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
telling and the fact that you've
you know we were talking before we
started rolling that typing is hard and
so here you have an author and you've
taken away one of the ways by which they
get that out and
as somebody who's thought so i'm a late
bloomer and i have this real sense of
wanting to make the most of the time
that i have late blooming meaning win
how late were you blooming
the the skills stack right so i
feel like i'm getting better but like
when i think about
things that i'm i'm 45 now and i'm only
just now getting confident in certain
abilities thank you what's your secret
diet
exercise sleep meditation that really
there's nothing magical i do not come
from great genes i'm very sad to report
okay um
so
when i think about the things that are
just now beginning to click for me and
i'm like oh my god like i see even
people on my own team that are 10 years
15 years ahead of where i was
it's very easy to be jealous that oh my
god you have this insight you know so
many years before i did and you know how
much more time will you be able to make
use of but very quickly you realize
that's not a fruitful way to approach it
and so
i
this was years ago now maybe five years
ago i did this thing to celebrate i
forget how many subscribers we had on
facebook or youtube or something and i
went live for 24 hours so i was on
camera for 24 hours without all i the
only breaks i took were to pee
and then three days later i was in
england and i gave a speech and um i
didn't have a microphone and so for nine
hours i was essentially yelling
um to this large crowd
and then i woke up and my voice was
weird
and it didn't go away didn't go away and
i felt like i had a lump in my throat
and then like when i would turn my head
i could feel something click and i was
like
ooh so then of course i'm like is this
cancer like what is this and you start
thinking what would happen if i lost my
voice
as a leader
even just in business forget being on
camera
my ability to persuade to um galvanize a
team to get people excited and focused i
have learned to do it all with my voice
and so i started thinking what would
happen if i lost my voice and it's like
okay like i would definitely have to
mourn i would have to go through a
period where it's like i'm just gonna
feel badly for myself for a while
um
but then it's like you you make use of
what you have but it really made me take
stock of
i had taken my ability to speak for
granted for at the time whatever 39 40
years
and now i don't and now i'm very
thoughtful and so
getting the kind of insights of the
struggle that you're having
it's very useful
yeah i mean it's all unfortunately it's
inevitable for everyone you may not you
may not go through a stroke but you're
going to deal with some kind of
adversity
where the physical
things that you took for granted are
taken away from you that just happens as
the nature of life and it can occur at
any age
so these are skills that you have to
develop and you but the main thing i try
and tell people is
i don't know how much how how
powerfully i can i can implant this in
your brain
but do not take for granted what you
have right now
because i can tell you i did
i thought i'd be swimming the rest of my
life it was my life it meant so much to
me
do not take for granted what you have
now when you're doing these activities
feel insane amounts of gratitude that
you have a body that can perform these
things
because it could be taken away from you
tomorrow right so that's the number one
thing i want to tell people it's not to
get anxious and paranoid and fearful
about the future that's not going to
help you at all you need to have a
joyful life a happy life
so but look at what you have right now
and look at the marvels the things you
don't realize as i said what your hands
and legs and brain can do it's
absolutely miraculous and awesome so
just look at it that way
and then if these things happen
we are creatures that are able to
accommodate ourselves to things
we can be very good at that right you
know we find compensations for it i mean
the other thing
you know being 45 i was
even late more a later bloomer than you
i think i mean i didn't start writing
the 48 laws until i was about 36 37 you
were probably you were doing things well
before that i remember from a business
standpoint yeah yeah it your story of
late blooming is really extraordinary
like it's
amazing
well yeah i mean um so
you know until i was 36 i was pretty
lost i wasn't like starting a great
business like quest and all these other
things i was
a struggling
depressed penniless screenwriter in
santa monica in a one-bedroom apartment
you know in this kind of run-down
apartment building right and then
suddenly my life changed so i'm as late
a bloomer as you can get
but
there's a reason why you bloom late if
you bloom at all
which is it comes at the moment that
you're ready for it right
so
people who are 32 33 that you might be
envious of
they're not ready to create what you're
able to create now with all of your
experience and all the things you've
learned with all the businesses you've
started all your entrepreneurial skills
all the people you've interviewed you
have that rich landscape of a brain that
we're talking about that 32 year old
they may have
more exp you know some more experiences
than you had but they have nowhere near
the ability to to exploit it like you
have it now you know
so yeah i like to run the brain in a vat
experiment
and that i find it really useful and
every time i explain to this this to
people i never see this sort of spark in
their eye that i want to see but for me
this has been
really liberating which any time i find
myself thinking you know woe is me or
whatever i say hold on
imagine for a second that all of this is
just the frame of reference that you
need literally you came into existence
in this moment you're a brain in a vat
somewhere and all the
trauma
sadnesses um failings all of that
is the context to your point about
emotions is the emotional context it
becomes necessary for you to make
decisions and move forward so rather
than lament it just like make sure that
you're making decisions that propel you
forward and even though i don't believe
that i think my life was lived and it is
exactly what i think it is and the
traumas and all of that are all real and
they're just a part of me but
there's something about running that
thought experiment that allows me to
recontextualize the purpose of
you know whether it's lamenting being a
late bloomer or my big lament which you
talk about in the book um you know just
not being as smart as i want to be like
when i see people that can really
process data quickly oh i get so jealous
to this day that everybody has their
thing that's my thing
and uh but realizing that with if you
look at it from just a slightly
different angle all of a sudden it's
like all right i'm good you process data
very quickly
you think that because you're talking to
me about subjects that i've already
thought about if you were talking to me
about a subject that's totally new
uh it it certainly startles me every
time how long it takes me to really like
i would never be a debater on national
television i would just tell you that
so that does not speak so much
specialized skill that i wish i had oh
really definitely yeah i mean i've been
around i've been at social gatherings
for the uh
this one person i know who has these
meetings with the smartest people around
and these these whipper snappers who are
25 26 and they're doing what you're
doing there they've got all this
information all the snappy stuff all
these anecdotes
damn where's that coming from
you know i'm just not like that animal
right i'm slow
i'm deliberate i need to read about i
need to process things and i go
slowness is a good thing
right they may be a whippersnapper but
they may be not being able to like go
into depth about anything they're on the
surfaces they're kind of regurgitating
ideas and beliefs that are kind of on
the surface that they're good at at
fooling people but they're not going
into the depths
people who go into the depths are slow
are deliberate
take time to think who are more
thoughtful you know and are more patient
so i wouldn't want to be that fast
you know that high speed processor that
they have because i don't think that's
where great things come from
it's interesting that's a very good way
to think about it the harder way to
think about it though is to say what if
they really are just better than me and
now facing that so the one that i always
pose to people is i want you to imagine
that someone you really respect doesn't
respect you
that's hard now if you can deal with
that like if i can stare nakedly at my
own inadequacies compare myself to
somebody who just objectively is better
at something that i want to be good at
so not not even discounting like sure
there might be trade-offs but can i look
nakedly at somebody who is truly better
than me at something that i want to be
great at
and still find joy and fulfillment in my
life that to me is like that's the
question and so i've tried to
get myself to a place you talked earlier
i thought this is so brilliant that your
ego gets knocked down but you have these
mechanisms like a thermostat to reset
your sense of self
that to me is the juice you have to get
good at that and so
i
used to
really get in emotional twists over this
stuff but i have learned some very
useful techniques to keep my emotional
equilibrium so i can say that i'm
envious of people that have that without
diminishing my sense of self or you know
losing time and energy to worrying about
it anymore i used to i don't want to
paint that this was easy
but that to me is is the trick okay but
i still think your process of that
they're so much better than me
is a bit of an illusion or the reason
for being envious okay so you combat
your envy all right but i'm trying to
tell you i don't think there is a reason
for your envy in the first place
so
people are they're not as brilliant as
you think they are
right people are good at faking things
generally
right and then maybe they're not as
happy as they seem to be maybe their
life you're just seeing them on
television or with their snappy answers
but they're covering up everything else
that's going on underneath right you're
not seeing the full picture there
right so there's generally your envy is
always kind of exaggerated because
you're beginning from a place of
insecurity you're beginning from a place
of inferiority where you're primed to
feel envious of people like that so it's
almost starting with you you're almost
projecting onto them their superior
qualities
you know and i find myself doing that
yes there are people who are better than
me i certainly know that there's a
writer i deeply admire who passed away
recently he's much more of an academic
and intellectual
his name is roberto colosso he was an
italian writer wrote a lot about ancient
greece
that guy is far more brilliant than i am
he's amazing what he wrote about i'm in
awe of it and i really mourned his
passing
but i think it's important to feel
for that not envy
but just
disinterested in admiration for people
who are superior to you and to recognize
it i know there are plenty of writers
and thinkers who are superior to me
and if they are genuinely that way
they're not bullshitting
all my hats off to them we need people
like that it it
reaffirms my faith in humanity when i
see someone that i think is vastly
superior or great at what they do i wish
i could be like them
okay there are other humans on this
world it's not as bad as we think it is
who are absolutely brilliant and you
know i feel that way about great
scientists as well i'm kind of a a
scientist monkey in a way so um it's a
monkey oh sorry no i love it you're
teaching
it's a french word
monkey means
a failed you know i wanted to be a
wannabe i'm a scientist wannabe sort of
thing i missed the boat it literally
means missed
um
so you know i deeply admire it
and um
and if i detect creativity and people in
their work i'm in awe of it you know and
there are people who can do creativity
that i can't even begin to imagine
that's where i feel aw and genuine
admiration
i never feel envy believe me i feel envy
all the time but not for people who are
incredibly creative
yeah it's interesting that's a great
frame i love
that i like you when i meet somebody
that blows me away i love it like i'm
stoked i'd be lying if i said that i
didn't want it also for myself but i'm
stoked that it exists in the world
um
yeah that is
very exciting when you see what humans
are capable of and then you take us as a
collective it's really interesting so i
just i was interviewed by a guy named
brian keating yesterday who wrote a book
about um i think it's called into the
impossible uh but he talks or no sorry
his book is about um
beyond like getting rid of the nobel
prize i forget the exact title brian
forgive me um but
he was talking about how the nobel prize
has like caused some of the greatest
scientists on planet earth to commit
suicide and like all this crazy [ __ ] and
i was like what and he was like oh yeah
you you um get these guys are nominated
for a nobel prize but because they never
win it becomes so devastating that they
can't live with it i'm like you're
nominated for a nobel prize something
that like
of 0.000 will ever you know achieve
uh
but he was like yeah he's like a really
a devastating thing for people and
he he of course remembered all the
people that had won and i guess you have
to sign this book when you win and so in
the book you see like um albert einstein
and all these other people and he said
you know feinman was like well i'm never
going to be an einstein einstein was
like i'm never going to be a newton
newton was like i'm never going to be a
galileo or whatever and it was like
you know that all of these people
were just like we look at them and like
oh my god like that would be insane to
hit that level and each and every one of
them
had someone that they were like well but
i'll never be that person so fascinating
well that's that's that's human nature
in a nutshell because i talk about that
in the laws of human nature in the
chapter about envy
that our brains operate by comparison
that's how it operates on the most basic
level
two a piece of information
comes through our senses and our brain
immediately processes it by comparing it
to previous things that we that we've
experienced so the brain only operates
by comparing
so when you create a social animal that
has a brain that operates that way and
is conscious obviously they're going to
be primed to continually compare
themselves to other people right so
albert einstein was comparing himself to
niels bohr to other people who he had
insecurities as well people who were
into quantum mechanics and making these
great discoveries he felt that kind of
little wound of envy as well and it's
been written about
so yeah it's impossible to get over the
most powerful person in the world is
going to feel that envy and in fact the
higher up you go
the more insecure you might tend to
become you know and you wonder do i
still have it
i'm getting older a lot of scientists
reach their prime when they're 30 35 now
they're 45 and they're 50 and that nobel
prize slipped through their hands even
though they're absolutely brilliant so
they're going to be feeling envy
envy is deeply deeply human and nobody
wants to talk about it it's the most
common human emotion and it's the least
common uh topic that we ever discuss
except in your books where you go into
it beautifully which i love and that's
part of the fun of your books is it's
all the things that nobody wants to talk
about and talked about well and
articulately with stories and
evidence i mean it's
really fascinating and for anybody that
wants to you know do what we were
talking about earlier and develop that
self-awareness just hearing about it
talked about so
clearly is
very helpful
oh well thank you very helpful dude i
love your work i
it has been a joy to have you on the
show as many times as i have i cannot
wait for the next one yeah this is what
my fourth time you three or four yeah
and hopefully there will be five six
that's incredible all right my friend i
have a big announcement my incredible
and talented wife lisa is about to
launch her new book radical confidence
in it she has managed to perfectly
capture the process of how to go from
feeling lost and insecure to taking
control of your life and doing amazing
things despite feeling fear sometimes a
lot of fear now let me tell you nobody
knows lisa better than me but when i
read radical confidence for the first
time and heard her describe what it was
like for her to go from having these big
exciting dreams as a kid to then as an
adult scheduling her life around the tv
shows that she wanted to watch or how
lonely and isolated she felt instead of
pursuing her dreams it was brutal for me
i would never say though that it was
worth it for her to go through all of
that just so that she could write
something down that allows others to
avoid it but i will say that at least
she was able to capture the strategies
that she used to break out of that rut
find her voice and begin doing
incredible things despite her
insecurities and fears that she wasn't
going to be good enough to achieve great
things so while it hurts me to know the
dark place that lisa went through i
really am excited for people who are
going through something similar right
now to read this book radical confidence
is an instruction manual
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life even when you're scared to death
look i know better than just about
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people to feel so insecure and
unprepared that they don't even want to
pursue the things that they want but
what lisa shows people in radical
confidence is that the radical part is
that you can accomplish extraordinary
things even when you feel fear that's
what radical confidence is being afraid
and unsure and having a tool kit that
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then once you've done that we'll get
back to today's episode all right guys
read the book and get ready to be the
hero of your own life peace out when i
think about
for something to to be
for you to say that it's better to you
know to really self-analyze it makes me
think you have a goal
what what is your goal maybe for your
life that might be the right place to
start like what to you is is a life well
lived in the context of you judging
doing the self-reflection and
understanding how the way the world
works becomes this exceedingly fun thing
for you
well
i mean you're asking really good
questions and i'm glad you're pressing
me on that i i like that um but it comes
down to what you want with for yourself
right
so are you somebody that's interested in
actually having power in this world are
you someone that's interested in being
successful in your venture in real life
define power for me most people think
it's a dirty word you've sort of made
your
your life around that
dirty word you've got a problem and
usually the people who think power is a
dirty word are the people who are the
most manipulative and passive aggressive
animals on this planet
because that's interesting we humans
naturally want power we want a degree of
control over our lives so imagine the
scenario where you can't control
anything about your children they just
run wild you can't influence them
you can't control any of the behavior of
your spouse that's irritating the [ __ ]
out of you you can't control your
colleagues who are plotting all these
things you have no and your boss is
making you crazy you have no control
that's a recipe for incredible not only
misery but depression for turning into
all kinds of health problems returning
to drugs and alcohol for going off the
deep end by the time you're 40 right
so
you want power in your life power is
i have goals
i have a fate i have a destiny in life i
want by the time i'm 40 to reach them
the ability to reach that to have
control over yourself and your and to a
degree of your emotions not repressing
them but some control
right will help you realize those goals
that is power power isn't like
some politician up there you know
weaving all these machiavellian things
to hurt and destroy people that's the
cliche you've been watching house of
cards for too long i don't nobody
watches that anymore but whatever the
new show is so that's not power power is
the ability to guide yourself
in a through a very dangerous world very
competitive world where every we're
almost all having to kind of
work for ourselves where we don't get
much help or cooperation from the world
we're thrown out of the university if we
go to college and here we're in this
world where there are no rule books
telling us how to navigate it
it's very complicated very difficult and
you make mistakes that you can suffer
for and power is knowledge his ideas is
understanding how to navigate a very
dangerous world okay so you want that to
get back on track to what i was saying
so you want that right you want to be
this is something that i talk about in
mastery the idea of wasting your
potential of never realizing your goals
of never being able to
to to create that business you wanted to
create or make that film that you think
is in you or start the business that
you're starting
tom you know
that's what you want in life and if you
don't want that there's nothing i can
say that will help you right i'm
starting with the assumption that you
want that and i think most people do
want that okay so your your rage you're
you're constantly being wasting time on
the internet you're constantly being
effect infected by the emotions of other
people is wiping away day by day second
by second all of your own power right
because what is your power your power as
you tom is to be able to realize what
makes you different what makes you
unique
you had
i don't quite remember the full
trajectory of your career but i remember
you early on with the health company
that you had started and all this and
then you had a plan your plan is to
create this kind of emperor i'm not
trying to reveal your secrets here but
you have i'll reveal a way you have this
idea of creating a new kind of empire
sort of the new disney right and that
comes from something within i'm assuming
that there's something of the child in
you that wants that that you've wanted
that for a while that it represents
something that's unique about you it's
not something that comes from social
media or the people around you that
could
play a small role but it's mostly
something from within you it's you okay
and that's
you what makes you different or unique
is your source of power and the days you
spend getting angry about things that
aren't have nothing to do with your
day-to-day life they're where they're
corroding that uniqueness of you and
they're making you a conforming
pavlovian dog that's just like everybody
else out there in the world
if you look at the people who are truly
successful and powerful
see them as kind of models or icons to
reach
okay
it's not to say that we all have to be
incredibly successful to feel fulfilled
i'm not saying that i know people who
are really great carpenters who are
great at that and that's really
fulfilling and i know people who uh who
just want to be parents and that's their
life's task and it's tremendously
fulfilling but the people who are really
successful even at those things we can
say that they're that they're unique
that they're one of a kind but there's
nobody else like them and that is the
source of your power
right so you want that if you don't want
that i can't help you but if you do want
that you're the time you're wasting
getting enraged and being manipulated
and feeling all these things and just
getting into that lizard part of you is
time you're wasting and and your life is
is a lot shorter than you think it is
whoo
ending on uh on a big one there um
before we get to mortality death all
that which i think is incredibly
powerful um i want to talk about that
the idea of carl young and the shadow
side so
no i don't think there's anybody writing
today that speaks as eloquently as you
do about the shadow about the sort of
dark energy that we all have inside of
us that can be
extraordinarily powerful
and i know you well enough to know your
beliefs around this are nuanced but
listening to you as you were talking
there it's like you know don't get
sucked into rage you're going to be
wasting your life life shorter than you
think
that is true but there's also an element
of
capture that rage my friend leverage
that rage point it at something that
makes sense
and this is where it gets incredibly
complicated because if you have a goal
and there's something that you want to
go after
letting
something piss you off can actually be
quite powerful and i talked to
my students in impact theory university
about this idea of having an animus
having something that that literally
animates you that you you can't live in
a world where that thing is true and
holding on to your anger enough to to
turn it into something usable so you're
not just flailing around reacting
freaking out but it's like hey i'm not
this is not okay i'm gonna fan the
flames of that not gonna let them burn
me to death but i'm gonna fan the flames
of that get angry and go do something
about it so how do you think about that
as you point out very aptly that the
the anger can cause you to waste your
life but also it's a tool how do you
help people reconcile that idea well
these are all great another great
question um
well you know i'm thinking back on on
myself and the anger that propelled me
to where i am today which was largely my
experiences in hollywood
and um just to tell that story very
briefly i worked in hollywood from like
the very late 80s into the mid 90s
and i saw a lot of very very
manipulative people
um
and a lot of hypocrisy
where it was
supposedly all about creating great art
making a film but really it was about
power it was about using people and
getting what you wanted out of and
getting more power than the other person
getting recognition and that was the
true subtext of what everybody motivated
most people in hollywood and man that
pissed me off the hypocrisy of that
pissed me off okay
now
is that something that comes from is
that just sort of a superficial reaction
to me feeling like because i wasn't
successful was i just simply hurt was it
more like envy because i wasn't very
successful myself in hollywood to be
honest
or did it come from something deeper
and in analyzing it yes it came
something very deep
since i was a child
i've always been very very
sensitive to people's hypocrisy to
people pretending to be something that
they're not and i think a lot of
children are like that they're very they
have antennae for that
and it really angered me and then you
could ask yourself well why why does
that anger you
because
i feel like
you know it's like people pretending to
be something that they're not you know
and you just have an inherent value that
that's a bad thing it's not just an
inherent value it's just that
we're all
flawed creatures and i
must have been aware since i was a child
that i am a flawed individual robert i
have dark emotions i can be kind of
bitter and aggressive and ambitious and
hurtful
right i knew from very early on of my
own flaws
and it really irritated me that people
pretended to be something else
you know but they weren't
you know they weren't true to themselves
and you could i could see that in
children who were pretending to be the
little princess or the prince in their
family like they were perfect they were
really good and then i would see the
other side when we you know for mommy
and daddy they were all perfect but then
when we played i could see the little
nasty little rascal come out right
i hated that you know okay we could go
we could dig deeper and deeper why did i
hate that but i think it came from
something very real about something
about me
so
my
irritate my anger at hollywood wasn't
really i don't deny that there was an
element of
of
you know i didn't get success so i feel
kind of envious
because we all feel that
but i don't think that was the full
picture there was something very real
about it
because i've been feeling it throughout
when i was a kid it was feeling it
throughout my 20s it was the subject of
all the short stories novels and plays
and screenplays i was trying to write so
it came from a very deep real place
so when it came time to write my first
book the 48 laws of power beginning in
i had to draw on that anger you know
and if it had been something that wasn't
really me if it was something that like
was just a gimmick
i don't think it would have worked
so if your emotions don't come from
something that's very profound about who
you are about that dark side isn't
something that's you are it but it's
like a gimmick you're just pretending to
be angry and there are a lot of people
who do that
or you're pretending to have some other
kind of emotion
we humans we can smell that we can sniff
out phoniness fairly well
but i felt it very deeply and i
disguised it in the 48 laws i channeled
it into a book where you never really
knew
that it was from hollywood and mike's i
never talked about myself
but you could feel the subtext of some
kind of little bit of anger there
people's hypocrisy right
so i took some an emotion that was
part of who i am
right and i used it
in very constructive channeled
productive way which is what i say about
the dark side
so
you know to get back to the to the
theory behind it
you know when you were a child you were
what i call like you were like a round
ball
a ball that had a front side and a dark
side that's not visible like the dark
side of the moon right
the front side was you're saintly you're
sweet you're nice and loving to your
parents you treat your sister and your
brother so well you get along with all
your friends but the dark side was wow
man i really hate that kid i'm going to
pull her hair i'm going to mess his
homework i'm going to do all the things
that kids naturally do
because we have an animal nature we have
aggressive impulses this includes boys
and girls i'm not certain girls can be
just as
as part of this as as boys are
okay and then as you get older that
you're like cut your head that ball in
half
and you only prese that only it's not
only that you just present the good side
is that you kind of forget about that
other half and it drops away from you
and you just pretend to be this good
person
because you're socially motivated to
make people think that you're a nice
pleasant
socially aware person
and then that all that dark energy gets
repressed and repressed and repressed
but nothing ever goes away
that's the law of human psychology
things you felt when you were three or
four or five they don't go away they
just sit in you and they either sit in
you and stew and then explode when
you're 30 into some irrational behavior
or you're aware of it you're aware that
i feel this way you're aware that i feel
envy you're aware that you feel
aggression and anger you're aware that
you sometimes actually want to hurt
people okay you're aware that you're a
full human being and you're not a
[ __ ] hypocrite like so many people
are out there i have a dark side it's
part of who i am all right
but don't you try to keep that in check
i mean it's not like what's your
prescription on that
is it like what does it mean to
integrate the shadow
it means
we keep coming back to this you know so
i'm i'm so boring here because i keep
repeating the same idea it means you're
aware of it right
but being aware that i'm angry or that i
have bitterness or whatever like isn't
it really the because what i'm trying to
figure out is you and i react very
differently to the sort of [ __ ] of
hollywood's a great example because now
i as you have exited i am now trying to
enter and because i am so hyper aware of
how people talk about hollywood i came
in and said look i'm just going to make
my reputation on i'm always going to
tell you where i'm at so when i see
somebody being fake full of [ __ ]
whatever because i'm attuned enough to
see it for the most part i'm sure people
pull some things over on me but for the
most part i feel like i can sniff it out
like you were saying before
but i have
like almost a sadness that that's the
only tool that they've learned to
leverage
and so i don't get the sort of anger
towards people that are manipulative or
whatever
good that's fine what's your point
so where i'm going is where how do you
get to the point where now you're not
just being aware of it but you're using
it so it's
how how can somebody who's listening to
this
go
i am going to take my so you gave us the
example of how you channeled it into
your book but now just like in terms of
daily life i'm guessing when you see
somebody being fake you don't rage out
on them so you are restraining sure
so in in when i talk about integration
is it the awareness leads to just being
able to hold it back or is there like i
will use it if somebody's bullshitting
me and they're trying to be aggressive
to me then i just be aggressive back
and so there's an element i feel like i
can control it aggression anger are
tools in my tool belt and i pull them
out when i think they're appropriate
yeah
well that's good but you know you're are
you conscious are you aware that you're
doing that or are you just simply
reacting to people
are you able to i
that's certainly been an evolution so
there are able to use it in a somewhat
strategic
way so for instance there's somebody you
come across in hollywood who is a
manipulator and you can smell it but you
go if you like simply call them out on
it
you might create some problems for
yourself you might create a counter
reaction that will work against you are
you able to step back and go hmm i need
to be strategic with this [ __ ] i need
to not just simply react i need to say
something that will either show him or
her that this is what they're being like
or i need to take some kind of action
that will thwart them are you able to do
that or are you just simply getting
angry in response
it's uh
i'm very strategic but at the same time
i want
i want to feel good about who i am as i
walk away from that exchange so i don't
want to feel like i'm just bullshitting
people either
um
so normally i i put it into asking
questions about like what's your goal or
i'll even say like it feels like you're
angry with me or upset with me and i
don't understand why
um you know and if you can help me
understand i'm certainly not trying to
piss you off um and it has like i won't
say it i i haven't been in it long
enough to know what the long-term
repercussions of my strategy are going
to be
um it's created awkward moments it has
certainly ended potential relationships
um
but i am
i'm constantly trying to think about who
i want to be in the exchange when i walk
away and what i want my long-term
reputation to be and that means having
the uncomfortable conversation up front
so that
what i say to you doesn't end up being
different than how i actually move if
that makes sense
but how is that your dark side
well so what i'm trying to figure out in
terms of the what what you mean by
integrating so i'm guessing it hey
here's what i do which is if somebody's
being aggressive towards me and it seems
like the right answer then i will
like let off like that little valve of
instead of repressing everything i will
let a little bit come out but i don't
know the only way that i
leverage my
shadow is as energy when i'm alone so i
don't know that i'm integrating it in an
intelligent way in these exchanges and
and i think that's part of what i'm
looking for is feedback on if there's a
way that i haven't got so here's how i
present it to people that
ask me and i say 80 of your time should
be in the light should be in the
beautiful things the wonderful things
you want to create optimism hope uh
compassion
twenty percent of the time you're gonna
lean on i call it the dark energy the
shadow side where it is i for instance
when i am [ __ ] exhausted to my core
and i just do not have energy to keep
going
in those moments i think about the
people that want me to fail and i'm like
[ __ ] them i am not going to let them be
right i am not going to let them see me
fail it is a dark ugly petty energy and
it's [ __ ] intoxicating and it gets me
up and it gets me going and it keeps me
pushing your question right there you're
answering my question there's your
integration right there
you're taking an emotion that could be
destructive
if you acted on it in the wrong way and
you're using it as a way to motivate
yourself
you you're not you're not spewing this
at people you're making it
sort of sharpen your own ambition your
own goals and go i better get up in the
morning and prove this idiot that
they're wrong about me you're not
hurting them but you're channeling it
into something productive so you just
answered your question that's very much
integrating it it's whether
your dark side is used for destructive
purposes i'm not advocating that you
hurt people i didn't go out and ever
name a single name of anybody in
hollywood ever did you could read my
book you'll never know that that's what
it was about right i didn't want to hurt
people i don't like you i don't like
hurting people it makes me feel ugly and
that ugly feeling ends up costing me
more than any kind of benefit i might
have gotten from venting it right i
don't want that
but so you're not actually trying to
hurt people you're using it to make
yourself more productive
so for instance you know you have a
business you have ambitions you have
goals
and you use all the people who doubt you
like you're doing and you're going to
make that a motivating device that's
very powerful let's say
you're an artist and you've had a lot of
your parents were really nasty to you
they were very abusive and you carry
that around with you and it's like this
500 pound rock on your your whole life
it's just pressing you down and now in
your in your play or your book or your
movie you let it out and you you you
don't say this is who they are but you
express it indirectly about very
manipulative people and you show your
kind of anger in a work of art and some
of the greatest works of art have an
underpinning of some kind of motivating
anger that's productive
let's say there's something that really
pisses you off in the world some form of
injustice whether that's sexism racism
whatever it is
instead of like just getting on facebook
and posting all kinds of stupid little
things and not getting anywhere you go
out you decide i'm going to start a
movement i'm going to create some kind
of social movement that's going to
actually get something done i'm actually
going to contribute to society instead
of just venting and spewing my own
personal pet peeves you're taking that
dark energy and you're channeling into
something productive that's the
integration you're not using it to hurt
people you're using it to motivate you
to create something and the other thing
is
we live in a culture that is so
politically correct where people are so
worried about if i use this pronoun am i
going to offend that person if i say
this am i going to lose my career we're
all so repressed that to see somebody
who
expresses some of that of that repressed
emotion in their work particularly in a
work of art it's like wow that's great
it's an attraction it's a form of
charisma that we'll have because you're
less repressed than other people so i'm
trying to tell people that dark side
contains incredible creative energy
incredible motivating power like you
said when you get up in the morning
and use it don't be afraid of it but use
it does that kind of answer what what
you're
help us understand
what the world is really like
what what do you think is that key thing
that people misunderstand
well the key thing is it goes back to
our nature and how we evolved as as
conscious animals
the key thing is there's an animal part
of our nature which is we completely
take appearances for reality that's sort
of the source of our problems and our
misery to be honest with you in life
so
the front that people present
the way they look the way they talk to
us their words
we sort of take at face value
and although we might think or we might
know from reading a book or whatever
that you can't always trust appearances
is kind of a cliche we can't control
ourselves
so it makes us extremely vulnerable to
charming people to charlatans to con
artists to politicians who say one thing
who do another to relationships terrible
relationships where we fall in love with
exactly the wrong person to the worst
kind of hires you know i do a lot of
consulting work i've been doing it for
over 20 years now the number one problem
i deal with is i hired the worst person
in the world and they're making my life
hell
right and why did you hire the wrong
person because you judge them on their
charming smiles their appearance their
their smooth talk their resume which you
can conceal a lot with your resume you
didn't look behind the facade and look
at what's underneath the character so
this is kind of ingrained in our nature
it goes back thousands and thousands of
years it's extremely difficult to
overcome
right and i have the problem too i deal
with it all the time
and and i have to go through a process
where i i step back and i say
i don't want to be paranoid
but this person is so nice and pleasant
is there something else going on behind
behind the curtain that that's there
you know and then sometimes i tell
myself no
i have ways of judging that they're that
they're
there's a consistency between the face
and the reality but oftentimes there is
not and i've become very good at that
kind of [ __ ] detect detection which
i've been doing my whole life how do you
get good at that
well
you know some things are hard to put
into words which is why i struggle so
dif much with my books
um because a lot of human communication
i estimated 95 it's just a number is
non-verbal right
so we don't pay much attention to that
because we're so word oriented right
we're so embedded in language that we
think everything in terms of what people
say
but unconsciously without even realizing
it we're continually judging people on
their non-verbal behavior
right so
there's their eyes their smile
are different from what they actually
say but we're not really
so in kind of a pre a naturally
intuitive way we understand that we
don't trust those kind of judgments
right so we we rely more on what they
say than what the signals that we pick
up from their body language
so years and years of training and being
sensitive to it it's probably something
that has to go back to my childhood if
you put me on a couch and psychoanalyze
me right here there was probably
something in my childhood where i had to
learn how to really read people not by
what they said by but
everything about them and i have a kind
of a feel an intuitive feel
for the energy the vibrations the mood
that people give off not through what
they say but through their body through
particularly their tone of voice and all
the other signals that is a number that
is the main way of judging you know
what's going what's really going on the
other thing you look at are people's
patterns of behavior
right things that have happened in the
past as i said in in laws of human
nature nobody ever does one something
just once right if somebody [ __ ] up and
does something kind of hurts you in some
way they say oh i'm sorry i don't know
what came over me that's not me
don't trust that it'll happen again for
sure it will happen again a second or
third fourth time what do you think is
going on there because when you were
going through the list of things being
in a bad relationship was the one that
really jumped out of you know you hear
people ending in these just like
horrendous cycles of being stuck in this
abusive relationship and the person
manages to reel them back in
what is going on on the side of the
person who convinces themselves
to go back into that relationship is
there
the need to be loved is there a wound or
something that you're that they're
trying to deal with and how do you
advise people that are stuck in a loop
like that well it's probably from some
kind of primal wound
right so there's a perverse part of
human nature which is
oftentimes in early childhood
something happened to us often something
that didn't happen to us like the love
we didn't get or the feel the nurturing
that we didn't get there's this kind of
wound this emptiness this lack right
and we grow up and we're not really
aware of it and kind of things grow over
this wound but what also happens which
is the perverse side of human nature
is that
early on our kind of sexual excitement
is sort of kind of grows up around that
wound
so that is so weird and yet seems so
self-evidently true yeah but
why
well i i'd have to be like i'd have to
go into something you know hit my go
inside my own psychoanalytic
you know mindset here but
um
you know when you're when you're very
young you're extremely vulnerable you're
extremely open to the energies of other
people in ways we don't understand right
now right it's it's it's hard to imagine
something what i'm writing about right
now in my new book when you're two years
old one years old
before you even had really mastered
language you're so dependent on other
people you're so open to them
that their energy gets infused it's
completely internalized
and also
children at that age also have their
sort of sexual nature is being created
at that moment at a very very early age
certain desires you know for us sex is
not just a physical thing it's an
emotional thing
right we have this it's psychological
so
things that we didn't get are charged
with all this kind of energy that then
could later on turn into sort of desires
so let's say for instance
you had a mother
who was very narcissistic
who really wasn't giving you the normal
mother nurturing empathetic energy it
was more about her and you had to pay
attention to her right
well
that kind of creates this sort of desire
this you're you're as an infant you
really want that love from that mother
you're trying to drag you're trying to
attract and pull it out of her as best
you can and your energy your desire is
is surrounding her with this kind of
emotional charge
sexual energy and you're going to find
throughout your life you're going to be
attracted to narcissistic women it's
going to be your achilles heel
throughout your life
because you want to kind of
re heal that wound you want to be able
to play back that initial trauma and
sort of rewrite the way it ended up
where now you're going to find this
narcissistic woman and she's going to
give you finally what you never had
before right it's a very very common
pattern
right and so you're not even aware of
this and it's extremely difficult to
break out of because your desire is for
this type of person so you might meet a
woman just doing it from a man's point
of view who isn't narcissistic who's
very empathetic and very caring
and she would be perfect for you and you
may even have a relationship with her
but the excitement the energy that
charge isn't going to be as strong as
with that other type and you're going to
fall back into the old patterns again
and again and again and the only way out
of it is to go back and look at your
early childhood and look at these wounds
and confront them face to face and
understand that you're a prisoner of
this kind of this kind of things that
were ingrained you at a very very early
age and what does that process look like
like how do you confront something like
that well how do you even develop the
awareness of the problem
well you have to look at what's going on
in the present right now you have to be
first of all it depends on how old you
are and how many relationships you have
but you have to see your own patterns
and if you have unhealthy patterns where
you have debt fallen again and again and
again for the wrong person you have to
see a sort of a through line there what
ties it all together what's going on
right
so
um you know a common scenario that i
wrote about in human nature is
in this particular scenario where your
mother is giving you the attention that
you think you want
right you have this feeling when you're
a child three or four years old that
that mother is abandoning you that's
almost your fault in that case right
because you don't want to believe
that a parent could be wrong or flawed
because it's too painful a thought so
you want to think that you are flawed
and she has abandoned you for some
reason it's very painful
so what you're going to do throughout
your life is
you're always going to be the one
cutting off a relationship before it
gets too intense
so that you don't ever have to go
through that abandonment feeling again
right that's your pattern right so after
six months
the relationship is kind of you know
growing you'll find some excuse she's
not right for me she's saying the wrong
thing she's
you'll break off the relationship
blaming her when in fact you're afraid
deeply afraid that she's going to
abandon you and you can't stand that so
you've got to see these patterns and
they're very painful and they're very
difficult because they're touching upon
things that go to the heart of who we
are you know it's not just in your
relationships you're going to probably
be doing that with your jobs as well
you're going to be quitting jobs before
they you know before you get to the
point where you have too much
responsibility
they're very very deeply ingrained in
you
and you have to be able to look at them
so awareness is everything the ability
to look at yourself
realistically and understand you're
saying see things as they are see the
world as it is
it begins with yourself
seeing yourself as you are right and
seeing that your adult self that's so
confident and has this you know this way
about the world is covering over some
wounds some vulnerabilities from your
deep childhood not everybody but for a
lot of people that's the case
you have to be willing to rip away the
skin and look underneath and see that
wound and touch upon it and then kind of
analyze it
and sort of see the patterns in your
life before you can begin one thing that
you do really well which i think is
definitely part of your appeal is that
you're able to
write about these difficult things in
human nature without needing to remove
yourself so you're not doing it as a
spectator oh oh those humans over there
they've got problems
you're able to really look at it
yourself so as
you think about this process of
ripping the skin away i think was the
the phrase that you said
um and confronting that
how do you begin to to translate
what's actually happening without the
need for the ego to step in and say no
no you're
it to not go in either direction quite
frankly to either then say oh because
you have this flaw you are a loser or to
blind yourself to the flaw and say no no
that's it's not a problem like how do
people find that middle ground of
acknowledging it without succumbing to
negative emotion around it
that's a great question
um
you know so sometimes
you know you need help in these areas it
depending on the depth of the wound
so sometimes you need a third person's
eyes on it you can't necessarily analyze
it yourself
which is why you might want to go into
therapy or you might want a spouse or
significant other or someone you love
and trust who can tell you these things
because sometimes it's very hard for you
to have any kind of distance from them
you know
but um
the the the ability to detach yourself
from your own emotions
is extremely important in life it
doesn't mean that you become a cold
rational person at all i don't believe
in that at all emotions are extremely
important for us it's what makes us
creative at what feeds our imagination
gives us drive
but the ability that you can gain over
your life
in this instant and in every other
instant to have a degree of a detachment
not a it's only a matter of degree
where you can stand back and you feel
something very powerfully you feel
attracted to something or a person you
feel excited or repulsed and to not
react and to step back and analyze and
go
why am i feeling this right now
is it because of what somebody is saying
right now or does it go deeper to that
is it related to some other issue that
is a skill that is not easy but you can
develop it day by day by day taking
little steps and so if you're able to
slowly detach yourself from your
day-to-day emotional reactions
it gives you a little bit of distance
between you and your ego
right so i meditate every morning i've
been doing it now for 11 years for like
40 over 40 minutes it's a ritual that if
i don't do i feel extremely depressed
something's wrong
okay and when i'm meditating
i become deeply aware these thoughts
start coming up they bubble up you can't
control them you become deeply aware of
your ego of certain patterns and you're
thinking of certain anxieties of certain
kind of neurotic thought patterns right
you're seeing it before your eyes it's
floating there this is your ego robert
it's going here there and there you can
see it
and now when you're in that state you
can almost see it as if it's another
person and it's very powerful it's very
liberating
now in the case of someone who's dealing
with a deep wound i don't know if you
can go you can't go there like tomorrow
and do this
i'm a realistic person i'm very
practical i don't want to advise people
something that's not going to happen
it's something that you're going to have
to it's a life skill that you have to
build the the the the power to take take
a step back and look at yourself with
some distance and see that ego as if
it's over there it's floating in front
of you it's giving you signs of who you
are you know you can develop that and
it's very powerful and it will give you
the ability to look at your own wounds
objectively but you're never going to
reach
a degree of 100 detachment
me who has been practicing this for many
years i still get caught up
in those wounds i still get caught up in
my ego it's just a matter of degree that
that's all i'm talking about
this is such an insanely complicated
issue when i think about okay so if the
number one problem is people aren't
aware that there's a game being played
basically you can't take things sort of
at their surface
and then understanding that as you were
saying that self-awareness is also this
critical part
then there are the studies that have
shown that your mind will
give you a reason for something
even when that reason is obviously not
true
and i don't know if you heard about that
study where people that have had the
ability to form
long-term memories damaged so they can
do short-term memories but you could
reintroduce yourself to them every three
minutes and they'd be like oh my god
they'd greet you anew each time
and the doctor put a pin in his hand and
he walked in and he shook hands and it
poked the person they jerked their hand
back like you know why'd you do that
they leave they come back three minutes
later the person does not remember
meeting them at all they stick out their
hand and the person will refuse to shake
it
and so they don't remember ever meeting
them before and so they'll say
why won't you shake my hand oh well you
know i've had a long-standing rule i
don't shake the hand of people with
white lab coats and they come up with
all these different excuses because the
brain can't like sit there in this
ignorance and so you have
something that's clearly hardwired in us
to to so we i have heard humans referred
to as meaning making machines which
makes a lot of sense to me we make
meaning out of something right so if we
have this hardwired propensity to come
up with some sort of meaning something
somewhere
and we have the psychological immune
system which doesn't want me to feel
badly about myself so now i have
an inclination to lie to myself
basically from some like deep seated
part of me that survives even
damage to the ability to make long-term
memories and so when i think about the
deck being stacked against people in
terms of really figuring out what's
actually going on inside themselves
it gets
a little scary and this is where so for
me when i think about okay if all the
things that i just said are true nested
inside of all the stuff you've been
talking about
the only path i see out of that is you
because everyone needs self-esteem
so your psychological immune system is
trying to make you feel good about
yourself got it
so you need to take conscious control of
feeling good about yourself but you need
to wrap it around something anti-fragile
so that for the only answer i've come up
with in my own life is to be the learner
that way if i do something stupid i make
a mistake whatever i can just go hey
that sucks and it does make me feel
badly but
i only value myself for being a learner
and since recognizing how i actually am
would be useful
then i'll face the truth of what this is
right and then i can learn and move on
well you touch on an extremely important
critical thing here the element that i'm
trying to hit at which is your level of
desire for change
so if you're trapped in these patterns
and you feel a great degree of pain and
your life isn't going anywhere and
you're having bad relationships bad work
habits and you say i can't deal with
this anymore
you're extremely motivated to go through
the process that you just mentioned
which is after every event that occurs
you go through a kind of an autopsy
right and you analyze you can do this on
a daily basis with a journal or you can
do it on a weekly basis
you know what did i do there what was
the element of where i actually might
have created the problem between me and
another person and i have to be
reasonably rational and i have to be
reasonably realistic
you're right if 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
and what happens is you know it's kind
of like an internal thermostat and so
you have like people who are what i call
deep narcissists
who have no kind of sense no
anchor inside of them no real sense
self-esteem to hold on to and when that
self-esteem starts going down down down
they have no way of dealing with it and
their only way of dealing with it is
acting out in the way that narcissists
act out so we all have if we're not a
deep narcissist we have that thermostat
where things
start hurting us a little bit and we
bring ourselves back up through this
self-esteem mechanism so we don't get
too depressed and too down there's an
element of unreality to that but it's
very valuable and i would never ever
ever want to burst that you need a
degree of illusion in your life it's
very important
but if you really want change if you're
really fed up if you're not kidding
yourself if you're not going through
this [ __ ] process yeah i kind of
want to change my life but you don't
really mean it
then nothing you no words no no therapy
will ever get you to that point you
almost have to hit bottom
you almost have to tell yourself i can't
take this anymore and now the motivation
is so deep that you're able now to go
through to begin the process of going
through that kind of self analysis
because that's the only way you're going
to get out of it it's the only way
you know a lot of the of of our culture
is making this worse in a way
unfortunately i mean there's good things
in our culture now but there are bad
things give me some of the bad well i
think
social media
for all the good that it does makes it
very hard to be self-reflective
interesting i i thought for sure you
were going to say just leads us to
compare ourselves why does it make it
hard to be self-referring well it does
well comparing yourself is not
self-reflective
when you compare yourself your standard
is always what other people are doing
right
they're on these great vacations he's
got a great job
tom has this amazing house where i'm
living in this hovel in los feliz right
that's not looking at myself that's
always having the other person as the
standard it makes us so
out in the world in other people what
other people are saying what other
people are doing it makes us continually
think in the social sense and not able
to turn inside and look at how who we
are what makes us different
we're so attuned to what's cool to what
other people are doing out there what
other people are saying that we lose
kind of an intuitive grasp of who we are
right so
the psychologist abraham maslow talked
of impulse voices
he said that a child of one years old
has this impulse voice that says
i like this fruit i don't like this
fruit i'm gonna throw it away right
and and then other things these voices
inside that make them that individual
this is what they like and what they
hate right these are very very important
as you develop later in life you know
this is what you love these are the
subjects that interest you these are
subjects you're not interested these are
the people you like these people you
don't like it's who you are in the
deepest sense of it it's your what i
call your primal inclinations it's you
at its core
and if you're so attuned to what other
people are saying and doing and telling
you and thinking that voice gets drowned
out by a million other voices and you're
not able to hear yourself anymore and
it's very hard to take a step back and
actually look at yourself and analyze
yourself
so i think that in some ways this this
dilemma that we're talking about is
getting more and more difficult because
to be able to do what you're talking
about you have to be willing to be alone
you have to be willing to close the door
in your room write down and say this is
what's going on this is what happens is
what i did this is what they did
you can't be
out there in the world and do this it's
impossible to do that process because
you're going to be sucked into the
social dynamic and you won't be able to
think about yourself so i think it's
made things a little bit harder for
people when you talk about like magical
thinking and a culture of bs what do you
mean
well um you know we're we humans are
gifted with a form of consciousness as
far as we know it there's no other
animal on this planet that has it
perhaps on another planet there's
something similar we don't know yet
but it comes with a price
you know basically it's the same size
brain
that was developed
through the course of evolution hundreds
of thousands of years ago
in circumstances that are completely
different from where we are now
right so evolution is a very slow
process so our brains haven't really
changed that much what has increased is
the incredible exponential explosion of
our knowledge particularly in the
sciences
and but at the same time that part of
our
consciousness our awareness lays on top
of a brain that is very primitive in
this nature i mean you know the brain is
structured in a kind of a hierarchical
manner and at the very bottom
are those most primitive layers but it's
often in cliche
terms called the lizard brain but it's
very real
and then there's a kind of a mid brain
that's more you know evolutionary that's
more
where our emotions come from and kind of
a connection between the the lowest part
and the highest part
anyway so we have this knowledge this
ability to think of to stand back from
our immediate circumstances and
contemplate possibilities oh i don't
have to react like an animal to this
thing happening i can step back and i
can think perhaps i could do a b or c
and as opposed to just reacting and that
is incredibly powerful it's what has
made us who we are today
but the problem with it is we don't know
how to use our brains because we still
are trapped in that very primitive model
that we have and so
we feel emotions and emotions tend to
govern so much of our thinking because
they're much more powerful than the the
kind of weak little signals that come
from the frontal cortex
and so we're not aware of how deeply our
emotions are infecting our decisions in
our day-to-day life
and the people who know this the best
are people in marketing
because they have been studying since
the 1950s all of the amazing
psychological experiments about how you
can kind of manipulate people how if you
if you're a salesman and you just
lightly touch somebody on the arm as a
friendly gesture they're 80 more likely
to buy your product right if you use
their name all these other little tricks
they've been studying it and they know
deeply how much that emotional part of
us governs our decisions when we buy
things
they call it the effective heuristic it
means that our decisions are largely
based on emotions
and the problem that we face is we're
not aware of that that was the whole
subject of the laws of human nature we
walk around thinking that we're making
decisions rationally that when we buy a
product or that when we choose a partner
to get involved with you know to marry
or whomever that we're basically basing
this on certain kind of rational
um you know protocols but we're not at
all we're infected very very deeply with
emotions and so that lack of awareness
that belief that we are rational when
we're not rational is very very
dangerous
because
answer me this time how many people do
you know
who admit to the fact that they are rash
irrational that the decision they made
in life even when that was a mistake
came from an irrational part of them
that it wasn't something that was
thought through that it wasn't something
as strategic i bet you could count them
on one hand
you know yeah and i'm as guilty of that
as the next person it's very much part
of our nature to deny the fact that
mostly we're governed by emotional
responses to the world around us
yeah the one of the things that i find
the most interesting in psychology are
the studies of people that have you know
one brain defect or another i think it
was vs ramachandran that did the study
on um i forget what the damage was to
the guy's brain but
he had no short-term memory so a doctor
would come into the room and they did
this test and they put a pin the doctor
put a pin in his hand and he shook hands
with the guy and it jabbed him and you
know the guy jerks back it's like what
the hell dr leaves comes back three
minutes later goes to shake the guy's
hand and the guy won't shake his hand
now remember he has no short-term memory
so the doctor says oh why won't you
shake my hand and the guy's like well
you know i'm really uncomfortable with
people in white coats and
you know obviously he's doing it because
some part of his brain
retained the fact that when he shook
hands with this guy that it caused pain
and the the conscious mind though is
pasting over some rationalization to
explain away this weird behavior and the
fact that our minds are working so
rapidly to deliver these socially
acceptable reasons for why we're doing
something when a reality that isn't at
all why we're doing something that gets
really scary really fast but the other
thing and i've heard you talk about this
before again one of the most interesting
things i've ever come across
where people's brains get damaged and
they no longer have access to their
emotions and so now they're frozen out
they cannot make a decision because
when you're trying to you know think
your way through something we're relying
on
a feeling an embodied feeling of one is
better than the other so
if it is impossible for us to move
forward without emotion and dangerous
to be unaware of our emotions how how do
we move forward
well it's it's not that complicated so
you bring up a good point um a lot of
people
have a misconception that rationality is
the ability to repress your emotions to
somehow subtract them from your
decision-making process and that is
exactly the wrong way to approach it
because
think of it in your own life if you meet
somebody who turns out to be very toxic
like a toxic narcissist
you're going to get a gut reaction an
emotional response from them right this
something's wrong with this person and
then that causes you to start thinking
about
maybe i shouldn't involve myself in a
partnership with this person maybe i
shouldn't get in a relationship so your
emotion will trigger a dangerous
response which was sort of the
reason why we have emotions a fear
response oh there's a lion hanging out
over there i better be you know aware of
it that emotion then triggers your kind
of awareness
so emotions are essential to the
rational process the problem is you have
no distance from your emotions you're
not able to take a step back and analyze
is this a rational response
is there really a lion over there well
you know i live in los angeles there's
probably not a lion over there it could
be a coyote or something right so i'm
able to step back and kind of analyze
the nature of the thread the nature of
what could be something exciting or not
so that's the dividing line you know
some i'm sorry that'll go away
like it sounded like it was coming from
my side i'm like i've never heard that
ring before in my life i should unplug
it
there's gonna be one more ring
hopefully it's telemarketing i'm just
getting inundated lately with
telemarketing
um
anyway so
the ability to step back and analyze
your emotions and tell yourself
why am i feeling this way why am i angry
why am i excited
that is the key point that is what
divides people who are truly able to be
rational from those who can't be right
so
you have to train yourself it's not
natural to who we are because our nature
is to simply react right so
the ability to stand back and say no i
better wait maybe i should wait a couple
of days before i send it let's see how i
think tomorrow and then tomorrow shows
you that it was irrational that your
emotion wasn't really proportional to
the event so if your emotional reaction
is proportional to the threat or to the
opportunity then
you know then there's a reason for it
but so often particularly in this hyper
social media environment where it's kind
of like we're all feeling constant rage
and anger
a lot of times it's not related to
anything real or is out of proportion to
the actual problem or threat
so you you don't try and repress your
emotions you can't write a book you
can't start a business you can't make a
decision about what you want to do
without the richness of emotions the
brain is an organic thing everything
works together so people who have had
that damage where they can't
feel the emotion that the emotions are
blocked and there are brain damage that
causes that
it's been shown that they can't make
rational decisions because they can't
decide they can't feel
what is what is good or what is bad what
is an opportunity what is dangerous so
you want your emotions you need them
you're not trying to repress them
repressing emotions will lead to other
problems what you want is just that tiny
little bit of distance that ability
when you're feeling it to go back and go
hmm
why am i really feeling this what are
the roots of it that's very powerful
ability that you can use that you can
develop through practice
just like exercise will develop your
muscles
through being able to think
before you react it will slowly become
natural to you but you have to practice
it you have to be aware of that's the
source of your problem
do you have uh a method for how you
practice that
well
the main thing is to be aware of it
because
you know
we're we're creatures that definitely
don't like anything kind of painful we
want our lives to be pleasurable
we've had painful experiences in our
life generally in social situations i
maintain the most pain is psychological
it comes from
bad social interactions okay so you
don't want pain in your life obviously
everyone's going to answer that right
so you don't want to make bad decisions
you don't want to have your emotions
dragging you along and causing all kinds
of havoc
so if you understand that that's the
problem you're now motivated to then try
and tackle it so i could give you the
best techniques in the world but it
won't matter at all if you don't feel
that need for it that that hunger for
the ability to have a slight degree of
control over your own actions
i
practice meditation every morning and
i i highly advocated it's i think it's
been one of the best things i've ever
done for myself i've been doing it now
for over 10 years it's like a ritual
and as you're meditating and you're
emptying your mind
suddenly emotions and things will start
welling up you don't even know from
where like anger and all this kind of
pissy stuff and things about your
parents and about all your bad
relationships etc
and now you're thinking
why am i thinking about that now
the sun is shining i'm trying to empty
my mind why is this garbage welling up
in me and you start to have some
distance and you start to see i try and
picture it like
my thoughts and my emotions they're out
there they're like two feet away from me
they're not inside my head they're over
there and i could watch my mind create
this little theater of all these little
problems and dramas
that's a beautiful thing
i catch myself now because i'm not
perfect i'm very human and i have the
same problems that i'm talking about but
i catch myself
maybe 50 of the time now wow you're
reacting here that emotional idiot part
of you that lizard part of you is taking
over and i can step back
so meditation is a very powerful tool
a ryan holiday you know my good friend
friend of yours he has very much
advocated the use of journaling of
writing things down and i do that as
well so you can analyze yourself
but the main thing is you've got to
train yourself so in the course of a day
what i tell people is let's say tomorrow
something triggers an emotional response
and it happens every single day in our
lives right something somebody says
something somebody you read in the
newspaper or online triggers it
okay practice this one thing just i ask
you one thing tomorrow
try and do this one little step and go
back and go
okay
what am i feeling right now i'm feeling
anger all right
okay first that's the first step what am
i actually feeling all right
what is the cause of this anger all
right this person is saying something
that really really annoys me that really
gets my gets my goat etc okay why
what are the roots of that anger is it
something that i've personally
experienced does it go back to my
childhood or is this just something
that's in the media sphere that's kind
of
uh that i'm
catching it's contagious from what other
people are getting angry about
just try and do that one thing tomorrow
where you something happens and you step
back and you go through that process
what am i feeling
why am i feeling it what are the roots
of it and is it something that's real or
isn't real and then if you just do that
once you'll it'll be very interesting
because you never do it and then maybe
you'll be inspired to try it a second
and a third time that's sort of kind of
the process that you go through
there's a one-two combo as i'm hearing
you explain that that um
i
worry about so one i don't know as you
were walking through that and you were
differentiating between is this
something from my past or is this
something in the media sphere and i
thought oh dear god like do most people
actually have that layer of nuance uh in
in terms of being able to understand
themselves and then also
who when i think about how easily we
like i will put myself in this but how
easy all of us humans are swayed by
the media by other people like if
somebody knows more about a topic than
us it is all too easy to just be like oh
that must be true because we don't know
enough about it to question it and when
when we first started talking and you
said you know there's this one
exponential thing that we're not used to
and i thought for sure you were going to
say the rate at which information comes
out yes because that's the thing that's
really freaking me out is information is
coming at us so quickly it is very hard
to have the level of um
self-understanding that you're talking
about where even if you're willing to do
the work to turn inward and ask the
questions will you be able to understand
discern all of the different things that
could be influencing you which i want to
talk about childhood at some point i've
heard you talk about that before we'll
stay focused here for now but like the
number of things that could be
influencing you that you may be totally
blind to
and then on top of that you've got
just so much data coming at you so fast
it feels hopeless to keep up with it all
yeah
well um you have to you know one thing
that happens to me in my meditation
that's very interesting is i realize how
deeply i have been conditioned and that
how deeply we've all been conditioned
by what by
other people by what we hear by what we
read by the people who talk to us by our
environment by the culture that we're in
by the times that we're living
the separation from being conditioned is
what is truly my own thoughts what comes
from within me
now it's a very artificial dividing line
because
really
none of my thoughts totally come from me
i've inherited language that goes back
thousands of years i was conditioned by
my parents to respond a certain way
right and you know i've obviously a lot
of my ideas come from books that i've
read so not all of the the dividing line
between what's truly me and what's not
is is fluid but there is something that
you can say is mean
it's like this is how i think this is
what my needs are this is where i am
right now in december 2020. this is my
reality right
okay it's who you are it's what your
needs are and what your experience is
and then there's that artificial element
of
all the stuff that you mentioned that's
so blasting in our faces from our
culture at like you know light years
speeds incredible speeds that are just
filling our brains with junk with
information that we don't need
with
heated opinions that really aren't our
own opinions right
so you have to be able first of all to
be able to turn that [ __ ] off i'm sorry
to use that language here hey
you know if you can't
you know take
bread breaks from social media from your
instagram account from facebook from
twitter
then you're a prisoner of it
you know just because just admit it to
yourself i am a prisoner of social media
i can't control it it controls me
and they we talked earlier about
marketing
mark zuckerberg facebook
these people are masters at marketing
they know exactly how to put press all
of your buttons they know that if they
give an a topic that's very
controversial that's maybe not
necessarily true but it's very heated
they'll get more views more likes more
posts more reposting etc they know how
to use certain colors to grab your eye
to grab your attention they know sounds
little beeping noises on your stupid
smartphone i like that word your stupid
smartphone that are going to like engage
you go whoa wow i better pay attention
they are manipulating you you are
conditioned you are a prisoner of social
media you are not in control of it
you're not you think you're the one
that's posting all these things that you
want to post about your life but really
you're not you're responding to what
everybody else is doing you're being a
conformist
if you really want to control it you
wouldn't have some distance you would
know
all right here's something that's really
affecting me as an individual that's
part of my life that i'm excited about i
want to share that with people and it
comes from instead of the need to get
attention instead of the need to get
people to like you instead of the need
to just bait your rage it's something
that like i want to express
a reality that i've discovered an idea
how many times is social media used for
the spreading of an actual idea that's
been rationally thought out
well then that if you're able to do that
then you are the one in control of this
monster this beast
and you can be you can use it for your
own purposes but just think about and
i'm not getting on a high horse here i
am as much guilty of this as anybody i
know how powerful it can be i know how
when i meditate i go whoa
where's that idea coming from robert you
have been conditioned
you've been brainwashed by the media
around you
so i'm just as guilty as anyone it's
very difficult you're submerged in it
we're social animals we're creatures of
our culture of our times it's not easy
but you have to be able to realize the
first step is to realize that you are
someone who's been conditioned just as
deeply as one of pavlov's dogs in those
experiments right hello my friend you
know that i believe success requires you
to see failure as the ultimate learning
tool success requires you to be
disciplined and gritty and to never ever
quit on your dreams i say all of that
because one thing is certain the road to
achieving your goal is not smooth or
linear i wish it was but it's not it's
going to be bumpy sometimes scary some
days you'll take two steps forward and
slide 10 steps back and that's why
success also requires you to know how to
pull yourself out of a rut and get
unstuck fast life is short you can't be
messing around with your goals you've
got to make progress every single day so
i've pulled a class from impact theory
university called how to get unstuck
which you can watch for free with the
link on your screen or by clicking below
when you join me for that free preview
of that workshop from impact theory
university i'm going to teach you my
strategy for how to
understand exactly where you need to be
going how to identify the obstacle
that's blocking you and the best way to
make the most progress towards that goal
and keep your momentum right click that
link and let's get to work all right
i'll see you on the inside you do take a
certainly a darker look at life than i
do and for some reason i find myself
completely drawn to that flame
of the way that you look at the world
maybe because it's good sort of
disconfirming evidence for me it doesn't
just put me in my own loop
but the guy who people say
some people say that you know uh robert
you shouldn't write these books this is
like evil machiavellian content the
world is better off not you know sort of
turning a blind eye to this which i
heartily disagree with but
for that person to now be touching on
the sublime what drew you to that
well um it's it's i could go on forever
about this i'll try and keep it
reasonably short but
i've been interested in this idea from
15 probably 20 years it's i don't know i
read an article i read a book about it a
long time ago
really excited me
and i meant to be my fourth book after i
finished war i started researching it
and then i got
disrupt distracted by the 50 cent book
that i did
then came mastery and then came human
nature and finally i took a breath and
said all right this is the time for the
sublime it's going to be my next book
and the 18th chapter of the law of human
nature is about confronting your
mortality and i talk about that the
sublime in that chapter
and the idea is that here's how i
explain the sublime it's kind of like a
circle if you can imagine human life as
a circle social life to be a human means
in any time period the culture that we
live in creates a circle and in that
circle is
a limit to what you're allowed to
believe in what you're allowed to think
your behavior there are codes and
conventions and rules that we all
ascribe to they're not the same as they
were in ancient egypt
3 500 years ago but back then they had a
circle it was just a different circle
right okay so you're not supposed to
think these thoughts you're not supposed
to do this that's that this is the
circle that we live in
just outside that circle is the realm of
the sublime it's something that we're
not really ever supposed to think about
or we're not really supposed to ever do
it's something that's filled with a
slight transgressive energy a level of
excitement
because deep down inside in human nature
we don't like limits
we rebel against them we want to be free
our spirits are yearning to be free and
that sense of these are codes that you
have to abide by is very restricting it
feels like a prison almost so we're
inevitably attracted to things outside
of that and that is the realm of the
sublime and it's incredibly exciting it
contains so much energy because in that
circle all of your energy is kind of
crushed and compounded inside of you
it's kind of you have to feel this we
have to do this when you let go and you
go explore outside of it it's like
suddenly you're tapping into something
that's in the cosmos incredibly
energizing it's what maslow called a
peak experience right
okay so the ultimate form of going
beyond that circle is death itself
death is the ultimate limit obviously to
our lives and people who have peered
through that door
because the word sublime literally means
up to the threshold
that's the latin up to the threshold of
a door so imagine that circle has all
these little doors in it and you're
peering through it this is something
that i haven't thought of before right
um
the ultimate door is death right and
people who peered through that door have
had a near-death experience a little bit
to some degree
it changes you
it's like that is the biggest blast of
the sublime that you can get that's the
strongest form of the drug imaginable
you no longer look at being alive
anymore the same way you no longer see
the trees the birds the the people that
you love in the same way do you
everybody see universally that people
see something better than they did no
it's not true
that's a good point there have been
studies
of near-death experiences
i don't remember the percentage but
there is a percentage the smaller
percentage that has a negative
experience it's very painful and ugly
and demonic and hellish
and no they're not having this so thank
you for bringing that up that's true
but most people for most people
it has this effect where
and the reasons why the people have the
hellish view there are other things
going on it's not that's just not normal
um
is
you know you came very close to death
and you're alive
so everything has a different meaning to
you right things that you took for
granted before no longer have that same
sense
and there are other things that go on
well anyway the typical to my story here
i wrote that chapter with those ideas in
mind
and then
two three months later i came this close
to dying myself
so what had been this intellectual
abstract argument about near-death
sublime blah blah blah became very real
right i was in a coma
i was driving my car if my girlfriend
hadn't stopped made me pull over
if the meretics hadn't come quickly i
would have permanent brain damage or i
would be dead i came very close i was in
a coma
i didn't have like visions of of you
know
angels etc and all the other things that
people sometimes claim they have
but i had some very strange things some
feelings in my body that
it not as often anymore but i still
sometimes get a feeling that my bones
were kind of melting from the inside
it was kind of like a sort of dissolving
what was solid about me was dissolving
right and then a sense of
a very it's only for a brief second and
sometimes i'm not even sure if it's true
or not but i had an image of me up above
looking down and i had i had died and
people were talking about me
right
i'm not sure whether my brain in memory
is playing a trick on me but i seem to
have that recollection
anyway it became very real to me this
subject right and so now
it wasn't just this intellectual or
thing about writing a book about the
sublime it was very very real
the last thing i'll say is
when i had originally planned the book
back in 2005 or so
i was going to be jetting off to tierra
del fuego to see you know
the the south pole i was going to go
swimming with dolphins in the caribbean
i was going to be going on top of you
know mount everest i don't know whatever
that kind of stuff
having sublime experiences
obviously i had a stroke
i can't even really walk outside my
house and take a normal hike i can
barely walk a few blocks
i can't do any of these things
right so what i've had to discover is
because i can only write a book if i'm
in the mood of the book
right
so i have to be feeling sublime to write
the book
i have to find it in everyday things i
have to find it in the little garden in
my house i have to find it in the cats
in my house
in my girlfriend you know and out in in
her eyes
looking outside my window in the books
that i'm reading i have to suck the
sublime out of every little trivial
little affair that i goes on in my life
and putting that in the book i think
will
so if i had written that other book
people were going oh that's great but
this guy this kind of rich white guy
he's able to fly off here that doesn't
have to do with my life
i'm living
as a stricter life as you can imagine
they're people much more restricted than
me but pretty damn restricted and yet
i'm able
to find this in my daily life if i can
find it there's no barrier for other
people no matter if you're flipping
burgers and mcdonald's the world is
sublime
and it's all around you and you don't
have to go to tierra del fuego to to
experience that i want to get more into
what the sublime is actually so
i honestly it's a word that i never
really thought of okay i feel like i
have an intuitive understanding that
it's something sort of surprising and
wonderful but with a
not sort of
big
um
amplitude's the wrong word but there's
there's something relaxed about it like
a warm bath is sublime you know but this
idea of it being a threshold something
that you're seeing beyond into something
new that's a new take on it for me which
is far more interesting
well it's it's
the sublime is not a warm bath quite the
opposite it's a mix of pleasure and pain
it's a mix of two opposing emotions a
sense of fear and a sense of awe
almost consecutively or at the same time
right so
if you go to see a horror movie or
you're on a roller coaster
the excitement comes from the fact that
you feel kind of at risk that there's
sort of danger there but you're safe
right so you're feeling two things at
the same time kind of anxiety and kind
of about the pleasure that you're
actually not being threatened
so
neuroscientists have shown that the
mixing of two sort of contrary emotions
creates an incredible intensity of
affect much more than just a single
emotion
so the quintessential experience of the
sublime when it was first
written about in the 18th century
was climbing uh the alps the matterhorn
or wherever it was right
and you got a sense of how small you
were
how you know you could die very easily
if there's an avalanche
and how you know how fragile you were in
the face of this immensity
and yet the awesomeness of it the beauty
of it was overwhelming and so they were
fascinated with this idea of being able
to feel these two contrary emotions at
the same time so it's not at all a warm
bath
um
i can only
the the sublime is an experience it's
hard to it's something hard to put into
words so robert's trying to write a book
about it yeah i know believe me believe
me i know but let me give you an idea
give me one example of something that is
so insanely sublime that you can't ever
think the same about the world after you
contemplate this
okay so
here you and i are sitting here talking
in this incredibly high-tech amazing
house with all the insane technology
around us all right consider this
our planet's some 4 billion years old
around 3.1 billion years in some little
bit of pond
some kind of organic life began we don't
know how or why or what triggered all
those scientists are getting closer
some form of single-celled bacteria
self-created itself out of chemicals
that came from other planets right
carbon etc okay
this single-celled bacteria dominated
the planet for billions of years it was
the only form of life right
okay and then sometime in the past i
i've forgotten the exact time frame in
my mind it's in my book
the first
multicellular creature was created maybe
that was two billion years ago or so
okay and it was a complete freak
accident
one piece bacteria swallowed another
bacteria and created a multicellular
organism it's only happened once in the
history of our planet once contemplate
that
we know that because there's only one
line of dna that we can trace back to
the first time that it happened there's
not a second line of dna only one
so it happened once
it's never happened again
it was a freakish example if that
happened happened
forget everything else that occurred on
this planet okay but it did happen okay
so these are called bottlenecks certain
things occurred that created
evolution go in a certain direction and
it could have occurred differently i'll
skip to 60 million years ago
when
a an asteroid the size of new york city
hit earth hid in in the yucatan
peninsula
and it was the most insane explosion
ever like the equivalent of all the
nuclear bombs on our planet
it destroyed the dinosaurs it destroyed
99 of the life on this planet right it
was the holocaust of all holocausts
if it and this
meteor almost missed the earth asteroid
very easily could have missed the planet
because think of the emptiness of space
and the smallness of earth it was a
freak accident
if that hadn't happened
dinosaurs would still be walking around
here
mammals would have never emerged as the
dominant creature
i'll skip to 80 000 years ago humans at
that point there were only like 10 000
humans left on the planet
if one single virus
i'm talking about homo sapiens
one single virus would have wiped us out
at that point we were extremely
vulnerable if that number had gotten
down further
anything could have wiped us out right a
change in climate etc okay
if that had happened
we wouldn't be here
and neanderthals would have probably
taken over the planet and who knows what
that would look like right now okay
then
think of your own parents
and how unlikely was there ever meeting
and the circle with the fate that
happened there
if they hadn't met tom wouldn't be here
or you'd be somebody else right
there are 70 000 generations more or
less going into you going back to the
first homo sapien all right
that one time encounter between you and
your parents multiplied by 70 000 chance
encounters
so to bring us to the present that you
and i are sitting here together in this
office with all this stuff around us
it's you and it's me
the odds against it are so unbelievably
astronomical that you can't even compute
so what does that make you think about
that what you what's happening to you
right now
if you really contemplate it it will
alter how you think about everything
everything you see around you the plants
the animals they didn't have to be that
way it's extremely unlikely
it's a weird world that we live in right
so that is an example of a sublime
thought
it's a little bit scary because it has
to do with annihilation holocaust deaths
but it's also
an awesome thought about the fact that
you're just alive
so that's that's sort of and it's
something i went into in the second
chapter of my book
i find this so interesting so
how
how do we make use of that
and why
is it so useful
well the reason it's so useful and this
is what i just did in my third chapter
is
it's wired into our nature
so a lot of things are wired that aren't
so good that we could talk about but the
need for transcendent experiences the
need to be taken out of ourselves which
is the source of all of our religious
all of our spiritual beliefs
and all of art the art that we create
almost everything that we humans do goes
back to our earliest ancestors right
and being the first conscious beings on
this on this planet conscious in the way
that our brains are conscious
they looked at this world and they saw
things that go you know i'm talking
about aborigines in australia
how did this world happen how did this
occur
how could it be that there are stars and
plants and kangaroos it's insane
and right and they had these kind of
sublime thoughts and out of that they
created gods and spirits and all sorts
of forces
okay but that awesome feeling that
feeling of why why are things the way
they are why is there something and not
nothing is very much wired into our
nature and to deny it
is very painful and so what i talk about
in the book is if you're not going after
the sublime you're going to go after the
false sublime and the false sublime will
be
drugs it'll be alcohol it'll be joining
some kind of
ugly political campaign in which you get
all your yaya's out and you feel angry
and violent blah blah blah right
you know on and on and on it could be
porn
you know online porn etc the kind of
drugs that take you outside of yourself
but are kind of ugly and then and
they're addicting and they're not
liberating so if you're not going after
this
you're going to find it in some other
way and it's not going to be healthy
and
you want this in your life because
it gives you a kind of peace and it
gives you a scale of priorities
you know if if the big bang occurred
some 13 14 billion years ago and started
this whole thing off
what does my little 80 90 years of
existence mean
this is like a flash it's like a pop of
a popcorn in in this in in the eternity
of time
it doesn't mean anything it's it's so
small
so why does it matter so it's calming
actually it's calming you down it's
making you think the things that are
happening right now aren't as big as i
think they are
so you want this in your life
then you ask me how do you get it is
that your question yeah so as you were
explaining it i thought um some people i
think are
[Music]
gonna brush it off maybe they don't
stop to really let that hit them and so
when you were talking i thought okay is
this why so i've never done psychedelics
but
i have a feeling that
whether it's a zen cohen whether it's a
psychedelic whether it's
using your ability to shape your own
attitude to suck the sublime out of
these simple moments
there's something
to your point about we're hardwired for
it there's something necessary about
jarring us out of
our frame of reference right that
is
if evolution is selected for it there's
something necessary maybe to combat
our ideas calcifying into dogma there's
something in there that's critically
important and so i'm just curious for
people that
don't know how to suck the sublime out
of the marrow of a simple moment
how they do it
well the how they do it is is is is
through my book i'm afraid
because the book you haven't finished
writing yet yeah i'm only a fourth of
the way through you give us tidbits in
in the daily laws so i will i will thank
you for that yeah a couple chapters are
in there um
the reason i say that i'm not trying to
hype myself is there are lots of books
written about the sublime particularly
in terms of art and in terms of like
cultural history but they're very
academic
they're very kind of boring which is
very paradoxical
because it's the last subject in the
world that should be boring
so the book that i'm trying to write
is in obviously inspirational but it's
also very practical
so each chapter the last section i
include exercises for you to practice in
your life they're going to make what i
just wrote about actionable and in the
very end i give you meditations
three things to meditate on every day
that'll make this part of your daily
life part of your daily practice right
so i'm trying to make it
as as practical as possible so
for instance the first chapter is about
the cosmic sublime which is in the daily
laws
about the big bang about the origin of
stars about our own sun and our own
planet and how insane all that is
right
and i talked to you about how you can
have
that feeling of the cosmos being created
by doing certain things in your daily
life you can visit certain landscapes
you don't have to climb mount everest
you can just go to the nearest mountain
around you put your phone away
right leave that behind
go alone if you can or bring somebody
with you and you don't talk
interesting and just so you can
think no just immerse yourself in this
world i've given you now pages of how
unlikely it is that a mountain exists
i've explained to you where the mountain
came from i've explained to you
how unlikely the birds in the sky are
and how unlikely life is and now you're
you're in it
and now you're seeing
at night if you camp out you're seeing
the night sky you don't have to have
money to do that you can go out anytime
to the nearest mountain or hill and to
have that experience right
there are other landscapes as well
anything having to do with water
water is the most weird thing if you
ever think about it
because as far as we know
we're the only planet that we know of
that has the form of water that we have
and we're looking for other planets that
have it form of water yeah well there's
no more water on mars it might be buried
underneath underground
or do you mean they have liquid water
they have liquid
on it's liquid gas on jupiter and saturn
but they don't have our form of water
there's certainly a planet out there
that will have it but water came to us
from from the sky didn't sound something
natural to earth it came from rain it
came from comets and asteroids that left
left it here these are molecules that
aren't natural to our planet
when you're
swimming in water you're like inside of
it it's the only element when you're in
a mountain you're not inside the
mountain you're not inside the dirt and
the stone but you're in water you're in
it
it's part of your body it's incorporated
in you
and to imagine
the vastness of water
so the cosmos is this vastness this
infinity
water is a touch of that infinity
there's no beginning or end to water
there's no kind of limit to it so i'm
giving you these places like deserts
that you can go to where you can have a
touch of that i also tell you
on the internet and i give you all the
links
here's where you can look
at things that um
what's like the hubble telescope has
photographed
it is insane the images that we can now
look at it is one of the most beautiful
things about living in the 21st century
they have photographed a black hole i
describe in that chapter what a black
hole is
to
black hole is something you can't even
imagine and yet they have photographed
it but just photographing the farthest
reaches of our galaxy the thoughts
that'll inspire so it is very practical
but you have to read my book
all right if i were watching this
interview back i know i punched myself
in the mouth if i didn't go back to this
idea of anarchy and there being elements
of that that are good um
tell me more i i have always had a
default assumption i will admit i have
never thought about anarchy as having
anything positive to offer so i'm
open-minded bring me in tell me why
anarchy is is has elements that may be
used it's not anarchy per se it's it's
it's change i mean
so
let's go through an example that i know
very well which is the french revolution
something that i've studied a lot and
i'm very it excites me for some reason
and here you have
a monarchy in france that has existed
for
at the time
700 years
very static in control of france
by the time you arrive in the 18th
century it's kind of ossified into this
very silly culture with marie antoinette
and and louis the 16th with these silly
rituals and these courtiers and
everything and and the populace is
suffering from famines and you know
they're going they're starving to death
and it's incredible inequalities of
wealth and it's basically a dead culture
and then slowly the fans of revolution
start churning beginning in the early
1780s there's some revolts against the
famine etc and against the king and then
it explodes in 1789
right and you know we're all more less
aware of what kind of ensued with the
guillotine and the terror and how it
goes way too far and it turns into
something a bloody nightmare you know
okay and then
after the after that falls apart that
napoleon kind of rises to the top and
he's sort of part of the french
revolution and then he slowly turns it
into something very conservative
etcetera on and on and on but the
argument that most people have is
you know the french revolution all that
bloodshed what could what what was it
for you know what that kind of anarchy
as you might put it what did it lead to
what good was it
well it led to the formation of what
became modern europe it led to the
decline of all monarchies it became an
ideal it showed the people of europe
there is another way of being there's
another way we don't have to live in
these incredibly rigid cultures that
that were pretty ossified like in the
austrian hungarian empire etc and or in
spain
that the ideal of revolution which
spread to south america
which spread you know of course saw some
of it was from the united from our own
revolution which preceded the french
revolution
but
other people have shown that the
conditions
before the revolution were actually a
lot worse the people there were many
more deaths and executions and suffering
than after the french revolution so
it was bloody it went too far
it created a reaction but in the long
run
decades later it had a very positive
impact because it broke up this
incredibly rigid system that was
strangling europe was strangling it
culturally economically and politically
so that's an example of change that at
the moment looks negative and bloody and
anarchic and unruly but in the end
created a very positive effect i'm not
saying that happens all the time it's
not a law
but
oftentimes what seems to be anarchic and
ugly and awful in the moment does end up
serving a higher purpose because we need
dynamism in our culture we need change
so
because that sounds so horrendous
because all of us only have one life to
live and if you're the one living
through the guillotine and like i've
heard stories about how absurd it got
where it had that sort of um was it in
world war ii where people were like
clapping oh no it was i think it was in
china where people are like so terrified
to stop clapping for um i think it was
mao that you know they'd be there for
like two hours like just clap and clap
and clap and clap and clapping and
because you could get ostracized or
killed if you were you know considered
the first one to stop clapping or i've
read the gulag archipelago and like the
nightmare that it would be to live
through that moment and i get it from a
macro perspective it's like we want that
change so robert greene is going to tell
us how to do revolution the right way
what's the
point
please tell me what i mean so
the russian revolution began
with that right began with these sort of
peasant rebellions but from the
beginning the bolshevik revolution was
an incredibly conservative movement it
was not a revolutionary movement it was
a movement about amassing power for the
state
for lenin and the state and stalin it
was a very repressive machine from the
beginning so it's not at all what i'm
talking about and the chinese revolution
is very obviously incredibly interesting
story because mao began with this idea
of like the trotsky idea of a permanent
revolution we're going to have a culture
that's constantly changing etc etc and
then it turned into this incredibly
rigid conservative ossified culture and
i wrote about in the laws of human
nature the cultural revolution in the
60s in which he wanted to completely
turn things upside down like what i'm
talking about so here i'm going to
contradict myself here i'm going to show
my own here i'm wrong robert's wrong
here was a chance he wanted to turn
everything upside down and it became a
nightmare and it turned into massive
conformity like what you're talking
about where you better keep clapping or
if you stop right it turned into a
nightmare
so
that kind of just change for its own
sake can lead to something very
destructive i don't deny that and and
look what happened to china afterward
after a moment like that they turned
extremely conservative and rigid in the
late 70s and it's something that still
affected them to this day
so
you know history is not like a
this logical
little thing like science or physics
where these things all happen the same
way i can pull up examples of change
that lead to something very negative i
understand i agree and there are
exceptions to what i'm talking about
in the long run in the higher picture
from looking from above i'm more worried
about cultures that are rigid that are
ossified that cannot change that don't
have that kind of constant churning of
the waters and it's not just culture
or or politics it's also business it's
also technology it's also the ability to
innovate you know
social media was a great thing
with the 90s and the early aughts we
were all so excited about it kind of the
freedom of it the ability to communicate
with anybody and it's turned this kind
of rigid megalith you know like
dinosaurs chomping around these giant
brontosauruses that now dominate the
landscape and nothing else can thrive
right
so that's kind of the dynamic where
having something it's not good for us we
want that we're the country the country
that
that sparks all of the innovation
because that's what america is we're a
country of change that's why europe
admired us we weren't hold we weren't
beholden to the past we were willing to
take risks
and create new kinds of businesses etc
so do you worry at all that we're moving
to with the pc culture with cancel
culture all that that we're moving
closer to something like you better not
stop clapping very much so very much so
so you know and this is the way of all
cultures so we started off with a kind
of a pioneer spirit
where you know it's it's
the rugged individual
and it's a kind of a culture where
people can kind of be different and
express who they were
and even in the 19th century in a time
very different from our own
where you know there were some kind of
rigid codes of how to behave there was
incredible freedom going on when you
look about at some of the weird kind of
um
cults that were forming the the kind of
utopian societies and some of the
writers and some of the things that were
going on was a and even the business
environment which was very cutthroat
with the robber barons
it was incredibly
dynamic period of time where where we
celebrated the entrepreneur and we
celebrated people kind of creating their
own
you you could you know the rags to
riches myth there's so much part of
america
and we've really you called it the rags
to riches myth
yeah
well tell me more why is it a myth
well it's not a myth in the sense that
it's wrong because myth is
misinterpreted nowadays to mean false
it just means it was part of our culture
just like athena
and and zeus was part of the greek myths
that people believed in it was an ideal
maybe that's the better word than myth
but it was part of what
held up
all americans could reach for that ideal
whereas in europe you couldn't you know
sort of thing so maybe myth was the
wrong word
but um
you know and so
the reason i've written about this
before and talked about it before but
the reason that was there that that
started
was
we it was a culture that was hungry that
we were we
we felt
um we felt that there were risks out
there that if we didn't do this that
america was going to suffer something
that we we felt
compelled to create new things
right
and you look at it in the arts and the
sciences in technology it was incredibly
vibrant
and then you can kind of watch it slowly
slowly slowly get get snuffed out that
spirit's kind of dying on the vine and
then kennedy in 1960 he saw what was
happening particularly in the eisenhower
era and he wanted to get back to that
what he called pioneer spirit and he
launched
well he called the new frontier which is
part of the space race
and
you know and the space race was what
created the internet it wasn't for nasa
we wouldn't have the internet and the
space race generated
i can't tell you how much of the
technological innovation that that
powers everything nowadays
so
yeah we're very much straying from that
spirit with with the cancel culture and
everything like that
you know so we're afraid of people with
different opinions
we're afraid of
of things that threaten our own
preconceived ideas
and
that kind of to me runs counter to some
of the spirit of our country it's not
we're not we've never completely lived
up to our ideals but that is the ideal
that i think
drove us for so many
generations
yeah one thing i find just incredibly
sexy is the idea of rugged individualism
um that's something that you know i'm
i'm with you stagnation is bad change
can be extraordinarily good change as a
general element is incredibly important
but when i think about the way things
are going now where it's group identity
over everything that really worries me
and ultimately i think a group is only
strong when the individual people
are focused on like how strong can i
become how much weight can i carry for
the group and then the broader we make
the group i think the better off
everybody is but if you're not first
leaning into like hey this is my sort of
one shot at things i'm gonna see how
strong i can get i'm gonna see how far i
can push myself i'm going to think for
myself act for myself
that to me is where one you just get
strong mental health because people are
chasing fulfillment they're pursuing
things that fill them up in a way that
maybe nobody else gives a [ __ ] about but
like they care about and they have the
ability to pursue that
and then you marry it to an idea that we
flirted with at the beginning that i
think now is the time to talk about
which is mortality man like you've got
precious little time on this planet and
are you doing something that you think
is rad
you know regardless of whether other
people are telling you that that's what
you should do like is is it something
that fills you up
how do you so i know
you've talked in other podcasts about
your book so i don't think i'm talking
out of school to say that you're working
on a book loosely titled or maybe
officially titled the law of the sublime
and how that relates to mortality and
the stroke that you had tell me more
about how do you think about the fact
that this is all finite how does that
tie in because when i think of sublime i
think of something so beautiful as to
you know it it's fleeting it's beautiful
and almost painful in its beauty right
is that close to how you think of it or
is it where you think about it it's very
wise it's very intuitive of you
because the thing about the sublime that
i'm trying to
capture the essence of in the book
is that it's a mix of pain and pleasure
and that's what makes it so powerful
so the that's really interesting the
idea of our mortality is obviously very
painful right what could be more painful
but the idea of transforming that into
something beautiful into something
enlightening into something that kind of
fills us with a much different spirit
which which motivates us to get
something done which makes us appreciate
what we can look at we're alive and the
sky is blue and you know and all that
so mortality has this ability to sharpen
our senses to sharpen our appreciation
of life and that turns that pain into
pleasure
but the pain and pleasure always go
together so underneath that kind of
ecstatic feeling that you feel when
you're aware that that you know there's
eternal time and that there are all
these insanely wonderful things about
around the world is always going to be
mixed with that tincture of pain about
how i'm going to be gone and i won't be
here to appreciate it but that mix of
the two emotions of what makes it so
powerful and so insanely addictive
right
because pure pleasure on its own can
almost get monotonous and it can almost
go ah i'm tired of it you know
i'm bored and pure pain
but the combination of these two things
and so in my book i'm talking about how
every element of the sublime has the mix
of those emotions and why neurologically
that is such a powerful thing to us
so you know people who've had ecstatic
experiences what
maslow the great psychologist called
peak experiences
let's say
one of the paradigms for me is climbing
a mountain
right climbing mount everest or the guy
who wrote that great book um
about touching the void
simpson you know people who've had those
kind of mountaineering experiences
to get there whoa what pain man how
awful you can't breathe you could die at
any minute there could be an avalanche
but you're so excited you're so happy
because you're alive and you're testing
you're testing your limits this is known
as the dynamical sublime but you're
testing your human endurance against the
forces of nature and then you reach the
top and you have this insane view
that's like the paradigm of the mix of
these two emotions now that might all
sound kind of pointy toy to something
very rare in life you know i'm not going
to climb a mountain i'm not going to
feel that way about death but i'm trying
to bring it down to everyday things in
your life so that the sublime is not
just these rare moments where you climb
a mountain
or whatever it is but it's in your
everyday consciousness right that's the
goal that i have because i think what
people are missing nowadays is they
don't have a sense of awe and a sense of
enchantment about the world around them
they feel everything is kind of dead and
everything is sort of the same
but the actual truth of it is is that
this world is so unlikely that you and i
tom bilia are talking right now over
skype about these very issues
five thousand years ago who could ever
it's impossible it's insane it's a dream
it's like it's not even real it's like
the matrix who could even begin to
believe it every moment of your life is
like that but you're not [ __ ] aware
of it you're so wrapped in banality that
you're not aware of the insane
awesomeness so my first chapter which i
finally finished was so difficult
was about the cosmos and about the big
bang and about the universe and about
the origin of stars and how the moon
came from the earth
about four and a half billion years ago
collided with this other mars-sized
planet called thea it was this giant
collision and the pieces of dust from
that collision started spitting around
the earth and by gravity kind of
collected it became the moon
and wow the moon is just like this dust
that came from earth
right and then in the beginning it was
like
much
like a third two thirds closer to earth
than it was now it was like this thing
that was right there in your face
you know to see
the origin of the moon and to realize
that that is unbelievable and that the
moon that i'm looking at now you don't
have to climb out everest you can go out
now and even in the daytime you can see
the moon
that's the same moon that people in
ancient babylonia were looking at and so
you're having the same experience that
they're having you know you can time
travel and do a lot of time traveling in
this book where you can experience what
it was like
5 000 years ago
1 million years ago you can travel
through through art the internet is the
most sublime thing ever invented
now i'm writing this book i have one
little question about a dinosaur that
i'm wondering about and how it how it
survived
i do three little little clicks on my
computer and whoa i've got all the
answers of all these experiments it's
insane i know recently you had a stroke
and the way that you're approaching it
has the sort of milton erickson written
all over it with rebuilding yourself but
with a writer's mind and so you're
paying attention to what it takes and
what you're going through walk us
through that like what are you learning
about that what principles of the book
are you applying to it
well um you know i i hate to say it but
it was kind of a near-death experience
because
i was with my wife at the time and she
called the ambulance right away
i was driving
and if she hadn't called right away i
would have permanent brain damage right
now
and i probably would have gotten in a
very bad car accident i might not be
alive
so you know the last chapter is a
chapter about death confronting your
greatest fear in life which is your
mortality
i literally had to confront that
so the abstract words that i have about
oh confront your death overcome your
fear suddenly became very real to me
and so that was one aspect of it
but literally
you lose control of your body
i'm a very independent person very
willful
i like to imagine myself like i can do
anything i want and suddenly i'm put in
the position of being a baby
depending on people to clothe me to feed
me i can't walk very well i have no
control over my left side of my body i
wasn't an athlete but i loved exercise
endurance exercise not all of that wiped
away
so what am i going to do am i going to
start feeling sorry for myself
and so i applied one of the things in my
book
which is has to do with the last chapter
about death
but it also permeates through the book
is just sort of accept things as they
are stop judging
you know i had to accept that this is a
fact of life
and how can i make it into something
strong how can i turn this into a
positive
i have a chapter on your attitude in
life how you can change your
circumstances by changing your attitude
your attitude towards life will
determine what you get
if you're avoidant and hostile towards
people
a hostile person will tend to create
hostility around him
so how can i alter my attitude
and it's a struggle every single day i
have to be incredibly patient and i'm
not a patient person
it takes me
10 minutes to put on a t-shirt to be
able to get my left arm through that
hole that sleeve
damn it i'm not somebody who's patient
and i've had to develop patience i've
had to overcome
all of these sort of negative qualities
in myself
so if i talk in the book about
overcoming your own nature this damn man
that was [ __ ] slammed into my face
right i had to overcome my frustration
my lack of patience my willfulness the
fact that i always have to do things
myself
you know and then i had to confront the
fact that i could easily have died but i
didn't i'm alive so i can learn from
this i'm learning a lot and i'm going to
rebuild my body i'm going to rebuild it
i've come a long way so like a month ago
i was pretty bad i'm
able to walk now fairly well
in four months from now i'm going to be
swimming again in six months i'm going
to be jogging i'm going to be back to
where i was nothing will stop me but i
have to overcome all of my deficiencies
and all of these weaknesses that i have
built up over the years
yeah that is uh needless to say that's a
long difficult road
how do you
or what tools do you use to reset your
mind every day as you're going through
this in in paralleling that maybe to the
chekhov story in the book
and how what he overcame and was really
extraordinary being beaten by his father
all the time
and that he goes on to be the guy that
isn't bitter was pretty extraordinary
what mechanisms do you use to reset
every day
i meditate every morning i've been doing
that for several years for
eight years now religiously
um and in those meditations i confront
myself
so
i'm sitting there meditating and my
meditation is all about emptying the
mind
but it's impossible to empty the mind so
as you're meditating thoughts come to
you anxieties worries resentments
i've trained myself to question where
they are
each time i feel anger at my
sibling or my mother or friend for
saying something that i misinterpreted i
go
that's your ego speaking
you these people weren't saying
something that was personal you just
have your ego which is always getting in
your way question it so question my
impatience my frustrations etc the
meditation has really helped me
then a fr a friend of mine
um wrote saying about the stroke well
look at it this way
that it's kind of an adventure that
you're having to experience things
you've never experienced before
wow
you know i think i'm so brilliant but
i'm not sometimes people other people
have the best ideas i'm always stealing
their ideas
that was a great idea this is an
adventure this is something new i'm
having to learn it it can be exciting
although really i'm feeling kind of
bitter and angry i have to confront that
and move past it the chekhov story is
great because
chekhov was born in a in russia the most
miserable village in russia
poverty-stricken etc
really cold and no streets weren't paved
and wild dogs ran through the streets
and you could fall into a pothole and
drown
and his father beat him every morning
practically
and his siblings were a mess
and then suddenly
two of the brothers ran off to moscow
and then the father decided to follow
them and the rest of the family
basically abandoned anton chekhov at the
age of 18 or 16 in this miserable little
town and he had to fend for himself
and he he started becoming really bitter
like why did why me
why did i have this awful family this
horrible abusive father this mother who
won't stand for up for herself this
drunken brother
why me he got and then he's he suddenly
got sick of this story in his mind
and he goes
maybe i need to look at this totally
differently
you know i don't want to be like this
the rest of my life
and so he decided that what he would do
is he would try and understand his
father instead of judging him
and he went through a process where
my father was born a serf
we got freed later on but he was
basically a slave
his father beat him
he was never allowed to go into the kind
of work that he wanted to so no wonder
he became an alcoholic who beat me he
can't help it
instead of
hating him i'm going to love my father
i'm going to try and love him for this
human being for this fact of nature that
can't help himself but is my father for
who he is
and in that moment he had a total
epiphany and transformation
that by getting rid of his negative
emotions towards people he was like free
he was liberated and i've experienced
this myself
my meditation
to go through just an hour or half an
hour of freeing yourself from all your
negative emotions about people this is
almost as if you're going to fly in the
air you feel so light and
suddenly gotten rid of all of your
burdens all the things that are weighing
you down
accepting people and loving them for who
they are is an incredibly liberating
thing now you can't do that for everyone
some people are so toxic and ugly that
you're never going to reach a point
where you're going to love them but you
can understand them and in understanding
them you don't have to internalize that
the pain they inflict on you
this is he changed his attitude towards
people and towards life and it changed
everything that came to him later on he
became a successful doctor and later a
great writer
the two the brothers of the same reality
the same world that they were looking at
the same family one looked at it through
this prism of empathy and love the other
looked through resentment and bitterness
the one person check off got famous and
successful
and and a fulfilled life the others just
descended into suicide and alcoholism so
your attitude is will mean what you get
in life
you know you will sabotage yourself with
your attitude so if i got all bitter and
railed against fate for making me who i
am for the stroke that ruined my life
that took away everything that i value i
can't travel i can't drive
i would become a different person i
would become somebody who limited my
scope of activity but by accepting it by
saying i'm not going to let this happen
i'm going to accept it i widen my scope
of activity i do things that i normally
wouldn't do if i became all angry and
avoidant and anxious
amarfati yes exactly tell people what
that means
well it's a latin expression that
literally means love of fate
and
it's
it was created by the german philosopher
friedrich nietzsche it's one of my great
icons in life one of my favorite writers
and basically his idea was
that we humans normally go through life
kind of
not accepting things we want things to
be different from the way they are
we want
to have a better
wife or husband we want our children to
be better we don't like the political
system we want this sort of utopia to
suddenly come about we want people to be
different we want this we want that
and to nietzsche that meant you are
anti-life
you are against life because life isn't
like that life is a series of facts life
is what it is we've evolved a certain
way your reality is a certain way it is
what it is and by
pushing against things
you hate life
you want to love life
you want to love fate
and what fate means
things happen to you can't control
you didn't control who your parents are
you didn't control what city you were
born into what school you went into you
didn't control whether you were born
rich or poor
right there's much you can't control
that's fate
accept it for what it is stop whining
and stop going i want something else
embrace your world your life
our fear of death is probably the
greatest influence on our behavior
throughout history we're the only animal
that's cautious of our mortality
and it's caused an incredible reaction
we're avoiding we're anxious we invent
an afterlife a heaven where we'll all go
right or today we never see death we
never see
people die in hospitals we never see the
animals that we eat being killed we have
no confrontation with death personally
in our life completely disconnected from
it it makes us anxious and fearful and
that controls everything about our
behavior we become anxious and fearful
about everything
so the ability to accept death and look
at square in the eye and accept this as
your reality that you're not going to
live forever is very liberating
so
a more fatty is a step from turning your
back that's face this way going here's
life and oh i hate it i don't want it
to turning around and facing and going i
accept it i love it i embrace it and it
has a very powerful effect
let's go a little deeper on that so
with your recent essentially moment
where you couldn't help but look at
death what have you
learned what have you taken away from
that
knowing
as a writer you have shown time and time
again that you see things that are often
counterintuitive
so what what was it in that maybe that
even surprised you
well the experience itself
on a physical level was very weird
because i didn't experience the stroke
as it was happening it was almost an
outer body thing
so my wife noticed i was acting very
strangely my whole body was
weird and everything
and then i blanked out and i was
basically kind of in a coma
or not conscious for about 10 15 minutes
and
then i was taken out of it at the
hospital
and i kind of freaked out
like what's happening to me where am i
what happened to my body
so it was a kind of a weird
out-of-body experience
that i think i'm still kind of
recovering from
the other thing was um
i did a book with 50 cent called the
50th love
and i
hung out with 50 for several months he's
a great guy we're still friends
50 had even worse near-death experience
than i was he was shot nine times very
close range
went through his jaw he came this close
to dying
and
he said and i've noticed it in him since
then
that nothing can faze him after that
how can he be afraid of anything in life
once he came that close to death so he
has this kind of zen calmness that i've
witnessed you don't think of 50 as being
zen and calm you think him as this angry
kind of thug like rapper but in real
life he's incredibly calm person who
never seems to get riled by things
well i've had a little bit of that
effect myself
so i've noticed the people around me
like my mother or other people they're
all freaking out about what's happened
to me oh my god you've got to keep you
might fall you might do this
and i i don't care really i don't i feel
calm
i feel more calm than i felt in a long
time
so that was kind of a counterintuitive
thing that i wasn't expecting now is
that because you feel like there's
nothing left to take away now every day
is a gift or
what is it what is the calmness born of
it's definitely that
and then it's definitely it helps the
fact
that i've written this is my sixth book
the loss of human nature was sort of
like my ultimate i like vomited out of
me everything that i had built over the
last 20 years into this one book all the
things i've learned
all my anger i got it out into this one
book
so if i die
i don't have to i don't have any regrets
you know i i'd like to write a seventh
and an eighth book i have other ideas
but i could die and i'm okay i lived a
great life
and i talk a lot about that in mastery
and in this book
that the worst feeling in the world is
to be facing death and to think
damn it i've wasted my life
and i want people out there to realize
that if your 20s and your 30s you don't
want to reach that point you don't want
to waste your time and become 55 58 have
a stroke face death and what have you
done nothing you've moved from job to
job you tried this you tried that with
half an energy you really have nothing
to look back on that's the worst feeling
so you know i don't have that problem i
don't think
so that's part of how i'm able to stay
calm
but the other thing is you say
bring it on what words can happen i've
already experienced it
you know
i'm somebody who has a great deal of
fear of death and now i had to deal with
it so
yeah it's all right it's not that bad i
can handle it
when infotech merges with biotech what
you get
is the ability to
create algorithms that understand me
better than i understand myself