WHY SUCCESS Comes From MASTERING Your DARK SIDE | Robert Greene & Lewis Howes

Robert Greene 0:00 What is my dark side? And, you know, I had to analyze it and deal with it and think about it, and think about how any success I've had in life is because I managed to use those dark emotions in my work and channeled them.

Lewis Howes 0:14 [upbeat music] I think you gotta have a dream.

Speaker 0:16 The School of Greatness.

Lewis Howes 0:17 Really? [laughs] Yeah.

Speaker 0:18 Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Lewis Howes 0:20 Welcome back, everyone, to The School of Greatness podcast. I am so excited. We have one of my favorite guests back on the show, Robert Greene, who is a New York Times bestseller of many books: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature, which was one of my favorites that you've done. So welcome back, my friend. You were, you were the first episode on The School of Greatness, episode one. I think we're at episode 1,020-

Robert Greene 0:47 Wow

Lewis Howes 0:48 ... somewhere around there now. So you were episode one-

Robert Greene 0:49 Wow

Lewis Howes 0:50 ... almost eight years ago.

Robert Greene 0:51 Wow. I'm so honored.

Lewis Howes 0:53 It's fun, man. And we, and we just did our 1,000th episode, and we did the top 10 moments of all 1,000 episodes.

Robert Greene 0:59 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 0:59 And you were the number one moment.

Robert Greene 1:01 Oh, really?

Lewis Howes 1:01 You were the number one moment.

Robert Greene 1:02 Which, which interview? The, the, the se-

Lewis Howes 1:03 First one.

Robert Greene 1:04 Oh.

Lewis Howes 1:04 We talked about the first one, and we talked about how, uh, you know, I launched this with an idea and a dream to inspire people, but I launched it with one episode and one listener and one guest. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:16 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:16 And you were the first guest. Thankfully, you came on. And, uh, one, you know, more than one person listened, but there was... You launch something, and the first person has to buy your book and read it. The first person has to listen. The first person has to watch the movie. Like-

Robert Greene 1:29 Wow

Lewis Howes 1:29 ... you gotta start with one. So it's been fun to look back. Now over t- 250 million downloads.

Robert Greene 1:36 Wow.

Lewis Howes 1:36 1,000 episodes. We get over 10 million downloads a month, and it all-

Robert Greene 1:39 Wow

Lewis Howes 1:39 ... started with you.

Robert Greene 1:41 Wow. I feel very humble and very appreciative.

Lewis Howes 1:43 Yeah, yeah. I appreciate-

Robert Greene 1:44 Very grateful that I could do, do that for you, 'cause you deserve it.

Lewis Howes 1:47 Thank you. Thank you.

Robert Greene 1:48 Some people, you, you wonder a little bit. They're kind of... You know?

Lewis Howes 1:51 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:51 I don't know if they're, if they're very substantial, but you deserve it.

Lewis Howes 1:54 I appreciate it. I think my mission's always been... I think we have a lot of similarities in the fact that... Well, we don't in the fact that you're way smarter and more talented than me as a writer. But we observe people, and we observe history and human behavior.

Robert Greene 2:07 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 2:07 And we just do it in different ways.

Robert Greene 2:09 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 2:09 You're great at researching and putting together ideas, complex ideas from the past-

Robert Greene 2:14 Yeah

Lewis Howes 2:15 ... and present to making something understandable on how we can improve our life, and I think I'm really good at reading human beings-

Robert Greene 2:21 You are

Lewis Howes 2:21 ... and observing environments-

Robert Greene 2:23 You are

Lewis Howes 2:23 ... observing body language to try to connect with people.

Robert Greene 2:26 I saw that in our last interview when you were interviewing me about the Human Nature book. Your questions were really pertinent, and you really understood. You've obviously been a student of, of psychology-

Lewis Howes 2:35 Mm

Robert Greene 2:35 ... and human behavior-

Lewis Howes 2:37 Yeah

Robert Greene 2:37 ... for a long time, so.

Lewis Howes 2:38 Thank you. Appreciate it. Uh,

Lewis Howes 2:40 my first question is, we had you on a couple years ago right after you had a stroke, which was, uh... You almost died, right? Your wife was in the car with you. I think you were driving.

Robert Greene 2:50 I was driving.

Lewis Howes 2:51 Your wife essentially said pull over because something was wrong, and you were like, "No, everything's fine," as you were, like, [laughs] you know, falling over or something. And she essentially saved her life and your life by stopping and recognizing it. You went to the hospital. You had a stroke, and it's been a two-year recovery of... I saw you last time, and I was, you know, I was really sad of, of, you know, your physical wellbeing 'cause I wanna see you healthy. But you've had a, a pretty positive attitude, I think, in the last couple years. I'm curious, what has been the biggest lesson for you with going through a massive stroke, uh, where it's hindered your relationships, where it's hindered your physical activity, your ability to work on the things you're passionate about? What's been the big lessons?

Robert Greene 3:41 Well, I'm a very driven person, so I wasn't gonna let this defeat me. Because the alternative was, was losing hope and becoming suicidal, and I wasn't gonna let that happen.

Lewis Howes 3:52 Mm.

Robert Greene 3:52 Also, I knew I had another book that I really, really wanted to write, so I had to keep living, you know? And I was in a coma for a while, and things were a little bit touch and go during that. And I feel like there was something willed inside of me unconsciously that kept me alive. The other weird thing is I spend a lot of my time alone, swimming, hiking, writing. It just so happened, just by c- coincidence, that my... I was driving when my wife was there. And so I have a feeling that I kind of almost was ready to have my stroke once she was there. I can't say that for sure. These are, you know, weird kind of psychic almost kind of thoughts. But I felt like there was some willpower in me that was keeping me alive so I could keep going. But the main lesson was, um, I... It's, it's been a struggle. I can't say it's been easy. I can't, like, lie and say I've just figured it all out and I'm this incredible superhuman being. I've had moments where I've cried. I've had moments where I've felt like giving up. It's, it's like a daily struggle. And I... Other people... You know, I know a lot of people in this world suffer. They have it a lot worse than I do. I have my... a comfortable life. I have a lot of money. I have my books, et cetera. But on the level of, like, my body, just every day has been a struggle. You know? I wake up, "Can I walk? Will I fall? Can I hold this in my hand?" So dependent on other people, and I'm a very independent person. So I've had to really, really work on myself and really develop a lot of patience, which I don't have.

Lewis Howes 5:30 Mm.

Robert Greene 5:31 And the, the thing is, when you get an illness like this or something happens like that, the natural thing is just to sort of wait it out and wait until your body recovers. And people said I would have a full recovery two years down the line or so. So the tendency would be just to let it go and let time take its healing process. But I wouldn't let that. I don't know why, but I was like, "No, I'm gonna work out every single day."

Lewis Howes 5:57 Mm.

Robert Greene 5:57 "I'm gonna do therapy two or three hours a day." I bought a special bicycle. Because I can't do a normal bicycle. It's a recumbent bike where you sit down. Man, it's like the hardest thing. You have to get up these incredible hills and like 80-year-old grandmothers are whizzing by me-

Lewis Howes 6:13 [laughs]

Robert Greene 6:13 ... on their bicycle.

Lewis Howes 6:14 This is outdoors.

Robert Greene 6:15 Outdoors.

Lewis Howes 6:16 [laughs]

Robert Greene 6:16 In the park, yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:17 Wow.

Robert Greene 6:17 But I'm just, I'm just determined to beat the thing, and sometimes it beats me, so every day is like a battle. You know? It's like a boxing match. Who's gonna win? But I'm not gonna give up. I just keep trying and trying. I'm going to see a new therapist. I'm working on new exercises.

Lewis Howes 6:33 Mm.

Robert Greene 6:33 I'm working on different parts of my body. I'm trying to build strength in certain muscles so I can start walking normally. 'Cause as you know, working out, swimming, and hiking, and bicycling, that was like my main way of de-stressing. I loved it. I loved being out in nature. I loved being alone with my thoughts. And to have that ripped away was like having, you know, part of your whole body taken away from you.

Lewis Howes 6:59 Mm.

Robert Greene 6:59 So, um, but, uh, you know, I'm pretty relentless.

Lewis Howes 7:03 Yeah.

Robert Greene 7:03 That's, that's my lesson. I didn't give up.

Lewis Howes 7:05 Which book of yours that you've written, and the lesson in, in that book have you had to lean back on more than any other lesson or principle? From all the books, how is it... Which one is like really, "Ah, that's interesting that I wrote about this five years ago, and now I really need to apply it"?

Robert Greene 7:21 Well, the last three books would be more applicable. So there's the book with 50 Cent, The 50th Law, which is about fear and overcoming your fear, and in fact, the last chapter was about the fear of death in that book.

Lewis Howes 7:32 Mm.

Robert Greene 7:32 And, um, you know, I've had to deal with a lot of fear. You don't know what it's like, every day you're walking and you don't know the next moment you're gonna fall. I've had several falls, and falls are literally what will do you in, so it's constant fear, and I just won't let it affect me. I push past my limits. I do things that I'm not supposed to do.

Lewis Howes 7:52 Mm.

Robert Greene 7:53 I take hikes even though I have to hold onto somebody to do it. People think I'm crazy. So I had to deal with my fear. Mastery taught me that repetition, doing something over and over and over again, like any kind of skill, learning a skill like basketball, whatever, leads to something. So every day just using my left hand instead of my right hand, forcing myself and slowly getting used to it, th- that taught me a lot. And then The Laws of Human Nature, you know, I have a... One thing that when you have a stroke, it, it affected the right side of my brain, which destroyed the left side of my body.

Lewis Howes 8:31 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 8:32 And supposedly, when the right side of your brain is damaged, it tends to make you more emotional.

Lewis Howes 8:37 Mm.

Robert Greene 8:38 And I've definitely become more emotional, so I've had to learn to control some of my anger, some of my impatience, some of my frustration, and obviously The Laws of Human Nature are a lot about that. And the last chapter is about having to deal with death. And so with all of the things I'm dealing with-

Lewis Howes 8:56 Mm

Robert Greene 8:56 ... and all the kind of, "Goddammit, why can't I do that?" I have to keep reminding myself I'm, I'm alive.

Lewis Howes 9:02 Mm.

Robert Greene 9:03 I'm gonna write another book. The birds are out there chirping. It could've been a much different story. L- uh, last month, six weeks ago was the second-year anniversary of the stroke, and I had this thought, "This could've been the second anniversary of my death."

Lewis Howes 9:17 Wow.

Robert Greene 9:18 And w- people would be, like, gathering together. Or maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. But, you know, it, it would be like the anniversary of my death. But it's not. I've been given a second lease, and I have to think about that every single day.

Lewis Howes 9:30 Isn't that crazy to think that when you die, hopefully people will think nice things about you-

Robert Greene 9:37 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 9:38 ... and every year they'll get together and say, "Hey, let's tell a nice story about our friend or-

Robert Greene 9:42 Yeah

Lewis Howes 9:42 ... you know, we lost." Hopefully. But isn't that crazy to think that someday we're gonna die?

Robert Greene 9:46 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 9:46 And someday no one's gonna remember us.

Robert Greene 9:49 It's a weird thought. Um, and it's also like, I wrote about this, I can't remember, I think it was in The 50th Law, where enough time passes, nobody remembers you.

Lewis Howes 10:00 No one.

Robert Greene 10:00 200 years from now, no one will even know who Lewis Howes was-

Lewis Howes 10:03 Yeah

Robert Greene 10:03 ... or Robert Greene. You know? And so you're, all traces of you are gone. Yeah, it's, it's a weird thought, and-

Lewis Howes 10:11 You might be in a history book or something, maybe.

Robert Greene 10:14 Maybe.

Lewis Howes 10:15 That-

Robert Greene 10:15 If the planet is still here

Lewis Howes 10:16 ... it's here, yeah.

Robert Greene 10:17 Um, yeah, that's true. But, uh, this is sort of what my next book is about. You have to be able to take every kind of negative experience or emotion in life and find a way to transmute it into something healthy and positive. So how do you take that thought and turn it into something life-affirming and productive? And so my way is, okay, that very well may be. I better make the most of what the time that I have, 'cause in 200 years I'm nothing, right? Also, through my books, I will have a life that will go on.

Lewis Howes 10:52 Mm.

Robert Greene 10:52 I will have a legacy. Work on that. Think about people reading you in the future. So I use it, any kind of negative thing-

Lewis Howes 11:01 Mm

Robert Greene 11:01 ... this is sort of the idea of amor fati that I talked about in my books. Any bad thing that fate brings you, you have to find a way, it's like alchemy.

Lewis Howes 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 11:11 Using the philosopher's stone, you transform that into gold-

Lewis Howes 11:14 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 11:14 ... if through a mental process.

Lewis Howes 11:19 How do you think we can transform ourselves into the p- the, the person or the people we wanna become when there only seems to be negative experiences in our life? I'm hearing you talk about transmuting negative into a positive. How can we truly transform ourselves into this desired dream life when it seems like everything is out to get me, the government isn't the way I want it to be, my friends are not the right friends? What do you think we can start to do to transform ourselves?

Robert Greene 11:50 Well, I would tell people to read chapter eight of The Laws of [coughs] Human Nature, 'cause I go deeply into that, which is the law about your attitude. And the idea is you have a viewpoint, a perspective. It's like the lens on a camera. And it's through that lens that you view the world and you view people and you view events. And no two people see the same event in the same way, right? And so your attitude, how you look at the world, will determine what you get in life.

Lewis Howes 12:16 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 12:17 So if you're focusing on all the obstacles, if you're focusing on the government, if you're focusing on COVID, if you're focusing on this person didn't give me that thing, my parents didn't give me that thing, that's you creating your attitude. You're building it. It's something, it's like a crystallization process. Something, this crystal starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger as each new crystal is added, and you crystallize this negative, defensive attitude towards life, and that's what you're gonna get. And there's simple examples of that. So if I'm, if I'm kind of come to this interview and I'm sort of defensive-

Lewis Howes 12:52 [laughs]

Robert Greene 12:52 ... and I don't really feel good about Lewis and I'm not sure what's going to happen, you've picked that up on me-

Lewis Howes 12:58 Yeah

Robert Greene 12:58 ... because you're a very astute person-

Lewis Howes 12:59 Yeah

Robert Greene 12:59 ... you're very sensitive. You pick it up, and so you're not gonna be very friendly to me. N- so my initial attitude creates a reaction in you-

Lewis Howes 13:07 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 13:07 ... which is negative. It starts from me, but because most people are kind of paranoid and don't have that self-awareness, they'll think, "God, Lewis-

Lewis Howes 13:16 Hmm

Robert Greene 13:16 ... is such an [censored] pardon. I don't know if I can swear.

Lewis Howes 13:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah [laughs]

Robert Greene 13:18 Oh, yeah. I'm on a television. [laughs] "Lewis is such an [censored] . He's so cold. Why is he... " But it's coming from me.

Lewis Howes 13:23 Interesting.

Robert Greene 13:23 And you're not realizing it. So you create how people react to you. You create how negative circumstances affect you.

Lewis Howes 13:31 Yeah.

Robert Greene 13:32 So, you know, we have COVID and jobs are being wiped out left, right, and center. You're having to spend a lot of time alone at home.

Lewis Howes 13:41 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 13:41 Your life has been massively disrupted, most people. And you can s- see this as like, "Goddammit, why did this have to happen? My life is ruined. I'm not gonna go anywhere," blah, blah, blah. You know, and you start maybe drink a little bit. You start putting on some pounds, that COVID, whatever they call it.

Lewis Howes 14:00 COVID 15 or whatever.

Robert Greene 14:01 COVID 15 [laughs] right.

Lewis Howes 14:02 Like the freshman 15. [laughs] Yeah.

Robert Greene 14:03 Right? Well, it's understandable. It is a very devastating-

Lewis Howes 14:07 Mm

Robert Greene 14:07 ... kind of bomb that exploded here. But on the other hand, you could say, this is an opportunity. And I'm not trying to be pollyannaish about it, because I don't, I'm not a pollyannaish person, as you know. I wrote The 48 Laws of Power.

Lewis Howes 14:20 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 14:20 And I don't, never have, no one ever has to say that I'm pollyannaish after I wrote that book. But it's an opportunity, and the opportunity is on many levels to rethink your life, to rethink your values, to rethink where you're going, to rethink what your career should be, what your relationship to other people should be.

Lewis Howes 14:39 Mm.

Robert Greene 14:40 It's a way, it's a time to r- reorient yourself to who you are and what you like and what you, you know, what your goals are and what makes you unique. It's a time to read books and enlighten yourself and enrich your mind. So if you take that attitude, then... I mean, Ryan Holiday wrote the best book on this subject. I encourage people to read it. The Obstacle Is The Way. If you have that attitude where obstacles are actually the path forward, nothing's gonna stop you. But it's all how you look at things. It's kind of a mental process that you switch to seeing the, the positive side. So a stroke-

Lewis Howes 15:16 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 15:17 ... is like the worst thing that happened to me. It, it, it ruined so m- but it's also been a blessing in some ways, 'cause it's really made me appreciate my life-

Lewis Howes 15:25 Mm

Robert Greene 15:25 ... appreciate the people around me, and I'm now writing my seventh book.

Lewis Howes 15:30 Wow.

Robert Greene 15:30 And I, you know, I keep having this thought that I could die tomorrow, because I, you know, I'm, I'm in a very vulnerable state for catching the coronavirus once you've had a stroke, things like... It could happen, you know? I gotta get this book done, man. I am so motivated. I'm working so hard on it, because, you know, I see that this is like my great opportunity to express something before I, before I am dead.

Lewis Howes 15:54 Yeah.

Robert Greene 15:54 So it's really just that switch inside of that lens how you look at the world that will change what you were just talking about.

Lewis Howes 16:01 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 16:02 What have the greats in history, what have they done when they lose a war? They, uh, you know, their, a family member dies. They go through a life-threatening condition. What have the great presidents, rulers, leaders of the past, what do they do in those moments of tragedy that allow them to bounce back and then rebound into something more powerful or greater than before? Is there common themes from the past that you've seen?

Robert Greene 16:32 Well, Abraham Lincoln faced a lot of that stuff. He, he dealt with a lot of death early on in his life-

Lewis Howes 16:38 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 16:38 ... with his parents and people around him, and he suffered some major setbacks. Um, and then you can think of, like, Winston Churchill, um, who, who, um, also dealt... Like, he led a campaign, a war campaign in, during World War I that was a major disaster. He was in disgrace.

Lewis Howes 16:58 Mm.

Robert Greene 16:59 And he was a very d- manic depressive person, and he became very, very depressed, and he bounced back. A lot of it is, um, getting back to your attitude and towards-

Lewis Howes 17:12 Mm

Robert Greene 17:12 ... thinking a, a particular way. So defeat and failure is the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

Lewis Howes 17:22 To, to... Say it again.

Robert Greene 17:23 Defeat or failure is the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

Lewis Howes 17:26 Why?

Robert Greene 17:27 Because when you're successful, you tend to not learn anything. You think, "Wow, my book, my business got so much, I mean, it's did so well. I'm, I've got the Midas touch."

Lewis Howes 17:40 [laughs]

Robert Greene 17:40 "Anything I do is gonna be great. And look, I've got all these people around me, these sycophants, saying, 'Robert, you're wonderful.'

Lewis Howes 17:45 [laughs]

Robert Greene 17:46 "You're great. I love what you did. Your book's fantastic," et cetera, et cetera. And slowly, slowly, s- I don't learn anything.

Lewis Howes 17:51 Mm.

Robert Greene 17:52 And then my next project is a disaster because I've become grandiose, because I'm not really moored in reality. Failure teaches you your limits. It makes you realize what you did wrong. It shows you what you could do differently, you know? So making it a personal example, 'cause it's always easier for me to do that, I did a book with 50 Cent called The 50th Law, and the first iteration of that book I wrote, and I- I've never had this happen before. People weren't really liking it. And then the editor, the publisher, dropped the whole project, and I was facing a major disgrace. 50 was gonna lose faith in me. I lost a project, and it was a big blow to my ego, and I have... We all have egos.

Lewis Howes 18:41 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 18:41 And so we found a new publisher, and he said, "Robert, we'll, we'll do the book, but you gotta rethink it, and I need this book in eight months." And I go, "You want me to start all over after a year working on this book, and you want it in eight months? No way." But then I realized, "Okay, what is it that I did wrong?" And he said, "You didn't make the book a Robert Greene book. You made it too much about 50 Cent. People want to read you. They want to read about your, your ideas. They don't want it to be so much about him."

Lewis Howes 19:12 Mm.

Robert Greene 19:12 "They want a combination of the two. But you were, you were, you were being too humble here." And I go, "Okay." And I listened to him, and I wrote the next book, and it took me... I, I worked like a fiend, and I got it done in eight months, and I took every lesson to heart about how I can fail, and it taught me very valuable lessons about my, the books that I write and how I need to have faith in my style and my ideas and not worry that if I'm working with a celebrity, that I have to give him all the attention.

Lewis Howes 19:46 Right.

Robert Greene 19:46 Failure taught me this, and success didn't teach me anything. So failure or defeat, you know, great generals-

Lewis Howes 19:54 Mm

Robert Greene 19:55 ... in battle, that's what they would learn. But the greatest general in history, I believe, was Napoleon Bonaparte, and Napoleon Bonaparte had 10 years of the greatest success anyone has ever had in military history from 1796 to 1806. He was on the top of the world. He crowned himself emperor.

Lewis Howes 20:14 [laughs]

Robert Greene 20:15 And then he had eight years or 10 years of the most abysmal failures. It's because it all went to his head.

Lewis Howes 20:23 Mm.

Robert Greene 20:23 He lost touch with who he was. He lost touch with his own military strategies that were grounded in success. He became too conservative. That's the other thing that success will do. It'll make you conservative. It'll make you think you have to hold onto what you've done and, and keep repeating it. In the world, success and, and great things happen by being not conservative-

Lewis Howes 20:45 Mm

Robert Greene 20:45 ... by being open with your ideas and challenging yourself and always trying something new and being willing to change. So that's, I think, the lessons there.

Lewis Howes 20:56 What would you say are three questions we should ask ourselves when we face some type of tragedy, some type of big loss, failure, near-death experience, break-up? What do you think... You said you started becoming introspective and asking yourself and changing your attitude. What three questions should we ask ourselves?

Robert Greene 21:15 Well, I don't know if I can get to three, but I'll start with one.

Lewis Howes 21:17 [laughs]

Robert Greene 21:17 [laughs] The first one is, could it have been worse?

Lewis Howes 21:22 Could it have been worse?

Robert Greene 21:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 21:23 It could have been worse, or could-

Robert Greene 21:25 Well, you're asking me for questions.

Lewis Howes 21:26 Yeah, yeah. Could it have been worse?

Robert Greene 21:27 Yeah. I mean, let's say, um, you know, I broke up with a girlfriend, and she had very embarrassing pictures of me, and she posted them all over the internet. Well, thank God that didn't happen, you know? Or I could have died. That's always the last one you always say. Could have been worse. I could be dead, right? As long as you have your body and your mind together, you can recover. I tell people, "And you can recover from the worst possible disaster, even public humiliation you can recover from," because fortunately, nowadays, people have short memories-

Lewis Howes 22:04 Uh-huh

Robert Greene 22:04 ... and they'll always remember your last success. So things are never as dire as they appear to be, so it's, could it have been worse, and what, what is the worst scenario that could have happened? Well, luckily, that didn't happen.

Lewis Howes 22:17 Yeah.

Robert Greene 22:18 The next question is, like, I would say, what is the lesson I can learn from this? So if it's a break-up with someone, and I've been through them. We all have. It's like instead of thinking that it was just putting blame on her or yourself, it's thinking of, was this the right person for me? There's gonna be someone else, right?

Lewis Howes 22:45 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 22:46 First of all, maybe I wasn't actually the right person for her, and maybe I was partially to blame for this, so what can I learn about relationships going forward?

Lewis Howes 22:56 Mm.

Robert Greene 22:56 And what can I learn about what I want from a relationship? Maybe I want something a little more stable, or maybe I need something a little more exciting, to sort of see, to be future-oriented.

Lewis Howes 23:07 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 23:08 And that's really critical, 'cause I, I talk to a lot of people who are going through hard times with COVID, is always being future-oriented. So we tend, when we're in the moment of a bad thing, like a break-up or a failure or, you know, like something, like a disaster-

Lewis Howes 23:23 Yeah

Robert Greene 23:24 ... is we're so enmeshed in the moment, and when enmeshed in the moment, things seem much larger than they are, right?

Lewis Howes 23:30 It seems so big.

Robert Greene 23:32 Right. But with time and distance, if you look back two years ago, it doesn't seem so big anymore, right?

Lewis Howes 23:39 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 23:39 So you need some perspective, and you need to understand that two years from now, you'll be onto another business, or you'll be onto another relationship, and things will be much better, so be future-oriented. That's one of the key things-

Lewis Howes 23:54 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 23:54 ... key elements about people who are very successful in life. They're always sort of oriented towards the future. What's the next project? Where, what can I, what am I gonna be doing in 5 or 10 years? As opposed to obsessed with the past, I think people who have a, the hardest time in life are so obsessed with the past. "That, that scumbag, he, he, he destroyed me. He, he ruined my last project. That blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." They hold onto the, all this, this crap. Right? They're so weighed down by the past, their parents, they whine, they complain. People who are future-oriented, it's, "Oh, I'm onto the next thing."

Lewis Howes 24:31 Mm.

Robert Greene 24:31 It's like they say in basketball, "Next man up."

Lewis Howes 24:34 Mm.

Robert Greene 24:34 Our star player was injured. All right, next player, come on. Let's just go. We gotta win this game, right?

Lewis Howes 24:38 Yeah.

Robert Greene 24:39 So that's sort of the thing is being future-oriented and, and thinking like that.

Lewis Howes 24:44 I started... It's really hard when you're in the moment of stress or breakup or chaos or you get fired from your job. It's, you feel like it's, it's such a big deal. It's so messy. It's so painful. It's hard to think outside of that moment when you're in it. I went through a breakup a coup- almost two years ago, and I remember feeling like, "Ah, this is like, this kinda sucks." It's in the moment, you know, people are judging you. And I just kept saying to myself over and over again, "I'm gonna have hindsight now."

Robert Greene 25:12 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 25:12 I think this is like, I, I was like, this is around January time. I was like, [smacks lips] "This might be like six to eight weeks of some, like, drama or whatever, just gossip. Let me think it's gonna be New Year's Eve one year from today."

Robert Greene 25:23 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 25:24 Like, what's the lesson I'm gonna learn from this experience?

Robert Greene 25:26 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 25:27 How much stronger am I gonna be?

Robert Greene 25:29 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 25:29 How much more, how, how much more humility will I have?

Robert Greene 25:31 Right.

Lewis Howes 25:32 You know, maybe I'll connect with someone new that'll be a better relation. You know, all these things. I just kept saying anytime I felt like the moment-

Robert Greene 25:38 Mm

Lewis Howes 25:38 ... was bigger than me, let me have hindsight now. In, in a year, six months, two years, I'm gonna be onto something else, and people will either move on with me or move out of my life.

Robert Greene 25:49 That's the perfect example. [laughs] That's exactly what I'm saying.

Lewis Howes 25:51 Yeah.

Robert Greene 25:52 I mean, honestly, it's hard, as you said-

Lewis Howes 25:54 It's hard in that moment

Robert Greene 25:55 ... in the moment.

Lewis Howes 25:56 It's-

Robert Greene 25:56 Right?

Lewis Howes 25:57 It's very hard.

Robert Greene 25:57 And so you can't beat yourself up. You can't like, "Goddammit, why am I like this? Why can't I just be like Robert or Lewis said?"

Lewis Howes 26:05 [laughs]

Robert Greene 26:06 I'm not like that.

Lewis Howes 26:07 Yeah.

Robert Greene 26:07 So at, when things first happen and they're bad, I beat myself up for several weeks, but it only lasts for several weeks, and then I pick myself back up.

Lewis Howes 26:17 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 26:17 So be patient and understand that right after something bad, you're gonna be depressed. It's okay to be depressed. It's okay to feel bad about yourself, to even blame yourself, but you're gonna pick yourself up and be patient about it, you know?

Lewis Howes 26:31 Yeah.

Robert Greene 26:31 It's a process.

Lewis Howes 26:33 How important is expressing emotions and feelings of the greats that you've studied or the people you've been around? Do they express their emotions and feelings publicly? Do they do it privately? Do they journal? Do they suppress their emotions and just act, and just have a positive attitude all the time? What do you think is the importance or lack of importance of emotions?

Robert Greene 26:53 Well, I think everybody's different. But in general, f- my knowledge of psychology and, um, all the books I've read is that you pay a price for repressing your emotions.

Lewis Howes 27:04 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 27:05 That repressing something eventually comes out. And the great psychologist Carl Jung, he was the one who kind of studied that in great depth. When you repress, for instance, your dark side or your dark emotions, they come out in other ways, right? So trying to always, like, present yourself as this very stoic person when in fact you're not, you're gonna pay a price for it. It's gonna come out in ways you can't control, right? There's gonna be-

Lewis Howes 27:31 Mm

Robert Greene 27:31 ... a negative, uh, consequences to that. Um, and so on the other hand, you don't wanna be this person who's constantly emoting and telling everybody what you feel like. It's very irritating. You have no self-control.

Lewis Howes 27:44 [laughs]

Robert Greene 27:44 And people are judging you.

Lewis Howes 27:46 Yeah.

Robert Greene 27:46 You look like this weak person who can't control your own tongue. You can't control-

Lewis Howes 27:50 Yeah

Robert Greene 27:50 ... okay? So I compare it in my books and, and, and, and talks to, uh, the metaphor of the rider and the horse, right?

Lewis Howes 27:59 Mm.

Robert Greene 27:59 So your ri- the rider of the horse is your rational brain, and the horse is your emotion. It's the animal part of you. It's what makes you angry or excited or fearful. The rider is what makes you kind of, you know, get, get things done.

Lewis Howes 28:15 Yeah.

Robert Greene 28:16 If the rider on that horse... I don't know if people have ridden a horse. I used to ride a lot when I was a kid. If you hold the reins too tightly, if you're trying to control the horse and repress it, the horse feels it. It feels it in the way your thighs are, are constricting it. Horses are very sensitive animals, right? And it won't do anything. It won't follow any of your instructions. It won't go anywhere. Or it will freak out and it will run far away and it'll throw you off the horse.

Lewis Howes 28:40 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 28:41 But if you just let the horse go anywhere, the horse also feels that. The horse has been tamed to some extent, 'cause I, this guy has, I have no respect for him.

Lewis Howes 28:49 Yeah.

Robert Greene 28:49 Right? He's not trying to do anything. And the horse will go wherever it wants, and you have no control. People who know how to ride horses, they know they have to have a balance. You have to hold the reins not too tightly, but you have to be able to guide the horse. You have to squeeze with the thighs, but not too tightly. The horse, you have to feel relaxed-

Lewis Howes 29:06 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 29:06 ... and one with the horse. The horse then gives in, and you can go anywhere. So you want a balance in life. You want to be able to understand your emotions, right? You want to be able to understand why you're angry, why you're fearful, why you're frustrated, and not just give into the emotion, like let the horse go anywhere. So that maybe next time you understand, well, maybe I don't need to feel anger or fear because it's-

Lewis Howes 29:32 Yeah

Robert Greene 29:32 ... not really related to anything. So you have a balance. You understand the horse, the emotion, and you can control it to some degree, but not over-control it or repress it. 'Cause like, I know if, I get angry a lot. I have ang- I could have anger issues, right?

Lewis Howes 29:47 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 29:48 Um, the moments where I give into it, I regret.

Lewis Howes 29:52 [laughs]

Robert Greene 29:52 If I sent that angry email to my agent-

Lewis Howes 29:54 Oh, man

Robert Greene 29:55 ... the next day-

Lewis Howes 29:55 It's the worst. You feel bad

Robert Greene 29:57 ... oh, oh, geez. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 29:58 Do you apologize a lot after you're angry?

Robert Greene 29:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 29:59 Or do you just kinda say, "Oh, I'm just-"

Robert Greene 30:01 Yeah, I do

Lewis Howes 30:01 ... "a grumpy old man now, just like..." [laughs]

Robert Greene 30:03 Well, I am a grumpy old man. But yeah, I do apologize.

Lewis Howes 30:05 Oh, that's nice.

Robert Greene 30:06 Apologies are good. It's a good thing to do.

Lewis Howes 30:08 Yeah.

Robert Greene 30:08 Um, but I, yeah, I feel terrible, right? And so you have to go through a process, like before you send that email, why am I angry? Do your hindsight thing. Will I be feeling angry in three weeks? No.

Lewis Howes 30:21 No.

Robert Greene 30:22 Is it really important? Is it possibly my own fault? When you go through that process, you're not repressing the anger. You're not pushing it down so then it explodes three days later when you yell at somebody who inadvertently crosses your path. That's what happens when you repress it. But you understand it, and you let it work for you. You know, "Okay, I won't write that angry email." But then you can use your anger for other things, like writing a book.

Lewis Howes 30:46 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 30:47 Right? Et cetera. Or, or believing in some social cause that's important.

Lewis Howes 30:50 Yeah.

Robert Greene 30:51 Et cetera. So it's a balance.

Lewis Howes 30:53 I'm, I'm curious about, um, The 48 Laws of Power and Laws of Human Nature. This is probably gonna be a hard question, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyways. What was your favorite, uh, law from The 48 Laws of Power pre-stroke, and what would you say is your favorite one now? And the same for, uh, Human Nature. Favorite, favorite kind of law of human nature pre-stroke that you're like, "This is the thing that's... In the season of my life that I really have connected to." And now something that you lean on or connect to in a different way.

Robert Greene 31:32 Wow, that's a tough question.

Lewis Howes 31:32 It's, it's hard, I get it. I mean, there's so many.

Robert Greene 31:35 Yeah. Well, um-

Lewis Howes 31:37 First thing that comes to mind, maybe.

Robert Greene 31:39 Well, f- for me, for The 48 Laws of Power, um, it's, it's, this, this'll be kind of, uh, symmetrical. But law number one was always, like, the most important one to me, never outshine the master, because it was the first law, it was the first successful book I ever had. When I first pitched it to the man who, who produced the book, I told him the story that initiated the, the, the m- never outshine the master. And I had personally violated that law on several occasions, and it had caused me a lot of misery and pain in my life.

Lewis Howes 32:14 Why?

Robert Greene 32:15 Why what?

Lewis Howes 32:15 Why, why did it cause you a lot of misery and pain by violating the law?

Robert Greene 32:18 Well, I, um... This is before I wrote the book.

Lewis Howes 32:21 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 32:22 So I had a job, uh, in the film business. It was a television show with a very famous person whose name I will not mention.

Lewis Howes 32:29 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 32:29 And I was a researcher on it. And I was the best researcher there by far.

Lewis Howes 32:34 [laughs]

Robert Greene 32:35 You know? You would, you'd count success by how many stories you found and what got actually filmed.

Lewis Howes 32:41 And yours got filmed the most?

Robert Greene 32:43 I had, like, a 60% rate or something like that.

Lewis Howes 32:45 Wow.

Robert Greene 32:46 I knew I was the best, and then I got fired.

Lewis Howes 32:48 Why?

Robert Greene 32:49 Right? Okay.

Lewis Howes 32:49 'Cause you were outshining the master.

Robert Greene 32:51 Well, at the time I thought, "She hated my guts. You know, I pissed somebody off, I said the wrong thing." And I could... I was capable of sometimes doing that, 'cause I could have an attitude.

Lewis Howes 33:01 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 33:01 And I was blaming other people, et cetera. But then, you know, it started, started dawning on me, and then later when I wrote the book, it was very clear to me that I had inadvertently made her think that I was, felt greater than she was, that I was after her job. Other people were really praising me-

Lewis Howes 33:18 Mm

Robert Greene 33:19 ... and not praising her so much. I was getting too much attention. And it happened another time, a second time, right? I wasn't controlling myself. And so that law-

Lewis Howes 33:29 Mm

Robert Greene 33:29 ... had a lot, meant a lot to me because it was very painful. Being fired is a very painful experience. I don't know if you've ever been through that.

Lewis Howes 33:36 No, I haven't.

Robert Greene 33:37 Really?

Lewis Howes 33:38 No. I mean, I've never had a job.

Robert Greene 33:39 Oh.

Lewis Howes 33:40 I mean, I got f- I mean, actually, I did get f- [laughs] I got fired once by getting in a fist fight on a golf course as a ground... I was a grounds crew kid when I was, like, 14, 13.

Robert Greene 33:52 Oh.

Lewis Howes 33:52 And, um, [laughs] we were playing around... This is a long story. We were playing around, like throwing l- leaves at each other, and someone punched me in the back of the neck as I'm, like, throwing leaves at him. 'Cause we're raking up, like, leaves and grass on the g- golf course. And he punched me in the back of the neck, and then I just went crazy and got in a fist fight. Only got in two fights, real fights in my life. That was one of them. And, um, we walked back to, I walked back to the, uh, kind of the grounds crew shed and washed my knuckles off, 'cause they're bleeding, and I was just high on adrenaline. And the, the kid who I got in a fight with walks back a couple minutes after me, and I couldn't recognize his face. He was-

Robert Greene 34:30 You punched him that bad.

Lewis Howes 34:31 I mean, it was just like, it was an animalistic reaction. When someone punched me-

Robert Greene 34:35 Wow

Lewis Howes 34:35 ... it was just like, you know. I mean, it only lasted for maybe 10 seconds, and then someone took, took us off. There was other people around and kind of broke it up. But I just kind of hit him in the right spot, I guess, and it kind of swelled over his eye. It looked like a softball on his eye.

Robert Greene 34:48 Wow.

Lewis Howes 34:48 And I was just like, wow. And it was really the first time I felt like I had any power as a 13-year-old.

Robert Greene 34:53 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 34:54 And the grounds crew, like, leader or the, the, the boss saw him walk up kind of yelling at me.

Robert Greene 35:01 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:02 And he just goes, "You're fired." And he, like, he writes a check and gives it to me and he's like, "Get out of here and never come back." And I was like...

Robert Greene 35:06 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:07 So that was, uh, my only [laughs] moment.

Robert Greene 35:09 That was, that was law number one being never punch a colleague.

Lewis Howes 35:12 [laughs] Exactly.

Robert Greene 35:13 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:13 Never punch anyone. So.

Robert Greene 35:15 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:15 But for you, was, it was stressful and emotional getting fired?

Robert Greene 35:19 Yeah. I mean, you take it personally, et cetera, and you-

Lewis Howes 35:22 And you were like, "I was the best."

Robert Greene 35:23 I was. I mean, I haven't had many jo- I don't, didn't stay at a job more than a year my whole life. But, um, I always, whenever I had a job, I worked very hard at it. And, you know, I was very conscientious, so that was very painful.

Lewis Howes 35:37 But don't you wanna... I would think if someone's excelling on my team, I'd be like, celebrate them and, and keep going. Wouldn't you want that? Or do you not want people to...

Robert Greene 35:48 Well, Lewis, come on.

Lewis Howes 35:50 [laughs] Wouldn't you want people to accelerate?

Robert Greene 35:53 You didn't read chapter, law number one?

Lewis Howes 35:55 Remind me.

Robert Greene 35:56 People have egos.

Lewis Howes 35:57 I understand, but-

Robert Greene 35:58 Yeah, in a perfect world where angels were everywhere-

Lewis Howes 36:01 [laughs]

Robert Greene 36:01 ... and we all just had wings and we were all just all out for other people and-

Lewis Howes 36:05 Right

Robert Greene 36:05 ... for the greater good, yeah.

Lewis Howes 36:07 Right.

Robert Greene 36:07 But we happen to live in this planet that, that's not like that.

Lewis Howes 36:10 I know.

Robert Greene 36:10 We're descended from primates. We're much different from that.

Lewis Howes 36:14 So how do you-

Robert Greene 36:14 And people have egos

Lewis Howes 36:15 ... how do you grow without-

Robert Greene 36:16 And so-

Lewis Howes 36:16 ... with, like, how do you improve in a career but not outshine too much so you stay in the career, I guess?

Robert Greene 36:24 Well, you have to read law number one. But, um, you know, you have to first understand the very basic principle of human psychology.

Lewis Howes 36:32 Yeah.

Robert Greene 36:33 Everybody has an ego, and everybody you meet is insecure. They have insecurities.

Lewis Howes 36:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 36:39 Okay? But your boss, the person above you, has even more insecurities and a larger ego than other people, and you don't think so. You, you, you're probably aware that they have an ego, but you don't think that they have insecurities because they're the boss. You know? But actually, they're always worried about whether people like them, whether people respect them, whether the people think they're doing a good job or not.

Lewis Howes 37:01 Hmm.

Robert Greene 37:01 They're riddled with doubts and they're constantly, and they're constantly looking out for people to see, though their body language, et cetera. Does that guy really respect me? Does he have an attitude, et cetera? You don't think that. You think, "If I just try hard to please the boss, it will work out wonderful, wonderfully." But you might be doing something else. You might be stirring up their insecurities.

Lewis Howes 37:24 Hmm.

Robert Greene 37:24 So you have to always be aware in life of people's insecurities, you know? It's like lesson number one. It's gonna save you a lot of painful moments. The people you deal with are riddled with doubts. They're riddled with fears. They have things hanging over them from childhood. They're wondering about themself. And you inadvertently are feeding their insecurities, and you never intended to.

Lewis Howes 37:48 Hmm.

Robert Greene 37:48 And then you find, wow, look what happened, and you don't even understand why it happened that way. So when you're fired for outshining the master, you don't know why you were fired, and it's very hard to learn a lesson when you don't know why it happened.

Lewis Howes 38:01 Hmm.

Robert Greene 38:01 That's what's so complicated and tricky about people. Because when people do something that's kind of harsh and negative, they never tell you why they're doing it. They always have a cover story-

Lewis Howes 38:10 Hmm

Robert Greene 38:10 ... a narrative.

Lewis Howes 38:11 Hmm.

Robert Greene 38:12 Right? They have a way of, of deflecting it as if they aren't to blame, and so you're confused. That's why I wrote The Laws of Human Nature, because you're continually confused. 'Cause people never tell you what they're really doing, why they're motivated, why they behave such a way. And you take their words and their appearance for reality, and it's not reality. So-

Lewis Howes 38:31 Hmm

Robert Greene 38:31 ... you know, that's the source of so much of your painful experiences in life.

Lewis Howes 38:36 Okay, so law number 1, never outshine the master, was, uh, the law that you were really leaning into pre-stroke. Is there one post-stroke that you think about that, that sticks to you more, that connects to you in a different way now?

Robert Greene 38:51 Yeah, I would say assume formlessness, which is law number 48, so that's why I said the symmetry.

Lewis Howes 38:57 Ooh, ooh, look at you.

Robert Greene 38:58 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 38:59 I like this.

Robert Greene 39:00 Um, and that's all about kind of being fluid and adapting to circumstances, and never having, like, a concrete form. It's a very military law. Comes from Sun Tzu.

Lewis Howes 39:13 Hmm.

Robert Greene 39:14 And, like, the perfect army doesn't have a form. You can't figure out where they are, what their strategy is.

Lewis Howes 39:20 Hmm.

Robert Greene 39:20 Their strategy has no form. Or, or, or the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi said that, you know, "Nobody ever knew what my strategy would be. I was completely formless." So it's a way of being very fluid in life and very open, and never doing the same thing twice and adapting your cer-

Lewis Howes 39:39 Hmm

Robert Greene 39:39 ... your, what you do to the circumstances around you. And when you have a stroke, you know, it's not easy to do that, right? Because your body certainly isn't capable of being fluid, so your mind has to be fluid.

Lewis Howes 39:53 Hmm.

Robert Greene 39:53 I have to retrain myself from not getting stuck in certain ideas and certain patterns of thinking, certain negative things and certain frustrations, and certain ways of looking at the world. I have to be fluid and take each day as it comes, and adapt myself to this new body that I have.

Lewis Howes 40:11 Yeah.

Robert Greene 40:12 So I think about that law a lot.

Lewis Howes 40:13 How does someone... You know, you have a, a book on mastery. How does someone m- master the art of something if they're always trying something new every day, or if they're always formless and reinventing themselves every day? Or, you know-

Robert Greene 40:28 Well-

Lewis Howes 40:28 ... what I mean? From these, the swordsman-

Robert Greene 40:30 Well-

Lewis Howes 40:30 ... you were saying, it's like he was always in a new strategy. But if you wanna master something, you typically have to do something over and over to master it, correct?

Robert Greene 40:37 Yeah, well, that's the thing about my books and about the laws. They're about the circumstances.

Lewis Howes 40:42 Ah.

Robert Greene 40:42 So I'm not saying assume formlessness for all you people out there who are 18 years old who are about to enter the work world, or 21. Just be formless. No.

Lewis Howes 40:51 [laughs] Master something, and then when you've mastered-

Robert Greene 40:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 40:54 ... multiple things you can adapt.

Robert Greene 40:56 Miyamoto Musashi, uh, was fighting for 20 years as a swordsman in life and death battles, and he eventually developed this power of his.

Lewis Howes 41:04 Hmm.

Robert Greene 41:04 Right? But if he were formless without ever having any experience, he would've been killed in his first sword fight. So you know, you have to have discipline. You have to assume, like, this is what I'm doing and this is my career path, as you talk about-

Lewis Howes 41:18 Yeah

Robert Greene 41:18 ... as you mention in Mastery. And you have to put in the hours, the 10,000, the 20,000 hours, and then when you get to the level of a master, like a Bobby Fischer in chess, then you can do anything you want.

Lewis Howes 41:30 [laughs]

Robert Greene 41:31 You're on another level.

Lewis Howes 41:32 Yeah.

Robert Greene 41:32 You can be as formless as possible.

Lewis Howes 41:33 Wow.

Robert Greene 41:34 Right? So, um, yeah, you're right. I'm not ad- advocating that for just anybody out there.

Lewis Howes 41:39 Hmm.

Robert Greene 41:39 But for me and my situation-

Lewis Howes 41:41 Yeah

Robert Greene 41:41 ... after I've had, you know, the success. And it is, it's also for people who've suffered a major blow like that.

Lewis Howes 41:50 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 41:50 Like an illness or something, where your habits of thinking can get very set and very rigid, where every day you wake up and go, "Well, why do I have to be like this? Why couldn't it have happened just differently?" As opposed to being open to what life brings me every single day.

Lewis Howes 42:06 Yeah.

Robert Greene 42:06 And not developing a kind of a defensive, rigid attitude.

Lewis Howes 42:09 One of the things that I love about your journey and story is that you mastered so many different types of writing over 20, 30 years. I think you were, like, first in a newspaper and then a magazine, and then screenwriting, and then certain types of books. And then weird b- you know, you did all these different styles of writing that you tried a lot of things, mastered them to a certain point, which gave you the range, uh, to kind of write in the way you do now.

Robert Greene 42:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 42:37 It gave you the ability to write the way you do now, which I think is interesting. So I like that you say that when you're in your 20s, like, find something to, to hang on to, to master for a few years, then you can go to the next thing, and that'll give you more range.

Robert Greene 42:49 Well, uh, there's a... I don't know if I can remember my metaphor, but it's, it's like you want a path in life when you're 20, 21, 22. But you don't want it to be so rigid-

Lewis Howes 43:00 Mm

Robert Greene 43:01 ... because you're gonna burn out, you're gonna get bored, and you're gonna give up. You want that path to be like that instead of like this, so you can go this way-

Lewis Howes 43:10 Mm

Robert Greene 43:10 ... you can go this way, you can go this way, and go this way. But if your path is like that, you'll never find anything, 'cause you'll try everything. So I knew I was to be a writer, and I tried eight different forms of writing. You know you wanna be a musician, you try writing music, you try learning an instrument, you try performing-

Lewis Howes 43:29 Producing, yeah

Robert Greene 43:30 ... producing. You go into entertainment, a lawyer, as a music lawyer, whatever. You try different things.

Lewis Howes 43:36 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 43:37 But you know this is what I love in life. If you have no idea what you're gonna love, and I get... I deal with that because I help consult with people who come to me with that very issue. "Robert, I don't know what my life's task is. I never had any indication when I was a kid." That's the worst situation to be in. There are ways to solve that, but that's really, that's really painful-

Lewis Howes 43:57 Yeah

Robert Greene 43:57 ... because you have no idea where to go. But you, you wanna have a sense, but you wanna be fluid and open so that eventually what happens is, you hit upon the right thing.

Lewis Howes 44:08 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 44:08 Right? You, you-

Lewis Howes 44:10 And most of us are never gonna hit the right thing at 25.

Robert Greene 44:13 No. I was 36, 37, your age-

Lewis Howes 44:16 Wow

Robert Greene 44:17 ... when it happened.

Lewis Howes 44:18 So maybe I'll start to feel like I'm hitting the right thing soon. [laughs]

Robert Greene 44:20 Yeah, you found it out a little earlier. You found it out, like, eight years ago.

Lewis Howes 44:23 Yeah. I think so, but I think it's always evolving and, and growing and, you know, you gotta be fluid with it, so.

Robert Greene 44:29 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:29 It's funny because I'm... I've been consistent with the, the main thing, which I started the podcast almost eight years ago, and I said, "I'm gonna do it once a week for a year and see how it goes. See if I like it, learn, but I gotta be consistent enough for a year." Then I did twice a week for the second year. Now we've done three a week for the last five, six years, I guess now. And I've been consistent in one thing, trying to improve, you see me from the first episode to now, in the different stages. The leveling up, the production, the set, the s- you know, everything. The audio quality, video, all these different things, my skills. But also, I wrote a book. I'd never done that before. Uh, we did live events. It's like I'm trying new things as well that I'm not that good at the start, but we start to master them over time-

Robert Greene 45:15 Right

Lewis Howes 45:16 ... to create more range and diversity. So, but I'm still sticking to the main thing as the main thing-

Robert Greene 45:21 Right

Lewis Howes 45:21 ... and evolving as I go. So.

Robert Greene 45:24 Yeah. That's the perfect way to do it. Because, you know, you need challenges in life.

Lewis Howes 45:29 You do.

Robert Greene 45:30 Um, so, you know, I always look at it this way. If you're, you're, you're here, this is your skill level, a challenge like here is gonna really improve you. If the challenge is here, it's too much, you'll fail-

Lewis Howes 45:43 Mm

Robert Greene 45:43 ... and it, it'll have bad consequences. If you're here and you're below your level, you're gonna get bored. So the optimum thing is to always choose your next project that's a little bit above you so you can learn and feel excited and challenged, and have that, that adrenaline rush from trying to meet the challenge and get there, and all your energy is involved. So that's the proper way to do things in life-

Lewis Howes 46:06 Yeah

Robert Greene 46:06 ... for me.

Lewis Howes 46:07 So what about the laws of human nature? What was one that you, that you were like, "Ah, this is my law. This is the one that I love the most right now," for whatever reason pre-stroke to the one now, that you think about more as important for your life?

Robert Greene 46:24 Well, um, my favorite chapter was kind of about the dark side of human nature, the shadow.

Lewis Howes 46:31 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 46:31 Confront your dark side and make it work for you, as opposed to repressing it.

Lewis Howes 46:37 [laughs]

Robert Greene 46:37 Right?

Lewis Howes 46:38 Yeah.

Robert Greene 46:38 So everybody has a dark side. I don't care if you're Mahatma Gandhi-

Lewis Howes 46:43 [laughs]

Robert Greene 46:44 ... or, or whomever. You have a dark side, right? And, um, it comes out in ways that you're not even aware of. And I explain in the book where our dark side originates from. You know, as a child, we had a lot of powerful emotions that we couldn't control. We would hit our sister. We'd play terrible practical jokes. And I'm not talking personally. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 47:06 Yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 47:08 You know, t- terrible-

Lewis Howes 47:08 I do the same thing, yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 47:10 ... terrible practical jokes. We'd be kind of mean-

Lewis Howes 47:13 Uh-huh

Robert Greene 47:13 ... aggressive. But also, we'd be very loving, which is true as well. We'd be a full range of things. And then you learn as you get older, "Robert, you can't hit people in school. Stop that. Don't be like that. Don't play those practical jokes, it's bad. People don't like it." And you get older and older and you start repressing that, those-

Lewis Howes 47:32 Yeah

Robert Greene 47:32 ... kind of feelings that are very natural to you, right? Because we all have aggressive impulses. We all... We, we love our parents, but there's also a side of us that, that doesn't like them.

Lewis Howes 47:43 [laughs]

Robert Greene 47:43 We resent them. It's natural.

Lewis Howes 47:45 Mm.

Robert Greene 47:45 But we have to repress all that because we have to be good social animals. We have to be good little kids. We have to be little angels at school. We have to be angels at work. All this pressure, like, "I've gotta repress all that. I've gotta be this perfect person. I have to be someone who pleases, who's very nice," blah, blah, blah. And then, when you're 28, you start becoming addicted to alcohol and you don't know why. You start getting really angry. You have anger issues. You yell at people. You don't know why. You, you're at, like, a 45-year-old person with a very steady profession. You leave your wife and you run off with a 19-year-old, you know, f- out of the, you know, destroying everything that you've built. The dark side has come out because you've repressed it instead of dealing with it. So the idea was, you need to understand your dark side-

Lewis Howes 48:33 Mm

Robert Greene 48:33 ... confront it, and make it work for you. And I have a dark side.

Lewis Howes 48:37 Mm.

Robert Greene 48:38 I have... You know, every chapter in the book... You know, sometimes now I think that my answer wasn't the right answer, but I, I'll go with it anyway.

Lewis Howes 48:43 It's all good.

Robert Greene 48:44 Um, in writing the book, I kept having to say... I wrote a chapter on narcissism. "Robert, you're a narcissist, you know?" I wrote a chapter on, on, uh, on the dark side. I go, "Robert, you have a dark side." The same thing with the chapter on aggression. And, like, what is my dark side? And, you know, I had to analyze it and deal with it and think about it. And think about how I- My, any success I've had in life is because I managed to use those, that dark, those dark emotions in my work and channeled them because-

Lewis Howes 49:19 Hmm

Robert Greene 49:20 ... they have c- tremendous energy to them. They power you forward. So I had anger coming out of working in Hollywood.

Lewis Howes 49:28 Hmm.

Robert Greene 49:28 I kind of hated the environment. I hated people's hypocrisy. I hated all the sycophancy and all that. I was really angry, but I didn't let the anger turn inward. I channeled it into The 48 Laws of Power.

Lewis Howes 49:41 Hmm.

Robert Greene 49:42 So I used my dark side, and I really like that law because it showed me that I'm a victim of this, but I also unconsciously learn how to use what I'm, what I'm writing about. So I kind of drew on my own experience.

Lewis Howes 49:54 Yeah. I love that you talk about this because there's so many great artists that write songs that become b- hits and, you know, big bestselling books and movies out of pain, right? Out of a breakup, out of a drug addiction, out of rehab, out of whatever this painful thing that happens to them, and they express from their pain, and it somehow connects to other people in the world, to their pain, and then becomes this hit, whether it be a song or video or movie. Do you think anger, resentment, frustration is a greater power to create over love? Or if we came from a place of love, could it be that much more powerful, our creation?

Robert Greene 50:34 Well, that's a great question, and it really depends on who you are. Um, you know, sometimes those, those dark energies have more kind of ener- you know, power behind them. They impel you.

Lewis Howes 50:49 They do. [laughs]

Robert Greene 50:50 And, and, and love, it just kind of mel- you know, love doesn't necessarily make you wanna write a book, although it, it, it can. But for me, personally, I'm speaking from personal experience, it wasn't love that made me wanna write a book. It was anger and bitterness.

Lewis Howes 51:07 Hmm.

Robert Greene 51:07 Right? You know?

Lewis Howes 51:08 I'll show you.

Robert Greene 51:09 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:09 Yeah, I'll show you in 10 minutes.

Robert Greene 51:10 Whereas, you know, I love this and the that. Uh, yeah, it's not gonna... And the reason why that happens is people in our day-to-day life are so repressed. We have to be so politically correct.

Lewis Howes 51:25 Hmm, yeah.

Robert Greene 51:25 We have to be so pleasant and smiling, et cetera, that when your work expresses anger or expresses pain, people love it. They're drawn to it because finally someone's expressing what I'm feeling, but no one else is talking about.

Lewis Howes 51:42 Hmm.

Robert Greene 51:42 You know? Right?

Lewis Howes 51:44 That's powerful, yeah.

Robert Greene 51:45 Yeah. You know the person that I think a lot about in the dark side is Kobe Bryant, and I was gonna talk to him about it if, when I, if, if I could have. Um, because he confessed this. He had a lot of dark energy. He had a lot of anger, and he was so competitive. He wanted to crush you on the basketball court, and he spoke of it in those terms. It wasn't like a friendly little basketball game. This was war. But like Michael Jordan, he tra- he transmuted, he channeled this energy into being a good teammate and to just defeating the other team, working as a good player, a c- colleague with his other, with his teammates. But he learned to channel it. Early on, it kind of destroyed him a little bit.

Lewis Howes 52:28 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 52:28 It kind of ruined his relationship with Shaq in a way. But then he learned that that dark and that anger, et cetera, was the source of his power. It's kind of like Star Wars-

Lewis Howes 52:38 Wow

Robert Greene 52:38 ... and the Jedi-type thing, you know? And how you, you use that, that dark energy and transform it into something positive.

Lewis Howes 52:45 Do you think there's a basketball player or an athlete or someone who could not have dark energy and anger?

Robert Greene 52:51 [laughs] Who could have love.

Lewis Howes 52:52 Who could be just like-

Robert Greene 52:53 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 52:54 ... "I'm just grateful for my, my family, my w- my wife, my kids, like, my health, and I'm just gonna go out and channel my gifts to serve, to inspire, because I love the sport." Do you think there's...

Robert Greene 53:09 No. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 53:10 No. You think, you think anger is the way. It's like ch- learning to channel anger in a healthy-

Robert Greene 53:14 Anger and competitiveness-

Lewis Howes 53:15 Yeah

Robert Greene 53:15 ... and ambition and the desire to win, you know, um, is, is a very powerful motivating factor.

Lewis Howes 53:22 It's very powerful.

Robert Greene 53:23 Um, you know, maybe if you're an ice skater or s- or in a sport like that, where-

Lewis Howes 53:29 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 53:29 ... you're working in pairs and something.

Lewis Howes 53:31 Dancing or, yeah.

Robert Greene 53:32 Yeah, you don't maybe wanna have that kind of issue. I, I can get that. Uh, but, like, football or basketball or even baseball, you know, I don't think so, and all the s- the, the greats that I've studied all have pretty much a very similar profile. And there have been examples of players who don't have that, that drive, who are more kind of into being friendly and nice and loving, and they don't go nearly as far. I'm afraid to say it.

Lewis Howes 53:58 Hmm.

Robert Greene 53:59 The greatest players, LeBron James is probably the greatest player now. You're from Cleveland, right?

Lewis Howes 54:03 I'm from Columbus, but Ohio.

Robert Greene 54:05 Ohio. It's all the same.

Lewis Howes 54:05 We're O- we're Ohio, yeah.

Robert Greene 54:06 Yeah. Are you a Laker fan?

Lewis Howes 54:08 I'm a Laker fan now 'cause of LeBron.

Robert Greene 54:10 Okay.

Lewis Howes 54:10 I'm a LeBron fan.

Robert Greene 54:11 Okay. Well, me too now. Um-

Lewis Howes 54:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 54:13 But that guy is driven.

Lewis Howes 54:15 Driven.

Robert Greene 54:16 Right? You can see it in his face. He doesn't wanna lose. He's not going out there with love in his heart. I mean, he's a very generous person.

Lewis Howes 54:22 Hmm.

Robert Greene 54:22 He's a very loving person outside basketball, but on the court, no, I don't think so.

Lewis Howes 54:26 He's an animal.

Robert Greene 54:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 54:28 Yeah, he's an animal on the court. It's interesting 'cause I was very anger-driven from my teens to my 20s, maybe a m- a little bit in my early 30s. I was driven by anger to compete, to be the best, to win, but it always left me f- it left me achieving and accomplishing and kind of proving people wrong, but it always left me feeling like still unfulfilled inside. How can someone be driven by anger or frustration, bitterness, and achieve and feel peace at the same time? Is that possible?

Robert Greene 55:01 Yeah, because that's not, the goal in, in it is not, like, beating other people and humiliating them. That's the dark side, and that's giving into the dark side. The goal is to be the best at your sport, to win a championship, and then to give back to the community-

Lewis Howes 55:20 Mm

Robert Greene 55:20 ... to make a lot of money, and then donate a lot of it. Or become, you know, like LeBron has done with the schools in Ohio, et cetera.

Lewis Howes 55:27 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 55:28 To be a good role model. But when you reach the top, you have that luxury. And so it's more like, what are you doing this for? So when I had my 48 Laws, but I'm sorry to talk always about myself. It's kind of-

Lewis Howes 55:39 That's all right

Robert Greene 55:40 ... the narcissist in me.

Lewis Howes 55:40 It's all good.

Robert Greene 55:41 I admit it. Um, you know, it wasn't about making fun of all those Hollywood executives who I disliked. Then it wouldn't have been the book that it was. It was, "I wanna help people. I wanna use my energy, my frustrations, to show people that they don't have to suffer the way I suffer, other people suffer in the work world. These are the laws of power."

Lewis Howes 56:04 Mm.

Robert Greene 56:04 "You don't have to be so naive. You can understand that you don't need to never outshine the master." So I was able to put my energy in there and get some of my yayas out in doing it, but for a higher purpose-

Lewis Howes 56:16 Yeah

Robert Greene 56:16 ... to help people.

Lewis Howes 56:17 Right.

Robert Greene 56:17 I think that's the difference, right?

Lewis Howes 56:19 Yeah.

Robert Greene 56:20 And so I tell people, "You feel anger, but there's a lot of injustice in this world, particularly nowadays, right?" A lot of things are just wrong in this world today, and if I were young, I would... My anger would be exploding, 'cause there's so much that's wrong. Channel it into a worthy cause, into justice, into leading some kind of movement.

Lewis Howes 56:41 Mm.

Robert Greene 56:41 That's a brilliant way to take your dark energy and metamorphize it into something really positive.

Lewis Howes 56:47 Yeah.

Robert Greene 56:47 Believe it or not, because in my last book, Martin Luther King was one of my heroes that I wrote about. He had some of those frustrations and some of that anger. He, you know, he grew up in, in, in Atlanta where there wasn't as much racism, 'cause he was in a relatively good neighborhood. His father was a preacher. He was sh- he saw racism, but he was a little bit shielded from it. And then he had his first encounters-

Lewis Howes 57:11 Mm

Robert Greene 57:11 ... particularly when he went up north to, like, Boston. Believe it or not, it was in the North that he had his first real encounters. He had a few before that, but... And then he's like, God, he was really a- angry about it, really ups- it really was an eye-opener. And he learned that he couldn't give into that kind of emotion. What he was gonna do with his life is he was gonna use it to help Blacks in the South. He was gonna return to the South.

Lewis Howes 57:34 [clears throat]

Robert Greene 57:35 His path, he thought, was to stay in, in Boston, New England, because it was, like, cushy, et cetera. But then he realized, "No, I've got to take all this bitterness that I feel, and I've got to go back to the South at the risk of my own life and help my, my people," you know? So-

Lewis Howes 57:50 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 57:51 ... working for a cause is probably the best way you can channel-

Lewis Howes 57:55 Yeah

Robert Greene 57:55 ... some of that dark energy.

Lewis Howes 57:57 So how do we be angry about a cause, but not being a prisoner to that thing, that, that unjust thing that's happening in the word, the world?

Robert Greene 58:08 Well-

Lewis Howes 58:08 Is there a way we can still, like, be angry and in movement, uh, in creation mode, but not be a prisoner to that situation?

Robert Greene 58:17 Well, what would be, what would being a prisoner mean?

Lewis Howes 58:19 Um, I think, like, allowing it to affect you emotionally, to consume you, to control you, to, uh, make you focused on that thing all the time-

Robert Greene 58:30 Well-

Lewis Howes 58:30 ... as opposed to just living life

Robert Greene 58:31 ... well, it's where your energy is. Is it about you?

Lewis Howes 58:34 Mm.

Robert Greene 58:35 Is it about you and your emotions and your anger, or is it about helping people and about the cause? So is it for something greater than yourself? And if it's for something greater than yourself, then you're not a prisoner of it.

Lewis Howes 58:47 Got it.

Robert Greene 58:48 Because you're, you, you know, you're, you're, you're getting outside your own ego, and you're actually, actually working to help people, okay? But I can tell you, a lot of social movements and revolutions, if you wanna call it, or reform movements, they peter out because they lose energy. They, they lose their drive. The initial impetus sort of isn't quite there, and you've gotta be able to keep it alive, you know?

Lewis Howes 59:12 How do you keep it alive?

Robert Greene 59:14 Because you, you, you feel nothing has changed. The injustice is there. I mean, look at someone like Martin Luther King, what he had to put up with constantly, constant failures, constant rejection. Everybody cr- he dealt with so much envy, it was insane. Even people within the movement were constantly belittling and criticizing him, but he kept his, uh, eyes focused on the greater prize, the, the ultimate goal, which is what you wanna focus on. But you have to use that energy, or it's going to peter out, because life will wear you away. You'll get older. You'll relax. You don't wanna, you know, you don't wanna have to spend so much time doing this, you know? And you, you, you get soft, and, and the energy dries up.

Lewis Howes 59:56 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 59:57 And you need that energy. Every time I write a book, I'm starting from ground zero, and I'm going, "Okay, Robert. [laughs] What's gonna m- motivate you? What's, like, something that really irritates you and it makes you angry and pissed off?"

Lewis Howes 1:00:13 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:00:13 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:00:13 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:00:14 Okay, because now feeling that, you're gonna get over that mountain of writing the book, and you're gonna feel, every time you write a chapter, you're gonna feel that emotional kind of thing in your gut, and you're gonna express it. But I'm not doing it for me. It's because I know it's going to help people, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:00:30 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:00:30 So for my new book, I'm really frustrated and irritated by how limited people are about their thinking. And I'm not blaming people, 'cause I have the same problem. It's like the world is this insanely awesome thing to be alive. Do you know what it means to be alive? Do you know what... Everything had to fall into, you know, go back to the Big Bang, which is what I'm writing about now, and all the little pieces that had to fall into place for life even to begin-

Lewis Howes 1:00:58 To happen, yeah

Robert Greene 1:00:58 ... on Earth, and then for animals, and then for a giant asteroid to hit Earth, you know, some 70 million years ago so the dinosaurs are wiped out. None of this ha- you wouldn't be here. Lewis wouldn't be here if your parents hadn't met. So your life is like this insanely unlikely thing that ever happened. Do you know how awesome it is? Do you know how awesome it is to look out and see stars in the sky or things around you? And people are not. They're locked in their little banal worlds of social media, et cetera. They're not opening their minds up to what it means to really be alive, and it makes me angry.

Lewis Howes 1:01:29 Mm. That's good

Robert Greene 1:01:32 So I'm gonna, that's why I'm gonna write the book.

Lewis Howes 1:01:33 What's the title of this book? Are you sharing that yet or no?

Robert Greene 1:01:36 Yeah, The Law of the Sublime.

Lewis Howes 1:01:38 So it's about how we can think differently or how we can open our minds to possibilities?

Robert Greene 1:01:42 Yeah, it's, it's to reanimate your soul so you feel like excited about things, so you feel like... You know when you were a child, you were curious about so many-

Lewis Howes 1:01:53 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:01:53 ... things. You were open to so many experiences. Things were constantly wowing you. And then you become blase and kind of cynical, and you don't want new experiences, 'cause they kind of mess with your familiar patterns. And then your, your life kind of closes and closes and closes. And the sublime is opening your mind up as far as possible-

Lewis Howes 1:02:14 Mm

Robert Greene 1:02:14 ... as wide as possible. And opening your mind and your spirit like that makes you more creative, makes you more energized, makes you a better human being, et cetera. And so I have to write a book with a pur- sense of purpose. I don't write books for money. I swear on the Bible, I do not write books for money. The money comes in and I'm very happy. It's comfortable. But I don't write going, "What's the most marketable book I can do next?"

Lewis Howes 1:02:40 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:02:41 It's like, what do I need to express in this moment, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:02:44 Yeah. What does sublime mean? What is the definition?

Robert Greene 1:02:49 Well, you really wanna get into the weeds there? Um-

Lewis Howes 1:02:53 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:02:53 ... it comes from the Latin word sub- sublimis, and there's several meanings of it. But the one that I like is the limis is the, is what's called a threshold. It's like a door that leads from one place to another, right?

Lewis Howes 1:03:07 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:03:07 And sub means right up to. So sublime is right up to the limit. And the way I interpret it is, is that that door is death itself. On the other side is death. And so I, I draw a kind of, I have a metaphor, it'll be through- in the book and on the cover, of a kind of a circle, right? And just, we tend to th- our brains tend to work in these kind of conventional patterns, our, our minds, our thoughts, et cetera, right?

Lewis Howes 1:03:35 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:03:36 And th- that circle is wh- the limits that we will not go past. We will not think thoughts beyond that.

Lewis Howes 1:03:42 We'll stay in the circle.

Robert Greene 1:03:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03:43 We won't go beyond it.

Robert Greene 1:03:44 Right. Just beyond it is this region of the sublime, and it goes in very different arrows. And each arrow is a chapter.

Lewis Howes 1:03:53 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:03:53 But the main arrow is death itself. And when you go up to that door and you peer on the other side, you see something that's gonna shake you up, that's n- that, that's gonna transform you like it transformed me, right? You're gonna realize how short your life is, how weird it is to be alive, the possibilities of what it means to actually die.

Lewis Howes 1:04:16 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:04:16 Near-death experiences are s- are pretty, pretty awesome, amazing things. People have had near-death experiences, and they've been completely enlightened by them, right? Um-

Lewis Howes 1:04:27 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:04:27 ... and so that's the ultimate sublime experience, is going up to that threshold of death itself. But there are other experiences that I'm gonna be talking about as well.

Lewis Howes 1:04:36 Wow. I'm excited about that. That'll be [laughs] fun. That'll be fun. What, what about the, uh, I think you mention in The Laws of Human Nature, the first one, confront your dark side. What about the one you're thinking about more now that connects to you?

Robert Greene 1:04:52 Well, obviously, the chapter on death.

Lewis Howes 1:04:55 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 1:04:56 You know, um, not so much now, but right after my stroke. Because that was the last chapter, chapter 18. I finished it pretty much in May of 2018, and I poured a lot of energy into it, because I kind of think a lot about mortality, et cetera. And I, and I really thought, and I did research and I put a lot into it.

Lewis Howes 1:05:18 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 1:05:18 And then, two and a half months later, it happens.

Lewis Howes 1:05:24 After the book came out.

Robert Greene 1:05:25 After I finished writing it. The book had-

Lewis Howes 1:05:26 Oh, you finished writing. The book hadn't come out yet. Gotcha.

Robert Greene 1:05:29 Like, what is the irony there?

Lewis Howes 1:05:31 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:05:32 The gods are somehow, like, messing with me, right?

Lewis Howes 1:05:35 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:05:35 Because the fact that the stroke happened was, like, a series of chains of events that were pretty unlikely. So it was almost, like, fated to happen, right? And so I had to reassess. All right, Robert, you wrote that. Is that really true? Is it really true that it make, it alters how we look at other people?

Lewis Howes 1:05:55 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:05:56 Yeah, it does. You were true. But the, the, what happened was the chapter was written from an intellectual position, and the experience was not intellectual. It was very real. So when I had my stroke and I was in the hospital in the first days, I had this feeling in my stomach of almost, like, my bones melting.

Lewis Howes 1:06:17 Right.

Robert Greene 1:06:17 That they were soft. That the inside of my body was soft.

Lewis Howes 1:06:21 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:06:21 And so I later thought that that is the feeling of death that's, that's still in me, this feeling of softness. So death was no longer an idea. It was in my gut. It was in my viscera. It was a feeling. And so, you know, I had to think about that. And I actually did write that, that death is a feeling. It's not an idea. But here it was, it was brought to me in a, in, in, you know, in, in ex- experiential way.

Lewis Howes 1:06:47 Wow. I think that experience you had is gonna be very powerful for the next book.

Robert Greene 1:06:52 I hope so.

Lewis Howes 1:06:52 Being able to share your experience of being on the brink of death.

Robert Greene 1:06:57 Yeah. I'll tell you what, um-

Lewis Howes 1:06:59 Wow

Robert Greene 1:06:59 ... I'm gonna mention this in the book, is, um, I had planned on writing this book, on the sublime, 14 years ago. It was to be my, the book I wrote after the, the war book.

Lewis Howes 1:07:10 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:07:11 And then I got sidelined with different projects. And I'd always had the idea when I did this that I was gonna go have these incredible sublime experiences. I was gonna go travel to Antarctica to experience it.

Lewis Howes 1:07:24 Uh-huh. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:07:24 I was gonna go paragliding. I was gonna take boats in this area. I was gonna do... Of all these adventures. I was gonna live my book. And now I can't do anything.

Lewis Howes 1:07:33 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:07:34 I can't do one fucking... I can barely even go outside the house.

Lewis Howes 1:07:36 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:07:37 So what do I have to do? I have to live in my head.

Lewis Howes 1:07:40 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:07:41 I have to imagine all of it. And I think it's a very good thing because if I had been able to just go around and have all these adventures, I'd look like this kind of privileged kid who c- could just use his money. But the reader isn't gonna say, "I can't go to Antarctica," you know? But everyone that's reading the book is gonna be in my position more or less. You're not having... You don't have the money or the power to do all these things.

Lewis Howes 1:08:05 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:08:05 But it's in your head. It's how you think about it. So it's altered how I'm gonna write the book and how I think about the reader.

Lewis Howes 1:08:11 I think imagination's gotta be one of the most powerful things we can have. Or the power of our imagination. What did Einstein say about imagination? Something, it's like more powerful than knowledge or something like that. But it's what you were talking about earlier about being able to alchemize something. Having an idea that then we can transmute into real life and creation. And I think it's hard to create something meaningful without having a meaningful imagination, which brings you back to being a curious mind and from, from childhood-

Robert Greene 1:08:39 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:08:39 ... and being able to express yourself and be curious.

Robert Greene 1:08:42 Well, um, I mean, I look at it this way. You know, we're all going through a very difficult time now. A lot of people out there are really suffering. Circumstances are very harsh with their work, et cetera. And the tendency is that you don't imagine what else it could be, what, what, what the future could be, what you could be doing with your life. So the lack of imagination is really holding you back. So the idea that I want to plant in people's brain with my next book and in general is things don't have to be the way they are.

Lewis Howes 1:09:15 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:09:16 Because-

Lewis Howes 1:09:17 You know

Robert Greene 1:09:17 ... you're in this situation in the present doesn't mean it has to be that way in two months or a year from now. There are other possibilities. Try and imagine a different path for your life in a year, what that could be like. Try and imagine a different relationship you can be in if you're stuck in something, but don't keep in this little, small, little circle of thought. So imagination's extremely powerful and extremely important, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:09:43 You mentioned Martin Luther King as someone you're really inspired by, and from the past. Who are the top two people that you've researched or written about in any of your books that you really connect with the most as an inspirational leader from the past or a human being?

Robert Greene 1:09:59 Well, this person is a little bit more on the devilish side, because I have to, I have to, you know, not act like I'm, I'm, you know, this Mother Teresa here.

Lewis Howes 1:10:08 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:10:09 Um, and that would be Machiavelli. Machiavelli was the inspiration for The 48 Laws, somebody I've always loved.

Lewis Howes 1:10:15 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:10:16 Because he's such a realist. He explains this is not how life should be, this is how life is. This is how people are. This is what the world is like. And when I was 17, at 16 when I first read The Prince, I thought, "Wow." I didn't really understand the book, but I go, "Wow, this is powerful. This is really ex- talking to me. This is really saying what it's like with my friends in high school, et cetera." I could relate to his honesty, because so many people are so dishonest. And I love him because he's a man of the Renaissance. People don't understand this about him. He wrote a hardcore book like The Prince, but he also wrote much more-

Lewis Howes 1:10:55 Mm

Robert Greene 1:10:55 ... intellectual book like The Discourses. He also wrote one of the wickedest plays, comedies ever written in the history of, of theater, a play so sacrilegious that it shocked everyone at the time. And people still... And it's a very funny play, called Mandragola. So he was like a, a poet. He was a great seducer of women, even though he was physically ugly. He was like a really weird guy. He was interesting.

Lewis Howes 1:11:22 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:11:22 And I loved his stories, right?

Lewis Howes 1:11:25 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:11:25 So he'd be one. And the other one would be from Master, was Leonardo da Vinci.

Lewis Howes 1:11:29 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:11:29 I mean, these are from the same period. In fact, um, they probably crossed each other's path. Um, but Da Vinci, you know, he was like not human.

Lewis Howes 1:11:40 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:11:41 He, he thought on a level that was so superior, that was so almost godlike-

Lewis Howes 1:11:48 Mm

Robert Greene 1:11:48 ... that it fascinated me, you know? There's a theme that I have in my new book, people who are so far ahead of their time that it's uncanny.

Lewis Howes 1:11:57 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:11:58 And I have examples in history of this, people who are 1,000, 500 years ahead of their time. How can that be, you know? Is it just coincidence, or what is it? And I'm fascinated by it. Well, he was doing drawings of military tanks, of flying planes, of, you know, all kinds of, of elaborate technological devices that some have never even been invented, you know? And where did this come from? He was also, like, one of the first people in history who observed nature just for itself. He loved, like, plants and flowers and animals without thinking about God or religion.

Lewis Howes 1:12:38 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:12:39 He was one of the first animal lovers in history. I'm an animal lover, right? I love any kind of animal.

Lewis Howes 1:12:44 Got it. You got cats, right?

Robert Greene 1:12:45 I have cats, but I love dogs. I love horses.

Lewis Howes 1:12:47 Two cats, right?

Robert Greene 1:12:47 I have two cats.

Lewis Howes 1:12:48 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:12:49 But I love horses. I love dogs. I love them all. He, uh, no- ... People were so cruel to animals back then. Nobody had pets like that.

Lewis Howes 1:12:58 Yeah, just stray animals, and they just kick them and-

Robert Greene 1:13:00 Cats were just there to kill rats-

Lewis Howes 1:13:01 Wow

Robert Greene 1:13:02 ... you know, et cetera. He would go in the marketplace in Florence where birds were being sold. He would buy them and open the cage and let them fly away, you know? He had great empathy-

Lewis Howes 1:13:12 Mm

Robert Greene 1:13:12 ... for other animals, creatures who the church said didn't have a soul, but he believed that animals had souls, and he was the first person, really. So I'm obsessed with people like that who are so far ahead of their time, so he'd be the second guy.

Lewis Howes 1:13:25 Wow. Is there a woman from the past that you're ins-

Robert Greene 1:13:28 Cleopatra.

Lewis Howes 1:13:29 Cleopatra, [laughs] why, why?

Robert Greene 1:13:31 Well, 'cause I wrote a book about seduction.

Lewis Howes 1:13:33 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:13:34 And, you know, I'm obviously, uh, have a side to me that's very into seduction or I wouldn't have written the book, you know? And in my 20s, I was kind of a player.

Lewis Howes 1:13:44 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:13:45 You know? I know it's hard to believe now, but I was.

Lewis Howes 1:13:47 [laughs] Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:13:47 I was a bit of a rake. And so, um, and Cleopatra was kind of like... Almost my ideal in a way, what I read about. I haven't met her obviously.

Lewis Howes 1:13:56 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:13:57 Um, but she was very smart. She was quite an intellectual. I've always been very attracted to very smart women, right? Um, she was very well-read. She had the Library of Alexandria there. She'd read all the Greek classics. She was a lot smarter than the men around her.

Lewis Howes 1:14:13 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:14:14 She was a lot smarter than Mark Antony. I wouldn't say she was smarter than Julius Caesar, but she was his equal.

Lewis Howes 1:14:19 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:14:20 And she was insanely good seductress. She was very theatrical. She knew how to create these insane spectacles, and what man wouldn't be impressed by that? You know, she knew that Mark Antony was, like, this kind of raging sensualist, so she seduces him by creating this insanely decadent barge that floats down the Nile River with all these weird animals on it and people fanning you with giant things and all gold and everything. You know, Mark Antony goes on a tour of all the cities on the Nile with the, on this barge, and he was totally seduced. She was, like, constantly putting on this theater. And believe it or not, she supposedly wasn't that beautiful.

Lewis Howes 1:15:02 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:15:02 We don't have any images from her, but descriptions said that she had a bit of a nose, et cetera. But she had, her energy was really interesting, so that would probably be the, the woman of my choice.

Lewis Howes 1:15:13 What do you think is the greatest skill or couple skills that any 20 to 30-year-old kind of in their 20s should be learning how to master today? From the skills of psychology, the skills of human nature, the skills of understanding people, which skill should that be-

Robert Greene 1:15:34 Well-

Lewis Howes 1:15:34 ... to focus on?

Robert Greene 1:15:35 The, the, the, the, the best thing is to be able to get inside the minds of other people.

Lewis Howes 1:15:40 Ooh, there we go.

Robert Greene 1:15:40 If you develop that skill, the sky's the limit. Nothing will ever stop you because people are like a mystery. They wear a mask, and you don't have any idea what they're thinking. And I, I had this metaphor in Human Nature which I never wrote, but imagine a device was created in which, some app that you can now know the thoughts and feelings of the other person. Do you know the power you would have?

Lewis Howes 1:16:05 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:16:06 It'd be insane. Okay, you're not, I can't give you such an app. I can't invent that. But you can develop half of that power by becoming someone of insane empathy. And it's not easy, and not everybody's born the same way, but it begins with a, one very simple step, and that is normally you go around more interested in your own thoughts and ideas. You're thinking about your boss. You're thinking about your girlfriend or boyfriend. You're thinking about this person who said this, that, or the other, and you're locked in your head. And it's like a, a record, like in the old vinyl days, going around and round and round-

Lewis Howes 1:16:44 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:16:44 ... the same grooves, right? And even when you're sitting there talking with someone on a date or something, you're thinking about yourself. You're still in there, right? Because you find yourself more interesting than the other person, and it's very human. I'm not judging it. But inevitably, you think your own dramas, your own ideas, your own problems are essentially more interesting than the other person. So if that's the, that's your starting position, you're naturally gonna be more absorbed in yourself. You need to switch it around, and you need to tell yourself, "The other person is more interesting than me."

Lewis Howes 1:17:19 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:17:20 Their life, their thoughts, their ideas, it's like an undiscovered world. It's like going to Tahiti or something and visiting another culture.

Lewis Howes 1:17:29 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:17:29 They have experiences you've never had. They have a world that's not your world. It's fascinating. Why do people love movies? They love movies because they get to go inside other people's characters.

Lewis Howes 1:17:41 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:17:41 And they get to vicariously live in them. It's voyeurism. You can have that in everyday life-

Lewis Howes 1:17:46 Hmm

Robert Greene 1:17:46 ... if you switch that thing where you're more interested in other people. And so when you listen to them, you're not listening with the idea of, "Do they like me?"

Lewis Howes 1:17:55 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:17:56 "Are they thinking about me? What does it have to do with me?" I'm sorry using that voice, but it's-

Lewis Howes 1:18:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:18:01 You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of a whiny voice. "What's it about me, me, me, me?" Thinking just in a Zen way, absorb yourself in their words and their energy, and think about what, what they're saying. What's the subtext behind them? What's the body language revealing? What is it that motivates them? What is their inner life like? I can't get inside Lewis Howes' thoughts. It's impossible. But I can get inside your moods and emotions because we humans are very susceptible to the moods of other people. We can feel them. So I can start to, if I'm open enough-

Lewis Howes 1:18:35 Hmm

Robert Greene 1:18:36 ... I can understand the tone in your voice. I can understand the subtext of what you're saying, and I can pick up the emotion behind it and what you're intending. And once I do that, well, then if someone says something, I don't have to take it personally because now I understand that it probably comes from other things that have nothing to do with me.

Lewis Howes 1:18:56 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:18:56 Or I want them, I want to persuade them to help me on a project. Well, now I know what their world is like, what their spirit is, what their problems are. I'm gonna mold what I'm saying to plea- to get them interested in my idea. Doors open up to you left, right, and center. The whole universe opens up to you once you put, you're able to put yourself in the mindset and the-

Lewis Howes 1:19:17 Hmm

Robert Greene 1:19:17 ... the point of view of other people, enter their spirit. That's the single greatest step you can have. So you're about to start your first job, and you're all insecure, and you're all worried about you and what people think about you. Try and ma- it's not easy. It's not natural. Try and make that switch, and don't think about yourself. And try and figure out, what is your boss like? What does he or she, what are they, what is motivating them? What are their insecurities? What are their doubts? What is this person feeling? Da, da, and suddenly, you're gonna navigate this social environment in a much different level.

Lewis Howes 1:19:49 Hmm. I love this. This is powerful, I think. So to get in the minds of other people would be the greatest skill.

Robert Greene 1:19:56 By far.

Lewis Howes 1:19:57 And the way to do that, I'm hearing you say, is through empathy, through asking interesting questions, through listening.

Robert Greene 1:20:03 No, it's taking this one step, which is other people are more interesting than me. I love going to see movies. That other person is like Hannibal Lecter. I'm sorry, that's not a, that's not a good choice. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:20:18 Sure.

Robert Greene 1:20:19 Could be, but, or they're like this other character in some other movie. I don't know. Choose whichever one you want, right? They're fa-

Lewis Howes 1:20:25 Think of Beetlejuice. There you go.

Robert Greene 1:20:27 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:20:27 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:20:28 Wow, that was a long time ago.

Lewis Howes 1:20:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:20:30 Yeah, I remember that.

Lewis Howes 1:20:30 Just thinking of a fascinating character.

Robert Greene 1:20:32 They're like that. They have a s- they have do- stories, they have drama, right? Their childhood was probably weird.

Lewis Howes 1:20:39 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:20:39 They come from a culture, from a city, from a background that's not your city or background, and to try and understand it. Now, some people are harder to do that with than others. There, there are people out there who are, like, just total [censored] and you don't really wanna have to get into their world.

Lewis Howes 1:20:54 Right, right. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:20:54 Right? You feel like you're getting yourself, taking a shower of mud or something-

Lewis Howes 1:20:58 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:20:58 ... or excrement or whatever.

Lewis Howes 1:21:00 Sure.

Robert Greene 1:21:00 You don't wanna get into their world. But even then, it pays, if you've got a psychotic boss-

Lewis Howes 1:21:06 Mm

Robert Greene 1:21:06 ... it pays to get inside their mind so that you c- don't take things personally, so you can understand where they come from. So even with horrible people-

Lewis Howes 1:21:15 Mm

Robert Greene 1:21:15 ... being able to understand who they are will, will prevent you from taking everything personally.

Lewis Howes 1:21:20 So having the understanding that other people are more interesting than me, having that framework in your mind allows you to look at them differently.

Robert Greene 1:21:28 Or as interesting.

Lewis Howes 1:21:29 Or as interesting.

Robert Greene 1:21:29 That they have stories to tell. They have a life that's, that's fascinating. They're like a character in a movie.

Lewis Howes 1:21:35 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:21:35 I wanna understand it.

Lewis Howes 1:21:37 And asking questions allows you to understand it.

Robert Greene 1:21:40 Uh, you have to be careful with questions, because if you're so obvious, if you're going, "Tell me about it."

Lewis Howes 1:21:45 "Tell me about this." [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:21:46 Yeah. Yeah, "So did your, did you love your mother? Did your father?"

Lewis Howes 1:21:49 [laughs] They're like, "Yeah, why are you asking me this?"

Robert Greene 1:21:50 It starts getting intrusive.

Lewis Howes 1:21:51 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:21:51 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:21:52 So how do we get to know them without being intrusive?

Robert Greene 1:21:56 Well, it's an art. So, um, you know, y- y- people love to talk about their childhood.

Lewis Howes 1:22:04 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:22:04 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:22:04 And their successes, and yeah.

Robert Greene 1:22:06 Yeah, but I found, like, childhood is the main thing. Everyone has this kind of emotional attachment to their experiences as a child, to where they grew up, to their parents, to their family, to their earliest friends. It's got all sorts of emotions ar- surrounding it that are very potent-

Lewis Howes 1:22:24 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:22:24 ... and uncontrollable. So a very kind of slip in question about someone's childhood, and then asking a few leading questions and letting them do the talking. So if you're at, peppering them with questions, you look like a lawyer-

Lewis Howes 1:22:39 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:22:40 ... or someone who's, uh-

Lewis Howes 1:22:41 Or someone like me, who just interviews people for a living.

Robert Greene 1:22:43 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:22:44 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:22:45 So you want the, them to do 90% of the t-

Lewis Howes 1:22:48 Oh

Robert Greene 1:22:48 ... you can't, 90% of it, it's obvious what you're doing. 80% or se- people love to talk, right? If they do 70% of the talking, they're not even aware that they're doing that. But you're k- letting them talk, you're letting them be the star. But you find a, a foothold into their, what excites them, and you get them to talk and open up about their childhood, and then occasionally a question, and then occasionally you go into your own life-

Lewis Howes 1:23:13 Mm

Robert Greene 1:23:13 ... to sort of show, oh yeah, you had that, I had something very kind of similar. Mirroring people-

Lewis Howes 1:23:19 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:23:19 ... is a slightly manipulative trick. I, I don't d- doubt that, and I talk about that in seduction, but it's very powerful. They start telling you things about their childhood that are powerful, and you go, "Yeah, I had something very similar." And you probably have had something similar.

Lewis Howes 1:23:32 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:23:32 That's a really p- potent way of connecting to people. But you've gotta be subtle. It's an art getting people to talk and open up, to finding that thing that lights their face up, that gets them excited, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:23:44 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:23:45 What-

Lewis Howes 1:23:46 Yeah, I think, uh, the book Influence by Cialdini, I don't know if you've studied that book.

Robert Greene 1:23:50 Sure.

Lewis Howes 1:23:50 But just likability allows you to c- is one of his main, I think it's seven or eight keys of influence, but he talks about likability. And the more someone can see that they like you through mirroring or through-

Robert Greene 1:24:00 Yep

Lewis Howes 1:24:00 ... we have one thing in common, makes them like you more.

Robert Greene 1:24:03 Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:24:03 So finding that commonality, social proof, there's a, like a bunch of other things. Um, I can't remember all seven of them, but yeah, likability is one of the biggest things. It's one of the reasons why I'm just always trying to have fun and just be playful an- and kind of ease the moment for people so they can feel like, oh, this is relaxing and fun and playful and-

Robert Greene 1:24:23 Well, I must admit, that's why you're a good interviewer. And I know that because I've had, I've been with many bad interviewers.

Lewis Howes 1:24:28 Right. [laughs] Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:24:29 Who are kind of tense-

Lewis Howes 1:24:31 Mm

Robert Greene 1:24:31 ... and nervous and defensive, and they're insecure, right? Then they make you feel that way, and you-

Lewis Howes 1:24:37 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:24:37 ... but you have an energy that kind of brings out that part of, at least for me, that likes-

Lewis Howes 1:24:42 That's good, yeah

Robert Greene 1:24:43 ... that likes to yammer.

Lewis Howes 1:24:44 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:24:46 How does someone not be insecure? An interviewer, a, uh, someone trying to get a job and they're doing an interview with their potential boss. When you're with someone who's, you're inspired by or higher status or in a, on a, a influence position, how do you not be insecure or nervous?

Robert Greene 1:25:05 Okay. One simple answer. I mean, there might be exceptions, but it's pretty simple. Do your homework.

Lewis Howes 1:25:12 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:25:12 Be prepared. So if you go into an interview, you're naturally nervous. But if you've prepared, prepared the [censored] out of it-

Lewis Howes 1:25:20 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:25:20 ... you've researched that person, you know who they are, you know what the company is like, you know what the position is, why the other person was fired, what they're gonna need from you, you're gonna feel a lot less insecure than if you just kind of go in and wing it, right? Okay. So if you're on any kind of project, I talked in the war book about Alfred Hitchcock, the film director.

Lewis Howes 1:25:42 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:25:43 And my wife is a film director. It's a nerve-wracking task. You've got an army of 80 people who are all [censored] and insecure-

Lewis Howes 1:25:51 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:25:51 ... and ego-ridden, et cetera.

Lewis Howes 1:25:53 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:25:53 They're all secretly hoping you fail.

Lewis Howes 1:25:56 So they can be the director, yeah. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:25:58 Yeah. Okay, it's a nightmare, right? And Hitchcock was like, people were astonished. He'd be on the set, and he'd be falling asleep. "Oh, oh, really? Okay, yeah, yeah, go ahead."

Lewis Howes 1:26:09 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:26:09 He was like Buddha. He didn't care. He was never upset or anything. People, "How could that be?" Directors are the most nervous, a- bitter people. They're so control freaks. It's because he prepared every detail he knew beforehand.

Lewis Howes 1:26:23 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:26:23 He knew every shot that he wanted, what the clothes looked like, what the colors, how the framing would be. He storyboarded it in exact detail, and he said that, "By the time the film was being shot, I was bored because I knew everything, how it was supposed to be." So he could be calm because he was so well-prepared. So if you do your homework-

Lewis Howes 1:26:42 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:26:43 ... it's maybe not gonna get rid of all your insecurities and all your nervousness-

Lewis Howes 1:26:47 It helps a lot, though

Robert Greene 1:26:48 ... because a degree of nervousness is okay, because you have to understand the physiology. Adrenaline is a very powerful emotion, and feeling a little bit of doubt and a little bit of fear will drive you and keep your eye, keep you awake and alert. So you don't wanna be so confident that you'll just do anything. You want a little bit of tenseness.

Lewis Howes 1:27:08 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:27:08 But if you prepare and you, and you've anticipated the situation, it will get rid of 80% of those doubts that you have.

Lewis Howes 1:27:17 We were talking about before, and I have a couple final questions for you. We were talking about before, self-doubt, before we started recording, and I'm curious your thoughts on doubt, doubting ourselves, and how do we train our minds or our bodies or our life so that doubt doesn't keep us from accomplishing with what we want or keep us from trying something we want? 'Cause I think a lot of people don't do something because they doubt themselves so much, from the fear of failure or the fear of success or people judging them. What's your thoughts on this?

Robert Greene 1:27:49 Well, um, the main thing is, is you have to try something. You have to do something, right? And of course, if you're full of doubt and insecurities, it's gonna be very hard. And so what separates the person who is gonna learn this on the way to success from somebody who won't will be that person who's 22, 23, they tries it. They do it. They take that job, and they write that thing, or they do that whatever it is that the other person maybe wouldn't try, 'cause they're not afraid of failing.

Lewis Howes 1:28:20 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:28:20 Right? So a certain level of... You can't control that because some people are born that way. I don't know if they're born that way, but something about them in their DNA has, is giving them that drive.

Lewis Howes 1:28:32 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:28:32 But if you don't have that drive, if you have your insecurities, understand pain is a very powerful motivating factor. But if you're 22 and you don't try something, you don't feel the pain, so why not?

Lewis Howes 1:28:46 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:28:47 Then you're 23, then you're 24. You're not feeling pain. Then you're 28, and you're still not feeling pain. Then you're 32. You're starting to feel a little depressed. Then you're 35. [censored] man.

Lewis Howes 1:28:54 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:28:54 Then you're 40. You're picking up the bottle, you know, et cetera.

Lewis Howes 1:28:57 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:28:57 Okay, so understand, you're 22, that life is very difficult and that you're gonna, you're down a path towards something really, really bad unless you get your act together and try that first thing. Because what happens, people have studied fear, and it's very important. And I know back in 2001, I was in Vienna, Austria.

Lewis Howes 1:29:18 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:29:19 And I was watching... I was in a theater. I was in the middle of this, this very packed audience, and there was a fire. And people were panicking and running around, and I got such a sense of claustrophobia. It killed... I was like, "Ah." And from then on, I couldn't get on an airplane. I couldn't get in an elevator. I was, like, developing major claustrophobia, right?

Lewis Howes 1:29:41 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:29:42 And then I went. I saw a therapist, and she said, "You gotta expose yourself. You gotta go back in that elevator."

Lewis Howes 1:29:48 That is so true.

Robert Greene 1:29:49 "You gotta go back into that airplane, and then you realize it's not so bad, and you'll get over it. By avoiding it, you'll never get over the fear." So take that first step. Do whatever it is that you thought you couldn't do, and don't be afraid, because that is the most important moment in your life. And then you realize it's not so bad. Okay, people are making fun of me, I failed, but they never tried anything. I at least tried, and I have an idea for my next. But it wasn't so bad.

Lewis Howes 1:30:18 Right.

Robert Greene 1:30:18 You know? But if you never ma- make that first step, I don't care, the wisdom of Solomon won't be able to help you, right? You'll always be stopping before you can... So you've gotta be, have the guts to make that first step, and then the doors will open for you.

Lewis Howes 1:30:33 It... What I'm hearing you say is it's an experiential event. It's not a theory of, okay, let me think my way out of the fear-

Robert Greene 1:30:39 Right

Lewis Howes 1:30:39 ... or the insecurity-

Robert Greene 1:30:40 Exactly

Lewis Howes 1:30:40 ... or the doubt. It's like, no, I have to practice this and experience the feeling of, ah, I failed, or someone laughed at me, or I tripped and fell. Whatever it is, you've gotta experience it.

Robert Greene 1:30:50 You have a good way of summarizing what I'm saying-

Lewis Howes 1:30:52 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:30:52 ... because you said it better than I did.

Lewis Howes 1:30:54 Well, this is something I've been fascinated by because I think so many people are, doubt themselves, and their doubt is what keeps them from going after what they want, getting into the relationship they want, getting out of the relationship they want, you know, getting the job, all these things. And they're afraid of failure, they're afraid of success, and they're afraid of people's opinions or judgment when they take this action. And I, I tell people that the simplest thing you can do is write a list of your biggest fears and insecurities, circle the top one, the one that scares you the most, and then do that until you feel at peace with it-

Robert Greene 1:31:30 Right

Lewis Howes 1:31:30 ... or at least so you can embrace it. Essentially, become Batman of that fear-

Robert Greene 1:31:33 Right

Lewis Howes 1:31:33 ... and live with the bats of that fear, that insecurity-

Robert Greene 1:31:36 That's a good way of doing it

Lewis Howes 1:31:37 ... where then it becomes a powerful thing for you. And this is what I did in my teens and 20s, from being terrified of public speaking, and I went to public speaking class every single week until I felt like, "Wow, I feel powerful up here, not powerless."

Robert Greene 1:31:50 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:31:51 And I did it with so many different things that I was insecure about-

Robert Greene 1:31:54 Right

Lewis Howes 1:31:54 ... until they became skills as opposed to fears-

Robert Greene 1:31:59 Right

Lewis Howes 1:31:59 ... and insecurities. I think... And so I love that you said you've gotta expose yourself to the fear.

Robert Greene 1:32:03 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:32:03 You've gotta re-go into the elevator or go back to that theater that had the fire-

Robert Greene 1:32:07 Right

Lewis Howes 1:32:07 ... and breathe and feel comfortable so you can live your life.

Robert Greene 1:32:11 And then we go back to the thought about, you know, that question, could it have been worse?

Lewis Howes 1:32:16 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:32:16 Well, think of it this way. If you don't try that thing, it's gonna be a lot worse for you down the road. You're gonna never get anywhere and, and you're gonna f- the pain will be intense in 15 years. You're not feeling it now, but have that hindsight to realize that the worst thing in life, the worst feeling of all, is to feel that you wasted your potential.

Lewis Howes 1:32:40 Oof.

Robert Greene 1:32:40 That you had dreams and you never even tried them, and then you're in your 50s or 60s, you're facing death, "Why was I alive? I didn't do it. I could have done this, that, or that, and never even tried." Remind yourself of that. You know, they used to have emperors in, in ancient Rome would have a slave walking by them and whispering into their ear, "You're going to die. You're mortal. You might die tomorrow. You might die tomorrow." Right? And that was, like, a reminder of their mortality and that they had to not get so, uh-

Lewis Howes 1:33:14 Wasn't, wasn't that a story from Marcus Aurelius where he had someone talk to him and say, "You're just a man," or something? Or-

Robert Greene 1:33:19 That might be. That might be

Lewis Howes 1:33:20 ... was that who it was? I can't remember, but someone had someone just say every day, "You're just a man."

Robert Greene 1:33:24 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:33:25 The more powerful he became-

Robert Greene 1:33:26 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:33:27 ... to kinda k- keep him more grounded.

Robert Greene 1:33:29 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:33:29 "You're just a man," or, "You're going to die."

Robert Greene 1:33:31 Or just have that whisper, "You're gonna fail. You're gonna, you're gonna be... You're not gonna realize your dreams. You're gonna waste your life. You're wasting your life. You're wasting your life. You're wasting your life." You don't wanna feel that way. I know-

Lewis Howes 1:33:43 Mm

Robert Greene 1:33:44 ... like, it's hard to s- it, it's, I, I'm coming from a position of privilege, and I don't deny that.

Lewis Howes 1:33:49 Sure.

Robert Greene 1:33:50 But I was not, I didn't have anybody help me. I, all my success was pretty much on my own. I worked really hard. But I can tell you this, that prior to my success, I was really unhappy. I was really unhappy. I was very depressed. I even had moments I was suicidal. I felt like I could do something, but I wasn't able to do it. And then the ability to wr- write my books now, I don't have that feeling anymore, and it's the greatest thing in the world-

Lewis Howes 1:34:19 Mm

Robert Greene 1:34:19 ... to not f- ever feel like, you know, that, that, that doubt and that depression. It's like a constant exhilaration.

Lewis Howes 1:34:26 It's amazing.

Robert Greene 1:34:27 I, I finished it. I wrote that book. I did it. You know? I, I can feel good about myself, and I want other people to understand that. You may not... It, it doesn't have to be a grand project, but it has to be something that makes you feel like... You know, 'cause when you're a child, you have these dreams. Everybody had these dreams. You were gonna be the best basketball player in history, like me, like I thought I was.

Lewis Howes 1:34:50 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:34:51 Right. You know?

Lewis Howes 1:34:52 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:34:53 The Jewish kid's gonna be a great basketball player.

Lewis Howes 1:34:55 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:34:55 Okay. You know, or, "I'm gonna be the best this. I'm gonna be a great writer. I'm gonna be da, bla, bla." And then you get older and you lose those dreams, and it's very depressing. It's very debilitating, and you wanna keep some of that ch- child within you alive-

Lewis Howes 1:35:08 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:35:08 ... and some of that ambition, some of that desire-

Lewis Howes 1:35:11 Yeah

Robert Greene 1:35:11 ... to achieve something great. And having ambition is not a bad thing. It's a dirty word today, 'cause people think it means you're selfish.

Lewis Howes 1:35:19 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:35:19 But your ambitions can be towards achieving things that help people as well.

Lewis Howes 1:35:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:35:24 What's the greatest fear for you now that you haven't yet conquered or overcome, or insecurity that you're still dealing with?

Robert Greene 1:35:33 I don't know, Lewis. Um, [laughs] you know, um, I, I have a, believe it or not, a tremendous fear of failure.

Lewis Howes 1:35:42 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:35:43 Like, um-

Lewis Howes 1:35:44 Still, after all these-

Robert Greene 1:35:45 Still

Lewis Howes 1:35:45 ... massive hits and millions of books sold-

Robert Greene 1:35:47 Still

Lewis Howes 1:35:47 ... and every time you get a-

Robert Greene 1:35:49 I'm neurotic, and I don't deny it

Lewis Howes 1:35:50 ... every, every book is a hit and just changes lives.

Robert Greene 1:35:54 Well, uh, it's because, I don't know if it's from my background, I'd come home with straight As and my parents would go, "Eh. Okay, so what-

Lewis Howes 1:36:02 Right

Robert Greene 1:36:02 ... what's next?" Okay. So it's instilled in me some way. I don't know why, but... So I'm writing my new book, my first chapter, and I'm going, "This isn't working. It's, it's too intellectual. It's not gonna hit people. It's not relevant to their lives. I have to change it, I have to change it. If I write the book like this, people are gonna laugh at me." And I go through that every single time in every single book. Now, I'm able... It's kind of a split personality, because in the back of my mind I know I'm kind of playing a game.

Lewis Howes 1:36:28 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 1:36:29 But I still play the game, and it keeps me motivated and it keeps me working. So I must say, I'm still deathly afraid of failing my readers and of them being disappointed in me and going, "I thought Robert was this great writer, and look, he's put out this [censored] now.

Lewis Howes 1:36:43 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:36:43 What's wrong with him? He's getting old and soft."

Lewis Howes 1:36:45 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:36:46 I'm still afraid of that.

Lewis Howes 1:36:47 Wow. Well, I guess that's why you keep showing up, keep creating-

Robert Greene 1:36:52 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:36:52 ... to help you overcome that fear.

Robert Greene 1:36:53 I keep being back, invited back to Lewis Howes. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:36:55 That's it, that's it. Uh, this has been powerful, and I think, uh, a lot of people are gonna love this. I want them to, if you're listening right now and something inspired you, or you're watching, make sure to send a tweet to Robert Greene. Let him know what you enjoyed about this. Or on Instagram, Robert Greene Official. Post a story, tag Robert so he can see it, even though I'm not sure how active you are on Instagram, but someone's watching there-

Robert Greene 1:37:20 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:37:20 ... so you'll get the information.

Robert Greene 1:37:21 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:37:22 And The Laws of Human Nature on Facebook. If you don't have all of Robert's books, make sure to get them right now, and also get on your newsletter. I think you have a newsletter, right, where they can opt in for when the, the future book comes out? I'm not sure if Ryan probably manages a lot of it for you still.

Robert Greene 1:37:38 He is.

Lewis Howes 1:37:38 But go to your website-

Robert Greene 1:37:40 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:37:40 ... which is-

Robert Greene 1:37:41 PowerSeductionAndWar.com

Lewis Howes 1:37:43 PowerSeductionAndWar.com.

Robert Greene 1:37:44 The "and" is spelled out.

Lewis Howes 1:37:46 AndWar.com. Go there. Get on his newsletter, or just go check it every month, because the book's coming out hopefully in the next couple years. But this is gonna be your best book yet. I'm already declaring it.

Robert Greene 1:37:57 I hope so.

Lewis Howes 1:37:58 I'm declaring it, 'cause I know you're not gonna let yourself down, or people who read it down. You're that neurotic.

Robert Greene 1:38:03 I am that neurotic.

Lewis Howes 1:38:03 You're that neurotic.

Robert Greene 1:38:04 I sure as hell am, and I don't deny it.

Lewis Howes 1:38:06 You, well, you've got some other interviews we've had on our show. We'll link those up in the show notes if you wanna hear Robert's definition of greatness and his three truths. You can go listen to those. Uh, final question for you, what's the question you wish more people would ask you that they don't ask you?

Robert Greene 1:38:25 I don't really have a, a... You know, when people put you on the spot like that, you have to be, like, so quick-witted.

Lewis Howes 1:38:32 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:38:32 And I'm not, I'm s- I'm kind of a slow brain. Um-

Lewis Howes 1:38:35 Is there, is there anything you wish more people would, would have discussions about that they don't with you?

Robert Greene 1:38:41 Well, ah, I don't know. I mean, you know, um, I'm kind of really into the zeitgeist.

Lewis Howes 1:38:50 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:38:50 I wrote a chapter about that in Human Nature, about the times that we're living through. You know, I tend, people tend to think that I'm just interested in individuals and psychology now, but I'm also very interested in, in our culture-

Lewis Howes 1:39:03 Mm

Robert Greene 1:39:03 ... and our society and how it fits into the larger scheme of history. So sometimes people don't ask me so much about that chapter, and about, "What do you think is going on right now in the world today? Where are we? What is the moment that we're in, and how does it compare in the past?" Um, because I've read a lot of history.

Lewis Howes 1:39:23 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:39:23 I'm not bragging, because it probably led to my stroke-

Lewis Howes 1:39:26 Mm

Robert Greene 1:39:26 ... to be honest with you. You know, thousands of books. And so I have a s- innate sense of patterns of history, of things that repeat, of things... You know, people go through certain crises. And so it makes me very attuned to the spirit, to the feeling in the air now. So, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:39:45 Mm. What do you think's gonna happen in the next few years based on history?

Robert Greene 1:39:48 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:39:48 In t- in two minutes.

Robert Greene 1:39:50 Oh, God.

Lewis Howes 1:39:50 The ov- the overview of what you've s- experienced from all the historical events to what we're facing now.

Robert Greene 1:39:55 Well, I think the human spirit can't deal with too much stagnation, can't deal with... So on the one hand, we're afraid of change. On the other hand, we're deadly afraid of boredom and stagnation, and things have been stagnant for too long, and we're on the verge of what I think could be a revolutionary generation. It's not carved in stone, because social media's kind of disrupted the apple cart, so to speak. But young people are the, are the motors of change in this world. They will create culture. They will create new movements.

Lewis Howes 1:40:29 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:40:29 They will create, keep the world alive, because they enter the world, and the world doesn't fit who they are because it was created by boomers or whomever. So they wanna mold the world into something that's more like them. So they're the motors of all the changes, all the trends in fashion, all the trends in the arts, in politics, et cetera. But things have been too static for a long time. We live in a situation where the politics and the structures have not really shifted in 50 years.

Lewis Howes 1:40:57 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:40:57 They're ossified. And so I think the s- human spirit is sick of it. If I were 20 years old, I would be sick of it. I would say, "This is not the world that I wanna live in." And so I feel like there's going to be an outbreak at some point-

Lewis Howes 1:41:12 Mm

Robert Greene 1:41:12 ... where people are gonna say, "I wanna live. I want something more alive. I don't want this world that is so unequal." You know, I, I, I'm somebody who ramps against inequalities of wealth, et cetera, and just the kind of rigid s-

Lewis Howes 1:41:25 Mm

Robert Greene 1:41:25 ... social framework that we're living in. I think there will be an outburst. I can't... I'm not Nostradamus, so I could be wrong. In five years, people might be laughing at me. But I sense, and other people who've written, who write about the generational phenomenon say that the millennials were the crisis generation.

Lewis Howes 1:41:43 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:41:44 And that's always followed by the revolutionary generation, which would be the Generation Y or whatever you call them.

Lewis Howes 1:41:50 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:41:51 Or Z, Generation Z.

Lewis Howes 1:41:52 What should we... How should we be preparing ourselves if this comes true? What can we do now for the next couple years to prepare ourselves?

Robert Greene 1:42:00 Well, embrace it.

Lewis Howes 1:42:01 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:42:01 Embrace it. I, I did a, a podcast about it, and a lot of people were upset, going, "Well, you know, revolutions, I mean, come on. Look at the Soviet Union or Communist China. Revolutions are bad. They're ugly. Look at that." And I, my response is, change is the healthiest thing that can happen, right? Even if it's a change for the worse, it's okay, because humans need a vitality. We need things that are different. We need a different landscape, social landscape around us, right? So welcome it. Don't be a defensive little rat who's gotta live in their own little hole, and everything has to be the same. The world is changing. It will change without whether you like it or not. Technology will change your world whether you like it or not. Young people will change the world whether you like it or not. So it's a lot better to embrace it and feel excited about the opportunities that are coming out. Because if you look at the, just take it from the business point of view, it's a devastated... It's like a hurricane happened.

Lewis Howes 1:43:01 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:43:02 All the businesses that are gone.

Lewis Howes 1:43:04 All the jobs lost, everything, yeah.

Robert Greene 1:43:04 The entertainment industry, the travel industry, they're devastated.

Lewis Howes 1:43:07 Gone. Restaurant industry, yeah.

Robert Greene 1:43:10 What happens when that... New things are gonna spring up. New ideas are gonna spring up. There's gonna be new ways. I think the new f- the future for, for that kind of world is gonna be giving people experiences, because they've been locked up in their house for a year, and they want... So, like, you go to a hotel or a restaurant, you want to give people a little bit of an experience. It's not just something so flat and, like on social media.

Lewis Howes 1:43:33 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 1:43:33 So people feel more alive. There's gonna be opportunities you're not even aware of. So be open to the change, and be excited about it. That's the main thing that, that to prepare yourself for.

Lewis Howes 1:43:43 Mm. Robert, thank you for always opening up and being honest and real every time you come on. Thanks for being episode one, and now 1,000-something.

Robert Greene 1:43:53 Wow.

Lewis Howes 1:43:54 Uh, hope you come back on many other times.

Robert Greene 1:43:56 Episode 2,000 or something.

Lewis Howes 1:43:57 2,000? Yeah, hopefully we'll come back on in two... Well, before then.

Robert Greene 1:43:59 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:43:59 But, uh, your next book, we'll have you back on for sure.

Robert Greene 1:44:02 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:44:02 And if you guys wanna wa- hear more about, uh, Robert's, uh, ideas on the zeitgeist and what's happening in culture, then let me know, and maybe we'll bring you back on sooner in the next six months after the election [laughs] and everything to see what you think is gonna be happening moving forward-

Robert Greene 1:44:18 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:44:18 ... and what we can do about it. So Robert, thank you so much, man.

Robert Greene 1:44:20 Thank you so much, Lewis.

Lewis Howes 1:44:20 I appreciate it.

Robert Greene 1:44:21 I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Lewis Howes 1:44:22 If you wanna learn more about how to master your mind, check out this next video right here.

Speaker 1:44:27 So when people begin to disengage and get beyond themselves, you are at your absolute best when you get beyond yourself. And getting the person to that point-

Lewis Howes 1:44:38 How does someone get to that point?

Speaker 1:44:39 Yeah, so we teach them that formula. We teach them-