The Jefferson Fisher Podcast - Robert Greene: Why People Manipulate & How to Protect Yourself

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Have you ever felt like other people understand power better than you do — like they know the rules of the game and you don’t? In this episode, I sit down with The 48 Laws of Power author Robert Greene to talk about what power really is, how to use it without becoming manipulative, and why feeling powerless can quietly wreck your life. We get into communication, self-love, boundaries, and how to spot people who don’t have your best interests at heart, plus a preview of his new book The Law of the Sublime and what surviving a near-death experience taught him about appreciating life. Order The Next Conversation Workbook: https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/workbook Thank you to our sponsors: Cozy Earth. Upgrade Your Every Day. Get 40% off at cozyearth.com/jefferson or use code JEFFERSON at check out. Monarch Money. 50% off your first year at https://monarchmoney.com/jefferson  Momentous. Visit https://www.livemomentous.com/ and use code JEFFERSON for 35% off your first order. BetterHelp. Click ⁠https://betterhelp.com/jeffersonfisher⁠ for a discount on your first month of therapy. Order my new book, The Next Conversation, or listen to the full audiobook today. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show!  Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter.  Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube  Follow me on Instagram  Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you haven't heard of the book, the 48 laws of power, well, you might be living under Iraq. Today, I am privileged to talk to the man himself, the author of the 48 laws of power, Robert Green. Robert, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me, Jefferson. I appreciate it. This is a conversation I'm very much looking forward to because your book is one that often when I make content or I'm speaking, there will typically be somebody. who comes up and says, oh, have you read the 48 laws of power? And I said, yes, I have. And what I want to talk about and what the listeners are going to get, what you're going to get in this episode

is we're going to talk on can you use power? And can you also maintain your own integrity? Because a lot of the times people find those to be conflicting in some way of they hear manipulation. they don't hear anything that is descriptive, prescriptive, that can improve their life. Robert, how would you define power? What does power mean to you? Well, power is a tool. It's totally neutral. Like a hammer, you can use it to build a house, or you could clobber someone over the head and kill them with it.

So power is simply a tool. It's neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It can be used for evil. It could be used for great good. But power is the sense of having control over the immediate environment over events that are occurring in your life. So to use this to flip it around to the negative, if you sense in your daily life that you have no ability to influence your children, your spouse, your partner, the colleagues at work, your boss, the people in your company, It's a miserable, miserable feeling.

You have no power. You have no control. You have no influence. You can't tell people to do something and they don't listen to you, right? Or they do things to you that kind of block your path and you have no way of getting them to stop this. That feeling of powerlessness is something that human beings cannot endure very well. And if you feel powerless for very long, something is going to warp inside of you psychologically.

You're going to turn inward. You're going to become resentful. You're going to become angry. You're going to have pools of anger, you know, developing inside of you deeper and deeper and deeper. And you're not going to have control over yourself. So power is the first, the first sense of control is over yourself, over your emotions, so that you're not always reacting and getting angry. So that you have a little bit of detachment.

So when it comes to those situations where you need to move or influence people like your children, your spouse, your colleagues, your boss, you're able to step back, a half step, a full step, couple steps, and think, go, what is it that will actually move that person in the direction that I want? How can I actually influence them effectively so they don't hate me, so they don't resent me, so that they actually do what is in my interest. without maybe even realizing it or that the interests align in some way. So that is power for me, right? It begins with yourself. It begins with a slent sense of detachment from the events happening to you. It's the ability to strategize and think in each situation in life. This is a move that will gain me a little degree of control over events.

You can never, ever have complete control. life happens things happen pandemics happen black swans happen you can't control everything right but that little bit of margin of control is enough to kind of help you glide through life a little bit more smoothly when i think of power i think what you said is a perfect definition of it the ability one's ability to control or influence another's behavior, maybe including even their own. You have the personal power, you have relational power, like who in the dynamic might have more influence over the other between husband, wife, or partner, and maybe there's political power, the ability to construct, influence others, the ability to write laws, implement

laws socially. And what I find, the people that I get to talk to are always. looking for power of themselves and how they're going to improve their life. And where I teach is communication and the power of words. And this is why I really like, there's a number of the laws that you have out that are specific to communication, like using less words in particular. How do you find that communication and power intersect? They're obviously completely intertwined. But communication has to be strategic.

And that's the problem that a lot of people have in this world. They think if they just talk, if they just say, this is what I want, this is what I need, please come and help me, that that's communicating. All you're communicating is your insecurity and your insecurity and your needs. True communication is effective. It's strategic. Other people are naturally resistant to helping you or aligning themselves with your interest. Everybody has their own problems in the world today. We're all stressed. We're all working too hard. We never have enough time, right? So you talk to me about what you want. Okay, I'm kind of half listening, but you're kind of irritating me because

you're just spewing things from your side, right? True communication is what I was saying before. You take that step back and you put yourself in the other person's shoes, right? You get out of your own head because you're so self-involved that you don't realize that your words are just landing nowhere. You get out of your head and you go, I'm dealing with another person. They are not me. They have their own problems, their own wishes, their own issues right now in the present, right?

What is that? What is it that is going on in their head in their world? Sometimes you have to do some research. Sometimes you maybe you know them well enough. Maybe you don't know them at all, but you have to figure that out. It's a puzzle. Once you figure out their side, not your side, what they want, what they need, now you have some power to craft what you say to actually influence them, to appeal to their self-interest, which is one of the laws of power,

a very power one of the most powerful laws of all right so if i say something and i'm trying to influence trying to move them like on a chessboard in my direction right if i say something that appeals to their self-interest while it's also helping me their eyes will light up all those defenses that they have will start to go down so communication is absolutely worthless unless it's strategic and say always say less than necessary is important because the natural tendency for a human being without self-control is just to spew words, you know, just like verbal diarrhea. This is, you know, all my problems my life.

This is what's going on with me. This is what I need. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Just shut up. Talk less and think more about what the other person needs and craft your communication strategically. You know, I wrote a book recently, and it's hard not to, I can't imagine, writing a book and not having pieces of yourself in it, when you were writing this book,

what was coming up for you in your own life? Are you just studying these elements of influence and control and powers? It's something that you were writing to yourself or for other people. Where did that come up for you? Well, it came from two things. First of all, a very deep desire to help people in this world. I don't, my books, I think very, very deeply. I'm working on my eighth book now, so Power is my only book. But I think very, very deeply of my audience, right?

It's a form of communication to get back to that. And I want to help people. I want to help people deal with their problems in a real way, not just to satisfy my own ego. So I have to think about how my words can actually be absorbed into your daily life. So that's one side. The other side is the book came from a lot of pain, right? So I started into life like most people, kind of naive, kind of innocent.

I wasn't a good player naturally necessarily in power, right? I made mistakes. I talked too much, probably. I outshone the master, right? on and on and on. I could go through a laundry list of the things that I violated. And I didn't realize that the world is political. I thought when you enter the work world, what matters is having results is getting things done, is doing things well. But no, I had many, many, many painful experiences, particularly working in the film world.

But as I've said in many interviews, I've had 50 different jobs in my life, more than 50. in all different aspects in every little possible avenue of life I've had a job and I suffer deeply and I suffer deeply from the sense of

people are so political their egos are involved in everything you can see their egos as they walk past you right I would notice in the office that there was these hierarchies I worked remember I worked for a while at the magazine Rolling Stone

and there were these hierarchies there was the boss and you could just see this massive ego walking back and forth. Then there were all the other smaller little people working right under him and their egos. And there was little me in the corner as a copy editor, a little tiny, tiny little ego. But that's what mattered. That's what made things run was how will you impress him, how you talked to the boss in this case, Jan Wenner.

And I thought this is silly, but this is the real world. And you have to take the real world seriously. seriously, you have to succeed in the real world. So the book came from deep pools of pain for my own mistakes and from a deep desire to help other people because I feel it's the source of a lot of depression and misery in life. You know, you say something, or you do something, thinking that you're on the right track, it's going to help you, and the next thing, you know you're fired or you're depoted. You don't know why. I've felt, you know, I see people around me having these problems.

So those are the two strands of the book, a deep desire to help people and a realization that the world is political, full of egos, and that mistakes are very costly and painful, and I made plenty of them. Yeah, well, you're not alone. We've all made a lot of mistakes. Looking back at it now and knowing the impact of the book, and I want to talk about the book specifically that you're writing and going to be releasing soon, is for those who haven't read it or those who might go, you know what, now that I've listened to this episode, I want to pick it up

again. Maybe they have it on their shelf. I haven't looked at it in a while. How do you find, and especially being the one that wrote it, that this topic can also be very healing? I get a lot of emails from people that, you know, it's helped them. It's turned their life around where they started a business because of the book. Of course, you know, it's anecdotal, so I'm sure there's a lot of stories out there. People who've been hurt who've been on the other side of the manipulation. I understand that. But what's healing and liberating is to finally have that little light turned on inside of your brain

that this is how the world works. I didn't realize that. I thought what mattered was just being myself. I thought that I could just do my job, say the things that I like, dress the way that I like to dress, just be myself, and it was enough. And no, I'm suffering from it. And just seeing that little switch go on in your brain that, no, the game is different. It's played differently.

There are rules to this game. You can't just come in and play poker and just do whatever you want. There are rules for poker. There were rules for chess. You don't know the rules. You're just playing terribly and you're suffering. And just that little bit of switch inside going, maybe I'm entering this game. Maybe I'm from the wrong angle.

Maybe I'm being too selfish, egotistical. I'm too self-absorbed. And I'm not thinking enough about the players in this game. that little switch of your perspective of how you look at it can be deeply healing and enlightening because it's not natural to us. As I said, it wasn't natural to me. So I think in that sense, that's what has helped a lot of people, a lot of people who like myself enter the work world a little bit innocent and a little bit on the naive side. This episode was brought to you by Cozy Earth. One of the reasons I love Cozy Earth is because their product,

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to get it for somebody else, but I definitely need it for myself. And now, back to the episode. How can you tell if somebody is trying to manipulate you? Well, sometimes if people are clever, you're not going to realize it. Like if people are really good at the manipulation game, if they know the 48 loss of power, if they know how to seduce you, how to wrap their words and make you seem like they're just wonderful, and that they're out for your best interest, if they're really good at it, you won't realize it until it's too late.

And so in my book, one of my, I think my last book, The Laws of Human Nature, what I tell people is you need to identify these people before they enter your life or before you start listening to them. You need to be able to identify the manipulative types before they start charming, before they start enchanting you, before they start wrapping you up in their dramas. Because if you don't, if you fall into that trap, it's going to probably be too late. most people aren't such good manipulators and you can sense it right they're very passive aggressive they say things that they want to get from you but there's another there's a subtext involved right

and a lot of the bad manipulators you can feel it you have an intuitive sense you can understand it something in their body language something in how they speak it doesn't seem sincere But the main thing is to be able to sense people's character, to be able to identify the types of people out there. So, as I said, there's some people out there who are brilliant at the manipulation game, for whatever reason, not because maybe necessarily they read my book, but because it's in their DNA. They're just naturally good at it, right?

People who are very political. Okay. So your task is to be able to see. through these people, because the problem that a lot of people have, see, I have to kind of circle around here a little bit. The thing that I try to say in the 48 laws of power is that it's a game of appearances. Appearances matter so much in this power game, how you present yourself, how people see you, you know, act like a king to be treated like a king, right? Recreate yourself. Your appearances is what people are judging you by, right? So at the same time, you have to control

your appearances so people see you as powerful, but you have to see like a laser through other people's masks, through other people's games that they're playing, through the appearances they're trying to create. So the great manipulators out there, right, they have signs. They're not perfect. They give little clues, little crumbs that reveal that they're trying to play this kind of game on you. And that's why I wrote the laws of human nature where I give you tools for identifying the great narcissists out there. Because most of the master manipulators are toxic narcissists. And you have to be able to identify them before they enter your life. How to identify people who are full of envy. They are a very dangerous type. They'll become your best friend

in order to hurt you, to sabotage you, because they feel envious. You have to identify them before they get into your life on and on and on down the line. So that's sort of my advice. There's no simple answer how to identify a manipulator. It's in their character. It's in their body language. It's the little signs that they give out. And you have to be able to see through people's masks and not always take appearances for reality.

The people who would read, this book, and let's say they've read it, they really understand it, they're putting it in a practice, and there's somebody who wants to have, as we've defined, more power in their life, whether it's for good or whether it's for bad. And through that, they're going to be able to, as a verb, manipulate people for good or for bad to their purpose. Do you find that the people who read this book are doing it with ill intent or for good intent. I know you've heard you have to have had a lot of feedback from this book over the last many years. Yeah. And I'm curious what you'd speak to that. Well, let me clear up one thing, though, that not all of the laws are about

manipulation, right? Right. I mean, I guess it's how you define manipulation. But creating compelling spectacles, one of the laws, is, you know, creating something that draws a lot of attention, right? Which is what a lot of life and social media involves. You can say in some ways it's manipulation, but it's also just trying to please people, just trying to bring pleasure into the world, just trying to create a spectacle that attracts attention. I don't necessarily see every law in there about manipulation. But to get to your point, You know, I've said this before, the people who are really, really nasty and evil at the game of power, and they're out there, out there. I would say maybe three to five percent of the population would be like that.

Maybe I'm overestimated the number. You don't really need a book like the 48 loss of power, right? They've been learning this from a very early age. They probably had troubled childhoods. I don't want to get too deep into the psychology of that, but they've been wounded in their childhood, right? And they learn from the age of six or seven or eight. This is how you get people.

This is how you stream people along. This is how you get attention. This is how you be dramatic. This is what you say. This is how you get mommy and daddy to pay attention to me. This is how you get the teacher to like me. They've learned this step by step at an early, age, by the time they enter the work world in 22, they've been dealing, doing this in high school,

they've been doing it at college or wherever. They're getting better and better at it. Then this book comes along the 48 laws of power. Well, they don't need to read that. If they read it, it's just going to confirm the things that they've kind of intuitively understood. Now, I don't deny that there's going to be a percentage of people who read that book, go, wow, I can really be nasty in the world. I can really use this now and get a lot of power and they are using it for bad purposes. I understand that and I have to own up to that and not, I'm not completely naive about how the book is used. But the vast percentage of people, and I know this from the emails I get, I get hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of them in the last 20-some years, probably hundreds

of thousands in the end. Are people who are like myself, we're like, myself, who were naive, who didn't understand how the game is played, who entered the world with all kinds of illusions that were bred into them, because your parents don't tell you, your teachers, your parents and your schools, don't tell you that there are people out there who are manipulative, that the world can't be political, that everyone out there has egos. Nobody teaches you this. All of the books are so sweet. and sugary telling you self-help books, you know, just cooperates, this is how to be a good human being. And you enter the work world, and nobody prepared you for the slash that you have

from people being so nasty, political, and ego-written. Nobody taught me this. They glom onto the book, like it's, you know, water in the desert. Wow, he's teaching me something real. That's the majority of readers, I believe. I could be wrong. There's no science behind it. I don't have data, anecdotal data, though, is sort of how I believe it. These are the readers that are attracted to them. What I have found in my own life is so much of what I have seen and ran into with, especially in when they were early childhood trauma, like what you just talked about, people who have, people who are proficient at lying or manipulating or exercising. as we can define power, is because at that point in time in their life, there was an actual

utility to it. They were able to get mom and dad to stop arguing. They were able to keep the family together. They were able to not get in trouble to keep themselves from getting abused or whatever it is, that so much of it, they have already learned. And whereas some people might be, like you said, they think everything's roses, and they just get hit with the tidal wave as soon as they enter the real world of, wow, this is, it doesn't matter how nice I am. They're going to be rude to me. It doesn't matter how clean I play. I'm never going to get anywhere if I don't do X, Y, and Z. Nobody taught me the true rule, the hard knock rules. Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, I wrote a book about warfare, and one of the concepts called 33 Strategies

of war. And one of the concepts in there is what we call asymmetric warfare. And that's what is also called dirty warfare, right? People who like terrorism, okay, or like guerrilla warfare, where the rules are thrown out, where you're willing to do anything. Usually it comes from armies that are much smaller and weaker. And that's certainly the origin of terrorism, right? You're going to leverage your smallness, your small size, your small army, but being as nasty and amoral, and you'll do anything to get power to hurt the enemy, okay? And what happens is oftentimes the enemy

doesn't place by rules is good. And so in asymmetric warfare, right, it's an ethical, there's also an ethical asymmetry. So I think of things like Putin in Russia, for instance, Okay. He's somebody who's willing to play, do anything for power, as nasty and as dark, whatever works for him and his country is what he will do. When you have these European countries with their democracies and their rules and their organization and their bureaucracies, and they're continually at a disadvantage, facing somebody who's willing to do anything, much more than they're willing to, to do. We find this as well in American politics. So in life, the same thing happens. When there are people out there in your office who their ethics and their morals are thinner than

yours, they're willing to do much things that you would never consider doing, you're at a continual disadvantage. You're not willing to do the dirty things that they're doing, right? how do you defend yourself in a world where some people are willing to do things that you would never consider doing, right? Well, you have to become strategic and you have to understand that you don't have to do, you don't have to be evil. You don't have to lower yourself to their level. You don't have to play fire to hit fire with fire. You could do different things to upset them, to be strategic, to deter them from hurting you, etc. of. But the fact that there are asymmetries of it, there are people who are willing to do things that

you're not willing to do is the source of a lot of problems and pain in your life and suffering. And you're going to suffer throughout your life because of that. You know, those toxic narcissists, their gamut of what they're willing to do is like this and yours is like this. And so, you know, you're constantly being hit by things. And you're not necessarily understanding because, you're a good person, you don't necessarily register all the dark things that they're doing until it's too late. Before we keep going, I want to take a second to tell you about Monarch. The holidays are great, but they come with a lot. Travel gifts, family gatherings, it's one of those times where money moves fast, and it helps actually see where it's all going. If you want to keep your finances

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opportunities slip through the cracks this holiday season. Use code jefferson at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off of your first year at monarch.com with the code Jefferson. And now back to the episode. I'd like to read a quote that hit home for me. Understand, people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself, your worth, your abilities, your potential. That's in transform self-love into empathy. My question is, how do we build communication habits that handle these attacks?

on ourselves that instill doubts in us without internalizing them or how do you handle people trying to instill doubts in you? You talked about self-loves from my book, The Laws of Human Nature. So to the degree that you are insecure, to the degree that you don't really love yourself. So we have to clear up a misconception that people have. There's a difference between narcissism and true self-love, right? So if you learned at an early age, three or four or five years old, that you're actually a good person, that you're worthy of love and affection from other people, you know, that you have skills and abilities as you get older that are actually worthwhile that will contribute, right? Then you have an anchor in your life. You have a degree of love

of yourself, a confidence. So every time later in life where you have blows, where people hit you with doubts, but they try and sabotage you, they try and insinue it, maybe you're not so good, or they play these games that we're talking about, you're going to get this blow, and it's going to depress you and it's going to lower you down. And it's going to affect you. you were all like that. Nobody can, can't suffer from that, myself including. But what happens is if you have that level of self-love that you developed at an early age, you will rise back up. You'll start going, no, it's not true that I'm this way. It's not true what they're trying to tell me. You know, I'm actually worthy. And I know it because I've done things in my life. I've accomplished

this. I've helped this other person. It raises you back up. It's like a thermostat that you have inside of yourself. Okay. So the degree that you have, that love will bounce you back up and you'll be able to tell yourself, at first their doubts kind of hit you because we're all human. But then you go, no, it's crap. They're playing a game. I'm not going to fall for that. But if you were wounded very early on and you never developed that self-love and you have a lot of doubts about yourself already and you're insecure and you're riddled with like bullet holes and wounds inside of yourself where things can leak through and people tell you those things it's going to bring you down and you're going to not rise back up you rise back up a little bit that another person

will hit you you keep going down and down and you get depressed and you'll find it very difficult to rise back up. So the way you have to handle it in life, if you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s or even in your 50s, well, I just saw a coyote walk right by. You know, you have to develop it. You have to go back and go, I'm beating up on myself. I have all these insecurities.

They're effective. These people are effectively manipulating them because I'm allowing them. to manipulate me. So when bad things happen to you in life, you have two choices you can do, right? This is probably the most important thing I can tell everybody out there. You have two ways you can go. You can blame other people.

You can say, oh, that evil person out there, he's manipulating me. They're doing this, that, and the other, oh, woe is me. I'm being the victim, blah, blah, blah. They're evil, they're bad. Okay, you do that in life. you're never going to get anywhere, right? You're going to always be looking for things to blame, looking at external things.

You're never going to grow. You're never going to develop. The other thing is every time something bad happens, you look inside of yourself and you go, that person manipulated me, that narcissist got into my life and did all kinds of damage. What is it about me that allowed them into my life? What is it about me that was so innocent, that was so stupid, that believed the things that

were saying? Okay. So if you're able to learn and grow from these events and look at yourself and go, why was I allowing them to hit me and hurt me and instill these doubts and why didn't they affect me? What's wrong with me? Well, maybe I don't love myself enough. Maybe you don't have enough confidence in myself. how do I build that up?

Well, I have to go back to my childhood. I have to think about the things that I've actually accomplished. I have to build it up slowly, slowly, slowly. And that's how you handle things. But if you can't look inside of yourself and go, the bad thing happened and I have to learn from it and I had to grow and maybe some of it's my own fault, you're sunk in life for the rest of your life.

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matters, make it count. And now back to the episode. I want to make sure and touch on the project you've been working on. I believe it's called the Sublime. The Law of the sublime yeah yeah tell tell us about it is it do you have a release date for it well i'm very finally happy to to announce that yes it should be out in october of of 2026 and i think well yeah i mean i've been working on it for five and a half years now you know and so um every day constantly uh it's been it's been a roller coaster so to see the end is almost brings tears to my eyes i almost can't even i can't even that's wonderful handle it um this will be your ninth book it'll be my eighth book

eighth book eighth book okay eighth book wow that's incredible can you give us a a little preview of yeah well all the sublime so um it's a little bit influenced by the near-death experience i had eight years ago when I suffered a, seven and a half years ago, and I suffered stroke. And I came this close to dying myself and my wife basically saved my life. I was driving my car here in Los Angeles. She saw my face just falling apart, something weird going on. I was driving. I wasn't aware of any of it.

She got me, she forced me off the road. She called 911. They came quickly. If any of those little things hadn't happened, if, they'd been a minute later or she hadn't recognized it, I'd be, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'd either be dead or I'd be in a vegetative state. So life is this very thin thread, right, where things can, you know, you can definitely slip off the edge and you're not aware it can happen at any moment. And the sublime is this understanding that to be alive,

to simply be alive, to see the world, to see things as they are, to see birds, to see nature, to see human beings, to see that you and I are talking on this instrument right now, which 50 years ago would seem like something from some science fiction story, is utterly mind-blowing. But people don't realize that they walk through their lives with their phones stuck in their face. They're thinking about, you know, reading about what people have for breakfast. Their minds are getting smaller and smaller. They're shrinking down. They're not opening up to the infinite, to the vastness of this world, to the amazing fact that we're on a planet with life in a cosmos.

There's probably very little, hardly maybe no life at all. That it evolved to where we are today. That we're human beings that we have what we have. It's utterly unbelievable. And I'm trying to open your eyes to each of the different aspects of what I call the sublime. Then I talk about childhood and how our childhood was so intense, all of our childhoods were so intense, we're naturally sublime and what that means, how the brain and consciousness itself is utterly weird and sublime. How other animals and their consciousness and how we can kind of study and empathize with other species is utterly sublime. Love, which is a chapter, is a sublime quality. History in the past and our ancestors is an incredible thing.

I talk about ancient civilizations. I described to you what the ancient city of Babylonia looked like. The ancient world, the cities back there were unbelievably beautiful in a way we can't even imagine, right? So I have 12 different chapters, each kind of going into some of those different aspects. And it's been a journey because this hand here that I'm holding up is kind of dead because this is my stroke. I can't type. So I've had to handwrite everything and then dig it into the computer. Wow. If you saw it process, you'd go, my God, I can't believe he even got one paragraph of this book out. So, well, that is, that is incredibly.

impressive and I look forward to everybody taking a making sure they can go take a look at it when it comes out there in October I'm it's very um that's something to very much admire so I appreciate you sharing that well you're very welcome very welcome I wanted to wrap up with this question one that you've probably gotten before now that you've had 20 plus years to you know look backwards and you said well you know what i stopped at 48 if there ever could be now looking at it another law maybe one or two that you thought well i'd add this one do you have one the 49th law is there is no 49th law right you know Jefferson to be honest with you when i finish a book i kind of move on i'm on to the next project yeah i'm on to seduction i'm under war i'm under mastery i'm working

with 50 cent. I'm doing them all. I'm so absorbed in them. I don't really go back and think, what did I miss in that book over there? I try to tell myself psychologically, you covered it all, move on, onto the next project, don't look back kind of thing. That's sort of my guiding philosophy of life. I think that's a pretty good philosophy. One I can certainly relate to. Well, I appreciate for me to you, I appreciate your dedication. Oh, thank you. to your art and to your projects and what you've chosen to share in the world. And I know that, you know, as I've read them, anybody can, same with my content.

You can always take them in the way that you want to choose to receive them and how you accept them. But they are what they are. They, in many ways, power, like you've mentioned, is a neutral tool. And so what I've learned in our conversation today is, number one, power is the ability to control or influence another to your desired outcome. And those that don't have the power, they're the ones that they feel powerless in many ways feel like they got left behind and didn't learn these tools. These are the kind of lessons that you teach in that book

that you didn't just write off the top of your head. You research it from globally, from different ages to all across the world. And these are things that can help a lot of people, if anything, give them a really genuine perspective of what the real world is like. When it comes to dealing with people that are attacking you and trying to put you down and instill doubts in you, their ability to do so is corresponding to those level of self-love that you have invested in yourself. And those with higher self-love, they're going to be less affected by those trying to sow doubts into them. And then three, I want to touch on the Law of the Sublime, gave me just such a wonderful picture as you were even listening here. and you saw a coyote run by, the appreciation for life and how precious it is is something that we should never forget. Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us

in my audience. I hope you're able to see me. I see all this light coming in, God, I should have moved over. I just thought you were glowing. Yeah, you didn't know. I really is just, you're just glowing. That's awesome. Robert, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm glad that we're fine. I'm glad to be able to do this. Thank you. Take care of me. Me too. Absolutely. Yes, sir.