Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Robert Greene [Part 1] : Decoding the Laws of Human Nature | E43

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Master the laws of human nature with one of the world's leading human behavior experts, Robert Greene! This week, Hala is yapping with famed author Robert Greene. Robert has written six international bestsellers including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (co-written with rapper 50 Cent), Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.  In Part 1 of this interview, we cover Robert’s career journey and how he found his purpose in life. We also begin to cover his latest book, the Laws of Human Nature, which outlines 18 laws that motivates human behavior. Tune in to #43 to learn about the law of irrationality and why this is the foundation of understanding human behavior. And get a key understanding of the law of narcissism, which proposes that we are all narcissists---and once we accept this we can transform self-love into empathy to improve our relationships and be happier and more fulfilled. Fivver: Get services like logo creation, whiteboard videos, animation and web development on Fivver: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrcpa Fivver Learn: Gain new skills like graphic design and video editing with Fivver Learn: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrlearn If you liked this episode, please write us a review! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey guys, if you're an avid listener of Young & Profiting podcast, I'd like to personally invite you to YAP Society on Slack. It's a community where listeners network and give us feedback on the show. Vote on episode titles, chat live with guests, and share your projects with the group.

We'd love to have you go to Bitly slash YAP Society. That's bit.ly slash YAP Society. You can find the link in our show notes. This episode of YAP is sponsored by Fiverr, a marketplace that over 5 million entrepreneurs used to grow their business. I've been using Fiverr for years. In fact, I got the YAP is sponsored by Fiverr, a marketplace that over 5 million entrepreneurs used to grow their business. I've been using Fiverr for years. In fact, I got the YAP logo made on there, and if you've seen my cool audio grams with animated cartoons, I get those images from Fiverr too.

They have affordable services like graphic design, web design, digital marketing, whiteboard explainer videos, programming, video editing, audio editing, and much more. They have over 100,000 talented freelancers to choose from, and it's super affordable. Prices just start at $5. If you're interested to give 5 or a shot, hit the link in our show notes. You are listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halitaaha, and today we're speaking with Robert Green, one of the world's

leading masters of human behavior. Robert has written six international bestsellers, including the 48 laws of power, the art of seduction, the 33 strategies of war, the 50th law, co-written by rapper 50 Cent, mastery, and the laws of human nature. In part one of this interview, we cover Robert's career journey and how he found his purpose in life. We also begin to cover his latest book, The Laws of Human Nature, which outlines 18 laws that motivate human behavior.

Robert and I discuss the law of irrationality and why this is the foundation of understanding human behavior. We also speak about the law of narcissism and how we are all narcissists and once we accept this we can transform self-love into empathy to improve our relationships and to be happier and more fulfilled. Hey Robert, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you for having me, Holly, my pleasure. Just so everybody understands we had a bit of technical difficulties, but after a half an hour and some hard work and consistency, we're here. So Robert, thank you so much.

Honestly, I appreciate your time. Don't worry about it. I'm used to this happening. So Robert, to give a brief introduction to our listeners, you are a master of human behavior. Some even call you a genius of human behavior. Some even call you a genius of human behavior. You have a canon of bestselling books, including The Wildly Popular 48 Laws of Power.

You've partnered with mega-rap stars, like 50 Cent for the 50th Law. And most recently, you released a book called The Laws of Human Nature. But from my understanding, writing is not something you immediately fell into. You actually held 80 jobs before becoming an author. You were a construction worker, a translator, and even a Hollywood movie writer.

You speak a lot about purpose, and we'll definitely get into that. But right now, I want to understand how you found your purpose, amidst all these different experiences, and what you feel your true purpose is in life. Well I always knew from pretty early age, I'd say probably around eight years old, that I wanted to be a writer. I just had a love of books and language and I remember I wrote short stories and I even wrote a novel when I was a kid. My thing was once I graduated college, kid. My thing was once I graduated college I didn't really know what kind of writing I was meant for. Was it writing fiction, novel, screenplay, was it writing books, nonfiction books, was it journalism? And so that would cause me to wander and to try my hand at many different jobs. I started off journalism working in

New York and I discovered that it really wasn't a different jobs. I started off journalism working in New York, and I discovered that really wasn't a good fit. I certainly wasn't my calling. I sort of tend to think in larger ideas, and journalism was so much about the day to day that I grew kind of frustrated and bored with it. And then I wandered around Europe, further cliché of the American wandering around Europe, and I worked in a hotel in Paris, and I didered around Europe, furtically shea of the American wandering around Europe,

and I worked in a hotel in Paris, and I did construction in Greece, and I taught English and Spain. You name it, I did it. I was using that as a springboard for maybe writing novels, because I thought a novelist has to have a lot of life experience. And so that was sort of my thinking.

And I didn't really come together, probably because I wasn't disciplined enough. And then I moved back to Los Angeles where I'm from, and I got involved in Hollywood thinking maybe I should be a screenwriter, I could make a living, and it seemed like fun. But Hollywood and me just weren't a good mix either. I didn't like the fact that when I wrote, I had no control over that. Twenty other people would get involved and ended up being this kind of mixed soup that all these other people worked on. I didn't feel like I had any power or any voice.

I don't like that. I'm kind of a control freak. Anyway, I was about 36 years old and things weren't clicking. And as you mentioned, I had 80 different jobs. I could go through them, but I won't bore the listeners out there. It was looking pretty bad for me. Like, I couldn't find. My purpose was to write, but what was I meant to write? And then I had the good fortune of meeting a man in Italy when I was working there in a job who was a packageer of books, his name was Yo Stealthers, and we've got along really well and

he asked me one day we were in Venice Italy walking along the East case there on the canal. He had had do you have any ideas for books Robert? And suddenly came out of me what turned into the 48 laws of power I just sort of rift on it. I improvised my idea, which is that power is timeless, that the people that I saw in Hollywood were just as macchi a valiant, as a lot of the history that I was reading about, like the Borsha, etc. And I gave them a story to illustrate what I meant. It ended up being a story that opened the 48 laws of power about Louis XIV to illustrate the law and never outshine the master.

And he got very excited, he said, Robert, I'll pay you to write the treatment. And then we'll see what happens. And I borrowed money from my parents, so I had enough money to write this treatment. And I figured at that point, I was what I call, I was on desk runs. So a phrase that I used in one of my books, this was like my one chance in life. This is what safety would call get richer die trying. Write a book or die trying, that was my motto back then. If I didn't make this thing work, I was probably just a loser in life. I was

never going to make it. And I was so motivated and I was so hungry and I was so angry that, you know, like I hadn't really done anything yet. And I knew this was it. It felt right to me. I was able to use all my experience, all my research. I found a voice that worked for me. And, you know, the lesson that I've gleaned from that and that I tell other people is that you have to experiment in life. It's never going to be easy and you're never going to come when you're 22, 23. And suddenly a bath can arise in your front door. It says, the ribbon attached to it. This is your purpose in life. It doesn't work like that. You have to struggle. And in struggling, what I did was I learned all kinds of skills.

I learned how to write under a deadline for journalism and how to make things snappy. I learned in Hollywood how to give things a structure, how to be dramatic. I learned how to research, et cetera. And all of these skills, plus all that I had learned about power went into this book. So the lesson is when you're in your 20s, you need to be constantly developing skills, because skills are what will lead to mastery, will lead to you finding your calling and life, and then a certain point will come as it came to me when I was 36, where an opportunity will cross your path and you're ready for it. And I would have been ready if I was 26 to write a book,

but things just hadn't happened to work out for a reason. So that's sort of how I found my calling. That's so inspirational and such a good lesson to take away the fact that, you know, your experiences that you have over the years, you gain these skills that you can then use in a different way one day for something really special that can, you know, make your career of like 48 laws of power did for you.

Great story, thanks for sharing. Your books are jam packed with information on historical leaders and rulers and their fascinating stories. And all of your books have been multi-year projects. You published just six times over the past 20 years where other authors might have 20 or 30 books within that time span.

But the difference is that your books are truly impressive works of art. And it took you six years to research the book that we're going to focus on in this interview called The Laws of Human Nature. Like a lot of your books, it's also filled with colorful stories of powerful people. So, what is the process for researching for your books? Because I assume that you have to do so much research and background information to come up with the content that you have. Well, the process is relatively simple. When I started book, I have a general idea. I've written

a treatment to sell it to the publisher and doing that, I have kind of a framework for what this book will be. But within that, I keep a very open mind. And in the beginning process of writing the book is kind of the most fun part. I start reading all kinds of books and various subjects. So when you write a book on human nature, I'm reading books about neuroscience, how the brain was formed, and reading books about anthropology, and how we evolved, and how our earliest ancestors evolved. I'm reading books on psychology and psychoanalysis,

the influence of the earliest years on us. I'm reading books about biology and physiology about our actual chemical makeup and how our brains are wired. I'm reading books about history. I'm reading a lot about philosophy. And I just saw this wide open net, and it's kind of fun. And what happens is, it's sort of this weird game. You read a book that's interesting, and then you look at the bibliography and it mentions

other books that said, they go, wow, that sounds really interesting. And it sends you on this wild goose chase, and it's kind of like serendipity. You find books that you never thought of before or subjects that you had imagined. And then you go on this chase, and then at some point you have to end the fun part because you have to write a book, you can't just research endlessly and just have a lot of fun. You have to get serious. So at that point what I do is I go back to all the books I've written maybe there'd be 40 or 50 books that I've read so far. And I start taking those books that I've break them into note cards. I take notes on each book on these four by six color coded note cards. And eventually

I'll end up with two thousand, maybe more note cards. And as I maybe reach the point of having a thousand note cards I go, all right, here's my book. I've got all of these subjects, all of these themes to keep repeating. And the notes and the research will tell me what my chapters are. So in researching about human nature, I see certain patterns that go throughout history that keep repeating no matter the culture, no matter the time period. So there'll be things about envy,

how humans are so prone to envy. I go, well, no, that has to be a chapter. And there's so much written about our irrationality, how we are basically governed by emotions, not by reason. All right, that has to be a check. There's all this delicious material about human aggression and what human aggression comes from, on and on and on.

And so that's sort of the process I go through. It starts off kind of wide and free-flowing and excited and then slowly kind of narrows and gets more rigid and I have to kind of go with my research. But it's a process that I've home after 20-some years of writing these books. And I wish I could make it easier. I wish I could just write the 30 books that you mentioned. But my problem in life is, I don't like things that are easy. I want to really help the reader. If I'm writing a book about what motivates human behavior, if I want to really reach out to the reader and say, this book is going to change your life.

It's going to change how you look at yourself. You're going to change how you look at your colleagues, your competitors, your audience. I have to really hit it. I really have to have it based on science and research. I can't just spout things off the top of my head. And a lot of books written nowadays, I don't like them because they're very thin. They have like one idea and the writer was clearly in a hurry to write the book so he can make money or whatever. I mean there are still very good books up there, but a lot of times books kind of continually disappoint me. And I don't want to disappoint the reader. I want to like thrill the reader with going, wow,

I never thought of that. This is something completely new. And I want to do that page after page after page. So that's why I could do this excruciating process. That's amazing. You know, I read some of your books years ago, but the most recent book that I read your latest book time and time again, I was like, wow, I never thought of that or wow, I've never heard of that and you have such unique perspective and the research really shows and it's so entertaining. It's like almost like watching a movie when you're reading your book because you have so many stories and it's so many real examples So kudos to you

Like the way that you described your process for writing a book was like researching you for this interview You have so much content out there. It was so hard to narrow it down To an interview So I'm gonna have to have you back on if you let me for the verses of today's show I'm gonna largely focus on your latest book and it outlines 18 laws that defines who we humans are. And for my listeners who aren't familiar or who never have read the book before,

would you just explain the purpose and reason behind the book and what you wanted readers to gain from it? Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University Podcast. The Millionaire University Podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Again, that Shopify.com-profiting Shopify.com-profiting all lower.com-profiting. All lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Well, we all kind of are interested in most of us at least, starting in improving ourselves. We realize that we have faults and weaknesses, gaps in our knowledge, etc. So we read self-help books, we read books on psychology, whatever. But it's my opinion that none of these books really ever change you. That basically you remain kind of a prisoner of these patterns in life that you can't get

out of. And reading a book isn't really going to help you. And so my purpose is in writing this book is to tell the reader, okay, look, let's bring this down to basics. Your success in life and your happiness depends on your ability to get along with other people, to be able to understand them on a deep level, to be able to recognize people who are toxic and avoid them, realize how to get along better and be more persuasive with the people you're dealing with so that they will follow your ideas or be interested in what you have to do or what you have to say.

So that you're not always kind of budding heads with people's resistance. So life gets easier and you're not always having any emotional drama. And also, you need to understand yourself better because a big problem life is. You don't really understand what motivates your own behavior and you do things kind of unconsciously and you get in trouble. So given that, I want to get at the root cause of why we misunderstand human behavior. And my idea is that the people you're dealing with on a day-to-day level, and you can think about it right now, you can think about your boss, you can think about your colleagues, You can think about that audience, the clients, or customers you're trying to

reach. You have assumptions about them. You have a kind of a shorthand, sort of easy snack judgments, prejudices, pre-judgments, about who they are, usually based on your own desires and wishes. And I'm trying to make the point is that you're not really seeing people for who they are. And when you operate to make the point is that you're not really seeing people for who they are. And when you operate in life without knowledge, when you operate kind of based on half ideas of who people are, you're going to make terrible mistakes. You're going to come out with a product that doesn't resonate with people because you don't understand their psychology. You're going to offend your colleague without realizing it. You're not going to get people interested in financing your ideas because you don't know how to appeal to other people's self-interest, etc., etc.

So I want to make this book a game changer. I want to really, really show you in a deep level what motivates human behavior. And as you said, I have 18 different laws. So I'm exploring 18 different facets of human behavior. A lot of it is, let's be honest, a lot of it's sort of negative things that we can't control forces inside of us, that govern our behavior that are kind of unconscious, which is our need to constantly compare ourselves to other people and think of, well, what they have and what I don't have in comparison

to them, which causes all kinds of problems in the series of social media. So I want to make you aware of these things that are inside of you that are motivating your behavior, and more importantly, how it's motivating the people around you, that you can find an operating life with enough knowledge is never going to be perfect. You can never understand people perfectly. But the thing about human beings is we have a tool. We have this amazing tool, which is what I would call empathy. We have the ability to think inside of other people,

to imagine what their life is like, to imagine what their experience is like, to imagine what it means to come from a totally different culture, or to be a different gender, or whatever. And by doing this, we kind of expand our knowledge, and we get a sense of intuitive feel for other people. And this amazing tool that you have, and I explain in the book where it comes from, is like you're not using it. It's like a muscle that's not even being developed. And I'm going to give you

tools for honing this empathy for the disability, put yourself inside the shoes and skin of the people that you deal with. That sounds incredible. And for my listeners out there, I read the book and it is like truly the ultimate self-development, self-help guide that is out there. It's great. Let's begin with the title of your book, The Laws of Human Nature. To me, that almost implies that we're like animals. We have predictable instincts and habits that are unavoidable. And today, with so much advancement and technology, we kind of forget that we're animals.

And what you call our lower selves, the part of us that reacts on instinct and motion as opposed to irrationality. The first on your book is the law of irrationality. We think we're rational, but we are not. Why is it true that today we have never been more enslaved by human nature and that we are mostly irrational beings. Well, you know, human beings evolved over the course of hundreds of thousands of years ago, well before the invention of language, it's arbitrary to say when this evolution

began, you can go back to primates, you can go back further and further to mammals. But let's say, you know, two million years ago, we started evolving in the form that we are now. And in that period, you know, we were feeling certain pressures from the environment. Human beings compared to like other animals in Africa where we emerged were kind of weak. We couldn't run very fast. We had no claws. We weren't as strong as chimpanzees. And we were preyed with a lot of animals like leopard, etc.

And in many different moments, human beings almost became extinct because we were small in number and we were so physically weak. But the strength of being developed was being a social animal and learning how to cooperate on a much higher level. And in this process of dealing with a very harsh environment and learning how to get along with other people and operate in a band that could be very cohesive and powerful, our brains developed and our brains developed in a very particular way. And one of these particular ways is emotion. So animals obviously feel emotions, most definitely fear. The fear of response is something that even reptiles have.

It goes back millions and millions of years. But we humans evolved many more complex emotions than animals experience. And basically, the reason for these emotions that we developed was a form of communication so that before the invention of language, if we felt fear or joy or excitement, it would communicate itself on our face. And other people would notice that.

And it was a way to communicate without having to say anything and to help us in our survival so that if we were suddenly being stalked by a predator, we could all respond together very quickly because we saw the fear that people were expressing, etc. So we evolved very complex, very nuanced emotion, but then later we developed language and part of our brain, the neocortex, where language kind of evolves and sort of the executive function of the human brain, sort of the rational part of us. And that part only evolved over the course of 30, 40,000 years in the time that language

was involved. And so if you look at the human system, our neocortex is on the top part of our brain, but below it are all of these more primitive systems like the limbic system that governs our emotions. And these systems are ancient and powerful. They have hormonal and chemical responses to situations. And that little cortex on the top that governs our rational ability to think and execute and plan is actually very recent and smaller and much less powerful.

So we all have the experience where we think we know what we want, we have a plan, we have a strategy, we spend time working on it, and then suddenly under the stress of the moment or the pressure from other people or a change in circumstances, and the emotions overwhelm us. And all our ability to think straight and all our planning goes out the window because emotions are much more powerful than the thinking part of us. And then the other thing is, when we have emotions, they're not connected to the other parts of our brain. In other words, we think in terms of words, but the emotional

part of us, the limbic system, where emotions emerge, are not connected to the language part of our brain. So you never really know, you never can really quite verbalize the way you feel. You wake up one morning and you're depressed, you don't know why and you can't rash I can't put it into words. It just happens or you're angry and you think you're angry for some reason but then if you think about it, it's probably you don't really know exactly why you're angry. That's because these two parts of the brain don't really communicate well. So basically your emotions are largely governing your behavior. They're governing your decisions on what you buy particularly and economists

and marketing people understand very well that your buying behavior is mostly emotional. It's governing your career decisions, governing so much of what you do in life. So I'm trying to make the point, understand how your brain operates, understand that you are not born rational, understand that most of your decisions, most of your planning, most of your strategies, stem from wishes and desires instead of actual thinking and strategizing and planning. And if you can realize that, then suddenly you have the ability to step back and go, all right, I'm not going to let my emotions push me around. I'm going to be aware of the roles they're

playing in my decision. And I'm going to try and introduce a little more thinking into what I do in life. So that's sort of, I'm kind of giving you a long explanation that is perhaps the most important chapter of the book. But that's sort of the reasoning of when trying to make you more aware of who you are and what really is governing your behavior. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to New Heights, break through to the six or seven-figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of Not One, but six thriving companies, and now she's

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That's masterclass.com-sash-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-sash-profiting. Yeah. So your concept of rationality, is that really just the same as emotional intelligence? Or do you think that it's different? It has an element of emotional intelligence in that you're aware of your own emotions and where they come from. So I talk in the book, for instance, you'll be angry and you'll think that you're angry

because somebody said something to you and they triggered you and you explode or you write an email or something. But really what is going on is that somebody said something that morning that made you upset and frustrated and you carried it with you later in the day and what this other person did you was merely a trigger for something that was already in you or maybe it even stands from things in your early childhood that you're not even aware of. So emotional intelligence is the ability to see the source of your own emotion and understand where they come from and not just simply react on them and not just simply assume that you're

always justified to feel the way that you do. So in that sense, it is very much a part of rationality, but it's not the whole picture. There are other components that I go into very deeply in that chapter. Yeah. In the past, you have said that we have a higher and a lower self. Like previously mentioned, the lower self is the one that behaves like an animal, whereas the higher self understands our innate human behaviors and tries to overcome them and use them to our benefit to optimize our relationships and social standing. Do you think that it's truly possible to transcend human nature and become fully rational,

like a fully rational being, or do you think that you're always gonna have these emotional tendencies and animalistic behaviors? Well, there's no transcending human nature because it is our nature, you can't get out of that. And I'm trying to make a big point is, the fact that you think that you can somehow transcend that you can be different from other people, that you are not irrational, you're not narcissistic, you are not aggressive, is an illusion.

It's effective, you are very much a prisoner of human nature. But with that awareness, by being aware that you are not rational, that you have to learn how to become rational, you can then use the actual tools that we humans have for much greater purpose. So you can use your human nature. You have human nature and it can be used for destructive purposes for those animal things that you mentioned, or it can actually be channeled into very productive things, which is becoming part of that higher self. So, like those moments in life where you overcame your own kind of selfishness and you felt like you were actually thinking about other people and acted on that, you felt that higher self operating. It's part of your, and you liked it. Or when you actually, instead of being lazy and playing video games and taking the path of least resistance,

you actually got your act together. And for six months, you were really hard on a project, and you made it come together. You felt great. You felt, wow, this is part of me. This is a potential part of me. That's incredibly powerful. So the same energy that makes you aggressive

and push people around can be channeled into something productive. It can be channeled into being persistent. it can be channeled into being persistent, it can be channeled into fighting for a just cause. You must take what you're given, the tool that you're given and simply use them for better and higher purposes, but there's no escaping human nature. Yeah, how about we talk about the law of narcissism next, this probably was my favorite topic in your book. We often think about narcissists in one particular way, people who are selfish and absorbed

themselves and in love with themselves, but you say it's more complicated than that and all humans are narcissists by our own nature. Why is that? Well, it's a little bit complicated, but basically I explained where this comes from. And essentially, in your earliest years, when you were three or four years old, you don't even remember this. But you had to go through a period, depending on your parents. This is about most people with their parents, where you had to deal with a situation where

you're not getting as much attention and recognition as you want it from your parents. Perhaps there were other siblings, perhaps they thought you were getting older and you need to become more independent. And at that moment, psychologists talk about it. It's a very frightening moment because suddenly you have a sense of you're almost being abandoned into the world. You're not getting what you used to get so easily. And so what we humans do in that moment in those years is we develop a self, an image of ourselves, and to self that we can love, we can appreciate. We like our own thoughts, we like our own bodies, we like our own ideas and our own preferences. And so in those moments when we're not getting attention as we get older, we

can always fall back on ourself and go, well, I'm really actually a good person. I don't need to have constant attention from other people. I can go back into myself and be entertained and find that validation and recognition on my own. I don't need other people. As you get older, the sort of self gets more and more pronounced. It becomes kind of like this hard shell. And so you'll notice, if you look at yourself in life, you'll notice that you tend to like people who are like you. You like people who look like you. You like people who have the same values that you do. You like people who like the same movies that you do, you like people who like the same movies that you like, it's because you're basically a narcissist, they're giving you a mirror reflection

of who you are, they're giving you that sense of validation by reflecting back to you, your own sort of image of who you are. And so nobody escapes that process. If you didn't have a self to love, you would be at the mercy of other people. You would constantly feel empty. You would constantly feel the need to draw attention to other people by acting out, by being dramatic, by playing all kinds of games. And that person that I just mentioned, like what you would be like if you didn't have a self to love, that is what I call a deep narcissist.

Deep narcissists never really developed the kind of anchor that's self that they could love, and so as they go through life, they feel a tremendous amount of pain. They're always insecure, they're always anxious. Are people paying attention to me? Do people like me? Am I pleasing them? Am I getting the attention that I want? And so deep narcissists are always acting out,

are always trying to get attention in some way or other. And we've all recognized people like that. And so my idea is that you are self-absorbed. If you looked at yourself honestly, when you're talking in a conversation with people, half the time, more than half the time, you're not listening to them. You're involving your own thoughts, because you think that your own thoughts are more interesting than theirs. You're involving your own anxiety, your own plans, your own ideas, because you think that that's more interesting than other people. You are self-absorbed. Get over that

stuff, trying to be into Nile. And once you recognize that you have this people, you are self-absorbed. Get over that stuff, trying to be in denial. And once you recognize that you have this tendency, you can then begin to overcome it. You can then begin to, I said, because reverse where you turn that kind of self-love and inner fascination with yourself towards other people. You can start becoming more fascinated. What other people have to say

in your own thoughts and your own ideas. And so empathy, as I mentioned before, is an incredibly powerful tool, but it can only be used once you come to terms with the fact that you are mostly, for most of your life and for most of the time that you're interacting with people, you are tend to be in meshed in your own self and your own ideas and you need to get out of yourself.

And the idea in this book is being self-absorbed, being in meshed in your own problems continually is actually making miserable. It's actually a cause for depression and getting interested in other people and actually sitting in a conversation and actually not listening to your own voice but actually trying to imagine what their life is like, what their experience is like, therapy, it gets you out of yourself, it gets you out of your own little world and it kind of, it's refreshing and energizing. So it's not only is it is gonna make you a better social person to learn how to deal with your own self-absorption,

it will also help you mentally and creatively and make you happier, more fulfilled person. That's super powerful. And so for my listeners out there, the key takeaway is everyone's a narcissist, even if you're a little bit narcissistic and you should transform your self-love into empathy. So that's a great lesson. Thanks for listening to part one of my interview with Robert Green on Young & Profiting Podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to write us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show. Follow YAHP on Instagram at Young & Profiting and check us out at Young & Profiting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on YAHP Society on Slack. Check out our show notes or Young & Profiting.com for the registration link. You can find me on Instagram at YAHP with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the YAHP team for another successful episode. This week I'd like to give a special shout out to his sham. His sham has been working hard booking our winter lineup,

and we can't wait to share who we've got coming up. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft.

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