Kind: captions
Language: en
if we saw it completely into ourselves
we would hate ourselves so thoroughly
that we wouldn't get out of bed we'd all
be killing ourselves you do need a
degree of illusion you do need a degree
of self-esteem and confidence right
as people navigate the
modern world as they try to make their
way through something like that what are
the tools and approaches
that you recommend to people
well it's kind of what the subject sort
of what the daily laws is about there's
there's two things
so um
you know the the the source of your
power in life
is your attitude towards the world and
in in human nature i kind of describe
what i believe an attitude is it's your
lens it's your way of looking at the
world everybody's lens is different
you're not seeing things exactly as they
are you're seeing them filtered through
how you look at them
some people this is so important yeah
some people are optimistic and
adventurous some people are anxious and
closed and you could put two people in
the same circumstances visiting the same
place
the pessimistic anxious person will find
it unpleasant people are rude i don't
like it the adventurous exploring type
will find the circumstances very
exciting but it's the same thing it's
just you're judging in a different way
so the lens that you want you want a
lens that clarifies things you want a
lens that's realistic that you're trying
to see things as they are
right it's good to be excited but
sometimes if you're too excited and too
adventurous you're going to walk right
up to that tiger and they're going to
eat you alive sometimes you have to be a
little bit wary of things you have to
see your circumstances for what for what
they are
in military terms they call it
situational awareness you're very aware
crystal clear about who you are
about who other people are about what
the world is like so that's the attitude
that you want to craft for yourself in
this world and it's very difficult as
you've been saying very eloquently the
cards are stacked against you a because
of how we're wired you know our brains
developed 200 000 years ago
in circumstances that certainly aren't
the way things are now so we're so
there's kind of a a gap there between
you know how how we're wired to think
and what's going on in the 21st century
and b we're dealing with technology
that's making things harder
so you your goal in life is to become
more realistic to be able to step back
and look at things as they are
and how do you get there is the question
so first you have to see that as your
goal and it has to be important to you
it has to be something that you want and
it's not just something that's cold and
dry and scientific really fast why is
that the right goal
why is that the right goal yeah to see i
agree with you i just want to see how
you explain it to people why it matters
to see the world the way that it
actually is
well
okay imagine it this way so there's
yourself everything begins with you
right you're filled with all kinds of
illusions about who you are about what
you're good at what you're bad at what
your weaknesses are what your strengths
are
if you're able to see inside of yourself
with a degree of realism you'll be able
to understand
this is what i was destined to be in
life this is what i call my life's task
this is the career that's that fits me
that suits me
so if you're able to have that realism
when you're 22 years old you're not
going to suddenly go off on this wrong
career path that's going to make you
miserable make you an alcoholic by the
time you're 30 you're going to have a
degree of direction in life it's
incredibly liberating it's incredibly
powerful to be able to see inside of
yourself and know what you were destined
for and what makes you you
other people other people wear masks
they smile but it doesn't their smile
doesn't mean anything
there are toxic people out there it's
not everybody i don't mean to make you
paranoid maybe there's like five percent
of the world that's truly toxic
every single human being i can guarantee
you has had to deal with these talks of
people in a way that's painful
and you don't see them you know they're
very tricky these are people who've
learned to disguise themselves
you're going to get sucked into all
these dramas and traumas with these
people
can make your life miserable imagine you
had a realistic attitude and you could
see through these people you could catch
before you get involved with them signs
of that they might be one of these types
another thing that's incredibly
liberating the world that you live in
there's a zeitgeist there's a spirit of
the times there are trends there's
things that are going on right now in
your career in the world at large
and we're fed with so much [ __ ] in
the media we have no idea what's really
going on the ability to see this is
where the world headed is headed this is
where business will be in two years this
is where things are going to be these
are the trends
the power so the power to see inside
yourself the power inside to see other
people to see the world
you know you're superman if you can do
that if you can have a degree of that
the world is at your feet basically
so you know there's i don't think
there's any counter argument to that
where you don't want that kind of
realism
and it's not this ugly thing it's
incredibly sexy because it's incredibly
powerful
right
so we've now come to the point you and i
we agree that that's what you want
the person out there is going yeah i
want that as well okay robert that's
fine how do i get there aha
well
you have to be patient you have to know
it's a process
you can't get ahead of yourself you
can't get ahead of your skis it's going
to take day by day by day by day you
have to build it up you're working
against your own nature you're working
against the times so be patient be
compassionate with yourself and learn to
take these baby steps and in the book
daily laws i have a lot of different
ways of attacking that
the main way of attacking it is a
learning the ability as we talked about
earlier to be able to detach yourself
from the immediate events going on and
to be able to look at yourself with a
degree of dispassion and say
this is what i did really did
what really happened here so just a
simple example something kind of doesn't
go the way you wanted to which will
happen almost every day or every week
you know with your children with your
spouse with your boss wherever
okay
what is your normal reaction every
single human including myself
blame that person
they're not caring they're not
empathetic they're an [ __ ] there's
they're narcissistic blah blah blah stop
it stop it right now don't do that again
step back and say what did i do
okay if that person is toxic why am i
involved with them there's something
wrong about me
if that person
got reactive and resentful and they had
a bad tone of voice something that i
said
maybe there was something in me that was
projecting kind of negativity maybe my
own mood wasn't really was kind of
creating this atmosphere that made them
react that way
look at yourself instead of blaming
other people
you know these are parts of the process
there are many others but yeah dude that
is so huge
people always so i have a
saying that i like that most people
[ __ ] hate which is everything is my
fault i love it it's so useful
so uh
fault is a word that
gives people i don't know emotional
distress or something so they don't like
when i use that phrase um
but what i like to remind myself is that
if i did something different i could get
a different outcome right and that's so
powerful to me to not by blaming
somebody else by making it their fault i
give away all my power and there's
nothing i can do about it and now i'm
sort of a victim of circumstance but man
when you take 100 ownership and you look
at your life and say my life is an exact
reflection of choices that i've made now
if i want it to be different then i just
need only make different choices
completely and and one of the things
that that's like that is
if something went wrong
maybe and i'm to blame just accept it
just accept the fact that it happened
don't try to change it but just say that
this has happened and i'm not going to
fight it and it's just my fate in life
you know it's okay
right
so the ability to accept things
is also taking ownership of them so if
something bad happens and you can't
really control it because let's be
honest there are times that you can't
control things they're just going to
happen who predicted a pandemic you
can't control that right
so your first reaction is to get all
pissy and go damn it why'd it happen
[ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] i'm a victim blah blah
blah
okay that's just gonna make you more
depressed more inward more
harder to act in the world whereas if
you say okay
i can't control the pandemic it's a
terrible thing but i'm going to roll
with the punches i'm going to accept the
way things are i'm not going to fight it
this is the way the world is what can i
get out of it what kind of benefit
well
maybe i can reassess my career maybe
before the pandemic happened i was just
headed in this path
and i wasn't i was kind of blind maybe
i'm not really happy with what i am i'm
not happy with my relationships with my
career maybe i need to reassess it maybe
it's time for me to be alone and read
books and and study and and learn new
skills etc so the ability to to accept
things that you can't change and to see
some benefit from them is also part of
that
i want to go back to emotions so
we've talked about how emotions are
incredibly powerful you um i don't think
you used this example in the book but it
was certainly along these lines that if
you damage the region of somebody's
brain that deals with the emotional
centers they can't make decisions which
is absolutely
just insane to me
um and
you also have a quote in the book though
that i wrote down that i would like to
share with people now and
for
clarity's sake i actually agree with
both sides of this so you've got the
side that you talked about where if you
damage the emotional centers of
somebody's brain they can't make a
decision and then you also had
a quote and i don't know why my
the app has crashed that i have the
quota i can paraphrase it if i can't get
this out here we go i think i can get it
now
um
nope it's not opening so the paraphrase
of the quote is that emotions are
essentially a disease
looking for a remedy and i was like yes
yes you can't just
believe your emotions or maybe that's
not the right way to think about it but
you can't just take them on board and
because i have this feeling i'm gonna
act on it or it represents truth right
help people understand first give us
that like what do you mean how is it
possible that my emotions aren't
necessarily
useful or true
and then we'll balance it with the idea
of how important emotions actually are
well
in in in a japanese zen way
your emotions are truth because you are
feeling the way you're feeling okay so
that's real
right but it could stem from a very
false source
as well okay so
let's just go back to that example that
i gave earlier
of the young boy who was felt abandoned
by his mother right
and his whole pattern in his life is to
be the one that's doing the abandoning
so he's not abandoning himself
so in the moment that he's with this
woman within this relationship that's
been going on
he's starting to feel
something's wrong with her she's bad
she's she's not right for me she's gonna
you know i better leave this
relationship right
he's not reacting on what she's doing
his emotions are not coming from which
she could be perfectly fine she could be
totally loving he's projecting on to her
his own emotions what he feels is
genuine he genuinely feels that
something is wrong but it doesn't come
from the truth itself it comes from some
deeper much deeper pain
so your emotions
you feeling them but the source of them
you have no idea what the source is
right
so
you know you exploded somebody in your
office tomorrow because of something
and then you don't realize that in the
morning you were already put in a bad
mood by something that somebody else
said and that kind of made you prone to
like exploding later on in the day
you are seeing that other person that
triggered you but you're not seeing what
happened earlier in the day that set the
tone for it that planted the seed for
your being triggered right
so you don't have access to the source
of what's really causing your emotions
now
i'll be honest you're never gonna get
true access to the actual source of it
because there's something buried very
deep inside
who knows where it came from who knows
how young you were who knows really
the unconscious processes that were
going on
okay so you're never going to get at the
core the real truth but you can get
closer to it you can and you cannot
react in the moment you can say
if this you're this young man who's
trapped in this pattern it's very
difficult the thing to go but
am i being
is it true that she's actually being
like that if i actually step back and
analyze her words
they're totally neutral she's not being
mean or vicious she's not about to leave
me
right or she's not betraying me in any
way it's totally neutral right and i
often go through that process i've been
in a relationship for a long time where
i get a little bit upset and angry and
i'm blaming her and blah blah blah and i
have to go back like it takes a couple
hours for the microwave to kind of cool
down right and you go
no way man
she why does she feel the way she's
feeling well it probably comes from me
but i'm i'm totally projecting onto her
right
so just the idea that you are projecting
your emotions onto people just the idea
that you're reacting to something that's
an illusion it's a mirage is liberating
enough because it's going to prevent you
from doing stupid things
how many times i've had this problem
do you get angry and you send that angry
email
voicing all of your upset and just
pleasure
and then two hours later [ __ ] i wish i
hadn't said that i wish i hadn't
revealed my vulnerability i wish i had
maybe i was it was i overreacted right
so the ability to to write that email
and then put it in the draft folder and
never send it and you know i have this
thing in my own uh computer where in my
email that draft folder is getting
larger and larger it's got 12 it's got
20 it's got 80 things in it that shows
me 80 times i have put that thing into
the draft folder and i have a degree of
control
so
yeah the idea that
they're one that you don't have full
access to everything that led you to
react the way that you did and two that
to some extent it's an illusion
so you call it attitude i call it frame
of reference i've given my entire
professional life to the idea that frame
of reference may be the single most
important thing in the determining the
outcome of your life
so looking at right now in much of the
developed world your zip code is the
number one predictor of your future's
success so
were it your iq i could understand that
but the fact that it just is where you
happen to grow up
that's really really distressing to me
and so having worked in the inner cities
a lot and seeing up close what the
problem is you encounter people with
incredible intellect
but as you watch them process the data
they're processing it through a filter
and that filter is what you call
attitude and
when it encounters an attitude that
isn't helpful you get an outcome that's
like a fun house mirror and you're like
what the way that you're looking at this
doesn't make sense in the following way
you have a goal and the way you're
thinking about things either your goal
makes no sense it won't optimize for
fulfillment or joy
or you have a goal that makes sense and
the way that you're parsing the data
does not lead you to take actions that
will actually move you towards that goal
right and so it becomes this
really um distressing question of okay
somebody gets to adulthood they have an
attitude or a frame of reference that
isn't helping them
accurately
it isn't helping them process data in a
way that will move them towards a useful
goal that's the the cleanest most
truthful way to say it so then the
question becomes what can you do to
begin
reformulating
that attitude that frame of reference in
order to get you where you want to go do
you think at all about
the like what is the atomized thing that
makes up the attitude for me it's
beliefs your frame of reference is is a
reflection of i'll call it roughly 25
beliefs that you have get those beliefs
right you're a-okay get those beliefs
wrong and you've got a real problem but
the atomized thing for me is a belief
what's the atomized version of an
attitude for you
well i'm not quite sure i understand the
beliefs part but i'm trying to
um
explain it do you want me to explain it
yeah all right so
the most important one so i've actually
written down the 25 that i think make
this up but there's one that's really
important
it's what i call the only belief that
matters which is that in fact you talk
about this in your book mastery is
essentially about this idea that
if you put time and energy into getting
good at something you will actually get
good at it right and that thing has
utility in the real world now if you
believe that then you'll pick up the
guitar and you'll start practicing
you'll sit down with the typewriter and
you'll start writing if you don't
believe it it wouldn't make sense to
pick up a guitar you're either good at
it from birth or you're not and so why
would you bother right that one belief
will bifurcate your entire life because
you're either going to
lean into just the things you think
you're already naturally gifted at and
your life will be limited by whatever
that is or you will spend a massive
amount of time and energy gaining
mastery right and those two same person
but those are wildly divergent outcomes
yeah uh i i think that's that's that's
very true um i don't know the atomizing
i think i might just basically being
agree with you i would maybe say the
stories that we tell ourselves which
comes down to the same thing
because i've discovered in
my meditation that the way the brain
works is continually telling us stories
about the world about ourselves about
the way people are and i don't mean
stories in it's literally what i'm
saying it's like constructed like a
story it has a narrative arc to it right
this is what happened to me and and the
story is constructed and this is the
result and what the story i'm telling
myself might not be the correct story at
all right so being able to understand
what really happened what is the
actually the story that that occurred
there is extremely important and so
you're hitting on the bedrock which is
extremely fundamental which is
do you believe that you're capable of
change
do you believe that good things happen
when you go through a process of
learning and taking steps do you believe
going back to your belief
that you can actually get out of your
patterns
because you can be fooling yourself you
can be bullshitting you can be saying
yeah i kind of do but deep down inside
you don't really want to do it because
believe it or not your bad patterns give
you a degree of comfort right it's
something that you know
and to get out of them you're suddenly
thrust into the unknown and that could
be very frightening so you could be
holding on to these bad patterns so the
belief that
i can change
i can actually do something different in
my life i can actually recreate myself i
can actually learn things i can actually
rewire my brain because the brain is
incredibly plastic even at the age of 40
50 you can change your career you can
learn new skills you know i've reached
60 i'm constantly learning as well the
brain is insanely plastic do you believe
that
do you believe that you have the
possibility to change yourself to alter
your patterns that's probably the single
most important thing right there and to
get people to believe that as i said
there's two levels there's the people
who shake their head yeah yeah yeah
they'll read mastery but it won't mean
anything to them because
they're afraid
of the change
they're comfortable with a degree of
failure i hate to say
because if you don't try things you
never have to deal with the
responsibility the pain of failure right
so you don't really want to change deep
down inside you don't really believe in
tom's number one
bedrock belief right you're kind of
fooling yourself
so it's not a fairy tale it's not a
bunch of
a myth that we're creating it's true
that you have the power the brain if you
just understood this one thing that the
brain is like a landscape it's like a
landscape out in the world that you see
where things can be lush and tropical or
they can be completely arid and dead
you create that landscape yourself you
create the brain that you have by the
degree of how you're open to experience
by the degree of how much you learn
about the degree of how many different
sources of information you take in you
can create this incredibly alive brain
that's very creative imaginative and how
much more fun will your life be if
you're open and you let things come in
and new ideas come in
so it's up to you you're the one that's
creating your misery it's creating your
patterns it's and it comes down to that
bedrock one belief that you just
mentioned
we consider ourselves human
obviously we're human beings but i don't
by that definition
i think that we're actually animals that
we have an animal nature and that we
have to become human
and we become human
by overcoming some of these deep-rooted
animal forces within us
these forces within us that we can't
control such as the fact that we can't
control our own emotions our own anger
our own frustration or if we feel envy
or we're caught up in the emotions of
other people i call those forces primal
forces human nature and i have 18 of
them
and they can create
sort of negative patterns of behavior
the dark side of what we see in the news
etc
and we all have them ingrained in us
because with the way we evolved millions
of years ago served a very definite
purpose for our survival as a species
but the savannahs of east africa is not
the offices in silicon valley or 21st
century america the world isn't the same
we are not built to adapt to this new
technological environment we're in we
still have that lizard brain those
animal parts of our nature
so my book is designed to confront you
with human nature
so you can begin to overcome it so for
instance law number one is about how
we're basically irrational creatures
we think that we're rational but really
our emotions govern us we feel something
before we ever have an idea or think it
we have to become rational through this
process that i lay out in my book
so i don't mean to say
that we're negative because humans are
obviously incredible look at what we've
created it's an outrageous if you think
about who we were millions of years ago
and where we are now we're obviously
capable of incredible achievements we're
also the most brilliant social animal on
the planet we're capable of cooperating
and working on teams to a level that no
other animal has ever reached so there's
obviously another side to the story but
to become greater to become truly human
we have to overcome these forces that i
lay out in the book
what are some of the other primitive
forces that are driving us especially
ones that people might not be aware of
well
i think we're kind of aware of it but we
don't see it in the same light so for
instance we are built to constantly
compare ourselves to other people
we're always thinking of what the other
person has and how we are in relation to
them are we getting as much attention as
that other person it started off when we
were children are we getting more
attention than our siblings from our
parents so we're continually comparing
ourselves in rank in power in status to
the people around us
and this is deep force within us and
it's constant every day every moment you
don't realize it but you're going
through that
and social media it completely
exacerbates this tendency in human
nature
and it's the source of envy which i have
a whole chapter on in my book
so that's one force that i that i talk
about and it has i try and show the
roots of that you know in our evolution
another is the contagiousness of
emotions which is extremely powerful
we tend to think of ourselves as
autonomous human beings that we're
independent that we
i feel affection or anger or frustration
on my own we don't realize how deeply we
are affected by the emotions of the
people in a group
this is the viral effects emotions are
extremely contagious and i explained in
the book there was an evolutionary
reason for that
before the invention of language we
humans had to be able to communicate to
one another through just picking up the
moods of other people and if there was a
threat to our group or our tribe the
ability to feel fear and anger together
bonded us and helped us survive
but that doesn't serve much function in
the world today where viral emotions can
be very dangerous and very
we see a lot of that on social media
so those are two of forces you know i
could mention and there are several
others
so you've said that you often write from
a place of anger i do what was the anger
that was driving this book
well
i tell you you know i just think
i'm really worried about people nowadays
so in mastery my worry was people no
longer knew how to build things
no longer understood the process for
becoming great and excelling at some
craft or field
but now my worry is that people are so
immersed in their smartphones and their
technology that they don't understand
people they're not observing people and
this has been documented in studies
that young people for instance levels of
self-absorption and narcissism have been
growing steadily since the 1970s
we are the preeminent social animal on
the planet
our survival depends on how we relate to
other people whether we understand them
on some level and i find a lot of people
are increasingly in the world are really
bad at observing just basic elements in
human psychology
the position i'm in now i'm a consultant
to a lot of very powerful famous people
i'm not going to mention any names but
people fly me out to consult with ceos
political people who are very powerful
and even in other countries
and the number one problem i find that
they have is an inability to understand
the people they're dealing with they
hire the wrong partners they hire the
worst assistance
when they're ruining their lives these
are people who are technically brilliant
they understand their field they
understand marketing etc but they don't
understand basics about people around
them and they make terrible hires or
they marry absolutely the wrong person
for them in their lives their emotions
or you know their personal relationship
bring them down
so this is like our achilles heel and i
think it's gotten worse in the world
today so my anger was that people are so
focused on technology but that we need
to focus much more on human nature on
understanding people that's the primary
skill that you need in life
i found it really interesting so i'm
sort of the um i get a little
mischaracterized as the blank slate guy
and admittedly i do want to believe that
we're blank slates but i don't believe
that i don't think that we are blank
slates and i think that there is a
certain amount of human nature that's
really baked into things um one thing
that i thought was pretty funny in your
book was like the biggest part of human
nature is that we deny that there is
human nature i thought that was
wonderfully ironic and terrifyingly true
and
i want to know like how much of this is
stuff where we tease out because you
said the purpose of the book is to give
you a sense of who you are so that you
can change who you are but without that
self-awareness without going through the
process of learning this stuff you're
just never going to be able to make that
change so okay operating from the thesis
that your book is designed to give me
that level of self-awareness as i go
through the process of trying to tease
out who i really am which is a
fascinating journey that your book takes
people on if they're willing to
acknowledge when they see themselves
how much of this is truly like just uh
you were born that way and how much of
this is
early childhood development
well i have a chapter on character
which is an extremely important chapter
and what i'm trying to get at in there
is that there is something deeply
ingrained in each individual person a
particular individual nature that we all
have and it causes us to go into
compulsive patterns of behavior i have
this problem myself
i notice each time i write a book i'm
telling myself i'm going to make this
book short i'm not going to ruin my
health i'm not going to do so much
research and every goddamn time i still
go through the same process i can't
break this pattern
okay and everybody has them where does
it come from some of it comes from our
dna from our genetics things we can't
control that we've inherited from our
parents
some of it comes from our early
attachments
and some of it comes as we get older and
we interact with teachers and mentors
and various people who create a certain
way we view ourselves if people keep
telling us that we're not really worthy
that we're not good students we
internalize that and we end up becoming
like that
so it's a mix of things you know each
person has a mix of these qualities and
you have to kind of
and untangle the various strands and
you're right what i'm saying is you're a
mystery to yourself
you don't know who you are you have
patterns of behavior and you're not even
understanding that
you don't know why you're angry you
think you're angry because that person
said something mean to you or did
something wrong but in fact your anger
probably stems from things from deep
deep within from your childhood and
you're not reacting to that person but
to actually your parents and what they
didn't give you
you know the the the origin of wisdom
according to the greeks was know thyself
right
and i believe that very firmly that
knowledge about who you are is an end in
itself and will help you in so many ways
become that human being that i think we
all have the potential to become so talk
to me about self-awareness and how it
impacts biases
well um
you have to see this is my books i try
to be as practical as possible i don't
want to get academic i want you to be
able to actually use this knowledge
so i'm a great believer in baby steps in
learning how to do things on a daily
basis
so normally when we feel an emotion or
we have an idea we don't examine it we
just assume that's that's you know just
natural we came up with that on our own
i want you every single day to be
examining yourself and to look at
yourself
why do i have that idea
why am i feeling this sudden emotion
and it's not easy it takes it can take
time and it can take degree of
introspection that you're not
comfortable with
but if you begin to look at yourself and
question
why do i feel this way
and examine it and look at perhaps other
sources of it then you can begin this
process of understanding instead of just
simply accepting that you feel or have
this
this certain idea
so when i write the book on human nature
i admit
that i have a negative bias towards
human nature i tend to see the dark side
in people i tend to see their
manipulative side what they're trying to
hide that was the source for the 48 laws
of power that was the anger i felt then
that people weren't being honest about
how manipulative they can be
so
i recognize that i have this bias
i recognize that that's who i am instead
of thinking that
well i'm just brilliant and my ideas are
always correct i question it and i
question
is my negative bias towards human nature
is that reality or is it just me and
maybe it's just me because of my the way
my parents are you know my parents were
kind of anxious and a little worried
about a lot of things and i internalized
that and maybe that gave me my negative
view on people so i question it and i
say maybe it's not real maybe i need to
read books that tell me the other side
of the story and there are plenty of
books you know that say that humans are
great so question yourself stop assuming
that everything you do is so brilliant
and smart and right
and imagine that maybe your ideas don't
come from yourself maybe
you're feeling some political anger or
whatever comes from the fact that you're
just assuming it from other people
you're following things on facebook and
you're getting swept up in some viral
emotion you want to think that you're
completely independent and autonomous
but maybe you're not as independent as
you think
so how do you want people to use your
book as a tool as they go through what
exercises do you want them to do because
i think
some of a lack of self-awareness is not
just a i don't want to do the work the
introspection it's not understanding the
process of what introspection is
well some of it also is denial some of
it also is a block that people have to
look at themselves because
it is
it is a little bit
the confrontation with reality
but as far as the process is concerned
it's it's a daily thing so first of all
the first and most important thing that
you have to do is to is to come to admit
it's almost like an aaa thing that you
have a problem
if you go through life thinking you
don't have a problem that you know who
you are that your relationships with
people are fine that everything is
hunky-dory then you're never going to be
able to even begin to go into the
process so admit you have a problem
admit you don't understand the people
you deal with
even your spouse or your children their
mysteries to you you don't really know
what they're thinking so admit that
first
when you admit that now you're motivated
to try and learn there are little steps
you can take i won't go through all of
them but the first thing is
if you take your your wife or your
husband if you say to yourself i don't
really understand them i think i do but
a lot of the times when you think you
understand them you're just simply
projecting your onto them your own
emotions step back and say today
i'm going to observe
her let's just say from my point of view
in a different way than i normally do
and i'm going to look at her nonverbal
communication because i'm a big believer
in non-verbals and today i'm gonna glean
one truth about my wife or spouse or
partner
that i had never noticed before and i'm
gonna try and see
perhaps get to the point where i can
begin to understand her perspective
so if for instance there's an argument
or a disagreement
here's another instance where you step
back and you go
stop being self-self-righteous
and maybe try and take the step of
understanding her point of view so you
know so these are sort of baby steps
that you take in in life you can use
this in your office where you think you
you know your colleagues but you don't
know them and they might be having
thoughts about you that aren't very
pleasant that you don't want to confront
step back and start observing them and i
have many many examples in the book
about how lessons on how you can start
observing people
observing their body language
seeing the subtext behind their words
you know seeing their patterns of
behavior you know for instance
you'll notice sometimes we all go
through this
that when we
see our boss
we get a kind of
body language and a nervousness that's
it's unusual but when we see somebody
else like a friend
suddenly our face lights up and we're
much more relaxed and happy all people
are like that so you want to see how
somebody reacts to you when you meet
them when you come up to them and how
they react to other people and notice
that there's a great difference when
they see you and suddenly they're very
nervous around you or they're very
excited that will tell you a lot about
yourself and about them you're not being
observant you mentioned milton erickson
before we were talking about how
incredibly observant he was
his
what he was fascinated with was how
incredibly unobservant people are
let's go deeper into milton erickson who
is a shared fascination for you and i
and seeing him in your book
was very excited and you give like this
blow by blow account of how he comes to
what is really
almost a superpower his ability to read
nonverbal communication is beyond
powerful but the way that you tell the
story it makes it sort of self-evident
how he develops that
walk us through
you know what happened when he got
struck with polio how he leveraged that
what some of those realizations were and
then how we can all train ourselves um
and and if you can touch on like what he
learned about the word no like i found
that really yeah yeah
well milton erickson is amazing figner
he's the person who created basically
hypnotherapy and was the main
inspiration between behind nlp
and
when he was about 18 years old he
suddenly got polio
and as his polio spread his entire body
was was paralyzed
even the only thing that wasn't was his
eyeballs he could move he could look at
people he had some ability to see
move his eyes a little bit
and so
imagine i can imagine myself i have a
very active mind imagine you're
paralyzed in bed you can't read you
can't watch anything no television no
entertainment
people can read you stories basically
but how incredibly bored you'll become
and how frustrating and you can't
do anything for yourself you know you'd
go crazy
so what milton erickson did as he was in
that state and he was living in his
house and people were visiting is him
is he decided he would observe people on
a much higher level
now he couldn't say anything he couldn't
communicate because his
mouth was paralyzed as well
so all he could do was observe
and observe people closer and closer and
so he noticed that as that as he
progressed in that there's a there's
this second language that people speak
and this language is non-verbal
it is in gestures it is in tone of voice
it isn't just your body posture
and slowly over
months and years of being paralyzed in
this position
he literally mastered this second
language
he could tell
from the way his sister
moved her hair like that or moved her
head that she was feeling some
resentment towards her other sister
he noticed as you said that there were
like five different forms of no
that someone could say no
i don't want that apple when they were
offered to it but they really meant yeah
i really do want that apple
and so he noticed that there were all
these different variations of no
depending on the tone of voice
he could hear people in another room
talking about him and through that the
tone of their voice he could understand
what they were really trying to say
about him and the subtext behind
the words that people have
and so as people talk
and they use words to conceal what
they're thinking their bodies reveal
what they're actually thinking behind
the words through their nervousness
their tone of voice their eyes
the eyes and the mouth tell you
incredible amounts of information
milton erickson mastered this language
and as he got older he used this in his
therapy
where he would have patients enter his
room he became a
and he deliberately placed his desk at
one end of the corner so they would have
to walk into the room
and he could understand from the way
they walked and their gate
whether they were nervous whether they
were excited whether they wanted to
change their lives or not
he was so brilliant at it that people
later in life people thought he was
psychic
he could literally read your thoughts
it was unbelievable so
the point of the story was
that humans have this ability to unders
to master this second language
put yourself in the position of our
earliest ancestors i mentioned this
earlier
they don't have language yet their
survival depends on getting along with
the group
and knowing like you're hunting and
where where is that leopard what's going
on
but you can't say anything you don't
have language yet so your ability to
pick up fear in the eyes of a fellow
group member or to pick up excitement
your survival depended on it so i
maintain that our ancestors were
virtually psychic in their ability to
attune themselves to the non-verbal
communication that people are constantly
emitting
so the idea in this book is
we humans are all constantly emitting
information about our real emotions
it comes out non-verbally
and you're not picking up these signals
you're so focused on people's words that
you're missing this other reality which
is so incredibly eloquent and i try and
instruct you in the book about how you
can become a superior observer of this i
find it very um
i don't know the right way to frame this
other than to say that while i wouldn't
wish a stroke on anybody the fact that
you in particular are able to bring back
the lessons from that
what are you doing on a daily basis to
get those
joyful moments despite all the
restrictions
well i have to be honest it's a struggle
you know some days i'm very successful
and i feel very excited and happy
some days it's like i've got tourette's
syndrome i'm just walking around going
[ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] i'm so upset i'm so
frustrated and so
i'm daily having to struggle with myself
and um
so whenever i feel that level the
frustration is very easy to explain
imagine that you can't really button
your shirt that your left hand is so
weak
that you it it takes you forever to
button your shirt to get dressed in the
morning takes like 10 20 minutes
to like get my vitamins off the shelf as
this kind of ordeal
i can't type so just my hands
so you take for granted you out there
you take for granted your use of your
hands brother i can tell you the hand or
sister that hand is a miracle you have
no idea if you lost one of your hands
what a nightmare it would be don't take
it for granted the fine little things
that your hands can do because i can't
do them anymore
you know i can't walk in a normal way
i'm always kind of losing my balance i
have to hold on to things etcetera like
so the frustration is every single day
there's a tenseness like am i going to
fall am i going to drop this can i hold
on to this can i get this
done and it builds up until your your
body starts getting tense
before anything ever happens
so i have to fight that and i have to
feel it before it happens and i have to
go through kind of a mantra of
you are getting better you're just not
aware of it robert
it's something you can't see it's so
gradual
that it's gonna take three or four more
years calm down it's not like it's this
is going to be you forever et cetera etc
other times i don't believe my mantra
and i get upset
so it is a daily daily struggle and i
can go through weeks
where the struggle seems great and i'm
fine and then suddenly i'll fall through
this hole where i'm just like
damn it
you know i see people walking by on the
street taking a hike
just three years ago that was who i was
it's not who i am now i'm like a
different person i want to cry you know
i can't do
the things that gave me pleasure
so sometimes i can't control it when i
see
things in the world that remind me of my
past life but i had to find compensation
so
i can't take a hike up into the
beautiful griffith park
which is very beautiful with incredible
woods up there something i love doing
i can't ride a bicycle but i found a
recumbent bike
it's basically a tricycle a souped-up
tricycle right but i got the top of the
line
trike recumbent trike right the best you
can get the fastest the lightest weight
one and now i'm able to go up these
incredible hills it was like obviously
slower than normal people
a normal bike but i can go up the
biggest hill you can imagine and i do it
and i go up into the hills in the woods
and i'm alone and it's my therapy
and i
know that it's ephemeral that it only
lasts for like half an hour an hour
i'm
suck every second of joy out of that
being in the woods that i can being
alone and being away from everything so
i've had to find compensations you know
i had to look at the little things
around me and find insanely
beautiful things about them also
i had the kind of stroke that damages
the right side of the brain
which has an effect on you many ways but
the main thing is
it
crea you can't your right side of your
brain isn't communicating to the left
side so your left arm your left leg
isn't getting signals from the brain
that's why i can't do the things i can't
do
but
it saved my cognitive abilities so if
it's hitting my left side which people
have strokes
that's the kind of people that lose the
ability to talk
they can't really think straight i
wouldn't be able to write a book
so every day
three o'clock if i'm lucky after i've
exercised i sit down
i'm with my sublime book with my
notebook
i'm in heaven
nobody bothering me please don't call me
if you call me i'm going to cuss you i'm
going to get the [ __ ] out of my hair i'm
only working on my book
i am the happiest little baby in the
world
you know because that book is saving me
it's my therapy so i found compensations
but you know we talked earlier about
patients
i'm patient in some sense
you know to write a book but i'm also
impatient in another sense right i'm
impatient with my body with my physical
things i want to be able to do things
now
and so i've had to learn
a different form like a meta patients
and a whole other level of patients and
and it's a work in progress that's all i
can say
talk to me about hope how is it
you know as you
do physical therapy and try things and
you make some progress but not as much
as you want how do you continue to renew
your
hope it's it's the
most
hardest thing and it's the most
important thing i can tell you um
because the moments that i don't feel
hope
i'm just kind of ready to give up
you know i mean what's the point of this
so i have to continually
rekindle it and it's been a roller
coaster ride because
in the beginning people will say robert
you've got to try this you've got to try
um
hyperbaric chambers you've got to try
this
this accuscope that this guy has you
have to try the stem cell research you
have to go this and that i get my hopes
up oh all right i'll spend thousands of
dollars on this new form of therapy i do
it
a little bit of change but nothing
really happens then my hope sinks
it's like um well i don't know what the
expression is uh
a god that dies every single time this
happens it's how i explain it like i had
this belief in something and then it got
burst it's very painful
and so you know people are constantly
suggesting new forms of therapy my hope
rises
and i have to be able to control that
and know there is no quick fix on this
the actress sharon stone had a stroke
very similar to mine
at an age at a comparable age
and i actually was going to try and
contact her it sounded like we had very
similar experiences she wrote that it
took her seven years
to get back
to a normal kind of life
i've done three years so far
so i have to tell myself
that there are no quick fixes and she
herself did every form of therapy
imaginable and believe me
people are well-meaning
and they come they say robert you gotta
try this you gotta try that i've gone to
the point where like please don't tell
me that anymore you know
i don't believe in quick fixes
i have to do this day by day by day i
have to retrain my body
you know so
i'm trying a new form of therapy right
now
it didn't instantly give me results
it's something very interesting it's
based on feldenkrais
fascinating new way what is feldenkrais
it's a whole different way of looking at
your body and i find it fascinating it's
just not
hyper designed for a stroke victim but i
think somebody will someday it's based
on this idea that the body is a whole
unit right
so you can't isolate the parts the body
works as a whole it's in a complete
organic hole
so if you have back pain it doesn't stem
from your back it stems from your pelvis
it stems from your hamstrings it stems
from how you move your legs stems from
your neck the whole body
and we have built intentions all over
our body
we use muscles that we don't need to use
right so every time you're about to lift
something or do something arduous or
even psychologically do something
arduous the chest muscles tense up as if
that will help you somehow get over what
you're doing
but you don't need the chest muscles
they're not you design for that you're
using muscles that you don't need
they're expending energy if only the
muscles that were necessary to do the
job were firing
everything would work so much better
so the felt in christ this is
called the anat banil method she was a
student that felt in christ
is there's an ideal of the body that i
can sense when i do the lessons where
you're on a whole other level you're
like
only using the muscles that are
necessary you're moving with this kind
of grace and elegance and efficiency
that wasn't existing before all the bad
habits with our necks our shoulders
and and the psychological stuff that put
you through it's very powerful it's just
not
geared specifically for a stroke victim
then i'm doing another form of therapy
tom you have no idea how
boring
this physical therapy is
right so when i'm used to exercises
that's kind of fun
i even lifting weights can be fun
because you see your muscles building
right you feel your heart pounding
swimming running it's all kind of fun
this is like little micro movements with
your knee with your leg it's so boring
so i have to like put music on i have to
watch the ball game i have to do
something to distract myself
so i mean i'm going through all the the
weeds here of of my process but
that's
well so what i find interesting about it
is just inevitably
all of us are going to go through
something or have gone through something
and how we deal with that crisis is so
tell