Transcription
We're a very creative species, right? We have language, we have consciousness. We have immense powers. Those powers developed under the pressures of necessity, of having to get things done.
The power game, the rule laws of power are in understanding human psychology. Never outshine the master. You're creating the appearance that you respect the master, that they are better than you, that you are going to obey them, that you're going to follow them. You're playing that game. Always say less than necessary. You're wearing the mask of somebody powerful who learns to control their tongue and control their behavior. Act like a king to be treated like one.
The power game, the rule laws of power are in understanding human psychology. Never outshine the master. You're creating the appearance that you respect the master, that they are better than you, that you are going to obey them, that you're going to follow them. You're playing that game. Always say less than necessary. You're wearing the mask of somebody powerful who learns to control their tongue and control their behavior.
Court attention at all costs. You know the behavior that will get people to look at you and attend to you. Do not build fortresses. You understand that appearing isolated as somebody is very dangerous. You know how to play the perfect courtier. You create the appearance of power. And that is the power game, is creating the appearance of it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, of course, results do matter. They do figure into the picture. I won't deny that. But the main part of the game, the main part of the laws are understanding the role of appearances, being a good actor, and knowing how to manage that properly in a group situation.
A lot of our idea of a leader and power is nonverbal stuff. Because as I said, we're an animal. We're a social animal. We don't like to believe understand that, but it's true. And so, a lot of it's the body language. So, a powerful person in a meeting is kind of relaxed. They're kind of like this. They could be They could put their bodies anywhere. Right? Whereas, other person is like all tight and nervous and aware. A powerful person has a directed focus. A weak person is like always looking around, touching their hair, touching their face. That's There is a word for it. I forget what it is. It's non-verbal communication. But, it's a sign of insecurity. Right?
A powerful person is able to look at everybody in the room directly, whereas somebody who's weak is always kind of averting their gaze. There are these these signs of kind of confidence and charisma, where you feel you're powerful and it emanates outward. Your eyes have that certain gaze.
It's unfortunate because for women, it's a little bit harder to play that game because some of the things that read as powerful for men, for women should read as powerful, but often read as she's mean, she's a Right? So, women have a harder time in playing this game of appearances cuz they're judged so much on their looks and not about these other things. So, um it's complicated. But, there are these kind of cues that people give off that show that they've inwardly feel secure and powerful and it kind of emanates outward.
It's There's a law in there, act like a king to be treated like one. If you feel like you're a king or a queen, people will believe that you are. Right? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I have this story in there of Christopher Columbus, who was like the son of of like a a grocer somewhere in like Portugal or whatever, but he convinced all of the kings of Spain that he came from nobility. And they It was a total con game, and they believed it, but he carried himself like that. He believed it, and they gave him all this money to go and explore America.
That's sort of the So, if it's all just make-believe, if it's all just hype, if it's all just appearance and optics, you won't get very far because you have to end up producing. And some of the laws are about that. It's not all about that. So, plan all the way to the end is about like getting the results that you want by planning all the way to the end. You know? So, it's not just just faking it. That'll get you somewhere, but at some point you have to produce.
The thing is, um the best way to to to cultivate it is to actually have results that that show that actually have a record to go upon. So, you can kind of fake it like Columbus did, but Columbus already had achieved some things when he did that. He'd already had some naval skills, I believe. Don't quote me on that. But, it's good to have some things to hang your hat on that will help give you that confidence. So, it's not completely faked, but William James, the great American psychologist, talked about as if strategies. And it's a very important concept in psychology from the early 20th century. If you believe as if you were confident, as if you are powerful, it will tend to be read that way, right? And so, like he had the analogy, if you smile, even though you don't feel like smiling, you'll end up kind of maybe feeling kind of happy. So, the physical action will create the psychological action, was his belief, cuz he was very much a believer in the body, things starting from the body. So, if you believe physically and bodily embodied that you are great, that you deserve this, it will kind of become part of your psychology and it will radiate outward.
Everybody has some good qualities, right? Everybody, I think almost everybody has something that they can can go back to in the past and go, "I was actually very good at that. That was actually a good moment. I actually was, you know, scored in that particular moment." And you can think about that. I mean, actors do that all the time in movies, when they want to express an emotion, they go back into their past. Like, they have to express sadness, they go back and they think about their father or mother who died, and they call that emotion up. You can call that emotion up of when you did something actually really great. You might have only been in high school when you were on the sports team and you you threw the touchdown or something. Okay, think about that and and it'll come back to you. Everybody has something that they can be confident about, I hope.
If you're feeling timid, if you're feeling that you're not confident in something, you will start a project and it will fail because you feel that way. Because you don't enter into it with the right energy. So, if you feel if you take something and you do something boldly, everybody loves the bold, everybody admires it. Even if it's stupid, even if it fails, it will gain you that kind of attention. And so, let's say you're thinking about starting a business. Well, just go ahead and do it and be bold about it and start it and be as dramatic as you can and be as confident as you can, and it creates a self-fulfilling dynamic. People admire it. They don't admire the timid and the insecure, and the guy who spends 2 years talking about that podcast he's going to start. They admire that bloke who just decided, "All right, I'm going to start it. I don't care if nobody likes it, it's fine."
Uh I remember this guy who interviewed me once. He had a magazine called Bad Ideas. And it was a really successful magazine in like the early 2000s. I said, "Where'd you get that idea?" He said, "My mother told me that to start that magazine was a really bad idea, right? So, I thought I'd put the title there, you know, and that would be the title of it." And he just went ahead and started it, and it was very successful because it was a great like marketing gimmick, and it also worked, and it was actually full of bad ideas in the book thing, but very in a very interesting way. Um So, being bold, being different.
Everybody nowadays, I'm getting on my goddamn soapbox again, and I'm so I apologize to everyone about this, but everyone is so similar. Everybody is so afraid. Everyone's trying to be like everybody else. You go out there and you start something that's different, that's you, that's unique, that's loud, that proclaims, "I'm a different voice on it." You're going to get attention. So, I want more bold people in this world. We've got too much fear, you know? That's I'm not maybe a big admirer of in some ways of Elon Musk, but damn it, he's always bold, and it always works for him. He doesn't start just a a minimal business about maybe sending rockets out there. He starts thing that's going to take you to Mars. He's bold, and people love it.
I like to think of uh who the the human animal is. I like to take this out of the little specific and go into the meta area here. And um what it meant to human. We're very creative species, right? We have language, we have consciousness, we have immense powers. Those powers developed under the pressures of necessity, of having to get things done, of having to survive in a very brutal, ruthless world where a leopard could pop out tomorrow and and eat me, where there were dangers all around, where there was food was scarce. And under the pressure, we had to think, we had to be creative, we had to be inventive, we had to be strategic. The human brain evolved under immense amounts of pressure. Okay? That's how the brain works. And I almost like to think of it in terms of barometric pressure. So, in your brain, when you're feeling that barometric pressure, it's like, I've got to get this done, or I'm going to fail, and I'm not this project won't happen, and then and people will laugh at me. You work like a fiend. Energy, your whole body responds, right? Your blood gets moving. You you accomplish things that would normally take you months, you do it in days, because you feel that pressure.
You take away that pressure, and you don't know what to do. And I've got like 3 years, I could do this or that, and then you just wander around, you're lost, you have no energy, you have no focus. You know, you're maybe playing video games, maybe watching porn, you're kind of distracting yourself in the moment. But it's but your energy is just being dissipated in like 20 different directions. So, your brain needs pressure. It needs constant pressure. And stress and pressure is not a bad thing. We have this thing where we feel like stress is bad. It's bad for you. Bad. You know, you need to relax, man. You need to chill. Stress will kill you. No, being bored will kill you. Not having anything to do will kill you. It's much more dangerous than stress.
Yes, you can work too hard. You can work where there's no soul involved. I work like a fiend cuz I'm writing a book. And it's a very hard process for me. And I'm working far too much, but man, I love it. It's fantastic, right? And it's It could kill me. The stress could kill me. Gave me a stroke. But I'd rather die under the stress than be bored and have nothing to do. Okay? So, feeling that pressure it makes your eyes pop open. It makes your brain focus. It makes you alert. Makes you want to live. It makes everything seem exciting to you cuz you've got to get things done.
So, I'm writing a book right now. I could take 12 years to write it. But that wouldn't be very I wouldn't feel good about it. So, I give myself deadlines. I give myself a deadline of finishing this chapter by July 31st. Here it's August 10th. I haven't finished it, but now I'm working double hard to try and finish it in time cuz if I didn't have a deadline, I would take forever. So, create pressure for yourself is a good thing.
You know, I gave a talk recently in which I talked about Thomas Edison, the great inventor. And Thomas Edison was a young man. He was in his early 30s. He'd invented the phonograph and a new way of the telegraph, but he wasn't hadn't really had any major inventions. He had started Menlo Park, his industrial park for doing research. We're talking about the 1870s, I believe. But he did something very interesting and very strange. Um I don't know how conscious it was, but he gave an interview with a newspaper. And he said, "I've been working on creating the incandescent light bulb." Now, before that, there was the arc light, which was a light that was really powerful. It used far too much energy. You couldn't use it in the house. The way houses were lit was with gaslight. Gaslight was dangerous. It's explosive. And it And the companies in America that that had a monopoly on it. So, the prices was very corrupt business. So, he goes, "I'm working on the incandescent light bulb." Reporters go, "That's interesting." He goes, "Yeah, I'm close to I'm close to getting I'm close to nailing it." Whoa. And he goes, "Yeah, and in 5 years, I'm going to light the entire city of New York with the incandescent light with electric light." Whoa, they go crazy. They publish this article and the stock prices of gas start going down down down down down. Money flows into his coffers because the the cheapness of light of a light bulb, the profits are just insane. So, money is pouring in. He goes back to his Menlo Park where he develops ideas. And his employees who are reading about this go, "Mr. Edison, what are you thinking? You had just tinkered with the incandescent light bulb. We're not even near inventing it. We're not even near creating it. And the idea of lighting New York, it's it's What were you thinking? What were you smoking? The equivalent thereof." And he goes, "Well, gentlemen, I said it to this major newspaper. We better get to work. We better make it happen." What happened with all the money that came in, he could now hire the people to do it. But the pressure of getting that done in 5 years made him do it in 5 years. It was a monumental work of persistence and discipline and detail. But he had a deadline. He didn't want to hurt his reputation. He didn't want to disappoint the public. He had to get it done in 5 years, and he did get it done in 5 years. So, he created his own pressure by using the publicity angle.