Pod Insights The School of Greatness 713 Master the Laws of Human Nature with Robert Greene About this episode THE KEY TO LIFE IS RELATIONSHIPS. Life’s an enrollment game. You’re either signing people up or pushing them away. The more you can learn about how the human mind works, the more you can be aware of how your actions influence others. It’s so much more than just the words that you speak. The energy that you bring into a room and the attitude you have towards life has a huge effect on the people around you. That’s why I’m so excited to share this conversation I had with an expert on human nature and the art of seduction: Robert Greene. Robert Greene is an American author and speaker known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written five international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law and Mastery. Robert says that you have to understand human nature in order to get people to follow you. He argues that how you interact with others determines how far you will get in life. Are you enrolling people in your vision? Or are you showing up in a way that doesn’t make people want to say yes to you? Learn how to take responsibility for the energy you put out into the world and harness the power of body language on Episode 713. Some Questions I Ask: What is your biggest insecurity? (11:38) Is there value in detaching from our emotions? (12:51) How do we understand the strength of someone’s character? (20:28) How do we break harmful patterns? (24:10) What are ways we sabotage ourselves? (28:17) What does it mean to “infect people with the proper mood”? (45:36) How do you make people want to follow you? (1:16:33) In This Episode You Will Learn: How self-doubt can actually help you (13:42) The most important thing to think about when hiring someone (21:06) What it means to have strength of character (22:11) How the Pygmalion Effect can help you succeed (31:51) How to become a Master Persuader (36:13) The key to becoming a better listener (37:14) The importance of body language (43:35) What makes someone a successful seducer (48:57) The number one need that humans have (56:17) How to find your passion (1:15:05) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 17,674 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lewis Howes? This is episode number 713 with number one New York Times bestselling author, Robert Greene. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Oprah Winfrey said, "The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude."
0:43 Lewis Howes? And Winston Churchill said, "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference." We are blessed to have the one and only Robert Greene in the house today, who is going to share a lot. And this might be one of the most powerful and informative interviews of a long time because we're talking about the laws of human nature. And the key to life is relationships. The relationships you have with other people around you and the relationship you have with yourself. And if we do not understand how to master those relationships, we will never achieve what we desire in our lives.
1:22 Lewis Howes? We need people in our life to achieve and accomplish and make certain things happen. And if we show up in a way that is not convincing, and if we don't understand where other people are coming from, then we are missing out on a huge part of life. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert or somewhere in the middle, all of this will be relevant for you and could transform the way everything is done in your life moving forward. And if you don't know who Robert Greene is, he is the number one New York Times bestselling author and known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He's written five international bestsellers. The 48 Laws of Power, which is a mega hit, 2 million copies sold.
2:04 Lewis Howes? The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, and Mastery. And now he has a new book called The Laws of Human Nature. And I'm telling you guys, I'm looking through this right now. And I'm circling and underlining so many things. It's a game changer. It's like the Bible of understanding how humans think and act. And addition to having a massive following within the business world and a deep following within Washington DC. His books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest musicians and artists in the world, including Jay-Z, Drake and 50 Cent, who are all massive fans of Robert Greene.
2:46 Lewis Howes? And in this interview, we talk about how we can build masterpieces in our life's work without sacrificing health. And is that possible? Robert just had a stroke two months prior and we dive in and talk about how he went so hard on writing this book that he believes part of it was causing this stroke where he's now has to recover. And we dive into that. We also talk about how do we really determine someone's character? How can you see behind the mask and figure out if someone has a strong character or not? The quality of listening that you need to do in order to form the most powerful relationships in the world and why most of us are not really listening at all.
3:27 Lewis Howes? Also, learning how to accept and understand others instead of just judging people. And a small hint here, if you want people to do anything you want them to do, you can't judge them. We cover the difference between manipulation and persuasion. And really we cover the five strategies for becoming a master persuader. This section of the interview is going to blow you away. We talk about understanding your shadow self and how you need to have a dark side and so much more. This is blowing me away. I'm so excited for you to listen to this one. Make sure to share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com/713. Tag me on Instagram when you're listening to it right now so I can connect with you
4:11 Lewis Howes? because I believe you're going to be nodding your head throughout this entire time saying aha a lot of the time and freaking out about what you're going to learn about yourself and the people around you. This was backed with five years of research and so many ideas for you to get out of this. I'm super pumped for this. Let me know what you think. All right, guys, a big thank you to our sponsor. And again, I'm super pumped about this. So without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Robert Greene.
4:48 Lewis Howes? Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have Robert Greene in the house. Good to see you, my friend.
4:54 Robert Greene? So good to see you, Lewis.
4:55 Lewis Howes? You are one of the most influential writers of the last two decades with your books, Forty Eight Laws of Power, Thirty Three Strategies of War, The Fiftieth Law, Mastery, Artist Seduction, and now The Laws of Human Nature, which is going to be a massive hit. Make sure you guys get this book. And probably your best work in your mind ever, right? Do you think this is your best work?
5:18 Robert Greene? It's hard to say. It's like choosing between your children, which is your favorite child, you know? It's the latest. So it is, you know, I'm very proud of it. But the thing was, I've been for 20 years, over 20 years, been writing these books. So massive amounts of research and reading, but also consulting work with people in business and other areas. So I've gathered a lot of intelligence or knowledge about people and what makes them tick. And I've seen a lot of mistakes that I've made and other people have made. So this is sort of the distillation of all of my years of research and all the things I've experienced.
5:55 Lewis Howes? Wow.
5:56 Robert Greene? Yeah.
5:57 Lewis Howes? Where's your biggest insecurity in your life? Whether it be when you first started writing books, you know, 20 years ago to where it is now?
6:05 Robert Greene? Well, I'm very insecure. Like, yeah, but I try and turn it into something positive. Meaning when I finish a book, I don't really know if it's that good or if it's going to be successful. I'm very worried that I'm not connecting to the reader, to the audience. And so what that does for me is I never kind of rest. I'm never comfortable. I never assume, wow, this is a masterpiece, it's going to do really well. And so when I'm writing the book, and it's been in all my books, I'm thinking very, very deeply about the reader. How's the reader going to assimilate this information? Will it help him or her? Will it strike a chord? Will it resonate with their life? What they think of people that they know?
6:50 Robert Greene? So I'm trying to connect very, very deeply to the reader because I'm insecure, because I don't take them for granted. I think where a lot of writers and people go wrong is... They believe in their own myth. They believe that what they've written is so good, or that they don't have to make that effort to connect to people. You know, a lot of professors or experts or people who are in a very specific field, they assume that their knowledge is, you know, that other people know what they know. And they kind of talk down to the reader. And I never try to talk down to the reader. I try to elevate the conversation.
7:27 Lewis Howes? Right. And what would you say is your main insecurity? Is it a fear of judgment? That people may not like your writing, or they may not like you, or that you're not good enough? Or what's the?
7:40 Robert Greene? Probably all of it.
7:40 Lewis Howes? All of it, yeah.
7:41 Robert Greene? Yeah. I kind of grew up that way. My parents were not the type to coddle me or to say, "You're great, Robert." Or if I came home with straight A's, it's like, "Huh, huh. So what?"
7:54 Lewis Howes? They didn't care that much. Oh, wow. Even if you got a perfect?
7:57 Robert Greene? They cared, but, "Oh, you can always do better."
8:00 Lewis Howes? Even if you got a perfect score?
8:01 Robert Greene? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
8:03 Lewis Howes? Okay. Could've done it faster. You could've done, yeah.
8:06 Robert Greene? Yeah. It's kind of a Jewish thing, I have to say. So I never felt secure about my work. Maybe when I was younger, I tried to write. I tried many different forms of writing. I tried writing novels. And I think in my twenties, I was a little more grandiose. I believed that what I was writing was really great, and it wasn't. It kind of sucked. So it's been a process of also getting over that kind of youthful exuberance and taking more time and thinking more deeply about what you're doing. But I have a lot of insecurities. I mean, that's one of them.
8:42 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And you talked about detaching from our emotions. Is there more value in detaching from our emotions? Or because we are emotional and insecure, we create better work by holding on to those emotions?
8:59 Robert Greene? Well, that's a great question.
9:00 Lewis Howes? Like, if you didn't care, do you think these books would be as good as they are?
9:06 Robert Greene? Well, probably the source, to get back to your first question, the source of my insecurity is I kind of have a desire to please people, to impress them. I'm just being very honest here. And this probably went back to very early on. So I've always wanted to get the best grades and be the best pupil in the class. But there's a weakness in that. It seems great, you're getting straight A's, you're doing well in sports, et cetera. But there's actually an insecurity, a self doubt, where you're trying to please people and maybe you go a little extra hard. So in that sense, compensating for your insecurities in that way can be a positive thing. So my insecurity by itself could destroy me
9:49 Robert Greene? in that I would never get the effort up to make, write a book or do something. It would hold you back from putting it out. Yeah, because if I doubt myself, maybe it's better never to try anything. A lot of young people have this problem. They have a negative attitude where they, they think that, well, if I don't do anything, if I just be a slacker, at least I won't fail and I can kind of make myself feel better that I'm the best slacker that there is. You know, if you don't try too hard, you're never going to fail. You're never going to have the pain of failure. So that's the negative side of insecurity. But it can also motivate you to try even harder, to actually get work done and to make it something really great and to doubt yourself constantly, which is how I kind of use that.
10:34 Robert Greene? Right, using the doubt to push yourself to put out better work. Yeah, I mean, it probably, you know, I had a, we can get to this. I had a stroke a couple of months ago. Probably is what led to this and is not necessarily a good thing. But I worked so hard on this book. Five years. Five years. obsessing over it, every word, every sentence. Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking, how can I make this more accessible? Because a lot of the information I had was from kind of heavy sources, like psychologists, people who were psychoanalysts who've studied human nature very deeply. And they use a lot of jargon and you can't really figure out exactly what they're saying. And I want to make it readable for the average reader out there.
11:18 Robert Greene? So the effort of constantly trying to connect to people.
11:23 Robert Greene? Is, I think, comes from an insecurity, but it's turned into something positive.
11:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
11:27 Robert Greene? This is a great question. I've never had, never been asked this before.
11:31 Lewis Howes? Do you feel like it's worth putting out these books that reach millions of people at the detriment of potential health challenges?
11:40 Robert Greene? Yeah. I mean, if you asked me, if I could have a choice of not writing the book and never having this physical problem, I would have chosen writing the book.
11:48 Lewis Howes? Really?
11:49 Robert Greene? For sure.
11:49 Lewis Howes? Why is that?
11:50 Robert Greene? Because I have, I may be physically crippled a little bit and I'll get over it. But I have this for the rest of my life. I can feel really good about myself. I could die tomorrow and I know that I wrote what I wanted to create. I expressed what my life was meant to express. So that's a great feeling, that even in the worst depression I could have with my body not responding the way I want, I can feel a great deal of pride that I actually got this thing done and it didn't kill me.
12:22 Lewis Howes? Is there a way to create masterpieces?
12:26 Robert Greene? Without doing that?
12:27 Lewis Howes? And staying healthy and peaceful in your mind?
12:30 Robert Greene? Well, you know, you'd think I would have because I exercise every day.
12:34 Lewis Howes? You swim?
12:35 Robert Greene? I swim. I, I mean, I'm a fanatic. Even now with my stroke, I'm exercising every day aerobically. And eat well and I meditate.
12:45 Lewis Howes? Wow.
12:46 Robert Greene? And I, you know, I do everything right. But it's still, it's still led to this. Yeah, it's a good question. I think my next book, because I am getting older.
12:55 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
12:56 Robert Greene? And this happened, I'm gonna have to kind of find a better way to do it a little bit. Just still write something shorter with a lot of work, but not maybe take five years.
13:06 Lewis Howes? Right. Take a year and a half, two years, maybe three years.
13:08 Robert Greene? Three years, maybe two, three years, yeah.
13:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Wow. So you're already thinking about the next book?
13:14 Robert Greene? Yeah. In the ambulance on the way home from the hospital, I had an idea for my next book.
13:19 Lewis Howes? Really? What was that?
13:23 Robert Greene? Well, it's very, it's very primitive. I've not really totally developed it. But it's about how the bad things in life, how negative things are actually, I mean, it's similar to Ryan's book, but it's a different spin on it. How they, you actually learn more from negative than the positive.
13:41 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
13:42 Robert Greene? Like you learn, I thought in the ambulance back home, I thought of all of the people I knew
13:49 Robert Greene? who handle adversity terribly. I'm not going to name names.
13:53 Lewis Howes? Sure, sure.
13:53 Robert Greene? Some of them are related to me.
13:55 Lewis Howes? Sure.
13:56 Robert Greene? Who handle adversity really badly. And I thought, I don't want to be them. And as I thought about that, I thought, hmm, there's something interesting in that thought. Like who I don't want to be. We never think like that. But it's actually very interesting. And it's also getting in touch with learning from your bad experiences. But also, it's kind of a book about negativity, and I know that sounds really bad and negative.
14:23 Lewis Howes? Sure, sure.
14:24 Robert Greene? But how, we're so attached to what we see in life, to what's in front of us, to what the appearances people have, to their masks they wear. And I want you to think of what isn't there, what you're not seeing, what's invisible. I kind of go into it in the, in the chapter about generations and trends in society.
14:44 Robert Greene? And all my books, I'm trying to tell people, don't accept what you see with your eyes. Look for something deeper. What is the meaning behind this? If you're planning a, a strategy or making a big decision in your life, what is it that you're not considering? So it's kind of about negative space. I know it's very primitive, but I'm, I can promise you I'll turn it into something.
15:06 Lewis Howes? I'm sure it'll be beautiful, yeah. Well, in sports, they always talk about, you know, you learn more from your losses than your wins.
15:11 Robert Greene? That's right.
15:12 Lewis Howes? Everything's fine when you win. You're like, ah, everything's forgiven.
15:15 Robert Greene? That's right.
15:15 Lewis Howes? Like, let's just keep doing it. When you're losing, that's when you're like, okay, we evaluate everything.
15:20 Robert Greene? That's right. Well, some people don't, some people know how to do that. But that's how you have to profit from your losses. I do that with things I've written that didn't quite work out. You know, I've written books that I had to completely rewrite that were dead ends. Like the 50 Cent book. I had a version of that book that we did together that wasn't working at all. And I learned a lot from what I did wrong there.
15:46 Robert Greene? I learned, for instance, the problem of that book in its first version was that I wasn't being myself. I was trying to be, please him more. And I've learned to always sort of be myself. But I had to learn that by trying to be someone else. So that sort of is what you're talking about.
16:03 Lewis Howes? Interesting, yeah. In this book, I think this is fascinating. You have all these different laws about human nature and understanding why humans do the things they do, why they think, why they feel a certain way. And you talk about determining the strength of people's character. How do we understand the strength of someone's character? Whether they're toxic, whether they're, they have high values, besides this, you know, the things that we can see of like, okay, they broke their word, or they're negative, or things like that. How do we really determine someone's character?
16:38 Robert Greene? Well, the first thing you have to do, the most important thing is to realize that determining people's character is the most important thing that you have to do in judging them. So normally, we think if someone's very charming, that that's great, or if they're really good-looking, or if they're very successful. So if we're looking, let's say we're looking for a business partner, or a romantic partner, or a colleague to work with, we're gonna base our decision on those kinds of appearances. Like, people can be very good at deceiving you with being very charming and flattering. Or they have a brilliant resume, and you'll be seduced by that. And what you wanna do, the first step in that law is to say, no, that's not how I'm gonna judge people.
17:20 Robert Greene? My main value is their character and the strength of their character. And character is something from deep, deep, deep within. The word "character" comes from the Greek "chairos", which means "to carve". And character is something really deeply carved inside the person. It's who they are at their core. It creates patterns of behavior that they can't even really control. It's who they are genetically. It's who they are from the early values of their parents. So you wanna connect to that, you wanna see that. It's not immediately visible to you because people will disguise their character. You wanna see that, and you wanna value it more than anything else. And what you want are people with strong character. And what that means is, people...
18:06 Robert Greene? They have an expression for metal, they call it tensile, where a metal is stronger if it can give a little bit. Because if something is too rigid, it breaks. So you want people who are adaptable, who can be fluid, who aren't weak, because that metal isn't weak, who have an inner strength and a core to them, but they can bend, they can learn, they can adapt, they can change. You want to see people who are empathetic, you know, who know how to get along with other people. So if you have two people to choose, and one has a glittering resume, but the other person understands human nature and is superior in a social sense, and can also has a good work ethic, you choose that other person.
18:51 Robert Greene? You don't choose necessarily the person with that glittering resume. One of the things you look for are patterns in judging their character. Because people reveal themselves in the past. They reveal who they are through their actions. They try and disguise it, but they reveal it. So I say in that chapter, "Nobody ever does anything once." So let's say you have a friend who does something kind of nasty to you. They talk behind your back. Then they'll say, "Oh, Robert, Robert, that was just, something came over, that isn't me. You know, I'm sorry about that, that just happened. Circumstances made me do that." And you'll be likely to believe them. But the fact is, if they've done that once, they've probably done it many times.
19:36 Robert Greene? If people gossip, and you hear them gossiping about other people, they'll probably eventually gossip about you. So you want to be able to look at people's patterns and look at their past and see trends and understand that if they've done certain things in the past, they will continue to do them because we humans have compulsive behavior. We are compelled to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again.
20:02 Lewis Howes? How do we stop that pattern? If we recognize it within ourselves, "My character's been off. I've been doing something, you know, for years, a certain way that I don't want to do anymore." How do we do it so we can strengthen our character? But also, so you know what? I believe this other person can have a stronger character through breaking a pattern. Or is it just not possible?
20:24 Robert Greene? Of course it's possible. At the end of every chapter, I show you how you can turn this potentially negative quality into a positive quality. So when it comes to you and your own patterns, you have to first realize that you have these patterns before you can even begin to break them.
20:41 Lewis Howes? So awareness.
20:43 Robert Greene? Yeah, honesty. This is a book about awareness and being honest with yourself. If you don't admit that you have these patterns, then you can't possibly break them. I know in writing books, I have terrible, terrible patterns.
20:55 Lewis Howes? Like what?
20:56 Robert Greene? Well, stressing so much over things that aren't that important.
21:00 Lewis Howes? Obsessing, stressing, yeah.
21:02 Robert Greene? Obsessing. I take note cards for everything that I read, all my research, and I take way too much, too much information. I have like thousands of them I'm writing. I have to stop and I say, "Stop being so, such a perfectionist. It's, it's like you're wasting your time." It's been book after book after book. I'm very aware of it and I'm very aware of breaking that pattern. But you have to see it and be honest with yourself in order to break it. So that's the first step, is seeing the pattern and then not struggling against it, not trying to be somebody who you're not, but finding a way to use that pattern, to use that problem to your advantage. Similar to what Ryan Holiday wrote in his book, "The Obstacle is the Way."
21:46 Robert Greene? I have an example in the book of an actress, Joan Crawford, from the Hollywood classical period. And she had a very troubled childhood. Didn't know her father, her mother beat her, men abused her, et cetera. And she managed to take, and it was creating terrible patterns in her life. And she found a way to turn that around, to use all of those disadvantages and make them, make herself a much stronger and very powerful performer. By bringing all of the pain in her childhood into her acting. By becoming so focused on the director. Because she had been abused, she was very sensitive to other people. She used that sensitivity to focus on the director and other actors, to be in tune with them.
22:31 Lewis Howes? To connect with them, to build relationship, is that essentially?
22:34 Robert Greene? Yeah. She was very aware of her own weaknesses and her own fragility. And she was able to use that as a strength. So with other people, it's never hopeless. I mean, some people are toxic. I talk a lot about toxic characters. People, those are the kinds of people who can't really change. Their patterns are too ingrained. And we've all met people like that. We've all had to deal with a narcissist, who's so deeply self-absorbed. There's nothing that's ever gonna save them or pull them out of that self-absorption.
23:07 Lewis Howes? Unless they have like a near-death experience or they have someone close to them.
23:10 Robert Greene? That's true.
23:10 Lewis Howes? You know, something where it's like a big awakening.
23:13 Robert Greene? That's true.
23:14 Lewis Howes? Or they get sick or whatever, right?
23:15 Robert Greene? You're right, that happens, that does happen.
23:18 Lewis Howes? Sometimes.
23:18 Robert Greene? Sometimes it does. But you have to be honest that there are people out there. You can't be naive. There are people out there who are toxic, who are dangerous, who can ruin your life. You hire the wrong person. And I've dealt with a lot of, in my consulting, with a lot of people who hired a business partner who ended up sort of taking the business from them. Very common scenario. You have to not be naive and recognize these toxic types. And often it's best not to try and change them. Because trying to change them entangles you in a lot of their drama.
23:53 Lewis Howes? And it just, it's just never gonna happen. You might be trying for years and wasting your time and energy.
24:00 Robert Greene? But you know, people have to be able to change themselves. They have to be motivated. You can help illuminate some of their patterns and their problems. But it has to come from within.
24:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Now, you talk about the law of self-sabotage.
24:14 Robert Greene? Yeah.
24:14 Lewis Howes? And it's self-sabotage ourselves by attracting toxic people, but also what are the other ways that we sabotage ourselves?
24:23 Robert Greene? Well, this is a chapter about your attitude in life, right? The point of that chapter is, related to human nature, is none of us see the world in the same way. So you and I could go watch a movie. It's the same movie that we're watching. I love it. I see something. You hate it. You see something else. You don't experience it the same way. We're watching the same world, the same reality, but we experience it differently. Everybody you meet is experiencing their world differently than you are. So you have an attitude that colors what you see. And some people have an attitude that tends towards the negative. And I describe a negative attitude as something that's closed.
25:07 Robert Greene? So you're not open to new experience. You're trying to close that lens. You have certain beliefs, certain ideas about life, and you're not willing to change them, right? Because that gives you a sense of security. And so you want an attitude that's expansive, where you accept people. You're not always judging them. You're not negative about them. You understand that people can't necessarily help who they are. You're open to change. You're open to having adventure. And that kind of attitude kind of gives you a certain degree of freedom. So that the worst thing that happened to you, and you're able to transform that into something good. So your question was...
25:52 Lewis Howes? How do we recognize when we're sabotaging ourselves? And what's the things we do most to self-sabotage?
26:00 Robert Greene? Well, if we have a setback or a failure in life, which is inevitable, do we do one of two things? Do we analyze ourselves and see what we did wrong? And how we could change ourselves? Or do we immediately look outward and blame other people? That person screwed me. Society doesn't like me. Because of these circumstances, I'm screwed and I can never help it. It's the world, it's not me. That's a self sabotaging pattern of behavior. Because if you're always pointing fingers at other people and blaming them, you're never gonna learn from your experiences. And you're all, you're gonna end up being quite bitter. So that's probably one of the most, the main sources of a self sabotaging.
26:46 Lewis Howes? So you could easily say, this stupid bee that stung my neck that caused this blood clot and this high pressure in me. I blame the bee for this stroke that I had. Screw you bee. Or you could take responsibility and say, well, what did I do to my health? Leading up to the bee sting, you know, for years and taking full ownership and responsibility, is that what I'm hearing?
27:09 Robert Greene? Yeah, that's what you're hearing, yeah.
27:11 Lewis Howes? The story and the perception around the experience, the way you see that movie playing out. Having a positive attitude around it.
27:20 Robert Greene? Being and reflecting about the role that you played in what happened. So, we're not in charge of everything that happens in life. There are circumstances that are beyond our control, right? But a lot of what does happen to us is something that we do, that we are responsible for. There are amazing studies about the role of attitude and what happens to you in life. So they have this thing called the Pygmalion Effect. Teachers who treat a student as if they are smart and gonna do well, those students end up doing well. So how you treat people, how you think about yourself has a great impact on what happens to you. When doctors prescribe a new medication,
28:05 Robert Greene? there's always the same trend that a new medication has been invented. The success rate is like eighty percent. Because people believe in it, because it's new. And then like two years later, it starts going down.
28:18 Lewis Howes? Really?
28:18 Robert Greene? Yeah. It's a placebo effect. So if you believe something is going to work... If you believe that you are great and you deserve good things, that you are a good student, you will end up making those things happen. So how you look at yourself will often determine what ends up happening to yourself. So if you're talking about what causes self sabotage, if you go through life thinking, "God, I'm not really that good. There's something wrong with me. I don't really deserve good things. I don't deserve to have a lot of success or to have a lot of money." People read that off of you. A major theme in this book is that we are masters at reading people's body language and nonverbal behavior.
29:01 Robert Greene? So when somebody feels that they don't deserve things, it's kind of an off-putting quality in them and it pushes people away. So you create self fulfilling dynamics by how you look at yourself and your attitude. I had a chapter in the Forty Eight Laws of Power called, "Think Like A King To Be Treated Like One." And there's a story of Christopher Columbus, who came from dirt poor poverty, but imagined that he was royalty. And by imagining that, people started treating him like that. And as they treated him like that, he felt even more kind of greater about himself. And he was able to convince the king of Portugal to give him these ships, when in fact he was sort of a mediocre admiral captain.
29:46 Robert Greene? So your attitude and how you think about yourself sort of determine how people treat you and what happens in life.
29:53 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I always say that we're either, you know, life's an enrollment game. And we're either enrolling people in our vision or unenrolling people by the way we're showing up, our energy, our language.
30:05 Robert Greene? What do you mean by enrolling?
30:07 Lewis Howes? I'm enrolling you to come on my show. And getting you to come on my show because of the energy I put out, the relationship we have, the connection, the platform. Or I'm unenrolling you by...
30:21 Lewis Howes? The way I've treated you over the last six or seven years, by the platform being out of integrity or not doing that well, you're not gonna be as excited to wanna say yes. You know, we're influencing people all the time.
30:35 Robert Greene? You are influencing people all the time.
30:37 Lewis Howes? In a positive or negative way, right?
30:38 Robert Greene? Yes, everything you do, people are reading and they're either saying, "I like that," or "I don't like that," or "I'm indifferent."
30:45 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yes is like, "I'm enrolling you, yes," or "I'm not enrolling you," it's a no. And you talk about, you know, the chapter that I really like is about...
30:54 Robert Greene? Seven or seven.
30:55 Lewis Howes? Where are we at, right here?
30:57 Lewis Howes? The persuasive one.
30:58 Robert Greene? Yeah, seven.
30:59 Lewis Howes? Is that one? Yeah, right here. "The Five Strategies to Becoming a Master Persuader." This one? Yeah, right here, seven, yeah.
31:05 Robert Greene? Well, you, Lewis, don't need to read that chapter, because you already have that kind of mastered.
31:10 Lewis Howes? But I think people need to understand this.
31:12 Robert Greene? Yeah.
31:12 Lewis Howes? Because I think what we just talked about right there is probably one of the most powerful parts of this whole book, in my mind, and in life, is are you enrolling people in your vision? In being the king or queen, in getting the ships that you want? Are you stepping up and enrolling people and getting people to say yes to you?
31:34 Robert Greene? Yeah.
31:34 Lewis Howes? Or your dreams, or hire you, or date you, or marry you?
31:39 Robert Greene? Yeah.
31:39 Lewis Howes? Or are you not showing up in a way that people wanna say yes to you?
31:43 Robert Greene? Right.
31:43 Lewis Howes? And I feel like...
31:44 Robert Greene? Key question.
31:45 Lewis Howes? My whole business has been built on getting people to say yes, when I had nothing. You know, I was on my sister's couch 10 years ago.
31:52 Robert Greene? Yeah.
31:53 Lewis Howes? No money, no skills, no degree. And it was an energy that I had to learn how to just get people to say yes. And then the more, and then building momentum around that. So I'd love to talk about this, becoming a master persuader. And the first thing you talk about is, which I think most people aren't doing, you say is to deepen your listening, to be a better listener. And most people don't have the patience to care about someone else. They're so concerned about what they think about them.
32:23 Robert Greene? Well, people always talk about being a better listener, and their advice is usually very weak. I mean, it doesn't, ineffective, because, okay, I've become a better listener. Yeah, I'll try that, but it's very hard to overcome certain patterns. So I tried to tackle the question of, why is it that you're not a good listener? And at the root of that is you're more interested in yourself than you are in the other person. You won't deny that. You will say, "Oh, no, no, no, that's not me. That's not me. I really like people." But the truth is, you're more interested in your own thoughts and your own ideas, things that you're so certain about, your own experiences, than about that other person and what they're saying and what's going on inside them.
33:07 Robert Greene? If you can flip that around, if you can actually feel the motivation to get inside Lewis and get inside his head and his experience, then you will suddenly will become a better listener. That's the key, not just telling people to listen more. The key is the quality of the listening and the emotion involved. So if I feel I want to get inside that other person, inside their life, then suddenly you will start listening. What will make you interested in other people? Well, first off is the idea you don't know them. Normally, when you're, let's say you're on a first date with someone or you're just meeting someone, you have assumptions about them. You create a simplified version of who they are. And that's what you think, you know, and that'll stay with you forever.
33:50 Robert Greene? Instead, you want to think, "That person is more interesting than I imagine." Their first appearance isn't really who they are. They're like a book that I could read. We love going to movies and getting inside other characters and what motivates them, being taken along for a ride. Think of the people that you meet in life as a character in a movie. You want to know what motivates them. They are more interesting than you think. They've had traumas. They've had problems from their early childhood. They have fantasies. They have a shadow, a dark side to their personality they're not revealing. They're more complicated and interesting than you think. So if you're motivated to understand what makes them tick, their experience, suddenly you will start listening. Yeah.
34:36 Robert Greene? So that's the key to me. And it's not easy.
34:40 Lewis Howes? Why is it so hard for people? Because for me, it's been an easy thing because I've used my insecurity of not feeling like I was smart enough growing up because I was one of the poorest students in school.
34:52 Robert Greene? Yeah.
34:53 Lewis Howes? So I was like, my voice doesn't matter as much. Let me just ask smart people what they think.
34:59 Robert Greene? Right.
35:00 Lewis Howes? And it became a huge advantage for me.
35:02 Robert Greene? Right.
35:03 Lewis Howes? Because I've learned that being the most interested person in the room, you become the most interesting.
35:10 Robert Greene? Well, the key is really so much in the book is, are you motivated to change yourself? Do you want to become successful in life? This book is trying to realign your priorities and how you look at the world. Normally, your focus is on yourself and on your work and the techniques in your work, you know, the skills you have to master. And I'm telling you, the key to success in life is people. We're a social animal. We're like dogs or wolves or whatever, chimpanzees. We're a social animal. And how we interact with people will determine how far we get. You can be brilliant at hacking computers or whatever, but if you're terrible with people, your life is going to be hell.
35:55 Robert Greene? So are you motivated to become somebody supremely skilled at understanding and working with people? That's the whole point of the book. You have to buy into that. You have to buy into the fact that you're usually bad at dealing with people. You're not seeing who they are. You're seeing reflections of your own fantasies or projections. You have to admit that you're not good at dealing with people and you need to improve. If you understand that and you want to change and you're motivated to get out of your shell, then you can make that leap. I'm a big advocate of baby steps. You're not going to suddenly... Transform yourself into Bill Clinton overnight.
36:34 Lewis Howes? Right, right. Remember thousands of people's names and yeah.
36:37 Robert Greene? Or suddenly become a great listener. So every day you give yourself little tests. So you have now lunch with this person who you normally find kind of boring. All right, for 10 minutes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shut off my internal monologue. And I'm gonna force myself to listen to them. And I'm gonna glean some information, some nugget about their character that I never understood before. I'm gonna ask them about their childhood. It's not gonna be the kind of inquisition where I'm asking them penetrating questions. But in a relaxed mood, I'm gonna find out about something that, that really motivates them or something deep or some traumatic experience they had. You force yourself day by day to take little baby steps in which you
37:21 Robert Greene? try to learn something about people that you didn't know before.
37:24 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
37:24 Robert Greene? And get interested in them and their experiences.
37:27 Lewis Howes? I think a lot of people are asking the wrong questions too. I think you gotta start learning to ask different questions.
37:33 Robert Greene? Like what?
37:34 Lewis Howes? What do you mean? I think a lot of questions are very service-y. And I know you wanted to keep it relaxed as well. You don't need to be like, tell me you're done.
37:40 Robert Greene? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:41 Lewis Howes? It's also, there's ways you can start opening that up. And I think for me, I know if I wanna get the most out of someone, I have to give the most myself. I have to start with vulnerability or opening up in certain ways. I can't just expect someone else to open up if I don't. But I think certain questions, like if you're meeting someone for the first time, as opposed to what do you do or where do you work? It's what are you most excited about right now?
38:06 Robert Greene? Yeah.
38:06 Lewis Howes? Or what's something you've been having a challenge with in your life?
38:09 Robert Greene? Well, the thing I tell people to look for, because I'm a very big believer in non-verbal communication. In the course of a conversation, if you, if you keep it kind of open and flowing, people's eyes will light up when a certain topic is mentioned. It could be their children, it could be their work, it could be their parent. It could be something in their life that their whole body language changes. They relax. I know if you suddenly asked me about the Los Angeles Lakers.
38:38 Lewis Howes? Be excited?
38:38 Robert Greene? I would be very excited because that's one of my deep passions in life is basketball and the Lakers.
38:43 Lewis Howes? Yeah. But people. You got my hometown guy, LeBron James.
38:46 Robert Greene? Oh, you're from Cleveland?
38:47 Lewis Howes? I'm from Ohio. Wow. I'm from Ohio, but I.
38:49 Robert Greene? How do you feel about this?
38:51 Lewis Howes? I feel bittersweet because I wish he stayed in Cleveland.
38:54 Robert Greene? Oh, you did.
38:54 Lewis Howes? I wanted to win one more there, but you know, I live in LA now, so it's nice that he's here at least. And then I can go to some games and watch him.
39:00 Robert Greene? That's right.
39:01 Lewis Howes? Because I didn't get to go watch games in Cleveland.
39:03 Robert Greene? That's right.
39:04 Lewis Howes? So I'm like, if he's gonna go anywhere, this is the place to be.
39:07 Robert Greene? That's right. That's good.
39:08 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
39:09 Robert Greene? I never used to like LePraun, but now I love him.
39:11 Lewis Howes? And now you love him. Greatest player in the world. Yeah.
39:13 Robert Greene? For sure.
39:15 Lewis Howes? So you light up about that. Look at you. You're getting excited talking.
39:17 Robert Greene? You can see it. If somebody inadvertently brought that up, they could see like, oh, wow, man, I look at talk for hours about the Lakers, you know? But everybody has a topic like that. It could be something a little more intellectual, more interesting than sports, but you're not paying attention to people's body language is another thing. So as an observer, as a good listener, you're not just hearing their words. You're looking at their eyes, their facial expressions. I have a chapter on that. How to differentiate between the fake smile and the genuine smile.
39:49 Lewis Howes? Wow.
39:49 Robert Greene? And it's very real, you know? A real smile lights up the whole face. It alters how the eyes look. You wanna see when you've hit something like that, or when you've done the opposite and you get that kind of scowling micro expression. Oh, fuck you.
40:03 Lewis Howes? Right, right.
40:05 Robert Greene? But people aren't observant. They're in their own shell. They're not seeing. People are constantly giving out signs of their likes, their aversions, you know, their values, and you're missing them because you're not paying attention.
40:17 Lewis Howes? Is it because we're too obsessed with how we look or what other people are judging about us? Is that why we're closed off or not observant?
40:25 Robert Greene? I think it becomes kind of a habit, and that's the main part of it, that we're worried about how we look and how they're judging us. But also part of that habit is, you know, life is difficult in this world, in the modern world. We're absorbing too much information on our phones, et cetera, and it's a very competitive world out there. So naturally, we turn inward. Naturally, we're thinking about ourselves. We're thinking about what we need to do. You know, our own anxieties, or they're talking and I'm thinking about shit. I have to, I gotta change that appointment tomorrow. Kind of thing, because you're thinking about your own problems, et cetera, and naturally so.
41:07 Robert Greene? But the whole thing is, is my books are all about getting outside of yourself and finding other people more interesting than yourself in some ways.
41:17 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I'm always doing that.
41:19 Robert Greene? Yeah, you don't need this book.
41:21 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I know, this is great, though. I, I think you, you know, for me, I do need this book because there's always another level of like, what am I missing, what am I not seeing, and how can I get to where I want to be faster? You talk about infect people with the proper mood.
41:35 Robert Greene? Yeah.
41:36 Lewis Howes? What does that mean and how do we do this?
41:38 Robert Greene? Well, this is a key to influence and persuasion. I'm trying to make the case in this book about human nature, that we are animals, that we have an animal side to our nature that you have to understand. We are extremely vulnerable to the emotions and moods of other people. I trace that back to how we evolved as primates and had the need our ancestors had for understanding the moods of the people in the, in the group or the tribe before language was invented. So we're extremely vulnerable to the moods and attitudes of other people. If someone visits us and they're in a depressed mood, it will tend to lower our energy.
42:23 Robert Greene? We've all had the experience. Think of it yourself. You go through life and you encounter 10 different people and there's always one in those 10 people that kind of makes you feel happy. The moment you meet them, an old friend or whomever, wow, you're smiling, you're laughing, your mood changes. And there's one in 10 that every time you meet them, it's feel like, man.
42:43 Lewis Howes? Your mood changes in a bad way.
42:44 Robert Greene? Bad way. Well, it's because you're feeling something. It's not just the fact that you're a friend. There's something non-verbal going on. Our moods are extremely contagious. And so you can persuade people more.
43:00 Robert Greene? Through you infecting them with your mood than through your words.
43:03 Lewis Howes? True.
43:04 Robert Greene? Words are not necessarily the best means of influence.
43:07 Lewis Howes? Energy.
43:08 Robert Greene? Energy.
43:09 Lewis Howes? The way you show up.
43:09 Robert Greene? Attitude.
43:10 Lewis Howes? It's like if there's a negative room or people having a negative conversation, there's 10 people, and someone enters it with a positive energy and just starts connecting with each person. You see the mood lift in a positive way.
43:23 Robert Greene? Right.
43:23 Lewis Howes? But it could also be if everyone's having a good time and one person comes in. And it's like just being negative and taking everyone down and saying stupid stuff, you're like.
43:31 Robert Greene? We've all been through that.
43:32 Lewis Howes? Then everyone's mood goes down. Again, it goes back to life is an enrollment game. You're either enrolling people in the way you want to show up, or they're enrolling you. And that energy.
43:41 Robert Greene? Well, so this, this should be like a really exciting concept to you as a reader. Because what it means is.
43:49 Lewis Howes? You can change.
43:50 Robert Greene? You can alter people by how you approach them with your energy.
43:54 Lewis Howes? Absolutely.
43:55 Robert Greene? Right? So, I mean, I wrote about that a lot in The Art of Seduction. Errol Flynn was probably the greatest seducer that ever lived. If we counted the number of women he slept with, it's close to 3,000.
44:06 Lewis Howes? Wow.
44:07 Robert Greene? And he died when he was 50. So if you do the math, it's pretty insane. He was an unbelievable seducer, and I researched this as deeply as I could, why? And women would write memoirs about it, and they would mention their experience. And they said, being around Errol Flynn was like having drunk three martinis. He was so relaxed and so comfortable with himself. He had a kind of animal spirit where he was just really himself and very comfortable, very open, that being around him, you just, you felt all of your resistance and all your defenses just melting away. There were other great seducers, like Duke Ellington was like that.
44:48 Robert Greene? So on the level of seduction, and male or female, how you approach them, your mood, more than what you say about yourself and your own insecurities, will have a much greater impact.
44:59 Lewis Howes? More than the pick-up lines or whatever, it's the energy.
45:01 Robert Greene? I believe so.
45:03 Lewis Howes? The confidence.
45:04 Robert Greene? A relaxed, undefensive quality is, will go very far. I remember.
45:09 Lewis Howes? How did he die?
45:11 Robert Greene? Alcohol.
45:11 Lewis Howes? Wow.
45:12 Robert Greene? He was just, he was a major alcoholic. He drank himself to death.
45:15 Lewis Howes? Probably was unfulfilled.
45:17 Robert Greene? Huh?
45:17 Lewis Howes? He was probably unfulfilled.
45:18 Robert Greene? Well, yeah.
45:18 Lewis Howes? Tracy.
45:19 Robert Greene? Three thousand women, it could be, kind of, it gets kind of soulless.
45:22 Lewis Howes? Oh, my gosh, yeah.
45:24 Robert Greene? He's a very interesting character. But I remember I was in Paris when I was 21. I was living there, I was working in a hotel. And there was a man, it was a hotel where all the models stayed. And there was this Brazilian man who was obsessed with all the models in the hotel. And he was the greatest seducer I've ever seen in my life. And one day I was walking down the street with him and some other friends. And this other woman came running up. She realized he was a seducer and was not, had not been honest and was cheating on her. And I will never forget how he responded. He was so relaxed and so undefensive about it. And he didn't apologize. He was just, this is who I am, more or less in his body language.
46:08 Robert Greene? And she completely relaxed and changed, you know? And I thought, God, normally it would have been this yelling match. And he completely diffused it with his sort of relaxed attitude, you know? So it's a whole language that you need to master is how your moods infect other people. And I tell people, experiment with that.
46:29 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
46:30 Robert Greene? Normally with this one person, you're locked in a dynamic where you always are kind of reacting the same way. Try next time approaching them with a completely different mood. Think something differently about them. Suddenly force yourself to think that this person is really, really like good looking and exciting and seductive. And you'll see that your thinking of them in a certain way will change how they respond to you.
46:57 Lewis Howes? Wow. As opposed to being defensive and guarded and reactive and angry.
47:01 Robert Greene? Judgmental.
47:02 Lewis Howes? Yeah, and you said, you do not judge other people, you accept them as they are.
47:07 Robert Greene? Well, that's a key throughout the whole book.
47:09 Lewis Howes? You're not going to influence people if you're judging them, right?
47:12 Robert Greene? That's the key through the whole book. The book starts with a quote from Schopenhauer, meaning that if you come across people who are bad, just think of them as, or as toxic, just think of them as a sort of kind of mineral that you're, that you're encountering.
47:28 Robert Greene? That you're a scientist, people are all different. You're not going to change them. They are who they are because of their circumstances. And instead of judging everyone, learn to accept them. And to kind of understand that you are flawed and so are they. So kind of get rid of your superiority.
47:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah, because that's not going to influence them. If you're trying to persuade them to do something, judging them and making them wrong is only going to make people more defensive, right?
47:55 Robert Greene? Well, that's true, but the other point is, your superiority, your sense of superiority is usually not justified.
48:02 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
48:04 Robert Greene? I'm making the point in this book, the number one thing about human nature is that we tend to deny that there is such a thing. I'm not aggressive, I'm not narcissistic, I never feel envy. I don't have a bad side to me, it's the other people, right? Right? I don't have any of these bad qualities.
48:20 Lewis Howes? We all do that, that's the point.
48:21 Robert Greene? Yeah, you have these qualities as well as anyone else. If you can be honest with yourself, you'll be a little more humble and realize you're not so perfect and not superior, which will make you less judgmental about other people.
48:35 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And you said, you just talked about this, but thinking of the person in the best light as they're generous and caring, or thinking that they're good-looking, you know, thinking that will help you, your energies show up in a different way to potentially persuade them.
48:51 Robert Greene? It will alter the dynamic.
48:52 Lewis Howes? Of the conversation, right?
48:53 Robert Greene? I have a story in there of, in the next chapter of this great Russian writer Chekhov, who came from the poorest circumstances, his father beat him every day. He lived in the most miserable village in Russia. And then, his family abandoned him to go to Moscow and left him alone in this, in this village. And he said, "God, I could end up being the most bitter person and hating everybody and hating my life. And I don't want to let that happen to me." There's a chapter about how to change your attitude. And instead, I'm going to accept my father. I'm going to learn to love him. He grew up under terrible circumstances. He's beating me because his father beat him.
49:38 Robert Greene? I'm going to understand him and I'm going to accept him and I'm going to love him. I'm going to do the same about my mother. I'm going to do the same about my alcoholic brother. And then he moved to Moscow to be with them. And he moved into this house with eight people who were miserable, fighting, bitter, hating, toxic. And his attitude and his acceptance of them completely altered everything. He got his father out of the house and into a better job. He changed his, you know, he got his siblings to start reading and to think of higher things than just their petty feelings. He changed the dynamic by how he, how he thought of them.
50:13 Lewis Howes? Wow. One person can change the whole dynamic.
50:16 Robert Greene? That's right.
50:17 Lewis Howes? Or the whole dynamic can change the one person.
50:19 Robert Greene? That's right.
50:20 Lewis Howes? And you say that when you want to persuade someone, they can't feel like they're being coerced or manipulated. They must choose to do whatever it is you want them to do. Or they must at least experience it as their choice.
50:33 Robert Greene? Well, this is the key to this particular chapter, but it's a key to the whole book, is people have what I call a self-opinion. They have a way that they look at themselves. I said there are three universals to the self-opinion. Practically every human being has them. Number one, we all think that we're autonomous. That when we make a decision, we weren't manipulated. We did it on our own. We're independent. Number two, that we're intelligent, that we're smart, that we know what we were doing. It doesn't mean that you feel like you're an intellectual. A plumber thinks that he knows plumbing better than anyone. That makes him feel like he's intelligent in his own way. And the third is that we're good people, that we treat people well.
51:18 Robert Greene? And none of these might be true, but we all tend to believe them, that that's who we are. Then there'll be other components to that. Oh, I'm very independent, self-reliant person, or I'm a great rebel. I'm anti-authoritarian, etc. So you have an opinion about yourself. And if someone tries, says something that challenges that opinion of yourself inadvertently, if they make you feel that you're kind of stupid, or that you don't know what you're talking about, or that you're, you're doing something because you were manipulated, that you didn't choose to do it, or that you're really not such a good person, we will suddenly get extremely defensive and closed off. And nothing you will ever say or do will change that.
52:01 Robert Greene? You can even turn into hatred, or something bitter feelings. Most of the time, we're going around, and we're not doing that, but we're not necessarily feeding people's self-opinion. The number one need that humans have, I want you to remember this, is to feel validated by other people.
52:20 Lewis Howes? It's the number one need?
52:21 Robert Greene? The number one need. William James, the great psychologist, said that it's not just me. People want to feel recognized and validated by other people. We can feel good about ourselves, but if we don't get that from other people, if they don't validate that we're smart, intelligent, independent, it's hard to feel that. So we're all craving that validation.
52:41 Lewis Howes? Constantly.
52:43 Robert Greene? Constantly. If you're able to give people some of that validation, if you're able to feed their self-opinion without being a flatterer, because, you know, people do have good qualities, and you can actually recognize them. But if you can validate their self-opinion, suddenly their defenses go down, and you have room to maneuver them, to persuade them, to influence them.
53:05 Lewis Howes? You're talking about being allied to their insecurities. And you say by praising and flattery is a great strategy, like you just said, but not, there's praise and strategy, but then there's manipulation. So what's the dance between the two?
53:21 Robert Greene? Well, if you flatter someone, and it's clear that that it's your after something, you've already violated their self-opinion, because it's clear that you think that there's someone that can be manipulated. So you're telling them, "Oh, you're not so independent as you think. I can, I can trick you." And that doesn't work if we see through some obvious flattery. So that can actually-
53:45 Lewis Howes? You can flatter someone and then say, "Oh, can you do this for me right afterwards?"
53:48 Robert Greene? Well, that's pretty obvious.
53:49 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
53:51 Robert Greene? But also, if you flatter someone about something that everybody flatters them about, then it's clear what you're after, that you're doing something. So you want to find those qualities that no one's been flattering them about, but that they feel insecure about.
54:07 Lewis Howes? Uncertain about.
54:08 Robert Greene? Right. Now, what would that be for you, Lewis?
54:13 Lewis Howes? Oh, man, probably like that I'm a good writer. You know, it's like, I believe that I'm a good writer, but it's like, I'm not as good as you, you know? It's like, I'm not like a Ryan Holiday or...
54:23 Robert Greene? So now all of your listeners know that.
54:25 Lewis Howes? Yeah, tell me, you have a great book, Lewis. I loved reading it.
54:29 Robert Greene? Your writing is amazing.
54:30 Lewis Howes? There you go.
54:31 Robert Greene? You're on Ryan's level completely.
54:34 Lewis Howes? Exactly.
54:34 Robert Greene? So to get to that point, though, you have to understand people. You have to see who they are. You have to understand what their insecurities would be. Generally, you don't want to flatter people about what everybody else is flattering them about. It's too obvious.
54:50 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
54:51 Robert Greene? So sometimes, for instance, a person will be very, is very Machiavellian. He's very clever and strategic. And if you flatter them about that, thinking that that, you know, that's, you know who they are, et cetera, you're actually going to insult them because they don't want to think of themselves as being Machiavellian. They think that they're doing these things for a good cause, for a good reason. So you want to find a different avenue, a different way of approaching them, to say, wow, you won that election and you're going to do great things with it. You know, flattering their values, their sense of goodness.
55:30 Lewis Howes? The impact you're making, how you're helping people.
55:32 Robert Greene? Yeah.
55:33 Lewis Howes? I think it's figuring that out and figuring out what's... And the way you do that is by being a good listener, I think.
55:39 Robert Greene? Yeah.
55:39 Lewis Howes? And a good observer.
55:41 Robert Greene? Yeah.
55:41 Lewis Howes? By not just observing the obvious, but observing the unobvious.
55:45 Robert Greene? Right.
55:46 Lewis Howes? And you have to get out of your own self to be interested in someone else.
55:48 Robert Greene? Yeah, all these things are interconnected that we've been talking about.
55:51 Lewis Howes? And then you talk about using people's resistance and stubbornness. They are often, most people with deeper levels of insecurity and low self-opinion.
56:02 Robert Greene? Well, this is tricky. This is kind of advanced influence.
56:06 Lewis Howes? This is like Advanced seduction.
56:07 Robert Greene? Yeah, yes. It's basically reverse psychology.
56:11 Lewis Howes? Okay.
56:11 Robert Greene? And the best example is like a rebellious teenager who doesn't want to do their homework, who doesn't want to be told what to do. You have to realize that you telling them what to do feeds into their rebellious nature and just makes them more defensive. But if you go with their resistance and go with their feeling of being a rebel, you can actually work within their mindset and get them to change. I have an example of a student who's thrown out of school because he's not studying hard enough. And the teacher says, he's gonna have to do all of this work at home in order to graduate. And he's gonna have to study at home, but I can't have him in school
56:55 Robert Greene? because he's like dealing drugs, etc. And the kid is like, god damn it, I'm not gonna study at all. Fuck that guy. You know, I'm just gonna be a slacker. And his mother went to a psychologist who trained her about how to use reverse psychology and said, "Look, you try and get him to study will make him worse. Do try this approach. Try telling him that the teacher wants him to fail. The teacher gave him all of this work, knowing that he wouldn't succeed because he knows you're a slacker. And if you could prove him wrong, can you imagine how great that will feel to show that asshole up? So if you study hard and actually graduate, you'll make him look like a fool." And it worked.
57:39 Lewis Howes? It worked?
57:40 Robert Greene? Yeah.
57:40 Lewis Howes? Wow.
57:41 Robert Greene? I mean.
57:42 Lewis Howes? Proving people wrong is some of the most powerful energy and fire that I think humans have. I think that's that was my entire life, was proving everyone wrong about like kids who made fun of me and bullies and guy who sexually abused me and all these things. I was like, I'm gonna prove everyone wrong. And it worked.
58:02 Robert Greene? Powerful motivator.
58:03 Lewis Howes? It worked until it didn't. Until I realized, man, I'm still suffering inside and I'm not fulfilled. And it wasn't until about five years ago when I started opening up about everything I was insecure about or holding on to and frustrated about. When I realized like, okay, yeah, that got me to where I'm at and it helped me accomplish a lot of things, but I'm still unfulfilled. And when I started to say, how can I prove people right and lift other people up? Whether they doubted me or hurt me or not, and focus on that energy. That's when I became so much more fulfilled, so much more peaceful and more driven to impact more people as opposed to prove a handful of people wrong.
58:46 Robert Greene? That's right. Well, a lot of what I'm talking about in the book is your ability to be aware of yourself and honest with yourself and say that this isn't ultimately fulfilling.
58:57 Lewis Howes? Right.
58:58 Robert Greene? And that what I think is this strong thing is actually a weakness of mine and I'm going to work against that. That's sort of the whole point of the book is knowing who you are, knowing your weaknesses, knowing what really motivates you, because it was your self-awareness that was able to make you change.
59:16 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And my self-awareness in the beginning for 30 years was like, this is the way I need to be in order for me to achieve.
59:23 Robert Greene? Was there a particular experience that provoked this?
59:27 Lewis Howes? I mean, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man. My brother was in prison for four years and I didn't have friends during that time because the neighborhood parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me. I was, you know, in the special needs classes all through elementary school and had to tutor through college because I couldn't read and write.
59:45 Robert Greene? Wow.
59:45 Lewis Howes? So just getting, feeling like very insecure around everything. I wasn't a good student. I didn't learn in the structure that school has built for us. I learned from sports. So I put all my energy into proving people wrong in sports because I could learn from moving my body, from listening to a coach and applying it right then and failing and learning. And that structure was a better format for learning for me.
1:00:09 Robert Greene? But was this something that happened five years ago that triggered?
1:00:12 Lewis Howes? Oh, yeah. Five years ago, I started, I read about this in my book, Masculinity and talked about it many times, but I had a bad fight. I was playing basketball down the street, pickup game with a bunch of people and got a bad fight, like a real fistfight and blood everywhere and.
1:00:30 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:00:31 Lewis Howes? And I had this awakening right afterwards of fear. I was like, what did I just do? I didn't got in a fight.
1:00:37 Robert Greene? Were you the instigator?
1:00:39 Lewis Howes? We are both kind of the N C A R S. He hit me first, but we're like, you know, talking trash the whole game and hard fouling and, you know, playing a hard game. But he actually hit me first so that I could have diffused the situation at any time. I could have backed away. I could have been calmer, all these things.
1:00:56 Robert Greene? So that made you reassess yourself?
1:00:58 Lewis Howes? Yeah, it made me realize I'd achieved all these things. I was, you know, successful or whatever with these accomplishments. But I was like, why am I still angry? Why am I still?
1:01:09 Robert Greene? Right.
1:01:09 Lewis Howes? Why am I still reactive to this nonsense that's nothing? It's a little pick a basketball game. And yet I take it so personally.
1:01:17 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:01:18 Lewis Howes? And feel like this person is attacking my masculinity, my manhood, my life, my credibility, everything. So I would defend myself. Anytime someone said something negative about me, I had to defend myself.
1:01:31 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:01:31 Lewis Howes? It's kind of like my whole life, though.
1:01:33 Robert Greene? Right.
1:01:34 Lewis Howes? Now, I was a joyful, happy guy. But when that happened, it was a trigger.
1:01:39 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:01:39 Lewis Howes? So, and my friend was like, I don't want to hang out with you anymore. Because he was there. He was like, every time we play basketball, you get in a fight.
1:01:46 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:01:47 Lewis Howes? Or you react, or you say something, or you shove someone, whatever.
1:01:50 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:01:51 Lewis Howes? And so I said, I need to take a look at my life. And I started going to workshops. I started doing emotional intelligence training. I started working with therapists of all different types. And I was just like, I need to see what's the root of this.
1:02:03 Robert Greene? Well, the key is here is that decision that you were not going to let this become a pattern.
1:02:07 Lewis Howes? That was it.
1:02:08 Robert Greene? And a lot of people could have reacted the opposite way.
1:02:11 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:02:12 Robert Greene? What makes you different from others is someone could write a whole book about.
1:02:16 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Well, I'm a student of life, too. You know, I always want to learn. And I realized that's something that was holding me back. Like, I'd achieved a certain level of success or results, but I still couldn't sleep at night. I was still hurting inside. I was still unfulfilled. And I was like, Well, I thought, once you achieve these things,
1:02:33 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:02:33 Lewis Howes? like you feel better.
1:02:35 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:02:35 Lewis Howes? Like, these are dreams that I've had for years that, why don't I feel good now? Yeah, and I think it was like, I turned thirty, I was going through a breakup in a relationship that I moved here for in L.A.
1:02:44 Robert Greene? Yeah, I remember that.
1:02:45 Lewis Howes? I was in a business breakup as well with my partner, and I was like, huh, what? You know, I'm the common denominator for everything going wrong in my life.
1:02:53 Robert Greene? Right, right, right.
1:02:53 Lewis Howes? Like.
1:02:54 Robert Greene? So you saw your own patterns?
1:02:56 Lewis Howes? I saw it. And, and I think that was my not near-death experience of like getting in this fight, but it was like an awakening moment.
1:03:02 Robert Greene? Fight, see, sometimes it takes something physical, like you, you could feel the, the fist on your face, and you knew the feeling of shame.
1:03:10 Lewis Howes? Oh.
1:03:11 Robert Greene? These are powerful chemical reactions that you'll feel twenty years from now, and so that can wake you up. Hopefully, it doesn't take that much for other people, but sometimes it does.
1:03:21 Lewis Howes? Sometimes it does.
1:03:22 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:03:22 Lewis Howes? And luckily, the guy was, the guy was fine, I mean, there was blood everywhere and everything, but the police station was right across the street, and I was just like, I could lose everything. Like, what if this guy had a knife? What if they pressed charges? Or what if, you know, it's like, what's the point of this?
1:03:39 Robert Greene? You see, this, this is something I, I talk about in the book a lot, is, there's almost like a stranger inside of you. A person that acts and you don't even know who they are. Like, in those moments, you're not Louis.
1:03:53 Lewis Howes? No.
1:03:53 Robert Greene? Who is this? And it could happen tomorrow still.
1:03:56 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:03:56 Robert Greene? Where you could get in a situation where that will happen. And where does that come from? Well, there are things like that in everybody, where certain circumstances, certain events will trigger something in you, and you'll act in a way that you don't even understand. Like, I never did that before, why am I doing this?
1:04:13 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:04:14 Robert Greene? Why am I falling in love with the absolute worst woman that I could possibly, you know, involve in my life? Why am I taking this career job path that's making me miserable? Why am I getting into fights? Why am I suddenly getting angry? I'm saying that these are forces inside of you, human nature, that you don't understand, that are compelling you to behave in certain ways. And your only way outside is to understand what's going on inside of you.
1:04:43 Lewis Howes? Wow. And that's why this book is so important. You have so many other great chapters in here. I want to ask you a couple more questions. And then we can wrap it up. This one on, you know, advance with a sense of purpose is a law. You talk about the law of aimlessness. And I think, you know, for me, having a clear vision, or at least a vision that you think is clear for a certain amount of time, is one of the most powerful things we can have. Because if we are aimless, then we're screwed, I feel like.
1:05:11 Robert Greene? Yeah. Well, the problem for human beings is, you know, an animal, a cat or a dog, they don't have to wake up in the morning and decide what they're gonna do. Oh, am I gonna eat this food? Am I gonna go for a walk, whatever? Their life is sort of programmed by their, who they are genetically, et cetera. We humans don't have that kind of programming. We are not given any kind of natural guidance in life. We could wake up and we could not go to work tomorrow. We could suddenly do whatever we want if we felt so inclined. So we have to create our own sense of purpose. And that purpose can't come from the outside. If our parents tell us, you need to do this, this and this, or a teacher tells us,
1:05:54 Robert Greene? it's not gonna connect to something deep within us. And it might work for a while, but when we're 25, we'll feel empty and hollow because we're not, it's not something from within and we'll lose...
1:06:05 Lewis Howes? It's not our path, yeah.
1:06:06 Robert Greene? Yeah. So the trick in life is figuring out what you were meant to do. I maintain, and this is something that I go into in great depth and mastery, in chapter one of mastery, but also in this book, is to figure, every human is different. Every human has a different genetic code. Their brains are wired differently. No two people have the same parents who raised them a certain way. You are different. You have something very unique about you. That uniqueness exists for a purpose. If you follow that, if you use your uniqueness in some way, you will create something probably pretty interesting and pretty great, right? But if you follow what everyone else is doing,
1:06:50 Robert Greene? you will be like everyone else. You will become a lawyer because your parents say you are, should. And when you're 29, you'll feel, you won't feel connected to it. And you'll see that there are 8 million other lawyers doing the same thing. And you'll be 32 and you'll be drinking and you'll gain weight and you'll lose all, and your life will go downhill from there. Is this your life? No, could have been. Yeah. Could have been. My parents would have liked me to become a lawyer or a doctor. Yeah, right. So, how do you find that voice? I call it a voice that's telling you who you are and what you need to do. How do you find it? Well, it's listening, first of all.
1:07:30 Robert Greene? So, when you were young, you were generally attracted to certain activities or pursuits. I call it in mastery, primal inclinations. It's a voice inside of you saying, "You should do this, you are attracted to that." There's a book that I recommend by a man named Howard Gardner called The Five Frames of Intelligence. He mentions that there are five forms of intelligence. One that has to do with mathematics, patterns. One is kinetic with sports. One is social and to do with people. One has to do with words. There's a fifth one, I don't remember. Everyone has a brain that is inclined towards one of the five.
1:08:13 Robert Greene? That's like your main strength. For you, it might have been kinetic, which was sports and activity and physical action. We tend to emphasize in our culture intellectual as a form of intelligence. But being really good with your hands or being really good at sports is a form of intelligence. You are naturally drawn to one of these five forms. You have to know what that is. And when you were very young, you felt naturally drawn to certain things. When I was a kid, I was drawn to words. I was obsessed with language and words. And I was obsessed with strategy. With warfare and war games and sports.
1:08:55 Robert Greene? And so, you know, eventually, that's sort of what I ended up doing. You know, Tiger Woods, when he was a year and a half old, saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage, and he went berserk. He felt this like primal attraction to it. I have many examples of famous people. You probably had that in your life. But as you get older, you start listening to your friends, your teacher, your parents, and you're not hearing that voice anymore. And all you're hearing is what other people tell you who you should be, what they think is cool. And you lose connection to what makes you unique. And what, who you are, your uniqueness is your source of power. The further you deviate from that uniqueness, the weaker you will become. You will become like other people.
1:09:37 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:09:38 Robert Greene? So the game in life is to know who you are, to gather skills and train yourself and be disciplined. And by the time you reach your age of thirty, you have a lot of creative energy and you're able to take all the things that you've learned and create something unique like you did with your School of Greatness. I was thirty-six when I started writing The Forty-Eight Laws of Power, so it took me a little bit longer than that.
1:10:03 Lewis Howes? Well, you're obsessed a little more with things, that's why. You're a perfectionist. You let that get in the way.
1:10:07 Robert Greene? Well, I had a little more failure than most people have. Took me a little longer, I'm a little slow.
1:10:13 Lewis Howes? It's okay. Work in your advantage. That's powerful, I like that. So lean into your curious, the things that you were curious about as a kid, and go back into one of those five things, figure out what it is.
1:10:24 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:10:25 Lewis Howes? And start pursuing that more.
1:10:27 Robert Greene? And also know what you don't like.
1:10:29 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:10:30 Robert Greene? You don't like working in a group where everything's political. Well, then maybe you need to be an entrepreneur and work for yourself and start your own business. So the things that you dislike show you a lot about who you are.
1:10:43 Lewis Howes? I like that a lot because I think a lot of people right now, they have too many options.
1:10:47 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:10:48 Lewis Howes? I'm passionate about everything. How do I know which direction to go?
1:10:52 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:10:52 Lewis Howes? And that's like a downfall in itself. It's just like law of figuring out how to choose one direction. There's people that don't have, they don't know what their passion is. They're like, how do I find my passion? And there's people who have lots of passions.
1:11:05 Robert Greene? Right.
1:11:05 Lewis Howes? They're basically in the same boat.
1:11:06 Robert Greene? They are.
1:11:07 Lewis Howes? You're not doing either, anything.
1:11:08 Robert Greene? That's right. And it's hard because especially with the internet and all the access to information, you can get excited about so many things. Oh, I could direct a film. Oh, I could, you know, write a screenplay. Oh, I could win a political election, et cetera. No, you can't. You can't do everything. You're not meant to do everything in life. You are not Leonardo da Vinci. There's probably one or two or three things that you need to focus on, but you need to find that thing to focus on. Focusing on one activity is not something that should frighten you, which liberate you. Because by developing solid skills in one area, you now have power to maybe branch out to something else and combine different skills.
1:11:51 Robert Greene? If you aren't somebody, if you're somebody that gets easily bored by just one straight path, you can follow this path of doing different things, but you have to master each level before you can advance.
1:12:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And if you are scattered in your passions or your direction or your vision, you will influence less people. The more powerful you become in one area, the more influential you become with lots of people. Isn't that right?
1:12:16 Robert Greene? That's right.
1:12:18 Lewis Howes? We'll finish with this topic and then I'll ask you my final couple of questions. Because there's a lot of people that are looking to build a business or build a following with social media. You have a chapter that says, make them want to follow you. How do we make people want to follow us, whether it be offline, online, you know, buying into our business, our products, our services, our books?
1:12:41 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:12:42 Lewis Howes? Following us on social media, listening to our podcast. How do we do that?
1:12:48 Robert Greene? Well, you have to understand human nature.
1:12:51 Lewis Howes? That's the key.
1:12:52 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:12:52 Lewis Howes? Understanding human nature, yes.
1:12:54 Robert Greene? People don't want to be forced, or coerced, or manipulated. They want to feel that they are coming to something on their own. So if you create this podcast, and you go out there and you get all this advertising, etc., and you force people, you force yourself down people's throats with your presence, they go, "Ah, this guy's trying too hard, I'm not so interested." But if you create a viral buzz, where instead of you promoting yourself, I go out and go, "Wow, Lewis was the best interviewer, but you are, you are one of the best interviewers around."
1:13:26 Lewis Howes? Thank you.
1:13:27 Robert Greene? I believe that.
1:13:28 Lewis Howes? Appreciate it, thank you.
1:13:29 Robert Greene? And I realize, because that was six years ago, I remember how good an interviewer was.
1:13:32 Lewis Howes? Yeah, thanks.
1:13:34 Robert Greene? If I'm the one going out and promoting you, suddenly that carries so much more power. So you have to understand that you don't want, oftentimes, this is a chapter about leadership. Often, as a leader, your impulse is to yell at people and make them do things, do your bidding. And that creates defensive, resentful, bitter people. You want them to want to join your force, to do, to join the group, to follow the group's path, to, you know, to get into line on their own. Of their own volition, they follow you. And so you have to understand that, first of all, you're dealing with individuals. You can't compel, you have three people who work for you, you can't do the same thing with each person.
1:14:19 Robert Greene? You have to play to their psychology. You have to create a cause. People don't want to feel like they're doing something for money. It makes, it's kind of soulless and mercenary.
1:14:29 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:14:30 Robert Greene? If, "Oh, I'm going to listen to Lewis's podcast because I'm going to become a millionaire." Well, you'll get some people, but a lot of people will find that kind of empty. But if you say, "You listen to my podcast, and you're going to help humanity, you're going to change the world, you're going to feel great about yourself, people are going to love you." You're appealing to things that motivate people. So you have to understand that, you have to get them to join a cause. Basically, I mean, I have more things in the chapter.
1:14:59 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah, that's the essence of it, yeah. You talk also about a dark shadow, is that what you call it? Shadow side, a dark shadow?
1:15:06 Robert Greene? The shadow side.
1:15:08 Lewis Howes? What is that mean, and what is your shadows?
1:15:10 Robert Greene? Well, your shadow side came out on the basketball court very clearly.
1:15:13 Lewis Howes? Yes, Incredible Hulk.
1:15:18 Robert Greene? Yeah. Yeah. It's a very important concept. Basically, it means when we were children, we were two or three years old, we were like a complete individual. We felt all this range of emotions, anger, hate, love, it's joy, depression. And we tended to express it as children often do. All the time, right? Yeah.
1:15:41 Robert Greene? And then our parents intervene and say, because a child who just does what he wants and is always expressing it can be kind of irritating and you want to sleep and you have your own cares. So you're telling the child, stop that behavior, stop being like that. Be a good boy, be a good girl, study harder. And so you start to repress certain qualities in yourself in order to please your parents, in order to please other people. Those qualities could be your aggressiveness, your natural assertiveness. It could be your kind of dramatic tendencies. Your theater nature, yeah. Your what? Your theater nature. Your theater nature. Yeah. You kind of repress them. You try to be something that will please other people.
1:16:24 Robert Greene? And as you repress that other part of your character, it goes into what we call the shadow. It doesn't disappear, nothing ever disappears. It just is not immediately visible. It forms the dark side of your character. There's the moon that we always see in the sky. Then there's the dark side of the moon that we don't see. But the dark side of the moon doesn't exist, it's still there, just we don't see it. Everybody has their dark side. And it comes from these qualities that they were repressed when they were younger.
1:16:56 Robert Greene? And it will come out later in life in sudden bursts of anger like you on the basketball field. Right. Or it'll come out, you know, in a relationship. For instance. You might have felt like your parents didn't really love you. And you're worried that, that you were worried with a child. You had a irrational fear that they would abandon you. And then you form a, a relationship later with a woman. And she's slightly cold to you, but not for any reasons that have to do with you. Maybe she's in a bad mood. You assume that she's about to abandon you because you have that fear. And you lash out and you get angry. And you like basically instigate a breakup in advance.
1:17:40 Robert Greene? Because you don't want to deal with that pain of going through it. You don't want to have to be abandoned. You want to be, be the one abandoning.
1:17:47 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:17:47 Robert Greene? Well, that's your shadow side coming out. Everybody has it. And you'll notice it when people do something that seems out of character. They will lash out, they will get angry, they will do something self-destructive. They will say, as we said earlier, oh, that's not me, you know, something came over me. But no, that is them, that is their shadow acting out. That person on the basketball court wasn't somehow Mr. X who suddenly invaded Louis's body.
1:18:16 Lewis Howes? Right, right.
1:18:16 Robert Greene? It was Louis. It was more Louis than what we normally see.
1:18:20 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:18:21 Robert Greene? Normally, we see the nice, pleasant Louis.
1:18:22 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:18:23 Robert Greene? The real Louis suddenly came out on that basketball court.
1:18:26 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:18:26 Robert Greene? And you saw it. Well, everybody has that. And you want to see that in people. You want to see that they're, you want to see their shadow.
1:18:35 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:18:35 Robert Greene? And understand that, that, that they're not as the nice, as nice and wonderful as they say they are. Not to judge them, but to be aware. And you want to see your own shadow so you can use it, so you can be aware of it, so you can overcome it.
1:18:48 Lewis Howes? Wow. What's your shadow side?
1:18:52 Robert Greene? That's a good question. I've had to deal a little bit with my shadow side now because I suffered a stroke about two months ago. And my shadow side is I feel like I'm, I have an incredible need to be independent and self-reliant. And if I don't feel that way, if I feel like I'm trapped, that I can't do something. I get really angry and really can be vicious and violent. So the sense that something is stripping or stepping on my independence or autonomy can trigger that Louis Howe basketball reaction.
1:19:26 Lewis Howes? The Hulk comes out.
1:19:27 Robert Greene? The Hulk comes out.
1:19:28 Lewis Howes? So your wife and everyone has to suffer that, huh?
1:19:31 Robert Greene? Well, I had to deal with it. I've had to deal with the fact that I am dependent, that I am like a baby right now, that I can't. I have to rely on people, but there are other things that I can do for myself still, but they're small things. That's part of it. And then the other shadow side is the hyper perfectionist in me that's always trying to please and make the absolute perfect book.
1:19:52 Lewis Howes? Well, they're pretty amazing. They're pretty amazing. And so it's paying off in some ways, but at what cost also? What's the price you have to pay?
1:20:00 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:20:01 Lewis Howes? With that shadow, I guess, right?
1:20:03 Robert Greene? Yeah, but you know, as I said before, when we were first talking, I'll take that price.
1:20:09 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:20:10 Robert Greene? Because I created something that I wanted to do. I did something that meant a lot to me. And I knew I was kind of hurting myself physically, but I still did it. It's like you're going off to war. What will make a person, man or woman, go into battle, knowing that you could die?
1:20:31 Lewis Howes? A greater purpose.
1:20:32 Robert Greene? Yeah. You give up your body for, or a football player for something. You give up your body for something greater. And that's not a bad feeling.
1:20:40 Lewis Howes? Yeah. What's the thing you're most proud of that most people don't know about?
1:20:44 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:20:47 Robert Greene? Thing I'm proud of? Well, I don't like tooting my own horn. I don't like saying how wonderful I am.
1:20:53 Lewis Howes? If you had to, about the thing that you're most proud of?
1:20:56 Robert Greene? Well, you know what? People assume, because I wrote The Forty Eight Laws of Power, they have this image that I'm kind of this asshole. That I'm sort of this manipulative Machiavellian asshole who goes around trying to get the better of people. That I know every trick in the book. That if I'm late for a meeting, I'm doing that on purpose because I'm slaying some game. And actually, I'm a really nice person. You know, I'm kind of a puppy.
1:21:23 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:21:23 Robert Greene? I'm not like that at all. You know, I can be tough when I have to be. Kind of my father, my father was a really nice person. He wasn't weak, but he was just really nice. So I don't know if I'm proud of that, but that's sort of a side of me that people don't know. I'm not, I'm not as much an asshole as they think.
1:21:41 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah. That's good. Good to be proud of being a nice guy. Your shadow side is the manipulative strategist, right?
1:21:48 Robert Greene? That's right.
1:21:48 Lewis Howes? That comes out.
1:21:49 Robert Greene? That is right. That's actually more accurate. That would be my shadow side.
1:21:52 Lewis Howes? There you go. What's the question you wish more people would ask you than ever ask?
1:21:58 Robert Greene? Wow.
1:22:01 Lewis Howes? Anytime you get Robert Greene, you say, wow, that's a good sign.
1:22:07 Robert Greene? Man, you see, the problem for me is my books cover so many different topics that people generally ask about everything. I mean, a lot of it has to do with, because I've spent my whole life listening to other people and writing about other people, I don't really talk about myself very much. So, sort of talking about my own experiences and how I formed myself, I did that in a TED Talk, and it was very difficult for me, it's very unnatural. But in this TED Talk, I discussed how I arrived at where I am right now. And it's something I don't get to talk a lot about, because I don't like to talk about myself that much.
1:22:51 Robert Greene? But that's sort of a question I don't get so much.
1:22:54 Lewis Howes? How you arrived where you're at right now?
1:22:56 Robert Greene? Yeah, how I ended up writing the kind of books that I write.
1:23:00 Lewis Howes? I remember you telling me about this six years ago, where you had done a lot of different things that were all failures.
1:23:06 Robert Greene? Right.
1:23:07 Lewis Howes? Where I think you were like a newspaper writer, or like a screenplay writer, and all these different things, and you were like 70% good at all of them, but they weren't really that great.
1:23:16 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:23:17 Lewis Howes? And then they all kind of magically showed up at 36 to writing like this different book that no one really wanted, but then it was like a big hit.
1:23:25 Robert Greene? Yeah, I mean, the thing was, goes back to the thing about uniqueness that we were talking about. I've never felt like I was like other people, I've always felt like an oddball. I never did what my parents told me to do. I left college and went and lived in Europe. I mean, I graduated, but I lived in Europe and I just wandered around. I never listened to what people told me to do. So, when it came time to writing this book, this man, who was my partner in writing it, who packaged it, he sort of asked me if I had an idea for a book, and I kind of explained my ideas about power.
1:24:01 Robert Greene? I decided to make it something very weird and unique.
1:24:06 Lewis Howes? Different than was in the market and.
1:24:08 Robert Greene? Yeah, like you can hate the 48 Laws of Power, but you can honestly, no one has ever written a book like that. The structure with the stories, the sections, the quotes, the things on the side. And I got a lot of grief for that. The publishers go, I don't think this will work. And we want you to change it. We want it to be more like other books. And so I stuck to my guns and I said, no, I'm going to go down sinking with who I am. If this works, it's because I'm weird and I'm unique. And it succeeded. And then after the 48 Laws of Power, the logical thing was to put 48 Laws of Power, Part Two, and just sort of kind of mine what I'd already done. Said, no, I'm going to go in a new direction.
1:24:53 Robert Greene? So I'm constantly challenging myself and following my own path. I'm a weirdo and people don't realize maybe how weird I really am. Only my wife kind of knows how truly weird I am.
1:25:06 Lewis Howes? Sure.
1:25:07 Robert Greene? So maybe that's to answer your question.
1:25:08 Lewis Howes? I like that.
1:25:09 Robert Greene? How truly strange and weird I am.
1:25:12 Lewis Howes? But that's the path to achieving something great is leaning into your uniqueness.
1:25:17 Robert Greene? I think so. I mean, you could go too far with that.
1:25:19 Lewis Howes? Right, right. It's still got to reach the masses in some way.
1:25:22 Robert Greene? I could have written poetry.
1:25:24 Lewis Howes? Hey, there are poets right now that are selling millions of copies.
1:25:27 Robert Greene? Okay.
1:25:27 Lewis Howes? Groupie Cora, have you seen her?
1:25:29 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:25:29 Lewis Howes? She sold millions of copies, two books, I think were number one, your time bestseller, poetry books.
1:25:34 Robert Greene? I take that back. If I had written poetry, I wouldn't have.
1:25:36 Lewis Howes? It wouldn't have been good for you. Yeah. This is a question I ask at the end. It's called the three truths. I didn't ask you this last time because I didn't have this question. So imagine you live as long as you want, live for as many years as you want, but at some point you get to choose the day it's the last day for you. And you've written every book that you can think of. They've all been bestsellers, they've all, you know, millions of copies, like you've already done, and then some. You've done it all. And you say, okay, it's been good, like, time to go. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. So no one has access to your work anymore. You've got to bring it with you, hypothetical.
1:26:20 Lewis Howes? But you get to write down on a piece of paper, the three truths from everything that you've learned in your life, from all of your books, all of your messages, your work, your insights, all your weirdness that you are, the three things you know to be true about life. And this would be the only thing that you would leave behind for everyone to have. Robert Greene's Three Truths or Life Lessons. What would you say are your truths?
1:26:44 Robert Greene? There's a weird kind of law that governs the universe, which is what you give to the world is sort of what you get, right? So we are more active than we think we are. We are more responsible for what happens to us than we think we are. And so the things that have worked for me in life, when I've sort of been aware of that, and through my attitude, through the pattern of my life is kind of foggy with all of the failures. But overall, there was a reason behind it. There was a purpose, and I followed that purpose unconsciously, maybe consciously to some degree, and it led to where I am today.
1:27:30 Robert Greene? But that there is something, a feeling that I had, that there was something kind of guiding me. And I can't put my words, I can't put my finger on it. Something was guiding me to where I ended up today, even from when I was five years old. So I've always had a feeling of like fate and destiny, for better or for worse, and it happened. So that's
1:27:53 Lewis Howes? That's one.
1:27:53 Robert Greene? The other truth is that I tend, and other people, we tend to be too nice in life. Too indulgent with other people, too nice. We don't ask for enough. We feel like we don't deserve much in life, etc. And we let people push us around. I was pushed around a lot because I was sort of a naive writer type, who didn't understand that there are bad people out there. So, one of the things I had to learn in life, and that are the source for my work, is that there are bad people out there, and you have to recognize that. That there are narcissists, that there are aggressive people, that there are passive aggressive people.
1:28:37 Robert Greene? They are enviers. And you have to be aware of that, and you have to be strong enough to deal with them. And by not being able to deal with those kind of people, your life can be completely ruined. One awful, toxic person, one bad relationship can ruin you for life. You internalize the negative energy. So, the ability to stand up for yourself, and to be aware, and to understand that not everyone has the best intentions, that you're going to be more strategic, and not always kind of just accepting what people give you, is a major source of wisdom for me.
1:29:20 Robert Greene? And all of my books come from a bit of anger, you know? And I think the reader can feel the anger in them. And anger is kind of an intoxicating emotion. And I even talk in the book how it can be a positive emotion. When my writing is angry, it's very real, and you can feel it. So, I've been able to take that kind of sense of there are people out there who are hurtful, and use that anger and turn it into something positive, into a book. I was sort of the, "God damn it."
1:29:53 Lewis Howes? Final truth.
1:29:55 Robert Greene? Final truth. I'd say one thing was, kind of related to some of the other things I've said. And I did write a book about this. But it has to do with the role of fear in my life and what I've been afraid of. I come from a background of my parents were kind of anxious, somewhat fearful people. And I tend to internalize that, to worry about what will happen next, to whether people will like me. And to the degree that I overcame that fear and did something bold and unusual,
1:30:37 Robert Greene? I've kind of become more of who I am and kind of achieved things. So I've always been one to confront my fears. Like, I have great fears now of walking, because if I fall, and it's very easy for me to fall, I could be finished, you know, I'll break something and now I can't, my stroke will never, I'll never get over. I've got to get over that and I've got to keep walking and walking and get over my fear. I was afraid of, of being alone or being in a situation I had no control over. So when I was 22 years old, I went and lived on the island of Crete in Greece with a backpack and sleeping in caves.
1:31:22 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:31:23 Robert Greene? And kind of being alone and sort of cutting myself off from the world was something I greatly feared. And I kind of overcame that fear. So sort of the ability for me to confront what I'm most afraid of has been a great source of power. I'm not great at it. There's still many fears that, that haunt me. But instead of kind of giving in to them, always kind of confronting them and moving past them.
1:31:51 Lewis Howes? Hmm, to confront your fears.
1:31:53 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:31:54 Lewis Howes? Wow, that's powerful.
1:31:55 Robert Greene? Did I cover three?
1:31:56 Lewis Howes? You covered three. These are beautiful. Make sure you guys get this book, The Laws of Human Nature. It's out right now, very powerful. I recommend getting a couple of copies to give to friends as well, because... The key to life is relationships.
1:32:11 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:32:11 Lewis Howes? And this is the key to understanding people and understanding how to be better in relationships. So get this book. It's going to transform the way you move through life. We can follow you on Instagram, Twitter. Where do you spend time at or where do you post the most?
1:32:26 Robert Greene? Well, we have a website in which everything is followed into. I've had it for years. It's power, seduction, and war, the "and" spelled out, dot com. Those are my first three books.
1:32:37 Lewis Howes? Power, Seduction, and War.
1:32:38 Robert Greene? Dot com. You'll find there a site for mastery and for the new book.
1:32:42 Lewis Howes? Great. And you spending time on social media at all or no?
1:32:45 Robert Greene? Yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and.
1:32:48 Lewis Howes? Instagram.
1:32:49 Robert Greene? Instagram, but I'm not as active as I should be, but I'm there.
1:32:53 Lewis Howes? What's your handle on Instagram?
1:32:55 Robert Greene? Shit.
1:32:56 Lewis Howes? We'll find it and link it up for people.
1:32:58 Robert Greene? Yeah, I don't even know what it is on Twitter. I just have it on my phone. I don't.
1:33:01 Lewis Howes? We'll find it. It's probably your name. So good. Well, I want to acknowledge you before I ask the final question. I want to acknowledge you, Robert, for constantly showing up and creating masterpieces because these books truly transform lives. Millions of people talk about them, read them, and they improve their life because of the information that you obsess over, whether that's good or bad. But your ability to dive into a topic is unbelievable. So I acknowledge you for your care and attention to detail.
1:33:31 Robert Greene? Thank you, Lewis.
1:33:32 Lewis Howes? To impact people's lives.
1:33:33 Robert Greene? Thank you, Lewis.
1:33:34 Lewis Howes? I just want to make sure you take care of your health moving forward.
1:33:38 Lewis Howes? But it's amazing everything you've done. I'm grateful for our friendship over the years.
1:33:43 Robert Greene? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:33:44 Lewis Howes? And just, you know, everything that's happened, so.
1:33:47 Robert Greene? I saw you when you were just a little.
1:33:49 Lewis Howes? You were my first episode.
1:33:50 Robert Greene? Yeah.
1:33:51 Lewis Howes? So I appreciate you for giving me my first chance of.
1:33:54 Robert Greene? It was an honor. I'm so proud of you and everything you've done.
1:33:56 Lewis Howes? Thank you, thank you. The final question is, what is your definition of greatness?
1:34:03 Robert Greene? It's kind of what we've already talked about. I feel like everybody has the potential for greatness. And greatness would mean something a little bit larger than what you've already done. For going a little bit beyond what you've already created, going a little bit past your limits. Great implies kind of size and largeness. And so, everybody has the potential for greatness. I don't care who you are or the bad circumstances of your childhood. And greatness is realizing your own potential. I don't care what that is.
1:34:45 Robert Greene? It could be in being the best possible parent. It could be in using your hands and creating some beautiful work of art or some great bit of craftsmanship. It could be in writing a book or creating a great podcast. But it's something larger than what you were 10 years ago. You've expanded your boundaries, you've expanded your own limits. You've pushed them a little bit further. So to me, that's greatness. I made this a circle, I didn't explain it in the book. Because I said, human nature kind of contains us. It creates a limit for us. We can't become a chimpanzee or a sheep. We are human and this is the limiting factor.
1:35:30 Robert Greene? But by knowing the laws of human nature, you can begin to explore a little bit further out and become something a little bit more. You can take your irrational nature and become more reasonable and rational. Well, going, pushing a little bit past your limits and expanding like a balloon just a little further, that's greatness to me. Not accepting, but moving past your own limits. All right, we're green. Thank you, man. Thank you, Louis. Thank you. That was great. Thank you.
1:36:04 Lewis Howes? There you have it my friends, I hope you enjoyed this one. I was blown away and I felt like I could have gone on this interview for hours because we just scratched the surface of what's possible in understanding human nature and how to master yourself and really understand how to connect with all types of people and all walks of life to get them to buy into your vision more, to get them to relate to you more, to build better quality relationships with people. Life is about relationships and the quality of your life is dictated and determined based on the quality of your relationships that you have with other people. So how are you showing up?
1:36:46 Lewis Howes? Are you showing up constantly with a negative attitude and constantly surrounded by toxic people? If you have toxic people in your life, you need to reevaluate this, re-listen to this and learn the steps on how to remove those toxic people from your life and take responsibility for what you've caused to attract them. Make sure you guys pick up a copy of the book. The full link to the book and all the information about Robert is at lewishouse.com/713. So go there, you get links to the book, tag me on Instagram @lewishouse and let's stay connected. I want to hear your thoughts on this because it is a powerful one.
1:37:27 Lewis Howes? And Oprah Winfrey said at the beginning that the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude. And Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You must do the things you think you cannot do." What is your attitude like today? Are you a positive person? Are you fixated on the negative things that are happening around you that you make excuses about? You have a choice in this moment on how you want to show up with your attitude and you must do the things you think you cannot do. Robert Greene talked about the fears that you have, the insecurities you have.
1:38:08 Lewis Howes? Sometimes they feel so overwhelming, you must lean into those fears today. Stop wasting time. Stop playing small. Lean into your fears and start to overcome them. I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something. Great.
1:38:49 Lewis Howes? Great.
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