The Jordan Harbinger Show - 704: Robert Greene | The Emotions Behind Success, Mastery, and Power

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Robert Greene (@RobertGreene) is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers on power and strategy, including The 48 Laws of Power and The Art of Seduction. His latest book is The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature. [Note: This is a previously broadcast episode from the vault that we felt deserved a fresh pass through your earholes!] How to learn multiple languages and maintain their use throughout your life. Why it's important to apprentice, and how you can find the right mentor to guide you. How to find your life's task -- even if you think you're too young, too old, or already established in your field. Why social intelligence is crucial on the path to mastery. How keen observation of others serves to sharpen our own skills. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/704 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss one of our earlier shows with The 48 Laws of Power author Robert Greene? Catch up here with episode 117: What You Need to Know about the Laws of Human Nature! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Success and mastery and power is not an intellectual pursuit. It's not a question of learning a lot of things from books. It's actually an emotional quality. The fact that you're disciplined, patient, persistent, that you love what you're doing, that you can put up with criticism, that you're tough. These are all emotional qualities that Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison or whomever you want to look at, that's what they have.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Fortune 500 CEO, former cult member, money laundering experts, or former jihadi. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker.

If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, I highly suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic, and they help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Y'all have said these are super helpful. I'm glad to hear that. We've got topics like disinformation and cyber warfare, negotiation and communication, China and North Korea, technology and futurism, crime and cults, and more.

Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start, or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Wow, this one from the vault, Robert Green on the show. This interview, I'm hesitant to tell you how old this interview is. In fact, maybe I shouldn't. It's almost 10 years old. It's one of the first interviews that I did where I actually read the book first, which is amazing to even hear me say that, because of course, that's standard practice now. I remember I read the book, which was a huge book, because I didn't want to blow it because Robert Green was such a big influence.

We talk a lot about language learning, how to find your life's task, even if you think you. you're too young, too old, or already established in your field. And of course, why it's important to apprentice and why you need a mentor and how to find one and why social intelligence is crucial on the path to mastery and how you can begin to develop it. Stay tuned here for Robert Green and enjoy. And just one more note, you know, it's funny. For those of you who've been listening for a while, you know that Jen is my wife and we have two kids. This episode was recorded.

I want to say either the month I met Jen or possibly the month after. So this is a deep cut, y'all. And it's probably one of the earliest interviews that I have that's actually worth airing. I would say a lot of the stuff before this was, well, I don't want to disparage anybody too much, especially my guests. But I will say, I was not in the finest of form up until this episode. This is quite a turning point in my interview career. So if this is your first episode of the show, I'd like to think I'm a little better at this now. But if this isn't your first episode in the show and you've been listening for a while,

I would love to hear what you think of the difference in my interview technique and skills all around from what's got to be eight or nine years ago now till today. So thank you so much for listening. Here we go with Robert Green. Is it true that you worked around 80 jobs before you became an author? Well, my girlfriend and I were counting and I got up to 60. Then I said, you know, there's just, I've such a bad memory that I'm sure there are all these jobs I've forgotten. So we just rounded up to 80. In truth, maybe about 15 or so occurred, you know, before I graduated university because I had to sort of work my way through college. Right. I like to say after college, where it really starts to matter. I had at least 55 to 60 jobs, yeah.

Yeah, that's plenty. And you're not 185 years old. So did you just have these jobs for like a month or a couple weeks? And it was like, next? Well, some of them were, you know, for a few days or a couple weeks. I've never had a job longer than 11. months. That was the longest I seemed to be able to sustain the boredom and the routine and looking at the same faces every day. I'd have a job where I would, it'd be like in television where you only work for four months on something and then they bring you back a year later kind of thing. But I just couldn't stomach any, I guess 11 months was the longest and then a lot of other jobs for like a week, two weeks, a couple months here and there. Right on. Yeah, that makes sense.

Because I was going to say anybody with that amount of experience in different fields is I they're doing a lot of things concurrently or a lot of things, not for a long time. And you also speak five languages according to Wikipedia, but I always got to ask, like, do you speak five languages or is it like, yeah, I've got some Spanish under my belt? And then that made it into a Wikipedia article by somebody. I live in Europe. My French is very strong. My Spanish is very strong. My German used to be strong and I can read it, but I wouldn't say I'm a great German speaker. And then Italian is probably the weakest. So if I really, really had to say, I'd say three for sure, probably four, the five is pushing it. But I'm very good at languages, so

give me a couple months in Rome and my Italian would be very strong. You know, that's funny. You're the only other person I know personally that speaks five languages besides myself. And I also, I always ask, because whenever I meet people, they're like, I speak seven languages. I'm like, that's amazing, which ones? And they're like, Spanish and Portuguese and then German, and I'll say something in German. And they're like, I don't know what you just said. And I'm like, that was pretty basic. So obviously, you're full of crap. Or they like, they know how to say, hi, my name is Jordan in that language. And they're like, I speak German now. Yeah, no, I don't consider it that way. Because that was my major in college and, you know, it was comparative literature. And I studied ancient Greek and Latin. So

there are even more languages if you want to add that, although I don't speak them. Nor does anyone speak ancient Greek or Latin, really, right? Well, maybe a few Catholic priests somewhere can maybe converse in Latin. I take it very seriously like you, knowing a few words is not speaking a language. My opinion is if you can't talk to a taxi driver, you don't speak that language. And that's a pretty low bar, too. Okay, well, that bar, I would say four. But as I said, give me like six to eight weeks in Italy and I'd be making it fun.

You are a great writer. and the fact that you speak a lot of languages also makes a lot of sense. I'm always sort of baffled by people who can write really, really, really well in only one language and can't speak or understand anything in another language because it's almost like there's some sort of wasted talent there, I think. It's not that they're not really good at it, just they haven't applied there. Because if you can really master subtlety and nuance and humor in your native language, it seems like you should be able to pick up the basics of something else.

Well, I don't know about that. There might be some truth to it, but I think the... you can kind of divide people who are good at languages where they're sort of auditory oriented people. Words and sounds, they can just sort of absorb their minds in it. It's sort of a type of person. I happen to when I'm writing, I like hear the words before I even write them. But you can be a great writer that's just totally into the literary written aspect. You're not gifted at all for languages. I've known quite a few people like that. Yeah, I do too. That's what always surprised me. I think that you're right there because I'm very, very auditory, and I'm always talking to myself either out loud

or in my head. Languages always came very naturally to me except for in middle school and high school where I hated it, but that was just because it was French and I didn't care about memorizing a verb table. I was the same way. It wasn't until I lived there that I realized that I'm really good at languages. That's why whenever people go, I'd love to live abroad, but I suck at languages. I go, how do you know you suck at languages? Well, I never did well in school, and I'm like memorizing the etra verb table and all its exceptions has nothing to do with you hanging out with some people and learning how to talk like them and mimicking accents, et cetera. And a big part of it is if you go to France, are you alone, do you have to learn it in order to be able to pick up this girl in a bar or do you have,

are you, you know, to get a job or are you hanging out with other Americans? If you dump somebody in the middle of France and their survival depends on it, they'll suddenly start getting better than they normally would because you really have to listen. A lot of people go live there and they're just hanging out at McDonald's and other, you know, hanging out with other Americans. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The reason that I found out that I was good at languages was because even though I was terrible at them in high school, I was an exchange student. I ended up getting placed in the former East Germany. And I was really pissed in the beginning. And I thought it was awful, you know, in the beginning, I was like, this is terrible, stupid communist, blah, blah, blah,

is Cold War crap. And all these other students in West Germany were out partying and they were tons of foreigners there and it was so cool. And then about halfway through the year, everybody over there was homesick, and I was damn near fluent conversational German because nobody spoke English. And they were all, you know, people over there had taken five years of German prior. They were doing okay, but my German was about on par with theirs. Wow, that's a great story. Wow. I remember waking up in the middle of the night one night and going, I have a choice to make. I can go home totally defeated. I can just suck it up, learn German, make some friends, and get the hell out of this house, which is depressing. And that's

exactly what I did. And once I started doing that, the connection with my host family and the kids in school got really, really good. And then it was like, oh, Jordan's a real person. He can talk now. The last people to find out were my teachers, because I knew they'd make me do work. If they found out I could actually speak German. So I just would skip school and go hang out with immigrants and play hacky sack and sort of ditch and go hang out with like the burnout kids. And that was great because none of them were good at English. They were smoking weed and playing hacky sack in the town square. So I did a lot of Pachysack and drinking, you know, and doing stupid 17-year-old kid crap, and I came back with awesome German.

That's a great story. Yeah, your German must be pretty good. It hasn't gone away either, which is great, because that's the other thing that people say is that it fades. Well, it fades, but it comes back pretty quickly. If you spent, like, a couple weeks in Germany, it would come back really fast. Things like Spanish, I get to practice here quite often, so that keeps it alive. But, like French, I don't know any French people here or German.

German. So what I do is I listen to books in French or German in my car and I kind of keep my head a little bit or watch movies in French, that kind of thing. That's phenomenal. I don't have the patience for that. That's for damn sure. I saw this as a critique on a few websites that reviewed the 48 laws of power. People say that, yeah, this might be true or this might be effective, but somehow it's a moral or, you know, you shouldn't be telling people about this or you shouldn't practice these things because you're just going to make people ruthless. What do you say to people who seem to be, feel almost victimized by the idea that you can learn to be more charismatic? I see that with the 48 laws of power, you get all these high achievers like Will Smith,

who's a frigging awesome dude learning from this book and they say it's amazing. And then you get all these people going, oh, you're just teaching people to be ruthless. This is like a modern day art of war. You're just a scumbag preaching scumbags, how to be scumier. What do you say to those people. Well, there's a lot of things I say. Anybody who's worked in the real world who doesn't live in a commune in Oregon has dealt with the 48 laws of power. They've dealt with psychotic, tyrannical bosses, men and women who think they know everything, who play all kinds of weird games, have egos, there's envy, there's passive aggression, there's even more nasty manipulations going on. And if you've lived through that, then the book of Fortier Laws of Power, it seems almost even a bit mild.

Oh, yeah, I've seen that, and I know about it. And that's good. It helps me be aware of it. A lot of people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, African Americans or women, for instance, in the world, they've seen all that power stuff really a lot more directly than other people because they're looking at it from the other end. It's pretty clear and pretty obvious the power game can be pretty ruthless, and those who have power kind of write the rules. But then you've got people who have a pretty good life, who've never had anything bad happen to them. This is one type of person, and they whine and whine, well, why do you have to talk about this? This isn't the reality. Well, it's not the reality for you. So maybe don't read the book, and I'm happy you don't read the book. It's not

your reality because you live in a small town in Oregon, or you've managed to have a lot of money, or you never have encountered it, and that's great. Ever since the Bible, and we've been recorded history. We've been seeing examples of this. And so for you to close your eyes to it is ridiculous. And the other thing I say is people who are sharks, who are manipulators, and we all know who they are, they don't really need the 48 laws of power.

I mean, they know it. They were born that way a little bit, or the sociopath type. It's in their DNA. They have a sense of how to make people feel guilty and get things done from them. Whatever their particular manipulative game is, they don't need to read a book to hone those kinds of skills. There are a few people.

I've heard from readers where maybe someone was kind of borderline, and the book did help them become pretty damn ruthless and done some bad things. And I don't feel so good about that. I understand. But the majority of emails I get are from the kind of naive schmows like myself, who went out in the work world expecting that the world would be kind of like a literary adventure and discover it's not, a lot of people need instruction. They're too naive. A book not for the sharks, it's for the minnows. The people who don't know how these other people are operating.

That's really who the book is addressed to. And I found it's weird because the last thing I'll say, the book's been out for 16 years now. And it's like a weird kind of mirror. You bring to the book your own past, your own obsessions, your own neurosis. We all have neuroses. And the book kind of makes you see what you want to see in there. And I've noticed a lot of people who feel uncomfortable about their own manipulative dark side. The book makes them feel doubly uncomfortable, and those tend to be the types that get very upset about it. That would be my long-winded answer there. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Robert Green. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the show, we got authors,

we got thinkers, we got creators and performers every single week here. It's because of my network, frankly. I got a call on that all the time. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I don't sell anything here. This isn't an upsell. I don't want your credit card info, none of that.

It's just about improving your networking and connection skills, making you a better connector, and more importantly, making you a better thinker. That's all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And most of the guests that you see or hear on this show, subscribe and contribute to that same course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where I know you belong. Now, back to Robert Green. Now, of course, I'd like to talk a little bit more about mastery versus the 48 laws of power, which is an awesome book, but maybe a little bit more for another time. I definitely think that mastery is such a brilliant piece of work. I keep getting my copies stolen,

which shows you how good and how in demand this book is. And you actually have a little bit of a rubric for discovering your calling, finding what you call your life. life's task. And I'd love to have you shed some light on that because I think a lot of guys could use that. I know I wish I had read that 15 plus years ago. It's a concept that I'm trying to introduce to you and it begins with the following thought. You were born, you, the person listening to this, unique and individual, your DNA, totally different from anybody else's. That's a fact. And the way your brain is wired, et cetera. There will never be anybody else on the planet with exactly your DNA and your brain configuration. It's a pretty amazing fact to think about that.

And when you were a child, when you were really young, this difference of yours was a lot clearer. You were drawn without any way to verbalize it. You were drawn to certain things. I know if I look back in my deepest childhood, I was drawn to words and the sound of words just sort of enchanted me. But for other people, it can be sports, images, they have a visual mind, other people, it's patterns and mathematics, whatever. And essentially, I believe, I can't prove it scientifically, everybody had these inclinations at some point in their life. But what happens as you get older is you start off listening to your family, your teachers, your peers. They start telling you what they think you should be doing. You start listening to your friends are saying it's cool and

not cool. Teachers are telling you you're good at this, you're bad at that, and you lose complete sense of what was natural to you, what you really love, what you were drawn to. And you have to learn all of these other things in school that you don't like. If you're a word-oriented person, you have to learn math, and suddenly you hate that, and then you go, oh, shit, I just hate all learning. This is the French teacher example that we were just talking about, and I was good at languages and I hated French and thought, I'm terrible at this because the way that she decided languages needed to be taught was look at this book and look at this verb table and memorize all this, and if you come in and you don't know it, you fail. Yeah, a completely dead approach to language.

Language is all about socializing. That's why we have language in the first place. And it's supposed to be a real encounter where two people are dialoguing or whatever to turn it into something like a math formulas to kill it. But that happens in so many subjects. And so we get turned off from learning. We get into the university system. We don't know what we really like. We choose a job because our parents are saying we have to make money. We have to make money. Friends are saying this is where everyone's going. I get onto Wall Street or I become a lawyer. You're kind of lost. And then you can kind of fake it if you're young because you've got all this energy and you look good and people like you and you're out doing things. But eventually getting into a field that doesn't connect to who you are to what

that difference was that I mentioned at birth, it catches up to you. Usually around the age that you happen to be at mid-30s, can be a little later, a little earlier. You're not paying attention to things going on in your career to what's going on. People are younger and more eager or keep coming up. You get downsized, quit, you don't know where to go, and you're a mess. It depends on where you are on that scale, whether you're 22 just starting out or whether you're more like that mess at 35. The process of reconnecting and discovering who you are and finding out what you are meant to do is not like something that happens overnight. It's a process. It's a very important process that requires some introspection, reconnecting to who you are. I get people who come to me and they say, I like your

book, it's intellectual, I understand it, but I have no idea what my life's task is. It's like you might as well be speaking in Swahili. I can't figure it out. And I say, all right, give me some time. give me a couple weeks, let's talk, let's figure it out. And we go through that. These are people who I consult with. And we discover what point they kind of lost it when they started to listen to other people. What are the things that make them excited? I always say there's a subject out there. It can be an intellectual subject or it can be an activity that when you do it or when you read about it, it makes you excited in a way that you just can't verbalize. For me, it's reading about our earliest human ancestors in a newspaper or magazine or online. Wow, I just have to read about it. It cites me so much. I can't begin to explain it. These kinds of things are indications of something about what you are naturally drawn to. And all of the people who are really successful in life, and I really want to emphasize that, who are really successful in life, have that emotional, personal connection to their work. It's the most important step in your life. It doesn't mean it has to be 100 percent or

and pleasurable and that you just are waking up every moment on a cloud and oh, I love music and I'm doing it. No, we have to make money and there's other things involved. In a general sense, if you're not in some way passionate or excited about where you're headed, there's no mental challenge, you're never going to get very far. So it's the first chapter and it's the most important point in the book. And that definitely jibes. When I read that, I was like, oh my God, this is me because when I was young, when I was about eight or nine, I was trying to build an FM transmitter. And I tried again when I was in my early teens because I wanted to be a talk show host, which is funny, because I'm doing that now. And I didn't even put that together until I think it was my mom or cousin pointed it out.

I also was really good at figuring out systems and I liked doing that. And I got caught. I got in trouble because I was wiretapping when I was 13, 14 years old. I always liked those types of systems and those things like that. And so now looking back, I'm like, ah, the reason that I love doing this is because it's essentially what I would be doing is a hobby anyway, except now I get to make it my job. And of course, before that, guys who listened to the show know that I went to law school. I went and worked on Wall Street. It was awful because everybody went, you should be a lawyer. That was the worst thing ever. You found your way.

Probably you got frustrated and you hated your life and sort of listened to yourself. Even the law school, it taught you something. Yeah, yeah, of course. So that's how you have to approach it. Like, nothing is wasted, even my worst jobs at the time where I figure, what the hell am I, why am I doing this? I learned a hell a lot about people and their psychology and all that. So I want to tell people that it's, even when if you're stuck in a bad job and you're trying to figure your way out, you still have to have the approach that everything around you is like

a learning process. And there's always something to get out of even the worst job that you're in. I would definitely agree with that. Any sort of adversity can be turned into an opportunity if you frame it correctly. How should guys go about this? I mean, what if guys are thinking, well, crap, I'm a lawyer right now, or I'm in the medical profession or whatever the myriad of emails that I get, and they go, I don't even know what I want. I don't even know what my life's task is. Do we have some sort of practical application that we can throw out there? One thing is, I'd say men are worse than women on this front, is we're not usually good at introspection, let's put it that way, sort of taking time off to think about ourselves. We're not really connected terribly, deeply to our own feelings about what really excites us and what doesn't. But women are generally a little more in tune with these things. And so you have to kind of develop that as almost a skill or a power in your life. and it's a very, very important skill.

And what I mean is you have the ability every now and then to step back from all the madness of your life and all the things that you're doing and to sort of assess where you are. Are you enjoying this? Is it challenging? Is it the right thing for you? Who are you really? Why do you hate this kind of work? You know, you hate politicking and all the bullshit.

Well, maybe that's an indication that you should be an entrepreneur. or you should be working for yourself. You don't like working in large groups of people, which is something I definitely shared for myself. You love writing literature, and yet you're a lawyer. Okay, it's not a matter of suddenly quitting your job as a lawyer and writing a novel. It's a matter of finding out how you can segue into it, how you can now start becoming a writer dealing with legal matters.

Lawyers have to do a lot of writing, and maybe there's a way to combine that and slowly turn it into something practical, of form of journalism or whatever, and then eventually you can write a novel or a screenplay, making it a kind of a logical progression. But you can't do any of that unless you're listening to yourself. With you, Jordan, you were listening to yourself when you got the jobs on Wall Street and the jobs in law.

You know, this isn't fitting for me. I don't like it. I got to get the hell out even though I'm getting paid. I hope I'm being reasonably accurate here. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I didn't think of it as listening to myself at the time. I just thought of it as I really, hate what I've listened to from everyone else. So I'm just not going to do that anymore and

screw it even if I'm poor for a while, I'll figure it out. So I guess that was sort of like, well, I'm not going to listen to anyone else. So by default, I am now leading. People are afraid of not making money. And if that dominates your life, then it's going to be very difficult to do what I'm talking about. I mean, I understand if you're older or you've got kids to support and bills, et cetera, but if you're addicted to the paycheck and you can't get off, of it and you're just so scared, then don't even bother. I mean, that's going to be where you are. That's a lifelong problem that you have. But if you'd go the opposite direction, you learn to, like you did, quit and live minimally for a while and kind of be on the edge and do the things

that I'm saying, like listening to yourself, what you like, what frustrates you, what excites you. Every time later in life, when you hit a dead end and it happens to everyone, it still happens to me, you'll be able to do what I talk about and say, all right, now's the time to step back, look at myself. And then if I have to take a pay cut, I can take it because I took it before in life and it wasn't as bad as I thought. These are life skills that you're developing. Making money is not the only important skill in this world. There are life skills where you know how to handle certain situations like changes in your life, like having to deal with less money and things like that. Absolutely. I definitely agree to that. So maybe guys can think of or write down things they liked to do as a kid,

and you sort of mentioned this before, and discover what that life's task might be. Well, okay, so the part of the process that I have people, it's a little bit almost like therapy in a way. It's a lot of fun, actually, is to go dig into the deep childhood stuff and try and remember some of those early earliest memory. Sometimes there's just nothing there, and I understand that. But usually there's something that comes up, at least up until the age of 15, of some activity or subject, that does have that effect on you. And then we analyze it. Is it something that's really you or were you really into music because everybody else was into? But it's not just looking at your earliest childhood. You have to be attentive to the present. Even in the job that you have now, where there are aspects of it, even if it's working at Wendy's or whatever, Well, I actually like, you know, talking to people when I'm doing this, that, and the other. I hate the burgers, and this is a terrible analogy I'm building here, but there's an aspect that you like, whatever that is. Okay, think about it and be aware of it. And then there are things that you don't like.

You've got to look at your emotional makeup in the present. And the thing that you have to understand is success and mastery and power is not an intellectual pursuit. It's not a question of learning a lot of things from books. It's actually an emotional quality. The fact that you're disciplined, patient, persistent, that you love what you're doing, that you can put up with criticism, that you're tough. These are all emotional qualities that Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison or whomever you want to look at, that's what they have.

So I'm trying to reconnect you to those qualities that you have, those emotions that you're feeling in the present of where you hate something or you love something. and looking at your child is a component, but it's not the only thing that we can do here. I love that because a lot of people will write in and they just have no idea where to even begin. And a lot of people listening might be going, I read this book and you're only focusing on the first 10%,

but I think this is very, very important, especially from my audience here, people really do get stuck. And none of the other steps really matter if you're not even sure what you want to do in terms of how you're going to apply yourself. And it can be vague. I mean, it's not like you know that you have to do exactly this job. That's not how it works. It's usually like, you know, I want to be a writer. This was my scenario. I didn't know what I wanted to write. And it's a pretty wide field that includes television and journalism and novels, etc. But with that wide parameter of this is what I love, I then could explore within it and try different things. If you're in a younger age, you have that option.

If you're older, maybe you don't. But it's not like you're going to narrow it down to, oh, I was meant to do entertainment law for this, this, and this. You want to give yourself some room to explore. It's like an adventure that you're setting out on, particularly if you're younger, and you can find out what you hate and what you love. And then eventually you'll find your way to that perfect thing like you have. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Robert Green. We'll be right back. Thank you all so much for listening to the show, especially this episode, which is,

old A.F. I hope y'all are enjoying this. It's so funny slash cringy for me to listen to this stuff. It's not the guest, of course. It's my own performance. It just makes me want to dunk my head in a bucket of water. But honestly, I love the fact that I can bring you these conversations. The fact that something I recorded almost a decade ago still has value is really special to me. And I do have to feed the old kids. So if you want to support the show and I love it when you do, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals has all of the URLs and the discount codes and everything all in one place. You can always search for sponsors using the search box on the website as well. Please do consider supporting those who support this show.

Now for the rest of my conversation with Robert Green. What about guys who say, well, you know, I'm too old. And you sort of touched upon this when you were saying, if you're already established in a field, maybe you can sort of segue things over, like the lawyer who does a lot of writing, who becomes a writer. Is there a time when people say, I'm too young, I'm too old, I can't do this because,

because I think people listening are either going, hell yeah, I can't wait to do this. Or they go, yeah, that's fine for some people, but I, blah, blah, blah, can't do it because X, Y, Z. Especially guys who say I'm too old. Well, it depends on what the old is. If you're 70, okay, okay, I think maybe you're too old. Maybe 65.

That'd be about my limit. If you say anything earlier, I'd start getting a little bit cranky with you. But it's different at each phase of life. If you're in your 30s and you're really unhappy and you're frustrated, you still have plenty of time to make a fairly radical change, which could include going to school or apprenticing somewhere, you still have more time than you think. If you're in your 40s, it's a different assessment. Basically, you've been working at a job, let's say you were a lawyer for 20 years and you just totally burn out. You can't just suddenly make a radical break. It has to be something a little more

gentle, in which case you have to look at the skills that you have as a lawyer and what it brought you and figure out a way where you can now segue into something that is more connected to you personally. Also, if you've had four different jobs, for instance, none of them quite connecting, you can take a step back and say, all right, I've learned from these jobs that I really didn't like, four different kind of interesting, weird skills that I can now combine in a new business. I can come up with a business idea that's totally unique, that's based on all of my interesting experience, and that's going to be the next step that I take. And that can happen in your 40s or 50s. It depends on where you are and who you are. Not everybody is the same. None of us really like

change anyway, but as we get older, we like it even less. So it has to be gentle and realistic. If I went out there and said, no matter what age you are, just quit your job and follow your passion. That's just a lot of bullshit. And you're going to end up getting angry at me and you won't become a master and you won't be successful because it's ridiculous advice. It has to be realistic and work with your strengths in weaknesses. As I said, if you're 70, maybe it's too late because you're so set in your ways. But the other thing to keep in mind, your most creative years, and this is a book really about creativity, are your 30s and maybe the first half of your 40s. If you're younger, you really want to be keeping that in mind. You want to be focused and use your 20s as a period

for learning and accumulating skills so that when you hit those 30s and your mind is still active and you have really a lot of energy, you can now take all those things that you learn and do something really exciting. So although it's never too late, it's really better to start early. Got it. When we do finally find out what we're really passionate about, you discuss a lot in the book actually about the ideal apprenticeship and the mentor dynamic. A lot of people reach out and they want mentorship or they want to know how to approach people for mentorship. You're kind of an expert on the subject, and I've actually spoken with some people who we have

in common who are very good at this as well. Charlie Hohn, Ryan Holiday, those kind of kids are just like prodigies when it comes to it. What advice do you have for people who are looking to learn about a certain field or get mentorship in a certain field? Yeah, I get a lot of that to people who want me to be their mentor, et cetera. And actually, Ryan Holiday was my mentee four or five, six years ago. He was my assistant. There's two things. There's the apprenticeship phase that I'm talking about. And I really want you to think in these terms.

The problem that a lot of us have is we get out of school. Our school life is very directed. We've got teachers and principals and a family sort of telling us what to do and a routine. And then we're suddenly thrust into the real world and we've got no guys. guidance, nothing. We're completely on our own. And I want you to think of this is actually not a time for just wandering. It's a time I'm going to call your apprenticeship. It can be maybe eight to 10 years or seven to 10 years. It roughly corresponds with your 20s, but it bleeds into the 30s, which it certainly did for me. And it's a time where you're developing all of your skills. It's not a time of making money. If you're so obsessed with making money, you're going to make a lot of mistakes.

You're going to grab a job that pays well but doesn't give you an opportunity to learn because you're so worried about making a mistake. It's such a big company and you're never really hands on on all these different tasks. It's better to take a job at a place where you're going to learn. Learning is the gold that you're going to transform into something amazing when you get on your own in the 30s. You want skills. You want to learn about how to work with people, how to deal with difficult people.

You want to turn yourself into a great observer of things going on in the world around you. You want to be someone who's patient and disciplined and organized. All the things that you're going to learn at three or four or five, or in my case, unfortunately, 50, 60 different jobs, that's what you're after. I tell you in the book, I'm showing, here's how to think of that period in your life. Here's how to structure it. Here's what you need to go for. What are the most important things? you can still be an apprenticeship throughout your 30s, et cetera, but it's really mostly when you get out of the university.

Now, part of the getting an apprenticeship is if you can, finding a mentor. It's not always possible. It depends on where you live and who you are in your circumstances. But, you know, people are always looking for a shortcut to power. And I always say there is no shortcuts. And wanting a shortcut is almost a sign that you're not going to ever get there. Yes, I agree so much with that. The one shortcut that actually is kind of true is a mentor because they're able to really focus you and show you what you're good at, what you're not good at. The things they've learned, they can give to you in a really direct one-on-one personal way. They can criticize you and give you instant feedback on what you're doing. You could get to master music 10 years on your

own practicing, but if you have this great jazz artist mentoring you, it could be five years with that kind of instruction. But the most important thing to realize is you can't begin to ask for a mentor until you've got something to offer. If you're fresh out of school or whatever and you don't have discipline, you don't have a resume, you can't tell him or her, I've organized this person's life, I know how to do this research and that. No one's going to hire you.

People are going to hire you if they can see, ah, I'm going to get something in return. I get this young person with a lot of energy who can do the things I don't want to do, who's going to save me time, who will do some of the research for me, et cetera. We've got to have something that separates you from the crowd. So maybe spend two or three years working in different jobs so that you reach a point where you do have something to offer a really incredible person and they will take you on because the other true fact is people who are successful do like taking on protegees and disciples, it's a very satisfying relationship. They're open to it, but you have to

have something that's going to appeal to their self-interest. I know this is true for a lot of people in similar shoes at higher levels that I talk to all the time. We've sort of mutually agreed that what needs to happen is you need to make it so it's impossible for us to ignore the value that you're bringing to the table. And it can't be some like, wouldn't it be great if I could triple your revenue? I mean, how are you going to do that? You're 25. Maybe you have a great idea. I don't really care about that. But if you come and you say,

I design something for you that I can create that's going to help you and what do you think of it, I need to be able to go, wow, I didn't even have it in the budget to hire you, but I need you working on this yesterday. That's really true. And what happened with Ryan, as people know who Ryan Holiday is,

I met him through Tucker Max. I don't know if you know, Tucker is he's good. Ryan was a fan of my books. You know, he wanted to be my researcher, but I didn't know who the hell he was. And I knew, though, that he was kind of a whiz kid with the internet, which I'm not, because I'm an older guy. At some point, I said, Ryan, I'm having real problems with my Wikipedia page. And he said, yeah, I can fix that for you. This is my way of testing him. He did. You know, to me, it seemed like I had no idea how to fix it.

In a week, he had it completely fixed. And then I'm on the board of directors for American Apparel. And the CEO suddenly was telling me, you know, I'm having problems with my Wikipedia page. All right. I got the person for you. That's Ryan. He heard it from me and he trusted me. And then Ryan got a job in American apparel. And then the rest is history. He wrote his book and he's writing other books based on all of that. But he had like a real skill like you mentioned. I could see him helping me. And once he had his foot in, then he could do all sorts of other things and figure it out. One thing I tell people in the apprenticeship phase that's an important skill to have is to make yourself an observer.

what happens is people are so eager to impress and prove themselves and be charming, et cetera, that they're not paying attention. If you pay attention to Jordan and his problems and what he needs with his work, if you work for him for free for a month, helping him organize his schedule, et cetera, and you just pay attention, you'll figure out some things that this guy needs really badly, and you'll have a plan for helping him do it. But you're not going to be able to get to that point. if all you're thinking about is, you know, how can I impress this guy right away? What can I do? I'm going to triple his revenue, et cetera. Just ridiculous schemes as opposed to just stepping back and being realistic and observing what other people need. And that's what you're going to supply.

Absolutely. Speaking of observation, you talk a lot about seeing people as they are. Why is it so important to see people as they are? And how do we start that process? I included it. It's a chapter in mastery for a very important reason. And that is, I don't I don't want to give you the impression that just being brilliant at your job and having skills and all that is enough in this world. We're social animals, and you can be a great computer programmer. But if you're just have repulsive personal habits and you're really bad with people and you're insulting them, it doesn't matter whether you're Steve Wozniak. You won't get very far in life because you have no social skills.

And then the other thing is people who have social skills, it's a form of intelligence that connects very well with mastery. People who are attentive to individuals to other people around them are also attentive to the details of their work. So the two go hand in hand. I'm trying to say that the people around you, everybody's different, as I said in the beginning, this sort of primal uniqueness. And you're not seeing that. You're projecting onto them fantasies from your childhood. They're like this woman or this man or father or mother. Or you're paranoid. You think that they're evil and they're after. You're, you or you're idealizing them because you think they're just the most marvelous person. You're doing this constantly day in and day out. And because of that, you're making all sorts of mistakes

where you're not picking up cues that people are leaving about what they want and what they really are after. You're just constantly misreading them. And it's troubling. And it's actually going to be the main cause for a lot of grief and problems in your career. And so the key is to be aware that that's what's going on. And then to go through a project. where you try and see people, as you said, see people as they are, which is the name of the chapter. And how you do that, I mean, there are many ways, and I give tips on that. But one example would be, let's say three months ago, you were involved in some terrible battle in your job and you got fired or something bad happened.

Now, your normal reaction is to just, God damn, that was their fault. They're such an awful person. Why couldn't they see how brilliant I am, et cetera, et cetera? etc. Take that now as a learning experience. Step back and say, maybe I did something wrong there. Let me look at myself through their eyes as an exercise. Maybe they saw me in a way that has nothing to do with how I see myself. And perhaps there was something that I did that was involved in the conflict. There are other ways to approach it. But basically, you're trying to put yourself the perspective of other people and imagining how they see the world, what their pet peeves are, what their loves are, suddenly you have 20 weapons in your arsenal.

They include the ability to not blame other people for mistakes and see that maybe you are part of the problem. It gives you the ability to charm people. You know what they need, what their weaknesses are, what they really are looking for in life. You can supply it. You know what they hate so you can avoid making those mistakes. it just changes the whole game. And it's actually the subject of my next book. So I'm transforming chapter four of mastery into an entire book. Then I'm going to take it to a whole other level

of far as how to read people. But once you're there, it just changes your whole approach to the social and it makes something like mastering your career so much easier. That sort of leads into my next question, which is what is the next book? It's about social intelligence and reading people?

Well, I'm calling it the laws of human nature. In mastery, a key theme is something from neuroscience called mirror neurons, which is essentially our ability to empathize with other people. It's a unique human ability to put ourselves in the mind of the other person and imagine their experience, their thoughts. No other animal has it. I maintain it's a source of so many of our powers. And there are studies out there showing that that empathic power of ours is declining rather dramatically among young people, probably because of social media, but there are other factors. I'm trying to say that the art of reading people comes from our ability to place ourselves in their shoes imagining what their experiences are like and to have a deep understanding of human

nature. What are the main drives that really impel people, such as the drive to be acknowledged, to be recognized, to have validation and attention from other people, that kind of thing. I'm going to show you these sort of laws of human nature, and through that I'm going to help you develop ways for reading these things in people and giving you all kinds of tips on how people reveal themselves in everyday life, in conversation, through their actions, so that by the end of the book, you'll just be a more socially proficient person. Excellent. Thanks so much, Robert. That was really good. Solid. Thank you so much, Jordan. I really enjoyed it.

The episode you just heard was the first interview I did with Robert Green back in the old show. I mentioned that in the show intro here. Coming up next is a trailer of Robert Green on his book, Laws of Human Nature. It looks like it's an older episode because the numbers earlier, but it's actually a newer interview because this one you just heard was from like eight or nine years ago now. Here we go. If we just sit in our inner tube with our hands behind our head and crack open a six-pack of beer, the river of dark nature takes us towards that waterfall of the shadow.

Yeah. So when we're children, if we weren't educated, if we didn't have teachers or parents telling us to study, we'd be these monsters. We're all flawed. I believe we humans naturally feel envy. It's the chimpanzee in us. It's been shown that primates are very attuned to other animals in their clan and they're constantly comparing themselves. You're dislike of that fellow artist or that other podcaster, 99% sure that it comes from a place of envy. For sure. You are not a rationality.

Rationality is something you earn. It's a struggle. It takes effort. It takes awareness. You have to go through steps. You have to see your biases. When you think you're being rational, you're not being rational at all. You go around, everything is personal.

Oh, why did he say that? Why is my mom telling me this? And I'm telling you it's not personal. That's the liberating fact. people are wrapped up in their own emotions, their own traumas, so you need to be aware that people have their own inner reality. People are not nearly as happy and successful as you think they are. Acknowledging that you have a dark sight, that you have a shadow,

that you're not such a great person as you think, can actually be a very liberating feeling. And there are ways to take that shadow and that darkness and kind of turn it into something else. More with Robert Green. Check out episode 117 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Thank you so much for listening, by the way. I love these conversations. Robert Green is an amazing guest. We have other episodes with him, episode 117, The Laws of Human Nature, and episodes 581 and 5802. And episodes 581 and 582, which are about Robert's book, The Daily Laws. All high value stuff, especially if you're into Robert Green.

Go back and check those out, 117, 581, 582. Links to all things Robert Green will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Books are always at Jordan Harbinger.com slash books. Please use those website links. If you buy books from the guest, it does help support the show. Audible accounts as well. Yes, it works for audiobooks. Yes, it works in other countries. We've got that little genius link thing set up. So please use those, even if you're in Canada, the UK, or Australia. Transcripts are in the show notes, videos up on YouTube, advertisers, deals and discount codes, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Again, please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me right

there on LinkedIn. I love connecting with you there. Less crazy's on LinkedIn. So far. Anyway, I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use every day. The reason I'm able to book the guests, the reason I'm able to cut deals with sponsors, the reason I'm successful in life really comes down to my network. I want you to learn these same skills. I don't need your credit card. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you can find the course. Dig that well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests you hear on the show, they subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. We want to see you there.

This show is created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie O'Campo, Ian Baer, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know a Robert Green fan, you know somebody who could use the advice that he gave here today, please share this episode with him. The greatest compliment you can give us as always to share the show with those you care about. Even those you don't care about. I don't care. Just share the show, period. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on this show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by

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