Kind: captions
Language: en
life is a series of facts life is what
it is awareness will spark everything it
means all right now instead of reacting
i'm going to think and i'm going to
study what makes you differently unique
is your source of power so the power to
see inside yourself the power inside to
see other people 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 today's guest
is the legendary number one new york
times best-selling author of a string of
books on the nature of power itself he's
been referenced in songs by jay-z kanye
west and drake to name but a few the
godfather of power dynamics himself
robert greene
admit you have a problem admit you don't
understand the people you deal with
even your spouse or your children
they're 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 going to
glean one truth about my wife or spouse
or partner
that i had never noticed before and i'm
going to 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 so 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 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 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 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
and 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 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 percent 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
having just gone through an election
cycle the the like
absolute sense of urgency with every
message at all like it's life and death
like ah pay attention and everybody's
like fighting and it really feels sort
of terrifyingly divided right now
and so thinking about okay people are
splitting into camps they're
conditioning themselves more and more be
team players think in the the right way
how can people begin to unwind that so
that we can be
more open-minded more mentally flexible
finding a way to
um find a
common ground forward i'm not sure my
real question is around conditioning how
do we recognize it and how do we
recondition ourselves
well the process is always sort of the
same i'm going to sound kind of
monotonous in it but it comes down to
awareness
which is the key to all the things that
i talked about in the laws of human
nature you know
so let's assume then that we go okay
cool i'm aware of the fact that this is
happening now how do i take control of
that process like are is it be careful
about the books you read be careful
about the tv shows you watch or is there
something beyond that
awareness will spark everything it means
all right now instead of reacting i'm
going to think and i'm going to study
okay and it's actually
you know we humans we want things to be
fun and pleasurable but trust me the
process of analyzing things instead of
reacting is one of the most fun
pleasurable
exercises you can ever go through
because now whenever i see a television
show whenever i see an outraged talking
head on television or whatever i'm going
hmm i'm studying their body language i'm
going what are the nonverbals they're
communicating
where are their ideas coming from is
this something real
and stepping back and analyzing is
incredibly exciting and it's more
entertaining than just getting all
emotionally involved in it
so if you know that you're conditioned
if you know that for instance um and
they've i think it was i can't remember
who it was that wrote an article
recently about how social media and
media in general is designed to hit
those anger buttons right that's how
they've been met that's how they've been
navigating these whole four years of
trump you know it's why their ratings
have been through the roof so you know
that's what they're doing you know that
that's what's happening
now it's exciting to actually see how
they're doing it
wow
i can okay i pressed on that button that
zuckerberg wants me to press on not
zuckerberg but the technicians there
okay why why did i do that robert why am
i getting sucked into that you know this
episode is sponsored by future go to try
future dot co slash impact to get your
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you can also click the link at the top
of the episode description now enjoy the
episode
if we saw it completely into ourselves
we would hate ourselves so thoroughly
that we wouldn't get out of bed we would
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 going to 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 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 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 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'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 did heaven [ __ ]
[ __ ] [ __ ] 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 gonna roll with
the punches i'm gonna 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
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guys take care and be legendary
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
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
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
i go 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
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
[Music]
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 denisha 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 the 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 is
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 it going i
accept it i love it i embrace it and it
has a very powerful effect
we humans naturally want power we want a
degree of control over our 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 know 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'll 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 a 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 that
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
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 bullet 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
um
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 counter-intuitive
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
um 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 the 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
read everything this man has ever
written i'm telling you he is absolutely
right these are books that get under
your skin they will change the way that
you look at the world they will change
the way that you look at human nature
and most importantly
if you let it they will change the way
you look at yourself and we didn't even
get into some of the extraordinary stuff
that he talked about in the book about
how you develop self-esteem the story
that you tell yourself how you construct
your sense of self how it's used both as
a mask and as a way to reflect back on
yourself it is incredibly extraordinary
and as you go on the journey of reading
the book if you're open to it you will
see yourself in many of the darker
elements of human nature i am sad to say
that i think all of us will see bits and
pieces of ourselves through all of the
18 laws of human nature not all of them
are flattering but if you're willing to
really get that level of understanding
like he said from there you can change
yourself but if you don't first
understand yourself then that is
absolutely hopeless and that has really
been the extraordinary journey that he's
taken us on as reader zasrar through all
six of his books
is to just understand as he called other
people facts of nature i think that's so
interesting and to see yourself in that
pantheon as well to understand that
there are parts of you that are just
facts of nature and to really come to
understand those is to come to
understand yourself is to be a master of
yourself and that journey is something
that i'm extraordinarily grateful to him
for laying out in this book so
eloquently i think it is worth every
second that you will spend on it i
cannot highly recommend it enough i have
a new website it's at
robertgreenofficial.com i hope i have
that right
robert greenofficial
your socials are at robert greene
official yes and there you will find
instagram i have tick tock believe it or
not my man yeah
that's good that's good this new
generation needs to know okay so i've
ticked if i talk instagram
facebook
twitter
and then a website where you can get
links to all of my books and some of my
ancient blog posts and things like
interviews it's in my youtube channel
all right guys if you haven't already be
sure to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care
[Applause]