Manipulation Expert: How To Influence Anyone & Make Them Do Exactly What You Want! - Chase Hughes

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/46c1ca60505dd2c9

This is how social media starts roping you in. This is how politics starts roping you in. This is how cult leaders will recruit you into a cult. It's the number one way that we influence another human being.
Micro compliance. And hypnosis is a great example of this. Like I can have a person laying on the floor unconscious in maybe a minute and a half.
And it's very easy to do. Anybody can learn to do it. But one of the things you'll see me do at the beginning of that is like give me your hand, put both hands out like this, and then flip them over, look all the way up and look all the way down. I'm gonna make him do like 50 things. None of the things that I just did with them are meaningful.
Everything was micro compliance. And you don't realize that you're going through massive amount of compliance. In order to get your behavior to change,
or influence another human being. Use what works for brainwashing. Because our brains have not developed one more wrinkle in the last two hundred thousand years. So a regular example of this is novelty. Anything novel hijacks our brain.
So if you're trying to change your beliefs or you want to lose this weight, change something up in your life. Change your wardrobe, repaint the walls in your office. You need to tell the animal part of our brain here because this has been proven on FMRI studies that the decision shows up before we're conscious of it. What about human to human skills?
So people are starving to have great conversations that are very influential. Which means that if I'm an attorney, I can sway a jury. If I'm a hostage negotiator, I save people's lives. If I'm a parent, I raise better kids because I can communicate in a way that gets the outcome that I'm looking for. And you can do that with any of these techniques like negative dissociation. The childhood development triangle.
This thing called the PCP model, and when it comes to influencing human beings, that is the most important thing that you could ever understand. That might just be the most important skill in the world. So let's do some role playing.
Alright.
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Uh

The world is changing rapidly.
Before our eyes.
On so many fronts, in terms of geopolitics, but also in terms of technology with this whole AI thing, that's
rapidly accelerating. And with that, you've got things like robotics that are on the way and Elon Musk saying that we'll have ten billion humanoid robots in the world in the future. And these are gonna be intelligent robots because the software within them is now artificial and it's
Incredibly intelligent.
One of the things people say to me a lot is in a world where
We're gonna have all this intelligence.
What jobs are gonna remain? And one of the points of consensus from interviewing all these great AI experts is that human skills, any skills that are irreplaceably human, social skills, people skills
Uh
gonna be of extreme value.
You spend
A lot of time.
Teaching people these skills.
I asked you a question just before we started recording. The question I asked you is what is the thing you like talking about the most that you think adds the most value to people?
What did you say?
helping people understand how to
guide human decision and and have great conversations that are very influential.
What does that mean in in real specific practical terms?
It means that if we are in a conversation, I become more likely to help you achieve the outcome that I see for you.
So if I'm a leader then I can
do that. If I'm an attorney, I can sway a jury. I can make a jury pick a certain decision.
If I'm a hostage negotiator, I save people's lives. If I'm a parent
I raise better kids because I I can communicate in a way that gets the outcome that I'm looking for.
From another person.
That might just be the most important skill in the world.
I think it is.
Increasingly so in a world of AI where computers are going to be able to handle a lot of the sort of intelligent white collar related stuff for us.
And we're gonna be rendered
useful only for that which humans can do. Which is probably
This stuff.
Yeah.
The IRL in real life, human to human stuff.
And I think people are starving for it.
You've got a podcast that's non performative.
And people are attracted to realism. There's so much that's artificial and performative that people are starving for realism already. And this is pre-AI.
This was starting to blow up because it just gave us a sense of something that was real.
We are in a
epidemic right now of loneliness.
Where people are are disconnected from each other, and these human skills are gonna matter more than ever as AI comes out. I I was thinking about what you teach in terms of human behavior and getting the best out of people and then influencing people to do what you want them to do. And um
AI does a lot of that.
It does.
It seems like it's been programmed.
Two
Understand human behavior.
And to get me
To like it.
So let's get into some of that human behavior that you think is critical in a world of AI. In a world of AI,
If
The skills that matter the most are human to human skills.
Where does one where does one begin?
Let's understand humans first. Like how could AI
Compromise a person.
And when it comes to influencing human beings, the most important thing that you could ever understand, whether you're a CEO, uh a mom, or dad.
Is this thing called the PCP model.
And P C P
is a three step cascade that happens inside the human brain.

Or
We're we're just having a sales call and we make we make a sale.
Everything goes through P C P so P is perception.
So the first step to really changing somebody's outcome, getting you to make a decision later on, is to change how you're viewing this situation.
So when people talk about owning the frame of a situation or redefining what a situation means right there.
is changing the perception of it.
If we're just talking about AI.
AI can say, yes, uh Steven, I see what you mean, and I can see why you're frustrated. And you know, one of those like standard responses.
But here's what's here's what this is really about.
And it gives you this layer that makes you say, Oh shit like
This is
It's going deep. So now it's hit the P on the PCP model.
So it's modified your perception of a situation. And how is it specifically done that there? Is it because it's acknowledged
My point of view, but then sh
Given a new one? Yes.
So if it'd just give me a new one, I might not have believed it.
But because it first acknowledges my point of view before delivering it a different one.
That's more effective. Yes.
So and the biggest mistake that people make with language is language should be resonating and not directing.
If you wanna speak well, you're not directing people to think certain things or to feel certain things. It should resonate with what they're already feeling and then start guiding them.
So you're getting into their river.
So to speak, and flowing with that first.
Okay, so let's let's do some role playing.
All right.
I say to you.
Chase, I think the sky's purple.
Your job is to
Carry out the perception shift. Yeah.
What would you say to me?
So if somebody says something that is an idea that's far out there.
I'll always acknowledge it.
And I would say like every human being is different. And it's fascinating how many rods and cones we have in our eyes, how we all perceive things differently.
And it's amazing when you see one thing.
That you might see something that's purple and I see the exact same thing. We may be seeing the identical color.
But our brains are just interpreting it differently, or maybe we have a different word for it.
And it's amazing how much we agree on and we just don't realize how much aligned we are with the
a situation in life.
That makes sense. Mm-hmm.
So
I've never
I've never had to respond to somebody calling this guy purple, but
If I can modify how you perceive a situation. So let's say we're at a business networking event and I walk up to you.
And I say,
Let's say I call out the script. Openly call out the script.
And I say it's it's amazing how many people are just running the script of I need to look like a business professional. I can't say anything that makes me look emotional.
I can't say anything that's personal, have to hand out a business card, I have to
Like put on this persona. So I'm just openly saying the script that's running inside that person's head.
And I'm making you aware of it, which means that I'm changing your perception of the situation.
So anything I can get you aware of that's running inside of your own head.
I can massively start transforming your behavior. And we'll get to identity here in a minute, but
Any script that you call out?
You're weakening its power.
Um
So like if you shook my hand super aggressively, or somebody shook my hand like an like a pretend alpha male.
And you call out exactly what they're wanting to happen.
And you say, Wow, that handshake is really firm. I just read an article a few weeks ago that only alpha males do that.
And you say the quiet part out loud.
So any script that's running in the background, some kind of social script.
If I can surface that
Then I become a lot more powerful over the situation because I've lessened the power of a script.
Any script that we push
down is going to be a lot more powerful in that person.
We're increasing power.
On that example of the
Mat very, you know, over the top handshake.
By calling it out
What have you done?
What what have you done in my head? So I've I'm the one that's just squeezed your hand really tight. Yeah.'Cause I wanna be an alpha male.
You call it out.
Wha what does that do? It def it disarms me, or it makes me feel great, or
No, and and and I'm not saying that that's a tactic anybody should do, but
If there's a script running.
Here like here's what we're supposed to do. You and I are on a podcast. We're supposed to l make eye contact with each other. We're supposed to nod throughout this entire thing. I'm making both of us more aware of this.
And that gives us a little permission to break away from it.
Oh, to break away from it. Yeah.
So your desire to be the alpha male in the handshake situation.
would be temporarily kind of broken because I'm openly saying out loud what you didn't want to say out loud. Oh, okay.
Does that make sense? Oh okay. So you're like kinda calling it out but without it being
Without making fun of it. Yeah. Yeah.
So
After I shift your perception, I all I need to do is get you to see a situation a little bit differently.
And if you turn on the news, oh my God, are you gonna see this all day.
Every day.
The perception changes Oh, you thought it was about this?
Guess what?
Here's what they did today, and they did this blatantly, and they're and now it's in your face.
They do all of this stuff to shift your perception.
And
In order to get your behavior to change
Once I shift your perception, then I change the C in the in this model.
And the C is context.
And context is the most important.

And nobody's talking about it.
probably everyone watching this or listening to this right now is going to get naked.
Today.
They'll get in a shower. They'll get in a bath. Whatever it is.
But some w almost everybody's going to get naked. We're probably not gonna do it in the middle of an office building, like at work.
Context dictates what behavior is permissible.
So if if you go back to nineteen f I think it was nineteen fifty seven.
There's this guy running a stage hypnosis like comedy show.
You know, where they bring people up on stage and make'em do silly stuff.
And
One of the guys that's up on stage, he's knocked out and he's doing all this crazy stuff.
He's an off duty police officer.
So he's concealed he has a concealed
Handgun.
But one of the skits in this or one of the bits that this comedian does
He tells the people that all of you are sheriffs, and you can't leave the stage but
Everybody in the o in the a audience right here is rowdy. They're making lots of noise. You need to tell'em to keep it down.
So this starts
And the hypnotist says
Now they're they're not even listening to you. They're not respecting you.
And then he says they're they're p you can't leave the stage, but one of them's pulling out a gun.
Then this off duty police officer pulls out his
service weapon and starts firing into the crowd.
This is a true story. True story.
Really? Yeah.
But is he a monster?
Of course not, because context dictated
What he would do.
So if I can change context to where what I want you to do
Is just an automatic thing.
I can make you do anything.
The own the the real skill is just being able to shift perception and context.
If you can just shift perception and context, you can radicalize someone on the internet and turn them into
A shooter.
You can radicalize somebody politically.
and make'em excommunicate their entire family over a Thanksgiving.
I'll give you a an example from UK.
In in nineteen in nineteen seventy nine, I think, there was a fire in in Manchester in Woolworth's department store.
Yeah.
And
It was during the daytime. Doors were open.
And
It turned out that most of the people that died
We're in the restaurant.
And these the the restaurant was right by the door.
So the fire inspector looked and they were trying to figure this out and then a psychologist finally came along.
And said they died because they were waiting to pay their bill.
Because no one gave them
permission to kind of stand up
And walk out. No one did it first.
So they kind of just went along with the crowd.
And in the context of a restaurant, you don't stand up
and walk out until you've paid your bill.
So the context
can also lead us into something like that.
So the perception of the situation, even though there's a fire, I'm locked in context of I'm sitting in a restaurant.
And
And that's been tested time and time again where people will sit in a smoke filled room long enough to die.
Just'cause nobody else is moving.
So context matters.
So how does that pertain to
Being able to persuade people.
For like I don't know.
Debian, Ohio.
Yeah.
Who's listening? Yeah. How does she work?
And think about context when she's in a sales meeting speaking to her husband, her son, whoever it might be.
Yeah. So
One of the best things that you can learn when it comes to being able to shift context is setting the frame of what every interaction is and being the one to openly say what the frame is as the conversation starts.
Let's say you're talking to a kid and it's a parent talking to a kid.
The kid thinks they're in trouble. That's the context they have, and I need to shift their perception of our situation before I can change their context.
So we sit down, we start the conversation.
And I'm like, I'm so glad that we could have this talk in a calm way.
That is focused on learning.
Instead of punishment.
A massively transformed
Perception and context. So I've changed what this means and the definition of what's allowed here.
Mm so context gives us
The final P, which is permission.
So if I change your perception of a conversation, and you can do that right away.
And
if if I'm entering into a negotiation.
And we start the room with
I'm glad that we could all come here for this, and I know both of us want to find common ground as fast as possible, and I suggest that maybe we even start there.
So I'm setting a frame right right from the very beginning.
It's so surprising how few of us do that when we go into a conversation.
I was just thinking back over the last sort of
ten days of my life in business meetings, very important business meetings in Los Angeles with new potential
Partners.
And walking into the boardroom
And sitting down and doing the like formalities of like Oh hi, how's your weather? Like how's the weather? Where'd you live? Oh West Fine. And then
Little bit of quiet, we introduce ourselves.
And nobody really sets the frame or
Someone sets the frame, but it isn't you.
Yeah.
And actually
That meeting would have been much more productive if I'd
volunteered up a frame very early.
And it was a
frame in line with whatever I'm trying to get out of that meeting. Yeah.
And any time you're setting a frame or just kind of setting the perception of what's going on, especially in business, start out by a negative first because people
Bitch about stuff in business all the time?
And then go to the positive. So you're doing kind of a contrasting statement. So like let's say in in that last meeting you had, if you said something like
I'm so glad we're meeting today, guys. There's so many people out there that just fall into these competitive mindsets.
Uh and it's really good to do business with people that are in a collaborative mindset instead of a competitive mindset.
With what you've said, the frame that I wish I'd said based on the all of the the context was I'd walked into that room wanting to get a deal done'cause I'm sick of fucking talking about it on emails. Yeah. And meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings. So I wish I'd walked in and said something, words to the effect of
I'm so glad we could
Meet in person.
to finally really make progress on this because there's been so much talk about theoretical
Deals.
And I feel like getting us together can get us much closer, much quicker.
To figuring out.
A a real deal.
That we can work on words to that effect. Yeah. Because I think that would have started the conversation away from the theoretical.
Yeah. If I just cooled it out.
But unfortunately I didn't say that, and we spent a lot of time just talking about
Theoretical stuff again.
Yeah. And you can do that with permission.
at the beginning with a permission phrase and just say, Hey, just so I understand and I may be I may be wrong here.
But
What I understand is the purpose of this meeting is for us to kind of compile all these zooms that we've been on for months and months and finally get something done and put a bow on it.
That we have some kind of finished product, even if it's not perfect yet, we have something tangible.
Mm.
And that's that that's permission. So you're like now I might be wrong about this, but of course they'll they'll probably agree with that.
I think the same applies actually for romantic relationships. Thinking about having an argument with your partner, you can go in just emotion versus emotion.
If you don't take a minute to just
Define what we're trying to accomplish from this.
And then when people drift because they do in emotional situations, you've got a frame to bring them back into that you pre agreed on.
You know,'cause you when you get in those emotion they'll bring up something your mother did six you know, four years ago or something you and it just drifts away from
The frame? Yeah.
And if you watch the media
Uh especially the opinion side of the media, and they talk about a politician that they don't like, what do they start out with?
This is going to scare you.
In another piece of terrifying news. Here's what this guy did today up on the stage. This politician did. So they set the frame for it to be terrifying.
They're setting up your perception from the very beginning.
And then if I if I change the context
In one context, yeah, maybe this politician's a bad guy. Another context is this person is a threat.
to democracy.
I've heard that phrase a lot.
A lot.
And that mean and what do we do to threats to our entire democracy? We kill them.
So we start radicalizing people instantly without them really even processing that they're they're internalizing that. We were radicalizing people just through that context.
So if you can modify perception and context, you can give someone that permission, that final piece to do anything. Let's go back to the police officer in the hypnosis show.
He had the permission to start firing his firearm because of the context of being attacked by someone with a weapon.
Mm-hmm.
So
Once the context shift, your social permission of what I'm allowed to do, like I don't strip down and get naked in my office, but I do when I'm standing in front of a hot shower.

That is the permission to do things differently.
So
If you want someone to do something that they normally wouldn't do, the question you ask yourself is
In what context?
Would the decision I need this person to make be an automatic thing?
If we agreed on
Ten different things out of eleven.
Then we
the automatic thing would be for us to sign an agreement together. Okay.
Or if
If I'm being shot at.
the automatic thing for me is to draw my weapon and and fire back.
So it's an automatic behavior based
that typically in another situation would violate social permissions.
Like I don't have social permission to to behave in that way.
Mm-hmm.
I was reading about the story.
that you referenced. I think I found the one in December nineteen twenty three. The New York Times reported on it.
regarding a tragedy in Croatia where an Austrian hypnosist ended up firing
Into the crowd.
And um
killed three people and wounded several others.
Before he was snapped out of his trance.
Upon realizing that he had done it, the officer reportedly arrested the hypnotist on the spot.
Which is strange to
That's called cognitive dissonance.
Wow, okay.
So PCP. I understand that. One of the things I was thinking about is
Is there any way for my audience listening now, based on everything you know about PsyOps and the way that we're manipulated with media?
Is there any way
That
We might be able to help them.
be more objective in a world that is trying to force them into one frame or the other.
Because I'd you know, as a podcaster, this may be a selfish thing.
I speak to so many different people.
And I'm gonna speak to
Someone on the right.
Someone on the left, up, down, left, right. I don't really as long as I think I'm gonna have be able to have a conversation with them, I'm gonna meet them as I find them and I'm gonna have a conversation with them.
And there's really no external pressure that's gonna change that. Yeah. Unfortunately. Like I've I've had all the external pressure in the world and I'm not gonna change that because I have to do this myself for a long period of time. So m my the thing that's gonna keep me in love with this job is to be able to follow my curiosity and not be trapped by anyone else's
Pressure.
But that requires your audience as well to be open minded.
Which means that if I sit here with Kamala Harris or with Donald Trump.
I
I want my audience to come into the conversation with as an open mind as they possibly are able to.
Let's talk about how to manipulate your next podcast guest into being more open minded. Okay.
And this technique is
Something we teach called negative dissociation.
And the way that it works is
I'll make a small um it should sound like an observation about the world.
So in our discussion, let's say we just sat down
And I'd say, you know what, I'm I'm glad I'm interviewing with you. There's a lot of people out there.
That are just so closed off and locked in these little rigid beliefs.
And I'm not sure whether it is they're just terrified of what
what people are gonna think about them if they step outside the lines or if they're scared of
being open minded.
for these other beliefs. I'm not sure
Which one it is, but
Амі, і мітізпи софен.
And you're gonna nod. You nodded your head while we were saying'cause it what is what I'm saying sounds true.
It it probably is.
But you're making that person very covertly agree that they are not that person.
Mm-hmm.
That makes sense? It makes perfect sense. So
Throughout the conversation, what you're really doing is n you're not getting them to make an agreement about how they're gonna act. You're getting them to make an agreement about who they are as a human being.
Mm-hmm.
So the moment you can get them to covertly make an I am statement in their head, you're hacking your way into that person's identity.
So like let's say you said that, they nodded.
And then
Maybe a few minutes later you're like, I got I got a confession to make. I ha you know, I had social anxiety growing up. How did you get
This open about
Everything. Have you always been this way, or was this through some kind of
Mm like leadership training or something like that that you went to.
And the moment you answer that question.
I've got you to commit.
Now you're fully committed.
Uh to being wide open for the rest of the conversation.
What would you assume they would then say in such a scenario? You're like, uh, I don't know. I I think I've always been really open.
I I haven't been really scared about what people think about me and I've always tried to wear my heart on my sleeve. So now you're getting to make all these commitments.
That they're gonna be like that going forward. Yeah.
Okay. I I mean, you're not permanently changing a human being.
Mm. But it's a temporary change that they will make for one little compartment of a of an interaction with you. And is this because you're really
You're speaking to the
You said the identity.
The sense of who they want to be.
And that's heavily driven by social
Perception.
And when I think of them.
Yeah.
Uh but it's not who they want to be.
Uh it's who they
Say they are.
And those are different.
So
Man, uh Bob Cialdini's got a great example of this.
They got these uh people that stick signs in their yard, these giant ugly
Signs that say drive safe on them.
And the way that they got this
Like
Eighty five percent of this neighborhood to stab them into their yard.
Nasty, stupid looking sign.
Was a week prior.
A week before they knocked on their door and they said, Hey, I have a one question survey, it'll take fifteen seconds. Do you support safe driving? Yes or no?
Of course uh everyone's gonna say yes.
And then so now they've made a commitment about who they are.
Do you support
Who are you as a person?
Then they said, All right, thank you so much for that and
Just to show your support, could you put this tiny small sticker in the window of your house facing the street?
And they're like, Yeah, yeah, and they go stick it on the window.
But they're more likely to do it'cause they just said yes.
But anyone who said yes, I support safe driving
A week later.
would stick that giant stupid looking sign in their front yard.
And the and they double blinded this. They did it in another neighborhood where they didn't go door to door first. They just went door to door and said, Hey, can we stab this giant ugly son in your yard?
And like one percent.
Of people said yes.
As opposed to like eighty five percent in the other neighborhood.
But it's a tiny agreement about who you are as a person.
So this is the power of pre committing.
Getting someone to pre commit to something.
Before you ask them to do it.
Yeah.
And you get them to pre commit in terms of their identity and who they think they are and who they want to be.
Yeah.
But you're not getting them uh it I'm not using this technique to go to make you sign a contract. I'm using it to just make subtle shifts in how you're behaving in our conversation. So if I wanted you to focus on me more, I'd do the opposite of the negative dissociation thing. And remember, I'm not talking about you.
'Cause if I'm sitting here saying, Oh, Steven, you pay attention so well in a conversation, that sounds super weird and
Yeah.
Manipulative. People say that to me all the time. Yeah. Maybe they want maybe they want you to. In reality, if I do the opposite of what that negative dissociation statement did.
And I s I make a positive group of people and assign an attribute to them. So that's how you would do this.
So it's like you know, Stephen, it's amazing. Every time I meet these
Really high performing CEOs.
all of these Fortune One Hundred companies that I work with, you sit down with one of these CEOs, it's like they all have the exact same quality.
You sit down with these people and they stop.
what they're doing and they just completely tune in.
to other people when they talk to him.
Mm.
So I'm taking a quality that I know you admire.
Like a s CEOs, all this kind of stuff.
And I'm assigning a trait to that.
And you're gonna nod and you're gonna
That sounds kind of true.
But it also means that you're agreeing that you are also that type of person.
Mm-hmm. But I'm never saying it about you.
So this is w if I'm talking directly about you, which is what so many influence people teach out there
Like, oh, I can tell that you this or I can tell that you're the kind of person that blank and blank and blank
This is called aiming language. My aim my language is aimed at you and it you can feel it.
And people can feel that
There's something going on. If there somebody's sitting there
making guesses and weird assumptions about them.
So any time you're using any of these techniques, it should feel and sound
Like you're making an observation about the world.
It's interesting how to do it.
this sort of power of pre commitment can also be used on yourself.
To get you to do things.
Yeah.
As you were saying, I was looking down at some research here, then there's multiple studies that I find fascinating. One of them is a study conducted at MIT with students.
Um, they gave these MIT students three major papers for their semester. One class was given ultimate freedom. They could turn in all three papers at the very end of the semester with no penalty. The other class was forced to pre-commit to strict, evenly spaced deadlines throughout the semester, and the students who had total freedom performed the worst.
And experienced the most stress.
The students who pre committed to certain deadlines produced the highest quality work and gave
The best work and got the best grades.
It proved that intentionally restricting our own future choices through pre-commitments is often the best way to beat procrastination. And I remember the study they did with people on a beach where
They had a fake thief run past someone next to you on the beef and
on the beach and grab a radio and twenty percent of people would chase.
The person, but if someone had said to you uh in a different study where someone runs up, grabs the radio, but someone has said to you seconds earlier, Hey, I'm just going
To get an ice cream, can you take a look. Can you just watch my stuff?
Ninety five percent of people would then chase
the person stealing the radio because we've made a pre commitment to another person.
So pre commitments can work with yourself or
Yeah.
With others.
Which is fascinating because
Especially to yourself.
I find that interesting, but I can change my own behavior.
by making a pre commitment attached to my own identity.
Um
I guess there's one more I'll share, which is this the study around savings. They found that people who committed to saving
Even if they read it on a piece of paper.
Were up to five times in terms of percentage terms. They went from saving 3% to saving 15%, roughly 15%, just because they'd done a pre-commitment.
Even years earlier that they would they would save.
That's beautiful.
I love that.
And and you're kind of just pre doing your own identity.
And if if somebody wants to master that
You make it about your social commitment.
To yourself, to other people, but publicly say like I am this kind of person to yourself.
So it's not like I'm the
I'm gonna go to the gym tomorrow. It's
I am the kind of person that goes to the gym is a much
more powerful.
Identity based.
Action.
And identity is the number one thing.
In the world.
When it comes to persuasion and influence.
There's basically w the way that I teach this to intelligence people is when you're good at influence, you're building two walls. One wall is anxiety and the other one is cognitive dissonance.
And the hallway that you're creating is the relief from those.
From those things. What are those two things? So I know and I know what anxiety is, but what's cognitive dissonance?
Well, the the anxiety is like if I don't do what I say, I'm gonna have some so I'm gonna face social rejection.
Or if I
If I go here and I'm and I break this rule or I don't do this, I'm gonna break a social contract with somebody.
The cognitive dissonance is I am the kind of person that does this and
If I don't do this, I'm not keeping with who I said I am and and who I agreed to be.
And I'm facing cognitive dissonance.
So that's like when
Yeah.
Some politician wins the presidential election that someone doesn't like.
Like you have that cognitive dissonance either A, I have to decide that wow, a lot of people like this person.
Or B.
Everyone's stupid.
And it's a lot easier for me to just say everybody's stupid. And we always take that path.
So cognitive dissonance means that
It's bouncing them back into the hallway every time they bump up against something that they've previously agreed to.
And identity is the way that that you can hack your own behavior so fast.
And the way that I explain this to people, it takes thirty seconds to understand it.
If you were an Olympic athlete
And
You had a
A a badass body. Like you had a
Healthy diet.
Everything was in in perfect shape. You woke up every morning, you had great energy and all that stuff. And one day you woke up for some reason and you're two hundred and ninety five pounds.
And you wake up, you look in the mirror.
And this something weird happened overnight.
How fast would you get back to that body?
It would be
Lightning you you may set world records for
For weight loss.
Because your identity
Is with that body.
It's not that oh I need to I wanna lose this weight so I can be healthy.
It's this is not mi.
And anytime you're feeling this is not me, or I'm this is against my who I am as a person.
It's the most powerful motivator when it comes to influencing other people and influencing ourselves.
Hm.
And like a a goal like a weight loss.
thing that I that I have a lot of my clients do is to download
The face app.
There's like an app where that'll make you look super fat and real real obese.
And print it off and put it on your refrigerator.
And then people are like, Oh, well aren't I programming my subconscious to be fat? Like, No.
You're pro you're programmed to go away from bad things first.
Never toward positive things first. It's always a way.
Your ancestors lived because they mistook a uh a rock for a bear.
Not the other way around.
Yeah. Never the other way around.
Yeah.
So you're not gonna accidentally program your brain and I'm I'm the brain
Guy.
But put that on the fridge and you start
You start hacking into your own identity, but you're doing it in a way that your mammalian brain, the thing that runs the show.
Can see it and understands it instantly.
There's no words, there's no motivational phrases or anything like that.
It picks up on it instantly and starts setting a course forward because it's cognitive dissonance that you're creating for yourself. I remember N I Ne Ryel who I interviewed, he wrote the book on like procrastination.
Called Indistractible said to me.
A phras that's always stayed with me. It's probably, you know, we f spoke for six, seven hours, I think, me and Nia. Just this one phrase I always think about. He said that humans are discomfort avoiding creatures.
And like we think that we're
Pleasure seeking creatures.
But when he said discomfort avoiding, I really like interrogated him. I was like, Yeah, but what about like horiness?
That makes me have sex. And he was like, Well actually that horniness is a form of discomfort.
Your body is sending you this sort of almost irritation, which is making you take an action. And I stress tested it across many areas of my life. I was like, actually, he's tr he's right.
I I'm trying to avoid discomfort. And in your example of seeing myself on the fridge.
Yeah, I'm I would I would want to avoid
that it would cause such dissonance to my identity that I would do everything to avoid that. Some big ass fet Steven on the on the fridge. Yeah. I mean that's actually
Every couple of years what gets me back in shape is like catching myself in the mirror.
Or because I'm always on camera.
I sometimes I don't see myself kind of getting out of shape and then I watch the podcast back and I'm like, Oh fuck.
Yeah.
Like Jack didn't tell me. No one's told me.
And then then I'm like, right, gym every day again and
Uh interesting. And it's social.
'Cause you're I mean, you're making this commitment in front of a million people.
Yeah.
What else do you think is important to know as we head into this AI world where human skills and people skills are gonna be more important than ever, what what other frameworks have you got for me that I should
Bear in mind or or ideas.
As we go into AI, your leadership style, everyone's leadership style needs to be front and center and
I know there's a lot of books out there that are technically about leadership or
But I think they're about management and they call themselves a leadership book.
When I teach what's most important
When it comes to understanding ourselves is developing authority.
Uh, but that authority has those five traits of authority. This is confidence, discipline, leadership, gratitude, and enjoyment.
Do you do show notes where people can download stuff in the description?
Yeah, sometimes you can. I'll s I'll send this inventory to you where people can take this quiz.
And it's
It's the most revealing thing about your leadership power.
But what people tend to do is seek out the wrong type of authority.
Uh
learn this with t twenty years of working with people.
That
We will tend to seek
One of these little avenues that looks
A certain way because we think that's what leadership is supposed to look like. That's what authority is supposed to look like.
But there are three types.
And
The three types that I've broken them down into and how authority channels to other people, because authority looks different in different people. So it's the president.
The Professor
And the artist.
And we can have that authority. So like the artist you can think of like somebody like Johnny Depp.
The president you can see somebody like
Uh Obama.
The Professor, you can think of like the classic movie.
Professor. Still broadcast authority, but it's not loud. It's not extremely directive.
And the artist can hold a ton of attention.
Mm-hmm.
And in some rooms doesn't hold any attention at all.
The authority's still there.
The the attention isn't.
For somebody that's super calm.
Even if they're the CEO of a company.
They might be the professor.
And the whole time their idea of what leadership looks like is this president.
So they're faking their way into this thing and it never feels real. They still like even though their authority's really high
They have this weird feeling of inauthenticity because they're pushing towards the wrong authority channel.
What's the cost of that?
I think that it detracts from your level of authority.
Which automatically means that you're getting less outcomes that you want in life. Because your inauthenticity to both others and yourself.
Um
Like pays a toll on you, so
if I'm inauthentic to you, then that's gonna hurt my authority, but then if I'm inauthentic to myself, it's gonna hurt my
Happiness, I guess.
Yeah.
I'm gonna feel like I'm again going back to your point about identity, living fulfilled life. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think w when people say authenticity, we should note
That
What we call most people call authenticity is a costume of childhood beliefs.
Like my authentic self and how I act is typically what I was in childhood.
How I deal with conflict, how I make friends, how I stay safe, all these little patterns that I learned when I was eight or nine. I'm still repeating a lot of that stuff.
So when we say authenticity, it's always
Important to think that
It's authenticity plus
Uh removal of ego.
And a willingness to receive social injury.
And that's the best way that I've ever been able to describe that to somebody.
Like if I'm being authentic in a conversation
Then I'm willing to receive a social injury.
For it.
Cody Sanchez said something to me which has stayed with me. She said, um again, I'm gonna butcher it, but words to the effect of
I won't be friends with anyone in private.
That won't say something in public.
That will cost them something.
And going to your point about social injury. I think what's
Cody's actually saying is like that's how I know that
They're authentic, is they're willing to risk
Something
For something they believe.
Yeah.
I also think this is how you know a brand's authentic.
Like are they willing to cause social inj inju injury in the near term?
For something they believe in the long term. Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
And
A lot of what I've got.
Well a lot of the recent brand debacles that we've had
Is
They thought they were doing something to avoid social injury that caused a massive social injury. Because people said you're not being authentic to your audience. Yeah.
Yeah. When they tried to do like get into identity politics and stuff like that.
Okay, like vir extreme virtue signalling and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Which backflies.
Can we go into this childhood development thing really quick? Sure. I think it's super important for people to know. Sure. And I'm I'm a behavior profiler.
And
If if anybody listening didn't know that.
And
One of the things that I teach everybody is this thing called the childhood development triangle.
So it's just three sides of this triangle.
So when you're growing up
What did that child have to do most of the time to earn and keep friends? So friends is one.
And then to feel safe.
Well what did the kid have to do to feel safe?
For some kids safety was like
I don't know, somebody gives me a hug at the end of the day. For some kids it was like am I gonna eat?
Today.
Some kids it's like cracking jokes.
Yeah.
I'm gonna crack jokes.
And keep friends. I'm gonna feel safe by becoming really loud.
And dominating the room. I'm gonna become safe by getting really small and shrinking so nobody notices me.
Or I'm gonna become safe by being hyper vigilant because I don't know if dad drank before he got home or if he's gonna start drinking when he got home.
So it's like what did that child n what are the scripts that that child needed to run on autopilot to feel safe, to make friends, and then to get rewards?
And that would be the third side.
And the rewards for some kids might just be like appreciation. And it's typically just appreciation, affection, love.
And that tends to
Get written in childhood and
The kid
Who writes all these permanent scripts
They put'em in a backpack and carry'em all the way into adulthood.
Yeah, and ninety percent of us are walking around with this exact triangle.
governing our life. And if you look around at people at work.
You see this woman
Who every time there's a meeting
Uh, she wants to speak up a lot, but then she shuts her mouth and her body shuts down and all the kind of stuff. You're seeing an eight year old.
Who got yelled at at a family dinner table.
Mm-hmm.
That's all. But you're just seeing it in a grown up body.
I have two examples that are super friend of mind.
That
completely aligned with what you've just said. I have two colleagues that I work with
And I got six months into working with one of them and I could always tell that there was something not quite right because
Whenever I was in the room, they would
They would stare at me a lot.
And um
They would
Be a little bit more on the pessimistics.
pessimistic s side than I'm used to.
And one day at dinner I was talking to them about their childhood and they offered up that their dad
Was
His mood could change rapidly.
And he was
always pointing out why something would never work.
And why and he was an extreme pessimist. And suddenly this person who he's in my life
Suddenly made sense.
I completely understand it.'Cause you grew up in that environment where to be safe
Um
You
Agree with it. Had to pay attention to to the authority figure.
And then yeah, you had to
Also you learnt
Maybe that you know.
Pessimism was
A way to safety. Yeah, safety. And then there's another colleague who's actually in the room over there, and I'll ask her before we publish this if I can s say this publicly, but similar thing. She she expressed to me that she had a a dad that was his mood would change rapidly. And I said to her one day, I said,
Um
I call her Sarah. I said Sarah you're always staring at me
Is it whenever I look at you, you're already looking at me.
And it's like you're like over analyzing and overthinking. And she explained to me the same thing. She said, When I grew up, my dad's mood would just change like this. So every time I'm preempting.
I'm like a radical preemptor.
I'm thinking twenty steps ahead of like what might go wrong, or you know, which makes her exceptional at her job.
But I would you know.
Yeah, one might assume that that comes at some kind of cost.
Yeah.
So safety. Yeah. Very true.
Very true.
And
The the way that I explain this, if somebody wants to like
It's not where you can kinda go back and like sit there for five minutes, put it on a post it note and then figure your whole life out.
I wish I had a cool uh a trick to do that.
But the way that like
I want people to think about this is
Going back to your childhood, a lot of those things these are just contracts that were written in a child's voice.
And when you start hearing these patterns repeating in your head, force yourself to hear
The voice of a kid.
That's all it is.
It's just a kid.
Who made these choices. It's not an adult.
So
We're typically three different people, all of us.
We have a work self
Like a professional kind of self. We have a home self.
And we have a self with friends.
And what is that as a kid?
That's classroom.
Playground home.
So
I'll typically take people through this process of
Where were you around authority figures, which is like classroom or home?
But were you around when your all your friends were around? You got made fun of, or you had to become really small. And that that goes on the friend's side of the triangle and that
that talks about how the social patterns that are gonna show up for me.
And somebody says, Well, I keep attracting these negative people into my life.
Why do I do that? And that that goes to these patterns. Because if I do this, I know this is gonna happen, I know that's gonna happen. It's just completing a story archetype.
So
That's the childhood development triangle, and it is really powerful to start understanding our own patterns.
And I'm I'm not saying that
You can go out there and there's like here's six steps that are gonna change your whole frickin' life if you if you do these six things.
the awareness is what you want. You want massive like self knowledge and and self awareness.
Mm.
Uh w with the
side agreement of I am not special.
And I'm completely okay if I'm never understood.
Because most of what happens uh when we get into arguments with our spouse, we get into these bitchy arguments with people uh at work.
It's our argument to be understood.
More than it is for us to
come to a solution. I need you to understand me.
So getting okay with the idea that you might not never
Ever be understood.
is like step number one. Number two.
I am not special.
And that that helps us to open the door to start coming into a lot of these things.
But if you if you're a leader at work, you can start seeing these patterns in your employees and you can be like
I see an eight year old there.
And if you get to a point where you're
seeing some of these a behavior that might have pissed you off in somebody that works for you and you're like, Wait a second.
Now I can see
Exactly what's going on because this, this, and this probably happened. You don't need to make some prediction or
fortune telling thing about their childhood, but
You're starting to see these patterns, and you know now how your team's gonna respond in conflict.
And if the if it's a conflict and it's social, you're seeing all their friends patterns.
If it's a conflict and somebody might be losing their job, you're gonna see their safety patterns come out.
And you'll see your own.
So do you think I should go to the key people in my life, maybe my team, and ask them these questions about around
How did you make friends?
Is that the question?
What did you do to make and keep friends? What did you do to make and keep friends?
And what was the safety question again?
Like what what did you need to do or avoid to feel safe?
And
The rewards one?
What did you feel and this one's always you want to put the word feel in there. What did you feel like you had to do to earn rewards? And what were rewards to you?
It was appreciation or somebody that's like
hyper s significance driven. Like I've gotta have the Rolex, I've gotta have the Ferraris and all this kind of stuff.
They never got rewards.
Because
Their parents ignored them unless they brought home a certificate.
Their teacher called and said they did a good job. They played the piano recital and did a great job and lots of people were acknowledging them and clapping for them. They only got acknowledged when they were socially significant.
And am I right in thinking here that these are fundamentally interlinked in many ways, because
When you're talking about
Safety.
I was running through my head the things that made me feel safe and they were rewards.
that I could tell my friends about. Yeah. So I like I touched all three of them. And part in part because we, you know, I was thinking w I was very different to my social group when I was younger. We were the black family.
There wasn't another black family that I knew of. Um
Um other than maybe one other kid, I think, in the air in in Plymouth in nineteen ninety four or five.
Um so
some of the material things I wanted, like the the shoes that everyone had.
made me s feel safe'cause they made me fit in.
Yeah. And
That you know, and that got me friends.
Yep, or at least I thought it did.
So like for me it really was like an interconnected triangle.
Yeah. That's just one of many examples that I could think of.
It does tend to do that.
I will typically wait for somebody to figure that out.
And and as they're filling it out, they're they're kinda like, Oh, I did this because of this to get to this. And it you'll see a little cycle start happening.
Uh, but it's great for self knowledge, but if you're a behavior profiler, that's what's gonna run people. You're gonna know how they're gonna respond to conflict.
You're gonna know what they're gonna avoid. You're gonna like if you're putting teams together
I know what people I wanna have working with each other. And it doesn't have to be some complex nine hour
thing like you can see this stuff in everyday life.
And you're not saying that I need to radically change No.

But what if one part of this triangle
Or one behavior I've learnt for safe deal, for rewards, or for friends.
is making my life worse.
Yeah. You know what it could be ruining my life. Like it could be the things standing in the way of me having a romantic relationship or getting promotion or building a business. It's like getting in the way now.
Yeah.
What do I do, Chase?
So you
You've identified the pattern. Let's assume that you've you've got it. You're like, Oh, I've got this shit that's
That's happening on repeat.
The part two of this is
I need to focus on that being a kid.
That belongs to a child.
And I need to write down like this here's how that child wrote the contract, made the promise to themselves, developed the contract.
And then even if you make it up like when
I'm gonna write down
A little thing, when did this kid bring it into adulthood?
I need to stay small.
In order to stay safe. Let's say it's one of those things.
And then you just start telling yourself
That is a child's voice.
That's a child's voice.
So you the voice is not gonna go away.
That's the sad part.
That's like me you trying to
not complete the sentence Mary had a little
In your head. You can't get rid of it.
No matter how hard you try to delete that, it's repeated
Over years and years.
Just like one of these things.
The the what truly changes for you is
Hearing a child.
Hearing a misguided child who developed a coping mechanism for the world.
Not knowing that they were
Like they just assumed I'm gonna have this forever, I'm gonna need this as an adult, I'm gonna bring this into my adult life.
Part two of this is
You make a
Like a wallpaper or something for your desktop?
And we talked about being negatively uh
motivated, we're away from negative things.
You make a w like a motivational wallpaper that has your big limiting belief on it.
And then take it to an extreme.
I had a client that had this
If I say small, I'm gonna be safe.
Uh, and he was in a bus like he owned a business.
But he wouldn't go get these big clients and he wouldn't
You wouldn't go do this. The guy's got three kids.
And I said, I want you to make a desktop wallpaper that says my kids don't deserve for me to be successful.
I want you to look at it every single day when you turn your computer on. Because that's exactly what your belief is saying.
'Cause if your kids truly deserved it, it would override the belief.
So you just need to write the belief in plain English and what it's truly, truly costing you in your life.
Is my kids don't deserve
me to be successful. My kids don't deserve money.
And that's what it comes down to. And every day you look at it, you you have a feeling of disgust
And there's a hyper awareness of that thing running in your head. You're gonna be more prone to hear it when it does come up.
And
you're also training yourself to hear it as a child's voice, which means you're gonna start hearing fiction.
You're still hearing the same sentence, but you're hearing a fictional story.
There's two parts to this. I I love this and there's two parts to it that I think I wanted to talk about. The first is
In doing so, in waking up in the morning and seeing my wallpaper that says like my kids don't deserve a great life or whatever.
Um, of course it's gonna motivate me to take action.
Which is then gonna start to build new evidence once I take action, once I win that big client and I realize that everything's fine.
Which is gonna change my life. And then the second point I wanted to point out is like
People listen to podcasts like this.
And they write this stuff down.
And then
Yeah.
Have relapses.
And things don't change fast enough. And I think that can sometimes make them feel hopeless or inadequate because they heard it on the diary of a sea or whatever, and then they did it for a bit and they struggled and it didn't quite work out. And then they went back to their old behavior. And I think in part this happens because we live under the presumption that this stuff is easy and it's fast, and that at some point in the future,
I can fix my trauma.
Like I think one of the best realizations I have had
was realizing that the bullshit that I've carried with me in that backpack since I was a kid.
that the stuff about what will make me safe or what will reward me or how I'll make friends or who I am.
Whatever, my survival mechanisms.
They will be be with me forever.
And actually
Instead of
trying to delete them, like throw them out the backpack, what I was able to do Yeah is like
Turn down their ability to make the decision. That's it.
That's it.
You've totally got it.
And and
I would say this for anybody out there that
You're trying to go through this and you're having a hard time.
I get it, it's totally tough.
The number one way that we influence another human being. Let me just kind of metaphor this for one second.
Uh when you watch a hit hypnotist
And hypnosis is fun anybody can learn to do it. It's a it's a pretty easy thing.
So it looked very dramatic. But one of the things you'll see me do at the beginning of that is like go ahead and sh give me your hand and I'll hold their hand for a second, like put both hands out like this.
Then flip'em over.
That's great.
Now just to just to test your eyes really quick, look all the way up and look all the way down.
All the way left, and all the way right.
Right, then spread your feet a little further apart, a little closer together. Actually no, face this way.
And I wanna make him do like fifty things. None of the things that I just did with them are meaningful.
None of them.
Everything was micro compliance.
So this is how social media starts roping you in, this is how politics starts roping you in, this is how
Cult leaders will recruit you into a cult.
Micro compliance.
And you don't realize that you're going through this massive amount of compliance.
So like you go through a doctor's physical and they go through like
This ninety point checklist they've a m made you do fifty things and then
They recommend a weird drug or they recommend you get on some other drug, take some time.
To think about it.
because our brain is hardwired for these microcompliances.
So
I say this to say that if you're
Going through any of these things you're trying to change your
beliefs, or you're trying to change something in your body, use what works for brainwashing.
And figure out a way that you can get micro compliance with your own goals on a very regular basis. Small little wins, so your brain has that just like hypnosis, just like
Cult recruiting, just like brainwashing. Small little things at the very beginning. So everything in influence should be looked at as a wedge.
Mm. Everything.
It reminds me of that uh famous
study they did where they got people to
give electric shocks to other people, the uh Milgram obedience experiment. Yeah.
And they managed to get a member of the public to
Give.
Another member of the public.
Lethal electric shocks.
just through sort of micro compliance but also through authority because the experimenters were like wearing white
Jackets, white overalls, et cetera.
And here's the second thing in that experiment that's gonna gonna perfectly tie back to this.
So this experiment that you're talking about happened at Yale University. It was nineteen sixty two.
Uh
And we uh I mean there's tons of data on it, but essentially strangers would shock another person seemingly or what they thought was to death, just'cause some dude in a lab coat told them to.
But what they didn't account for e and even Dr. Milgram's book was called Obedience to Authority. They thought it was all about the authority, the lab coat, the guy's tall.
Uh it's a professional setting.
But
Really think about if you go back to our ancestors.
Like the most important
resource to your ancestors was your was focus.
There's nothing more important than focus.
And the number one way to generate focus
You'cause you if if I don't have your focus
I can't command authority.
Right.
So focus is always first.
Well, focus, authority, tribe, and emotion. Those are the four things that govern a mammal. All mammals. Dolphins doesn't matter.
So
I have to have focus before authority and they didn't talk about that.
And the way to get focus is through novelty.
Novelty meaning.
something unexpected is occurring. So like if you walk past the same bush every day
Uh uh ten thousand years ago, and your job is to carry fish from the river
And suddenly you walk past that bush and you hear a big ass
Uh stick snap.
All of your focus.
All of it is on that stick.
Not it's not on your kids, it's not on your health, it's not on anything that's going on, it's to this new unexpected piece of information.
That hijacks our brain.
Anything novel hijac our brain.
So if you see like it and it follows that pathway, focus
Then authority, and then tribe, but what's everybody else doing? And then emotion.
Then how do I feel about it?
So it's
And and what happens is
We are hardwired.
To respond to these things, you cannot decide not to respond.
To novelty.
Your head turns it to to loud sounds, all this stuff happens.
So the way that
If if you're trying to do this like brainwash yourself
Is
Change your house up.
Change something up in your life. Change your wardrobe. Repaint the walls in your office.
Move your furniture around, buy a new car if you if you can.
I want you to like just imagine is
How would I influence my dog in this situation?
I would need imagery.
I would need something to shift.
If I move the kitchen table to the side and move all the furniture, when my dog comes out of the bedroom, he's gonna know something's different.
Yeah.
I think this is one of the great
Secrets of
Good marketing.
Is that it beats your brain's wallpaper filter.
And um I read a little bit about this in my last book about this idea of beating the wallpaper filter. I think we talked a little bit about it last time, but I talked about a study where they got a rat and put it in a maze with chocolate at the other end of the maze, and they looked to the rat's brain as it went through the maze the first time.
And they saw that the rat's brain was like exploded with activity. It's smelling the walls, it's trying to figure it out.
And then they put the rat in the maze the second time.
And there's like
Almost no brain activity.
Because it's on autopilot.
It knows the maze, so it doesn't need to use any of its cognitive resources. Its cognitive resources can be allocated to new surprising things. The maze is no longer surprising. Whiz is through the maze to the chocolate. And even like as you think about how you got out of your bed this morning and got down to the kitchen, you didn't have to think.
So you paid no attention.
Yeah. Um
But you would have paid attention if you walked down there and you're like sofa wasn't there.
Um and that how does that then apply to marketing? So like how do you surprise people?
is like a central question of anyone who's trying to build a personal brand, start a podcast.
Or do marketing.
Um
But I guess also to
To persuade people. It's one of the things I think about a lot when I talk on stage.
Yeah.
Is
I know I'm competing.
with
Your mobile phone.
your Twitter feed or your TikTok.
So I have to do something almost like every ten seconds.
To like catch you off guard.
And Mr Beast, I guess, is the great master of this, and it's probably why he's got half a billion YouTube followers.
Because the minute that video starts.
Oh, we're hooked in. You're hooked.
But this I mean, that's the power of novelty.
I would challenge anybody to take this challenge.
If you're scrolling through short form content.
Watch for something that like
jerks your attention.
Like some kind of weird novelty thing that happens.
And that video's
Probably short, twenty
Maybe forty second video that that
It captures your focus through novelty.
The next video, watch for an authority figure.
A famous YouTuber, a celebrity
A politician
A pop singer who thinks that they know
Politics.
All that kind of stuff.
Watch for an authority figure.
Next.
Watch for a tribe signal.
So a tribe signal is gonna be
Here's how many people agree with this. Here's lots of people doing one thing.
These tickets are selling out. Here's the Taylor Swift concert. Here's everyone cheering at the concert. Here's how you're supposed to behave. Is basically what that means in the tribe section.
You're supposed to do what these people are doing.
And then watch for the emotion.
So watch for this pattern.
It'll be a focus generating novelty.
Then it'll be authority, then you'll see tribe, then you'll see an emotional video.
And guess what happens after the emotional video?
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I heard you say something as well that um if you want to persuade other people you should make them feel clever.
Yeah.
Explain this to me.
I
Yeah.
refer to this as maybe the most dangerous persuasion skill there is.
And
What I'm i it the ten second brief is I basically I'm gonna put a Lego right here on the table in front of you.
I'm gonna put another Lego right here on the table in front of you.
Yeah I'm just gonna
Keep having the conversation.
Where eventually your brain is gonna be like oh
I bet those things go together.
So the idea came from you.
So I'm gonna give you one piece of information and another piece of information, but I will never put them together for you.
And the reason is that any idea that you think came from your own mind, you have no ability to resist it.
So all I have to do is make you have an idea.
So a regular example of this is
Let's say you're watching the news and they say
Uh local Austin woman.
has been reported missing.
Neighbors said
That earlier this day
People saw her arguing with her boyfriend.
Oh yeah. Details after the break.
So
Yeah. And your brain is like, Oh, I know what happened.
Oh I know exactly what happened.
But they make you feel clever.
Yeah. They give you a piece of data and a piece of data, but they don't tell you to put it together.
The media do this all the time. Yes.
And if you can do this in a courtroom
It it you it will be the biggest unfair advantage you'll ever have in in a legal standing.
Because it'll win uh lots of trials.
The way that
Like if there's a formula on how to use this is
Here's a piece of information here.
And
It's a piece of information that you will absolutely agree with.
that makes sense to you and another piece of information that makes sense to you. It it has to be two things that
That makes sense to your brain.
'Cause it's like you're not gonna experiment with something that you're not familiar with.
So two pieces of familiar information close enough together where the brain is gonna say, Oh, you know what I can do? I'm gonna put those two things together. Isn't this how conspiracy theories take hold as well? Oh yeah.
'Cause I was you know Yeah.
You know, there's a big um
There's a big enduring conspiracy theory that someone like Bill Gates
has done things that are nefarious as it relates to
health. And then like I guess the two pieces people are connecting is they're saying
Well, he's worked a lot he's very rich and powerful.
And he's very, very interested in
Health.
biotech and and vaccines and all these other things. And and you know
someone very, very, very, very powerful. We often think of, you know, very powerful, successful, influential people as being somewhat like
evil or not having our interests at heart, and then someone who's spending a lot of money on like
health and medical side side of things.
Um
Is on is quite an unusual thing. So we put two and two together. We have you know, we think they have b bad intentions because they are a billionaire. And that word is, you know, comes with certain pre preconceptions. And then
Health.
And then a pandemic happens and I think people, you know.
Yeah, I think a lot of conspiracies.
Nice.
Name a movie from when you were a kid where the bad guy
Or were the super rich person in the movie.
Wasn't the evil.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's programmed into
The media it's a
definite programming.
That was very deliberate.
Uh in our country.
It's like always the rich people are evil.
Uh but then people say, Oh well Tony Stark was rich. They made him a sociopath.
It's interesting because I think
You know, I can make the case that at some point it's intentional.
But at some point also it becomes such a clear stereotype that you have to follow that stereotype when you're like writing movies or else it doesn't make sense to people.
Yeah, and I'm not saying it was intentional within the last like two hundred, three hundred years.
I'm t we're talking about like the brothers Grim
uh ancient fairy tales.
And it wa I think it was intentional then, like
having wealth is bad. There's virtue in poverty. That's the big thing they wanted to communicate to their kids.
Um it poverty is virtuous.
And of course like we're we're still doing a lot of that stuff today.
But the reason is exactly what you're saying is is correct. I think it's it's burned into like some collective archetype of of what stories ha have become.
And we wouldn't recognize it. So look if I watched a movie and there was a very successful billionaire businessman
All I have to say is that for you to fill in the gaps, you're thinking private jet. You're thinking about how they treat people. You're thinking
You know, they're on their phone with a briefcase. You're thinking, you know, that they have what they're wearing. You know what they're wearing.
And I didn't say any of that stuff. Yeah.
And you made me feel clever.
'Cause I put all that stuff together. That came in came from my own mind.
And speaking of archetypes, that's the second way that you can win any court case in the world.
Have you got experience with court cases and
Stuff like that.
What is your experience? As far as I know, I'm the only trial consultant that offers a two hundred percent money back guarantee.
Uh when I work.
So what does that mean as a trial consultant? What's your objective in simple terms? It's always a little different.
And it depends on uh w whether I'm working for prosecution or defense.
I I know nothing about the law.
Like
Just about nothing.
But I know people.
So I will typically go in and will pick a jury.
And will select a jury.
And we wanna select a jury based on this factor and this factor and based on this zip code.
Here's the question that we wanna ask to find out which is gonna be a good juror and which is a bad juror. But then I have to figure out questions that are covert.
How can I covertly ask a question where the opposing counsel, the other attorney, won't know what I desire and what I don't desire?
Based on the answer.
So one case I worked for was with a
was for a large
Grocery store company.
Who was being sued because a lady slipped on a green bean.
Real shit.
Oh, and they hired me.'Cause it was it was a big
Big lawsuit.
And uh
I want a jury that has an
internal locus of control.
that they're in charge of their own life. They're they're responsible for their destiny. And we want to weed out the people
That have
the opposite. We wanna weed out the people that kind of victim mentality, like the world happens to me.
That kind of thing.
So
We have to figure out how do I ask a question that A reveals that is
Be covert.
And C it's not gonna expose what we're looking for to opposing counsel.
So we'll come out with a question like how does a person catch a cold?
And then you get one person that answers.
Well, these stupid kids
picking their boogers, they're wiping them on the escalator, they're coughing sneezing all over the place. People aren't wearing masks
We asked the next guy, How does a person catch a cold?
He says, Well
Uh, if I've ever caught a cold, I was in place a place I shouldn't have been.
I didn't wash my hands thoroughly enough. I didn't take care of my body. I didn't take vitamins. I didn't take care of myself.
Mm. Very, very different. So we'll we know what what is satisfactory for us
To
Select a jury. And that's just one uh tiny example. But I'm gonna pause you there because I just wanted to share something before we carry on with this story'cause it's fascinating. So actually the last question I ask on our culture test when we
employ people for my company. We we asked them thirty five questions before they
are offered the chance to interview. And the last question is when I don't do great work
Who's to blame?
And asks them, it says, the people I worked with.
I wasn't giving clear enough instructions from a client or a boss.
Or myself.
It's remarkable.
That forty five percent of the population
We'll click.
It was me.
When I don't do great work, it's not my team to blame. It's not the person above or below me or some other factor. It is me.
And that scores them I shouldn't say this'cause it's gonna ruin my test, but I'm gonna just say it. That scores the highest marks.
on that that particular question.
Because again, we're trying to reveal like if you have that sense of personal responsibility. Yeah.
And internal locus of control, internal centre of control in your life.
Which correlates to better work, more ambition, harder work, better long
long term success and better happiness.
More happiness.
Sorry.
He needs to continue. And that you you can tell they're driven too. They're gonna own their mistakes. They're gonna they're gonna help other people be more accountable. Probably gonna learn faster. Yeah. Because they're gonna take responsibility. Absolutely.
So with an archetype in the jury room. So we've selected let's say we've s picked a jury
Then the goal is
What is the
What is the
overall archetype of the case that's playing out in front of us right here.
It's w a small person suing a big company.
Let's say if I'm on the opposite now. Let's say I'm on that lady side.
Then I'm gonna come out with
Without ever saying the name.
I'm gonna come out and I'm gonna make you think David and Goliath all day long.
Without knowing that I made you think David and Goliath.
I might say giant. I might say someone small.
I might say slingshot. I might say all these little key words that are probably in your head about the David and Goliath story, just to plant that narrative in your head.
And that may might be the first three hours of
of the day.
And I've jammed that into your head and you think it's your own idea.
This makes sense so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So
Then the next time I'm gonna talk about
Uh maybe it's a deposition or something like that.
We'll talk about waiting in line at the DMV.
We're gonna talk about
For people that don't know the context there,'cause they're not in the US. Yeah.
So waiting in line at the at this government
Identification card office.
Everyone ever around the world will have some form of fat when you've gone to get a passport or whatever. Yeah. Waiting at passport control.
Um
W your doctor's office keeping you waiting for forty five minutes and not caring about your time. We're gonna talk about all these situations where a big big company is screwing over another person, or a big big government.
Doesn't know what the hell they're doing, they're incompetent.
So the attorney doesn't say any of this.
He's just mentioning the scenario.
So if I mention a scenario, what I'm you
There's like a little file clerk in your head.
And if I mention any scenario, I can get that little guy
to run down to the file cabinet and pull out
a folder that has that stuff in there. So when I say
Hot air balloon.
Your file clerk runs down there and like, Okay, I I was at a hot air balloon festival in New Mexico or something.
And pulls that file out.
So if I can get your file clerk to keep pulling files out throughout the day.
What the one thing the file clerk does and this is a gross
Generalization.
Is
Anything that's pulled out throughout that day and if it's in one context
The file clerk leaves them all out on the desk.
And if I can get enough files, all the files that I want out on that desk
That's gonna influence every decision that you make when you go home tonight.
So that's kind of the pre suasion, except I'm putting it in there in the form of an archetype.
And if I get you to think David and Goliath
I want you to think that this is the midpoint of that story, not the end.
So if I just get you to think this is probably David and Goliath.
This is the middle part of the story. This is when
The little kid, the shepherd kid, is walking down the hill to challenge
Uh challenge the giant.
Your brain comes up with the ending to the story automatically.
Mm.
So these archetypes are so woven into us that we think if I could just complete an archetype story
It's justice.
And what does archetype mean?
So an archetype is just like a
A brand of story.
Okay. So like a a hero's journey.
Like a beginning and middle of the city. Tragedy.
Okay.
Loss and return, a Rags to Riches story, a Wounded Healer story. All these classic story types.
So there's like twelve story types. Joseph Campbell's uh talked a lot about this.
But if th our brains has about twelve of these little archetypes and if it's a like a wounded healer story
And there's a redemption thing at the end, which is called a redemption arc.
I'm gonna get the audience to see that we're at the seventy five percent mark right where it's about to happen. And if I just get you to see a situation through the lens of an archetype
Your brain automatically
Not just
predicts, but you know how it's gonna end.
Mm-hmm.
And you want to make it in that way because it looks like justice. It looks like the right thing to do. And you don't even know why your brain is trying to do that. Even though I'm the one that's
jammed the archetype into your head for
A couple of days.
Mm-hmm.
So bringing this back to Debian Ho Ohio. Yeah.
How might she use such a strategy in her own life to
Get the best out of the people she works with, or those around her.
Yeah. So you can also use this as a profiling tool.
If
And uh if you take notes on this stuff r about people in your office, I would keep'em private.
But
Figure out like this guy's on a
You don't even have to know and memorize all these twelve archetypes. What movie are they in?
When they talk about their life, what movie are they in?
You have that one guy in the office that wants to go on crazy adventures and do stuff that nobody else has done, this is that's a back to the future archetype.
You can make up your own archetypes.
But if they're if they're doing all this
And everything's going good, what's the next thing they're gonna predict?
They're gonna have a problem coming up in their life.
So I know how they're gonna predict their future if I just know what story they're in.
Andrew Bustamante, who's that CIA spy who I've had on the show a few times, told me about his Rice framework.
um in espionage, reward ideology, coercion and ego.
Um
Reward being the things you want, like money, ideology being
you know, doing this is good for your family, doing this is good for your country.
uh the C being coercion which is pressurising people and the E being ego. He said of all four of these
ideology, like understanding someone's ideology is the most persuasive
For when he was a spy.
And
The way that I've kind of conceptualised that and maybe built upon it a little bit.
And I I'm saying that'cause I don't want to be butchering his idea.
is I think everybody has a hero's journey.
that they're on right now. And when you're
meeting them to get them to, you know, maybe come and work at your company or persuading them to do a deal. Like the first great challenge is listening to them long enough.
For them to hand over
Their ideology to you.
So that you can speak to them not through your own ideology and what you want.
But you can talk through their ideology.
And like even with me, obviously, there's like a hero's journey in my mind. There's like a story. All of us.
That like
is behind me, but also I want to be ahead of me.
And if you know if you can listen long enough to figure out what that is, you can
Tell me okay, Steve, I'm gonna sell you this Range Rover.
And
Tell me the features of it or the benefits of it.
through the hero's journey that I want to live out. Yeah.
Everyone listening right now has that. Like you have a a hero's journey that you're on, and the most persuasive thing I think anyone could do is not just give you money or whatever.
Is to
Let them know that the thing you're offering
is gonna realise that story.
Or at least the next chapter.
Okay.
So not it.
We don't always want to sell a completion. We just want to say this is the logical next step of this story.
Like
This guy did a bad thing.
He needs to be punished?
And what happens after the punishment. This is the learning the lesson and being redeemed arc.
Mm. So we're not we're not gonna tell a jury or suggest to a jury that he's gonna go learn a lesson and then come back.
We're just gonna suggest like what's this next thing that happens.
So if somebody has this arc if we figure out what
What is my journey? What is what archetype am I living right now? What type of story
Then I can figure out
How my brain is predicting the future.
Because archetypes are so woven into our brains without language.
So th th language is not necessary for the archetype to exist.
Mm-hmm.
So
It's
If you know someone else's archetype, you can
understand how they're gonna predict their future and how they're gonna make choices. And how do you get their archetype out of them?
You're gonna hear it.
It's so funny, like there's you don't even need special questions.
You ask them about their life, ask them where they're from.
Ask'em to give me like this summary of like what happened when you worked there at that company. Well I did this and this and this and nobody thanked me.
It was a thankless job. The manager was a total asshole.
So now you're starting to see a an archetype. Like the guy was in a tragedy there. The guy was a victim. And they want to be appreciated. Yeah, so now he's here at this brand new company for redemption.
So now we're in a redemption story arc.
That makes sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So it i it just comes out naturally in everybody's speech.
But the the funny thing is I've never seen it applied to
Course.
In the way in the way that we do it.
And it's a just such a powerful tool.
The number one thing that I specialize in.
There's this thing called the time distance problem.
This is what I wanted to solve throughout
Mm my entire career.
So we have two axes.
Are vertical axes.
So this is
Horizontal axes is the distance line.
And the vertical axis going up and down is the time.
Line.
Okay, so we have time.
And we have distance.
So distance is how far away from a behavioural norm.
Can I get a person to go?
Mm.
Can I get
Steven to confess to a crime.
Like
Doing something that's gonna send you to jail for thirty years
Is way outside of your behavioral norm.
And for me to be able to do that in an interrogation room, I have to do some techniques. I have to do some
Crazy stuff. If I do it in sales, then I'm getting you to make a decision that you maybe otherwise wouldn't have. Maybe if I'm in timeshare.
Uh sales or something like that.
And
At the end of the day.

Some people can get

But it's gonna take forever.
To do it.
It's gonna take maybe a year.
To to make something happen.

Sell to them, et cetera. Yeah.
And
The last interrogations I did that were for
A corporation in California.
I had to do forty five interrogations in like two days.
And I had maybe twenty five minutes for interrogation. So the least amount of time I've I've ever
been given.
And
That was the time distance problem. So how do I layer on
the techniques, the identity, the perception, context, and permission, how do I get that layered into a conversation as fast as possible so I can shift someone's behavior?
As fast as possible.
So everything that you're looking at is typically a time distance problem.
And there's one more universal thing, and this may not even fit anywhere in the episode'cause it's random.
But you were talking earlier about like carrying this trauma in your backpack. So many people are trying to get rid of this trauma.
The reason that psychedelics can rewire PTSD so effing fast is
Is that it it's that it doesn't delete your trauma at all. The memory's still there, the whole
All the
Stuff is still there.
It changes the perspective so massively.
that you can still see the event, but it forces you to see all of that stuff through a different lens. Mm-hmm.
So if you look at somebody that has
some depression stuff going on, some weird mental stuff going on in their life. So much of

I can't be a leader, I can't go into this meeting, I can't do this negotiation. It's a perspective problem.
Like ninety percent of the problems that that that people have that I work with is is just a perspective issue.
And nothing else.
And occasionally.
Um
I if somebody's been going through a lot for a long time.
Uh I would get your neurotransmitters tested and get your brain.
Tested and see if you've got some chemical imbalance that's that's causing a lot of stuff. Just sometimes a vitamin deficiency could cause a lot of that.
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Outside of psychedelics, is there any useful ways you found to change one's perception?
There's they have all kinds of like sleep deprivation. Sensory deprivation tanks.
The darkness retreats.
All those things that people talk about with breath work and they go on these big ass retreats. I don't know anything about those things.
Do study psychedelics.
A lot.
And
I I think Johns Hopkins this year I think said that it was the most effective drug ever tested in human history.
For depression, treatment resistant depression or
For psychological problems.
The treatment position, depression, PTSD
addiction.
And now we have this new drug called Ibogaine.
It's not new. It's been around for thousands of years, but
Uh that's helping people with addiction.
And
There's now people able to do intravenous
Uh DMT.
For like five hours at a time instead of five minutes at a time.
And I was the forty first person in the world to do the uh intravenous
Uh DMT. When did you do that?
Uh, Denver.
I did it because it DMT boosts has a massive boost of BDNF, which is brain to route nootrophic factor.
And it also produces a lot of plasticity, a lot of brain plasticity. So I was trying to fix my brain. I've got a brain disease.
So I went down there on this this five hour thing and I've been
Completely different ever since that day.
So it is a it is a massive benefit.
And
It's heavy though.
DMTs are heavy.
Heavy thing to go through.
I don't see I can't see
Any reason why any human being would use it recreationally.
For anyone that hasn't experienced DMT, how would you describe the experience?
I know that's gonna be hard to do'cause I've m some of my friends have done it and when you ask them to describe it, it seems to be quite abstract.
Yeah, it's like
If you
If we had some two dimensional creatures.
That we're living on this piece of paper right here on the table.
And one of those creatures figured out that he can smoke some DMT.
And that somehow enabled us to peel this two dimensional creature
To where it could see in three dimensions and see
Everything in this room.
That's a DMT.
You're getting peeled out of reality into some
Other realm.
And the the weird thing is, every scientist that I know that studying DMT
Not one of them thinks it's a hallucination.
What do they think it is?
I think the the more someone the more familiar someone is with DMT, the less certain they are.
About what the hell's going on.
But everyone
Everyone, literally everyone who uses DMT pretty much goes to the same exact places.
And they all meet the same entities, the same seven or eight different types of entities. And it's been the same for forty five hundred years of of recorded history with DMT.
And DMT is something we make in our own body. It's it's an endogenous chemical.
Has it changed your perception of what reality really is? One hundred percent.
Yeah.
It's so much more real than this reality.
It's like
It's
You it's so ineffable.
There are no words that that can describe it.
But
It's a thousand, maybe a million times more real than this.
In such a way that just coming back to this
Feels like
Everything is kind of clamation for a little while.

Or just fake, like a cartoon.
uh of some kind. It's just really low resolution.
And
I I I come back with no certainty about anything.
And I think everybody comes back with that lack of certainty.
You're not coming back and be like I saw this exact thing and here's what it means and here's how the universe is created and and all of that.
But you go up there and you come back and you're like something about this
plane doesn't feel real anymore. And that is a permanent shift that's hard for some people to make.
And you can't unsee
that you were kind of able to poke your head out of the out of the side door of the Truman show.
And and look out.
Backstage for a little while.
So has it made you believe that this isn't
Real.
This reality that we're living in now is not real.
We'd have to define real.
But
The only
How would you define real? Yeah, that's a good question. So that's my poor. You can touch it.
You can measure it, you can taste it, smell it.
Would that be real?
Do you think we're living in a simulation?
We have to define simulation. I think every society has this hubris
of the universe is whatever's cool to us right now.
Electricity came out and the universe was energy. Industrial Revolution came out and the whole universe was a giant machine.
And right now everybody says, Oh, that we in we just in discovered computers, the universe must be a computer.
It's like the the hubris of of every generation.
What I mean by simulation uh
I think like is it rendered in some way?
Buy something.
Um
I I I study this stuff
All day, every day of my life.
And I think that the more we
The more discoveries we have and
Particle physics and quantum mechanics.
The more they're proving the hermetic
Principles. Right.
What's that?
This is the seven ancient
Principles of this guy named Hermes Trismogistus.
Also known as Thoth.
Like an e an Egyptian guy.
Confused about his name.
But he's like uh
He wrote these like these first two principles are the most important. The first one is all is mind.
All is mind. All is mind. The all is mind. The universe is mental.
And then the second one is as above, so below.
And here's how I explained this to my son a couple of days ago.
I said
Have you ever had a dream?
Where there's like a building in the dream.
Maybe there's a house in front of you.
And what are you looking at the house with?
Um
He's like, Well my eyes.
So why?
Which eyes are they?
Are they your eyes that you're seeing the house with?
And he said, No,'cause you're imagining your own set of eyes to see the house with in your dream.
Your eyes don't aren't there.
Your body isn't there. So you're imagining the whole body and the world.
And I said, What's the distance between you and that house and your dream?
They said thirty feet.
I said, What is the air made out of between you and the house?
And he said, Air. And I said, You have air in your dreams? Is it real air?
He said no it's just
It's my brain.
I said, so is there a distance between you and the house?
He said no.
What's the house made out of? Me.
What's the air made out of me?
The entire thing is me. The ground I'm standing on, the house, the s the
Clouds in the sky.
So in a dream
You can verifiably prove that something is real.
You can test it, you can touch it.
And all that and the perception of it is is very much real.
So the theory now
And I don't I don't have any certainty about this. But I one interesting theory that I've heard from many different neuroscientists
Is like if we look at as above, so below
Like a universe spins like a DNA double helix. You can zoom in on a human eyeball and it looks the same as a nebula.
What if dreams are this level
Level one.
And this is like level two of them.
Where we're hallucinating distance.
And I think that's a great question.
Whatever the case is.
I have no idea.
I have no
theories about it myself.
But whatever the case is, I do think that separation is the greatest lie ever told to the entire world.
Like the you are separate from that person, like this you are separate from this.
And how people say, I need to go spend time in nature. Like you are nature.
Like that's
That's part of who you are. You're made out of that stuff. You're made out of that dirt.
So I think the illusion of separation is is
the one thing that I think will help a lot of people, and that's why psychedelics
can really just rewire somebody's brain so
So fast.
It just deletes that separation.
Feel like I just did had some DMT.
'Cause you said, you know, level one is dreams, level two is maybe this reality. So the question in my mind was what's level three?
Yeah, then that would maybe be what you see on DMT.
You said that world was more real than this one.
Oh yeah, exponentially.
Immeasurably.
Why? How how do you quantify realness? Like what's the s the measuring stick there?
Yeah.
There it there are no words for it.
Has this changed your view on religion?
Yeah.
How has it changed your view? I wasn't really a religious person. I I think it made me a much more spiritual person.
And I think before
Any psychedelic therapy that I went through I was I was performing spirituality.
So spirituality was kind of something I
I did to show people.
Yeah, virtue virtue to signal virtue. Yes.
And
Now of spirituality you kind of see it like it's not a big deal.
It doesn't you don't have to go by
linen yoga pants and and wooden beads and bathe in essential oils to be spiritual. Like you can just
Maybe have a hand up there and be less certain.
I think the certainty is that
Is the enemy. Like we haven't been here very long. We're very
very newborn creatures on this planet.
Has it made you more empathetic?
Unbelievably so.
Yeah.
At the end of the day it
Everybody wants to
Like after your first or second time going to psychedelic therapy, you're like, Oh, I need to understand the secrets of the universe now.
Which you go in there with this like very egoic
Uh egocentric.
uh desires.
And then they're like, Okay, you want to understand the universe, they'll show it all to you and your brain's not capable of understanding it, remembering it.
Or translating it once you once you come back anyway.
And I think o over time
You learn that
The more ego I have, it's like I'm performing.
And then every time I go back in there or every time like I
kind of reflect on that experience, it helps me to unzip
This my little ego costume.
Uh a little bit more.
Did you know that you can get banned from DMT?
Really?
Dude, you gotta look this up.
There are thousands of people out there who are using DMT recreationally.
And the beings up there.
Basically told him.
You are done.
And you're you're banned from from DMT. And the journey stops.
Right there in that moment.
And the guy can take hit after hit after hit after hit of DMT and nothing happens.
You can be banned from that.
Realm or whatever it is.
I think they call it hyperspace now.
In the culture culture surrounding DMT, there is a widely reported anecdote phenomenon called being locked out of hyperspace.
Many frequent users report reaching a point where the drug simply stops working as expected regardless of the dose.
The common descriptions include the waiting room wall, getting stuck in the initial onset phase and being unable to break through, the gray room.
Seeing only flat, colourless, or dull visuals instead of the visual vibrant geometry.
The hyper slap, a terrifying or deeply uncomfortable experience where entities
That you aren't welcome or shouldn't be here anymore.
This sudden blackout.
Smoking the substance and simply
falling asleep or remembering nothing, effectively being denied entry.
Hm.
And it is
There are thousands of people.
What if the um very, very random
But
Persuasive.
thought experiments I sometimes
um use to explain why I've started to believe that there's probably something more.
Is
Willie
how much I've learned about the gut microbiome.
I sound like a strange thing.
Not a connection one would expect to make. But when I sat here with these experts and they're like, Oh, by the way, there's thirty eight trillion living organisms in your gut right now.
I
You know, you you're saying like what is
Below is above or whatever that phrase was.
I was okay, so those thirty eight million creatures, I know that you could argue that maybe they're not conscious or whatever you want to say, but they have no idea.
Like if they work they have no idea that they're living inside another organism.
Down that if they could debate.
They would be debating religion.
They'd be saying, Do you think we have a creator?
And they'd look around and they wouldn't see him.
But because they don't realize that they're inside.
I guess
That
God, like their creator, the thing that's feeding them every day and keeping them alive, and that kind of you could argue created them because I create the environment for them to reproduce.
And when I thought about that, I thought about the oceans. I was like the you know, the animals at the very bottom of the deepest ocean have no idea that there's anything above. They have no idea. And then I and then you've got to ask yourself, am I like arrogant enough to believe or naive enough to believe?
That like this is it.
That I am at the top of the mountain there's nothing.
It's so egotistical to think like there isn't there could be nothing above me.
And then the other thing that's been really persuasive for me in my journey of like
spirituality or religion or whatever you want to call it, is I did
a bunch of star tours and generally getting interested in the stars and sitting there with a a star expert and him saying to me at night time in Joshua Tree, look over there and he'd like get this big binocular out, this one metre binocular.
Let's see what you're seeing there.
Is he'd say something crazy like twenty eight million light years away.
And I'm looking at a whole nother galaxy and it's just this spec and it's twenty eight million light years away.
Scratching my head and like what the that is
inconceivably far away and it's just this dot. And he goes, Yeah, there's like trillions of those.
Don't think oh, like the book got microbiome, there's like thirty eight trillion of those.
Yeah.
And they're just specs.
With life on them.
That we
understand at some granular level, but maybe not the deepest granular level. So maybe I'm just another gut
In the bug.
Of some toddler.
In some other space. And I just don't know the answer. What do you do with that information? No idea.
But the new theory is that this
Consciousness is external to our body.
What does that mean?
Like our brains act as a receiver and a filter.
for consciousness and not a creator of consciousness.
So that hypothetically, maybe DMT
Is something that just pops that filter off.
And allows us to experience.
Mm. And then if the all is mine, so if
Everything in my dream is made up of me.
And we just copy paste that up to this level.
We're all maybe part of one mind and there
Aren't any people.
It's just a mind.
So like the distance between us doesn't exist. It's just
Just like a dream, except we're sharing a dream up here.
And that's one of the
I think that's a part of that that new consciousness theory.
I don't subscribe to any of'em.
Any one of them in particular. You haven't got to believe any of this stuff.
Um
Because it's hard to you're never gonna know for sure.
But even hearing it.
makes me feel a lot more empathetic for my fellow being.
Yeah.'Cause it makes me you.
It makes it makes your enemy.
You, it makes your friend you, makes the person you love, hate, whatever. It makes all of them you.
And none of us would
I think I think we treat ourselves much better sometimes than we would treat an uh uh someone
a thousand miles away in a different country with a different color skin.
Yeah.
Um so
That's what I love about this conversation. And actually every time I bring myself back to this point about consciousness being one, it does make me
More empathetic to things.
It does. And it's not because you're a moral person.
Mm. Like you don't have to have morals anymore. So if I see you as me
Mm-hmm.
I'm just protecting myself.
Yeah. Like it it's just a natural in the same way I would with my children. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean the the morality doesn't need to exist anymore. It's just
The right thing.
Chase, what is the most important idea?
we didn't talk about that we should have talked about specifically as it relates to
the most important skills people are gonna need.
whether it's body language or people skills or sales skills, in the world we're heading towards where they're positing that robots are gonna take away lots of the manual labor jobs and artificial intelligence is gonna take away a lot of the like cognitive work.
And we might be rendered left.
With each other in the real world.
Yeah.
Number one.
is making people feel
Heard?
And scene.
And resonating with them when they're heard and not judging them when they're seen.
That's the number one.
Because AI
You can mark my words.
AI will never
In a milyen years.
serve as a replacement for humans on the social level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where we have survival, safety, belonging that
That third row.

cannot be fulfilled through electronic means as of yet, anyway. And maybe the
They're gonna start making sex robots and all that kind of stuff from these
Th these things come out.
But
We cannot fulfil
That desire. We cannot fulfill that need.
So
What's above that?
Then we have esteem.
our self esteem and our

We can never move past level three.
Because we're getting a placebo of connection from Twitter and
TikTok and all these apps and uh
these pseudo social apps, YouTube. We have these parasocial relationships on YouTube.
And
It's n it cannot fulfill that level. Our brains were not wired to receive digital connection.
Yeah.
We have our brains have not developed one more wrinkle in the last two hundred thousand years.
Exactly the same brain.
Mm-hmm.
So
We're not gonna out science.
Uh the lower part of the brain.
And you can't like meditate your way out of having
good relationships and being around three D people. You you need it in your life.
And uh
I genuinely think AI's never gonna replace it.
I would agree.
I would agree.
I think one of the things that's been really persuasive in this regard is I remember in psychology lessons when I was like
Maybe sixteen years old. Mrs. Lowney.
I've always missed Miss Lowney.
Miss Lani, if you're listening, please get in touch. My I shouldn't say my email. Um
But just get in touch.
through Gareth, he knows me, but I just wanted to say that'cause she she was a great teacher for me in psychology. I really only like two lessons in school, business and psychology. So Mr Hughes and Mrs. Lounley Lowney's lessons. The others I found a bit tricky.
But I thought those two teachers saw something in me. Miss Lowney was talking about the Rhesus Monkeys experiment.
Where they got these like recess monkeys to
Um
Either they gave them a fake mother but had that had cloth on it.
Or they gave them a wire mother. So a mother w made out of wires.
And they look to their psychological outcomes over time. I'm probably butchering this, so please community note me, Director Team, so that the facts are on the screen.
And what they found is if you want
the monkeys that grew to be most psychologically stable.
And happy.
And weren't psychopaths were the ones that had a cloth mother.
And the s the monkeys that became erratic and clearly had deep psychological problems were the ones that just had a wire mother. So uh that's always reminded me that even in a world of robots, AI, whatever, there's still something irreplaceably human about physical human connection and touch.
Yeah. Which I actually think is gonna become is gonna absolutely surge in a world where we do have robots and intelligence and retentive algorithms. I think there's gonna be this bifurcation of society where many people fle back to
The real world.
Yeah.
And the the two biggest things that we have as a result of all this is loneliness and division.
And the division is manufactured, then the loneliness is a byproduct.
Is there anything else you wanted to share?
Yeah, maybe some good news. That was some shitty that'd be shitty to stop on that note.
Give me some good news.
I think one of the the number one thing that people need to know
Is that
If you wrote down the biggest insecurities that you've ever had in your entire life, every
Crazy, crazy thing.
About how
You thought it was a big deal. You have to forget forgive yourself for that shit you did when you were twelve.
You have to uh stop doing this. You have to you have to stop hiding yourself from other people. If you just wrote down every one of your insecurities,
With a hundred people.
And then had someone type all of them out. All hundred people.
You wouldn't be able to find your own.
You you'd be very confused.
You'd think that someone just paraphrased you a hundred times if you're digging through that hat trying to find your insecurities.
And it would shock you.
Uh and it's one thing to hear it maybe on a podcast, but
To see it in real life.
If you see the depth of other people
We are so much the same.
And all the shit that we hide
'Cause we don't want anybody else to see it.
Everyone else is hiding the exact same stuff. Everybody else is feeling the exact same way.
The number one thing that people regret on their deathbed is like
I should have treated it more like a game. I should have figured out what was important in the game and done what was actually important.
Uh and that's it.
That means a lot to you, doesn't it?
That particular point. I've I've it's almost like you've changed since the last time we spoke.
In a way.
Yeah. I think there's been a bit of an evolution.
Yeah.
It I I think that level of empathy is super important to life and it helps slow things down.
And no matter what you're going through.
Put put make a poster and put this up on your wall.
It's supposed to be fun.
It's supposed to be a game.
Yeah, Alan Watts had a quote that said.
Most of man's memory comes from taking very seriously what God made for fun.
Mm-hmm.
It's hard not to take it seriously though, when
Yeah.
Seems to
threaten some of our prehistoric
design. And if we go back to the triangle where you've got friends and rewards and you've got safety.
If it threatens any of these things, then it doesn't feel so fun.
Right.
Depending on your perspective.
And that's where the big perspective shift comes in of like
I gotta remind myself this is supposed to be fun.
Chase, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
And the question left for you. Sounds like you've rehearsed that.
Yeah, I've said it quite a few times now, probably five hundred times.
Um
If you were going to take on a new challenge this year,
To expand the territory
of your skill set.
In a way that would make you happy, what would it be?
I think uh
Developing the ability to
Shut the fuck up and celebrate.
When there's a win.
Uh, we should have like a a giant record month.
In our company, massive record month. And
I was like okay, okay.
And then I just w I joined another meeting in
It fell by the wayside and I think I'm gonna regret doing that. And I think celebrating wins is a skill.
Uh that I need to cultivate.
Better.
Mogoda um from episode one hundred and one was the most shared episode.
of any podcasts in twenty twenty three on Apple in the UK.
Apple.
And one of the things he said in that conversation, he's um head of Google X who left when his son died in a routine operation and he went in search of happiness. So at Google he was leading the innovation teams, all like the AI stuff, rob robots and all that stuff. And I remember he he like becomes a backpacker at fifty odd years old.
ends up having a divorce from his wife after eighteen years and his whole life when he sat in the chair, he was like backpacking at this one shirt. He'd come to my studio in Shoreditch in London, this this old kitchen. This used to be my kitchen. And he said a line to me which has always stayed with me. He said, Happiness is when your expectations of how your life are supposed to be going are met.
And so from that I can deduce the opposite to be true, which is unhappiness.
is when your expectations of how you thought your life was supposed to be going go unmet. And in there
I've I always come back to this because like almost all of my unhappiness
is when I had an expectation
Of how my life was supposed to be going, or something was supposed to be going, your relationship getting cut off in traffic, whatever it might be, podcast, whatever.
And when it when you fall short of one's expectation, that gap is like
is dissatisfaction and frustration, whatever else. And so
Can one play with this by
Being grateful.
Gratitude is a proxy.
Of
Realizing that expectations you once had
are now being met and succeeded. But the problem is
A striving creatures.
We keep
A delta.
Between
Where we are.
And where we expect to be.
So like when you talked about celebrating your win there.
I think the problem is you're already thinking about the next one. So you've already created delta.
Yeah.
And that's gonna keep you on happen. Whereas like the you know
Wh is it Eastern traditions are all about gratitude, which in that moment is going, Fuck Chase, we did it.
Yeah. This was a dream.
Yeah.
And you did it.
And like are you able to sit in that? The problem I've also discovered with this psh spiel
is I expected it to be automatic.
I expected
The gratitude and the excitement and the joy to be automatic.
Yeah.
So when it didn't automatically show up when I became a millionaire or the podcast did well.
I
Thought maybe it will show up on the next one.
Yeah.
Instead of like taking a moment and forcing it out of me, like reminding myself that this was it, Chase.
Yeah. This was the dream. And that's the perspective. Yeah, perspective. Like your your camera angles like
Mine, I'll speak for myself.
It's just so zoomed in on on this exact moment.
on what's going on in the business, this meeting that's coming up in a few minutes.
You're just like dragging that camera.
by the throat and pulling it up to like when you zoom out on Google Maps and be like
This is
A big deal.
Like you have time to pause.
Nothing you think is a big deal is a huge deal.
You can pause, you can st
Cancel that meeting.
Uh and really celebrate.
It it's so true.
And it maybe.
Like when I became a millionaire, I thought it was like
It's gonna fix my posture. It's gonna make my skin look better um
It didn't do anything. It didn't do shit.
Mm.
And the crazy part about that is you hear often hear of what they call gold medal depression.
Which again is a prime example of like you you had an expectation of that moment. You thought confetti and a marching band and it would be on the front page of the newspaper or whatever.
And the reality is it didn't do shit. So now you got a problem. Now you're now a lot of people they get upset. They come back from the Olympics with a gold medal and they're depressed.
Because they climb to the top of the mountain they go and
It didn't change anything?
Now that's a problem.
Yeah.
So
I actively practice, especially ahead of an accomplishment.
I actively practice.
Forced gratitude, which is like really taking a moment and and zooming out as you say.
And then the other is, like before I just got my house in LA, which is this incredible fucking house, and like blows like from where I come from is
you know, kid born in Botswana.
Move to the UK.
Um
Before I walked into the house.
I I literally out loud reminded myself
That this was not gonna change anything in my life.
It wasn't gonna make me.
an an inch happier in any way. It was gonna have no material impact on anything. No one's opinion of me is gonna change. Nothing. It's gonna do nothing for me. And when I walked into that house for the first time
I can actually really enjoy it.
Because my expectations were so low.
That's beautiful. So it was very easy to exceed my expectations'cause I had none.
You know, and I actually enjoy it every day when I walk downstairs because it's like blowing my mind.
Yeah.
You know?
That is awesome.
But you still get to celebrate.
That that you got the house. Yeah.
Without it meaning something about you.
Yeah. That's I think that's the difference.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. Like you can feel good about a good YouTube comment without it
S
Without you going, yeah.
Yeah, Steven is a good guy.
You know, like where you're not writing identity statements about it. Identity, that's the key. That's what I was clearly doing there, is I'm saying this is not gonna impact my identity in any way. Don't you fucking think it's gonna go. Yeah.
But it still means that when I wake up the morning and see a view, I go, Wow, that's so wow. Yeah.
You know. So true.
So true.
Uh.
fully resonate with that. Chase, where do people go to get more of you?
Where's the best place?
Best place is N CI dot university.
N C I dot university. I'll link that below.

Looking for the link.
And my YouTube channel is just my name.
will try and collab with you on this video. So if you should if you look down below, you should see two
icons, you'll see the Director icon and Chase's icon. If you're watching on YouTube, just click Chase's icon and you'll go over to his YouTube channel.
Chase, thank you so much.
Thanks, Stephen.