Transcription
The dark side of human nature has a lot of creativity, has a lot of energy. An artist has to have a dark side. You use your dark side because all those dark emotions, all the people that shat on you in your life, they inspire you. They create your best work. Don't run away from your shadow. Don't run away from your narcissism. Use it in a healthy way.
The thing is, children are much stronger than we think they are. They're very resilient. They're very resourceful. They're going to find their love. They're going to find a way to compensate for it in some way.
And what's something very interesting when I was doing Seduction and some of my other books, and I look at people who were like very charismatic, like a Malcolm X, like a Marilyn Monroe, I could go on and on and on. These are people that came from very, very bad families, right? They had no love. Marilyn Monroe was an orphan essentially, raised in an orphanage, you know? Her whole life was, I got to get people to love me. I need love so desperately. And her way of doing it was to literally make love with the camera. Nobody ever done that before. You could sense that she needed it and it was so powerful that you sensed it, that she drew it to herself.
Great charismatic individuals, John F. Kennedy is someone who had a lot of charisma. He came from a very bad childhood, right? His father was very mean to him, etc. Some children in the worst circumstances ends up bringing the best out of them. They have to find their way in life, and some people who have everything don't go very far because they don't know how to find things for themselves.
So, life is weird. Some people who have great childhoods do well. Some people who have great childhoods are spoiled and never learn how to get things on their own. And some people who have the shittiest childhoods learn how to be resourceful and get what they need on their own.
Seduction is a high form of power because you make people feel pleasure. You make them feel excited or interested in you. And then their resistance to your ideas slowly lowers and you have the ability to influence them and to move them in the direction that you want. If you yell at them, like how we're talking about your child, and you tell them, "Do this. Do that." They will resent it and for good reason. But if you're subtle, if you're more seductive in your approach, if you're more indirect, people will do what you want or go in your direction without ever even realizing it.
So, it was a subtheme in The 48 Laws of Power. And so, I was sort of interested in the psychology of that and why some people are good at it and some people are awkward about it. Well, I like to distinguish between cold seducers and warm seducers.
A cold seducer is something you don't want to be. That's the typical image that we might have of a male seducer, but even of a female seducer, like the great courtesans, etc., whether they're just after money or the men are just after sex. That's not my ideal. My ideal is kind of a back and forth quality, where it's not domination. It's sort of like a game that you're playing. It's like a mating game. It's like a courtship ritual, where both people are kind of seducing each other.
And so, what makes for a great seducer is very simple. I can summarize it very simply. You are outer directed. So, when you meet somebody for the first time or you're on a date or whatever it is, you're not having that internal monologue going, "Does she like me or does he like me? Am I dressed well? Am I saying stupid things? What can I do to impress?" No. You turn it off and you're outer directed and you're listening to them and you're entering their spirit and you're hearing them say things that give you an idea of what they're missing in life, of what they want, of what their needs are, of what makes them an individual. You're absorbing it. You're entering into their spirit and then you can reflect it back to them. You can give them gifts. You can take them to places that show that you're attentive to them.
Because if you look at how we are in our day-to-day life, normally people never pay us attention. They're always so self-absorbed. They're never thinking about us. The times where you get the sense that people are actually interested in who you are as an individual is pretty rare. If you give that feeling to someone, it's incredibly powerful because we all want to be validated. We all want to be recognized. So, what the seducer is not someone who's all worried about him or herself and thinking they're involved in the other person. They're absorbed like a sponge inside their psychology, inside their world.
But one quality that's very anti-seductive is preaching and moralizing. Is like telling people, "Oh, that's wrong what you just said." Or, "Your politics are ugly." Or, "You're not really good at this." Or something or other. Having a moral superiority, a sense of sanctimony in a realm which should be about pleasure, which should be that kind of equality, that kind of back and forth dynamic, where you're asserting your moral superiority is deeply, deeply anti-seductive. The element of preaching to people. Not being generous. And I mean, not just with money. Money is important, but not just being generous with your spirit, right? You want to be open. You want to give as much as you can to the other person, of yourself, of your time, of your money, of your energy, etc. So, being all kind of crimped and I don't want to give. I don't want to spend money. I want to take you to the cheap place to eat. I don't want to give you much time is very, very anti-seductive.
Now, there is a part of weakness that is seductive. So, I would say vulnerability is seductive, but insecurity is anti-seductive. And there's a big difference. Because most of the time we are closed the influence of other people, particularly now. We have these walls up because life is harsh. People are coming at us with their advertisements, with their pleas, with their wanting money, with this and the other. And we've all learned to be very defensive, right?
And seduction is an openness. Is the opposite of that. And you felt it when you were a child towards your parents, you felt very vulnerable and open. And there was an element of your parents and how they treated that was very much like a seduction, right? So, seduction is about being open to the other person to the extent where you can even fall in love. You can fall under their spell. And the sense of letting go of your ego, letting go of your defensiveness, and letting another person enter your world is being seduced. It requires vulnerability.
If you meet the typical scenario is of a man who's not vulnerable at all. He's so powerful and in control and everything, has no vulnerabilities, it's frightening, you know, for a woman. It could be very frightening. Like this He's so strong. He's so invulnerable that there's something wrong about it. You know, maybe he's a serial killer. Maybe he's got skeletons in his closet. Something isn't right about that.
What seduces you about a puppy, about a child, about an animal, is their vulnerability. It makes you want to hug them. It makes you want to help them, right? The sense which if you came upon a tiger that's there and that they don't need that, well, that's not seductive. I mean, on your screen it is, but if they're there in your living room, that's not seductive. But that puppy is, right? Vulnerability, the sense that somebody needs protection or help brings out qualities in us that we don't normally have that I think allow for seduction. So, that is being vulnerable. That is I can be influenced by that other person. I am open to their spirit, right?
That's being vulnerable. The word vulnerable comes from the root of it means a wound, vulnus. So, you have a wound inside of you and you need healing. And the other person naturally wants to help you, right? But being insecure is the means I'm so self-absorbed. I'm so worried about myself that I can't get out of it. And we've all had that experience. When you meet somebody and you can sense you can smell their insecurity in them. I'm not judging them because we all have insecurities. It makes you feel insecure. It makes you feel a little bit awkward. Whereas if you meet someone who's not like that, who's confident, etc., it brings out that quality in you. So, if you're on a date and there's someone who's you smell that kind of insecurity, it makes you awkward and insecure. It creates a kind of a problem. So, that would be the difference between the two.
Well, the thing is, okay, there's several things. So, first of all, we live in a culture where people think you don't you shouldn't have to put effort into something like love and romance. You should just be who you are, man. I don't have to put on a role. I don't have to play a game. That's manipulative. Blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I'm sorry. Love and romance is something that is almost biological. If you look at animals and mating rituals, they're incredibly elaborate. Seduction is a mating ritual.
And so, the worst thing you can feel is that this person isn't putting any effort into something. Let's just say it's from the woman's point of view this man he just shows up wearing jeans and his usual sloppy outfit. He doesn't comb his hair, etc. etc. etc. He takes me to the pub for dinner on our first date. You know, he's not thinking about me. He's not willing to put any effort into it. If he's not willing to put any effort into it what's it going to be like 3 months down the line when he completely takes me for granted which is what happens in a relationship? Am I not important enough? Right?
Whereas the ability to have a little bit of effort to think of it as kind of theater and drama and that there's nothing evil about it. So I'm going to dress nicely. I'm going to I just have to be fancy. Just that I'm going to put some effort into how I look. I'm going to take her to a place that isn't is you know, I'm not talking about candlelight and roses and that kind of crap. It doesn't have you can be creative. It can be somewhere that's scuzzy that's on the wrong side of town but it's different and it's appealing to and you put some thought into it. There's a reason you're taking her there, right?
If you're not able to let go of your kind of tightness when it comes to a woman, then something's wrong with you, man. Just let go. Spend some extra money. Spend the extra 10 quid that you might need to spend on taking you to someplace different but it signals a kind of cheapness and it's not about money. It's about a cheapness in your spirit. Right? She's not worth you know, letting go. Okay, maybe you don't have that much but my god, you have enough. It's not going to make if you're that poor then then you know, okay, maybe. But probably not. You can afford it. Show that you that it means something to you.
Look, seduction is a language. It's not a language of words. It's a language of gestures that we're paying attention to. We're paying attention to people's body language. We're paying attention to their actions, to the things that they never say. So when you signal that discounts are so important to you that even on the first date you have to get a discount you're signaling that it's not there's something tight about you in your nature and it's not very pleasant. And to win over someone like a let's say you're a man and it's a woman who might be reluctant to have a relationship requires some effort. It requires some thinking. You can't just hack you well, you can't just swipe and get it. You can have your internet sex but you're not going to get that in real life. It doesn't work that way.
It takes time. It takes patience. You know, and you're going to have to work at it and you're going to be rejected. Being with people is a skill. Being a social animal although there's a part that comes naturally, if you spend all of your time here, you're losing that skill of how to respond to people's body language. You know, half of the thing is you're sitting in a bar opposite let's say it's a woman and how she crosses her legs, how she sips her drink, how she looks at you, how she touches her hair. She's signaling things. It's a language. It's a beautiful language. Right? You have to learn it and you're not going to learn it here because you can't. You have to be in person. It has to be skin to skin. You have to get a feel for what other people are thinking and feeling. And we're actually really really good at that. Humans have That's what makes us human. It's called mirror neurons. I can sense what's going on in your mind. I can read your body language. You have to get out in the world and you have to be put yourself physically out there and try and try and try and have rejection. And I know it sounds awful but it is a skill in a way where you're learning how to like understand and deal with people and and and understand that what they're who they are and get inside their spirit. It takes time and effort and patience.
So for young men you have to realize that, right? If you think everything has to be easy and quick, it's never going to work for you.
Finally, I found a book written by a woman whom he had seduced another actress and she said he was so relaxed and so comfortable. It was like being it was like an animal type thing and then when I would sit with him, it was almost as if I had drunk two martinis just sitting next to him. His comfort and his security and his confidence, his relaxed attitude, it just made me drunk. So feeling relaxed, feeling confident and not defensive and comfortable with yourself is a very powerful seductive quality. I mean there are many of them but that's one that I would point out.