How to Make Women Chase You (Psychological Tricks) | Robert Greene

0:00 Women have a sick sense of they can smell an insecure man, right? And you can they can smell it in you. They can smell it in all kinds of ways. And trying so hard to please and trying so hard to be nice secretly indicates that you're actually very weak inside and it's very much a turnoff is very anti-seductive. And so you want to be nice, but you want to be strategic about it. You want to know sometimes I don't want to be nice. Sometimes I want to show create boundaries. Sometimes I want to pull back. I want to play the coette. I want the woman to know she does. She can't take me for granted, right? I'm not interested in her. The moment you show her that you're not interested in her, she's going to be much more interested in you. You're willing to play a little bit of that tough part of it. You're in

0:46 control. You're strategic. you know when to use absence and when to use presence, when to to text them and call them and when to disappear for a couple a week or so and make them feel like they don't you know they they can't take you for granted. So know when to be nice and you can use it to to affect but you also know when I don't want to be nice in this world and that pertains to all sort of situations in negotiation etc. If you're always so nice in business, you're you're going to be a doom. You're not going to survive very long. >> I come at this from a evolutionary perspective. And so the reason because I was so bad with women for so long and then figured out how to quote unquote play the game and it worked literally on a dime from one literally from one day

1:31 to the next. I could not be successful with women to I felt like within my sexual market value. Let me not oversell this, but within my sexual market value, I could be successful sort of when I wanted to be. And it it was so it was such a set of rules that I was following that I actually had to laugh out loud. I was like, I cannot believe it took me this long to just figure out that, oh, I have to present myself a certain way. That uh you don't want to go for the clothes right away. that you really this is about um a strategic revealing of your personality. It's about understanding what's going to get them exciting. You might hate this description, but it's marketing. Once you understand that you're a brand, you have to establish what your brand means.

2:16 You have to make them feel some kind of way about you. The way that you're establishing your brand better be real. And one of the things I'm sure we'll talk about today is I take all of this I I've been married to the same woman for 21 years. We've been together for 23. to me that we had to seduce each other in the beginning and then at some point that becomes a deep long-term pair bond which is a totally different game and I really hope everybody can get good at both games because that's really how you end up having an amazing love life that will ride with you through the ups and downs but seduction is real people need to stop pretending that it's not from my perspective this is based on evolution that women and it's interesting because I think you push back a little bit on looking at the 30,000 foot view of men

3:02 and women. I'll make a case for it. If you hate it, tell me you hate it, but here's my case. There's a quote, I forget who it's by, forgive me, whoever said this, this is a paraphrase. Any individual woman is a mystery, but taken as a whole, they're a mathematical certainty. It was technically said about men, but you get the idea. And that makes sense to me. And so I you're right, like ultimately I had to figure out my wife. I didn't just have to figure out women as a general thing. I had to figure out my wife. But every time I think of my wife as thinking like me, I can't predict her behavior. The second I lump her in the mathematical certainty of women are like this, then I'm way closer to being able to predict her behaviors. And so I think it's very important to understand the distinction

3:49 between how men think and how women think, what we fantasize about, how we approach sex, what we think of as seductive. But you're not going to get that from a book. So you can read all of the facts about this is how women think etc etc. The best way to do that is by observing them. So if you pay attention to the person that you're trying to s if you pay if you start paying attention to women as young at the earliest possible age you will see these qualities in them. You will see the fact that they are interested more in stories that they want that they don't want to be feel like it's just about sex and you're in a hurry to get them to that point. These aren't great mysteries that you need to read from a book. It's pretty clear if you pay attention, right? So, I just want to get

4:35 men out of the mode because we are so goddamn analytical. It's such a problem that reading a book, reading a text, having algorithms is the only way we can think. Get the [ __ ] out of there and pay attention to the person. Develop your your mirror neurons. Develop your observational skills. Develop the human part of you that observes that feels what the other person is feeling. If you depend so much on things that you've learned from the art of seduction or from a book, it's going to make you a bad seducer. But to the degree that you can click into those human qualities that we all possess where you sense the emotional tone of the other person, you sense what their vulnerable vulnerabilities. You sense what they're missing in life. Yes, maybe 60% of women

5:22 are missing a similar thing that there are patterns to. And maybe reading about it can kind of click that into you. Okay, fine. I'm not going to say that that's all bad. But the main thing you want is to be getting out of your head and into your emotions and into observing and into feeling what the other person is feeling and not being so head oriented and not being so analytical. You know that I think is the main problem that a lot of men face. It's really interesting. My experience was I needed to understand it analytically because I didn't have the intuition for it. And it may be that I just didn't look I don't believe people are born with intuition. I think that it develops over time. So, for whatever weird reason, the intuition I developed was that if I wrote poetry and showed up with flowers on the first date, which I

6:08 actually did multiple times, uh that that would get me somewhere. And it did not get me anywhere. I was actually once, this is where you ask any kids listening in the car to you turn the radio down, whatever. Uh but this is a true story. I was in bed with a woman. We were getting naked. We were rounding third base. And I managed to mess that up because I displayed what I will call uh at a moment where I should have been confident and uh masculine. You might hate that word, but um I displayed what I will now, God, I don't even like saying this out loud, but it's true. Uh I displayed a more feminine trait and was like, "Let's not go any further unless this means something," which isn't what I was feeling. those exact

6:54 words, which isn't what I was feeling. It was what I thought she wanted to hear and it was not. And it put the brakes on the whole situation. >> Well, it's very easy to explain why that would happen because that makes her think that, oh, maybe he's not so into it. Maybe I'm not that attractive. Women secretly want to feel that you desire them, that you're that she is so attractive that you're going to lose control. And you didn't lose control in that moment. And you blew it. You [ __ ] it up. Mhm. >> So, it's very obvious why that didn't work. >> Yeah. Obvious to you now. Where were you back then, Robert Green? [laughter] Uh because I still want to punch myself in the mouth for that entire evening. >> So, yeah, lesson learned. >> We've all made mistakes like that, though. >> Yeah, I'm going to guess that that one's pretty bad. Uh, so what I had to really

7:41 begin to understand was what women actually were going to respond to and not the terrible assumptions that I had built up in my mind. >> And what I began to realize is that um there are things that women want that don't. They are not the same as what I want. And so when I started realizing, okay, >> making that person my like what you just said, you're losing control. making and that's where I think you get like the billionaire archetype of okay this is somebody that has everything that is normally this you actually talk about this in your book you say normally men get completely lost in what I think you refer to as masculine pursuits how often are you checking your credit score afraid of identity theft or account breaches we all use the internet every

8:26 single day for important things like personal banking and remote work so why not protect yourself with our sponsor Aura is an all-in-one cyber security service that keeps keeps you safe online. Aura identifies data brokers exposing your info and submits opt [music] out requests on your behalf. Aura also monitors your credit, tracks your passwords for data breaches, and secures your online activity with VPN and anti-malware protection. You can try Aura for free for 2 weeks by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR code. And so I read that to mean hyper pursuit in business, being myopically focused on something, working yourself to death, which certainly resonates with the life my wife is living right now, where I I

9:12 work an obscene amount. Now, if you ask my wife what does she want, she'll say quality time, which is another way of saying, "I want this person who's made a ton of money, who's at the top of the business heap, I want him to stop all of that because I'm so irresistible that he's only going to pay attention to me." And the way that makes her feel when I'm just completely focused on her. I'm not touching my phone. I'm not My mind isn't wandering. I am locked in on her. I'm making her feel physically attractive. I'm making her feel the truth, which is she is my mental equal. Like all of that, that she's a woman I have to contend with. That she's captured my imagination. That she has taken this wild stallion as evidenced in, and I don't mean stallion studly. I just mean

9:58 this unbroken cult that is, you know, off running in the world of business. She's gotten a saddle on me, slowed me down, got me to pay attention to I mean, this is the Beauty and the Beast mythology where she is so special that she has been able to capture the attention of the person who's never had their attention captured before. Now, I've never thought about this before. I've only ever told my wife uh that I love you. I've never told that to another woman cuz I was never in love before. So, for my wife, it really was the um what in literary circles they call in erotic literary circles they call the magic hoo-ha. So for my wife, she was the only one that was able to break me out of that. She's the only person that's ever gotten me to slow down in my ambition to pay attention to

10:44 her. And once I could see it from not just my wife's perspective, but the general that's what women are looking for perspective, then I was like, "Oh, wow." Like I really get now why she wants my attention. That that isn't something I should be frustrated by that. Yeah, this is even now 23 years in, it's a seductive tool that I can play, which is you've completely captured my attention. Like, if I see my wife and she's looking good, I'm going to stop whatever I'm doing and tell her and make sure she knows and feels it viscerally. And all of that required me to understand just the psychology of the whole situation. >> Mhm. I have no problem with that. Is

11:30 this something that I seem to have disagreed with? >> No, not at all. That's just me um appealing to the nice guys out there of I get you either may it may be insecurity which mine was certainly driven by that or you may think it's a winning strategy. I get that but it isn't. >> Well, one thing that I think is very seductive that I can point out here and it has a little bit to do with what you're saying is what I call generosity. Generosity is is a very powerful seductive quality. It doesn't mean money as as you might necessarily assume. It can mean money, but it means that you're generous with your attention. You're generous with with what you're giving to the other person, right? So, you know,

12:15 the main thing for a man who's we tend to be very linear focused, mono focused on this one thing. And there's an evolutionary reason for that. For tens of thousands of years, hunting, we had to just focus on one thing. women were focusing on many different things at the same time. You know, they're they're they could multitask. We can't. Um so getting out of that mono rail that you're in with your attention and being able to give to the other person and give them attention and in the initial phases shower them with the attention that they're not getting from other people. Although you can go a little too far with that. So you sometimes you have to step back and kind of be absent for a little bit so they they don't feel like it's you're not like a stalker. You're

13:01 not like it doesn't come from an insecure place. You're in control of it. But the sense of being generous with your personality, with the time, with the attention you get is incredibly incredibly seductive. The sense that you're not generous and stingy with money. You like take them to a cheap restaurant. You ask them to pay. you're kind of, you know, you that's a sign that you're not generous in general. So, uh maybe that's part of the the billionaire appeal where you assume that that person's going to be very generous at least with their money. So, the sense of being closed and inside yourself and stingy and not wanting to give to the other person, give of your time, your attention, your money, all these other things that is deeply deeply

13:47 anti-seductive. What do you do you think that we're living in a time right now that is complicated in a negative way by um changing gender norms? Well, I don't know if I want to get into that that hornets's nest, but um you know, in seduction, I I I make it clear and I made it clear in my human nature book that we're a mix of qualities. That nobody is completely masculine and no woman is completely feminine. Men have feminine qualities. Women have masculine qualities. Some men have more feminine qualities than masculine. Some women, we're a mix. It's a chemical thing. And there's no way to predict that, right?

14:33 and it's always been that way. But um there's ways that kind of element of androgyny for instance can be very very seductive and very powerful if you know how to use it. Right? So I'm not going to say that um that's overly complicating things. In fact, the sense of kind of crossing boundaries with gender is actually a sign of some of the periods in history where things where things were the most open to seduction. So for centuries, women could not seduce men and and I you I can I can delineate that period. I mean going through all throughout ancient history and I talk about it in my new book because to be

15:20 interested in a woman so much that you wanted to give them attention and time meant that you were feminine, right? And men were masculine. They were warriors, etc., etc. They weren't interested in the inner worlds of women. Women were there to clean the house and to make babies essentially. So seduction was not something that really existed in the ancient world except with some exceptions like Cleopatra etc. So the idea that you're interested in a woman and in her world is already admitting there's a feminine element within you. And so I look at moments in history and I just wrote about this like in the middle ages where our whole notion of love came from at least the western notion or you look in the 18th century the grand epic of of seduction

16:07 with Kasanov and all those characters. You look at the 1920s in America and in Europe a period of incredible sexual energy freedom and seduction. These were periods where there was a lot of androgyny going on. So, I don't necessarily think that that's something that's going to limit the the seductive qualities and the energy that's in the atmosphere. I think what's hindering us is not the gender norms. It's more our kind of defensiveness, our closed spirit, our desire to be completely in control of of our circumstances by by withdrawing into our egos and being afraid of of being hurt, being afraid of being wrong, being afraid of of not being strong. etc., etc. I think that has more more an inhibiting factor on on

16:54 seduction in the world. >> Why do you think young people are having so much less sex right now? >> Well, for men, a lot of it has to do with porn. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a sociologist, but that would be my estimation. where first of all they're having a lot of sex virtually and second of all their idea of sex and what is pleasurable and what a what a woman should be like comes from those ideals in pornography and the look etc etc and so it's not as much of a need for them etc to to kind of physically we've become much more virtual in how we get pleasure in life um also I think there's an element of

17:39 fear as I said I mean young people have grown up in these in these periods of massive uh economic instability. They've had to deal with the '08 collapse with the pandemic and everything that's happened there. So, they've had to deal with circumstances that are very powerful and that are going to make them anxious as well as all of the helicopter parenting that many of them had to to live through. So, they're filled with much more anxiety right now than I think in my generation. And that anxiety makes you want to kind of retreat into your own inner world. And having sex, at least for a man, uh, and you can probably relate to this, it's a feeling of you're almost like, it's almost like

18:26 too much. You're almost like weak afterwards. You're almost like afraid of it. You're afraid of the power that a woman has over you, right? You obviously get over that very quickly and you deal with it. But there's an element of fear involved and especially when you're an adolescent, especially when it's when you're younger. And so I think the levels of fear and anxiety that young people are having in the world and rightly so I don't condemn that for that is probably why there's less physical sexual and psychological interactions with members of the opposite sex. [clears throat] >> Yeah. I think it's inevitably going to be a very complicated issue and like you I'm not a scientist but um I am always willing to talk about things that I know

19:11 nothing about just to walk people through how I think about a problem. >> Uh so looking at it I think that a big part of the problem is what you were talking about with insecurity. I think that the way the world is set up right now, whether it's um pornography, whether it is uh a society that's really spent the last several decades telling men that they their masculine impulses are bad. And for better or worse, I think that sexuality, male sexuality is tied up in power. And I think sex itself is uh dances around power dynamics. It's one of the the main things in female erotica is power dynamics and it man you want to dive into a hornet's nest like

19:58 power dynamics people get real weird about this subject. Um but with all of that if men are either because the economy is weird and they're not able to get on the property ladder and they've got you know $180,000 in debt and they don't feel like they're going anywhere and they're lost in a sense of hopelessness. They have easy access to pornography. um they're just not feeling powerful. And if they're not feeling powerful, then they're going to uh struggle to feel confident in the bedroom. And I mean, just to really put it all out there, um, I think a guy has to feel confident and powerful, not in a weird like I'm a dominant way, but strong and confident, rooted in his body and feeling good about himself to get and

20:46 maintain an erection. Like you're not going to see a lot of people who are insecure scared uh sporting erections. Those are sort of flip sides. >> Take a lot of Viagra, >> I guess. But do you really think like I would be surprised it just that puts you in and also just bodies, right? So diet, nutrition now so horrible that I have to imagine a lot of people are just physically not in a place where they're feeling good about themselves. >> Uh you wrap that all up and you get to what I'm sure is the tip of a very large iceberg that I've grossly oversimplified. But >> no, no, no. I think you you touched upon a point that's very valid. I and I didn't touch upon I think is very true is that um it's it's not a good time to be a man right now. It's very confusing.

21:33 You know, our role models are very mixed up. We don't really know what is a positive virtue for a man. We think that we look at somebody like Andrew Tate as possibly an icon. A lot at least a lot of young people do, which I don't at all. I think that's I think it's really gross and vulgar and full of all kinds of insecurities. A man like that a kind of an icon sort of a sense of strength from either a political figure, a leader or an actor or anything that used to be in the culture. We don't really have that and men are are seen as something kind of ugly in our culture. You know, it seems like ugly energy that comes from men. And I every time I read the newspaper I I see that kind of that kind of slant on things that anytime a man is

22:19 sort of revealing a kind of addivistic trait of being kind of dominant and strong. Oh, ugly. Oh, he's, you know, he's awful. He's he's primitive. He's not, you know, etc., etc. And so it's very very confusing. And I remember being a young man myself growing up. I'm such an old person that I can remember like the late 60s, you know, and it was kind of confusing then and I was struggling and I had a good role model with my father. He was very he was very gentle but he was also quite masculine etc. And I remember being confused about it and kind of straining and trying to find a proper masculine role model and it was a struggle and and I found it sometimes with my teachers and my professors in school and other

23:04 people I later gravitated to. But the sense of this is what it means to be a man. These are good qualities. The quality of being a leader, of being strong, of even being kind of dominant and being able to dominate a group and dominate a room or to be so powerful that your voice can carry. These are all positive traits. We wouldn't be here right now, Tom, talking, you and I, if men didn't have those traits, right? If they didn't have the courage to face, you know, enemies with spears, etc., etc. These are all positive qualities just have to be channeled in in socially productive ways, which is what an Andrew Tate doesn't do. But if only we could craft a Frankenstein monster of what an ideal male figure would be like. It

23:50 would be very very helpful for young men. And I don't mean to craft it in a fantasy way. It would be great if there were really people like that, you know, in this world today. So, you know, um, to me, a masculine quality is a kind of inner strength, a confidence that doesn't need to yell, it doesn't need to scream, it doesn't need to bully people. It's just so strong that people are attracted to it and it emanates. It radiates itself and people can feel it, you know, so you don't have to yell at someone. I remember when I was at on the board of directors of American Apparel and the CEO um, who we ended up firing, he was a good friend of mine. He's brilliant in some things, but he could he was yelling at people left, right, and center. He thought that's what power is. That's what being masculine is. And

24:36 I thought it just showed incredible weakness. The ability to set an example to tell people this is how you should be by how I'm behaving, etc. Taking responsibility. These are that's a masculine quality. Not blaming other people. We need to redefine what it means to be masculine and what are the positive aspects of it. I think is very very critical for our culture. >> Talk to me about aggression. I think men should have a gear that is aggressive. Should be a gear. I don't think they should live there. What do you think? Completely. I mean, and you know, my wife can attest to this. I'm an insanely competitive person, right? To the degree that it's almost maybe unhealthy, right?

25:22 So, like I'm bicycling up a hill and people pass me. God damn it, you can't pass me. I'm going to pass you even though right now I can't because I'm physically weaker. I'm still trying to do that on my stupid recumbent bike, etc. I'm very very competitive and that competitive energy I think a lot of men have. It's what directs us towards sports, you know, and I'm I'm a sports addict etc. Compet being competitive is allied with being ambitious. And getting back to seduction, a man who seems ambitious is very, very seductive. And having no ambition is very unmasculine and very anti-seductive. But we have, we see the word ambition as being kind of ugly, as if it's like egocentric, as if it's selfish. But damn

26:10 it, this world was built by people who are ambitious. They created it, right? You wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have the internet. You wouldn't have all your little tools that you whine and complain about if it weren't for people who are incredibly ambitious. Ambitious people have created the world. So men have aggressive energy. It's the testosterone flowing through us, right? You can't you can't repress it. You can't get rid of it. It's there. And how you channel it is the key. It can become very self-destructive. You can channel it towards violence. You can channel it towards pushing people around. Or you could say, I'm gonna I'm gonna channel it towards being competitive to towards being the best person at what I'm doing. We talked, I think last time I was here when I talked about the human

26:55 nature, we talked about Kobe Bryant, a man who had a dark side. He is so competitive to a degree where it could have killed him. It was just awful. And he acknowledges it. He channeled it into the basketball court. It made him fant made him the one of the greatest players ever. It's how you take that energy, that testosterone, that aggression, and what you do with it. That's the critical factor. And that's where I think a lot of men are confused about it. >> For the people out there who believe that their life is boring and that they're wasting it, what trap have they fallen into? And what advice do you have for them to get out of that sense? Well, you were talking to me about we were talking earlier about diet and problems with your health and you're saying get at the root cause.

27:42 So, you have to get at the root cause of your boredom. And most often you're looking at it superficially. You're thinking, I just don't have enough stimulation in my life. I need to travel more. I need to get rid of my girlfriend or boyfriend and find a new relationship. My career is bothering me. I need to change jobs. That's the superficial way of dealing with the problem that's deeper. You have to look at yourself and you have to see the possible root causes of what is making you bored. A lot of it is the fact that you are looking for external stimulation. Whereas looking inward and seeing who you are and what drives you and what your motivations are, what makes you different. You were talking about diet and how all the intricacies and how each person responds to foods

28:29 differently and it's very inexact science. Well, you are an individual and you have your own little weirdness and everything about you is different and you have all these little grains inside of you that react differently to things. You don't know who you are. You're alienated from yourself. You're alienated from your nature. You're finding career paths that don't suit you. Just like I might be eating things that don't suit me. I'm sorry to keep going back to that. >> No. >> Right. You're getting in you're involved with people that don't suit you. You don't know who you are. You don't know your core, your essence. You don't know what exits you. What Abraham Maslo calls impulse voices. You have these little voices inside of you that are saying, "I like this. I love this. This is what excites me." You're not listening to

29:16 them. gets drowned out by social media, by your parents, by everybody else. So, you don't know who you are. And because of that, you choose things that aren't right for you. And when you choose things that aren't right for you, you're not engaged emotionally. And when you're not engaged emotionally, you get bored and you get restless. And you reach for got to travel to Bali, got to start playing the guitar, I got to quit my job, I got to go find a new, you know, a model to start dating or whatever. You don't and it doesn't it ends up like you do it and for a week or two it's exciting >> and then it doesn't lead any to anything lasting and then you you're you're bored and you're restless and you go on to the next thing. It's exactly what I'm writing about right now in my book on

30:01 the sublime. I'm just quoting the chapter I just wrote. >> I love that. I actually didn't I mean I know that you're writing about the sublime. I had no idea that it was about that specifically. >> How could you? >> True. And in fact, I I want the the viewers to hear that I am desperate for your next books to come out. I really do think of you as a legend, man. Rereading the Daily Laws and prep for this, I am freaked out by how accurately you get a certain aspect of the human condition. So, with that in mind, is it that people don't have the balls to look at who they really are? Is it just that things are getting drowned out and they don't know how to create the silence? Like why is it so hard for people to understand themselves? >> Well, it's hard and our default position is to take the path of least resistance

30:48 about what is easy, you know? So, right now um and I should hardly talk, but pe people are extremely interested in drugs, >> right? And like psychoactive drugs, mushrooms that trust me, I did a lot of that in my 20s. I have nothing against it, right? But you have the capacity in you to be continually high on life, to almost have a drug-like effect. We have these remarkable senses with our ability to pick up colors, etc., etc. You could be continually tripping. You don't need drugs. Your brain is wired for this kind of this kind of interaction with life. It doesn't feel true to me. So, how do we tap into that? What am I? >> Well, because it takes effort. Whereas popping a pill, whereas just doing the

31:36 easy thing, whereas looking at yourself and introspecting requires effort and it requires pain, right? Because when I look at myself as I do with my meditation every morning, God, Robert, you've got a lot of problems, man. Why these thoughts keep popping up? You think you're so great, but you're not so great. Your your mind is veering towards these petty issues. Let's work on this. Right? So my meditation this morning, this very morning, I was thinking, "My problem, Robert, is you don't let go. >> You've got to let go." And I just kept repeating myself, let go. Let go. Let go. Every time a thought came in, I was like, "All right, let go of it." Okay, but it was painful because you realize what your what your blocks are, what your limitations are, what you're doing

32:23 wrong. We don't want to face ourselves. It's so much easier to look externally, to look out in the world, to find a guru or a coach who will help you, to find a book that will help you, to find a drug that will help you, to find some kind of to go on online porn, you know, anything as opposed to looking inward and seeing who you really are. Yeah. So, looking inward and seeing who you are is definitely heavy. It's definitely hard. It is also I would say the thing that leads most assuredly to success. Now the reason that I say that is I have found that by acknowledging my own pettiness, my insecurities, all of that, I can better understand other people. When I can better understand other people, I can better navigate the world.

33:09 >> Yeah. So the method that I use to figure that out is when I feel something uncomfortable, I one, I distrust my emotions. So I don't just think, "Oh, I have an emotion. I should enact it." I'm like, "That may have a a dark underbelly. I want >> Second, >> uh, my wife and I were arguing and she says something that just makes me so pissed off and I'm like, "What the [ __ ] How dare you?" you like I cannot believe that you would say whatever it is that she said. And what I learned early in our marriage was anytime I had that impulse, she had tripped an insecurity of mine. >> But if I didn't know that I was insecure about it, I would get the surface level emotion, it felt so real. It just felt

33:56 like she had said something she shouldn't say. And I would never take the time to figure out why shouldn't she say that? >> And so the emotion gave me righteous indignation. I would push back on, hey, why' you say that? And never get into, oh, I see. I'm super insecure about this thing, which is what's triggering the emotion. So, it's what she and I call arguing about the tea. So, you're at the surface level, going back to your early point. You stop at the the part that's easy to identify. I am angry. Because I am angry, then I just do what the anger tells me to do, which is push back, shut her down, get her to take it back, whatever. rather than go whoa, like why does that bother me so much? But in understanding why it bothers me, then I'm like, okay, now I see this as an insecurity. So when I see somebody get

34:41 angry at me, I'm like, oh [ __ ] they're insecure about this. That's interesting. And so now let's drill into and why are you insecure? I mean, look, there are certain conversations where you're never going to ask that. But it's it gives a lot more clarity which is why I asked like I think it's that the reason people don't identify what's really going on inside of them is twofold. One it takes a certain level of understanding about the human animal just generically about the way emotions come about etc. And then testicular fortitude to look at something and say, "Oh man, I'm not as cool as I wish I were." >> Yes. Right. >> So, how do we get beyond that?

35:30 >> Well, um, you know, you don't have to read books about human nature or or or make it a study. Just look at yourself and you'll find out all that you need to know, right? You'll know that you have the flaws that you naturally think you see in other people. So I always find when people are particularly angry about some character trait in me or others, they're actually more often than not projecting >> unconsciously. They have the same trait. So god damn it, that person's a narcissist. Well, you're not that's your way of kind of hiding from yourself. Your own narcissism. So by looking at yourself, you're inevitably going to see your flaws and your limitations, which was the whole subject of the laws of human nature. We

36:17 have these negative qualities built into the way are we evolved as human beings, right? But we evolved a million years ago under circumstances that are completely different now that don't have any relationship that aren't functional to the high-tech worlds that we live in. And so we have a lot of qualities that that constantly create problems for ourselves. Okay? You think that it's other people that have these problems. You think other people are aggressive, other people are passive aggressive, other people are self-absorbed. No, you have all of these traits as well. Okay? So it's painful, right? And if you know one thing about human beings, if there could be one law about human behavior, and it's true, I suppose of every

37:02 animal, we avoid anything painful and we veer toward what is pleasurable or easy. Okay? So, how do you overcome that? That's your million-doll question that you're asking. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom. Sometimes you have to go, nothing is working in my life. I'm miserable. I'm depressed. My career isn't going in the right way. Okay, maybe I'm the source of it. And when you hit rock bottom, you're willing to take anything. The pain of looking at yourself isn't maybe as bad as the hole that you've dug yourself into. Okay. The other way is you don't necessarily have to hit rock bottom, but you are really motivated to change your life, right? You you're ambitious. You want to be successful. You want to have some degree

37:49 of power. We're a social animal. You want to get along with people. You want to know how to navigate these complicated social environments that we inhabit, right? And so it's not working for me right now. I'm getting in my own way. Okay? So I have to step back and I have to look at myself and I have to study who I am and I have to do some heavy work on myself. Now, nobody says that's easy. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it and we'd be living in paradise. But we obviously don't, right? >> Do you think it's a an intellectual level that people have to be at in order to do that or is there a process that people can run to figure this out? >> I'm a big believer that intellect is vastly overrated, that we are emotional

38:35 animals. The problem is emotional. I hate to keep saying it, but I'm about to be giving a talk in a few weeks, and this is exactly what I'm giving my talk about, which is you have to change your orientation, right? that your problem is emotional, not intellectual. Our first uh when we're having a problem, our first because what I'm I'm giving a talk about is how to deal with change in the world. >> Whenever we think that we we don't understand something or we're having a problem, we think that knowledge is the answer. We have to accumulate more knowledge. It's intellectual. We have to know more data. We have to read studies. We have to understand these things better. The problem is emotional. The reason you can't deal with change or you're not looking at yourself is you

39:21 have emotional blocks. You're full of fear. >> Now, we're turning away from the emotion. >> Is it that we're turning away from the emotion that causes the problem? Like, why is being emotional stalling people out? It's not being emotional that's stalling people out. It's the kind of emotions that you that are kind of blocking you. So there are emotions that are very positive like confidence, like boldness, like fearlessness, like openness to experience, adventurousness. These are all brilliant expansive emotions. I contrast expansive emotions with constricting emotions. Ego, pettiness, fear, impatience that close you down and narrow the scope of what you're willing

40:06 to try out. Okay. So fear I compare it to a tree. Fear is the root of all of this. And at the branches we find impatience. We find ego. You know we find >> is all of this the human condition or the fear of change or the inability to change. >> Well you know we are anxious creatures by nature. It's kind of built into our system as well. And so we're kind of primed to feel fear etc. But these things are subtle. So you're not aware that fear is the source of your problems, right? Because you're not attuned to who you are. You think that it's um because I don't know enough

40:53 about the world or other people are blocking me or I would wasn't I didn't get good enough education blah blah blah blah blah. Right? It's hard to see the effects of fear because it's very subtle. It's going to block you in ways that you're never really aware. It's like this kind of poisonous gas that you can't see and it's seeping into you. So, getting back to when I'm talking about how you deal with change, which is an incredibly important issue, particularly in a world now that's changing so quickly, right? You have to be able to be open to what's happening in the present mo moment with people, with events. etc., etc., but because of fear, you're slipping further and further behind. You're locked in the past. You

41:38 think that ideas that you had um are are exactly what's happening. You're not paying attention to the things that are around you because paying attention is hard and it's difficult and it means letting go of some of your most cherished ideas about the world and just being open to experience. So with people for instance, let's say I'm working with you, Tom, right? And we've been working together for a year or so. I have a certain impression of you, right? Probably from our first interactions. And that impression kind of freezes in my mind. And as I'm dealing with you, I'm always sort of seeing this kind of image that I have of you. And I'm not paying attention to who you are in the

42:24 moment, how you are changing, how things are adapting. Maybe my first impression was wrong. Maybe you're actually quite different. But that takes some courage. That takes some effort to be alive in the moment to say, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't really know who he is. I don't know what motivates his behavior. I need to pay attention." But the idea that I know the answer actually stems from fear. So, in this moment of radical change, so I I think there's two things at play. I'd be very interested to see what you think of this. So, I think we're living through a very um weird moment as the the Chinese um proverb. I'm not even sure what to call it, but may you live

43:10 in interesting times. Supposedly meant as a curse. I think we're living in interesting times. And I mean that as a curse. And uh when I think about it, I think that a lot of what's playing out is some change is bad. And and I consider myself hyper malleable. It's one of either my greatest strengths or my greatest weakness. I'm not entirely sure. In fact, when you started off by saying you have a hard time letting go, I have the exact opposite problem. Uh I find it very easy to let go of anything, everything, my identity, all of it. like it to a point where it it may border on not useful but anyway so you've got we're living in a time where I don't think all change is good and then on top of that I think that when people feel

43:58 weak no when people are weak they have a feeling that ah like things are not going the way that I want they don't understand that their fear is coming from weakness an actual inability to be effective in the world and because they have the will to power in the niche way. they begin grabbing on to whatever tool they have at their disposal. And right now the thing that people are using is shame and shouting people down effectively. And so mix and this is super complicated with social media and all that but those two things and I'm just beginning to like think through this so thank you for letting me think out loud but those feel like the the twin heads of this dragon right now. >> What are the twin heads again?

44:44 >> Some change is bad. So some things that are happening are actually we're going in the wrong direction and then some of the um lashing out that people are doing is because they are weak and they don't know a positive way to navigate the world to manifest the will to power in a way that has to do with personal responsibility getting better at moving through the world. And so instead they use the easier tools which are shouting people down which makes them feel powerful but in reality is fear of their ideas but they don't know how to get stronger in their own convictions. They don't know how to be open-minded to learn. And so new ideas scare them. Some ideas actually are bad but they feel weak. And so now they're just lashing out somewhat blindly.

45:29 >> Yeah. Of course um some changes are not good but in in the larger picture of it change I believe has an inherently positive quality to it >> because the worst thing that can happen to a culture to a civilization is to be in these static moments. So let's say we're going through a moment where the political correctness where the social justice warrior is in the ascendant and I agree with you it's a negative it's a kind of a negative change in a way right well first of all you have to understand these changes so even if they're negative it's not that you embrace everything that's going on in the world that you understand them on a on a deep level but let's say that this is a

46:14 negative change that is occurring in the world but it's occurring for a purpose It's a reaction against something that occurred earlier on. It's not going to last. Have a larger picture of history and of the world. Nothing that we humans do lasts very long. And particularly now in this accelerated moment of change in 10 years from now, the generation Z and the new generation coming up, they're going to be so [ __ ] tired, pardon my language, of all of the truth, the virtue signaling and everything. They're going to go in the opposite direction. It's going to swing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, right? So, don't get so caught up in the moment and think that this is this is like where we're heading. Like a hundred years from now, we're all going to be

47:00 like these grand inquisitors that the social justice movement will reach this insane end point. We've had these moments before in history where people get extremely tight and constricted and upset and uptight and worried about things and angry and taking it out on everybody else. We've been through it so many times before. So have some perspective that it won't last. Okay. Do you worry at all though that with the historical lens on it also has killed a lot of people? This is the first time in my life where I'm like, uh, I have a feeling that there are going to be consequences to the way that society is going now. I couldn't be more open to realizing that I'm wrong. So if you have an insight that I'm missing, >> you mean people being cancelled and their careers being ruined being executed? be beheaded for it.

47:46 >> Uh yes, I do mean I don't I'm not thinking literally of guillotines, though that has been one of the historical ways that this played out. But like I am I am very aware of the truth of the statement all that evil needs is for good men to do nothing. And so it is right now it feels like division is running just in opposite directions. And as somebody that has uh who does a lot of time talking on camera, I think a lot about okay, how do I how do I grapple with some of the issues and then what is the way to sort of present ideas to people that will hopefully gently nudge them in a more

48:31 useful direction. So I think all about usability. It's why I love your book so much because you're like if I was going to boil you down really simplistically, I would say your core message is deal with the world the way that it is, not the way that you wish it were. And that idea is very powerful to me. So looking through the lens of okay, what is useful? What is the way that I can behave that is useful? So you started by saying no thyself. I think that's incredibly useful. One, it helps you navigate your own emotions. Two, it helps you understand other people. Okay, so that advice is good because it's incredibly useful. Then I look at the world running in opposite directions, algorithms, social media exacerbating that problem. The rapidity with which ideas burn through society is really

49:18 fascinating. And historically, humans tend to go so wrong before they swing back in the other direction that millions of people do die with a high and distressing degree of frequency. Now, do I think that we're right on the precipice? No. I think that we have plenty of time and space to calm everybody down, but I do think for the first time in my life anyway, here in the US, it's worth going, hey, this can rev up to the point of being actually dangerous. >> Yeah. Well, I don't I don't disagree with you. But then the question is, what do you do about it? I mean, you can't change like whole groups of people in mass like people like they used to think

50:03 in communist countries where you could change human nature by creating a different system. We know that doesn't work unless you happen to believe be a communist and you believe that's possible. So, it has to occur on an individual level, right? And how do you change that in a culture where it is where we're engineered to be angry and emotional where all of the social media that people spend 85% of their lives on I don't know I'm just taking that number out of my you know what >> way too low but yeah [laughter] okay um you know it's engineered for that right you know just to give an example something that really gets under my to show my own outrage um you know on my on my feed, I get these these notices from

50:49 Next Door. You know what Next Door is, right? >> And everything is about crime and about and I know in my neighborhood there's some crime, but it's but if you read Next Door, it's it's like gives you the sense that there's everywhere like there's murderers next door to you, like rapists are all around you, right? It freaks you out. The algorithms are there. They choose those posts to put in your feed that are going to get you emotional. That's just next door. Facebook is a master of it. You know, Instagram, they all just use these algorithms to hit your most basic emotions, right? How do you fight that? Well, you have to fight that on an individual level. You have to tell people you are being manipulated, right? And in order to say that you're being manipulated, you're hitting their ego.

51:36 You're telling them you're not as in control of yourself as you think you are. And I know this from myself. I know that I am manipulated by these different algorithms. But it means I have to have that kind of humility to say I am a person who can be manipulated. But most people go around thinking, "Oh, I'm not manipulated. I'm in control of my thoughts. I know what my feelings are. I behave according to what I want to do." [ __ ] You're continually being manipulated by these various these various platforms. Okay? You can't change it as an individual. I can't go and get Mark Zuckerberg to suddenly stop doing all these dastardly things. It's impossible, right? So, what do you do? You have to try and awaken people one by one by one. That's sort of why I write books like the laws of human nature to

52:22 waken you up. And it's a incredible theme in that book. We might hate it, but I hit that again and again about how we are being manipulated by social media. How it's playing to our most basic instincts. How envy, which is a most powerful human emotion, it defines us in so many ways. >> Why envy? >> Why envy? Well, it's just one of the 18 chapters. But why? Why did I choose that? >> No. Why is it so powerful? >> Because it is wired inside of us. Our brains work by comparing um different pieces of information. On the most basic level, that's how our brains, our neoortex operate. A piece of information comes up, we compare it to something else. Our bra, our minds operate through

53:09 continual comparisons. When you create a social animal whose survival depends on getting along with other people, that comparison device is continually in operation with other people, what do they have that I don't have? Why are they getting that attention that I don't have? Why are they getting these these gifts and these rewards and I don't have any of them? It was a problem that existed in hunter gathering societies. If you've ever studied primitive cultures, you come upon a very strange custom of theirs, which is the moment anyone receives a gift of food or anything, what is the first thing they do? They give it to someone else. It's like a ritual because you're deathly afraid that if you keep that gift, people are going to have envy and they

53:55 will murder you, right? So, it's it's a continual ritual. So, it's bred into us. Even chimpanzees are known to feel envy. Like, if another chimp gets a delicious piece of grape and the other one has a cucumber, he's like, "Wow, what the hell? What's going on here?" Right? >> That study is hilarious, which you can find on YouTube for anybody watching. It's insane. >> Yeah. So, it's who we are. But what do you think social media is? It's an engine of envy. It's making you continually aware of what other people have and what you don't have. Oh, he's vacationing in Bali. Oh, he's dating a supermodel, etc., etc. Look at my poor pitiful life. Well, that person who's they're only posting the most positive things. They're not showing their their

54:40 kind of unhapp misery of their daily life, but you're feeling envy. So, how do you overcome that? You have to first be aware that you're feeling envy, that it is motivating you that you feel this. And that means what? We bring you back to looking at yourself. So we can't fight these negative changes in a global context. We have to hit individual people. We have to awaken their own their consciousness. We have to make them look inward. And the best thing I can do is for me personally is to write books about this. I don't know any other way. So we're making them look inward and we're we want them to understand that they're having an emotional problem, not a logic problem, which I think is a really interesting insight. >> I think so. In business, I realized pretty early on in my career that the thing that separated me from other

55:26 people was I could self soothe. So, I was stung by whatever happened, whether it was somebody chastising me or embarrassing myself or being embarrassed on purpose by a narcissist or whatever the situation may be. And it broke most people like it would derange them. It would push them underground. would >> the either they're embarrassing themselves, being chastised, somebody going out of their way to embarrass them, all the power games that you talk about >> and and you and you were able not to soo yourself. >> I could soo myself. It still hurt. I still went through the same emotion, but I was so obsessed with my goals that I would just ask myself, what is going to move me forward? Well, that's an that's an amazing um example

56:12 of the process that we're talking about and the power behind it. I couldn't have chosen anything better. In fact, I don't think I could do anything better than what you do because I try and do what you're talking about. And I don't even know if I've quite reached that level. But that's exactly what the the point I'm trying to make and that you are illustrating here. That when you look at yourself, when you look at what really is driving your behavior and let's first admit that we really don't know who we are and that there's a core that we will never understand, right? We can't really see completely into ourselves. We can't really totally understand what motivates our behavior. There's an element. I'm a big believer in humility. You may not believe it because I write these books that don't seem humble at all. But the humility to say there are parts of me

56:59 that I'm never going to understand. Okay, that's good. That's all right. That's a powerful thing. Cuz the idea that you know yourself so completely and I've gone through this process and I know who I am and I've got these problems. It's [ __ ] You don't know who you are. There's always a core that you'll never ever understand. And that's a beautiful thing in life because it means mysteries are great. They're fantastic. It means you have more work to do. But all we're talking about is increasing that margin of knowledge. So let's say in the end, just to pick another number out of my you know what, 70% of ourselves were never going to know, right? For most people it's 95% or 98 or 99. If you can lower that number a little bit, if you can have a deeper understanding, if you can understand that what you're doing is that it's all

57:45 about your ego, that you really want to be right and not about getting ahead or having success or power. If you can learn these little things, the world opens up for you. Because what power is really about in life, people always ask me for definitions, is it's about having more options. Okay? So, when you're so narrowed down inside yourself about, you know, you have the right answer, you know that, you know, you're going to argue with people and everyone else is wrong, etc., etc. You're you're limiting what you can do in life. You can only take path A or B because that's what you're geared for. That's what's going to soothe your ego. That's what's going to make you feel better as you thought when you're trying to shout to get the right echo. Okay? But when you let go,

58:33 when you're open to the fact that you don't know who you are, that there are other things that could be going on, and then you figure out that ego is tripping me up, suddenly doors open. I can do C. I can do D. I can do E. I can do what you just said where I can stop. I can learn more. I can shut my own head, the voice in my head, and I can pay attention. I can learn. The world starts opening up. You start having options. You have maneuverability. You can do different things in life. Things open up for you. That's all I'm ever asking for people is to get out of these kind of narrow corners that they back themselves into. A lot of people are feeling hopeless right now and they are gravitating towards alcohol, porn, Netflix etc.

59:19 But nobody is coming to save them. If they want to get out of that hole, they are going to have to do it themselves. So what is it that people can do and quite honestly avoid doing if they want to stop being aimless and make their dreams a reality? Well, um sometimes you have to get deep enough in that hole that you really really want to get out. So the key factor in life is motivation, is desire, is the energy that you bring to it. So, if you don't believe in yourself, if you only half-heartedly are reading my books or listening to Tom or listening to me and you go, "Yeah, I kind of want to change." It won't matter. It won't change anything. You'll just go back to your old habits, right? Because habits are very powerful. You're a product of

1:00:04 the cultural moment. It's very hard to resist it. It's very hard to swim against the tide of the times that we live in. So if you don't have the motivation, if you don't have the energy, if you don't have the idea that damn it, I'm going down fast. If I don't turn this around, I'm, you know, you're only alive once, it's, you know, yolo. And um, it goes past really fast. I can tell you that as now as I get older, faster than you think. So, you've got to be desperate. You've got to tell yourself, I've got to get out of this. I've got to change my life. I've got to swim against the tide of the times that I lived in. I have to change my ways because if not when I'm 32, when I'm 35, all of my hopes, all of my horizons will narrow so much that it it's going to

1:00:51 look very very bleak. Right? So the younger you are, the better. And you have to have that desire. You have to look at yourself square in the eye. And the number one thing to think of is you have much less time than you imagine, right? It goes b past really quickly. Your 20s will go past faster than you could imagine. Suddenly you're 30. You go, "Whoa, what am I going to do?" Then you're 40, [ __ ] it's too late, you know? Okay, so just realize you don't have as much time as you think you have. Now, the other thing you have to realize is um what builds strength, what builds character is resistance, right? So if you're trying to make your body physically stronger, you need

1:01:37 resistance. You need weights because weights are are natural resistance. You need to swim, water is resistant. You need to run, you know, gravity is resistant, etc. That resistance builds muscle, builds strength, builds aerobic power, etc., etc. Life mentally, it's the same thing. The times that you live in are providing incredible amounts of resistance towards success, towards power, towards a sense of fulfillment. They are flooding your face with all kinds of qualities that you have to resist. And to the degree that you're aware of these qualities and to the degree that you resist them, you will build inner strength, you will build the kind of life skills that are necessary to survive in a and thrive in a very

1:02:22 very tough world. So, one of these resistance factors is social media is the level of distractions that we're all facing, right? That's never ever ever been so intense. And you have to realize you don't let everything into your body. You don't eat all this sugar. I hope at least. You don't eat all the pizza that you think is great for you. You understand that you have to limit your diet to be healthy. Particularly as you get older, you have to limit your sugar intake, among other things, etc. Okay? You have to limit the amount of stuff that's coming into your head. You have to put your head on a diet. You have to go, I can't be distracted. I can't absorb all of this information. The human brain, we can only retain so much

1:03:09 in our short-term memory, let alone our long-term memory. You're flooding it with too much. And what happens is you're losing the ability to focus on simple things, right? So to be successful you have to have primarily the quality to focus to concentrate and that begins on small banal tasks like I mean this is this is you know a simple example but if you're playing the piano or you're learn want to be a chess master you have to learn the basics you have to learn the moves the different games you can play you have to learn how to do scales etc etc you have to be very focused and attentive to it So, if

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