Transcription
Power and strength, first, it lives in the mind, right? So if I think myself strong, I am strong. If I think I'm like, you know, even with that, you know, Chinese delegate or when I've had altercations with somebody bigger than me or somebody's messed with me, you know, my and I knew maybe they, they could take me, you know, my mind, I'm like, "All right, man, you know, you may walk over here, but and you may beat me, but I promise you, you're going to be limping back. You're going to have to earn that." And that's kind of like that, that sentiment I've always had. Like, I don't ever put myself underneath. It's like, I'm going to brawl if I need to brawl. But again, like, I, I'm speaking this way, but it really isn't my go-to behavior. It was though. Like, I really didn't want to fight everybody when I was younger, and I wanted to express my opinion and force my opinion down other people's throats. And I'm like, "Why am I doing that?" And I realize that we do that one, ego. Your ego runs a mock. And then two, insecurity, especially when you're younger. You're trying to figure yourself out, so you don't know who the hell you are and be being grounded in in yourself. So I, I really think it's like just about pausing and not letting yourself kind of like run wild. But once you do that, cuz you then say like, "And when I did act, I had to do so in a way that assured it would not be mistaken for weak or uncertain of my abilities."
All right, so I'll give you an example. Paralinguistics, and you and I have talked about this. If I don't want somebody to go into this room, I'm going to say, "You can't go into this room." Versus, "You can't go into this room." So my tone, my pitch, I speak with conviction. So what do you sound like when you deliver your information? What words do you use? That's the thing. What do they hear? What do they hear when they hear you? Like, I know a lot of people who can't watch themselves on camera, can't hear themselves. Like, "Oh my God, is that what I sound like?" Then fix it. How would you start to fix it? Then look, you want to strengthen your voice. You don't want to be like, "Okay, you can't go into this room. You can't go into this room." It's like, "You can't go into this room." You also have to believe in what you're saying and why you're saying it. So when I did my previous job, like, I was protecting the President of the United States. I had the backing of the U.S. Secret Service. And look, having that gives you confidence. Gives you confidence. But I also went through training, academy, and I had people get in my face. I had to deal with things. But the more adversity you deal with, the more resilient you become. When you don't deal with adversity, when you avoid conflict, you you don't know what to do when real conflict shows up. Repetition, repetition, and creating habits that are healthy, so that when things happen, you default to those habits and you pull up that version of you. So I have that version of me that's the stand your ground version. It's like, "Oh no, no, no." But I'm also tactical about it. So somebody can come at me or do something or betray me, I'm not going to come at them at the most obvious of ways. I'm also not going to do anything that brings me lower. You know, and it gets really hard, man, cuz that Greek part of me and that coins part of me wants to come out. But I will, I won't call that person names. I really, really will control. But I'm like, "I'll fix you in some other way." But the right way, the best way, the strategic way, not to hurt you, but to kind of get you out of their way.
And you know what's interesting too? There's two main reasons, or well, there's two types of personas to be careful of: people who are extremely self-righteous and people who use justification. And so let me start with justification. When I did interviews, polygraphs, I would interview people who did really horrible things. And can I tell you, they would almost always justify it. We, we would have the saying, "Any person can do anything at any given moment in time, given the opportunity," because you can justify it to yourself. "Well, I did, I punched him or I hit him with a bat because he shoved me." That's justification. Or, "I'm going to go after him and his money," you know, or after his family because he did this to me or she did that to me." And justification is very dangerous because you can, you use that to justify you doing something bad, or somebody else will use that to justify harming you. At the end of the day, what you're doing is horrible. Just be aware of that. You're just justifying it to yourself. Even when I interview people who committed crimes of passion or just crime in general, "Well, I did this to her because she did that, because she led me on, because she teased me, whatever, whatever the case may be, or because she, you know, betrayed me in this way." And so people hit back. So you ever have that time where you're like, "I can't believe this person did this to me?" He's like, "Yes, you can. You know why? Because in their minds, they justified what they're doing to you." That's why sometimes we have these moments like, "What are they thinking?" They're thinking, "I'm justified."
The other persona to watch for is self-righteousness. That is huge. So that's the, "I am holier than thou. I know better. I'm, I'm above you." Or when you have people, you ever, you ever have anybody be like, "You know what? I'm really going to pray for you because you need it." Right? Anybody says that to you, it's like, first of all, it's the most condescending thing you can say to someone because it's insinuating, "I'm closer to God or Allah or whoever you believe to than you are, so I'm going to talk to him for you." No, don't worry about it. I'll go talk to him or her myself. And with self-righteousness, it's like, you believe you're so right. And that's rigidity. That when you think, "No, no, no, I'm so right. Let me tell you how right I am." Flags. And look at how people treat other people. Because if they gossip about other people, they treat other people, the poor, the the wrong way, I promise you, they're doing the same thing to you or will do the same thing to you. You have to look at people holistically, who they are with everybody, because that's going to come back to you.
I think that there's so many different outlets. It's like assessing yourself. Surround yourself with strong people. If you're around people who like, lose their, guess what you're going to do? Lose yours. And don't mimic other people when they escalate. Don't, don't, don't follow the, don't follow. I get trapped in that all the time. I really do. I've noticed that about me. I keep calm. I keep calm. I keep calm. But then like after a certain moment, like if someone keeps escalating, I keep calm. "At least you're doing good. You're doing good. People escalate, Lisa. It's okay. You're doing good." And then they just keep escalating. At some point, I freaking just like, "When you when you escalate, what do you do? Do you yell? Do you what do you do?" Yeah, my, my tone gets louder, my voice gets louder, I get harsher. I mean, don't get me wrong, like I've been in spaces like that when I feel that, I really remove myself. I go, I go, I go quiet. So you said something earlier like, "I go silent." When I can't keep composure, I go silent. If I disappear from someone's life, I'm done. Or I've gone silent. Like, I'll remove myself or even the situation, and I'll come back. But if I can keep composure, like I will assert myself. Like you have authority. Asserted. And authority doesn't mean being a jerk. Authority doesn't mean being condescending. And in fact, authority is a strong influence tactic. When you are perceived as an authority in something, people will acquiesce to you more. This is why we acquiesce so much to to doctors, because we see them as authority. Law enforcement, because they've got a uniform on. Financial advisors, so many people acquiesce to them because we see them as an authority. Meanwhile, like, they could have graduated at last in their class. But when you assert yourself as an authority in body posture, in voice, in speech, and how you present yourself, people are less likely to mess with you.
So from the onset, like I had to learn this a lot in the interview room. When I would interview people who were criminals, who would see me and be like, "Oh man, this is going to be an easy day." Because I worried about that initially. But I controlled that from the moment I met that person. From the moment I met them. From the moment, break it down. What do you mean by that? "Hi, how are you? I'm Evie Pompurous. Nice to meet you." And if I wanted to throw in "Special Agent," I freaking would. "Hi, I'm Special Agent Pompurous. Nice to meet you. Come with me." Now, granted, this was an interview environment, but I set the tone. Now this person understands that I, she's an authority here. I establish myself as an authority. And that's really, really important. So I won't be passive. Passive is a no-go because that that builds up and then you blow up on people. But if I'm also dealing with someone who's like, "I'm sorry, a buffoon," I'm done dealing with you. I will minimize my detailing, my my my dealing with you. I'll deal with you via email if I have to. I'll pull back. I'll have my manager deal with you. I'm like, "Hey, I don't want to talk to this guy. Guy's a bozo. I know I got to work with him. Can you handle him?" So I'm strategic. I don't need to handle him.
I want to go back to verbal economics. Um, talk to me about that, because I'm such an um advocate for like, words matter. The words you use for yourself, um, the words you use to others, um, can signify either with yourself that you're inferior or um, superior. And then to others, whether you feel, because like you said, right, authority. So the language that you use in order to express through authority, I assume, is extremely important. Um, what are the things that you feel make all the difference in that situ, in situations?
So verbal economics is actually didn't come from me. It came from my one of my former colleagues, Lee, who's a great interview negotiator. And he said, he, we talked about language, and he said he turned the coin. Cuz we were talked about how important it is, the words we use, because we would be very mindful of the words we use when we would talk to people, because certain words can put people off and cause, you know, make them shut down. In other words, can invite them in and make you appear more open, and they communicate with you more. So he would call it verbal economics. Meaning, we live in a time where we think, "I have to say everything I'm thinking." Like, I was mentioning this woman once, she's like, "You know, I talk really fast because I'm trying to get everything I'm thinking out of my mouth." And I'm like, "Why? Choose what you let out. Not every idea that pops into your head should you verbalize, because when you do that, you're not putting weight into your words." So verbal economics means choosing your words thoughtfully. And then what you're about to say, think of it as money, right? And the more powerful, impactful the words, the more money you're putting down. It's currency that you're using with another human being. And if those words you're using have currency, have weight, they're going to impact that person more. But if you're just like spewing out everything you're thinking, there is no currency there, because nothing is really truly of value. Look, it's going to happen where people and things are going to come out the wrong way or say the wrong thing. But when you can slow it down and really use this, this mindset of verbal economics, "My words matter, and they have weight, that they impact another human being in some way." And it can impact them in a positive or negative way. And it can also impact me, whether what I get from that relationship is positive or negative.
So how did you start assessing which are the high dollar bills and the low dollar bills? It depends on the situation. Like with, I talk about priming a lot in the book. And priming is, you can prime people to to be more open with you. And it's actually good negotiators, good people who do business. Before you do a pitch, we used to have the same, even in the interview room. Your opening line, you should always write that thing down. That should be rehearsed. You should never fly by the seat of your pants. That opening line is going to be the defining, the defining moment and how the rest of your conversation is going to go. So like priming words. You know, "Hi, I'm Evie. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. I, I can't wait to talk to you about the partnership and create an open relationship and an honest one where we can cooperate together." Now, in there, I threw in priming words: open, cooperative, relationship. So I'm priming you to want to work with me, to create this open environment. You can also do that with your environment, as far as like having open space, letting people not feel closed in. You can prime situations and people. Talking to people, uh, man, tables. Like, I, I could teach people who do interviews or talk to people. Like, and you do, you have solid, you have open space here. But people do negotiations and they have tables between them. Biggest 101 fundamental: never negotiate with somebody with a table between you two. I, I taught this interviewing thing for realtors, how to sell better, better. I did a speaking presentation, and they worked so hard to like, get people to connect with them, to sell them like property and all this stuff. And then they go to sit down to do paperwork. And what do they do? You worked all this time to build this rapport, and the minute you sit down at the table, you just killed it. Because now it went from an informal, "Hey, we're buddies," to like, "All right, sit down and do business." And think about it, the moment somebody sits down and does business, what do everybody do? You straighten up. "Okay, going to do business now. Okay, I'm going to do my interview now." I don't want that guy or gal. I want the person before. I want my buddy. And you have a table.
I've heard you said t when you can't actually see their body. And the whole point is to read people's body language. Oh yeah. How can I read somebody's? One, tables work as barriers, right? So there they are, psychological barriers. There's me, and then there's you. Even I teach, I have a podium. I never stand behind my podium. I come out from the podium. I walk through the aisles of my classroom because I let my students know, "Hey, it's not me and then you, right? It's us. I'm here with you." Are we doing dates wrong then? Because people go on dinner dates. No, for a date, you don't know this dude. You, you're a guy like, you want to have some space between you. Like me walking through the aisle and having a couple of feet between me is different. When you're sitting at a table, what are you talking about? One to two feet. And on a date, like I would be super thoughtful, especially if you don't know somebody. Like first dates, especially using apps or whatever, you really got to be mindful about who you meet. Public places, the first few dates, definitely have some space. Monitor that space like between you and that person. Don't give personal information. Don't have them come pick you up at your home. I know I just went on a tangent with this, but I have so many people ask me about this. And I'm like, "You have to be really careful. Don't trust unconditionally. Like, you don't know people." I really like that because if you know that you're about to put yourself under pressure, whether it's a date, or whether it's a job interview, whether it's something else, having these tactics of like, how far to sit from someone. Like, I think about a lot of things. I don't even think about that, or like how that would impact you. But I think about, this is what happens when you're under pressure. You think about who yourself. And that's all you're thinking about. Me, me, me. I, I, I. I'm under pressure. I'm under this. And you're not thinking about the person across from you.
One of the ways I deflect pressure to for myself is I'll think about that person. I forget about me. That I'm going to present, I'm going to speak, I'm going on camera. And what I do is to relieve the pressure off of me, I'm like, "What is that person want?" And so when I can focus on who the recipient is, I forget about myself. So that is truly another tactic. Like, I just shot something, uh, project here. And you know, I wanted to make sure I did a really good job when we were shooting. And I took it back to like, I'm delivering something for the viewer, someone, something, somebody's going to see. And that's what matters. So I took myself out of it. "I'm nervous. I'm, I want to do a good job. Me." And I made it about them. "What do they need to see? What do they need to hear?" So that it feels impactful, authentic. And that takes that distracts me from me. But if you're presenting something, so to speak, be prepared. Like, a big part of pressure is not being prepared. If you're prepared, that's one less thing you have to worry about. If you got on the right outfit, that's one less thing you have to worry about. If your hair and makeup are done in the way, in the way you feel confident, that's one less thing you have you have to worry about. So I look at it as columns. Let's say I'm nervous about something, right? I'm nervous about speaking because I'm just nervous. And I, the pressure of speaking. So here's that column, speaking. I'm like, "All right, here's where I have a struggle." But what, what other columns can I control? Well, I can control what I wear, so I feel good and strong. And I can control how I look. And I can control how much I prepare. And I can control my paralinguistics, my voice, my speech, my rate. I can. So I'll check all these other boxes where here it's like, "All right, here I'm still kind of flailing a bit." But I control all these other things. Because you can go into a situation and then again, going back to my previous career, where we would go into situations, have all these protocols in place. But in the end, I don't know how someone's going to respond or react, or if there's going to be an attack or whatever is going to be. But I controlled all these other verticals. I'm prepared. I'm wearing. I'm, I've got my gear on. I've got my shoes on that I need to run or fight with or whatever. My hair is pulled back. I'm confident. I got a good night's sleep. Whatever I need to do. I checked all those boxes. So that when something does break bad, or there is pressure, I'm, I'm, I'm good here. I just got to worry about here.
I love that. God, every time I talk to you, like the thing that always just screams so much is you just take ownership. You take ownership over your actions. You take ownership over the outcomes. And I heard you in your book talk about taking ownership over the outcome. And a lot of people give, I like to say, give away their power by saying, "But this person advised me, this person told me to do this." And so they're giving away their ownership over the situation. But I've heard you talk about like, no, even if other people give advice, it's on you. Um, talk to me about that. Have you always felt like that? Um, how do you do that? And how do you do that and not going back to the shame thing? Take ownership over it, but not shame yourself.
I love what you just said. Because what you said is exactly right. What a lot of people do is we'll blame other people because we think we're protecting ourselves. "I'm going to blame this person because I don't want it on me." But what you don't realize is in the long term, you do damage to yourself because that becomes your default. And now nothing is your fault, and everything is everybody else's fault. And then nothing's going to work out for you. And you give your power away. When I blame other people, I do the exact same thing. And I came from an agency where they're like, "I don't, they don't, they don't want to hear excuses. Save your excuses." So I was also groomed, like, "Own your, you make a mistake, own it. You make a mistake, fix it. Nobody wants to hear it. Find out what it is, fix what it is, and then that way you can move forward, forward, and excel." You make yourself more insecure and you hit your own confidence when you do that when you blame other people because you're saying, "All these people have control over me. I have no control over my fate or what happens." I'm the captain of my ship, so I'm going to steer the direction it goes. And if a wave comes and it knocks me over, then I'm going to fix my ship and steer another way.
I love that so much. And that, so I've been, as you know, been suffering with health issues for five years. And for the first three years, I was going to all the doctors, waiting for them to fix me. But over time, I figured out what was wrong with my gut. And there was, um, abuse on antibiotics. I was getting sick a lot. And so I was blaming the doctors. If the doctors thought they were giving me too many antibiotics, I shouldn't have been having too many. They were just prescribing it. And I was then going to the doctors to fix me. Then the ownership thing came in. I was like, "Hang on a minute. If I say that it's on them that caused this, how can I then take ownership over fixing it?" But if I flip my mind and say, "Lisa, this was you." The doctors didn't force antibiotics down my throat. I swallowed them myself. The doctors would say, "You know, I probably shouldn't give you this many antibiotics." Never once did I say, "Why?" Never once did I sit there with Google and go, "What is the worst thing that can happen if I take too many antibiotics?" And once I realized, I was like, "Wow, this is all my fault." And that's amazing because now I can fix it. Now I'm not waiting for the doctors to fix me. And immediately, I started going to biohacking. I got like glucose level monitors. And and and since then, over the last two years, is when I've finally been able to make change.
Do you realize that this is, this is profound for me. Do you realize that you were taking these medications and not questioning anybody? Why? Authority. Yeah, a doctor gave it to you. Oh, he must know. He must know. Well, if he's telling me to take it, and we don't question it, it's like, "Oh, okay, doctor. The doctor told me to do this. The doctor told me to do that." But you're choosing to put it into your body. Like, we have no sense of like, like responsibility over ourselves. You are responsible. Like, I am responsible for myself. So whatever happens to me happens to me because I choose certain things to some degree. Like, I choose. Like, I have a choice. And like, I monitor that decision. And if I choose wrong, I choose wrong. Rather than like, "This person, this." If I could say one of the things that I don't want to say it's the pet peeve, but one of the things that disappoints me sometimes with folks is like, when I hear excuses, and I'm like, "Why are you blaming everyone else for everything?" Like, life is being done to you. You're not, you're not doing to life. You're not experiencing life. You're not, you're not doing it. It's being done to you. Everything is being done to you. And it's so easy to get into that mindset, right? Because a lot of the time, excuses are valid. Like, they're valid. Right? If you were to come to me and you were like, "Oh my God, I just got robbed." And you're like, "This guy, he was like seven feet tall and I didn't see him coming." And so all of these things. Like, you know, and let's say they robbed you. But if you had said, "I put my..." Oh God, this is a terrible situation. In fact, I don't want to be victim-blaming. And I worry that I'm about to go down a whole victim-blame thing. There's actually something called victimology. Really? Yes. What's victimology? Victimology is when we look at people who have been victims of crime to see if there's certain patterns. And the, there's, there's certain things that make somebody either more or less susceptible to crime. And lifestyle is one of them. And so your lifestyle can impact you. It's not about blaming. It is lifestyle choices.
How do you separate the two then? Well, it's about assessing. So it's like, if I go out and I get drunk, and I'm with a friend, and my friend leaves me, I can either blame my friend for leaving me if something happens to me. Or I could be like, "I went out. I chose to get drunk. Part of that's on me because I didn't have a proper plan in place to make sure I had the right friend, to make sure maybe I didn't go out and get drunk." I, growing up, avoided drinking. I grew up in New York, and there's a lot of bad things happening out. But I wanted to go out and be young and experience the nightlife. So I chose. I'm like, "I'm going to choose to have my wits about me." But I can still go out. And so I avoided drinking because I wanted to make sure nothing happened to me. That helped, helped me stay safe to some degree. Or, you know, working out at night. Like, I, I've expressed this to you. I work out at night, and I go running at night. But I will make an assessment. I'm like, "Oh man, it looks really desolate here tonight. I'm not going to go." So victimology is about looking at patterns. And then the findings in the research of victimology also show that if somebody's a victim of one crime, that they potentially are victimized multiple times. So usually, you're not a victim once, but multiple times. And I think that's a really good thing to look at, not just when we're talking about crime or something being happened to you, but in life. So if you see that you're constantly being victimized by people, right? This person took advantage of me, then this person, this person did this to me. So if you're constantly in that victim space, ask yourself, "What am I doing to let people think that they can do this to me?" There's something I am doing or not doing that lets people think that they can treat me this way, that they can take advantage of me. And then being honest with yourself to change that.
Go. I so freaking hope people hear that. Like, I really do. Because if you can, if anyone that's listening or watching can take their their emotions out of it and just listen to what you're saying, it's so empowering. Like, it's so freaking empowering. Um, and that's what I'm always about, like, how do we look at situations that can be seen or are freaking negative and go, "How can I use this to empower myself for next time so that I'm not a victim?" Or, you know, that I can at some point, right? Like you've said many times, you can't control other people. You can't control if someone's going to attack you. But I've even heard you say about like a breakdown of attack, where they look at people who have their guard down. Oh, they, there was a study done where they look at offenders, violent offenders, they ask them like, "How do you pick who you're going to target?" And they say, "Oh, I just body language. I would just assess the person." And they pick targets that look easy, distracted on their phone, not paying attention, squeamish, poor body posture, you know, not paying attention, whatever it is. The, if the person looks like they're going to go down easy, then that's who they pick. They don't want a fair fight. Bullies don't want a fair fight. They don't, they're not looking for their equal. They're looking for people that they can take over and abuse. That's why children are constantly being victimized because they're the least able to take care of themselves. And so that's why you see so much of that. But that's what bullies and predators do. Fight back. Speak back. Walk away. Like, you have choices. You have choices. If you are fed up with people pushing you around and you find you want to learn how to command respect and stop letting your emotions take over, then click here right now. Because even when I feel pressure sometimes, fight is not the right thing to do. It's not. Sometimes the right thing to do is to.