Shadowing Practice: The Psychology of Effortless Seduction! | Robert Greene - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Some people are good seducers.
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Some people are good seducers.
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They're very calm.
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They know how to tell a good story.
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They have charisma.
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They have energy.
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But there are people who do the opposite.
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They just think they're being natural and they offend a lot of people.
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Act like a king to be treated like a king.
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Recreate yourself.
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Your appearance is what people are judging you by.
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You have to keep people on their heels.
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They can't know everything about you.
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So you have to create mystery.
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If you become an astute observer,
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the game will be much easier to manage.
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Everything people do is a sign.
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If they're showing up late or they're not returning your phone calls,
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they're telling you something about themselves indirectly.
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So you may not realize it,
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but you sense that something is wrong about this person that you've just met.
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Sometimes if people are clever,
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you're not going to realize it.
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Like if people are really good at the manipulation game,
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you won't realize it until it's too late.
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And you're not necessarily understanding because you're a good person.
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When bad things happen to you in life,
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you have two choices you can do.
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You know how some people are good seducers.
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And it can be not just for sex,
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it can be socially or politically.
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They're very calm.
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They know how to tell a good story.
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They have charisma.
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They have energy.
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their face lights up they know how to say the right things
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and they attract you right
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so a seductive person is self-aware they're self-aware of their body language you know the clothes
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that they wear of how they talk okay
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but there are people who do the opposite they say the
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wrong things they do the wrong things they dress the wrong way they take you to the wrong places they repel you.
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They are anti-seductive.
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Nobody wants to be around them, right?
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And so what are the qualities that make a person anti-seductive?
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So one of them are people who talk too much,
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who are always bragging, who always have a story to tell.
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People who moralize, who tell you you're wrong.
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This is what you need to do.
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This is what's good.
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This is what's bad.
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The anti-seductive person has no self-awareness.
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They enter life.
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They don't look in a mirror.
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They don't think about what they're saying.
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They just think they're being natural and they offend a lot of people.
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You have to keep people on their heels.
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They can't know everything about you.
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And what I said is,
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disappear for a couple weeks.
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Make people talk about you.
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Make people wonder, why is she not posting as much?
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Why are we not seeing what she's wearing in the morning and having for breakfast and all these other things?
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If they know everything about you,
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it's human nature that you become too familiar
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and they're not interested in you anymore it's a certain point
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so you have to create mystery you think of doing something
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that's going to surprise the other person now nobody knows you
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completely your husband doesn't know every single thing about you he
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didn't know you before you got married he didn't know all your previous boyfriends
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and everything so if you give him a sense of you show him something that he didn't know about before He goes,
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wow, I was taking her for granted.
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I wasn't, you know, I think I knew everything about her.
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She showed me something that surprised me.
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Maybe the surprise isn't something good,
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but at least it like keeps him on his heels.
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It makes him think about you.
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Because in a relationship, people will take you for granted after a couple of months, right?
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They were so interested in you in the beginning,
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and now it's kind of dwindling.
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They take you for granted because they think they know everything about you.
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if you surprise them, if you say something different,
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if you take them to a place where they never thought that you would take them to,
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if you dress a certain way that seems a little bit out of character,
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not completely out of character,
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go, wow, you need to do that in a relationship constantly.
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Otherwise, it's just going to fizzle.
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All the energy is going to go out of it.
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The most important skill that you can have
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is knowing how to observe people and not be
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so wrapped up in yourself and be outer directed so
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when you're in a situation like you've entered a job for
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the first time your tendency is to be all insecure
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and think did I say the wrong thing am I doing am I dressing correctly am I fitting in?
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And you're not observing.
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You're thinking about yourself, right?
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And the whole game is to be observing.
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It's like you're observing the world,
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the different games that are going on,
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what people are doing, what they're like,
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what their tastes are like,
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what the boss is like.
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There are all these levels of power going on.
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You want to get outside of yourself and simply observe, right?
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And not be thinking about yourself as much.
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If you become an astute observer of the people around you,
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the game will be much easier to manage, right?
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You will know this is a person who is insecure.
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I cannot offend them.
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I cannot say the wrong thing to them.
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This is a person who's strong and secure.
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I want to be with them.
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I want them to mentor me.
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You want to be able to take criticism from other people.
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In other words, be less insecure and be more kind of outer motivated and paying attention to the people around you.
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Everything people do is a sign.
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So if they're showing up late at meetings or they're not returning your phone calls,
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it's not some innocent event.
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It means something.
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It's coming from some place within them.
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They're telling you something about themselves indirectly.
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If their desk is a mess,
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right, they can't organize their desk.
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It's a sign of something else going on inside them.
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You can sense people's tone,
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not just in what they say,
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but in how they write something right there's a lack there's
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not this usual kind of polite tone there's a little bit of a sharpness there's a word
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or two that indicates that they're upset they're angry every little thing
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that people do is a sign you're not paranoid
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because it's actually a lot of fun and you're decoding what's going on
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because people wear masks they smile
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and they say i love your ideas cody you're brilliant you're wonderful
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but inside they're thinking something else and you have to be able to pick up all of these signs.
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Nonverbal communication and it's extremely important skill to develop and what
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that means is people can say anything they want to with words.
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In fact they generally do they never really exactly say what's
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on their mind that's how it is in the social world
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because if you said what was exactly on your mind you would be offending a lot of people right.
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So we
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don't ever really say exactly what we feel
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but our body language does not lie it's very difficult to
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lie with your body language even the finest actors in the
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world find it very difficult to lie with their voice
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because the voice reveals people's feelings right it's like watching a movie
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and observing people and understanding them we're very good at picking these kind of cues up so
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you may not realize it but you sense that something is wrong about this person that you've just met
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this is something
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that in the i talk a lot about in the art
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of seduction i've dealt with with women who've written me back they had a gut feeling
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that this man
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that they met was wrong there was something bad about him they got a bad feeling from it
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but what happens is you don't trust that feeling and then
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because you're not as you say in our culture it's not something that we value And then we go on,
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we have a relationship, and then we find the hard way out that our original gut instinct was the correct one.
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So you want to trust these feelings.
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They're very valuable.
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We are animals.
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We think we're all so intellectual.
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We've got our frontal cortex that governs everything.
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But inside, we operate on emotions,
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on instincts, on feelings, on sensations.
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It's a nonverbal form of communication.
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It comes out in people's gestures and how they move, how they stand.
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You're talking to them, but their feet are pointing in a different direction.
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They're not so interested in you.
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Their eyes reveal if they're really listening to you or not.
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You can understand exactly what people are thinking.
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But you have to do this to be able to reach this kind of level of understanding.
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You have to shut off your own mind.
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You have to shut off all your internal chatter.
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and you have to observe and you have to see,
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you know, exactly what, try and read and detect what that particular sign means.
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And you won't believe how often you are very accurate with it.
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You can detect people's resentment, people's envy.
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It's just that you're not paying attention and you don't value this form because we're so verbal.
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We think everything has to do with words, but it doesn't.
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Sometimes if people are clever,
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you're not going to realize it.
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Like if people are really good at the manipulation game,
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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,
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that they're out for your best interest.
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If they're really good at it,
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you won't realize it until it's too late.
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You need to identify these people before they enter your life 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,
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before they start enchanting, before they start wrapping you up in their dramas.
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Because if you don't, if you fall into that trap,
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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,
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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,
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something in how they speak.
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It doesn't seem sincere.
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But the main thing is to be able to sense people's character,
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to be able to identify the types of people out there.
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So your task is to be able to see through these people.
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Appearances matter so much in this power game how you present yourself,
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how people see you, you know,
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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.
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So at the same time,
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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,
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through other people's games that they're playing,
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through the appearances they're trying to create.
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So the great manipulators out there,
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right, they have signs, 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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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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The people who are really,
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really nasty and evil at the game of power.
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They've been learning this from a very early age.
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They probably had troubled childhood.
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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,
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you get the teacher to like me.
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They've learned this step by step at an early age by the time they enter the work world in 22.
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They've been dealing doing this in high school 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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All of the books are so sweet
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and sugary telling you self-help books you know just cooperate 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
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that you have from people being so nasty and political
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and ego-ridden nobody taught me this how do you defend yourself
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in a world where some people are willing to do things
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that you would never consider doing right well you have to become strategic
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and you have to understand
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that you don't have to do you don't have to be evil you 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,
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to be strategic, to deter them from hurting you,
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etc. But the fact that there are asymmetries of it,
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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?
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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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There's a difference between narcissism and true self-love.
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So if you learned at an early age,
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three or four or five years old,
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that you're actually a good person,
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that you're worthy of love and affection from other people,
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you know, that you have skills and abilities as you get older that are actually worthwhile,
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that will contribute, right?
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Then you have an anchor in your life.
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You have a degree of love of yourself, a confidence.
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So every time later in life where you have blows,
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where people hit you with doubts,
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but they try and sabotage you.
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They try and insinuate that maybe you're not so good,
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or they play these games that we're talking about.
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You're going to get this blow,
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and it's going to depress you,
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and it's going to lower you down.
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But what happens is if you have that level of self-love that you developed at an early age,
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you will rise back up.
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You'll start going, no, it's not true that I'm this way.
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It's not true what they're trying to tell me.
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You know, I'm actually worthy.
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And I know it because I've done things in my life.
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I've accomplished this.
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I've helped this other person.
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It raises you back up.
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It's like a thermostat that you have inside of yourself.
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Okay.
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So the degree that you have,
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that love will bounce you back up.
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And you'll be able to tell yourself at first their doubts kind of hit you because we're all human.
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But then you go, no, it's crap.
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They're playing a game.
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I'm not going to fall for that.
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But if you were wounded very early on and you never developed
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that self-love and you have a lot of doubts about yourself already
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and you're insecure and you're riddled with like bullet holes
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and wounds inside of yourself where things can leak through and people tell you those things,
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it's going to bring you down and you're going to not rise back up.
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You rise back up a little bit,
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then another person will hit you.
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You keep going down, down, down.
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You get depressed and you'll find it very difficult to rise back up.
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So the way you have to handle it in life,
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if you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s or even in your 50s,
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you have to develop it.
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You have to go back and go,
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I'm beating up on myself.
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I have all these insecurities.
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They're effective.
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These people are effectively manipulating them because I'm allowing them to manipulate me.
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So when bad things happen to you in life,
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you have two choices you can do, right?
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This is probably the most important thing I can tell everybody out there.
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You have two ways you can go.
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You can blame other people.
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You can say, oh, that evil person out there,
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he's manipulating, she's manipulating me.
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They're doing this, that, and the other.
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Oh, woe is me.
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I'm being the victim, blah, blah, blah they're evil, they're bad.
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Okay, you do that in life,
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you're never going to get anywhere, right?
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You're going to always be looking for things to blame,
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looking at external things.
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You're never going to grow,
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you're never going to develop.
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The other thing is every time something bad happens,
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you look inside of yourself and you go,
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that person manipulated me, that narcissist got into my life and did all kinds of damage.
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What is it about me that allowed them into my life?
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What is it about me that was so innocent,
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that was so stupid, that that believed the things that were saying?
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Okay.
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So if you're able to learn and grow from these events and look at yourself and go,
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why was I allowing them to hit me and hurt me and instill these doubts?
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And why didn't they affect me?
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What's wrong with me?
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Well, maybe I don't love myself enough.
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Maybe I don't have enough confidence in myself.
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How do I build that up?
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Well, I have to go back to my childhood.
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I have to think about the things that I've actually accomplished.
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I have to build it up slowly, slowly, slowly.
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And that's how you handle things.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with Robert Greene's "The Psychology of Effortless Seduction" provides a unique opportunity for English learners to enhance their speaking skills. The speaker's calm demeanor and mastery of storytelling offer an excellent model for effective communication. By practicing this video, learners can improve their English pronunciation and develop their ability to convey charisma and energy through speech.
Moreover, Greene's insights into human behavior create a compelling context that encourages active listening and speaking practice. Shadowing his speech helps students grasp the nuances of tone and delivery, which are crucial for achieving fluency. Additionally, students can use this material for IELTS speaking practice, as the themes discussed align with topics that may appear in exam scenarios, providing both vocabulary and context to enhance their performance.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- “Act like a king to be treated like a king.” - This imperative structure sets a confident tone that aims to motivate action.
- “You have to keep people on their heels.” - The expression "keep someone on their heels" indicates maintaining an element of surprise, which can be useful in conversation strategies.
- “Everything people do is a sign.” - The phrase employs the simple present tense to convey observational skills, a key component when interpreting social cues.
- “They repel you.” - The use of the word "repel" illustrates strong emotional responses, a crucial aspect of making impactful statements.
Using these structures while shadow speaking can significantly improve your English fluency and emotional resonance in communication.
Common Pronunciation Traps
When practicing with this video, pay special attention to some words and expressions that may present challenges:
- “Seducers” - The stress falls on the second syllable, which can be tricky for non-native speakers.
- “Charisma” - This word includes the "zi" sound that can be difficult. Focus on the smooth flow of the syllables to improve your pronunciation.
- “Anti-seductive” - The prefix "anti-" can often lead to pronunciation errors. Ensure clarity in differentiating between "anti" and "seductive."
By focusing on these common pronunciation traps, learners will be better equipped to improve English pronunciation effectively. Shadowing Greene's words allows students to hear these nuances in real time, enhancing their own speaking skills through auditory practice.
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.
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