling ourselves stories and narratives all day long.
Speaker 1: But how we're processing what we're experiencing is our reality
Speaker 1: as opposed to the event or what someone said or
Speaker 1: social media, as you gave an example, like I can
Speaker 1: either sit here and say like, I know that when
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning and I start scrolling
Speaker 1: on social media, my mind is now moving ten times
Speaker 1: one hundred times faster than if I don't do that.
Speaker 1: And I know that brushing my teeth and showering is
Speaker 1: a much more peaceful process if I haven't looked at
Speaker 1: my phone then if I do. And so that choice
Speaker 1: is being made in the invisible world, and the visible
Speaker 1: world is simply something I'm interacting with and taking from
Speaker 1: or being affected by it.
Speaker 2: Well, so we mostly live in things that are invisible. Yes, right,
Speaker 2: symbols et cetera. Yes, language is a symbol it's not reality.
Speaker 2: And so things like government and social behavior, they are
Speaker 2: rules and codes that we abide by, but they're not visible.
Speaker 2: They're invisible, right, Yeah, definitely, and we're not aware of that.
Speaker 1: And so we're trying to raise our awareness of the
Speaker 1: invisible world. I'm always trying to raise my awareness of
Speaker 1: why do I process this way? Where does this come from?
Speaker 1: Where's this idea taking root?
Speaker 2: That's a very yeah, it's a very interesting process to
Speaker 2: go through.
Speaker 1: It's hard, it's yeah, it's not clear. It's not like
Speaker 1: I here's the step by step process. It's just something
Speaker 1: I've been engaging with a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I like to try and go through a
Speaker 2: thing where I question all of my beliefs and things
Speaker 2: of why, where does that come from? Why do I
Speaker 2: believe that? Why has that become something that's so hardened
Speaker 2: into my brain? I believe that about myself and who
Speaker 2: I am about other people. I continually try to challenge
Speaker 2: it and look at what might be the source of it,
Speaker 2: and then maybe say it could be the opposite, right,
Speaker 2: and it actually it can lead to a lot of
Speaker 2: problems because it's like my mind is always swimming and
Speaker 2: I never really think anything is certain I'm always you know,
Speaker 2: seeing the opposite side of it, but I think it's
Speaker 2: in the end, it's a very healthy process.
Speaker 1: How do you I love where we're going because it
Speaker 1: kind of comes back to your same point early, sorry,
Speaker 1: your earlier point about how someone of strong character knows
Speaker 1: how to take criticism, which means they know how to
Speaker 1: deal with the opposite of what they think, call feel.
Speaker 1: And so this idea that you're sharing now that it's
Speaker 1: healthy to be able to question, to evaluate, to assess
Speaker 1: our beliefs and values. But like you said, it's one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things to do because you get into
Speaker 1: a space of uncertainty, you question your identity, you lose
Speaker 1: a sense of direction.
Speaker 2: How do we.
Speaker 1: Question ourselves without losing ourselves and actually realize that that
Speaker 1: is the process of discovering and building ourselves?
Speaker 2: You know, like, who really are you? In the end?
Speaker 2: You know what constitutes you? The essence of you? What
Speaker 2: were you meant to accomplish in this world? Right? Your
Speaker 2: sense of purpose? You know, to use the title of
Speaker 2: your show, What is it that makes you an individual?
Speaker 2: Makes you unique? That you alone are meant to accomplish
Speaker 2: in life? Well, it's not given. We don't know it,
Speaker 2: And a lot of people really really struggle with trying
Speaker 2: to figure that out, right, because they've been programmed by
Speaker 2: their parents, by their siblings, by the culture, by their
Speaker 2: teachers to say, this is who you are, this is
Speaker 2: what you should believe in, this is what you were
Speaker 2: meant to accomplish in life, this is what's cool and
Speaker 2: what's not cool, okay, And so you have to question yourself.
Speaker 2: You have to say, is this really who I am?
Speaker 2: Am I really interested in this subject? Am I really
Speaker 2: interested in this kind of person and getting in a
Speaker 2: relationship with this kind of person? And so question yourself
Speaker 2: on that level, you're getting at a deeper and deeper
Speaker 2: core of maybe who you are. At essence, you're cutting
Speaker 2: away all of the social stuff that's been foisted upon
Speaker 2: you that it has nothing to do with you, Right,
Speaker 2: So in some ways you're kind of a mystery to
Speaker 2: yourself and you're sort of trying to solve that puzzle,
Speaker 2: and you have to ask these questions, is this something
Speaker 2: I'm actually really interested in? Is this an intrinsically important
Speaker 2: thing to me? Or is it something that's in the
Speaker 2: culture or something that other people have told me? And
Speaker 2: questioning that over and over and over again. Is not
Speaker 2: to lead you into this abyss where there's nothing real.
Speaker 2: It's to get you closer to who you are, to
Speaker 2: what really matters, to what that essence of you is,
Speaker 2: to what you were meant to accomplish in life. And
Speaker 2: once you reach that that inner kind of gold, then
Speaker 2: you have a degree of certainty. So I know, I
Speaker 2: knew from a very young age that I wanted to
Speaker 2: be a writer. Right, I had to struggle to figure
Speaker 2: out what kind of writing I wanted. But knowing that
Speaker 2: that's who I am, probably at the age of eight,
Speaker 2: it allowed me to go I'm not interested in that.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. This isn't important. Why
Speaker 2: am I following this career path? Why am I wasting
Speaker 2: my time here? And then, so, knowing that kind of core,
Speaker 2: you don't have to keep questioning yourself. So I'm never
Speaker 2: going to question myself. Why are you a writer? Why
Speaker 2: are you writing books? You should have been a pop star.
Speaker 2: I should have been a rock singer. You should have
Speaker 2: written poetry, you should been a lawyer. No, I'll never go
Speaker 2: there because I have that firm ground beneath me, and
Speaker 2: that's what your questioning is supposed to lead to get
Speaker 2: to the essence of who you are, and once you're there,
Speaker 2: you have a degree of certainty in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, It does. And I feel like a
Speaker 1: big challenge something that I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: lately is a big challenge. Of where that comes from
Speaker 1: is because we care so much about what people think,
Speaker 1: and we're scared of being an unsuccessful version of ourselves
Speaker 1: because we'd rather be a successful version of what someone
Speaker 1: else wants us to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so we're scared of being an unsuccessful writer
Speaker 1: if we could be a successful accountant. We're scared of
Speaker 1: being an unsuccessful artist because we'd rather be a successful
Speaker 1: tech person whatever else it may be. Fill in your blank.
Speaker 1: And because what we think people think of us has
Speaker 1: such a stronghold on us that we can't pivot to
Speaker 1: our passions, we can't maneuver to our purpose, we can't
Speaker 1: accept that maybe I'm not what this person wants me
Speaker 1: to be. And I've been spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: in this to try and figure out and I'll and
Speaker 1: we'll let's dive into it from different perspectives. But I
Speaker 1: guess how much, Robert, do you care what people think
Speaker 1: of you, and how have you made sense of that
Speaker 1: over your time as someone who obviously writes that a
Speaker 1: lot of people enjoy your reading. People may disagree with you,
Speaker 1: they may agree with you. People, as you said, debate, discuss,
Speaker 1: But how have you made sense of that? And what's
Speaker 1: been your process of dealing with how you think people
Speaker 1: think about you.
Speaker 2: This is how people think about me who know me personally,
Speaker 2: and it is how people think about me in the
Speaker 2: social realm who don't know me personally and who have
Speaker 2: an idea of who I am just often very different
Speaker 2: from the reality. But naturally, as a human being, I
Speaker 2: care that people understand that I'm a certain way, that
Speaker 2: I have a certain character, that I actually love jokes
Speaker 2: and silly bathroom humor, and that you know I like
Speaker 2: stupid movies, and that I'm not always you know, reading
Speaker 2: heavy philosophy. You know, my wife can tell you all
Speaker 2: about this childish side of my personality. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's always been important to me to feel kind of
Speaker 2: authentic and sincere, and I've always hated and it's probably
Speaker 2: why I wrote the forty eight Laws of Power. I
Speaker 2: hate people who are pretending to be something that they're
Speaker 2: not deeply, deeply wounds me. And I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's been like that because I
Speaker 2: was a child. Maybe I suspected that in my parents,
Speaker 2: the kind of falseness that upsets me deeply. And so
Speaker 2: I wrote the forty eight Laws of Power because I
Speaker 2: felt people are such hypocrites. They pretend that they're not
Speaker 2: interested in power, but that's all they're interested in, right.
Speaker 2: They wear this front, Oh, I just want to help people.
Speaker 2: I just want to make movies and culture, and arn't
Speaker 2: know you're interested in power. So it's always been deeply
Speaker 2: important to me to kind of reveal what's really going
Speaker 2: on in someone and to sort of feel that way
Speaker 2: about myself. So when I don't feel like I'm myself,
Speaker 2: when I feel like I'm faking it, and sometimes to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, Jay, being a kind of quote
Speaker 2: unquote self help, gurup, it feels false. It doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like who I am. I feel like a bit of
Speaker 2: an impostor. It's not really what I wanted to be.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to write books. I love ideas, I
Speaker 2: love thoughts, I love expanding my consciousness. Right, So the
Speaker 2: feeling that I'm not being who I am, and that
Speaker 2: other people are kind of glomming onto that is upsetting
Speaker 2: to me. I don't know if I'm answering your.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's I mean, that's resonating so deeply with me.
Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting, isn't it How your self
Speaker 1: perception is so different from people's projection onto you, And
Speaker 1: so I can identify with that. I do what I
Speaker 1: do because I'm just sharing what I love. So I
Speaker 1: love meditation, I love wisdom books, I love traditions, I
Speaker 1: love ancient wisdom and modern science and seeing the parallels
Speaker 1: between the two, and I just love talking about that
Speaker 1: and sharing that. And I don't think I've ever thought
Speaker 1: of myself as a guru or a guide or a
Speaker 1: or that kind of individual. But we in society, if
Speaker 1: someone shares or teaches or gives insight or advice, we
Speaker 1: box them or bucket them as that's the same as you.
Speaker 1: We'd go in the same bucket, even though we kind
Speaker 1: of do similar things about very different things, and we
Speaker 1: probably have some similar interests in some different interests. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting how there isn't a space. Like I often
Speaker 1: say to people, I'm just trying to be everyone's spiritual friend.
Speaker 1: Like that's my goal. Like I'm that guy who's introducing
Speaker 1: my friends to cool things that they may not have
Speaker 1: come across, whether it's Eastern spirituality or wisdom or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. Like, I'm that guy, and that's all
Speaker 1: I want to be. I don't want to be anything else, right,
Speaker 1: But it's hard when you almost get put on a pedestal,
Speaker 1: even though you didn't ask for that. I didn't want that.
Speaker 2: Well, people's perception of you can almost become how you
Speaker 2: perceive yourself if you're not careful for sure, you know.
Speaker 2: And so that's why I keep coming back to myself
Speaker 2: and going, is that really who I am?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, Robert, you know. And also I
Speaker 2: actually I have a flawed individual. I'm a flawed human being.
Speaker 2: I have, you know, blind spots in my nature. I
Speaker 2: have compulsions that I wish I didn't have. And I
Speaker 2: don't like this idea that people think I'm this powerful
Speaker 2: person who's figured everything out because I'm not. I have
Speaker 2: That's why I write wrote the book The Laws of
Speaker 2: Human Nature. It was because I understand that I shared
Speaker 2: the same flaws that I have. Narcissistic tendencies that I
Speaker 2: too can feel envy that I have moments of grandiosity.
Speaker 2: So I'm not comfortable with the idea like that I'm
Speaker 2: this somebody that I'm not that the perception of me is.
Speaker 2: But that's what happens to a lot of successful, famous people.
Speaker 2: They become trapped in what other people are thinking about them.
Speaker 2: They become trapped in that image. And I honestly think
Speaker 2: I could be way off base, but I'm thinking of
Speaker 2: somebody like Anthony Bourdain who committed suicide. I think he
Speaker 2: was burdened and weighed down so much by how people
Speaker 2: thought of himself and it wasn't who he was, and
Speaker 2: it kind of made him feel deeply uncomfortable. And I'm
Speaker 2: sure there were many other issues going on, but a
Speaker 2: lot of times it can make you uncomfortable in your
Speaker 2: own skin, the way people perceive you, and it can
Speaker 2: lead to deep feeling links of depression and I and
Speaker 2: a loss of who you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean could write a new book
Speaker 1: called the Flaws of Human Nature.
Speaker 2: It's like, thank you, that's what the book is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's eighteen dark corners of human Nature. But yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a good idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no it's just, you know, I thought of
Speaker 1: like it is true. It's there's a seeking of perfection,
Speaker 1: and there's a sense that we've created in the world
Speaker 1: of before and after, in the sense that if you
Speaker 1: look at like a workout program, and there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with this because it makes sense, but there's a before
Speaker 1: picture and there's an after picture. And if someone's wealthy,
Speaker 1: it's like they were poor and now they're rich, and
Speaker 1: everything's a linear before and after journey. And what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, and I fully agree with you on this,
Speaker 1: is that actually all of my challenges are cyclical and
Speaker 1: they're different. So it's not that I never feel anymore.
Speaker 1: It's that I feel it differently to how I felt
Speaker 1: it ten years ago, and hopefully I'm a bit better
Speaker 1: at dealing with it and understanding it and engaging with
Speaker 1: it than I was ten years ago. But it's not
Speaker 1: that it doesn't affect me anymore, right right, And same
Speaker 1: with spiraling thoughts. It's not that I don't have anxious
Speaker 1: or negative thoughts anymore because I'm enlightened. I still have
Speaker 1: those thoughts. I just deal with them better than I
Speaker 1: did ten years ago, and I probably have more tools
Speaker 1: to help.
Speaker 2: Me engage with that's true, that's free.
Speaker 1: And I think that cyclical nature is a wonderful thing
Speaker 1: to accept as an individual and as someone who's learning,
Speaker 1: because you then don't fool yourself to think, oh, there
Speaker 1: will be one day where I will no longer have
Speaker 1: a negative or anxious thought like Jay and Robert, like
Speaker 1: you know, they probably never have it. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably have less, but it's not that I never.
Speaker 2: Have done exactly right. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of idea of this before and after,
Speaker 1: I think is what confuses so many people because it
Speaker 1: feels like, oh, there is a point at which I
Speaker 1: never have to go back to being this version of myself.
Speaker 2: Well, that life isn't like that, you know. It's weird
Speaker 2: sometimes because before the forty eight Laws of Power came out,
Speaker 2: I was just this nobody living in a two one
Speaker 2: bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, rent controlled, you know, never
Speaker 2: really made any money, never really had any success in life,
Speaker 2: and I was constantly giving people advice, but nobody would
Speaker 2: listen to me because I hadn't written the book. And
Speaker 2: suddenly the book comes out and I'm supposed to be
Speaker 2: a different person. It's very strange. But I'm actually the
Speaker 2: same person that I was when I was living in
Speaker 2: that miserable one bedroom apartment, you know, and giving out
Speaker 2: my advice that nobody listened to. Now people listen to it.
Speaker 2: But the only difference is because suddenly I have this credential,
Speaker 2: which is very strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can relate to that so many ways. I
Speaker 1: used to be mentoring, coaching people in my community. I
Speaker 1: would do these little events in London ten eleven years
Speaker 1: ago now where like five people would show up and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, I was just doing it. I
Speaker 1: would speak at universities for free for years, like I was.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, It's been such a big part
Speaker 1: of my life to just do this. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to be someone who's learning and sharing. That's what I enjoy.
Speaker 1: I enjoy learning, and I enjoy sharing, and I enjoy
Speaker 1: synthesizing and making things simple and practical for other people's
Speaker 1: That's what I get my joy from. And I was
Speaker 1: always inspired by two quotes. One is Ivan Pavlov where
Speaker 1: he said, if you want a new idea, read an
Speaker 1: old book. And so that's always been something that my
Speaker 1: work has been inspired by. It's always based on ideas
Speaker 1: that seem timeless, but they're.
Speaker 2: And old, very beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then there's another thought from Einstein, which is
Speaker 1: another part of what inspires my work, which is if
Speaker 1: you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Speaker 1: And so these are the two kind of tenets that
Speaker 1: what I enjoyed doing in the world. And again, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're magnificent, miraculous or brilliant. They're just what
Speaker 1: I'm meant to do. And there's such a beautiful significance
Speaker 1: and insignificance in that very understanding, Like it's really significant
Speaker 1: building because I'm like, I know what I have to do,
Speaker 1: and it's really insignificant because I'm like, it's just what
Speaker 1: I have to do. It it's not the best or
Speaker 1: the worst, or it's not comparative, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's how when you're talking in the daily Laws of Power,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of how, in different words, how you
Speaker 1: describe like your life's you know, your life's gifts, your
Speaker 1: life's work, your life's path.
Speaker 2: I've always liked all books myself, so you know, I
Speaker 2: read a lot of books of philosophy, et cetre history,
Speaker 2: but I also read books of famous zen classics, the
Speaker 2: twentieth century books, I'm not so sure, but I'd read
Speaker 2: like something from the eleventh century, where the thought process
Speaker 2: is so different, but it's timeless, it's human. Man, it
Speaker 2: is so beautiful. It so sparks these ideas that he
Speaker 2: or this writer, this thinker was dealing with the same
Speaker 2: things now a thousand years later. But they still strike
Speaker 2: a truth. But it's in this language that's very weird
Speaker 2: and primitive and barbaric. I don't know why that excites
Speaker 2: me so much. It's the same idea that a modern
Speaker 2: writer might write, but put in the words of seventy
Speaker 2: thousand years ago, it suddenly touches me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you explain that, Jay?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if I can, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that you've reincarnated and you had some connection
Speaker 1: to it. But can I explain it. I can't explain it,
Speaker 1: but I can I can reflect on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I find that there's a part of it that that
Speaker 1: right or creator may never have known if anyone would
Speaker 1: ever read it. Yeah, And so that privacy and that
Speaker 1: secrecy and that intimacy with their work, not knowing that
Speaker 1: it would ever be viewed seen read broadcasted. That has
Speaker 1: some power to ask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a humility to that, whereas now people right
Speaker 2: were expecting all these people to be reading it. We
Speaker 2: do it for the attention. Yeah, it was much different
Speaker 2: back then. Yeah, that's very interesting. I ever thought of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I've definitely found that. I try and wreath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try and sit with ideas for longer now and
Speaker 1: try and kind of I'd love to know your process
Speaker 1: for that. However you managed that since that moment of
Speaker 1: where you became quote unquote successful because externally because of
Speaker 1: forty eight laws, how did that change your creative process?
Speaker 1: How did you hold on to the roots of this
Speaker 1: kind of thinking.
Speaker 2: So, after the forty eight Laws of Power came out
Speaker 2: and it was successful, I was at a turning point
Speaker 2: in my life, and it's a turning point that a
Speaker 2: lot of people I think have faced, was to I
Speaker 2: just can continue redoing the forty eight Laws of Part
Speaker 2: It was successful, it worked. Well, why don't I just
Speaker 2: write the forty eight Laws of Power Part two. It'll
Speaker 2: bring in money, it'll bring in attention. I'll just riff
Speaker 2: off what I wrote there. And something about me was
Speaker 2: not comfortable with that it seemed cheap, it seemed easy,
Speaker 2: and it seemed lazy. And I know myself that if
Speaker 2: I'm not challenged by something different, I grow bored. So
Speaker 2: I have to write something that feels like there's energy
Speaker 2: behind it, there's anger, there's love, there's something powerful behind it.
Speaker 2: I have to feel it or it won't be in
Speaker 2: the words. So if I'm just doing the forty eight
Speaker 2: Laws of Power Part two, it won't be there. It'll
Speaker 2: have an emptiness, and damn it. A lot of artists
Speaker 2: and writers fall into that trap, and it's why their
Speaker 2: books kind of have this sort of hollow ring to them, right,
Speaker 2: They're just going through the motion. It's just repeating what
Speaker 2: worked before, and I can't stand that feeling. I have
Speaker 2: to feel like I'm off into a new land if
Speaker 2: with this new book. So each book has to represent
Speaker 2: a challenge, right, And so the one I'm writing now
Speaker 2: is completely different from all seven of the other books,
Speaker 2: and it's an incredible challenge. But it makes me excited
Speaker 2: about every day because I know I cannot repeat the
Speaker 2: same kind of books over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: My soul becomes dead and I have to feel alive
Speaker 2: with each projects.
Speaker 1: I'm loving these personal answers. No. No, I can resonate
Speaker 1: very deeply with that as well. I always try and
Speaker 1: write about something that I'm working through or struggling with,
Speaker 1: whether it's personal, whether it's with clients, whether it's with
Speaker 1: someone in my life, friend's family, Like it feels alive.
Speaker 1: It needs to feel alive. I can't write from a
Speaker 1: point of theory or knowing, like the book has to
Speaker 1: be a discovery exactly. And I've only just started my job.
Speaker 1: I've only written two books. But as I'm hearing you,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to that I feel that I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: it in a healthy way, because yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was about to write my third book and the topic
Speaker 1: everyone wanted was so predictable and expected and it made sense,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't want to write about
Speaker 1: something that makes sense, Like that's boring. Like it's like,
Speaker 1: I want to write about something that feels like alive
Speaker 1: in my life and electric it makes me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: now that I've chosen, I will tell this to you later,
Speaker 1: but I've chosen my next topic and I'm just been
Speaker 1: like writing notes about it. I'm reading about it. I'm
Speaker 1: seeing connections out.
Speaker 2: That means it's going to be a great book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just it feels. I mean it's harder. It's
Speaker 1: harder because you don't know. So you're spending more time,
Speaker 1: Like we said earlier, you're spending more time with emptiness
Speaker 1: because there's a sense of, well, I don't know which
Speaker 1: direction this book's going to go in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's that comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a joy in that, yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you're when you're discovering your process through a
Speaker 1: book or or work, how have you learned to become
Speaker 1: comfortable when the discomfort of creativity in that, like you
Speaker 1: don't know where the path's going to take, You don't
Speaker 1: know if it's going to land or not. You don't
Speaker 1: have it, Like, how are you grappling with that process
Speaker 1: of what we're discussing.
Speaker 2: Well, it's very strange because I'm dealing with it right
Speaker 2: this very moment. I'm writing something that's driving me crazy
Speaker 2: and it's this and the very subject I'm writing about
Speaker 2: is about what I'm going through. So I'm writing it.
Speaker 2: This is in my book on the Sublime, and I'm
Speaker 2: writing about the concept of the damon are you familiar
Speaker 2: with that? It's the idea, it's an ancient Greek idea,
Speaker 2: but it's in many other cultures that we have a
Speaker 2: second self, that there's something, there's a voice inside of
Speaker 2: us that is guiding us to something higher or better,
Speaker 2: but it can also lead us to something lower and worse.
Speaker 2: It can be demonic, which is where the word comes from,
Speaker 2: or it could be something. And Socrates had his dameon
Speaker 2: there's a voice in soide of him, and it said
Speaker 2: it always just said this is the right way to go,
Speaker 2: or this is the wrong way to go. Nothing more
Speaker 2: than that right. And so when I'm writing, it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel right, and it's driving me crazy. And I'm going
Speaker 2: through this right now. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't resonate.
Speaker 2: It's not truth, it's not real. You got to start over,
Speaker 2: you got to do it again. And in the back
Speaker 2: of my mind, I'm thinking, God, I've lost it. I'm
Speaker 2: getting old, and I just don't have my mojo anymore.
Speaker 2: But then I realized I've gone through this like eighty
Speaker 2: five times every single book. It'll come to you, it'll
Speaker 2: come back. It isn't right because it doesn't feel right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't resonate, it doesn't have a reality to it.
Speaker 2: So I have to go through this process where I
Speaker 2: write something and it excites me and it interests me,
Speaker 2: and it just flows out of me, as opposed to
Speaker 2: like I have to pull every word out, And so
Speaker 2: I learned to trust myself that eventually I'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: But each time I hit that while I go, this
Speaker 2: is it. You're finished. The book isn't going to come out.
Speaker 2: You're done. The wells are dry, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting. I feel like that is every
Speaker 1: creative's journey, like it has to go through that the
Speaker 1: wells are dry, as you just said, that kind of
Speaker 1: experience of that's it, it's over, there's nothing else coming
Speaker 1: out now. I'm you know, and and it's almost like
Speaker 1: we as we know, like the cliche of like it's
Speaker 1: on the other side of that feeling. Yeah, but it's true.
Speaker 1: There is a sense of when everything is just or
Speaker 1: not making sense. How have you learned the sense whether
Speaker 1: something feels true to you because it obviously felt true
Speaker 1: to someone. How do you decipher between this feels true,
Speaker 1: It feels real to me even if people don't agree.
Speaker 2: With it, because it just feels that way.
Speaker 1: It's purely just a feeling.
Speaker 2: First of all, it it like I'm always trying to
Speaker 2: get at what's real and not what's theoretical. I have
Speaker 2: a real dislike of abstraction for its own right. It
Speaker 2: feels like it's a way of eluding something. It's an evasion.
Speaker 2: I want to get at the core and the reality
Speaker 2: of what I'm trying to write about, and so when
Speaker 2: I get it, I feel it and I know that
Speaker 2: I've done that, and I have the reader in my mind,
Speaker 2: and I know the reader can connect to it. It's
Speaker 2: going to have a personal appeal. Whereas I have a
Speaker 2: tendency to be abstract and professorial and theoretical, I cross
Speaker 2: all of that out. If you saw my notebooks, ninety
Speaker 2: five percent of it's crossed out. And I don't let
Speaker 2: the public ever see that side of me because I
Speaker 2: don't like it. I want my books to feel like
Speaker 2: I'm hitting something that's actually truthful and real that people
Speaker 2: don't like to talk about. Kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 2: So right now I'm writing about what is our self?
Speaker 2: What is the sense of self that we have in
Speaker 2: our world? It's a very limited idea of the self.
Speaker 2: We have a very limited idea of our consciousness, very
Speaker 2: limited idea of what it means to be a human
Speaker 2: being in the twenty first century. We're actually much more
Speaker 2: immense and much more interesting than we think we are.
Speaker 2: We have these possibilities, these connections because we're a part
Speaker 2: of something incredibly vast, and to have consciousness is absolutely
Speaker 2: an astounding thing, right, So I want to sort of
Speaker 2: expand what you the reader thinks of who you are,
Speaker 2: what yourself is. It's much larger than you imagine. But
Speaker 2: I have to convey that in language that feels right
Speaker 2: to me, that feels authentic, that feels like everybody in Africa,
Speaker 2: in China, in India, in Idaho is going to be
Speaker 2: able to relate to it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, for sure. And that's I think that's
Speaker 1: what I was alluding to with that invisible world point
Speaker 1: of like how that's what we don't see, Like there's
Speaker 1: so much to ourselves that we don't see that we're
Speaker 1: fully unaware of that we don't have, we don't realize
Speaker 1: we have act access to. And Yeah, finding the right
Speaker 1: terminology I find to be such a There's there's one
Speaker 1: word that I love, which is a bit more etherial,
Speaker 1: but I guess an astronomer could find some beauty in it.
Speaker 1: But there's a term in the Vedic literature is called
Speaker 1: unto akash, which means inner sky. Again, unto akash inner
Speaker 1: and akash means sky, inner sky. Yeah, in a sky.
Speaker 1: And it's this idea of how, you know, we're so
Speaker 1: fascinated by outer space, but there's that same inner sky
Speaker 1: that exists, so just that like the galaxy and the
Speaker 1: planetary systems and everything else that exists internally too, But
Speaker 1: there has to be a just as we have to
Speaker 1: go and do space exploration, you could do the same internally.
Speaker 1: You discover so much.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I'm writing about. That's very interesting.
Speaker 1: And and and it's yeah, it's fascinating and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I find language is what I find vocabulary so needed.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I grew up with the smart vocabulary,
Speaker 1: but not the biggest and I feel reading, of course
Speaker 1: expands that, and especially when you read history and other books,
Speaker 1: and I found that its language is just so powerful.
Speaker 1: And I worry that social media exposes us to such
Speaker 1: limited language that the brain and the mind and the
Speaker 1: consciousness doesn't have the opportunity to be expansive because the
Speaker 1: words don't allow for it. If we're all reading the
Speaker 1: same memes and the same trends and the same hashtags,
Speaker 1: and it kind of just creates this very very limited
Speaker 1: space of consciousness.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why I like looking at other languages. I've
Speaker 2: speak several other languages and I'm constantly learning them. And
Speaker 2: right now I'm reading a lot about an African culture
Speaker 2: called the Akhan in West Africa and Ghana and their
Speaker 2: concepts of the soul, the spirit, and the body. And
Speaker 2: they have a word in there called sun zoom and
Speaker 2: we translated to spirit. But then I'm reading the African
Speaker 2: philosophers who actually know that word, and they go, it's
Speaker 2: not the same as the word spirit, and then they
Speaker 2: go out and describe it, and that one word contains
Speaker 2: all of these other worlds that are so weird and
Speaker 2: interesting that the word spirit in English does not convey, right,
Speaker 2: you know, And other languages have that sense, and so
Speaker 2: language can have that possibility where it opens up. It's
Speaker 2: not just this unior this one track meaning. It has
Speaker 2: other balances, other possibilities to it, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 2: we're kind of deadening our language in a way. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you study like other cultures, you know,
Speaker 2: Eskimos had like a thousand words for snow and we
Speaker 2: have one word. You know, Russians have like forty words
Speaker 2: for the color blue and we have one word. Kind
Speaker 2: of thing. As the language gets smaller and smaller and
Speaker 2: more uniform, our thoughts become more and more limited in uniform.
Speaker 2: So to no here a word like inner sky, it
Speaker 2: opens up all these other ideas in your mind, whereas
Speaker 2: we don't have a word like that in English, you know.
Speaker 2: And then because I'm doing things for Zen, Japanese language
Speaker 2: is so rich with things that we can't possibly even
Speaker 2: begin to express in English, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, what have been other ways of people opening
Speaker 1: up their minds? This has been something one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things to do. I remember reading a quote from
Speaker 1: Robin shar My years ago that said ordinary people have
Speaker 1: big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries. And it was
Speaker 1: one of those, you know, little dreams I had that
Speaker 1: was I want to I have a home, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a big library. And that was one of my
Speaker 1: most favorite things to kind of put together when I
Speaker 1: moved here and started spending more time in when I
Speaker 1: would travel, I've always collected books. I've always and I
Speaker 1: started collecting expanding my audio library. I realized as I
Speaker 1: grew When I was growing up, we listened to a
Speaker 1: very limited form of music in my home, and even
Speaker 1: I was growing up as a teenager, I listened to
Speaker 1: like one genre of music, rap and hip hop, like
Speaker 1: that was. And again, I love rap and hip hop.
Speaker 1: I love rap and hip hop history. It's super cool.
Speaker 1: I have no issues with it. I just think that
Speaker 1: my audio library was so limited in my teens that
Speaker 1: now that I'm in my thirties, I'm now listening. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to listen to so many random, different things, which
Speaker 1: again inspire different thoughts, different feelings, different emotions. And so
Speaker 1: I've realized that vocabulary was one thing, audio has been
Speaker 1: another thing. What are other things that you've discovered that
Speaker 1: help open up that consciousness of mind, because, as we
Speaker 1: both keep referring to social media, technology is almost making
Speaker 1: us more limited, more singular, more one dimensional.
Speaker 2: Well, as I said, it's something I'm writing about right now.
Speaker 2: So music and the audible stuff is very, very interesting
Speaker 2: and very exciting. So this is new phenomenon where musicologists
Speaker 2: have been able to recreate music from eras that we
Speaker 2: never could listen to before. So I was writing at
Speaker 2: one point about a festival in ancient Greece, and to
Speaker 2: put me in the mood, I wanted to hear ancient
Speaker 2: Greek music. Well that doesn't exist, having no recordings of it,
Speaker 2: but sure enough there are, and the rhythms and the
Speaker 2: sound is so weird an alien that it makes it
Speaker 2: music captures the spirit of a time, right. So if
Speaker 2: we're only hearing these same melodies, you hear cards going
Speaker 2: by with that same kind of pop song, it's such
Speaker 2: a limited circle of harmony, such a limited circle of
Speaker 2: what music can be. But when you open up to
Speaker 2: African music, to music from ancient Babylonia to Greece, to
Speaker 2: music in South America, other rhythms, other poetry in music
Speaker 2: and sounds, it's mind blowing. It's interesting. So that's what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, that the human animal is much more interesting
Speaker 2: than we think it is. Reading about ancient cultures is
Speaker 2: a very mind expansive project. You can go on because.
Speaker 1: Books you'd recommend in that regard.
Speaker 2: You know what's so exciting now is they have these
Speaker 2: books called The Daily Life in the Daily Life in
Speaker 2: Ancient Babyloni, the daily life in I forget which city
Speaker 2: in India, the daily life in ancient Greece, etc. And
Speaker 2: you get to feel for not just the grand philosophical issues,
Speaker 2: but how people ate, what their houses were like. And
Speaker 2: so so I was writing. I just wrote a chapter
Speaker 2: about our relations shift to time and history, and I
Speaker 2: was trying to take the reader in my new book.
Speaker 2: I'm giving them exercises and I'm saying, try to imagine
Speaker 2: yourself in a world a thousand years ago, and you
Speaker 2: walk out your front door. There's no mechanical sounds. There's
Speaker 2: no airplanes, there's no cars, there's no machines. It's just birds.
Speaker 2: Maybe a saw and a hammer is the most you're
Speaker 2: going to hear. That's a strange thing. There are no signs,
Speaker 2: there are no advertisements, there's no words. Everywhere. It's kind
Speaker 2: of empty, right, you're just wandering around. There are all
Speaker 2: these kind of rants and weird, horrible smells because people
Speaker 2: aren't bathing, there's no but they're very human smells. Right,
Speaker 2: Your whole sensory experience is on another level. But when
Speaker 2: you live in this twenty first century world where things
Speaker 2: are so sanitized, but we don't smell these things. We
Speaker 2: only hear these packaged mechanical sounds. Your sensory world is
Speaker 2: shrinking down and down and down, and you realize the
Speaker 2: ancient world they had some bad stuff. They weren't very good.
Speaker 2: You know, they had slavery. I understand all of the negatives.
Speaker 2: So I'm not painting this portrait. But on another level,
Speaker 2: their realm of senses, their realm of language, their internal
Speaker 2: worlds were far richer than ours. And by connecting to
Speaker 2: them by reading these books, by reading books, not just
Speaker 2: the daily life thing I said, but actually text from
Speaker 2: those times. As I was mentioning, when I read a monk,
Speaker 2: a zen monk from the eleventh century, and the different
Speaker 2: thought processes, It opens my mind to a different way
Speaker 2: of thinking, to a different way of accessing reality. But
Speaker 2: like I'm reading a lot about Aztecs because I'm sort
Speaker 2: of obsessed with the Aztecs. I don't know why. And
Speaker 2: they had these amazing spectacles. That was the thing about
Speaker 2: the ancient world, these festivals and spectacles that are far
Speaker 2: beyond burning Man or any rock concert, right, you know,
Speaker 2: I could describe the fire ceremony in Astec culture that
Speaker 2: only occurred every seventy years. There is nothing you can
Speaker 2: ever imagine in your life that would be like that.
Speaker 2: It is so utterly spectacular. And so I have this
Speaker 2: eight hundred page book called as Tech Philosophy, and it's
Speaker 2: very theoretical, but God, it gives you an entree into
Speaker 2: a totally different way of thinking about the world. Right
Speaker 2: where they have these metaphors that the universe has this energy.
Speaker 2: Some of the energy is like stream that's being wound
Speaker 2: around in a certain way. It's like weaving, like other
Speaker 2: other things like that. This kind of energy that the
Speaker 2: world has. Wow, this is fascinating. You know, our ancestors
Speaker 2: were actually thinking, but they're not. Aren't there us? It's
Speaker 2: a human being. We're all human. We all have those
Speaker 2: same kind of consciousness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. I love also finding things in coaches
Speaker 1: that match in different languages, and so so I went
Speaker 1: to Hawaii a few years ago, which obviously for someone
Speaker 1: who grew up in London, it's not normal. People in
Speaker 1: America or La traveled to Hawaii fairly often. I went
Speaker 1: to Hawaii, and well, not often, it's more accessible, but
Speaker 1: I went recently and my wife and I went on
Speaker 1: one of the tours there and they showed us the
Speaker 1: peraglyphs which are there obviously like markings and storytelling technique
Speaker 1: and tool. And they were showing us how when a
Speaker 1: child is born, they used to place the umbilical cord
Speaker 1: on the ground and they would then draw a spiral
Speaker 1: around it and that would be seen as a place
Speaker 1: that the child could always come back to to feel
Speaker 1: the energy and reconnect with the earth. Oh exciting, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, that's spectacular. I wish everyone felt disconnected
Speaker 1: to the earth. And then we would go out every
Speaker 1: morning on a canoe. I forget their name for it,
Speaker 1: but they had their version for it, and they would
Speaker 1: pay respects to the Sun and the ocean and we
Speaker 1: would take part in this ceremony with them. And in
Speaker 1: India there's something known as Suria Namashkara, which it translates
Speaker 1: to sun salutation, which again I've talked to Andrew Huberman
Speaker 1: about This is like kicking off the Circadian rhythm. But
Speaker 1: the goal is you pay your respects to the sun
Speaker 1: for everything it offers to you and the energy that
Speaker 1: it provides. And so to see that in Hawaiian culture,
Speaker 1: Indian culture, and then I was in Bhutan recently I
Speaker 1: went on a trip to Bhutan, which I'd always wanted
Speaker 1: to visit, and this is a culture that really feels
Speaker 1: like you're going back in time. You walk out there
Speaker 1: and it feels like what you just described a thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, landlocked between Indian China.
Speaker 2: Indian China, so right in between where they're having their tensions,
Speaker 2: the kind of wars that's going on a little bit.
Speaker 1: Bhutan doesn't have a war. No, they don't even have
Speaker 1: a military. It's not part of their culture.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: They believe in their Buddhist nation, yes, yes, and their
Speaker 1: practices are very protected. Their culture is very protected. Like
Speaker 1: everyone's really still wears the cultural dress. It was spectacular.
Speaker 1: There's no there may be a couple of these now,
Speaker 1: but until very recently, there's no mals, no cinemas, no restaurants,
Speaker 1: like completely, and it's beautiful because it's just hills and mountains.
Speaker 1: They believe that the forest will always be seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the land mass because they believe they're sacred. You
Speaker 1: can't trek up to or ski on any of their
Speaker 1: mountains because they're sacred. They protect them. So there's a
Speaker 1: really and you almost I almost felt like what you
Speaker 1: just said there's no signs, you can't hear anything, there's
Speaker 1: no machinery like it really does feel like that, and
Speaker 1: we all, all of us who are there, experienced this
Speaker 1: sense of slowness that you don't experience anywhere else, not
Speaker 1: in a bad way in the mind. The gravity almost
Speaker 1: of the space was really really powerful to experience.
Speaker 2: That's very exciting because you know, you can go out
Speaker 2: into nature, into the mountains and you can feel that
Speaker 2: and you can feel like this is what it was
Speaker 2: like two thousand, one hundred thousand years ago. But we
Speaker 2: don't have that feeling with human things because every city
Speaker 2: has its Starbucks, it's malls, it's generic culture that we've
Speaker 2: transported throughout the world. So to have a place where
Speaker 2: you can actually go back in time is fantastic. But
Speaker 2: I wish it wasn't so far away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's worth
Speaker 1: visiting for anyone who wants to do. It was a
Speaker 1: really special trip. But you're right, the generic culture is
Speaker 1: the right word. Actually, there's there's every street looks the same,
Speaker 1: every area looks the same, you do. I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of passion behind local businesses, and it's healthy
Speaker 1: people want to support local business. We need more of
Speaker 1: that because the generic culture really takes away from like
Speaker 1: you expect. I mean, I was an Indian just recently
Speaker 1: on the way back, and it's like there's a Tim Hawtons,
Speaker 1: like right there, Tim Hortons, which I think is like
Speaker 1: popular in Canada or something like that. Is it popular
Speaker 1: in the US Tim Hortons, it's Canada or my wife
Speaker 1: was telling me about it, but it was just one
Speaker 1: of these it's it's And then there was a Starbucks
Speaker 1: and then it was the same, the same thing, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm in India, like you know, like
Speaker 1: I don't not expect it, but it's yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: generic that's what's made the brain so dull it has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're becoming homoginized. I mean I like going
Speaker 2: to countries like Mexico because there's still pockets in Mexico
Speaker 2: where you can feel something of another of a very
Speaker 2: different culture. You know, it's only in small, little areas,
Speaker 2: but it's very excited. Nothing like Boots Hahn, but you
Speaker 2: can still get it a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's been such a joy talking to you today,
Speaker 1: and as always, I love how we just get lost,
Speaker 1: and this is what I wanted.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was craving a authentic, real connection where both of
Speaker 1: our minds were in this moment.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: I want to end with a few h so fast
Speaker 1: paced questions. We call this the fast five, and I
Speaker 1: probably did it with you last time, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to change it up this.
Speaker 2: Time for you. My mind is fast enough to up
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: So you have to answer the questions. It's more like
Speaker 1: the Final five. You've got to answer the questions in
Speaker 1: one word to one sentence maximum. So Robert Green, these
Speaker 1: are your final five. The first question is what is
Speaker 1: something you had wish you'd learned earlier?
Speaker 2: The piano? I mean, I know you were probably thinking
Speaker 2: about something about life, but I love music and I
Speaker 2: wish I had learned the piano when I was young.
Speaker 1: Do you still play? Do you plan that?
Speaker 2: And no?
Speaker 1: No? Okay. Second question, what is something that you used
Speaker 1: to be sure about that you now are less sure about.
Speaker 2: I guess a sense of right and wrong, or good,
Speaker 2: good and evil. When I was young, I had a
Speaker 2: very strong sense of it it's and now I'm not
Speaker 2: so sure about what it is.
Speaker 1: Answer question number three, If you could go back and
Speaker 1: live in any age. I'm thinking you going to say
Speaker 1: the Aztecs. But where would you like to go and
Speaker 1: where would you want to live and what would you ask?
Speaker 2: I would go back to the Paleolithic era and our
Speaker 2: earliest ancestors because I'm fascinated by their world and what
Speaker 2: they were like. So the Paleolithics twenty thousand years ago, okay,
Speaker 2: And I would like to know about their religion, their spirituality.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in origins of human consciousness?
Speaker 1: So have you read any books on that? Then?
Speaker 2: Yes? What would write about if someone the subject? I
Speaker 2: was just my last chapter I was writing about the
Speaker 2: origin of language is the origin of human consciousness. It's
Speaker 2: the same time that there were the cave paintings, right,
Speaker 2: famous cave paintings in France, but they're all over the world, Aborigines,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And that was the beginning of symbolic consciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are all sorts of books written on that subject.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Question Number four. If you could have three people
Speaker 1: over at your dinner party, any three people you choose,
Speaker 1: living or dead, who would they be?
Speaker 2: What would be Friedrich Nietzsche? Because I'm reading a biography
Speaker 2: of his right now, that's unbelievable. The other would be
Speaker 2: Buddha why not, And then the other would be a
Speaker 2: very odd mix of people. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: they're going to get a good Yeah, I'd say I'll
Speaker 2: maybe Socrates and let the fur fly.
Speaker 1: Fifth and final question, Robert.
Speaker 2: I finally stressful.
Speaker 1: They are something you're trying to learn right now.
Speaker 2: To be more forgiving about myself because I'm extremely unforgiving
Speaker 2: with yourself. Yeah, not easy. It's not been my life pattern.
Speaker 1: Where did the pursuit begin and why is it a
Speaker 1: worthy pursuit?
Speaker 2: Well, I think because of my upbringing, I always had
Speaker 2: a feeling of never good enough. I'm never smart enough,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing enough. I'm not a good enough person,
Speaker 2: and I internalize that and so it's probably partially led
Speaker 2: to my stroke. Probably let me drive makes me drive
Speaker 2: myself too hard, and so sometimes I just have to
Speaker 2: be more forgiving. So instead of thinking, God, I'm never
Speaker 2: going to write anymore at the well is dry, the
Speaker 2: forgiving aspect is, Robert, you're tired, you're exhausted, You're doing fine,
Speaker 2: It's going to come. It will come, just trust it.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, you know, being indulgent towards yourself.
Speaker 2: I can be indulgent towards other people, but I can't
Speaker 2: be indulgent towards myself. So just learning to forgive myself
Speaker 2: for not being perfect, if for not getting exactly what
Speaker 2: I want in life, does the hardest thing for me,
Speaker 2: that's beautiful. It'd be very good for my health if
Speaker 2: I could, if I could ever get there, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Robert. You're welcome everyone, Robert Green. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode of me and Robert truly just
Speaker 1: having a genuine, passionate conversation about things we love. Please
Speaker 1: share on TikTok, on x, on Instagram, on Facebook, whatever
Speaker 1: platform you use. In the YouTube comments section, what resonated
Speaker 1: with you, What books you're going to read, what you
Speaker 1: connected with maybe some of the creatives out there who
Speaker 1: want to shift the way they think, or whether you've
Speaker 1: got some great insights on what are strong and weak
Speaker 1: character points. I want to know what hit you, what
Speaker 1: resonate with you? And thank you so much for listening
Speaker 1: and watching, And thank you again Robert for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much so as usual, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That means a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we go on for hours.
Speaker 1: I know, truly. If you love this episode, you'll love
Speaker 1: my interview with Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma
Speaker 1: and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on
Speaker 1: from the past.
Speaker 2: Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a
Speaker 2: tree doesn't go o where it's hard and thick, does it.
Speaker 2: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.