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

0:00 This is how social media starts roping you in. This is how politics starts roping you in. This is how cult leaders will recruit you into a cult. It's the number one way that we influence another human being. Micro compliance. And hypnosis is a great example of this. Like I can have a person laying on the floor unconscious in maybe a minute and a half. And it's very easy to do. Anybody can learn to do it. But one of the things you'll see me do at the beginning of that is like give me your hand, put both hands out like this, and then flip them over. 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 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

0:45 because our brains have not developed one more wrinkle in the last 200,000 years. So a regular example of this is novelty. Anything novel hijacks our brain. So if you're trying to change your beliefs or you want to lose this weight, change something up in your life, change your wardrobe, repaint the walls in your office, you need to tell the animal part of our brain here because this has been proven on fMRI studies that the decision shows up before we're conscious of it. What about 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 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

1:31 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. >> All right, guys. I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show. And roughly 69% of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've ever done anything for you, giving you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so much to myself, but also to my team because when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's a favor I would ask you. And um if you do hit the subscribe button, I

2:17 won't let you down. And we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. Means the 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 say to me a lot is in a world where we're going to have all this intelligence, what jobs are going to

3:02 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 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

3:48 for you. So, if I'm a leader, then I can do that. If I'm an attorney, I can sway a jury. I can make a jury pick a certain decision. If I'm a hostage negotiator, I save people's lives. If I'm a parent, I raise better kids because I I can communicate in a way that gets the outcome that I'm looking for from another person. That might just be the most important skill in the world. I think it is increasingly so in a world of AI where computers are going to be able to handle a lot of the sort of intelligent white collar related stuff for us and we're 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

4:34 and people are attracted to realism. There's so much that's artificial and performative that people are starving for realism already. And this is pre- AI. This was starting to blow up because it just gave us a sense of something that was real. We are in a epidemic right now of loneliness where people are 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.

5:22 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 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

6:09 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

6:54 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

7:39 shift. >> Yeah. >> What would you say to me? >> So if somebody says something that is an idea that's far out there, I'll always acknowledge it. And I would say like every human being is different. And it's fascinating how many rods and cones we have in our eyes, how we all perceive things differently. And it's amazing when you see one thing that you might see something that's purple and I see the exact same thing. We may be seeing the identical color, but our brains are just interpreting it differently. Or maybe we have a different word for it. And it's amazing how much we agree on and we just don't realize how much aligned we are with 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

8:25 if I can modify how you perceive a situation. So, let's say we're at a business networking event and I walk up to you and I say, let's say I call out the script, openly call out the script and I say, "It's it's amazing how many people are just running the script of I need to look like a business professional. I can't say anything that makes me look emotional. I can't say anything that's personal. 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 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

9:11 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 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

9:57 know, over the top handshake by calling 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 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 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

10:43 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. >> 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 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. And context is the most important thing

11:29 in the world. And nobody's talking about it. Probably everyone watching this or listening to this right now is going to get naked today. They'll get in a shower. They'll get in a bath. Whatever it is, but some 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 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

12:15 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 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 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

13:03 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

13:48 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 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

14:34 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 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

15:20 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 means and the definition of what's allowed here. >> So, context gives us the final P, which is permission. So, if I change your perception of a conversation and you can do that right away and if if I'm entering into a negotiation and we start the room with, I'm glad that we could all come here for this and I know both of us want to find common ground as fast as possible and I suggest that maybe we even start there. So, I'm setting a

16:07 frame right right from the very beginning. It's so surprising how few of us do that when we go into a conversation. I was just thinking back over the last sort of 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 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

16:53 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 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. >> And meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings. So, I wish I'd walked in and said something words to the effect of, "I'm so glad we could meet in person to finally really make progress on this because there's been so

17:39 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, we have something tangible."

18:24 >> 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 for romantic relationships. Thinking about having an argument with your partner, you can go in just emotion versus emotion. If you don't take a minute to just >> define >> 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

19:09 another piece of terrifying news, here's what this guy did today up on the stage. This politician did. So, they set the frame for it to be terrifying. They're setting up your perception from the very beginning. And then if I if I change the context in one context, yeah, maybe this politician's a bad guy. Another context is this person is a threat to democracy. I've heard that phrase a lot. >> A lot. And that mean And what do we do to threats to our entire democracy? We kill them. So we start radicalizing people instantly without them really even processing that they're they're internalizing that. M >> we were radicalizing people just through that context. So if you can modify perception and context, you can give someone that

19:56 permission, that final piece to do anything. Let's go back to the police officer in the hypnosis show. He had the permission to start firing his firearm because of the context of being attacked by someone with a weapon. >> 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 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 things out of 11, then we the automatic

20:41 thing would be for us to sign an agreement together. >> Okay? >> Or if if I'm being shot at, the automatic thing for me is to draw my weapon and and fire back. So it's an automatic behavior based that typically in another situation would violate social permissions. Like I don't have social permission to to behave in that way. >> I was reading about the story that you referenced. I think I found the one in 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 it, the officer reportedly arrested the

21:26 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 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

22:13 external pressure that's going to change 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 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

22:58 observation about the world. So in our discussion, let's say we just sat down and I'd say, you know what, I'm I'm glad I'm interviewing with you. There's a lot of people out there that are just so closed off and locked in these little rigid beliefs. And I'm not sure whether it is they're just terrified of what what people are 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.

23:43 >> 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 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.

24:29 >> 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 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.

25:14 >> 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 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, could you put this tiny small sticker in

26:02 the window of your house facing the street? And they're like, "Yeah, yeah." And they go stick it on the window. But they're more likely to do it 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 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 pre-commmit to something before you ask them to do it. >> Yeah. >> And you get them to precommit in terms

26:48 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 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 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 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 this. So, it's like, you know, Stephen,

27:34 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 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

28:20 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 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 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 conducted at MIT with students. Um they gave these MIT students three major papers for their semester. One class was

29:07 given ultimate freedom. They could turn in all three papers at the very end of the semester with no penalty. The other class was forced to pre-commit to strict, evenly spaced deadlines throughout the semester. And the students who had total freedom performed the worst and experienced the most stress. the students who pre-committed to certain deadlines produced the highest quality work and gave the best work and got the best grades. It proved that intentionally restricting our own future choices through pre-commitments is often the best way to beat procrastination. And I remember the study they did with people on a beach where they had a fake thief run past someone next to you on the 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

29:53 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 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

30:39 save. That's beautiful. I love that. And and you're kind of just pre-doing your own identity. And if if somebody wants to master that, you make it about your social commitment to yourself, to other people, but publicly say like I am this kind of person to yourself. So it's not like I'm the I'm going to go to the gym 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 that I teach this to intelligence people is when you're good at influence, you're building two walls. One wall is anxiety

31:25 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 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

32:11 you have that cognitive dissonance. Either A I have to decide that wow a lot of people like this person or B everyone's stupid. And it's a lot easier for me to just say everybody's stupid and we always take that path. So cognitive dissonance means that it's bouncing them back into the hallway every time they bump up against something that they've previously agreed to. And identity is the way that that you can hack your own behavior so fast. And the way that I explain this to people, it takes 30 seconds to understand it. If you were an Olympic athlete and you had a a a badass body, like you had a healthy diet, everything was in in perfect shape. You woke up every morning. You had great energy and all that stuff. And one day you woke up for some reason and you're 295 lbs.

33:00 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 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

33:48 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 programmed to go away from bad things 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. >> 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

34:35 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 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 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 what about like horniness that makes me have sex? And he was like, well, actually that horniness is a form of discomfort. Your body is sending you this sort of almost irritation which is making you take an action. And I stress tested it across many areas of my life. I was like, actually, he's he's right.

35:20 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 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." >> 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

36:06 skills going to be more important than ever. What what other frameworks have you got for me that I should bear in mind or or ideas >> as we go into AI? your leadership style. Everyone's leadership style needs to be front and center and I know there's a lot of books out there that are technically about leadership or but I think they're about management and they call themselves a leadership book. When I teach what's most important when it comes to understanding oursel is developing authority. Uh but that authority has those five traits of authority. This is confidence, discipline leadership gratitude and enjoyment. Do you do show notes where people can download stuff in the description? >> Yeah, sometimes. 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.

36:52 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 one of these little avenues that looks a certain way because we think that's what leadership is supposed to look like. That's what authority is supposed to look like. But there are three types and the three types that I've broken them down into and how authority channels to other people because authority looks different in different people. So it's the president, the professor and the artist and we can have that authority. So like the artist you 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

37:38 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 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

38:25 that you're getting less outcomes that you want in life >> because your inauthenticity to both others and yourself um like pays a toll on you. So if I'm inauthentic to you then that's 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 that stuff. So when we say authenticity,

39:11 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

39:56 risk something for something they believe. >> Yeah. >> I also think this is how you know a brand's authentic. like are they willing to cause social 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 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.

40:42 >> And I'm I'm a behavior profiler and >> if if anybody listening didn't know that. And one of the things that I teach everybody is this thing called the childhood development triangle. So it's just three sides of this triangle. So when you're growing up, what did that child have to do most of the time to earn and keep friends? So friends is one. And then to feel safe. 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 becoming really loud and dominating the

41:27 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

42:13 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 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

43:00 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

43:47 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 the same thing. She said, "When I grew up, my dad's mood would just change like this." So, every time I'm preempting, I'm like a radical 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 do that. But the way that like I want people to think about this is going back

44:34 to your childhood, a lot of those things, these are just contracts that were written in a child's voice. And when you start hearing these patterns repeating in your head, force yourself to hear the voice of a kid. That's all it is. It's just a kid who made these choices. It's not an adult. So, we're typically three different people, all of us. We have a work self, like a professional kind of self. We have a home self, and we have a self with friends. And what is that as a kid? That's classroom playground home. So I'll typically take people through this process of where were you around authority figures which is like classroom or home. What were you around when your all your friends were around?

45:19 You got made fun of or you had to become 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 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. You want massive like self-nowledge and and self-awareness

46:06 >> 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 special. And that that helps us to open the door to start coming into a lot of these things. But if you if you're a leader at work, you can start seeing these patterns in your employees and you can be like, I see an eight-year-old there.

46:52 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 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

47:38 question again? >> Like what what did you need to do or avoid to feel safe? >> And the rewards one, >> what did you feel? And this one's always you want to put the word feel in there. What did you feel like you had to do to earn rewards? And what were rewards to you? >> 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 their parents ignored them unless they brought home a certificate. Their teacher called and said they did a good job. They played the piano recital and did a great job. And lots of people were acknowledging them and clapping for them. They only got acknowledged when they were socially significant. >> And am I right in thinking here that these are fundamentally interlin in many ways? Because when you're talking about

48:23 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 >> 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

49:09 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 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

49:54 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 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 things. And then you just start telling

50:40 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 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 adult. I'm going to bring this into my adult life. Part two of this is you make a like a wallpaper or something for your desktop and we talked about being

51:27 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 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 costing you in your life is my kids

52:12 don't deserve me to be successful. My kids don't deserve money. And that's what it comes down to. And every day you look at it, you you have a feeling of disgust. And there's a hyper awareness of that thing running in your head. You're 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 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

52:59 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 sometimes make them feel hopeless or inadequate because they heard it on the diary of a sea or whatever and then they did it for a bit and they struggled and it didn't quite work out and then they went back to their old behavior. And I think in part this happens because we live under the presumption that this stuff is easy and it's fast and that at some point in the future I can fix my trauma. Like I think one of the best realizations I 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

53:45 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 hypnotist, and hypnosis is anybody can learn to do 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

54:30 your hand and I'll hold their hand for a 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 look all the way down. Look all the way 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. 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

55:16 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 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 should be looked at as a wedge.

56:01 >> 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.

56:48 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 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.

57:35 >> Novelty meaning something unexpected is 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

58:20 is we are hardwired to respond to these things. You cannot decide not to respond to novelty. Your head turns to to loud sounds. All this stuff happens. So the way that if if you're trying to do this like brainwash yourself is change your house up. Change something up in your life. Change your wardrobe. Repaint the walls in your office. Move your furniture around. Buy a new car if you if you can. I want you to like just imagine is how would I influence my dog in this situation? I would need imagery. I would need something to shift. If I move the kitchen table to the side and move all the furniture, when my dog comes out of the bedroom, he's going to know

59:06 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 little bit about it last time, but I

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