How Saying Less Makes People Respect You More - Robert Greene (4K)

Robert Green welcome to the show thank you for having me Chris my pleasure we finally get to meet after all these years the first time that you came on the show was episode 78 where are you at now five years ago I'm on 820 wow the show is 400 times bigger than it was when you first came on so I wanted to say thank you 400 come on Chris I know I know I'm disappointed I know I really did try to impress I wanted to hit that 500 number before we got to meet but I wanted to say thank you for for coming on very early you're very welcome you're very welcome I also wanted to say thank you for sending me the special edition of 48 Laws of Power ah which is the coolest book ah for the people that haven't seen it it's uh leatherbound gold emboss 48 on the front and then as you look at the side it's gold so like just like a gold um boundary on the outside of the paper but as you splay the pages out in One Direction it's your face as YouPlay the pages out in the other it's that famous portrait of ma Valley so cool yeah so cool I can't really totally take credit for my partner on on the first three books he did it he's an brilliant designer he consulted me on it but um he's really the genius behind that but it's the sort of thing you can't not take a photo of yeah it's so you I mean it's the most basic technology as well you stuff that's been around you used to get it in um serial boxes to you know look at things from different angles to be able to make it work but no one's ever applied it to a book before well he he um he's he's a very strange guy he's Dutch he's very interesting we were we we had a good combin we had a good uh kind of Rapport and he researched it and he found in the 18th century this was a technique that they would use on the edging of books where you would flip through it and you would see an image and he studied how they did it and then he was able to replicate it through U digital technology but you know that's pretty genius that's pretty interesting so yeah who is that guy his name is yast elfers you'll see his name on my books the yast elfers book my first three books um and he's the one that if it weren't for him I wouldn't be here I'd either be dead or I'd be still working in Hollywood and probably be dead anyway he discovered me I've told the story many times but he uh basically gave me my first break and he subsidized me while I wrote the 48 Laws of Power he produced it he designed it together we designed it but so I have I have a lot to owe him and he's still involved yes he designed to cover the daily laws and I'm hoping he'll yeah sure we're still together yeah what do you think is the problem with modern philosophy where did we go wrong well I mean it's a huge subject and you know there are lots of different aspects of philosophy op y but like um everything it's so much in our culture it's kind of lost its Soul so um you know years ago um we kind of somewhere went off on a wrong path we lost faith in just our thinking in our brains in our minds right so Socrates or n or if you know skipping here 2,000 years they didn't sit there and and go through scientific journals about the origins of Consciousness and do studies and data and mathematical formulas to figure out how the brain works or what makes a human being I'm doing a lot of things on Socrates right now because I'm writing about him the stuff he's saying about is absolutely brilliant it's mind-blowing and it's incredibly relevant to our world today but if you were around today then people would laugh at him oh it's all speculative right it's just subjective where's where's the data where's the heart facts there psychology is even more infected with this kind of mindset but philosophy is like that I can't read that stuff you know for me philosophy it has to have like a direct connection to my life to living to my soul to my Day-Day Affairs to what I have to think about when I wake up in the morning kind of thing you know it can't be all about this this ethereal abstract stuff I can't get my brain around it I want to know how to live I want to know how to think I want to know how how to breathe I do a lot of uh I'm heavily into zen meditation and Zen philosophy to me that is like one of the most beautiful forms of philosophy and it's all about how to ground your day-to-day life and you can say Zen can be described as the ultimate realistic philosophy the realist philosophy it's taking you back to what is truly real okay yes they they they kind of the language could be very strange like they they try and present these riddles to you to alter your Consciousness but the essence of it is very relatable and they want you to be able to take their philosophy and live in your day-to-day life and not have a separation between the two so I can't read that stuff that goes on now I just can't read it I mean there's some people whose things I like but they're usually not considered philosophers one of my favorite writers that nobody will have ever heard of he died a couple years ago so he's sort of contemporary is a man named Roberto Colosso he um writes the most fantastic books I would consider it philosophy um he's Italian he ran an edit a a publishing company for many years but he writes books about the ancient world and he mixes it in with with stories and anecdotes he has a book called The Ruins of Kos that's just one of the most brilliant books you'll ever read that to me is philosophy because it stir my soul it makes me think it makes me imagine the world makes me rethink about the life I'm living but so many of the stuff other stuff I just can't read I'm not saying it's their fault maybe it's my own fault but for me it's kind of gone down this this wrong path down a rabbit hole what if you're having to work that hard to resonate with the entire world's worth of philosophy I don't know I feel like it's probably not a you problem if there's a lot of you're you're trying your heart you're opening yourself up and you're only finding small glimmers here and there yeah yeah I mean um so there's a philosopher and you have to excuse me my memory is not what it used to be um maybe his name will come to me he wrote an essay very famous essay about what is it like to be a bat I thought it was great I'm so excited about it and I did I bought the book that it's that's in he's very famous philosopher he's actually quite smart very interesting but the essay is um you're looking up right now I am Thomas Nagel yes Thomas Nagel he's written some very interesting books but they're not they don't grab me the way that that n or schopenhauer or haaker even um grabs me um but his idea about what it's like to be a bat he's trying to essentially say we can't know right because that kind of Consciousness is so different from ours right it's echolocation we have nothing to compare it to therefore get out of your arrogance you can't know it and a part of me understands it but a part of me disagrees with it and because I wrote a chapter in my new book about animal Consciousness and how we can put ourselves inside even something as strange as a bat or a spider and I wrote a lot about how spiders think yes there are limits to it and that's what the point of his essay but so many times with I find particularly now in the world today particularly in Academia is the necessity to say you're against something you're reacting you know he's reacting against people who put too much empathy and anthropomorphized things okay so I'm going to write a book that says the opposite and I'll get attention and I'll get in the New York Times review book BS and people will listen because I'm standing against something so Academia is all about like having some novel stance usually from some cultural perspective whereas the truth is more rounded it's more it's it's not so heart set just reacting and going the opposite direction you're not arriving at the truth so maybe it's a combination of the two maybe there are limits to what we can know about a bat and how it thinks but we have an amazing capacity to put ourselves inside of other beings and to kind of get a feel not an intellectual sense but a feel of what it might be like to echoing echoing you know we can get a feel for that and I talk about spiders and how their more their form of intelligence is all about vibrations they feel in in their eight legs in the bottom of their eight legs they feel the wind blowing they feel the vibrations on the web they feel the weather they know a storm is coming they can sense a creature that is land on their web just by the vibrations and elephants have a very similar uh Power in their feet they can they can sense an earthquake from 10 miles away but we can we can sense that because we can feel vibrations and you know I can't really uh know a spider but spiders are intelligent and the idea that they're intelligent and that they think is a radical idea so I don't know I'm going off on on some tangent here but that's I'm trying to answer your question Spirit of play in that which is fun I think and I know you mean there is a sort of this odd highly scrutinous skeptical uh yeah there's a lack of play uh ex that you said it perfectly thank you that's that you hit the nail right there I learned something else that you taught Billy Oppenheimer I that said Above All Else focus on acquiring Knowledge and Skills Knowledge and Skills are like gold a currency you will trans transform into something more valuable than you can imagine it's similar to one of your tweets which is eventually the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up to you and the fall will be painful what's that mean well um you know uh life can be kind of difficult right um You don't really know sometimes where you're headed nobody kind of gives you any kind of guidance in this world right and they don't tell you when you graduate college go ahead go Robert you go study this this is what you know and you know this is what your brain is suited for etc etc you have to find your own path and so for me personally I spent years in the wilderness um so I'm G I'm going give this a personal spin because I think that helps a little bit because what I can answered inside my own body here so I I know I want to be a writer but I can't figure out what the hell I'm going to write so I leave college and I try journalism because I have to make a living I have to support myself and I don't really like it it doesn't suit me he writes an article and then a week later it's forgotten nobody reads about it and as somebody who studied ancient Greek and Latin in college I think in terms of thousands of years and not in three days or a week you know I want something that I write to be read in 30 204 you know sorry um so wasn't a good fit so I quit I wand around Europe trying to write a novel with my backpack I live in London I live in Paris I lived in irand I lived in Greece you name I taught English in Spain trying to write a novel I had no discipline I couldn't do it it didn't work and I get starting to get depressed then um my dad isn't well I decid I'm going to move back to Los Angeles hey I'm going to get a job in Hollywood right that that'll be I'll make I'll make a ton of money and I'll be writing and you know Etc how glamorous how sexy you know movie star starlets on my knocking on my door Etc okay terrible terrible fit because I'm a control freak I don't like people coming in and changing everything I say and I don't like conforming and I don't like compromise sorry that's bad thing about me but I didn't want to have to lower my my eye standards to to what they were asking me to do is a terrible fit all right now comes the chance I meet this man yo deler as we mentioned earlier in Italy and he says he ask me if I have any ideas for books and I kind of improvised the 48 Laws of Power the point of my long-winded story here is I had spent 18 years or so acquiring in high levels of skill in writing okay I could I learned in journalism how to write under a deadline Under Pressure how to make it dramatic how to make the opening sentence exciting enough to make you read all further trying to write novels taught me about creating stories which is a huge part of my writing working in Hollywood I learned how to research which is a huge element and then the theatrical element making things dramatic also story okay all of that time time Slowly by slowly Brick by Brick I had developed real level skill so when it came time to write the 48 lws of power I could do it I had learned all this discipline I had learned how to write under a deadline I learned how to make things entertaining the whole the whole bag okay and so the World opened up for me prior of that time I was miserable really really was I mean I had good moments too you're young you're always happy when you're young but a lot of times I was miserable and I didn't know why but I was acquiring skills not even aware of it and so the reason I write that is when you develop that skill when you're serious about it because I was very serious about writing you change your brain you rewire your brain it's like uh and this is a remarkable power of the human brain that people don't realize something I'm also writing in my new book um this this one writer uh his name is Schwarz I believe he's a UCLA neuroscientist he wanted to help people who had OCD right obsessive comp you know compulsive disorder and usually it's drugs and it's talking therapy he wanted to find out something more effective and he found that through certain strategies that he developed um that they could use in their life that they would get over their disorder and he the point isn't what the strategies were the point was he did brain scans and through the strategies that he gave them to do which I can't remember right now the brain scans show that they changed the brain and his point was through thinking through developing skills you literally change matter you change your brain so something non-material like thoughts can lit changing material things like the wiring of your brain you learn skills you're changing your brain you're changing the matter of your brain things are connecting that weren't connected before and slowly if you do it if you're serious enough a point will be reached like it was reached in my life where either you will start a business or someone will ask you to do something like write a book or make a film and the world will open up for you and you'll be able to do it because you have that you've laid the ground you you you've laid the soil everything is there it's rich and now something great amazing will Sprout up out of it when you have no talents you have no skill life is a series of endless confusion you you hit this road you go here then something else you go here then you go here you end up in a circle and you don't know where the hell you are when you've got skills Zoom you know where to go it's not it's not zoom it's more like but you're heading somewhere yeah it's not yeah I don't know if we're we being filmed but so yeah so that's that's my answer to your question isn't it interesting that the accumulation of skills period that the time can be a little bit like being in the trenches you have no promise of Glory you don't know if this is even going to work you have no idea whether this is is worth it and you don't even have the context of how the journalism with the novel with the Hollywood with the interpersonal skills with the guy that you meet in Italy with the so on Germany blah blah blah blah uh it's only in retrospect that you get to piece this entire Arc together and I think it's one of the reasons why reserving judgment on whether or not the situation you in right now is good or bad is probably a a pretty good idea because you just don't know what's around the corner that you've been preparing for that you didn't even know existed yes but there are parameters to it it's not like you're totally it's total mystery in the moment so um you know going back to what bothers me about philosophy we're so caught up in things that are rable rational things that can be put into numbers quantifiable data you know Big Data AI etc etc but the human consciousness is more subtle than that is more fine grained no numbers can actually approximate what human consciousness is capable of and what we have sometimes is we have an intuition about things in the moment so maybe in retrospect I'm creating a story that didn't really exist back then but at the same time I kind of knew the future I kind of knew that this would happen I had a feeling of Fate it was always there it's weird I know it sounds woo woo I'm sorry to say but it's very real and I've studied millions of successful famous people and a lot of them report the same thing sometimes you don't real realize it but your body and your brain has a sense of even the future and of where you're headed but you're not totally aware of it so I knew that I wanted to be a writer so if people don't know that they want to be a writer they don't know want to they want to go into engineering it said they'll never make those little connections that I was able to make and having that sense that you want to be a writer that you want to make films that you want to start a particular kind of business if you're interested in technology creates a framework in your brain that kind of changes how you make decisions you're not totally conscious of it but not everything in life you're totally conscious of things are operating below the level so it's something it's the chapter I'm WR right now about my Sublime book there is something in you that is guiding you towards certain things right guided you towards podcasting I don't know your life I don't know your biography before then but something inched you towards that what is that it's interesting to find out it's not all just chaos and random is what I'm trying to say that's beautiful and I agree do not be the CT cynic the ability to express wonder and amazement and seem like you mean it is a rare and dying talent but one still greatly valued yeah I mean um you know I can um I can recall my own childhood for instance growing up here in Los Angeles and um I had a a very vivid imagination which I'm Not Unusual like that most children do but I was always inventing games I loved inventing sports games games with you rolled Dice and you created this whole world I created war games all these different things that my imagination was doing and um and then when I take walks and stuff I was like seeing I was thinking about the world I was going through all kinds of fantasies I was dreaming about the future okay I was innocent like children are supposed to be and in their innocence I was opening up to the world and I was experiencing the world as it is because the reality is we are born into a very very strange and mysterious and wondrous World which is the subject of my book right you take everything for granted but you don't realize that to be alive the odds against you being Chris Williamson are absolutely Astron omal to be around with all this technology where we were as humans 20,000 years ago something you can't even begin to Fathom and when you're a child you ask these questions you know Albert Einstein said the same thing you know he said genius is able to keep questioning to be that child to keep wondering about things right so your ability to wonder to ask questions to not feel like you know all the answers isn't a beautiful thing it's not just to make you more intelligent it also makes you happier so cynics start from a place where they know everything the world is just so rotten it's just everybody is out for power people accuse me of saying that but it's not true everyone's out for power everyone's got like an ulterior motive it's all just about these you know you're really not interested in other people Robert you're interested in making money right cynicism reduces everything to this one level it has nothing to do with reality because reality is much richer and weirder and more mysterious than that so when you're SI when you're a cynic you're missing the beauty of life but also people don't like to be around cynics the court cynic is to get back to your question because um yeah people like maybe some sarcasm I don't deny that but people want to feel that sense of Innocence they want to feel excited they want to feel enthusiastic and if you're a Debbie Downer if everything is like but oh that's what's really going on here you're not really BL blah blah people will like yeah they'll me laugh at your jokes but eventually they're going to push you aside because they don't want to hear that kind of stuff play and enthusiasm huh play and enthusiasm again we're coming back to play yeah I've been using my eight Sleep mattress for years and I absolutely love it I used to find myself waking up in the middle of the night because I was was too hot and this has been completely neutralized by the magic that is eight sleep it is time to upgrade your sleep game with eight sleep's newest generation pod the Pod 4 ultra it can cool down each side of the bed to 20° below room temperature and for those who snore heavily it can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve air flow and stop it and it is clinically proven to give you up to 1 hour more of quality sleep every night best of all they have a 30-day sleep trial so you can buy it try it and if you do not like it after 30 days they will give you your money back plus they ship internationally right now you can get $350 off the Pod 4 ultra by going to the link in the description below or heading to 8sleep.com slod wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout that's EIG HTS sleep.com wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout yeah I'm cultivating that sense similar to another uh tweet you had which I loved the stupidest people are always the ones who think they have the right answer yeah yeah so um getting back to my studies of of the ancient world which is main main part of of me one thing that always excited me was this concept the ancient Greeks that um more harm is caused In This World by stupid incompetent people than by evil people right and what they there's there's a a a word in Greek called fris which is a form of wisdom to use your title here but it's a form of practical wisdom to be able to get things done to navigate through life navigate through people to be balanced and get things done okay so um what makes people stupid and right now we have a lot of stupid people in this world there always have been stupid people people because there are more people on the planet exponentially there are more stupid people on the planet what makes people stupid and I'm sorry I'm just going to tell it like it is is their certainty that they have all the answers this is what's going on with our government this is what's wrong you know with this or that this is what people should be like blah blah blah blah blah so you're narrowing your focus to this little tiny little rail something that you heard from somebody else it's not even your own stupid idea it's you've absorbed it on the internet whatever and you're going down on this this kind of monor rail path me meanwhile the world is all around you and you're just going like zo like that because you're so certain you have the answer and when you have leaders this is to get back to the Greek thing when you have leaders who are so certain they enter they enter a country into a war that have they haven't been thought out of because and and so the Paradigm in in ancient culture was the pelpiii war of between Athens and Sparta the war that ended up kind of being the end of Athenian democracy and of their Golden Era right and it was the idea and and thiddies one of the greatest writers who ever lived wrote the history of the pelian war living at that time he was saying that people the leaders thought oh this will be so easy and think of all the great things when we go and we take Sicily and we conquer that the whole world will and the sparter will be destroyed right it wasn't thought through they were so certain of the answer that they didn't think of the parameters right they didn't think really on a grand Str strategic level so people who are certain of things are very stupid and when they have power they're very very dangerous I'm not saying evil people aren't dangerous but incompetent stupid people who were so certain who haven't thought things through are just as dangerous as evil people I think that's FAL stupid people than there are evil people as well probably probably yeah yeah it's very interesting to think about the uh where the ven diagram intersects for people who are always cynical and people who always have the right answer or who always know they go hand in hand corre they totally overlap yeah correct yeah so um one of your fellow countrymen from 200 years ago exactly L 200 years ago a gentleman named John Keats a poet came up with a concept called negative capability and negative capability he wanted to answer the question was why is Shakespeare another one of your countrymen why was Shakespeare so brilliant well his characters were so realistic because he made them as real human beings and what he could do was they weren't stick figures Shakespeare could think of a person and entertain two things about them at the the same time they could be both evil but also have a strain of goodness inside of them they were complex human beings are complex and negative capability is the essence of being of being creative it means you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time two thoughts that apparently contradict each other but you can entertain them and not grasp at one or the other not past judgment immediately yeah so you're kind of able to deal with ambiguity and you're able to say life isn't that isn't that it's kind of both at the same time that is creativity that is real thinking you know I mean I could go on and on about my ideas about live ideas and dead ideas but this is real live thinking I have been playing with an idea that's basically the same thing just repurposed with a silly meme for me which is a cognitive superp position so like how in physics in physics yes and then when you decide you collapse the super position down um but that I try to you know think in super positions as much as possible there's a very good book written about like that it's not perfect it's pretty good book called the possibility principle you can look that up he tries to apply those kind of ideas in physics to day-to-day life in Psychology it is interesting it's worth looking at so much depends on reputation reputation is the Cornerstone of power through reputation alone you can intimidate and win once it slips however you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides never let others Define it for you yeah um you know so when I wrote the 48 Laws of Power I tried to I have somebody through my whole life loves playing games I don't mean that in the abstract sense I mean literally like chess back gamon Sports poker whatever and um I like the cleanness of a game it's like you do this and you can win Etc but there's also a psychological element in it so particularly when you're playing poker and you're bluffing and you're and I was always fascinated by this it's a game of chance you don't really know what cards you're going to get but that fellow over there he's been bluffing he bluffed before I'm sure he did he's going to do it again right so the psychology starts entering into the picture in a game of chance it's not a game there's skill certainly skill involved but a lot of it's chance and because he bluffed before and he's got that look in his eye could be a woman don't mean to generalize all right I'm going to fold okay so you don't realize that so much of the game of power has nothing to do with data and you being better person at something a lot of it is pure psychology and intimidating people and winning before you even enter into a battle so if you have a reputation you carry it with you and the reputation doesn't have to be real personally I don't know how valid this is I have this reputation now of being this Mackie ofi in characters you know and so if Robert's five minutes late for a meeting it means he's playing a game even though it probably just the traffic but my reputation now kind of put people a little bit on their heels you know where it's not necessarily true about me but it kind of goes ahead of me and it makes it influen proceeds yeah and so it's a extra form of power so the idea you have to the overall arching idea to pull us out of the specific is power is pure psychology pure psychology and what I mean by that is um the CEO of a company he doesn't get there based on it's not like baseball where his balls and Star Soccer sorry you probably don't even know I'm a ranger I'm a Texas Rangers Fan I'll have you know oh okay all right well it's not like baseball where balls you know you hit you have a good batting average or Ops all right you're you're you're going to get in the lineup they're going to bat you in in the cleanup spot okay um life isn't like that so the way somebody Rises to the CEO and I know because I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company it's not about metrics it's not about things that they've actually done it's about psychology right people rise to positions of power because they know how to play the game and they know how to play the game psychology they know how to appear they know how to play the Optics they know how to intimidate they know how to say less than necessary they know all the psychological little gambits and that's why I wrote the 48 Laws of Power it's kind of like this is The Game of Life the game of power the rules are are a little bit nebulous but here's how you play you play by mastering these little psychological bits one of them is your reputation I'm fascinated by reputation and credibility especially given what I do now but my previous life I was a club promoter I ran you were a what club promoter I ran nightclubs for a very long time clip promoter what what do we call that here CL it would still be it would just be a promoter it's called Uh so marketing for nightclubs essentially the GU stood on the front door with the guest list and the bands for VIP and all of the hot girls names and then after a while we owned a group of guys that did that and then we owned a group of guys that owned a and you start to build up this company and um in that every single nightclub that you've ever been to is the same thing it's people getting drunk in a room to music it'll never be anything else you can dress this one up pink and give out inflatable flamingos on the door or this one's really cheap or this one's on a Wednesday and it's sort of naughty that you shouldn't be going out on a Wednesday dress it up however you want it's people getting drunk in a room to music that's all it's ever going to be and what I realized from doing that was the power of reputation this isn't the reputation of a person it's the reputation of a brand but if your company is known for always putting on good parties then you get to benefit from that and is when you have a reputation for good putting on good parties people come more people come you have better yep correct so this is the this sort of odd and this is the the really important Point uh never let others Define it for you uh and uh when you are vulnerable you'll be attacked on all sides because as it's going up it it does it predes you it continues to do work for you exponentially growing and growing but when you're starting to go down even your best work will sometimes be derated to be worse than it is so you have done something that is good but because of your reputation you're a liar you're a phony you're a grifter you're a shill you're a fake that's right yeah it credibility is the one thing that you should never sell because you cannot buy it back there is no return policy on your credibility and and people are so getting back to the word stupid I mean it's a theme they post things on social media when they're young not realizing that 5 years later when they're trying to get a job at a law firm they're like you know sure they're doing incredibly ridiculous things on Instagram and that part of their reputation everything you do is reflected through the social world right nothing is in isolation people are continually judging you so you have to be aware you have to think before you post you have to think how are people going to take this if I say this stupid rude thing that comes right out of me because I don't control my my my tongue it's going to ruin my one fault step will ruin your reputation does a British MP who is receiving on the receiving end of a tweet from 2009 which has come back around I think I read about this you like get these Estonian retards out of my house right now so I don't mean to laugh about it's terrible estonians are very smart people get these Estonian retards out of my house right now I want these whatever and uh she's had to do this rving apology but I mean you know when was Twitter when did Twitter start probably 2008 or so this is you know it's is early this is the equivalent of the big bang you know this is the whatever it is microwave cos cosmic background of tweets and um yeah the I I just love that I really I really think that the reputation Point can't be overstated and you know I've got to see in this industry as well both whether it's authors podcasters YouTube there are some people who have traded reputation and credibility for uh money or for short-term trades that didn't make sense and they've not ended up coming off in one form or another they've tried to cash it in now give me an example like going to Spotify and H no no not that do not name names no not that um interestingly with with Joe move to Spotify that was something that he got an an awful lot of credibility for and that's one of the interesting things had it have been with a different platform that didn't carry as much uh weight gravitas they have their own reputation it becomes multiplicative as opposed to sort of subtractive yeah I know of course like uh getting a Nike sponsorship is cool hoay for you that's not you selling out but getting a sponsorship with some brand that everybody thinks is really like lame that is selling out you're obviously only doing it for the cash um but you know there's a ton of guys that have held political positions or have swayed With the Wind just blown with the whatever it goes this way whenever it goes that way and the interesting thing is even if they've made a ton of money from it even if it's been advantageous in one domain I actually think that if you gave them the opportunity they would give all of it back and some to be able to regain their reputation I think they would give anything they could to be back in the cool kids club and there's no return policy on credibility well the other thing about reputation and credibility is it has to be consistent so um you have to like it's like a brand you're you're known for something you're known for being strong you're known for being self-confident you're known for being Machiavellian or whatever it is funny or light-hearted or Y and there's a certain kind of you know shape to it and if you're like all over the map and you're going over here your reputation is about that is about this it looks weak it makes it look like because we want to we want to feel like people judge on appearance they don't judge on the reality of who you are they don't know who I am or who you are they judge on what they see and what they how we appear and if those appearance they want to have something consistent that they can grab on to they want to say something simple that guy is funny and that's who he is you know this guy is that they want a very simple formula and if you can't be consistent if you're all over the place if you're changing your ideas you're Conservative then you're liberal blah blah and you're trying to to tack with each wind to get power yeah you'll get some power that way but it'll make you look weasy it'll make you look distrustful and people won't like that and your reputation will be one of somebody who has no soul who has no core so reputation also has to have a consistency a core to it a soul that binds it all together especially if it seems like it's being done for a contrived reason you know I think people are fine with people changing their mind as long as show me you're working explain to me how you got from that position to this one don't do it beyond the sort of Tolerance level that we all have of this is a little bit too much I've updated I used to be Pro this now I'm anti- that um yeah I I really do think an awful lot about the value of of reputation and um in another way it's very never let anybody else Define it for you um you know allowing that sort of vacuum to to seep in loses you your power over your reputation and allows other people to derate it on the other hand if you're very mauian person poke holes in the in your enemy's reputation and you will destroy them bring up things that are inconsistent with the reputation and you will have ruin be like a popping a balloon it'll just go like that you know and I talk about how in that chapter how PT baram played that game to ruin other people's reputation and make people wonder is he really like that I guess not because I just saw this fact that contradicts it so I'm giving you some very evil ma valan advice out there if you have enemies one of the meanest things I'm not a mean person I don't like being mean sure it's true but I spent a Thousand Nights on the front door of nightclubs with drunk people so you need a few defense mechanisms and what you realize especially when people have had alcohol is that people fall into only a small number of buets and behavior usually pretty predictable and one of the things that we realized as kind of a script that we could run when somebody was getting a little bit mouthy remembering that were flanked by big British gorillas right you've got door staff all around you no not me I was I was the guy that I was the dude in the skinny jeans with the clipboard I had the I had you know six foot six dudes with leather gloves on either side of me they were give me your ID etc etc and um one of the things that used to work it was so mean but it worked so well if somebody started they'd been ejected or they hadn't been allowed into the club or something had happened we'd always say mate sorry you need to get away from me your breath stinks and it's completely unfalsifiable Because unless someone's going to come over and smell it they can't say no it doesn't and it just immediately enters this person into this it you just watch the color drain from them so yeah I uh oddly breath apparently hosis is reputation as well or or just body odor yep that's great any smell it's just it's so I'm going to remember remember that it's really good it's really I your breath stinks I need to just can you give me a little bit of room oh it's just used to pull people apart in other the news this episode is brought to you by element for the last three years now I have started my morning every single day with element it is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't each grab and go stick pack contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium with no sugar no coloring no artificial ingredients or any other junk sodium plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health regulating appetite and curbing Cravings I keep hopping on about it because 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by the time you become 28 they can hire somebody 24 when they hired you but for less money they will do that right away it's a brutal world so if you're replaceable you will be replaced so the only defense about that against that is to be irreplaceable in this world and the good news is that you are at at your core Irreplaceable there is something strange and weird about you once again I hate to say it but it's a chapter that I'm writing right now for my my Sublime book okay and so and I explain in Mastery where that comes from biologically your DNA how you are marked as a unique individual at Birth the combination of variant in your chromosomes is mathematically impossible for it to ever be replicated yes the variations are marginal the differences aren't great between you and me but those little differences are the differences between me liking this kind of hip-hop music and you liking a different kind of hip-hop music right it creates your inclinations that creates your tastes and so what the game of life is involves is knowing your uniqueness is knowing who you are is knowing what makes you weird and What Makes You odd okay and the problem is is that we're social animals and the pressure continually honest is to fit into a group is to be like other people to have their ideas to have their values to have their tastes to dress like them okay and that happens when you're young you're in your adolescence we all go through that phase I went through that phase but if you keep on that track when you're in your 20s and on which is happening a lot today through social media you're going to lose that sense of what makes you odd and different I compare it to a voice when you're very young that little voice in you is going Robert you should be a writer Chris you should be a blah blah blah blah blah I don't know what it is right it's telling you something and as you get older you don't hear it anymore because you're hearing all the other you're hearing your voices if your parents the teachers the culture around you your peers your friends telling you this is what's cool this is what's not cool and that little voice comes completely drowned out and so you don't know who you are anymore and you're afraid particularly young people today I mean maybe it's always been that way are so afraid of being different they're so afraid of being odd but look look at all the powerful people in this world look at your Elon Musk look at your celebrities in in entertainment in business and politics they're oneof a kind they they have like you I hate that word but it's like a brand they're different they stand out for something that's truly different you know even Albert Einstein there's nobody else like Einstein there's nobody like Da Vinci okay that's where your power lies and you'll go oh but Robert those are people that were brilliant that were talented I'm not like that I don't have that well [ __ ] you do have that it's just you you're it's you're not you're forgetting about it and you don't want to put the effort into it I talked in Mastery of a woman named Temple grandon who is born with severe severe autism and she was able to find her way to become a very brilliant Professor academic writer and about animals animal behavior and about autism itself she found her way to it when she couldn't when she was three or four she couldn't even speak any language she was going to be hospitalized you have that potential it's just you're not putting the effort into you were lazy you want to fit into the group you want to conform because it's easy but your oddness what makes you weird What Makes You Different that little strange quirk in how you want to dress yourself that little strange quirk in your musical tastes that little quirk in the food that you like to eat that is who you are those are signs from deep within from your core from your soul there that this is who you are and if you lose that not only are you not going to be successful in life you will also Lose Yourself and you will be Mis you'll be unhappy you'll be UNF you'll be alienated from who you are and you can get away with that when you're young because you're happy you look good you've got energy things are going right you get into your 30s and you're like everybody else and you don't know who you are and you don't know what you like anymore you just following the trends you start to get depressed and you start going down this this rabbit hole and things can turn really ugly so you need a bit of courage in life you need to go okay I am weird I am strange you know lean into it so um when I had the 48 law of power when it first when I first wrote the book um without it being published yet it was a very Strang looking book and it reflects my own strangeness things on the margins stories everything broken up images quotes here and there it's kind of how my brain is a hodge podge kind of a mess really and the Publishers they bought the book but then they came back to us and they said Robert can you kind of maybe make this more like other books can you get rid of all those sections and everything and I said no take it or leave it this is the book as it is it's odd it's strange they didn't like that because if it doesn't fit into all the other books that I've had successful it's too big of a risk if this movie isn't like the movies that were made last year who knows we'll go see it people are so conservative but because it was odd it stood out and it was successful if I had succumbed and I compromised and made it more like other books I wouldn't be here talking to you so sometimes you need a little bit of koness you need a little bit of courage and you to stand up and say I'm okay being different it's fascinating that lots of people maybe most people want to be extraordinary in some way but also don't want to stand out that in a way that allows them to be mocked but you know the latter is the price of the former you can't behave the way that everybody else does and expect to not get the results that everybody else gets it's like I think about regressing to a mean that doesn't exist uh you know that everybody is idiosyncratic and unusual in their their own way and we're all imagining this sort of odd 50th percentile Avatar that is the most acceptable but when we think about why we love the people that we love we don't love them for how average they are no one's ever said do you know what it is I'm just boted with how predictable all of her opinions are no one's ever said that we love people for their eent eccentricities and uh a friend George has the idea of non-fungible people like non-fungible tokens that it's un Irreplaceable there is nobody else like them yeah yeah yeah uh if you think about your favorite memories from your favorite people it's not from the things that are easily replaceable it's from the fact that they were just obsessed with football and when the football was on the TV you could talk to them and they wouldn't even turn to you or it was the fact that they hated violence or they love dogs every dog walked into the room and they would be gone they would be away that's what we love people for and my favorite uh strange person from history Salvador Daly and I would take it one step further you said you kind of have this it's it's advantageous and also uh psychologically healthy for you to embrace who you are fully I actually think in some ways it's a maybe I would go as far as to say that it is our duty to humanity I think it's yeah our duty to embrace the things that only you can do yeah well in um in nature um the diversity of species in a habitat make it vital make it alive make it sustainable and that comes from mutations in the genetic code some insect has a mutation and therefore a whole new species a whole new thing splinters off from that and it creates variety well in human culture is like a habitat in a way um so you marked with uniqueness by your genetic code insects don't really have individuality we have individuality and they are like mutations and so your mutation your difference you being Chris is for a purpose you marked that way because by mining your uniqueness your weirdness your oddness your little quirky tastes you're going to contribute something new to the culture and contributing something new to the culture you enrich it you keep it turning around and round and around cultures in the past that die on the vine don't have any variety you know you can look at like the Soviet Union at its most uh you know decadent or when it was really at its worst phase like in 70s and 80s there's no change there's no variety early on there was all sorts of weird different voices they ended up getting imprisoned and murdered okay but a culture has to have variety it has to have a diversity of voices like a gene pool or an immune system yeah and so you by being odd you're contributing to that you're contributing to the culture by not doing that you're not contributing at all and that's a real waste of what nature gave you I always think again about Dolly I spent quite a bit of time researching him and I think as brilliant as they were Michelangelo didn't do Dolly d Vinci didn't do dolly in fact there's that uh famous job application that Da Vinci sends I think to the king of Italy and da Vinci is sort of listing all of the different things that he can do I can make machines for war and a trebuchet and a blah blah blah the final paragraph he writes the sentence also I can paint I I always think about also I can paint what is the also I can paint that I don't see in myself what are the things that my friends really value perfect example the guy that I was talking about earlier on George I um I've been learning a little bit about myself and I I discovered over the last year that I'm a people pleaser in some regard and I was lamenting this to him over Christmas as we were driving to go and get food and I sort of brought up something I'd done with him which was sort of being overly cautious that I I would have done something that would have annoyed him or or or or stepped on his toes in in some Manner and uh he said I just want to sort of stop you there because I'm aware that to you you've been able to frame that is people pleasing in this thing that is malignant and you want to get rid of but to me that's you thinking about me first which is actually one of the things that makes me love you as a friend so be very careful sort of labeling areas creating an unnecessary value judgment and I think getting in getting another perspective and that that really gave me pause I just thought yeah I'm so agreeable with all of these things and I hate disappointing people and I think that other people's emotional states are my responsibility and so on and so forth and then I bring it up to a friend and he says yeah that's why I love you yeah and uh was interesting yeah I mean um it's good to have a little bit of control over something so if in certain situations sometimes it's good to be able to not be so pleasing because I'm a people pleaser too it's my nature so I understand that and sometimes you have the feeling that it's not coming from the right place correct you're not choosing to you're obligated to by nature and you're feeling a little bit of fear involved in it y fear of displeasing a fear of rejection a fear of being different um and it could probably goes back to Childhood and to my parents we probably have similar parental uh Dynamics um so but what's good about what you're saying is and I completely agree and I wrote about this I think in human nature is that you have this quality you can't really control it it's who you are you know it's either genetic or it comes from those first couple of years with your mother or father so make it work for you find the way that it's a strength and see it as a strength and use it and don't have second thoughts about it use it for power right and don't be so conflicted about it it's all how you look at it and there's a reason why you're a people pleaser and you can if you weren't a people pleas you wouldn't be doing podcasting you'd be this [ __ ] I would never have agreed podcast right so um it's just that in moments you wish you could control it on kind of like the grass is greener thing that we were talking about before we got started you know this assumption that the thing you don't have is more valuable than the one that you do or that things would be fixed if only you could have that but what else comes along for the ride you know if you got rid of your people pleasing nature what are the little parasites that your lack of people pleasingness would also have attached to it are you sure are you really sure that that's the thing that you want exactly yeah well that's where it comes down to um knowing yourself and knowing what makes you different and knowing these are things you can't really change so um my wanting to be a writer or Tiger Woods wanting to be a golfer when he's like two years old there's probably some genetic component in it and maybe there's some early bonding but there's probably a genetic component to it you can't control it it's who you are and maybe that you can't control it is a good thing and maybe it's there for a reason and maybe if you wanted to do something else that wouldn't work out so my knowing that I wanted to be a writer instead of you know a businessman or a lawyer like my parents wanted to be probably saved my life to be honest with you you so knowing what makes you different is kind of going to guide you past these these dangerous moments in life to and and make you want to do to change who you are because you feel pressure social pressure to change who you are yeah to regress to this imaginary mean yeah two um elements I think of me that are genetically predisposed or uh at least very deeply embedded um the first one is I've always liked to talk and ask questions and as a child uh I always used to get in trouble in school because unfortunately my voice appears to carry further than everybody else's so even though the naughty kids would be genuinely being naughty poking other people with [ __ ] protractors or something I would be the one that was heard even though I wasn't misbehaving as much I would be the one that was heard you being nosy you know children should be seen and not heard you stop being so no why you asking all of these questions would be one of them and the other one is Solitude I'm an only child I spent a lot of time listening to audio books in my room playing with toys on my own throwing a ball off the wall and seeing if I could kick it off that wall and then catching it hours hours and hours and hours I didn't have anybody else didn't have anybody else to play with uh and you think well God you know this the the things that you're punished for when you're a child or the things that you think are malignant when you're a child you're often rewarded for if you can just find a way to alchemize them as an adult so I'm sure that your ability to sit and read or go to a cabin or right in your room and you nobody's come and gone and you haven't noticed and you think well my solitude as a child was maybe something that I lamented or or that I saw as a weakness or something like that and yet it's a superpower when I become an adult if I can find the way to channel it and the same thing for the the question asking or the listening to audiobooks you know what's the 2024 internet version of an audio book it's a podcast it's what I'm doing right now uhhuh yeah yeah um and uh you know it really just comes down to um being aware of of who you are what makes you different and being comfortable with it and so you're going to have moments where you're not comfortable with it you want to conform and you want to be like other people and you know you went through that and I went through that in adolescence in particular on through the 20s you make some changes to things because you think it's cool but you keep coming back you keep coming back to being alone you keep coming back to doing throwing the ball against the wall in some metaphoric way no no no no no no I'm I kid you not the way that I like to relax now in between sessions of work I get a tennis ball and throw it against the wall it's the most bizarre thing I I had the same thing but I uh because I'm American mine was baseball and I I had a ball and I'd throw it against the garage door and I would play all these different games with with my glove on and I would catch it and and I would imitate the crowd cheering me and I had this was a home run this was C you know and if I had if I could do it today I still would so I understand that but you come back to these things because they're so strong in you yeah and you can't help it and they give you relief and they give you comfort and they Who You Are and so it all comes down to do you come back to these things or do you change because of the pressures of other people and what is the difference why are some people like that and some people are not and that's the million-dollar question because swimming upstream or swimming Downstream is working against or working with your nature yeah and trying to find a way to make it work for you as opposed to trying to change it so that you can find a way to make it work yeah makes a lot of sense Shan Puri who does my first million very very smart guy I remember one of the first conversations I ever had with him on Zoom he had a sort of small leather black basketball uh in his hand and we were just talking and he was a little bit further back in his desk and he was tossing it like this and rolling it along the desk and sort of throw it in the air like what R so it wasn't like we were writing anything it was a casual conversation between friends I said what what are you doing he says oh I grew up playing basketball I'm happiest with a ball in my hand yeah and I thought holy [ __ ] that's every time that I go to the park it there's a tennis ball that's now mine for the rest of it and I'll bounce it in my hands until we finish up and then I'll you know the tennis ball charity pool that it goes back it goes back into the park and I thought holy [ __ ] so I I came up with a name for that which is a a weirdness role model and it's somebody who does a thing that sort of breaks the ceiling on what you thought was acceptable behavior you've seen this guy do a thing and you go oh my God like maybe I could have a ball on my desk maybe I could have a tennis ball or a cricket ball on my desk and that means that I can because I've seen this guy do it and it's it's a weirdo role model or a weirdness role model yeah yeah well uh I think we all need that in our life um people who were different I remember in in high school I had an English teacher who kind of changed the course of my life and um he was very weird he was very different his way of thinking was different and how he talked about writing and literature was very odd and I other students hated him he and I thought he was just fantastic so it's kind of interesting what you said that was a role model I could see and he was just a high school teacher so it wasn't like a career path for him but I could see that having that kind of quality was a good quality and I was attracted to it traveling should be about the journey not the chaos of packing which is why I have been using nomatic backpack and Carry On Pro for over a year now this thing is the best backpack on the planet I did an entire month on tour on just hand luggage alone it's like the Swiss army knife of travel pack they've got pockets for your laptop your clothes your snacks it is so well organized that even your toothbrush feels important and the amount of thought that they' put into every pouch and zipper is incredible it's beautifully designed it's not over engineered and it will literally last you a lifetime with that lifetime guarantee so this is the final backpack that you will ever buy plus they also offer international shipping free shipping on orders over $49 in the United States and if you don't like it for any reason you can return or exchange it within 30 days so you can buy it completely risk-free fill it with all of your possessions and if you don't like it they'll give you your money back right now you can get a 20% discount by going to the link in the description below or heading to Nom matic.com wisdom using the code mw20 a checkout that's Nom matic.com wisdom and mw20 a checkout you are Your Own Worst Enemy you waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present since nothing seems urgent to you you're only half involved in what you do yeah um well I like to think of uh who the the human animal is I like to take this out of the little specific and go into the meta area here and um what it meant to be human we're very creative species right we have language we have Consciousness we have immense Powers those Powers developed under the pressures of necessity of having to get things done of having to survive in a very brutal ruthless world where a leopard could pop out tomorrow and and eat me where there were dangers all around where there was food was scarce and under the pressure we had to think we had to be creative we had to be inventive we had to be strategic the human brain brain evolved under immense amounts of pressure okay that's how the brain works and I almost like to think of it in terms of barometric pressure so in your brain when you're feeling that barometric pressure it's like I got to get this done or I'm going to fail and I'm not this project won't happen and and people will laugh at me you work like a fiend energy your whole body responds right your blood gets moving you you accomplish things that would normally take you months you do it in days because you feel that pressure you take away that pressure and you don't know what to do and I've got like three years I could do this or that another you just wander around you're lost you have no energy you have no Focus you know you're maybe playing video games maybe you're watching porn you're kind of distracting yourself in the moment but it's but your energy is just being being dissipated in like 20 different directions so your brain needs pressure it needs constant pressure and stress and pressure is not a bad thing we have this thing where we feel like stress is bad it's bad for you bad you know you need to relax man you need to chill stress will kill you no being bored will kill you not having anything to do will keep is much more dangerous than stress yes you can work too hard you can work where there's no soul involved I work like a fiend because I'm writing a book and it's very hard process for me and I'm working far too much but man I love it it's fantastic right and it could kill me the stress could give me gave me a stroke but I'd rather die under the stress than be bored and have nothing to do okay so feeling that pressure it makes your eyes pop open it makes your brain focus it makes you a word makes you want to live it makes everything seem exciting to you because you've got to get things done so I'm writing a book right now I could take 12 years to write it but that wouldn't be very I wouldn't feel good about it so I give myself deadlines I gave myself a deadline of finishing this chapter by July 31st here it's August 7th I haven't finished it but now I'm working double hard to try and finish it in time because if I didn't have a deadline I would take forever Manana Manana Manana yeah so create pressure for yourself is a good thing you know I gave a talk recently in which I talked about Thomas Edison the great inventor and Thomas Edison was a young man he's in his early 30s he had invented the photograph and a new wave for the telegraph but he wasn't hadn't really had any major inventions he had started Meno Park his industrial park for doing research we're talk about the 1870s I believe but he did something very interesting and very strange um I don't know how conscious it was but he gave an interview with a newspaper and he said I've been working on creating the incandescent light bulb now before that there was the AR light which was a light that was really powerful it used far too much energy you couldn't use it in the house the way houses were lit was with Gaslight gas light was dangerous was explosive and and it and the companies in America that that had a monopoly on it so the prices was very corrupt business so he goes I'm working on the incandescent light bulb reporters that's interesting yeah I'm close to I'm close to getting I'm close to nailing it wow and he goes yeah and in five years I'm going to light the entire city of New York with the incandescent light with electric light who that go crazy they published this article and the stock prices of gas start going down down down down down money flows into his coffers because the ab the cheapness of light of a light bulb the profits are just insane so money is pouring in he goes back to his Meno Park where he develops ideas and his employees who are reading about this go Mr Edison what are you thinking you had just tinkered with the incandescent light bul we're not even near inventing it we're not even near creating it and the idea of lighting New York it's it's what were you thinking what were you smoking the equivalent thereof and he goes well gentlemen I said it to this major newspaper we better get to work we better make it happen what happened with all the money that came in he could now hire the people to do it but the pressure of getting that done in five years made him do it in five years it was a Monumental work of persistence and discipline and tell but he had a deadline he didn't want his reputation he didn't want to disappoint the public he had to get it done in 5 years and he did get it done in five years so he created his own pressure by using the publicity angle and people are going to expect it when's it happening has it happened yet you said it was going to have happened by now yeah yeah yeah I think uh Naval ravikant talks about how when he was at one of the first companies he ever worked for in Silicon Valley and he started telling people I'm going to start my own startup and 6 months later he was still there and everyone said I thought you were starting your own startup and that was the push out of the door for him he couldn't bear the expectation that he'd put not on himself only on himself but also from other people too so I suppose our um need to be socially consistent can be bad when it's maybe derating your uniqueness your idiosyncrasies and your weirdness but if you can funnel it to motivate you to go forward yeah it's the reason why you know I don't think that I would be particularly successful um being a journalist for instance uh despite the fact that I do three episodes a week for it's been four years that we've done that it's been six years the show's been going but this is because my need to not look silly in front of other humans and how much I am uh infused by the presence of others even whilst being quite introverted means that by doing a podcast I've never not shown up I've never canceled because of something that hasn't been you know justifiable reason so I don't want to look silly in front of the person I'm sat opposite if it was me in a blank piece of paper God the motivation to do that you know every three times a week I need to come up with a new column of a thousand words that be whereas for the person who wants to just write on their own and come up with headlines and St oh guys sit down with a person again have a conversation with them and ask them questions and that's not my sort of thing um so yeah being able to use the social mores to kind of pull you to where you want to be to understand again your own yeah fallibility and and insecurities and attach those like a South and a North magnet sort of use that to pull you along yeah I always like to um to Riff on what you're saying I always like to challenge myself um so I never each book that I do I'm now on my eighth book is different from the other one right and my books take several years to write they're not like I can't put put them out in six months each one is different from the last one and I'm taking a risk because my readers are expecting Robert to write about strategy and power now he's writing about Mastery seduction seduction yeah now he's writing about the sublime what the hell was his problem okay it's a challenge and the challenge is good because it gets my energy l levels going but if I took a challenge that was too difficult so there's a level here so I could go here and write another 48 Laws of Power would be like this it would be kind of easy I could go here and write a book on how to build a a skyscraper out of 10 I don't know whatever okay I can never write it I can never it's too big of a challenge or you know the history of all human ideas okay that would be the equivalent there okay no I kind of go here it's a challenge it's not here boring 48 Laws of Power part two it's not history of world ideas 4,000 Pages it's here it's a little bit above me it's going to get my energy going but it's not impossible and that's the that's the game of life so if Edison had said I'm going to light the entire world in five years no way New York was was a pretty he I'm I'm going to light New York in 50 years also yeah exactly which is probably more realistic um you know uh it was a challenge it was a pretty big challenge but it was not an impossible one we'll get back to talking to Robert in one minute but first I need to tell you about ag1 in my quest for the best greens drink on the planet I went through just about every single option and after a year of testing I found ag1 three years later I still use it every single day because it is so much more than just greens it is the most comprehensive highly tested and rigorously formulated supplement I've ever found with one single scoop of ag1 you're replacing multiple Health supplements like multivitamins digestive AIDS immune supports and more it is NSF certified meaning that even Olympic athletes can use it there is a 90-day money back guarantee so if you've heard about ag1 you're thinking about trying it you can buy it completely risk-free try it for 89 days and if you do not like it they will give you your money back plus they ship internationally right now you can get a free Supply vitamin D3 and K2 five free ag1 travel packs plus that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink a1.com modern wisdom that's drink a1.com slod wisdom it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt yeah uh the proverbial one hit wonders um you know uh what happens is you know there was there was a real syndrome in in Hip Hop and uh you know I talked a lot about that with 50 where um you come from we come from the hood and you've never had any kind of money and then overnight you've got you know six figures seven figures you've got women like you know Left Right Center coming to you you've got all this power and attention and celebrity and it goes to your head and you start partying and you start thinking um like well uh okay I better put out another album but you get a little bit conservative now because you want to keep going and you think that you've got a formula for it right and then you're second album doesn't do nearly as well so but if that first album didn't do well and you were smart about it it would have taught you a valuable lesson about about the music industry so 50 he uh he did his first album called power of the dollar and I I I have a kind of a bootleg copy of it he gave me it's it's absolutely F you it's available now pretty much on the Internet it's absolutely fantastic but right before it was to be launched he got shot and the produc producers dropped him on the pro dropped his the album they didn't release it and they dropped him from Columbia Records it's too dangerous it was a drug beef and we can't have this guy touring if he's gonna be there's going to be violence and so he was thinking you know the failure instead of it had been a big hit would have gone to his head he you know who knows what would have happened to him here he was like completely at back to square zero in fact worse he had nothing he did all this work and he had this price on his head and and nobody would come near him and he wanted to learn what the lesson was from this from his this failure it wasn't really it wasn't his fault it although it sort of was because he he had been a crack dealer and it was like a previous beef that had he hadn't really resolved so you know it was maybe partially his fault anyway um he goes well the lesson is I can't be dependent on a record label they're too conservative they're too cautious I'm somebody who lives on the edge my music plays on the fact that I was a crack dealer that I live dangerously that I'm the real thing that I'm not a fake gangster I'm the real thing okay so what am I going to do I'm not going to put out a record I'm going to do mixtapes and I'm going to sell them on the streets of of Queens and then Brooklyn and then Manhattan you know just these little tapes these singles and I'm going to be as violent his first one that he puts out it's called [ __ ] you he's saying [ __ ] you to everybody who ever doubted me [ __ ] you who tried to kill me [ __ ] you to the record labels pardon my language Etc so he learned from that he learned not to take success for granted and he built on that and so he's not a one- hit wonder so sometimes success when in your 20s is the worst thing that can happen to you because you have no discipline you have no perspective you think it's just going to keep going the way it is you're not aware of all the dangers out there you don't have life experience enough to realize how things can turn on you very quickly if I had been given the chance to write the 48 Laws of Power when I was in my 20s and I had success it would have ruined me I probably wouldn't have had success why because I wasn't ready for it look Chris I had had so much failure until I was essentially 39 years old pushing 40 that I had perspective that I know what it's like to to fail and so when I had success wasn't like wow I'm the greatest thing that ever happened I can just live off this forever my next book's going to be fantastic no have a little voice in me it says Robert you failed so many times you're probably going to fail again right you've seen so many people in Hollywood who who started off hot and and and and bombed I had experience to know that I can't take this for granted I have to be careful I have to be strategic I have to build on it and not let the success go to my head and it didn't go to my head when I wrote The Art of Seduction I was so worried that book would fail I was certain it was going to fail I felt that way about every single book I've ever written you know I still feel that way you know I this this next book certain it's it's it's it's doomed to failure I better make it the best book of all so if if you you get drunk on your success you know and uh don't get high on your own Supply was the the phrase that 50 would always say so um you know you want to keep your feet on the ground you want to know that failure is nipping at your bugs that your next your next podcast Chris could be the worst one of your life you'll say the wrong thing and suddenly everything will start cratering MH that put keeps you on the edge and you don't take your success for granted yeah I'm very glad when I look back at the period that when we first spoke uh up until the period the second time that we spoke so we did about it was about episode 78 it was about episode sort of 350 something like that and um that period if you look at the graph of plays and followers and money is like that it's just flat the graph is just totally flat between the two there's a little upward tilt and it's the lore of anything which becomes exponential that as you start to zoom out more it makes the very beginning look even more poultry and it's that up to there but that's only been the last two years oh two and a half years it's there and I you know I tell the story that there was days in 2018 uh the year that we launched the show where we'd been going for maybe 10 episodes 20 episodes something you know we're halfway through the first year there was days where we do no plays I'm still releasing weekly episodes and there was days where there would be no one no place you know my mom listened to every episode and i' got friends I'm still in the guilt ridden you should listen to my new thing thing and zero plays none nothing I'm like that's insane and uh I I'm glad I'm glad it makes me you know every time that I get to find a random Garage in the middle of LA and think oh we get to light this and make it look like a cinema movie like a a Hollywood movie in Hollywood how cool is that and it's framed up against something which is smaller there's a a documentary that I'd really love to get you to watch it's called how I'm feeling now by lwis Capaldi so he's a Scottish singer you would recognize a ton of his songs and um basically it charts this challenge that he has Scottish dude a very non-typical like a like a chubby young guy he not like a heart throb or anything uh with Scottish accent as well and very self-deprecating which is which is charming he's Charming in that way but he writes these songs when he's 17 he's playing them in working men's pubs all around Scotland and then he gets picked up by Universal records and he releases this album and it goes beyond into Stella just the biggest billions and billions of streams and he does a world stadium tour and glastenbury mainstage everything everything everything everything and then he has to do a second one he has to do it again and the stress of another album yeah he has to do a second album uh and this is an interesting twist I think on uh it's a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt um because he is someone that I think did learn the right lessons from it going right on his first attempt that he shouldn't take things for granted that maybe that was a fluke that he does still need to work hard some of the lessons that failure would have taught you uh but he just has this unbelievable pressure because the bar he has got he's taken the chairlift to the top of Everest and he goes well what how how am I supposed to top yeah that you know I it's the classic thing as well I suppose that you have a lifetime to write your first book and then well I mean most people maybe two years for you six years uh to write your to write your second um you got this wealth this big well to dig into material for the first one and then it's like congratulations now do it again yeah you go again but right I I just I just did go yeah yeah yeah but again and uh he I think he'd love the the documentary it's very I willing what's the name of it again how I'm feeling now on Netflix yeah well um a lot of it is um comes to your own your own level of wisdom about um do you have some perspective so it's possible that somebody could have success in their 20s and they would be able to handle it but it's probably because they came they they had a family background or something behind some kind of experience behind it because by Nature we are always thinking that we're better than we are our self- opinion we're really I'm probably like this I think I'm like this right some people is like this the moment you have success you think you have the Golden Touch people start a lot of the worst thing that happens to you is the people that surround you and they go my God you're a genius you know you're absolutely brilliant and then you want to bounce ideas off of them they go that's fantastic go ahead go go on right whereas you want them to say it's [ __ ] it's terrible you have the worst idea but now you're followed you're surrounded by sycophants and yes people yeah and they're telling you how great you are you see that with a lot of celebrities I wonder whether that was the role for the court cynic in some ways to offset the SI of you talking about the court or the Court Jester I I suppose so but I don't know whether the court cynic is just uh like a colloquial term or whether was a genuine role but I could imagine that it would be useful I know the jester was there to be the only one that could mock the king with impunity basically um but if I was a king in the Medieval ages if I was a noble King a smart one I would have employed a court cynic and I've employed the court cynic to only come up with counter positions that even if the entire room the whole Council thought that it was fantastic tell me how this is wrong that's part of my am Consulting with business people um that I've had over the years I that's the role that I play bring Robert in he'll tell us it [ __ ] but they don't listen to me that's that's the main lesson you know I tell people think of all the things that are going to go wrong with your plan let's game this out this could go wrong this could go wrong the public might react this way a competitor might be already anticipating the same thing will come out let's gain this out and let's make sure that the launch of your product is foolproof okay so we think of all the things that can go wrong all right then let's alter the strategy let's go here a little more instead of going here they never listen to me have you tried telling them it's going to go right and then they might and then they might say oh God Robert said it was going to go right we definitely need to change something you mean reverse psychology I might need to try that might be the that might be the next one okay this I I really like this one being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a Target you should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself yeah um well you know you want if if everything is easy in life um if everyone loves what you're going to do and you have no enemies you have no opposition nothing to resist you're just going to be mush you're not going to amount to anything you're not going to be able to push yourself you know I could be a to change evolve Muhammad Ali said if I didn't have Joe Frasier around I would not have become the great boxer that I am I mean he would have been a great boxer anyway but a a nemesis like Joe Frasier put me on a much higher level is there not a line in Batman where the Joker says I complete you if he doesn't there should be but it seems like the sort of thing that he fledges said in there but it it is the truth without the Joker what's the Batman yeah and I I love the idea you should relish the chance to prove yourself um pressure is a privilege in that way yeah um you know I I uh when I was doing the book with 50 Cent the 50th law um I was very kind of timid and I decided um to make it really a book about 50 because I was kind of like he's the celebrity who am I so I wrote a very 50 Centric version of the book about his business Etc and nobody liked it in fact the publisher canceled the project and here I was my reputation was on the line could have been a humiliating blow to me okay and so um another publisher comes in and he says Robert you need to change the idea you need to make it more about you and not less about him but more about you and your style and your ideas the intersection yeah so oh [ __ ] I spent a lot of time working on this because if you do that I I'll I'll I'll I'll publish the book I go well my reputation I'll be I'll be ruined if I don't okay and so all right I'll do it he goes okay the bad news is you have eight months to do that I work like a fiend now I didn't have an enemy here so but the challenge it was like I was in a boxing ring with Joe Frasier right I had to raise my game it was the first time in my writing career writing books that I was facing failure real failure if I didn't succeed in that book 50 would thought something was wrong and we had announced the publication people you know I would have maybe recovered but it would have been a major blow and I had to make that book happen and it brought out Best in Me it made me do things that i' had never done before it made built up my self-confidence so it's the equivalent of somebody doubting you because there were a lot of doubters around and a lot of people thinking well Robert's kind of finished here we thought he was this but he's not really and so having that kind of pressure like we talked about deadlines and having people doubt you it can Crush you but it can also make you a lot stronger can make you a better fighter was there ever a 49th law you went straight from 48 to 50 well he's 50 Cent I know I wondered if you'd ever thought get a 49 thin and then it means that I can no there is no 49th the 49th law is there is no such thing as the 49th you don't talk about the 49th law that's what it is yeah use absence to increase respect the more you are seen and heard from the more common you appear if you are already established in a group temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about even more admired you must learn when to leave cultivate value through scarcity yeah I mean um the problem that a lot of people have with my books and in life is they're too black and white so they'll say things like well Robert if I'm absent on social media no one will have heard of me if I don't write this book if I don't put on another album if I don't produce this product how can I do that you know what what are you talking about absence like that that's very dangerous in the world well I don't talk about just absence I say it's a dance between absence and presence right so it's not like you disappear so that you are a little bit less present you're able to disappear for a while and you make people wonder about you Napoleon said if I show up at the theater every night in Paris in my little Emperor's box people start taking me for granted if I show up every week they'll be going that's interesting but he's coming every week if I show up once a month it's like an event oh my God he came here when is he coming next whoa It's all this attention that's the dynamic of absence and presence if you come every two or three days n if you come every week n you come a month yeah if you come every year people will forget about you won't have any power you have to know exactly the dynamic isn't it interesting that this is uh reflected neurologically with intermittent schedule reward variable schedule reward too which is exactly what social media and slot machines and gambling it's what they all work on yeah well what is that so if you press a button but example of this um mice get to push a button you're into mice again you like their mice I I need to use I need to use something as a legitimate example here so uh mice get to push a button uh if it's every five times or 10 times or 20 times they get a piece of food they will push the button uh but then they will get sick if it's intermittent they don't know when it's going to come they will push the button way more aggressively and it's that the dopamine we get when we're not ready for it well we're not ready to see Napoleon up in his Emperor's box overlooking the ballet yeah that's real and ever since the second episode that we did it's always in my mind and I always think about your face whenever I think of this particular sentence aloofness is alluring I always think about that and um my housemate's dad has a a similar idea which is be good and be gone and it's how how he shows up at parties it's a a good justification for the Irish goodbye I think as well be good and be gone oh what was Robert he was yeah oh they call it an Irish goodbye leaving without saying goodbye to everybody yeah oh that's the opposite of a French goodbye it takes forever or you never leave everyone's like kissing each other and talking each other at the door and they never leave yeah um yeah um I mean uh so people think that uh nowadays so like in a dating situation this is a common example if um nowadays because things are different you have a date and if you're like texting her the next day or the or that evening it's kind of like H something he's I don't know about this guy's a little bit desperate I'm not so sure about him if you text the next day it's a little bit one if you wait take two days but not three she's starting to think about you start to go um this guy's interesting maybe he doesn't like me or maybe he does I'm not sure and she starts thinking about you starts fantasizing about you then the second day your name pops up it has power it has effect so if you're inundating somebody you don't give them room to fantasize you don't give them room to think about you and then they they start one they St taking you for granted kind of thing you know so people say yeah but in the world like celebrities will tell me I had this one female raps not going to say her name who would say yeah but Robert in social media I can't disappear they go yes you can I mean it was before the social media era but Michael Jackson would disappear for several years before a record Beyonce disappeared for like two years in between records didn't produce anything then when she came out with a record whoa what a splash you can still get away with it now you just have to know the sweet spot you have to know that maybe in social media it's you can't disappear for a year or even a month but if you do it for a week people notice it and they start thinking about you so you have to kind of know how to play the game I think there's a uh momentum build as well that perhaps is everybody need a price that you need to pay in the beginning uh so there's a technique in urg rowing so when you sit on a one of those indoor rower uh things concept to and what people will do in order to get the speed up uh more easily they'll do little polls and then they'll do really long polls and that's when they start to get their power in I often think about that when it comes to people beginning anything it's like hey if you haven't started your podcast you don't get to be absent in the beginning yeah like that's just called not starting your podcast right you know delaying the publishing of your first book is not you being aloof and alluring it's you just not getting the work done so there is a a there is momentum inertia that needs to be accumulated and then you break expectations so this uh shows that I don't have the can to show you I launched a product last year and we had um Fades colored Fades uh orange to orange or yellow to Orange uh yellow to green and then the third can that we released was just pure white and I wanted to break the pattern I wanted to set expectations and then very quickly to break them and I thought about it kind of the same from branding perspective there too I think I have a convention I think I know what to expect oh that's a little bit interesting that's different to what I would have thought yeah yeah but you need to have created the setup for that precisely correct precisely correct it breaking a convention before you've set a convention is just being sporadic and sort of Scat goning everywhere whereas it would be like if uh you'd released an article that was one of the laws from 48 law and then the next book was different or it was on a different topic and you go well you haven't haven't established enough of a style I haven't got the expect you can't break an expectation that I don't yet have um and you know this is surprise as well well that's why I say power is a game of psychology so you have to master these very subtle and invisible rules of psychology and so knowing some people know it by Instinct they have a marketing sense that I need to break up expectations if everything is always the same there's no surprise okay but you have to understand you have to think about the how people are going to respond you have to understand the psychology involved that surprise gets attention that's what's not as expected stands out and people are excited they're interested in it okay and also creating viral effects is another is like the flip side of this using absence and creating absence so I talk about this in The Art of Seduction if you um pass by a restaurant where there's just one couple sitting there eating you go and and the menu looks good and the reviews are good you I don't think we want to go there you go a few blocks further than there's this restaurant people are packed they're sitting they're all laughing they're drinking all right let's go that the food could be crap yeah but because you see other people doing it you're drawn into it well you are speaking my language as an excl club promoter so we would do everything we would uh one of the strategies we used to have was outside of a nightclub your que the length of your queue is the determinant of how busy it is inside but the length of your queue is determined by how wide the queue is not by how many people are in the queue so we kept a two wide queue so we would squeeze the barriers in and these people would be R going two by two like Noah Arc but we would be able to create a queue that was 100 yards long well you see now these are things you just knew a instinctively I don't know how some people maybe don't get that kind of thing but that's the kind of psychology you want to play on I talked about how in PT Barnum he was a master of this he had the Museum of oddies in Manhattan right and the whole game was to get people inside because once they were inside there were all these odd you know really weird [ __ ] in there that was so strange and interesting these Curiosities these deformed you know fetuses and animals how do you get them inside so he hired the worst possible band he could find to play really terrible music right near his Museum and they would be playing so loud that people would run inside the museum to escape this music you know that's the kind of thinking you know Mackie aelan Q organizing yeah uh actually speaking of that I mentioned I told you I'm going to Florence next week uh I'll be able ble to see nicolo's um tomb tomb it's in s Santa croch I love Santa croch uh what is a lesson from mavelli that you think most people gloss over or something sort of a Hidden Gem that you wish had more exposure that people more people knew oh there's there's so much there you're going to tease my adult brain here but um the idea that the most powerful idea that he has and he has a lot of powerful ideas is that people rise to a position of an elevated position based on a certain quality that they have that makes them stand out let's say for Chris Williamson it's your pleasing ability your your your bonom me your you're sympotic or whatever the language you want to use makes you blah blah blah but a point is reached where the times change things are different because life is always changing and that thing that you relied on that strength that you have is no longer so in demand it's not so interesting the culture has moved on but you don't know how to move on because you're addicted to the same way of doing things M so when he was saying what would be the perfect Prince to talk about the prince like in his book The Prince would be a man or a woman but his time would be a man who could continually adapt to circumstances who just didn't have one form of power he compared it Fortune is constantly shifting you have to be able to shift with fortune and write it and keep writing it upward and upward that would be like a superum being who could always adapt to circumstances not change who they are not suddenly be a confident person who's now really timid but to use your confidence in a different manner when the time asks for something different and so in my Consulting most of the people who fail in life um that I'm working with have reached a level of power of position but they can't go any further they hit a ceiling because they don't know how to adapt they only have one way responding to circumstances so we think of makavelli as this kind of rigid thinker with this sort of aggressive ideas he's actually a very fluid thinker and it's all about being fluid one of his main metaphors is water because you know there was a river in Florence and he was sort of obsessed with currents it kind of like in a sunsu and Asian way your ability to flow and change and adapt to circumstances and um I wish people understood that and were weren't so rigid about everything that they do they weren't so rigid in how they read the 48 Laws of Power they weren't so rigid in their politics they weren't so rigid in their in their creative life so it's finding play again in in some way I suppose and uh I I I it's come up a lot over the last year or so for me I think that there is not for me I'm not doing it someone maybe not you either you're busy uh should write a book about play about reintroducing a a sense of play what it does from a sort of psychological Health standpoint one of the greatest books ever written has already been written on that subject it's a book called homo ludens by Dutchman Johan henka written in like the 30s I think you nobody could ever write a better book he talks about the history of play and he goes deely deeply into the psychology of it it's one of the best books you can ever read homo meaning man is playing so it's playing man yeah so you know there's Homo sapiens thinking about our brain he's saying we're homoludens we're the playing animal it's absolutely brilliant book I could never top that uh thinking about Mackie valy I had Dr Alexander Lee on the podcast so he wrote a phenomenal biography of Mackie valy he came on the show he's historian uh what was it called I can't remember the name I can't remember the name of his book anyway um uh he told me the story I didn't realize that mackelli was such a tear away uh sort of little lothario here and there oh who's total Seducer yeah but he told me this story about him where he'd been on the road and he I can't remember the term that he used talks about something like a like a a a nuptial longing or something it's this sort of very proper British uh he's horny M Val's horny and he gets taken you would say he gets taken into this brothel and there's a a woman that he sleeps with uh but the light is off and he says that he decides to get the candle and bring it closer to her and he sees this hideous woman and he throws up and sort of he's traumatized by this thing that he's done and uh yet to hear Dr Lee the very sort of proper British historian telling me this story about the thing is what what really gets my go what I can't stand is people use the word Machiavellian and they have this image of him as this evil conniving person you know and they they have the the image of him and how he actually looks he's like a rat and he's he was a incredibly warm Humane human being who was really very funny and witty he was a to complete renaissance man so first of all he understood Politics on a extremely high level absolutely brilliant he was a not a great diplom he was a lowlevel diplom but he had a very good sense of psychology he was a great Seducer of women we know that okay he also wrote a play he wrote plays and he wrote poetry people don't realize that he wrote the most scandalous play I think ever written making fun of the Catholic Church where there are rituals taking place in a church that are incredibly imp impious you know sacriligious it's a called mandra go it's a hilarious play trust me it was performed in the Vatican it was so good at the time what in the 1520s people don't realize that this man was a true renaissance man he was a poet he was a playright he was a lover of women he was a great strategist you know so yeah I I have lots of anecdotes about him too as well in that sense but yeah he's fantastic I really I really enjoyed learning about the man you know it's it's odd that the ideas precede a person the if the my favorite book about makavelli is called Machiavelli's virtue by Harvey Mansfield it's a fantastic book I highly recommend it one of the few academics that I actually really like he understands melli whereas most people are not on the level of him and he writes about how relevant Mai is to the world today and how he foresaw everything going on in business and politics please if you're interested in Maki maki's virtue it's it's one of my favorite books one of the uh groups I suppose I think that's looking for a lot of advice at the moment is young men uh feeling a little lost like their place in the world is know just uncertain they don't they don't really know or have the direction what advice would you have for young men that are feeling a little lost in the modern world well you have to um you have to be comfortable with with who you are and with your masculinity so the word masculine has now got like this negative connotation around it which is terrible because you're a young man it's not every young man some men don't feel this way but a lot of young men I remember myself you got this testosterone that's roaring through you you're competitive you're ambitious you have goals you have this energy you want to assert yourself but it's bad it's bad it's bad you're not supposed to be like that you know and so and the culture isn't about there's no virtue in masculinity okay there is such a thing as toxic masculinity most definitely but there are virtues in in being masculine and have to be redefined and we have to have icons and role models for that and so when I was growing up oh God I sound like I hated that when people said that when I was a kid so I know you're going to hate me but I'll say that anyway I can't help it because it's true when I was growing up you know I watched like a lot of westerns you know it was the the the silent hero kind of thing the Gary Cooper thing but my idea of masculinity growing up was a man who was in control of himself who wasn't mean wasn't pushing people around who was decent who treated women well so treating women well is a masculine virtue is a good thing it comes from position of strength you're not insecure about your masculinity you don't have to prove that you're a man by demeaning women by pushing them around by calling them [ __ ] and [ __ ] Etc you don't have to take the Andrew Tate path in life you can respect women and respecting them is a sign of your strength it's a sign of being secure in your masculinity you don't need to put other people down to make yourself feel better okay so we have to redefine these qualities but there are no icons like out out there you either have the Andrew Tates out of there you have these wimpy men who are just so afraid of being masculine okay your aggression your assertiveness your testosterone it's a good thing it's how things get done it's what energizes you what's puts you in the world it makes what makes you ambitious it makes you assert yourself and and motivate yourself it has to be channeled it has to be disciplined but you have to see you know we were talking about are people pleasing things and how you reframe it you have to see who you are and see The Virtue and see the power in that and it's a cultural problem because men are very confused I didn't have that confusion when I was growing up um you know so now it's very difficult because you're being told that all these things that you feel naturally are negative they're only negative if you can't control them so self-control is a very masculine quality you're able to control yourself you're able to control your passion you're able to not talk too much if you don't need to talk too much I'm not saying women don't have that the opposite is wrong these are things that men naturally have because of their biology and I'm sorry I do believe in these things um but they're good they're just how you use them that can be bad and so I just wish there were more positive role models out there I know I could be a real bastard I could be a real [ __ ] I'm very competitive when I play games I like to win and I can be a little bit mean about it okay I mean I'm a pleaser but I like winning I channeled it all of my aggression all of that testosterone I'm not saying I have more than anyone I just have normal amounts I pour it into my books I pour that edge that aggression that like damn you I don't really like you I don't like the world into the 48 Laws of Power into here's how these manipula these how people manipulate these are how people can be bad and cruel and I'm going to get out all my aggression by exposing it and showing it and being as real and direct I Channel it into something as opposed to hurting other people kind of thing so finding ways to channel your aggressive tendencies is a positive way way of being a man you have to find whatever that is sports is a great example but there are other things as well it feels a lot like Alchemy in a way uh or actually it's even it's Alchemy is taking something which is bad or useless and turning it into something which is valuable this is taking uh something which is uncertain it could go either way you know this desire for Mastery for conquer for achievement uh and and using it to propel you forward and hopefully making the world a better place along there's no reason that your desire to pursue and Conquer and and and become masterful anything has to leave the world worse it's not some weird zero some thing where in order for you to become better you need to take from the world I think it it's additive yeah yeah I mean um you know you have to you have to be smart and um you have to be in control of yourself and you have to be disciplined but let's just add discipline to one of those other masculine virtues it just needs to be redefined we need people out there men and even women who um feel comfortable with this saying these are the virtues this was these are the good sides of being of being a man and being masculine and so even mastering things and even being competitive is not bad you build a business that kicks ass that that that that does really well that that gives people certain things that they needed or they wanted so it's just a matter of how you channel that energy and how you control it and what the virtues are is self-control not feeling like you have to put people down in order to raise yourself up feeling confident not having to boast a terrible ma um toxic masculine quality is boasting and saying look how much money I have look how much women I've slept with look at all this other other thing you just talking it's just a lot of hot air that's not strong that's actually weak some so many powerful qualities actually come from a position of great weakness and insecurity when I look at leaders who are always like boasting and talking about you know all the great things that they've done I see a little insecure little weak child having to say these things right so it just depends on whether it comes from something solid and strong or comes from massive Wells of insecurity Robert Green ladies and gentlemen Robert I I really really appreciate uh your openness at being able to talk about this stuff I think this line between human psychology and human nature um is very much needed at the moment because as you said about the masculinity portion the role models the archetypes sort of um previous lessons and channels that we would have run through many of them have been thrown up in the air by technology by changing social uh uh positions and uh I I'm looking forward to you getting this Sublime which I'm sure that you are as well getting this Sublime thing finished yeah and then when it's finished I'll be missing it and ready to do the next one what's your self-imposed rough self-imposed submission date well it's going to hope hopefully it'll be out in 2026 okay you're going to have to wait two years cuz it's going to take a year to finish and then a year to put it in shape and uh I can say it's going to be a very weird book coming from you that is a extra special claim yeah it's the weirdest book though that I've ever written can can you say why well I'm trying to shake you up I'm trying to make you not see the world in the same way I'm trying to make you realize that you've you're looking at it in a very limited fashion and so every chapter I'm trying to challenge you and say that the world is different and actually much more exciting and interesting than you think it is and um so I would like to compare it to taking drugs without having to take the drugs that it's going to like kind of alter a little bit how you look at things as if you micro doed on something books kind of like micro do you know so um it's going to alter you how you look at nature how you look at animals how you look at yourself how you look at people how you look at your own childhood how you look at history how you look at Art and and music and and then how you look at death death is the Final Chapter obviously because death is the ultimate Sublime you know something I know quite intimately so um it's going to to be a a weird book and maybe it'll fail maybe they'll have 10 readers well you've been certain over the last eight so you know yeah but this could be the one that's that fails you never know uh I've been thinking so much about awe and Dread as two emotions that are pretty absent and uh I imagine that they fit somewhere into the sublime I think Transcendent experiences like that well so important I mean I know we're at the end here but the the sublime is an unusual thing It's a combination of pain and pleasure of awe and Terror of and these two things in the human body and I analyze the the neurolog the physiology of it create a kind of VI vibratory effect in you where if it were just beautiful and pleasurable well okay if it were just painful ah but the combination of the two is startling and it makes you look at it and it has an effect on your body and it gives you chills you know and so um so like when you look out at the night sky it's infinite it's awesome but I'm so small I'm so tiny signant I'm so meaningless put those two together and you have the sublime well I'm going to see uh the Val's Four Seasons performed in Venice in two weeks so I wonder whether I'll have some Sublime or some a or some dread I'll I'll take some uh what's the dread oh being in the presence of Mastery like that throws into sharp contrast all of the areas where you haven't pushed yourself and you can feel dreadful for that I often find whenever I see my friends who are in a rock band and they play like a huge gig and I'm there and you know I just watch them command a th thousands of people yeah yeah and I go what the [ __ ] are you doing with your life why so it's a it's a beautiful blend of the two I tell you before we do leave um first off everyone needs to go and pick up uh the 25th anniversary edition of 48 Lo of power because it's beautiful and you get to do that cool thing with the edges of the paper and it's a limited edition it's going to run out and that uh but also you've started uh pumping on YouTube as well it seems like every few days there's a a new piece of content so people can go and check that out which I'm a massive fan of yeah yeah I can't believe it because we started out with nothing and we're going to be hitting two million subscribers this year so it's w join us in the muck and the Maya of the content creator world oh my God it's soon soon you'll be doing peace peace signs and and selfies and all the rest of it yeah the pressure you you have you can't let up it's it's almost like a bad thing in some ways aloofness is difficult when you're doing that Robert thank you so much it's been a long time coming to do it yeah thanks thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Robert you will love my conversation with his old student and fantastic stoic philosopher Ryan holiday just that