Mastering Power, Seduction, and Human Psychology with Robert Greene

Intro

A lot of manipulators and narcissists too is they pretend to be interested in you, but there's something kind of dead in their eyes. When you're excited, your eyes dilate. When you're really excited about somebody and you smile, your whole face lights up, your cheeks go up. But a fake smile's When I entered the work world, I was very naive. I thought like you that everyone's was going to work very hard trying to get the right results. Lo and behold, it's all about politicking. So, from very early on I was aware that people wear masks.

In an ideal world, wouldn't it be better to figure out a job where you didn't have to do that? You show me that ideal world and I'll move to it. I mean, it's not the world we live in. Mostly I'm just working on my new book. I'm thinking it's going to be my major work that is summarizing a lot of how I feel about life in general. We are animals after all and we have animal roots and we have a connection. We're obsessed since childhood with animals.

You have your lamb there. I have my cats, you know, and so entering that consciousness, I have a chapter on childhood about accessing I say childhood was a lot of the pain that we feel as we get older is that we experienced something different we were when we were children. We experienced something more open. Our minds were more open. Life was more intense and as we get older, we miss that and it causes us problems and I have a chapter about how to re- enter your childhood not just by becoming immature, but but creating a kind of mind and spirit and consciousness that you had as a child. I have a chapter on paganism which I discussed with your father. We had a very interesting discussion about that.

About the pagan consciousness because um I've studied a lot of ancient cultures and how interesting our ancestors, how they thought about the universe. This is I don't know if that's giving you an idea. I mean, I can go through all of the chapters, but that's No, that that gives me a bit of an idea.

Robert’s upcoming book

What When are you planning on launching or releasing the book or for for pre-order, let's say, and then release? Well, um there's 12 chapters. I've written eight. I'm on the ninth chapter. At the very slow pace that I'm going, I'll probably finish next early next year. Maybe in time to come out in 2025, the fall of 2025. But probably more likely, I can't believe it's 2026.

I take a very long time to write a book, sometimes 5 or 6 years. So, the pre-orders at the earliest would be in 2025. Okay, great. Well, good luck with that. Thank you. I need luck. Yeah, writing is really something.

Okay, I have a whole bunch of questions for you. Um some of them some of them I want to cover they're similar topics to what we talked about last time, but I found them really interesting. So, I want to go back to some of those, but a bunch of them are new. So, can we start with Oh, this we didn't cover yet. Um you talk about mentors quite a bit. How do you look for a mentor? Well, um it depends on what field you're in and who you are as an individual.

But to generalize a little bit, think of the mentor as kind of a second parent that you have. So, we don't get to choose our parents. You're fortunate to have a brilliant parent, but we don't choose our parents. And so, the mentor is the chance where you get to choose somebody to be like that surrogate father or mother you never really had. And so, it's more than just you don't want to just find somebody who's the most brilliant person in their field, but there's no emotional connection. There has to be a kind of an emotional contact between you, a back and forth, an exchange. So, I often tell people go through a process where you think that is somebody I would like to become.

In 5 or 10 years, I would like to be, you know, accomplishing the same kind of things. Their spirit, their sense of humor, their openness, their the way they think is something I I feel a connection to that in in a kind of an intuitive way. And so, you find a a mentor that way where there's So, I I had in my book Mastery, there was a woman, Yoky Matsuoka, who's I considered a brilliant um master of robotic intelligence who I interviewed. She was looking for a mentor at MIT. She's always been kind of a rebellious person. She played tennis as a young woman, and her her her idol was was John McEnroe. And so, she was looking for a mentor who had the same kind of rebellious spirit as her.

So, there's a there's a kind of similarity in spirit. That's how you find them. Then the next question is how do you get them? How do you How do you initiate communication and contact with them? Yeah. Okay. I think I've heard of that woman.

I think I was considering interviewing her for the podcast. She sounds really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, just a month ago. That's coincidental. That's funny. Hey guys, I've partnered with Meru Health, a very cool telehealth company for health optimization.

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Robert on anxiety

Anxiety. Well, it's kind of something that I I discuss peripherally in all of my books, and I discuss it a little bit in Sublime. I mean, it's related to our relationship to death, I I believe. Um, so we have layers of emotions in each of us. We we only uh we're only generally aware of the surface. So, I feel angry or excitement, I'm just aware of what initially triggered it. But deep down inside in your unconscious, there was something there was something else underneath it that triggered that emotion, right?

So, anxiety is the same thing and underneath it in deep deep layers is your fear of death. So, if your if you're not confronting your mortality, the fact that your your life is short, that you're going to die someday, then all these kind of little roots of of anxiety start sprouting up inside of you and you become afraid of other things and anxiety becomes kind of generalized because you're not dealing with the most basic reality, which is your mortality, right? And so then there are other factors that you're not dealing with as well. So, I think anxiety is is is like we all feel it. I feel it a lot. I I happen to have come from uh parents a mother who's very anxious all the time and she kind of ingrained that in me. So, I have a lot of anxiety.

And there could be a productive side to anxiety if you know how to deal with it. But the problem most people have is they don't analyze their emotions. They don't know why am I feeling anxious? What is it in this particular moment that's triggering it or what is lying underneath it, you know? So, when I'm writing a book, I'm extremely anxious because I don't think it's right. I'm not getting the right answer here. What I've written is not is superficial.

And so I use that anxiety to make me go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into what I'm working on. So you can make it something productive if you understand where it comes from. But as I say, underneath it all, are you able are you think are you aware of of the shortness of your life? Are you aware that at some point you're going to die and that people are going to be leaving you left, right, and center as you get older? Are you confronting the basic fear that is that all humans have felt for for millennia? If you're not confronting that, then anxiety will always be with you. Interesting.

Is anxiety triggered by fear or pain?

Fear of death. Do you think it can also be brought on by the fear of pain? Or do you think that also relates to the fear of death? I feel like a lot of my anxiety, when I like you said, dig deeper, you know, I'll get angry about something and then I'll realize I'm just I'm not actually angry, I'm sad. And then I real I'll realize I'm not sad, I'm scared. And like you got deeper and deeper. Um, but do you think it can also be fear of pain or do you think that's actually just fear of death at the bottom as well?

Well, what what what is the nature of your particular anxiety? What tends to trigger your anxiety? And how does it relate to pain in in that way? Well, I think I think I've got two two things, if I get down to the bottom, that make me quite anxious. And a lot of it has to do with me being sick when I was a kid. I know, yeah. And so, I've got a lot of trauma associated with hospitals that I really can't I'm like still having trouble getting through.

And then I have some trauma associated with past relationships that's come up. I had a baby recently. I had a baby 2 months ago. Well, congratulations. Thank you. His name is George. Wow.

Um and I have I've got some trauma from just other relationships. I have trauma from like my dad getting sick and taking care of him and watching that. Yeah. And so I'll be completely fine and then sometimes something will bubble up, something will trigger me and I don't even like the word trigger because it's been taken over but but I will get triggered and I'll get immediately I'll get very angry about something that I shouldn't really be angry about. And then I'll realize that was an overreaction. Why am I angry? I'm not angry.

I'm sad and like I said then I'll realize I'm not sad, I'm scared like at the bottom of it and then it'll be because it was something related to a figure of authority in a medical setting that really freaks me out or that's about as much as I've figured out. I'm sure that there's more to it but um but it's crazy I think. I think the older I get the more I understand that your mind is way more complicated than it feels when you're younger when you just have these like sad, angry, happy emotions with like especially as many like when years pass and things build up it's just it's wild. So I kind of well I don't know if that made any sense or if that was just a bunch of garbled words but No no no makes a lot of sense but um you know it's life is inevit- pain is inevitable in life, right? You're going to feel physical pain and you're certainly going to feel emotional and psychological pain if you ever have to deal with human beings on any level. That's something I write a lot about there. You know, people are slippery, they're evasive, they never quite ever do what you want, they hurt you etc.

So pain is inevitable and it's how do you deal with it? If you're always kind of trying to push it away and run away from it as you say fear is lying underneath that. So you don't want to confront your pain so you try and mask it. You try and medicate it with with with drugs or or alcohol or something, or you try to medicate it with some kind of addiction, anything to kind of hide it. So, the what you want to do with your emotions, first of all, let's get the idea that emotions are never simple. As you very wisely point out, it's never just pain or fear. There's There's other things going on, you know?

When you feel an emotion, it's mixed with all sorts of other things as well, and it passes very quickly. So, your fear quickly fades into something like excitement, and then it fades into something like depression, and then it comes you know, it's moving around. Okay, so your emotions are complicated. But, you want to develop the ability to stop and say, "Why am I feeling that in this moment? What is at the root of it, right?" And so, one thing that you have to understand is pain is inevitable in life. So, I want to develop the ability to confront it and to embrace it and to not run away from it and say, "I'm strong enough."

And there's actually something great about feeling pain. So, you want to be able to actually feel the emotion and not try and run away from it. So, pain is a signal from your If it's from your body that something is wrong and you have to correct it. But, if it's a pain that's emotional and psychological, it's also a signal that you have to deal with this particular issue. It's a It's a way that you can use to toughen yourself up and to not be so fragile and to realize that I can handle this pain if I run into it If I don't run away from it and I run into it and I confront it and I try and deal with it in the moment. That's how how I look at it. Yeah, so you have to get to the point where you're okay with it, like basically, exposure therapy.

Like, you you can't keep running away. I I found with things that I've gone through that I've actually gone through and then they're behind me now.

How writing helps anxiety

If I wrote about them in like serious detail as if I was kind of reliving them a number of times until it was easy to write about them, then eventually I would stop thinking about them. So, writing was extremely effective for me more than I think definitely more than thinking about it. That doesn't work very well. Um more than talking about it, writing about it numerous times seemed to help. Well, there's there's a lot of wisdom in that. So, you know, when your thought when you're inside your head at all at all, you just have these loop of thing the thoughts that go round and round and round and they kind of torment you and they haunt you and they never get anywhere. Right?

Yeah. And and we're a culture that depends so much on talking on talking therapy. And that also doesn't really get you anywhere because it just makes you constantly inside of yourself. And what you've done by writing it down is you've taken what's inside of your head and you've made it external. You put it on a piece of paper. So, it's no longer in your head. It's actually out there in the world.

Yeah. Looking at the object of what you wrote is very therapeutic. It's very liberating as opposed to always having it circling around in your brain or just simply talking about it. There's a lot of power, I believe, in taking a journal or any kind of any anything that you want to write in and writing about your experiences, writing about why you're afraid. And sometimes what happens is you start writing and you go off on these tangents and then you realize there's something else involved that's going on here. It's a very free-flowing process and it's a very beautiful process. So, I think what you're doing there is is is very wise.

Yeah. I haven't thought about the fact that you're actually physically putting something on paper and it could be thought of removing it from yourself. I like that as opposed to talking. I I like that. Yeah. Um I mean, a lot of people just do Excuse me. Do it on the computer, which is fine.

I'm very old-fashioned. I like actually taking a book with an actual pen and writing it down. So, it's physically it's your hand that's moving it and it's not just all virtual and you have it on paper. There is something very powerful about that. Um but yeah, I I mean, we've I don't know about you, but we've all a lot of us have been through the kind of therapy where you see a therapist and you talk it through. Yeah. It can be good, but so much of that it doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

You can spend years and years and years and you go round and round and round in the same circles, right? But having the ability to put it out on paper or to express it artistically, to create a novel or a book or or a piece of film or maybe what you do with your podcast, it gets it outside of you and out there in the world and it doesn't haunt you. It doesn't torment you as it as it would if it's always just inside.

Does therapy work?

I think therapy is probably tricky for some people and works for other people. Like I know for me, I I started therapy when I was in when I was 12 cuz I was extremely depressed and I was on medication and there the doctors were like, you should see a a therapist. And I just I had a hilarious number of therapists in a row that just didn't work in hilarious ways. Like terrible, terrible ways. But the first one, her husband got brain cancer, which is just terrible. And she couldn't handle it, so she'd talk to me about it. I was 12.

And it was just like her room was full of I was too old for it, too. She only saw chronically ill, depressed kids. So, you'd go into the doctor's office and it'd be full of kids that were really hurt, in wheelchairs and like really disabled. And I looked normal even though I had arthritis everywhere. I looked like a normal kid. So, it was like scary going in there. And then her her office was covered in frogs, little stuffed animal frogs.

It was just like Yeah, anyway, that was the first one. And then after that, I kept making them cry. I'd tell them what was going on and they'd cry. And I was just like This isn't I'd be like, "No, it's okay. Everything's fine. I'm fine. Look up here.

I'm fine." Anyway, So, they they needed a therapist. Yeah, well, they Those are the people that go into therapy. Kayla? I think you should write a book about these experiences. It would be very funny and very interesting going back on all of the therapists that you've had and about your early experiences. Oh, man, I have I have most of a book done.

I just haven't finished it cuz like the last couple years four or five years were hard, so I'm not like ready to pour that out yet. It's still swirling around. Soon though. I think I'm almost ready. If you guys ever consume alcohol, ever, it should probably be vodka. But, that's not what I'm talking about right now. Please try my supplement.

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How to identify slippery people

Yeah, I had the naive idea uh growing up that people Everybody else was exactly like me. That's just what I thought everybody else was like. I didn't realize people differ so greatly. I just I didn't know that till I was probably 24. I didn't understand it. It's hard to understand somebody else. So, um I didn't realize how What percentage of the population is slippery?

So, how do you How do you teach people to identify slippery people? Are there behaviors that you can look out for so you realize what's going on before you intertwine yourselves with them? Well, the first thing you have to realize this is a lot about I wrote about it in my book about human nature is we all have this quality, So, we all have slippery tendencies. I know that if people are confronting me in in certain ways and I and I don't like it, I'll have it like a slippery strategy for avoiding them because I don't like Well, it's a bad quality in me, but I'm admitting it. I don't like overt conflict. I don't like overt confrontation. So, I It's important to recognize that we all have these tendencies and not get so righteous about it.

Right? But then, there are people who are super slippery, who are much more slippery than I am. And the main and the main thing to understand is that people have patterns. So, if somebody does something once where you find them talking behind your back, or you find them not showing up for an appointment or not doing what they promised that they were going to do for you, which is typical slippery passive-aggressive behavior, your first tendency would be, "What's going on here? That something isn't right." And then maybe you might ask them about it, and they'll have some excuse going, "Well, I'm sorry, you know, I was caught up in traffic or I've been very busy." or whatever. Then you go, "Okay, that's fine."

You have to stop and go, "If somebody is like that once, it is probably part of a pattern." Right? So, if somebody is late once, they probably are doing it chronically. And it's not a sign that they're just disorganized or that they live in a place where there's a lot of traffic. It's a sign where they they don't completely respect you. They're they're much more They think they are so much more important. Their time is so much more important than yours.

If people don't answer your emails, maybe they do have a good excuse. So, you give them a little bit of leeway. You go, "Okay, I'll let it happen once." But if it happens again and again and again, then you know that something else is going on. So, you recognize the pattern and you understand that people never or very rarely do something once. So, if they're doing this kind of evasive behavior where they're or they're a lot of envy where people act like they're your friend and they they love you and they're they're just so into your life and they want to hear everything about you, but then they do something that's that that strikes you as odd that seems like they're kind of hurting you or they're sharing your secrets or they're betraying you in some way. A lot of that will stem from envy.

So, they they became your friend, they became so close because secretly they don't really like you. They feel like you got something that they that they should have that you don't really deserve it. So, you have to be able not be so naive is the main lesson here. When people do something that strikes you as sort of odd or potentially hurtful, right? Um don't just accept their excuses or don't just let pass by, but analyze it and look at them and try and see if it's something in their character that they might that there might be something else going on. Because people who are who are toxic or who are evasive or passive-aggressive the problem that that we have is that they generally try to present a very pleasant, genial, friendly front and we don't recognize it. And their charming front kind of deceives us.

And then if they do something that we don't like our first instinct will be me to blame ourselves or maybe it was something that I did. And I want you to like have some distance from the social realm and look at it as if it's like a boxing ring where people are punching each other, right? And kind of step back and analyze what people are doing, analyzing their moves and seeing the patterns there and not getting so emotional, but having some detachment and analyzing the patterns that you can see in their behavior. Did it take you a while to like to figure that out? Is that how you viewed people when you were say below the age of 20, or did you have things happen to you in life and then you realized that this is what people were like? Well, I think a lot of it is your your early parenting and your and your if you're if you're a child and you feel that all vulnerable, like you're you're you're not getting quite what you want, you become very sensitive to people and their motives and their behavior because you're afraid of being hurt. So, a lot of very empathetic people later in life, I found in my experience, had parenting that was there was something a little bit off about it, and they had to be very attentive to the adults around them to make sure that they weren't hurt, right?

How Robert developed his outlook

So, you develop a kind of sensitiveness. But, I will admit that when I was 22, 23 and I entered the work world, I was very naive. I thought like you that everyone's was going to be like me, that they were going to work very hard and try and get the right results, and that thinking and ideas is what mattered in getting getting what the results that you wanted. And then, lo and behold, it's all about politicking, about who who's friendlier with the boss, about who's got this kind of office, about all this kind of bullshit that I just thought was ridiculous. In fact, it kind of ended up inspiring my first book, The 48 Laws of Power. So, I was naive, too. But, because I had that childhood where I was very sensitive to people, I don't like getting hurt, I was very keen on observing what this is what is going on, and I was very much seeing these kind of power games that people were playing, you know?

And um I didn't think that people were as innocent as they protested. I've always had a idea of analyzing things, and I like to understand what's going on underneath. So, from very early on, I was aware that people wear masks. They pretend to be something that they're not because that's what it means as a human being when you're social, when you're out in the world. You're never exactly who you are. You're wearing a kind of a mask. So, how you are with your father and how you are with the public or with other people, it changes with each different person that you interact with, right?

So, I've always been aware of these masks that people wear and um what is going on beneath that friendly smile or that continual frown or that kind of fake laughter. Is there some Is there a pain behind it? A lot of smiling and laughter is actually quite painful. And you have to be sensitive, and you have to think about it, and you have to use some of your intuitive powers and your empathy to kind of It's not all just intellectual. A lot of it is um is feeling what other people are feeling it and kind of seeing you know, what I say like that fake smile and what's behind it. Yeah.

How to trust your intuition

I think I I realized I mean, intuition is a better word. I've been calling it vibe. But I Vibe's fine. Uh I used to pick up on that before I realized what it was. Just being uncomfortable around certain people and being like, "What's making me uncomfortable? Nothing should be making me uncomfortable. Maybe it's something that's wrong with me."

And eventually something on would unfold and I'd be like, "Oh, that's what I was picking up on." Um but I I thought intuition and the whole vibe thing and picking up on things that you couldn't, I guess, articulate properly, I thought that I thought that was all bullshit, I guess, for a while. I don't anymore, but like for quite a while I did. Why do you Why do you think it was bullshit? I think it was because I couldn't articulate it. Like if you you walk into a room and you can tell two people are arguing, but no one said anything, that feeling that's in the air Yeah, exactly. I like of course.

It also It's also possible I was on antidepressants for a long time and I think that kind of screws with your perception. Yeah. So maybe that played a role. A a lot I've noticed with a lot of women, for instance, who get into very bad relationships and they talk they come to me for advice, etc. And a lot of times they had a feeling when they first met man that something wasn't right with him, right? But then they forgot about it. They didn't listen to that little voice, that little intuitive that vibe, if you will.

That there was something about this man that was maybe narcissistic, that was maybe a touch violent, that was maybe, you know, whatever you want to call it. And then he charmed them in some way and and and he he put on a smile and he said all the right things, but that first moment where they where you catch something about a person before you get emotionally involved with them, is very, very telling and you have to listen to it because it's real, that feeling in the air about people. I mean, think of it this way. We are animals that have roots that go back millions of years, okay? And as human beings, we spent in our evolution hundreds of thousands of years without words, without language. And we were very much a social animal. We were attuned to people's feelings.

We had no words to communicate them, but we understood, just by looking at them, that there was something wrong or there was a danger in the environment. We have that ability, it's very powerful, it's built inside of us. That feeling in the air that you sense when you enter a room and people you know have been arguing is real. There's something going on, but it's not something you can verbalize. You have to trust that feeling and go lean into it and go "What is that?" And not just push it away and go, "Oh, it's just woo-woo. It's It's not science."

Because it is It is actually very accurate. Yeah. I completely agree. I completely agree. I I mean, I think people are talking about it now more and taking it more seriously, but your example of telling women that if they feel that something's off, to follow that instinct, that's ex- extremely valuable. Yeah, because I've heard it time and again they'll say, "You know, when I first met him, uh I had this weird feeling and then and then I thought, well, maybe I'm wrong, you know, maybe I'm just It was like, I had a bad relationship before, maybe I was just projecting it onto him." Yes, that's possible, but more likely you were sensing something that is actually very real about this person, and then you forgot about it or you repressed it because you you wanted to have that relationship.

And so you when you get emotionally involved with the person, it's very, very difficult to analyze them, to step back and go, "What is their character? What is really going on here?" And I'm not saying you need to be this cold person that is always analyzing everything people do. That'll make you miserable. But having the ability to occasionally step back and let go of your emotions and just look at the person, I can't tell you how powerful that can be, how liberating it can be, how it can save you from entering a relationship that will end up costing you emotionally for years and years and years. It's a very, very important skill to develop.

Difference between power and manipulation

Is there a difference between power and and just manipulation? Well, um that's a good question. I mean, uh in the in the 48 Laws of Power, um most of the techniques or not most, but a fair amount of them have to do with manipulation. But, not all of it has to do with manipulation. So, uh you know, it's like you're you're a lot of the power in life comes from within you. It's not about pushing people around and crushing them and and seducing them. It's about yourself and how you carry yourself.

So, a lot of the laws of power in in that particular book have to do with your attitude towards yourself. Right? So, I have a chapter in there, excuse me, called excuse me, act like a king to be treated like one. So, if you think of yourself as a king or a queen as somebody very powerful that deserves great things in life, other people pick up on that. And it makes them go, "Well, I'm going to treat them that way." That's not really to me a manipulation. That's just how you feel about yourself.

Right? So, always say less than necessary, which is a very powerful technique, is you tend to talk too much. And when you talk too much, you reveal your insecurities. You reveal the fact that you can't control yourself. You you reveal weakness. So, being able to control what you say, I don't see that as a manipulation. If you're trying to actively deceive people with your words, that is manipulation.

But, training yourself to maybe talk less and think more instead of reacting is very powerful. You know? And so, creating an air of mystery or recreating yourself, how you present yourself to the world because we are all actors, you could see that as manipulation, but I see it as very human. You know, children, when we're children, we love to play games, we love to play roles, we like to wear costumes and pretend we're a a firefighter or or or, you know, whatever it is that we like to pretend that we are. So, it's a very human thing to play a role and to act and to and to put on a facade. You might see that as manipulation. I just see that as human and the fact that you can control how other people see you is very, very powerful.

You could look at everything that humans do as a manipulation and I find that very reductionist cuz I don't think that's true. But I I think a lot of the things that I think are power have to do with how you control yourself, how you see yourself, how you're able to not just always be emotional and reacting to things. Self-mastery. If you want to think of self-mastery as a manipulation, you could do that, but I don't I don't see it that way.

Oversharing in workplace relationships vs personal

Do you suggest implementing these strategies differently in like the workplace and in relationships? Like showing your significant other yourself, that's beneficial, right? But showing the workplace your innermost feelings is inappropriate. Very, very true. But then there are times where it crosses over. You mean, you know, the problem with human beings is we're so rigid and dogmatic where we think it's always A or B. And and and it's not, it's more fluid like that.

So, in your personal relationships, sometimes you want to keep a little bit of mystery. You don't want that partner of yours to know everything about you, right? Because then you become so familiar that there's no fantasy involved, right? And if they stop fantasizing about you, they'll find something else to fantasize about, another human, for instance, right? So, even with your personal relationships, you want a touch of of of mystery. You don't a a little bit of things that that will surprise them about you is very very powerful. Okay, but yes, what you say is very true.

So, in the work world and this is a problem that people have in the world today because of social media. They're so used to revealing everything about themselves, what they had for breakfast to where they vacationed, who who they're dating, all this other stuff that when they enter the work world, they just they don't know how to turn that off and they just become the same person and it's not good. It's not being a social human being. In the work world, you're playing a role, you're playing a a particular game, you're trying to fit in, you're trying to get things done in a certain way. You're wearing a mask, you're playing a game, you're playing a role. It doesn't have to be who you are personally. So, it's very important to differentiate your friendships from the work world and and the power world.

It's a very important thing to learn.

Can a mask incorporate into who you are?

Do you think if you put on these masks, they end up incorporating into who you are at some point anyway? Well, it's a good point and that happens to people. If you notice somebody as they get into their 40s and they played this particular role in life, they were like whatever job they were and they were always kind of wearing that mask that by the time they're 45, they can't take it off. Their face is kind of frozen into that look that they've had at the work world or whatever, right? So, the key is you have distance from yourself, right? So, if you go in the work world and you have to smile a lot and you have to tell people that you love their ideas even though you think their ideas suck and you have to do all the kind of gamesmanship, you have some distance and you go, "I know I'm playing a role, okay? I'm not taking this so seriously that I actually feel what I'm telling people.

I know what I'm up to. And if you do that, then you retain your spirit, you retain your soul, you know? When you're a child, you know that you're playing a role, you know that you're not really a fireman, you know you're not really an NBA player, you know you're not really the president or whatever. You're playing a game. You have to have a little bit of distance from yourself and not take everything personal. Because if you don't, then as you say as you get older and you get in your 30s and 40s and 50s, that mask actually becomes who you are and it can be very frightening. Wouldn't it, in an ideal world, wouldn't it be better to figure out a job where you didn't have to do that, where you could be more of yourself?

You show me what you show me that ideal world and I'll move to it. I mean, that's not the world we live in. Yes, you know, um I've reached a point now where I don't have to wear so many masks anymore. Of course, I have to wear a little bit of a mask. I'm not completely being who I am here in my house with you right now, but I'm being fair I'd say I'm being 90% authentic, okay? Just to put a number on it. All right?

But, um Sorry, I forgot where I was going with this. Um but yeah, I've reached a point I've reached a point with my work where I don't have to pretend so much, which is a great thing. Right? And being an entrepreneur allows you that freedom. So, not having to work for other people is is the most powerful thing you can do. You as as an entrepreneur running your own podcast, running your own business, you don't have to play so many of those games anymore. You probably have to play a little bit of them.

You have employees, etc. But you have to play less and less of them. So, the larger the group of people you work with, the more or have to wear those masks and the more dangerous it becomes, the more you become your own boss and you don't have to play all those political games with people, the more power that you have to not and to to be more of who you are. I mean, look, we love like certain icons in our culture like rock stars or or people like that who we feel are being authentic, right? Like you you take any kind of of of popular music icon out there and we go they're able to just be who they are. They just have this person this this authenticity. It's because they can do that because that's where their power is.

They can make money to be Okay. you know? That would be the ideal world, but we don't live in that ideal world. Okay, that makes sense to me. That makes sense. So, a lot of the yeah, societal positions people are put in, they they have to put on a mask in order to fit that position. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Okay, that makes sense. Like whatever a TSA agent is, whatever that mask that is a horrible mask. Yeah, or or or the doctors that you don't like and Oh, yeah. You know how they they just sit at the computer and they just type and type and they don't even look at you in the eye and then they just tell you things as if they're God. And imagine imagine that that's who they are for 20 30 years. That's who they are when they go home at night to their children or to their wife or or husband. They you know, they can't take it off.

So, or the TSA agent. They definitely aren't going to have a wife or husband if they keep that mask on. Maybe they could marry each other. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, here this is a fun one.

Quick signs you’re being manipulated

Um are there are there quick signs you can pick up on uh to allow you to recognize that you're being manipulated? Well, um it depends on on on on the kind of manipulation that's going on. So, is it Is it a sexual seduction? Is it that kind of manipulation? Is it someone trying to steal their money from you? Is it somebody trying to charm you? So, a lot of the scenarios that I've personally had to deal with as a consultant will be the following cuz there These are all different kinds of scenarios and they're all a little bit different.

So, you have a business and um you realize that it's too much for you. The business is growing. You need a partner, right? So, you start looking for a partner and you find person A, male or female and you you interview him or her. Let's just say him so I don't have to go through all that gender jumping and and he's like he's so he's very pleasant and nice, got a great resume. He's smiling and everything, wonderful. Um and then you hire him.

And then lo and behold he turns out to be very lazy. He turns out to be out for himself. He turns out that he can't take any kind of criticism which I must tell you the worst character flaw you can ever deal with with people are those who cannot take criticism. It'll just drive you crazy, right? It'll send you to an early grave. I I completely agree. Okay.

So, you've hired this person and they're making your life miserable and then they give me a call and they go, "Robert, what can I do?" Well, I say "The best thing you should have done was to recognize beforehand that they were playing a game. Okay? So, you want to recognize these types before you get emotionally involved with them." And you can test them. So, I often tell This is going back to the scenario of looking for a business partner. You give them an interview and you you ask them a question that's totally off base, that's totally from left field. that's you surprise them.

There's no way they could have prepared for it, they can't expect it. How do they react? You know, because they've they've trained themselves like a monkey to respond everything correctly, and you've thrown them a curve. Do they get all stressed and they try and cover it up with bluster, or do they go sit back and go, "You know, I never thought of that before. That's an interesting question. I'm not really quite sure how to answer it." If they do that, ding ding ding, you've hit somebody that's good.

Right? They've shown that they have the ability to not always feel like they're right. So, you test people, you push them before you get involved with them. But, in other scenarios, you have to trust that that initial feeling that you get from people, you know, in my Laws of Human Nature, I have a chapter on nonverbal communication. And something that you probably thought was a little bit woo-woo when you were 24, but is actually, I think, very powerful. Right? So, people who are really narcissistic, we all have a touch of narcissism.

I certainly have a a good dose of narcissism in myself. We all have it. We're all self-absorbed. There are those deep narcissists out there, and boy, can they be painful, and boy, can they be manipulative, right? Their body language reveals it. And I talk about how study their face, and what a lot of manipulators and and narcissists do is they seem they pretend to be interested in you, right? But, there's something kind of dead in their eyes.

They're not they're pretending, they're wearing the role, their their mouth seems to say things that are are are empathetic, but their eyes are dead. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but I've worked for somebody who was like that, and I noticed it right away. He wasn't really ever looking at me, even though he was saying things that seemed to give that impression. Look, I'm sorry, go ahead. That's creepy. Is it like So, I I've come across a number of people that had They gave me kind of like shark eye vibes. They're like lizard eyes.

Just something was just a little bit It was just a little bit creepy. That's the vibe it gave me was shark or lizard-like eyes. I've come across a couple of people like that. Well, eyes are are very telling. They're very like as they say, it's the windows to the soul. Um and so, you know, when you when somebody is genuinely interested and excited about you, their eyes dilate. They open.

There are things about ourselves we cannot control. I don't care if you're Hitler or whomever. There are things about your face you cannot control. And you cannot control the dilation of your eyes. So, those lizard eyes you're talking about, they're very narrow. They're very pointed like that. Mm, maybe that was it.

When you're excited, your eyes dilate. When you're really excited about somebody and you smile, your whole face lights up. Your cheeks go up. But a fake smile's Yeah. very tense. There's nothing happening here or here. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Attuning to that will show you that people are saying something and they're not being genuine. And that's one sign of of manipulation. And then, I know this will sound very self-aggrandizing, but if you read the 48 Laws of Power and you read The Art of Seduction, and you know the tools that a seducer will use on you, you can be very aware in the moment if they're using that on you, right? So, in the second half of the law of Art of Seduction, I have 24 strategies uh in seduction, starting from when you first meet somebody to the very end when you have consummated a relationship. And um and so for instance, one of the chapters in there is about isolating the other person. So, you take them away from your their family your family and you um you you alienate them from your family saying or your their friends saying, "Those people are awful, right?"

That's a sign that they're trying to isolate you and it's a classic seductive technique and it's a manipulation and it can be very dangerous. So, if you read the these books like mine um you'll see the strategies that people who manipulate and seduce use and you'll recognize them right away. A lot of women have written to me saying that the book helped them see before they got trapped in a of a of a typical kind of destructive male seducer or pickup artist. They could see right through them because they read the book. So.

Are there healthy ways of manipulation?

Do people ever implement those strategies in order to get what they want but in a healthy way? Cuz you can seduce somebody at the beginning of a relationship and it's a bit you know, just the beginning of a relationship it's more fun and it's more exciting than it is a little bit later on and there are techniques that you wouldn't necessarily implement throughout the relationship. Is that still a manipulation or is that like where's the line between bad and normal? Well, it's for what purpose? Are are you um are you trying to like um take this person and and make them your slave? Do you want them to submit to you? Do you want them to be at your beck and call, you know, like your dishrag?

Or do you genuine So, a really a healthy seduction involves a back and forth. So, in every relationship and every kind of seduction or relationship, it's never 50/50, I'm afraid. Very rarely is the interest on one side and the other exactly the same. There's always a little bit of tension where somebody is more interested than the other person, and it can go back and forth and back and forth, which is very common. But it has to be relatively equal. So, if the other person just wants sex out of you, which is, you know, which would be the unhealthy uh relationship unless you unless that's what you want as well. But if that's all they want out of you, right?

They're not really in love with you. They're not really interested in you. They're using you for a purpose. Okay? So, a healthy seduction is I'm in love with the other person. I actually really want them. And and they feel it, and they want me, and then I use some of these tactics that I mentioned.

So, um the woman I'm with now, we we've been together for for quite a while. She's She went out, so I can tell you this story right now. Um when I first was dating her, this is before I wrote The Art of Seduction, mind you. Um I knew that I had um all of these women friends who were very beautiful, right? And it was my birthday, and I had invited these, you know, like six or seven very beautiful women to have birthday dinner at this restaurant. And so, in the back of my mind I go, I'm going to invite this other woman that I I'm now with to this party. And I knew that she seeing me surrounded by all these women would get her competitive and would make it look like I was somebody desirable.

Now, she recognizes this afterwards that this is what happened, and she laughs about it, and she she doesn't quite think that I was being as clever as I pretend to be as I'm telling you. We have a disagreement about that because I think I was being quite clever. But um you know, I was genuinely interested in her. I was love with her. I wanted her, you know, Yeah. go out with me. So, I used a little bit of trickery. But, seduction and love and relationships, there there's a bit of theater involved.

It's not real life. We don't want to go out with somebody who just wears shorts and and and and clogs and a t-shirt, right? We we dress up. We go to a nice place. We take someone to a restaurant. We take them to the theater to to whatever. There's theater involved.

And we people in the world today we're craving sub- as I said in the beginning, sublime. We're craving experiences. We're craving to be taken out of our boring, mundane, day-to-day lives. We want something mythic. We want something larger than life. So, if you're doing that in your seduction and it's out of the the goodness of your heart because you really truly interested in that person, I see that as a completely healthy and completely within completely legal in sedat- in seduction terms.

Robert on the Apple Vision Pro

Have you seen anything about these Apple Vision Pro? Speaking of keeping people in their own heads and kind of isolated, do you have any feelings about the new Apple Vision Pro? Um well, you know, Michaela, I'm kind of an older person. I'm probably more like your father's age. So, that kind of stuff just doesn't appeal to me. And um I'm an un-virtual person. I want to see people in the flesh.

I want to I want to meet them. I want to talk to them. I want maybe touch them within bounds, etc., etc. I don't like all of the virtuality. It drives me crazy. And um because the What is to me What is the most powerful thing that human beings possess? I ask you.

What would you say? Okay, let me think. Give me like 15 seconds. Yeah, it's not really fair for me to put you on the spot. No, no, no, no, no, no. I've got I got a couple of answers. I have my own answer, but okay, go on.

I I would say I think it's probably the ability to love. I'm going to go with that. Okay. Well, that's related to what I'm saying, to what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that the most important brain power that you have is that your imagination. Your ability to see This is what could happen with these particular materials. Oh, yeah, that's amazing.

Yes. This is the world I have, but I can see other things. I can imagine a possibly I can imagine a book, I can imagine what a building, whatever. When you're a child, you develop your imagination by playing games with other people, etc., etc., in various different ways. When you live in a world where everything is pushed on you where everything you have no room for your imagination. They're the ones programming your brain, giving you these images, giving you this virtual feeling, making you see all of these things instead of the real world, enhancing, because I know that the Apple Pro, it has this feature where it actually enhances the environment. Um you know, then your brain is rotting.

You're not learning how to use your own imagination. And so in in my new book the chapter I just wrote was about history and our relationship to the past. And I'm someone, like I know your father is, I'm absolutely obsessed with history and our ancestors and things that happened in the past. I think it's the most incredible trip you can be on is to is to journey into the past. And I wrote these sections where I take you inside of cities in the ancient world, like the city of Babylon in the 7th century BC, and I say, "Imagine you're you're there and what it would be like." It would be absolutely incredible. It would blow your mind.

Learn to exercise your imagination and don't have everything put on you through technology where they're they are programming your brain. They're not programming your iPhone or your or your Apple Pro. They're literally put inside your head. They're programming your thoughts and they're they're curtailing your imagination. So, I think this stuff is kind of dangerous. But, I'm an old guy, so what am I going to do? I I'm more I think I'm more positively predisposed to it just but I can see the dangers for some people for sure.

I feel like they'd have to be used very wisely in very specific situations in order to be beneficial. We got a pair to try them out. Ah. And it's so they're too heavy right now. There's a battery attached to them. So, they're not I don't think they're usable at the moment. They're like you'd end up with a headache and neck pain and things.

But, I had it on for about 10 minutes and my husband and I both had headaches afterwards I think cuz the screen is so close. But, looking through them is insane. You get like 15-ft theaters and it's really but it also makes reality look a little bit off. Like that feeling you get when you look at somebody who has kind of lizard eyes. Like their eyes don't match up with their smile. That's kind of what looking through the glasses looked like. Like tables and things are just a tiny bit not real.

It's It was kind of creepy. Interesting but creepy. In some ways I would compare porn to that. Yeah. Yeah. In the world of porn, all the women have gigantic breasts. They're all like shaped a certain way.

They're all long-legged. They're all incredible like this. And so, guys when they see actual women in the world, they're kind of disappointed when they take their clothes off. You don't look like a porn star. You're living in this kind of virtual world where everything is enhanced, right? And then the real world looks kind of disappointing to you. I don't know if I'm if I if I'm making sense at all here.

Oh, no, you you are. And I I feel like for people who are maybe born into this and experience the virtual world at a younger age, it's going to be much more difficult for them, obviously. If you started that at a young age, I don't know. It was very interesting to look at, you know, you I can see how somebody could get addicted to having a 15-ft screen right in front of you. I heard watching movies is is pretty intense on this thing where it's like like it's the Yeah. beautiful screen you've ever seen in your life. It's so real, but So, that that sounded kind of interesting to me, but I don't know. I I don't know if I'd be into it.

Maybe when it gets less heavy and it doesn't leave you with with a headache. That would help. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to ask you one last question, then I'm going to let you go. Sort of mesmerized by your lamb, by the way. Thank you. Is there any relationship to that lamb?

Kind of. I So, I don't know if you know this. I am I'm on an all-meat diet. I only eat meat. I Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm still only eating meat, and for a period of time I only ate lamb.

And so, you'd think I wouldn't have a painting of the lamb, but I'm very grateful that I was able to eat something that didn't make me ill. And so, my husband bought me this painting of the lamb. Uh-huh. Um and it's so cute. Yeah. But, it's more of a grateful thing than a like haha I eat lamb. It's more like thank god lambs were around or I'd be very ill for a period of time.

That's very good. That's Yeah. I understand that. Yeah. Okay, last question. Yep.

Robert’s relationship with 50 Cent

Um how did the collaboration with 50 Cent in the 50th Law initiate. Well, um very simply, it started in like late 2005. He had um he had been a huge fan of the 48 Laws of Power. He discovered it like a couple years after he had recorded his first album, and he found the book extremely helpful in dealing with the music business, which is a very very shark very shark-infested environment. And um and he also read The Art of Seduction, which had been out, and he found that very useful cuz 50 is a is an incredible seducer. And I can say that because I've been in rooms with him on the telephone talking to various celebrities and seducing them. He could charm any woman on this planet.

He's actually brilliant at it. And he even charmed my mother, you know, my 97-year-old mother when he met her at at a book signing. So, he's very seductive. He read The Art of Seduction. He wanted to meet me. And he had a at that point he was launching a series of books, so he might have been thinking about a book at the time. I had no idea.

So, um I was, you know, they were inviting me to New York to meet him, and I yeah, sure, why not? I mean, that could be fun. I'm all into like new and weird experiences in my life. But I must admit I was a little bit intimidated because I I'm not a huge hip-hop fan. I like hip-hop, but 50 was like my favorite. I thought I really liked his music cuz I liked the edge on it. I liked the kind of rawness.

I I found it very appealing. So, I was intimidated by him. Was he going to be disappointed in me? Was he going to be like so thuggish that I'm going to be, you know, shaking in my shoes in front of him? So, I was a little bit worried. I flew to New York, and I met him in the back room of a steakhouse on Madison Avenue. Um, me by myself, me little white boy by himself.

He he's surrounded with his entourage. So, I was already feeling a little worried. I sat down next to him. And first of all, I was noticing the bling was insane. He had a diamond bracelet on that was just unbelievable. I had no idea how much it was worth, but it's incredible. It's like It's all I could look at was that diamond bracelet.

Um, he was so nice. He was so friendly. He was so open. And then it ended up later as we became friends and we worked on the book that he said he was a little nervous meeting me because he was expecting this kind of older Henry Kissinger type guy who was so powerful that he would I would just stare at him and he would melt. So, he was a little bit nervous. So, we were both thinking the other person was not who they were because he's actually a very sweet, nice, down-to-earth person. And I'm I guess I would have to say I'm maybe more of the same.

I'll let other people say that. Anyway, so we got along really well. There was a nice rapport. And I got to thinking he didn't say Robert, let's do something together, but I got to thinking you know, um two people from the opposite ends of of our country. Me, you know, middle-aged Los Angeles boy, you know, very middle middle-class I'm sorry, middle-class. I didn't mean middle-aged. Very middle-class background in Los Angeles.

My father was a salesman his whole life. But, you know, a comfortable life. 50, Southside Queens. His mother was killed when he was when he was like 9 years old. She was a a hustler. He became He dealt crack when he was 9 years old. The two opposite ends of the spectrum. What if we put our minds together and wrote a book?

How interesting that would be. How it would show America that all these all this identity stuff, all these walls that people put up between people is just bullshit. We're humans. We all have the same aspirations. We all have the same We think in the same way. Let's put our two brains together. And so he he was open to it.

And the idea was I was going to spend a few months with him and decide what is 50's source of power in life. You know, where where is his power? And as I was with him, it didn't take me three three months. It took me like one month. I realized it's his lack of fear. And I don't mean in a thuggish way. I mean he's not afraid of failure.

He's not afraid of being criticized. He's not afraid of doing something different and odd. He's not afraid of of of um confronting people, etc. And that fearlessness is is incredibly powerful. Because if you think about it, how did somebody from this these horrible circumstances differentiate himself from all the other people in his neighborhood, in his hood? And how did he become who he was? And I sort of traced it back to this quality that he was not afraid of failing.

He was not afraid of learning. He was not afraid of of of on on and on. And so um we we spent these six months together. I followed him around. I had the most amazing experiences, some of which I can't even repeat. Um and uh I saw a whole world that I've you know, I've I've never had had any access to before. And then I wrote We wrote this book together based a lot of it on his stories and about things in history about the power that you can have in life when you're not afraid.

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Do you Do you think So, just before you go, do you think his ability to not be afraid was brought on by the fact that he experienced what must have caused so much fear when he was so young that everything else in comparison just was inconsequential. Well, yeah, but you know, a lot of people in the hood have the same experience, but they don't end up here. But what happened to him really happened to him was when he was I don't know how old, maybe 21 or so. Um from an old drug dealing days cuz he had kind of left the drug dealing behind. An old beef somebody came up to him while he was sitting in and shot him nine times from like this range.

And the bullets went in through the side of his mouth. Right? And he nearly died. He came this close to dying. And he had a classic near-death experience which we talk about in the book. And um when you've gone through a near-death experience and and I have gone one through one recently, a lot of things that mattered to you beforehand don't matter anymore. Right?

Why should I be afraid of this little piddly person who's bothering me? When I nearly died, it doesn't matter. It gives you a sense of scale and proportion. These are the things that matter, not, you know, not this little emergency that happened. So, I saw him for instance, there was a crisis in in G Unit, that's that's his company, where he was um launching a video. And it got um released on the internet, pirated on the internet before the release. And all of his managers were freaking out.

They were so angry. They were going to like what it's our whole roll out of this of this song and and the album has gotten ruined and what are we going to do? We're going to sue, blah blah blah blah. I saw him in this meeting. He let them get all hysterical. He was completely calm. He was just a pillar of calmness.

And he said, "Look, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do." I'm not going to try and imitate his voice cuz I can't do it. I'm going to tell you what we're going to do. We're going to turn this into something great. Right? We're going to turn this into an opportunity. And he says, we're going to stage something.

And we're going to have it put on social media that when 50 heard about this, he got so angry, he took the flat screen TV off the off the wall and he smashed it, and he took somebody's phone and he threw it around there, and he had this incredible tantrum, and he was so angry. And they filmed it, and they put it on social media, and it be it went viral, and it was like the best publicity. He turned this terrible thing into a publicity opportunity. That's how his mind works. And we have a chapter in the book called turn shit into sugar, which is a hustling experience. You turn any kind of shit into sugar, which is what he did then. In order to do that, you have to be not afraid, not afraid of oh, maybe maybe what I'm doing isn't right, maybe the producers aren't going to be happy, maybe the company the record company No, fuck it all, I don't care.

Pardon my language. We're going to we're going to do it anyway. So. That's very cool. Yeah. That must have been a wild experience. Yeah, I can't imagine. me.

I I can tell you things, you know. Maybe when I meet you in private, I'll tell you, but yeah. All good. He's he's he's a great person. I have respect for him. We we're still friends. We still talk.

That's very cool. Well, thank you, Robert, very much for talking to me again. It was having me. really Yeah, really nice to catch up. Good luck with your book. You'll have me on again, maybe, if I'm lucky. What? 100%. Okay.

Yeah. And if you're ever in um Scottsdale, if you ever come to Scottsdale, I'm in Scottsdale, so we can record in person. Yeah, if you end up doing any type of tour or anything. Okay. Um Scottsdale's near Phoenix, right? Yeah, yeah, like right next door. 20 minutes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Scottsdale's beautiful, yeah. I love I've been there a few times. Yeah, I will let you know, and if you're ever recording in LA, you let me know. Okay, perfect. Thank you again. Have some lamb. Definite Oh, I'm not eating lamb anymore.

If I eat lamb again I don't ever want to eat lamb again. I eat so much lamb. I'm back on beef. Okay, all right. We'll go out for have some beef. Okay, that sounds good. Thanks.

I'll talk to you soon. All right. Say hello to your father for me. I will. I will. Okay. Bye.

Bye. Bye, Megan.