The Art Of Seduction and Human Psychology | Robert Greene

Intro

and what happens with a lot of people is as they get older and they accumulate pain and hurts from broken relationships is they don't want to be vulnerable anymore because they don't want to have to go through that but that means that the person that broke your heart that made you vulnerable has one has defeated you has made you turn into something that you don't want to become so you have to be able to feel that you can be vulnerable right and if you're a seducer trying to seduce someone revealing to that other person that you have fallen under their spell is almost the most seductive thing you can do because it's deeply deeply exciting to feel that that other person is charmed by us [Music] welcome to episode 121 of the michaela peterson podcast in this episode i spoke with best-selling author robert greene it was intense he walked me through the nine seduction types in one of his books and gave examples of each told me which one i was and which one he was it was fun he spoke about common manipulation techniques how using his laws of power aren't always manipulative the ruthless power structures in hollywood tips on being vulnerable and his new book the daily laws robert greene's an american author known for his books on strategy power and seduction he has written six international bestsellers including the 48 laws of power the art of seduction the 33 strategies of war the 50th law mastery and the laws of human nature like i mentioned his newest book is the daily laws this was a really fun episode if you want to learn how to communicate with people effectively and seductively check out his work if you like this content be sure to hit subscribe i hope you enjoy this episode robert greene welcome to my podcast well thank you for having me so much mikayla i really appreciate it i'm very excited for this episode i'm a huge fan of your books so this should be good i'm a huge fan of your father his books and his overall intelligence so please say hello to him for me i will we should get you guys together i will work on that in the future that would be a fun conversation so we'll do that we'll do that at some point uh before we get started could you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do well um i'm basically just a writer i don't really do anything else i have a seventh book that is coming out my first book is the most famous it's the 48 laws of power i've also written the art of seduction the 33 strategies of war i did a book that i co-authored with the rapper 50 cent called the 50th law i did mastery the laws of human nature which came out a few years ago and my new book the daily laws which will be out in a couple of weeks and i'm currently working on my eighth book right now they kind of tend to center on subjects like power and strategy and mastering your own career and and human behavior i have i had to choose a common theme and that's about all i do well eight books is quite a lot so that sounds like full-time work yeah how did you get started on writing about the topic of power what makes you knowledgeable about power well i don't really have a degree it's not anything i could say oh i graduated from princeton with a degree and those are overrated anyway in my opinion yeah well right i don't know anything like that basically what happened was in my 20s and 30s i sort of knew that i wanted to be a writer but i couldn't quite figure out what i wanted to write so i tried my hand at all these different jobs i worked in journalism i did cons i lived in europe for many years i worked in a hotel as a receptionist tour guide in ireland a teacher of english in spain i worked in a detective agency here in los angeles you name it i did it and and then i worked in hollywood prior to writing my first book through all of these experiences i observed every manner of huma of manipulation and power game that was going on from all different kinds of bosses and all different kinds of endeavors and i'm somebody who kind of likes authenticity and realness in people the fact that um that we're sort of ashamed of our own nature we're ashamed that we're this animal that actually has desires for power that has ambitions that has a dark side has always disturbed me and so based on my experiences and based on all i had learned throughout my years of wandering through my studies in college the books that i read i wrote the 48 laws of power now i can't say it came from anything else except my own experience and my own brain but i think the success it has has shown that it's somehow has resonated with the truth with so many people okay so from your experience in hollywood what was the type of manipulation that you saw that was mainly used there well every every single form because it's a place in a place where people pretend to be so liberal so woke so progressive but really what motivates a lot of their behavior is just naked power they want to have admiration they want to be recognized and they want to be respected as someone who has a position of power in the pecking order in hollywood right and so they don't they don't reveal that it's things that i observed going on behind the scenes that revealed to me all of these manipulative games that were going on so so many of the laws of power were kind of based on things i observed such as conceal your intentions such as get others to do the work but always take the credit on and on and on crush even crush your enemy totally i observed all of those in my experiences in hollywood because people are motivated to disguise all of their maneuvers you know you don't want to be seen as somebody who's later revealed to be a harvey weinstein you want to project this liberal magnanimous image and so it's like something you don't really ever talk about or see but i saw from first-hand experience and that's what i wrote about i mean i could tell you specific stories i don't know if you're interested in that or not i'm interested i'm definitely interested well the story that kind of sticks out mainly in my mind was i was working for a director i'm not going to say his name um and basically he had written a screenplay um and he he was just sort of starting out as a director he'd written a screenplay and he knew that if he tried to be the director himself people would think he was being too ambitious he was going to write and just direct it and all of that so what he did was instead working with the producer he made a point of hiring this young man who i believe at the time was in his late 20s who was just starting out who had had written a screenplay and had directed one film and he hired him knowing full well that it was above his head and that he was more than likely going to fail you know and he kind of set it up so the guy would fail he wasn't always there to help him with certain meetings and he wasn't helping him working on the script etc and so lo and behold two days into production the guy was messing up left right and center and the producer fired him and now the man that i was working for was able to come and say look i can rescue this project let me be let me direct it and he concealed his intentions completely that nobody had suspected that he was really kind of behind all of this that he was sort of maneuvering it in that direction and then it made him look like he was the rescuing angel as opposed to this devious machiavellian person who had set it all up that's creepy that sounds like an exhausting way to live keeping track of all the stories that you're telling people that sounds like a lot of work you mean for me personally well no i meant for the guy who had manipulated this person into failing and then taken credit for being the savior yeah it didn't you know it in the end what bothered me most of all about it because you know i can't help but say that i'm a little bit admiring people who have the guts to pull something like that off but on the other hand he basically ruined this guy's career because it was such a failure that it really hurt his reputation i know i followed it up immediately afterwards and he had gone through he hadn't written or directed anything since he may have somehow revived his career i'm not sure but it really really hurt his reputation and so that was the thing that that really really bothered me in the end okay well it sounds like something that should bother you yeah yeah that's interesting i feel like trying to weave those stories and manipulate situations like that i feel like it's actually more difficult just to do things honestly what do you mean by that well i mean i mean the way he went about it hiring somebody and then having them fail and then saving it i feel like that's actually the easy way out compared to doing what's honest which is hey i wrote this screenplay and i want to direct it and then fighting that way which probably makes your life more pleasant in the long run rather than having to manipulate everybody is a lot of hollywood like that with people just playing these games well you know it's my own personal experience i saw that up front i can't say that it's anecdotal but i've worked i've now been working with people in hollywood who are trying to produce some of my own books for film and television and i consult with a lot of directors and actors and people in the business and it's a nat and then they all they all have stories to tell me about things that are even worse than what i've told you so i do believe it's it's pretty you know what spread out there and even though things are getting better in some ways they're trying to diversify hollywood you know with more women and morbid ethnicities etc still that all kind of power dynamic is there because it's an industry it's always been like that going back to the earliest days in the 1920s and so i don't think that's ever really going to change there is one industry i can tell you that's even worse than hollywood which is i've learned through my you know exposure to rappers etc is the music industry the things that go on the music industry make hollywood look like kindergarten but okay okay and is that is that mostly like relationships between men and women in the music industry no it's between like record producers and artists and managers etc you know where it's a very very exploitative environment where um you know people that you never really know where the money is coming from how many albums you've sold particularly now with the um with so many things being streamed there's a lot of deception going on a lot of funny marketing uh sorry funny accounting going on to hide the revenue streams and then people who are fresh who come into the business early on they sign contracts without realizing they're signing away all the ownership to their work you know it was it was 50 cent who kind of revealed a lot of this to me and he said you know he grew up on the streets of southside queens dealing crack seeing people murdered dealing with hardcore stuff day in and day out and he said nothing had ever prepared me for the shit i saw in the music business it was it was worth because at least on the streets people were direct you kind of more or less knew where they were coming from but he never knew where these people were coming from and it was very disorienting i wonder if that's going to change rather dramatically like things are changing so much with people being able to grow social media profiles and have followers on youtube i know a couple of artists that haven't signed with anyone because they're like why i already have you know two million followers on youtube the marketing aspect is kind of gone i'm wondering if that'll change and then these contracts that are like what are they called the ones that you like you said you sign away everything like that's got to start fading away even just book publishers i find that take a a large percentage because they're offering marketing services well a lot of people don't need marketing services anymore if they can get on podcasts or yeah that's true it's very true and there's a kind of democratization going on but the only thing that's the film business is different i think than those other examples because to make a film and marketed you really really are dependent on the hollywood power structure you could make your film cheap on an iphone for instance which people do nowadays and film it but you're not going to be able to get a theatrical release you're not going to be able to to get it streaming on netflix etc so you are very much dependent on the old power structures there so that kind of democratization that's very positive that's going on with the internet it's happening a little bit in hollywood but i don't think it's i think it's going to reach the limit yeah i wouldn't be surprised um for for the 48 laws of power why did you choose 48 you probably get that question constantly i get that question um well i didn't really choose 48 the process was kind of weird i i don't usually like to reveal you know how the sausage is actually made but i guess i'll go ahead and tell you um you know i started out researching all of the great power of people and influencers throughout history and all cultures and all the power games that were that that were kind of the most sexiest most interesting and out of that i kind of derived these patterns of of behavior that transcended time and culture and i had 72 of these patterns originally which were which would were to be loss of power and slowly i started eliminating them because these this didn't seem strong enough i started combining them getting rid of them and i ended up with 52 if you can believe it or not and publishers said you know 52 it doesn't sound good and it's also sounds a little pat it sounds like you meant it to be 52 weeks of the year or 52 cards in a deck we preferred the number 48 and so i go well you know what am i going to say but then i thought about it because i don't like to be too rigid and too close and stubborn i thought it's true 48 laws sounds a lot better than 52. it looks better it's a very powerful number so i'm going to do what they say but i'm going to take the four laws that are kind of extra and i'm going to combine them into other laws and create these kind of double laws with two sides to them and bring it down to 48. so i don't usually like try to reveal that but i guess you you lured it out of me somehow but that's sort of wide ended up with 48. okay well clearly that paid off something worked yeah well you know things like numbers and colors they have a kind of a primal effect on us and you can't ignore this sort of nonverbal primitive side of our of our nature and so you know like the color red as people know on on who design like facebook you know as a button has this certain effect where it's black as this effect the number 48 i for some reason kind of has this sort of it just seems definitive whereas if it were 47 that wouldn't have that feeling or 49 or 50 sounds like too obvious but man that 48 it's like a sweet spot you know what am i gonna do that is strange but very true so are any are any of these laws of power like honest or are they all kind of types of manipulation no i'd say more than half are honest and more than half are kind of common sense and relatively positive you know so interaction with boldness is not an evil law it means when you start something if you show that you are bold and decisive people are attracted to that i talk about play a perfect courtier the world that we live in every kind of time there's a power structure it's like a court surrounding a king and you have to be charming and you have to be polite and you have to be gracious in this court so there's nothing kind of i mean you might find that a little devious but it's mostly about being polite and understanding other people and kind of playing understanding the culture that you're in there's plenty of there's a law called work on the hearts and minds of others which means that you can't force people into things you have to get them to want what you want to do as opposed to pushing them in certain directions despise the free lunch which is all about the power of generosity you know you you don't want to like always be looking for things on the cheat you don't want to accept things that are free you want to pay for things and you want to be generous with your time and your money and your energy i mean i could go on and on there's a core maybe a third that are that are kind of a little bit hardcore and a little bit well definitely manipulative but it's not the majority of laws which ones are your favorite well law number one i have a little i have a kind of a personal relationship for for several reasons called never outshine the master and the idea is that if you enter your the work world and you try so hard to please and impress the boss which is a very common thing that we do they might end up feeling that you're did you think that they're better than they are you might inadvertently outshine them and make them feel insecure and once you do that they're never going to tell you that that's what you've done they're going to fire you and you'll never really understand why and it's very painful and i've had that happen to me i could think at least three times i can recall one very very most emotional one of all where i was hired on the television show to do the research and find the stories and by far i was the most successful researcher there but i was making many too many people above me feeling insecure like they weren't getting credit for things and they started making my life miserable and they fired me and i couldn't figure out why you know like i produced i had the best record of all why would you fire someone like that well ego matters more than results in a lot of a lot of places you know a lot of work worlds and so um and and the reason i i like that story so much is i had heard somebody told me a story before all this had happened about louis xiv the great french king of the 17th century and how he had a finance minister named nicholas fukay who threw the most lavish party in honor of louis the king so that he could ingratiate himself into the king's favor and maybe be not be nominated as prime minister and the party was so memorable people wrote about it years later it had fireworks it had plays it was i visited the chateau where it happened it was just the most probably the most magnificent party ever thrown in the history of mankind and everyone was like telling nicholas this is great this is wonderful well the next day he was thrown in prison and he spent the rest of his life in prison he had outshone the king and i remember that story years later when it happened to me and i go this there's something true there there's something elemental about human psychology and years later when i was pitching first pitched the idea to the man who produced the 48 laws of power i started with that story and i told him this happened 500 years ago when people were wearing powdered wigs and all these elaborate costumes but the world hasn't changed it's the same dynamic no matter where you are so that personally is kind of maybe one of my favorite laws and there are others that that stands out that sounds extremely frustrating it sounds like you wouldn't want your company to to grow really if your ego is above good work but isn't that pretty common haven't you encountered that as well i mean yeah i mean um the thing that people make a mistake about i i don't know if you agree with me here but is that you think that the person above you your boss who seems he or she seems so powerful in control you don't realize that they have insecurities that they have an ego that they have weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you assume that if you say something that might be a little bit ambiguous they'll laugh it off because they're so powerful they don't care about me or what i say but the truth is the higher up you go in in a hierarchy the more insecure you become the more you're worried about whether people really truly respect you you know whether you people really are truly admiring you whether you have their attention or not and so powerful people often have more insecurities than those on the bottom of the scale and you go into the work world not thinking of the egos of powerful people but it's it it's very evident and it can cause you a lot of problems okay that makes sense and that might be because people at the top have more to lose potentially that could play into it maybe very much so that's very true okay okay your your book on seduction so that's a bit is there an overlap between that and power and what do you define as seduction exactly well there is an overlap so there are several chapters in the 48 laws that have to do directly with seduction i tell seduction stories there's one law in particular you can use absence to create honor and respect and it's basically how you need to occasionally absent yourself from other people to get them to fantasize and think about you and that your absence can often be more powerful than your presence you can be too much in people's face and they start to see you too familiar and they disrespect you whereas if you step away and they don't see you for a few days they start wondering about you and it seems very powerful well i consider i say in the modern world that you can't be too forceful and direct too brutish or people are going to turn against you it looks ugly so the the game of power is to always appear to be a paragon of virtue as they do in hollywood but to actually be aware of the hardcore games going on and to occasionally play them yourself and seduction is the ultimate form of this power it's what napoleon bonaparte said putting your iron fist inside a velvet glove so when people feel your hand on them it feels so soft and velvety but actually it's very firm and it's pushing people in the direction you want so this is kind of a soft power and seduction is by far the ultimate form of this because what you're doing is you're creating pleasure for people you're giving them kind of what they want what they secretly desire and not many of us have enough pleasure in this life in fact it's something that i think all of us lack we wish we had more of it because we're so stressed and we work way too hard somebody who comes into your life and gives you something that you don't have gives you an experience that's different that's exciting that's seductive and alluring you your guard comes down your defenses go down normally we're very resistant people we're very defensive but when somebody does something that gives us that pleasurable moment our walls come down we started losing some of that defensiveness and now we're open to other things that they can do or say to us and they have a power over us that they wouldn't have if they were so obvious and tried to make us do something and so i thought seduction is the ultimate form of power in the modern world and what i wanted to do in the art of seduction was get beyond just simple sexual seductions you know i've certainly described seductions between men and women gay lesbian they even have a trans seduction in there for sure there's the sexual aspect but i also talk about social seductions where you're seducing people in the work world there's no sex involved i talk about political seductions i talk about marketing seductions what is the psychology that ties all of this together what is it about us human animals that make us so vulnerable and so open to this process of seduction so that's sort of why i wrote the book that's very cool do you think people who end up seducing you in some way so giving you some pleasure that you want and then you open up can that be carried out for a very long time or do you think that's kind of fleeting and it gets burnt up eventually or is there a relationship you can have where that can just continue or ideally both parties can do that for a very long time well you know a lot of people have come to me unfortunately they come to me for advice on their romantic relationships unfortunately i can't imagine why i'm not i don't consider myself an expert on that the people who know more than i do but the number one complaint i get i hear i hear it more often from women but i also hear from men it's not that the man keeps seducing me day in and day out but that he stopped he started taking me for granted he's become so familiar in the beginning he started taking me out to to movies he took just exotic places great restaurants he dressed well you know he was kind of doing things that that were very exciting and now six months into the relationship he doesn't do any more he doesn't put any effort into it he's stopped seducing me in some way he's become too familiar and it could be he or she excuse my use of only that pronoun and so the idea was and i wrote about this in the art of seduction i think it's chapter 24 is that you want to keep seducing the person that you're in a relationship with you can't do it with the same intensity or get tiring for both of you right because we do want to settle into a relationship we do want a degree of familiarity with the other person we do want to feel comfortable but upon occasion you have to go back to those original moments that sparked your desire for the other person that made that connection so electrifying between and you need to revive it and you need to do some of the things that you did before you know whatever that is surprise them with with a gift that that says something personal about them or take them to some place that they're not expecting to keep surprising them because once the mystery is gone once people are so familiar to you there's something that's lost in there you know and so it's not that you're constantly seducing them i don't think that's even possible it's that you don't lose the sense of the fact that you have to think about the other person in their spirit and do things that continually surprise and excite them i don't think there's anything amoral or wrong about that i think it's very healthy no for somebody who doesn't give advice about seduction that sounds that sounds pretty like pretty good advice uh i also suppose that when people get into a relationship the seduction part is the first part because as soon as you're in a relationship and it's stable you're not necessarily seducing anymore right because seduction would occur before you actually get that person right yes yeah and a lot of people what happens is um you know in the in the first part of the book i have the nine types of seducers and i'm trying to tell you that you're going to be one of these types you know there's the siren the rape the charmer the natural the dandy the charismatic etc etc what's the dandy the dandy is a person who has a kind of androgynous edge to them it's a man who has a slight feminine edge it doesn't seem make him seem you know gay or whatever if if he is straight it just is intriguing you think of like a mick jagger or a rock star like david bowie it kind of adds to their romantic allure and there is a slight bisexual element to that no doubt and in a woman it's a slight sort of masculine edge like a marlena dietrich or a madonna and that slight edge of masculinity doesn't put men off it excites them and i explain why in that chapter so that's the dandy um i can't remember why i'm talking about this i had a reason behind it what was your question before do you remember i can't remember my question before but i have a new question anyway marilyn monroe does she fall under the siren most definitely she's like there are two icons for for the siren which is the first type that i talk about because it's the oldest seductive type in history it goes back to ancient greece the the sirens themselves in the myth um cleopatra is the first icon and then marilyn monroe is the second and the reason is is that the siren has a kind of a theatrical edge to her it's always a woman in this case all the other types except the rake rakes are only men all the other types can be either gender but the siren is a woman who exudes this kind of natural sexuality in everything she does right she doesn't have to come on overtly but it's in her glances it's in her voice it's in her the way she moves her body and marilyn monroe was the quintessence of this and part of it comes from her from her story she was an orphan right she had a very tough childhood and her whole life was about the fact that she felt abandoned that she never had the love of a parent in her life and it was very real and so her desire was to get love from everybody she came upon and she learned early on that by wearing a certain kind of sweater she could excitement and and get attention from them and then she learned when she became an actress to kind of make love to the camera to kind of look at the camera in a way that wasn't obvious but it kind of reaped some sort of animal sexuality and it was very very seductive it made her you know the quintessence of of beauty and seduction of her time and so yeah she she's definitely one of the icons of that for sure you talked about the rake can you describe the rake yeah i mean i was a rake uh i'm what you call a reformed rake so i can speak from experience on that and basically my years of being raped were in my twenties and pretty much early thirties and then it was been since i stopped but the rake is a man who has an intense interest in women he understands them deeply he's obsessed with women and perhaps it comes from something relationship going with his mother you know we can analyze that as well but he has this obsessive interest in them he understands their spirit he finds it very exciting to be around them but one woman can never satisfy him the only way he can get satisfaction is by constantly having new women in his life that's how he that's how he satisfies this hunger because the moment that a woman becomes familiar it kind of loses the edge that he wants he's kind of like a hunter he loves the process of hunting the woman of of seducing her of getting her to fall for him and in those first few weeks he showers her with attention that's his power he love bombs them he's so he's so excited about their world he gives them gifts that show he's thinking about them he takes them to exciting places it's irresistible right and um but the thing is it can't last because he has to continually spread spread the well he has to continually find new people to conquer and i i i in the book i kind of um profile some of the greatest rakes who ever lived and one of them is the is the great classic hollywood actor errol flynn um errol flynn was this devilishly handsome man that didn't hurt but he was also in the end people claimed that he had seduced or slept with about 3 000 women and um and he died when he was 51 52 from alcoholism and so i went when i wrote the book i kind of did the math on that and the math was rather insane it was like at some point he had to be seducing a new woman every other day something like that and i was trying to figure out what was his secret what made him so insanely seductive to women of all types actresses waitresses you name it of course being errol flynn and having his reputation helped but he also had a devilish edge that kind of scared a lot of women but i read in one book that just being around he was so comfortable with himself he was so non-defensive he was like an animal that was completely comfortable in his body and it was it made the woman completely relaxed this one woman said yeah i felt like i had drunk a couple of martinis and i hadn't just by being around him you know and so the rake has this kind of undefensive quality he's like this natural animal that exudes this energy kind of like how the siren is so that's sort of what a rake is that was awesome okay cool okay so i was going to ask what the equivalent of that was for a woman but you're saying the siren kind of yes um yeah definitely the siren i mean you can't really have a male siren and you really can't have a female rape i mean um i do profile in the in the in that section probably the greatest lesbian seductress who ever lived natalie barney who was kind of a poet and writer in the early 20th century and she was the closest equivalent i could come to a female rate because um she was seducing women left right and center and she had a little bit of that presence but normally it's something that's pretty specific to men and women okay that description was amazing can i get you to do one more that was amazing okay yeah and another um i guess seductive type you want me to list what the other ones are yeah yeah that was too cool we need to do more oh well that was the the dandy i already mentioned the natural which is the one who's kind of like a child then there's the coquette blows hot and cold very very powerful seductress um there's the charmer who's very good at sort of social seductions there's the star the person who kind of exudes kind of like a like a film star presence that makes everyone project their fantasies onto him or her and there's the charismatic somebody who just has that natural charisma i can't think if i'm leaving somebody oh the ideal lover that those those the other seven types so you choose whichever one you want okay what you said there was one where you project your ideal lover on them well the star is is sort of this person i use as the example um the woman is marlena dietrich and the man who's john f kennedy excuse me president john f kennedy and what it is is they've learned the hollywood technique and for marlena dietrich it was clearly you know a film thing that she learned was you have a kind of blankness to you you're not too obvious in what you say and what you do you're not overtly this way or that way you have a kind of an emptiness to your face to your blankness to how you move and you allow people you don't talk too much and you allow people to project onto you their fantasies they see into you what they want to see into you whereas if you kind of say who you are and you're put too direct they have they have a mysterious error about them and john f kennedy he was obsessed with hollywood something people don't understand would know very well he was obsessed with hollywood he was obsessed with film stars and his favorite film star from the classic age of hollywood was montgomery cliff very handsome young man from the late 40s early 50s and he modeled his whole persona after montgomery clift that kind of silent machismo that he exuded that kind of certain look in his eye that montgomery clift had and it was immensely powerful as we saw in the election in 1960 where so many people saw into him what they wanted to see you know and he disguised the reality he disguised the reality that he was actually a man in his 40s who was physically and almost crippled he had all of these illnesses he could his back was incredible pain but he was able to disguise all of it and project this other image so these are the two people that i chose to to kind of illustrate that wow and then yeah i'm sorry go ahead no no you go ahead well you're kind of like a blank screen onto which people can see what they want to see and there's a way to do that i kind of describe in that chapter how you can do that can you describe how you can do that well i understand michael i've written seven books and i can't remember it all of the details um you know like so for someone like marlena dietrich she would dress in a certain way where it seemed kind of ambiguous and you didn't know what she was doing or what it meant she would wear for instance she was also a dandy she would wear for instance a man's tailored suit right and um but she would do it in a way the way she hold her cigarette the way she walked down the stairs where you thought she was there was something going on she had like this added presence but she couldn't figure out what it was because she didn't say or do anything directly she didn't purposely demonstrate why she was wearing that or or reveal you know something by the way she walked it was just non-verbal there was something about her in air and she learned in front of the camera if you've ever acted before you understand that quietness is much more powerful than noise if your face is quiet you're able and your whole body is quiet and your spirit is quiet you attract the camera you attract attention it looks powerful in theater if there are like five actors on the stage the man or woman who stands with dignity who's calm who doesn't say anything but has this presence that's where your eye goes to and the camera knows this so that kind of blankness where you allow people to see into you what they want is what the camera loves and any actor kind of learns that i mean i i direct the listener here to go and read the chapter on the star because there's more kind of practical advice in there if that's what you want each each of the each of the categories there's a lot of advice about because the idea is michaela is you have one of these qualities in you it's natural to you you're kind of born with it i don't care who you are or how what your looks are or whatever you have one of these qualities because seduction isn't about beauty it's about a kind of understanding human psychology and if you're too obvious in your seductive techniques if you've read robert books the art of seduction and you try to apply a b and c to a man or a woman it's not good it's going to fail because it looks too cold and calculating but if you see this natural quality in you if you know that you're a coquette by nature somebody who blows hot and cold and you know how to bring it out and make it more conscious and aware and a little more put more emphasis on it you're seducing without appearing unnatural you're seducing without appearing like it's forced it just comes from your personality and that kind of makes it doubly effective that's interesting i wonder if at some point my dad has all these personality scales with a big five i wonder if you could figure out what kind of personality each of these types has because there must be similarities is it do you think it's based on personality what these nine types yeah it's based on a kind of energy that goes that predates that it's almost like a jungian i know your father's heavily into you into these kind of archetypes that human the humans kind of fall into right and it's almost like an energy that you have and you know somebody like the siren there might be a genetic component to a woman who has that but also for the siren the rake i do believe that there's something in the relationship to the father and the mother kind of steers people in the direction you know there's the jungian concept of the animos and the anima the anima the man the animals for the woman it's the internalized image of your mother if you're a man inside of you and it becomes the kind of woman you're always looking for or the internalized image of your father becomes your animus and has a heavy influence on all the partners that you end up choosing so there's a level that goes very deep inside of our nature either early childhood or even genetic that kind of pushes us in these directions that is so cool okay i'm gonna have to figure out what i am which yeah which one which one would you be i don't know i have no idea what do you think i know we've only been talking for half an hour i would say either like possibly the siren i can get behind that and possibly um charismatic you know i i'd have to know you a little bit but that would be the first one that i would kind of be that i would think of would be the siren sweet whichever one the uh stand in room silently to attract attention i'm not that one oh okay then you're not the star okay yeah you could have a bit of the natural in you as well i don't know we gender have one that's predominant for me the rape but there's also a second quality that's always there and for me that's sort of the natural so there might be a second one lurking within you as well or even a third who knows cool okay um you mentioned going hot and cold does that mean just being you know all into a relationship and then you're angry about something what do you mean by hot and cold well that's the coquette and although we traditionally associate the coquette with women there are plenty plenty of male coquettes out out there and the idea is you know how to to be hot in other words to be excited by that other person to send them looks that show that you're interested in them to do things that show that you're interested and once they take a step towards you you now take a step back and you blow kind of cold and you're not so attentive and you don't return their texts right away and you don't return their phone calls and they start wondering he or she was really into me but now they don't seem to be so into me is it my fault that i do something wrong i better try even harder to get their attention so you chase them and then maybe they get hot again and they excite you because they have to keep keep the flame flickering otherwise it'll die out and then they step back they blow hot and they blow cold hot and cold hot and cold and it's devilishly seductive i know it's i've fallen for in my youth as well i have a terrible weakness for coquettish women and it can drive you absolutely crazy because it makes you think that something is wrong with you and that you have to try harder to get them and once you think that you have to try harder to seduce them you are the one who's completely seduced right so it's it's the classic hard to get but if you're always hard to get then nothing will happen you know how to occasionally mix in the easy to get with the hard to get yeah i think i had a relationship like that i don't think i'm a fan of that at all no it's not it's not a very nice quality but it's extremely effective i'm afraid okay okay and then last question about this this is fascinating um the natural you said that was your kind of backup so what's the natural the natural the um the icon for that was charlie chaplin um basically it's a person who has retained a lot of their childhood qualities right and older and then the other the female version of it is josephine baker the great african-american dancer and actress of the 20s and 30s and 40s these are people who they don't seem infantile but they've grown up and they've retained a lot of the child within them right they seem to have that kind of impish mischievous quality of a child they don't seem to be trying to put something on they're just authentically who they are they're naturally spontaneous they're naturally funny sometimes they may say something that will offend like children will do right but they're very charming in the fact that they don't seem to be trying that they're so authentic right and josephine baker was this amazing dancer um in the 20s she was also a bit of a dandy as well she would wear she would dress as a man but her dancing was so wild and so nobody had ever seen any dancing like that nowadays we're kind of used to it because we see twerking and all kinds of things on the internet but this was the version of it in the 20s and 30s whoa where's this woman coming from you know only a child would be acting like that she's so natural she's so comfortable with herself and and i tell the story how she learned as a child to always kind of live inside of her fantasy worlds that she had as a child and kind of retain that as she got older and so i was staying in that kind of child dream world fantasy world is very seductive on other people you know and so um you know it the reason it's so seductive is it doesn't seem like a put on and someone like a charlie chaplin was an incredibly effective seducer and so there is an element of calculation behind it you kind of know that that spontaneity that childlike quality is very seductive very alluring to people so you're going to kind of give it a little extra sometimes you're aware of it and you kind of you know act a little stronger in that direction so okay that makes sense um for people who are having trouble because there are many people i would say probably men in general have more trouble with seduction than women probably but do you have say three tips for people who are having trouble seducing other people i don't have three i have two that come to mind maybe a third will come to me in a few minutes and the first one is you have to be able to get outside of yourself so in this sense seducing is very healthy it means that normally what where a lot of men go wrong particularly is they're thinking about themselves all the time they're thinking does she really like me am i really saying the right thing am i doing the right thing i've got to try really hard to make sure that she actually likes me and they're inside their own thoughts in their own their own world and what they need to do instead and this applies to women as well is get inside the other person's world that's the key to seducing them to understand michaela her childhood her needs what she has and what she lacks in life her weaknesses her vulnerabilities what will put a smile on her face what will excite her and so when you get when you have that philosophy you listen in a different way you're listening to them with this kind of focus where you're picking up little cues that they say of things that excite them or or repulse them and you're kind of remembering them and then later days later you say something that relates to something that they had expressed and it reveals how deeply you were listening and it's very seductive or you give them a gift that this ta that isn't necessarily expensive but is tailored to something that they had said some nuance that they had revealed in their conversation it seems very personal so getting outside of yourself and getting into the spirit of the other person is probably the most important thing of all the second one which is related to the first one is to lose your defensiveness to lose your defensive qualities to be open to the other person to being vulnerable to the other person you know a lot of people now in the world today are very defensive and for good reason because our lives are so stressful we have so many things in our face so many people bothering us etc and we kind of get really rigid and tight and defensive and you can even physically locate it in our chest areas etc and the idea of being vulnerable of opening up to another person allowing them to have power over us is actually frightening for a lot of people but it's it's it's unnatural it's not human because we have a tremendous need to feel vulnerable to feel open to the influence of another person to have that electrical current going back and forth and it stems from our childhood where we were so vulnerable to the spirit of our father or our mother and it delighted us right there was a kind of bond between us like between a mother that transcends you you're almost a part of her in some way and so that need to feel connected to feel vulnerable is very human and what happens with a lot of people is as they get older and they accumulate pain and hurts from broken relationships is they don't want to be vulnerable anymore because they don't want to have to go through that but that means that the person that broke your heart that made you vulnerable has won has defeated you has made you turn into something that you don't want to become so you have to be able to feel that you can be vulnerable right and if you're a seducer trying to seduce someone revealing to that other person that you have fallen under their spell is almost the most seductive thing you can do because it's deeply deeply exciting to feel that that other person is charmed by us right but in order to do that you have to be vulnerable to them so those are the two keys if i i could come up with a third but um no that was good i'm kind of slowing down here yeah no that that was really good um i was i was quite ill for most of my life i had autism i was i was really really ill and part of the way i got through that was building up these kind of like psychological walls so that i couldn't feel and then once i got healthy i still had these walls up and it took me a number of years to start like shedding them and it was like it was so absurd it was like i could feel i could feel when they went away and i'd cry a whole bunch and then i'd be like okay walls are lowering walls are low yeah it was wild how did you how did you lower the walls do you remember yeah i'd connect with people and in order you know i'd connect with somebody and then i'd hit a wall and be like oh i could feel it right it was like i'm not i'm not connecting there's some sort of blocking and then i just kind of it was it hurt almost but i'd relax a little bit and be like okay you know i'm not in the same kind of chronic ill health problems that i was like i can let my walls down a little bit and then i could experience more positive emotion more connection but yeah i'd say a lot of people are suffering from from that from being hurt from relationship problems from being ill from being stressed sure kovid hasn't contributed very well to that no no no that's definitely put a damper on people's dating habits for sure yeah that's very valuable information then um do you have i guess do you have advice for people who are kind of trapped to try and let down some of their walls well i think you what you said is is very valid and very interesting it's the fact that you could feel them rising up you could feel yourself starting to judge the other person right that's sort of we disguise our own defensiveness from to ourselves we say it's the other person who's acting in this way that isn't right they're being aggressive they're bothering us etc we blame them whereas you have to look inward and see that maybe you were the one that's putting up the wall not them doing something to you you are afraid of of being hurt and so you're finding an excuse to kind of raise the wall you know and you're thinking of you're anticipating the hurt or the pain that's going to come right and it starts with you and so being aware of the fact that you are probably you know if you look at how you judge other people that's a sure sign of your defensiveness now sometimes you're right in your judgments and you need to be somewhat defensive because there are scary people in the world there are toxic narcissists for instance there are people who are very aggressive and dangerous so you can't just be open to everyone going around you're going to really really suffer so there's a good reason to be a little bit defensive in this world and i understand that but the point where it becomes painful and unproductive is in your personal intimate relationships so you know you you carry over your your fear of people into these personal relationships and you're not even aware of it happening because you think it comes from them that's really from your own defensiveness and you have to be aware of the fact that you're not that you're paying a price for that you're not being a complete human being because we are more than anything we're not these intellectual rational animals we're emotional animals emotions dominate our behavior emotions dominate our reactions to the world they are much more powerful than thoughts where are these emotional animals and to not ex experience the full range of emotion to not experience the full range of love and as well as depression and hurt is to be part half human right and so you're really in the end hurting yourself you're not protecting yourself you're hurting yourself and i repeat once again that it's very important to um be able to detect the toxic people out there and that was the subject of my last book the laws of human nature but you can't you have to be at some point not be paranoid and realize that not everybody is like that and that you have to kind of let yourself be vulnerable so that you can experience sometimes experiencing pain and depression is important and necessary because part of growth is part of being a human being you know we all go through those periods i go through them myself but to try and repress that and to make everything kind of even where you're not experiencing joy or pain is i think to stifle your your your your human qualities yes that was great have you had negative feedback from any of the books you've written of course i mean um mostly the first two books because they're the the darkest the most devious of my books if you want to say put it that way and um you know people were saying that um i was promoting kind of almost rape culture or something that and it wasn't my intention at all and most people who like sometimes i get um emails i've gotten a lot of emails from women who say i think this man this boyfriend and my former boyfriend read your book and he did some really awful things to me and i and i feel very bad about that you know it's not the majority it's occasional and sometimes i've tried to advise them about how you know what how to respond then how to feel afterwards so i get some negative feedback from that and from the 48 laws but most of it is i'm not personally i mean i don't know if people will believe it but i'm not personally a devious evil machiavellian character i'm more kind of naive and innocent kind of stupid in some ways and when i entered the work world i was making all kinds of mistakes like i mentioned earlier in hollywood i outshone the master etc etc and so i wrote the 48 laws of power and the art of seduction from the point of view of people who are not good at the game who need to understand how it works so that they can defend themselves so they can use some of these laws of power as well in the world um but yeah i still get this criticism and i understand where it's coming from okay that makes sense well robert greene that was amazing thank you so much oh that was thank you i really i really enjoyed it yeah i wanted to hear i wanted to hear more of your stories but we'll maybe do that another time we should do that another time we should do that another time for sure and i think i'll hook you up with my dad i think you guys would have a great conversation so we shared we share some similar interests you know um i mean i've read his books and i know we're both interested in young yeah and we're both very much interested in ancient cultures and ancient civilizations history um and a few other similar interests but that would be fun that would be fun i have here i'm gonna link this below i have this here yeah so that's gonna be linked below when is it out it's out october 12th okay yeah and basically what it is is um it's extracts and from podcasts and from my books and from things i've written over the course of my of the 25 years that i've been writing and each day is kind of a meditation on a specific subject and it's basically i'm trying to help you gain a more realistic attitude towards life so that you don't so that you understand people on a deeper level and then you understand yourself on a deeper level and it's kind of structured to take you through the whole year focusing on your career focusing on power games focusing on seduction and influence and then finally focusing on human nature and the last month there are extracts from the new book that i'm working on called the law of the sublime so there's some original material in there but it's basically a book to make you think every day and kind of absorb ideas that are scattered throughout six of my other books that's so cool wow okay yeah so it's dated you can start in yeah this is great what the mentor needs how to learn quickly and deeply understand how the brain works okay well thank you very much for the book thank you very much for coming on that was a very entertaining podcast i'm glad i'm glad you liked it thank you i enjoyed it myself i found it very entertaining as well good okay wow and that's that's clint eastwood staring at me i've been kind of intimidated by that gun being pointed at me but yeah you should are marlin brando over there yeah i recognize that johnny cash yes i know yeah your icons yeah role models yeah exactly marilyn monroe is around here too but she's not in this one okay okay very good okay well thanks for coming on that was fun thank you so much mikayla my pleasure i really enjoyed it you

Introduction to this week's guest Robert Greene

How Robert got interested in writing about power and strategy.

Common manipulation techniques

The difficulty of being honest

The ruthless industry and power structures of Hollywood and the music industry.

The 48 Laws of Power

Using power without being evil or manipulative.

Robert's favorite laws

The Art of Seduction

The nine seduction types

The Star

The Coquette

The Natural

Tips on being vulnerable

The negative lash back from Robert Greene's books.

Robert Greene's new book, "The Daily Laws."