Latest / The Empire of Wealth / Give Me 39 Minutes And I_ll Make you Dangerously Confident

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Give Me 39 Minutes And I_ll Make you Dangerously Confident · The Empire of Wealth

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Speaker 1: Robert Greene just sat down with me to share the
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Speaker 1: tools you need to master yourself, seduce anyone, and build
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Speaker 1: unshakable confidence.
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Speaker 2: If you want to have confidence in life, it has
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Speaker 2: to be built on something real.
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Speaker 1: Most people feel stuck, trapped by fear, self-doubt, or a
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Speaker 1: system that conditions them to play small.
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Speaker 2: The problem is nobody teaches this, nobody gives it to you.
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Speaker 2: So our school system is completely ass-backwards.
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Speaker 1: In this episode, you'll learn how to transform anxiety into
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Speaker 1: confidence and become a powerful individual that commands respect. We'll
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Speaker 1: cover five fundamental steps. Firstly, how to master yourself. Secondly,
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Speaker 1: how to understand human nature. Thirdly, how to build confidence. Fourth,
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Speaker 1: learning by doing. And finally, how to reinvent yourself.
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Speaker 2: So the first and most important step is mastering yourself
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Speaker 2: before anything else. But the problem in mastering yourself is
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Speaker 2: a lot of it has to do with gaining discipline.
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Speaker 2: If you just go out in the world without any
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Speaker 2: sense of what other people are like, of what their
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Speaker 2: needs are, you're just going to say stupid things. You're
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Speaker 2: going to offend people. So you have to understand the
1:00
Speaker 2: social game and how to master your appearance and how
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Speaker 2: to make people like you in some way, right? But
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Speaker 2: the other thing is you want to gain a sense
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Speaker 2: of discipline, self-discipline. It's no good if people tell you
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Speaker 2: to do things, if people tell you to work, if
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Speaker 2: they force you to do this A, B, and C.
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Speaker 2: It has to come from within. You have to have initiative.
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Speaker 2: You have to be motivated to do things. And what
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Speaker 2: I've learned over the course of writing my seven books
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Speaker 2: and through the course of my whole life is that
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Speaker 2: you master yourself through learning, through learning something that you love,
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Speaker 2: that interests you. That's how you develop discipline. So if
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Speaker 2: you're studying things, if you're entering a career that doesn't
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Speaker 2: suit you, that you don't really love, that isn't really
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Speaker 2: your dream, then it's gonna be very hard for you
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Speaker 2: to master yourself. It's gonna be very hard to gain
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Speaker 2: that discipline. You're gonna be tuning out. You're gonna be distracted.
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Speaker 2: You're gonna be on your phone too much. You're not
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Speaker 2: gonna be focusing deeply, which is how you master yourself.
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Speaker 2: To me, the key to life, the key to everything,
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Speaker 2: the key to success It's figuring out what you love.
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Speaker 2: You know, you got to first figure out, I call
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Speaker 2: it your life's task, what you were born to create
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Speaker 2: in this world. Everybody is born as an individual. There's
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Speaker 2: something very unique about you. And I mean every single
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Speaker 2: person out there. I don't just mean people who have
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Speaker 2: special talents. Everybody has this power within them. Everybody is
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Speaker 2: unique in some way in their DNA. how they were
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Speaker 2: raised in their early encounters in life. And the trick
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Speaker 2: in life is bringing out your uniqueness, bringing out what
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Speaker 2: makes you weird, what makes you strange, what makes you different,
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Speaker 2: and leaning into it and creating a business, writing a book,
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Speaker 2: going into some field that reflects that uniqueness. If you
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Speaker 2: discover what that is, when you're hopefully when you're in
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Speaker 2: your early 20s, more or less, then you're going to
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Speaker 2: learn at a much faster rate than if you Parents
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Speaker 2: tell you to go to law school and you go
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Speaker 2: to law school, but it doesn't really connect with you
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Speaker 2: and you're tuning it out and you're not really learning.
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Speaker 2: But if you find something that you love, you're going
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Speaker 2: to learn at a very fast rate. And as you learn,
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Speaker 2: as you develop skills, as things improve in your brain,
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Speaker 2: you're going to be gaining discipline. You're going to be
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Speaker 2: mastering yourself because I believe that you master yourself in
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Speaker 2: what you actually make and what you create. I only
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Speaker 2: became who I am through writing my books. It's writing
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Speaker 2: my books that changed me. It has made me a
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Speaker 2: different person. Your work is going to make you a
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Speaker 2: different person if it's something that you love, if it's
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Speaker 2: something that excites you. So the key to everything in
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Speaker 2: life is making that choice early on in your early
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Speaker 2: 20s about what you were destined to create, what really
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Speaker 2: suits you, what fits, what meshes with your uniqueness. Once
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Speaker 2: you discover that, the whole game kind of opens up
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Speaker 2: to you and everything will start to make sense. Now,
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Speaker 2: of course, the main question is that people ask me
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Speaker 2: is how do I find that? I think a lot
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Speaker 2: of young people today are sometimes afraid to be different.
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Speaker 1: Especially in school, you're not encouraged to be different. If
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Speaker 1: you stand out, you get teased.
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Speaker 2: I mean, you know, people like maybe dress differently and stuff,
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Speaker 2: but truly being unique in your work, in your ideas,
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Speaker 2: in your thinking, in what you love is something that people,
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Speaker 2: a lot of people are afraid of. And if you
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Speaker 2: look at anybody who's successful in music, for instance, they're
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Speaker 2: all unique. There's nobody else like them. I mean, back
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Speaker 2: in my day, I was a big David Bowie fan.
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Speaker 2: There's nobody like David Bowie, right? These are people that
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Speaker 2: understood their uniqueness. They weren't afraid of it. They embraced
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Speaker 2: it and they used it. Okay. So you've got to,
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Speaker 2: that's extremely important. So the question is that I get
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Speaker 2: asked a lot is, Robert, I don't know what my
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Speaker 2: life's task is. I like A, B, C, D, E, F.
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Speaker 2: I'm like at a supermarket and I can just choose
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Speaker 2: all these different goodies and candies and things, but I
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Speaker 2: can't figure out What's the one thing that I really
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Speaker 2: made to create in this world? And the problem is,
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Speaker 2: because this goes back to mastering yourself first, is you're impatient.
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Speaker 2: People today, everybody who's young, I was like this when
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Speaker 2: I was young, you're impatient. You want things right now.
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Speaker 2: You want an answer. You want Robert Greene to tell you,
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Speaker 2: this is what you were meant to do. This is
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Speaker 2: how you find your life's task. ABC, I give you
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Speaker 2: these clues and you're just going to find it like
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Speaker 2: on an Easter egg hunt or something. It doesn't work
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Speaker 2: like that. You have to be patient in this world.
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Speaker 2: Figuring out who I am, figuring out what I love,
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Speaker 2: figuring out what I was meant to do, it's going
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Speaker 2: to take months. It could take years. You have to
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Speaker 2: be patient. You have to be open and willing. It's
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Speaker 2: an adventure. It's a journey that you're on. So I say,
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Speaker 2: all right, let's just first start on that thing that
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Speaker 2: I'm not going to give you an answer right away.
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Speaker 1: You have to be patient.
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Speaker 2: And then it's a matter of going into yourself and
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Speaker 2: being introspective. which is an incredibly important skill to have
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Speaker 2: in life, to be able to withdraw from the group,
5:34
Speaker 2: withdraw from your phone, withdraw from your friends, be alone,
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Speaker 2: listen to yourself and write things down in a journal
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Speaker 2: and go, these are my thoughts. These are what I like.
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Speaker 2: This is what I love. This is what I hate.
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Speaker 2: When I was five years old, I really, really loved
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Speaker 2: this activity, this endeavor. And then I kind of lost
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Speaker 2: track of that and I forgot about it. You're going
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Speaker 2: to be going deeply, deeply, deeply into yourself. Not listening
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Speaker 2: to what all your friends are saying, not listening to
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Speaker 2: what people on Instagram are saying, just yourself, your voice.
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Speaker 2: You have a voice inside your head that speaks to
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Speaker 2: you about what you love, but you're hearing all these
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Speaker 2: other voices from other people. Get rid of all those
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Speaker 2: voices and listen to yourself. And when you go through that,
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Speaker 2: something will happen. A click will happen. You'll go, hmm,
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Speaker 2: I actually am really attracted to science. You know, I
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Speaker 2: was forced to go in this other direction. I'm really
6:27
Speaker 2: interested in this. I have a kind of a logical brain.
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Speaker 2: This is what I was meant to do. Could be anything.
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Speaker 2: I don't know what it is. And I tell people
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Speaker 2: often when you were very young, when you were eight
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Speaker 2: or seven, You actually knew it, but you lost it.
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Speaker 2: And so it's a process. It's like archaea. It's like
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Speaker 2: a dig. We're digging in the ground and we're going
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Speaker 2: back into your childhood and we're figuring out what it
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Speaker 2: is that makes you unique and what you were meant
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Speaker 2: to accomplish in life.
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Speaker 1: I think to follow your point, a lot of people
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Speaker 1: aren't asking themselves what their factory setting is. And they're
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Speaker 1: not saying to themselves, what is it I enjoy doing?
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Speaker 1: And then maybe get really good at that. To your point, mastery, right?
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Speaker 2: I mean, the problem is nobody teaches this. Nobody gives
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Speaker 2: it to you. You know, when you go to school,
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Speaker 2: when you're young, They force you to do algebra, math, sciences, English.
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Speaker 2: doesn't suit you, you get turned off by learning, right?
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Speaker 2: And then that haunts you the rest of your life.
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Speaker 2: But I can tell you, learning is actually the most
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Speaker 2: exciting thing in the world. It's almost as exciting as sex.
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Speaker 2: I know you don't believe that, but it is.
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Speaker 1: Wow, big statement. That's a big statement. But I love
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Speaker 1: business so much. I know exactly how to do business.
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Speaker 1: I love it so much. I know that learning feeling
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Speaker 1: is like nothing like it. But why aren't people tapping
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Speaker 1: into this? I think because in school... It's just like
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Speaker 1: a buffet. You just have to learn all these different things.
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Speaker 1: You're not focusing on that one thing that really excites you.
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Speaker 1: And school isn't geared towards finding those things, right?
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Speaker 3: But why is it like that? If you get a
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Speaker 3: D in something, they make you do it more. Because
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Speaker 3: people are stupid. Because people are illogical. Because our education
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Speaker 3: system is a bureaucracy. It's an organization. It's the madness
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Speaker 3: of groups. When groups build something... It's inevitably irrational and stupid.
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Speaker 3: So our school system is completely ass backwards. If you're
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Speaker 3: never encouraged to go in the direction that excites you,
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Speaker 3: then for the rest of your life, you're going to
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Speaker 3: be haunted by this feeling of, oh, learning is boring.
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Speaker 3: Learning is tedious. I'd rather do a video game. I'd
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Speaker 3: rather watch online porn. That's much more fun.
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Speaker 2: Let me tell you a story here. My parents wanted
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Speaker 2: me to be very successful. They were very ambitious, right?
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Speaker 2: And they were kind of pushing me to go to
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Speaker 2: law school, to medical school. And I was a literature person, right?
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Speaker 2: I was just into books and learning and reading and novels.
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Speaker 2: And I wanted to be a writer. And I wandered
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Speaker 2: through life, my 20s. As I've told in many interviews,
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Speaker 2: I had 50 different jobs. By the time I'm in
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Speaker 2: my mid-30s, you could definitely say that Robert Greene was
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Speaker 2: kind of a loser. I never made money, really good money.
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Speaker 2: I went from job to job to job to job.
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Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't a complete failure, but I had
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Speaker 2: not figured anything out. My parents were really getting worried
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Speaker 2: about me because they didn't force me to do these things.
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Speaker 2: And then I discovered what I love. I found writing
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Speaker 2: these interested in doing what i loved and now i've
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Speaker 2: made more money than my father ever made in his
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Speaker 2: entire life i mean i made more money than i've
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Speaker 2: ever would have made if i'd gone to law school
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Speaker 2: or med school because i pursued what genuinely excited and
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Speaker 2: fascinated the.
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Speaker 1: Late gratification you're partly talking about there aren't you so
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Speaker 1: you just followed the dream yeah and then eventually all
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Speaker 1: the wealth comes whatever wealth is these days anyway you
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Speaker 1: know so what do we need to know about human nature.
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Speaker 2: People are tricky People are not easy. Learning a math
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Speaker 2: problem or coding, that's kind of easy and simple and linear.
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Speaker 2: People are not linear. People are weird. They're difficult. They
9:37
Speaker 2: never say what they really think about you. Robert, I
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Speaker 2: love your book. It's wonderful. But really, they're thinking, God,
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Speaker 2: what a sellout. I don't really know. You never know
9:44
Speaker 2: what they're thinking. You never know what they're up to.
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Speaker 2: It's tricky. It's deceptive. And it can drive you crazy.
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Speaker 2: And if you enter the world 22, 23, they never
9:53
Speaker 2: teach you these things. And you enter the work world.
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Speaker 2: and it's all political and people have their egos and
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Speaker 2: they're all trying to get this or that. Or you
10:01
Speaker 2: can take it personally and get very upset and you
10:03
Speaker 2: can get emotional. It can ruin your life. So I
10:05
Speaker 2: want you to think of understanding people as a skill
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Speaker 2: as necessary as as learning business, as learning coding, as
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Speaker 2: learning algorithms, learning anything in life. And the only way
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Speaker 2: you're going to learn about people is by interacting with them.
10:20
Speaker 2: If you're too virtual, if you're doing everything on your phone,
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Speaker 2: you're not interacting with people, you're not going out and
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Speaker 2: meeting them, you're not being social, that skill will atrophy.
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Speaker 2: It's like a muscle you have to develop. And so
10:33
Speaker 2: you have to get to this point where I really
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Speaker 2: want to understand people. I want to read them. I
10:39
Speaker 2: want to be able to know what's going on and
10:41
Speaker 2: not be so lost. So the first thing is to realize,
10:44
Speaker 2: to get down on your hands and knees and go,
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Speaker 2: I don't understand people. They're mystery to me. They cause
10:49
Speaker 2: me problems. Now you can take the next step. And
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Speaker 2: the next step is you have to observe people. And
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Speaker 2: the problem that most of us face is Quite honestly,
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Speaker 2: we're more interested in ourselves than we are in other people.
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Speaker 2: I make the point in my book, Human Nature, Laws
11:06
Speaker 2: of Human Nature, that we are all self-centered. We are
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Speaker 2: all narcissists to some extent. We want to hear about ourselves.
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Speaker 2: We love it when people talk about us. Other people,
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Speaker 2: we don't think they're as interesting as us. But actually,
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Speaker 2: other people are much more interesting than you are. Your
11:20
Speaker 2: thoughts are going round and round in circles, the same
11:22
Speaker 2: boring ideas. People are weird. They're strange. They have different
11:26
Speaker 2: experiences than you. They come from different cultures. Feel like
11:29
Speaker 2: you want to get inside people. You want to understand
11:31
Speaker 2: their stories. You're interested in them. And then use your imagination.
11:35
Speaker 2: And then be very attentive to people's nonverbal cues. But
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Speaker 2: the most important thing about understanding human nature is that
11:43
Speaker 2: appearances don't matter. People create the appearance that they want
11:48
Speaker 2: you to see. So don't take the appearance people present
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Speaker 2: to you at face value. Look behind the mask.
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Speaker 1: I think it's such an underrated... point that people don't
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Speaker 1: understand how I ask people in the street what their
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Speaker 1: dream is. The answers blow my mind. I just find
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Speaker 1: it so fascinating as well. What's going on behind the eyes,
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Speaker 1: you know, like there's so much more and people do judge,
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Speaker 1: not by how people look, but the jobs that they're doing.
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Speaker 1: So we asked this guy who was in the bin,
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Speaker 1: like what his dream is. And he had this most
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Speaker 1: amazing dream. He was in the bin, taking something out
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Speaker 1: of the bin to eat.
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Speaker 2: He was like homeless.
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Speaker 1: I don't, we couldn't tell what he was actually doing,
12:19
Speaker 1: but he was in the bin and you would normally
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Speaker 1: walk past this person, maybe with a little bit of fear.
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Speaker 1: And then we actually asked him what his dream was
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Speaker 1: and his dream was incredible. You know, like back to
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Speaker 1: your point, I think we do judge a book by
12:28
Speaker 1: its cover, but a lot of people will be listening
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Speaker 1: to this thinking, well, you know, okay. So again, back
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Speaker 1: to themselves.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: I can, I can go ask people, you know, what
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Speaker 1: they're about and I can copy Simon. What's her dream?
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Speaker 1: But how do I know, you know, how do I,
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Speaker 1: how does that help me? How do you think that
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Speaker 1: helps people?
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Speaker 2: Well, geez, I mean, you know, as I said, you're
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Speaker 2: a social animal. So at some point, However old you are,
12:48
Speaker 2: you're going to get a job. You're going to be
12:50
Speaker 2: dealing with 5, 6, 20, 100, 200 strangers, right? And
12:54
Speaker 2: if you don't understand them, if you're not interested in them,
12:56
Speaker 2: if you don't know what's really going on in their mind,
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Speaker 2: you're going to be doing stupid things. You're going to
13:01
Speaker 2: be making mistakes. You don't realize that everyone has an
13:04
Speaker 2: ego and that you're going to be stepping on their
13:06
Speaker 2: toes and making them upset. Your life is going to
13:08
Speaker 2: be miserable if you don't take the time to try
13:11
Speaker 2: and understand people on a deeper level. And once you
13:14
Speaker 2: do try and understand them, when you understand, another gear
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Speaker 2: and you go I'm going to try and figure them
13:23
Speaker 2: out now you can't always figure people out they're complex
13:26
Speaker 2: I don't really know what's going on in your mind
13:28
Speaker 2: right now I can't read it but I can sense
13:30
Speaker 2: your mood I can sense how you feel I don't
13:33
Speaker 2: know your thoughts but I can sense if you're kind
13:37
Speaker 2: of hostile if you're open and interested so you want
13:41
Speaker 2: to develop this interest in other people you want to
13:44
Speaker 2: see it as a skill and you want to observe
13:46
Speaker 2: them and in my book loss of human nature I
13:49
Speaker 2: I explain 18 kind of facets, traits that humans have
13:53
Speaker 2: had for thousands of years. And I kind of take
13:57
Speaker 2: you through it step by step just to give you
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Speaker 2: one example. So I don't want to take up all
14:00
Speaker 2: the time here. I have a chapter on envy. Envy
14:02
Speaker 2: is an incredibly important thing to understand. Everybody feels it.
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Speaker 2: I feel it. Even Elon Musk feels it. The most
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Speaker 2: powerful people in the world feel it. It's so ingrained
14:14
Speaker 2: in human nature. What it is, is we're constantly comparing
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Speaker 2: ourselves to other people. That's how our brains work. Our
14:20
Speaker 2: brains work by comparing things. So if I'm on social
14:23
Speaker 2: media and I see people are traveling to Tahiti, they've
14:27
Speaker 2: got these wonderful families, they're married to this beautiful woman,
14:30
Speaker 2: I'm feeling envy, damn it. Even I, I'll feel envy, right?
14:33
Speaker 2: I feel it. You know, Ryan Holiday, you know, Ryan Holiday,
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Speaker 2: my former mentee, he's far more successful than I am.
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Speaker 2: I can feel envy for Ryan. You know, we're all
14:43
Speaker 2: prone to it. And I want to show you where
14:45
Speaker 2: it comes from, how you feel it, how you can
14:48
Speaker 2: overcome that feeling and turn it into something productive. So
14:51
Speaker 2: understanding human nature is also about understanding and identifying toxic
14:56
Speaker 2: people before you let them into your life and they
14:59
Speaker 2: ruin you. One of the things I talk in the
15:01
Speaker 2: book about how to use your envy is if there
15:04
Speaker 2: are people who have things that you wish you had
15:07
Speaker 2: but don't have, then use that as a spur of
15:10
Speaker 2: as something to stimulate you to get what they have,
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Speaker 2: to become successful.
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Speaker 1: I think positive envy, I think envy, a bit like ego,
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Speaker 1: can be powerful if it's a positive thing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. One aspect of envy is this thing called schadenfreude,
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Speaker 2: which means we feel joy when other people have a
15:25
Speaker 2: bad experience, right? It's an ugly emotion, but a lot
15:29
Speaker 2: of people have it. I'm sure I've had it in
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Speaker 2: my life. I'm sure you've had it.
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Speaker 1: I can't think I have, actually. And I'm being genuine.
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Speaker 1: I can't think of a moment where I've enjoyed someone
15:37
Speaker 1: else's misery. I say that. I used to have an agency.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
15:41
Speaker 1: Here we go, here we go, here we go. And
15:42
Speaker 1: we beat a big company that said they were going
15:44
Speaker 1: to squash us and we beat them. But it was
15:46
Speaker 1: more like a competition type fight.
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Speaker 2: Okay. Well, the other side of that, the opposite of
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Speaker 2: schadenfreude would be, I'm using German words, so excuse me, please,
15:55
Speaker 2: but mitfreude, which means having pleasure with other people. So
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Speaker 2: when other people have success, feel joy about them. Force
16:03
Speaker 2: yourself to feel good about them. Force yourself to say,
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Speaker 2: That's great. I'm so happy for you. You won't realize
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Speaker 2: how wonderful that feeling is.
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Speaker 1: Because it's not natural.
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Speaker 2: It's not natural. If your friends suddenly sell something great,
16:17
Speaker 2: your first instinct is, well, why not? Why not me?
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Speaker 2: So drop yourself and just go. I'm really, truly happy
16:25
Speaker 2: for that other person. It's a very wonderful emotion. There's
16:28
Speaker 2: two kinds of confidence. There's the confidence that's just pure bullshit,
16:31
Speaker 2: where you're just kind of presenting a confident front. And
16:34
Speaker 2: then there's the confidence that's a quiet confidence. It's based
16:38
Speaker 2: on the fact that you know what you're talking about,
16:40
Speaker 2: that you have skill, that you've had success in life.
16:44
Speaker 2: So you don't need to brag. You don't need to
16:45
Speaker 2: kind of create the show, the performance of confidence. I
16:49
Speaker 2: can very quickly tell the difference when I meet people.
16:51
Speaker 2: What's the difference? Who has the real one? Who has
16:54
Speaker 2: the fake one? But the main thing that you want
16:56
Speaker 2: is if you want to have confidence in life, it
16:59
Speaker 2: has to be built on something real. If let's say
17:02
Speaker 2: in the realm of seduction, which is one of my books,
17:07
Speaker 2: The Art of Seduction, being confident when you meet a
17:12
Speaker 2: man or a woman is very important, right? That sense
17:16
Speaker 2: of confidence is carries over, they feel it, and it's
17:19
Speaker 2: very seductive. It's a very powerful quality. It's like charisma.
17:23
Speaker 2: If it's just you're trying so hard to feel confident,
17:27
Speaker 2: particularly women, they can see right through it, right? They
17:30
Speaker 2: can see the fakeness in that. But if it's built
17:32
Speaker 2: on the sense of, I feel comfortable, I've been successful
17:37
Speaker 2: before with other relationships, with seductions, if you want, it's
17:40
Speaker 2: based on something real. It feels real. Take it out
17:43
Speaker 2: of that if it's like in your business world, You're
17:47
Speaker 2: not going to have confidence until you actually create something,
17:50
Speaker 2: but it can come in small pieces. Like in the
17:53
Speaker 2: first three months of this process, you find yourself learning skills. Okay,
17:59
Speaker 2: I'm going to start a business, right? I have a
18:02
Speaker 2: business in my mind. It's been my dream, right? Okay.
18:05
Speaker 2: I can't start right now because I don't have the funds.
18:07
Speaker 2: I don't have the money. Although you always do have
18:09
Speaker 2: the funds. You should start tomorrow anyway, but say, I don't,
18:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to spend the next few months learning the
18:14
Speaker 2: first steps of the process that already will build confidence
18:17
Speaker 2: that you're doing something that you're not just living in
18:20
Speaker 2: your dreams and imagining it. So, okay, I'm going to learn.
18:23
Speaker 2: I'm going to go online or I'm going to take
18:25
Speaker 2: a class. I'm going to learn what I need to
18:27
Speaker 2: do to get the funding to start my business already
18:31
Speaker 2: in those three months. You have a slight little foundation
18:34
Speaker 2: of competence, right? It's based on something real. Now you
18:37
Speaker 2: go out and you do something. You try and get
18:39
Speaker 2: that funding. Okay.
18:41
Speaker 1: You fail.
18:42
Speaker 2: You don't get what you want. You're a little bit frustrated. Okay.
18:45
Speaker 2: Something didn't go right. I need to learn some more.
18:48
Speaker 2: You don't give up. Giving up will screw all this
18:50
Speaker 2: whole process up. Yeah.
18:52
Speaker 1: Never give up. I think that's an important part.
18:53
Speaker 2: Okay. All right. So it didn't work. I'm going to
18:56
Speaker 2: try again. All right. So you go back to square one.
19:01
Speaker 2: You read more, you think about it, and then you
19:03
Speaker 2: try again, and now you get it. Whoa, your confidence
19:06
Speaker 2: level is starting to rise, right? You don't want it
19:08
Speaker 2: to go from here to here because that's grandiosity. That's
19:12
Speaker 2: not going to go anywhere. Confidence must be built step
19:14
Speaker 2: by step, by action, by success, by success, by success, right?
19:18
Speaker 1: So you're here.
19:19
Speaker 2: Now you're here. Wow, I got the funding. Now you're
19:21
Speaker 2: starting a business. Starting a business is hell. It's so complicated.
19:24
Speaker 2: It's so difficult. It's not going to be as easy
19:26
Speaker 2: as you thought, right? Okay, so you don't give up.
19:30
Speaker 2: You keep trying. And as you get any kind of success,
19:33
Speaker 2: you move on to that next level. On and on
19:35
Speaker 2: and on you build it. Then, of course, inevitably in life,
19:37
Speaker 2: you're going to have failure. You're going to fall down, right?
19:39
Speaker 2: And your confidence is going to waver. But in the
19:41
Speaker 2: back of your mind, you will always have that memory
19:44
Speaker 2: of how you pushed past it, how you didn't give up,
19:47
Speaker 2: how you learned, how you got past the first failure.
19:50
Speaker 2: and it'll still give you a level of confidence that
19:53
Speaker 2: you can always fall back on but the main point
19:55
Speaker 2: is it has to be built slowly on things that
19:58
Speaker 2: are real on things that you do and if you
20:00
Speaker 2: do it's confidence that will last you through your whole
20:02
Speaker 2: life i.
20:02
Speaker 1: Think it's the best explanation i've ever heard of like
20:05
Speaker 1: it's good to fail because if you fail, you learn something.
20:07
Speaker 1: You go again and again until you learn something, and
20:09
Speaker 1: then you get the confidence because you've failed so many times,
20:11
Speaker 1: you've got all the knowledge now to not fail.
20:13
Speaker 2: Well, failure is the entrepreneur's school where you learn. I
20:19
Speaker 2: have the story in Mastery of Henry Ford. We started
20:23
Speaker 2: a Ford Motor Company. You think your business is hard
20:25
Speaker 2: to start. Try starting an automobile company in the 1890s.
20:29
Speaker 2: The amount of capital necessary for starting it, It was insane, right?
20:33
Speaker 1: He didn't even have the trademark, did he, for the
20:34
Speaker 1: car at the time? No.
20:37
Speaker 2: So we had an idea about how he was going
20:40
Speaker 2: to do it, but his first company failed completely. He's
20:43
Speaker 2: going to start a second company. And everybody in the
20:46
Speaker 2: business goes, Henry Ford's a failure. We're not going to
20:48
Speaker 2: give you money. Once you fail in this business, you're gone.
20:50
Speaker 2: He somehow conned somebody into giving him money. Tried a
20:53
Speaker 2: second time. It was a disaster. It was even worse,
20:56
Speaker 2: an even bigger failure. Right now he's totally ruined. No
21:00
Speaker 2: one will ever go near him. He found some kind
21:03
Speaker 2: of naive Scottish investor. He got the money from this guy.
21:08
Speaker 2: And now he understood exactly what he needed to do.
21:11
Speaker 2: He understood why he failed. He understood he had to
21:13
Speaker 2: create a factory system that had a certain kind of
21:16
Speaker 2: scale to it. He understood what the customer wanted. He
21:19
Speaker 2: learned so many lessons that his third one was a
21:21
Speaker 2: huge set, became Ford Motor Company and became the factory system.
21:25
Speaker 2: He said, I only learned how to be so successful
21:28
Speaker 2: through all of my failures. It's hard to learn things
21:32
Speaker 2: when everything's just an idea, when it's just abstract. We're
21:34
Speaker 2: concrete people. We're animals. We live in our bodies, right?
21:39
Speaker 2: And so if you're only in your head, it's really
21:41
Speaker 2: hard to learn. But if you're doing it, you learn
21:44
Speaker 2: so much faster. So if you want to start a business,
21:48
Speaker 2: you could spend five years putzing around. Oh, I've got
21:52
Speaker 2: to get better at this. I've got to go to
21:53
Speaker 2: business school. I've got to read this book. You don't
21:56
Speaker 2: start the damn thing.
21:58
Speaker 1: This business school stuff drives me absolutely crazy, to be honest,
22:01
Speaker 1: because there's kids getting into serious debt, spending four years
22:03
Speaker 1: learning business. Just start a business. You'll learn sales quite
22:07
Speaker 1: quickly because you've got no choice. So what's happened? And
22:10
Speaker 1: what can people do to kind of fight back? Because
22:11
Speaker 1: people will be listening to this and they'll be saying, right,
22:13
Speaker 1: for example, we're helping a lady who wants to be
22:15
Speaker 1: a graphic designer. She was going to go to UCLA
22:18
Speaker 1: for four years, costing us $ 60, 000 a year. She's going
22:21
Speaker 1: to get into $ 204, 000.
22:22
Speaker 2: UCLA? Is that expensive? Yeah.
22:24
Speaker 1: Well, she's out of state. So out of state, plus
22:27
Speaker 1: her cost of accommodation so it's going to cost her
22:30
Speaker 1: 60 000 us a year so 240 000 and four
22:33
Speaker 1: years of her life to learn graphic design by doing
22:36
Speaker 1: it surely that's logical i put this video about this
22:40
Speaker 1: people tell me no she should go and learn she'd
22:42
Speaker 1: go to she should go to ucla and what's happened
22:45
Speaker 1: that that's the default everyone believes is the way to
22:46
Speaker 1: do things one of the people.
22:48
Speaker 2: That i interviewed in mastery is a man named uh
22:51
Speaker 2: named just suddenly paul grant sorry all right You know who.
22:54
Speaker 1: Paul Graham is? Y Combinator. Yes, Y Combinator. Big fan, yeah.
22:57
Speaker 2: In the 70s, he was a hacker early on in
23:00
Speaker 2: the computer era. He learned hacking when he was very young.
23:03
Speaker 2: He went and studied AI at MIT, some university like that.
23:07
Speaker 2: And then he decided that he wanted to be a painter.
23:10
Speaker 2: And he left school and he went to Italy and
23:12
Speaker 2: he studied to become a painter. And then one day
23:14
Speaker 2: he was in New York in the loft trying to paint.
23:17
Speaker 2: He had no money. And he heard an ad on
23:19
Speaker 2: the radio that the internet, which was just starting out,
23:23
Speaker 2: would be where people would buy things. But nobody thought
23:25
Speaker 2: of that. He goes, with my skill in coding and
23:30
Speaker 2: my design skills, I'm going to create that. He created it.
23:33
Speaker 2: He sold it to Yahoo for $ 5 million. And he
23:35
Speaker 2: went on from there. He started Y Combinator. And Y
23:38
Speaker 2: Combinator is like a school for entrepreneurs, right? And the
23:44
Speaker 2: idea is we'll teach you how to start your business
23:48
Speaker 2: and then we'll own a share of it. Okay. But
23:51
Speaker 2: because he understood the process of learning by doing, he
23:54
Speaker 2: created his own business by just simply doing it by
23:57
Speaker 2: hearing an ad on the radio and just having the
23:59
Speaker 2: cojones to go out there and do it. And so his,
24:03
Speaker 2: his school, his incubator school was based on the idea
24:06
Speaker 2: that you're going to come to mountain view or wherever
24:10
Speaker 2: it was Palo Alto. And you're going to, Build your
24:13
Speaker 2: business right there in the school. You know, you're not
24:16
Speaker 2: going to study any kind of books or anything. You're
24:18
Speaker 2: going to build your business. We're going to watch you
24:20
Speaker 2: build it. And if it's good, then, you know, we'll
24:24
Speaker 2: fund it for you and everything like that. So we
24:26
Speaker 2: understood learning by doing right. And. He would get, because
24:31
Speaker 2: it was so successful, and it started so many businesses
24:34
Speaker 2: that way.
24:34
Speaker 1: Airbnb was started in that incubator, for those that don't know.
24:38
Speaker 2: Sam Altman, who we all have heard of, he came
24:40
Speaker 2: from that. He was running WebHop Native for a while.
24:42
Speaker 2: He was running it, but he also came through it.
24:44
Speaker 2: He would get 5,000 applications every year for people who
24:48
Speaker 2: wanted to be in the incubator school. And as soon
24:52
Speaker 2: as he got the sheet and said, Yale University threw
24:54
Speaker 2: it in the trash, as soon as he got one
24:56
Speaker 2: and said, I went to this business school, he threw
24:58
Speaker 2: it in the trash. Then there would be somebody who
25:01
Speaker 2: just was a kid somewhere who had like done his
25:04
Speaker 2: own kind of computer work on his own. He'd put
25:07
Speaker 2: that in the possible pile. People who went to these schools,
25:09
Speaker 2: he thought they were totally useless. They had no ambition.
25:12
Speaker 2: They were not self-starters. You want to be a self-starter.
25:15
Speaker 2: You want to learn in life to start things, to
25:17
Speaker 2: do it on your own, not to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
25:20
Speaker 2: to just go out there and start it. Because if
25:23
Speaker 2: you start your business, you will learn more in two
25:26
Speaker 2: months than in 20 years of business school, right? And
25:31
Speaker 2: you'll probably fail. But your failure will teach you. So
25:34
Speaker 2: stop waiting and just go out and start it. I
25:37
Speaker 2: went to university. There's nothing wrong with university. There's nothing
25:39
Speaker 2: wrong with learning. But learning as... as a way of
25:44
Speaker 2: delaying actually building something is wrong.
25:47
Speaker 1: You can do and learn at the same time. That's
25:48
Speaker 1: the beauty of Y Combinator. I built a competitor called
25:51
Speaker 1: Nest to Y Combinator in Asia. And we didn't do
25:54
Speaker 1: it as well as them, I would just like to say.
25:55
Speaker 1: One thing I noticed, we used to get about 3,000
25:58
Speaker 1: applicants per accelerator program. And we can only bring eight
26:00
Speaker 1: companies in. I always felt bad. We left thousands of
26:03
Speaker 1: people behind. But what I loved about the model, apart
26:06
Speaker 1: from leaving people behind, which is why I do this
26:07
Speaker 1: way instead of that way now, is that the whole
26:09
Speaker 1: model is you're doing, but however so often as you're doing,
26:13
Speaker 1: maybe someone knows something you don't know that can allow
26:15
Speaker 1: you to do the doing better. And that's what the
26:17
Speaker 1: apprenticeships were about. If you're making something, carving something, if
26:23
Speaker 1: someone who's carved before says, just that area there, be
26:26
Speaker 1: able to look careful. Brilliant. So guidance, I guess is
26:30
Speaker 1: where mentorship comes in. you know, you had a mentor, right?
26:33
Speaker 2: I had a mentee.
26:34
Speaker 1: Mentee. Oh, mentee. Oh, sorry, mentee.
26:36
Speaker 2: Ryan Holiday.
26:36
Speaker 1: I was his mentor. Oh, right. And now he's more
26:39
Speaker 1: successful than me. But that's because of your good work.
26:42
Speaker 2: Perhaps.
26:42
Speaker 1: But there's not enough of that now, by the way,
26:44
Speaker 1: in the world. There's not enough of that supporting someone
26:48
Speaker 1: through your experience. Why did you decide to mentor him?
26:51
Speaker 2: He was 19 years old. He was just this kid
26:55
Speaker 2: at You know, you're just California Riverside. He was a
26:59
Speaker 2: big fan of 48 laws. I needed somebody to help
27:02
Speaker 2: me and I had really bad luck. People are really lazy.
27:08
Speaker 2: They don't take instructions. If you criticize them, they wilt.
27:11
Speaker 2: They like, Oh, you know, they don't, it's really hard
27:14
Speaker 2: to criticize people. So when you're serious in writing a book,
27:18
Speaker 2: you have to criticize people. So I thought I'll give
27:20
Speaker 2: this 19 year old kid a try. He seems very sincere.
27:23
Speaker 2: He was fantastic. I could criticize him. He didn't wilt.
27:26
Speaker 2: He didn't become this little shrinking person. He understood it.
27:31
Speaker 2: He improved. And he was very smart. And he understood
27:35
Speaker 2: my thinking process. And so I can't take credit for
27:39
Speaker 2: him because he's very motivated, very ambitious. And he's extremely smart.
27:44
Speaker 2: But I helped him. I helped him along the way.
27:47
Speaker 2: I taught him. I got him a job at American
27:49
Speaker 2: Apparel where I was on the board of directors. which
27:52
Speaker 2: gave him the idea for his first book. So I
27:55
Speaker 2: can take credit for that. But I also taught him
27:57
Speaker 2: kind of the bread and butter of how to write
27:59
Speaker 2: a book, how to organize it, how to create notes,
28:02
Speaker 2: how to research. So I helped him in that sense.
28:05
Speaker 2: And now he's a global phenomenon.
28:08
Speaker 1: People are listening and I think learning by doing is
28:11
Speaker 1: quite an obvious thing, but people are scared to go
28:14
Speaker 1: and do it on their own. Just again, same question,
28:17
Speaker 1: kind of, but like how, if people want to get
28:19
Speaker 1: a mentor, What do you think the way is to
28:21
Speaker 1: get someone to help you with the doing? Do you
28:23
Speaker 1: think there's any way to go about that?
28:24
Speaker 2: Well, not to promote myself, but I have a whole
28:27
Speaker 2: chapter on it in Mastery. Oh, okay. It's about mentorship
28:32
Speaker 2: and why it's so important. It's exactly what you said,
28:35
Speaker 2: that people can watch you. They can see that you're
28:37
Speaker 2: doing it this way, but you should do it that way.
28:40
Speaker 2: And giving you that instruction can save you years of
28:45
Speaker 2: not getting it correct. So it can be very valuable. Adapt.
28:48
Speaker 1: And reinvent yourself.
28:50
Speaker 2: You know, the world changes at a very rapid rate.
28:53
Speaker 2: And so a lot of problems that people have that
28:55
Speaker 2: come to me is I got into this career. These
28:58
Speaker 2: are older people. And it was really great. I mean,
29:01
Speaker 2: you don't know how many people here in Los Angeles
29:03
Speaker 2: in the film business had a little niche job that
29:06
Speaker 2: was really comfortable making a lot of money. And suddenly
29:09
Speaker 2: streaming came on. They lost it. Suddenly AI come on.
29:12
Speaker 2: They lost it. Horrible. It's a horrifying, horrifying experience. And
29:16
Speaker 2: so this world is ruthless like that. The pace of
29:19
Speaker 2: change has never been like this in the history of humanity.
29:23
Speaker 2: You can't let yourself get trapped in a career that's
29:26
Speaker 2: going to be like that, right? You have to be flexible.
29:29
Speaker 1: The gold in.
29:30
Speaker 2: This world now in this economy is having a variety
29:34
Speaker 2: of skills, not not like all over the map but
29:38
Speaker 2: within a certain framework you you've learned four different ways
29:41
Speaker 2: you can go and then when that change happens you're
29:45
Speaker 2: able to adapt but you always have to keep in
29:47
Speaker 2: the back of your mind that this whole thing could
29:49
Speaker 2: blow up. You're relying on social media, your TikTok. TikTok
29:53
Speaker 2: could be gone tomorrow. Suddenly, the social media world is
29:56
Speaker 2: completely different. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but
29:59
Speaker 2: you have to be aware that this could happen. Where
30:01
Speaker 2: would I go from there? You have to be fluid
30:04
Speaker 2: in life. You can't be stuck and think, this is
30:06
Speaker 2: what I'm going to be doing for the rest of
30:08
Speaker 2: my life because the world doesn't operate that way. I
30:11
Speaker 2: know writing books, when I began in the late 90s,
30:17
Speaker 2: there was no internet really for books. It was all
30:19
Speaker 2: mainstream media, magazines, newspapers. It was hell. I hated it.
30:25
Speaker 2: And then the internet started coming about. And when I
30:30
Speaker 2: did the book with 50 Cent, suddenly you had to
30:31
Speaker 2: kind of market yourself on the internet. Then that completely
30:34
Speaker 2: changed by the time my next book, each time my
30:36
Speaker 2: book comes out, the landscape is completely different. Nothing is
30:40
Speaker 2: the same and I can't rely on what I did before.
30:43
Speaker 2: So I have to adapt If you're rigid, if you
30:48
Speaker 2: think that I've figured it out, I've got it in
30:51
Speaker 2: the pocket, I know exactly, I've got the perfect career,
30:54
Speaker 2: you're going to be a dinosaur at some point. You're
30:56
Speaker 2: going to be extinct. The world will move on and
30:58
Speaker 2: you'll be left behind. So be open and willing to
31:00
Speaker 2: adapt and be aware of what's going on in the
31:03
Speaker 2: world and how the industries are changing. And reinvent yourself is,
31:09
Speaker 2: it's actually, you want to think of it as something exciting.
31:12
Speaker 2: In 48 Laws of Power, I have the metaphor that
31:14
Speaker 2: we're all actors. That part of being a social animal
31:18
Speaker 2: is to act. And people who are really successful are
31:21
Speaker 2: actually really good actors. They know how to perform in
31:23
Speaker 2: front of the people who work for them and part
31:26
Speaker 2: of the public. They're not being exactly who they are.
31:29
Speaker 2: They're not being completely authentic. They're playing a role and
31:33
Speaker 2: they're good at it. So you're an actor. Take control
31:36
Speaker 2: of that and realize people are going to judge by
31:39
Speaker 2: how you appear. Reinventing yourself is like becoming someone else.
31:43
Speaker 2: It's like fun. It's like, I'm going to be someone else.
31:45
Speaker 2: It's a new role I'm going to play. My own
31:48
Speaker 2: way of doing that is each time I write a book,
31:52
Speaker 2: I do something very different from the last book. So
31:55
Speaker 2: 48 Laws of Power, I go to art of seduction.
31:58
Speaker 2: Then I go to writing a book about war and strategy.
32:00
Speaker 2: That's quite different from seduction, but not really. And then
32:04
Speaker 2: I go and write a book with 50 cents, completely different.
32:08
Speaker 2: And then I write a book on mastery, which is
32:09
Speaker 2: something I've never done before. And now I'm writing a
32:12
Speaker 2: book on the sublime. I want to keep challenging myself.
32:15
Speaker 2: I want to be somebody different. I want to be
32:17
Speaker 2: able to perform differently. So each book, I have to
32:20
Speaker 2: talk about it in a different way. And it kind
32:22
Speaker 2: of excites me because I am a bit of an actor.
32:25
Speaker 2: I have kind of a ham side to me. It's
32:27
Speaker 2: exciting to feel like you have control over your identity
32:30
Speaker 2: about how people see you. And that sometimes you like
32:33
Speaker 2: to mix it up. You know, rock stars are really
32:36
Speaker 2: good at that. You know, Michael Jackson was kind of
32:38
Speaker 2: the master of it. He was never... quite the same person.
32:41
Speaker 2: He was always changing. I like the idea of never
32:44
Speaker 2: staying still, always moving, adapting, and becoming a different person.
32:48
Speaker 2: If people get to know you too well, if they
32:51
Speaker 2: know exactly who you are, And this is like later
32:55
Speaker 2: in your career and you're in your 40s. They tune
32:57
Speaker 2: you out because they're too familiar. They know who you are.
32:59
Speaker 2: They're bored with you and they're going to move on
33:01
Speaker 2: to somebody else.
33:02
Speaker 1: I've been married for 23 years. I think it's because
33:04
Speaker 1: I keep reinventing myself. So she hears a new person
33:06
Speaker 1: with a new story of why she would have left
33:08
Speaker 1: me long ago. I totally agree with it.
33:10
Speaker 2: You know, you want to keep the public. on their toes.
33:14
Speaker 2: They haven't quite figured out Simon Squibb. He's suddenly coming
33:17
Speaker 2: out with this other idea, this other, I don't know
33:19
Speaker 2: what that would be. Well, we didn't know who he was.
33:21
Speaker 2: How interesting. As opposed to, oh God, I'm so tired
33:24
Speaker 2: of that guy. I've been looking at him for months.
33:27
Speaker 2: Let's move on to somebody else. I think people do
33:29
Speaker 2: have that, to be honest, that last one. I think
33:30
Speaker 2: people are like.
33:31
Speaker 1: Not Simon on our For You page again. But I
33:33
Speaker 1: think reinventing yourself as well, I think a lot of
33:34
Speaker 1: people listening, I mean, there's innovators dilemma as well, right?
33:37
Speaker 1: Where sometimes people have something that's working. I see this
33:40
Speaker 1: a lot in middle-class lifestyle. People have a house, they
33:43
Speaker 1: have a car, they have a job. They can't suddenly
33:46
Speaker 1: not be a lawyer anymore. So how do you make
33:49
Speaker 1: sure you reinvent? Is there a hack there that people
33:52
Speaker 1: maybe use? How do you reset yourself? The world is
33:54
Speaker 1: working against you. It wants you to settle down. It
33:58
Speaker 1: wants you to have an identity. People want to know
34:01
Speaker 1: exactly who you are. But you're going to reach a
34:03
Speaker 1: point where life loses its kind of flavor, its excitement
34:08
Speaker 1: to you. People have midlife crisis, I guess.
34:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you want to anticipate that. You want to
34:13
Speaker 2: be fluid in life. My last chapter of the 48
34:18
Speaker 2: Laws of Power is called Assume Formlessness. It's a military idea.
34:22
Speaker 2: It comes from Sun Tzu. But the idea of being
34:24
Speaker 2: formless in life, of being fluid and moving with things,
34:28
Speaker 2: is actually a much more enriching way to experience this
34:32
Speaker 2: world because circumstances are constantly changing. So you want to
34:35
Speaker 2: develop this fluidity when you're young. You want to be
34:38
Speaker 2: open and you want to hold that openness and that
34:41
Speaker 2: spirit of adventure. And so if you're going into law
34:45
Speaker 2: and you're in your mid-20s, just look ahead and just
34:48
Speaker 2: look at the people who are in their 40s and
34:51
Speaker 2: how unhappy they are and how stuck they feel and go,
34:54
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be like that. So what am
34:56
Speaker 2: I going to do? I'm going to think of a
34:59
Speaker 2: second career I can use channeling off my law skills
35:03
Speaker 2: because lawyer skills change. are actually very valuable skills for
35:06
Speaker 2: other things, for other endeavors, because you understand the law. Therefore,
35:10
Speaker 2: you can be very helpful. Let's say that you wish
35:13
Speaker 2: you'd been a musician. You can become an agent or
35:15
Speaker 2: something like that because you know law, right? So keep
35:17
Speaker 2: in your mind that at some point, you're going to
35:20
Speaker 2: branch off from this one direction you're going in and
35:23
Speaker 2: have a plan and be fluid and be excited.
35:26
Speaker 1: I don't want to have any regrets either, do you?
35:27
Speaker 1: I want to make sure. Do you have any regrets?
35:30
Speaker 2: My only regret is that I'm not 23 anymore. I'm 22.
35:35
Speaker 2: But I can't really help that. I'm sure that technology
35:38
Speaker 2: is coming. No, I don't have any regrets because everything
35:41
Speaker 2: worked out for the best. In Buddhism, there's the Dharma
35:44
Speaker 2: wheel and it turns everything. Everything kind of happens according
35:48
Speaker 2: to the Dharma, which is law. So here the Dharma
35:51
Speaker 2: wheel has spun and now I'm talking to you. That's
35:53
Speaker 2: just the way it was meant to be. So I'm happy.
35:56
Speaker 2: I have no regrets.
35:57
Speaker 1: Finally, just to ask, reinventing yourself, I think the big
35:59
Speaker 1: thing right now is AI. What's your take on that world?
36:02
Speaker 1: What do you think is going to happen there?
36:03
Speaker 2: I'm not personally a lover of AI. I think it
36:07
Speaker 2: has a positive aspect, which is it could invent cures
36:13
Speaker 2: for terrible illnesses and things like that. Great. Who would
36:17
Speaker 2: be against that? In mastery, I talk about how the
36:19
Speaker 2: human brain works and how we have to be disciplined
36:22
Speaker 2: and we have to be willing to deal with tedium.
36:25
Speaker 2: We have to learn. And learning is something that you
36:29
Speaker 2: have to enjoy and be excited about. And I think
36:31
Speaker 2: a lot of young people are getting too goddamn lazy.
36:35
Speaker 2: From what I hear from people in universities, they don't
36:38
Speaker 2: want to read a whole book anymore. They just read summaries.
36:41
Speaker 2: They just get on AI. The AI kind of helps
36:43
Speaker 2: them with their essays.
36:44
Speaker 1: You think.
36:46
Speaker 2: You're being clever. You think that, man, I don't have
36:48
Speaker 2: to write an essay. I can just get AI to
36:50
Speaker 2: help me. But you're hurting your brain. It doesn't sharpen up. No.
36:55
Speaker 2: So one example is learning a foreign language has so
37:00
Speaker 2: many benefits, right? First of all, it's disciplining your mind.
37:06
Speaker 2: Each language has a different logic. French has a different
37:08
Speaker 2: logic than English. German doesn't. Each time you enter that language,
37:12
Speaker 2: your brain is learning a different logic. You're enriching your brain.
37:15
Speaker 2: Probably firing up new parts of your brain even. For sure.
37:19
Speaker 2: It's also making you so that you can go to
37:21
Speaker 2: a place and interact with people who are different in
37:23
Speaker 2: their own language. And speaking another language makes you into
37:26
Speaker 2: a different person. People tell me that when I'm in Spain,
37:29
Speaker 2: I lived in Spain, I became Spanish. I was much
37:32
Speaker 2: more kind of aggressive and masculine and my hands were
37:34
Speaker 2: going all over the place, you know. It changes you.
37:37
Speaker 2: But now with AI, people are just going to the,
37:39
Speaker 2: goddamn phones and they're getting like translations for everything they
37:43
Speaker 2: go sit to a restaurant they go how do i
37:45
Speaker 2: order this and gives them the whole thing and they
37:46
Speaker 2: spit it out in a really bad accent you're cheating
37:49
Speaker 2: yourself you use it as a tool it's a tool
37:52
Speaker 2: it's not don't become a slave to technology be the
37:56
Speaker 2: master of it i use ai when i'm needing a
37:58
Speaker 2: research problem that i can't i try and i try
38:01
Speaker 2: i can't get it so i ask uh chat gbt
38:05
Speaker 2: and sometimes it gives me a good answer and i
38:07
Speaker 2: use it but it's I select it. We fetishize technology
38:11
Speaker 2: so much, but we really should fetishize the human brain.
38:15
Speaker 2: The human brain is, if you think about it, 50,000
38:19
Speaker 2: years ago, we didn't have language. We were these hominid creatures.
38:22
Speaker 2: Through the development of our brain, we created language, which
38:28
Speaker 2: no other animal has. And our brains just exploded and
38:31
Speaker 2: they became scientists have said it is the most complex
38:35
Speaker 2: organ thing in the entire universe. The number of neurons
38:39
Speaker 2: in your brain that can connect is astronomical. It can't
38:42
Speaker 2: even be computed. Your brain is a wonder, which is
38:45
Speaker 2: something that is sublime. You were gifted with this at
38:48
Speaker 2: your birth, this insane instrument that no other animal, my
38:51
Speaker 2: cats are really clever, but they don't have that power.
38:55
Speaker 4: They can't, you know, invent things they can guess the
38:58
Speaker 4: future as far as i know yeah they probably can
39:00
Speaker 4: they're keeping quiet they're smarter than that yeah but um
39:03
Speaker 4: yeah ai is great we invented it our brains invented
39:07
Speaker 4: it but let's celebrate the brain that invented it not
39:09
Speaker 4: the actual tool
39:10
Speaker 1: Robert thank you so much time out to share your
39:12
Speaker 1: knowledge with us today i feel honored