Modern Wisdom - #389 - Joe Navarro - An FBI Agent's Guide To Body Language

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent, author and a world expert on body language. Becoming an exceptional communicator is a superpower. No matter your job or goals in life, the better you are at communicating, the better your outcomes will be. Joe led the FBI's non-verbal communication division and SWAT operations whilst catching and turning spies for 25 years, today we get to hear his best advice. Expect to learn the biggest mistakes people make when setting up to talk to someone in a room, why self-awareness can save lives, how to control your emotions more effectively, how to de-escalate an intense confrontation, how to be better at small-talk and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://bitly.com/cdwisdom (use code MW15) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy Be Exceptional - https://amzn.to/3lW1xbG  Check out Joe's website - http://joenavarro.net/ Follow Joe on Twitter - https://twitter.com/navarrotells  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Joan of Arrow. He's a former FBI agent, author and a world expert in body language. Becoming an exceptional communicator is a superpower. No matter what your jawball goals in life, the better you are at communicating, the better your outcomes will be. Joe led the FBI's nonverbal communication division and SWAT operations operations while catching and turning spies for 25 years. Today we get to hear his best advice. Expect to learn the biggest mistakes people make when setting up to talk to someone in a room, why self-awareness can save lives, how to control your emotions more effectively,

how to de-escalate an intense confrontation, how to be better at small talk and much more. These guys, man, that have been in the Bureau or the CIA or some sort of special forces for years, they have an unlimited number of stories. It's crazy. It feels like they've been alive for a thousand generations and they've just got this endless bucket that they can dip into. Joe is a sick guy and there's tons to take away from today. I didn't realize about the furrowing of the brow or the way that you're supposed to sit adjacent to someone when you try and have a conversation to get something out of them in a room, whether you're a boss trying to have better interviews or someone who's constantly having conversations

with people where you might need them to be on side, I think there is a John Navarro, welcome to the show. Good to be here, Chris, for the people who aren't familiar with you and your backgrounds, where have you gone that's led you to this point. Number four, you know, 25 years in the FBI, where I got to play as a SWAT team commander, spy catcher and a bureau pilot. I was the FBI's body language expert, and then I retired and wrote 14 books. And so not much. Yeah. A colorful career path, I think you could say.

What are those different elements within the Bureau there for the people that haven't got clear what you're talking about? Yeah, well, you know, within the FBI, we have a lot of subprograms. So when I entered into the Bureau, I was already a licensed pilot. And we were always in need of pilots because we use aircraft as platforms for surveillance. So I got to do that. And then they wanted volunteers, which means I was pushed into going into the SWAT program because sometimes you're up against some pretty dastardly groups and spent 14 years on a SWAT team in Puerto Rico and in Tampa and doing counterterrorism investigations, but mostly, you know, I spent those 25 years. So you can do other things within the FBI. I was part of the National Security's behavioral program, which looked at human behavior.

And actually, that's really what led me, not only my spy catching, but led me to begin to write books. And in fact, the first book that I wrote with Jack Schaefer really was, I was getting ready to retire from the FBI and people were saying, you know, there's all this knowledge that you have, but you're taking it with you. Why don't you share it? And I never intended to be a writer. In fact, I often say I'm a writer, I'm an author, I'm really not a writer.

I know what a good writer is. I'm sure you know the difference, but you know, all in all, it was a fantastic experience. And obviously you learn a lot. I got to work with British intelligence, I worked with German intelligence and just different folks around the world. It makes for an interesting career. What's the difference between SWAT and Puerto Rico and SWAT in Tampa? Well, the difference was that each major city has its own SWAT team. And when I transferred to Puerto Rico, there we were dealing mostly with counterterrorism. When I came to Tampa,

then it became more in the area of criminal activity, drug gangs with a lot of firepower and so forth. You know, Puerto Rico is a United States Commonwealth, so we have jurisdiction there, but it's just a matter of the kind of work we were doing at the time. There's a really interesting story where you talk about you quite self-reflective

to do with a challenge that you had on the morning of quite a big operation. Can you take us through that? Well, yeah, you think back of all the challenges and that one was here in Tampa, Florida, where we were getting ready to do a SWOT operation. And one of the things that you always are thinking about is safety. And have we covered all the bases? And you go down the mental checklist of where's the nearest hospital in case somebody gets hurt? Where can we land a helicopter or a series of helicopters?

If somebody needs to be mad about acting? case somebody gets hurt, where can we land a helicopter or a series of helicopters as somebody needs to be mad about acting? You know, it's a kind of things that the British SAS would go through. And I noticed that in the meeting, you know, the questions that should have been asked, weren't being asked as quickly and efficiently as normal. One of the things you want to do is have an eye on all the troops, who's having a tough time, who's having a bad day, is anybody's mind off the game, just like in sports.

Finally, it just dawned on me, even though I was at the SWAT commander at the time, I went to the boss in the office and I said, I got to take one of your players out. He's not doing well. And we had full confidence in me. And he said, yeah, have at it. And I said, well, that's me. I got to take myself out. My mind is not where it should be. I'm not responding to things. I don't know what's wrong and and so you know, I talked about that in in my in my book and and I'm glad that I did it because the operate, you know, the number two guy took over, everything

went down, nobody got hurt. But I had to be honest with myself and have that conversation and say, should I be here doing this? And it was kind of humbling that all of a sudden. And I think it can happen to any of us. We can be physically not well. We can be physically not well, we can be mentally not well. And that day I was not mentally well. And then I think a few days later, it finally, you know, you

don't think about this. My grandmother had passed away. And a few weeks earlier, and I think it was still bothering me, and it affected me. And I think these are the kinds of conversations that I talk about in the book that we need to have and say, do we really know ourselves? Do we know our own weaknesses? Do we recognize them? And are we willing to challenge that? And I think it's hard to do

because in an organization where you have all these alpha males and alpha females, and everybody's always gung ho and willing to do anything and everything, every once in a while you have to deal with the human factor. And I think that was good for me because I think it made me a better agent to deal with other people when they had their own issues. You must have had a very good relationship with your superior to be able to go and have that conversation.

You must have felt very comfortable with it. Well, we had worked at that point. We had worked several years together, and he had known me before, and you develop confidence. I mean, every operation you run, you run by them and you go through the list of what we're going to do, how we're going to do it, what happens, for instance,

if they open up and fire on us, what happens if they take, if they open up and fire on us, what happens if they take a hostage and so forth. And so you have that bond, but it's not something that's always automatic. And I was appreciative that he didn't force me to, I think a lot of bad supervisors would have said, well, you can do it. Get tough, get in there and just do it. And he knew when to push, he knew my limits,

but he knew that something wasn't right. And that's, I talk about that also, that one of the greatest attributes of a great leader is the ability to observe the needs and the wants, but also the fears and concerns of the people they lead. And I think, you know, I look back on history and you look at the great generals. And I think that's one of the things that stood out is that they had a sense of each and every player and say, well, this unit or this man or woman can do that, but we mustn't push too far at times.

And it goes to the concept that to lead, you have to be able to observe. It's an interesting thought that it's not necessarily the thing that you're running towards that you always need to look out for. It's the thing that you're running away from. What is it that the people that are working underneath you really fear? Because improving motivation or increasing motivation might get more output out of them, but the thing which is going to completely ruin the operation is the fear. So getting that sort of first seems to be the priority. You nailed it, Chris.

The thing that is never taught in any business school in any management school, in any management school is that you have to identify that, which everyone may fear be concerned with. And then the leaders role is to ameliorate that. To diminish its capacity to divert, to injure, to hurt or to cause people to quiver. And that's one of the things that great leaders do. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking

about someone in a home situation with a small group of five or six people in a church or a military organization, or as a CEO, is how do you get through this dilemma? How do we attenuate fear? One of the things we're seeing nowadays is we're seeing a lot of leaders who, in fact, in flame fear, who, not only at times, create a fear, but flame, you know, create an atmosphere where it's allowed

to be fertile and percolate to the surface, not realizing that the greatest leaders are always ameliorating fear. They're always pushing it down, getting it out of the way because they know that number one, fear can turn into hatred and fear can be paralyzing. And so whether you're looking at the financial industry in 2008 and you look at those people who came forward and helped us through this and said, we will deal with this problem a little bit at a time, but we will deal with it, while others were just panning the flames of the world's going to end, that's not leadership. That's the worst kind of leadership. How do you define self-mustery? That's a great question. I think it's a combination of things. I think it's number one, being in charge of taking responsibility for, but also being in control of your emotions.

I looked at so many historical examples and realized that oftentimes what has derailed, really smart people, is their inability to control their emotions, that whether it was great coaches or any number of individuals, great military leaders, they were derailed by their emotions. The second thing is the ability to focus enough on those things that are important to you so that you can then dedicate yourself to that. You know, I talk about Joseph Campbell in his great book, The Power of myth. And he famously said, follow your bliss. A lot of people made fun of that. And they misunderstood what that meant. It wasn't you were going to sit yourself down on a chair, on a sunny beach, and your bliss was going to come to you. What he meant was on a sunny beach and your bliss was going to come to you. What he meant was that if you pursue that which you seek, which if you focus on it, if you create the scaffolding of experience,

reading, reaching out to people that you can achieve that bliss and that doors will be open to you. I look at the American example of Benjamin Franklin who arrives in Philadelphia with 15 cents on his pocket, learns the trade of publishing, becomes the, you know, postmaster general of the United States creates the first the fire department and then goes on and becomes the first ambassador to France. How do you do that? I mean, what school do you go to? There's actually no school now that you can attend to that will teach you that. But what he did was he created the scaffolding. He, you know, in essence, he created that whole apprenticeship program for himself so that there would be no limits. None. If you go to France right now, the only statute there is of an America is Benjamin Franklin.

He wasn't president. You know, he gifted to the world the lightning arrestor, but beyond that, you can create yourself into something and that's mastery and it doesn't matter whether you're Jane Goodall and you're 22 years old and you say, you know what? I want to be an ethylogist, I'm going to go to the jungle, I don't have a degree. She didn't have a degree. She was a secretary. She says, you know what, I'm going to study primates and became the premier mind in the world in the subject of primates. She's the first to tell us, hey,

not for nothing, but these little guys use tools. Isn't that how we define mankind? I mean, it was, it was, it was a shock. She didn't let anything get in her way. That's what you can achieve when you have self mastery. So self mastery, sorry, self mastery is a combination of removing fear and then focusing intently on the thing that you want to do. It's, it's, it's that it's creating. It's controlling your emotions, but being able to focus on the things that are important to you, and then creating an apprenticeship program for yourself. You worked hard at it. You, you, you, you, you know, I'm sure you made plenty of mistakes, but you got to where you are at

by creating this, by having that proper scaffolding one bid at a time. Nobody, nobody said, oh, here's a memo, follow it, and you'll be interviewing Joan of our or Chris Voss or somebody else. You did that on your own. And that's what the book is about. That exceptional individuals, they don't have to follow a particular regimen. They can create their own regimen, and that is true self-mastery. Yeah, it's a strange thing to think about

permissionless apprenticeships as they're called online, where somebody does just strike out on their own. Let's say that there's someone listening who thinks, yeah, I know that I'm ready to make a change, I know that I'm not in the place that I want to be. How does someone set out on the first step of an apprenticeship? Because I think that's probably going to be the hardest one. That's a great question. You know, experience teaches me that, you know, I think now it's actually a lot easier.

I think now it's actually a lot easier. You can go on YouTube and do everything from figure out how to tune your car to swap out your bathroom appliances. I think it's so much easier now when I started in the area of non-verbals, 1971, 72. There were maybe one or two books on body language. Now there's an infinite number. So I think it's a matter of taking advantage of what resources exist, but also reaching out. I admire people who don't hesitate to reach out and say,

hey, I'm starting out. Can you give me a few tips? Just see other day. I was talking to somebody and I said, you've been working for the government for 25 years. You're going out on your own. Here's a few tips. Number one, get yourself a nice business card.

Don't put too much information on it. Just your name, email address, and a phone number. And that's it. Don't label yourself as to what you will do or not do. Number one, number two, if you have a website, don't take good care of it. And don't change your email address every six months as you go from AOL to Yahoo to Roadrunner and whatever. A little bit of advice, very simple. The guy came back to me later and he said,

you're right. Those things were important. We can always find someone that will help us. And there's nothing wrong with reaching out to others and just ask, how did you do it? If I came to you and say, Chris, how did you do it? You've got such a successful program. And I'm sure you could say, well, the first thing you do is you humble yourself. And you say, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to learn.

And then, and then make the sacrifices. One of the, one of the things that I find is people have grand ideas, but they don't know how to pay the price. They don't know how. To focus, to study, to rehearse, to do things so that you become better at it. Just the other day, a student was asking me, you know, well, you know, I find writing very difficult. I find writing very difficult. And I asked him, well, how many times did you edit what you're working on? And he says, oh, I must have edited it two times. I go, wow. I said, do you know how many times I re-edited my complete book?

It's 26 times from start to finish. And it could probably use even more. I said, that's the price that you have to pay. You say, you know, you got to see a play Hamilton. Wow, fantastic. Tickets are expensive. Yeah, they're expensive. How many times did they rehearse 47 times before anybody saw them? And that's what most people aren't, that price is what people aren't willing to pay. But the swimmers that go out there and work on their technique, the cellist that goes out and perfects the technique, the person that like you sits in front of the screen and evaluates themselves and says, how can I do this better? They're going to be the soonest winners. They're willing to pay the price. And that's part of mastery. And it's, you know, people say, well, it can be, it can't be done.

And my argument is, it can be done. The question is your dedication to them. One of the things that I learned a couple of years ago that was so interesting was the difference between having a dream that you like the idea of and having a goal that you're prepared to achieve. So a lot of people have the dream of, let's say, being a rock star, but they don't actually like the idea of gigging on the road or practicing playing guitar and having calluses on their hands and reading sheet music and having to go through tons and tons of shitty bandmates and deal with record deals and deal with crap managers

and sleep in a van and do this. It's like, well, hang on a second, you just said that you wanted to be a rock star. Like, this is what being a rock star is. It's all of that shit until you finally get to play Wembley Arena or somewhere in Vegas. That's the price that you are paying for this. And a lot of the time, I think people would not put their hand

in their pocket and pay the price that they think they would be prepared to pay for the dreams that they have. It's the ones where you're actually able to get reality to meet up with your pursuit where you end up making progress. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. We want to be John Lennon, right, with 10 number one hits under our belt, you don't realize number one, how many songs he wrote that never made it. You don't realize how many songs they threw away. You don't realize the Beatles. How much time they spent crossing the channel going to Germany, playing in these little clubs where, on a good night, they would get 60 to 80 people.

And, you know, they were being paid, I think, less than $60 in relative dollars for performing. And they were sleeping through three-door room and it's not a pleasant life. Everything comes at a price. But if one thing instructed me, and I'm sure you read it, you saw the story in the book of this woman who does this needle work and I found her in Brazil and she was no no over South America for her needle work and she was blind. She was blind and she was

doing needle work and she had taught herself to thread count with her fingertips just like if you would read Braille and she she could read the material. And then, I mean, it was just being in her presence was a wonderful experience. This is what she wanted to do. This is how she provided for her family, and she was the best. family and she was the best. And she didn't let anything get in her way. But again, is what price are you willing to pay? Observation is like your specialist subject, right? So let's say that we've got a beginner who's never looked at non-verbals before. What are the main things that somebody should be looking for? Well, you know, obviously the face is the one thing that we

we always notice. Something so simple as, you know, when we like someone, we arch the eye brows, we say, hey, yeah, that's right. So we emphasize with the eyes, Chris, when you struggle with something, your eyelids come down and they stay down for a little bit. And that lets us know that, yeah, you're struggling with that. You know, our lips tend to compress when we're struggling with something

or we're in disagreement, we purse our lips forward when we've made up our mind quite often we do jaw shifting when we have doubts like Yeah, right mate. Yeah, that's sort of thing There's just you know, there's there's so many things the the little area between the eyes There's so many things, the little area between the eyes called the globella. We furrow that when we don't understand something or we're in disbelief. There's all sorts of things about the body, but one of the things, for instance, the feet are actually one of the most honest parts of the body because our feet don't have a contract.

So socially, if you smile, I smile. So there's a social contract almost everywhere in the world where if Chris smiles, I have to smile back, right? But your feet don't. If you don't like somebody, often you'll see them enter a room and they'll go, hey, how are you? But the feet are facing away.

And we, the Olympic brain, this more primitive area and they'll go, hey, how are you? But the feet are facing away. And we, the Olympic brain, this more primitive area of the brain that's really quite exquisite, doesn't allow us to front things that might be harmful to us. So we turn it away. And you'll see it with like, little two-year-old kids, they'll go, I don't wanna talk to you. It's like, well, nobody taught them that. And yet they do it. So, there's those things, or you'll see the comasher touching, right? So these are the comasurs of the mouth, the corners they'll go. Yeah.

You know that there's an issue, there's a concern in their mind. So we reveal a lot. This said obviously this has nothing to do with deception. We know that there's no single behavior indicative of deception, but it does give us clues as to what the person may be thinking. And that's always useful. What about proximity from someone? That's a big issue because now we know because of the pandemic that people want more space. Proximix has more to do with culture and personal preferences. So in Latin America,

I come from Cuba and in Cuba, we stand very close to each other. We touch each other a lot and so forth. And then you go to Norway and Sweden, which I have been, and people stand further apart. There's less touching and so forth. That's a huge factor when you're trying to establish a relationship is if you're constantly violating somebody's space, then basically you're making them uncomfortable. And that is not, that just doesn't work over the long run because all you can think about is, come on buddy, back up.

You know, the brain is, the brain says certain things is very binary. We're either comfortable or uncomfortable. If you get in an elevator and somebody gets too close to us, we start ventilating, we start touching our neck, we do all sorts of things. And it's the same thing that happens when we're in an argument. And after the argument is over, that's when you think of all the clever lines you should have said. But in the argument, you can't think of it because your brain is dealing with the arguing, the emotions. And yeah, so we have to be mindful of space. And even where we look at each other, right?

Because you can look at somebody so intensely that it makes them nervous. Women often complain that men have to be reminded that stay up here. You're not norad, your radar doesn't have to be all over the landscape, just right here guys. And I agree, in fact, the research shows that in a social setting or a business setting, it really needs to stay just within this area to make people comfortable.

How can people strengthen their powers of observation then? Let's say it's someone that isn't used to paying this much attention. Well, I mean, that's a great question. It's one that I'm often asked and I say, well, obviously, buy my books and so forth. But that's just too easy. Well, there's several things that I've done over the years. And one is, obviously, I've studied the literature, I've written some of the literature,

but one of the things that I personally do is I try to watch films from different cultures. So, big on my list are from Brazil, Korea, Persian films, I love, Turkish films, Egyptian films, and films from Mexico, and some Japanese films. And I watch them to study the body language and to become more focused on the little subtle nuances, something so simple as greeting behaviors, turn yielding behaviors, who can look at whom, and validating that most of the non-verbals that really matter are universal. I mean, a smile is a smile, a nose wrinkle, right? I mean, I've seen that in Japan. I've seen it in Korea. I've seen it in in Iran. So, you know, so I studied that way, but there are little tricks you can do.

So that can really help you. One of the ones that I use is every once in a while, when I go outside, use is every once in a while when I go outside I will I will I will I will do a quick scan and say okay how many white cars how many great cars how many red cars and and and sort of work my way through that as I go through a parking lot as I'm driving in and then as I'm walking away to I'll say, okay, I was right. There were two whites, one gray, one black. And like any skill observation is a skill set that you have to work at. For two years, while I was in Puerto Rico, they wanted me to be a supervisor.

And it didn't destroy, but it certainly hampered. Once I went off the desk and was back on the street, I could immediately tell the difference of how much slower I was at observing. Because on a desk, you look at, you're doing this whole day out there, you have to have situational awareness. You forget that you're supposed to scan, right? You're supposed to scan the world around you, not focus on one little thing at a time.

So training yourself to do the quick scan so you can read a whole room is something that we teach and you can become better at it. You mentioned earlier on about emotions and one of the elements that you identify in good communication is the primacy of emotions. Is that the same as controlling your emotions, what's the goal that we're trying to get through here?

That's a good question. Let's differentiate from a biological as well as a evolutionary perspective, there had to be a quick efficient system to protect us. And that became our emotional system. And I say that because the emotional system has actually very little thinking going on. So if all of a sudden, I were to, if we were in the same room, Chris, and somebody brought it in a Bengal tiger, we would probably stand or sit very still. We would kind of like not move. Do you see that beast?

Well, you know, I just don't say anything. Right? This is your emotional brain This is your emotional brain, working, which says in the face of fear, in the face of a threat, freeze. The freeze response kicks in. People think it's fight or flight. It's not. It's freeze, flight, fight. And so there's the primacy of emotions. If I walk by you and throw a punch, well, if you had to think about it,

you know, and say, well, you know, I'm built better than Joan of R.O. My arm, you know, I've got Chris Williamson has guns in his arms. Joe's an old man, you know, you're doing the math. I know you're doing the math. I know you're having a visual. You really don't don't want to countenance. If we had evolved that way, we'd all be dead. We'd be thinking, is that a friendly snake or is it ill-tempered?

So our brain is kind of hectic. It evolved to deal with the emotional security stuff first and foremost, and that's why when we're stressed, we forget where the keys are, and we forget the clever lines, because emotions have primacy. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that we can't take control of our emotions.

What that means is when we have the opportunity, which is different, when we have the opportunity to reflect, to deal with emotional situations, you have a child that does something wrong. Okay, they're gonna do things wrong. How do I deal with that rather than fly off the handle? That's the difference. Where you have an opportunity to assess the emotions of the moment versus something that's reactive.

I mean, if a car's coming at you, you're not going to be able to think too much about that. That's where, and, you know, containing impulsiveness, right? There's a lot of people that are impulsive. You know, you ask them, well, how much savings do you have? Well, I haven't been able to save any money. Well, yeah, but you're spending more money on your car than so they're very impulsive with certain things. And that's part of it too, is is raining yourself in. And that's emotional mastery. Yeah. It's so unfortunate that the high-pressure situations that we get ourselves into are the ones where our physiology makes our brains so ill-prepared for it.

So you do a big event, you've got a big talk coming up, it's your first one, a lot's on the line, you really, really need to nail this. And then the night before you don't sleep because you're terrified and you wake up the next morning and you're unprepared. And what's happening in the body and the brain when we're going through that sort of pressure situation, it's an awkward conversation with a partner or a boss or there's something that we're concerned about what's happening to us. What's happening to us is is is is you literally are it's an electrochemical imbalance. You are your serotonin levels may be down.

You probably haven't been sleeping, you haven't been eating right, so your sugar levels are off. Your cortisol is flowing because you're having this difficult conversation or you're nervous because you're having this difficult conversation or your nervous or your tense. People forget the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe without question.

The sun, that's easy to explain. The human brain, we have no idea what's going on. We don't even know how memories are really built, synapses are reaching out to axioms, you know, all sorts of things. We respond to the world around us. And for the most part, we have a certain amount of control, but it can be overwhelming. And I've been in those situations. Oh, my gosh, you're going to do your first TED talk. How's that going to go over? And you worry. But then you start to think, wait a minute, And you worry, but then you start to think, wait a minute. This is where mastery comes in. What do I know?

Will anyone in the audience know as much about this topic as I will? How many people have arrested a spy here? How many people have arrested seven or eight spies? How many people have listened in on the conversations of the mafia, the Joe Bonanile family in New York? How many people have investigated 25 homicides in two years? And then you realize, okay, okay, start to settle down. These people have an experience, what you've experienced. You know, it's, well, what if there's PhDs in the audience? How many of them have interviewed 13,000 people? You know, then you start to say to yourself,

and everybody can do this, what do I know? How do I know it? Have I rehearsed it? And then you can sort of will yourself back up to where you really belong? Because it's easy to crush yourself and say, oh my god, there's going to be 600 people there. And these people are my equals and they know stuff. But yeah, you can resuscitate yourself if you need to. And sometimes, it's overwhelming that I say, find a wall and push it. Just push it. Just push that wall.

And one of the interesting things that happens is that in the effort to push that wall, that you're forcing your muscles to then send signals to the brain, which then begin to create that homeostasis that we need because your brain can only handle so many things. And if you're sitting there pushing just as hard as you can, your brain really can't do two things at once. It's strange though, because we have the same reaction innately when we stub our toe, or you get kicked in the shin, because the reason that you rub it is because the brain struggles to send the sensation of both pain and rubbing at the same time. Exactly. And if you get kicked in one leg and then get kicked in the other, trust me. I played American football. The first one you forget about, it's the second one that takes over. It's the same technique that we teach, for instance, people who all of a sudden are having a panic attack, and you say, squeeze the nerve that lies here between the comasher of the

index finger and the thumb. There's a nerve there that if you squeeze it really hard, it's extremely painful. And all of a sudden, if you do that for about 10 or 12 seconds and you hold that, all of a sudden you find yourself, where's my anxiety? Where has that gone? And the brain is handling one thing at a time. I had a really interesting experience with this. I came off a mo-ped in Bali because I'm where has that gone? And the brain is handling one thing at a time. I had a really interesting experience with this. I came off a moped in Bali because I'm

a awful tourist that can't ride bikes and hit the deck, grazed all one side of me. But because I'm a bro, I decided that we were going to go to the beach club in any case, and the lads that I was with would clean me up when we were there. So we stopped in a pharmacy, continued onto the beach club as basically one entire side of me is covered in blood. And we sat down and I had a beer and they were like,

look, right, we'll get started with this. So I had shoulder, elbow, knee and top of foot. And that was in order of ascending extremity as well. So it was worse, the foot was the worst than the knee then. So the guys were going through it and they had alcohol, swabs, they had iodine and then they had dressing. So we're gonna do all of this

in the middle of a beach club, which is an experience. And you write like each time that they did it, it was the most painful thing that I'd ever felt. Anyone that's listening that's never had alcohol in an open wound, it burst through the ceiling of what I thought my nerves could communicate. I thought, I understand what pain is, I understand the amount of signals that a part of my body can send to my brain. Not fuck off. This can go completely through the ceiling. So the,

it's like putting a cigarette out on your skin. Dude, it was, it was insane. So he does the first one and I'm, I'm like, this is, I can't believe how painful this is. And then he puts a bit of dressing on and then the next one happens and the first one stopped and It was it was kind of interesting to see that sort of discreet pain Receptive going also the funniest part of it whenever I look back the guy that was doing it was being very kind I'd ruined at least an hour of our day because I'd come off this bike and he was going to have to spend his time as opposed to speaking to the pretty girls in the beach club. He was going to have to clean me up. As he was doing it, he knew it was hurting me and I was gritting my teeth and continuing to drink beer in between it. All that he kept on saying

was, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I was like, yeah, I know, but you have to do it. So just keep on doing it. I appreciate you doing this. He's like, yeah, no, but I'm just so sorry. Inflicting pain on me in the middle of this beach club. So yeah, I see, I see that and the way that it happens. Another thing there, that got to a point when he did my foot, which was basically the entire top of my foot had come off. It was so painful that I started laughing. That was the level of pain that it got to. I burst out laughing. It almost didn't hurt because I was like, this is so painful, it's ridiculous. Absolutely absurd. Absolutely absurd.

And yeah, for some reason I started laughing, which was the bright point. That's interesting. Yeah, by the way, I was also a medic in the bureau. Don't put alcohol on an open wound. I mean, I was dealing with people that were rigors that had taken a first aid course, talking to someone that's never taken any, so they were doing their best. Did you, I'll just hear you right, say that you were part of the team that surveilled the banana crime family?

Yeah, one of the things that happens in the bureaus, you know, we only have so many agents. So every once in a while, you're, I think you would say in the, in the UK, you would be seconded to another group. And for about a year, I was, I was loaned or secounded to the group that was working on the Joe Bonanno and so here's all these made guys who years later you would you would be watching the sopranos and they said yeah that's how they talked you know maybe yeah forget about it. Which one was that one bugged? Was that the one in the house or the one in the car? Oh, well, that one, I don't talk about in the book. What the Bonano family was doing was,

they were going to, this was in the 80s, so there were still a payphones. So they would go to payphones around the city, and they would call each other using payphones thinking that the FBI wasn't sophisticated. We had what's called a roving warrant that basically we would intercept what was going on at the main junction of AT&T or whoever it was. And then we would say, okay, they're calling this number and then the warrant applies to this phone number. So they would be sitting there with quarters dropping quarters thinking, oh, this is really smart.

And we're sitting there, you know, with recording equipment, getting at all. But I'll tell you what, you really learn about about morality and the lack there of, I mean, they're talking about either, well, we either bribe the witness or we just grab one of their family members and torture them one. It's like, wow. It's like these people have no morals. That just bothered with outcomes. That's all they cared about. That's all they cared about. I mean, there's a scene in one of the, in a movie about the mafia where you see these guys, just for the sake of it, they're trying to take a part

of parking meter, which probably has maybe $5 worth of quarters in it. And they were relentless in things like this. It didn't matter as long as it was an illegal way of getting money. They would spend hours on it, not realizing that, if you value yourself at, let's say, $5 an hour, this is actually money coming out of your pocket. It didn't matter to them. As long as it was illegal.

That's all. They were all so seduced by the idea of a criminal activity that it blinded them sometimes to the actual outcomes that they were getting from it. That's interesting. If they had opened a pizzeria, they would have probably made a dollar, a dollar 10 on a dollar investment, they'd be making money, but they didn't want to be legitimate. For them, working was illegitimate, and they would do anything to work against it.

Yeah, but interesting. Let's say that someone's having a conversation with an interlocutor and it's getting a little bit heated or you can't really get that other person to communicate in an effective way. What are some of the strategies that people could use to improve their communication in that situation, to kind of de-escalate it, to bring it down and to start getting everyone at the table again? Are you going to try this at one of the football games there and the...

That's not going to happen. I work in a lot of nightclubs, though. I stand on the front door of a lot of nightclubs and very many times people say, why am I not coming in? Why it's because you don't have any identification? Well, I've got a photo of it on my phone. I'm sorry, I can't accept that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is such a big issue now because we seem to be more intolerant.

We seem to be lacking the social skills that we once had. One of the things that I try to tell people is that distance always helps, angling away. Right? So this is very intense, but if you angle away, if you can create some space, even something as subconscious as doing a artificial cathartic exhale where you go, right? Just doing that exhale, let's the other person know at a subconscious level that things need to calm down. I learned that trick when I was going through paramedic training at Roosevelt Rhodes Naval Hospital in Puerto Rico and

The ER doctor said he didn't remember where he had learned it He said but a lot of times you come in and the family members are all upset because their son or daughter is injured. And he says, I just found that by exhaling, taking a deep breath and exhaling, then it somehow got other people to calm down. And I've used it ever since. I didn't create this, but I've certainly used it. And there's something about that that helps to calm things down. The other thing is that antagonizes us is too much eye contact. So reducing the eye contact. So as you said, you're working at the front door, maybe looking over the person or just around the nose area,

but not that direct eye contact sometimes helps. But there are people who either have so much alcohol in them or they're just really emotionally unstable. And you just have to be aware that there are limits to what we can do, you know, to the softer voice, to the deeper voice. You know, whether we say stop with our fingers together or we spread them out, say no, no, no, no, no, fingers together or we spread them out, say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, slow down. It doesn't work that way. There's things we can do, sure.

It's a baptism of fire doing de-escalation on the front door of a nightclub. The degree to which people's rationality has been completely divorced is, it's a sight to behold, man. Like, you know, girls tend to get either indignant or hysterical. The typical one is they've had a bit too much to drink or they've been caught inside doing something

that they shouldn't and they get brought out by the door staff and the door staff take them outside and say, look, that's you for the night time. You're not coming back into this venue tonight. And what happens is the guys that stand on the front door so the door staff that stand next to me and my boys, they're the ones that deal with the yapping for however long it is. And yeah, there tends to be a bunch of different reactions from guys. It'll be usually trying to give some sort of rational explanation

to try and appeal to the rationality of the door staff. And then if that doesn't work, it goes to insults. Girls tend to, in my experience, be quite indignant and can't believe that it's happened, and then it turns into hysterics. And this is when people have had too much to drink, they're just so... There's nothing that you can say. So, you know, all of the best ideas in the world as you're talking about here, they just simply go out of the window. The really isn't much that you can say. So, you know, all of the best ideas in the world as you're talking about here, they just simply go out of the window. The really isn't much that you can do. Yeah, then you're really limited. Now you've got, if you're lucky, it's alcohol, if you're dealing with people that are on some bizarre homemade drug, it can be really scary because sometimes they present as having no fear. They don't mind escalating.

I mean, I'm not talking to a person anymore. The rules and the procedures that you have in your head aren't the game that that person is playing anymore? Well, we see that with, you know, with these, I guess, the term that's often used at these games, these Hullagans, who, I mean, they're almost reptilian. They just want to fight scratch, hurt, and they really have almost no conscience. And I've seen it where one, you know, eight hours earlier, they were fine. And now they're so inflamed that.

And it doesn't help that they're surrounded by their buddies that are... Crowd mentality. Crowd mentality plus a little bit of an ebriation is a hell of a drug. Hell of a drug. It's scary. It can be be scary. I talked to a woman once who was the door person. She was we call them the bouncer and and she in fact I talked to her not

that long ago, but she had told me this story two years ago and she said, yeah, once they start drinking it's a problem but you know, I try to address it as early as possible that When I'm in that line, I don't wait till they're right in front of me if I can begin to address things While they're still further behind, I will say, no, so and so, you know that you're barred from this, that don't even bother coming in. So she tries to address it as far out. And she's not a, you know, she's slight built woman, but, you know, she's, as we say, she's a tough as woodpecker lips. You don't want to, you don't want to piss her off.

That works really well. So we have a dormant doing what we call scanning. So he'll move up and down the queue, a lot of our events are for students. And then sometimes there'll just be a group of guys on a stag party that are 40 years old. And the guy will just move down the queue and we'll, we will try and get them before they get to the front. Because when you're at the front, it almost feels like a stage, so the pressure's turned up a little bit and if you have to turn people away there, plus they've wasted more time standing in the queue, which makes them predisposed to be a bit pissy.

So yeah, we use that and it works. It seems to work really well. Talking about having someone angle their body away, I'm friends with a guy called Dr. Stu McGill, who's the world's expert in lower back pain, incredibly good physician, unbelievable. And he, I went to go and see him in Canada. I went to go and get an assessment off him after I had him on the show and I went and stayed with him

and went fishing and stuff. And when he sat me down, he gave me the full Monty of his experience when you do an assessment. And the way that he has his living room constructed is that he has a single chair, a very nice comfortable single chair, and that's where the client sits. And then he has an adjacent, so forward and to the side, he has a couch. So it's like an L, but there's no L on it. And you're sat at the foot of the L, and he's sat on the upright part,

and then directly opposite where you're sat, he's got a fireplace, and the fireplace is always on. And he was talking to me afterward, and he'd said that throughout all of his time as a clinician, testing and split testing, and trying to get people to open up about their imbalances and the way that they move and stuff like that. He found that by having them sat looking forward looking at a fireplace and him just sat to one side still speaking to them

still facing them but not directly facing them. He found that that really got people to open up. It's interesting that you have that same insight as well. same insight as well. Well, I would add even this further, and I agree with that completely. One of the things that I had to do was to get people to confess to being spies. That's a tough job because all the evidence is overseas, right? And the Russians, they weren't particularly keen on helping us out. So they're not going to give us the evidence back. So getting people to confess was not easy. But what I found was that the most success I had was not interviewing people in an office setting or in an interview room. First of all, most interview rooms aren't designed by people who know anything about interviewing, so you see them sitting across from each other.

Most of the espionage interviews that I did without exception were usually in hotel rooms that we rented for that purpose and we always sat either on a couch or a combination of couch and chairs, but we never sat across from each other. We always sat at. And I was criticized a lot by a lot of the old timers. And they would say, well, just bring them in and you know, sit them in a cross from you and you don't understand. You don't understand. Yeah, you don't understand.

I'm doing interviews that will last six, seven hours. And I don't, and I want this person to open up and and that's and that's how I did it. I understood as I'm sure your doctor friend understood that too much eye contact affects interviewing, that allowing the person to drift off, to be comfortable, to be reflective is often better than what you see on television. And I still teach that.

When I teach interviewing, I say, please do not sit directly in front. It's actually easier to resist someone when they're in front of you. You say, no, and I say, no, you're telling me no? It's easier to fend somebody off than somebody's next to you. Somebody's next to you. It's pretty tough to argue with them. It's like, we're both on the same side. And that's what I tried to create that, you know, look,

the documents are already on the other side. That's already taken place. Now, how do we work our way through this? Because the federal government's not gonna go away. The FBI's not going away. I'm not going away. And you're sitting next to me. So how do we how do we move forward? And it was always amazing to me how people are willing to, okay, well, we somehow have to work our way through this where if you put them in front, oh, it's so much easier to resist somebody. How can people become better at small talk? where if you put them in front, oh, it's so much easier to resist somebody.

How can people become better at small talk? That's tough for me because I'm actually an introvert and I find groups a challenge. The easiest way is do not talk about yourself. I, when I'm at a party or with a group, I don't want to talk about myself. I know what I've done. I really don't. What I want to know is what do you do? What are you interested in? There's a park nearby here and sometimes I'll take the dog there and I want to know what everybody does and I'm fascinated that one guy's an attorney but he's really into photography. The other one is a grandmother and she's really into her grandkids more than she is into her own

daughter. That's what I want to know about. I want to know about them. I want to know all the little things that they've found, what movies they're watching and so forth. I think it's really easy if you can just, at some point, turn it so that we're talking about them. I think it's a little harder for me because somebody will say, oh, this is Joan of Auro, he's an author. I don't want to talk about that. I really want to talk about what other people think. What if you come up against someone who is another you, though, because then you're going to ask them questions about them and they're going to go, I don't want to talk about me, John. I want to know about you and your illustrious history.

Yeah, so stalemate. So, yeah, you have to have a backup plan and that backup plan is, I'll find one story that I've told before and it's, I consider it my giveaway and I said, well, you know, one of the more interesting things was this de facto. We were trying to get him to de facto and I sat down with him and we were going back and forth and he didn't want to leave. He was on the other side of the Warsaw Pact. I still can't reveal what country he was in.

We were sitting there in a hotel room, and finally, I just grabbed his hand, he was an older gentleman, and I said, listen, I understand completely, I would be scared too, and I don't know what drove me, because I think I was only 29 years old at the time. I just continued to hold his hand and he began to cry. And you know, and he said, I can't continue to live this lie.

And then that's when he defected. It's a good story. That's a good way to start a... Well, you know, it was something that was different. It's a story, you know, people think, oh, you know, you came through the door, you threw in a flashbang, boom, breach her in, boom, send the dog, boom, send the tear gas in.

Now we prance in and... And hold it on me. Yeah, that's what spy catching is all about is human behavior. Yeah, but you got to be careful with your audience, but I'll tell you, in the book, you probably read the story where I'm in San Francisco and they're announcing on the radio who just won the Boston Marathon. And once again, it was somebody I think from Kenya or Ethiopia, one of those great runners from that were. And the guy driving it, he says, do you mind if I listen?

I go ahead, listen. And he says, he's from my tribe. And the rest of the day, as he drove me around, was listening to him talking about how he grew up in that part of the world, which I know so very little about. And then he revealed something that was really eye opening. And to this day, it's one of the most worship conversations that I ever had because I didn't talk about, you know, I didn't say, oh, you know, I'm here in San Francisco

because I'm going to give a big talk. I didn't want, I wanted to listen to this cab driver who then said the most interesting thing I've ever heard and I said why do so many people from this part of the world are such great runners and he said something that just Rattled me and he said we didn't we didn't have newspapers or or magazines or radios or magazines or radios and I go, what? You know, I'm figuring he's gonna say, well, we have great genetics and, you know,

we, our tribes are isolated. And he said, we didn't know what world records were. So we just ran fast everywhere. Think about that. We just ran until we dropped that. That's brilliant, mate. That hits it right on the nail. If you don't know what the goal is, if you don't know that, oh, yeah, you got to stop at 26 miles, then you'll run 30. If you don't know that you're supposed to run at 98% of your ability,

you don't have a coach telling you slow down on the first three-fourth of the... We just ran everywhere. Wow. I saw a video not long ago of a school child looked like perhaps Kenya running to school. I think he must have missed the bus if there was a bus and it's a car driving driving behind him and the kid must be maybe 11 or something 11 or 12 and it's the most gorgeous running

form. Just absolutely beautiful turnover speeds. Nice, long rangey strides. The head staying completely still the arms are moving. He's got his backpack on. And it's just, it's like when you see a leopard go in slow motion, it's just, it's gorgeous running style. And you just think that's, that kid's 12,

probably never had an athletics coach in his life. It doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me that they dominate distance running at all. And the altitude and the temperatures and so on and so forth. And the long carbs and the good builds perfect. And running every day, and that's how he grew up. He said, we just ran everywhere. And you think about that. I mean, we get in a card of, go a mile to pick up the newspaper.

And think about, you're right about their running styles. They sort of, they maximize a fit. And then you know, you're right about about their running styles. They sort of, they maximize efficiency because obviously if everybody's running every day, you're going to model whoever's the fastest and it turns out when that, when that head holds still and into the body that's fully gimbled, you know, just like a zebra or a cheetah. But then you think, oh man, what's going to happen the day we put really good running shoes on this kid and say the Boston marathon.

So like over and over again. And they do it with such love and appreciation for that. But that's my idea of small talk. My idea of small talk is to listen to what other people say. But I have to tell you at the same time. Nothing is more painful than to listen to the people brag over and over about themselves. I'm too old. I just walk away. We've talked about being exceptional today. What would you do? How would you design a person if you wanted to make someone as un-exceptional as possible?

What would be the personality traits and the characteristics and the worldview that someone would have that is the complete antithesis of what you're trying to achieve? Not curious. A person that is completely not curious about anything. Not themselves, not the world around them, that they think they know it all, think it all, and so forth.

Someone who is rigid in their thinking, who is uncompromising, who is unwilling to make any sacrifice and wants everything handed to them. Someone who has no empathy, someone who takes no action when action is needed, who has no concept of providing comfort for others. I've never been asked this question, Chris. I think it's a profound way to ask that question and I thank you for it. That is the antithesis.

And when you say it that way, you think, oh my gosh, there are people like that. And they're horrible. They're so rigid in their thinking. They're unyielding. They're not curious at all. They don't want to know anything about you. They don't want to explore the world around them. Everything is so rigid and suspicious. And they don't want to take any action to help. That is the antithesis of the exceptional. Because the exceptional really are about providing psychological comfort. They're about helping themselves, but not at the expense of others. They want everybody to succeed. They want everybody to have fun, to enjoy life. And I think that's what really sets

exceptional people apart. Joe Navarro, ladies and gentlemen, be exceptional. Master the five traits that set extraordinary people apart. We'll be linked in the show notes below. And if people want to check out what else you do, where should they go? Please come to my website, joenovarro.net. And they can see all my books and videos. And soon they'll see my interview with you Chris. Exciting.

Obviously the pinnacle of your career so far. Joe, thanks very much for that. I've got to thank you. I've got to tell you, you're one of the best interviewers that I've dealt with. I love your questions, I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch