Exploring Human Nature with Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday

stop judging people and categorizing them, that is the last thing you want to do, what you want to do is understand them, you want more understanding and less judgment in your life and through that power you will feel the need to address the lives of this way. It's an honor to have everyone here. We were talking in the car right above. This is the first event Robert has done in seven years. So this is a rare gift for me and I think for you too. I was thinking. Also, it was almost 12 years ago that I started as your research assistant.

I thought it was longer. I think it's been about 12 years. Then you were 19 years old. I had uh so it's amazing to be able to interview you and you look the same. It's a compliment, yes, okay, actually you look the same too, but I was lucky enough to see this book. You've been working on it almost every day of those seven years, which, as a writer, I'm just now into. awe at um, I don't think people understand how hard it is to work on a book and the reward is events like this and you know you have to get it out into the world and you kind of delay that gratification for seven long years.

Why did you choose this topic? Why this book and why right now? Well, it's a little complicated, so bear with me. Over the course of several years after the publication of the 48 Laws of Power, I received thousands of emails from readers who came to me to tell me their problems and I was also approached by hundreds of people who wanted personalized consulting for their problems and after thinking a lot and thinking deeply about these experiences and my own experiences with people I knew, I came to the following conclusion: that we

human

s and I include all of you in that category, that is high praise, yes, we have a dirty little secret um, this secret has nothing to do with sex life or fantasies or anything as exciting as that, but the secret is that everyone.

All of us, to one degree or another, suffer and it is a pain that we do not discuss or even understand and the source of this pain is other people. Hell is other people. with people, um, this comes in the form of relationships, connections that are not very deep between people we consider our friends, etc., which leads to a lot of loneliness, it comes in the form of bad decisions for associates and partners, which Leading to all this fighting and complicated breakups comes from allowing a toxic narcissist into our lives, which leads to all kinds of emotional trauma that can take years to overcome, if ever, and it also comes from our inability to persuade people to influence them and get them interested. in our ideas leads to all kinds of feelings of frustration and anger, which is why we are deeply social animals, which is the main theme of our book, and having dysfunctional social relationships leads to all kinds of problems, it leads to depression, it leads to thoughts recurrent obsessives. to the inability to concentrate on our work, to eating disorders, even to physical illnesses such as heart disease, etc., we only see the surface phenomenon, loneliness, depression or the physical, we do not see the underlying source and, to Sometimes we are not even aware that we suffer from loneliness and about seven years ago, while writing Mastery, I decided that what I really wanted to do was write a book that would help people deal with and overcome this deep pain that I felt a lot.

Some of my readers were telling me that they wanted a book like this, but I just didn't want to write the usual stupid self-help book that throws you little formulas, little Pat lines about how you know how to get along. with people as much as I wanted. I wanted to write a book like I always do, that gets inside you, that changes the way you think about the world, that gets under your skin and really alters your perspective on people and the world. , and so on with that modest objective. In my mind I asked myself a question as I always do when I write a book: What is the source of this pain of this problem?

The obvious answer is that we are generally very poor observers of the people around us. We are bad listeners. We have become so engrossed in our smartphones and our technology that we don't pay attention and when we pay attention we project onto people our own emotions, our own desires or we are very quick to judge them and classify them as that person's good. that person is evil that person is nice that person is not nice and therefore, seeing only a small portion of who people are, we naturally misunderstand and misjudge them, which leads to all kinds of problems, bad decisions and bad strategies, and if that is the source of our problem then the solution is for us all to become better observers and listeners, which is what many self-help books on the subject say, but I found it very unsatisfying for an answer that is not where I wanted to start, so I thought about it very deeply. and I decided I wanted to ask another question: are there times in our lives when we really feel different and act different, when we are actually paying deep attention to people and observing them?

And I said yes, first there are these moments. Above all, as children, children are master observers of people, they are very in tune with the emotions and moods of their parents, their survival depends on it. Scammers hate children because children can see through their falsehood, which is why we were all great observers when we were children. when we travel to a foreign country and everything is exotic and strange and the customs are strange, our senses are heightened and we pay attention to people, they seem so different that we want to understand them if we start a new job and we are a little nervous, we are paying attention to all the little power dynamics that exist, obviously, when we fall in love, we are extremely attentive to that person, we are picking out every little sign and detail that they are admitting. about whether they like us, who they are, what their character is like, and finally, strangely enough, whether we read a really good novel or watch a great movie.

We are fascinated by the characters someone has created and we want to enter their world. Excuse me, what do all these experiences mean? I know this is a very long answer. I'll get to the point in a minute. What do all these things have in common? That have? What we have in common is that in these moments our desire is engaged, we are excited, we are curious, we feel the need to pay attention to people and survival might even depend on it, so when we are excited and curious and feel the need suddenly our eyes come alive and we are looking and observing, we are getting inside people and also in these moments there is less of our ego, we are moving out of ourselves and into other people's world, we normally don't .

We feel like this, we actually have little interest in the people around us. I hate to say that, but it's true, we are the people we deal with every day, we take them, you know, they're too familiar to us we don't seem exciting and we feel like our own thoughts and our own world are more interesting than theirs, We have our own needs and our own problems to deal with, so I decided what if I could write a book that would bring you back to those positions that you had in those moments if I could make you feel like a child again if I could make you feel like those moments when you were in love or when you were traveling to a foreign country where you were excited and curious and really wanted to investigate inside the minds of the people around you, that would change everything.

You wouldn't have to suddenly imagine that you are a better listener. Observer. You would become a better listener and observer. So how could I create that kind of Tak magic? taking you as a reader and guiding you deep into the inner worlds of the people around you and making you see what their fantasies are and what their lives are like from the inside, so my opinion is that the people you deal with are much more interesting and complicated and strange than you imagine, you think you have to travel to some foreign country like Bali or watch some interesting movie, meet interesting people, not that salesman or whoever it is, actually they have a very rich and deep inner life, they are fascinating .

I just don't realize it, so how am I going to be able to do this by immersing you in the study of

human

nature

and making you grateful and making you aware of all the signs, the hidden language that people reveal that show what is really happening? ? There is something in their lives behind all their fake smiles and the masks they present, and I will do it by teaching you the language of non-verbal communication, how to differentiate a fake smile from a real smile, how to read the language of the eyes. To tell a deep narcissist by his facial expression and believe me, you can see a deep narcissist just by looking at his face.

I'm going to teach you the language of character, how to really see the signs of what a person is at their core. their behavior patterns and how to see the deep childhood wounds they carry in their current life. I'm going to teach you the language of opposites when people reveal some overt trait, like knowing the tough guy or the saint or the person who is so charming and meek I'm going to teach you that they are actually the opposite deep down in sight that tough guy is riddled with weaknesses and insecurities, I'm going to teach you the language of the dark side, the dark side of every human being, those repressed desires and fantasies that seep into people that they don't want to reveal but come out, I'm going to show you how to detect the There are toxic people, the narcissists, the envers, the passive aggressive and finally I am going to train you so that you stop judging people and categorizing them, that is the last thing you want to do, what you want to do is understand them, you want more understanding and less judgment in your life and through that process that I'm taking you.

I hope you feel the power of this. You will be able to develop better relationships with your friends and partners because you are stepping out of your own small circle of thoughts and entering their world. To make better decisions with Associates and partners, you will avoid toxic people, you will learn to persuade people and yourself and confirm your own opinion over and over again, and through that power you will feel the need to approach life in this way and , like I said, I will alter the way you perceive people from the inside out and once I get you this far you will never want to go back to where you were before, so I'm sorry. very long answer, that's great, but we can call it here if you want, eh, we can call it, we're okay, I know it's very ambitious, but I'm not saying I've achieved it, but that's where the book came from, well.

I'm curious that you mentioned this idea of ​​a dark side and one of the things you've said in some of the conversations we've had about the book is that you said and I don't think it's in the book, but it's a great line you said. , um, the first rule of human

nature

is that we deny that human nature exists. I'm curious to know why you think this is and what it is about ourselves or others that we are so afraid to face. People, I'll tell you seven years ago. I was in Sydney, Australia, excuse me, on a book tour and I asked the people at the hotel what I should see and they told me to go to the Sydney Zoo and I hate zoos because I'm an animal. lover and I think zoos are like prisons, but I thought, "Okay, I'll go because I really want to see a kangaroo and you have to take a boat there, take a fairy there.

I want to see a woman and I want to see a Tasmanian Devil, this It's my only chance, so I went there and saw the kangaroos, but then I came across this huge pen of chimpanzees and there's like 30 chimpanzees in the whole community, that's what they call chimpanzees and I was fascinated. I stayed there for a. time and As I looked at them I was so fascinated that they looked so much like human beings that it was strange there was the little boy with the mother and the mother was eating something and the expression on that boy's face was intense Envy wishing that he was like a human kid who doesn't like adults to have something they don't have there was the alpha male suddenly walking and all the other chimpanzees were walking behind him It reminded me of watching Dove on American Apparel who was playing with ropes and All the Minions.

Walking behind them they were very human, but what was so interesting to me was watching the other people who were also watching the chimpanzees, they were so uncomfortable with this that they were laughing, it was clear that they were very uncomfortable, so One of the things about human nature is that it tells us that we have a lot of the primate in us, we have a lot of the qualities of a chimpanzee and we are terrified of that kind of feeling that we like to think of ourselves as so clean and modern and sophisticated and tech-savvy. and so civilized than that ugly little primate that has such brutal power that it scares us, but that's what we are.

Human nature also tells us that we are a deeply social animal and that much of our behavior comes from the desire to fit in well.group and that, social scientists have said that often when people do a good deed, they want to do a good deed because they want other people to see them doing a good deed, you know, you see that on social media. People post all the great causes they support all the time, but we want to see ourselves as autonomous people in control of our own thoughts. The idea that our social nature determines much of our behavior.

We don't like that feeling. Human nature. It says that we are governed by emotions not reason why emotions are the main thing that determines our behavior and we like to think of ourselves as so rational and above all that but most importantly human nature teaches us that we are all cut of the same cloth we basically share the same brain the same DNA the same wiring so if some humans are narcissists they are aggressive being envious means that all of us have these problems too, there is a narcissist in each of you, each of you has aggressive tendencies, especially these people, especially these people who read my books, you know, but we want to think not.

I'm not the narcissist. I am never aggressive. I'm not envious, it's the other, so we are very inclined to deny that we have these aspects of human nature, but that denial is actually part of human nature. I want to take you all and tell you to stop denying and accept us, accept that primate in you, that primate in you is not ugly, it is actually a beautiful thing, the animal part of our nature is actually a very powerful thing, there is strength in that me too. Explain what that force is in the book and you are not necessarily saying to give in to your primary or aggressive ner, but you have to accept them if you want to channel them or block them or whatever you want to do with them, aware that the emotions Governing you now gives you the opportunity to become truly rational.

I say that no human being is born rational. We have to train ourselves to become that. Knowing that animal part of our nature gives us the power to overcome it, but first you have to accept it. I have to get out of your denial, yes, and one of the things you talk about in the book is how part of one of the things that our human nature does is sabotage us, we say that we want to do something within our human nature or we say that you want to be a certain way, but then our nature sneaks up on you you work on this book for seven years you're researching human nature The human experience you're working on this kind of big stretch goal what do you learn about yourself what did you do?

You learn about your own nature by sitting alone with yourself for so many hours. I learned that I'm crazy basically um uh you know that was a revelation because you know here I'm writing about narcissism. Dig deeper into this and believe me, I've met a lot of narcissists in my life, you might even be out there um and um, I was saying wow, Robert, you're actually a narcissist, you actually have a lot of these traits and you didn't. It wasn't a nice thought and it's stayed with me since I keep catching myself saying you can be quite narcissistic, sure, so I wrote the chapter on aggression, the last chapter and said, damn, man, you're an aggressive son of a bitch.

I know I'm writing about other people and how to overcome them, but I have these problems, so it was like opening my eyes in that way, but I've noticed that people who have only been gone four months, but people who've written to me who They read the book and had the same reaction. They say. You know it's been a little painful. It is a painful book to read. No. It is a mirror of things we don't necessarily want to see. about ourselves, so when you have a big goal like mine, I'm curious to delve deeper into this idea of ​​self-sabotage.

You know, Steven Pressfield has this idea of ​​resistance, this kind of force that prevents us from doing what we want. We are wanting to do something that is part of our human nature. I'm curious if, in reading the other side of this book, you learned anything about it that you can share with people who are trying to get something done and who have some creative work. you're making a movie or a piece of art or you're trying to start a company, what did you learn about how to master these forces in yourself to achieve something? Sorry, my leg tends to do this sometimes, so I have to put my hand down.

Well, I wrote about it in Mastery, but there are like four or five steps that you need for any big project and if you follow these four or five steps you will have tremendous success. Well, I'm not trying to be like Donald Trump. and the school or whatever you've created, these are real, they're real, so number one, you have to really love your idea, it has to be something from the depths of your being, it has to be personal, it has to move you. on a deep level because you're going to have to persevere for several years, there will be a lot of critics, a lot of mean people who will say you can never do that, your parents will tell you to go back and go to law school, all these things that you have. really loving it, putting up with all that crap that people are going to throw at you, and I have this theory in Mastery that when you do it, when you create something, the spirit that you created with the energy, the emotion translates into the product.

So when someone writes a book just for money, you can smell it when you read the book. Reeks of someone just trying to get something. You know, we can feel it, but when the writer is excited, he excites the reader. The love and desire you put into your project will translate. The second thing you have to do is choose something that is only a small challenge for you, so if it is too big a challenge, you will fail and blame. yourself and you'll never recover if it's not enough of a challenge you'll get bored and you won't do it, but if it's just above your level then every time I write a book I choose something that will be a challenge, it's just a little bit above above my level, this one was way above my level, but when something is a little bit above you, it takes out all your energy, you have to try harder, you know you have to go a little further and this will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is another thing for readers who know, like my Book of War, that they must put themselves on the ground of death. The terrain of death is extremely important. The ground of death means it is from Sunu. If an army is fighting with its back to the wall, it will fight with it. three times the strength because now it's win or die. I don't want to say you have to be that extreme, but you should feel like you only have six months to do it. You can't wait two years to start your business. You have to do it.

Start it tomorrow. You can't take two years to complete it. You have to give yourself six months. You need that kind of energy and desperation to be able to live up to it. The fourth thing would be, what is the fourth thing I can do? I don't remember it well, the other thing is that I know there is something I'm leaving out. The other factor is that you have to reevaluate your overall approach to pleasure and pain. Normally we think of pleasure as something immediate and quick. we want to go to the movies we want to go on a date we want to play a video game we want to see a great movie to create create something big and lasting it's going to take time it's going to cause something it's going to involve some pain some sacrifice and what you have to do is change your whole evaluation of what is pleasurable, what is pleasurable, is actually achieving something that you set out to do, to achieve your goals, taking the time to do something that is meaningful to you.

I can tell you personally that the satisfaction I get from writing a book, even though it requires many painstaking and tedious hours of work, is a feeling that is so superior in pleasure to anything else in life that it is as if I could die tomorrow and Alright. I did what I wanted to do I said what I wanted to do I felt like I helped people and worked at it and gave it everything I had, that is a much deeper form of pleasure and I want you to reorient your sense of pleasure towards these longer goals. term and not to these shorter-term objectives, so those are some of the ingredients.

I know I left out one that will help me. Four very easy steps to follow for everyone. I know there's something I left out, but anyway no, no, I agree. it's writing books it's not fun having the books it's a lot like getting it's getting to the other side of that challenge that's the rewarding part so you have to do it it's uh it's yeah I I and I can your books take seven times longer than mine like this I can only imagine what that delay is, the delay of gratification, it's interesting. What I thought was so notable about this book is that you would think you know we talk about confronting your dark side, but you know you talk if you like the main lesson.

For me, there is empathy like that in this book. You're writing a book about the importance and power of empathy that perhaps people who love the 48 Laws of Power or who hate them might not have expected. I heard in a book by Robert Green, well the 48 laws of power are not as evil and this book is not as soft and mushy as people might think, but I agree with you, I think we are having some kind of plague. Now that people have lost their sense of empathy, they are so quick to judge other people, everyone, especially on social media, feels morally superior to other people, that's why there is so much righteousness in the world and not enough empathy. and if you don't don't mind, I'm going to read you a quote from my book by my brother in spirit, my favorite philosopher, Friederick Nicha, who had a great impact on me as a child, and the quote is this, go on, I don't have my reading glasses on is the one who really wants to know something new, being a person and a book does well to entertain him with all the love possible and quickly divert his eyes from everything it contains, he finds repellent a false enemy in fact banishing it from the mind so for For example, it allows the author of a book the longest start and then, like someone watching a race, he wishes with a beating heart to reach his goal, because with this procedure one penetrates to the heart of the new to the point that it really moves. and this is precisely what it means to know it.

If you have come this far, reason can later make its reservation that the overestimation that temporary suspension of the critical pendulum was nothing more than an artifice to attract the soul of the thing, I love that idea of ​​the soul of The thing about empathy is that you are trying to reach the soul of other people who you are not, that you are approaching them with a degree of Love, even if there is someone who seems toxic or repellent to a certain degree, you are opening yourself up, wo Ryan, I'm sorry, your book is too heavy, this is not my fault, oh, it's the book's fault, I see you write a smaller book, BL people, yeah, that's one of the laws of human nature, um, So where was I?

So empathy is an extremely important quality and I'm trying to say that you didn't have much empathy. For me. Hit this glass. No, I did not do it. I did not do it. We'll talk about that later. "Um, and I maintain that one of the things about our nature that is extremely powerful is our ability to enter the perspective of others and enter their world, but empathy is a very difficult thing to write about because it's not something you can quantify ". If we're a culture that loves data and quantifying things, you can't really write a book about empathy in any realistic, practical way because it's a feeling, it's a visceral emotion, it has to be a feeling and we have this power because, like primates.

For hundreds of thousands of years we lived without the ability of language in our early ancestors and had to understand each other without being able to speak words, we are incredibly in tune with the emotions and moods of the people around us and I know this in e In my life I practice empathy in a very deep Lev Lev, so when I go out, I'm in the world and I'm in a store or something or wherever, I'm on the street and I see someone. I go through this process of going, what's it like to be that person?

What's it like to be that person? Feeling like them, you know what it's like to grow up in that house. I imagine a background for them and I use my imagination to enter their world and sometimes I get this kind of chill, this feeling that I can really be them, that I can really feel what it's like to be in their world now, obviously, that's probably inaccurate. , but I'm closer to it than if I were sitting there judging and criticizing them and I've been doing this probably my whole life because that's what a writer does, a writer has to get under other people's skin, so you could say, Well, Robert, it's easy for you because you know that's what you are.

I was born that way but I wasn't born that way it's a skill you develop by practicing it endlessly using your imagination to enter other people's worlds obviously it's a little bit harder to cross ethnic lines and gender lines and socioeconomic lines but it certainly isn't. impossible and I know I've done it on several occasions, so it's an incredibly valuable tool that each and every one of you was born with, but that you don't use, that lies, it's like a tool in your box that just lies there and just rust, so I know it's hard to talk and write about it in a practical way, but I did my best to dive into it and explain to you how it can be done.develop this extremely critical tool that is somehow related to a political issue.

I wanted to ask you what it seems to be, um and you talk about this in the book, there's kind of a Rise of the, it seems like one of the big lessons of the book is to avoid the mob mentality, yeah, and it's like you both have an understanding of what that other people think and act, but also not necessarily give in to it, so I was wondering what do you see the kind of rise of these populist movements across the country and around the world and do you see this kind of visceral anger? That's coming into play. our politics, like what reaction do you have to that and then how would you suggest that leaders or people should think about these things that are happening?

Well, it's obviously very scary, but I have to tell you if you're depressed about the times. that we live in these moments happen all the time history is cyclical I don't believe in progress history is cyclical and this repeats itself over and over again periods of intense tribalism and then the bad day passes these bad days will end someday soon It could take 10 years or whatever, but humans can't live like this for long, somehow we'll get through it, but it's a very worrying time and if I were a politician now I'd say I was whispering in a Democrat's ear. policy to get rid of this evil empire that has taken over our country.

Sorry for getting political for a moment. I would say that the greatest danger is falling into the strategy of divide and conquer, one of the oldest military strategies that has ever existed. divide and conquer in military terms they call it defeat in detail, it means that a small army can defeat a large army by putting it into PE Pieces, dividing it and defeating each of those pieces in detail and it is what dictators and tyrants have used for centuries . polarizing, dividing the public, dividing it into a small code, a small group of people can rule a huge country, because the numbers are against them, if the people would really act, were able to act and unite and oppose this authoritarian leader, they would.

It doesn't last, so they divide and conquer. CEOs do that dubbing. Charney was the master at that, you know, that type of leader knows how to divide and conquer with his employees, pitting one person against another and he is the one who rules it, so Trump is a master polarizer, he is the source of his power, he is able to split the enemy and make them fight each other and then he can come in with his 38% for victory, right, mhm, that is the source of his ugly evil power and it is the source of everything. authoritarians divide and conquer, to counter that you have to counter their strength and you have to play the numbers game and the reality is that in the United States right now there is 1% and there is 99% and probably most of us here.

They are 99%. I know I'm right and the huge wealth inequalities in this country are unhealthy. There was an excellent book that I encourage you to read called Why Nations Fail and one of the main reasons is the incredible discrepancies in wealth, which means there is no money left for education, infrastructure for big projects, so someone who is struggling Against this Force you have to realize that we have the power of numbers, right, we have the majority of the people on our side, we are not going to fall into the strategy of divide and conquer that is the number one thing the second thing is that a leader today has to understand the Zeitgeist.

I have a chapter on that. I recommend reading chapter 17 on Generations in the Zeitgeist and the Zeitgeist we are going through now. This is a very radical change of spirit. I feel like it hasn't manifested yet, but it will be what happens in the next 10 years. A new generation is taking over the millennial generation. They have been highly criticized by people my age. I think it's unfair, but Millennials come from a generation that is part of a pattern that is much more community-oriented, that has much more to do with the collective, with working with the group, they have reacted against previous generations that focused exclusively on the individual and the entrepreneur.

Today's politician has to be very in tune with the Zeitgeist and what's happening, what the future is, so I think those would be the two elements that I think would make a successful Challenger. I could go into greater detail, but I don't want to. no, I think that makes a lot of sense and maybe I would add a little more to that and the theme of the book is not reacting emotionally to the things that you see as one of which is not only that Trump is very polarizing, but he's also polarizing because sped up the news cycle so that everyone reacts to things all the time instead of doing it.

You know Pericles as one of the heroes of your book. It's like no, let's take a step back and look at this from a distance. right and become rational while you say we have problems doing it right, he knows how to push people's buttons, you know he is a master of entertainment, he tells him that television is his kingdom, he follows a law of power, people blame me why Donald Trump is president because of the 48 Laws of Power and believe me, that is my worst nightmare in life, but there is one law of which he is the master.

He is probably the greatest genius that has ever existed in this law. Can you guess which one he is? Thank you, you are an absolute master at court attention at all costs, you absorb media attention, you are absolutely brilliant at it every day, there is a new outrage when someone in your administration is about to see this every time, you are about to be dragged into the M investigation and charged, that's right. something scandalous in the Middle East or with NATO or with Merkel to divert attention, it is incredible, but it is because we live in a culture that is so easily manipulated in that way through Twitter that we are so interested in this, already You know, we are so easily manipulated and fall into this kind of stuff, so yes, you would need a politician who comes with a bigger vision with a great strategy to defeat it and not get distracted by all these little ones, but also just, the world needs to be As the. the audience should be less prone to outrage because it's like they're reading something interesting like one of Trump loves to watch cable news but actually watches with the sound off just watch like you're going to watch like Chy Gardner , Yeah.

He simply observes what people do and can tell from that whether he is eliciting the reactions he wants, which is very primitive and surprising. Roger ALS did the same thing, that's creepy, that's very creepy. Wow, I think we have time for maybe one more. question, then we'll go into the question and answer forum, so you've been writing about power, war, seduction and now human nature for over 20 years, yes, you're already starting your next book and one of the things that I love. about Mastery and I recommend it to all these young people who email me and tell me how to do it and I always recommend the book and then they come back to the question and I know you wrote a little bit about it, but I thought about it.

That would be a good place to leave it. How do people find that for themselves? How do you find something to spend 20 years doing? And I know you. I started writing early. I was early to what I wanted to do. You had enough. some jobs before you became a writer so you found it through trial and error so how do people discover their life's work, whether it's writing or whatever? I'm sorry about my leg, it's okay, it's like Doctor Strange Love I I don't know if you're soup um it has a mind of its own I can't control it um well you know there are several steps the first thing is you have to know yourself deeply you have to go back to your childhood you have to know the great psychologist Abraham Maslo called it impulsive voices and noticed that babies from a very young age know what they want they like this food they don't like that vegetable they want to eat this they want to go there they want to grab that shiny object Babies have a series of likes and dislikes from a very young age, this is extremely human and powerful.

You had to when you were three or four years old you hated this type of activity and you loved this other one. You don't like math. I am drawn to words, there is a great book that I recommend to everyone called The Five Frameworks of Intelligence. I think it's Howard Gardner. Yes, they are basically five forms of intelligence. You have one of those forms of intelligence. Inevitably, it could be kinetic, which moves with the body, which is a form of intelligence, it could be verbal, it could be patterns and mathematics, it could be about people, what is the form of intelligence that is natural to you, what do you like? leaned when you were a child, what did you love. what to do I know when I was young I was fascinated with the words I can remember in sixth not in fourth grade the teacher did this activity where she put the word Carpenter and asked us to think of as many words as we could spell the word Carpenter as if you knew and Do you know different words that you could get out of a yes, thank you.

I have a pen, yeah, I should be a writer too, yeah, and I thought, wow, I love it, that's crazy, you mean you could take words. letters and combine them into words, how exciting. I was fascinated by words from a very young age, so you have to know that and you have to know what you don't like. I remember when I was 23 or 24 years old. Sorry, I'm still talking about that. I thought I told you I was a narcissist um uh when I was about 24 years old. He was a journalist living in New York and had written this article about traveling in Italy.

I thought it was a great article and The Editor wanted to have lunch with me. I thought, "Oh, great, he's going to praise this article he brought me. He started drinking while he was drinking his third whiskey. He started telling me, Robert, you'll never be a writer. You need to find another one." career in your life you need to, you know, go to law school, just forget it, you don't have the tools, your writing is all over the place, etc. and instead of my reaction, of course, at first I was a little upset, but finally I said no. that's not true what's true is that I'm not cut out for journalism journalism is ugly it's stupid it's not right I don't want to say I'm sorry I'm sorry I don't want to generalize for me for me it doesn't fit well You know, um, I know what I don't like.

I don't like journalism. I don't like working in large corporations. I don't like politics that involves 20 or 30 people. I need to work for myself, so that's it. Another step in the process and you need to go through life when you're younger, knowing that I had a general framework, a general direction for me, was to write, explore, have fun and some adventures, try this, try that with everything that's inside . a general parameter and then at some point when you hit 30, which I maintain is our most creative period, it's 30. I mean, I'm in my 50s, so that doesn't say much, but you know, it was then when I wrote the 48 Laws. of Power, which was a book that came out of me in a way that it never could now you're going to be ready, you're going to be ready for something great and creative because you've accumulated all these skills, so, um, and that was kind of like that. the path I took I had 80 different jobs when I was 20 I worked in construction I worked at a detective agency which was one of the most interesting jobs I've ever had very depressing um You probably learned a little about human nature there although I learned a lot about human nature, I was a skip Tracer, which basically means that on the phone I'm trying to find people who have gone missing and haven't paid their bills, etc., and it's about how to learn to lie. on the phone, you know, you call and say I'm a great friend of your son, blah, blah, blah, we went to school together, you know and yeah, you know we did, we were interested in we went to the same church, I need get in touch with him again, where is he?

Yes, and you have to get excited and you have to act as if you are a certain person, all to lie and all to get money. It was the most absorbing job I have ever had. but he taught me a lot about how to deceive and manipulate people and what you know, a lot of things were related to the loss of power. I'm sure you know, I worked in Hollywood, which was also another soul suck. I love Holly, but I don't Don't get me wrong, I had all these jobs, so I had all these experiences, I had fun, and then when someone came to me with a book idea, they asked me for a book idea and I told them everything. about 48.

Laws of power. He loved it. I was ready to write that book, which I wouldn't have been before. I don't know if this is very practical advice or not. No, I think so, so you have to try a lot of things to find out what's not. I don't like, um, imagining what you like, having a basic frame of reference, no, and getting to know yourself, yeah, really, really, getting in touch with yourself. I talk a lot about Paul Graham, kind of an icon of that man who founded Why Combinator. He was into computers and artificial intelligence and hacking, he got a little tired of it, he decided to go to art school and became an artist, you know, living in a Soho L, the artist cliché, and finally he heard an ad. on TV on Netscape radio as Netscape.

He was going to be this new frontier and he thought this was the opportunity for me to combine everything I hadlearned about computers and art and design, so his wandering around trying different jobs, all led in this serendipitous way, a lot of it is luck. life I am an incredibly lucky person if I had not met the yast elves, I would have committed suicide, I could have become homeless. I agree that luck is an important aspect of life, but when everyone is lucky, they will meet someone who Chance will happen to you but you don't recognize it, you are not prepared, you let it pass and you missed your chance.

I recognized my opportunity and took advantage of it.