Robert Greene: What A Near-Death Experience Taught Me About Life

1. 0:00 – 0:56

   Experiencing Life Like a Child

   1. RGRobert Greene0:00

      You have to be aware of how short life is. You need to get back to that sensation of being alive in the moment, and it's kind of an ecstatic experience, and so I wanted people to have that in their life without having to die.

   2. LHLewis Howes0:12

      He's the best-selling author, millions of copies of his books sold, was the very first guest on this show. Now, 2001 episodes later, welcome back to the School of Greatness, Robert Greene.

   3. RGRobert Greene0:23

      When I had my near-death experience, I was slurring my words incredibly, and my face was falling. When someone saves your life, there's obviously a different kind of feeling, right? I have to look at her through new eyes. I have to see that I am here because of her. Love between two humans is of the highest form of the sublime. It's about experiencing life on a higher level.

   4. LHLewis Howes0:46

      Would you say that most of our pain and suffering comes from focusing too much on ourselves?

   5. RGRobert Greene0:52

      Well...

2. 0:56 – 4:39

   Why Lewis Started the Podcast

   1. LHLewis Howes0:56

      Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm excited about our guest. We have the one and only Robert Greene in the house, and Robert was episode number one on the School of Greatness, and this is episode 2001. I get chills just thinking about it, because of so much that has happened in the last almost 14 years for both of us.

   2. RGRobert Greene1:16

      Hey, hey, yeah.

   3. LHLewis Howes1:17

      But I'm so grateful for you for being, taking a chance on me, being my first guest when no one knew what a podcast was back then, so a big thank you for that.

   4. RGRobert Greene1:26

      What were you thinking back then? You thinking... It wasn't even called a podcast, was it?

   5. LHLewis Howes1:30

      It wa- it, it was, but no one knew what a, no one knew what a podcast was. I was thinking, "I'm going through a stage where I feel stuck in my life. I feel stuck in a relationship, my business is-

   6. RGRobert Greene1:41

      What were you doing before then?

   7. LHLewis Howes1:42

      I was running a-

   8. RGRobert Greene1:43

      Let's talk a bit about you here.

   9. LHLewis Howes1:44

      [laughs] I was running a, I was running an online marketing company.

   10. RGRobert Greene1:46

       Uh-huh.

   11. LHLewis Howes1:47

       I had a business partnership, but we were kind of, like, arguing a lot.

   12. RGRobert Greene1:50

       Oh.

   13. LHLewis Howes1:50

       And we weren't seeing eye to eye.

   14. RGRobert Greene1:51

       Uh-huh.

   15. LHLewis Howes1:52

       I had moved to LA maybe six months before then for a girl. That didn't work out.

   16. RGRobert Greene1:57

       Uh-huh.

   17. LHLewis Howes1:57

       And so I felt stuck in this kind of relationship that was off and on, and we weren't seeing eye to eye. And, um, I just... But I was making money in a business, but everything in my, my relationships were falling apart, and I was at the center of all those kind of breakdowns.

   18. RGRobert Greene2:13

       Uh-huh.

   19. LHLewis Howes2:14

       And so instead of blaming everyone else, I s- kind of had a aha moment. I was like, "Oh, maybe I'm the problem. Maybe there's something that I get to look at within me that's causing these breakdowns, or choosing relationships that aren't in alignment for whatever reason." And that's when the healing journey began for me, and I said, "I feel stuck, but I also have access to really wise individuals who have given me mentorship for the previous few years. I want to..." And I'd kind of been interviewing people organically-

   20. RGRobert Greene2:47

       Uh-huh

   21. LHLewis Howes2:48

       ... without recording it.

   22. RGRobert Greene2:49

       Uh-huh.

   23. LHLewis Howes2:49

       And I would just take action, specifically in my business, and I was like, "Well, maybe I can just interview people and see if it can help me get unstuck, but also help others."

   24. RGRobert Greene2:57

       Oh, interesting.

   25. LHLewis Howes2:58

       And I was actually stuck in LA traffic when this idea came to me.

   26. RGRobert Greene3:02

       Interesting.

   27. LHLewis Howes3:03

       And I was like, everyone around me stuck in the, in the, the highway was, all looked frustrated, honking their horn. And I was like-

   28. RGRobert Greene3:11

       Oh, yeah

   29. LHLewis Howes3:11

       ... "They look stuck. I look stuck. Maybe we're all stuck" [laughs] . And I was like, "What is it within me that's causing this, or that's attracting this, or aligning with this?" And the podcast began, and you were the first guest that we had on. So I wanna acknowledge you again for constantly inspiring me and so many people in this world for the work that you do.

   30. RGRobert Greene3:32

       Oh, thank you.
3. 4:39 – 11:11

   Recovering Childhood Wonder

   1. LHLewis Howes4:39

      have as kids. I was telling you beforehand that my twin daughters just turned one.

   2. RGRobert Greene4:43

      Wow.

   3. LHLewis Howes4:44

      And you have a whole chapter about childhood in here.

   4. RGRobert Greene4:47

      Yeah.

   5. LHLewis Howes4:48

      What is it about childhood that allows for awe and wonder that we, as adults, tend to forget how to tap into?

   6. RGRobert Greene4:58

      Well, um, it's hard because we can't remember our first months and first years of life, right? And it's kind of a strange thought. We can remember everything else. The, probably the reason is we didn't have language then, so we'd have nothing to ha- stick our memories onto. But I did a lot of research, and if you think, and if you've had children, you look at the baby when it's first born, and it's just this bundle of nerves and impulses, just crying all the time. It's got all these things you gotta attend to, and it's kind of in this strange state of just needing. It's an, almost like an animal, okay? Then around nine months or so, maybe 10, it's depending on the child, things start calming down a little bit, and they start looking up at the world. They start looking up in, in their crib. They look at the mobiles, things that are moving. They see their parents moving about. They start observing the world. And try imagining this for a moment at, in your adult perspective, but you're seeing the world for the first time. You're seeing things for the first time. So your mind is really open and expansive. We've ... The, the childhood brain is so much more plastic than the adult brain. It's constantly forming these new neural pathways in the brain and making all sorts of connections, which is why a child's imaginations are so powerful, right? So the brain is just really active, and it's seeing all these things for the first time, and it's utterly enchanted. Colors, right? Just colors, not for the object, but just the color itself is fascinating. Everything, you know, the sky, animals, particularly pets are, are absolutely mesmerizing. The world of adults, which seems so weird and strange, these tall figures moving about-

   7. LHLewis Howes6:40

      [laughs]

   8. RGRobert Greene6:40

      ... doing their strange activities. You don't even know language, so it's just noise that you're hearing. The world is strange. You're not an animal, so that you don't have any ... You're, you're conscious, but you don't have words to hold onto, so it's this incredible experience that you're going through, right? So the adult brain operates through what we call inhibition. In order to get through our day-to-day lives, our brain is inhibiting the information that comes in, right? So that we can function. If we had to see all the colors and things going on around us, we, we wouldn't be able to handle our day-to-day business, right? The child's brain has very little of that inhibiting going on, so it's paying attention to everything, right? Even the silliest, stupidest thing, it's paying attention to and wondering what that is, okay? So it's this whole other world that they have entered, and then they learn language. You know, it depends on the age. I don't know if your ch- children are starting to speak yet. They're probably not-

   9. LHLewis Howes7:38

      Yes

   10. RGRobert Greene7:39

       ... ma-ma-pa

   11. LHLewis Howes7:39

       They're ba-ba-ba, da-da, ma-ma, yeah

   12. RGRobert Greene7:41

       ... babbling kind of thing. You know, I don't know exactly when, a little after a year, year and a half. You start ... You learn the word I, and that's a very powerful moment because up until then, you don't really have a sense of yourself as an individual, as something separate from mommy and daddy and the environment. And so you become interested in I'm this person, I'm this individual, and that's also very fascinating. And perhaps you look in the mirror for the first time, and you see yourse- an image of yourself reflected, and that's very strange experience, okay? So everything is weird and wondrous and strange and enchanting. Of course, there are people who have had troubled childhoods. We have to acknowledge that, and it's not all wonderful. But even still, their minds are, are still fresh and open, and there are moments of this incredible enchantment, right? Then slowly, slowly, day by day, we start losing it, okay? So that sense of having a self and an ego. So there's a proportion going on in childhood. The world is fascinating. 90% of your attention is in the world and how interesting things are. 10% maybe is about yourself and your needs and who you are because you're just beginning to think of yourself as an individual, okay? Slowly, those numbers start to reverse-

   13. LHLewis Howes9:03

       Mm

   14. RGRobert Greene9:03

       ... until you're an adult, and 98% of your attention is about yourself-

   15. LHLewis Howes9:08

       Wow

   16. RGRobert Greene9:09

       ... your ego, your insecurities, am I getting attention? And maybe 2% is noticing things that are around you, okay?

   17. LHLewis Howes9:17

       Is being in awe of something or noticing something.

   18. RGRobert Greene9:19

       Just even paying attention.

   19. LHLewis Howes9:21

       Ah.

   20. RGRobert Greene9:21

       People ... I walk, look at people. I'm up in the hills of Griffith Park riding my bike. It, it's, uh, spectacularly beautiful, and people are like this. They're not looking at the trees, the, the sky, the, just the insanity of our planet Earth. So they're not even ... So 2% of the ... you might even paying attention a little bit to the environment, okay? So in the book, I call it the lost self. Your childhood is your lost self, right? You've lost it. But if you never had your childhood, you would never know what you were missing, and you probably wouldn't be unhappy. But because you once knew this mind that was so open and fresh and excited and awe-

   21. LHLewis Howes10:06

       Mm-hmm

   22. RGRobert Greene10:07

       ... unconsciously in the back of your mind, you're going, "I'm missing something. I once had it." You're not thinking that consciously, but unconsciously it's affecting you, and it's secretly making you miserable because you once knew that you had possessed a mind that was experiencing the world in a very immediate and powerful fashion. And so I say, you know, you, you, you maybe try drugs. You try ... You get into addiction, all sorts of things to try and recapture that feeling of not being separated from the world. And in the book, I try and tell you, and there's a lot of research I go through, it, it's not about recapturing the paradise of childhood or being all nostalgic or looking at photographs and, and TV shows from that. It's about re ex- look- looking at the world through the eyes of a child again, re-experiencing your childhood in the present, how you experience the world, okay? And I give you exercises on that and how you can go back to ... So one, one example I'll give you is

4. 11:11 – 16:37

   Experiencing Time Differently

   1. RGRobert Greene11:11

      children experience time in a much different way than adults do. First of all, we obviously have to experience time for scheduling, right? And we all go crazy with that, particularly nowadays where we're expected to be on top of so many things, okay? But a child, I give the metaphor of imagine a river, okay? And you are in some, a raft, a canoe on the river, and you're just floating along the river. All right? The child experiences time as if it's inside that river. It just, it's a flow. It's a feeling of being, of movement, of movement, and it's a physical, sensual sensation of just being in the present and flowing with the time, and it's kind of an ecstatic experience of being alive, right? You can't look behind because you're not, you're just flowing down the river. You can't really look ahead. It's just the sense of flow is, is what it is. The adults are standing on the shoreline, and they're seeing the river pass, so they can see back to the past and they can see forward, but they're not inside time. They're not inside that flow. Time is this abstract thing of, "Tomorrow I gotta finish this. In an hour I gotta send this email. Yesterday that person said that. What'd that mean? I'm so, I'm angry and upset." You're not inside time. You're viewing it from the outside, and it's making you anxious and neurotic and upset and worried. When you're in the flow of time, it's this, like, liberating fee- Now, I'm not saying you can go around like that all the time. You wouldn't get any work done. But upon occasion, you need to get back to that sensation of just experiencing time as this sensation of being alive in the moment and being inside that flow, that movement.

   2. LHLewis Howes12:54

      Mm.

   3. RGRobert Greene12:55

      Just the sensual feeling. I have other things about that that I'm gonna help, 'cause at the end of each chapter, I have exercises which I've never done in any of my books before.

   4. LHLewis Howes13:06

      Why did you d- do it in this one?

   5. RGRobert Greene13:08

      Because I don't want it to be an academic book about a subject about the sublime. And the subject can be very academic. I want the reader to experience everything I write about because, I mean, we can get into this later. When I had my near-death experience with my stroke, the world ... When I emerged from it, the world was different. It looked different. It felt different. It had this sparkle, this intensity. And part of the reason to write the book is I wanted people to have that in their life without having to die.

   6. LHLewis Howes13:39

      Mm.

   7. RGRobert Greene13:40

      So I wanted to give you exercises so that you can feel what I'm writing about. So that's one of the exercises, and I have others so that you can perceive the world-

   8. LHLewis Howes13:51

      Mm

   9. RGRobert Greene13:51

      ... more in that immediate, fresh, open fashion and re-enchant it so everything doesn't seem so similar and the same and so, and you're always craving something new. Th- I have a quote in there, "You don't need to travel to different planets and, and, and have all these incredible experiences. What you need is a new pair of eyes." It's a quote of Marcel Proust. You want to be able to look at the w- the same world that you're looking at but with a new pair of eyes, and that's a lot of what I'm trying to do in the book.

   10. LHLewis Howes14:21

       How do we start to look at the world with a new pair of eyes when we are dealing with a lot of challenges or stress or re- responsibilities or overwhelmed constantly and it's hard for us to remove ourselves from that or, like you say, step into the flow of that feeling?

   11. RGRobert Greene14:39

       Well, nothing really of great value in life is gonna be easy, okay? But what I try and say in the preface to the book, and I understand this is a strange concept. Uh, Robert writes about power. He writes about seduction. M- those I can get what that is, but the sublime, what the hell's that?

   12. LHLewis Howes14:56

       Mastery, all these things. Yeah.

   13. RGRobert Greene14:57

       Yeah. No, well, I don't know. So I try and ground you in the preface, and I try and say that probably you've had moments where you've sensed something else about life, something greater than your individual concerns, but it's very fleeting. But I want you to get a feel, understand that a lot of your misery and unhappiness and depression come from feelings of being so disconnected from your surroundings, from other people, and even from yourself. It's making you miserable, right? And you don't think about that way. Your tendency will be to blame other people for your depression, your unhappiness, or the world, okay? But there's something about how you experience life that can alter all of that. And in, in experiencing life in this different kind of zone, this different kind of level, it doesn't mean you can't go around about your day-to-day work, you can't get things done.

   14. LHLewis Howes15:59

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RGRobert Greene16:00

       In fact, being so anxious and depressed and having, thinking about constantly about emails you have to respond to, it's not making your c- your career, your parenting, your relationships any better.

   16. LHLewis Howes16:11

       No.

   17. RGRobert Greene16:11

       It's probably making you crazy, right? So in some ways, feeling like there's something greater than your ego out in the world is gonna make it almost easier to, to function in the day-to-day life. So I wanna make it clear that this is a book that can actually h- make life easier for you if you can absorb some of the lessons.

   18. LHLewis Howes16:33

       For those that chase success, money, or fame,

5. 16:37 – 20:28

   Why Success Won't Bring Joy

   1. LHLewis Howes16:37

      and it, they realize that it doesn't give them the ultimate fulfillment they're looking for, how can chasing or tapping into the sublime bring them more joy and fulfillment than money, success, or fame?

   2. RGRobert Greene16:54

      Well, it's a, it's a well-known aphorism, and I write about it in The Laws of Human Nature, that if you make things like money and success your goal, it's almost you're gonna get in your own way and you're gonna make life harder. So the most successful people in the world, you can take, you can take an example like a Steve Jobs, for instance. Notoriously, he never cared about money.

   3. LHLewis Howes17:17

      Mm.

   4. RGRobert Greene17:17

      He, he, he hard- he wouldn't spend it. He lived in a very plain apartment. He didn't buy all these l- What his motivation was was creating these beautiful objects, was design. He was a designer more than anything. He wanted to marry technology with beautiful aesthetic design, right? It was his obsession. And in the process of mastering that and the pleasure it gave him and the flow, which is a s- subject in Mastery, he made a lot of money.

   5. LHLewis Howes17:49

      Mm.

   6. RGRobert Greene17:49

      More money than pr- a lot of, you know, almost anybody else, right? So I don't know Elon Musk. I don't know him personally. I know s- I can understand Steve Jobs better. But I have a feeling that what motivates him is the excitement of some new bit of technology that he create, something like out of a comic book, a car that can fly, whoa, more than... I know m- money is certainly is probably important to him, but I think the, the real motivation is the excitement of creating something that he imagined, right?

   7. LHLewis Howes18:22

      Right.

   8. RGRobert Greene18:23

      So this isn't a book that's going to make you more successful in life. I, I understand that, so maybe you'll be put off in reading about it. But to feel like there's something larger than yourself, that you're connected to something deep, for so many s- millennia, we humans needed religion. We needed the feeling like there was something transcendent, greater than our s- itself, our ego, our individual self. It kind of grounded us in the sense that there's something much more important, much vaster, right? And that sense of connection was very healing to the human being, because we're the only animal that's conscious of our mortality and our death, and if we think about it, we go, "Why go on l- doing anything when it's all gonna be canceled out by death?" Religion was an incredibly important value in our world, and it's largely disappeared. You can't get through life without having coming to terms with some of these things. At some point, your health is gonna leave you. You're gonna suffer. Your relationships will fall apart. People you know are gonna die, and you're gonna be f- confronting the bare realities-

   9. LHLewis Howes19:36

      Mm

   10. RGRobert Greene19:36

       ... of life and how harsh it can be, and you're gonna want to have something that grounds you and that's more than just money and more than just success, more than your ego. And if you haven't been developing this in your 20s and 30s, you get to your 60s and 70s, and you can't cope. You can't handle what life is throwing at you. So I must, I have to say it, this isn't a practical book for success. It's a practical book for living your li-

   11. LHLewis Howes20:06

       Mm

   12. RGRobert Greene20:06

       ... experiencing life on a higher level. That's the practical value in it.

   13. LHLewis Howes20:10

       Well, the, and the, the flip side of that, when you live your life on a higher level, you're, should be able to attract more success, more opportunities, more experiences that bring you more joy.

   14. RGRobert Greene20:21

       Yeah.

   15. LHLewis Howes20:22

       And when you're in that joy state, you typically can create better results in your life, typically.

6. 20:28 – 24:27

   Transforming Romantic Relationships

   1. RGRobert Greene20:28

      I have a chapter in there about love. It's called The Love Sublime, and I'm trying to say that love between two humans is like the highest form of the sublime in so many ways, okay? And the reason is we're, we humans have two sides to us. We're physical. We're an animal. We w- we have sexual desires. We want that kind of pleasure. We're also spiritual creatures that are aware of our mortality, that are aware of higher things, and we have spiritual cravings for something transcendent, okay? Just sex by itself is a kind of an emptiness. We, we get sa- we get that satisfaction, then we want more or something. It doesn't-

   2. LHLewis Howes21:14

      Mm

   3. RGRobert Greene21:14

      ... really fulfill us. There's something missing. Pure spirituality, going to the church, you know, it could be great, but we're also physical beings, and so there's something seemingly alienating about that. In The Love Sublime, you're combining the physical attraction to a person with the spiritual. Your love becomes something spiritual. The person that you are attracted to, normally the people in our lives are objects. They, we just pass them by. We, you know, we, we see them like anything else, right? In The Love Sublime, that person becomes a subject. They live inside of you.

   4. LHLewis Howes21:54

      Mm.

   5. RGRobert Greene21:54

      You connect to their consciousness. They become a part of you, okay? The reason I'm mentioning this is we have the metaphor of falling in love, and it's like literally falling, okay? And there's a fear of that falling. We fear if we get too far, we're vulnerable, and we're gonna get hurt, and so we stop it, right? We start having doubts and mistrust, and, "I don't know if I can trust this person. They might hurt me," you know? Then power struggles start emerging, and the moment you stop the process of falling, the other person feels that, and it causes them to distrust you, and it causes them to stop falling. So your attitude affects the other person. But by letting go and letting yourself fall deeper into what I'm calling The Love Sublime, the other person is drawn into that and s- and goes into the same process. So how you feel about the world, how you feel about yourself translates to other people.

   6. LHLewis Howes22:59

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RGRobert Greene22:59

      And in this one instance, that sensation of letting go of your defenses and your ego is gonna draw the other person into that.

   8. LHLewis Howes23:06

      Yes.

   9. RGRobert Greene23:07

      So there is a power that comes in, in, in submitting to the sublime.

   10. LHLewis Howes23:12

       At work, greatness sometimes starts with a pile of meeting notes here, follow-up questions there, but that's okay because ChatGPT Work, a new way to work in ChatGPT, can organize multi-step projects and help you make progress while staying in control. ChatGPT Work can use your apps, connected tools, and files to create things like landing pages, trackers, internal tools, even web apps. Say your team has a new product concept. Use ChatGPT Work to review customer feedback, pull themes, and draft a prototype. Maybe there's a planning doc that ChatGPT Work can organize into owners, next steps, and a shareable status update. Make it even more specialized by installing specific plugins like Google Drive or Microsoft Teams. The big picture? ChatGPT Work helps you get unstuck between thinking about your work and actually making progress on it Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans Interesting. In the book, uh, The Law of the Sublime, you know,

7. 24:27 – 30:20

   Surviving a Stroke

   1. LHLewis Howes24:27

      in the, the first words you write are about how you owe your life to your wife.

   2. RGRobert Greene24:32

      Yeah.

   3. LHLewis Howes24:33

      How has your relationship with the law of love and the sublime transformed since having your stroke eight years ago in your marriage? How has that law of the love of sublime transformed in some way for you?

   4. RGRobert Greene24:51

      Well, uh, we'd been together for many years, and like any couple, we had our ups and downs, but it was... But we had a very strong bond. And then, um, it's hard to explain, but when somebody saves your life, you have a... It kind of alters things.

   5. LHLewis Howes25:11

      A literal saving, not just, "Oh, you saved me by coming into my life-"

   6. RGRobert Greene25:15

      No

   7. LHLewis Howes25:15

      ... but she saved you-

   8. RGRobert Greene25:16

      Yeah

   9. LHLewis Howes25:17

      ... from dying.

   10. RGRobert Greene25:17

       Yeah, because I was driving my car in Los Angeles, and she saw that my... I was slurring my words incredibly, and my face was falling. Half my face was drooping, and she didn't panic. She didn't scream or, or once. She just, "Stop the car, pull over, get out." He s- I started getting out of the car. "Get back in," and she called 911 right away. She kept her... She was level-headed, you know, which is, uh, something a lot of people wouldn't be.

   11. LHLewis Howes25:48

       Right.

   12. RGRobert Greene25:49

       She's a very level-headed person. She saved my life because 30 seconds later, I would either be brain dead or I'd be dead.

   13. LHLewis Howes25:57

       Wow.

   14. RGRobert Greene25:58

       You know? They would've come, but it would've been too late to get the blood flowing back to my brain, 'cause my brain, there was a blood clot and no f- blood was flowing to the brain. So when someone saves your life, there's, there's a different, obviously, [laughs] a different kind of feeling, right? And, uh, I always very much loved her. I still love her, but it, it, it was, like, something e- even deeper. I, I have to look at her through new eyes.

   15. LHLewis Howes26:25

       Oh.

   16. RGRobert Greene26:25

       I have to see that I am here because of her, you know? I literally would not have a brain to write a book, or I wouldn't... I'd be dead, right? So, you know, you have to think about that every day as you look in the mirror, as you get up in the morning, and as you look at her, this person that, that did that for you. And so beyond which, she had to deal with this lump of human flesh, me-

   17. LHLewis Howes26:54

       [laughs]

   18. RGRobert Greene26:54

       ... that couldn't do anything. For months, I was like a baby.

   19. LHLewis Howes26:58

       Wow.

   20. RGRobert Greene26:59

       And she had to be patient, and she had to be loving, and she had... She didn't wanna lose me, but she had to also pretty much take care of me. And I, you know, I don't like being dependent. I'm a very independent person, so it was rough for me. But her patience and, and she's still very much patient and understands my limitations. I don't know, what more can you get out of a- another human being, you know? So we already had a very deep bond. We don't have children. We have pets, which are, are our children, and she's a filmmaker, and I write books, and so we have... Those are our children. But our bond is very powerful, both through the book wr- through what we've experienced because she said that that was the worst day of her life. She's, she saw ver- how close she came to losing me, so it just brought us that much more closer.

   21. LHLewis Howes27:57

       What was the biggest lesson for you over the last eight years that you've learned about love, seeing it with new eyes?

   22. RGRobert Greene28:05

       We're so wrapped up in words and language and ideas that we don't understand that we're animals.

   23. LHLewis Howes28:11

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RGRobert Greene28:12

       And that our communication to other people happens prever- un- preverbally. Other people sense your emotions. They sense you're defensive, you're insecure. If you sense from me that I don't like you, Lewis, which is the opposite, but if you sense that-

   25. LHLewis Howes28:29

       Mm

   26. RGRobert Greene28:30

       ... you would have a much different relationship to me, right? I don't have to say a word. We were talking about this earlier, right?

   27. LHLewis Howes28:36

       Yeah.

   28. RGRobert Greene28:36

       So I know that, um, the moment I start getting... My ego starts popping up with a little voice going, "Am I getting enough attention? Is she... Does she really love me enough? Is she helping me enough?" I go, "Get down. That's, that's stupid. That's ridiculous," right? If I let my ego constantly come up with defensive, resistant reaction-type things that are, happen a lot with couples, she would sense that, and they would have this kind of back and forth dynamic.

   29. LHLewis Howes29:09

       Yeah.

   30. RGRobert Greene29:10

       So the idea is, in your relationship, you can change that back and forth dynamic by how you relate to the other person. You can s- When, when your ego starts prop- popping up and you hear its voice, you can say, "Wait a minute. I don't need to go there. It's gonna cause problems. It's not important." The ego isn't important. What's important is giving to the other person.
8. 30:20 – 34:45

   The Root of Human Suffering

   1. LHLewis Howes30:20

      focusing too much on ourselves, what we lack in our ego?

   2. RGRobert Greene30:25

      Very much so. I mean, um, you know, we're... First of all, we're a social animal, and we can't... Our whole sense of self and who we are comes from being around other people. If you've ever been alone for a long period of time, strange things start happening to you. You start wondering about yourself. You, you, you lose connection to reality.

   3. LHLewis Howes30:47

      Mm.

   4. RGRobert Greene30:48

      We need other people to validate ourself. We need to be seen through their eyes. So we're a social animal, but we're also an animal that's aware that we're gonna die someday and that there are these forces that are much more immense than we are, like the universe itself, like life on planet Earth, like, like 13, 14 billion years of the life of our universe, like 4 billion years of our planet. We're aware of how incredibly insignificant and small that we are, right? And so to the degree that we can g- get outside of ourselves, we can heal some of those wounds that came from that period I mentioned earlier as a child where we were absorbed in the world and then we lose it. It's a wound that, that is constantly afflicting us. We can heal it. There's a story in there of a th- psychotherapist in Buenos Aires in Argentina who has a patient named Miguel. Miguel is happily married, beautiful wife, three loving, devoted children, a beautiful house, a great job, but something is missing. He's unhappy. He doesn't know what it is. Something feels flat in his life. So he goes to this therapist and they talk, and they talk. They go through his childhood. They go through all of his grievances, all of his problems at work, and the therapist is thinking, "This isn't going anywhere. You know, we're just going around in circles." And finally, one day, he says, "We're gonna stop all of this. We're gonna train for three months, you and I. You're not gonna ask me why, and we're going to go and climb Aconcagua, Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere in Argentina, right in the Andes, one of the most amazing... It's like the Mount Everest of the Andes, okay? And, uh, don't ask me why. We're just gonna train, and we're gonna go do that." And the guy goes, "All right. All right." So they train. They finally make this climb, and it's the most insane experience. There's storms. Their, their lives are at stake. The stars at night are spectacular. The scenery, the landscape is just unworldly. And then they, they don't make it to the top because the weather's bad, and they come home. But the guy is transformed. And the idea is all of the talking just centers you on your ego.

   5. LHLewis Howes33:18

      Mm.

   6. RGRobert Greene33:19

      Getting outside of yourself and going to a landscape like that and putting your life at risk and seeing the stars and seeing the universe makes you realize that what is bothering you is so insignificant-

   7. LHLewis Howes33:31

      Wow

   8. RGRobert Greene33:31

      ... that it alters your scale of values. So opening up to what I call the cosmic sublime is a way to kind of heal some of the wounds that your ego inflicts.

   9. LHLewis Howes33:42

      You know, when I think of sublime, for me personally, I think of God. I think of... When I think of awe, I think of wonder, like, and questioning. How is this all happening? What is this universe? E- even though it's... We s- we know what it's made up of, but how is it really made up of that? How long, you know... Why are we here? Is the soul returning from somewhere else? Where does the soul go afterwards? All these things make me think of God, this idea of sublime. How has your relationship or view of God evolved since writing this book?

   10. RGRobert Greene34:20

       Well, I'm, I'm not... Uh, I was, I was born Jewish, but I never really got into the faith 'cause it just didn't relate to me growing up in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

   11. LHLewis Howes34:33

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RGRobert Greene34:33

       It had no relevance. So I have no organized religious background. I've had girlfriends who were Christian, and I've kind of see- saw, you know, the world through their eyes.

9. 34:45 – 43:37

   The Miracle of Existence

   1. RGRobert Greene34:46

      I, you know, I've been doing a form of meditation that's from Buddhism, and I'm very much involved in that, but there's no God in Buddhism. But so I'll say this, though, um, first of all, I have deep respect for religions, and I recently reread the New Testament-

   2. LHLewis Howes35:04

      Mm

   3. RGRobert Greene35:04

      ... and it was just like, it's a incredibly beautiful document. And just as literature, it's, it's so beautiful. But I'll say this. In The Cosmic Sublime, I explain the insane chain of circumstances that led to the formation of planet Earth and life on Earth, starting from the Big Bang and how things could have gone completely differently, how a slight change in the temperature, there would be no matter because particles couldn't cohere. There would be no light 'cause photons of light couldn't happen. There would only be darkness. And how the first star evolved and then exploded, which sent all the elements that, that seeded other planets happened, and there was almost a chance that didn't happen, on and on and on to planet Earth, this, this rock, right?

   4. LHLewis Howes35:58

      It's crazy. [laughs]

   5. RGRobert Greene35:59

      That, that gets-

   6. LHLewis Howes36:00

      It's crazy

   7. RGRobert Greene36:00

      ... hit by another planet, uh, called Theia, another moon, that now creates the, uh, the iron core of our planet, that changes the tilt of our planet, and all these details that go into place that are just enough for the life to form. If we were 2% closer to the sun, life would not have happened, right? And that planet that hit Earth that caused the things that also allowed for our planet to have an environment, the chances of it hitting us exactly the way it did are in- insane, all right? When you go check list of all these things that happened with our, you know, the, the, uh, magnetic field that protects us from radiation, the oceans that came from a thousand years of raining that filled all the asteroid basins that give us water, the elements that came probably from asteroids, the unlikeliness of this makes you think, "Is there a purpose there? Was there some reason for this? Was there some reason that all of this came together so that, uh, humans, 13 billion, 14, almost 14 billion years after the Big Bang, could be conscious and recreate this entire story of our universe?" Maybe other people on other planets have, but maybe not. It almost makes you wonder if there was a purpose, if something is going on for a reason, right? To me, that's the closest I can get to this eerie sensation that there is something out there that's guiding it, but it, it might be irrational, but you-

   8. LHLewis Howes37:43

      Wow

   9. RGRobert Greene37:43

      ... get that feeling when you read this story.

   10. LHLewis Howes37:46

       The crazy thing is, you know, my, my twins just turned one yesterday, and my mom is staying with us right now. My wife's parents were with us, and some of their family were there, having a little celebration. And at the end of it last night, I was just hugging my wife, talking about how great of a job she's done over the last year as a mom and going through the challenges she went through, and I was just like, "You know, you did it and we did it, and they're here, and they're so beautiful, and they're, you know, they're growing and they're developing, and it's just such a joy to be around these two beings every moment we have with them." And I was telling my mom, I was like, "Mom, thank you for, you know, having me so that we could have these girls."

   11. RGRobert Greene38:32

       Yeah.

   12. LHLewis Howes38:32

       "And, like, none of this would be possible without you."

   13. RGRobert Greene38:35

       Yeah.

   14. LHLewis Howes38:35

       And I- she's been telling me more about her life stories over the last, you know, couple of years about her childhood and then how she met my dad, and just the chances-

   15. RGRobert Greene38:44

       Yeah

   16. LHLewis Howes38:44

       ... of them meeting.

   17. RGRobert Greene38:45

       Yeah.

   18. LHLewis Howes38:45

       And then their parents, the cha- and like you just go all the way back-

   19. RGRobert Greene38:49

       Yeah

   20. LHLewis Howes38:49

       ... for my kids to be born. The chances are so slim on everything lining up to be here now, and for us to be here now, 14 years later after our first interview-

   21. RGRobert Greene39:02

       Yeah

   22. LHLewis Howes39:02

       ... or episode one to episode 2001. It's got, you know, the, you call it cosmic sublime, right? It's like, but there's gotta be some purpose to all this, right?

   23. RGRobert Greene39:12

       Um, well, first of all, so you're... Th- that's, um, that's absolutely perfect. So you talk about your parents. I calculated or, or I read somewhere that there have been 70,000 generations of humans going back to the first Homo sapiens. So that chance encounter happened 70,000 times.

   24. LHLewis Howes39:31

       [laughs] That's crazy.

   25. RGRobert Greene39:32

       Right? Okay. Now, you may have been born, but you'd be in a completely different fashion. You wouldn't be Lewis Howes.

   26. LHLewis Howes39:39

       Uh-huh.

   27. RGRobert Greene39:39

       Who knows what you'd be, okay? But also, uh, 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula.

   28. LHLewis Howes39:49

       Oh, yeah.

   29. RGRobert Greene39:50

       The most devastating experience in the history of our planet. I have a s- I retell the story of that last day of the dinosaurs in the book. I did a lot of research because I liked that day, one day where all of life practically disappeared on planet Earth.

   30. LHLewis Howes40:08

       Crazy.
10. 43:37 – 49:46

    Why We Chase Addictions

    1. RGRobert Greene43:37

       Well-

    2. LHLewis Howes43:37

       Is it focusing on their, their, their stressful thoughts, their phone, or just not paying attention to the sublime? Anything that distracts them from it, or what's the main enemy?

    3. RGRobert Greene43:46

       Well, I have two things in the book. I talk ... It's a good question. I talk about the anti-sublime and the false sublime.

    4. LHLewis Howes43:53

       Oh.

    5. RGRobert Greene43:54

       So the anti-sublime is kind of an attitude that you might ... We f- tend to find a lot in the world today where, "Oh, come on, Robert, there's nothing ... It's just ... The world is just what it is. Science teaches us there's just facts out there, you know? There's nothing to be- feel awe or enchantment about. It's just the world as it is, right? People are there. The mountains are there. There's no reason ... You're just adding like romantic h- subjective beliefs to it. There's no need to be subjective. It's just all objective, scientific facts."

    6. LHLewis Howes44:27

       Mm. Yeah.

    7. RGRobert Greene44:27

       Kind of-

    8. LHLewis Howes44:27

       I was dealt the cards that I've been given, and this is the way life is, and ...

    9. RGRobert Greene44:30

       Yeah. It's kind of a cynical, hard-edged view of the world under the pretense of being realistic, right? So there's no room for romanticism or sentimentality-

    10. LHLewis Howes44:42

        Mm

    11. RGRobert Greene44:42

        ... which people would think that's what my book is about. And it comes from a kind of a fear of anything different. A- and in the end, it's kind of a fear of death itself.

    12. LHLewis Howes44:53

        Mm.

    13. RGRobert Greene44:54

        But it's a fear of having to open up and be ... it ... open up your heart and open up who you are and your emotions.

    14. LHLewis Howes45:01

        Yeah.

    15. RGRobert Greene45:01

        You wanna just narrow things down to hard, brutal facts, to data, to algorithms, to what computers give you. That's the anti-sublime, and it's very painful because we were children once, and we did experience the world as enchanted and whirl- weird and strange. And to completely repress that is gonna secretly make you miserable-

    16. LHLewis Howes45:27

        Yes

    17. RGRobert Greene45:27

        ... if you want it. The false sublime is you want the sublime. You wanna be taken outside of yourself, but you want this ... You want it to come from the outside. You want it to come from stimulation. So I'll take a drug, and that will give me the feeling, right? I'll ta- I'll drink a lot of alcohol. That will give me the feeling. I'll play video games, or I'll go see Marvel movies with all these fantastic, weird imagery. That will get me out of myself, right? Or I'll get addict- any kind of addiction will do that, or online porn or whatever it is. So you want the feeling of being taken outside yourself, but you want that to come kind of easy and quick.

    18. LHLewis Howes46:13

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RGRobert Greene46:14

        Something that you can take or something that somebody can give you. Whereas the true sublime versus the false sublime is ... seriousness comes from within.

    20. LHLewis Howes46:22

        Mm.

    21. RGRobert Greene46:23

        It's nobody's giving it to you. When you climb that mountain, when you look at your child, when you think back at your own childhood, there's nobody stimulating you or giving you these images. It's coming from your own imagination, your own experience. And that is much more powerful, and that's much more enchanting and awesome-

    22. LHLewis Howes46:41

        Mm

    23. RGRobert Greene46:41

        ... than having it c- come when you're never quite happy and you want more and more of it. Be- concerns do an addiction. Whereas the real sublime is, is a much different experience.

    24. LHLewis Howes46:51

        Interesting. From everything that you've studied and researched in your own personal experience, what do you think is the root cause to someone being addicted to an outside stimulus to try to give them a feeling of this? Of all addiction, what do you think is that root cause?

    25. RGRobert Greene47:09

        Well, um, I don't know. This might sound weird, but when you, you spent the first nine months of your life or whenever it was in a womb, right?

    26. LHLewis Howes47:22

        Yes.

    27. RGRobert Greene47:23

        And you were inside another body, and you were completely a part of it, okay? And then you're thrown out into the world through the birth canal, and you're screaming and crying, and it's light and it's bright and, and you're, you're, you're not happy. But you're still ... Your mother is there, hopefully, and you feel a deep, powerful connection to that body that you once were inside, right? And you're sucking on its breasts, and you feel that kind of oneness, all right? And then as I explained, you're slowly getting separated, and you slowly get inside of your ego and you feel, you feel the pain of disconnection and separation from what you once knew unconsciously probably, obviously, right? And so an addiction is an attempt to get back into the womb.

    28. LHLewis Howes48:15

        Really?

    29. RGRobert Greene48:16

        Attempt ... Yes. Is to get a feeling of something so soothing. It brings back the feeling of oneness. It crowds out all the anxiety. And that feeling of being separated because you're, you're like with this substance and it's taking you inside this other comfortable zone where there's nothing else in the world. You're protected, right? And, um-

    30. LHLewis Howes48:39

        Huh
11. 49:46 – 1:02:05

    Insights on the Afterlife

    1. RGRobert Greene49:46

       I mean, this is not quite answering your question, but everyone was dead once already.

    2. LHLewis Howes49:52

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RGRobert Greene49:52

       So before you were born, y- you didn't exist. So if you think about it, uh, you were kind of dead already.

    4. LHLewis Howes50:00

       Mm-hmm.

    5. RGRobert Greene50:01

       And when you were i- c- in the womb, you're already kind of close to that moment where you didn't exist, which is a form of death. So now you're returning to it. You're returning to where you once were. Look, I, the last chapter is on the death sublime. It's very important because it's near-death experiences, which I didn't have as powerful a near-death experience as those who see angels and light and all these other things happening, so I have to qualify it, but I had a near-death experience. And so I did a lot of research and I wrote a lot of stories in the book, to me, some of the, the most interesting stories about people who had near-death experiences. Now, I don't personally have any, uh, experience of, like, angels or, or God or seeing my dead relatives, which a lot of people do have. And so there's a lot of literature on it. Um, and some people believe that these experiences prove the existence of an afterlife. I'm not gonna go there because it's not my experience, and I can only write about what my experience is. There are p- a, very interesting books, a book I highly recommend called After. It's an excellent book, a scientist.

    6. LHLewis Howes51:18

       Hmm.

    7. RGRobert Greene51:18

       His name is Bruce Greyson, something like that. He's, like, studied all of these, uh, after-death experiences, and he, he's a scientist, but he's also made to wonder, is there something going on here? And there are examples of people who are hardcore scientists who suddenly think that there might be evidence of an afterlife, okay? But what I will say is very strange things happen in the near-death experience.

    8. LHLewis Howes51:45

       Really?

    9. RGRobert Greene51:46

       Yes. So I have two stories in there. Um, I have many more, but two of them are ... So there's this woman who, uh, named Pamela Reynolds, a very famous story in the near-death literature. She has a brain aneurysm that could pop at any moment and kill her, but it's at the base of her brain, which makes it extremely difficult to put a clip on to stop it from popping. So she's at risk any d- she's, like, in her 20s, any day it could pop and she'll die, and there's no way to get that far down.

    10. LHLewis Howes52:19

        Ooh.

    11. RGRobert Greene52:20

        So there's this man in Arizona who's devised a possible surgery that could work, and what it is, is he freezes the body. He takes all the blood out and he cools it and he puts it back in at a temperature in, like, 50 degrees where the, where the, you're actually d- you're dead.

    12. LHLewis Howes52:39

        Come on.

    13. RGRobert Greene52:40

        Yeah, he, he brings you as close to death as you can. He puts you on a heart-lung monitor to keep you breathing from a machine.

    14. LHLewis Howes52:48

        [sighs]

    15. RGRobert Greene52:48

        But everything is stopped, okay? And-

    16. LHLewis Howes52:52

        There's no blood flow.

    17. RGRobert Greene52:53

        No.

    18. LHLewis Howes52:55

        Holy cow.

    19. RGRobert Greene52:55

        Well, the heart-lung machine is keeping things, right, but there's nothing in the body.

    20. LHLewis Howes53:00

        Right. Wow.

    21. RGRobert Greene53:00

        Right? And so, um, and then-

    22. LHLewis Howes53:03

        This, this happened?

    23. RGRobert Greene53:04

        Yeah, yeah.

    24. LHLewis Howes53:05

        Holy cow.

    25. RGRobert Greene53:06

        There's a name for it. I t- I talk about it in the book. And anyway, he, he puts these things in your ears to make sure that there's no brain activity, because he has to completely stop the brain so that he can see down far enough into the brain to see the aneurysm and put the clip on. If there's activity going on, he, it's too d- I don't, I'm not a surgeon.

    26. LHLewis Howes53:29

        Uh-huh.

    27. RGRobert Greene53:30

        Okay? So these things in the ears, you can't hear anything when you're ... And, and the bra- it's monitoring that there's no activity in the brain. He puts you in a barbiturate coma, right? And so you're essentially as close to death as a human being can be, right? He, and then your eyes are all, are taped shut, et cetera. Okay, she's in this hospital room and it, and she, last thing she remembers is the m- sound of the wheels of the gurney, and then she's out of it. Suddenly, in the middle of the operation, she wakes up.

    28. LHLewis Howes54:04

        Come on.

    29. RGRobert Greene54:05

        Yeah.

    30. LHLewis Howes54:05

        [laughs] Ooh.
12. 1:02:05 – 1:07:34

    Ancient Wisdom We Forgot

    1. LHLewis Howes1:02:05

       or do differently that we don't do today?

    2. RGRobert Greene1:02:09

       When I went to college, I studied ancient Greek, and so that was ... I'm fascinated with ancient cultures and their languages and their belief systems. So, um, in this chapter, I try, I tell a story of the greatest, um, ritual in the history of religion called The Eleusinian Mysteries. It existed for 1,000 years in ancient Greece and it was also in ancient Rome. And, um, it was the most powerful, uh, religious experience anybody could ever have gone through. And I'm not gonna tell you all the details 'cause I, I don't want your, your listeners to go crazy with this stuff. But, um, I take you through the entire ritual, a- as much as I could, because it's a mystery and nobody was allowed to ever talk about it or they would be killed.

    3. LHLewis Howes1:03:00

       Wow.

    4. RGRobert Greene1:03:01

       But we know certain facts, and we've been able to piece together certain things. I take you, the reader, listener, reader, through this ritual, right? And it gives you a feeling of dying and then being reborn, okay? But the essence of the story is to tell you that your idea of pagan gods, ancient Greek gods, Egyptian gods, whatever, is completely wrong. They're not these silly little, uh, personifications, anthropomorphized entities out in there bickering, doing things like Zeus in the sky, like how we figure imagery of it. There's nothing to do with that. They are forces of nature. They are spirits. They are waves of energy that permeate the universe. So Aphrodite is this energy, the goddess of love, is this energy that permeates the universe, that makes things wanna come together, that wants things wanna unite, sexually, in whatever fashion, right? It's the goddess of love, okay? And when an ancient person fell in love, they felt it wasn't they themselves that were feeling the love, the goddess had inhabited their body-

    5. LHLewis Howes1:04:16

       Mm-hmm

    6. RGRobert Greene1:04:16

       ... and was possessing them.

    7. LHLewis Howes1:04:17

       Interesting.

    8. RGRobert Greene1:04:18

       So religion to them was a feeling of being possessed by something greater than themselves, by a force of nature, by an energy that goes on. Zeus is something violent. It's the violence of the universe. Poseidon is the energy f- coming from the ocean. You know, uh, Persephone was the goddess of the underworld who brings life up vegetation.

    9. LHLewis Howes1:04:41

       Hmm.

    10. RGRobert Greene1:04:41

        You feel these energy forces through you. You feel possessed. It's not happening you by yourself, but the world is possessing you. I find it a very, very beautiful concept. I'm sorry it doesn't seem very modern, but the idea that your sensations don't come from you, but come from outside you, that there's something larger going on, that when you're attracted to a person in an overwhelming way, you're being possessed by this energy that is constantly throughout the universe trying to unite things-

    11. LHLewis Howes1:05:15

        Interesting

    12. RGRobert Greene1:05:15

        ... particles, et cetera. And so in, in the ancient Greek world, theos, the word for God, really l- means something that is ... you com- that is like a shimmering, that something very quick that's passing through. It's not a thing. It's like this-

    13. LHLewis Howes1:05:33

        Is it like an energy or-

    14. RGRobert Greene1:05:34

        Yeah.

    15. LHLewis Howes1:05:34

        Interesting.

    16. RGRobert Greene1:05:35

        And entheos is to be filled with that energy, and it was the highest form of religious experience to feel you possession. And atheos, where we get the word atheism, meant-

    17. LHLewis Howes1:05:48

        It's without

    18. RGRobert Greene1:05:49

        ... abandoned by the gods.

    19. LHLewis Howes1:05:50

        Huh.

    20. RGRobert Greene1:05:51

        They don't even wanna bother with you.

    21. LHLewis Howes1:05:53

        Wow.

    22. RGRobert Greene1:05:53

        And that's like the worst feeling that you can have. I don't wanna get too into the weeds into this, but the pagan indigenous experience of the world to me f- fascinates me because I, I, I'm constantly experiencing these things. I'm reading about them, and I'm very, very attracted to that, that-

    23. LHLewis Howes1:06:10

        Ah

    24. RGRobert Greene1:06:10

        ... worldview.

    25. LHLewis Howes1:06:11

        That's interesting. Everything you're talking about in this book is fascinating to me. I'm curious, what surprised you the most in researching this, or lessons you learned, things you studied, stories that brought you awe that you didn't already know?

    26. RGRobert Greene1:06:27

        There's two chapters, one about the brain, uh, called The Neuro sublime, and the idea is that the human brain constructs what we consider to be reality, right? So you think you're seeing the world as it is, but you're not. You're seeing the world that the brain creates for you and constructs for you. It makes everything simple, it makes everything orderly, makes everything patterned and familiar. And there's another ... And it's creating, uh, exactly how the world appears. There's another way of seeing the world, right? There's another reality out there. And I describe that, and I describe the story of a woman who had a stroke. I don't know if you've ever, uh, heard of her, uh, Jill Bolte Taylor.

    27. LHLewis Howes1:07:10

        Is this the brain surgeon-

    28. RGRobert Greene1:07:11

        Yeah

    29. LHLewis Howes1:07:11

        ... the neuroscientist who-

    30. RGRobert Greene1:07:12

        Who had a stroke.
13. 1:07:34 – 1:17:25

    The Interspecies Sublime

    1. RGRobert Greene1:07:34

       I happen to be, uh, a, a, a, a deep animal lover.

    2. LHLewis Howes1:07:38

       Uh-huh. You have cats or dogs?

    3. RGRobert Greene1:07:39

       I have cats.

    4. LHLewis Howes1:07:40

       Yeah, I've got two cats.

    5. RGRobert Greene1:07:41

       You do?

    6. LHLewis Howes1:07:41

       Yeah.

    7. RGRobert Greene1:07:42

       Oh, I've seen them.

    8. LHLewis Howes1:07:42

       Yeah.

    9. RGRobert Greene1:07:43

       A few times.

    10. LHLewis Howes1:07:43

        You got four? I can only-

    11. RGRobert Greene1:07:44

        Two.

    12. LHLewis Howes1:07:45

        Two. Yeah, two and two. We're, we got twin cats, you know? [laughs]

    13. RGRobert Greene1:07:47

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, uh, cats are amazing.

    14. LHLewis Howes1:07:50

        They are different types of creatures. They're different ... Their energy is very healing from my perspective-

    15. RGRobert Greene1:07:55

        Yeah

    16. LHLewis Howes1:07:55

        ... but they can also be kind of crazy too at times. [laughs]

    17. RGRobert Greene1:07:57

        They're definitely cra- they're not, they're part wild.

    18. LHLewis Howes1:07:59

        They're not predictable.

    19. RGRobert Greene1:08:00

        No, they're not.

    20. LHLewis Howes1:08:01

        They can just-

    21. RGRobert Greene1:08:02

        They're not like a dog

    22. LHLewis Howes1:08:02

        ... start biting you, like, in a second.

    23. RGRobert Greene1:08:04

        Yeah.

    24. LHLewis Howes1:08:04

        They could be calm, and then you pet them a certain way, and they, "Mah," you know? It's like ... [laughs]

    25. RGRobert Greene1:08:08

        Yeah. Yeah, it's very true.

    26. LHLewis Howes1:08:10

        Right?

    27. RGRobert Greene1:08:10

        That's why we love them.

    28. LHLewis Howes1:08:11

        [laughs] Yeah.

    29. RGRobert Greene1:08:13

        Um, and so in that chapter, I went very deep into the research. So for instance, I tell the story of a man who's obsessed with a, with a falcon, with a hawk, and he tries to become a hawk. And he follows this one hawk everywhere, and he studies it, and he gets so inside their way of thinking. And at the very end of the story, and it's a, from a book, and it's a fantastic book, called The Peregrine, he almost feels like, he's like, this hawk has accepted him and allows him to come closer. And, and so the point of this chapter is-

    30. LHLewis Howes1:08:47

        Like, a wild hawk, not a hawk that he-
14. 1:17:25 – 1:20:22

    Robert Greene's 3 Truths

    1. LHLewis Howes1:17:25

       Um, I've asked you this before a number of times. This is your sixth time on this show.

    2. RGRobert Greene1:17:29

       Okay.

    3. LHLewis Howes1:17:29

       And I'm curious if it's changed. It's called the three truths question. So hypothetical scenario, you get to live as long as you want in this life.

    4. RGRobert Greene1:17:36

       Uh-huh.

    5. LHLewis Howes1:17:37

       But far in the future, it's your last day. Uh, and you get to continue to create and make all the work you want to make and write more books if you want to, but for whatever reason on this last day, you have to take all of your content with you, social media, books, gone from this existence. Hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world on the last day, and this is all we would have of your content. What would those three lessons or three truths be for you?

    6. RGRobert Greene1:18:04

       There's something larger than your individual self out there, and you want to tune yourself to it. You are a social animal, and by your ability to understand people and get inside their spirit, you will be happy, fulfilled, and powerful.

    7. LHLewis Howes1:18:21

       Mm.

    8. RGRobert Greene1:18:22

       And finally, um, life is very short, and you, you have to, even though I was given 200 years to live, it's still very short, and so you have to have a sense of urgency in this world.

    9. LHLewis Howes1:18:36

       Mm.

    10. RGRobert Greene1:18:36

        You could die tomorrow any moment, even though I was granted 200 years. You could die any moment, so you have to have a sense of urgency. You have to be aware-

    11. LHLewis Howes1:18:44

        Mm

    12. RGRobert Greene1:18:44

        ... of how short life is.

    13. LHLewis Howes1:18:46

        Mm. Beautiful. I think they evolve every time I ask you that question.

    14. RGRobert Greene1:18:50

        Oh, oh, well.

    15. LHLewis Howes1:18:51

        So yeah. You know, it's good.

    16. RGRobert Greene1:18:52

        Okay.

    17. LHLewis Howes1:18:52

        No, I like it. I like it that it's like-

    18. RGRobert Greene1:18:54

        It's okay

    19. LHLewis Howes1:18:55

        ... that's great. Uh, Robert, again, I got one final question for you, but before I do, I wanna thank you again for all that you do for me, for so many people in the world. You've been a, a light with your books and the content you've created and all the interviews you've done for many years now. Before I interviewed you, I didn't see you doing a lot of interviews out in the world, but now with podcasts, I see you doing a lot more, which is a great gift for so many of us. So I want to thank you again for all you do.

    20. RGRobert Greene1:19:20

        Oh, thank you.

    21. LHLewis Howes1:19:20

        For being episode 2,001 as well as number one as well, so it's a cool milestone for us there.

    22. RGRobert Greene1:19:27

        Uh-huh. Okay.

    23. LHLewis Howes1:19:28

        Um, and my final question is what's your definition of greatness?

    24. RGRobert Greene1:19:33

        My definition of greatness is knowing who you are to the core and realizing what that core would be, what, what, what is truly you, what is unique about you, the special, weird power you have been born into-

    25. LHLewis Howes1:19:50

        Mm

    26. RGRobert Greene1:19:50

        ... the seed that was planted in your birth, knowing it and bringing that seed to life is truly greatness.

    27. LHLewis Howes1:19:56

        Robert Greene, thank you for being here.

    28. RGRobert Greene1:19:57

        Thank you so much for Lewis. I always love it.

    29. LHLewis Howes1:19:59

        Appreciate you. Amazing. [gentle music] 25 years Secret Service, getting people to admit the worst things they've ever done, what would you say is the number one secret or communication tip to getting the truth out of anyone?

    30. SPSpeaker1:20:13

        It's not about asking the right questions. It's creating and being in an environment where the truth doesn't hurt. What's the off-ramp we can give that other person so they can save face? You blame outside factors-

Episode duration: 1:20:22