Chase Hughes: The 3 "Dark Psychology" Tricks To Read Anyone's Mind!

This is how social media starts roping you in. This is how politics starts

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

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.

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. You look all the way up and look all the way down. I make

them do like 50 things. None of the things that I just did with them are meaningful. Everything was micro

meaningful. Everything was micro compliance. And you don't realize that

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

being. Use what works for brainwashing because our brains have not developed one more wrinkle in the last 200,000 years. So a regular example of this is

years. So a regular example of this is novelty. Anything novel hijacks our

novelty. Anything novel hijacks our brain. So if you're trying to change

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

humanto 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

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. There's

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.

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world. And uh yeah, let's do this.

Chase, 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 10 billion humanoid robots in the world in the future. And

these are going to be intelligent robots because the software within them is now artificial and it's incredibly intelligent. One of the things people

intelligent. One of the things people say to me a lot is in a world where we're going to have all this intelligence, what jobs are going to remain? And one of the points of

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 are going to 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

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

for you. So, if I'm a leader, then I can do that. If I'm an attorney, I can sway

do that. If I'm an attorney, I can sway a jury. I can make a jury pick a certain

a jury. I can make a jury pick a certain decision. If I'm a hostage negotiator, I

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

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 going to be rendered useful only for that which humans can

do, which is probably this stuff.

Yeah. the IRL in real life, humanto 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

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 disconnected from each other and these

human skills are going to 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 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 to 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 humanto 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, a mom, or dad, is this thing called the

PCP model. And PCP is a three-step

PCP model. And PCP is a three-step cascade that happens inside the human brain when we get influenced. Whether

we're doing something massively extreme like some manurian candidate type stuff or we we're just having a sales call and we we make a sale. Everything goes

through PCP. 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 Stephen 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 [ __ ] 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 has it specifically done that there? Is it

because it's acknowledged my point of view but then given a new one?

Yes.

So if it just given 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 want to 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 is 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

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

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 a a situation in life.

Does that make sense?

Mhm.

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

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

professional. I can't say anything that makes me look emotional. I can't say anything that's personal. I 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

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. Ah,

so like if you shook my hand super aggressively or somebody shook my hand like a 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

loud." So any script that's running in the background or 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 Matt very, you know, over the top handshake by calling it out. What have you done? What have

it out. What have you done? What have

you done in my head? So, I' I'm the one that's just squeezed your hand really tight cuz I want to be an alpha male.

You call it out. What What does that do?

It It disarms me or it makes me feel great or No. And and and I'm not saying that

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 make eye contact with each other.

We're supposed to nod throughout this entire thing. I'm making both of us more

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 kind of calling it out but without it being without making fun of aggressive. Yeah. Okay.

aggressive. Yeah. Okay.

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 going to 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 now it's in your face. They do all of this stuff to shift

face. They do all of this stuff to shift your perception.

And in order to get your behavior to change, once I shift your p perception, then I change the C in the in this model. And the C is context.

model. And the C is context.

And context is the most important thing in the world. And nobody's talking about it. Probably everyone watching this or

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 almost

a bath. Whatever it is, but some almost everybody's going to get naked. We're

probably not going to do it in the middle of an office building like at work. Context dictates what behavior is

work. Context dictates what behavior is permissible. So, if if you go back to 19

permissible. So, if if you go back to 19 I think it was 1957, there's this guy running a stage hypnosis like comedy show, you know, where they bring people up on stage and

make them 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 offduty police

crazy stuff. He's an offduty 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 in the audience

right here is rowdy. They're making lots of noise. You need to tell them to keep

of noise. You need to tell them to keep it down. So, this starts and the

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 you can't leave the stage, but one of them's pulling out a gun." Then this offduty police officer

gun." Then this offduty 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 only 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 them excommunicate their entire family over a Thanksgiving. I'll give you an example from UK. In in 19 in 1979, I

think there was a fire in in Manchester in Wworth's department store.

Yeah. And it was during the daytime, doors were open and it turned out that most of the people that died were in the restaurant and these the restaurant was

right by the door. So the fire inspector looked and they were trying to figure this out and a psychologist finally came along and said they died because they were waiting to pay their bill cuz 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

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 fil room long enough to die just cuz nobody else is

moving. So context matters. So how does

moving. So context matters. So how does that pertain to being able to persuade people for like I don't know Debbie in 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. Mhm.

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

context. So, I've changed what this means and the definition of what's allowed here.

So, context gives us the final P, which is permission. So, if I change your

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

beginning. It's so surprising how few of us do that when we go into a conversation. I was just thinking back

conversation. I was just thinking back over the last sort of 10 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, fine. And

weather? Where'd you live? Oh, fine. And

then a 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 had volunteered up a frame very early and it was a frame in whatever I'm trying to get out of that meeting.

Yeah. And anytime 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 [ __ ] about stuff in

business all the time and then go to the positive. So you're doing kind of a

positive. So you're doing kind of a contrasting statement. So, like let's

contrasting statement. So, like let's say in in the 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."

Mhm.

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 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 cuz I'm sick of [ __ ] talking about it on emails. Yeah.

emails. Yeah.

And meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings. So, I wish I'd

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 real deal that we can work on." Words

to that effect cuz I think that would have started the conversation away from the theoretical.

Yeah.

If I just called 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,

product. Even if it's not perfect yet, we have something tangible."

And that's that's permission. So you're

like, "I might be wrong about this." But

of course, they'll probably agree with that. I think the same applies actually

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

versus emotion. If you don't take a minute to just define 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, cuz when you get those emot 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, they talk about a politician that they don't like, what do they start out with? This is going to scare you. In

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

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. M

internalizing that. M 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

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.

Mhm. 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

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 10 different

thing? If we agreed on 10 different things out of 11, 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 permissions. Like I don't have social permission to to behave in that way.

I was reading about the story that you referenced. I think I found the one in

referenced. I think I found the one in December 1923. The New York Times

December 1923. 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

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.

Yeah.

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 SCOPS 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

other? because I'd, you know, as a podcaster, this is maybe a selfish thing, I speak to so many different people and I'm going to 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 going to have be able to have a conversation with them.

I'm going to meet them as I find them and I'm going to have a conversation with them. And there's really no

with them. And there's really no external pressure that's going to change that. Yeah. Unfortunately, like I've

that. Yeah. Unfortunately, like I've I've had all the external pressure in the world and I'm not going to change that because I have to do this myself for a long period of time. So my the thing that's going to 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

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, 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

rigid beliefs. And I'm not sure whether it is they're just terrified of what what people are going to 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 I mean you meet these people so often and you're going to nod. You nodded your head while we were saying because what is what I'm saying sounds true

and it probably is but you're making that person very covertly agree that they are not that person. M.

Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense.

So throughout the conversation, what you're really doing is you're not getting them to make an agreement about how they're going to act. You're getting

them to make an agreement about who they are as a human being.

Mhm.

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 I got a confession to make. I, you know, I had social

to make. I, 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 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?

They'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 going to be like that going forward.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, you're not permanently changing a human being, 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 their you said their identity, their sense of who they want to be. And that's heavily driven by

to be. And that's heavily driven by social perception of what I think of them.

Yeah. Uh but it's not who they want to be. Uh it's who they say they are.

be. Uh it's who they say they are.

And those are different.

So and man, Bob Chelini's got a great example of this. They got these uh people to stick signs in their yard.

These giant ugly signs that say drive safe on them. And the way that they got this like 85% 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 15 seconds. Do you

survey. It'll take 15 seconds. Do you

support safe driving? Yes or no?" Of

course, everyone's going to say yes. And

then so now they've made a commitment about who they are. Do you support? So

it's who are you as a person? And they

said, "All right, thank you so much for that." And just to show your support,

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."

street? And they're like, "Yeah, yeah."

And they go stick it on the window. But

they're more likely to do it because 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

yard." And the and they double blinded this. They did it in another

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 sign in your yard?" And like 1% of people said yes, as opposed to

like 85% in the other neighborhood. But

it's a tiny agreement about who you are as a person. So this is the power of precommitting. Getting someone to

precommitting. Getting someone to pre-commmit to something before you ask them to do it.

Yeah.

And you get them to precommit in terms of their identity and who they think they are and who they want to be.

Yeah. But you're not getting them 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

dissociation thing. And remember, I'm not talking about you because if I'm sitting here saying, "Oh, Stephen, you pay attention so well in a conversation." That sounds super weird

conversation." That sounds super weird and 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

you to. In reality, if I do the opposite of what that negative dissociation statement did, and I I make a positive group of people and assign an attribute to them. So, that's how you would do

to them. So, that's how you would do this. So, it's like, you know, Stephen,

this. So, it's like, you know, Stephen, it's amazing. Every time I meet these

it's amazing. Every time I meet these really high performing CEOs, all of these Fortune 100 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

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 them.

So, I'm taking a quality that I know you admire, like CEOs, all this kind of stuff, and I'm assigning a trait to that. and

you're going to nod and you're going to that sounds kind of true but it also means that you're agreeing that you are also that type of person but I'm never saying it about you. So

this is 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 ang my language is aimed at

language. my ang my language is aimed at you and 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 anytime you're using any of

them. So anytime 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

the 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

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

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

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 beach and on the beach and grab a radio and 20% 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 can you take a look?

Can you just watch my stuff? 95% 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, you know, with others, which is fascinating cuz especially to yourself.

I find that interesting that I can change my own behavior by making a pre-commitment attached to my own identity. Um

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 wrote 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' 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

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 going to go to the gym tomorrow. It's I am the kind of person

tomorrow. It's I am the kind of person that goes to the gym is a much more powerful identitybased action. And

identity is the number one thing in the world when it comes to persuasion and influence. There's basically the way

influence. There's basically 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 I know what anxiety is, but what's cognitive dissonance? Well, the the

cognitive dissonance? Well, the the anxiety is like if I don't do what I say, I'm going to have some so I'm going to face social rejection or if I if I go here and I and I break this rule or I

don't do this, I'm going to 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 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

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

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 30 seconds to understand it. If you were an Olympic

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

every morning. You had great energy and all that stuff. And one day you woke up for some reason and you're 295 lbs.

and you wake up and 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

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 want to lose this weight so I can be healthy.

It's this is not me. And anytime you're feeling this is not me or 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 and like 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 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

be fat?" Like, no. You're pro You're programmed to go away from bad things first. Never to positive things first.

first. Never to positive things first.

It's always a way. Your ancestors live because they mistook a a rock for a bear. Not the other way around.

bear. Not the other way around.

Yeah.

Never the other way around.

Yeah. So, you're not going to 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 mamalian 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 near Iel who I

yourself. I remember near Iel who I interviewed who wrote the book on like procrastination called indistractable said to me a phrase that's always stayed with me. It's probably, you know, we

with me. It's probably, you know, we spoke for six, seven hours, I think me and Nia, there just this one phrase I always think about. He said that humans are discomfort avoiding creatures and like we think that we're pleasure-

seeeking creatures, but when he said discomfort avoiding, I really like interrogated him. I was like, yeah, but

interrogated him. I was like, yeah, but what about like horniness that makes me have sex? And he was like, well,

have sex? And he was like, well, actually that horniness is a form of discomfort. Your body is sending you

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 he's right.

I I'm trying to avoid discomfort. And in

your example of seeing myself on the fridge, yeah, I I would I would want to avoid that. It would cause such

avoid that. It would cause such dissonance to my identity that I would do everything to avoid that.

Some big ass fat 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.

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."

fuck." Yeah. like Jack didn't tell me like no

Yeah. like Jack didn't tell me like no one's told me and then then I'm like right gym every day again and uh interesting and it's social because 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 going to be more important than ever. What what other frameworks have

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 oursel is developing authority. Uh but that

developing authority. Uh but that authority has those five traits of authority. This is confidence,

authority. This is confidence, discipline leadership gratitude and enjoyment. Do you do show notes where

enjoyment. Do you do show notes where people can download stuff in the description?

Yeah, sometimes. I'll send 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. I've

learned this with 20 years of working with people. That we will tend to seek

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

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 could think like somebody like Johnny Depp, the president you can think of somebody like uh Obama. The

professor, you can think of like the classic movie professor. It still

broadcasts authority, but it's not loud.

It's not extremely directive. And the

artist can hold a ton of attention.

Mhm.

And in some rooms doesn't hold any attention at all. The authority is still there. The attention isn't. For somebody

there. 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 is 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

on you. So if I'm inauthentic to you then that's going to hurt my authority but then if I'm inauthentic to myself it's going to hurt my happiness I guess.

Yeah.

I'm going to feel like I'm again going back to your point about identity living life.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think 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

or nine. I'm still repeating a lot of that stuff. So when we say authenticity,

that stuff. So when we say authenticity, it's always important to think that it's authenticity plus a 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.

It's 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 going to 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 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

brand's authentic. like are they willing to cause social ind injury in the near term for something they believe in the long term.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. And a lot of what 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 and Okay. like like extreme virtue signaling

Okay. like like extreme virtue signaling and stuff like that. Yeah.

Which backfires.

Can we go into this childhood development thing really quick? Sure. I

think it's super important for people to know. Sure.

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

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. 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 going to eat today?

For some kids, it's like cracking jokes.

Yeah. And

I'm going to crack jokes and keep friends. I'm going to feel safe by

friends. I'm going to feel safe by becoming really loud and dominating the room. I'm going to become safe by

room. I'm going to become safe by getting really small and shrinking so nobody notices me or I'm going to become safe by being hypervigilant because I don't know if dad drank before he got

home or if he's going to start drinking when he got home. So it's like what did that child 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 them in a backpack and carry them all the way into adulthood.

Yeah.

And 90% 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

this kind of stuff. You're seeing an eight-year-old who got yelled at at a family dinner table.

That's all. But you're just seeing it in a grown-up body. I have two examples that are super front of mind that completely align with what you've just said. I have two colleagues that I work

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 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 is in my life suddenly made sense. I completely

understand it because 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

learned 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 say this publicly but similar thing she she

expressed to me that she had 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

her Sarah. I said, "Sarah, you're always staring at me." Whenever I look at you, you're already looking at me and it's like you're like overanalyzing and overthinking. And she explained to me

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,

this." So, every time I'm preempting, I'm like a radical preempter. I'm

thinking 20 steps ahead of like what might go wrong or, you know, which makes her exceptional at her job. But I would, you know, you know, 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 kind of 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 a trick to

life out. I wish I had a cool a trick to do that. But the way that like I want

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

choices. It's not an adult. So, we're

typically three different people, all of us. We have a work self, like a

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. What 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

really small. And that that goes on the friends side of the triangle and that that talks about how the social patterns that are going to 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 going to happen. I know

that's going to happen. It's just

completing a story archetype.

So that's the childhood development triangle. And it is really powerful to

triangle. And it is really powerful to start understanding our own patterns.

And I'm not saying that you can go out there and there's like here's six steps that are going to change your whole freaking life if you if you do these six things. The awareness is what you want.

things. The awareness is what you want.

You want massive like self-nowledge and and self-awareness uh with the side agreement of I am not

special and I'm completely okay if I am never understood because most of what happens uh when we get into arguments with our spouse, we get into these

[ __ ] arguments with people at 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

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

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 fortunetelling thing about their childhood, but you're starting to see these patterns and you know now how your team's going to respond in conflict. And

if they if it's a conflict and it's social, you're seeing all their friends patterns. If it's a conflict and

patterns. If it's a conflict and somebody might be losing their job, you're going to 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

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

earn rewards? And what were rewards to you?

Okay, it was appreciation. Or somebody that's like hyper significance driven, like, I've got to have the Rolex, I've got to have the Ferraris, and all of this kind

of stuff. They never got rewards because

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

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

them. They only got acknowledged when they were socially significant.

And am I right in thinking here that these are fundamentally interlin in many ways? Because when you're talking about

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.

So I like I touched all three of them and part in part because we, you know, I was thinking I was very different to my social group when I was younger. We were

a black family. There wasn't another black family that I knew of. um um other than maybe one other kid I think in the area in Plymouth in 1994 or five. Um so

some of the material things I wanted like the the shoes that everyone had made me feel safe cuz they made me fit in.

Y and that you know and that got me friends. Y

friends. Y 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 and I will typically wait for somebody to figure that out and as they're filling it out they they're kind of 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-nowledge but if you're a behavior profiler that's what's going to run people. You're going

to know how they're going to respond to conflict. You're going to know what

conflict. You're going to know what they're going to avoid. You're going to like if you're putting teams together I know what people I want to have working with each other. And it doesn't have to

be some complex 9hour 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 learned for safety or 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

life. Like it could be the things standing in the way of me having a romantic relationship or getting a 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 [ __ ] 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

contract. And then even if you make it up like when let's I'm going to 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

safe. Let's say it's one of those things. And then you just start telling

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 going to 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

years. Just like one of these things that that 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 going to have this forever. I'm going to need this as an

forever. I'm going to need this as an adult. I'm going to bring this into my

adult. I'm going to bring this into my adult life. Part two of this is you make

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 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 going to be safe. Uh and he was in a b

like he owned a business but he wouldn't go get these big clients and he wouldn't he 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.

And I want you to look at it every single day when you turn your computer on." Because that's exactly what your

on." Because that's exactly what your belief is saying.

Because 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

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

disgust. And there's a hyper awareness of that thing running in your head.

You're going to 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 going to 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 going to

whatever. Um, of course it's going to motivate me to take action, which is then going to start to build new evidence once I take action, once I win that big client and I realize that everything's fine, which is going to

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 they have relapses and things don't change

fast enough. And I think that can

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

trauma. Like I think one of the best realizations I ever had was realizing that the [ __ ] 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 or whatever my survival mechanisms they will be be with me forever and actually instead of trying to delete them or 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

one second. Uh when you watch a hypnotist, and hypnosis is anybody can learn to do it. It's a it's a pretty easy thing. So,

it. It's a it's a pretty easy thing. So,

it looks very dramatic, but one of the things you'll see me do at the beginning of that is like go ahead and give me your hand and I'll hold their hand for a second. Like, put both hands out like

second. Like, put both hands out like this and then flip them over. That's

great. Now, just just to test your eyes really quick. Look all the way up and

really quick. Look all the way up and look all the way down. Look all the way left. Look all the way right. All right.

left. Look all the way right. All right.

Then, spread your feet a little further apart, a little closer together.

Actually, no. Face this way. Now, I will make them do like 50 things. None of the things that I just did with them are meaningful. None of them.

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 90point checklist.

they've made you do 50 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 it's hardwired for these micro

compliances. So I say this to say that

compliances. So I say this to say that if you're going through any of these things and 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

beginning. So everything in influence should be looked at as a wedge.

Everything.

It reminds me of that famous study they did where they got people to give electric shocks to other people, the Mgrim 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, etc. And here's the second thing in that experiment that's going to going to perfectly tie back to this.

So this experiment that you're talking about happened at Yale University. It

was 1962.

Uh, and we 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 because some dude in a lab coat told them to.

But what they didn't account for, and even Dr. Mgram'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

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 and you because you if if I don't have your focus I can't command authority right so

focus is always first my 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

occurring. So like if you walk past the same bush every day 10,000 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 hijacks our brain. So if

you see like 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

about it? So it's and and what happens is we are hardwired to respond to these things. You cannot decide not to respond

things. You cannot decide not to respond to novelty. Your head turns to to loud

to novelty. Your head turns to to loud sounds. All this stuff happens.

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 going to 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 wrote a little bit about this in my last book about this idea of beating the wallpaper filter. I think we talked a

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 at 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 like 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

autopilot. It knows the maze, so it doesn't need to use any of its cognitive resources. Its cognitive resources can

resources. Its cognitive resources can be allocated to new surprising things.

The maze is no longer surprising.

Whizzes through the maze to the chocolate. And even like as you think

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 your like sofa wasn't there.

Um and how does that then apply to marketing? So, like how do you surprise

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

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 Tik Tok. So, I have to do something almost

Tok. So, I have to do something almost like every 10 seconds to like catch you off guard. And Mr. Beast, I guess, is

off guard. And Mr. Beast, I guess, is the great master of this. is probably

why he's got half a billion YouTube followers because the minute that video starts, yeah, you're hooked in.

You're hooked.

But this I mean that's the power of novelty. I would challenge anybody to

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 is probably short 20 maybe 40 second video that that 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.

of stuff. Watch for an authority figure.

Next, watch for a tribe signal. So, a

tribe signal is going to 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 everyone cheering at the concert. Here's how you're supposed to

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

this pattern. It'll be a focus generating novelty. Then it'll be

generating novelty. Then it'll be authority. Then you'll see tribe. Then

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 refer to this as maybe the most dangerous persuasion skill there is.

And what I'm the 10-second brief is I basically I'm going to put a Lego right here on the table in front of you and I'm going to put another Lego right here on the table in front of you and I'm

just going to keep having the conversation to where eventually your brain is going to be like, "Oh, I bet those things go together." So the idea came from you. So I'm going to 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

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. Oh, I know exactly what happened." But they make you feel

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 you it will be the biggest unfair advantage you'll ever have in a legal standing because it'll win 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 make sense to your brain because it's like you're not going to

experiment with something that you're not familiar with. So, two pieces of familiar information close enough together where the brain is going to say, "Oh, you know what I can do? I'm

going to put those two things together."

Isn't this how conspiracy theories take hold as well?

Oh, yeah. Cuz I, 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

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

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

heart. And then someone who's spending a lot of money on like health and medical side of things um is is quite an unusual thing. So we put two and two together. We have you know

we think they have 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

this is how I think a lot of conspiracies name a movie from when you were a kid where the bad guy or where 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 in our country. It's

like always the rich people are evil. Uh

but then people will say, "Oh, well Tony Stark was rich. They made him a sociopath."

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 200 300 years. I'm we're talking about like the

years. I'm we're talking about like the brothers grim uh ancient fairy tales and it w 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. Poverty is virtuous.

kids. 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 correct. I think it's it's burned into like some collective archetype.

Yeah.

Of of what stories have become and we wouldn't recognize it. So like 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 how they treat people. You're thinking,

treat people. You're thinking, you know, they're on their phone with a briefcase. You're thinking, you know,

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 because I put all that stuff together. M

that came 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?

A lot.

What is your experience?

As far as I know, I'm the only trial consultant that offers a 200% money back guarantee uh when I work.

So, what does that mean as a trial consultant? What's your objective in

consultant? What's your objective in simple terms?

It's always a little different and it depends on whether I'm working for prosecution or defense. Uh, I know nothing about the law, like just about

nothing. But I know people. So, I will

nothing. But I know people. So, I will typically go in and we'll pick a jury and we'll select a jury. And we want to select a jury based on this factor and

this factor and based on this zip code.

Here's the question that we want to ask to find out which is going to 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

covert. How can I covertly ask a question where the opposing council, 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

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 [ __ ] Uh, and they hired me because it was it was a big big lawsuit. And uh I want a

jury that has an internal locus of control that they are in charge of their own life. They're they're responsible

own life. They're they're responsible for their destiny. And we want to weed out the people that have the opposite.

We want to 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 B covert and C is not going to expose what we're

looking for to opposing council. 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 on the

their boogers. They're wiping on the escalator. They're coughing, sneezing

escalator. They're coughing, sneezing all over the place. People aren't

wearing masks. who asked the next guy, "How does a person catch a cold?" And 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

have been. I didn't wash my hands thoroughly enough. I didn't take care of

thoroughly enough. I didn't take care of my body. I didn't take vitamins. I

my body. I didn't take vitamins. I

didn't take care of myself.

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 going to pause you there cuz I just wanted to share something before we carry on with this story cuz it's fascinating. It's actually the last

fascinating. It's actually the last question I ask on our culture test when we employ people for my company. We ask

them 35 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 it asks them, it says, "The people I worked with, I wasn't given clear enough instructions

from a client or a boss or myself." And

it's remarkable that 45% of the population will 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

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 because it's going to ruin my test, but I'm going to 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 center 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, please continue.

And that you you can tell they're driven, too. They're going to own their

driven, too. They're going to own their mistakes. They're going to they're going

mistakes. They're going to they're going to help other people be more accountable.

Probably going to learn faster because they're going to take responsibility.

Absolutely.

So, with an archetype in the jury room, so we've selected, let's say we've 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 a small person suing a

right here? It's a small person suing a big company. Let's say if I'm on the

big company. Let's say if I'm on the opposite now, let's say I'm on that lady's 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

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 m 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. Does this make sense so far?

own idea. Does this make sense so far?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So then the next time I'm going to talk about uh maybe it's a deposition or something like that. We'll talk about waiting in line at the DMV. We're going

to talk about for people that don't know the context there because they're not in the US.

Yeah. So waiting in line at the at this government identification card office.

Everyone every around the world will have some form of that when you've gone to get a passport or whatever.

Yeah. Waiting at passport control. Um

your doctor's office keeping you waiting for 45 minutes and not caring about your time. We're going to talk about all

time. We're going to 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 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 your file clerk runs down there and like, okay, 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 going to influence every decision that you make when you go home tonight.

So that's kind of the persuasion except I'm putting it in there in the form of an archetype. And if I get you to think

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

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.

Mhm.

So these arc types are so woven into us that we think if I could just complete an arctype 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, tragedy, a loss and return, a rags to riches story, a wounded healer story,

all these classic story types. So

there's like 12 story types. Joseph

Campbell's uh talked a lot about this, but if our brains has about 12 of these little arc types, and if it's like a wounded healer story, and there's a redemption thing at the end, which is

called a redemption arc, I'm going to get the audience to see that we're at the 75% mark right where it's about to happen. And if I just get you to see a

happen. And if I just get you to see a situation through the lens of an arc type, your brain automatically not just predicts, but you know how it's going to end.

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.

So, bringing this back to Debbie in 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 I have

profiling tool. If I have and uh if you take notes on this stuff about people in your office, I would keep them private, but figure out like this guy's on a you

don't even have to know and memorize all these 12 arc types. What movie are they in? When they talk about their life,

in? When they talk about their life, what movie are they in? You have the 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 of this and everything's going good, what's the next thing they're going to predict? They're

going to have a problem coming up in their life. So, I know how they're going

their life. So, I know how they're going to predict their future if I just know what story they're in.

Andrew Bamonte, 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

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, the C being coercion which is pressurizing

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 conceptualized that and maybe built upon it a little bit, and I I'm saying that cuz 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 going to sell you this Range

Rover and tell me the features of it or the benefits of it through yes, the hero's journey that I want to live out."

out." Everyone listening right now has that.

Like, you have a hero's journey that you're on. And the most persuasive thing

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 going to realize 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

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. M

arc. M so we're not we're not going to tell a jury or suggest to a jury that he's going to go learn a lesson and then come back. We're just going to suggest like

back. We're just going to 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 arc type 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 the language is not

without language. So the language is not necessary for the archetype to exist.

So it's if you know someone else's archetype, you can understand how they're going to predict their future and how they're going to make choices.

And how do you get their archetype out of them?

You're going to hear it. It's so funny like there's you don't even need special questions. You ask them about their

questions. You ask them about their life. Ask them where they're from. Ask

life. Ask them where they're from. Ask

them 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 [ __ ] So now you're starting to see an archetype like the guy was in a tragedy there. The guy was a victim

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. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

So it it just comes out naturally in everybody's speech. But the the funny

everybody's speech. But the the funny thing is I've never seen it applied to courtrooms 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 is this thing called the time distance problem. This is what I wanted

distance problem. This is what I wanted to solve throughout my entire career. So

we have two axes, our vertical axis and horizontal axis.

So this horizontal axis 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

distance. So distance is how far away from a behavioral norm can I get a person to go?

So can I get Stephen to confess to a crime? Like doing something that's going

crime? Like doing something that's going to send you to jail for 30 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

techniques. I have to do some crazy stuff. If I do it in sales, then I'm

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 time share uh sales or something like that.

And at the end of the day, some people can get people far on the distance line, but it's going to take forever to do it. It's going to take

maybe a year to to make something happen of persuading them and trying to sell to them etc. Yeah. And the last interrogations I did

Yeah. And the last interrogations I did that were for a corporation in California, I had to do 45 interrogations in like

two days. and I had maybe 25 minutes per

two days. and I had maybe 25 minutes per interior. It's the the least amount of

interior. It's the the least amount of time 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

possible? So, everything that you're looking at is typically a time distance problem. And there's one more universal

problem. And there's one more universal thing, and this may not even fit anywhere in the episode because it's random, but you were talking earlier about like carrying this trauma in your backpack. So many people are trying to

backpack. So many people are trying to get rid of this trauma. The reason that psychedelics can rewire PTSD so effing fast is that it that doesn't delete your

trauma at all. The memory is still there. The whole all that stuff is still

there. The whole all that stuff is still there. It changes the perspective so

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.

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 of what ails us, even someone who's lacking confidence and they say, "I I can't be a leader. I

can't go into this meeting. I can't do this negotiation." It's a perspective

this negotiation." It's a perspective problem. It's

problem. It's like 90% of the problems that that that people have that I work with is just a perspective issue and nothing else. And

occasionally, um, 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. Do any of you remember a conversation I had on this podcast with anthropologist Dr. Daniel Lieberman? It was one of the most viewed

Lieberman? It was one of the most viewed conversations of all time on the Diary of a CEO. And interestingly, the most replayed moment of that entire conversation was when I talked about a specific pair of shoes that I wear.

They're called Barefoot Shoes, and they're made by a brand called Vivo Barefoot, who have become one of the sponsors of this show. Now, all of their shoes have significantly reduced support, which gives my feet the

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Enjoy.

We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary.

For those of you that don't know, every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the diary of a CEO and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't

release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These

have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other. With

that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big

companies. So, what we've done is we've

companies. So, what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time. And if you want to drive connection and instill habit change in your company, head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will

be in touch. 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 and 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 John's 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 Ibagane. It's not new. It's been

called Ibagane. It's not new. It's been

around for thousands of years, but uh that's helping people with addiction.

And there is now people a able to do intravenous uh DMT for like 5 hours at a time instead of five minutes at a time.

And I was the 41st person in the world to do the intravenous uh DMT.

Where did you do that?

uh Denver.

I did it because it DMT boosts has a massive boost of BDNF which is brain derived neutrophic factor and it also produces a lot of plasticity, a lot of brain plasticity. So I was trying to fix

brain plasticity. So I was trying to fix my brain. I've got a brain disease.

my brain. I've got a brain disease.

So I went down there on this 5 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.

DMT is a heavy heavy thing to go through. I don't see I can't see any

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 DM2, how would you describe the experience? I

know that's going to be hard to do because of 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 were 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's 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 4,500 years of of recorded history with DMT. And DMT is something we make in our own body. It's

it's an indogenous chemical. Has it

changed your perception of what reality really is?

100%. Yeah. It's so much more real than this reality.

It's like it's 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 claymation for a little while.

Claimation or just fake like a cartoon uh of some kind. It's just really low resolution

kind. It's just really low resolution and it I I come back with no certainty about anything. And I think everybody

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.

The only How would you define real?

Yeah, that's a good question. So, that's

why 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?

that we have to define simulation because I think every society has this hubris of the universe is whatever is cool to us right now electricity came out the universe was energy industrial

revolution came out the whole universe was a giant machine and right now everybody says oh that we in we just discovered computers the universe must be a computer it's like the the hubris

of of every generation what I mean by simulation I I think like is it rendered in some way by something. Uh

I I study this stuff all day, every day of my life. And I think that the more we the more discoveries we have in particle physics and quantum mechanics, the more

they're proving the hermetic principles, right?

What's that?

These are the seven ancient principles of this guy named Hermes Tismagist, also known as Thoth, like an an Egyptian guy.

They're 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.

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 days ago. I said, "Have you ever had a dream

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

dream? Maybe there's a house in front of you. and what are you looking at the

you. and what are you looking at the house with? And he said, "Well, my

house with? And he said, "Well, my eyes." I said, "Why? Which eyes are

eyes." I said, "Why? Which eyes are they? Are they your eyes that you're

they? Are they your eyes that you're seeing the house with?" And he said, "No, cuz you're imagining your own set of eyes to see the house with in your dream. Your eyes don't aren't there.

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 in your dream?" They

said, "30 feet." I said, 'What is the air made out of between you and the house?' And he said, 'A and I said, 'You

house?' And he said, 'A and I said, 'You have air in your dreams? Is it real air?' He said, 'N no, it's just it's my

air?' He said, 'N no, it's just it's my brain. I said, so is there distance

brain. I said, so is there 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 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 of 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 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

helix. You can zoom in on a human eyeball and it looks the same as a nebula. What if dreams are this level

nebula. What if dreams are this level level one and this is like level two of that where we're hallucinating distance?

We're hallucinating. And I think 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 of 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

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 because 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 this the measuring stick there?

It it there 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

think it made me a much more spiritual person. And I think before any

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.

And now spirituality, you kind of see it like it's not a big deal. It doesn't you don't have to go buy 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 the is

certain. I think the certainty is the is the enemy. Like we haven't been here

the enemy. Like we haven't been here very long. We're very very newborn

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 got to look this up.

There are thousands of people out there who were 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

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

break through. The gray room, seeing only flat, colorless, or dull visuals instead of the visual vibrant geometry.

The hypers slap. A terrifying or deeply uncomfortable experience where entities appear to tell you that you aren't welcome or shouldn't be here anymore.

The sudden blackout, smoking the substance and simply falling asleep or remembering nothing, effectively being denied entry. H

denied entry. H I think there's there are thousands of people. one of the um very very random

people. one of 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 weirdly how much I've learned about the gut microbiome.

And it sounds like a strange thing and like not a connection one would expect to make. But when I sat here with these

to make. But when I sat here with these experts and they're like, "Oh, by the way, there's 38 trillion living organisms in your gut right now." I

you know, you're saying like what is below is above or whatever that phrase was. I was like, okay, so those 38

was. I was like, okay, so those 38 million creatures, I know that you could argue that maybe they're not conscious or whatever you want to say. Yeah.

But they have no idea. Like if they work, they have no idea that they're living inside another organism down. If

they could debate, they would be debating religion. They'd be saying, "Do

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 their 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 created 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 got to ask

idea. And then I and then you 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 and 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 1 m binocular and he say what you're seeing there is he'd say something crazy like 28 million lighty

years away and I'm looking at a whole another galaxy and it's just this speck and it's 28 million light years away.

Scratching my head going like, "What the that is inconceivably far away and it's just this dot." And he goes, "Yeah, there's like trillions of those."

And I'm thinking, "Oh, like the gut microbiome. There's like 38 trillion of

microbiome. There's like 38 trillion of those."

those." Yeah.

And they're just specks with life on them that we understand at some granular level, but maybe not the deepest granular level. So maybe I'm just

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.

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 full consciousness.

M and then if the all is mind. 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

consciousness theory. I don't subscribe to any of them. Any one of them in particular.

You haven't got to believe any of this stuff. Um

stuff. Um because it's hard to you're never going to know for sure. But even hearing it makes me feel a lot more empathetic for my fellow being.

Yeah.

Cuz it makes me you. It makes it makes your enemy you. It makes your friend you. Makes the person you love hate

you. Makes the person you love hate whatever. It makes all of them you. And

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 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.

Like you don't have to have morals anymore. So if I see you as me,

anymore. So if I see you as me, I'm just protecting myself.

Yeah. Like it's just a natural in the same way I would with my children.

Yeah.

Or 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 going to 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 going to take away lots of the manual labor jobs and artificial intelligence is going to 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 seen 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 million years serve as a replacement for humans on the

social level of Maslo's hierarchy of needs where we have survival, safety, belonging. That that third row of

belonging. That that third row of Maslo's pyramid cannot be fulfilled through electronic means as of yet anyway. And maybe the they're going to

anyway. And maybe the they're going to start making sex robots and all that kind of stuff when these these things come out. But we cannot fulfill that

come out. But we cannot fulfill that desire. We cannot fulfill that need. So

desire. We cannot fulfill that need. So

what's above that? Then we have esteem, our self-esteem and our our self-actualization.

We can never move past level three because we're getting a placebo of connection from Twitter and Tik Tok and all these apps and uh these pseudosocial

apps. YouTube, we have these parasocial

apps. YouTube, we have these parasocial relationships on YouTube and it's it cannot fulfill that level. Our

brains were not wired to receive digital connection.

We have our brains have not developed one more wrinkle in the last 200,000 years. Exactly. the same brain.

years. Exactly. the same brain.

So, we're not going to outscience uh the lower part of the brain. And you

can't like meditate your way out of having good relationships and being around 3D people. You you need it in your life. And I genuinely think AI is

your life. And I genuinely think AI is never going to 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 16 years old, Mrs. Lowi.

I've always missed Miss Lowry. Miss

Lowry, if you're listening, please get in touch. My I shouldn't say my email.

in touch. My I shouldn't say my email.

Um, but just get in touch through Gareth. He knows know me, but I just

Gareth. He knows know me, but I just wanted to say that because 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 Lown's lessons. The

others I found a bit tricky, but I thought those two teachers saw something in me. Miss Lowry was talking about the

in me. Miss Lowry was talking about the recess monkeys experiment where they got these like recess monkeys to um either they gave them a fake mother but that

had cloth on it or they gave them a wire mother so a mother made out of wires and they looked at their psychological outcomes over time. I'm probably

butchering this, so please community note me, Dio 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 the monkeys that became erratic and clearly had deep psychological problems were the ones that just had a wire mother. So

that's always reminded me that even in a world of robots or AI, whatever, there's still something irreplaceably human about physical human connection and touch.

Yeah. which I actually think is going to become is going to absolutely surge in a world where we do have robots and intelligence and retentive algorithms. I think there's going to be this bifocation of society where many people

flee back to the real world.

Yeah. And the two biggest things that we have as a result of all this is loneliness and division and the division is manufactured and the loneliness is a byproduct.

Is there anything else you wanted to share?

Yeah, maybe some good news. That was

some shitty. I'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 [ __ ] you did when you were 12. 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 [ __ ] that we hide

the same. And all the [ __ ] that we hide because we don't want anybody else to see it. Everyone else is hiding the

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.

important. Uh, and that's it.

That means a lot to you, doesn't it?

That particular point, 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.

And 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.

And I think Alan Watts had a quote that said, "Most of man's memory comes from taking very seriously what God made for fun."

fun." It's hard not to take it seriously though when it seems to threaten some of our prehistoric design. And if we go back to the

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.

right? Depending on your perspective.

And that's where the big perspective shift comes in of like I got to 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 500 times. Um,

now. Probably 500 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 [ __ ] up and celebrate when there's a win.

Uh, we just had like a giant record month in our company. massive record

month and I was like, "Okay, okay." And

then I just went I joined another meeting and it fell by the wayside and I think I'm going to regret doing that and I think celebrating wins is a skill uh

that I need to cultivate better.

Mo Gordat um from episode 101 was the most shared episode of any podcast in 2023 on Apple in the UK according to 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 robots and all that stuff and I remember he he like becomes a backpacker at 50 odd years old ends up having a

divorce from his wife after 18 years and his whole life when he sat in the chair he was like backpacking he had this one shirt he'd come to my studio and short 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

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 I always come

unmet. And in there, I 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

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 or whatever else. And so, can one play with

whatever else. And so, can one play with this by being grateful? Because I think great

being grateful? Because I think great gratitude is a proxy of realizing that expectations you once had are now being met and succeeded. But the problem is as

striving creatures, we keep a delta between where we are and where we expect to be. So like when you talked about

to be. So like when you talked about celebrating your win there, I was like the problem is you're already thinking about the next one. So you've already created a delta.

Yeah.

And that's going to keep you on whereas like the you know is it Eastern traditions are all about gratitude which in that moment is going [ __ ] 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 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'll 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, is 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.

They'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

to pause. Nothing you think is a big deal is a huge deal. You can pause, you can cancel that meeting uh and really celebrate.

It's so true. And it maybe like when I became a millionaire, I thought it was like it's going to fix my posture. It's

going to make my skin look better. Um it

didn't do anything. It didn't do [ __ ] Hm. And the crazy part about that is you

Hm. 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 I don't know like front page of the newspaper or whatever. And the

reality is it didn't do [ __ ] 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 got 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 [ __ ] house and like blows like from where I come

from it's you know kid born in Botswana moves to the UK. Um before I walked into the house I I literally out loud reminded myself that this was not going

to change anything in my life. It wasn't

going to make me an inch happier in any way. It was going to have no material

way. It was going to have no material impact on anything. No one's opinion of me is going to change. Nothing. It's

going to do nothing for me. And when I walked into that house for the first time, I could actually really enjoy it because my expectations were so low.

That's beautiful.

So, it was very easy to exceed my expectations cuz I had none, you know, and I actually enjoy 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 without you going, "Yeah, yeah, Stephen 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 going to impact my identity in any way. Don't [ __ ] think it's going to going to.

Yeah. But it still means that when I wake up in the morning and see a view, I go, "Wow, that's so wow."

Yeah.

You know, so true. So true. I fully resonate with

so true. So true. I fully resonate with that.

Chase, where do people go to get more of you? Where's the best place?

you? Where's the best place?

Best place is nci.un university.

NCI. University. I'll link that below for anyone that's looking for the link.

And my YouTube channel is just my name.

We'll try and collab with you on this video. So, if you should if you look

video. So, if you should if you look down below, you should see two icons.

and you'll see the directio icon and Chase's icon. If you're watching on

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.

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