The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 121. The Art Of Seduction and Human Psychology ｜ Robert Greene

00:00:00.000 And what happens with a lot of people is as they get older and they accumulate pain and hurts from broken relationships, is they don't want to be vulnerable anymore because they don't want to have to go through that.

00:00:12.180 But that means that the person that broke your heart that made you vulnerable has won, has defeated you, has made you turn into something that you don't want to become.

00:00:20.760 So you have to be able to feel that you can be vulnerable, right?

00:00:24.780 And if you're a seducer trying to seduce someone, revealing to that other person that

00:00:31.420 you have fallen under their spell is almost the most seductive thing you can do because

00:00:36.940 it's deeply, deeply exciting to feel that that other person is charmed by us.

00:00:45.040 Welcome to episode 121 of the Michaela Peterson podcast.

00:00:49.140 In this episode, I spoke with bestselling author Robert Greene.

00:00:53.240 It was intense.

00:00:54.780 He walked me through the nine seduction types in one of his books and gave examples of each,

00:01:00.060 told me which one I was and which one he was. It was fun. He spoke about common manipulation

00:01:05.760 techniques, how using his laws of power aren't always manipulative, the ruthless power structures

00:01:10.840 in Hollywood, tips on being vulnerable, and his new book, The Daily Laws. Robert Greene's an

00:01:17.280 American author known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He's written six international

00:01:22.840 bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War,

00:01:29.040 The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. Like I mentioned, his newest book is

00:01:34.500 The Daily Laws. This was a really fun episode. If you want to learn how to communicate with

00:01:39.760 people effectively and seductively, check out his work. If you like this content,

00:01:44.320 be sure to hit subscribe. I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:01:52.840 Robert Green, welcome to my podcast.

00:01:57.480 Well, thank you for having me so much, Mikaela. I really appreciate it.

00:02:01.220 I'm very excited for this episode. I'm a huge fan of your books, so this should be good.

00:02:06.120 I'm a huge fan of your father, his books, and his overall intelligence, so please say hello to him for me.

00:02:11.560 I will. We should get you guys together. I will work on that in the future. That would be a fun conversation, so we'll do that. We'll do that at some point.

00:02:20.480 Before we get started, could you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do?

00:02:26.900 Well, I'm basically just a writer. I don't really do anything else.

00:02:31.840 I have a seventh book that is coming out. My first book is the most famous. It's the 48 Laws of Power.

00:02:38.700 I've also written The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War.

00:02:42.500 I did a book that I co-authored with the rapper 50 Cent called The 50th Law.

00:02:48.100 I did Mastery, The Laws of Human Nature, which came out a few years ago, and my new book, The Daily Laws, which will be out in a couple of weeks.

00:02:59.100 And I'm currently working on my eighth book right now.

00:03:02.000 They kind of tend to center on subjects like power and strategy and mastering your own career and human behavior if I had to choose a common theme.

00:03:13.440 And that's about all I do.

00:03:14.620 Well, eight books is quite a lot, so that sounds like full-time work.

00:03:19.660 Yeah.

00:03:20.260 How did you get started on writing about the topic of power?

00:03:24.300 What makes you knowledgeable about power?

00:03:27.280 Well, I don't really have a degree.

00:03:29.180 It's not anything I can say, oh, I graduated from Princeton with a degree in psychology.

00:03:33.320 Those are overrated anyway, in my opinion.

00:03:35.680 Yeah, right.

00:03:37.100 I don't have anything like that.

00:03:38.740 Basically, what happened was in my 20s and 30s, I sort of knew that I wanted to be a

00:03:44.040 writer, but I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to write. So I tried my hand at all these

00:03:49.180 different jobs. I worked in journalism. I lived in Europe for many years. I worked in a hotel as a

00:03:55.700 receptionist, tour guide in Ireland, a teacher of English in Spain. I worked in a detective agency

00:04:01.800 here in Los Angeles. You name it, I did it. And then I worked in Hollywood prior to writing my

00:04:08.140 first book. And through all of these experiences, I've observed every manner of manipulation and

00:04:15.500 power game that was going on from all different kinds of bosses and all different kinds of

00:04:20.540 endeavors. And I'm somebody who kind of likes authenticity and realness in people. The fact

00:04:27.940 that we're sort of ashamed of our own nature. We're ashamed that we're this animal that actually

00:04:35.380 has desires for power, that has ambitions, that has a dark side, has always disturbed me.

00:04:43.500 And so based on my experiences and based on all I had learned throughout my years of wandering

00:04:49.000 through my studies in college, the books that I read, I wrote The 48 Laws of Power. Now,

00:04:54.480 I can't say it came from anything else except my own experience and my own brain,

00:04:59.300 but I think the success it has has shown that it somehow has resonated with the truth

00:05:04.980 with so many people. Okay. So from your experience in Hollywood, what was the type of

00:05:12.100 manipulation that you saw that was mainly used there? Well, every single form, because it's a

00:05:20.440 place where people pretend to be so liberal, so woke, so progressive, but really what motivates

00:05:28.200 a lot of their behavior is just naked power. They want to have admiration. They want to be

00:05:34.080 recognized and they want to be respected as someone who has a position of power in the pecking

00:05:38.980 order in Hollywood, right? And so they don't reveal that. It's things that I observed going

00:05:46.980 on behind the scenes that revealed to me all of these manipulative games that were going on.

00:05:53.300 So, so many of the laws of power were kind of based on things I observed,

00:05:57.520 such as conceal your intentions, such as get others to do the work, but always take the credit.

00:06:03.220 on and on and on, even crush your enemy totally.

00:06:06.980 I observed all of those in my experiences in Hollywood

00:06:10.040 because people are motivated to disguise all of their maneuvers.

00:06:14.520 You don't want to be seen as somebody who's later revealed to be a Harvey Weinstein.

00:06:19.940 You want to project this liberal, magnanimous image.

00:06:24.560 And so it's like something you don't really ever talk about or see,

00:06:28.340 but I saw from firsthand experience, and that's what I wrote about.

00:06:31.500 I mean, I could tell you specific stories. I don't know if you're interested in that or not.

00:06:35.020 I'm interested. I'm definitely interested.

00:06:38.280 Well, the story that kind of sticks out mainly in my mind was I was working for a director.

00:06:44.680 I'm not going to say his name. And basically, he had written a screenplay.

00:06:52.660 And he was just sort of starting out as a director. He'd written a screenplay.

00:06:57.400 And he knew that if he tried to be the director himself, people would think he was being too ambitious.

00:07:03.760 He was going to write and direct it and all of that.

00:07:07.020 So what he did was instead, working with the producer, he made a point of hiring this young man who I believe at the time was in his late 20s, who was just starting out, who had written a screenplay and directed one film.

00:07:21.820 And he hired him knowing full well that it was above his head and that he was more than likely going to fail.

00:07:28.280 And he kind of set it up so the guy would fail.

00:07:30.800 He wasn't always there to help him with certain meetings,

00:07:34.680 and he wasn't helping him working on the script, et cetera.

00:07:37.920 And so lo and behold, two days into production,

00:07:40.500 the guy was messing up left, right, and center,

00:07:43.280 and the producer fired him.

00:07:45.400 And now the man that I was working for was able to come and say,

00:07:48.560 look, I can rescue this project.

00:07:50.260 Let me direct it.

00:07:52.280 And he concealed his intentions completely.

00:07:54.640 that nobody had suspected that he was really kind of behind all of this,

00:07:59.660 that he was sort of maneuvering it in that direction.

00:08:02.160 And then it made him look like he was the rescuing angel

00:08:05.060 as opposed to this devious Machiavellian person who had set it all up.

00:08:11.500 That's creepy.

00:08:12.660 That sounds like an exhausting way to live,

00:08:15.000 keeping track of all the stories that you're telling people.

00:08:18.420 That sounds like a lot of work.

00:08:20.400 You mean for me personally?

00:08:22.300 Well, no, I meant for the guy who had manipulated this person into failing and then taken credit for being the savior.

00:08:30.340 Yeah, it didn't, you know, in the end, what bothered me most of all about it, because, you know, I can't help but say that I'm a little bit admiring people who have the guts to pull something like that off.

00:08:43.040 But on the other hand, he basically ruined this guy's career because it was such a failure that it really hurt his reputation.

00:08:50.480 I know I followed it up immediately afterwards and he had gone through he hadn't written or

00:08:56.120 directed anything since he may have somehow revived his career I'm not sure but it really

00:09:01.320 really hurt his reputation and so that was the thing that that really really bothered me in the

00:09:06.120 end okay well it sounds like something that should bother you yeah that's interesting I feel like

00:09:14.640 trying to weave those stories and manipulate situations like that

00:09:19.660 i feel like it's actually more difficult just to do things honestly

00:09:23.940 what do you mean by that well i mean

00:09:28.300 i mean the way he went about it hiring somebody and then having them fail and then saving it

00:09:35.240 i feel like that's actually the easy way out compared to doing what's honest which is hey

00:09:40.380 I wrote this screenplay and I want to direct it and then fighting that way, which probably makes

00:09:45.160 your life more pleasant in the long run, rather than having to manipulate everybody. Is a lot of

00:09:50.900 Hollywood like that with people just playing these games? Well, you know, it's my own personal

00:09:56.540 experience. I saw that upfront. I can't say that it's anecdotal, but I've worked, I've now been

00:10:03.120 working with people in Hollywood who were trying to produce some of my own books for film and

00:10:08.780 television and i consult with a lot of directors and actors and people in the business and it's a

00:10:15.580 and then they all they all have stories to tell me about things that are even worse than what i've

00:10:20.700 told you so i do believe it's it's pretty you know what spread out there and even though things are

00:10:27.340 getting better in some ways they're trying to diversify hollywood you know with more women and

00:10:33.960 more ethnicities etc still that old kind of power dynamic is there because it's an industry that

00:10:41.040 it's always been like that going back to the earliest days in the 1920s and so i don't think 0.86

00:10:46.160 that's ever really going to change there is one industry i can tell you that's even worse than

00:10:51.480 hollywood which is i've learned through my you know exposure to rappers etc is the music industry

00:10:58.320 the things that go on the music industry make hollywood look like kindergarten but

00:11:02.460 okay okay and is that is that mostly like relationships between men and women

00:11:09.320 in the music industry no it's between like record producers and artists and managers etc

00:11:17.360 you know where it's a very very exploitative environment where

00:11:21.440 um you know people that you never really know where the money is coming from how many albums

00:11:28.860 you've sold particularly now with the um with so many things being streamed there's a lot of

00:11:35.220 deception going on a lot of funny marketing um i'm sorry funny accounting going on to hide the

00:11:41.440 revenue streams and then people who are fresh who come into the business early on they sign

00:11:47.160 contracts without realizing they're signing away all the ownership to their work you know it was

00:11:52.320 it was 50 cent who kind of revealed a lot of this to me and he said you know he grew up on the

00:11:57.820 streets of Southside Queens, dealing crack, seeing people murdered, dealing with hardcore

00:12:03.300 stuff day in and day out. And he said, nothing had ever prepared me for the shit I saw in the 0.99

00:12:08.400 music business. It was, it was worse because at least on the streets, people were direct 0.99

00:12:13.500 and you kind of more or less knew where they were coming from, but he never knew where these people

00:12:18.420 were coming from. And it was very disorienting. I wonder if that's going to change rather

00:12:25.260 dramatically like things are changing so much with people being able to grow social media profiles

00:12:31.040 and have followers on youtube i know a couple of artists that haven't signed with anyone because

00:12:36.460 they're like why i already have you know two million followers on youtube the marketing aspect

00:12:42.060 is kind of gone i'm wondering if that'll change and then these contracts that are like what are

00:12:46.880 they called the the ones that you like you said you sign away everything like that's got to start

00:12:52.960 fading away even just book publishers i find that take a a large percentage because they're

00:13:00.220 offering marketing services well a lot of people don't need marketing services anymore if they can

00:13:04.940 get on podcasts or yeah it's true it's very true there's a kind of a democratization going on

00:13:10.880 but the only thing that's the film business is different i think than those other examples

00:13:15.420 because to make a film and market it you really really are dependent on the hollywood power

00:13:22.060 structure. You could make your film cheap on an iPhone, for instance, which people do nowadays

00:13:28.040 and film it, but you're not going to be able to get a theatrical release. You're not going to be

00:13:32.520 able to get it streaming on Netflix, et cetera. So you are very much dependent on the old power

00:13:38.060 structures there. So that kind of democratization that's very positive, it's going on with the

00:13:42.920 internet. It's happening a little bit in Hollywood, but I don't think it's, I think

00:13:47.100 is going to reach a limit. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. For the 48 laws of power, why did you

00:13:55.500 choose 48? You probably get that question constantly. I get that question. Well, I didn't

00:14:04.720 really choose 48. The process was kind of weird. I don't usually like to reveal how the sausage is

00:14:11.260 actually made, but I guess I'll go ahead and tell you. You know, I started out researching all of

00:14:18.220 the great power people and influencers throughout history and all cultures and all the power games

00:14:24.400 that were kind of the most sexiest, the most interesting. And out of that, I kind of derived

00:14:31.200 these patterns of behavior that transcended time and culture. And I had 72 of these patterns

00:14:37.620 originally, which were to be loss of power. And slowly I started eliminating them because

00:14:44.520 this didn't seem strong enough. I started combining them, getting rid of them. And I

00:14:49.740 ended up with 52, if you can believe it or not. And publisher said, you know, 52, it doesn't sound

00:14:57.200 good. And it's also sounds a little pat. It sounds like you made it to be 52 weeks of the year or

00:15:03.400 52 cards in a deck. We prefer the number 48. And so I go, well, you know, what am I going to say?

00:15:12.760 But then I thought about it because I don't like to be too rigid and too closed and stubborn. I

00:15:18.080 thought it's true. 48 laws sounds a lot better than 52. It looks better. It's a very powerful

00:15:24.800 number. So I'm going to do what they say, but I'm going to take the four laws that are kind of extra

00:15:30.600 And I'm going to combine them into other laws and create these kind of double laws with two sides to them and bring it down to 48.

00:15:39.780 So I don't usually like try to reveal that, but I guess you lured it out of me somehow.

00:15:45.980 But that's sort of why it ended up with 48.

00:15:48.940 OK, well, clearly that paid off. Something worked.

00:15:52.520 Yeah. Well, you know, things like numbers and colors, they have a kind of a primal effect on us.

00:15:59.320 And you can't ignore this sort of nonverbal primitive side of our, of our nature. And so, you know, like the color red, as people know on, on who design like Facebook, you know, as a button has this certain effect, whereas black has this effect, the number 48, I, for some reason, kind of has this sort of, it just seems definitive.

00:16:21.540 whereas if it were 47 that wouldn't have that feeling or 49 or 50 sounds like too obvious

00:16:29.000 but man that 48 it's like a sweet spot you know what am I going to do that is strange but very

00:16:36.660 true so are any are any of these laws of power honest or are they all types of manipulation

00:16:45.760 No, I'd say more than half are honest and more than half are kind of common sense and

00:16:51.940 relatively positive.

00:16:54.380 You know, so interaction with boldness is not an evil law.

00:16:58.320 It means when you start something, if you show that you were bold and decisive, people

00:17:03.340 are attracted to that.

00:17:04.900 I talk about play a perfect courtier.

00:17:07.440 The world that we live in, every kind of time there's a power structure, it's like a court

00:17:11.560 surrounding a king.

00:17:12.720 and you have to be charming and you have to be polite and you have to be gracious in this court.

00:17:18.740 So there's nothing kind of, I mean, you might find that a little devious, but it's mostly about

00:17:22.160 being polite and understanding other people and kind of playing, understanding the culture that

00:17:28.260 you're in. There's plenty of, there's a law called work on the hearts and minds of others,

00:17:33.000 which means that you can't force people into things. You have to get them to want what you

00:17:37.680 want to do as opposed to pushing them in certain directions despise the free lunch which is all

00:17:43.260 about the power of generosity you know you you don't want to like always be looking for things

00:17:47.920 on the cheap you don't want to accept things that are free you want to pay for things and you want

00:17:52.760 to be generous with your time and your money and your energy i mean i could go on and on there's a

00:17:59.160 core maybe a third that are that are kind of a little bit hardcore and a little bit well definitely

00:18:06.660 manipulative, but it's not the majority of laws. Which ones are your favorite?

00:18:14.300 Well, law number one, I have a little, I have a kind of a personal relationship for several

00:18:20.040 reasons called never outshine the master. And the idea is that if you enter the work world and you

00:18:26.940 try so hard to please and impress the boss, which is a very common thing that we do, they might end

00:18:33.760 up feeling that you think that they're better than they are. You might inadvertently outshine

00:18:38.680 them and make them feel insecure. And once you do that, they're never going to tell you that

00:18:44.500 that's what you've done. They're going to fire you and you'll never really understand why. And

00:18:48.060 it's very painful. And I've had that happen to me. I can think at least three times I can recall

00:18:54.200 one very, very most emotional one of all, where I was hired on a television show to do the research

00:19:01.580 and find the stories and by far i was the most successful researcher there but i was making many

00:19:08.000 too many people above me feeling insecure like they weren't getting credit for things

00:19:12.460 and they started making my life miserable and they fired me and i couldn't figure out why you know

00:19:17.920 like i produced i had the best record of all why would you fire someone like that well ego matters

00:19:24.500 more than results in a lot of a lot of places that you know a lot of work worlds and so um

00:19:30.420 And the reason I like that story so much is I had heard somebody told me a story before all this had happened about Louis XIV, the great French king of the 17th century, and how he had a finance minister named Nicolas Fouquet, who threw the most lavish party in honor of Louis, the king, so that he could ingratiate himself into the king's favor and maybe be nominated as prime minister.

00:19:59.300 and the party was so memorable people wrote about it years later it had fireworks it had plays it

00:20:05.100 was i visited the chateau where it happened it was just the most probably the most magnificent

00:20:09.100 party ever thrown in the history of mankind and everyone was like telling nicholas this is a great

00:20:15.600 this is wonderful well the next day he was thrown in prison and he spent the rest of his life in

00:20:19.980 prison he had outshone the king and i remembered that story years later when it happened to me and

00:20:25.540 I go, there's something true there.

00:20:28.280 There's something elemental about human psychology.

00:20:31.280 And years later, when I was pitching, first pitched the idea to the man who produced the

00:20:36.400 48 Laws of Power, I started with that story.

00:20:39.620 And I told him, this happened 500 years ago when people were wearing powdered wigs and

00:20:45.580 all these elaborate costumes.

00:20:47.540 But the world hasn't changed.

00:20:48.960 It's the same dynamic, no matter where you are.

00:20:51.780 So that, personally, is kind of maybe one of my favorite laws.

00:20:54.920 and there are others that that stands out that sounds extremely frustrating it sounds like you

00:21:01.000 wouldn't want your company to to grow really if your ego is above good work but isn't that

00:21:08.640 pretty common haven't you encountered that as well i mean yeah yeah i mean um the thing that

00:21:19.080 people make a mistake about i don't know if you agree with me here but is that you think that the

00:21:24.100 person above you, your boss, who seems he or she seems so powerful and in control, you don't realize

00:21:30.660 that they have insecurities, that they have an ego, that they have weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

00:21:36.640 And you assume that if you say something that might be a little bit ambiguous, they'll laugh

00:21:41.720 it off because they're so powerful. They don't care about me or what I say. But the truth is,

00:21:47.100 the higher up you go in a hierarchy, the more insecure you become. The more you're worried

00:21:53.020 about whether people really, truly respect you, you know, whether people really are truly admiring

00:21:58.160 you, whether you have their attention or not. And so powerful people often have more insecurities

00:22:03.360 than those on the bottom of the scale. And you go into the work world, not thinking of the egos

00:22:10.380 of powerful people, but it's, it's very evident and it can cause you a lot of problems.

00:22:16.960 Okay. That makes sense. And that might be because people at the top have more to lose

00:22:20.020 potentially that could play into it maybe very much so that's very true okay okay your book on

00:22:29.100 seduction so that's a bit is there an overlap between that and power and what do you define

00:22:37.540 as seduction exactly well there is an overlap so there are several chapters in the 48 laws that

00:22:45.600 have to do directly with seduction i tell seduction stories there's one law in particular

00:22:49.860 you use absence to create honor and respect and it's basically how you need to occasionally

00:22:56.880 absent yourself from other people to get them to fantasize and think about you and that your

00:23:02.380 absence can often be more powerful than your presence you can be too much in people's face

00:23:07.520 and they start to see you too familiar and they disrespect you whereas if you step away and they

00:23:12.300 don't see you for a few days. They start wondering about you and it seems very powerful. Well, I

00:23:17.860 considered, I say in the modern world that you can't be too forceful and direct too brutish or

00:23:24.720 people are going to turn against you. It looks ugly. So the game of power is to always appear

00:23:30.020 to be a paragon of virtue as they do in Hollywood, but to actually be aware of the hardcore games

00:23:35.920 going on and to occasionally play them yourself. And seduction is the ultimate form of this power.

00:23:43.240 It's what Napoleon Bonaparte said, putting your iron fist inside a velvet glove. So when people

00:23:49.220 feel your hand on them, it feels so soft and velvety, but actually it's very firm and it's

00:23:53.920 pushing people in the direction you want. So this is kind of a soft power. And seduction is by far

00:24:00.200 the ultimate form of this, because what you're doing is you're creating pleasure for people.

00:24:06.260 You're giving them kind of what they want, what they secretly desire. And not many of us have

00:24:11.600 enough pleasure in this life. In fact, it's something that I think all of us lack. We wish

00:24:14.980 we had more of it because we're so stressed and we work way too hard. Somebody who comes into your

00:24:20.600 life and gives you something that you don't have, gives you an experience that's different, that's

00:24:26.800 exciting that's seductive and alluring you your guard comes down your defenses go down normally

00:24:33.900 we're very resistant people we're very defensive but when somebody does something that gives us

00:24:39.120 that pleasurable moment our walls come down we started losing some of that defensiveness

00:24:44.600 and now we're open to other things that they can do or say to us and they have a power over us that

00:24:50.680 they wouldn't have if they were so obvious and tried to make us do something and so I thought

00:24:56.200 seduction is the ultimate form of power in the modern world. And what I wanted to do in the art

00:25:02.020 of seduction was get beyond just simple sexual seductions. You know, I've certainly described

00:25:07.680 seductions between men and women, gay, lesbian, even have a trans seduction in there. For sure,

00:25:13.040 there's the sexual aspect. But I also talk about social seductions where you're seducing people

00:25:18.180 in the work world. There's no sex involved. I talk about political seductions. I talk about 0.73

00:25:23.840 marketing seductions. What is the psychology that ties all of this together? What is it about us

00:25:30.260 human animals that make us so vulnerable and so open to this process of seduction?

00:25:35.740 So that's sort of why I wrote the book. That's very cool. Do you think people who

00:25:42.420 end up seducing you in some way, so giving you some pleasure that you want, and then you open up,

00:25:48.600 can that be carried out for a very long time or do you think that's kind of fleeting and it

00:25:55.200 gets burnt up eventually or is there a relationship you can have where that can just continue

00:25:59.920 or ideally both parties can do that for a very long time well you know a lot of people have come

00:26:06.980 to me unfortunately they come to me for advice on their romantic relations i'd say unfortunately

00:26:11.880 i'm not i don't consider myself an expert on that the people who know more than i do

00:26:17.480 But the number one complaint I hear, and I hear it more often from women, but I also hear it from men, is not that the man keeps seducing me day in and day out, but that he stopped, he started taking me for granted.

00:26:31.080 He's become so familiar.

00:26:32.620 In the beginning, he started taking me out to movies, to just exotic places, great restaurants.

00:26:39.080 He dressed well.

00:26:40.480 You know, he was kind of doing things that were very exciting.

00:26:44.280 And now, six months into the relationship, he doesn't do anymore.

00:26:47.180 doesn't put any effort into it. He stopped seducing me in some way. He's become too familiar

00:26:52.480 and it could be he or she, excuse my use of only that pronoun. And so the idea was, and I wrote

00:26:58.960 about this in the art of seduction. I think it's chapter 24 is that you want to keep seducing the

00:27:06.480 person that you're in a relationship with. You can't do it with the same intensity or get tiring

00:27:11.900 for both of you right because we do want to settle into a relationship we do want a degree of

00:27:17.260 familiarity with the other person we do want to feel comfortable but upon occasion you have to

00:27:22.080 go back to those original moments that sparked your desire for the other person that made that

00:27:27.020 connection so electrifying between and you need to revive it and you need to do some of the things

00:27:32.040 that you did before you know whatever that is surprise them with with a gift that that says

00:27:38.380 something personal about them or take them to some place that they're not expecting to keep

00:27:43.240 surprising them. Because once the mystery is gone, once people are so familiar to you,

00:27:49.560 there's something that's lost in there, you know? And so it's not that you're constantly seducing

00:27:55.120 them. I don't think that's even possible. It's that you don't lose the sense of the fact that

00:28:01.580 you have to think about the other person and their spirit and do things that continually

00:28:06.560 surprise and excite them. I don't think there's anything amoral or wrong about that. I think it's

00:28:12.660 very healthy. No. For somebody who doesn't give advice about seduction, that sounds pretty good

00:28:20.960 advice. I also suppose that when people get into a relationship, the seduction part is the first

00:28:27.460 part because as soon as you're in a relationship and it's stable, you're not necessarily seducing

00:28:32.940 anymore right because seduction would occur before you actually get that person right yes

00:28:39.820 yeah and a lot of people what happens is um you know in the in the first part of the book i have

00:28:46.700 the nine types of seducers and i'm trying to tell you that you're going to be one of these types

00:28:52.100 you know there's the siren the rake the charmer the natural the dandy the charismatic etc etc

00:28:59.920 what's the dandy the dandy is a person who has a kind of androgynous edge to them it's a man

00:29:08.920 who has a slight feminine edge it doesn't seem make him seem you know gay or whatever if he is

00:29:15.760 straight it just is intriguing think of like a mick jagger or a rock star like that or a david

00:29:21.840 bowie it kind of adds to their romantic allure and there is a slight bisexual element to that

00:29:28.020 no doubt. And in a woman, it's a slight sort of masculine edge, like a Marlena Dietrich or a 0.87

00:29:34.100 Madonna. And that slight edge of masculinity doesn't put men off. It excites them. And I

00:29:39.580 explain why in that chapter. So that's the dandy. I can't remember why I'm talking about this. I had

00:29:45.940 a reason behind it. What was your question before? I can't remember my question before, but I have a

00:29:51.600 new question anyway. Marilyn Monroe, does she fall under the siren? Most definitely. She's like,

00:29:57.020 There are two icons for the siren, which is the first type that I talk about because it's the oldest seductive type in history.

00:30:05.200 It goes back to ancient Greece, the sirens themselves in the myth.

00:30:10.980 Cleopatra is the first icon of it.

00:30:14.060 And then Marilyn Monroe is the second.

00:30:16.680 And the reason is, is that the siren has a kind of a theatrical edge to her. 0.63

00:30:23.240 It's always a woman in this case. 0.96

00:30:24.900 All the other types, except the rakes, rakes are only men. 0.98

00:30:28.320 All the other types can be either gender.

00:30:30.540 But the siren is a woman who exudes this kind of natural sexuality in everything she does, right? 1.00

00:30:39.980 She doesn't have to come on overtly, but it's in her glances. 0.95

00:30:43.640 It's in her voice.

00:30:44.600 It's in the way she moves her body. 0.70

00:30:47.320 And Marilyn Monroe was the quintessence of this.

00:30:50.600 And part of it comes from her story.

00:30:53.440 She was an orphan, right?

00:30:55.460 She had a very tough childhood.

00:30:57.540 And her whole life was about the fact that she felt abandoned, that she never had the

00:31:02.600 love of a parent in her life.

00:31:05.600 And it was very real.

00:31:06.720 And so her desire was to get love from everybody she came upon.

00:31:12.260 And she learned early on that by wearing a certain kind of sweater, she could excite

00:31:17.780 men and get attention from them.

00:31:20.160 And then she learned when she became an actress to kind of make love to the camera, to kind of look at the camera in a way that wasn't obvious, but it's kind of reaped some sort of animal sexuality.

00:31:33.040 And it was very, very seductive. It made her, you know, the quintessence of beauty and seduction of her time.

00:31:41.040 And so, yeah, she's definitely one of the icons of that for sure.

00:31:45.840 You talked about the rake. Can you describe the rake?

00:31:48.360 yeah i mean i was a rake uh i'm what you call a reformed rake so i can speak from experience on

00:31:56.360 that and basically my years of being a rake were in my 20s and pretty much early 30s and then it

00:32:03.020 was then i stopped but the rake is a man who has an intense interest in women he understands them

00:32:11.540 deeply he's obsessed with women and perhaps it comes from something relationship going with his

00:32:16.920 mother. You know, we can analyze that as well. But he has this obsessive interest in them.

00:32:22.560 He understands their spirit. He finds it very exciting to be around them. But one woman can

00:32:28.220 never satisfy him. The only way he can get satisfaction is by constantly having new women 1.00

00:32:33.600 in his life. That's how he satisfies this hunger. Because the moment that a woman becomes familiar,

00:32:40.220 it kind of loses the edge that he wants. He's kind of like a hunter. He loves the process

00:32:47.600 of hunting the woman, of seducing her, of getting her to fall for him. And in those first few weeks,

00:32:55.240 he showers her with attention. That's his power. He love bombs them. He's so excited about their

00:33:02.760 world. He gives them gifts that show he's thinking about them. He takes them to exciting places.

00:33:08.140 it's irresistible right and um but the thing is it can't last because he has to continually spread

00:33:16.440 spread the wealth he has to continually find new people to conquer and i i in the book i kind of

00:33:23.940 profile some of the greatest rakes who ever lived and one of them is the is the great

00:33:30.560 classic hollywood actor errol flynn um errol flynn was this devilishly handsome man that

00:33:36.420 didn't hurt but he was also in the end people claimed that he had seduced or slept with about

00:33:43.300 3 000 women and um and he died when he was 51 52 from alcoholism and so i went when i wrote the

00:33:51.660 book i kind of did the math on that and the math was rather insane it was like at some point he had

00:33:56.960 to be seducing a new woman every other day something like that and i was trying to figure

00:34:02.780 what was his secret? What made him so insanely seductive to women of all types, actresses,

00:34:09.960 waitresses, you name it? Of course, being Errol Flynn and having his reputation helped,

00:34:15.260 but he also had a devilish edge that kind of scared a lot of women. But I read in one book

00:34:20.740 that just being around, he was so comfortable with himself. He was so non-defensive. He was

00:34:27.840 like an animal that was completely comfortable in his body. And it was, it made the woman 1.00

00:34:33.740 completely relax. This one woman said, I felt like I had drunk a couple of martinis and I hadn't 0.96

00:34:40.780 just by being around him, you know? And so the rake has this kind of undefensive quality.

00:34:47.200 He's like this natural animal that exudes this energy, kind of like how the siren is.

00:34:52.160 So that's sort of what a rake is. That was awesome. Okay, cool.

00:34:57.840 Okay, so I was going to ask what the equivalent of that was for a woman, but you're saying the siren, kind of.

00:35:04.020 Yes, yeah, definitely the siren. 0.98

00:35:06.560 I mean, you can't really have a male siren, and you really can't have a female rape.

00:35:12.260 I mean, I do profile in that section probably the greatest lesbian seductress who ever lived, Natalie Barney, who was kind of a poet and writer in the early 20th century. 1.00

00:35:25.100 and she was the closest equivalent i could come to a female rate because um she was seducing women 1.00

00:35:32.440 left right and center and she had a little bit of that presence but normally it's something that's 0.84

00:35:37.060 pretty specific to men and women okay that description was amazing can i get you one more

00:35:44.220 that was amazing okay i want yeah and another um i guess seductive type you want me to list

00:35:51.920 what the other ones are yeah yeah that was too cool we need to do more oh well that was the the

00:35:58.100 dandy I already mentioned the natural which is the one who's kind of like a child then there's

00:36:02.840 the coquette blows hot and cold very very powerful seductress um there's the charmer who's very good

00:36:11.600 it's sort of social seductions there's the star the person who kind of exudes kind of like a like

00:36:18.300 a film star presence that makes everyone project their fantasies onto him or her and there's the

00:36:23.660 charismatic somebody who just has that natural charisma i can't think if i'm leaving somebody

00:36:28.860 oh the ideal lover that those those other seven types so you choose whichever one you want okay

00:36:35.600 what was you said there was one where you project your ideal lover on them

00:36:42.400 well the star is is sort of this person i use as the example um the the woman is marlena dietrich

00:36:53.900 and the man who is john f kennedy excuse me president john f kennedy and what it is is

00:37:01.360 they've learned the hollywood technique and for marlena dietrich it was clearly you know a film

00:37:06.460 thing that she had learned was you have a kind of blankness to you you're not too obvious in what

00:37:13.960 you say and what you do you're not overtly this way or that way you have a kind of an emptiness

00:37:19.360 to your face to your blankness to how you move and you allow people you don't talk too much

00:37:25.120 and you allow people to project onto you their fantasies they see into you what they want to

00:37:30.880 see into you. Whereas if you kind of say who you are and you're too direct, they have a mysterious

00:37:37.820 air about them. And John F. Kennedy, he was obsessed with Hollywood. This is something

00:37:44.060 people don't understand or know very well. He was obsessed with Hollywood. He was obsessed with

00:37:49.540 film stars. And his favorite film star from the classic age of Hollywood was Montgomery Cliff,

00:37:55.200 very handsome young man from the late 40s, early 50s. And he modeled his whole persona

00:38:02.000 after Montgomery Clift, that kind of silent machismo that he exuded, that kind of

00:38:07.720 certain look in his eye that Montgomery Clift had. And it was immensely powerful, as we saw

00:38:14.820 in the election in 1960, where so many people saw into him what they wanted to see, you know,

00:38:20.740 And he disguised the reality. He disguised the reality that he was actually a man in his 40s who was physically almost crippled.

00:38:30.360 He had all of these illnesses. His back was incredible pain, but he was able to disguise all of it and project this other image.

00:38:38.100 So these are the two people that I chose to kind of illustrate that.

00:38:43.460 Wow.

00:38:45.260 And then...

00:38:45.740 You're like a... Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:38:47.200 No, no, you go ahead.

00:38:48.060 well you're kind of like a blank screen onto which people can see what they want to see

00:38:53.660 and there's a way to do that and I kind of describe in that chapter how you can do that

00:38:57.680 can you describe how you can do that

00:39:00.880 well I understand Mikhail I've written seven books and I can't remember it all of the details

00:39:10.540 um you know like so for someone like marlena dietrich she would dress in a certain way

00:39:19.660 where it seemed kind of ambiguous and you didn't know what she was doing or what it meant 0.92

00:39:25.120 she would wear for instance but she was also a dandy she would wear for instance

00:39:28.760 a man's tailored suit right and um but she would do it in a way the way she'd hold her cigarette

00:39:35.680 the way she walked down the stairs where you thought she was there was something going on

00:39:41.060 she had like this added presence but she couldn't figure out what it was because she didn't say or 0.66

00:39:46.720 do anything directly she didn't purposely demonstrate why she was wearing that or or

00:39:52.240 reveal you know something by the way she walked it was just non-verbal there was something about

00:39:58.020 her in air and she learned in front of the camera if you've ever acted before you understand

00:40:05.120 that quietness is much more powerful than noise if your face is quiet you're able and your whole

00:40:14.260 body is quiet and your spirit is quiet you attract the camera you attract attention it

00:40:19.400 looks powerful in theater if there are like five actors on the stage the man or woman who stands

00:40:25.500 with dignity who's calm who doesn't say anything but has this presence that's where your eye goes

00:40:30.800 to. And the camera knows this. So that kind of blankness where you allow people to see into you

00:40:37.980 what they want is what the camera loves. And any actor kind of learns that. I mean, I direct the

00:40:45.220 listener here to go and read the chapter on the star because there's more kind of practical advice

00:40:50.020 in there if that's what you want. Each of the categories, there's a lot of advice about.

00:40:55.780 because the idea is Michaela is you have one of these qualities in you it's natural to you

00:41:02.540 you're kind of born with it I don't care who you are or what your looks are whatever you have one

00:41:08.400 of these qualities because seduction isn't about beauty it's about a kind of understanding human

00:41:13.480 psychology and if you're too obvious in your seductive techniques if you've read Robert

00:41:20.180 books the art of seduction and you try to apply a b and c to a man or a woman it's not good it's

00:41:25.380 going to fail because it looks too cold and calculating but if you see this natural quality

00:41:30.620 in you if you know that you're a coquette by nature somebody who blows hot and cold and you

00:41:36.220 know how to bring it out and make it more conscious and aware and a little more put a little more

00:41:40.700 emphasis on it you're seducing without appearing unnatural you're seducing without appearing like

00:41:46.340 it's forced it just comes from your personality and that kind of makes it doubly effective

00:41:51.860 that's interesting i wonder if at some point my dad has all these personality scales with a big

00:42:00.440 five i wonder if you could figure out what kind of personality each of these types has

00:42:07.880 there must be similarities is it do you think it's based on personality

00:42:11.540 what these nine types yeah it's based on a kind of energy that goes that predates that it's almost

00:42:20.240 like a Jungian, I know your father's heavily into Jung, into these kind of archetypes that

00:42:26.100 humans kind of fall into, right? And it's almost like an energy that you have. And, you know,

00:42:33.300 somebody like the siren, there might be a genetic component to a woman who has that.

00:42:39.500 But also for the siren and the rake, I do believe that there's something in the relationship to the

00:42:44.340 father and the mother that kind of steers people in that direction. You know, there's the Jungian

00:42:49.600 concept of the animus and the anima the anima for the man the animus for the woman it's the

00:42:56.100 internalized image of your mother if you're a man inside of you and it becomes the kind of woman

00:43:02.720 you're always looking for or the internalized image of your father becomes your animus and has

00:43:08.040 a heavy influence in all the partners that you end up choosing so there's a level that goes very

00:43:13.740 deep inside of our nature either early childhood or even genetic that kind of pushes us in these

00:43:18.700 directions. That is so cool. Okay. I'm going to have to figure out what I am. Which, yeah. Which

00:43:25.420 one, which one would you be? I don't know. I have no idea. What do you think? I know we've only been

00:43:33.600 talking for half an hour. I would say either like possibly the siren. I can get behind that.

00:43:48.700 and possibly um charismatic you know i'd have to know you a little bit but that would be the

00:43:57.520 first one that i would kind of be that i would think of would be the siren sweet whichever one

00:44:03.900 the uh stand in a room silently to attract attention i'm not that one okay then you're

00:44:11.500 not the star okay you could you start yeah you could have a bit of the natural in you as well

00:44:17.240 I don't know. We tend to have one that's predominant for me, the rate, but there's

00:44:21.460 also a second quality that's always there. And for me, that's sort of the natural. So there might be

00:44:26.200 a second one lurking within you as well, or even a third, who knows? Cool. Okay. You mentioned

00:44:32.820 going hot and cold. Does that mean just being all into a relationship and then you're angry

00:44:38.700 about something? What do you mean by hot and cold? Well, that's the coquette. Although we

00:44:43.780 traditionally associate the coquette with women there are plenty plenty of male coquettes out

00:44:49.820 out there and the idea is you know how to to be hot in other words to to be excited by that other

00:44:59.060 person to send them looks that show that you're interested in them to do things that show that

00:45:04.320 you're interested and once they take a step towards you you now take a step back and you

00:45:10.460 blow kind of cold and you're not so attentive and you don't return their their texts right away

00:45:17.260 and you don't return their phone calls and they start wondering he or she was really into me but

00:45:24.820 now they don't seem to be so into me is it my fault that i do something wrong they better try

00:45:29.640 even harder to get their attention so you chase them and then maybe they get hot again and they

00:45:35.440 excite you because they have to keep the flame flickering. Otherwise, it'll die out. And then

00:45:40.840 they step back. They blow hot and they blow cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. And it's devilishly

00:45:47.620 seductive. I know I've fallen for it in my youth as well. I have a terrible weakness for coquettish

00:45:53.820 women. And it can drive you absolutely crazy because it makes you think that something is 1.00

00:45:59.780 wrong with you and that you have to try harder to get them. And once you think that you have to try

00:46:04.560 harder to seduce them. You are the one who's completely seduced, right? So it's, it's the

00:46:11.820 classic hard to get, but if you're always hard to get, then nothing will happen. You know,

00:46:16.620 occasionally mix in the easy to get with the hard to get.

00:46:21.420 Yeah. I think I had a relationship like that. I don't think I'm a fan of that at all.

00:46:26.320 No, it's not. It's not a very nice quality, but it's extremely effective. I'm afraid.

00:46:31.140 okay okay and then last question about this this is fascinating um the natural you said that was

00:46:38.700 your kind of backup so what's the natural the natural the um the icon for that was charlie

00:46:45.680 chaplin um basically it's a person who has retained a lot of their childhood qualities

00:46:53.320 right and older and then the other the female version of it is josephine baker the great

00:46:59.060 African-American dancer and actress of the 20s and 30s and 40s. These are people who they don't 0.98

00:47:07.380 seem infantile, but they've grown up and they've retained a lot of the child in them, right? They

00:47:14.260 seem to have that kind of impish, mischievous quality of a child. They don't seem to be trying

00:47:20.560 to put something on. They're just authentically who they are. They're naturally spontaneous.

00:47:26.660 they're naturally funny sometimes they may say something that will offend like children will do

00:47:31.860 right but they're very charming in the fact that they don't seem to be trying that they're so

00:47:36.520 authentic right and josephine baker was this amazing dancer um in the 20s she was also a

00:47:45.300 bit of a dandy as well she would wear she would dress as a man but her dancing was so wild and

00:47:51.960 so nobody had ever seen any dancing like that nowadays we're kind of used to it because we see

00:47:56.320 twerking and all kinds of things on the internet. But this was the version of it in the 20s and

00:48:01.360 30s. Whoa, where's this woman coming from? You know, only a child would be acting like that. 1.00

00:48:06.820 She's so natural. She's so comfortable with herself. And I tell in the story how she learned

00:48:13.240 as a child to always kind of live inside of her fantasy worlds that she had as a child and kind

00:48:20.260 of retain that as she got older. And so I was staying in that kind of child dream world fantasy

00:48:26.800 world is very seductive on other people, you know. And so, you know, the reason it's so seductive is

00:48:35.420 it doesn't seem like a put on. And someone like a Charlie Chaplin was an incredibly effective

00:48:42.360 seducer. And so there is an element of calculation behind it. You kind of know that that spontaneity,

00:48:49.820 that childlike quality is very seductive, very alluring to people. So you're going to kind of

00:48:56.740 give it a little extra. Sometimes you're aware of it and you kind of, you know, act a little

00:49:01.880 stronger in that direction. So, okay. That makes sense. Um, for people who are having trouble,

00:49:08.960 cause there are many people, I would say probably men in general have more trouble with seduction

00:49:15.860 than women probably but do you have say three tips for people who are having trouble seducing

00:49:23.460 other people i don't know i have three i have two that come to mind maybe a third will come to me in

00:49:29.340 a few minutes and the first one is you have to be able to get outside of yourself so in this sense

00:49:38.300 seducing is very healthy it means that normally what where a lot of men go wrong particular

00:49:45.300 is they're thinking about themselves all the time they're thinking does she really like me am i

00:49:51.040 really saying the right thing am i doing the right thing i've got to try really hard to make sure

00:49:55.700 that she actually likes me and they're inside their own thoughts and their own their own world 1.00

00:50:00.460 and what they need to do instead and this applies to women as well is get inside the other person's 0.99

00:50:06.260 world that's the key to seducing them to understand michaela her childhood her needs what she has and 1.00

00:50:13.880 what she lacks in life, her weaknesses, her vulnerabilities, what will put a smile on her

00:50:19.820 face, what will excite her. And so when you get, when you have that philosophy, you listen in a

00:50:25.680 different way. You're listening to them with this kind of focus where you're picking up little cues

00:50:30.840 that they say of things that excite them or repulse them. And you're kind of remembering them.

00:50:37.300 And then later, days later, you say something that relates to something that they had expressed

00:50:43.020 and it reveals how deeply you were listening and it's very seductive or you give them a gift

00:50:48.180 that isn't necessarily expensive but is tailored to something that they had said some nuance that

00:50:54.360 they had revealed in their conversation it seems very personal so getting outside of yourself and

00:51:00.780 getting into the spirit of the other person is probably the most important thing of all the

00:51:06.040 second one which is related to the first one is to lose your defensiveness to lose your defensive

00:51:11.900 qualities to be open to the other person to being vulnerable to the other person you know a lot of

00:51:18.720 people now in the world today are very defensive and for good reason because our lives are so

00:51:23.920 stressful we have so many things in our face so many people bothering us etc and we kind of get

00:51:30.040 really rigid and tight and defensive and you can even physically locate it in our chest areas etc

00:51:36.340 And the idea of being vulnerable, of opening up to another person, allowing them to have power over us is actually frightening for a lot of people.

00:51:47.520 But it's unnatural. It's not human because we have a tremendous need to feel vulnerable, to feel open to the influence of another person, to have that electrical current going back and forth.

00:52:01.000 and it stems from our childhood where we were so vulnerable to the spirit of our father or our

00:52:07.420 mother and it delighted us right there was a kind of bond between us like between a mother

00:52:13.140 that transcends you're almost a part of her in some way and so that need to feel connected and

00:52:19.680 feel vulnerable is very human and what happens with a lot of people is as they get older

00:52:24.820 and they accumulate pain and hurts from broken relationships

00:52:28.820 is they don't want to be vulnerable anymore

00:52:31.460 because they don't want to have to go through that.

00:52:33.800 But that means that the person that broke your heart

00:52:36.060 that made you vulnerable has won, has defeated you,

00:52:39.240 has made you turn into something that you don't want to become.

00:52:42.360 So you have to be able to feel that you can be vulnerable, right?

00:52:46.380 And if you're a seducer trying to seduce someone,

00:52:50.680 revealing to that other person

00:52:52.480 that you have fallen under their spell is almost the most seductive thing you can do

00:52:57.800 because it's deeply deeply exciting to feel that that other person is charmed by us right but in

00:53:05.240 order to do that you have to be vulnerable to them so those are the two keys if i i could come

00:53:11.180 up with a third but i'm no that was good i'm kind of slowing down here yeah no that that was really

00:53:17.040 good um i was i was quite ill for most of my life i had auto i know i was i was really really ill

00:53:25.080 and part of the way i got through that was building up these kind of like psychological walls

00:53:30.400 so that i couldn't feel and then once i got healthy i still had these walls up and it took

00:53:37.080 me a number of years to start like shedding them and it was like it was so absurd it was like i

00:53:43.400 could feel i could feel when they went away and i'd cry a whole bunch and then i'd be like okay

00:53:47.440 walls are lowering walls are lowering great yeah it was wild how did you how did you lower the

00:53:53.780 walls do you remember yeah i'd connect with people and in order you know i'd connect with somebody

00:54:00.340 and then i'd hit a wall and be like oh i could feel it right it was like i'm not i'm not connecting

00:54:06.920 there's some sort of blocking and then i just kind of it was it hurt almost but it relaxed a

00:54:13.500 little bit and be like okay you know i'm not in the same kind of chronic ill health problems that

00:54:19.300 i was like i can let my walls down a little bit and then i could experience more positive emotion

00:54:23.520 more connection but yeah i'd say a lot of people are suffering from from that from being hurt from

00:54:29.780 relationship problems from being ill from being stressed sure covid hasn't contributed very well

00:54:35.260 to that no no no that's definitely put a damper on people's dating habits for sure yeah that's

00:54:42.180 very valuable information then um do you have i guess do you have advice for people who

00:54:47.900 are kind of trapped to try and let down some of their walls

00:54:53.020 well i think what you said is is very valid and very interesting it's the fact that you

00:55:01.520 could feel them rising up you could feel yourself starting to judge the other person right that's

00:55:07.440 sort of we disguise our own defensiveness from to ourselves we say it's the other person who's

00:55:13.820 acting in this way that isn't right they're being aggressive they're bothering us etc and we blame

00:55:19.640 them whereas you have to look inward and see that maybe you were the one that's putting up the wall

00:55:24.780 not them doing something to you. You are afraid of being hurt. And so you're finding an excuse

00:55:33.000 to kind of raise the wall, you know, and you're thinking of, you're anticipating the hurt or the

00:55:39.700 pain that's going to come, right? And it starts with you. And so being aware of the fact that

00:55:47.360 you are probably, you know, if you look at how you judge other people, that's a sure sign of

00:55:53.100 your defensiveness. Now, sometimes you're right in your judgments and you need to be somewhat

00:55:59.360 defensive because there are scary people in the world. There are toxic narcissists, for instance.

00:56:05.180 There are people who are very aggressive and dangerous. So you can't just be open to everyone

00:56:10.020 going around. You're going to really, really suffer. So there's a good reason to be a little

00:56:14.840 bit defensive in this world. And I understand that. But the point where it becomes painful

00:56:20.220 and unproductive is in your personal intimate relationships so you know you you carry over

00:56:26.580 your your fear of people into these personal relationships and you're not even aware of it

00:56:32.520 happening because you think it comes from them but it's really from your own defensiveness and

00:56:37.200 you have to be aware of the fact that you're not that you're paying a price for that you're not

00:56:43.960 being a complete human being because we are more than anything we're not these intellectual

00:56:49.980 rational animals. We're emotional animals. Emotions dominate our behavior. Emotions dominate

00:56:57.460 our reactions to the world. They are much more powerful than thoughts. Where are these emotional

00:57:02.820 animals? And to not experience the full range of emotion, to not experience the full range of love

00:57:10.040 and as well as depression and hurt is to be part half human, right? And so you're really in the end

00:57:17.300 hurting yourself you're not protecting yourself you're hurting yourself and i repeat once again

00:57:23.060 that it's very important to be able to detect the toxic people out there and that was the subject

00:57:29.260 of my last book the laws of human nature but you can't you have to be at some point not be paranoid

00:57:35.040 and realize that not everybody is like that and that you have to kind of let yourself be vulnerable

00:57:41.060 so that you can experience sometimes experiencing pain and depression is important and necessary

00:57:47.120 is part of growth. It's part of being a human being. You know, we all go through those periods.

00:57:52.060 I go through them myself, but to try and repress that and to make everything kind of even where

00:57:57.540 you're not experiencing joy or pain is I think to stifle your, your, your, your, your human

00:58:04.260 qualities. Yes, that was great. Have you had negative feedback from any of the books you've

00:58:12.880 written? Of course. I mean, mostly the first two books, because they're the darkest, the most

00:58:21.600 devious of my books, if you want to say it, put it that way. And, you know, people were saying that

00:58:29.240 I was promoting kind of almost rape culture or something that, and it wasn't my intention at all.

00:58:36.180 And most people who like, sometimes I get emails, I've gotten a lot of emails from women who say, I think this man, this boyfriend of my former boyfriend read your book. And he did some really awful things to me. And I, and I feel very bad about that. You know, it's not the majority, it's occasional. And sometimes I've tried to advise them about how, you know, what, how to respond then how to feel afterwards.

00:59:05.020 So I get some negative feedback from that and from the 48 laws. But most of it is, I'm not personally, I mean, I don't know if people will believe it, but I'm not personally a devious, evil, Machiavellian character. I'm more kind of naive and innocent, kind of stupid in some ways.

00:59:24.820 And when I entered the work world, I was making all kinds of mistakes. 0.98

00:59:28.620 Like I mentioned earlier in Hollywood, I outshone the master, et cetera, et cetera.

00:59:33.660 And so I wrote the 48 Laws of Power and the Art of Seduction from the point of view of

00:59:38.640 people who are not good at the game, who need to understand how it works so that they can

00:59:44.000 defend themselves and so they can use some of these laws of power as well in the world.

00:59:49.720 But yeah, I still get this criticism and I understand where it's coming from.

00:59:54.280 okay that makes sense well robert green that was amazing thank you so much oh thank you i

01:00:03.200 really enjoyed it yeah i wanted to hear i wanted to hear more of your stories but we'll maybe do

01:00:08.060 another time we should do that another time we should do that another time for sure and i think

01:00:13.040 i'll hook you up with my dad i think you guys would have a great conversation so we share we

01:00:17.860 share some similar interests you know um i mean i've read his books and i know we're both interested

01:00:22.700 in yong yeah and we're both very much interested in ancient cultures and ancient civilizations

01:00:28.440 history um and a few other similar interests but that would be fun that would be fun i have

01:00:35.840 your i'm going to link this below i have this here yeah so that's going to be linked below

01:00:41.000 when is it out it's out october 12th okay yeah and basically what it is is um it's extracts

01:00:51.580 and from podcasts, and from my books, and from things I've written over the course of my of the

01:00:56.980 25 years that I've been writing. And each day is kind of a meditation on a specific subject.

01:01:04.440 And it's basically I'm trying to help you gain a more realistic attitude towards life,

01:01:10.300 so that you don't so that you understand people on a deeper level, and that you understand yourself

01:01:15.540 on a deeper level. And it's kind of structured to take you through the whole year, focusing on

01:01:21.340 your career, focusing on power games, focusing on seduction and influence, and then finally

01:01:27.260 focusing on human nature.

01:01:29.780 And the last month, there are extracts from the new book that I'm working on called The

01:01:33.320 Law of the Sublime.

01:01:34.720 So there's some original material in there, but it's basically a book to make you think

01:01:39.560 every day and kind of absorb ideas that are scattered throughout six of my other books.

01:01:45.940 That's so cool.

01:01:47.720 Wow.

01:01:48.180 Okay.

01:01:48.540 Yeah.

01:01:48.760 So it's dated.

01:01:50.080 You can start in.

01:01:51.340 Yeah. This is great. What the mentor needs, how to learn quickly and deeply

01:01:55.860 understand how the brain works. Okay. Well, thank you very much for the book.

01:02:01.260 Thank you very much for coming on. That was a very entertaining podcast.

01:02:05.860 I'm glad. I'm glad you liked it. Thank you. I enjoyed it myself. I found very entertaining as

01:02:10.280 well. Good. Okay. Wow. And that's, that's Clint Eastwood staring at me. I've been kind of

01:02:16.620 intimidated by that gun being pointed at me but yeah Clint you said our Marlon Brando over there

01:02:23.400 yeah I recognize that Johnny Cash yes I know yeah your icons yeah role models yeah exactly

01:02:33.040 Marilyn Monroe is around here too but she's not in this room okay okay very good okay well thanks

01:02:39.420 for coming on that was fun thank you so much Michaela my pleasure I really enjoyed it

01:02:46.620 We'll be right back.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - October 15, 2021

121. The Art Of Seduction and Human Psychology ｜ Robert Greene

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