Robert Greene: How to Deal with Negative People When They Are in Your Family, Friend Circle or Work

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (01:00):
We don't really have a self. The self is a
construction of our minds. There actually is nothing there, and
that kind of emptiness, eaglelessness, is enlightened with It's a
beautiful feeling. One of the best selling authors of the
last twenty years, Robert Green. If you're dealing with your
own weaknesses and your own emptiness inside, you're going to

(01:21):
be drawn to people who fill that up. People's perception
of you can almost become how you perceive yourself if
you're not careful.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
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Speaker 2 (02:05):
The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Jay Sheety Jay Sheety Sly Jay Sheet. Hey everyone, welcome
back to on Purpose, the place you come to become
a happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is one
of your favorites, someone who's been on the show before.
You absolutely loved our first episode together, and so I
had to have him back. He's also one of my

(02:30):
favorite authors, someone that I've been rereading recently, especially when
I fell out of love with learning. And I'll tell
you about that in a second. Today's guest is Robert Green,
the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The forty
Eight Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The Thirty
three Strategies of War, The fiftieth Law Mastery, The Laws

(02:52):
of Human Nature, and most recently, of The Daily Laws.
I am so excited to welcome back to the show, Robert. Robert,
thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thank you so much for having me you, thanks for
that great introduction.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Of course, grateful to have you back in the sea.
And as I was just saying to you offline over Christmas,
I spent last year touring. I was on stages. We
did nearly forty cities across ninety days. My book had
come out. I was really pouring out externally, and whenever
that happens to me, I always kind of after that

(03:25):
get a feeling of I need to grow again, I
need to learn again, I need to nourish myself. And
I really believe that last Christmas, The Daily Laws of
Power became my daily read and I have recommended it
to so many people. My wife started reading it, my
closest friends have started reading it, and it was just

(03:46):
such a great book for anyone who's either stuck with reading,
someone who's kind of like not sure what to read,
someone who's trying to figure out their direction in life.
The Daily Laws of Power is a great starting place.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'd say, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I've always been a fan of your books, and you
send me this beautiful limited edition version which I'm getting
to show off on the show by the forty eight Laws.
What a phenomenal book. So thank you for being such
a big part of my learning journey.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
For having me. You're a rock star. But what a
tour You've been on. A tour like that that sounds
like fun.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
It was fun. It was fun. We went to Sydney
and Melbourne and Brisbane, and we went all over India.
I went to Dubai, I went to Whoa Paris, Berlin.
It was phenomenal. It was amazing.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
But you could see yourself more of an extrovert or
an introvert.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
So that's a great question, and I'm going to let
you define the two for me, because you'll probably have
some wisdom to share with us. I energize alone, but
I enjoy connecting with small groups of specific people. So
I assume I'm overall and introut. But nine nine percent
of people would say, Jay, you're an extrovert. But if
I was in a big group of people, I would

(04:53):
find the one person who I share values with to
have a deep conversation. I wouldn't be milling around into
do using myself to everyone. So if that makes any.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Sense, But do you need to be alone?

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Do you feel I crave alone time A lot? Yes,
a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
So you're a mix.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah you're under that. Yeah, yeah, that's what it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
But I have so many questions for You're over that
I got into and I'm really coming to you with
questions that I know a lot of my community and
audience repeatedly ask and I think your specifically position to
answer a lot of these. The first one I have

(05:29):
is one of the biggest things I get asked is Jay,
how do I deal with negative people? How do I
deal with negative people in my family? How do I
deal with negative people in my friends circle? How do
I deal with negative people at work? In close intimate circles.
I feel a lot of people feel they're dealing with negativity.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, you know, it all depends on the details, the
kind of negative person you're dealing with. There are several
kind of ways of looking at it's some kind of micrones,
some kind of much larger. The larger picture is, we
all have negative traits, we all have dark traits, right,
and so you kind of if you have this idea

(06:13):
that it's just humans, human beings are like this. It's
like a flower or a rock or a tree. It
has its nature. You know, I just accept it. I
accept people for who they are and I deal with
them on that level. I don't judge them, et cetera. Now,
of course, when you're dealing with negative people, it can
be very difficult because negative people like to stir up

(06:36):
a lot of drama around you, around them, and that's
the kind of power that they get. They like the
attention that they get from making people upset, from pulling
on your emotions. Right, So you have to have you
have to have this kind of larger look at them
where it's not about me, right, They're dealing with their

(06:57):
own issues, their own problems. There's a history behind it.
It could be their parents, it could be their family,
it could be their spouse, their children, whatever, and they're
venting it on me in this particular moment. But it's
not personal. I tell people, don't take everything so personally, right,
But then you know, so there's all these different levels

(07:19):
and it all really depends on the specifics because a
lot of people come to me for advice, but a
lot of times you're enmeshed with a negative person, like
it's your boss, it's your spouse, et cetera, et cetera,
And it's very difficult to do what I'm talking about, right,
And so you have to try and get a little
bit of distance from them. You have to be able

(07:41):
to say to yourself, they're not me, right, they have
their own problems. I'm separate from them. The sense of
being separate from them is very liberating, right. So they
have issues and they're trying to drag me into it,
and they're trying to drag me down. But them, I
have my own life and I'm not going to get involved.

(08:04):
Sometimes you need to have empathy, but sometimes you need
to shut that off. And so the best thing in life, though,
is That's why I say, there's just so many angles
to approach this from is if they're like a deep narcissist,
and that's probably the most common type of negative person
you deal with in the world today and we all

(08:24):
have come across this. The power that you have is
to recognize people like that before you get involved with them,
and to not get involved with them, right, And so
they have signs things that you can pick up in advance.
People who are toxic. I don't know if we're toxic
and negative are the same here. They don't show it immediately.

(08:47):
They're good at deceiving you. They can be very charming,
they can be very dramatic. They pull you in with
their great stories they have. Sometimes they're even charismatic. A
lot of important CEOs in the world, people like Elon Musk,
are raging narcissists. They appear very exciting and you want
to get to know them, but you have to recognize

(09:08):
that these are people that are probably going to use you. Right.
They don't see you as an individual, and the people
you associate with were very as humans, we're very open
to the emotions of other people, right, And so the
people you associate with have a huge role on who
you are and the energy you have, you know, your

(09:30):
daily life, et cetera, et cetera, And so you have
to be very very careful who you let into your life,
right and God, Jay, I don't know, there's so many
different angles to approach it from. I tell people that
don't judge people as far as who you're going to
let into your life. Don't be deceived by the appearances.

(09:53):
Don't judge people based on their intelligence, on their charm,
on whether they're good or bad, et c. Judge them
on their character, whether they have a weak or a
strong character.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
What are some of the signals the signs we can
look out for, because I think what you just said
is so true that we naturally get attracted to people's appearance, intelligence, charisma,
access because we haven't really been trained to view character.
So I remember when I lived in the monastery, the

(10:29):
highest quality or character trait that was considered the epitome
of internal emotional evolution was humility. And so when you
met someone who is humble, and you met someone who
didn't have false ego, they were considered a high character

(10:49):
and we were trained in order to understand that. But
in the modern world, that isn't how the material world works.
We're almost attracted to people who can come off arrogant
and show boats. And even if we sense we don't
like that, we still believe that person has power. And
so what are things that we have to look out for?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, Also, there are people who appear to be humble,
but they're not really humble. There's a lot of people
now who feign humility because it's seen as a positive trait.
So humans are born actors and you have to kind
of look behind the mask. So I tell people I
view it as strong or weak character. A strong character
is a person who can take criticism right, who can

(11:30):
work with other people right, who can deal with stressful situations,
who can handle responsibility, and if there's something goes wrong,
they take I am to blame for They don't look
at other people. There's somebody who can rely on you
lean on them, and there's something there to lean on.
You can rely on them in situations. A weak character

(11:50):
is somebody who cannot take criticism. That is probably the
number one characteristic. The worst trait I think in people,
and a definite trait of negativity is somebody who can't
take any kind of criticism right. They're so defensive, So
that means they can get away with anything, They can
say anything they want, and there's just like a wall

(12:11):
of shell around them. Right. So, the ability in a
work situation, in a relationship to take criticism and not
be able to use it constructively is an incredibly useful
and powerful trait to me that reveals strong character. How
people handle stress is a really good sign of their character.

(12:35):
So in a work situation, people are good at faking
it and pretending that they're very strong. But when it
gets really stressful and there's a lot of pressure on it,
the mask falls off and they reveal that they can't
handle it. They're too weak. They're reacting to everything, they
can't get out of the moment. They're so impatient, you know,
and fragile. And so the ability to handle stress shows

(12:59):
that somebody has something strong inside of them, right. How
they handle power, Right, So, when people are kind of
climbing up the ladder in a group or in a
job they generally were, they generally try and pretend like
they're they're work with the group. But once they have power,
that all falls off and they can become abusive and

(13:21):
they feel like they can get away with any things
that they couldn't get away with before, they treat people
below them miserably, et cetera. So when people have power,
how do they handle it? Are they responsible? Do they
suddenly become somebody different or do they maintain the character
that they had beforehand? Right? What kind of partners do

(13:42):
they choose? Do they choose a spouse, a husband, a girlfriend,
et cetera, somebody that they can push around, somebody that's
inferior to them so that they can feel better about themselves.
How do they look when they're playing like a game,
or they're in outdoor activities or something that has nothing
to do with work. Are they so competitive they have
to win it everything, even when it's like outside of

(14:04):
that kind of environment. You know, these are kind of
traits that help me sort of judge a person's character.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, and these are often the things that we either
ignore or we actually let them kind of fall by
the wayside or don't pay enough attention to them because
we think, oh, no, but they're so smart and they're
so this, And I wonder how much of guys also, like,
what does that say about us that we often get

(14:33):
attracted to the wrong things within people? What does that
say about us? Does that make us a stronger weak character?
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Speaker 2 (15:17):
I know that I tend to be I tend to
get involved with narcissistic people. It's a weakness of mine, right,
And maybe it's because of my upbringing, and maybe it's
because I feel a kind of emptiness inside of me,
and that their charm and the attention that they tend
to they pretend to give you is kind of enchanting

(15:38):
or casts a spell on you and it draws you in. Yes,
so if you're dealing with your own weaknesses and your
own emptiness inside, you're going to be drawn to people
who fill that fill that up. Are you going to
be drawn to causes and charismatic leaders that pretend to
give you a purpose in your life because you don't

(15:59):
have a purpose, but have it for you kind of things.
So a lot of it has to do, yeah, with ourselves,
and we're attracted to We're even attracted to negative people.
And there are people who have patterns in their life
where they deliberately choose the worst kind of person for them,
right and over and over and over again, because at

(16:23):
least that makes them feel alive. At least the pain
of it, you know, gives them a sense of something,
have something dramatic, and so they deliberately bring on those
kind of that kind of pain. So it's complicated.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, Yeah, when you said that, often we feel an
emptiness inside and you were saying maybe because if you
are bringing you felt that emptiness inside as well, have
you tried to fill that emptiness or is there another solution?

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Well, to me, it's why I wrote the book Mastery.
The way I fill my emptiness and how I've done
it since I was a kid is through my work
and through my ideas and my thinking, and how I'm
constantly looking for new thoughts and new ways of looking

(17:15):
at the world. So I find that if I don't,
if I didn't have my work as kind of some
people think of work as something that you just have
to do, right, it's just a way to get money.
But for me, it's a way to feel like I'm
a human being, that I am who I am. I

(17:37):
was destined to write these books, and it gives me
every day I wake up and I know this is
what I need to accomplish, et cetera, et cetera. And
so that's why I read so many books. That's why
I'm so intrigued by ideas. That's why I'm writing a
book right now about a subject that very much captivates

(17:59):
me because it does feel that inner kind of emptiness.
But on the other hand, as someone who meditates and
practices a form of zen meditation, there is a purpose
to emptiness right there. It's not necessarily good to be
always having to fill things up in your brain like

(18:20):
you're just pouring food into your system. You know, there
is something actually kind of intrinsically beautiful about the idea
that there that there is emptiness, that that I don't
really have a self, that there is actually not that
there is no such thing as a mind. Actually, it's
it's an illusion that we create, right, It's something that's

(18:41):
it's something through words that we have. So that sense
of emptiness that you know, I'm I don't have an ego,
or that I'm confronting the world, that I'm just hearing
and seeing things as they are, it is actually a
beautiful thing. So you have to kind of have to
kind of struggle against this idea of always having to
fill myself up.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
What's something you're saying you like observing humans and humanity.
What's something that you've observed about humans over time that
surprised you.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Well, nothing really surprises me because I read a lot
of history and I see that things just keep repeating
over and over and over again. I know though, since
I had my stroke, and since I've physically weak and
there are things I can't do anymore, I've actually noticed

(19:33):
that people respond to me differently, and it's actually very positive.
So sometimes I can be very negative about people. That's
kind of my inclination. That's how my mind tends to work,
which is not necessarily a good thing. We all have
these attitudes that make us look at the world a
certain way. I tend to have a negative bent towards

(19:53):
human nature. But I must say people have been very
very kind to me since I've had my stroke, and
it's sad that you have to have an accident like
that to be able to perceive it. But I've seen
another side where everyone wants to help me. They kind
of empathize with the fact that I'm a little bit
helpless in these situations. And it's also made me kind

(20:18):
of feel differently about other people who have disabilities with
things that they can help in their lives. But the
sense of I'm a little bit helpless and people are
really eager to try and help me actually is something
that has kind of surprised me in a way.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, I liked what you said there that it's sad
that someone has to go through something for us to
then show that sides of ourselves, which means that it's
always there. It means that it exists inherently within us.
Do you think it's because why do you think that is?
Why do you think that is that if it's inherently there,
we don't display it at all times to all people.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
I don't know. I mean, we're all born with the
capacity for empathy. It's something that It interests me a
lot because the feeling that I'm connecting very deeply to
another person, let's say my wife, et cetera, is a
very overpowering emotion. It gets me out of myself and

(21:18):
I'm seeing the world through her eyes as opposed to
me always projecting myself onto her. It's a very moving experience.
And sometimes you go to a movie and you find
yourself getting inside the characters. You're getting outside of yourself
and you're feeling this empathy for them, you're identifying with them.

(21:38):
These are all very powerful emotions, right, and we all
have the capacity for that, But the world we live
in is actually a machinery to deaden those emotions, that
sense of empathy. Right. It's just puts so much emphasis
on ourselves, on our individuality, on who we are, Our needs,
you know, are the attention that we want, that we deserve.

(22:01):
We're so focused on ourselves that that natural feeling of
wanting to get inside of another person. And you know,
it's very strange, Jay, because if you think about it,
our inner lives are actually quite boring, the same thoughts
repeat over and over and over again, the same emotions,
the same preoccupations, the same anxieties and other people. They're

(22:27):
so different. They have their own worlds, right, They're like,
it's like traveling to another country. So we should actually
be much more oriented towards other people. We should have
a natural interest in their world because it takes us
out of ourselves. It's like therapy. But it's been deadened
by so many things in our world, by social media,

(22:47):
by the pressures we're under, by just modern lifestyle, and
so that empathetic muscle that everybody has is kind of atrophying.
And yet there'll be moments where it kind of sparks
to life and you feel like, God, I want that.
I want more of that in my life, more of
that in my world. How do I get it?

Speaker 1 (23:07):
What would you say is you're most repeated thor on
a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Like what do I need to do today? What's on
my schedule? You know? So, like I'm meditating in the
morning and I'm trying to empty my mind and I'm
going into what's known as a co aan, right, and
then these thoughts keep bubbling up and they're so annoying,
and it makes you aware of the machinery of your

(23:34):
own mind. And so to answer your question, it's always like, oh,
did you remember that you have to call this person
this afternoon? Did you remember you have to change that reservation?
Do you remember that you have to do this? At
the scheduling things so unimportant, so trivial, Where I'm trying
to open my mind up to something vast and important,

(23:55):
it's little things like scheduling and stuff like that. Then
there will be other thoughts that we repeat, you know,
like if I saw a movie from images will keep
popping up from that and such. It makes you aware
that you're not in control of your own mind. Right.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
How have you found over time with meditation and other practices,
what have you used in order to start quietening, emptying,
whatever the right word is for you releasing those thoughts
so that you can connect with vastness, be creative or
self express.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Wow, it's not easy, and it's an ongoing process, and
I could say I'm maybe ten percent of the way
where I'd like to be. But first of all, you
recognize you go through a thing where a thought pops
up and it's like why am I thinking about that?
I don't like it. You realize that it's just a thought,

(24:48):
and what is a thought? Now? I know We're getting
really weird and metaphysical here it. But it's not real.
It's a phantom, right, it has no reality. Reality is
your body, the present moment, the birds outside the sky
where you are sitting, the fact that you're alive, that
your blood is pumping. These are real. But that thought

(25:10):
in your mind is a shadow. It's a phantom. It
doesn't exist. It has no reality. And so I go
through this process where don't engage with it, and it's
really weird because then my mind plays tricks on me
and it pulls up a thought that's definitely going to
engage me, right because it wants that. It's like a

(25:31):
sugar rush, and so I go, okay, no, I'm not
going to engage with it. And it made me realize
as I went through that process that this is what
social media is based on. Social media has mirrored the
human brain on a large scale. We have thoughts that
are designed to grab our emotions and make us think

(25:52):
about them repetitively, over and over again, compulsively. Right, And
there's probably a purpose behind that, but social media is
actually a genius at that. It picking out putting up
things up there. They're going to engage our emotions, so
we have to pay attention. So I always try, and
every time that happens, I withdraw and I say, it's

(26:12):
just a thought, it's not real, it's not who I am.
This is a very important part of meditation. Your thoughts
are not who you are. They're a separate part of yourself.
You are something different from your own thoughts. I don't
know if that means anything to you.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
It does, it does definitely. And while we are not
our thoughts and we are not our mind, our thoughts
become our reality. We find that a repetitive thought turns
into a habit, that turns into a pattern, that turns
into an action, becomes our reality. For example, I am
an unorganized, lazy individual usually translates into oh I forgot

(26:53):
to send that it didn't happen, because now it's a
belief that's built up. And so it's so fascinating that
something that's so so not real becomes so real. And
I've been really into seeing how thought editing is so
useful as an activity and an exercise, because I've sound

(27:14):
so many of my thoughts become my beliefs that become
my life. And I think a lot of people don't
realize because they don't realize that their thoughts are like
clothes that you can change. We do believe that our
thoughts are real and our reality and whatever we're hearing
in our head is exactly what is, and we don't

(27:36):
realize that. Oh it's like looking in your wardrobe and saying,
I don't like the color green anymore. I'm going to
change it for blue. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Well, there was something I read recently in one of
the Buddhist books I like to read, that said our
minds are basically topsy turvy. They're upside down. So the
reality is we don't really I don't want to get
too deep into this, but we don't really have a self.
The self is a construction of our minds. There actually

(28:06):
is nothing there, and that kind of emptiness, like egolessness
is Enlightenment is a beautiful feeling and maybe in your
life you've touched upon it briefly. I know I've touched
upon it briefly. It's not the reality I have every day,
but that's the real that's real, and what's not real
are the thoughts. But everything is turned upside down in

(28:28):
our worlds, and so these delusionary thoughts of about people,
about who I am, about my habits, et cetera. They
become our reality when it's exactly the opposite, right, you
have to be able to be aware of that. And
so you know, meditation is all about being aware of

(28:49):
is becoming aware of these things because we walk around
like automatons. You know, I'm very into this writer named Gerjeff.
I don't know if you've ever heard of Gerjeff. He
was this He's basically from Armenia. He was in the
beginning of the twentieth century. He was this man who
was very interested in mysticism, and he traveled throughout Asia

(29:12):
trying to find the essence of all the different esoteric philosophies,
and he created his own philosophy and it's very interesting,
very exciting stuff. He wrote a book called In Search
of the Miraculous that I highly recommend people, and it's
not wooh wo stuff. He was a very very practical man.
He puts it in very practical terms. But his idea

(29:34):
is that we walk around asleep. We're on automatic pilot constantly.
We're not really aware that we're breathing, that we're existing,
We're not aware where our thoughts come from. We're not
aware of how our body moves, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And so it's a process of slowly becoming
aware of these kinds of things that is really kind

(29:56):
of I've been doing this fourteen fifteen years now, really
really kind of changed the course of my life.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
I have to say, Yeah, I love that, and I
can't wait to read that book now. And I couldn't
agree more. I feel we're so disconnected from our mind
and body that we constantly believe that someone outside of
ourself has the answer for how we feel. And while
that may be true when you're seeing a doctor or

(30:25):
a dentist or something of that professional nature, we don't
really know how our body's been feeling for weeks or
months until it crashes, and then we've realized that we
haven't paid enough attention to X or yoz or a
relationship in the same way has to end in order
for us to realize that he had lost investment and

(30:48):
energy or whatever it may be. And we're so far
away from the self, or at least this version of
the self, that yeah, we're not really aware. I love
what you just said. About the idea of how conscious
are we of the fact that we're breathing, we're here,
we're present, we're together, versus how much are we living
up here? Yeah, and it's really interesting, isn't it, Because

(31:11):
there's almost two realities that we're always dealing and if
we're getting too heavy, I'm happy to move away from it.
But it's almost like I've been thinking a lot about how,
in one sense what's out here is real and in
one sense what here is in and at the same time,
actually what's going on here is the real because it
defines how I interact with everything else, and it can

(31:33):
help me be a better filter, a bit of a
chooser selector of the people I'm around and the places
I visit.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
So you say you have to kind of use the
mind to be able to become president. It's a process.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
I would say, I'm alluding to that in discovery, not
in pushing it. If that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. I agree with
that definitely.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah. I've been reflecting a lot recently about how most
of what's happening is in the invisible world, and.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
That that's very interesting. Tell me more about that.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
So I've just been. I was thinking that in one sense,
you have reality externally the visible world, but how I
make sense of that visible world is all in the
invisible space, and ultimately, how I make sense of it
is the reality that I experience regardless of what's happening

(32:27):
around me, Which is why we realize that people who well,
we all are telling ourselves stories and narratives all day long.
But how we're processing what we're experiencing is our reality
as opposed to the event or what someone said or
social media, as you gave an example, like I can
either sit here and say like, I know that when

(32:50):
I wake up in the morning and I start scrolling
on social media, my mind is now moving ten times
one hundred times faster than if I don't do that.
And I know that brushing my teeth and showering is
a much more peaceful process if I haven't looked at
my phone then if I do. And so that choice
is being made in the invisible world, and the visible

(33:14):
world is simply something I'm interacting with and taking from
or being affected by it.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, so we mostly live in things that are invisible. Yes, right,
symbols et cetera. Yes, language is a symbol it's not reality.
And so things like government and social behavior, they are
rules and codes that we abide by, but they're not visible.
They're invisible, right, Yeah, definitely, and we're not aware of that.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
And so we're trying to raise our awareness of the
invisible world. I'm always trying to raise my awareness of
why do I process this way? Where does this come from?
Where's this idea taking root?

Speaker 2 (33:57):
That's a very yeah, it's a very interesting process to
go through.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
It's hard, it's yeah, it's not clear. It's not like
I here's the step by step process. It's just something
I've been engaging with a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah. Yeah, I like to try and go through a
thing where I question all of my beliefs and things
of why, where does that come from? Why do I
believe that? Why has that become something that's so hardened
into my brain? I believe that about myself and who
I am about other people. I continually try to challenge
it and look at what might be the source of it,

(34:29):
and then maybe say it could be the opposite, right,
and it actually it can lead to a lot of
problems because it's like my mind is always swimming and
I never really think anything is certain I'm always you know,
seeing the opposite side of it, but I think it's
in the end, it's a very healthy process.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
How do you I love where we're going because it
kind of comes back to your same point early, sorry,
your earlier point about how someone of strong character knows
how to take criticism, which means they know how to
deal with the opposite of what they think, call feel.
And so this idea that you're sharing now that it's
healthy to be able to question, to evaluate, to assess

(35:08):
our beliefs and values. But like you said, it's one
of the hardest things to do because you get into
a space of uncertainty, you question your identity, you lose
a sense of direction.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
How do we.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Question ourselves without losing ourselves and actually realize that that
is the process of discovering and building ourselves?

Speaker 2 (35:27):
You know, like, who really are you? In the end?
You know what constitutes you? The essence of you? What
were you meant to accomplish in this world? Right? Your
sense of purpose? You know, to use the title of
your show, What is it that makes you an individual?
Makes you unique? That you alone are meant to accomplish
in life? Well, it's not given. We don't know it,

(35:50):
And a lot of people really really struggle with trying
to figure that out, right, because they've been programmed by
their parents, by their siblings, by the culture, by their
teachers to say, this is who you are, this is
what you should believe in, this is what you were
meant to accomplish in life, this is what's cool and
what's not cool, okay, And so you have to question yourself.

(36:14):
You have to say, is this really who I am?
Am I really interested in this subject? Am I really
interested in this kind of person and getting in a
relationship with this kind of person? And so question yourself
on that level, you're getting at a deeper and deeper
core of maybe who you are. At essence, you're cutting

(36:34):
away all of the social stuff that's been foisted upon
you that it has nothing to do with you, Right,
So in some ways you're kind of a mystery to
yourself and you're sort of trying to solve that puzzle,
and you have to ask these questions, is this something
I'm actually really interested in? Is this an intrinsically important
thing to me? Or is it something that's in the

(36:56):
culture or something that other people have told me? And
questioning that over and over and over again. Is not
to lead you into this abyss where there's nothing real.
It's to get you closer to who you are, to
what really matters, to what that essence of you is,
to what you were meant to accomplish in life. And
once you reach that that inner kind of gold, then

(37:18):
you have a degree of certainty. So I know, I
knew from a very young age that I wanted to
be a writer. Right, I had to struggle to figure
out what kind of writing I wanted. But knowing that
that's who I am, probably at the age of eight,
it allowed me to go I'm not interested in that.
I don't want to do that. This isn't important. Why

(37:39):
am I following this career path? Why am I wasting
my time here? And then, so, knowing that kind of core,
you don't have to keep questioning yourself. So I'm never
going to question myself. Why are you a writer? Why
are you writing books? You should have been a pop star.
I should have been a rock singer. You should have
written poetry, you should been a lawyer. No, I'll never go

(38:01):
there because I have that firm ground beneath me, and
that's what your questioning is supposed to lead to get
to the essence of who you are, and once you're there,
you have a degree of certainty in your life.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, it does, It does. And I feel like a
big challenge something that I've been thinking a lot about
lately is a big challenge. Of where that comes from
is because we care so much about what people think,
and we're scared of being an unsuccessful version of ourselves
because we'd rather be a successful version of what someone

(38:35):
else wants us to be.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, And so we're scared of being an unsuccessful writer
if we could be a successful accountant. We're scared of
being an unsuccessful artist because we'd rather be a successful
tech person whatever else it may be. Fill in your blank.
And because what we think people think of us has

(38:58):
such a stronghold on us that we can't pivot to
our passions, we can't maneuver to our purpose, we can't
accept that maybe I'm not what this person wants me
to be. And I've been spending a lot of time
in this to try and figure out and I'll and
we'll let's dive into it from different perspectives. But I
guess how much, Robert, do you care what people think

(39:23):
of you, and how have you made sense of that
over your time as someone who obviously writes that a
lot of people enjoy your reading. People may disagree with you,
they may agree with you. People, as you said, debate, discuss,
But how have you made sense of that? And what's
been your process of dealing with how you think people
think about you.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
This is how people think about me who know me personally,
and it is how people think about me in the
social realm who don't know me personally and who have
an idea of who I am just often very different
from the reality. But naturally, as a human being, I
care that people understand that I'm a certain way, that
I have a certain character, that I actually love jokes

(40:07):
and silly bathroom humor, and that you know I like
stupid movies, and that I'm not always you know, reading
heavy philosophy. You know, my wife can tell you all
about this childish side of my personality. So you know,
it's always been important to me to feel kind of
authentic and sincere, and I've always hated and it's probably

(40:30):
why I wrote the forty eight Laws of Power. I
hate people who are pretending to be something that they're
not deeply, deeply wounds me. And I don't know why.
I don't know why it's been like that because I
was a child. Maybe I suspected that in my parents,
the kind of falseness that upsets me deeply. And so
I wrote the forty eight Laws of Power because I

(40:51):
felt people are such hypocrites. They pretend that they're not
interested in power, but that's all they're interested in, right.
They wear this front, Oh, I just want to help people.
I just want to make movies and culture, and arn't
know you're interested in power. So it's always been deeply
important to me to kind of reveal what's really going
on in someone and to sort of feel that way

(41:12):
about myself. So when I don't feel like I'm myself,
when I feel like I'm faking it, and sometimes to
be honest with you, Jay, being a kind of quote
unquote self help, gurup, it feels false. It doesn't feel
like who I am. I feel like a bit of
an impostor. It's not really what I wanted to be.
I just wanted to write books. I love ideas, I

(41:35):
love thoughts, I love expanding my consciousness. Right, So the
feeling that I'm not being who I am, and that
other people are kind of glomming onto that is upsetting
to me. I don't know if I'm answering your.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Oh no, that's I mean, that's resonating so deeply with me.
I think it's so interesting, isn't it How your self
perception is so different from people's projection onto you, And
so I can identify with that. I do what I
do because I'm just sharing what I love. So I

(42:11):
love meditation, I love wisdom books, I love traditions, I
love ancient wisdom and modern science and seeing the parallels
between the two, and I just love talking about that
and sharing that. And I don't think I've ever thought
of myself as a guru or a guide or a

(42:33):
or that kind of individual. But we in society, if
someone shares or teaches or gives insight or advice, we
box them or bucket them as that's the same as you.
We'd go in the same bucket, even though we kind
of do similar things about very different things, and we
probably have some similar interests in some different interests. And

(42:55):
it's interesting how there isn't a space. Like I often
say to people, I'm just trying to be everyone's spiritual friend.
Like that's my goal. Like I'm that guy who's introducing
my friends to cool things that they may not have
come across, whether it's Eastern spirituality or wisdom or whatever
it may be. Like, I'm that guy, and that's all
I want to be. I don't want to be anything else, right,

(43:17):
But it's hard when you almost get put on a pedestal,
even though you didn't ask for that. I didn't want that.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Well, people's perception of you can almost become how you
perceive yourself if you're not careful for sure, you know.
And so that's why I keep coming back to myself
and going, is that really who I am?

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (43:37):
I don't think so, Robert, you know. And also I
actually I have a flawed individual. I'm a flawed human being.
I have, you know, blind spots in my nature. I
have compulsions that I wish I didn't have. And I
don't like this idea that people think I'm this powerful

(43:58):
person who's figured everything out because I'm not. I have
That's why I write wrote the book The Laws of
Human Nature. It was because I understand that I shared
the same flaws that I have. Narcissistic tendencies that I
too can feel envy that I have moments of grandiosity.
So I'm not comfortable with the idea like that I'm

(44:19):
this somebody that I'm not that the perception of me is.
But that's what happens to a lot of successful, famous people.
They become trapped in what other people are thinking about them.
They become trapped in that image. And I honestly think
I could be way off base, but I'm thinking of
somebody like Anthony Bourdain who committed suicide. I think he

(44:41):
was burdened and weighed down so much by how people
thought of himself and it wasn't who he was, and
it kind of made him feel deeply uncomfortable. And I'm
sure there were many other issues going on, but a
lot of times it can make you uncomfortable in your
own skin, the way people perceive you, and it can
lead to deep feeling links of depression and I and

(45:02):
a loss of who you are.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean could write a new book
called the Flaws of Human Nature.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
It's like, thank you, that's what the book is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's eighteen dark corners of human Nature. But yeah, that's
a good idea.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yeah, it's no it's just, you know, I thought of
like it is true. It's there's a seeking of perfection,
and there's a sense that we've created in the world
of before and after, in the sense that if you
look at like a workout program, and there's nothing wrong
with this because it makes sense, but there's a before

(45:39):
picture and there's an after picture. And if someone's wealthy,
it's like they were poor and now they're rich, and
everything's a linear before and after journey. And what we're
talking about, and I fully agree with you on this,
is that actually all of my challenges are cyclical and
they're different. So it's not that I never feel anymore.

(46:00):
It's that I feel it differently to how I felt
it ten years ago, and hopefully I'm a bit better
at dealing with it and understanding it and engaging with
it than I was ten years ago. But it's not
that it doesn't affect me anymore, right right, And same
with spiraling thoughts. It's not that I don't have anxious
or negative thoughts anymore because I'm enlightened. I still have

(46:24):
those thoughts. I just deal with them better than I
did ten years ago, and I probably have more tools
to help.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Me engage with that's true, that's free.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
And I think that cyclical nature is a wonderful thing
to accept as an individual and as someone who's learning,
because you then don't fool yourself to think, oh, there
will be one day where I will no longer have
a negative or anxious thought like Jay and Robert, like
you know, they probably never have it. It's like, well, yeah,
you probably have less, but it's not that I never.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Have done exactly right. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
And so that kind of idea of this before and after,
I think is what confuses so many people because it
feels like, oh, there is a point at which I
never have to go back to being this version of myself.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Well, that life isn't like that, you know. It's weird
sometimes because before the forty eight Laws of Power came out,
I was just this nobody living in a two one
bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, rent controlled, you know, never
really made any money, never really had any success in life,
and I was constantly giving people advice, but nobody would

(47:31):
listen to me because I hadn't written the book. And
suddenly the book comes out and I'm supposed to be
a different person. It's very strange. But I'm actually the
same person that I was when I was living in
that miserable one bedroom apartment, you know, and giving out
my advice that nobody listened to. Now people listen to it.
But the only difference is because suddenly I have this credential,

(47:51):
which is very strange.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, I can relate to that so many ways. I
used to be mentoring, coaching people in my community. I
would do these little events in London ten eleven years
ago now where like five people would show up and
it was, you know, I was just doing it. I
would speak at universities for free for years, like I was.

(48:16):
It was, you know, It's been such a big part
of my life to just do this. I've always wanted
to be someone who's learning and sharing. That's what I enjoy.
I enjoy learning, and I enjoy sharing, and I enjoy
synthesizing and making things simple and practical for other people's
That's what I get my joy from. And I was
always inspired by two quotes. One is Ivan Pavlov where

(48:38):
he said, if you want a new idea, read an
old book. And so that's always been something that my
work has been inspired by. It's always based on ideas
that seem timeless, but they're.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
And old, very beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah. And then there's another thought from Einstein, which is
another part of what inspires my work, which is if
you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough.
And so these are the two kind of tenets that
what I enjoyed doing in the world. And again, I
don't think they're magnificent, miraculous or brilliant. They're just what

(49:13):
I'm meant to do. And there's such a beautiful significance
and insignificance in that very understanding, Like it's really significant
building because I'm like, I know what I have to do,
and it's really insignificant because I'm like, it's just what
I have to do. It it's not the best or
the worst, or it's not comparative, right, And I think

(49:33):
that's how when you're talking in the daily Laws of Power,
that's that's kind of how, in different words, how you
describe like your life's you know, your life's gifts, your
life's work, your life's path.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
I've always liked all books myself, so you know, I
read a lot of books of philosophy, et cetre history,
but I also read books of famous zen classics, the
twentieth century books, I'm not so sure, but I'd read
like something from the eleventh century, where the thought process

(50:05):
is so different, but it's timeless, it's human. Man, it
is so beautiful. It so sparks these ideas that he
or this writer, this thinker was dealing with the same
things now a thousand years later. But they still strike
a truth. But it's in this language that's very weird
and primitive and barbaric. I don't know why that excites

(50:26):
me so much. It's the same idea that a modern
writer might write, but put in the words of seventy
thousand years ago, it suddenly touches me.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Can you explain that, Jay?

Speaker 1 (50:36):
I mean, I don't know if I can, apart from
the fact that you've reincarnated and you had some connection
to it. But can I explain it. I can't explain it,
but I can I can reflect on it. I mean,
I find that there's a part of it that that
right or creator may never have known if anyone would
ever read it. Yeah, And so that privacy and that

(51:00):
secrecy and that intimacy with their work, not knowing that
it would ever be viewed seen read broadcasted. That has
some power to ask.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah, there's a humility to that, whereas now people right
were expecting all these people to be reading it. We
do it for the attention. Yeah, it was much different
back then. Yeah, that's very interesting. I ever thought of that.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yeah, I've I've definitely found that. I try and wreath. Yeah,
I try and sit with ideas for longer now and
try and kind of I'd love to know your process
for that. However you managed that since that moment of
where you became quote unquote successful because externally because of
forty eight laws, how did that change your creative process?

(51:46):
How did you hold on to the roots of this
kind of thinking.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
So, after the forty eight Laws of Power came out
and it was successful, I was at a turning point
in my life, and it's a turning point that a
lot of people I think have faced, was to I
just can continue redoing the forty eight Laws of Part
It was successful, it worked. Well, why don't I just
write the forty eight Laws of Power Part two. It'll
bring in money, it'll bring in attention. I'll just riff

(52:10):
off what I wrote there. And something about me was
not comfortable with that it seemed cheap, it seemed easy,
and it seemed lazy. And I know myself that if
I'm not challenged by something different, I grow bored. So
I have to write something that feels like there's energy

(52:31):
behind it, there's anger, there's love, there's something powerful behind it.
I have to feel it or it won't be in
the words. So if I'm just doing the forty eight
Laws of Power Part two, it won't be there. It'll
have an emptiness, and damn it. A lot of artists
and writers fall into that trap, and it's why their
books kind of have this sort of hollow ring to them, right,

(52:54):
They're just going through the motion. It's just repeating what
worked before, and I can't stand that feeling. I have
to feel like I'm off into a new land if
with this new book. So each book has to represent
a challenge, right, And so the one I'm writing now
is completely different from all seven of the other books,
and it's an incredible challenge. But it makes me excited

(53:16):
about every day because I know I cannot repeat the
same kind of books over and over and over again.
My soul becomes dead and I have to feel alive
with each projects.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
I'm loving these personal answers. No. No, I can resonate
very deeply with that as well. I always try and
write about something that I'm working through or struggling with,
whether it's personal, whether it's with clients, whether it's with
someone in my life, friend's family, Like it feels alive.
It needs to feel alive. I can't write from a
point of theory or knowing, like the book has to

(53:51):
be a discovery exactly. And I've only just started my job.
I've only written two books. But as I'm hearing you,
I'm happy to that I feel that I'm thinking about
it in a healthy way, because yeah, I was. I
was about to write my third book and the topic
everyone wanted was so predictable and expected and it made sense,

(54:12):
And I was like, I don't want to write about
something that makes sense, Like that's boring. Like it's like,
I want to write about something that feels like alive
in my life and electric it makes me. I'm like,
now that I've chosen, I will tell this to you later,
but I've chosen my next topic and I'm just been
like writing notes about it. I'm reading about it. I'm
seeing connections out.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
That means it's going to be a great book.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah, it just it feels. I mean it's harder. It's
harder because you don't know. So you're spending more time,
Like we said earlier, you're spending more time with emptiness
because there's a sense of, well, I don't know which
direction this book's going to go in.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
So it's it's that comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, but there's a joy in that, yeah, very much so.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, when you're when you're discovering your process through a
book or or work, how have you learned to become
comfortable when the discomfort of creativity in that, like you
don't know where the path's going to take, You don't
know if it's going to land or not. You don't
have it, Like, how are you grappling with that process

(55:14):
of what we're discussing.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Well, it's very strange because I'm dealing with it right
this very moment. I'm writing something that's driving me crazy
and it's this and the very subject I'm writing about
is about what I'm going through. So I'm writing it.
This is in my book on the Sublime, and I'm
writing about the concept of the damon are you familiar
with that? It's the idea, it's an ancient Greek idea,

(55:38):
but it's in many other cultures that we have a
second self, that there's something, there's a voice inside of
us that is guiding us to something higher or better,
but it can also lead us to something lower and worse.
It can be demonic, which is where the word comes from,
or it could be something. And Socrates had his dameon

(55:59):
there's a voice in soide of him, and it said
it always just said this is the right way to go,
or this is the wrong way to go. Nothing more
than that right. And so when I'm writing, it doesn't
feel right, and it's driving me crazy. And I'm going
through this right now. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't resonate.
It's not truth, it's not real. You got to start over,

(56:19):
you got to do it again. And in the back
of my mind, I'm thinking, God, I've lost it. I'm
getting old, and I just don't have my mojo anymore.
But then I realized I've gone through this like eighty
five times every single book. It'll come to you, it'll
come back. It isn't right because it doesn't feel right,
it doesn't resonate, it doesn't have a reality to it.

(56:41):
So I have to go through this process where I
write something and it excites me and it interests me,
and it just flows out of me, as opposed to
like I have to pull every word out, And so
I learned to trust myself that eventually I'll figure it out.
But each time I hit that while I go, this
is it. You're finished. The book isn't going to come out.

(57:02):
You're done. The wells are dry, you know.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah, that's so interesting. I feel like that is every
creative's journey, like it has to go through that the
wells are dry, as you just said, that kind of
experience of that's it, it's over, there's nothing else coming
out now. I'm you know, and and it's almost like
we as we know, like the cliche of like it's
on the other side of that feeling. Yeah, but it's true.

(57:28):
There is a sense of when everything is just or
not making sense. How have you learned the sense whether
something feels true to you because it obviously felt true
to someone. How do you decipher between this feels true,
It feels real to me even if people don't agree.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
With it, because it just feels that way.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
It's purely just a feeling.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
First of all, it it like I'm always trying to
get at what's real and not what's theoretical. I have
a real dislike of abstraction for its own right. It
feels like it's a way of eluding something. It's an evasion.
I want to get at the core and the reality

(58:09):
of what I'm trying to write about, and so when
I get it, I feel it and I know that
I've done that, and I have the reader in my mind,
and I know the reader can connect to it. It's
going to have a personal appeal. Whereas I have a
tendency to be abstract and professorial and theoretical, I cross
all of that out. If you saw my notebooks, ninety

(58:31):
five percent of it's crossed out. And I don't let
the public ever see that side of me because I
don't like it. I want my books to feel like
I'm hitting something that's actually truthful and real that people
don't like to talk about. Kind of thing, you know.
So right now I'm writing about what is our self?

(58:51):
What is the sense of self that we have in
our world? It's a very limited idea of the self.
We have a very limited idea of our consciousness, very
limited idea of what it means to be a human
being in the twenty first century. We're actually much more
immense and much more interesting than we think we are.
We have these possibilities, these connections because we're a part

(59:13):
of something incredibly vast, and to have consciousness is absolutely
an astounding thing, right, So I want to sort of
expand what you the reader thinks of who you are,
what yourself is. It's much larger than you imagine. But
I have to convey that in language that feels right

(59:33):
to me, that feels authentic, that feels like everybody in Africa,
in China, in India, in Idaho is going to be
able to relate to it, you know.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Yeah, no, no, for sure. And that's I think that's
what I was alluding to with that invisible world point
of like how that's what we don't see, Like there's
so much to ourselves that we don't see that we're
fully unaware of that we don't have, we don't realize
we have act access to. And Yeah, finding the right
terminology I find to be such a There's there's one

(01:00:07):
word that I love, which is a bit more etherial,
but I guess an astronomer could find some beauty in it.
But there's a term in the Vedic literature is called
unto akash, which means inner sky. Again, unto akash inner
and akash means sky, inner sky. Yeah, in a sky.
And it's this idea of how, you know, we're so

(01:00:30):
fascinated by outer space, but there's that same inner sky
that exists, so just that like the galaxy and the
planetary systems and everything else that exists internally too, But
there has to be a just as we have to
go and do space exploration, you could do the same internally.
You discover so much.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
That's exactly what I'm writing about. That's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
And and and it's yeah, it's fascinating and so yeah,
I find language is what I find vocabulary so needed.
And I feel like I grew up with the smart vocabulary,
but not the biggest and I feel reading, of course
expands that, and especially when you read history and other books,
and I found that its language is just so powerful.
And I worry that social media exposes us to such

(01:01:17):
limited language that the brain and the mind and the
consciousness doesn't have the opportunity to be expansive because the
words don't allow for it. If we're all reading the
same memes and the same trends and the same hashtags,
and it kind of just creates this very very limited
space of consciousness.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Well, that's why I like looking at other languages. I've
speak several other languages and I'm constantly learning them. And
right now I'm reading a lot about an African culture
called the Akhan in West Africa and Ghana and their
concepts of the soul, the spirit, and the body. And

(01:01:55):
they have a word in there called sun zoom and
we translated to spirit. But then I'm reading the African
philosophers who actually know that word, and they go, it's
not the same as the word spirit, and then they
go out and describe it, and that one word contains
all of these other worlds that are so weird and

(01:02:16):
interesting that the word spirit in English does not convey, right,
you know, And other languages have that sense, and so
language can have that possibility where it opens up. It's
not just this unior this one track meaning. It has
other balances, other possibilities to it, right, And so yeah,

(01:02:38):
we're kind of deadening our language in a way. And
you know, if you study like other cultures, you know,
Eskimos had like a thousand words for snow and we
have one word. You know, Russians have like forty words
for the color blue and we have one word. Kind
of thing. As the language gets smaller and smaller and

(01:03:01):
more uniform, our thoughts become more and more limited in uniform.
So to no here a word like inner sky, it
opens up all these other ideas in your mind, whereas
we don't have a word like that in English, you know.
And then because I'm doing things for Zen, Japanese language

(01:03:21):
is so rich with things that we can't possibly even
begin to express in English, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
So yeah, what have been other ways of people opening
up their minds? This has been something one of my
favorite things to do. I remember reading a quote from
Robin shar My years ago that said ordinary people have
big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries. And it was
one of those, you know, little dreams I had that

(01:03:50):
was I want to I have a home, I'm gonna
have a big library. And that was one of my
most favorite things to kind of put together when I
moved here and started spending more time in when I
would travel, I've always collected books. I've always and I
started collecting expanding my audio library. I realized as I

(01:04:12):
grew When I was growing up, we listened to a
very limited form of music in my home, and even
I was growing up as a teenager, I listened to
like one genre of music, rap and hip hop, like
that was. And again, I love rap and hip hop.
I love rap and hip hop history. It's super cool.
I have no issues with it. I just think that
my audio library was so limited in my teens that

(01:04:32):
now that I'm in my thirties, I'm now listening. I'm
trying to listen to so many random, different things, which
again inspire different thoughts, different feelings, different emotions. And so
I've realized that vocabulary was one thing, audio has been
another thing. What are other things that you've discovered that
help open up that consciousness of mind, because, as we
both keep referring to social media, technology is almost making

(01:04:55):
us more limited, more singular, more one dimensional.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Well, as I said, it's something I'm writing about right now.
So music and the audible stuff is very, very interesting
and very exciting. So this is new phenomenon where musicologists
have been able to recreate music from eras that we
never could listen to before. So I was writing at

(01:05:21):
one point about a festival in ancient Greece, and to
put me in the mood, I wanted to hear ancient
Greek music. Well that doesn't exist, having no recordings of it,
but sure enough there are, and the rhythms and the
sound is so weird an alien that it makes it

(01:05:42):
music captures the spirit of a time, right. So if
we're only hearing these same melodies, you hear cards going
by with that same kind of pop song, it's such
a limited circle of harmony, such a limited circle of
what music can be. But when you open up to
African music, to music from ancient Babylonia to Greece, to

(01:06:04):
music in South America, other rhythms, other poetry in music
and sounds, it's mind blowing. It's interesting. So that's what
I'm saying, that the human animal is much more interesting
than we think it is. Reading about ancient cultures is
a very mind expansive project. You can go on because.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Books you'd recommend in that regard.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
You know what's so exciting now is they have these
books called The Daily Life in the Daily Life in
Ancient Babyloni, the daily life in I forget which city
in India, the daily life in ancient Greece, etc. And
you get to feel for not just the grand philosophical issues,
but how people ate, what their houses were like. And

(01:06:55):
so so I was writing. I just wrote a chapter
about our relations shift to time and history, and I
was trying to take the reader in my new book.
I'm giving them exercises and I'm saying, try to imagine
yourself in a world a thousand years ago, and you
walk out your front door. There's no mechanical sounds. There's

(01:07:16):
no airplanes, there's no cars, there's no machines. It's just birds.
Maybe a saw and a hammer is the most you're
going to hear. That's a strange thing. There are no signs,
there are no advertisements, there's no words. Everywhere. It's kind
of empty, right, you're just wandering around. There are all
these kind of rants and weird, horrible smells because people

(01:07:37):
aren't bathing, there's no but they're very human smells. Right,
Your whole sensory experience is on another level. But when
you live in this twenty first century world where things
are so sanitized, but we don't smell these things. We
only hear these packaged mechanical sounds. Your sensory world is
shrinking down and down and down, and you realize the

(01:08:00):
ancient world they had some bad stuff. They weren't very good.
You know, they had slavery. I understand all of the negatives.
So I'm not painting this portrait. But on another level,
their realm of senses, their realm of language, their internal
worlds were far richer than ours. And by connecting to
them by reading these books, by reading books, not just

(01:08:23):
the daily life thing I said, but actually text from
those times. As I was mentioning, when I read a monk,
a zen monk from the eleventh century, and the different
thought processes, It opens my mind to a different way
of thinking, to a different way of accessing reality. But
like I'm reading a lot about Aztecs because I'm sort
of obsessed with the Aztecs. I don't know why. And

(01:08:47):
they had these amazing spectacles. That was the thing about
the ancient world, these festivals and spectacles that are far
beyond burning Man or any rock concert, right, you know,
I could describe the fire ceremony in Astec culture that
only occurred every seventy years. There is nothing you can
ever imagine in your life that would be like that.

(01:09:07):
It is so utterly spectacular. And so I have this
eight hundred page book called as Tech Philosophy, and it's
very theoretical, but God, it gives you an entree into
a totally different way of thinking about the world. Right
where they have these metaphors that the universe has this energy.

(01:09:33):
Some of the energy is like stream that's being wound
around in a certain way. It's like weaving, like other
other things like that. This kind of energy that the
world has. Wow, this is fascinating. You know, our ancestors
were actually thinking, but they're not. Aren't there us? It's
a human being. We're all human. We all have those
same kind of consciousness.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Yeah, you know. I love also finding things in coaches
that match in different languages, and so so I went
to Hawaii a few years ago, which obviously for someone
who grew up in London, it's not normal. People in
America or La traveled to Hawaii fairly often. I went
to Hawaii, and well, not often, it's more accessible, but

(01:10:15):
I went recently and my wife and I went on
one of the tours there and they showed us the
peraglyphs which are there obviously like markings and storytelling technique
and tool. And they were showing us how when a
child is born, they used to place the umbilical cord
on the ground and they would then draw a spiral
around it and that would be seen as a place

(01:10:37):
that the child could always come back to to feel
the energy and reconnect with the earth. Oh exciting, and
I was thinking, that's spectacular. I wish everyone felt disconnected
to the earth. And then we would go out every
morning on a canoe. I forget their name for it,
but they had their version for it, and they would
pay respects to the Sun and the ocean and we
would take part in this ceremony with them. And in

(01:10:59):
India there's something known as Suria Namashkara, which it translates
to sun salutation, which again I've talked to Andrew Huberman
about This is like kicking off the Circadian rhythm. But
the goal is you pay your respects to the sun
for everything it offers to you and the energy that
it provides. And so to see that in Hawaiian culture,
Indian culture, and then I was in Bhutan recently I

(01:11:20):
went on a trip to Bhutan, which I'd always wanted
to visit, and this is a culture that really feels
like you're going back in time. You walk out there
and it feels like what you just described a thousand
years ago, landlocked between Indian China.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Indian China, so right in between where they're having their tensions,
the kind of wars that's going on a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Bhutan doesn't have a war. No, they don't even have
a military. It's not part of their culture.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
They believe in their Buddhist nation, yes, yes, and their
practices are very protected. Their culture is very protected. Like
everyone's really still wears the cultural dress. It was spectacular.
There's no there may be a couple of these now,
but until very recently, there's no mals, no cinemas, no restaurants,

(01:12:13):
like completely, and it's beautiful because it's just hills and mountains.
They believe that the forest will always be seventy percent
of the land mass because they believe they're sacred. You
can't trek up to or ski on any of their
mountains because they're sacred. They protect them. So there's a
really and you almost I almost felt like what you
just said there's no signs, you can't hear anything, there's

(01:12:36):
no machinery like it really does feel like that, and
we all, all of us who are there, experienced this
sense of slowness that you don't experience anywhere else, not
in a bad way in the mind. The gravity almost
of the space was really really powerful to experience.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
That's very exciting because you know, you can go out
into nature, into the mountains and you can feel that
and you can feel like this is what it was
like two thousand, one hundred thousand years ago. But we
don't have that feeling with human things because every city
has its Starbucks, it's malls, it's generic culture that we've
transported throughout the world. So to have a place where

(01:13:22):
you can actually go back in time is fantastic. But
I wish it wasn't so far away.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's worth
visiting for anyone who wants to do. It was a
really special trip. But you're right, the generic culture is
the right word. Actually, there's there's every street looks the same,
every area looks the same, you do. I know there's
a lot of passion behind local businesses, and it's healthy
people want to support local business. We need more of

(01:13:51):
that because the generic culture really takes away from like
you expect. I mean, I was an Indian just recently
on the way back, and it's like there's a Tim Hawtons,
like right there, Tim Hortons, which I think is like
popular in Canada or something like that. Is it popular
in the US Tim Hortons, it's Canada or my wife
was telling me about it, but it was just one
of these it's it's And then there was a Starbucks

(01:14:12):
and then it was the same, the same thing, and
I was like, I'm in India, like you know, like
I don't not expect it, but it's yeah, it's the
generic that's what's made the brain so dull it has.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah, yeah, we're becoming homoginized. I mean I like going
to countries like Mexico because there's still pockets in Mexico
where you can feel something of another of a very
different culture. You know, it's only in small, little areas,
but it's very excited. Nothing like Boots Hahn, but you
can still get it a little bit, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Yeah. Well, it's been such a joy talking to you today,
and as always, I love how we just get lost,
and this is what I wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
I was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
I was craving a authentic, real connection where both of
our minds were in this moment.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Okay, yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
I want to end with a few h so fast
paced questions. We call this the fast five, and I
probably did it with you last time, so I'm going
to change it up this.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Time for you. My mind is fast enough to up
with you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
So you have to answer the questions. It's more like
the Final five. You've got to answer the questions in
one word to one sentence maximum. So Robert Green, these
are your final five. The first question is what is
something you had wish you'd learned earlier?

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
The piano? I mean, I know you were probably thinking
about something about life, but I love music and I
wish I had learned the piano when I was young.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
Do you still play? Do you plan that?

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
And no?

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
No? Okay. Second question, what is something that you used
to be sure about that you now are less sure about.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
I guess a sense of right and wrong, or good,
good and evil. When I was young, I had a
very strong sense of it it's and now I'm not
so sure about what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Answer question number three, If you could go back and
live in any age. I'm thinking you going to say
the Aztecs. But where would you like to go and
where would you want to live and what would you ask?

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
I would go back to the Paleolithic era and our
earliest ancestors because I'm fascinated by their world and what
they were like. So the Paleolithics twenty thousand years ago, okay,
And I would like to know about their religion, their spirituality.

(01:16:40):
I'm interested in origins of human consciousness?

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
So have you read any books on that? Then?

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
Yes? What would write about if someone the subject? I
was just my last chapter I was writing about the
origin of language is the origin of human consciousness. It's
the same time that there were the cave paintings, right,
famous cave paintings in France, but they're all over the world, Aborigines,
et cetera. And that was the beginning of symbolic consciousness. Yeah,

(01:17:11):
there are all sorts of books written on that subject.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
Amazing. Question Number four. If you could have three people
over at your dinner party, any three people you choose,
living or dead, who would they be?

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
What would be Friedrich Nietzsche? Because I'm reading a biography
of his right now, that's unbelievable. The other would be
Buddha why not, And then the other would be a
very odd mix of people. So I don't know if
they're going to get a good Yeah, I'd say I'll

(01:17:46):
maybe Socrates and let the fur fly.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Fifth and final question, Robert.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
I finally stressful.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
They are something you're trying to learn right now.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
To be more forgiving about myself because I'm extremely unforgiving
with yourself. Yeah, not easy. It's not been my life pattern.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Where did the pursuit begin and why is it a
worthy pursuit?

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Well, I think because of my upbringing, I always had
a feeling of never good enough. I'm never smart enough,
I'm not doing enough. I'm not a good enough person,
and I internalize that and so it's probably partially led
to my stroke. Probably let me drive makes me drive

(01:18:41):
myself too hard, and so sometimes I just have to
be more forgiving. So instead of thinking, God, I'm never
going to write anymore at the well is dry, the
forgiving aspect is, Robert, you're tired, you're exhausted, You're doing fine,
It's going to come. It will come, just trust it.

(01:19:02):
So it's kind of like, you know, being indulgent towards yourself.
I can be indulgent towards other people, but I can't
be indulgent towards myself. So just learning to forgive myself
for not being perfect, if for not getting exactly what
I want in life, does the hardest thing for me,

(01:19:22):
that's beautiful. It'd be very good for my health if
I could, if I could ever get there, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Thank you, Robert. You're welcome everyone, Robert Green. I hope
you enjoyed this episode of me and Robert truly just
having a genuine, passionate conversation about things we love. Please
share on TikTok, on x, on Instagram, on Facebook, whatever
platform you use. In the YouTube comments section, what resonated
with you, What books you're going to read, what you

(01:19:48):
connected with maybe some of the creatives out there who
want to shift the way they think, or whether you've
got some great insights on what are strong and weak
character points. I want to know what hit you, what
resonate with you? And thank you so much for listening
and watching, And thank you again Robert for your time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Thank you so much so as usual, I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Thank you. That means a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Yeah, we go on for hours.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
I know, truly. If you love this episode, you'll love
my interview with Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma
and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on
from the past.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a
tree doesn't go o where it's hard and thick, does it.
It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Robert Greene: How to Deal with Negative People When They Are in Your Family, Friend Circle or Work