EverydaySpy Podcast - #1 CIA Tactic: "FAKE THIS One Thing & People Will Instantly LIKE YOU — Even If You're Awkward”

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

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Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. One of the other misconceptions I've already talked about when it comes to picking up on cues and picking up on whether or not somebody's telling you the truth or not is the fact that you think that, you know, most of the time you shouldn't trust your gut.

Talk about why you think that and what people should do instead. So when people talk about trusting their guts or when someone's encouraged you to trust your gut, what they're saying is that you should basically lean into your perception of the world, lean into your worldview. but we've already discussed, like your worldview is biased. Your worldview is limited. Your lens that you use is flawed. It's not as accurate as the true world around you. It's subjective, not objective. So if anything, we're encouraged at CIA never to trust our gut,

because your gut is the most untrustworthy thing in your body. Consider the fact that the human brain, your brain and mind, is inherently lazy. The human brain does not like to work hard. Like people who procrastinate, there's nothing wrong with them. That is the natural way of doing things. Every single human being procrastinates something in some way.

We wait until the latest possible minute to brush our teeth. We wait until the latest possible minute to go to the bathroom. We wait until the latest possible minute to stop doing the things that we love to do. Like we inherently procrastinate. because the human brain does not like to use extra energy to accomplish a task. It likes to use the minimum amount of energy to accomplish a task. So the way that you often achieve that is by waiting until the last minute before you actually make a decision, waiting until the last minute before you think something through, waiting until the last minute before you consider somebody else's

point of view. So trusting your gut means doing what your body finds natural, which is inherently the laziest, least energetic thing that you can do because the human brain is built for survival. So there's lots of reasons why you should not trust your gut. Instead, what you should trust is what we call something, we call it assessment versus assumption. Assessment is what you should be doing. And the process of gaining or creating an assessment means that you are constantly collecting data, especially cognitive dissonant data, which means conflicting data, you're constantly collecting data and processing that data intentionally so that you can create a current and viable perspective on what's happening around you. So if you're getting ready to have a conversation

with your boss, or if you're getting ready to have a conversation with your spouse, you want to actively and intentionally be collecting information from all around. you. A simple example, if you have a conversation with your spouse at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's very different than if you have a conversation with your spouse at 10 o'clock in the morning. Because by 5 o'clock in the afternoon, both of you have expended your energy. The kids have probably stressed you out. You know, chores of the day have stressed you out. You're probably thinking about 200 things at once. Whereas at 10 o'clock in the morning, you're less stressed. You have more energy. You probably just had your first or second cup of coffee.

You're in a better mood. So, of course, the conversation is going to go differently if you have a conversation at 10 a.m. versus 5 p.m. What ends up happening is that we have the conversation at 5 p.m. And then we're surprised when our spouse doesn't react or doesn't respond well. When we could have predicted that if we were collecting assessment right before the conversation. If we would have taken a moment to assess, she's probably, in my case, my spouse is a she, she's probably stressed out, she's probably tired, she probably hasn't eaten in the last four or five hours,

and she's probably thinking about dinner and bedtime, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So when you use assessment, you can set up a situation that gives you a more objective chance of success, rather than just trusting your gut and thinking that you're right because of a biased worldview. We spent like a good bit of the conversation talking about other people and how we can pick up of other people or lying, not telling the truth, being deceitful, etc. I think people in general, like I've said, have a hard time with tough conversations that can come across as being unconfident, maybe shy, a bit nervous. And that can be off-putting to somebody who maybe doesn't know them as well. what tips do you have for somebody to be able to gain more empowerment during a conversation and to appear more confident if there's somebody that has a hard time with that.

Yeah, unfortunately, the truth here is a truth that most people don't like to hear, right? All of self-improvement doesn't actually start with improving yourself. You're not actually going to improve yourself very quickly. you can have very fast success, but you cannot have very fast personal improvement because personal improvement is something that oftentimes doesn't happen until after you have seen that something works. It's not like working out. When you go to the gym and you try to bench press, you just can't bench press 225 pounds. I mean, maybe you can bench press 125 pounds, but you have to literally go to the gym day after day, week after week, with a routine,

you have to eat right, you have to rest, and eventually you will build up to the place where you can bench press 225 pounds. Self improvement is the opposite. Self improvement, you basically have to convince yourself, I'm going to go try to bench press 225 pounds. Even better, I'm going to understand that the reality is that it doesn't matter how much I actually lift.

It matters whether or not the other people in the gym believe I am lifting 225 pounds. even if it's a fake bar with fake weights. If they think I'm lifting 225 pounds, then from their perception, I have lifted that much weight. That's really where self-improvement and professional improvement lies. It doesn't lie in taking six months to get better. The value to professional and personal improvement is doing something today that immediately has benefits. So when somebody comes to me and they say, hey, I'm shy around other people.

I'm awkward around other people. I'm anxious and conversations. The last thing I try to tell them is, oh, well, what you need to do is six months of meditation and two years of counseling and read these seven books and create a journal. Because nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to take six months to get better. They want to get better right now. Well, if you actually want to get better right now, the first thing you have to understand is

that it's not about you at all. It's about how other people perceive you because they're living in a perception. They're living in a world where their perception is their reality, whereas their perspective is something they're not even trying to develop. So if you feel like you're anxious during a conversation, prepare for that conversation and then lie during the conversation. but instead of lying about the content, lie about how you actually feel, lie through your behavior, appear to be confidence,

appear to be knowledgeable, appear to be excited. It takes effort, it takes time. This is where the whole idea of fake it until you make it comes from, because the reality is that just because you're faking it

doesn't mean that the audience knows you're faking it. The other person doesn't know that you're faking it. And one of the big aha moments that the agency gave me, was when I realized that I don't have to be the best shooter. I don't have to be the fastest driver.

I don't have to be the strongest guy in the room. I just have to get people to think I can shoot well. I just have to get people to think I can drive fast. And if they believe it, it's just as effective as if it is true itself. What about somebody who's looking to pry information out of somebody? How can they ask better questions? I mean, I've heard you talk about when somebody has like some super private information that they have about themselves that they're not proud of, they're not necessarily just going to open up and share it with their family members of the people that they care about most because of ego, because of shame, because of pride. But if you're somebody who kind of has a hunch that something's up with somebody, how can they get to the root of that?

This is a, it's a trickier question. It's a more nuanced question, right? Because there's two types of reasons that people hide information. There's reason number one that people hide information is because they respect the information. So they don't want to share it. So nobody wants to share their salary. Nobody wants to share how much they pay for their mortgage. Nobody wants to share what their GPA was in college, right?

So they respect that information, so they keep it private. The second reason people hide information is because they're ashamed of it or because they want to hide it. right? So that's when you're hiding your affair. That's when you're hiding the fact that your child, you know, disrespects you at home. That's when you hide the fact that you have some sort of health issue that you're not proud of. So there's two different reasons why people cover up or do not disclose information. And depending on those two reasons, it changes how you approach the person. If someone just is holding information private, then you have this this challenge where your goal is to try to get into what we call their private life.

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So it's a concept we call the three different lives. Everybody has a public life, everybody has a private life, and everybody has a secret life. The public life is the life that you live every day. It's the life that you show your neighbors. It's the life that you show your friends. It's the life that you brag about. It's the life you put up on Instagram. It's not real.

It's just public. If it was real, you would feel much less good about it, right? I mean, women put on makeup to hide their real face. Men put on t-shirts that make their bodies look more fit than they really are. We all put on deodorant to smell better than we really smell. So that's all public life kind of stuff. So, of course, the smile that you wear when you really hate the person, that's public life. So everybody has a public life.

And we all have to understand that when we meet somebody, the person we're really talking to is their public life. It takes time and it takes effort to connect with somebody to a place where they're willing to shed their public life and let you into what we call their private life. Inside that private life is where people will share private secrets like their salary or their mortgage or some less important health issue that may have crept up. right, like going bald or, or whatever, erectile dysfunction. That kind of stuff happens in a private life. You get there, you get from public life to private life, just almost by accident. It's just by being someone's friend, by connecting over common topics or commonalities. You go to the same church, you play on the same weekend softball team, whatever else it might be.

when you develop a close friendship, which we all have done in our lives, then you can get into someone's private life. But when you want to get to the place where they have real, like, real secrets, real shame, real embarrassment, now you have to get into something that's called their secret life. And there's a challenge to the secret life because once you get into someone's secret life, you essentially can never get out. You're stuck in their secret life, which means you have become so close to that person that they now feel a sense of incredible loyalty and connection with you. Even if you don't feel it with them, they feel it with you. So as an example, Doug, you probably have a girl or possibly a boy in your life who is the

one that got away. Do you remember the one that got away? Girl, yes. So what happened is that girl got into your, secret life. And now for the rest of your life, dude, you're going to remember her. How much does that suck? It sucks. That sucks. That sucks, man. It happens to all of us. Right. Somebody gets into our secret life and they become the one that got away. Maybe they got into our secret life when we were 13. Maybe they got into our secret life when we were 23. We've all had that person who has found their way in.

similarly you are the one that got away for somebody else at some point you got into some girl's private secret life excuse me and she's never been able to let you out because she became so connected so attached so loyal to you that even though she's married to somebody else with three kids right now she still thinks about you which sucks for both of you sucks for her because she thinks about you sucks for you because there's somebody out there thinking about you and you have no idea that they're out there doing it, right? They could be stalking you. They could be Googling you. You have no idea. That's the double-sided sword to getting into someone's secret life. If you get into their secret life, yes, you get all those deep, dark secrets,

but you can never get out. They will always think of you. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, Join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.