We don't really have a self. The self is a construction of our minds. There actually is nothing there.
And that kind of emptiness, egolessness, is enlightenment. It's a beautiful feeling. One of the best-selling authors of the last 20 years, Robert Greene. If you're dealing with your own weaknesses and your own emptiness inside, you're going to be drawn to people who fill that up.
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Subscribe right now. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is one of your favorites, someone who's been on the show before. You absolutely loved our first episode together, and so I had to have him back.
He's also one of my favorite authors, someone that I've been rereading recently, especially when I fell out of love with learning, and I'll tell you about that in a second. Today's guest is Robert Greene, the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, The Laws of Human Nature, and most recently, of The Daily Laws. I am so excited to welcome back to the show Robert Green.
Robert, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me, J. Thanks for that great introduction. Of course, grateful to have you back in the sea.
And as I was just saying to you offline, over Christmas, I spent last year touring. I was on stages. We did nearly 40 cities across 90 days.
My book had come out. I was really pouring out externally. And whenever that happens to me, I always kind of, after that, get a feeling of, I need to grow again.
I need to learn again. I need to nourish myself. And I really believe that last Christmas, The Daily Laws of Power became my daily read.
And I have recommended it to so many people. My wife started reading it. My closest friends have started reading it. And it was just such a great book for anyone who's either stuck with reading, someone who's kind of like not sure what to read, someone who's trying to figure out. Their direction in life, The Daily Laws of Power, is a great starting place, I'd say.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And I've always been a fan of your books, and you sent me this beautiful limited edition version, which I'm getting to show off on the show. But The 48 Laws, what a phenomenal book. So thank you for being such a big part of my learning journey.
For having me. You're a rock star, but what a tour you've been on. I've never been on a tour like that. That sounds like fun. It was fun.
It was fun. We went to Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane. Oh, my God.
All over India, I went to Dubai, I went to Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin. It was phenomenal. It was amazing. Would you consider yourself more of an extrovert or an introvert? So that's a great question.
And I'm going to let you define the two for me because you'll probably have some wisdom to share with us. I energize alone, but I enjoy connecting with small groups of specific people. So I assume I'm overall an introvert, but 99% of people would say, Jay, you're an extrovert. But... if I was in a big group of people, I would find the one person who I share values with to have a deep conversation.
I wouldn't be milling around introducing myself to everyone. So if that makes any sense. But do you need to be alone? Do you feel? I crave alone time a lot.
Yeah. Yes. A lot.
So you're a mix. Yeah. You're a mutt. Ambivert. Yeah.
Yeah. That's what it's called. Yeah.
Ambivert. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. But I have so many questions for you, Robert, that I want to dive into. Sure, go ahead.
I'm really coming to you with questions that I know a lot of my community and audience repeatedly ask, and I think you're specifically positioned to answer a lot of these. The first one I have is, one of the biggest things I get asked is, Jay, how do I deal with negative people? How do I deal with negative people in my family? How do I deal with negative people in my friend circle? How do I deal with negative people at work, in close, intimate circles?
I feel a lot of people feel they're dealing with negativity. Well, you know, it all depends on the details, the kind of negative person you're dealing with. There are several kind of ways of looking at it, some kind of micro and some kind of much larger.
The larger picture is we all have negative traits. We all have dark traits, right? And so you kind of, if you have this idea that it's just humans, human beings are like this, it's like a flower or a rock or a tree.
It has its nature. You know, I just accept it. I accept people for who they are and I deal with them on that level. I don't judge them, etc.
Now, of course, when you're dealing with negative people, it can be very difficult because negative people like to stir up a lot of drama around them. And that's the kind of power that they get. They like the attention that they get from making people upset, from pulling on your emotions, right?
So you have to have this kind of larger look at them where it's not about me, right? They're dealing with their own issues, their own problems. There's a history behind it. It could be their parents. It could be their family.
It could be their spouse, their children, whatever. And they're venting it on me in this particular moment. But it's not personal.
I tell people, don't take everything so personally, right? But then, you know, so there's all these different levels. And it all really depends on the specifics because a lot of people come to me for advice. But a lot of times you're enmeshed with a negative person.
Like it's your boss, it's your spouse, etc., etc. And it's very difficult to do what I'm talking about, right? And so you have to try and get a little bit of distance from them. You have to be able to say to yourself, they're not me, right? They have their own problems.
I'm separate from them. The sense of being separate from them is very liberating, right? So...
They have issues and they're trying to drag me into it and they're trying to drag me down. But I'm not them. I have my own life and I'm not going to get involved.
Sometimes you need to have empathy, but sometimes you need to shut that off. And so the best thing in life, though, is that's why I say there's just so many angles to approach this from, is if they're like a deep narcissist. And that's probably the most common type of negative person you deal with in the world today. And we all have come across this.
The power that you have is to recognize people like that before you get involved with them and to not get involved with them, right? And so they have signs, things that you can pick up in advance. People who are toxic, I don't know if we're toxic and negative or the same here, they don't show it immediately.
They're good at deceiving you. They can be very charming. They can be very dramatic. They pull you in with their...
great stories. Sometimes they're even charismatic. A lot of important CEOs in the world, people like Elon Musk, are raging narcissists. They appear very exciting and you want to get to know them, but you have to recognize that these are people that are probably going to use you, right? They don't see you as an individual.
And the people you associate with, we're very, as humans, we're very open to the emotions of other people right and so the people you associate with have a huge role on who you are and the energy you have you know your daily life etc etc and so you have to be very very careful who you let into your life right and um god jay i don't know there's so many different angles to approach it from no i tell i tell people that don't Judge people as far as who are you going to let into your life. Don't be deceived by the appearances. Don't judge people based on their intelligence, on their charm, on whether they're good or bad, etc.
Judge them on their character, whether they have a weak or a strong character. What are some of the signals, the signs we can look out for? Because I think what you just said is so true that we naturally get attracted to people's appearance, intelligence. charisma, access, because we haven't really been trained to view character. So I remember when I lived in the monastery, the highest quality or character trait that was considered the epitome of internal emotional evolution was humility.
And so when you met someone who is humble and you met someone who... didn't have false ego. They were considered of high character, and we were trained in order to understand that.
But in the modern world, that isn't how the material world works. We're almost attracted to people who can come off arrogant and showboaty, and even if we sense we don't like that, we still believe that person has power. And so... What are things that we have to look out for?
Well, also there are people who appear to be humble, but they're not really humble. There's a lot of people now who feign humility because it's seen as a positive trait. Yes. So humans are born actors and you have to kind of look behind the mask. So I tell people, I view it as strong or weak character.
A strong character is a person who can take criticism, right? Who can work with other people, right? Who can deal with stressful situations. who can handle responsibility and if there's something goes wrong they take I'm to blame for they don't look at other people there's somebody you can rely on you lean on them and there's something there to lean on you can rely on them in situations a weak character is somebody who cannot take criticism that is probably the number one characteristic the worst trait I think in people and a definite trait of negativity is somebody who can't take any kind of criticism right they're so defensive So that means they can get away with anything.
They can say anything they want, and there's just like a wall, a shell around them, right? So the ability in a work situation, in a relationship, to take criticism and be able to use it constructively is an incredibly useful and powerful trait to me that reveals strong character. How people handle stress is a really good sign of their character.
So in a work situation, people are good at faking it and pretending that they're very strong. But when it gets really stressful and there's a lot of pressure on it, the mask falls off and they reveal that they can't handle it. They're too weak.
They're reacting to everything. They can't get out of the moment. They're so impatient, you know, and fragile. And so the ability to handle stress shows that somebody has something strong inside of them, right? How they handle power, right?
So when people are kind of climbing up the ladder in a group or in a job, they generally try and pretend like they're with the group. But once they have power, that all falls off and they can become abusive and they feel like they can get away with any things that they couldn't get away with before. They treat people below them miserably, etc.
So when people have power, how do they handle it? Are they responsible? Do they suddenly become somebody different?
Or do they maintain the character that they had beforehand, right? What kind of partners do they choose? Do they choose a spouse, a husband, a girlfriend, etc.? Somebody that they can push around, somebody that's inferior to them so that they can feel better about themselves? How do they look when they're playing like a game or they're in outdoor activities or something that has nothing to do with work?
Are they so competitive they have to win at everything? even when it's like outside of that kind of environment, you know? These are kind of traits that help me sort of judge a person's character.
Yeah, and these are often the things that we either ignore or we actually let them kind of fall by the wayside or don't pay enough attention to them because we think, oh, no, but they're so smart and they're so this. And I wonder how much of that is also like, what? What does that say about us that we often get attracted to the wrong things within people?
What does that say about us? Does that make us a strong or weak character? I know that I tend to be, I tend to get involved with narcissistic people.
It's a weakness of mine, right? And maybe it's because of my upbringing and maybe it's because I feel a kind of emptiness inside of me and that their charm and the attention that they tend to... pretend to give you is kind of enchanting or casts a spell on you and it draws you in. Yeah, so if you're dealing with your own weaknesses and your own emptiness inside, you're going to be drawn to people who fill that up. Or you're going to be drawn to causes and charismatic leaders that pretend to give you a purpose in your life, because you don't have a purpose, but they have it for you kind of thing.
So A lot of it has to do, yeah, with ourselves and we're attracted to, we're even attracted to negative people. And there are people who have patterns in their life where they deliberately choose the wrong, the worst kind of person for them. Right. And over and over and over again, because at least that makes them feel alive.
At least the pain of it, you know, gives them a sense of something's half, something dramatic. And so they deliberately bring on that kind of pain. So it's complicated, yeah.
Yeah, when you said that... Often we feel an emptiness inside and you were saying maybe because of your upbringing, you felt that emptiness inside as well. Have you tried to fill that emptiness or is there another solution?
Well, to me, it's why I wrote the book Mastery. The way I fill my emptiness and how I've done it since I was a kid is through my work and through my ideas and my thinking and how I'm I'm constantly looking for new thoughts and new ways of looking at the world. So I find that if I didn't have my work as kind of, some people think of work as something that you just have to do, right? It's just a way to get money.
But for me, it's a way to feel like I'm a human being, that I am who I am. I was destined. to write these books and it gives me oh every day i wake up and i know this is what i need to accomplish etc etc um and so i that's why i read so many books that's why i'm so intrigued by ideas that's why i'm writing a book right now about a subject that very much captivates me because it does feel that inner kind of emptiness but on the other hand um as someone who meditates and practices a form of Zen meditation, there is a purpose to emptiness, right?
It's not necessarily good to be always having to fill things up in your brain, like you're just pouring food into your system. You know, there is something actually kind of intrinsically beautiful about the idea that there is emptiness, that I don't really have a self, that there is actually not, that there is no such thing as a mind, actually. It's an illusion that we create, right?
It's something through words that we have. So that sense of emptiness that, you know, I don't have an ego or that I'm confronting the world and I'm just hearing and seeing things as they are, it's actually a beautiful thing. So I have to kind of struggle against this idea of always having to fill myself up. What's something you were saying you like observing humans and humanity? What's something that...
you've observed about humans over time that surprised you? Well, nothing really surprises me because I read a lot of history and I see that things just keep repeating over and over and over again. I know though, since I had my stroke and since I'm physically weak and there are things I can't do anymore, I've actually noticed that People respond to me differently, and it's actually very positive. So sometimes I can be very negative about people.
That's kind of my inclination. That's how my mind tends to work, which is not necessarily a good thing. We all have these attitudes that make us look at the world a certain way. I tend to have a negative bent towards human nature. But I must say, people have been very, very kind to me since I've had my stroke.
And it's sad that you have to have... an accident like that to be able to perceive it. But I've seen another side where everyone wants to help me.
They kind of empathize with the fact that I'm a little bit helpless in these situations. And it's also made me kind of feel differently about other people who have disabilities or things that they can't help in their lives. But the sense of, I'm a little bit helpless, and people are really eager to try and help me, actually is something that has kind of surprised me in a way. Yeah, I liked what you said there, that it's sad that someone has to go through something for us to then show that sides of ourselves, which means that it's always there. It means that it exists inherently within us.
Yeah. Do you think it's because we, why do you think that is? Why do you think that is, that if it's inherently there, we don't display it at all times to all people?
I don't know. I mean, we're all born with a capacity for empathy. It's something that interests me a lot because the feeling that I'm connecting very deeply to another person, let's say my wife, etc., is a very overpowering emotion. It gets me out of myself and I'm seeing the world through her eyes as opposed to me always projecting myself onto her. It's a very moving experience.
And sometimes you go to a movie. and you find yourself getting inside the characters, you're getting outside of yourself, and you're feeling this empathy for them, you're identifying with them, these are all very powerful emotions, right? And we all have the capacity for that. But the world we live in is actually machinery to deaden those emotions, that sense of empathy, right? It just puts so much emphasis on ourselves, on our individuality, on who we are, our needs, you know, our...
the attention that we want, that we deserve. We're so focused on ourselves that that natural feeling of wanting to get inside of another person. And you know, it's very strange, Jay, because if you think about it, our inner lives are actually quite boring.
The same thoughts repeat over and over and over again, the same emotions, the same preoccupations, the same anxieties. And other people, they're so different. They have their own worlds, right?
It's like traveling to another country. So we should actually be much more oriented towards other people. We should have a natural interest in their world because it takes us out of ourselves. It's like therapy. But it's been deadened by so many things in our world, by social media, by the pressures we're under, by just modern lifestyle.
And so that empathetic muscle that everybody has is kind of atrophying. And yet there'll be moments where it kind of sparks to life. And you feel like, God, I want that.
I want more of that in my life, more of that in my world. How do I get it? What would you say is your most repeated thought on a daily basis? Like, what do I need to do today? What's on my schedule?
You know, so like I'm meditating in the morning and I'm trying to empty my mind and I'm going into what's known as a koan, right? And, um... And then these thoughts keep bubbling up, and they're so annoying, and it makes you aware of the machinery of your own mind. And so to answer your question, it's always like, oh, did you remember that you have to call this person this afternoon? Did you remember that you have to change that reservation?
Do you remember that you have to do this, that, the scheduling things? So unimportant, so trivial, where I'm trying to open my mind up to something vast and important. It's little things like scheduling and stuff like that.
Then there'll be other thoughts that will be repeating, you know, like if I saw a movie from it, images will keep popping up from that and such. It makes you aware that you're not in control of your own mind, right? How have you found over time with meditation and other practices, what have you used in order to start quietening, emptying, whatever the right word is for you, releasing those thoughts so that you can... connect with the vastness, be creative or self-express? Wow.
It's not easy and it's an ongoing process. And I could say I'm maybe 10% of the way where I'd like to be. But first of all, you recognize, you go through a thing where a thought pops up and it's like, why am I thinking about that?
I don't like it. You realize that it's just a thought and what is a thought? Now I know we're getting really weird and metaphysical here. I like it.
But- It's not real. It's a phantom, right? It has no reality. Reality is your body, the present moment, the birds outside the sky, where you are sitting, the fact that you're alive, that your blood is pumping. These are real.
But that thought in your mind is a shadow. It's a phantom. It doesn't exist.
It has no reality. And so I go through this process where don't engage with it. And it's really weird because Then my mind plays tricks on me and it pulls up a thought that's definitely going to engage me, right?
Because it wants that. It's like a sugar rush. And so I go, okay, no, I'm not going to engage with it.
And it made me realize as I went through that process that this is what social media is based on. Social media has mirrored the human brain on a large scale. We have thoughts that are designed to grab our emotions and make us. Think about them repetitively over and over again, compulsively, right? And there's probably a purpose behind that.
But social media is actually a genius at that. Picking at, putting up things up there, they're going to engage our emotions. So we have to pay attention. So I always try and every time that happens, I withdraw and I say, it's just a thought. It's not real.
It's not who I am. This is a very important part of meditation. Your thoughts are not who you are.
They're a separate part of yourself. You are something different from your own thoughts. I don't know if that... means anything to you? It does.
It does, definitely. And while we are not our thoughts and we are not our mind, our thoughts become our reality. We find that a repetitive thought turns into a habit, that turns into a pattern, that turns into an action, becomes our reality.
For example, I am an unorganized, lazy individual. usually translates into, oh, I forgot to send that. It didn't happen because now it's a belief that's built up. And so it's so fascinating that something that's so not real becomes so real. And I've been really into seeing how thought editing is so useful as an activity and an exercise because I've found so many of my thoughts become my beliefs that become my life.
And... I think a lot of people don't realize, because they don't realize that their thoughts are like clothes that you can change, we do believe that our thoughts are real and our reality and whatever we're hearing in our head is exactly what is. And we don't realize that, oh, it's like looking in your wardrobe and saying, I don't like the color green anymore, I'm going to change it for blue. It's as simple as that. Well, there was something I read recently in one of the Buddhist books that I like to read that said our minds are basically topsy-turvy.
They're upside down. So the reality is we don't, I mean, I don't want to get too deep into this, but we don't really have a self. The self is a construction of our minds. There actually is nothing there. And that kind of emptiness, that egolessness is enlightenment.
It's a beautiful feeling. And maybe peace. In your life, you've touched upon it briefly. I know I've touched upon it briefly.
It's not the reality I have every day. But that's real. And what's not real are the thoughts.
But everything is turned upside down in our worlds. And so these delusionary thoughts about people, about who I am, about my habits, etc., they become our reality when it's exactly the opposite. You have to be able to be aware of that.
And so, you know, meditation is all about being aware of, is becoming aware of these things because we walk around like automatons. You know, I'm very into this writer named Gurdjieff. I don't know if you've ever heard of Gurdjieff. No, I haven't.
He was this, he's basically from Armenia. He was in the beginning of the 20th century. He was this man who was very interested in mysticism, and he traveled throughout Asia trying to find the...
essence of all the different esoteric philosophies and he created his own philosophy and it's very interesting very exciting stuff he wrote a book called in search of the miraculous that i highly recommend people and it's not woo woo stuff he was a very very practical man he puts it in very practical terms but his idea is that we walk around asleep we're on automatic pilot constantly We're not really aware that we're breathing, that we're existing. We're not aware where our thoughts come from. We're not aware of how our body moves, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And so it's a process of slowly becoming aware of these kinds of things that is really kind of, I've been doing this 14, 15 years now, and it's really, really kind of changed the course of my life, I have to say. Yeah, I love that. And I can't wait to read that book now. And I couldn't agree more. I feel...
We're so disconnected from our mind and body that we constantly believe that someone outside of ourself has the answer for how we feel. And while that may be true when you're seeing a doctor or a dentist or something of that professional nature, we don't really know how our body's been feeling for weeks or months until it crashes. And then we realize that we haven't paid enough attention to X or Y or Z or... a relationship in the same way has to end in order for us to realize that it had lost investment and energy or whatever it may be.
And we're so far away from the self, or at least this version of the self that, yeah, we're not really aware. I love what you just said about the idea of how conscious are we of the fact that we're breathing, we're here, we're present, we're together versus how much are we living up here. And it's really interesting, isn't it?
Because There's almost two realities that we're always dealing with. And if we're getting too heady, I'm happy to move away from it. But it's almost like I've been thinking a lot about how, in one sense, what's out here is real. And in one sense, what here isn't.
And at the same time, actually, what's going on here is the real because it defines how I interact with. everything else. And it can help me be a better filter, a better chooser, selector of the people I'm around and the places I visit. So you say you have to kind of use the mind to be able to become present.
It's a process. I would say I'm alluding to that in discovery, not in pushing it, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It makes sense to me. I agree with that.
Definitely. Yeah. I've been reflecting a lot recently about how most of what's happening is in the invisible world, and that... That's very interesting.
Tell me more about that. So I've just been... I was thinking that in one sense, you have reality externally, the visible world, but how I make sense of that visible world is all in the invisible space.
And ultimately, how I make sense of it is the reality that I experience. regardless of what's happening around me, which is why we realize that people who, well, we all are telling ourselves stories and narratives all day long, but how we're processing what we're experiencing is our reality as opposed to the event or what someone said or social media, as you gave an example. Like I can either sit here and say, like I know that when I wake up in the morning and I start scrolling on social media, my mind is now moving. 10 times, 100 times faster than if I don't do that.
And I know that brushing my teeth and showering is a much more peaceful process if I haven't looked at my phone than if I do. And so that choice is being made in the invisible world. And the visible world is simply something I'm interacting with and taking from or being affected by.
Well, so we mostly live amid things that are invisible. Yes. Right?
Symbols, etc. Yes. Language is a symbol. It's not reality. And so things like government and social behavior, they're rules and codes that we abide by, but they're not visible.
They're invisible, right? Yeah, definitely. And we're not aware of that.
And so we're trying to raise our awareness of the invisible world. I'm always trying to raise my awareness of why do I process this? this way? Where does this come from?
Where's this idea taking root? That's a very, yeah, it's very interesting process to go through. Yeah, it's hard. It's like, yeah, it's not clear.
It's not, it's not like, here's the step-by-step process. It's just something I've been engaging with a lot. Yeah.
I like to try and go through a thing where I question all of my beliefs and things of why, where does that come from? Why do I believe that? Why has that become something that's so hardened into my brain. I believe that about myself and who I am, about other people. I continually try to challenge it and look at what might be the source of it and then maybe say, it could be the opposite, right?
And actually it can lead to a lot of problems because it's like my mind is always swimming and I never really think anything is certain. I'm always, you know, seeing the opposite side of it. But I think in the end, it's a very healthy process. How do you, I love...
I love where we're going because it kind of comes back to your same point, sorry, your earlier point about how someone of strong character knows how to take criticism, which means they know how to deal with the opposite of what they think or feel. And so this idea that you're sharing now that it's healthy to be able to question, to evaluate, to assess our beliefs and values. But like you said, it's one of the hardest things to do because you get into a space of uncertainty.
question your identity, you lose a sense of direction. How do we question ourselves without losing ourselves and actually realize that that is the process of discovering and building ourselves? You know, like who, who really are you in the end?
You know, what, what, what constitutes you, the essence of you, what were you meant to accomplish in this world, right? Your sense of purpose, you know, to use the title of your show, what is it that makes you an individual, makes you unique? that you alone are meant to accomplish in life?
Well, it's not given. We don't know it. And a lot of people really, really struggle with trying to figure that out, right?
Because they've been programmed by their parents, by their siblings, by the culture, by their teachers, to say, this is who you are. This is what you should believe in. This is what you were meant to accomplish in life. This is what's cool and what's not cool. Okay?
And so... You have to question yourself. You have to say, is this really who I am? Am I really interested in this subject? Am I really interested in this kind of person and getting in a relationship with this kind of person?
And so question yourself on that level. You're getting at a deeper and deeper core of maybe who you are at essence. You're cutting away all of the social stuff that has been foisted upon you, that it has nothing to do with you, right?
So In some ways, you're kind of a mystery to yourself, and you're sort of trying to solve that puzzle. And you have to ask these questions. Is this something I'm actually really interested in? Is this an intrinsically important thing to me?
Or is it something that's in the culture? Or something that other people have told me? And questioning that over and over and over again is not to lead you into this abyss where there's nothing real.
It's to get you closer to who you are, to what really matters. to what that essence of you is, to what you were meant to accomplish in life. And once you reach that, that inner kind of gold, then you have a degree of certainty. So I know, I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a writer, right? I had a struggle to figure out what kind of writing I wanted.
But knowing that that's who I am, probably up at the age of eight, it allowed me to go, I'm not interested in that. I don't want to do that. This isn't important. Why am I following this career path?
Why am I wasting my time here? And then, so knowing that kind of core, you don't have to keep questioning yourself. So I'm never going to question myself. Why are you a writer? Why are you writing books?
You should have been a pop star. You should have been a rock singer. You should have written poetry.
You should have been a lawyer. No, I'll never go there because I have that firm ground beneath me. And that's what your questioning is supposed to lead to.
Get to the essence of who you are. And once you're there, you have a degree of certainty in your life. Yeah, it does.
It does. And I feel like a big challenge, something that I've been thinking a lot about lately is a big challenge of where that comes from is because we care so much about what people think and we're scared of being an unsuccessful version of ourselves because we'd rather be a successful version of what someone else wants us to be. Yeah, yeah. And so we're scared of being an unsuccessful writer if we could be a successful accountant. We're scared of being an unsuccessful artist because we'd rather be a successful tech person.
Whatever else it may be, fill in your blank. And because what we think people think of us has such a strong hold on us that we can't pivot to our passions, we can't maneuver to our purpose, we can't accept that... Maybe I'm not what this person wants me to be. And I've been spending a lot of time in this to try and figure out, and I'll, and we'll, let's, let's dive into it from different perspectives, but I guess how much, Robert, do you care what people think of you and how have you made sense of that over your time as someone who obviously writes that a lot of people enjoy your reading, people may disagree with you, they may agree with you, people, as you said, debate, discuss, but how have you.
made sense of that? And what's been your process of dealing with how you think people think about you? There's how people think about me who know me personally. There's how people think about me in the social realm who don't know me personally and who have an idea of who I am, which is often very different from the reality. But naturally, as a human being, I care that people understand that I'm a certain way, that I have a certain character, that I actually...
love jokes and silly bathroom humor and that, you know, I like stupid movies and that I'm not always, you know, reading heavy philosophy. You know, my wife can tell you all about this childish side of my personality. So, you know, it's always been important to me to feel kind of authentic and sincere. And I've always hated, and that's probably why I wrote The 48 Laws of Power. I hate...
people who are pretending to be something that they're not. Deeply, deeply wounds me, and I don't know why. I don't know why it's been like this since I was a child.
Maybe I suspected that in my parents, the kind of falseness that upsets me deeply. And so I wrote The 48 Laws of Power because I felt people are such hypocrites. They pretend that they're not interested in power, but that's all they're interested in, right?
They wear this front that, oh, I just want to help people. I just want to make movies. and culture and art know you're interested in power.
So it's always been deeply important to me to kind of reveal what's really going on in someone and to sort of feel that way about myself. So when I don't feel like I'm myself, when I feel like I'm faking it, and sometimes, to be honest with you, Jay, being a kind of quote-unquote self-help guru, it feels false. It doesn't feel like who I am.
I feel like a bit of an imposter. That's not really what I wanted to be. I can relate to that.
I just wanted to write books. I love ideas. I love thoughts. I love expanding my consciousness.
Right. So the feeling that I'm not being who I am and that other people are kind of glomming onto that is upsetting to me. Yeah. I don't know if I'm answering your question.
I mean, that's resonating so deeply with me. I think it's so interesting, isn't it? How your self-perception is so different from...
people's projection onto you and so i i can identify with that i do what i do because i'm just sharing what i love so i love meditation i love uh wisdom books i love traditions i love ancient wisdom and modern science and seeing the parallels between the two and i just love talking about that and sharing that yeah and i don't think i've ever thought of myself as a guru or a guide or that kind of individual. But we in society, if someone shares or teaches or gives insight or advice, we box them or bucket them as that. So same as you, we'd go in the same bucket, even though we kind of do similar things about very different things.
And we probably have some similar interests and some different interests. And it's interesting how there isn't a space. Like I often say to people, I'm just... trying to be everyone's spiritual friend.
Like that's my goal. Like I'm that guy who's introducing my friends to cool things that they may not have come across, whether it's Eastern spirituality or wisdom or whatever it may be. Like I'm that guy and that's all I want to be. I don't want to be anything else.
But it's hard when you almost get put on a pedestal, even though you didn't ask for that or didn't want that. Well, people's perception of you can almost become how you perceive yourself. if you're not careful. For sure. You know?
And so that's why I keep coming back to myself and going, is that really who I am? Yes. I don't think so, Robert.
You know? And also, I actually, I'm a flawed individual. I'm a flawed human being. I have, you know, blind spots in my nature.
I have compulsions that I wish I didn't have. And I don't like this idea that people think I'm this. powerful person who's figured everything out because I'm not.
I have. That's why, you know, I wrote the book, The Laws of Human Nature. It was because I understand that I shared the same flaws, that I have narcissistic tendencies, that I too can feel envy, that I have moments of grandiosity. So I'm not comfortable with the idea like that I'm this somebody that I'm not, that the perception of me is.
But that's what happens to a lot of successful, famous people. They become trapped in what other people are thinking about them. They become trapped in that image.
And I honestly think, I could be way off base, but I'm thinking of somebody like Anthony Bourdain, who committed suicide. I think he was burdened and weighed down so much by how people thought of himself. And it wasn't who he was. And it kind of made him feel deeply uncomfortable. I'm sure there were many other issues going on.
But a lot of times... It can make you uncomfortable in your own skin, the way people perceive you, and it can lead to deep feelings of depression and a loss of who you are. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you could write a new book called The Flaws of Human Nature. Thank you. That's what the book is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the 18 dark corners of human nature. But yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah, no, it's just a thought of like, it is true. There's a seeking of... perfection.
And there's a sense that we've created in the world of before and after, in the sense that if you look at like a workout program, and there's nothing wrong with this, because it makes sense, but there's a before picture and there's an after picture. And if someone's wealthy, it's like they were poor and now they're rich and everything's a linear before and after journey. And what we're talking about, and I fully agree with you on this, is that actually all of my challenges are cyclical.
And they're different. So it's not that I never feel envy anymore. It's that I feel it differently to how I felt it 10 years ago. And hopefully I'm a bit better at dealing with it and understanding it and engaging with it than I was 10 years ago.
But it's not that it doesn't affect me anymore. Right, right. And same with spiraling thoughts.
It's not that I don't have anxious or negative thoughts anymore because I'm enlightened. I... still have those thoughts. I just deal with them better than I did 10 years ago.
And I probably have more tools to help me engage with them. And I think that cyclical nature is... a wonderful thing to accept as an individual and as someone who's learning because you then don't fool yourself to think, oh, there will be one day where I will no longer have a negative or anxious thought like Jay and Robert.
They probably never have it. It's like, well, yeah, you probably have less, but it's not that I never have them. Exactly. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. And so that kind of idea of this before and after, I think, is what confuses so many people because it feels like, oh, there is a.
point at which I never have to go back to being this version of myself. Well, that life isn't like that. You know, it's weird sometimes because before the 48 Laws of Power came out, I was just this nobody living in a one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, rent-controlled, you know, never really made any money, never really had any success in life.
And I was constantly giving people advice, but nobody would listen to me because I hadn't written the book. And suddenly the book comes out and I'm supposed to be a different person. It was very strange.
But I'm actually the same person that I was when I was living in that miserable one-bedroom apartment, you know, and giving out my advice that nobody listened to. Now people listen to it. But the only difference is because suddenly I have this credential, which is very strange. Yeah, I can relate to that in so many ways.
I used to be a mentor and coaching people in my community. I would do these little events in London. 10, 11 years ago now where like five people would show up and it was, you know, I was just doing it.
I would speak at universities for free for years. Like I was, it was, you know, it's been such a big part of my life to just do this. I've always wanted to be someone who's learning and sharing.
That's what I enjoy. I enjoy learning and I enjoy sharing and I enjoy synthesizing and making things simple and practical for other people. That's, that's what I get my joy from. And I was always inspired by two quotes. One is Ivan Pavlov, where he said, if you want a new idea, read an old book.
And so that's always been something that my work has been inspired by. It's always based on ideas that seem timeless and old. Very beautiful, yeah.
Yeah. And then there's another thought from Einstein, which is another part of what inspires my work, which is... If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough.
And so these were the two kind of tenets that... what I enjoyed doing in the world. And again, I don't think they're magnificent, miraculous, or brilliant. They're just what I'm meant to do.
And there's such a beautiful significance and insignificance in that very understanding. Like, it's really significant building, because I'm like, I know what I have to do. And it's really insignificant because I'm like, it's just what I have to do. It's not the best or the worst or it's not comparative. Right.
And I think that's how when you're talking in The Daily Laws of Power, that's kind of how, in different words, how you describe like your life's, you know, your life's gift, your life's work, your life's path. I've always liked old books myself. So, you know, I read a lot of books of philosophy, et cetera, history.
But I also read books of famous Zen classics. The 20th century books, I'm not so sure, but I'd read like something from the 11th century where the thought process is so different, but it's timeless, it's human. Man, it is so beautiful. It so sparks these ideas that he or this writer, this thinker was dealing with the same things now, a thousand years later, but they still strike a truth.
but it's in this language that's very weird and primitive and barbaric. I don't know why that excites me so much. It's the same idea that a modern writer might write, but put in the words of somebody a thousand years ago, it suddenly touches me. Yeah. Can you explain that, Jay?
I mean, I don't know if I can explain it, apart from the fact that you've reincarnated and you had some connection to it. But can I explain it? I can't explain it, but I can reflect on it.
I mean, I find that there's a part of it that... that writer or creator may never have known if anyone would ever read it. Yeah. And so that privacy and that secrecy and that intimacy with their work, not knowing that it would ever be viewed, seen, read, broadcasted, that has some power to it.
Yeah, yeah. There's a humility to that. Whereas now people write, we're expecting all these people to be reading it. We do it for the attention. yeah it was much different back then yeah that's very interesting i never thought of that yeah i've i've definitely found that i try and wreath yeah i try and sit with ideas for longer now and try and I'd love to know your process for that.
How have you managed that since that moment of where you became quote-unquote successful because externally, because of 48 Laws? How did that change your creative process? How did you hold on to the roots of this kind of thinking? So, after the 48 Laws of Power came out and it was successful, I was at a turning point in my life.
And it's a turning point that a lot of people, I think, have faced was, do I just continue? redoing the 48 Laws of Power. It was successful. It worked well. Why don't I just write the 48 Laws of Power Part 2?
It'll bring in money. It'll bring in attention. I'll just riff off what I wrote there. And something about me was not comfortable with that. It seemed cheap.
It seemed easy. And it seemed lazy. And I know myself that if I'm not challenged by something different, I grow bored. So I have to write something that feels like there's energy behind it.
There's anger. There's love. There's something powerful behind it.
I have to feel it or it won't be in the words. So if I'm just doing the 48 Laws of Power Part 2, it won't be there. It'll have an emptiness.
And damn it, a lot of artists and writers fall into that trap. And it's why their books kind of have this sort of hollow ring to them, right? They're just going through the motions, just repeating what worked before.
And I can't stand that feeling. I have to feel like I'm off into a new land with this new book. So each book has to represent a challenge, right?
And so the one I'm writing now is completely different from all seven of the other books. And it's an incredible challenge. But it makes me excited about every day because I know I cannot repeat the same kind of books over and over and over again. My soul becomes dead. And I have to feel alive with each project.
Am I answering your question? I keep feeling like I'm not answering your question. You are.
You're totally answering my question. I'm loving these personal answers. No, no. I can resonate very deeply with that as well.
I always try and write about something that I'm working through or struggling with, whether it's personal, whether it's with clients, whether it's with someone in my life, friends, family. Like it feels alive. It needs to feel alive.
Yeah. I can't write from a point of theory or knowing. Yeah. Like the book has to be a discovery. Exactly.
And I've only just started my journey. I've only written two books. But. as I'm hearing you, I'm happy to, that I feel that I'm thinking about it in a healthy way.
Because yeah, I was, I was about to write my third book and the topic everyone wanted was so predictable and expected and it made sense. And I was like, I don't want to write about something that makes sense. Like that's boring.
I want to write about something that feels like alive in my life and electric and makes me. I'm like now that I've chosen, and I will tell this to you later, but I've chosen my next topic and I've just been like writing notes about it. I'm reading about it.
I'm seeing connections. Well, that means it's going to be a great book. Yeah. It just, it feels, I mean, it's harder.
It's harder because you don't know. So you're spending more time, like we said earlier, you're spending more time with emptiness because there's a sense of, well, I don't know which direction this book is going to go in. Yeah.
So it's, it's that comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty, but there's a joy in that. Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
When you're discovering your process through a book or work, how have you learned to become comfortable in the discomfort of creativity? In that, like, you don't know where the path's gonna take you, you don't know if it's going to land or not, you don't know if it... Like, how are you grappling with that process of what we're discussing?
Well, it's very strange. because I'm dealing with it right this very moment. I'm writing something that's driving me crazy. And the very subject I'm writing about is about what I'm going through. So I'm writing it.
This is in my book on the sublime and I'm writing about the concept of the daemon. Are you familiar with that? It's the idea, it's an ancient Greek idea, but it's in many other cultures that we have a second self, that there's something, there's a voice inside of us. that is guiding us to something higher or better, but it can also lead us to something lower and worse. It can be demonic, which is where the word comes from, or it could be something.
And Socrates had his daemon. There was a voice inside of him. And it said, it always just said, this is the right way to go or this is the wrong way to go.
Nothing more than that, right? And so when I'm writing, it doesn't feel right. It's driving me crazy. And I'm doing this right now. It doesn't feel right.
It doesn't resonate. It's not truth. It's not real.
You got to start over. You got to do it again. And the back of my mind, I'm thinking, God, I've lost it. I'm getting old and I just don't have my mojo anymore. But then I realized I've gone through this like 85 times every single book.
It'll come to you. It'll come back. It isn't right because it doesn't feel right. It doesn't resonate.
It doesn't have a reality to it. So I have to go through this process where I write something and it excites me and it interests me and it just flows out of me as opposed to like I have to pull every word out. And so.
I learned to trust myself that eventually I'll figure it out. But each time I hit that wall, I go, this is it, Robert. You're finished. The book isn't going to come out. You're done.
The wells are dry. Yeah, that's so interesting. I feel like that is every creative's journey. Like it has to go through that. The wells are dry, as you just said, that kind of experience of that's it.
It's over. There's nothing else coming out now. And it's almost like.
as we know, like the cliche of like, it's on the other side of that feeling. But it's true. There is a sense of when everything is just not making sense. How have you learned to sense whether something feels true to you? Because it obviously felt true to someone.
How do you decipher between, oh, this feels true, it feels real to me, even if people don't agree with it? Because it just feels that way. It's purely just a feeling.
First of all, it like... I'm always trying to get at what's real and not at what's theoretical. I have a real dislike of abstraction for its own sake, right?
It feels like it's a way of eluding something. It's an evasion. I want to get at the core and the reality of what I'm trying to write about. And so when I get it, I feel it, and I know that I've done that.
And I have the reader in my mind, and I know the reader. can connect to it, it's going to have a personal appeal. Whereas I have a tendency to be abstract and professorial and theoretical.
I cross all of that out. If you saw my notebooks, 95% of it's crossed out and I don't let the public ever see that side of me because I don't like it. I want my books to feel like I'm hitting something that's actually truthful and real that people don't like to talk about kind of thing, you know? So right now, I'm writing about what is our self? What is the sense of self that we have in our world?
It's a very limited idea of the self. We have a very limited idea of our consciousness. We have a very limited idea of what it means to be a human being in the 21st century. We're actually much more immense and much more interesting than we think we are. We have these possibilities, these connections, because we're a part of something incredibly vast.
And to have consciousness is absolutely an astounding thing. astounding thing right so i want to sort of expand what you the reader thinks of who you are what yourself is it's much larger than you imagine but i have to convey that in language that feels right to me that feels authentic that feels like everybody in africa in china in in india in idaho is going to be able to relate to it you know yeah no no for sure and that's I think that's what I was alluding to with that invisible world point of like how that's what we don't see. Like there's so much to ourself that we don't see, that we're fully unaware of, that we don't realize we have access to. Right. And yeah, finding the right terminology, I find to be such a...
There's one word that I love, which is a bit more ethereal, but I guess an astronomer could find some beauty in it. But there's a term in the Vedic literature that's called... antarakash which means inner sky say it again antarakash antarakash means inner and akash means sky inner sky yeah inner sky beautiful and it's this idea of how you know we're so fascinated by outer space but there's that same inner sky that exists so just that like the galaxy and the planetary systems and everything else that exists internally too oh i have to but but there has to be a just as we have to go and do space exploration yeah You could do the same internally.
Oh, for sure. And you discover so much. That's exactly what I'm writing about. That's very interesting.
Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's fascinating. And so, yeah, I find language as well. I find vocabulary so needed. And I feel like I grew up with a smart vocabulary, but not the biggest.
And I feel reading, of course, expands that. And especially when you read history in other books. And I found that language is just so powerful. And I worry that social media... exposes us to such limited language that the brain and the mind and the consciousness doesn't have the opportunity to be expansive because the words don't allow for it.
If we're all reading the same memes and the same trends and the same hashtags, it kind of just creates this very, very limited... space of consciousness. Well, that's why I like looking at other languages. I speak several other languages and I'm constantly learning them. And right now I'm reading a lot about an African culture called the Akan in West Africa, in Ghana.
And there are concepts of the soul, the spirit, and the body. And they have a word in there called sunsum. And we translate it to spirit. But then I'm reading the African philosophers who actually know that word and they go, it's not the same as the word spirit.
And then they go on and describe it. And that one word contains all of these other worlds that are so weird and interesting that the word spirit in English does not convey. Right. You know, and other languages have that sense.
And so language can have that possibility where it opens up. It's not just this one. track meaning. It has other valences, other possibilities to it, right?
And so, yeah, we're kind of deadening our language in a way. And, you know, if you study like other cultures, you know, Eskimos had like a thousand words for snow and we have one word, you know, Russians have like 40 words for the color blue and we have one word kind of thing. As the language gets smaller and smaller and more uniform, our thoughts become more and more limited and uniform.
So to know, hear a word like inner sky, it opens up all these other ideas in your mind. Whereas we don't have a word like that in English, you know? And then, because I'm doing things with Zen, Japanese language is so rich with things that we can't possibly even begin to express in English, you know?
So, yeah. What have been other ways of people opening up their minds? This has been something, one of my favorite things to do. I remember reading a quote from Robin Sharma years ago that said, ordinary people have big TVs, extraordinary people have big libraries. And it was one of those, you know, little dreams I had.
That was like, one day I have a home, I'm going to have a big library. And that was one of my most favorite things to kind of put together when I moved here. And I started spending more time in...
When I would travel, I've always collected books. I've always... And I started also collecting... Expanding my audio library, I realized as I grew...
When I was growing up, we listened to a very limited form of music in my home. And even as growing up as a teenager, I listened to like one genre of music. What was that?
Rap and hip-hop. Like that was... And again, I love rap and hip-hop. I love rap and hip-hop history.
It's super cool. I have no issues with it. I just think that my audio library was so limited in my teens that now that I'm in my 30s, I'm now listening. I'm trying to listen to so many random different things, which again, inspire different thoughts, different feelings, different emotions.
And so I've realized that vocabulary was one thing. Audio has been another thing. What are other things that you've discovered that help open up that consciousness in mind? Because as we both keep referring to social media technology, is almost making us more limited, more singular, more one-dimensional. Well, as I said, it's something I'm writing about right now.
So, music and the Audible stuff is very, very interesting and very exciting. So, this is a new phenomenon where musicologists have been able to recreate music from eras that we never could listen to before. So I was writing at one point about a festival in ancient Greece.
And to put me in the mood, I wanted to hear ancient Greek music. Well, that doesn't exist. I mean, there are no recordings of it. But sure enough, there are. And the rhythms and the sound is so weird and alien that it makes, music captures the spirit of a time, right?
So if we're only hearing these same melodies, You hear cars going by with that same kind of pop song. It's such a limited circle of harmony, such a limited circle of what music can be. But when you open up to African music, to music from ancient Babylonia, to Greece, to music in South America, other rhythms, other poetry in music and sounds, it's mind-blowing. It's interesting.
So that's why I'm saying that the human animal is much more interesting than we think it is. Reading about ancient cultures is a very mind expansive project you can go on. Are there any books you'd recommend in that regard? You know what's so exciting now is they have these books called The Daily Life in, The Daily Life in Ancient Babylonia, The Daily Life in, I forget which city in India, The Daily Life in Ancient Greece, etc.
And you get a feel for not just the grand philosophical issues, but how people ate, what their houses were like. And so... So I was writing, I just wrote a chapter about our relationship to time and history.
And I was trying to take the reader in my new book, I'm giving them exercises. And I'm saying, try to imagine yourself in a world a thousand years ago, and you walk out your front door. There's no mechanical sounds. There's no airplanes.
There's no cars. There's no machines. It's just birds. Maybe a saw and a hammer is the most you're going to hear. That's a strange thing.
There are no signs. There are no advertisements. There's no words everywhere.
It's kind of empty, right? You're just wandering around. There are all these kind of rancid, weird, horrible smells because people aren't bathing. But they're very human smells, right?
Your whole sensory experience is on another level. But when you live in this 21st century world where things are so sanitized, but we don't smell these things, we only hear these packaged mechanical sounds. your sensory world is shrinking down and down and down.
And you realize, yeah, ancient world, they had some bad stuff. They weren't very good. You know, they had slavery.
I understand all of the negatives, so I'm not painting this portrait. But on another level, their realm of senses, their realm of language, their internal worlds were far richer than ours. And by connecting to that, by reading these books, by reading books, Not just the daily life thing I said, but actually text from those times. As I was mentioning, when I read a monk, a Zen monk from the 11th century, and the different thought processes, it opens my mind to a different way of thinking, to a different way of accessing reality. But like, I'm reading a lot about Aztecs, because I'm sort of obsessed with the Aztecs.
I don't know why. And they had these amazing spectacles. That was the thing about the ancient world, these festivals and spectacles that are far beyond Burning Man or any rock concert, right? You know, I could describe the fire ceremony in Aztec culture that only occurred every 70 years. There is nothing you can ever imagine in your life that would be like that.
It is so utterly spectacular. And so I have this 800-page book called Aztec Philosophy, and it's very theoretical, but God. it gives you an entree into a totally different way of thinking about the world, right? Where they have these metaphors, um, that the universe has this energy, some of the energy is like string that's being wound around in a certain way.
It's like weaving, like, other things like that, this kind of energy that the world has. Wow, this is fascinating. You know, our ancestors were actually thinking, but they're not our ancestors, they're us. it's a human being we're all human we all have those same kind of consciousness yeah you know i i love also finding things in cultures that match but are in different languages and so what so i went to hawaii a few years ago which obviously for someone who grew up in london it's not normal people in america or la travel to hawaii fairly often i went to hawaii and um or not often it's more accessible but i went recently and my wife and i went you went on one of the tours there and they showed us the paraglyphs, which are there obviously like markings and storytelling technique and tool. And they were showing us how when a child is born, they used to place the umbilical cord on the ground and they would then draw a spiral around it.
And that would be seen as a place that the child could always come back to, to feel the energy and reconnect with the earth. And I was thinking, that's spectacular. I wish everyone felt this connected to the earth.
And then we would go out every morning on... a canoe, I forget their name for it, but they had their version for it, and they would pay respects to the sun and the ocean, and we would take part in this ceremony with them. And in India, there's something known as Surya Namaskar, which translates to sun salutation.
Sure. Which, again, I've talked to Andrew Huberman about this, it's like kicking off the circadian rhythm, but the goal is you pay your respects to the sun for everything it offers to you and the energy that it provides. And so...
to see that in Hawaiian culture, Indian culture. And then I was in Bhutan recently. I went on a trip to Bhutan, which I'd always wanted to visit. And this is a culture that really feels like... you're going back in time.
You walk out there, and it feels like what you just described a thousand years ago. Where is Bhutan? Is it near Pakistan? Bhutan is landlocked between India and China.
India and China. So right in between. Where they're having their tensions, the kind of wars that's going on a little bit. Bhutan doesn't have a war, no. They don't even have a military.
It's not part of their culture. Wow. They believe in, they're a Buddhist nation.
Is it a Buddhist nation? Yes, yes. And their practices are very protective.
their culture is very protected. Like, everyone generally still wears the cultural dress. How exciting. It was spectacular. There's no...
There may be a couple of these now, but until very recently, there's no malls, no cinemas, no restaurants, like, completely. And it's beautiful because it's just hills and mountains. They believe that the forest will always be 70% of the landmass because they believe they're sacred. You can't trek up to or ski on any of their mountains because they're sacred.
They protect them. So there's a real, and you almost, I almost felt like what you just said. There's no signs.
You can't hear anything. There's no machinery. Like it really does feel like that.
And we all, all of us who were there experienced this sense of slowness that you don't experience anywhere else. Not in a bad way, in the mind, the gravity almost. of this space was really, really powerful to experience.
That's very exciting because, you know, you can go out into nature, into the mountains, and you can feel that. And you can feel like this is what it was like 2,000, 100,000 years ago. But we don't have that feeling with human things because every city has its Starbucks, its malls, its generic culture that we've transported throughout the world. So to have a place... where you can actually go back in time is fantastic.
But I wish it wasn't so far away. Yeah, yeah, it's fine, it's fine. It's worth visiting for anyone who wants to.
It was a really special trip. But you're right, the generic culture is the right word, actually. There's every street looks the same. Every area looks the same. I know there's a lot of passion behind local businesses and it's healthy.
People want to support local business. We need more of that because... the generic culture really takes away from like you expect i mean i was in india just recently on the way back and it's like there was a tim hortons like right there what a tim hortons which i think is like popular in canada or something like that is it popular in the u.s tim hortons no it's canada or my wife was telling me about it but it was just one of the it's it's and then there was a starbucks and then it was the same yeah the same thing and i was like i'm in india like you know like i don't not expect it but it's yeah it's the generic it's what's made the brain so dull. It has. Yeah.
Yeah, we're becoming homogenized. I mean, I like going to countries like Mexico because there's still pockets in Mexico where you can feel something of a very different culture. It's only in small little areas, but it's very exciting.
It's nothing like Bhutan, but you can still get it a little bit. Yeah. Rob, it's been such a joy talking to you today. And as always, I love how we just get lost. And this is what I wanted.
I was craving a authentic, real connection of where both of our minds are in this moment. But I want to end with a few fast-paced questions. We call this the fast five.
And I probably did it with you last time. So I'm going to change it up this time for you. I hope my mind is fast enough to keep up with you.
So you have to answer the questions. it's more like the final five you've got to answer the questions in one word to one sentence maximum so robert green these are your final five the first question is what is something you had wish you'd learned earlier the piano i mean i know you were probably thinking about that's beautiful something about life but i love music and i wish i had learned the piano when i was young do you do you play now no no okay Uh, second question, what is something that you used to be sure about, but that you now are less sure about? I guess a sense of right and wrong or good, good and evil. When I was young, I had a very strong sense of it. That's a great answer.
And now I'm not so sure about what it is. It's a great answer. Uh, question number three, if you could go back and live in any...
age i'm thinking you're going to say the aztecs but uh where would you like to go and where would you want to live and what would you ask i would go back to the paleolithic era and our earliest ancestors because i'm fascinated by their world and what they were like so the paleolithic x'20,000 years ago okay and I would like to know about their their religion their spirituality interested in origins of human consciousness so you read any books on that yes well if someone's the subject I was just my last chapter I was writing about well the origin of language is the origin of human consciousness Wow It's the same time that there were the cave paintings, right? The famous cave paintings in France, but they're all over the world. Aborigines, et cetera.
And that was the beginning of symbolic consciousness. Yeah, there are all sorts of books written on that subject. Amazing.
Question number four. If you could have three people over at your dinner party, any three people you choose, living or dead, who would they be? Well, it would be Friedrich Nietzsche, because I'm reading a biography of his right now.
Unbelievable. The other would be Buddha. Why not? And then the other would be a very odd mix of people, so I don't know if they're going to get along.
That's a good pie, though, isn't it? Yeah, I'd say maybe Socrates. Okay.
And let the fur fly. Fifth and final question, Robert. I find these stressful.
They are, they are stressful. Something you're trying to learn right now? To be more forgiving about myself, because I'm extremely unforgiving. With yourself? Yeah, not easy.
It's not been my life pattern. Where did the pursuit begin and why is it a worthy pursuit? Well, I think because of my upbringing, I always had a feeling of never good enough.
I'm never smart enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not a good enough person. And I internalize that. And so it's probably partially led to my stroke, probably makes me drive myself too hard.
And so sometimes I just have to be more forgiving. So instead of thinking, God, I'm never going to write anymore, the well is dry. The forgiving aspect is, Robert, you're tired, you're exhausted, you're doing fine.
It's going to come. It will come. Just trust it. So it's kind of like being indulgent towards yourself.
I can be indulgent towards other people, but I can't be indulgent towards myself. So just learning to forgive myself for not being perfect and for not getting exactly what I want in life. It's the hardest thing for me. That's beautiful.
It'd be very good for my health if I could, if I could ever get there. That's beautiful. Thank you, Robert. You're welcome.
Everyone, Robert Green, I hope you enjoyed this episode of me and Robert truly just having a genuine, passionate conversation about things we love. Please share on TikTok, on X, on Instagram, on Facebook, whatever platform you use in the YouTube comment section, what resonated with you, what books you're going to read, what you connected with. Maybe some of the creatives out there want to shift the way they think. or whether you got some great insights on what are strong and weak character points. I want to know what hit you, what resonate with you.
And thank you so much for listening and watching. And thank you again, Robert, for your time. Thank you so much for having me, Jake. Your presence and energy.
So grateful. As usual, I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
That means a lot. Yeah, we go on for hours. I know, truly. If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it? It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable.