Shadowing Practice: Robert Greene: Why Nice People Lose Power & How To Fix It - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If you haven't heard of the book, The 48 Laws of Power, you might be living under a rock.
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Today, I am privileged to talk to the man himself, the author of The 48
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Laws of Power, Robert Green.
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Robert, thank you so much for coming.
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Thank you for having me, Jefferson.
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I appreciate it.
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This is a conversation I'm very much looking forward to
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because your book is one that often when I make content or I'm speaking, there will typically be somebody who comes up and says,
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oh, have you read
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The 48 Laws of Power?
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And I say, yes, I have.
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And what I want to talk about and what the listeners are going to get,
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what you're going to get in this episode is we're going to talk on,
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can you use power and can you also maintain your own integrity?
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Because a lot of the times people find those to be conflicting in some way.
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They hear manipulation.
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They don't hear anything that is descriptive, prescriptive, that can improve their life.
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Robert, how would you define power?
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What does power mean to you?
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Well, power is a tool.
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It's totally neutral.
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Like a hammer, you can use it to build a house
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or you could clobber someone over the head and kill them with it.
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So power is simply a tool.
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It's neutral.
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It is neither good nor bad.
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It can be used for evil.
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It can be used for great good.
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But power is the sense of having control over the immediate environment, over events that are occurring in your life.
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So to use this to flip it around to the negative,
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if you sense in your daily life that you have no ability to influence your children,
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your spouse, your partner, the colleagues at work, your boss, the people in your company, it's a miserable, miserable feeling.
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You have no power.
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You have no control.
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You have no influence.
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You can't tell people to do something and they don't listen to you, right?
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Or they do things to you that kind of block your path
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and you have no way of getting them to stop this.
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That feeling of powerlessness is something that human beings cannot endure very well.
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And if you feel powerless for very long, something is going to warp inside of you psychologically psychologically.
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You're going to turn inward.
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You're going to become resentful.
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You're going to become angry.
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You're going to have pools of anger, you know, developing inside of you deeper and deeper and deeper.
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And you're not going to have control over yourself.
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So power is the sense first.
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The first sense of control is over yourself, over your emotions, so that you're not always reacting and getting angry,
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so that you have a little bit of detachment.
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So when it comes to those situations where you need to move or influence people like your children, your spouse, your colleagues, your boss,
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you're able to step back a half step, a full step, couple steps,
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and think and go, what is it that will actually move that person in the direction that I want?
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How can I actually influence them effectively so they don't hate me, so they don't resent me,
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so that they actually do what is in my interest without maybe even realizing it
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or that the interests align in some way.
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So that is power for me, right?
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It begins with yourself.
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It begins with a sense of detachment from the events happening to you.
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It's the ability to strategize and think in each situation in life.
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This is a move that will gain me a little degree of control over events.
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You can never, ever have complete control.
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Life happens.
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Things happen.
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Pandemics happen.
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Black swans happen.
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You can't control everything, right? But
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that little bit of margin of control is enough to kind of help you glide through life a little bit more smoothly.
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When I think of power, I think what you said is a perfect definition of it the ability,
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one's ability to control or influence another's behavior, maybe including even their own.
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You have the personal power, you have relational power, like who in the dynamic might have more influence over the other between husband, wife, or partner.
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And maybe there's political power, the ability to construct, influence others, the ability to write laws, implement laws socially.
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And what I find, the people
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that I get to talk to are always looking for power of themselves and how they're going to improve their life.
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And where I teach is communication and the power of.
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And this is why I really like,
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there's a number of the laws that you have out that are specific to communication,
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like using less words in particular.
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How do you find that communication and power intersect?
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They're obviously completely intertwined.
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but communication has to be strategic and that's the problem
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that a lot of people have in this world they think if they just talk, if they just say this is what I want,
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this is what I need, please come and help me that that's communicating.
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All you're communicating is your insecurity and your needs.
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True communication is effective it's strategic.
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Other people are naturally resistant to helping you or aligning themselves with your interest.
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Everybody has their own problems in the world today.
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We're all stressed.
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We're all working too hard.
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We never have enough time, right?
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So you talk to me about what you want.
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Okay, I'm kind of half listening, but you're kind of irritating me because you're just spewing things from your side, right?
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True communication is what I was saying before.
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You take that step back and you put yourself in the other person's shoes, right?
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You get out of your own head because you're so self -involved
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that you don't realize that your words are just landing nowhere.
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You get out of your head and you go, I'm dealing with another person.
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They are not me.
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They have their own problems, their own wishes, their own issues right now in the present, right?
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What is that?
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What is it that is going on in their head in their world?
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Sometimes you have to do some research.
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Sometimes maybe you know them well and that maybe you don't know them at all, but you have to figure that out.
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It's a puzzle.
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Once you figure out their side, not your side, what they want,
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what they need, now you have some power to craft what you say to actually influence them, to appeal to their self -interest,
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which is one of the laws of power, one of the most powerful laws of all, right?
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So if I say something and I'm trying to influence, I'm trying to move them like on a chessboard in my direction, right?
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If I say something that appeals to their self -interest while it's also helping me, their eyes will light up.
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All those defenses that they have will start to go down.
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So communication is absolutely worthless unless it's strategic.
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And always say less than necessary is important
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because the natural tendency for a human being without self -control is just to spew words, you know, just like verbal diarrhea.
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This is, you know, my problems, my life.
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This is what's going on with me.
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This is what I need, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Right?
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Just shut up.
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Talk less and think more about what the other person needs and craft your communication strategically.
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You know, I wrote a book recently and it's hard not to,
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I can't imagine writing a book and not having pieces of yourself in it when you were writing this book,
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what was coming up for you in your own life?
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Are you just studying these elements of influence and control and power?
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Is it something that you were writing to yourself or for other people?
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Where did that come up for you?
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Well, it came from two things.
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First of all, a very deep desire to help people in this world.
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I don't my books I think very very deeply this I'm working on my eighth book now
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so power is in my only book
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but I think very very deeply of my audience right it's a form of communication to get back to that right
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and I want to help people
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I want to help people deal with their problems in a real way not just to satisfy my own ego
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so I have to think about how my words can actually be absorbed into your daily life.
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So that's one side.
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The other side is the book came from a lot of pain, right?
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So I started into life, like most people, kind of naive, kind of innocent.
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I wasn't a good player, naturally, necessarily in power, right?
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I made mistakes.
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I talked too much, probably.
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I outshone the master, right?
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On and on and on.
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I could go through a laundry list of the things that I violated.
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And I didn't realize that the world is political.
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I thought when you enter the work world, what matters is having results, is getting things done, is doing things well.
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But no, I had many, many, many painful experiences, particularly working in the film world.
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But as I've said in many interviews, I've had 50 different jobs in my life, more than 50.
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in all different aspects, in every little possible avenue of life I've had a job.
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And I suffer deeply, and I suffer deeply from the sense of people are so political.
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Their egos are involved in everything.
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You can see their egos as they walk past you, right?
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I would notice in the office that there was these hierarchies.
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I worked, remember, I worked for a while at the magazine Rolling Stone.
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And there were these hierarchies.
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There was the boss and you could just see this massive ego walking back and forth.
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Then there were all the smaller little people working right under him and their egos.
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And there was a little me in the corner as a copy editor, a little tiny, tiny little ego.
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But that's what mattered.
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That's what made things run was how well you impressed him, how you talked to the boss, in this case, Jan Wenner.
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And I thought this is silly, but this is the real world and you have to take the real world seriously.
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You have to succeed in the real world.
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So the book came from deep pools of pain from my own mistakes
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and from a deep desire to help other people
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because I feel it's the source of a lot of depression and misery in life.
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You know, you say something or you do something thinking that you're on the right track, it's going to help you.
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And the next thing you know, you're fired or you're depoted.
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You don't know why.
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I felt, you know, I see people around me having these problems.
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So those are the two strands of the book, a deep desire to help people and a realization that the world is political,
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full of egos, and that mistakes are very costly and painful, and I made plenty of them.
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Yeah, well, you're not alone.
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We've all made a lot of mistakes.
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Looking back at it now and knowing the impact of the book, and I want to talk about the book specifically
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that you're you're writing i'm going to be releasing soon is for those who haven't read it
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or those who might go you know what now
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that i've listened to this episode i want to pick
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it up again maybe they have it on their shelf i haven't looked at it in a while how do you
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find and especially being the one that wrote it
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that this topic can also be very healing I get a lot of emails from people that, you know, it's helped them.
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It's turned their life around or they started a business because of the book.
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Of course, you know, it's anecdotal.
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So I'm sure there's a lot of stories out there.
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People who've been hurt, who've been on the other side of the manipulation.
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I understand that.
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But what's healing and liberating is to finally have
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that little light turned on inside of your brain that this is how the world works.
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I didn't realize that.
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I thought what mattered was just being myself.
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I thought that I could just do my job, say the things that I like, dress the way that I like to dress, just be myself.
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And it was enough.
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And no, I'm suffering from it.
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And just seeing that little switch go on in your brain that no, the game is different.
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It's played differently.
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There are rules to this game.
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You can't just come in and play poker and just do whatever you want.
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There are rules for poker.
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There are rules for chess.
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You don't know the rules.
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You're just playing terribly and you're suffering.
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And just that little bit of switch inside going, maybe I'm entering this game, maybe I'm from the wrong angle.
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Maybe I'm being too selfish, egotistical, I'm too self -absorbed,
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and I'm not thinking enough about the players in this game.
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That little switch of your perspective, how you look at it, can be deeply healing and enlightening because it's not natural to us.
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As I said, it wasn't natural to me.
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So, I think in that sense, that's what has helped a lot of people,
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a lot of people who like myself enter the work world a little bit innocent
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and a little bit on the naive side.
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How can you tell if somebody is trying to manipulate you?
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Well, sometimes if people are clever, you're not going to realize it.
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Like if people are really good at the manipulation game, if they know the 48 laws of power, If they know how to seduce you,
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how to wrap their words and make you seem like they're just wonderful, that they're out for your best interest,
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if they're really good at it, you won't realize it until it's too late.
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And so in my book, I think my last book, The Laws of Human Nature,
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what I tell people is you need to identify these people before they enter your life
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or before you start listening to them.
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You need to be able to identify the manipulative types before they start charming you, before they start enchanting you,
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before they start wrapping you up in their dramas.
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because if you don't, if you fall into that trap, it's going to probably be too late.
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Most people aren't such good manipulators.
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And you can sense it, right?
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They're very passive aggressive.
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They say things that they want to get from you, but there's a subtext involved, right?
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And a lot of the bad manipulators, you can feel it.
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You have an intuitive sense.
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You can understand that something in their body language, something in how they speak, it doesn't seem sincere.
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But the main thing is to be able to sense people's character, to be able to identify the types of people out there.
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So, as I said, there's some people out there who are brilliant at the manipulation game for whatever reason.
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Not because maybe necessarily they read my book, but because it's in their DNA.
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They're just naturally good at it, right?
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People who are very political, okay?
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So your task is to be able to see through these people because the problem that a lot of people have,
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you see, I have to kind of circle around here a little bit.
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The thing that I try to say in the 48
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Laws of Power is that it's a game of appearances.
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Appearances matter so much in this power game, how you present yourself, how people see you.
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You know, act like a king to be treated like a king, right?
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Recreate yourself.
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Your appearances is what people are judging you by, right?
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So at the same time, you have to control your appearances so people see you as powerful.
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But you have to see like a laser through other people's masks, through other people's games that they're playing, through the appearances they're trying to create.
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So the great manipulators out there, right?
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They have signs.
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They're not perfect.
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They give little clues, little crumbs that reveal that they're trying to play this kind of game on you.
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And that's why I wrote
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The Laws of Human Nature, where I give you tools for identifying the great narcissists out there.
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Because most of the master manipulators are toxic narcissists.
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And you have to be able to identify them before they enter your life.
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How to identify people who are full of envy.
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They are a very dangerous type.
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They'll become your best friend in order to hurt you, to sabotage you, because they feel envious.
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You have to identify them before they get into your life, on and on and on down the line.
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So that's sort of my advice.
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There's no simple answer how to identify a manipulator.
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It's in their character.
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It's in their body language.
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It's the little signs that they give out.
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And you have to be able to see through people's masks and not always take appearances for reality.
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The people who would read this book and let's say they've read it,
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they really understand it, they're putting it into practice, and they're somebody who wants to have, as we've defined, more power in their life,
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whether it's for good or whether it's for bad.
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And through that, they're going to be able to, as a verb, manipulate people for good or for bad to their purpose.
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do you find that the people who read this book are doing it with ill intent or for good intent?
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I know you've heard you have to have had a lot of feedback from this book over the last many years.
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Yeah.
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And I'm curious what you'd speak to that.
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Well, let me clear up one thing, though, that not all of the laws are about manipulation, right?
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Right.
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I mean, I guess it's how you define manipulation.
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But creating compelling spectacles, one of the laws, is creating something that draws a lot of attention.
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Right.
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Which is what a lot of life and social media involves.
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You can say in some ways it's manipulation, but it's also just trying to please people, just trying to bring pleasure into the world,
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just trying to create a spectacle that attracts attention.
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I don't necessarily see every law in there about manipulation population.
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But to get to your point, you know, I've said this before, the people who are really,
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really nasty and evil at the game of power, and they're out there, out there,
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I would say maybe three to 5 % of the population would be like that.
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Maybe I'm overestimating the number.
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You don't really need a book like the 48
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Laws of Power, right?
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They've been learning this from a very early age.
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They probably had troubled childhoods.
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I don't want to get too deep into the psychology of that, but they've been wounded in their childhood, right?
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And they learn from the age of six or seven or eight.
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This is how you get people.
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This is how you string people along.
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This is how you get attention.
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This is how you be dramatic.
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This is what you say.
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This is how you get mommy and daddy to pay attention to me.
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This is how, you know, you get the teacher to like me.
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They've learned this step by step at an early age.
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By the time they enter the work world in 22, they've been dealing, doing this in high school.
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They've been doing that at college or wherever.
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They're getting better and better at it.
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Then this book comes along, The 48 Laws of Power.
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Well, they don't need to read that if they read it, it's just going to confirm the things that they've kind of intuitively understood.
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Now, I don't deny that there's going to be a percentage of people who read that book go,
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wow, I can really be nasty in the world.
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I can really use this now and get a lot of power.
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And they are using it for bad purposes.
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I understand that.
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And I have to own up to that and not, I'm not completely naive about how the book is used.
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But the vast percentage of people, and I know this from the emails I get,
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I get hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of them in the last 20 -some years, probably hundreds of thousands in the end,
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are people who are like myself, who are naive, who didn't understand how the game is played,
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who entered the world with all kinds of illusions that were bred into them because your parents don't tell you,
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your teachers, your parents in your schools, don't tell you that there are people out there who are manipulative, that the world can't be political,
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that everyone out there has egos.
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Nobody teaches you this.
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All of the books are so sweet and sugary, telling you self -help books, you know, just cooperate.
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This is how to be a good human being
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and you enter the work world and nobody prepared you for the slap that you have from people being so nasty, political and ego ridden.
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Nobody taught me this.
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They glom onto the book like it's, you know, water in the desert.
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Wow.
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He's teaching me something real.
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That's the majority of readers.
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I believe I could be wrong.
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There's no science behind it.
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I don't have data.
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anecdotal data, those is sort of how I believe it.
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These are the readers that are attracted to them.
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What I have found in my own life is so, so much of what I have seen and ran into with,
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especially in, uh, when they would early childhood trauma,
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like what you just talked about people who who have people who are proficient at lying
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or manipulating or exercising as we can define power.
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It's because at that point in time in their life, there was an actual utility to it.
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They were able to get mom and dad to stop arguing.
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They were able to keep the family together.
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They were able to not get in trouble, to keep themselves from getting abused or whatever it is.
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that so much of it, they have already learned.
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And whereas some people might be like you said,
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they think everything's roses and they just get hit with the tidal wave as soon as they enter the real world of,
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wow, this is, it doesn't matter how nice I am.
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They're going to be rude to me.
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It doesn't matter how clean I play.
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I'm never going to get anywhere if I don't do X, Y, and Z.
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Nobody taught me the true rule, the hard knock rules.
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Yeah.
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Is that fair?
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Yeah.
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I mean, I wrote a book about warfare and one of the concepts called 33
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Strategies of War.
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And one of the concepts in there is what we call asymmetric warfare.
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And that's what is also called dirty warfare.
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Right.
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People who like terrorism.
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OK.
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Like guerrilla warfare.
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where the rules are thrown out, where you're willing to do anything.
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Usually it comes from armies that are much smaller and weaker.
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And that's certainly the origin of terrorism, right?
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You're going to leverage your smallness, your small size, your small army,
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but being as nasty and amoral and you'll do anything to get power to hurt the enemy, okay?
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And what happens is oftentimes the enemy plays by rules, is good.
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And so in asymmetric warfare, right, it's an ethical, there's also an ethical asymmetry.
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So I think of things like poop in Russia, for instance.
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Okay.
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He's somebody who's willing to play, do anything for power.
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As nasty and as dark, whatever works for him.
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And his country is what he will do.
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When you have these European countries with their democracies and their rules and their organization and their bureaucracies,
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and they're continually at a disadvantage facing somebody who's willing to do anything much more than they're willing to do.
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We find this as well in American politics.
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Okay.
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So in life, the same thing happens.
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When there are people out there in your office who their ethics and their morals are thinner than yours,
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they're willing to do things that you would never consider doing, you're at a continual disadvantage.
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You're not willing to do the dirty things that they're doing, right?
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How do you defend yourself in a world where some people are willing to do things
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that you would never consider doing, right?
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Well, you have to become strategic and you have to understand that you don't have to be evil.
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You don't have to lower yourself to the level.
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You don't have to play fire to hit fire with fire.
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You can do different things to upset them, to be strategic, to deter them from hurting you,
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etc. But the fact that there are asymmetries of it, there are people who are willing to do things that you're not willing to do,
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is the source of a lot of problems and pain in your life and suffering.
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And you're going to suffer throughout your life because of that.
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You know, those toxic narcissists, their gamut of what they're willing to do is like this, and yours is like this.
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And so, you know, you're constantly being hit by things, and you're not necessarily understanding because you're a good person.
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You don't necessarily register all the dark things that they're doing until it's too late.
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And now back to the episode.
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I'd like to read a quote that hit home for me.
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Understand, people will constantly attack you in life.
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One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself, your worth, your abilities, your potential.
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That's in transform self -love into empathy.
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My question is, how do we build communication habits that handle these attacks on ourselves,
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that instill doubts in us?
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without internalizing them?
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Or how do you handle people trying to instill doubts in you?
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You talked about self -loves from my book, The Laws of Human Nature.
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So to the degree that you are insecure,
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to the degree that you don't really love yourself, So we have to.. clear up a misconception that people have.
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There's a difference between narcissism and true self -love, right?
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So if you learned at an early age, three or four or five years old, that you're actually a good person,
430
that you're worthy of love and affection from other people, you know, that you have skills and abilities as you get older that are actually worthwhile,
431
that will contribute, right?
432
Then you have an anchor in your life.
433
You have a degree of love of yourself, a confidence.
434
So every time later in life where you have blows, where people hit you with doubts, but they try and sabotage you,
435
they try and insinuate that maybe you're not so good, or they play these games that we're talking about, you're going to get this blow,
436
and it's going to depress you, and it's going to lower you down, and it's going to affect you.
437
We're all like that.
438
Nobody can can you can't suffer from that myself, including.
439
But what happens is if you have that level of self -love that you developed at an early age, you will rise back up.
440
You'll start going, no, it's not true that I'm this way.
441
It's not true what they're trying to tell me.
442
You know, I'm actually worthy and I know it because I've done things in my life.
443
I've accomplished this.
444
I've helped this other person.
445
It raises you back up.
446
It's like a thermostat that you have inside of yourself.
447
Okay.
448
So the degree that you have that, that love will bounce you back up
449
and you'll be able to tell yourself at first their doubts kind of hit you because we're,
450
we're all human, but then you go, no, it's crap.
451
They're playing a game.
452
I'm not going to fall for that.
453
But if you were wounded very early on and you never developed
454
that self love and you have a lot of doubts about yourself already
455
and you're insecure and you're riddled with like bullet holes and wounds inside of yourself where things can leak through
456
and people tell you those things, it's going to bring you down and you're going to not rise back up.
457
You rise back up a little bit, then another person will hit you.
458
You keep going down and down and then you get depressed and you'll find it very difficult to rise back up.
459
So the way you have to handle it in life, if you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s or even in your 50s,
460
well, I just saw a coyote walk right by.
461
You know, you have to develop it.
462
You have to go back and go, I'm beating up on myself.
463
I have all these insecurities.
464
They're effective.
465
These people are effectively manipulating them because I'm allowing them to manipulate me.
466
So when bad things happen to you in life, you have two choices you can do, right?
467
This is probably the most important thing I can tell everybody out there.
468
You have two ways you can go.
469
You can blame other people, you can say, oh, that evil person out there, he's manipulating, she's manipulating me, they're doing this, that, and the other,
470
oh, woe is me, I'm being the victim, blah, blah, blah, they're evil, they're bad.
471
Okay, you do that in life, you're never going to get anywhere, right?
472
You're going to always be looking for things to blame, looking at external things, you're never going to grow, you're never going to develop.
473
The other thing is every time something bad happens, you look inside of yourself and you go,
474
that person manipulated me, that narcissist got into my life and did all kinds of damage.
475
What is it about me that allowed them into my life?
476
What is it about me that was so innocent, that was so stupid, that believed the things that were saying?
477
Okay.
478
So if you're able to learn and grow from these events and look at yourself and go,
479
why was I allowing them to hit me and hurt me and instill these doubts?
480
Why didn't they affect me?
481
What's wrong with me?
482
Well, maybe I don't love myself enough.
483
Maybe I don't have enough confidence in myself.
484
How do I build that up?
485
Well, I have to go back to my childhood.
486
I have to think about the things that I've actually accomplished.
487
I have to build it up slowly, slowly, slowly and that's how you handle things.
488
But if you can't look inside of yourself and go, the bad thing happened and I have to learn from it
489
and I had to grow and maybe some of it's my own fault, you're sunk in life for the rest of your life.
490
You'll never ever develop.
491
I want to take a quick second to tell you about Momentus.
492
Momentus is a sponsor of this podcast.
493
I am so excited to be talking about because I use this stuff every single day.
494
When I tell you I ingest it and I feel like I am making myself a better person every time I do,
495
it's because that is the absolute truth.
496
Momentus, they make the science of better performance simple.
497
And you might be thinking, look, Jefferson, I am not huge on exercise.
498
I'm not some athlete.
499
I'm not running everywhere.
500
I get it.
501
I do.
502
I get it.
503
Momentus is giving me the nutrition that I know I'm not getting in my very busy day.
504
So here's how I think about it.
505
I know I want to show up my best.
506
That means I need to start with what I'm putting in my body.
507
That has to do with all of my nutrition.
508
So what am I taking?
509
I take a lot of Momentus stuff.
510
I do their whey protein, which is grass fed.
511
I use their creatine.
512
I use their magnesium L3O8.
513
They have a whole sleep stack that I take, which helps me sleep at night.
514
It's restful.
515
I take all their omega -3s and it's in my fridge.
516
I love this stuff.
517
And I used it before they were ever a sponsor.
518
So when I'm pressing record to talk to you or I'm stepping on a stage to speak to people,
519
it matters what I put in my body.
520
You can go to livemomentous .com, use the code Jefferson, and get up to 35 % off your first subscription.
521
That's livemomentous .com slash Jefferson.
522
Momentous.
523
When your moment matters, make it count.
524
And now, back to the episode.
525
I want to make sure and touch on the project you've been working on.
526
I believe it's called The Sublime?
527
The Law of the Sublime, yes.
528
Yeah, tell us about it.
529
Do you have a release date for it?
530
Well, I'm very finally happy to announce that, yes, it should be out in October of 2026.
531
That's fantastic.
532
Well, yeah, I mean, I've been working on it for five and a half years now, you know, and so every day,
533
constantly, it's been a roller coaster.
534
So to see the end is almost brings tears to my eyes.
535
I almost can't even, I can't even handle it.
536
This will be your ninth book?
537
It'll be my eighth book.
538
Eighth book.
539
Okay.
540
Eighth book.
541
Wow.
542
That's incredible.
543
Can you give us a little preview of the law of the sublime?
544
So it's a little bit influenced by the near -death experience I had eight years ago when I suffered,
545
or seven and a half years ago when I suffered a stroke.
546
And I came this close to dying myself.
547
And my wife basically saved my life.
548
I was driving my car here in Los Angeles.
549
she saw my face just falling apart something weird going on I was driving
550
I wasn't aware of any of it she got me
551
she forced me off the road she called 9 -1 -1 they came quickly
552
if any of those little things hadn't happened
553
if they'd been a minute later
554
or she hadn't recognized it I'd be I wouldn't be talking to you right now I'd either be dead
555
or I'd be in a vegetative state so life is this very thin thread, right?
556
Where things can, you know, you can definitely slip off the edge and you're not aware it can happen at any moment.
557
And the sublime is this understanding that to be alive, to simply be alive, to see the world,
558
to see things as they are, to see birds, to see nature,
559
to see human beings, to see that you and I are talking on this instrument right now,
560
which 50 years ago would seem like something from some science fiction story, is utterly mind -blowing.
561
But people don't realize that they walk through their lives with their phones stuck in their face.
562
They're thinking about, you know, reading about what people had for breakfast.
563
Their minds are getting smaller and smaller.
564
They're shrinking down.
565
They're not opening up to the infinite, to the vastness of this world,
566
to the amazing fact that we're on a planet with life in a cosmos.
567
There's probably very little, hardly maybe no life at all.
568
That it evolved to where we are today, that we're human beings, that we have what we have.
569
It's utterly unbelievable.
570
And I'm trying to open your eyes to each of the different aspects of what I call the sublime.
571
Then I talk about childhood and how our childhood was so intense.
572
All of our childhoods were so intense.
573
We're naturally sublime in what that means.
574
How the brain and consciousness itself is utterly weird and sublime.
575
How other animals and their consciousness and how we can kind of study and empathize with other species is utterly sublime.
576
Love, which is a chapter, is a sublime quality history in the past and our ancestors is an incredible thing.
577
I talk about ancient civilizations.
578
I described to you what the ancient city of Babylonia looked like.
579
The ancient world, the cities back there were unbelievably beautiful in a way we can't even imagine, right?
580
So I have 12 different chapters, each kind of going into some of those different aspects.
581
And it's been the journey because this hand here that I'm holding up
582
is kind of dead because this is my stroke I can't type so I've had to hand write everything
583
and then dig it into the computer wow
584
if you saw my process you go my god I can't believe
585
he even got one paragraph of this book out um
586
so uh well that is that is incredibly impressive and I look forward to everybody taking a,
587
making sure they can go take a look at it when it comes out there in October.
588
That's very, that's something to very much admire.
589
So I appreciate you sharing that with us.
590
You're very welcome.
591
Very welcome.
592
I wanted to wrap up with this question, one that you've probably gotten before.
593
Now that you've had 20 plus years to, you know, look backwards and you said, well, you know what?
594
I stopped at 48.
595
if there ever could be now looking at it, another law, maybe one or two, that you thought, well, I'd add this one.
596
Do you have one?
597
The 49th law is there is no 49th law, right?
598
You know, Jefferson, to be honest with you, when I finish a book, I kind of move on.
599
I'm on to the next project.
600
I'm on to seduction.
601
I'm on to war.
602
I'm on to mastery.
603
I'm working with 50 Cent.
604
I'm doing them all.
605
I'm so absorbed in them.
606
I don't really go back and think, what did I miss in that book over there?
607
I try to tell myself psychologically, you covered it all, move on, on to the next project, don't look back kind of thing.
608
That's sort of my guiding philosophy of life.
609
I think that's a pretty good philosophy, one I can certainly relate to.
610
Well, I appreciate, from me to you, I appreciate your dedication.
611
Oh, thank you to your art and to your projects and what you've chosen to share in the world.
612
And I know that, you know, as I've read them, anybody can, same with my content, you can always take them in the way
613
that you want to choose to receive them and how you accept them.
614
But they are what they are.
615
They, in many ways, power, like you've mentioned, is a neutral tool.
616
And so what I've learned in our conversation today is, number one, power is the ability to control or influence another to your desired outcome.
617
And those that don't have the power,
618
they're the ones that they feel powerless in many ways feel like they got left behind and didn't learn these tools.
619
These are the kind of lessons that you teach in
620
that book that you didn't just write off the top of your head.
621
You research it from globally, from different ages to all across the world.
622
And these are things that can help a lot of people.
623
If anything, give them a really genuine perspective of what the real world is like.
624
Two, when it comes to dealing with people that are attacking you
625
and trying to put you down and instill doubts in you,
626
their ability to do so is corresponding to the level of self -love that you have invested in yourself.
627
And those with higher self -love, they're going to be less affected by those trying to sow doubts into them.
628
And then three, I want to touch on the law of the sublime gave me just such a wonderful picture
629
as you were even listening here and you saw a coyote run by.
630
The appreciation for life and how precious it is is something that we should never forget.
631
Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and my audience.
632
I hope you're able to see me.
633
I see all this light coming in.
634
God, I should have moved over.
635
I just thought you were glowing.
636
Yeah, you know, I really, you're just glowing.
637
That's awesome.
638
Robert, thank you so much.
639
I appreciate it.
640
Thank you so much for having me, Jefferson.
641
I'm glad that we finally got to be able to do this.
642
Thank you.
643
Take care, man.
644
Me too.
645
Absolutely.
646
Yes, sir.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Robert Greene: Why Nice People Lose Power & How To Fix It”. This video has 646 sentences and 7236 words to shadow. The speech runs for 44:12. The speaker talks at a natural 164 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| manipulation noun | /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/ | The practice of manipulating or the state of being manipulated. |
| manipulate verb | /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/ | To move, arrange or operate something using the hands |
| monarch noun | /ˈmɑnɚk/ | The ruler of an absolute monarchy or the head of state of a constitutional monarchy. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| strategic adjective | /stɹəˈti.dʒɪk/ | Of or pertaining to strategy. |
| nasty adjective | /ˈnæs.ti/ | Dirty, filthy. |
| warfare noun | /ˈwɔɹfɛɹ/ | The waging of war or armed conflict against an enemy. |
| ego noun | /ˈiɡoʊ/ | The self, especially with a sense of self-importance. |
| naturally adverb | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | In a natural manner. |
| suffer verb | /ˈsʌfɚ/ | To undergo hardship. |
| eighth adjective | /eɪtθ/ | The ordinal form of the number eight. |
| utterly adverb | /ˈʌtɚli/ | Completely; entirely; to the fullest extent. |
| naive adjective | /naɪˈiv/ | Lacking worldly experience, wisdom, or judgement; unsophisticated. |
| innocent adjective | /ˈɪnəsənt/ | Free from guilt, sin, or immorality. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| back up verb | To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so. | |
| clear up verb | /klɪəˈɹʌp/ | To clarify, to correct a misconception. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| look forward to verb | To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to. | |
| see through verb | To perceive visually through something transparent. | |
| step back verb | /stɛp ˈbæk/ | To stop what one is doing and evaluate the current situation. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Robert, how would you define power?
- What does power mean to you?
- How do you find that communication and power intersect?
- Where did that come up for you?
- Why didn't they affect me?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | They've been learning · they've been dealing · They've been doing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't heard · I've said · I've had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be absorbed · are involved · who've been hurt |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who comes · those who haven · those who might |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 245 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: eighth /eɪtθ/, worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/, thin /ˈθɪn/, bath /bɑːθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, sabotage /ˈsæb.əˌtɑʒ/
- Long words — get the stress right: manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/, manipulate /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, terrorism /ˈtɛɹəɹɪzəm/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like manipulation, manipulate, monarch.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.