EverydaySpy Podcast - THIS is The MOST Powerful Lesson I Learned at CIA | Day 7

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/4ffYFzN There is a powerful lesson CIA taught me that transformed my life, career, and even my business today. That lesson was understanding the difference between motivation and manipulation. Today, I want to give that lesson to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I will be one of the first people to admit that CIA has a terrible reputation. That bad reputation is kind of well earned. It's deserved. Because for many decades, CIA has become very, very good at doing very, very bad things. Sometimes those things are sabotage. Sometimes those things are overthrowing governments. Sometimes those things are failed operations that become public laughing stocks. But the thing to understand is that for all the bad reputation that CIA has earned by the public discovering the things that it's done, it has done so many other operations that were successful, so many things in secret, so many things still yet undiscovered and undisclosed that nobody knows about. Now, when I was at CIA, I learned a very important

lesson early on in my training, a lesson that differentiated between the idea of motivation and manipulation. Now, going back to CIA's reputation, the whole world knows that CIA is masterful at manipulation. But here's what's so interesting. The same skills that go into manipulation are actually also used in motivation. And all those successful operations, all those secret missions that nobody ever discovered and still don't know about, those were examples where motivation were used. And that motivation was so powerful that people still to this day are motivated not to talk about the operation. So why am I sharing? this. I'm sharing this because this is such a powerful lesson in life. And I've used this lesson to

grow my business, to grow my family, to grow my influence, to grow my friends. Understanding that motivation and manipulation are two sides of the same coin absolutely transforms your trajectory for success, your future potential for influence, for power, for control over your own future. And that's what I want to talk about today. This incredible similarity and the very a nuanced difference between these two halves of the same coin. Now, if you come from a culture that has a coin-based currency, whether that's the US dollar or the euro or something in the Middle East, then you know that most coins have two different faces. They don't have the same face on both sides. Now, I have definitely traveled in parts of Asia and parts of Africa where coins really are the

same on both sides. They're just a piece of metal with a hole in the middle sometimes. But for the most part, fiat currency has two different sides on a coin. In the United States, we often call them heads or tails. We have a game that we make out of it when we're kids. That is so important because the coin itself is what carries the value. The face of the coin is essentially irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you pay somebody in quarters where all the heads are up or if you pay someone in quarters where all the heads are down. What anybody is counting isn't the heads or the tails. They're counting the value of the quarter itself,

what the value is in the coin. So when you talk about motivation and manipulation being parts of the same coin, then what you're talking about is the value is independent of the process. The process of motivating or the process of manipulating is independent of the value of the outcome that you're trying to achieve. This really throws a wrench into things when you start thinking about the motivational speaker industry, when you start thinking about the self-help industry, when you start thinking about

motivational speeches and TED talks and all the various commencement speeches that are happening all over the world at any time whenever college graduation comes around, all these people on all these stages trying to manipulate tens of thousands, millions of students and individuals and adults and professionals, all that motivation is really also manipulation. The same coin two different faces. So let's jump into this and let's understand this nuance better. CIA defines manipulation as getting someone to do what you want them to do when it is not in their best interest. That is manipulation. Motivation in contrast is when you get someone to do what you want them to do, but it is in their best interest.

When you compare CIA's definition of manipulation and motivation, what you find is the first half of both definitions is the same. Getting someone to do what you want them to do. That is the root definition in both manipulation and motivation. The thing that differentiates between motivation and manipulation is whether or not the activity is in the best interest of the person that you're targeting or whether it is not in the best interest of the person you are targeting. That's really where the difference is.

That means 90% of what happens when you motivate or manipulate is almost identical. The only part that is different is whether the outcome itself is in the best interest or not in the best interest of the person that you're talking to. So let's break this down into an example. When I'm getting my son to brush his teeth at night, I can either motivate him to brush his teeth or I can manipulate him to brush his teeth. But here's the tricky part. him brushing his teeth is always in his best interest. So whether or not I trick him, fool him, tease him, lie to him, force him, whether I manipulate him by traditional standards,

the outcome is still he's doing what I want him to do, brushing his teeth, and it's in his best interest, which is technically the definition of motivation. So if you're a parent and you're feeling self-conscious that you are manipulating your child to go to bed on time or to brush their teeth or to eat their vegetables or to eat their fruit. The reality is you're not actually manipulating them at all. You are motivating them.

You are motivating them to take an action that you want them to take that is also in their own best interest. Now let's look at an example of traditional motivation, right? Now, one of the best examples of this out there is actually the health and wellness industry where they're trying to motivate people to lose weight. So take any weight loss program that you've ever seen, whether it's a pill, whether it's food that gets shipped to your door, whether it's some sort of exercise routine or some sort of fad diet,

like only eating meats or only eating fruits. Take a look at any of those motivational health and wellness challenges. Now, in each of those cases, they're trying to get you to lose weight. But they're trying to get you to lose weight in a way that isn't always healthy for your own body. It's not actually healthy for the average body to only eat protein. It's not actually healthy for the average body to only eat fruit. So whether you're talking about keto diets or raw food diets or elimination diets, and the truth is that not all of these diets are actually good for all people, even though the message that's coming from the source is a message of motivation. It's encouraging, it's uplifting, it's optimistic. It's designed to get you to take a certain action. But that action isn't always in your best interest. It's not the same thing as the parent who's trying to get their kids to brush their teeth or go to sleep or eat a healthy balanced diet. It's completely. different because the outcome isn't always in the best interest of the target, even though

the message is what society would call motivational. So what you see in these two examples is that motivation and manipulation are very similar. They're what you might call kissing cousins. Almost the same thing with a very nuanced difference. That's why it's CIA, we call them two sides of the same coin. because the value is not the outcome for the person. The value is actually the outcome for the individual who is in charge of either motivating or manipulating, the parents who raises a healthy child or the marketer who sells millions of people on a fad diet that doesn't work. In both cases, the real value of the coin rests in the person who's controlling the message, the motivational message or the manipulative message.

But what's fascinating is society doesn't understand the difference between the two. So we judge and point fingers and make fun of the parents who's tricking their kid into doing the healthy thing. And we celebrate the individual who's out there trying to help others lose weight. It's a completely backwards model. But that backwards model is one that we've all come to accept over time. Because we've come to believe that motivation and manipulation are a matter of the words that are used, are a matter of the person that it's coming from. So we think that a politician is always manipulating us, and we think that a teacher is always

motivating us when in fact it might be reversed. The teacher might in fact be manipulating you or manipulating your child to believe a process works a certain way, that they're only fit for certain types of work, that they're gifted in certain areas, ungifted in other areas. And as crazy as it might be, some of the politicians out there might actually be motivational. Be trying to change something that benefits us. be trying to put in new legislation that benefits our county or our district or our city or our country. It's really quite amazing when you come to accept how similar motivation and manipulation are

and you start to see the difference in the nuance because it does two things simultaneously. First, it gives you a completely new power foundation to execute the outcomes you want personally and professionally. You can choose when you use motivation or manipulation with your employees, with your coworkers, with your kids, with your parents, with your in-lawful. laws. Second, it gives you a new lens to look at everything happening around you, the books that you're reading, the shows on TV, the advertisements that are coming across your smart device. You can now see and ask yourself whether the messages coming into your world are trying to manipulate you,

meaning get you to do what someone else wants you to do that is not in your best interest, or whether they're trying to motivate you, which is getting you to do something that someone else wants you to do that is also in your best interest. The importance of understanding the difference between manipulation and motivation is not only lost on most of American society, but most of the world. And that's exactly why CIA is so successful at what they do, living in that small space of confusion where people don't understand the message they're receiving, which is why CIA has the bad reputation they have for the moments when they are caught manipulating, but But it's also why so little is known about CIA because of all their success motivating the

outcome they want by giving people something that's in their best interest. If you've ever kept a secret because you believe that keeping the secret helped you get what was in your best interest, then you know what it's like to be motivated according to CIA's definition. And if you've ever disclosed a secret, even though you promised to keep it, because you believe that keeping it would not be in your best interest, then you know what it's like to be manipulated, according to CIA's definition. Now I understand that there are all sorts of emotions

that come up when you start talking about manipulation and motivation, but the truth is that the most successful future ahead of you will come to you easier and faster if you exercise motivation and manipulation that coin the same way that CIA taught me to use it. If you enjoyed this conversation, if you learned anything,

I hope that you'll leave a comment, like, subscribe to the channel, and share this with a friend. And I hope that you'll come see more of what I'm teaching at EverydaySpy.com. Take care.