Robert Greene
Appearances
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
everybody has narcissistic tendencies and we're all self-absorbed but nobody wants to admit it it's always somebody else it's always donald trump it's always elon musk but everyone has a manipulative side there are no saints in this world but can you use it productively yes most definitely there's deep narcissists who are very problematic and there's healthy narcissists and knowing the distinction between the two will help save you years of misery what if i'm dealing with a narcissist
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And that holds people back. So it's easier to not do anything and stay in your little bubble and go, God, if only I had had money, I would have written this great novel. I would have done this, this, that, or the other. It's just crap. You're trying to delude yourself. And you're afraid of actually putting your neck out on the line. That's what it comes down to.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's a common syndrome among adolescents.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It is, and it's very addicting and it's kind of a narcotic. But the thing is, so you've got this realm of possibility, which you could become anything. I could become an actor. I could become a great novelist. I could become a CEO. I could be Elon Musk II. But the way the world works is you don't achieve anything unless you have limits.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Having limits and hitting that wall and that resistance is what makes you learn, is what makes you great, is how the human brain functions. And what I mean by that is, Let's say you're learning the piano. You can't just start out playing anything and just doing all the notes. It's very limited what you can do, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And you have to go within those limits and those walls and learn the first things first, and then those walls start to expand a little bit. But you're constantly pressing against limits, and those limits make you stronger and stronger. It's like when you're swimming... The resistance in the water is what makes your muscles bigger, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The resistance of limits is what makes your brain bigger, makes you more successful, makes you learn. But if all you do is live in that nebulous world of possibility, you're never developing, you're never getting any muscle, you're never getting any strength. You're not developing life skills. It's a tough world, Stephen. You know that. People can be very cruel.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It can be a very mean-spirited world. You have to have a thick skin in this world. You have to develop some toughness. And you develop that toughness by trying things out and by failing. And if you fail, you know, like... Um, my wife's in the film business and we know a lot of actors and actor, you know, you think it's all glamorous, but it's actually like 99% rejection.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
People are constantly rejecting you and they're rejecting you for things that are, you have no control over like your looks, you know? And so what separates the actors who succeed and the ones who don't are those that have a bit of a tough skin. They don't take that rejection and go, oh, I'm so unworthy. I hate myself. Oh, the world's so awful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They go, all right, I'm going to go on to the next one. I learned what wasn't working there. And you develop some toughness. If you don't develop that toughness, you're never going to get anywhere in life. And you get it by trying and trying and working at it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Definitely not money. Definitely not reputation. Perhaps, I mean, yeah, or fame. Perhaps network can help. But what you really want to do in this world, in the 21st century, in our decade, is skills. You want to be learning skills. The more skills you have, and I mean true skills, I don't mean trying something out for a year and then going on to something else for another.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I mean getting real skill at something, right? Whether it's in computers, whether it's in the arts, in any field.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
real skill, and then if you can develop two or three skills by the time you're in your 20s and still have some fun, the world is going to open up to you because what you're going to be able to do when you turn 30 is you're going to go, I can take that skill that I learned in computers, I can take that skill I learned in media and in creating a podcast or whatever, and I can create a business that's going to combine the two in a way that no one has ever thought of because I'm a unique person.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The world will open up to you. Skills are the gold of the 21st century. And if you're seduced by money, if you think about money, you're doomed because that's not what matters in life. Because let's say you have two job offers. One is at Goldman Sachs for...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
opening position for $150,000 a year and one is at some startup for $30,000 a year and you're living in New York and you're going to be starving. You're going to be sharing a miserable little flat somewhere in Bushwick, whatever, okay? Take the $30,000 a year job because you're going to learn so much. You're going to be hands-on. Whereas in that other job, you're going to be lost in there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're going to be among... hundreds of other young people, and you're not going to have responsibilities. Here you're going to have responsibilities. So money is not what matters to you. Because when you're in your 20s, you can starve. You can live on less food. You can have it a little tough because you're young. I know myself. I was very poor. I lived in London.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I had a job in London in 1984, I believe. Yeah, 84. And I was making, I think it was 30 pounds a week. Maybe it's less than that. It was my starting salary. And my girlfriend at the time, the only thing we could eat was turnips and cauliflower. Cauliflower cheese was our main dish. But I was 25. I can handle it. So you can handle not making money and learning because that's what's most important.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. Well, I mean, also, you know, you look at somebody like Steve Jobs. I can relate to that because he wasn't interested in money at all. It was never the motivating factor. It's never been my motivating factor, right? I wanted to have fun and I wanted to be successful and I wanted to be able to write. He wanted to design the most beautiful pieces of technology in the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It ended up he was like the richest man in the world at the time, but he never cared about money. It wasn't what motivated him. I never cared about money, and now I'm not as rich as Steve Jobs, but I'm doing fairly well. Because it'll come to you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If you play the game right, if you learn the skills when you're young, and then you develop your own business, by the time you're 35, you'll be making four times what you would have made at that Goldman Sachs job, right? That's how the game is played these days. Starting your own business, being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is the most powerful position you can attain for, aim for.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Some people aren't, you know, destined for that. It's not in their DNA. But to me, that's what we should all be aiming for, to be your own boss. Because personally, I hated working for other people. But being an entrepreneur, starting your own business, one that has a niche in this world, you're going to make all the money that you'll ever need.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Okay, but the lesson for me in all of that is that altering your sense of what pleasure and happiness is. So in the moment, it's painful, right? And we don't like pain, nobody likes pain, I don't like pain, right? But if your sense of what pleasure is and happiness is only like here, from the present moment to here, it's gonna be very hard to get out of that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But if your sense of pleasure and happiness is here.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, the most common question I get, particularly from people in their 20s, is they don't really know where they're headed. They don't know what their career is, what I call in mastery their life's task. And I talk a lot about it in interviews and in the book mastery.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
then you've got power, you've got maneuverability, you have room to maneuver. And that's the key to the whole thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So, I mean, look at you now, is what I'm trying to say. You're pretty happy, I imagine. You're pretty fulfilled, right? And you wouldn't have gotten there If when you were 24, whatever, you just gave up because it was so painful, I better just go grab that easy job working for a bank or something. You'd be miserable now. Whereas look at you now. That's what I'm trying to open people's minds to.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Follow Stephen Bartlett here. That's the model.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you know, I worked for somebody, I was on the board of directors for this company, American Apparel, which no longer exists. And the CEO, Dov Charney, was the founder of the company, an incredible entrepreneur, who from one little shop here in Los Angeles, when I met him, created this empire. And it was incredibly rewarding. And he was, I'd say, a very fulfilled person. But he couldn't stop.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He couldn't stop. It was like a demon possessed him. He had to have more. He had to build more buildings. He had to have more American apparels all over the world. He leveraged himself. And then when the crash occurred in 2007, just after the company went public, he He was so in debt that the company never recovered, right? He tried too hard. He didn't know the limits, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I make the point that it is the most important decision in your life, figuring out what you were destined for, why you were born, what you were created for, what makes you unique. And I say that everything from that realization, from that understanding, kind of stems from that. Your sense of fulfillment, your happiness, everything will come from that one realization.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So part of this isn't—when I said if money motivates you, then you're going to have that demon. If fame and reputation motivates you, then that demon is going to seize you by the throat and going to make you work 18 hours until everybody eats your dust and you humiliate all your enemies, and you're miserable, right? Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So knowing who you are and knowing what matters is going to save you from that kind of demonic possession. Because you're actually not going to be very successful if you're like that. You're going to burn yourself out. You're not going to have very good ideas. What happens to a lot of people when they become successful is, first of all, it goes to their head. They think they have the Midas touch.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They think they've got the golden touch. And then their minds start going in this kind of singular direction. They learned how to do something, and they're just doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, and doing it. And they don't know how to learn. They don't know that there's other ways of doing things, right? And that's what happens when you become completely possessed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
and your mind isn't open and isn't free and isn't expanding and you're not creative anymore. To be creative will require you to try something different, to not expand your company endlessly like he did, and instead to take the five branches that you have here in Los Angeles and make the product better and be more creative with it and don't be possessed by money and fame and reputation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That's the answer, I think, there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's funny because I'm helping the son of an old friend of mine who's got that problem. And he's incredibly successful. I hope he's not listening to this. He's 20 years old. He's very wealthy. He's done amazing things. But he's one of those people who spread himself out to all these different things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I can't find a through line what connects them all except making money and having connections and stuff. And it's very alluring in this world, particularly, you know, where there's so many possibilities where you can get on the Internet. You can learn this, that the other people are doing these things. You can get into crypto. You know, you can start your own business here.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You can get into the health and fitness world. But life doesn't work like that. That's not how the brain functions. That's not what we were meant for. Because it doesn't start from you. The whole thing has to start from you. It can't start from the world. It can't start from what other people are doing. It can't start from what's sexy. It has to come from within. If it doesn't come from within,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
then you're going to be floundering for years and years and years. And so what I've done with this young person, whose name I won't mention but I love dearly, is what is it that really is in your heart? What is it that you really, really love? How can we connect this crypto with this media business that you're starting, with the sports world that you're starting, with this fitness thing?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And a lot of young people are very confused right now, and I don't blame them. These are very, very confusing times that they're going through, much more confusing than anything I had to deal with, particularly, I think, the influence of technology and social media.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
What connects them all, you know? And to me... I was thinking, I was getting the sense, we haven't solved it yet, but he's kind of excited. by celebrities and by that world. And that's fine. I think there's nothing wrong with that. So I'd say, well, maybe what connects all this is the film business, right? Because the film business is pretty wide ranging.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
To be a producer, to raise money, you're dealing with all kinds of different people. You're networking, you're meeting starlets. You know, it's a glamorous life, but it's focused, okay? So, you know, when you focus on something, The world just kind of opens up, but you have to be focusing on the right thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So if you were meant to be a writer and then you decide because you want money to go into law school and then you focus very deeply on law school, what will happen is for a year or two, you'll be able to skid by, but then the wheels will start going slower and slower because you're not interested in it. You're not connected to it. You get bored and your focus will start falling to pieces.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But if it's something you love, you can focus on that for 7, 8, 10, 12 years and never get bored.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You were the one that was interested in this other.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And what I mean by that is to know who you are, to know what you were meant to do in life, why you were born, what makes you unique, requires a lot of reflection on yourself, self-awareness, self-knowledge. You have to go inward.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah, I remember this is something that wise people know. And if you're young, if you have like a mentor like you did, who could tell you the truth, the ropes as they are, it will help save you years of misery. I remember when we were at American Apparel, it was the year 2007. The company was just about to go public.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I was about to be put on the board of directors, and this man came to me who was like your investor, and he said, Robert, just make sure that Doves doesn't mindlessly expand. Make the brand focused. Have it focused on one thing, and then he will be successful. At the time, I thought that was interesting, but I didn't really have the guts to like explain that to Dov.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But there are people out there who understand the truth of this. But the other thing about envy, like you say, you see your other friend doing crypto and they're having so much fun and making so much money. I tell you, it's bullshit. They're not having as much fun as you think, right? People create a front on Instagram or TikTok or wherever where life seems so glorious.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But they're never having as much fun as you might imagine. In my book, Laws of Human Nature, I talk about Aristotle Onassis, who in the 60s was the wealthiest man in the world. He was married to John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis. Who could be happier than that? He had yachts, et cetera.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He was the most unhappiest, miserable person in the world, as Jacqueline Kennedy explained in her autobiography. He was such a mean-spirited, unhappy person. Yet everybody envied him because he had this beautiful wife and all that money. The people you envy are not doing nearly as well as you think, so don't let that influence your decisions in life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And when your attention is always focused so much on what other people are doing, what other people are saying, you know, what they think is hot, what they think is cool, you become kind of a stranger to yourself, right? So when I talk about that concept to them, it's like... It sounds interesting, Robert, but I have no idea what that is. I don't know what my life's task is.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. Amen. That's, you know, that's the church of focus I agree with completely. I mean, I hate using my own examples because I'm a rare ovis, you know, I'm a rare bird. But... You know, I have this book that I'm writing, okay, and it's on a very specific subject. And I get distractions all the time.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
People want, you know, I can do this speaking engagement in India where I've never been before or Egypt, you know, kind of thing, or get involved in this television project. And I'm actually never really seduced by it because I just love writing. But where it really comes down to is I'm writing this book and it's been going really not well.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's because I'm not focused on the actual thing I'm trying to say. So you can bring that level of focus down to the finest, finest point of your business or your writing or whatever. What is it you're trying to say? What is it you're trying to accomplish? What is your brand really about? Get into the nitty gritty, get into the little fine grains of sand and know what that is.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I want you to do this following. I want you to... Robert Greene is one of the most influential writers in history. Unraveling the secrets of power, strategy, and human psychology that are essential for purpose, resilience, and success.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So every time I'm writing my chapter and I start writing about something that's not directly relevant to what it's about and what the reader is going to be interested in, I'm making a mistake and I make the mistake for several weeks and then I realize it and I pull back.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So that level of focus has to have a lot of energy behind it because you're so in love with what you're doing that when you deviate from it, this little radar inside of your brain goes, you're off, you're off, you got to get back to it, right? And It's painful, but when you do get back to it and when things do click, it's incredibly pleasurable.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So the focus for young people that seems so painful, God damn it, everyone else is having so much fun and I'm having to learn this. Just keep telling yourself that you're doing something that your brain is going to reward you with several years down the line.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Now, that's maybe 30% or 40% of the emails that I get. It's quite high, but it's not all of them. But it is a trend I've noticed with young people who are going through, I think, very, very confusing times. And I'm very empathetic to it because I was actually someone who was quite lost in my 20s. And I know the pain that that can cause. Not feeling like your life has any meaning.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So that friend of yours that seems to be having so much fun, in three years, they're going to be sliding down the ladder working at some crap job, whereas you're going to be rising up. So just keep your mind on the larger issue there and know that working with what your brain works well with will pay incredible rewards down the line.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, I mean, I know I can name five other podcasters who have the same story as you who told me that. Lewis Howes, Chris Williamson, Jay Shetty. They all have the same story. For several years, nothing. Crickets. And I knew these people when they were just starting out. And then that happens. I remember when I was working with 50 Cent on the book The 50th Law.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, people look at rap stars and they go, wow, the glamour, the fun, the excitement, the sexiness, the lifestyle. But he said, you know, I knew him because I was with him. Nobody worked harder than 50. He was incredibly disciplined and incredibly focused. And when he made it in the music business, it took incredible years of difficulty, hardship, and failure. But nobody ever sees that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They only see him in concert and all the glamour and all the fun. They never focus on the years of grit and near failure. He got shot and nearly died. His record label dropped him. He had to work his way back up into the music industry from the very bottom until Eminem finally noticed him. But we don't see that in these celebrities, all the grit and the hard work that took them to get there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
We just see the success and we get seduced by the success.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So figuring out what that is, is incredibly important. And the reason why I like this book so much is we tend to think of intelligence as intellectual, as, you know, computer programming or mathematics or whatever. Whatever it is, you know, having a PhD in this field. But that's not intelligence. Intelligence is also bodily intelligence.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Like somebody like Kobe Bryant in basketball is as intelligent as Albert Einstein, but in a different way. So you have a parent who's always geared towards intelligence. going to the best school and being an intellectual giant, and their child wants to do ballet or sports or something, and you kind of look down on that and you say, no, no, no. You're setting your child up for misery.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, I think that's something that really is tormenting a lot of young people. What does life mean? What will give me a sense of meaning, right, to what I'm doing, to where I'm headed, to my daily experiences? And not having that is deeply disturbing. And I've been through that myself. I think I'm getting a lot of that kind of feedback and a lot of those emails among others.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Recognize what one of these frames are for your child and press on it and let them go in that direction because it's what they're naturally gearing towards. It's what's fun, right? So for me, it was linguistic intelligence, words. Since I was a child, words bewitched me. I can't believe that we have words to name things and that there are these symbols with letters that have sounds.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But a lemon isn't a lemon. It's just a word. And I was like, five years old? What the hell can that be? That's so interesting, you know, that you could take a word apart and spell other words with it. So I knew very early on that it was words, words, words, words. And I absolutely stink at that. And one of these intelligence is mechanical intelligence, knowing how to build things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm terrible at that, which is very odd because my father was brilliant at that and he wasn't good at any of the others and I didn't inherit it. So that goes all, you know, that kind of debunks genetics right there. So figuring out which one of those and leaning in it and making that the direction of your life is so, so important.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So if your thing is interpersonal intelligence and you understand that and yet you're not heading into a job in which you're social and around people, you're going to be so miserable. But if you know that what your thing is interpersonal intelligence – you've got like 100 different directions you can head into. That doesn't mean you have to only be a social worker.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It just means you have to be a leader of people because you understand you like being around people, you like working with others, you're very empathetic. There could be 100 different kinds of jobs. But once you know that, it gives you a sense of direction. It's by far the most important step for people, and I always recommend people reading this book because it's very, very important.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, it's ugly in the sense of, you know, it's an admission that you feel inferior, that you feel that somebody is better than you are. And who wants to admit that? You know, there's a very famous psychologist named Alfred Adler from the 20s. He was a disciple of Freud.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He thought this ability of always wanting to be better and superior to others was the most motivating factor of 90% of human behavior. that we always want to feel at least that we're superior in some way. And the sense that we're inferior creates what he calls an inferiority complex.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So it's very, very painful to tell yourself that this person is doing better than you are or that they're younger and better looking than you are, that their wife is more interesting than you or their kids are doing better because it means it's a slight on you, right? We are very prone to envy genetically. by the way our brains operate.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So it's a known factor that chimpanzees are prone to feeling envy, right? If you give one chimp a banana or a grape and don't give another one, they'll be giving you that kind of evil eye, the stink eye that we associate with envy. So it's something that's in primates. And what it comes from, I believe, is our brains operate by comparison. That's how we learn. That's how we understand things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
We understand that this is a wild animal because it's not that other thing over there. Our brains compare bits of information to decide what is what, what's different from what's the other thing. So our brains are geared towards comparing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And when you create a social animal, we are the most social animal on the planet, and you have that brain that's constantly comparing, we're using that mechanism to compare ourselves to other people and always wanting what other people have.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And they've noticed in hunter-gatherer societies from back in 30,000 years ago, the few that still existed in the 20th century, that envy was a huge problem among them.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so that when one person was given a gift, everybody in the tribe was so upset and angry that the person who was given the gift had to give it to other people so that they wouldn't be the target of envy because it could lead to being murdered, right? Right. So envy is deeply ingrained in all of us. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others, okay? But we don't want to admit it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So if I compare myself to some other writer who I think is having a better life than I am, who's sold more books than me, what I'll do in my mind instead of saying, He deserves that or she deserves that because they are actually a better writer. I'll go, they don't really deserve it. They're a hack. They're just doing that because they know what the public wants.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
My books are going to be read 100 years from now, but nobody will read their books in five years. I justify it to myself. I don't feel envy. No, no, no. I'm not saying that person is superior. In fact, they're actually inferior to me. That's the games that we play when we envy other people. And it's something that social media is like a nuclear bomb of envy. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So 60 years ago, I wouldn't have known what my neighbors or friends from college are doing and how much more money they're making and how happy they are. But now you know what everybody on the planet is doing and how good they are and how happy they are and the incredible trips they're taking and, you know, the great schools that their children are getting into. on and on and on.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So it's this machine for manufacturing envy and it's infesting our political system as well. It's seeping into all aspects of life, but nobody wants to talk about it and nobody wants to admit it. The main thing with envy is to admit that you feel it, okay? So I will say, I will get on my hands and I will say, you know what? Sometimes I actually envy Ryan Holiday. He's 30 years younger than I am.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you know, you have to get out of this way of thinking that so many people have, which everything has to be simple and linear. And I'm headed in this direction. There's got to be a solution. Like I'm hacking my way to the truth. Life doesn't work that way. Life is very complex. So I can't give you a single track answer to finding your life purpose, you as an individual.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He's written already more books than I have. Before I even wrote my first book, he's got a family. He's got these great homes. He's doing really well. Yeah, sometimes I feel envy. I'll admit it. OK, if you don't admit it to yourself, then it just festers and something ugly will happen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so what I'm able to do with the feelings of envy that I might have is I think, God, Robert, there's no reason to feel that way. Go through a process and go. He's actually deserved all the success he's had. He deserves it because he's worked really, really hard and he's a really good person. He's ethical. He deserves it. And so you should be happy for him, which I am.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm incredibly happy for him. But I have that first little twinge of envy. You have to admit it to yourself. And it's not an easy thing to admit because it means you're admitting you feel inferior for a moment. Can you use it productively? Yes. Yes, most definitely. And I talk in Laws of Human Nature about strategies for doing that. One of them is there's somebody that you envy in the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, instead of festering with that ugly emotion, make that a spur. Instead of envy, feel what's called emulation. where you feel competitive and you're going to be as good as they are or better than they are. You're going to use that sense of inferiority to motivate you to work harder and harder and harder.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Another thing is, so when somebody has failure and we're actually kind of gleeful about it, it's called schadenfreude, right? The opposite of schadenfreude is a phrase that Nietzsche called mitfreude, which means instead of feeling inferior, pleasure in their pain, you feel their pleasure as well. So instead of feeling envy, try and feel happy for the other person. Now you'll say, I can't do that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But yes, you can. You have to practice it. There's a great psychologist named William James who called it an as-if strategy. So just tell yourself that but I'm actually happy for their success. And when you do that, it's actually a really great feeling to actually feel good about somebody else doing well. It's a very ennobling feeling. It kind of raises you up.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Instead of lowering you down and making you feel ugly, it makes you feel noble. It makes you feel better about yourself. And it kind of opens up your whole emotional life. So I have other strategies in the book, but those are a couple.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I think it is. I think it is. I mean, I've noticed in the last six years or so, the sales have been higher than they've ever been before. And a lot of it, you know, young people went through the... the crash of 2008 and they had to deal with the COVID and the pandemic. And in those years where the world seemed upside down, the book was selling better than ever.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So I think helplessness and feeling a loss of control and feeling like there might be something out there that can guide me a little bit in this very confusing anarchic times that we're living through can be very seductive and very appealing. So, I mean, there's always change in our world. There's always chaos. But when the book came out in 1998, it wasn't nearly as chaotic as it is right now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I can give you kind of clues. I can kind of direct you towards certain paths that have worked for me and that have worked for hundreds of thousands of other people who've become masters or very successful in their field. And the first thing is you have to go inward. So you have to resist the pull that our culture gives you. You have to also really want this.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So I think you're right. I do attribute the success, not necessarily to my brilliance or to the brilliance of the book, but to the fact that people are feeling more and more helpless.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you know, our tendency would be to bring it down to the individual level, but I think it's also a cultural problem. I think our culture is contributing to it. The kind of aimlessness in our culture where... We don't really talk about the skills that are necessary to get ahead. Our culture promotes all kinds of bad values. It emphasizes fame and celebrity. It doesn't talk about discipline.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It doesn't give young men a sense of purpose and direction. It doesn't value them. You know, right now, a lot of young men feel like you know, it's women that are getting all the attention that what why am I, you know, what is my purpose here? So I think it's a cultural problem more than anything else. And when I say that, that kind of absolves individuals.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I don't mean to do that as well, because you are an individual, you live in this culture, and you've got to get yourself out of that kind of hole that this culture is, is imposing on you. And so I have a lot of sympathy for it, because I don't think it's completely your fault that you feel lonely or that you're isolated or that you don't have friends that you don't know how to socialize.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, I didn't have this phone in my hand when I was in my formative years and I had to meet women when I wanted to, you know, at that point in my life in the 70s when I was in my 20s. And so I had to go out there and suffer from rejection. I had to go to bars, I had to go to clubs. I had to put myself out there and meet them and it was tough.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I learned skills, seduction skills, whatever you want to call them, but just social skills about, you know, women think differently than you. They have different values than you. What are their values? Get outside of yourself and think about what it's like to be them and what you can do that's going to please them and get them how you can enter into their world. You can have none of that now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
None of that. It's all, you know. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Yeah. So you're not going out. You're not developing that muscle. You're not putting yourself in live and interacting with people where you're feeling their body language, their nonverbal communication. So no wonder your social skills are atrophying.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And as your social skills atrophy, it becomes harder and harder and harder to go out there and put yourself on the line because you're not good at it. So you fall into this hole of becoming lonelier and lonelier because it's harder and harder to get out of it. OK, so I have tremendous empathy and I would never like preach or blame young men in particular for the problems that they're having.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That's probably what it really comes down to. Are you unhappy? Are you frustrated? Are you hitting kind of rock bottom? Is this a turning point in your life where you realize if I keep going this way in five years, it's going to be really serious? Okay, it has to be important to you and you have to have a sense of urgency. And with that sense of urgency, you have to make some decisions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I empathize with it very much so because I myself went through a phase where I felt very, very unhappy and even suicidal when I was younger. And I understand how your life can turn that way. So I don't mean to ever come across as somebody who has all the answers because I think it's cultural.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But if you are an individual, you have to see that, first of all, it's not a bad thing necessarily to be lonely. Part of the problem of loneliness is it's got this taboo against it, this bad name, like it's terrible to be lonely, terrible to be alone, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so you feel shamed for the fact that you're lonely, but actually it's extremely important in life to be alone sometimes and to be able to be on your own and to think about yourself and to kind of come to terms with who you are and to embrace what makes you different. And you can't do that if you feel ashamed about being lonely or if you can't ever be alone.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So knowing how to be alone is very important. It's what will make you successful. It will bring you skills. So don't think of it as something necessarily terribly negative in your life. But the other thing is, You have to force yourself. You force yourself to go to the gym to develop muscles and become stronger.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You have to force yourself to interact with people and get out of your phone and have real experiences instead of virtual experiences. And if you do that 10 times a month, just like going to the gym 10 times a month, your social skills will get better and better. Your social muscle will get better and better. And you'll feel better about interacting with people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Isolation, yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, it's the difference between you feel very unhappy that you're not connecting to other people. We're a social animal, right? And you feel like people don't like you, they don't respect you, that you can't interact with them on a level that's meaningful. Whereas the feeling of being alone for me Wow, I don't have to be around ugly, idiotic people. I can just be by myself.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I can read a good book. I don't have to interact with people whose ideas I don't like. I can just be myself and be as weird as I want. Wow, what a relief. I'm so happy being alone. Now, I'm not like that all the time. I would be terrible. But sometimes I do feel that way. And that's the difference. And that's a good thing. I remember once I was on an airplane.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And one of the decisions that's absolutely essential is to pay less attention to what other people are doing, to pay less attention to what other people are saying, to pay less attention to what people are telling you you should be doing, and to go inward and think about yourself.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I saw a young woman who was by herself. And I could sense that it was driving her crazy. And she had to use her phone to never feel alone, right? Even in the middle, when we're flying over the ocean, she had to like somehow connect onto the internet and be sending emails and texts and anything. And I got this kind of desperation in her, this intuition, this feeling that,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
One is that envy is deeply ingrained in all of us. In fact, always wanting to be better and superior to others is the most motivating factor of 90% of human behavior. But if you don't admit it to yourself, that ugly emotion is like a nuclear bomb to all aspects of life. It will seize you by the throat and make you miserable.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
that being alone was just horrifying for her. And I think that's not a good thing. I think it's a terrible thing. So yes, isolation is bad. You're a social animal. You're meant to be around other people. But if you can't be alone, you can't ever figure out what makes you different or what makes you unique. So you have to be able to play both sides of the game.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, I had a girlfriend who was very understanding, who helped me a lot. So I wasn't completely alone. And then a little tiny voice inside of me was saying, you have interesting thoughts. You're a strange person, Robert. I've always been strange. I never was like other people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And even in high school, I was always something off about me, which could be made me lonely, which can make me be a problem. But I kept saying, there's something different and off about you, right? And you have skills as a writer. It's going to happen someday. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. Keep trying, right? And so finally, I'm 35, 36 years old.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I was in Italy at the lowest point of my life. And then I met this man there who was a book packager, Joost Elfers. And he asked me if I had an idea for a book. And suddenly just, I almost get emotional just thinking about it. Everything just shifted inside of me. It's like, yeah, I could write a nonfiction book. And I just improvised what would turn into the 48 Laws of Power. He got so excited.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He said, I will pay you to write the, I forget what the word is, to sell it, you know, and sell. and then I'll pay you to live while you write it. And so suddenly it went from darkness to light because I had a purpose.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And think about what you love and what your interests are that have nothing to do with what people are doing on social media. The things that grab you, that excite you deeply inside in a way that's almost irresistible. Now, for me, I can say that it was always been writing, okay? And I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing. But there's also things like...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And all of my misery, you know, I could take all of the bad bosses I had, all of the horrible, psychotic bosses who were so stupid and so political and so manipulative, and I could go, wow, I've got all this material to write The 48 Laws of Power. All my worst experiences can go into this book. It all has purpose for it. I'm not saying that's going to happen to everybody.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I was literally at that moment before it happened, pretty much near rock bottom. And I asked my wife, what would have happened if this didn't? Turn out, would I have committed suicide? If I'd gone the same path and done some hack job, I'd probably be incredibly overweight and alcoholic and I might have already died of a heart attack.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Or maybe I would have found my way to something else, but it was a really, really low point in my life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But, you know, opportunities come. You just have to be ready for them. So I had this opportunity that came to me. And you might say, well, that's lucky. That's never going to happen to me. But it will happen to you. You're just not ready for it. You're just not recognizing it. Some person will cross your path that can lift you out of what you're doing, who can connect you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But you're not paying attention. You're not ready for it. You don't think you deserve it. So there is opportunity every day of the week. It's around you is what I'm trying to say.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
right yeah i have a chapter in laws of human nature about the nature of your attitude creates your circumstances which is sort of the same thing you're saying which is there are two kinds of attitudes that i talk about one is a close as an attitude that's closing that's constrictive that's narrow and there's one that's expansive and open you could call that pessimistic and optimistic
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
When I ever read anything that has to do with ancient history, particularly the origins of humanity, hundreds of, you know, tens of thousands of years ago, I am so excited. I can read every single article about that, every discovery that takes place in Africa about our origins. It just puts my mind in a spin to think that this is who we were 100,000 years ago and this is who we are now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But the closed attitude is you're only seeing life through this narrow little spectrum where everything is bad. People don't like you. There's hostility all around you. And what that means is you're not seeing reality. You're creating reality. You're creating that reality. You're seeing it, and that's what happens to you. The expansive attitude is... Life is amazing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
All these incredible things are possible. I have hope. Any moment there could be an opportunity. And that's not reality either. But you're going to create that reality by feeling that way and taking, seizing an opportunity, the smallest crumb of an opportunity. You're going to create those good circumstances. So by your attitude, you create the bad things that happen to you in life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, it's an addiction, and you have to understand that you are being manipulated, that you are being programmed, that these people have figured out exactly the kinds of things, the kinds of images that are going to hook you, and you're being played. You're a fool. They're playing with you, just like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook knows all the algorithms to hook you to the news feed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're being played by... By the images they know how to create and keep you always wanting more. Just like fast food has all these tricks to constantly be eating their Doritos or whatever it is. Okay? But the other thing is... So I'm not going to preach and moralize about pornography from a prudish aspect of it because I'm not a prude.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I have a chapter in the book that I'm writing on the sublime, on what I call love sublime. And the act of loving not God, not the universe, but another human being, an individual, man or woman, gay or straight or whatever it is. and how sublime that is. And what it is is,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
In that relationship, the boundaries between the two of you are allowed to melt and your ego can soften and you can feel their world and they can feel your world. And you have a connection that for a social animal is the highest form of connection. It's superior to a religious connection, I'm sorry. And what it requires is we have the expression falling in love. And it literally is falling.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's like you fall, fall, fall, fall, fall. You're open and you're vulnerable and you're letting yourself fall. And when you're not, what stops you from doing that is you don't want to be hurt. You don't want to be vulnerable, right? Because if you open yourself to someone else, You're likely to get hurt.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so the moment there's a disagreement between you or there's a moment where a friend says something nasty about this person you're interested in, you stop falling. You cut it off and that romantic thing ends and dies. But if you get past that and you allow yourself to open up completely and you just keep falling, falling and falling and falling, this incredible thing can happen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I describe it to you and I describe it, the dynamics of that and examples of that and why for a social animal, it's like the ultimate experience. And so pornography is completely robbing you of that because love of another human being is a sense of enchantment. Right? There's like this spark that's happening, this electricity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I want to know more. That's like one of these things that hits you in the gut. Well, the people out there, you have that. There's something like that. You had it when you were a child. You had it when you were two, three, four years old, five years old, and you've lost it because you're listening too much to other people. So it's kind of like archaeology would be the metaphor.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it's obviously sex is involved, so it's a very physical relationship as well, but it goes beyond that. It also has a kind of spiritual component, right? But it's a sense of enchantment. Where the world becomes alive to everything is beautiful in the world in those moments, right? And pornography is disenchanting you from everything. It's making it all mechanical and ugly.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it has no romance to it. It has no dimension to it. It's almost as if the two humans involved in it or however are like machine parts, right? They're not human anymore. And there's no emotion involved. There's no kind of spiritual connection. It's depressing. It's really, really depressing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
When I see it, I feel really sorry that I experienced this and I feel really sorry for the people who are in that industry. I find it really, really ugly and alienating. I'm not, as I said, a prude and I could watch a great movie with a love scene in it and it's very exciting and beautiful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But the seduction element, the element of, I saw a movie recently, a Japanese movie by the great director Ozu from the 50s. And there was a man who was married and he was about to have an affair with this woman who was kind of seducing him. And they had this kiss. I go, wow. I was getting, I hate to use the word turned on, but I was getting really excited. It was so full of emotion and energy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it made the sexual element so much more powerful by the element of romance, by the element of something kind of transgressive. There was no nude bodies. There was no sex you ever get to see. But the lead up to it and the nature of the emotions involved changed. made it to me deeply, deeply exciting.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if young men particularly can't have that experience, if everything is so mechanical, is so computerized, it's gonna be like AI, it's gonna be like AI sex, you know? Then you're losing your soul, you're losing your capacity for really falling in love, for really having that kind of dimensional experience, which, by the way, can be extremely physical, and it can only last for three months.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm not saying it has to be 20 years with one woman or one man. It could be for three months, but it enriches you. It makes you more human.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones and those relics and those artifacts from your past, the things that really excite you, as well as the things that you hate.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Now, if I were to go, you know, kind of do a reverse engineering, which I do with a lot of people who are successful like yourself, I could go back and kind of find that with you where that hit you because you had a particular path that led you to doing these podcasts. I know it wasn't a straight line. You deviated. You were in some other job that you hated. And then you slowly found your way.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, but it's not just pornography. There's too much of that in social media as well on other levels. So... You know, you have to understand what it means to be a human being, first of all. And we're physical animals. We can't be in our heads all the time. We think with our bodies, right? We think with the chemicals mixing in our bodies. We're very physical and we're social animals to the core.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And that social animal, what makes us superior is that we connect. I can kind of look at you and I can maybe understand what you're feeling, what you're thinking. And we can have a discussion and our ideas can go back and forth and connect and go to higher levels of understanding or lower levels of disagreement. But that's what it means to be a human being. You're not this fucking AI machine.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're not a bot. You're not an algorithm. You're not a little piece of data that Mark Zuckerberg can mix with. You're a human being with a body, with physical problems, with hormones, with emotions that are coursing through you. And you have to become a physical creature, which means doing things in the world, taking action, working, building a business, doing things with your hands.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, exercise, meeting people. Be inside of your bodies. And when you're in pornography, you're disembodied. You're not in your body. You might be wanking off as far as I know. You know, probably are. But you're not really inside of your body in any meaningful way. And so it's like my hope, if there's any hope, is that... And there's seeds of it in the world now where young people...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
are going to start getting disgusted with this because the human spirit is still very powerful. And it's still like, I don't want to be like this. It doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel right. And at some point, my hope is in 20, 30 years after I'm probably dead, there'll be a movement where people are going to be so against this that they're going to go in the opposite direction.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They're going to be returning to what it means to be a human being. There'll be a rekindling of interest in our past, in the primitive past, in the pagan past, things I'm writing about in my book right now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I've seen things like that sometimes, like in the New York Times, they had an article a few weeks ago about a group of young people in college who hate social media and absolutely refuse it and will not, it's like almost like a fraternity or a sorority. They will not allow anybody into their group who ever looks at their phone. They go, yay, yay, right on, brother.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I could have, if I'm in college right now, I would join that. Not that I think everything is evil. I have my own phone, et cetera. But if I were young, that sense of this is a nasty world. I want to return to what it means to be a human being. I want to spark a movement, a revolution that goes back to that. I hope that that's going to happen. I hope that's in the cards.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
What is it about human nature that we just don't want to admit? Well, first of all, we don't want to admit where we came from, our primitive roots, that we are animals, you know, that before we invented language, you know, we were living like any other animal in the outdoors, right? And... I remember one day I was in Sydney, Australia about 10, 12 years ago. And they had this amazing zoo.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I hate zoos because I'm an animal lover and I think zoos are like prisons. But I wanted to see the strange exotic animals there. And they had this amazing chimpanzee compound, right? Where the chimpanzees could kind of roam around freely.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Each of those stories, there's a lesson for people, right? And that's what I compiled in mastery. But it all begins from a sense of urgency. I can't go on this way. I have to find something that I love. When you're 20 or 21, maybe you don't feel that urgency because you're so young. You know, you look good. You have lots of energy. The world's kind of open to you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I was fascinated and I sat there for like two hours because it was like watching an office in Manhattan or something where there was the alpha male and all the other males were kind of following behind him, like the CEO of a company. And I was looking at around and I noticed all the people were like giggling and they were so embarrassed and they couldn't, they were making, they were laughing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That was their reaction because it made them so uncomfortable to see this animal that's so much like a human being, but it's also still an animal. They were just so uncomfortable by it. It made me realize that we're very, very uncomfortable with that aspect of ourselves.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The part that we can't really control so much, that isn't logical, that isn't rational, that isn't clean, all these civilized things. So we're in deep denial of our animal roots, but we're also in denial of our own nature. So we want to imagine ourselves to be these kind of saintly, moral, rational creatures, always thinking about what's good for other people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, and it's just a fairy tale. That's not the world as it is. You know, it's the world more like I described in the 48 Laws of Power, where people are manipulative, where people are playing games. Not everyone. But everyone has a manipulative side. Everyone has a dark side. We actually are deeply irrational creatures. We don't want to admit it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
We don't want to admit the parts of ourself that reflect this kind of animal nature, our irrationality, our aggression, the envy that we feel towards other people. It's always other people who are like that. So I give the example of narcissism and I try to make the point in the book. In narcissism, you know, I make the point that everybody's self-absorbed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, when you're reading a book and you see your birthday happens to be there, which is a fact, you're like, whoa, that's my birthday, because it's you, your astrological sign, that's me. We all are interested in ourselves. We're all self-absorbed, right? And when somebody suddenly talks about us, our ears prick up. I'm not moralizing it, it's just the truth. It's me, it's everyone.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You don't want to admit it. It's always somebody else. It's always Donald Trump was a narcissist. It's always Elon Musk was a narcissist. Everybody has narcissistic tendencies. That's human nature and we want to deny it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
professional pyramid in life you know the presidents and such they've got narcissistic traits and it's sure sure and uh and some of them are are kind of what i call deep narcissists who are very problematic and some of them are healthy narcissists so a lot of artists are what i would call a healthy narcissist so a lot of our artists aren't necessarily the best people Right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They're not often, you know, you wouldn't maybe want to be their friend. They're maybe not the most faithful person as far as a partner is concerned. But they put all of that narcissistic energy into their work and they create beautiful things that contribute to humanity. Steve Jobs was not a very nice person. Right? He was very aggressive. He was very assertive. And he was a control freak.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But you have to be careful because time passes really quickly. Those years in your 20s, they go by faster than you think. And if you turn 30 and you never thought about this and you've kind of been wandering around trying things, it starts to get a little difficult, much harder for you. So it's better if you have that sense of urgency when you're 21 or 22.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But look what he created. Okay? That's healthy narcissism. What's the first thing they tell you in AA? I've not been in AA, but I know it. It's admitting that you're an alcoholic. If you can't admit you're an alcoholic, how are you ever going to stop being an alcoholic? You first have to admit it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So if you want to stop being a narcissist, you have to get on your hands and knees and admit that you are a narcissist. Because if you deny it and you say everybody else is, if you can't look inward, how can you ever change that? And even the most saintly person on this planet, the Mahatma Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, they had definite strong narcissistic tendencies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
There are no saints in this world. Everybody has these, have these tendencies. So get off your high horse, look inward and see those traits that are narcissistic within you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, who isn't? In this world today, you're always dealing with a narcissist.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yes, but as part of law number one, is this is the great thing about being a human being. You can do two things at once. You can be consciously playing the game of, I'm not going to outshine him because he or she is going to fire me because I'm going to make them feel insecure. But at the same time, in my head, I'm going, that person isn't better than me. They don't deserve their position.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They're actually kind of incompetent and stupid. And someday... By being loyal and learning from them, I'm going to rise up and I'm being smart because I'm a social animal. And then at that point, I can just say, get away from me. I don't need you anymore. I'm better than you. You can outshine them, but you play the game. But the worst thing is if you internalize it and go, I actually am inferior.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm not going to outshine because I'm not a good person. I don't deserve it. And then you've internalized this sense of inferiority and it's going to haunt you the rest of your life. So you can play both sides of the game at the same time. You talk about acting in life to get ahead. Do we have to be actors in your view?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, this is where I start getting a little bit cranky, Stephen, because everybody's an actor, right? Nobody admits it, though. When you're three years old, you're already acting, right? You're crying because you're trying to get your parents' attention. You're making trouble with your siblings because you're trying to get something that you want. You're learning to be manipulative.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Children are very manipulative. Children are consummate actors. They learn that they can get what they want by behaving a certain way. If I'm an angel, mommy will give me this and the other thing, even though I know I'm not an angel. We are a social animal and we have words. We have language. And with words and language, we can say one thing and be another. We can lie. We can deceive.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
We can tell people, I loved your screenplay. You were fantastic in the movie. Man, you're looking so great today. We don't mean any of it. But we can do that because we have words and we can lie about that. We are all actors. If everyone went around saying exactly what they felt about the other person, No one would ever get along. We would have killed ourselves off by now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And the other thing I would say is you don't learn anything if you're not excited by it. So you have to have a sense of fun and adventure about this. So discovering what your life's task can't be this dreary, boring thing that Robert's advocating you do where you, oh, I have to spend time with myself. I have to look, you know, do a journal, blah, blah, blah. No, it's fun. It's an adventure.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're always telling the boss the things that they want to hear. You're always telling your partner. You're always kind of hedging exactly what you feel. You're an actor. I don't understand what's so complicated about that. I don't understand why people can't see that every day of their life. And in another instance— You're never the same with two different people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The way you are in front of your father as you are in front of your son or in front of a colleague, you're a completely different person. Your jokes are different. Your body language is different. You're an actor. Okay. Some people are good at it. Some people aren't, but you're an actor.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you are. It's not like you need to be. You are doing that. Even though you may not admit it, you are doing that. You see, the thing is, it's getting back to that scene at the Sydney Zoo where people are deeply uncomfortable with these aspects of their own character and their own personality. And I don't want you to go around thinking, God, it's great to be manipulative.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's great to just screw people over and get what I want and not care about them. No. But it's better to admit that you are capable of manipulation, that you do it Often unconsciously and often in a passive aggressive manner. It's better to admit it and it's better to be able to play the game when you have to. Like always say less than necessary. It's going to save you a lot of pain.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You don't have to go around all your life practicing these things. I don't think you want to. What was that law? Always say less than necessary. Law number four. Can you explain that one to me? In looking at powerful people, the person who talks less always gives off a greater aura of power than the people that are yabbering all the time, that are talking, that can't control their tongue.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And the idea is, if you can't control your mouth, if you just keep talking and talking, it gives an aura to other people that you can't control anything else. You have no self-control. And that is very unpowerful aura. And obviously, the more you talk, The more you are prone to say something kind of stupid and irrational that you're going to regret.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so powerful people know to command an audience. They sit there. They let other people talk and argue. And then occasionally they utter something. That's maybe a little bit ambiguous. Whoa, whoa, that's very interesting. Robert said that. What does that mean? You look powerful, right? You give off an air of mystery, give off an air of control.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And so a lot of people have a hard time with it because they think, Oh, should I just be able to say whatever I want and just talk? Well, no, you don't. Not in the social world, not in the work world. It's going to get you in trouble. Learn to control what you talk and learn that there are moments that saying less is actually much more powerful than just yammering on and on.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Trying different things that fit into this general shape of what you were destined for It's a blast. You know, when I was in my 20s, I had more fun than anybody. I had an amazing time. It was the best years of my life. I was trying all sorts of different things. I was exploring. I was traveling. I had adventures. So I don't want your life to be boring. I want you to learn.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, I remember 50, I would go to meetings with him. 50 Cent. Yeah, and he would hardly say anything. And people would be trembling. My God, he's not talking. He's not saying he's interested in my ideas. He'd just sit there with this kind of wry smile on his face. And then when he'd say something, oh, they would let out a breath. Oh, he's saying something. It would be very short and curt.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But he completely commanded the room because he just sat there as if he wasn't really happy with what people were doing. And it made them compete to make him happy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you know, some of the 48 laws is irony and, you know, people have to be able to understand and read what's ironic. So, like I have a chapter in there, play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following. And I'm not really saying go out and create a cult. I'm showing you why you might be in a cult right now because this is how cults operate. Okay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So when I worked in Hollywood, I worked at one point for a film director. And we had this process where we would sit in a room and we would talk about the story. We would discuss the dialogue stuff. And I would give all of this dialogue and ideas in there. And he'd be writing it down.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I'm not saying half the screenplay, but at least a third or a fourth were like my ideas, my contribution, my dialogue. I never got a single credit for any of it. It was always his name that was on there. People go, wow, that was so funny. That was really brilliant. I love that line. It's my line. Okay, so I learned this is the law of the jungle.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
When you're working in particularly in entertainment, in media, people take your work and they put their name on it. So like when you're watching a television show with some news broadcast or whatever, or an interviewer, their jokes aren't their own. They didn't write those jokes. They have a team of people writing it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But there's also understanding things like we all judge on appearances, that everyone has a dark side, and that we are all actors. And I will get into the nitty gritty of all of them because it's really about how powerful people use those traits for their success.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
All those great facts that are coming up, a team of researchers are putting it there. You never hear their names. You never know who they are. They took their work and they put their name on it. That's the law of the jungle. And the law of the jungle is don't get upset about it. It's part of the game. I got upset when that happened. I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. But I got resentful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I want you to have adventures. But you have to have a sense of direction, a sense of purpose to guide those different adventures that you go on.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Nobody's recognizing my work. Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine. The adult, if I had been smarter, was, that's just how it is, Robert. Just calm down. At some point, people will see your screenplays or your books or whatever, and you'll be fine. But just, I'm trying to show you this is how the world operates, and don't be so naive, and don't think it's not like that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, so if you read the law carefully, it's really about how powerful people use this. So if you're an underling, And you do the work you don't want to take credit for because it's going to get you in trouble, right? But powerful people have used for centuries the labor of other people and put their name on it to make themselves look powerful and to make them seem like they've got endless energy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Okay, so you have to apply that law with intelligence. If you're an underling and you're doing some project, it's a group project, don't go out there and take credit for it because people are just going to laugh at you. You're going to make a terrible fool of yourself. So every law has a context, you know, but that's powerful people use that law.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if you don't think that's how it operates, I'm sorry, but you're in for a world of pain.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, I think so. Your mind gets a little bit more rigid. You think you know all of the answers, right? But what happens with a lot of people, I also get correspondence from, or let's say turning 40 or even a little bit older, and they're coming to those crossroads, is it's even much more painful than when you're in your 20s because there's a sense of regret.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yes, it is self-control. Of course, you can take it too far where you have no emotions and you're just a cold fish out there. You know, it's good. Emotions are important. You're not going to write a book. You're not going to start a business unless you're excited, unless you have that emotional energy. So I'm not talking about stifling your emotions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That would be incredibly counterproductive and unpowerful. But there are emotions that are going to get you in trouble, particularly as a social animal. So it's not like you stifle your emotions. You learn how to channel and control them. And you learn that certain behaviors are going to be read as unpowerful, as hysterical, as somebody who can't get things done, as ineffective, incompetent.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So as an actor, you learn to sort of present the right front, the right facade. And that requires a degree of emotional control. Yes, for sure. It's very important. And it's not easy because when you're young, particularly, you're wired to be emotional. And you're going to learn this the hard way, which is how I learned it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm trying to teach you some lessons so maybe you won't make as many mistakes. Right. But it's a hard thing you learn, and you learn it by the mistakes you make, by saying something foolish that costs you your job, by outshining the master that costs you your job.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If you do a foolish mistake, there are two ways to go. And the common route is, that asshole, they screwed me over. It's their fault, you know, right? Or I made that mistake, but... You know, if circumstances had been better, if I had more money, if this person supported me, it all would have gone well. That's what we naturally do. And that's the kind of person that never learns from life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So your first instinct must always be, and not your first instinct, I correct myself, your second instinct, because your first instinct is always going to be that. There's a great book, I can't remember what the writer's name was, Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me. I recommend that book highly. It came out about 10 years ago. I think it's Elliot Aronson.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Very good book. Anyway, your first instinct always will be? It was a mistake, but it wasn't mine. I'm not to blame. All right? Everybody does it. I do it. Your second instinct is to step back and go, whoa, wait a minute. That's not right. I'm fooling myself. Actually, I played a role in what happened there. And what is that role that I played? What could I have done differently?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Maybe it's very subtle. Maybe it was something in my body language that turned people off, that made them not like me. Or maybe it was something I said or I did that could have changed the circumstances. What is it that I did? Then you can learn from the experience. And if only 10% of it is your responsibility,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
At least see it as 30% so that you can learn from it and exaggerate your role in the mistake because then you can learn from it. You can understand that you can correct these mistakes, right? So initially, you can always blame the other person. Then you're going to step back and you're going to go through this little dance.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
There's a sense that you've wasted your time. And to get back to a path that will suit you can be very difficult, as you mentioned. But there's also another side to that, which is you probably have been learning some skills in your life. You probably have had some experiences that have changed you. Because when you're 21, 22, you don't know the world. You don't know people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're going to go, no, I think I've definitely played a part in what went wrong here.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, there are several avenues that you can go. Everything depends on circumstances. So if you're going to be a strategist in life, which is what I recommend, you have to look at the particular parameters and not just go, there's one answer. There's several possibilities here. So number one, maybe you're in an awful job with awful office politics.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I have a thing that I get talked about in one of my recent talks of you can scale a culture of a group on a scale of zero to 100. 100 is what I call a reality group where people are only interested in getting the job done and everything is on results.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Zero is where everything is political and everything is personal and everything is about who knows who and how you brown nose your way with the boss, okay? So if you're at a company that's at that 20% level, then get your ass out of there. Okay? You have a colleague like that, but there are probably other colleagues like that. And that person is probably always causing problems.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Do you need to be at this job? It's the main thing you have to first ask yourself. And if you do need it, you need the job, and it's only this one person, then you have to go through a few steps. Number one, is it worth taking personally? What if I not take the high road, because I hate that phrase, but what if I say, it's not really worth it for me to get upset.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's better off in the long run to just act like... You know, it didn't happen. And to end up getting the promotion on my own in a different way and proving myself as success is the best revenge, you know, and how can I get there kind of thing, ignoring him or her and what they did and only focusing on what you can do. to get back, to get the promotion that you deserve.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The third possibility is sticking it to this other person, which is always something that I think is something you might have to consider doing, right? Which is playing the game back at them. When you're dealing with people who are unethical, like a Putin kind of type, where they're willing to do anything to get power and you're not, it's asymmetrical warfare.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They have more options than you do, okay? This person that did that to you, They're going to do anything for power, and it puts you at a constant disadvantage. What do you do? You have to do what they have in warfare called a deterrent strategy. You have to show this person that you're not somebody you can mess with, that you're going to do something to hurt them,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But it's controlled and it's a one-time thing. You're going to damage their reputation. You're going to spread some nasty rumor about them. But you don't have to feel like you're lowering yourself. It's just I'm doing it one time to show them that from now on you better not mess with me because, damn it, I've got a gun in my back pocket and I can use it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You think you know everything, but you don't know anything, right? You've never had any experiences in life. You never had to suffer. Maybe you have, but not really suffering like you do when you get older. So you're 40. You've had tough experiences. You've been hardened. You're not so fragile. And you've learned things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You can't just roll over because they're going to keep doing it to you time and again. So you've got three options and you've got to choose what's the best one. If you hate your job and you can't get around this person, quit.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If you don't feel comfortable going the low road and if you think it's a better strategy in the long term for you and your soul and your safety to simply focus on your job and get revenge that way, that's probably the best solution of all. But sometimes you need to have a shot across their bow to say, look, you can't attack me because if you do, there are going to be consequences to pay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. But if you do the option number two and you show that you don't really, that they didn't affect you and you kind of act like it didn't matter sort of thing, but you still work hard and you're still doing your job. they're going to wonder like, hmm, that's pretty impressive. That's interesting. This person has self-control.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And they're maybe going to be afraid of you in that sense by the fact, by the composure that you show them. So everything depends on who you are, your nature, and the nature of this Machiavellian character that you're facing, you know? But be alive to the moment and the circumstances and play for the long game.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So sometimes the long game means showing that you can mean action because then they're going to leave you alone for the next couple of years.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you have to take a big picture, especially if you're someone like me who studies history a lot. So there are always these moments in history of cycles of chaos where, and it could be caused in the past by a plague, by some terrible war that goes on like the Hundred Years' War in Europe. where people feel genuinely powerless and helpless, and there's a crisis of meaning in the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And I can point to specific moments in the ancient world, in Asia, in Europe, but it goes on and on. It's a cycle that happens. And when people feel powerless and helpless and there's all this chaos going around them, then they tend to be attracted to authoritarian figures, to easy solutions. They get much more irrational.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If you change your mindset at that age and you go, I'm going to take what I have. my experiences, my skills, what I've learned, and I'm going to redirect it towards something more exciting for me, then it will work for you, right? But as you say, it can be harder because you're more set in your ways.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They're much more likely to fall for cults and for belief systems that offer simple solutions and easy one-sentence answers, like make America great again kind of thing, you know. Wow, that sounds simple. It's easy. Yeah, we'll vote for that, right? So in moments of chaos and helplessness, people are going to grab for something that anchors them, that gives them a sense of meaning, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But it's often something very, very dangerous. So we're in a moment like that right now, I think, around the world. It's not just the United States. Believe it or not, things can happen under the skin and are subtle, like climate change. There are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change, but it's affecting everyone.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's making everyone a bit neurotic, the sense that we can't control our climate, right? That these disasters are going to keep happening and happening. That's a major sense of helplessness. The global economy where now your business is at the mercy of something that's going on in Indonesia or Japan or China is a tremendous sense of helplessness and a lack of control.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And your political figures don't seem to be responding to you in any way. Like their actions, their talk doesn't lead to the kind of results that you want. So You're very prone to following what demagogues say who offer you like easy solutions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Okay, so if you're living in a time like that, and it's more dangerous now than in the past because of social media and because of memes and because of the viral effects that are sweeping through humanity, right? They didn't have that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
during the bubonic plague, during the Hundred Years' War, during the French and Industrial Revolution, which was another period of incredible dramatic change in Europe at the turn of the 19th century, right? So they didn't have that, which adds to the brew and makes it much more dangerous. So...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Having a longer view is to say, well, you know, this is a moment of chaos and I'm going to be in control of what I think and what I believe. So I'm going to have a degree of distrust of what people are telling me. I'm not going to get so emotional when people start saying, this is what's evil, this is what's wrong with the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And to be very, very, very wary of people with simple solutions who say, if we just do this one thing, everything will be great. If we just add tariffs, if we just get rid of all the immigrants, America will be fabulous. These are fairy tales that are being peddled to you. I'm not trying to be political because the other side peddles their own kinds of fairy tales. Believe me, I understand that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The thing that... I do want to say is that you want to be able to think for yourself, okay? So let's say you think Trump is the answer he's going to have, he's going to solve all of our problems. Well, be capable of stepping back and going, maybe some of the things he's doing I don't agree with, aren't right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, have some discrimination, have some self-distance, be able to criticize your own side. So I'm on the left, on the Democratic liberal side. They are buffoons. They are fools. They are absolutely incompetent. And I don't afraid to say it. They make terrible mistakes. They blew this election. They're stupid. And it's painful to say that because it's the side that I support.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I do not believe in everything that they promote. There are things I disagree with them on. Some of their woke policies I just find are ludicrous. So be able to stand back and say, I don't agree with everything he says. Have some dignity. Have some self-worth. Say that I can think for myself and not get so emotional, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So you think being masculine and being a bro is to just say, oh, Robert, F you. You're such an idiot. You're so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, put YouTube comments because I get them all the time, you know. F you, you can fill in the blanks, right? That's not being masculine. That's not being tough or strong. That's being an idiot because you're not able to think for yourself, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Being emotional isn't masculinity. Masculinity is self-control, I'm afraid. Being masculine is being able to step back and go, This isn't necessarily the right thing to do. I have to think about it. I have to do something that's more productive, that's positive. I have to criticize myself sometimes. Weak people can't criticize themselves.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So if you're listening to me, at least be willing to say that maybe some of my ideas are wrong. My ideas and your ideas. right? That to me is strength. That to me is a masculine virtue, being able to criticize your own side and not get always so emotional and overheated and leaving nasty YouTube comments, as I'm sure I'm going to get right now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, I don't know. It's too painful for me to say what Trump got right. Well, you've got to be able to. I know. He is... I'll tell you what he gets right and what he's really brilliant at, which is communication and messaging. So the Democrats completely suck at that, right? They couldn't craft a message to save their life if everything depended on it. They're just terrible at it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, but I mean, the pain that you feel... When you get older and, you know, we humans have very active minds. We're gifted with the most powerful organ in the entire universe, the human brain. The billions of possible connections in our brain is greater than anything in the entire universe. It is the most amazing instrument. And our brains are very active.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
They don't know how to communicate. They don't know how to make a simple message. Now, I said simple messages can be deceptive, but in politics you have to have something like that. You have to stand for a vision, for something straight, and you have to be strong and you have to be willing to fight for it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So I do have the ear of some people in the Democratic Party, and I say what you got wrong and what Trump got right is— is to show the public that you are fighters, that you are strong, that you believe in something, and that you're willing to upset other people, other groups, because you believe in certain things. A large portion of the public he doesn't care about. He's interested in his base.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He doesn't care if he's hated. Okay, Democrats, don't care if you upset this special interest group or that special interest group. Some people have to hate you. Being hated is a good thing. Stand for something and be willing to fight. You got that all wrong, he got that right, so I can admit that. And he's much better at communicating and messaging.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
When it comes to policies, there's a pretty big gulf between us about what I think is good and bad. But, I mean, wokeness is... It's an ideology that isn't really connected to everyday life, to what's going on around us. Right? It's kind of a purity test of these are certain things that we hold and you better either, if you believe in them, you're on the good side.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if you don't believe them, you're on the wrong side. It's a polarity. It's a black and white binary way of looking at the world. And that's not reality. That's not how things are. Things aren't black and white. Things have a gray zone. Yes, there are things that are evil. Murder is evil. You know, social injustice, we can all agree on certain social injustices, yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But it's not like this purity test of if you don't believe in this, you're an evil, bad person, you know? So on the Israel-Palestine issue, for instance, Now, I happen to be Jewish, right? And I've never been a Zionist my whole life. I'm very happy to be Jewish. I was bar mitzvahed, and I have nothing against it, and I'm not a practicing religious person in Judaism.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I understand because I lost a large part of my ancestry during the Holocaust. It was deeply part of my childhood, a very traumatic thing that even my parents were still recovering from. So when it comes to Israel-Palestine, I'm very conflicted because I've met Palestinians.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
who had a terrible impact on me as they described the horror of what happened to them and the loss of their land and how deeply, what a beautiful country Palestine was and how traumatic it was to lose their home. But at the same time, Jews were completely homeless from the Holocaust and they did originate from this land. I can see both sides and it's very painful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if I were to craft a solution, first of all, I think Netanyahu is a horrible person, but there is a middle ground that could be had where there could be a two-state solution. But the woke people, oh, God, forget it, man. You're in favor of genocide. Get out of here. That's not life. That's not reality. That's not how the world works. It's not how things happen in this world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You're not dealing with the real world. You're just trying to act like you're morally pure. You're not really willing to sacrifice, to roll up your sleeves and come up with practical solutions. You just want to yell and rant and act and look like you're the most virtuous person on the planet.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And when you get older and you don't have anything to put your brain onto and things are slowing down, you don't realize that that's making you depressed. You don't realize that the fact that you haven't been able to fulfill what you were meant to fulfill is actually the source of your misery and unhappiness. You will blame it on other people. You will blame it on the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's tempting, but you're going to lose your soul. You're going to lose your dignity in the process. So it's fine to be part of a group. I remember I was a young man in 1983. I was on the left for sure. I don't deny it. I went to Nicaragua. to report as a journalist on the war going on between the Contras and the Sandinistas. And I was more on the Sandinista side.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And they've ended up, as things have rolled out, that Sandinistas are truly evil. I mean, Ortega and what he's done to Nicaragua is truly evil. But at the time, I thought they were pretty great. And I remember one day there was this immense plaza that they had. And I was in Managua. And Managua had just suffered this incredible earthquake. Half the city was in rubble still.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But there was this immense plaza. It was filled with everyone because the Pope had come there. And, you know, and it was a big deal because the San Denise was like, you know, anti-God or something, which wasn't true. Anyway, I was there with hundreds of thousands of people. And the feeling of being in the group where everybody was on the same side was so intoxicating.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I felt a ripple through me that I've never had in my life again of just being connected to all of these people. It was so joyous and exciting, but then it's also very dangerous as well. So You know, I liked having that experience, but as I got older, I go, I don't want to feel like that again because I think it can turn very ugly and dangerous as it ended up turning that way in Nicaragua.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, it's like a Hitler crowd kind of thing. I'm always fascinated by... Weirdly enough, as a Jew, by Hitler documentaries, I can watch every single Hitler documentary. It's just riveting to watch, like, these Nuremberg rallies. My God, it's like a drug. It's insane. All the people with their torches, all marching in the same way with these insignias, everything.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You could understand how people would get caught up in that kind of mania, right? But it's very dangerous. And even that moment... In Managua, later when I think back on it, maybe I should have had a little more self-distance from that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yes, we're getting caught up in easy solutions and things that aren't really thought out. I mean, what is human stupidity? A question that has obsessed me for a long time. And in fact, the third book in my series was originally supposed to be the history of human stupidity. But my publishers thought it was too negative a subject. And it would have also been too long of a book. But stupidity...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You will blame it on politics. You won't look at yourself and realize that it comes from you and the sadness comes from you and the fact that you're not... maximizing, not exploiting this gift that you were given. So it might be difficult to shed all of that. But I've talked to people I'd say more like around 30 years old, who say, Robert, I've had this horrible job.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
is the inability to think of the consequences of your actions, to think that you are certain that you know the answers, to take action based on this certainty, but to not think of steps three, four, and five that are going to happen as a result. And man, I'm seeing that all over the place on our political map. Where people take action, it's like our id is running the world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Like adolescence, like, you know, I'll do this, man. This will be cool. This will be interesting. You don't realize that you're going to get in a car wreck because you took this drug and you're driving your car. We're getting a lot of that kind of adolescent mentality. I'm going to take this action because it's fierce. It's angry. It's going to solve things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But the consequences down the road five years from now are going to be horrific. That is human stupidity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Court attention at all costs. He's the master of it. I remember I was on a book tour. I can't remember where it was, some corner of the world. Maybe it was Australia, maybe it was Singapore. And everybody was talking about Donald Trump. It was like the whole world was obsessed with him. I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where anybody has had that kind of power.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Court attention at all costs. He's the absolute master of it. He's law number 27, play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following. He has a cult-like following, right? People, nothing he does can be wrong. He was actually, God is on his side. God is protecting him. That's a cult. I'm sorry, but that's a cult. This is politics. It's not religion.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, interaction with boldness. He knows how to interaction with boldness, law 28, I believe, or 29. So there's several laws. He creates compelling spectacles, but there are a lot of laws that he violates as well.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's good not to think in such concrete terms of this is who I am to place labels on it. Like I'm a lawyer, like I'm a right-wing Trump follower, like I'm an entrepreneur. You're much more than that, right? There's something else about who you are, right? You have a soul. I know that's an old-fashioned concept, but I believe that people have a soul.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it can be their character, their traits that they have. that almost they have when they were born. It's what makes them who they are. It's their sense of dignity that they've returned to that self. But I can't put a label on it. I can't put a word on it. I can't say it's being a lawyer, being white, black, left, right, or whatever, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, I'm in a fast food place or something. I don't remember what it was, or I'm a barista, whatever. You know, I'm so unhappy. I have a wife and I have two kids. What do I do? Right? And so I go into their misery a little bit and then I say, okay, let's
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I like to think, and this will sound like I'm John Lennon in Imagine or some sentimental thing like that, But I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of the universe. Personally, maybe it's just me. I'm interested in every single culture and every single religion.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You know, I am just as much fascinated by the Yoruba religion in West Africa as I am by Buddhism, Islam, etc. They all fascinate me. Every country, every culture has something incredibly interesting about it. I've been studying things like the Aztec culture I wrote about extensively in my new book. Just an amazing story, amazing history. It's not me. I'm not ethnically Mexican.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm not related to it through time or anything, but I'm related to it as a human being, and I identify with it on a very deep level. Which poem? The sense of magic, the sense of awe in the face of this universe, the incredible sense of spectacle that they created. This... And I describe it in my new book, the city that they created Tenochtitlan.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It was one of the greatest, most beautiful cities that ever existed, that mankind has ever created, on a par with Venice, Italy, completely destroyed by the conquistadors. Nothing of it remains. If you go to Mexico City, you'll see nothing. They destroyed everything. But the picture presented by the first conquistadors that arrived there, my God, this is like a fairy tale. It is so beautiful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Their artwork, their culture, their music. It just blows me away when I read about their philosophy. I identify with that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If we only had some distance, we only realized that we all come from the same roots, that there really is no such a thing as an ethnicity, that we all come from the same human beings, that it's all relative, that all the cultures are related, that all human beings are interrelated.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's such a simplistic notion, but it kind of destroys all of our separations, all our partisanship, all of our niggly little sense of identity. I don't get my identity from being from California or Los Angeles or being Jewish or being American. I get it from being a human being with this incredible vast history. Nobody else is going to follow me in this. I know it's just me. It's my wish.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I empathize with it very much so because when I was younger, I was losing in the game of life. I was very depressed and even suicidal. But what lifted me out was...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if human beings in 100 years could believe that, it would be so beneficial for us in some way. It would mean we all have to protect this planet so that we can give it to our children, that climate change affects all of us, that we're all in this together. I know I'm sounding not like the guy who wrote the 48 Laws of Power, so excuse me for that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Let's first figure out something that you think you would really want in life, something that will have an income because you have to pay for your wife and your children. You can't just go off and write poetry or become a rock star. You have to support yourself and your family. What could that possibly be? And we dig and we dig and we dig. I said, all right, we have an answer, a kind of an idea.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, I write my books always with a sense of urgency, like it's going to help people because we're facing a problem. I felt the 48 Laws of Power was at a moment where people were too naive. I felt the art of seduction where people didn't understand about the psychology of dealing with the sexes, etc. I wrote the war book because I felt people were terrible at strategy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
The 50 cent book is different, but mastery because people had lost a sense of how to master profession. Human nature because people were really bad at dealing with people. Now, the problem I think is our minds are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. We're so absorbed in things that are so unimportant, so banal, so trivial, so stupid.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
At the same time, science is showing us the most marvelous things you could possibly imagine, you know, about the Big Bang Theory. We're being able to understand what the first minutes of our universe were like. We're able to take a picture inside of a black hole and understand what's going on in a black hole. We're able to understand the history of Earth.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Someday we're going to know how life began. It's insane what science is showing us about this world, about the world that we were living in, about this world that we were born into. And I want to open your eyes and expand your consciousness instead of shrink it to the dimensions of what we're actually facing in this world.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
How insane it is to be sharing the planet with animals and their strange consciousness, how they think differently, but how we can connect to them. We're the only animal that's conscious that we know of, but we can connect to animals on a way that is just insane. I call it the interspecies sublime, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm talking about how our childhood was a moment of incredible sublimity, how we were so open. Some people had a very painful childhood. I don't know. But we were very open to the world and very imaginative about how strange it is to be alive. that very easily dinosaurs could be roaming this planet right now if a meteor hadn't knocked out the dinosaurs 60-some million years ago, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
On and on and on. I talked about love. I'm writing now about artworks and aesthetics and things that trigger the sublime in us, nature, death, which will be obviously the last chapter.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But I just want you to sense that there is something very strange about being alive in the 21st century and not take it for granted and not just be caught up in everything that's so familiar and conventional and banal and open your eyes because as you do this, Your emotions open up. You're able to feel different things. Your thoughts open up. You're able to have different ideas.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I want you to do the following. I want you to carve out two hours, or as much as you can at night, where you start exploring this field on the internet, and you start considering maybe going to night school, okay, and taking classes that change this course. And then I want you to think of five years where you're going to be a goal, five years ahead. And they tell me,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You become more creative. Your consciousness expands. Anyway, I could go on forever because I've been writing the book forever. But that's sort of what it's about.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
If it isn't, I don't know if I'll still be here because it's literally, it's hard to explain this even, but I can't type and I can't take a walk and I can't do the things that I used to do to kind of decompress. So I have to handwrite everything in two notebooks with sticky pads here and there. It's like a rat's maze. And then I dictate it on the computer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's taken me, it ends up being like six years of work because the process has been so difficult for me. So my publisher, I've written, I'm going to finish in a few weeks, the 10th chapter, I have two left. I'm projecting to finish that by the end of the year, which will give me enough time to have it published in 2026. I hope, I pray, because if not, I don't know if my body can take it anymore.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, I can't, man. I can't take the focus. It's like, For three weeks now, I've been going, this isn't working. This isn't working. This isn't working. I'm not sleeping. My stomach is all churning. I'm getting too old for this. Then suddenly I break through and then it comes back and then it happens again and again. When I start a chapter, the first couple of months, I'm relaxed. I'm breathing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm fine. Then when I near the end of the chapter, I turn into the tightest person you can imagine. And I'm
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
so tight and then i finish it so i can't take much more of this to be honest with you because i had a stroke i'm not a young man anymore so i you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be overly dramatic here i don't want to be a drama queen i'm gonna i'll live i'll be fine but seriously i i can't i couldn't take another like two years of this would wouldn't i couldn't make that two years of this book yeah no more you're gonna write another book though aren't you
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to write a book about kittens or about the Lakers or something easy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, it was a talk that I gave recently in Atlanta, and I was trying to show the game of power as it's played, the rules of the game. And the one thing that I was trying to emphasize is that power is a game of pure psychology. And what I mean by that is... When you have a sports, you have a game like baseball, it's all statistics and data mostly, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So, and there's a winner and there's a loser. They won the game five to nothing, et cetera. Okay. So there are parameters. There's very little psychology involved, although in sports, in soccer, football, there's some psychology, but a lot of it's just playing and winning. But power isn't like that. So when we elect a leader like Donald Trump over Kamala Harris,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You might say, oh, he got more votes. But what is your judgment, your decision on voting for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris? Was it you spent four hours with a spreadsheet going over all of their economic policies, deciding this is what's going to happen, this is how it's going to benefit me? No. It was based on appearances, on psychology. He seemed like a leader.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He seemed like he had more authority. I kind of like his ideas, but you're not going very deeply into it, right? It's his appearance that mattered. CEOs are often hired because of their optics, because it's not based completely on the amount of money they've made. And believe me, I saw this firsthand when I was on the board of directors.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
People were hired not on their superior track record, but on their political skills. Often.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
overnight just having that has changed them. Suddenly from their depression they have hope and they feel a million times better and they have energy. Just from realizing that there is a possibility, it's going to take hard work, but there is an answer, there is a place to go. And so it changes it when you have some sense of direction.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. I mean, there was some, you know, metrics involved, but a lot of it was optics. Okay. So the idea is success, the power game, the rules, laws of power are understanding human psychology. Never outshine the master. You're creating the appearance of That you respect the master, that they are better than you, that you are going to obey them, you're going to follow them.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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 at somebody is very dangerous.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, 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 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, They're kind of like this. They can put their bodies anywhere, right? Whereas the other person is like all tight and nervous and aware.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
A powerful person has a directed focus. A weak person is always looking around, touching their hair, touching their face. There's a word for it, I forget what it is, nonverbal 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
There are these signs of kind of confidence, right? And charisma, where you feel you are 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 bitch, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So women have a harder time in playing this game of appearances because they're judged so much on their looks and not about these other things. So it's complicated. But there are these kind of cues that people give off that show that they inwardly feel secure and powerful and it kind of emanates outward. There's a law in there, act like a king to be treated like one.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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 like a grocer somewhere in like Portugal or whatever. But he convinced all of the kings of Spain that he came from nobility. And it was a total con game. And they believed me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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 iconic story that I use for that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You can to a degree, but at some point it'll catch up to you if you can't deliver results. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, it can come from one of two things. It can kind of come from almost a form of insanity where you believe since you were a child that you were destined for something great. I'm so amazing. I'm so wonderful. And you feel it. And it's not...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
completely made up you actually do get things done but you have that natural air that like a prince would have right what if you don't have any confidence can you cultivate it yes you can you can The thing is, the best way to cultivate it is to actually have results that show, to actually have a record to go upon. So you can kind of fake it like Columbus did.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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. William James, the great American psychologist, talked about as-if strategies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it's a very important concept in psychology from the early 20th century. If you believe as if you are 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So the physical action will create the psychological action, was his belief, because 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, everybody has some good qualities, right? Everybody, I think almost everybody has something that they 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 scored in that particular moment. And you can think about that. I mean, actors do that all the time in movies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
When they want to express an emotion, they go back into their past and 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 threw the touchdown or something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Okay, think about that and it'll come back to you. Everybody has something that they can be confident about, I hope.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah. You know, I talk in Mastery about something called a concept called learning by doing. And back in the Middle Ages, they used to have an apprenticeship that you would go through. Seven years, you would learn to be a craftsman, right? You'd first go from being an apprentice to a journeyman to a master. By doing things, the brain learns.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
There's no one sharp answer to this kind of thing. But one law that I would highlight is interaction with boldness. And what I mean by that is 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it creates a self-fulfilling dynamic. People admire it. They don't admire the timid and the insecure and the guy who spends two 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, fine, you know. I remember this guy interviewed me once. He had a magazine called Bad Ideas.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it was a really successful magazine in like the early 2000s. And I said, where did you get that idea? And he said, my mother told me that to start that magazine was a really bad idea. So I thought I'd put the title there, and that would be the title of it. And I just went ahead and started it. And it was very successful because it was a great marketing gimmick, and it also worked.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And it was actually full of bad ideas in the book, but in a very interesting way. So being bold, being different. Everybody... Nowadays, I'm getting on my goddamn soapbox again, and I apologize to everyone about this, but everyone is so similar. Everybody is so afraid. Everyone's trying to be like everybody else.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
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. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
He doesn't start just a minimal business about maybe sending rockets out there. He starts thinking it's going to take you to Mars. He's bold and people love it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I thought you were going to say they punched him.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
But if you never do anything, you're never going to learn. So if you suddenly said, I've been thinking about a podcast, I would say, get off your ass and start the podcast tomorrow. And it fails. You have learned so many things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Yeah, yeah. If I have one legacy, if I create more bold people in this world, I will be happy because we've got too many timid hares out there. We need more bold lions. Start your business. Write that book. Do it. Just do it, please. And then write me afterwards and either blame me or thank me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Oh, that's for sure. In negotiations, you ask for 200,000. That's what you get. You ask for a million. You maybe get $500,000, but it's $300,000 more than you would have gotten if you'd been timid. Always in negotiation, ask the higher price and mean it and say it with conviction, right? And make sure you think your price is high. You'll get the higher price.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That's the lesson. That's law.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm hoping that I'm alive and healthy and that my walking has gotten better so that I could take a walk and that I'm with my wife and that we're climbing a mountain, which I haven't been able to do. I loved hiking. And I'm able to do that, I will be crying in that moment because I am so frustrated not being able to do what I love the most.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You've learned more in those three months of failure than you have been two years thinking or five years of getting an MBA from some school and putting yourself in massive debt. Learn by doing. Learn by failing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And if that moment arrives in 10 years, God, I don't know how I'll be so joyous, you know, to be able to do something that I love so much and has been taken away from me and to have it back. I'm not asking to be, you know, an athlete or do what I could do before. If I could just take a simple walk up a hill, I'd be so happy. That's what I'm imagining.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Oh, please don't.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And other people I read about who've had experiences like this, who were in an accident at a young age, it's worse because I was already in my early 60s, who've had this... It's just like, how do you deal with it? You know, people who were like athletic, who were energetic, who were outdoors and then it's all taken away.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
It's a terrible story, but you learn life skills and you learn how to deal with it. And then. I still have my brain so I'm able to write a book, thank God. But I really, really want to be able to swim and hike again.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Just to walk up straight up the hill where I'm on the street I am. I would be crying. My wife can attest to that because I'm so frustrated. I'd be so happy. You know?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Well, you know, I want people to walk by my window in my office. I've told you, I think it was on my last conversation I mentioned this, so I don't want to keep repeating myself, but I see them walking their dog or riding their bicycle or jogging, and I go, they don't realize... How beautiful that looks to me. They don't appreciate it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And because they don't appreciate it, it doesn't mean that much to them. It means more to me than it does to them. They should be appreciating it. They should be thinking. I think of my neighbor. He's just out in his driveway fixing cars, and he's listening to his music. He should be so happy that he's got his body, that he's doing this, that he's in the moment, that he's present. But he's not.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I'm the one that's feeling his joy at being like that. But you should be feeling that in your everyday activities, that you're alive, that you're a human being, that walking... You take for granted walking. As somebody who can't walk, I know like you're always balancing on one leg. You don't realize that when you walk. The miracle of a human walk is at every moment, you're always on one leg.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
That's a balancing act. And you're able to do that and you're able to run and do it. Don't take that stuff for granted, you know? Because I can't, every step I take, I have to think about balancing on that left leg of mine.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
I would whisper to 20-year-old Robert... Just don't think about it, Robert. Everything's going to come out okay. Just be who you are. Don't regret anything. It's all working out for the best. Just I can't say like I would say enjoy the moment because I was enjoying my 20s immensely. But maybe when I was 34, I would have said, you know, don't give up. It's going to happen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Everything's going to fit into place and you're going to have an amazing life. You're going to be meeting Stevie Wonder, one of your idols when you were a kid. Bob Dylan is going to be mentioning you in a book and has read your book. The people that you loved when you were a kid. You're going to be meeting and hanging out with 50 Cent. You're going to be meeting presidents.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
Because you're afraid of failure, quite honestly. I mean, Freud has a word for it in German, Erfolgsangst, which means fear of success. Because this is something that afflicts a lot of adolescents. Because if you're successful, you now have responsibility. You now have a reputation. You now have succeeded and your next venture could fail.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
You have no idea what's ahead of you. Okay, I would have maybe said something like that. But then maybe I would have gotten lazy and I wouldn't have written it because I would have thought, oh, it's all going to happen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
And the neurotic energy, yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
So thank you so unbelievably much. Thank you for the opportunity, for the honor of being on this incredibly exciting podcast. As I say, every morning, this is my third time, I've always been in a good mood the morning before. I don't know if it's a coincidence or if it's something about being on your podcast. So thank you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Manipulation Expert: Most People Don't Realise They're Narcissists! You're Setting Your Child Up For Misery!
There's pressure that comes with trying something and putting your name out there. And if I don't ever try anything, if I don't bother, if I blame the world, I blame my parents, I blame my education system, I blame my partner, this, that, and the other, then you never have to worry. You never have to have that responsibility. You never have to have that fear of success.