In The Laws of Human Nature, author Robert Greene lays out 16 laws that will help us understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others. Typically, we have no idea why anyone (including ourselves) does anything. This is because feelings and thoughts are controlled by different parts of the brain—we can’t consciously access the source of an emotion or mood.
With the help of the laws, we can dive deeper into the workings of human nature and learn to:
(Shortform note: The Laws of Human Nature contains 18 laws. We’ve rearranged and combined some of the laws for concision and clarity.)
Here are the laws, organized by categories:
A self-image is our internal assessment of ourselves. Our assessment is usually a little more flattering than reality, and most of us believe we’re autonomous, intelligent, and good. Assessing and validating the self-image is critical to the following three laws:
Attention is both a fundamental human need and a limited resource, so to get as much as we want, we often turn inward and admire our self-images. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. When it comes to self-absorption, the toxic types are narcissists, who have weak or nonexistent self-images and therefore spend their lives seeking attention from others. Here are some examples of traits you can use to identify (and then avoid) them: They take everything personally, can’t listen, and try to control others.
2. Make yourself more empathetic. Like everyone, you’re at least a little bit self-absorbed, and the best way to keep your self-absorption from controlling your life is to focus on others instead of yourself. Some ways to do this are: learning more about people’s backgrounds, assuming the best of them, and trying to feel what they’re feeling by recalling similar experiences or copying their body language to trigger the associated emotions.
Grandiosity is our natural tendency to inflate our self-image and assume that we’re significantly more skilled than we actually are. We do this by, among other things, assuming that we single-handedly achieved success and that our skills are transferable. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. People with high grandiosity can be dangerous in personal contexts (because they demand attention but don’t reciprocate) and professional ones (they take on projects they can’t handle). Here are some examples of traits you can use to identify (and then avoid) them: They break rules, can’t take criticism, and act invincible like they’re fated to succeed.
2. Control your own nature. To keep your own grandiosity under control, try some of these strategies: Acknowledge that when you succeed at something you didn’t do it single-handedly, and pay attention to your body’s signals—when you try to do things that are beyond your limits, you’ll get headaches and feel tired, grouchy, and nervous.
We all need our self-image confirmed because we know it’s not always objectively accurate. We tend to like and listen to the people who validate us. Use this knowledge to:
1. Make people like you. People will drop their defenses and become more open to influence if they feel like you’ve confirmed their self-image. Here are some ways to validate: Flatter people’s insecurities, listen deeply, or ask for their advice (which makes them feel smart).
2. Control your own nature. When it comes to using this law on yourself, the goal isn’t to resist influence, it’s to open yourself to it. This allows you to be a lifelong learner and re-experience some of your childhood openness. Try some of these example strategies: Focus on only the positives when you encounter new ideas and break your own rules occasionally.
Explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton used his knowledge of Law #1 (people are self-absorbed) to make himself more empathetic. For example, when he and his crew were trapped in Antarctica, he assessed individuals by reading their mood, trying to feel the same way, and predicting what he (and therefore they) might do in the thrall of a particular emotion. For instance, Shackleton knew that Frank Hurley was a snob, so Shackleton shared a tent with him, which made him feel important because he was rooming with the leader.
All of us keep some of our thoughts and feelings to ourselves because if we didn’t, we’d offend everyone and become social outcasts. We’ll learn how to figure out what people are hiding in the following laws:
We all display a persona, or a mask, that pumps up our positive qualities and shows ourselves in the best light. However, it’s not always easy to hide our true natures—while we have good control of our words, we don’t always have good control of our body language and nonverbal cues. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Some people try to hide their socially inappropriate traits such as aggression, overambition, or arrogance. You can see through them (and then avoid them) by noticing their nonverbal cues (for example, a tall posture can indicate a desire to dominate), hypocrisy, or how they blame their actions on circumstance.
2. Make people like you. Design and wear an appealing mask to create favorable impressions of yourself. You can do this by demonstrating universally positive traits (like saintliness) and giving off appropriate nonverbal cues (stand tall to appear confident).
Everyone masks envy because it’s an uncomfortable emotion—to admit that we envy someone, we also have to admit that they’re superior to us, and most of us can’t take that blow to our self-images. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Enviers can be very dangerous—they might sabotage your career or relationships to make themselves feel superior to you. Identify (and then avoid) them by the following: They give backhanded compliments, love to gossip, have conflict in their pasts, and exhibit hot-cold behavior towards you.
2. Control your own nature. Here are some ways to manage your own envy: Remember that desirable-looking circumstances have inherent downsides (famous people have no privacy), compare yourself to people who have less, and be grateful for what you have.
Like envy, most people mask aggression because it’s not socially acceptable. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Aggressors can be especially dangerous because they’re willing to break rules and cross lines to get what they want. Identify (and then avoid) aggressors by their obsessive tendencies, a large number of enemies, or passive-aggressive behavior such as gaslighting.
2. Control your own nature. The best way to manage your own aggression is to redirect it. Use your aggression to motivate skill development, or transmute it into a more helpful emotion such as boldness.
In addition to emotions, many of us hide traits, especially traits that are associated with the opposite gender. Use this knowledge to:
1. Control your own nature. Everyone has both masculine and feminine traits, and when we embrace both, we feel more balanced and whole. To connect with whichever side you repress, avoid projecting onto the people you know of the opposite gender (attributing to them desirable qualities they don’t actually possess), and practice doing things in the style opposite of what you’d usually use. For example, if your usual action style is masculine (attack and overcome obstacles alone), try approaching a problem with a feminine style (step back and analyze all the possibilities, and be open to waiting for a more opportune moment).
Italian noblewoman Caterina Sforza used her knowledge of Law #7 to be a balanced, effective strategist. For example, when mercenary leader Cesare Borgia attacked her castle, she first tried to avoid a conflict (feminine style) by trying to trap him on her drawbridge by flirting with him. When that didn’t work, she turned to the more masculine style of sword fighting.
When in groups, we’re subject to social force—the energy of collective emotions—and understanding this force is important to the following three laws:
When we’re in groups, everyone else’s emotions affect us and potentially provoke us into doing things we wouldn’t do alone. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Groups contain hierarchies of individuals and/or factions, and everyone is trying to get closer to the leader. Identify (and then avoid) the dangerous group members by their flattery of the leader, enforcing of the rules, or stirring up of drama.
2. Control your own nature. To maintain your individuality in a group, and not be swept along by the collective energy, try some of the following strategies: Physically distance yourself from the group when you feel overwhelmed, determine the source of your emotions, and practice considering ideas that are the opposite of the group’s values.
Everyone belongs to at least one group—their generation. Generational values are shaped by world events that took place during the generation’s coming-of-age years and the inevitable conflict with other generations. Use this knowledge to:
1. Make people like you. If you can show people of your generation that you embody their spirit and share their values, you can gain support for your ideas. You might connect to members of your generation by using childhood callbacks, never criticizing your generation, and using your knowledge of conflict between generations to predict the future. For example, Frenchman Georges Danton saw the public’s dissatisfaction with the monarchy and predicted (and helped instigate) revolution.
Authority—guidance towards a higher purpose—is a fundamental human need. However, people confuse authority with leadership (holding a position of power) and often feel ambivalent about authority figures. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Before choosing to follow a leader, assess their authority. If they get followers by using force or don’t provide their followers with guidance, avoid them. If you can’t find anyone you want to follow, become your own authority by developing purpose. Your general purpose is to contribute to society in some way. To find out what your specific purpose is, identify your natural abilities and interests and use them to do something good.
2. Make people like you. If your purpose is to lead a group, you can develop authority by putting the group’s needs above your own, leading by example, planning for the long term, and developing empathy.
Elizabeth I used her knowledge of Law #10 (establishing authority) to make people like her. For example, she worked hard to gain her councilors’ respect: She became an expert in England’s finances, regularly worked past midnight, and let it be known that she had the country’s best interests at heart and aimed to make England prosper.
We all have some self-sabotaging tendencies, often stemming from traits that were useful in the past but are no longer applicable in modern life. We’ll learn how to deal with these tendencies in the following four laws:
By nature, everyone is ruled by their emotions, not their minds, because feelings used to be a survival mechanism—when we felt fear, we needed to react instinctively to stay alive. Use this knowledge to:
1. Control your own nature. To manage your own irrationality, you might identify what triggers strong emotions in you, be aware that you’re not at your most logical in these moments, and give your emotions time to pass before making decisions.
We tend to be concerned with the present rather than the future because our brains evolved to look for immediate rather than far-off danger. Use this knowledge to:
1. Control your own nature. To avoid shortsightedness, when you encounter a problem or decision, look at it as logically as possible. Try to detach yourself from your emotions, look at the situation from all angles, and consider the impacts of every outcome.
Our characters are at the core of our being and determine our actions, even when we’re not consciously aware of them. While we can shape our characters, we can’t change them, and this is why we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. Some people have a weak character, and no matter how many positive traits a person might have, their character will overpower them. This is because people with a weak character can’t take criticism, so they can’t learn or change. Identify (and avoid) people with a weak character by looking at how they act in stressful moments and when presented with small inconveniences. Also, look at how they treat their friends and family. If they ever act negatively, you can be sure they’ll do it again.
2. Control your own nature. You can’t change your character, but you can shape it. Use some of the following strategies: Spend time with people of strong character, create new habits, and become aware of your negative behavior patterns so that when you start to fall into one, you can catch yourself and step out.
Everyone sees a slightly different version of the world, filtered by their perception, or attitude. Our moods vary, but in general, we all have an overarching emotion that we filter the world through. This is caused by our brain’s inherent and unconscious sensitivity to particular stimuli. For example, if our overall attitude is sadness, when we see sad things, our brain fires strongly, and the strength of the firing makes us pay attention and feel sad. Use this knowledge to:
1. Manage toxic types. When you encounter people whose overall emotion is hostility, avoidance, or resentfulness, avoid them. When you encounter people with sad attitudes, don’t try to change their attitude, but invite them to do something with you, which will boost their energy. When you encounter those who are anxious, give off calming nonverbal cues, such as keeping still and not fidgeting.
2. Control your own nature. If you see hostility in yourself, try assuming the best of everyone. If you see avoidance, try taking on a small, achievable project. If you see resentfulness, don’t bottle it up. If you see depression, take a break or work on a project to increase your energy. If you see anxiety, put yourself in situations you’re scared of to show yourself things aren’t as bad as you anticipated.
Pericles was aware that Law #11 made him and everyone else in Athens irrational, so he took steps to mitigate this. For example, when Sparta presented Athens with an ultimatum—if Athens didn’t agree to new terms of peace, Sparta would attack—Pericles thought about the situation rationally. If Athens gave in, Sparta would just keep pushing for more and more. But if Athens tried to fight, they would lose because Sparta was more powerful. Pericles’s solution was to ignore the ultimatum but make it so inconvenient for Sparta to attack that they would just give up. Pericles and the other Athenian citizens would shelter inside the city’s walls when the Spartans arrived instead of engaging with them. Meanwhile, the Athenian navy would raid Spartan coastal towns and keep Athens supplied. The Spartan army, parked outside Athens, would become frustrated and eventually go bankrupt.
By nature, people are unable to be content with their current situation. Desire motivates us, not possession. We’ll learn how to manage this in the next two laws:
As soon as we get something we want, we want something else, a phenomenon that’s known as the grass-is-always-greener syndrome. And even though getting what we want is never satisfying, we still pursue our next want, hoping that one will make us happy. Use this knowledge to:
1. Make people like you. If you can put yourself or your work just slightly out of reach, people will be attracted to you because they can’t have you. Do this by being strategically absent or associating yourself with something transgressive (people particularly want what’s forbidden, because they can’t have it).
2. Control your own nature. To avoid getting caught up in an endless search: Reflect on what you sincerely want and like, use your feelings of longing to motivate yourself, and channel the law into coveting deeper versions of what you already have. For example, kindle the desire to know more about the people already in your life.
Being aware of death makes us sad, so we try not to think about it. However, when we avoid thinking about death or desensitize ourselves, our anxiety about it strengthens, and to avoid this anxiety, we try to make our life more controllable by doing less, dulling our psyche with an addiction, avoiding new things so we can’t fail at them, and avoiding spending time with people because they’re unpredictable. All these responses actually make our life more death-like—isolated and unchanging. Use this knowledge to:
1. Control your own nature. You’ll feel more alive if you think about death, and you can do this by making death more concrete (for example, imagine your own death), acknowledging that time is limited, and embracing the sublime (for example, contemplate the vastness of the universe).
Coco Chanel used Law #15 to make her products elusive and therefore desirable. For example, she created an air of mystery around one of her perfumes by making it smell like a bouquet rather than a single flower so no one could tell exactly what it smelled like. She sprayed it in her store but pretended she didn’t know what it was when shoppers asked. She also slipped unlabeled bottles into her most prominent clients’ bags.
In The Laws of Human Nature, author Robert Greene lays out 16 laws that will help us understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others. Typically, we have no idea why anyone (including ourselves) does anything, and if it even occurs to us to wonder about motivations, we tend to come up with simple explanations, such as “they were drunk.”
This is because our feelings and actions aren’t nearly as conscious as we’d like to think. In the earliest times, organisms evolved to sense danger and respond instinctively, with no cognitive delay. Later, in some organisms, this sensing of danger developed into the emotion fear. Fear served the same purpose of arousing and alerting animals to danger but gave them a few seconds to choose a response. Eventually, in social animals, fear developed into more complicated emotions and emotions became a form of communication. (For example, hissing showed anger.) Finally, humans developed the ability to think and use language.
This process of evolution resulted in the creation of three different parts of the human brain:
Because emotions and thinking are controlled by different parts of the brain, we can’t consciously access the source of an emotion or mood; all we can do is feel the mood and then try to express it with language or action. Emotion doesn't translate very well into language, so often we mistranslate, oversimply, or are confused. This is why it’s so hard to learn from emotions and change our behavior. (Animals don’t have this problem because they never need to go from emotion to language.)
Human nature is a complex mix of evolutionary, genetic, and developmental factors that we’re rarely aware of. In fact, our emotions, thoughts, and behavior are responses, not drivers. For example, when we get angry, we might think it’s because someone just cut us off in traffic, but it could actually be because of something in our childhood that the cut-off reminded us of.
If, however, we can look deeper at human nature, we can learn to:
This summary is divided into five parts, one for each of the following overarching elements of human nature: self-images, the hiding of feelings, group behavior, self-sabotage, and our desire for the wrong things.
(Shortform note: The Laws of Human Nature contains 18 laws. We’ve rearranged and combined some of the laws (Laws 3 and 9, and Laws 13 and 15) for conciseness and clarity.)
Attention is a fundamental human need that motivates almost all human behavior. For example, some people who don’t get enough attention turn to the spotlight of crime. However, while everyone wants constant attention, it’s a limited resource—everyone has to spread their attention among all the people they know and interact with. We need attention in two ways:
While we can’t always control how much physical attention we get, we have come up with a way to cope with a psychological attention deficit—we create (usually unconsciously) a self-image or self-opinion, which is an internal conception of ourselves that we can use to give ourselves our own attention. When we need more attention, have low self-esteem, or feel bad about ourselves, we can turn inward and admire our vision of ourselves.
Understanding, assessing, and validating people’s self-images is a large part of applying the laws in Part 1.
Self-images are rose-tinted versions of what we’re like in reality—we tend to boost our positive qualities and minimize our negative ones. The earliest versions of our self-images, developed between the ages of two and five, tend to have the qualities we admire in our parents. For example, if our mother is loving, our self-image tends to be loving too.
However, we can only edit our self-images to a certain extent—if our self-image is too different from what we’re really like, other people will notice and tell us, and then we’ll be full of self-doubt.
Almost everyone’s self-image includes the following traits:
1. They believe they have free will. Whenever people do something, they believe they’ve chosen to do it. In reality, they might have been manipulated into action—for example, by peer pressure—but they so prefer to believe in their autonomy that they fool themselves. In cases where they can’t deny that they’ve been coerced—such as following orders—they either resent the coercion or decide they’re choosing to do the action they’re being forced to do.
2. They believe they’re smart. Almost everyone believes they’re intelligent in some way. They might admit that they’re not a genius like Einstein, but they’re proud of their street smarts, common sense, manual skills, and so on. No one wants to believe they’re stupid or gullible.
3. They believe they’re good. People like to think that they treat others well, support causes, and act collaboratively, and if they clash with others, they think of it as “tough love.”
People additionally have self-opinions about their specific insecurities, which usually come from childhood. Most of these self-opinions include superiority. For example, if someone thinks of herself as independent, she’ll tend to think that being independent is a positive trait and that her independence levels are superior to others’.
A few people have low self-opinion because their childhood insecurity is related to being successful or good. A low self-opinion is just as strong as a positive one—people who think they’re mean or unworthy are relieved when this opinion is confirmed by a bad thing happening to them.
There are also people who never properly develop a self-image. These people usually had parents who didn’t encourage them to be independent or unique, and without this encouragement, it’s difficult to create a self-image that feels realistic. Parents can stall the development of self-image by being:
Our self-opinion is enormously important to our personalities. It affects our thinking and values to the point where we reinterpret the truth so that it doesn’t clash with our sense of self.
Because attention is a fundamental human need, we’re all at least a little bit self-absorbed and narcissistic, whether that’s an obsession with our self-image or an obsession with collecting external attention. Also, we become more self-absorbed as we age because we realize we’re the only ones interested in our own well-being.
We’ll use this law to manage toxic types and make ourselves more empathetic.
There are three different categories of narcissists:
Deep narcissists lack a self-image, so the only way they can meet their need for attention is by getting it from others.
As children, some extroverted deep narcissists do perfectly well. They learn how to attract attention, and people often think they’re vivacious and social. Introverts, on the other hand, inaccurately create a fantasy self-image that’s far superior to themselves and any real people. This image is unrealistic, so no one, including themselves, will validate it, and they’re constantly editing it to try to come up with something that sticks.
Both extroverted and introverted deep narcissists struggle once they’re in their twenties and thirties. People get tired of extroverts’ dramatic bids for attention, and extroverts have to find new social circles regularly. Introverts further isolate themselves because they’re both socially awkward and sure they’re better than everyone else, and no one wants to spend time with that kind of person. Sometimes, deep narcissists become addicted to alcohol or drugs.
To identify deep narcissists, look for the following flags:
There are four types of deep narcissists. If no more specific directions are given on how to handle each type, you should avoid them.
Type #1: Leaders
These deep narcissists are more driven than most and put this energy towards their work. People are drawn to them because their self-confidence makes them seem competent, and some of their surprising behaviors that don’t meet social conventions seem authentic and honest. They can be dangerous in romantic relationships and particularly in leadership positions, because the more people who follow them, the more important they feel.
They tend to be bad leaders. If challenged, they rage. They create problems only they can solve to demonstrate that they’re powerful and gain them more attention. Whatever organization or group they lead usually struggles because they need to control everyone.
To deal with these types, avoid joining their groups.
Type #2: Controllers
These narcissists are more ambitious, energetic, and insecure than other deep narcissists. They’re so sensitive to what others think of them that they’re constantly paying attention to others’ feelings and thoughts. At some point, these narcissists realize that their powers of observation can be used to learn about other people’s self-images. This allows these narcissists to mimic empathy, be likable, appear self-confident, and manipulate people. They’re most dangerous when they’re being charming.
These narcissists’ interactions aren’t completely faked. Otherwise, they would never draw anyone in. However, once the interaction is over, they ax any positive feelings—if they didn’t, they’d be vulnerable. The next time they encounter the same people, they act cold, which confuses people and makes them want to feel the camaraderie again.
Once they have power, they get resentful that they ever had to give other people attention. They’ll turn away from friends and create rock-and-a-hard-place situations.
To identify this type of narcissist:
It’s hard to avoid these narcissists because they’re so ambitious they often end up in positions of power, but once you’ve identified them, stay away. It’s the only way to be safe.
Type #3: Theatrical
These narcissists hide the fact that they crave attention because they know it would make them unlikeable. They disguise their narcissism by playing roles and inciting drama, and they often go to extreme lengths to seem moral or victimized.
The only way to deal with this type of narcissist is to avoid being drawn in by the show. If someone is always more victimized or more moral than anyone else, be suspicious, and look for drama in their past.
For example, French nun Jeanne de Belciel was a theatrical narcissist. When she was young, her need for attention so annoyed her parents that they sent her to a convent in Poitiers. There, she was sarcastic and superior, which got her sent off to another convent, this time in Loudun. Since her previous two acts hadn’t worked, in Loudun, she decided to become an expert in piousness. This approach did work—when the prioress left, Jeanne succeeded her. Being in charge wasn’t enough, however, so she dramatically pretended to be possessed, which resulted in public exorcisms, the execution of her supposed sorcerer, self-mutilation, and once she was cured, a tour of Europe to show off how blessed she was.
Type #4: Partner-Enhanced
Narcissism isn’t limited to a single person; it can appear in a relationship as well. Partners who don’t understand each other’s values and aren’t willing to learn empathy can encourage narcissistic tendencies in the other person.
To avoid this situation, employ empathy by learning more about the other person. When you treat someone with empathy, they can’t be defensive because you’re coming at things from their point of view. When one person is empathetic, this encourages the other person to be empathetic as well. (Being defensive is a lot of work and most people don’t want to do it.)
For example, Leo Tolstoy and Sonya Behrs were a narcissistic couple. Leo was a deep narcissist and Sonya was fairly self-absorbed as well. Their trouble started just before their marriage when Leo asked Sonya to read his diaries. He asked her to do this because he didn’t want there to be any secrets in their relationship. She, on the other hand, thought he’d asked her to read them because he didn’t want to marry her—the diaries were full of descriptions of his affairs, encounters at brothels, STIs, and other vices. Her reaction made Leo think she didn’t love him.
They did marry, but there was more conflict, often caused by one of them not understanding the other’s motivations. Leo would do something that annoyed Sonya, she’d do something extreme in response, and he’d feel bad and repent. Then, she’d do something that made him regret his repentance. They were never happy together. Leo eventually ran away, Sonya attempted suicide unsuccessfully and then chased him, and Leo fell ill while fleeing and died.
Most of us are functional narcissists—self-absorbed, but able to operate because we get enough attention from our self-image that we have time and energy to focus on things outside of ourselves. Functional narcissists have moments of deeper narcissism when something goes wrong in their lives, but they can usually recover.
Healthy narcissists have a strong self-image and they don’t need as much attention from others. They’ve accepted that they’re flawed, which makes their self-image even stronger because it’s close to reality. As a result, they can handle criticism, and they can focus outside of themselves more easily so they tend to be professionally or artistically successful. This success creates validation, which further strengthens their sense of self.
We should all strive to be category #3 narcissists—healthy. Healthy narcissists achieve their strong self-image and outward focus by mastering empathy, which is concentrating on others instead of themselves. Everyone has the potential to be empathetic because reading other people and thinking like them used to be critical to our survival. If we couldn’t communicate or cooperate, we would die.
In modern life, however, we don’t need this kind of empathy to survive—we don’t die if we misread someone’s mood. As a result, people are less empathetic than they used to be. Studies have shown that since the 1970s and especially since 2000, young people are more narcissistic. There are two other factors that likely play a role in increasing narcissism:
Because social interaction is a fundamental need, this increased self-absorption is bad for our brains. It’s bad for society too—it makes people resistant to or disbelieving of the opinions of others.
To develop the latent empathy that resides within us all, develop four empathetic skills:
Most people assume that they understand others and quickly judge them, but to develop your empathetic attitude, you must let go of this assumption. Assume you’re ignorant, you have biases, and people don’t have the same values as you.
Additionally, become aware of the attribution bias, which states that when you make a mistake, you chalk it up to circumstances, but when others make a mistake, you think it was because they’re flawed. Instead, when someone makes a mistake, consider their circumstances, the same as if you were evaluating your own mistake.
Finally, accept yourself and your flaws. If your self-image is inaccurately superior or insecure, you’ll have a hard time being empathetic with anyone.
To practice this skill, in your everyday conversations, listen to others instead of talking. Listen well enough that later in the conversation, you can refer back to things the other person has said or implied.
When someone near us is feeling or showing an emotion (for example, showing disappointment by frowning), we tend to pick up the emotion and feel it too. This is because when we watch someone do something, mirror neurons fire in our brains as if we were also doing the same thing ourselves. This firing generates the corresponding emotion.
The goal of mirroring is to translate our physical mimicking of others into an understanding of what they’re feeling and what they want. What people say aloud isn’t necessarily true, so instead pay attention to how they make you feel—intentions are driven by emotion, so if you can understand their emotions, you can figure out what they want.
To learn this skill, you can do one or both of the following techniques:
1. Consciously mimic people’s facial expressions and body language to encourage your brain to fire the corresponding emotion so you can feel it and figure out what it is. (However, do this subtly, otherwise, you risk appearing creepy.)
2. Recall an experience you had that created the same emotion you think someone else is feeling.
Mirroring people will also encourage them to empathize with you. When two people are connecting, they both mimic each other, which is called the chameleon effect.
Caution! Don’t let yourself fall too deeply into another’s emotions or else you’ll lose the objectivity you need for analysis and risk losing control.
Analytic empathy is understanding someone based on their values, preferences, and family. This type of empathy is particularly effective when approaching people you don’t like or who are very different from you, because if you try to assign your own values or cultural norms to other people, you’ll never understand them and potentially cause conflict.
To practice this skill, collect information about people, usually via conversation, to discover what makes them unique. The most valuable pieces of information come from childhood because this is when people develop their core values, often influenced by their parents and siblings. Learning more about someone’s present relationships with their parents and siblings can tell you about what their childhood was like.
Additionally, look at how people react to authority figures—this will tell you about their tendency towards rebelliousness or submission—and who they choose as their partners.
Most people like talking about themselves, but if you have trouble getting someone to open up, ask open-ended questions, or offer up some information about yourself to gain trust.
To improve your empathy, you need feedback, and you can get it in two ways:
To improve the quality and variety of your feedback, interact with as many different people as you can.
Extended Example: Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton is an example of a healthy narcissist with a solid command of empathy. When Shackleton led an expedition to Antarctica and his ship became trapped in ice, he had to make the call to abandon the expedition—his dream—and find a way for himself and the crew to survive the winter. If they didn’t work together, they would die in the harsh climate. Shackleton used empathy to bring his crew together:
1. He knew that his emotions would affect the crew’s, so he demonstrated confidence and competence, both vocally and with his body language, to inspire the men to do the same.
- For example, the morning after abandoning ship, he got up early and made tea for everyone. He was optimistic as he served everyone.
2. He had to focus on both the group’s dynamic and individuals’ feelings. He assessed the group by taking note of the collective mood during work, mealtimes, and entertainment. He assessed individuals by reading their mood, trying to feel the same, and predicting what he (and therefore they) might do in the thrall of a particular emotion.
- Shackleton knew that Frank Hurley was a snob, so Shackleton shared a tent with him, which kept him away from the rest of the crew and also made him feel important because he was rooming with the leader.
3. He had to be gentle when someone was feeling low or something went wrong. Yelling at people wouldn’t improve things, so he’d either try to improve their mood or subtly isolate them so their mood didn’t spread to others.
- When Shackleton decided to try rowing to a nearby island, he knew he couldn’t leave Harry McNeish behind because he’d stir up trouble. However, McNeish didn’t like hard labor, and at one point, gave up on rowing. Instead of scolding him, which might make him rebel, Shackleton called for a break, saying that everyone, including himself, needed a rest.
There are four skills associated with being empathetic: changing your attitude, mirroring, analyzing, and seeking feedback.
Think of someone you’d like to better empathize with. What’s your attitude towards her currently? What could you do to change your attitude? (For example, you might try giving her the benefit of the doubt.)
What nonverbal cues does this person give off? (For example, she might tense her neck and shoulders.) Try doing the nonverbal cue right now. What emotions does it make you feel?
How could you learn more about this person so you could analyze her? (For example, you might ask her about her childhood.)
How might you get feedback on your execution of the above three skills? (For example, you might reflect on whether or not your rapport is improving.)
In the previous law, we learned about narcissists who have malformed self-images. In this law, we’ll look at people who have inflated ones.
Grandiosity is our natural tendency to inflate our self-image and assume that we’re more skilled than we actually are. It increases as we age—the more we experience successes, however small, the more people confirm our grandiose self-opinion.
There are two types of grandiosity:
First, we’ll study the development of grandiosity. Then, we’ll use this law to manage toxic types and to control our own nature.
Grandiosity develops in early childhood. As we realized that we were separate beings from our mothers, we also realized that we were dependent and powerless. In response to this realization, we fantasized about being great and powerful—for example, by imagining we had superhero powers like flying or seeing through walls.
As we grew up, most of us experienced a second realization—that we’re small and powerless in other ways besides depending on our parents. We have limited skills, we’re one of the billions of people on the planet, and there’s a lot we can’t control. These realizations also make us fantasize about having power and feel grandiose.
Most people alternate between these two states, feeling small and feeling grand. However, children who don’t experience the second realization—for example, their parents spoil them so they never have to come to terms with the fact that they’re powerless—spend more time thinking about power, and this makes them more susceptible to grandiosity.
Grandiosity can be expressed in many ways, though there are fewer outlets today than they were in the past. In older times, people met their need for grandiosity with religion—gods and spirits allowed us to be part of something bigger and grander than ourselves—or by following a leader with a strong cause—if a leader did something great, their followers shared in the success.
Now that fewer people believe in something and there are fewer great leaders, we have to express our grandiosity in some other way. Many of us turn to worshipping ourselves, most commonly by trying to get social status through doing something prestigious or helping people. This works to some extent for talented people—they will have success and get the admiration they crave—but they’ll eventually get involved with projects that are beyond their abilities.
Additionally, people try to cope with their need for grandiosity by doing the following:
People who don’t have an outlet for their grandiosity are often manic, alternating between being excited by their next project and being depressed when they realize they won’t be able to complete it.
While there are fewer outlets for grandiosity today than there were in the past, people have more grandiose tendencies than ever because:
Everyone falls somewhere on the scale of grandiosity, and you can figure out if people have lower or higher grandiosity by studying the following behaviors:
When you encounter people with low, everyday grandiosity, indulge them. Grandiosity is normal.
When you come across people with high grandiosity, avoid getting close to them. In personal relationships, they’ll demand attention but won’t reciprocate it. In professional situations, they can’t accurately assess their own skills and abilities and end up with responsibilities they can’t complete. Be skeptical of what highly grandiose people say and judge their ideas and behavior itself, not what they say about it. Don’t try to expose their grandiosity; they’ll just get angry.
People who have high grandiosity and also have talent and energy are good at winning power because they can create a confident, mythic image that attracts people.
Grandiose leaders use six theatrical devices to create this larger-than-life image by creating the impression that they’re:
1. Fated to succeed. They tell stories about their childhood in which they’re uniquely talented in some way as if they’d been given gifts at birth (sometimes these stories are made up, sometimes they’re reinterpretations of reality). They also tell stories about impressive past successes that they achieved despite considerable opposition.
To fight this technique, track down more objective versions of their stories and share them.
2. Just like the average person. Grandiose leaders try to be representative of the average person to connect with the largest audience. They visibly demonstrate that they have the same interests and tastes as the general public, even if they come from a different class. Sometimes they even criticize the elite class.
To avoid falling prey to this tactic, look for contradictions between the leader’s real persona and background, and the one they present.
3. A savior. When there’s a crisis, grandiose people can often gain power because their high self-confidence is reassuring. They make large, simple, vague promises that are inspiring but also impossible to hold them accountable for. Saviors also find scapegoats who they can turn the public against to unify the group. They also unify the group with slogans, colors, music, and so on. The leaders tend to create cult-like organizations.
All you can do about this tactic is to remain analytical. You’ll never be able to convince believers that their leader has any negative qualities.
4. A rule-breaker. Everyone secretly wants to dispense with rules and get power in their own way, so when a leader does this, their followers live vicariously through them. Another version of this technique is to prioritize their hunches and intuition rather than science or expert opinions. They like to think they have a magical connection to how the world works.
To fight this tactic, whenever you hear someone talk about their rule-breaking abilities, realize that they don’t have any special powers.
5. A guarantor of success. This technique involves grandiose leaders spinning the past so that they can say they’ve never failed. Anytime something went wrong, they blame it on something else. Additionally, they tend to believe that their skills are transferable and they’ll succeed at anything they try, even if they don’t have experience.
To avoid falling for this trick, look for failures in a leader’s past, and then share what you find.
6. Invincible. Grandiose leaders by nature take risks—they have to, to hold attention—and much of the time, they manage to make things turn out all right. They also like the feeling of risk. They actually are somewhat invulnerable, up until the point where they overreach.
To deal with this tactic, dismantle the leader’s mythic image. The leader needs to have constant validation and attention, or else their confidence disappears and they can’t maintain their grandiosity. If you denounce them, they’ll probably get emotional, as will their followers, but eventually, some of their followers may realize they’ve been taken in.
It’s hard to recognize grandiosity in yourself because when you’re experiencing it, you’re not seeing reality. It’s also hard to learn from your mistakes because this would require you to admit that you’re not as great as you thought you were.
If you’re suffering from grandiosity, you might take on projects that are too advanced. You might jump from project to project because your current work isn’t confirming your grandiosity. You might be passive because you feel you deserve things, so instead of working towards them, you’ll wait for other people to give them to you.
There are several strategies to channel your grandiose tendencies into practical grandiosity:
Strategy #1: Acknowledge that you have grandiose tendencies and that your self-opinion may not be objectively accurate. Remember that you’re not inherently better than anyone.
Strategy #2: Choose one goal and stick to it. Fantastical grandiosity makes you inclined to jump from project to project as you imagine the attention you could get. Ideally, you’ll get so absorbed in this one project that you think about all the time, instead of fantasizing about the glory you could get from other projects. This project should also play to your skills.
Strategy #3: Balance imagination and analysis. When you first start projects, be open to all ideas. Once you have a better sense of the idea, seek out feedback. Ask others to point out potential flaws and analyze what you did wrong. The balance is important—too much imagination and you’ll fall victim to unrealistic grandiosity; too much analysis and your work will be conventional.
Watch out for signs of complacency—if you focus on yourself, you focus less on your work and don’t innovate.
Strategy #4: Choose appropriately difficult challenges. Grandiosity blinds you to difficulty. You tend to see projects as not very hard and people as likely to do what you want. You focus on what you’ll get if you succeed, not how to actually get there, so you can’t see the scale of the task.
In truth, getting anything done is hard: It takes a lot of effort, innovation, luck, and willingness to go back to the drawing board. People will resist you in ways you might not have anticipated. Your skills have limits.
To choose an appropriate challenge, look for projects that are just a little bit above your skill level—the challenge will keep you engaged, energized, and focused. If you succeed, you’ll increase your confidence; if you fail, you can learn from it.
If you pick a project that’s too far above your abilities, you’ll either quit or the project will end in disaster (for example, over budget).
Strategy #5: Pay attention to your body’s signals. When you do things that are beyond your limits, you’ll get headaches and feel tired, grouchy, and nervous. If you do things that you have a talent for, on the other hand, you have more energy and learn faster, and doing the task feels easy.
Additionally, when something goes right, you’ll feel a little scared that you might not be able to keep it up—this is your body telling you to watch out for grandiose feelings.
Strategy #6: Scrutinize your successes. When something goes right, recognize that luck and help were involved. No success is wholly our own—we always had help from teachers or contributors, or we had good timing. Additionally, don’t let past successes influence your next project. Every time you start something new, imagine it’s the first thing you’ve ever done and you have no track record.
Strategy #7: Let your grandiose tendencies escape occasionally. Every once in a while, consider taking on projects that are beyond your current limits, brainstorm new skills you want to learn, or demonstrate your self-confidence.
Extended Example: Michael Eisner
Michael Eisner, a former Disney executive, is an example of a grandiose leader. Like most grandiose leaders, his grandiosity developed in childhood—his mother spoiled him, even doing his homework for him, and protected him from his cold father.
Eisner had early, earned success in the film world and in 1984 went to work for the struggling Walt Disney Company. He turned the company around: His tried-and-true film formula—a great concept with a low budget—resulted in major hits including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and he stumbled on never-before-seen cartoons that he very successfully reissued for home video.
Eisner’s grandiosity had been rising throughout his career and at this point, he started to fall victim to grandiosity’s delusions. He started to feel like he and Walt had a magical connection. He also attributed Disney’s success entirely to himself, failing to take into account chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg’s talent, second-in-command Frank Wells’ detail-orientation, and luck (Eisner happened to find the unpublished cartoons right as the home video market took off).
Eisner became restless and decided to work on Disney’s new theme park, assuming his skills were transferable. They weren’t—he chose the wrong site (rainy Paris instead of sunny Barcelona), priced the hotel rooms too high, and had failed to understand the vacation habits of the French. It was the first disaster in his career, and he blamed Frank Wells because he was in charge of the project’s financial health.
Eisner’s grandiosity continued to plague him. He abandoned his lower-cost formula and tried to make blockbusters. He felt threatened by Katzenberg and fired him. He took on projects that were too big for him to manage alone, such as acquiring the film studio ABC and trying to start an Internet portal.
Eventually, Disney’s share price dropped so much Roy Disney asked Eisner to resign. Eisner still couldn’t see his own grandiosity and was offended because he was the person who had “single-handedly” saved Disney all those years ago. He attacked Roy, and Roy attacked back, and Eisner was stripped of his position, his downfall brought about by his grandiosity.
In the previous laws, we looked at how a lack or overdose of self-image affects our behavior. In this final law of Part 1, we’ll use what we learned about self-image to influence people.
Everyone is influenceable and has the power to influence others, and the degree of influence is related to how the influencer manages the influencee’s self-opinion. People are more likely to listen to and associate with people and groups that appear to validate their self-image, agree with their values, or share the same qualities. In contrast, people get defensive when their self-images are challenged.
As we age, we get more defensive as we encounter others’ judgment and demands. By our twenties, our walls are fairly well-established.
Many people dislike the idea of influencing others because it feels dishonest and manipulative, but there are four reasons to learn influence:
In this law, we’ll learn to make people like us. Then, we’ll learn to control our own nature.
To influence people, you need to get them to drop their defenses by making them feel validated and confirming their self-opinion. People can think whatever they want about themselves, but they don’t know that it's true until someone else confirms it. When they get confirmation, they relax and feel secure, which allows them to stop worrying about themselves and think about other things, such as whatever you’re trying to convince them of.
When you come up against someone with a low self-opinion, you still need to validate this opinion. Be empathetic about how difficult their lives are. Only once they feel validated can you start convincing them out of their low self-opinion.
If you try to get people to do what you want in any way other than validating them—for example, by pleading or making them feel guilty—you might get what you want once, but they’ll resent you and be unlikely to help in the future. And if you always try to influence people in these ineffective ways, you become in danger of thinking that everyone in the world is indifferent.
There are five strategies for confirming someone’s self-opinion:
In a conversation, everyone is more interested in their internal monologue than what the other person is saying. We’re partly listening, but we’re also partly thinking about what to say next or even zoning out. The best way to improve your listening skills is to motivate yourself to be interested in the other person. Think of them as a mystery—you already know what’s going in your head, but you don’t know what’s going on in theirs, which should interest you.
Listening deeply serves two purposes:
Once you’re listening deeply, encourage the other person to talk by:
By listening deeply, you’ll have learned what people’s insecurities are. To soothe them:
If you do flattery right, people will like you.
As we learned in the empathy section, people’s moods are contagious. Go into interactions relaxed and expecting to enjoy yourself, which will influence the other person to feel the same way. There are two ideal moods to project:
You can also create mood by touching people, which makes people like you even if they don’t know why. Touch only arms or hands and don’t make eye contact at the same time, or the contact will feel sexual.
Finally, since expectations are expressed nonverbally, you can try thinking of a person as you want them to be. For example, imagine people as generous if you want something from them.
As we learned at the beginning of Part 1, everyone likes to believe they’re autonomous, intelligent, and good.
To validate the autonomy element of self-image, create the impression that people are choosing to do whatever it is you want. There are three ways to do this:
Option #1: Frame the action as desirable by making it seem rare or enjoyable.
Option #2: Leverage people’s competitiveness. Many people can’t stand to be beaten or to see someone else do something they could do better.
Option #3: Give small gifts. Small gifts make people feel deserving. Large gifts look like bribery, and even if someone is desperate for the gift, they’ll still feel suspicious.
To validate people’s intelligence, tread carefully when you have opposing ideas:
To validate people’s opinion of their own goodness:
Some people won’t respond to any of the strategies above, particularly if they have a low self-opinion. These people are often rebellious and won’t take advice from anyone, even if they asked for help.
To redirect their resistance:
Option #1: Push strong emotions in new directions. Strong resistance to something can transform into strong motivation for something else.
Option #2: Quote them. This makes them feel like they’re doing what they want to.
Option #3: Let them maintain their stubbornness. When people oppose something, they’re often motivated by fear of losing control. Provide a way for them to make a change but maintain control.
Option #4: Agree with them. If people’s main opposition to doing what you want is that they want to be rebellious, if you tell them to carry on, they’re doing what you want. They have to do something different to oppose you, usually the thing you wanted all along.
Being influenced by others isn’t inherently a bad thing—most of your childhood and adolescence involved being influenced by others, books, stories, and so on. Being influenced was how you learned, and you learned fast because you were curious and very motivated to catch up with older people and become less vulnerable.
As you get older, though, you feel less vulnerable and learning seems less important. Like everyone, you became more stubborn.
Your goal is to find a balance between the mental flexibility you had when you were young—so you can be a lifelong learner—and your adult reasoning powers. You can use the same five self-confirmation strategies you use on others on yourself, but the first step is to become aware of how closed your mind is. To do this:
Strategy #1: Rose-tint new ideas. When you encounter a new idea, try to ignore all the negatives and focus on the positives. You can look at the idea in a more fair and nuanced way later—this is just a way to get yourself to consider it in the first place. Often, even if most of the idea is flawed or disagreeable, you’ll find some element that influences you, even if it’s just the ability to critique the idea more fully.
Strategy #2: Break your rules occasionally. To be truly autonomous, nothing must be allowed to control you, even rules you made up yourself.
Strategy #3: Be aware of your self-opinion. You’re not as free, smart, or good as you think you are. Once you realize that your self-opinion isn’t accurate, you won’t need others to validate it because you know it’s wrong anyway. Instead, you can focus outward.
Extended Example: Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Johnson wanted to be president and to do this, he had to influence a lot of others. When he was 28, he got himself elected to the House of Representatives, but he wasn’t skilled at public speaking or working with large groups. He triggered resistance in all sorts of people because he was aggressive, argumentative, and liked to talk.
For example, after later being elected to the Senate, Johnson approached Texas’ senior Senator, Tom Connally, for help in getting a seat on a prestigious Senate Committee. However, Johnson so irritated Connally that Connally banished him to the Agriculture Committee. This committee was deeply unpopular, and Connally expected Johnson would be stuck in the role for one to two decades.
Johnson realized that his attempts to influence people weren’t working, so he changed his strategy. The Senate was smaller than the House, which would naturally give him an advantage, and he changed his manner. He became deferential and asked other senators for their advice. In addition to impressing people, this allowed him to learn about how the Senate worked and how to play the Senators.
Johnson befriended Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who was very powerful but also lonely and lacking followers. Russell was passionate about baseball and the Civil War, so Johnson became interested in these things too. Johnson did favors for Russell and used many of the other self-image-validating strategies to influence him. Importantly, after becoming the Senate Democratic Leader, Johnson framed a request for control over committee assignments as something that was in everyone’s best interests. He tailored this best interest for every individual who opposed him, and as a result, he got what he asked for.
Johnson also befriended Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota because Humphrey was involved with the northern liberals, who would probably oppose Johnson because he was from Texas. Johnson used influence techniques on Humphrey too—he did him favors, validated his self-opinion, and mirrored him.
As a result of his abilities to influence, he eventually was elected president.
In Part 1, we learned to develop empathy, manage toxic types, control our own nature, and make people like us. In Part 2, we’ll look at how to continue developing these skills when faced with people who hide their true selves.
Humans communicate both verbally and nonverbally, but we tend to focus on words, which often don’t accurately (intentionally or not) represent our emotions. In fact, 65% of our communication is nonverbal, and body language usually more accurately communicates what we’re feeling than words. Most of us, however, only manage to read about 5% of nonverbal communication cues.
In this introduction, we’ll learn how to read nonverbal cues to find out what people are really thinking and feeling, even if they’re trying to hide it. Then, in subsequent laws, we’ll look at some of the things they might be hiding.
Reading people’s nonverbal cues isn’t just a matter of noticing what their bodies and voices are doing. You have to actually feel the same physical cues in yourself to empathize viscerally.
Learning to read people involves learning two sub-skills:
We all learned observation as children when we relied on other people to help us survive but couldn’t yet talk. Around age five, however, the skill started to languish because we had gained some independence from our parents and could focus on ourselves as a separate entity—we acquired new, attention-needing problems, and didn’t have the mental bandwidth for anyone other than ourselves.
There are some dos and don’ts of observation:
1. Start small or else you'll overwhelm yourself. Don’t try to read the whole body at once.
2. Focus only on observation. Don’t try to interpret what you notice, and especially don’t try to describe your thoughts in words.
3. People watch. Go to a public place and observe people. This exercise will allow you to watch people without having to maintain a conversation at the same time. Guess things about people based on what you see, such as their personality or profession.
4. Be subtle. Use only peripheral glances to spot clues. You’ll make people uncomfortable if you stare at them.
5. Encourage people to talk. Mirror them or respond with something that proves you’re listening. The longer they talk, the more they’ll communicate nonverbally.
6. Establish a baseline. When you’re studying a certain person, watch her interact with a variety of people to figure out her default emotion. Then, pay attention to changes from this baseline.
7. Study the cues of a known emotion. When someone is about to do an action that most people feel the same way about (for example, most people get nervous before exams), look at what their bodies and voices are doing and file these cues under things people do when they’re nervous.
8. Watch out for mixed signals. A mixed signal is a discrepancy between words and nonverbal cues. Nonverbal communication more strongly reflects negative than positive emotions, so when you see conflicting signals, assume the negative emotion is what the person is actually feeling.
9. Remember that all behavior is a form of communication. Clothing choices, silences, possessions—all of this communicates something.
10. Notice your own nonverbal communication. This will make you more likely to notice other people’s cues and the emotions that prompted them. You’ll also improve your control of your own cues.
As you practice, you’ll improve at multitasking conversation and observation and you’ll notice more and more cues. You’ll start to physically anticipate and feel other people’s emotions.
There are some common observational mistakes to avoid:
1. Don’t assign cues to emotions universally. Different people may use the same nonverbal cue to express different emotions.
2. Don’t let your biases sneak in. If you like someone, you’ll be inclined to interpret all of their cues as positive.
3. Avoid Othello’s error, which is a type of bias in which you correctly match the cue to the emotion, but incorrectly guess the source of the emotion because you’re predisposed to attribute it to something in particular.
4. Don’t be taken in by display rules. Different cultures have different ideas of what’s socially acceptable, and people’s behavior may stem from these rules.
Now that you’re starting to see nonverbal cues, it’s time to figure out what they mean. Here are some cues associated with common emotions:
The following cues often indicate that someone likes you:
Use this knowledge to:
The following cues often indicate dislike:
It’s harder to notice the dislike cues than like cues for two reasons:
To compensate for these difficulties, keep in mind the following:
1. People are more likely to show these cues as part of a microexpression, which is an expression that appears for less than a second. These expressions come out either when someone isn’t aware of what they’re feeling, or when they’re trying to quash it but don’t quite manage. (It’s very hard to control the facial muscles.) To notice microexpressions, use your peripheral vision.
2. People might give one of these cues as part of a mixed signal. This is because the tension between maintaining a polite exterior but maintaining secret tension is uncomfortable, and the negative part of the mixed signal allows for the release of tension.
3. People might say something general but direct it at you personally via body language.
4. People might indicate their dislike by using words, such as sarcasm, but accompany their speech with positive body language. If this happens multiple times, you should consider the words.
5. People might give off a lot of these cues because their baseline is more negative than average. Compare how they are with you to how they act with others—if they don’t treat you any differently, they probably don’t dislike you.
Make sure you see signs of hostility multiple times before deciding that someone dislikes you. If you have concerns, you can even try to provoke dislike cues. For example, if you think someone is envious of you, talk about a recent success (without bragging) and look for microexpressions.
Use this knowledge to catch hostility early and take any of the following steps to mitigate any danger:
Dominance is almost entirely communicated nonverbally because while human social evolution has resulted in the formation of hierarchy, nobody likes acknowledging this structure or their relative position.
The following cues demonstrate confidence and power, or a desire for power. (If someone doesn’t have power yet but displays all the cues, there’s a good chance they’ll get power because the cues attract others.)
People who have power but are scared to lose it exhibit the following cues:
Use this knowledge to:
Humans are inherently gullible because we want to believe that nice-sounding things—such as that all people are good—are true.
People purposefully use the following cues to try to distract you from whatever it is they’re really feeling and thinking:
The best deceivers are aware of the above cues and do the opposite by:
To compensate for these difficulties, pay attention to which nonverbal cues accompany specific words and speech because it’s hard to get the timing right. For example, someone might shake their fist in anger but do it slightly before or after they would actually be feeling the emotion if it were real.
Use your knowledge of deception cues to:
Now that we understand how to observe and interpret nonverbal cues, it’s time to look at some of the traits and feelings almost everyone hides.
No one acts true to themselves all the time. Starting from birth, we learn how to use our faces and bodies to get our parents to give us things, and we continue to act throughout our lives to fit into society. Acting completely honestly would result in social ruin—we would offend people and open ourselves up to so much judgment and insecurity it would affect our mental health.
We hide our negative feelings—such as superiority or insecurity—with words and sometimes mixed signals. A lot of the time we don’t even know we’re acting, and this conviction is part of what makes the mask believable.
However, no matter how good we are at hiding our feelings and masking, our real feelings are underneath somewhere, and they’re impossible to fully suppress, especially when we’re stressed, tired, angry, frustrated, or drunk. Accurate nonverbal cues leak out, often in microexpressions or in the tone of voice—people can look in mirrors to train their faces, but the voice is harder to change. Learn to spot these leaks and you’ll be able to uncover people’s real natures, as well as better mask your own.
Many people dislike the idea of acting or mask-wearing because it feels dishonest, but there are four reasons to study it:
In this law, we’ll learn to make people like us, manage toxic types, and control our own nature.
You can make people like you by wearing an appealing mask, which is also called impression management. Impression management is especially important in professional situations because people associate certain behaviors with certain professions, and if their expectations are contradicted, they suspect a lack of competence. For example, if your doctor started acting like a rock musician, you might worry about her ability to diagnose illness. Even people who seem rebellious are subject to this suspicion—if a hipster suddenly wore a suit, others would question her authenticity as a hipster.
Once you’ve proven your identity and competence, you can start to show more of your true self and quirks, but you can never completely take the mask off. To continue succeeding socially, you have to continue to meet others’ expectations.
To create your mask:
1. Demonstrate universally positive traits. There are some traits that everyone sees as positive, and a good one to demonstrate is saintliness, which you can do by supporting causes, or by appearing humble by lowering your head or publicly sharing vulnerabilities.
2. Cultivate first impressions. People have a hard time changing their initial judgments, so make sure you appear positive the first time they encounter you. Aim to be neutral and don’t use a lot of nonverbal cues. Making eye contact and smiling are enough. If you’re too excited, people might think you’re insecure.
3. Cater to your audience. You need to keep your mask on no matter who you’re addressing, but there’s some wiggle room.
4. Use appropriate nonverbal cues. Be aware of your normal nonverbal communication and tweak it to match whatever role you need to play.
5. Learn method acting, in which you show emotion on command. When you need to show an emotion, remember a time you genuinely felt it. This will make you feel the appropriate emotion enough to show cues. Or, arrange your face into a smile or frown, which will make you feel the emotion that prompts these expressions. Also, teach yourself to stop feeling emotion and showing cues.
6. If you’re seeking power, control how often people encounter you and how well they get to know you. When people see you a lot or you’re predictable, they get bored. Purposefully be absent, withhold information, or show slightly contradictory qualities to create mystery. (For more on these techniques, see Law #15: People Want What They Don’t Have.)
The qualities we try to hide are called the Shadow. Our Shadows developed in childhood as we learned from our parents which behavior was acceptable and which wasn’t. Because we depended on our parents for survival, we didn’t dare do anything that would make them abandon us, so we hid the things about ourselves that they didn’t like.
As we grew up, we experienced pressure from friends, mentors, and our culture to behave in certain ways (or else be left out of the group), so we repressed more. Typically, we learned that we had to hide aggression, overambition, arrogance, vengefulness, and other emotions society perceives as negative.
Most of us successfully mask these socially inappropriate characteristics, but they don’t disappear. There are moments when our Shadows sneak through our masks, and we become so different it’s almost as if we’re possessed. Additionally, as we get older, it becomes harder and harder to repress the Shadow because maintaining a mask is a lot of work and we tire of it. We secretly want to embrace the Shadow—when we were young, we felt freer and more creative, and we want these feelings back.
To spot people’s Shadow qualities, look out for:
You’ll see these cues over and over when someone is trying to hide their Shadow. Usually, the harder someone is repressing, the more likely the Shadow is to break free.
There are several types of masks, all used to repress the Shadow:
These types of men create a tough exterior to hide their inner vulnerability. They think they like to control women but secretly wish to be controlled by them. When their sensitive Shadow sneaks out, they’ll be embarrassed and act even tougher to make up for it.
To deal with these types, don’t be intimidated by their false toughness and don’t visibly doubt their stories and bragging because this will make them insecure. To take them down, provoke them (which will be easy because they’re so insecure) into some embarrassing action.
These types act moral and compassionate, but they secretly want power and things that society considers taboo. Their saintly mask can help them achieve a powerful position as a cult leader or politician, where they can reveal their true nature.
To deal with these types, first, establish whether they really are good people or whether they’re hiding a Shadow. Ignore what they say and look at their history—if they seem interested in power or wealth, they’re probably not actually saintly. To avoid trouble, keep your distance, or if you need to take them down, reveal their hypocrisy to their followers and admirers.
These types are power-hungry, envious, and aggressive, and they’re consciously aware of these tendencies. They’re also aware that they have to hide these qualities or they won’t get far in life, so they act kind and accommodating. This dichotomy is exhausting, so they’re prone to leakage, such as passive-aggressive comments.
To deal with these types, be cautious when you meet people who are initially overly friendly and keep your distance. Study them carefully for any signs of leakage.
These leaders passionately and dramatically support a cause. In reality, however, they only believe in something else so strongly because they don’t believe in themselves. They have such low self-worth that they don’t believe that they can actually make any progress on their cause, so they self-sabotage by becoming indecisive, making a mistake, or falling ill.
To handle these types, remember that the more strongly someone professes belief in something, the more likely it is that they believe the opposite.
These types fear irrationality and try to compensate by valuing science and analytical thinking. This valuing has a worship-like, religious element to it that’s in fact irrational. Sometimes, the irrationality will break free as anger during an argument or a bad choice.
To manage the intellectual superiority of these types, provoke them into an irrational reaction.
These types want to be different, unique, or “alternative” and talk up their interesting backgrounds. They’re insecure about the fact that their lives, like most of ours, include large doses of boringness.
Suspect that people who try very hard to be different are in fact conventional. People who actually are different don’t showboat it.
These types are outwardly self-reliant and appear to be good at their jobs—they take on projects and have high standards. In reality, however, they secretly crave dependence. They hide this in their inability to delegate or collaborate, but as they take on too much work themselves, they create catastrophes that force them into a dependent position, such as needing the help of a doctor.
To manage these people, avoid getting professionally involved with them—when they fail, they take others down with them.
Hiding the Shadow is exhausting and inauthentic, and at a certain point, we lose control. If we can better understand the Shadow and even release it in small doses, we’ll be less prone to emotional explosion and feeling possessed.
To create a healthy relationship with your Shadow, there are four strategies:
Strategy #1: Describe your Shadow. This is hard to do because, by nature, the Shadow is something we repress. To see yours:
For example, writer and poet Robert Bly hated businesspeople and advertisers because they were devious and wily, but when he looked for his Shadow, he found that he was devious and wily. He also paid attention to what other people said about him—they said his poetry was classical, and he thought the opposite, but when he reflected, he realized they were right.
Strategy #2: Redirect it. When the Shadow is bottled up, it becomes unstable, and you have no control over when it escapes. Let your Shadow qualities out in non-threatening (and potentially productive) ways.
Strategy #3: Channel it into something creative. Acknowledging and getting to know the Shadow allows us to be more creative because when we’re not repressing, we have more material to associate ideas with. Our conscious minds are more limited than our unconscious ones.
Strategy #4: Release your Shadow occasionally. Those who repress less tend to be more successful because they can make full use of their unconsciousness and appear authentic. To release the Shadow:
For example, Steve Jobs was difficult to work with because he showed his Shadow (for example, he didn’t listen to others). Despite his negative qualities, people still admire his work.
Extended Example: Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon so strongly repressed his Shadow that he had no control of it and it burst out at inopportune moments, eventually ruining his career. People who worked with him said that he was so inconsistent it was as if he had two personalities.
Like all of us, Nixon started to develop his Shadow in childhood. He was a needy crybaby and his parents didn’t approve of this—they wanted their child to be self-reliant. He disguised his vulnerability by creating a mask that was extra tough, masculine, and strong. For example, he claimed that he never cried.
After Nixon was elected president, he installed a taping system in the White House so that he would know what people were saying behind his back. However, the tapes also became a record of his Shadow side. Being president came with so much pressure and stress that he found it harder to hide his vulnerabilities. He became touchy when journalists criticized him and he worried about his public image. He criticized people he considered his enemies and talked aggressively about taking them down.
When some of his staff got caught breaking into the Watergate hotel to bug one of Nixon’s enemies’ rooms, Nixon was paralyzed and frightened. He hadn’t ordered the break-in specifically, but he had asked his staff to do some spying and dirty work. He tried to cover up his involvement. The secret tapes might clear his name, but they would also reveal his Shadow side to the public, and he couldn’t bear to have people see his true self.
Eventually, Nixon had no choice but to reveal the tapes. When the public found out what he was really like, they were horrified. Nixon resigned.
There are four strategies to control your Shadow: Describe it, redirect it, channel it into creativity, and occasionally release it.
Describe your Shadow. (Consider what you’re sensitive about, what you project, what other people have said about you, and so on.)
How could you direct your Shadow qualities towards something productive? (For example, if you’re aggressive, you might do well in a competitive sport.)
What’s something you’re repressing so hard you don’t even let yourself think about it? Try thinking about it for a moment. What new ideas does it generate?
Where and how could you safely release your Shadow? (For example, you might be more assertive when asking for a raise.)
In the previous law, we looked at some of the idiosyncratic traits and feelings people hide. Now, we’ll look at an emotion everyone hides—envy.
No one wants to consciously acknowledge envy because it would necessitate feelings of inferiority—to want something someone else has, we have to admit that the other person has it, which makes them superior. As a result, envy is rarely expressed as envy, even to ourselves.
For example, if you’re angry at someone, you might hide it from them, but inside, you know you’re angry. If you lose control and your anger leaks out, the other person will be able to recognize the emotion as anger, and often, they’ll be able to figure what caused your anger.
If you’re envious of someone, on the other hand, you’ll transform this feeling into something else. Often, you’ll decide that the person has whatever you don’t because she’s lucky, ambitious, or underhanded—she doesn’t actually deserve it. Then, you can feel anger or resentment at the unfairness. Because your envy is buried under layers of other emotions, other people can’t usually tell that what you’re actually feeling is envy, and they see only anger or resentment, which is confusing and therefore more painful.
According to Melanie Klein, a psychoanalyst, some people are predisposed to envy. It starts right from infancy—they resent their mothers whenever they leave, and they’re hostile to their fathers or siblings for taking their mothers’ attention. Unlike most of us, who experience envy when others get attention but also gratefulness when we get attention, enviers can’t see past what they’re not getting. They’re never satisfied, and they’ll feel this way their whole lives.
There are two types of envy:
It’s important to study this law for two reasons:
In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and to control our own nature.
When people’s envy is triggered, they display nonverbal cues and give themselves away through their actions. Everyone shows these signs occasionally as part of passive envy, but if you see a pattern or combinations of signs, you might be dealing with active envy.
Cue #1: Microexpressions on first meetings. When people initially meet you and feel envy, they haven’t had time to go through the mental gymnastics of transforming envy into something else, so you’re most likely to pick up on it in these early encounters. An envious microexpression involves the eyes drilling into you with disdain, the nose sneering, the chin jutting out, and the mouth turned down. Usually, the person tries to hide the expression with a fake smile after the fact. If someone envies you, you can sometimes provoke this microexpression by telling them about some good or bad news you’ve just received. They’ll look disappointed by the good news and joyful at the bad.
Cue #2: Paradoxical praise, which is a compliment that’s also a put-down and feels hostile. There are three versions:
Cue #3: Sincere, irrelevant criticism. When people criticize you but you haven’t actually done anything to deserve it, they may envy you.
Cue #4: A love of gossip. Gossip is an easy way to vent envy because it involves sharing negative things about others. If people gossip to you about others, assume they talk to others about you. You can identify potentially envious gossipers because they get animated when they gossip, and the subject is usually that everyone’s not as good as they think they are. More obviously, you might be able to tell if someone’s a gossip if you hear of a rumor being spread about you, or if the people you know act more coolly towards you than usual.
Cue #5: Desire for friendship. Becoming your friend is a good way to get close to you, learn your flaws and insecurities, and then exploit them to hurt you. You can identify people who are only trying to get close to you to hurt you by studying their feelings toward you: When you first meet them, they’re overenthusiastic, and in later interactions, they bounce between critical and warm.
Cue #6: Clues in the past. Enviers often have dramatic breakups in their past, and they always blame the end of the relationship on the other person.
Now that we’ve learned how to identify some of the cues enviers give off, it’s time to look at different types of enviers. If more specific instructions aren’t given, the best way to deal with envy attack from one of the types below is to:
Levelers want to reduce everyone to their level of success. They’re very aware of unfairness, and if anyone does well, they accuse them of being lucky, ambitious, or cheating the system. These types have a brutal sense of humor, but can’t cope with jokes about themselves. They tend to prize things that are mediocre because mediocrity is unthreatening.
Levelers are especially dangerous in the workplace because they’ll try to bring you down if you’re ever more successful than they are. They’ll do this via passive-aggression or even by sabotaging your work.
These types feel that they don’t have to earn attention and success—they deserve it. They’ll do the minimum amount of work possible—for example, they’ll outline a novel but not actually write it—and expect praise for this. In secret, these types don’t think they can succeed, so they don’t bother developing skills. They’re hostile towards those who have earned success, and they’re usually narcissistic.
You can recognize these types in the workplace by the fact that they keep their position by being charming and strategic, not by doing any actual work.
These types occupy a high position but are insecure about it, so they envy anyone who might take it from them, even the people who work for them.
These types can be hard to recognize because we assume that people who have achieved a leadership role are secure. Sometimes, you can identify them in advance by their history of firing people for unusual reasons or because they’re unhappy when you turn in good work. In other cases, you might only find out that you were working with this type after you’ve done a good job on something and been fired.
To deal with them, if you don’t want to be fired, let them take credit for your ideas and work, and soothe their insecurities by deferring to them.
These enviers measure their relative superiority using status. You can recognize these types because they ask questions about money, such as what your salary is, what class you fly, if you own your home, and so on.
If you rank higher than a status hunter, you’re probably safe enough—secretly they’ll envy you, but they’ll hide it with admiration. If you’re at the same level though, they’ll be constantly comparing themselves with you and attacking you if you get more. To deal with them, avoid telling them what you have and praise what they have.
These enviers get close to the people they envy by becoming their staff or friends. They want two things: to have some of what their target has and to hurt their target.
These enviers are harder to recognize because they’re good at hiding their envy under praise and admiration, but you can identify them because they’re overeager to get close to you.
Certain circumstances tend to trigger envy. If you find yourself in one of the following circumstances, it could be the opportune moment to identify enviers because they might display more cues than usual.
Circumstance #1: Status changes. When your status changes for the better, the people you know, especially in your field, might feel envious. This circumstance is the most common trigger of envy, and people who are older or wrapping up their careers are more susceptible to this circumstance.
When your status changes, don’t brag. Consider joking self-deprecatingly or bringing up the element of luck. For your close friends, you can offer to help them if you can do it without being patronizing. Don’t take any comments personally. If someone else’s status changes suddenly, make sure not to praise them in front of other people in their field, or this might increase the envy directed at them.
Circumstance #2: Natural talent. If you have natural talent, people may envy you. Avoid displaying your talent around enviers and even consider revealing some flaws or telling people about past mistakes.
Circumstance #3: Encountering non-enviers. Enviers hate people who don’t feel envy because it makes the fact that they’re consumed by envy much more obvious in comparison.
Circumstance #4: Being a woman. People tend to envy women more than men, and this envy is often expressed through criticisms such as being too unwomanly or cold. Act humble to deflect envy.
As we’ve learned, it’s impossible to avoid feeling envy, so all you can do is learn to identify it and control your response to it. Because envy quickly and often unconsciously transforms into another emotion, you have to consciously pay attention to your instinctive reactions to figure out what envy feels like. For example, the next time you hear about someone in your field having success, monitor yourself. Before you feel angry or hostile, first you’ll feel a whiff of envy. Notice it so you’re aware of it the next time it strikes.
Once you’ve identified that what you’re feeling is envy, use the following strategies to defuse it:
Extended Example: Jane Williams
Jane Williams is an example of a dangerous envier—her envy drove her to attack and hurt her more successful friend Mary Shelley.
When Jane first met Mary, Jane both admired and envied her. Mary was an accomplished writer with an exciting life, famous friends, and a desirable husband. Jane was a musician who had never had much success.
Jane repressed her envy and became friends with Mary. Jane liked that Mary liked her, but the closer they became, the more obvious it was that Mary was superior. To live with this, Jane had to cast Mary as someone who didn’t deserve to be envied. Mary wasn’t talented, she was lucky—Frankenstein was only successful because Mary had literary parents and friends. Mary was moody (two of Mary’s children had recently died), not charming.
Because Jane had decided Mary was a bad person, Jane felt justified in trying to steal her husband and spread rumors. Mary’s friends pulled away from her, and she didn’t know why. Jane pulled away too, confusing and hurting Mary even more because by that point Jane was one of Mary’s closest friends
Mary finally found out that Jane had been spreading rumors about her. Mary didn’t understand what had driven Jane to do this, but she realized Jane had been attacking her in other ways too—she sometimes caught Jane looking at her with hostility or encouraging her to do things that weren’t in her best interest. Mary eventually ended the relationship.
Like envy, aggression is an emotion no one wants to admit to having. For example, we all acknowledge that there are aggressive people out there, such as criminals, but we draw a hard line between us and them. We prefer to sketch peacefulness and cooperation into our self-images.
In reality, aggression is a natural part of human nature and everyone has it. Interestingly, it isn’t driven by any violence inherent in our species. In fact, aggression stems from a desire for control, which is driven by a fear of helplessness. Our helplessness comes from many sources: We need other people for validation and love but they’re unpredictable, we have childhood insecurities, and death comes, sometimes unexpectedly, for us all.
We can see this latent aggression in our dealings with others—unconsciously, we compare our aggression levels to everyone else’s. When we meet someone who’s more aggressive, we tend to act meek and obedient. But when we encounter someone less aggressive, we tend to feel superior. We might help them, or we might use them. Usually, we rationalize our aggression—for example, someone else started the fight.
There are two myths associated with aggression:
In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and how to control our own nature.
Because everyone has aggressive tendencies, you’ll occasionally encounter low-level aggression. Simply ignore it and move on. However, highly aggressive people can be dangerous because they’re willing to break rules and cross lines that you probably aren’t. For example, when you get frustrated with someone, run out of patience for their resistance, and snap at them, you feel uncomfortable and quickly stop. An aggressor, on the other hand, may have no problem yelling or swearing at someone.
Here are the two types of aggressors and how to deal with them:
Chronic aggressors have such strong feelings of helplessness that they regularly act on their aggression and cross social lines. Chronic aggressors likely become that way because of the influence of:
There are two types of chronic aggressors:
You can identify chronic aggressors by:
Avoid dealing or working with chronic aggressors. If you have to, don’t let them control your emotions. One of their strategies is to make you think about how evil they are and how angry they make you, which takes your focus off what they’re actually doing and makes you think irrationally. Try to disengage.
If you have to fight with them, don’t do it overtly—aggressors are good at fighting because they have resources and they’re relentless, and you’ll probably lose. Instead, find out what insecurity is motivating their aggression. Then, you can threaten to or actually expose them. Aggressors fear losing control, so if your actions appear to be leading in that direction, they might back off and go after someone easier. Ideally, connect with their other victims for safety in numbers.
Passive aggressors avoid confrontation, force, or active manipulation, but they still use aggression to get what they want. Passive aggression is also a way to release tension between the socially acceptable mask, real feelings, and self-image (we can pretend we’re innocent of aggression even though we’re still using it).
Chronic passive aggressors often learned this tactic in childhood as a way to respond to domineering parents whom they couldn’t actively challenge.
It can be hard to identify passive aggressors because their actions are contradictory and confusing. To recognize these types, look for fake vulnerability, childlike helplessness, and oversensitivity. The earlier you can identify passive aggressors, the earlier you can put up your guard.
Passive aggressors use the following techniques:
Chronic passive aggressors show up late or miss commitments, but always have a reasonable excuse. This behavior is designed to make you feel superior or controlled. If you call them out on their behavior, they’ll accuse you of being unsympathetic or adding to the troubles or stress that make them late in the first place.
Recognize this strategy by the nonverbal cues passive aggressors give off while making their excuses. Their tone is pouty and insincere.
To defend against this technique:
1. Stay calm, especially if the person is your boss. If you get angry, you’ll just encourage them.
2. Do the same behaviors back at them. Be purposefully late or absent and make reasonable excuses. This will make them realize you know their game.
Passive aggressors spin situations (even situations they’ve gotten themselves into) to cast themselves as a victim. The goal of this behavior is to get attention and control you.
It can be hard to recognize this strategy because bad things happen to everyone. However, there’s an obvious difference between passive aggressors and other victims—passive aggressors like the drama of victimization, but real victims find it shameful and don’t like to talk about what happened to them. (There’s an old superstition that if something bad happens to you, it’s because there’s something wrong with you.) Additionally, passive aggressors may have created the ugly situations themselves—for example, their projects fail because they didn’t pay attention to details.
Some additional clues indicate someone is using this strategy:
To defend against this strategy, get some mental distance by getting angry about how one-sided the relationship is—you give them energy and attention, and they give you nothing in return.
When you first encounter a passive aggressor, they might be very attentive to you—they’ll offer you help with your work or listen deeply. When you start to depend on them, they show confusing flashes of coldness. You can’t think of what you did to upset them, and you’re not even sure they are upset, but you want them to like you, so you start giving them attention, helping them with their work, and listening to them until you’re catering to them the same way they catered to you when you first met. The goal of this behavior is to get power over you.
Another version of this strategy is for the passive aggressor to make promises and then not keep them, or only partially keep them.
It can be hard to recognize this strategy because when you first encounter the passive aggressor, they seem so kind and solicitous that it’s hard to imagine them as manipulators. To avoid falling for this trap, be suspicious of anyone who’s too helpful too early and don’t let them get too close. Once they start showing coldness, they’ll be easier to identify—if the coldness seems unfounded, or they get upset with you for trying to create space, you know they’re using this strategy.
To defend against this strategy, end the relationship.
This strategy is usually employed by people you work for but it can also show up in relationships. The passive aggressor never tells you exactly what they need, and you have to guess. They sometimes praise you and sometimes criticize you for not doing a good job. (If they had told you what they needed, you could have done it, been immune to criticism, and they would have been dependent on you.)
It’s hard to defend against these passive aggressors because they usually have power over you and if they catch you trying to distance yourself, they’ll just try harder. All you can do is leave the relationship.
Some chronic passive aggressors delegitimize your self-image. The goal of this strategy is to lower your self-esteem.
To recognize this strategy, look for nonverbal joy cues when you break bad news. Also, be on the lookout for backhanded compliments, purposeful negative misinterpretations of you, or harsh criticism. They’ll often claim to be joking if you get upset.
To defend against the strategy, stay calm so the aggressors know that they’re not riling you. You can also hint that you know what they’re up to.
For example, the French revolutionary Robespierre used this strategy against George Danton. Robespierre “defended” Danton by giving a speech that focused on a detailed list of the charges against him and finishing the speech saying despite all this, Danton was praiseworthy.
If a passive aggressor is gaslighting you, they’ll do something irritating, but when you confront them, they’ll respond by making it seem like they haven’t actually done anything wrong and you’re the one being unreasonable. The goal of this strategy is to make you doubt your behavior and the legitimacy or your feelings so that you don’t challenge the passive aggressor again.
To recognize this behavior, look for nonverbal insincerity cues when the passive aggressor is apologizing. They might also bring up some past wrong you did to them. Additionally, they might be nice to everyone else, so that if you ever try to talk to others about their behavior, other people think you’ve lost it.
To defend against this strategy, whenever the passive aggressor behaves negatively, write it down. Then, when they claim you’re the one being unreasonable, you can look back at your notes and objectively evaluate whether you were overreacting or whether they’re trying to make you doubt yourself. If they are attacking you, don’t make them angry—they’re probably better at manipulating emotions than you are. Instead, stay calm and try to look at everything objectively. When their criticisms are valid, accept them. When they’re not, don’t. The passive aggressor might stop using this strategy when they realize it’s not working. If they don’t, avoid them.
Most people have medium-to-high levels of aggression, and these need to be expressed somehow. There are three ways you can choose to handle it, and the third one is most viable:
Some people are so uncomfortable with their aggression—it seems shameful, risky, and unlikeable—that they try to repress it. As we’ve learned, though, masking an emotion doesn’t get rid of it; it simply relegates it to the Shadow.
Repressed aggression leads to the formation of an “internal saboteur,” which is an entity that directs your aggression towards yourself. It tries to create control by reducing you so there’s less unpredictability in your life. It judges you, reminds you how easy it is to fail, and dulls your other emotions because they could open you to criticism. You become too scared to try anything new.
When you were a child, your aggression made you adventurous—you wanted to explore, both mentally and physically. You can still use your aggression to learn as an adult by developing:
Skill development has limits when it comes to siphoning off aggression—it takes time and you have to manage your aggression well enough to attend work, social events, or classes or lessons.
The existence of aggression isn’t a problem; the difficulty is how to direct that aggression towards something positive. There are four more productive emotions we can channel our aggressive energy towards:
1. Rage. Rage has some negative connotations, but in fact, anger can be motivating and healthy. Anger is only negative when it’s unrelated to reality—for example, it’s directed at a scapegoat, fueled by a conspiracy, or masking failures. If your anger is specifically aimed at something and justified, you can use it to take down a target. It can give you fuel for a fight rather than an outburst.
2. Ambition. Like rage, ambition has a negative connotation. However, the connotation stems from enviers who dislike it when other people accomplish things. (In fact, attempting to appear unambitious is an ambition.)
In reality, ambition can be very useful—it motivates you to achieve your dreams, which increases your self-respect. The best way to use ambition is to reflect on what you wanted when you were young and tweak your desire to be relevant to your current self.
Additionally, ambitions need to be specific to be useful—if they’re vague, such as wanting money, you’ll never be able to achieve them because there’s no endpoint, and this might lead you to aggression.
Once you achieve an ambition, pick a new one.
3. Relentlessness. Relentlessness helps you achieve your ambitions—when you want something, you keep working at it and you use your full mental resources. Human relentlessness is very strong—there’s little in the world that is invincible to it.
4. Boldness. Like relentlessness, boldness helps you achieve your ambitions. To become bolder, first, decide you deserve good things. Then, learn to defend your deservedness by speaking up to people in low-stakes, everyday situations. As you practice, you’ll realize that being bolder doesn’t come with negative consequences. When you’re more confident, you can practice being bold in bigger situations, such as negotiations or work.
Extended Example: John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller was a sophisticated aggressor who took down many people who didn’t know how to defend against him.
Like many chronic aggressors, Rockefeller experienced a lack of control early in life—his father was a con man who came and went unexpectedly, and the family’s finances were always unstable. From these early experiences, Rockefeller learned to be ambitious about money and to dislike disorder. When Rockefeller grew up, he gravitated towards the oil industry because it was volatile and if he could tame it, he would conquer unpredictability.
Rockefeller went into partnership with a man named Clark because he needed help with funds, but he didn’t actually want a partner because that would mean sharing control. Once their business was stable, Rockefeller purposefully annoyed Clark so much that he left the company, giving Rockefeller full control.
Rockefeller bought refineries from other people using a combination of bribery, fear tactics, bankruptcy, and pressure. He made people so emotional they became irrational, which is a classic aggressor technique. Eventually, his company, Standard Oil, had a monopoly.
Rockefeller felt the need to justify his aggression because he was Protestant and couldn’t square wanting to control people with his beliefs. He created an “aggressor’s narrative,” a story that reframed his quest for control as part of a purpose. Protestantism already had a possibility—rich people were favored by God because they could give money to the church and community—but Rockefeller expanded the narrative even further—he decided that getting the oil industry under control was a divine mission.
In the previous two laws, we looked at emotions (envy and aggression) that everyone hides. In this law, we’ll look at traits that almost everyone represses.
Everyone has both masculine and feminine traits, regardless of their gender. These traits come from two sources: genetics, and the influence of our parents, particularly the one of the opposite sex who is the first person we meet who’s significantly different from us.
As we grow out of infancy, we start seeking independence from our parents, and the easiest way to do this is to start fitting ourselves into the existing identity of gender roles.
Gender roles create psychological distance between the sexes, and sometimes this difference is so vast it makes people of different genders seem incomprehensible to each other. This lack of understanding can lead to hostility between the sexes, especially in men, perhaps because their mothers make them feel dependent and other women remind them of this dependency. As genders get closer to equality, this tension only strengthens.
However, this conflict between the sexes is really just a manifestation of inner conflict. Because we’re so young when we start repressing, sometimes, we don’t even realize we’ve lost parts of ourselves until we meet people who aren’t as repressed, or we hit midlife and realize we’re missing something.
In the law, we’ll study some basics of gender, including the anima and animus. Then, we’ll learn how to use this knowledge to control our own nature.
According to psychologist Carl Jung, we all have an internal entity called the anima (our repressed feminine tendencies) or animus (our repressed masculine tendencies). We tend to fall in love with people who embody our anima or animus because we want to get closer to our opposite both internally and externally.
When in love, our repressed traits come to the surface. To outsiders, it might look like we’re behaving out of character, but in fact, we’re being more authentic because we’re displaying all our traits, not just the traits associated with one gender. As a result, most of us change in the following ways:
(We don’t necessarily need another person to see our anima or animus—we can fall in love with ourselves.)
To see our own anima or animus and work towards letting it free so we’re not possessed but balanced, we can analyze who we fall for. Our choice of lover has a lot to do with our relationship with our parent of the opposite sex. If the relationship was ambivalent, we’ll look for someone who has the same qualities but whom we might be able to fix. If the relationship was negative, we’ll look for people who are the opposite of our parents.
As a result, we rarely see people as they are—instead, we project qualities onto them that they don’t actually have. Projecting is automatic and it’s not inherently bad—it’s how we start relationships with people of the opposite sex.
Learning about projections is important for four reasons:
1. You’ll be able to identify what you’re projecting on others, which will help you stop doing it. If you don’t clear your projections, you’ll never get to know the real person.
2. You’ll be able to understand how others project on you. When you become aware that someone’s projecting, don’t try to fit their image. It will be uncomfortable to not be yourself, you won’t get credit for your real qualities, and you’ll become resentful.
3. You’ll be able to see what people are repressing. When you meet someone who’s strongly masculine or feminine, you can assume their anima or animus will be just as strong.
4. You’ll be able to better understand how others react to those of the opposite sex. This will help you influence people.
Here are the six common types of projections:
The following three projections are what women project onto men:
Type #1: The Charmer
This imaginary man is older, successful, a bit of a rake, and romantic. He’ll want to change his ways and become respectable when he meets the right woman.
The real men who inspire this projection are actually self-absorbed, irredeemable, and not as romantic as they first appear. However, if they were as attentive and romantic as the woman imagined, she’d think they were weak and boring.
Women who come up with this projection often had intense relationships with their fathers. They loved the attention they received (their fathers might have preferred them to their mothers because they were more playful) and they’ll be seeking this attention their entire lives. They also absorb their father's aggressive, masculine edge.
To stop this projection, women must notice the pattern of men they’re attracted to and stop idealizing their fathers.
Type #2: The Bad Boy
This imaginary man is young, unconventional, dislikes authority, and fathers don’t approve of him. He looks rebellious with tattoos and a shaved head.
The real man underneath this projection isn’t rebellious so much as lazy, and that’s why he doesn’t have a conventional job. He can be controlling.
Women who use this projection often had strict, conventional, critical fathers who repressed their daughter’s rebelliousness. As a result, these women look for rebelliousness outside themselves.
To stop projecting this type, women must develop their own rebelliousness and assertiveness. They can do this by breaking small rules and saying no to people.
Type #3: The Confident Intellectual
This imaginary man is smart, confident, powerful, and dependable. He may be older and not physically attractive, but his allure is his self-assurance.
In reality, these men don’t possess the imagined qualities, or if they do, they only possess them in weaker concentrations.
Women who use this projection have low self-esteem because they’ve taken to heart criticism from others, especially their fathers. Because they lack their own confidence, they search for it externally.
To avoid this projection, women need to acknowledge that they’ve internalized inaccurate criticism. They can develop self-confidence by learning a new skill or working at a project. They need to learn to see themselves as equal to men.
Men project the following profiles on women:
Type #1: The Perfect Woman
This vague, imaginary woman will give the man everything his previous relationships (including the one with his mother) have lacked. However, he can’t articulate exactly what was lacking.
The real women who inspire this fantasy are usually narcissistic and independent, or free-spirited without a defined identity. They’re never perfect, because no one is, and the man is always disappointed and moves on.
Men who come up with this projection often had mothers who didn’t give them enough attention. Some of them may have been expected to give their mother's attention because they weren’t getting it from their husbands. These men’s feminine sides are introspective.
To stop this projection, men need to spend more time with real, flawed women. They need to give up control. When they need a muse, they need to look at their own anima and get closer to their feminine side.
Type #2: The Damsel in Distress
This imaginary woman seems to need rescuing and is unlike any other woman the man has ever met. She often comes from a lower class or different culture, and the man finds a way to idealize her.
Men who come up with this projection often had strong mothers. They have paradoxical feelings about their lovers—they think they want to be with someone like their mother, but they’re more attracted to sexy women, so they come up with a way to make sexy women classier. They think they want to help or rescue their lovers, but in fact, they crave danger.
To stop this projection, men need to develop their own feminine side—they’re attracted to playful, sensuous women because they don’t have any of those qualities themselves. They need to try new experiences, even dangerous ones.
Type #3: The Worshipper
This imaginary woman is kind, is attentive, and admires the man. She provides comfort to his difficult life.
The real women who inspire this projection don't possess the imagined qualities to the degree that the man wants, even if he manipulates her into playing a mothering role. Eventually, when it becomes obvious the woman isn’t prepared to be his mother, he thinks that she’s changed or misled him. She’s resentful. When they break up, it will be painful for the man because it feels like being abandoned by his mother.
Men who project this usually had an adoring, attentive mother. As they grow up, they try to meet their mothers’ expectations and are looking for women who can provide the same support their mothers did.
To avoid this projection, the man must notice the pattern. He needs to realize that he pushes himself too hard (to please his mother) and develop his own comforting qualities.
Now that we have a better sense of our repressed masculine or feminine traits, it’s time to look at how to stop repressing and find balance. One good way to do this is to try to use both masculine and feminine approaches when it comes to thinking, taking action, self-assessing, and joining a group.
Throughout history, men have been the ones to define gender roles and their relative values. According to men, the masculine methods of doing things were correct, and the feminine methods were irrational and weak. This resulted in women thinking that to be equal meant being more like men. However, both approaches are equally valid in all circumstances.
Here are some comparisons between styles of:
Masculine thinking is linear and focuses on categorizing things, analyzing individual parts, specializing, and discounting emotion.
Feminine thinking tends to focus on context and how things are related to each other. It takes the senses and emotions into account.
Most people gravitate towards one approach or the other, but the most successful thinkers use both approaches:
To create this balance in yourself, try whatever approach is the opposite of what you usually do. For example, if you’re a masculine thinker, try to pay attention to your intuition. If you’re a feminine thinker, focus on a specific problem.
Masculine action is to attack and overcome obstacles, often independently.
Feminine action is to take a step back and analyze all the possibilities, one of which might be a way to win without fighting. In the West, this style is often seen as weak, but in other cultures, it’s wise.
To create this balance in yourself, again try whatever approach is the opposite of what comes naturally. For example, if your style is masculine, don’t act right away. Consider how all the players involved will react. If your style is feminine, make sure that when you avoid conflict, it’s strategic, not because you’re scared of confrontation. Practice confrontation in every day, low-stakes situations. Don’t consider the other person’s feelings, don’t be deferential, and be aggressive.
Masculine self-assessment tends to involve grandiosity (overestimating abilities, taking credit for all successes, and blaming others for failure). Men have trouble learning from failure or asking for help when they encounter a problem.
Feminine self-assessment tends to involve inward focus. Women find it easy to ask for help and attribute their success to a group effort.
To create this balance, men should try looking for their own role in failures and others’ roles in their successes. They should also try to get a more accurate picture of themselves—if they’re not as great as they think, they’ll be motivated to actually improve. Women should let go of past criticism, which might make them less inclined to try new things. They should also try not to take things personally.
Masculine group behavior includes forming a hierarchy and trying to get as close to the top as possible. Leaders emphasize goals and results.
Feminine group behavior includes considering the feelings of everyone in the group. The process is just as important as the results.
Men should try the feminine approach, and women should occasionally stop listening to others and expel the negative people in the group.
Extended Example: Caterina Sforza
Italian noblewoman Caterina Sforza was born in 1463 and grew up in a castle with her father and stepmother. Unlike most girls of the time, she developed both her feminine and masculine sides and stepped outside gender roles, which would have dictated that she become a mother and wife, religious devotee, or a courtesan. Instead, she became a ruler.
Caterina turned out balanced partly because she had a lot of freedom and male influence during her childhood. She adored her father, who was also fairly gender-balanced. (He was fearless, powerful, diplomatic, artistic, fashionable, and moved to tears by choral music.) She came to share many of his interests, and he had her tutored in military history, sword fighting, and hunting, which helped her develop her animus.
When Caterina’s father was murdered, she moved to Rome to live with her husband, Girolamo. Everyone in Rome was fascinated by her because she was so well-rounded and unconstrained—she was fashionable, well-read, caring, and influential. It fell to her to gain the pope’s favor and secure her family’s position because her husband was too weak and hotheaded.
When the pope died, Caterina and her family were in danger because they’d lost their only protection. Girolamo was technically still in control of the papal armies until the new pope was elected, but he was too indecisive to make a call. Caterina took over even though she was seven months pregnant. She snuck into the city and took over Castel Sant’Angelo, which had enough firepower to block the roads leading to the Vatican. The cardinals couldn’t gather to elect a new pope until the cannons were pointed elsewhere, and after 11 days, they were forced to negotiate with Caterina, who wore armor and a sword over her dress.
Caterina continued to use a mix of feminine and masculine styles to maintain power and manage her enemies. For example, when mercenary Cesare Borgia attacked her castle, she first tried to avoid a conflict by trying to trap him on her drawbridge by flirting with him. When that didn’t work, she turned to the more masculine method of sword fighting.
In the previous part, we looked at some of the emotions that everyone experiences. Now, we’ll look at how our emotions change when we’re around others, in groups, or following a leader.
Social force is the energy of collective emotions, and it affects all of us. When in groups—at a concert, rally, and so on—we all feel the same emotions, based on what the rest of the group is feeling. This comes from a survival mechanism—in older times, if one person noticed danger and felt fear, their emotion would spread throughout the group and quickly alert the others to a possible threat. If multiple people felt the same emotion, presumably there was a good reason, so the emotion legitimized as it spread.
Social force also affects us when we’re:
Social force has several qualities:
In this part, first, we’ll look at how social force can overpower people’s individuality. Then, we’ll look at one of the largest groups everyone belongs to—a generation. Finally, we’ll look at how social force relates to leadership.
No matter how highly we think of our individuality, social force and group dynamics affect us all. If you think you’re exempt, ask yourself:
Being in a group influences us in the following ways:
Influence #1: We want to belong. When we first join a group, we’re an outsider, and we can feel the members of the group judging us and assessing if we’re dangerous. There are two ways to fit in, and the first is most important, but most people chose to do both:
Most of this matching happens unconsciously or in a way that appears to be intentional (we joined the group because we shared its values). However, if we look at a group from the outside, we’ll find that its members’ values are surprisingly consistent, considering how much everyone is unique. This consistency is caused by social force driving people to conform.
Influence #2: We need to perform. When in a group, we visibly demonstrate how much we belong. We put on masks so that we fit in better, but the longer we spend with the group, the more the mask becomes the reality.
The need for performance, like mask-wearing in general, isn’t something we need to fight or feel bad about—it’s wired in to everyone. What we do need to do is be aware of this influence so we can be more intentional about the image we present.
Influence #3: Other people’s emotions overpower our own. When we’re alone, our moods change, but if we’re in a group and a group member or members’ emotions are stronger than ours, they’ll replace them. Fear and anxiety are the most contagious emotions because they helped us survive. Apathy, tiredness, excitement, joy, hatred, desire, and rage are also quite contagious.
Influence #4: We become incredibly certain. By ourselves, we tend to doubt our choices. In a group, though, we tend to be certain of the decisions we’ve made, even if they’re risky or inadvisable. This is because in a group:
For example, financial bubbles are often caused by this influence. If everyone’s buying up stock in a certain company, it seems safer than doing it alone, where if it went badly, we’d feel ashamed.
In this chapter, we’ll first learn how to manage the toxic types that emerge in groups. Then, we’ll learn how to control our own nature.
To understand how groups produce toxic types, first, we’ll look at some basics of group dynamics. These dynamics are impossible to avoid—if you try to opt out, you’ll look suspicious or holier-than-thou, and you’ll be isolated from the group.
Groups often have their own language, customs, and way of doing things. This is most obvious between nations, but smaller groups, such as companies, have culture too. To assess group culture, don’t put much stock in how the group self-describes. Instead, consider the overall attitude and organization by looking at its actions and emotional tone.
Culture often includes:
Group culture can become so entrenched that new members, even leaders, can’t change it. For example, after World War II, the U.S. Department of Defense had an aggressive culture. Neither President Kennedy nor Johnson wanted to get involved in the Vietnam War, but they were unable to change the culture—in fact, the culture changed them and they became involved in the war. The older and larger the group, the stronger its culture.
Additionally, the older and larger a group, the more its culture will become conservative. This is because people want to maintain what they have, and as the group still exists, members think that their established ways of doing things will work forever. In fact, this inability to adapt is often what kills groups in the end.
Whether or not an outsider really is dangerous, having a collective enemy strengthens a group. Since the human brain processes best by comparing things to their opposites, us vs. them works well. The enemy can also be used as a justification for potentially questionable actions or as a distraction.
If our group is threatened, all four of the group influences strengthen. We think even more simply and unquestionably follow the groups’ decisions.
To figure out if an outsider actually is dangerous, consider her objectively—don’t let the groups’ opinions bias you. Do this privately, so you’re not accused of disloyalty.
People can’t handle rampant disorder, so groups come up with rules and behavioral codes about appearances, deference to authority, and so on. These unwritten rules are self-policed by group members.
In large, established groups, people will self-divide into factions because they want to be around those who are most similar to them (being around similar people gives a narcissistic boost). Additionally, by nature, we see larger groups as suspicious. Factions will ultimately break into even smaller factions.
Powerful factions will start to prioritize their own interests over the group’s and can even oust the leader.
The smaller groups of tribalism are part of our nature, but they make for a lot of fighting because there are few people in our group and a lot of people outside of them. To survive, humans will have to overcome this part of our natures. We’re so globally interconnected that we need each other to survive. What we really need is to all feel like we’re part of one group with diverse membership—the group of humanity.
Groups contain hierarchies of individuals and/or factions, and everyone is trying to get closer to the leader (the closer they are, the more power they have). For the most part, individuals admire the leader and think she’s superior, which makes it possible for them to accept that she has power over them. This is the same way we felt about our parents in childhood—because our parents controlled us, we had to cast them as competent so we could cope. Individuals tend to react to the leaders however they handled their family members, whether that was a need to please or resentment.
On the other hand, some group members, instead of wanting to get closer to the leader, want to displace her.
There are several types of group members, categorized by how they feel about power:
These types appear loyal and hard-working, but in fact, they don’t respect the leader and want power for themselves. As children, they might have competed with their fathers.
To identify these types, look at their past and their actions, rather than their mask. They’re good at using others and making people in power depend on them. They also tend to be impatient.
The best way to deal with these types is to avoid them—you don’t want to become an enemy or a tool.
For example, Alexander Haig was a power-hungry type. He was an assistant to Henry Kissinger, who in turn was Richard Nixon’s national security advisor. Haig made himself very useful to Kissinger by doing all sorts of tasks, even grunt work, and used his closeness to gather information on Kissinger’s weaknesses.
Haig also made himself appealing to Nixon—he made sure Nixon saw him working long hours, which he knew Nixon would appreciate because he was also a workaholic. Nixon started borrowing Haig from Kissinger and eventually made him chief of staff, a position Kissinger reported to.
These types try to control the flow of information to the leader. They can be useful—they protect the leader from distractions and low-priority requests—but they’re also dangerous because they strongly idealize the leader and want to have power over her specifically. They get close by flattering, fawning, and feeding her narcissism, and once they’re close, they learn the leader’s weaknesses.
You can identify these by how differently they act towards the leader than everyone else. Additionally, they often act as the enforcer of the group’s unwritten rules.
When you encounter these types, be careful. If you make them your enemy, they’ll cut off your access to the leader. You can try to expose their contradictory behavior between the leader and the rest of the group to the leader, but because this type is so close to the leader, the leader may take their word over yours. If you are the leader, don’t let individuals isolate you from the rest of the group.
These types are insecure, resentful, and envious of others, but they’re good at hiding these emotions by appearing loyal. They try to stir up drama to get attention, to attract the leader’s notice, and to get closer to her. They do this by spreading rumors about other group members’ loyalty.
To identify these types, look for someone who’s spreading rumors, and in chaotic moments, look for someone who seems to secretly enjoy the negativity.
To deal with these types, never insult them—they’ll target you and be passive-aggressive.
These types are good at identifying others’ Shadows, especially the leader’s, and eggers-on encourage others to let their Shadows loose. They do this by bringing up a shadow subject in a casual way, which makes the leader feel unthreatened enough to respond. Then, the egger-on suggests how they might act on these feelings.
To identify these types, look for people who have strong Shadows that they’re fairly in touch with.
To deal with these types, keep your distance and don’t cross them. They often self-destruct on their own—if something they encouraged the leader to do goes badly, they get blamed.
For example, Charles Colson was an egger-on. He was Nixon’s special counsel and knew that part of Nixon’s Shadow included paranoia and insecurity about his masculinity. Colson encouraged Nixon to vent and suggested ways to get revenge on the media, who had criticized Nixon.
Jokers and rebels are scared to fail, so they make fun of others, act cynical, and suggest outlandish ideas so that no one will take them seriously or give them any responsibility. Their role becomes to make everyone else feel a little superior.
Usually, there’s one person allowed to play this role in a given group, and to identify them, look for the person who is permitted to make fun of anyone in the group, even the leader (the leader permits this because it shows she has a sense of humor and isn’t insecure). They’re also the only person allowed to come up with ideas that conflict with the groups’ (the leader allows this because it makes her seem like she allows dissent).
To deal with this type, let her keep her role. If you feel the need to rebel, keep it private or subtle.
This type holds the highest position in a hierarchy. She likely got this position by being personable and friendly, not by demonstrating loyalty or having notable skills. Many leaders are lonely, so a friend is attractive.
To identify this type, look for the person the leader gives favors or special treatment to.
To deal with the favorite, like the Joker or Rebel, let her keep her position. You don’t want to be the favorite because it’s dangerous:
This type is the opposite of the favorite—she holds the lowest position in the hierarchy and everyone feels superior to her, whether in intelligence, skill, sophistication, or something else.
To identify this type, figure out who’s made fun of behind her back.
To navigate around this type, don’t make fun of her because it will debase you. Take the high ground and treat her well, and you might make yourself an ally.
These types can charm leaders and group members. They do this by acting as emotional mirrors—they validate people by reflecting their own opinions and emotions back at them.
To identify these types, look for people with high empathy.
To deal with these types, try to emulate them. Work on your empathy, nonverbal cues, and mirroring.
For example, Frances Perkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advisor and secretary of labor, was a master reflector. She used her empathy to intuit Roosevelt’s moods. She knew he liked stories, so when she wanted something, she’d present it as a narrative. She listened deeply and then reflected what he’d spoken about back to him.
She mirrored everyone else the same way and was careful to be nonthreatening. She had a huge influence over Roosevelt but never showed it.
Now that we better understand how groups work, we can look at how to maintain our individuality in the face of social force and even gain power.
There are a few strategies for maintaining your individuality when in a group:
Strategy #1: Determine if your emotions are stemming from yourself or others by pinpointing the source of an emotion. If you can’t find a concrete source, you may be picking up the emotion from others. Analyze which group emotions you’re most susceptible to and how they change depending on which group you’re in.
Strategy #2: Get some distance. If you feel like the group is overpowering you, distance yourself from the members for a little while to regain your individuality.
Strategy #3: Raise your self-esteem. Going along with a group is a way of hiding our insecurities, so develop your self-esteem so you no longer need this crutch. Boost your self-opinion by doing good work and accomplishing things, and by having confidence in your individuality.
Strategy #4: Keep your individuality private. You don't need to leave or challenge the group to maintain your ability to think rationally. Outwardly, continue to fit in. Inwardly, assess group ideas dispassionately, considering them separate from their source.
Strategy #5: Get a measure of the groups you belong to. Because we no longer have large belief systems—such as religion—but we still crave belonging, we sometimes join cults or groups we probably don’t actually want to get involved with. Weak groups tend to end up with grandiose or poorly skilled leaders, so look for these clues as you evaluate your groups.
Strategy #6: Consciously learn the unwritten rules. Most people figure them out subconsciously, but conscious knowledge heightens your awareness and will help you assess the group and navigate interactions. To do this:
Strategy #7: Tread carefully around factions. There are two ways to handle them and the second is preferable:
Strategy #8: Stay realistic. Groups tend to oversimplify. They create enemies, become delusional, and foster conviction bias (the tendency to assume if someone, including you, feels strongly about something, it must be right). Remind yourself of these dynamics so that when they start to act on you, you can notice and pull back.
Strategy #9: Practice considering ideas that are the opposite of the group’s. This will help you train to think for yourself.
To gain power with a group:
Extended Example: The Chinese Cultural Revolution
The events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution are an example of how people behave more emotionally, irrationally, and simply when in groups.
In the early days of the revolution, Jianhua was a student at Yizhen Middle School (YMS). Many of the students made posters that criticized their teachers for being counterrevolutionaries, and Jianhua felt the need to belong, so he joined in, even though he liked most of his teachers and the other students’ actions made him uncomfortable. As the teachers confessed to minor revolutionary infractions, Jianhua felt less sorry for them and the students’ actions appeared more justified.
One of the students, Fangpu, eventually took over the school from the teachers and started a group called the East-Is-Red Corps. Only a few weeks later, the factioning started—another student named Mengzhe started the Red Rebels, who believed that reason was a better strategy than the violence the East-Is-Red Corps was using. Jianhua was starting to fear Fangpu and joined the Red Rebels.
Even though both groups worshipped Mao and had the same goals, they feared each other as outsiders and adopted an us-versus-them mentality. When the East-Is-Red Corps kidnapped some Red Rebels, the Red Rebels discovered that one of their members was a spy and beat her up. This upset Jianhua because it went against the group’s theoretically non-violent ideals. But when the East-Is-Red accidentally killed one of the Red Rebels, Jianhua agreed with the group’s new value that responding violently was appropriate.
This kind of factioning and chaos was happening all over the country and Mao handled it by choosing sides in each local conflict. Mao deemed the East-Is-Red more revolutionary and the Red Rebels became officially the enemy. Jianhua and other Red Rebels were tortured, humiliated, and forced to do menial labor.
Jianhua went home for summer vacation. When he returned to YMS in September, after having a few months of both physical and mental distance in which to recollect his individuality and rationality, he realized that that group behavior had been incredibly destructive. Buildings were destroyed, all the teachers were gone, and classmates were dead.
There are three ways to gain power in groups: Flatter the leader, be useful, and manage other group members.
Think of a group you belong to that you’d like more power in. How might you flatter the leader? (For example, what are they insecure or uncertain about that you could praise them for?)
How could you make yourself useful (but not threateningly useful) to the leader? (For example, you might offer to take over a task that they don’t like doing.)
Think of a member of the group you’d like to get on your side. How might you make her like you? (For example, you might listen to her or give her credit.)
In the previous law, we looked at how people are influenced by the groups they belong to. Now, we’ll look at one of the groups that everyone belongs to—their generation. Generations are huge groups consisting of everyone who was born within the same 22-year period. Sometimes, the people born on the fringes may identify more with an earlier or later generation than their own.
Even though everyone who lives at a particular time experiences the same conditions, we all see the world through a generational perspective, which is a collective mindset we develop based on our age. (For example, when we’re teenagers, we find that our parents’ way of seeing the world doesn’t match our experience.) Our values are shaped by the generation we live in and how our generation reacts to the previous one.
Not everyone in a generation is the same, of course—there are more aggressive people who become leaders, people who prefer to follow, and rebels who try not to fit into their own generation. (However, even though the rebels might outwardly try to be different from other members of their generation, their actions are usually motivated by the same spirit. For example, the young conservatives in the 1960s might have been preaching values that opposed the rest of the generations’, but they did so using the same idealism and passion as the rest of their generation.)
In this law, we’ll first study generational awareness. Then, we’ll use what we’ve learned to make people like us.
Generational awareness is a knowledge of how our time shapes us, and more generally, how generations shape everyone. We can acquire this awareness by studying generational cycles and collective spirit.
Each generation has different art and thinking styles, and these styles alternate and repeat throughout the generations. Even what might appear to be surface-level (such as fashion) is in fact related to underlying psychological shifts. For example, when looser clothing became popular in the 1780s, this coincided with a desire for fewer societal constraints.
Generations follow a four-phase cycle:
The cycle always includes the new generation pushing back against the values of the previous generation. The author thinks this might be because we develop our generational perspective when we’re young and tend to think absolutes. Additionally, this pattern is probably somewhat responsible for our survival—if we continued by getting wilder and wilder, or more and more conservative, humanity would probably die out.
Technology is speeding up the generational cycle. These days, there are more crises, and it can be hard to identify which ones are notable turning points in the cycles.
Collective spirit is a mood and way of relating to people. Each generation develops their own spirit and it morphs as the generation ages, but its core always remains the same.
Here’s how this spirit develops during different life stages:
When we’re young, we’re impressionable and we’re highly influenced by our parents and teachers. We adopt their values, perspectives, and spirit.
As we get older, we start to connect more with our peers. By the time we’re teenagers, we have much more in common with the people our age than our parents, and we’re actively rebelling against our parents and trying to carve out our own separate identity.
At this time, we start to develop collective spirit and we create our own culture—what we think is funny or cool or valuable is different from what our parents would characterize as such. The more we learn about the world, the more we realize our parents haven’t interpreted it very accurately, and we need a more relevant perspective.
The clash between generations is also part of the collective spirit. Usually, four generations are alive at the same time, and their relationship to each other (called the zeitgeist) shapes all of them.
Sometimes, one generation’s collective spirit (usually the teenage one, because youth are more flexible and restless) is so strong it takes over the prevailing culture.
Interestingly, today, because technology has aided globalization, people might have more in common with someone halfway across the world who’s a member of the same generation than someone in a different generation in their region.
As we hit our twenties and thirties, we acquire the power to start changing the world as we move into the workforce. We continue to develop our collective spirit as we conflict with the older generation, who judge us and see us as too young and immature to make changes. (Being judged by an older generation dates back to at least Babylonian times—an inscription on a tablet from 1000 BC complains that the youth of that time were “lazy” and “rotten.”) We judge them back.
None of us can judge objectively because we’re influenced by our generational thinking. Additionally, most generations see their flaws as values.
At this point in our lives, members of our generation have taken leadership roles and have even more power to change the world. Our collective spirit develops as we judge the younger generation, just as the older generation judged us. Typically, our attitude is that youth these days are a problem, though we might be secretly envious of their youth.
Consciously understanding your generation’s collective spirit will help you determine values related to success, failure, status, and expression. Assess the spirit by studying:
Once you understand your generation and your zeitgeist, you can use this knowledge to make yourself and your ideas popular. For example, if there’s something about the world or a different generation that you don’t like, it’s highly likely that a large proportion of your generation feels this too, so you’ll have support if you try to make a change.
Here are some ways to take advantage of your generational knowledge to make yourself likable:
Strategy #1: Associate yourself with a historical figure in a similar zeitgeist. Since the generational cycle repeats regularly, there will be historical movements and leaders that are similar to you and what you’re trying to do today. These figures have a mythic air that you can use to lend yourself some gravitas (but be a more relevant, progressive version).
Strategy #2: Use childhood callbacks (if you still remember your childhood). Everyone in your generation had similar childhood experiences and childhood was an emotional time, so if you can recreate this spirit when presenting your ideas, they’ll resonate.
Strategy #3: Invent a new way for people to interact with each other. People always want to connect with each other and if you can create a venue or new way of using technology, or break down communication barriers, people will like your idea.
Strategy #4: Don’t criticize your generation. If there’s a particular part of your generation’s spirit you don’t agree with, try to subvert or redirect it rather than attacking it head-on.
Strategy #5: Adapt. As you get older and as younger generations start to enter the workforce, take leadership positions, and make changes, you need to adapt your own spirit to maintain the breadth of your audience. You might adopt some of the younger generation’s values.
Strategy #6: Don’t let the past influence you. When you were a child, your parents and other adults of their generation instilled their values in you, so you may feel conflicted about making a change. Pull away from the past and go your own way. Others will follow.
Strategy #7: See into the future. Collective spirit and the generational cycle make people act in predictable ways. If you can see sense changes in attitudes and articulate them early, people will connect with you and want to follow you.
Extended Example: French Revolution
When King Louis XV died, many French citizens hoped that his successor, his 20-year-old grandson Louis XVI, would revitalize the country. The lower classes were restless, wanted power, and thought that many elements of the monarchy had run their course. However, Louis XVI was unaware of Law #9 and tried to stop the generational cycle, which ultimately led to his execution.
Though Louis XVI was young, he clung to the ways of past generations. He was terrified to take power and took comfort in the outdated concept of divine rule, which stated that he was crowned because God had chosen him. He continued to run the country as his grandfather had, even though the citizens were clamoring for change, notably tax reform.
Unlike Louis XVI, middle-class lawyer Georges-Jacques Danton was aware of Law #9 and saw signs that the citizens were getting fed up with the king and upper classes. He predicted that there was going to be unrest and gave speeches about the future of France. He became popular and so much of the public supported his ideas that the king was forced to call an Estates General assembly to discuss the tax reforms with the citizens, nobility, and clergy.
Louis XVI held the assembly at Versailles, expecting that the palace’s grandeur, imagery, and symbolism would remind the commoners of their place and the monarchy’s power. However, the commoners were unimpressed by the palace—to them, it was old and out of style. They were even less impressed by Louis XVI’s refusal to concede on the tax reforms. To Louis XVI’s shock, the citizens created a group called the National Assembly and called for a constitutional monarchy.
Louis XVI ordered the organization to disband. They disobeyed. No one had ever disobeyed a royal decree before and Louis XVI couldn’t understand why the people weren’t behaving as the previous generation would have. He tried to use force to get people to re-believe in traditional values.
The revolutionaries, including Danton, revolted. Louis XVI and his family were taken prisoner, the National Assembly voted to make France a republic, and Danton was named minister of justice. Louis XVI was executed.
In the previous two laws, we learned how to manage human nature when belonging to a group. Now, we’ll learn how to manage human nature when it comes to leaders and authority.
By nature, humans have conflicted emotions about almost everything. However, people tend not to admit these conflicts to themselves, or even notice them in others, because they’re confusing and require extensive self-reflection to untangle. This is for three reasons:
We especially have conflicted feelings about authority figures because they remind us of the conflicting feelings we experienced toward our parents. Like our parents, we depend on authority figures—without them, we don’t have people to learn from, we fall victim to short-term thinking (more on this in Law #12: People Are Bad at Long-Term Thinking), and there’s nothing to rebel against, so we don’t learn to think outside the box. Additionally, in leaderless groups, everyone’s individual needs pull the group in so many different directions that the group doesn’t have purpose and never makes progress.
We also, however, crave independence from authority figures. We want to disassociate from leaders because they make us feel inferior and envious, or because we fear they might manipulate their power to achieve their own ends, rather than what’s best for the group.
These conflicted feelings cause us to act fickle towards authority figures. For example, in older times, if something went wrong under a king’s rule, he could be executed, and people would celebrate at these events. Today’s leaders are “executed” via losing elections or public shaming. Additionally, when it comes to established leaders, this fickleness can come from a fear of corruption—the longer someone’s in power, the greater chance they have of being corrupted.
In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and make people like us.
Authority and leadership aren’t synonymous. Authority comes from striving for a higher purpose, which is a fundamental human need. People need purpose to help them guide their behavior for two reasons:
Leadership, on the other hand, is just holding a position of power.
It’s possible for someone with little authority to end up in a leadership position, especially today, because many people, even those in charge, associate negative connotations with authority and avoid using it.
Therefore, it’s important to assess leaders before choosing to join their groups or follow them. Otherwise, we might decide to follow someone who doesn’t actually have a vision, regurgitates a groups’ desires, or is susceptible to the collective emotions of the group.
To learn to recognize and measure authority, think about your parents, teachers, mentors, bosses, and leaders in society and reflect on how much of an effect they’ve had on you, others, and the groups they lead. Try to figure out where they get (or don’t get) their authority from in specific moments.
If you can’t find a leader you want to follow, you can also meet or partly meet your need for guidance by developing personal authority. This involves finding your purpose and using it, instead of or in an addition to an outside authority figure, to guide your actions. (Note that purposes aren’t the same as ego.)
In general, our purpose is to find our own niche in the ecosystem of humanity so that we contribute to the world’s diversity. The world we live in today was created by others fulfilling their purposes in the past. (For example, the physics equations we learn in school were developed by ancient astronomers.) All of us have the responsibility to contribute something to society.
Our more specific purposes are determined by our unique talents and interests. All purposes are fine as long as they’re personal and internal.
Once we find our purpose, we’ll know how to behave when confronted with decisions and opportunities and reap the following benefits:
Additionally, when following our purposes, some of our negative, conflicting emotions will be changed into something productive or disappear entirely:
Boredom. If we aren’t doing something that matches our interest and engages us, we become chronically bored. We might try to distract ourselves with vacations or new hobbies, but nothing holds our interest for long due to the law of diminishing returns. Once we have a purpose, however, practicing skills is motivating because we know they’ll lead us somewhere concrete.
Insecurity. If we don’t feel like we’re working towards anything, we don’t have goals and can’t accomplish anything of value. We become sensitive to criticism, which makes it even harder to learn and improve. Once we have purpose, however, we know that we’re realizing our potential and have accomplishments to demonstrate we’re on the right path. Our doubts are about our work, not ourselves, and we’re able to tell the difference between helpful and unhelpful criticism.
Anxiety and stress. Lacking purpose, we were never forced to achieve a goal and spent most of our time avoiding pain. When we encounter unavoidable, stressful situations we don’t know how to cope with stress and suffer. However, once we have purpose, we regularly experience anxiety and stress in small doses as we achieve smaller goals that are related to our larger purpose. We learn to manage pressure and can channel it into motivation.
Depression. Without purpose, we don’t have any sense that our life has meaning, and we feel empty. However, once we have purpose, we’re happier because we know we’re living up to our potential and contributing to the good of humanity. We’ll still have low moments, but armed with purpose, these moments can be used for reflection.
Most people’s purposes don’t come to them naturally. While a few people might successfully identify them in childhood or have a eureka moment later in life, most people have to spend a fair amount of time reflecting to discover them.
There are four strategies for finding your purpose. The goal of all of them is to look beyond the influences of the people you know and society to find out what you uniquely are interested in.
Strategy #1: Identify your brain’s favorite type of intelligence. According to psychologist Howard Gardner, everyone’s brain has an affinity for a different type of intelligence, such as intelligence in math, music, or physical activity. When you’re doing one of these activities and it feels natural, that’s your intelligence type.
Strategy #2: Listen to your body. When you stray from your purpose or take a wrong turn, you’ll feel uncomfortable. The path is broad and there’s room for exploring, but it’s always headed in the same general direction. (The path can also include many facets—for example, some people find their purpose in combining fields of study. Leonardo da Vinci mastered both art and science.)
Strategy #3: Identify your natural abilities. Reflect on what activities feel easy and natural for you and what activities you’re happy to practice for long periods. You also probably won’t be overly bothered by criticism when doing these activities.
Strategy #4: Identify your primal inclinations, which are things you’re attracted to. Think back to what interested and fascinated you when you were a child. You probably won’t know why you were drawn to this activity (if you were pushed towards something by your parents, then it's not primal). Often, you’ll have been drawn to something after watching someone else do it.
If you’re just starting your career, explore your inclinations widely. For example, if you’re called to science, try biology, chemistry, physics, and so on. If you have experience already, don’t make a drastic career change. Instead, find a way to direct the skills you already have towards your purpose.
Once you’re determined your purpose, you can use the following strategies to pursue it:
Strategy #1: Transform pain and negativity into motivators. To be successful, you need skills, but skill acquisition can be painful because it requires many hours of practice, honest assessment of your abilities, criticism, and overcoming obstacles.
Strategy #2: Spend time with purposeful people and avoid purposeless ones. Because humans mirror the emotions of others, physically surround yourself with people who know their purpose so that their drive will wear off on you. These people are easy to recognize: The young ones seem fated for success, and the older ones have a resume of accomplishments. Additionally, purposeful people might be able to offer advice.
Strategy #3: Break projects into smaller steps. A purpose is by nature a long-term, overarching goal, but it can seem so large and far away that it’s overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. Create smaller, shorter goals that work towards the overall goal to avoid being overwhelmed. Think about the overall goal every once in a while to recalibrate your path and inspire you.
Strategy #4: Create peak experiences, which are experiences during which you transcend the everyday and become aware that you have greater potential than you realize. To do this:
For example, to create peak experiences, when actor Ingrid Bergman got a new role, she’d obsess over it. She didn’t think about how much money was making. Instead, she spoke to the crew about the writing and dialogue, isolated herself so she could connect with the role and forget about everything else in her life.
These days, finding purpose is harder than it used to be. In the past, people didn’t have so many choices—there weren’t that many jobs and roles. If they didn’t know what direction to take, there were mentors and advisors who could help.
Today, however, the amount of choices is overwhelming. A lot of traditional support systems, such as religion or, are disappearing and as a result, guidance on behavior, such as conventions or taboos, is also disappearing. As a result, some people:
If we can avoid the most common false purposes, we’ll be steered toward real purposes instead. Here are the common ones:
False purpose #1: Finding pleasure. When we choose some form of pleasure as our purpose (eating, videogames, and so on), it won’t ultimately satisfy us. We experience diminishing returns and can become addicted.
False purpose #2: Microcauses and groups. These movements and cults typically don’t have any concrete strategies to reach their goals, which are vague and tend to revolve around venting and getting rid of something rather than achieving something. For example, a group might want to get rid of a different group they envy or hate.
False purpose #3: Income and status. Often, the desire for income or status is related to wanting to feel superior. Superiority isn’t a concrete benchmark, so no matter how successful we are, we’re never satisfied and keep searching, which can make us depressed. (The best way to get lasting income and status is actually to follow your purpose because this will attract success.)
False purpose #4: Fame. Fame, like income and status, is a way of feeling superior to others. Due to the rise in social media, there’s a lot of competition for attention and it’s hard to maintain. (The best way to get lasting success, as with income and status, is to follow your purpose.)
False purpose #5: Skepticism. Skepticism is the feeling that life has no purpose and includes ideas like all politicians are corrupt and no matter what we do, the world is doomed, so we may as well do nothing. Skepticism is a way of hiding fear of failure and is a form of laziness.
There are several strategies for gaining authority, and they’re effective regardless of where you are in your life—if you’re not yet in a leadership position, the strategies will make you seem destined for one. If you’re already a leader, they’ll help you strengthen your position.
Strategy #1: Develop goals. Understand that your responsibility as a leader is to guide the group towards goals that are in everyone’s best interests. If you don’t do this, your followers will feel disconnected and the group’s unity will fracture. People will work slower, form factions, become passive-aggressive, or lose respect. This slows down the group’s progress towards the vision.
Strategy #2: Plan for the long-term. Most people can only think about the short term (see Law #13 for more information), so if you can elevate your thoughts and think further ahead, you’ll be able to predict the future and people will trust you. Once you have a vision, create a path to get there. Don’t waver if people doubt you, but be prepared to adapt the path as necessary.
Strategy #3: Prioritize the group. When people realize you’re working towards the greater good of the group, they’ll be more likely to give you attention and follow you.
Strategy #4: Lead by example. Work harder than anyone else, meet the highest standards, make sacrifices, and be accountable. This will encourage others to do the same. Start leading by example as early as possible—if you try to do it too late, it will look like a ploy.
Strategy #5: Set a precedent for toughness during your first impression. When people break rules or slack off, punish them. You can show your other sides later, but if you show too much softness up front, people will think you’re weak.
Strategy #6: Be authentic. Everyone’s authority style is different because everyone has different strengths and characters, but there are some authority archetypes that everyone fits into. If you can act in accordance with whichever archetype you most identify with, followers will see you as a natural, fated for the job rather than someone who just wants power. Here are the archetypes:
Strategy #7: Develop empathy. We need to use empathy to connect with individuals and get them to feel what we’re feeling (reciprocal respect, for example), or alert ourselves to their feelings.
Strategy #8: Don’t be entitled. Entitlement makes us lazy, self-absorbed, and delusional. Instead of being entitled, leaders have to earn their followers’ support. (Leaders are especially susceptible to entitlement because followers regularly hide their true emotions so the leader will like them. This masking makes it harder for leaders to notice ambivalence or even secret resentments that could lead to a coup.)
Strategy #9: Make yourself appear mysterious and complex. You might do this by sending mixed signals, being strategic with your presence and absence, using silence strategically, and being accountable without over apologizing. This will create an aura of mystery and people will be drawn to you. (For more on this, see Law #15: People Want What They Don’t Have). Don’t be too contradictory, though, or people will think you’re unstable.
Strategy #10: Never take anything away from people. Prioritize maintaining resources so you never have to take them from anyone. If the group needs to give something up, such as money or privileges, to achieve its ends, give it up yourself first, and try to make the shortage temporary.
Strategy #11: Don’t break your promises. If you promise people something new and don’t deliver it, people will feel like you’re taking it from them even though they've never had it before.
Strategy #12: Remember that people hide their emotions. If you’re in charge of people, they likely won’t feel comfortable showing their true emotions, so assess their actions instead.
Strategy #13: Weed out bad apples. There are some inherently negative people who will only ever take away from, rather than augment, the group. Identify them as soon as possible, and either kick them out of the group, or put them in a position where they can’t corrupt anyone else.
Strategy #14: Adapt with time. The longer you’re in a leadership position, the more danger there is that you’ll start to feel entitled to the position and become more conservative. Maintain your empathy and keep doing all of the above strategies as younger people challenge you.
In addition to these strategies, you may occasionally have to employ a motivational speech, force or punishment, or reward.
No matter how good your vision or empathy, people will always be fickle towards leaders. But if you do a good job of applying these strategies and people trust you, when you make mistakes, you’ll be forgiven more quickly because people don’t want you to step down, or they'll be lost.
Establishing your authority is only the first step to becoming a likable enough leader to get things done. Your next job is to create a healthy group dynamic that pushes all members towards cooperation, open-mindedness, and achievement. Groups with these healthy dynamics improve society.
There are six strategies for creating a healthy group dynamic. (They’re harder to implement with older groups that are more set in their ways, but it can be done. Be patient and make sure you don’t get overpowered by the existing culture.)
Strategy #1: Clarify the group’s purpose. When a group doesn’t have an overall direction, members get confused about what they should be feeling and working towards, and start to prioritize their individual needs rather than the group’s. Therefore, it’s important to clearly define purpose.
It’s also important to keep reminding the group of the purpose—they tend to forget over time, especially when they have success.
Strategy #2: Create a strong leadership team. As the overall leader, you need to save your mental energy and focus for the big picture. If you micromanage, you’ll confuse the purpose. Put together a team of trustworthy, good-spirited leaders to whom you can delegate tasks. When choosing team members, prioritize their characters and competence. Pick people who are good at the things you're not, and pick a diverse group.
Strategy #3: Never isolate yourself. Don’t ask (or allow) your leadership team to filter information. While you do have a lot to keep track of as a leader and can’t get bogged down in details, you need to have a realistic idea of reality because you’ll make better decisions when you know the whole picture. Make it clear that anyone can talk to anyone in the hierarchy and that talking about failure isn’t off-limits. Don’t appear to prefer a certain source of information or idea. Bring in outside experts. Finally, make sure to explain decisions to your group.
Strategy #4: Be fair. Treat all members the same. If someone isn’t pulling their weight, kick them out of the group. If something needs to be done, you do it too. This will help avoid envy.
Strategy #5: Spark the contagious emotion. Since people in groups are susceptible to feeling the emotions of others, especially the leader’s, feel whatever you want the group to feel and this will spread. Resolution and openness are always good options. Confidence can be productive if it comes from demonstrated accomplishments; otherwise, it can turn into grandiosity.
Strategy #6: Test the group. You need to know how much you can ask of your group, so to find this limit, apply pressure, such as giving them an unusually short deadline or difficult project. See who can handle the pressure and who can’t. It’s fine to have a few people—but only a few—who can’t manage pressure, if they have redeeming qualities.
After each challenge, the group will be stronger and should be able to handle new crises and obstacles.
Extended Example: Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I was very aware that people feel conflicting emotions and from her first public appearance, she used the above strategies to gain authority and make people like her.
When Elizabeth I was crowned as a young woman, she had no political experience, and her country was in debt and embroiled in religious conflict. She did have the throne, but instead of feeling entitled to power, she worked to earn her subjects’ respect. During her coronation procession, she showed different, authentic sides of herself, such as her ability to listen, affection for her subjects, and down-to-earth way of speaking. This helped her and the public connect.
She also worked hard to earn her councilors’ respect. On her first day as ruler, she held a meeting with all her councilors and showed that she was an expert in the country’s finances—in fact, she knew more than they did—and that her goal was to make England prosper. She regularly worked past midnight, which impressed her ministers.
One of her ministers, Sir William Cecil, admired her intelligence but didn’t think she was fit to rule because she was a woman. He planned to convince her to marry someone who could rule in her place. Elizabeth knew this would be bad for the country. If she married a foreign prince, he’d put his own country’s interests first. Instead of giving in, she prioritized the group’s (England’s) best interests and outmaneuvered Cecil by strategically starting marriage negotiations with leaders of other countries—if the Spanish got aggressive, she’d go speak to the French, and fearing an English-French alliance, Spain would retreat. By the time Cecil realized what was happening, he had to admit that she’d proved she would be a better ruler than anyone she could marry.
When Elizabeth I made her one mistake—not immediately executing the traitor Mary, Queen of Scots—the country forgave her because she had such a good track record.
(Shortform note: For more on Elizabeth I and other powerful people, read our summary of The 48 Laws of Power.)
In Parts 1, 2, and 3, we learned to develop empathy, manage toxic types, control our own nature, and make people like us. In Part 4, we’ll look at how to contend with our inherent self-sabotaging tendencies and stop them from derailing our progress.
By nature, everyone is ruled by their emotions, not their minds, and we’re all a bit irrational. Everyone is constantly feeling emotions, and these emotions affect our thinking and push us towards thoughts that make us feel good. Yet almost no one knows or accepts the influence of emotion—almost all of us think we’re rational and make decisions based on logic and reason.
As a result, whenever something bad happens, we blame outside forces, not ourselves. The explanation we come up with is nearly always vague, such as attributing the failure to other people or groups sabotaging us or bad luck. Most of the time, however, we’ve caused the failure ourselves with our inherent irrationality.
Rational people are aware of their inherent irrationality and try, as much as it’s possible, to dispense with emotions in their thinking. They admit that they’re inclined to be irrational, and they strive for a balance between logic and emotion and to understand the source of their emotions.
In contrast, irrational people are unaware of and deny their emotions, or they get even more emotional when someone points out that they’re letting their emotions influence them.
Rationality is a skill that needs to be learned, not a trait that everyone’s born with. In this law, we’ll first study different types of irrationality. They, we’ll use this knowledge to learn how to control our own nature.
Fundamental irrationality is the low-level constant irrationality everyone is constantly the victim of. It’s commonly driven by the emotions pleasure (which people want) and pain (which people want to avoid) and causes a variety of biases:
Bias #1: Conviction. This bias makes us think that if someone (including us) feels strongly about something, it must be right. When we see a leader speak passionately about something, we assume they’ve assessed the situation and their strong feelings are justified. When we feel strongly about something ourselves, this covers up doubt—if we can muster enough energy to strongly defend something, it must be valuable, right?
Bias #2: Appearance. This bias makes us think that we can successfully assess people’s character based on their appearance. This bias has two snags: 1) when people have an audience, they act in a way they know the audience will like, and 2) when we see a positive or negative quality in someone, we assume this positivity or negativity is representative of them as a whole.
Bias #3: Group. This bias makes us think our ideas aren’t influenced by others, which, as we learned in Part #3, isn’t the case. We prefer to be with others who have the same ideas as we have, to the point where we’re so scared of being alone that we adopt new ideas in order to fit in. This is so behind-the-scenes in the brain that we think we came up with the ideas ourselves.
Bias #4: Blame. This bias makes us think that we learn from our experiences. In fact, whenever we fail or make a mistake, what we usually do is blame others, a temporary lapse in logic, or circumstances, rather than search for the real reason that will prevent the mistake again. It’s too painful to admit we cause problems.
Bias #5: Superiority. This bias makes us think we’re better than the average person. This bias usually manifests in the fact that we’re much better at seeing the faults of others than our own. We assume that we’ve got everything together and earned it.
Bias #6: Confirmation. This bias makes us think that we come to decisions rationally, by studying available evidence. In fact, humans tend to search for evidence that supports what we already think, instead of looking at all available evidence.
To avoid this bias, never trust anyone else’s assessment of evidence. Skeptically study the evidence yourself, and seek out evidence that disagrees with what you and others want.
High-grade irrationally is a flare-up of emotion caused by a trigger, usually something external such as encountering a person who aggravates us. When emotion flares, it clouds our vision, takes over our attention, and we see and interpret everything through that filter. This filter intensifies the emotion, which makes us more sensitive and susceptible to feeling other emotions and puts us in a tense, reactive state. These states propel us into action such as violence because we need to release the tension somehow.
There are several different types of triggers:
Trigger #1: Sudden failure. When something goes wrong unexpectedly, we react irrationally by feeling cursed or fearful that the situation will become permanent.
To avoid this, step back and channel optimism.
Trigger #2: Sudden success. When something goes right unexpectedly, our brains release chemicals that excite us and prompt us to find a way to make the event happen again.
To avoid this, step back and channel pessimism.
Trigger #3: Stress. When we’re put under pressure or in a dangerous situation, our brain’s ancient survival mechanism kicks in and overpowers our logic.
To avoid lashing out, be aware of your own emotional state. No one can be completely emotionless while stressed, but you can control what decisions you make.
Trigger #4: Reminders of early childhood, especially our parents. Our parents’ influence on us was strongest when we were youngest, and we can carry memories forward throughout our lives. The trigger is identifiable by behavior that seems out of character, uncontrollable, and/or childish.
The only way to avoid this trigger is to notice it.
Trigger #5: Interacting with inflamers. Inflamers are charismatic, mythic, and skilled at expressing their own emotions, which encourages others to mirror them. They make others obsessed with them and incapable of logical thought.
It’s easiest to notice the effects of inflamers on others because when you’re being affected yourself, you’re so emotional you likely won’t notice. Once you’ve identified a person as an inflamer, look for their human characteristics and flaws to remind yourself they’re not mythic.
Trigger #6: Being in a group. Use the strategies in Part #3 to avoid being triggered by group behavior.
There are several strategies to empower cognition enough to compete with our emotions. Though irrationality is inherent and unavoidable, there are two reasons to be hopeful about managing our emotions:
Here are the strategies:
Strategy #1: Be aware of how your emotions affect your rationality. As soon as you know how the emotional part of your brain works, it loses its ability to take over. This strategy is especially effective in avoiding group bias. To do this:
Strategy #2: Identify your triggers. Whenever you get angry about something that’s not very important, you’re probably actually being triggered by something else, such as a different emotion like envy. Try writing down your reflections in a journal. This will help you push your ego aside. Once you get good at this in retrospect, you’ll be able to identify your feelings in the moment.
Strategy #3: Don’t respond immediately. Whenever you’re presented with something to react to, wait before responding. You can do this by physically leaving a situation, or letting yourself imagine your reaction but not carrying it out. Never communicate with someone while you’re feeling emotion; wait for it to calm. The more time you can give yourself, the more logical you can be.
Strategy #4: Don’t try to change people. Other people are major triggers of emotion because we want them to behave in a particular way (usually like us), and they never do. Instead of thinking of people like yourself, think of them like inanimate objects—unchangeable and impossible to project on. It’s harder to do this with negative people, but it’s possible.
Strategy #5: Find the right ratio of emotion and logic. Think before you choose to act, but once you’re acting, let your emotions drive you. If you tend too far towards logic, you’ll miss out on curiosity and new ideas.
Strategy #6: Find enjoyment in rationality. Being more rational shouldn’t be unpleasant. Rationality gives you more control over your life, which can make you not just calm but happy because you’re capable of achieving goals.
Extended Example: Athens
The people of Athens, like all of us, were irrational. Also like all of us, they had the potential to learn rationality, and one of them, Pericles, did.
Greek statesman and general Pericles noticed that all the Athenian leaders thought they were rational, but, in fact, all their decisions were driven by emotions—they wanted power, money, and attention. Pericles assumed he was also driven by emotions and tried to separate his feelings and his thinking. Pericles did this by never reacting in the moment, physically leaving heated situations, and analyzing his emotions. In war, he tried to minimize loss of life and fought only necessary battles, which saved Athens a lot of money and allowed the city to build masterpieces like the Parthenon.
One day, Sparta presented Athens with an ultimatum—if Athens didn’t agree to new terms of peace, Sparta would attack. Pericles thought about the situation rationally. If Athens gave in, Sparta would just keep pushing for more and more. But if Athens tried to fight, they would lose, because Sparta was more powerful.
Pericles’s solution was to ignore the ultimatum but make it so inconvenient for Sparta to attack that they would just give up. Pericles and the other Athenian citizens would shelter inside city walls when the Spartans arrived instead of engaging with them. Meanwhile, the Athenian navy would raid Spartan coastal towns and keep Athens supplied. The Spartan army, parked outside Athens, would become frustrated and eventually go bankrupt.
It was a good, rational plan, but in the second year of the war, Athens was hit by a plague. Pericles died and there were no other rational leaders to take his place. The Athenians embraced their irrationality and went to war, which lasted for years and resulted in huge losses of life on both sides. Eventually, Athens lost.
In the previous law, we looked at irrationality, a potentially self-sabotaging trait we all share. Now, we’ll look at a second universal trait—our inability to think long term.
Humans tend to be concerned with the present rather than the future because our brains evolved to look for immediate rather than far-off danger. This was beneficial in earlier times when all our problems were animal-like—eat, sleep, avoid predators, and so on. We didn’t need to understand complex situations or reason; we needed to notice the most dramatic elements of a situation and react quickly. We also tended to assume the current conditions were permanent.
Now, however, this evolutionary adaptation is to our detriment. The world is more complicated and long-term dangers are larger problems than most of what we’ll encounter in the present. For example, we pay more attention to terrorism than global warming, even though global warming is far more dangerous. Additionally, our attention spans are even worse because of technology, which is distracting.
In this law, we’ll learn how to control our own nature by replacing shortsightedness with long-term thinking.
We all think that we’re aware of the long term because we all have goals (though many of our goals are vague and more like wishes than plans). Of course, none of us is as immune to this law as we think we are.
First, we’ll look at some signs of shortsightedness. Then, we’ll look at how to escape this mindset.
If you see any of the following four signs, you might be suffering from shortsightedness:
Whenever you do something, there are complicated consequences that you might not be able to predict.
If you find yourself thinking that if you do something, your action will directly lead to only one outcome, you may be suffering from short-term thinking. It’s impossible to predict all the consequences, but the best long-term thinkers consider as many outcomes as possible.
A spin-off of nonconsequential thinking is believing that if your intentions are good, the outcome will be good. This is not always the case.
If you’re involved in many struggles, and none of them are going anywhere, but you don’t want to give up because you’ve spent so many resources already, this reluctance to retreat may signal shortsightedness.
Today, we can get information almost instantly—news is reported the moment it breaks and we can see what’s trending on any social media platform in real time. This makes us impatient and shortens our attention spans.
If you find yourself assuming that whatever’s currently happening will continue to happen indefinitely, or reacting to moment-by-moment trends, you may be falling victim to shortsightedness. In reality, snapshots aren’t usually representative of the larger context—for example, a stock price at 10 a.m. gives no indication of what the price will be in a week or even an hour.
The fourth sign of this law beginning to take hold of you is if you can no longer prioritize—you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information surrounding you. Knowing all the details can give you a false sense of control because you know a lot, but you don’t know what to do with it or what’s important. This will overtax your brain and potentially lead to confusion and headaches.
When you see any of the signs of shortsightedness in yourself, you can break out of this law’s thrall by adopting a farsighted perspective, which involves simulating hindsight and giving yourself perspective unclouded by emotions.
There are three elements to a farsighted perspective:
This is easier said than done—most of us don’t like to think too much about the future because sometime in the future, we’ll die. We usually don’t think more than a few years ahead, and usually only vaguely.
The past also makes us think of the passage of time, so we avoid thinking of that too. This disconnects us from our past selves—the person we were back then doesn’t seem much like the current version of ourselves.
Thinking only about the present, however, is full of so many ups and downs that it causes anxiety. Accepting the passage of time will make it easier to manage your emotions.
To change your views on the past and future:
Extended Example: The South Sea Company
In the 1700s, the South Sea Company created contagious shortsightedness in England that resulted in widespread financial ruin.
In 1719, the French Mississippi Company, which exploited resources in Louisiana, was doing very well and everyone in France was becoming rich as they bought and sold shares. This made English businessman John Blunt jealous and angry, and he decided to start a similar venture with the South Sea Company, which he led. The South Sea Company had a monopoly on trade between England and South America but did little trading. Its main job was to help the English government manage debt.
Blunt came up with an ambitious plan—the South Sea Company would take over the government’s large national debt, receive interest, and then sell the debt as South Sea Company shares.
However, there was one glaring problem with this plan—to make shareholders rich, the share price had to keep rising, but the company didn’t actually do any trade or have any assets. Blunt should have realized this—he was normally a shrewd businessman—but the hype in France got to him and made him focus on the present rather than the long term. Everyone else in England got caught up in the fever as well and invested their savings in shares, including very logical people like Sir Isaac Newton.
There were unexpected (from Blunt’s point of view) consequences. Blunt had inspired others to start new ventures and sell stocks, which increased competition for South Sea stocks. People cashed out their stocks to buy land, which was a safer investment. The Mississippi venture crashed and the French economy fell into a recession, foreshadowing a crash in England.
Blunt could only think of short-term solutions and many of them caused new problems. Soon the economy crashed, people committed suicide, and there was an attempt on Blunt’s life.
In the previous two laws, we learned two of the self-sabotaging traits (irrationality and inability to think long term) that everyone possesses. Now, we’ll look at the idiosyncratic characteristics we have that might sabotage us, starting with our compulsiveness.
Our characters are at the core of our being and determine our actions, even when we’re not consciously aware of them. While we can shape our characters, we can’t change them. This is why we tend to repeat the same mistakes, even when we try to do things differently, and this compulsiveness can be so strong that we believe that it’s fate or predisposition.
There are four layers to character, all of which determine our character traits. The first two are unconscious and we have to actively look for them to understand them.
1. Genetics. Our genes determine our moods, whether we’re introverted or extroverted, and potentially certain traits such as greediness, anxiety, or openness. (Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein believed that greedy infants were born that way.)
2. Upbringing. This layer of our character is formed by our relationships with our caregivers up until we’re four years old. During this time, we experienced intense emotions and were most susceptible to others’ influence. There are four relationships between children and mothers according to psychoanalyst and anthropologist John Bowlby, and these relationships often determine how our future relationships play out:
3. Habits. As we grow up, when we make decisions, we create neuron patterns in our brains, and once we’ve established this neurological roadmap, we tend to keep following it.
4. Masks. As people discover our character flaws, we hide them by spinning them into something more positive or acting the opposite. This layer is what makes it hard to accurately assess other people’s characters.
If these four influences are contradictory—for example, our genetics dispose us to be greedy but our parents raised us to be generous—our characters become contradictory too, often driving ambivalent or conflicting behavior.
In this law, we’ll look at how to manage toxic types. Then, we’ll look at how to control our own nature.
Character must be your number-one consideration when choosing people to surround yourself with, such as your partner or boss. However, on the whole, we’re not very good at assessing people’s characters because we tend to judge people on the obvious. Often, we only see their reputation, position, or a myth they’ve created around themselves.
Additionally, we like to believe that people are intelligent and decent, and we like to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they’re successful, we like to believe they’re good (even though it’s very possible to become successful by taking advantage of others). If they hold certain positions—such as priest—we like to believe they have a moral code that fits the position’s (which is often not the case).
In reality, some people have weak characters, and no matter how many positive traits a person might have, their character will overpower them. This is because people with weak character can’t take criticism, so they can’t learn or change.
People with strong character, however, can learn from mistakes because they have enough self-worth to handle criticism. Their character is more flexible and they can maintain their principles while also being open-minded. They keep their promises, can finish things, can prioritize global needs rather than their personal ones, and they’re patient.
There are two steps to accurately judging character:
The best way to determine people’s character is to study their behavior patterns. Research their past and pay attention to their current behavior, looking for repeated actions.
Some situations are particularly useful when it comes to judging character:
Situation #1: Positions of power. When people don’t have power, they often hide their true natures, because these would impede their ability to get power. Once they have it, however, they can act more naturally. Power usually doesn’t change people—we had just never seen their true selves.
Situation #2: The workplace. Look at how people treat employees—if there’s a discrepancy between how someone presents herself and how she treats people, she may have a weak character.
Situation #3: Daily life. Often, in the workplace, people can channel their flaws into productive actions. Outside of that situation, however, their flaws don’t have an outlet and may be revealed.
Situation #4: Small inconveniences. People tend to react to small things the same way they’ll react to bigger things, so if someone reacts inappropriately to something small, they may have a weak character.
Situation #5: Stressful moments. It’s harder for people to disguise their true character when under pressure because they lose their self-control. The people who do behave appropriately in these moments have strong characters.
Situation #6: Social circles. People’s choice of friends and partners often reflects childhood relationships—for example, if someone didn’t get enough attention from her parents, she might look for a partner who will fill this role for her.
Note: There are two types of people, introverts and extroverts. Extroverts value external criteria such as clothes, food, and friends, and are preoccupied with what others think of them. Introverts, on the other hand, are more interested in their own thoughts and feelings and like to spend time alone or with just a few people. These two types of people don’t tend to understand each other and often think the other is inferior. (For example, introverts think extroverts are shallow, and extroverts think introverts are no fun.) Therefore, if you’re trying to assess someone who’s a different type from you, consider if your assessment is being clouded by your dislike.
Situation #7: Tests. Make a joke at someone’s expense, share gossip, give her a hard assignment, or criticize her to see how she reacts.
Situation #8: Actions against their self-interest. Some people’s characters are so compulsive that they can’t control their actions, even when they endanger themselves.
Everyone’s character is unique, but there are certain categories that people’s characters fit loosely into. Below we’ll cover some of the most dangerous ones. They’re dangerous because they’re often hard to spot and once you’re involved with them, it’s hard to escape. If no more specific directions are given on how to handle each type, you should avoid them.
Type #1: Extreme perfectionists. At first, perfectionists appear hardworking and dedicated. If they yell at people for their performance, this can be excused because they care about doing a job right, which is admirable.
In reality, however, these traits stem from a desire for control. Perfectionists can’t delegate or depend on others, and anything they lead is disorganized because they can’t create a reporting structure, as everything has to go through them. While initially successful, they often later suffer from health problems and burnout. They eventually fail and blame others.
Avoid working for them.
Type #2: Exaggerated rebels. At first, rebels appear exciting, and they appeal to everyone’s adolescent desire to be free of authority. Their humor can be mean, which can be excused as authenticity.
In reality, however, these traits come from a desire to feel superior. Likely, as children, their parents disappointed them and as a result, they can’t stand authority or criticism. In the past, they probably ended relationships on bad terms.
Type #3: Oversensitives. At first, these people seem thoughtful and sensitive, and often considerate, intelligent, and slightly sad.
In reality, however, they take everything personally. Their parents probably didn’t give them enough attention and care, and they’re constantly reminded of this when they encounter others. In the past, they probably ended many relationships, and they always think they were the victim. Eventually, they’ll get touchy and brooding.
Avoid oversensitives because they hold grudges and seek revenge.
Type #4: Dramatics. At first, these people seem exciting, humorous, energetic, and fun. In reality, however, they’re seeking attention. As children, they discovered that they had to exaggerate and dramatize their problems to maintain their parents’ attention. In the past, they had confrontations in relationships, and they always act like the victim.
Avoid getting enmeshed with dramatics. If you do get involved, it will be difficult to get out, because they’ll make you feel guilty.
Type #5: Fountains of ideas. At first, these types appear to have good ideas and you’ll be tempted to get on board and back their projects.
In reality, however, these people never complete projects. They want power and attention, but they’re scared to pursue their ideas because it takes effort, and they always give up. As children, they probably had disorganized parents and never want to be in a situation in which they’re judged again. In the past, they probably haven’t completed anything but will blame others for this.
Avoid getting involved with any of these type’s work
Type #6: Free lovers. At first, these types seem unrepressed and capable of appropriately mixing professional and personal boundaries.
In reality, however, they see all their relationships as sexual. As children, they were probably sexually abused, and sex becomes about validation. If they don’t get enough validation, they can get depressed.
Type #7: Spoiled royalty. At first, these people seem regal, calm, and confident.
In reality, however, they want to be pampered, and they’re good at getting others to do it. You might find yourself doing them favors. As children, their parents probably spoiled them and protected them, and they may have acted helpless to get this treatment. If they don’t get what they want, they behave childishly, such as by throwing a tantrum.
Type #8: People pleasers. At first, pleasers appear considerate, accommodating, and charming.
In reality, however, this niceness is a defense mechanism. As children, their parents were probably harsh and they acted deferential and polite to avoid judgment or punishment. These types usually resent having to act this way and are often passive-aggressive and good at lying. They may secretly wish to hurt whoever’s above them.
Type #9: Rescuers. At first, these people seem like godsends—you have a problem and they want to help you.
In reality, however, these types want to control you and tamp down your independence. As children, they often had to take on a caregiving role.
Type #10: Moralizers. At first, these people seem eloquent and moral because they’re angry at injustice.
In reality, however, they have no sense of nuance. They’re judgmental and everything is black and white. As children, they were sometimes punished for their desires, which resulted in repression. They secretly want whatever they speak out about against.
You can’t change your character—no one can—but you can learn how your character determines your negative behavior, and then use this knowledge to transform weaknesses into strength and create new behavior patterns.
To start assessing your character:
Once you have a better sense of what your character is like, use the following strategies to improve it:
Strategy #1: Notice when you start acting according to patterns. You can’t consciously change your behavior until you’re aware of it.
Strategy #2: Create new habits. You can rewire your neurons and patterns by choosing to repeat behaviors that you want to have in your character. You might start with tolerance, resilience, or teamwork.
Strategy #3: Point your character in a positive direction. You’ve learned skills by repeating behaviors, and these skills can transfer to new behaviors.
Strategy #4: Spend time with people who do have a strong character so their influence will rub off on you.
It takes effort to maintain the strong parts of our character—empathy, generosity, resilience—because being decent to others can lead them to take advantage of us. On the other hand, it takes no effort to maintain weak parts of our character. If we don’t make a conscious effort to strengthen our characters, over time, the weaker parts will win out and determine our behavior.
Extended Example: Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes is an example of someone with a weak character who was good at hiding it. He had a terrible track record and made the same mistakes over and over, but people kept giving him second chances because they weren’t aware of this law.
Like everyone’s, Hughes’s character started to develop in childhood. His mother smothered him and his father expected him to represent the family name, and between the two of them, they ruled his life. He was so scared of letting his parents down that he acted very obedient but secretly hated depending on them.
When Hughes was 19, his parents died and he finally had control over himself. He inherited his father’s lucrative tool-making company and used the money to make movies and start an airline company.
However, all of these ventures failed in the exact same way—Hughes was a control freak and micromanaged everything. Projects were always behind schedule, over budget, and weak, because Hughes wasn’t an expert in either of these industries and refused to take advice or ideas from anyone because he couldn’t bear to be dependent.
For example, in 1942, the Defense Department commissioned Hughes’s company to produce transport and photo-reconnaissance planes. Hughes meddled in the engineers’ and general managers’ work and several of them quit.
Two years later, the project was so behind that the military forced Hughes to find a new general manager. He asked Charles Perelle, a superstar in aircraft production. Perelle initially didn’t want the job because he’d heard Hughes was difficult to work with, but when he met Hughes in person, this didn’t appear to be the case at all—Hughes was good at hiding his character. Hughes acted humble and promised to give Perelle authority. Hughes said that he needed Perelle’s help and that the previous problems had been caused by executives, not Hughes. Perelle took the job but quickly realized he’d been taken in. He quit less than a year later and the company never completed even a single reconnaissance plane.
In 1965, Hughes bid for another military contract. Even though his company had a terrible record, his publicity campaign and low price convinced the army to award him the job. Exactly the same thing happened—the project fell behind and didn’t produce. Hughes hadn’t learned anything from the previous contract and hadn’t changed at all.
There are four ways to shape your character: Become aware of your behavior patterns, create new habits, transfer your skills, and spend time with good influences.
What’s a recurring theme in your life? How might you become aware of this theme as it happens rather than only in hindsight? (For example, if you find yourself regularly being fired, consider whether there are any similarities in your behavior at any of the jobs.)
What’s a new behavior you’d like to develop? How could you reinforce it so it becomes routine? (For example, if you’d like to be more friendly, you might make a rule for yourself that every time you pass someone on the street, you say hello.)
What’s a trait you possess that’s making your character weak? (For example, you might be oversensitive.) How could you use this trait or the skills associated with it to strengthen your character? (For example, you might use your sensitivity to become more empathetic.)
Who do you know who has a strong character? How do you know? How could you spend more time with her?
In the previous law, we learned about the first idiosyncratic element of self-sabotaging (compulsiveness). Now, we’ll look at the second: attitude.
People think that they see the world objectively, but in fact, everyone sees a slightly different version of things, filtered by their perception, or attitude. (You can also think of attitude as your soul or life force.) Our moods vary, but in general, we all have an overarching emotion that we filter the world through. This is caused by our brains’ inherent and unconscious sensitivity to particular stimuli.
Our attitudes are determined by some of the same factors that set our characters: genetics and upbringing. We further hone our attitudes as we meet other people and have new experiences. When we encounter people we admire or like, they influence how we see the world. When we have a negative experience, we want to avoid the same thing happening, so we narrow our perspectives. Our attitude is constantly reformulating but we always have traces of its earliest shape.
There are two major types of attitudes. People experience moments of each, but in general, tend one way or another:
Type #1: Negative and limited. People with this attitude are scared of life so they avoid anything new because the larger their world gets, the less they can control. This attitude often develops in childhood if children don’t have support systems.
Type #2: Positive and open. People with this attitude are less scared and therefore are open to trying new things.
Attitudes affect more than just how we view the world—they affect how we interact with it. They drive many of our actions and affect our energy levels and health. Additionally, they’re self-fulfilling prophecies—when our attitude is negative, we expect bad things to happen to us, and because this makes us timid and narrow-minded, bad things do happen.
In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and control our own nature.
First, we’ll look at five negative attitudes and how to manage them in others and ourselves. Then, we’ll look at how to become more positive.
There are five common varieties of negative attitudes. Often, people hold more than one because negative emotions amplify each other. For example, someone who’s hostile is likely to also feel angry.
As you read through the following types, determine if you fit them by reflecting on how you:
People with this attitude view the world as being constantly against them. To deal with this, they become hostile so that they’re the source of the emotion and have more control of it. They unconsciously provoke hostility in others—for example, by being late—and this confirms their attitude that the world is hostile. They want to feel attacked and want revenge.
The hostile attitude stems from one or both of the following childhood experiences:
You can identify people with hostile attitudes by the following characteristics:
When you encounter those with hostile attitudes, don’t let them provoke you into hostility. Your neutrality will confuse them and leave them unable to retaliate against you.
If you see any signs of a hostile attitude in yourself, whenever you meet someone, think positive thoughts about them. For example, imagine that you like them before you start talking. Probably, you’ll notice that they’re not doing anything negative, which shows that the hostility you usually experience stems from you.
People with this attitude are predisposed to see the world as negative, and they respond in the same way as people with hostile attitudes—they become the source of the emotion so that they have some control.
The depressive attitude stems from childhood and develops from children feeling like their parents don’t love them. They’re too young to think that their parents are imperfect, so they assume that they’re unloved because there’s something wrong with them.
You can identify people with depressive attitudes by the following characteristics:
When you encounter those with this attitude, don’t try to convince them that life is good. Let them maintain their depressed opinions but invite them to do things with you that will increase their energy levels, which will naturally improve their mood.
If you see any signs of this attitude in yourself, realize that your body is telling you to take a break. You’ll only feel low temporarily. If your depression is ongoing, increase your energy level by working at something, especially something artistic. Art benefits from sensitivity.
People with this attitude are scared of losing control. They expect that everything is hard, and everyone will eventually let them down, which makes them anxious even before anything bad happens.
You can identify people with anxious attitudes by the following characteristics:
When you encounter those with anxious attitudes, give off calming nonverbal signals. This will encourage them to mirror you and possibly soothe them.
If you see any signs of this attitude in yourself:
People with this attitude are insecure, often about their intelligence or ability. They want to avoid situations where they might be judged, so they try not to finish things. They’re scared of both failure and success—failure because it comes with judgment, and success because they’ll have to keep living up to it.
The avoidant attitude has possible childhood roots:
You can identify people with avoidant attitudes by the following characteristics:
When you encounter people with this attitude, avoid getting into personal or professional relationships with them. Don’t try to help them—you won’t be able to. They’re too entrenched.
If you see any signs of this attitude in yourself, start a small project and finish it. Anticipate that you might fail, so that if you do, it won’t hurt that much because you’ve already prepared yourself for it. The fact that you completed the project, whatever the outcome, will increase your self-esteem because you’re so unused to finishing things.
People with this attitude are self-centered and take everything personally. They always feel wronged and oppressed. They’re constantly looking for nonverbal cues that indicate disrespect and can't deal with unfairness. They don’t lash out but instead stew and eventually retaliate. They sometimes become leaders.
You can identify people with resentful attitudes by the following characteristics:
When you encounter those with this attitude, be very careful not to do anything that they could misconstrue as insulting—they’ll hold on to this forever. The best thing to do is stay away from them as much as possible because even if you don’t do anything insulting, they’ll read it into one of your actions sooner or later.
If you see any signs of this attitude in yourself, avoid bottling up emotions. It’s better to react angrily in the moment than to keep ruminating.
There are several benefits to adopting a positive attitude. If you change your attitude, you can change your circumstances. Additionally, if you become more positive and open, your health might improve because you’ll be more energetic (the mind and body are linked). Finally, having a positive attitude gives you more control over your life because it stimulates your willpower.
To make your attitude more positive, change your view of the following elements:
Element #1: The world. Imagine that you’re an explorer excited to dive into the unknown. Don’t cling to what you already know, look for new material, whether that’s in your unconsciousness, such as your dreams, or outside yourself. Don’t worry about seeming consistent—you can change your mind whenever. Or, imagine that you’re your younger self, and try to regain the curiosity you had as a child. This will make you more creative.
Element #2: Adversity. You can’t usually control what adversity is directed at you, but you can control your response. Think of all obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to learn or become stronger.
Element #3: Yourself. Don’t accept the limits and criticisms others try to impose on you. Believe that you’ll do something great.
Element #4: Health. When we have more energy—for example, we’re excited because we’ve just fallen in love—we tend to be healthier. To help yourself go beyond your self-imposed physical limits, feel excited.
Element #5: Others. Most of the time, people aren’t directing negativity at you personally. See people as neutral. Even if someone really is out to get you, feeling calm will put you in a better position to appropriately respond.
Also, try to create the peak experiences we learned about in Law #10: People Have Conflicted Feelings, Especially About Authority Figures. These moments can create a permanent change in your attitude because they expand your world. Create these moments by:
Extended Example: Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov’s upbringing was fairly negative—he experienced a lot of hardship in his life and several of his family members were toxic types. However, Anton ultimately embraced a positive, open attitude by controlling his response to adversity and overcoming obstacles.
Anton’s father Pavel beat him and his siblings when they were children and forced Anton to work at the family’s grocery shop. He hated working there because it was cold, it took time away from his education, the customers were unruly, and if he ever made a mistake with money, Pavel would beat him further. Anton dealt with this by learning to laugh (sometimes mean-spiritedly) at the townspeople.
When Anton was 16, the grocery store was in serious debt and Pavel ran away to Moscow to avoid the debtor’s prison. His mother was left to deal with creditors and after being swindled, took the rest of the family except Anton, who was finishing school, to Moscow as well.
Anton was furious, bitter, and depressed. He was alone and very poor and was forced to start tutoring to feed himself. While tutoring didn’t pay well enough to even buy boots, Anton was surprised to find that he enjoyed it and that he enjoyed academia in general. He decided he wanted to go to medical school and studied hard.
One day, as a result of his studies in philosophy and literature, he started to understand his father. Pavel came from a long line of serfs, had been beaten by his own father, and had never wanted to work in a grocery store. Now that Anton realized his father was mainly just helpless, he could love him. Nothing changed about Anton’s circumstances when he came to this realization—he still lived in an isolated, miserable town and was still very poor. The only thing that changed was his attitude.
Anton went on to join his family in Moscow and helped them improve their own attitudes. He eventually became a doctor and writer.
In this last set of laws, we’ll study our inability to want what’s actually good for us. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll be able to control our own nature and make people like us.
By nature, people are unable to be content with their current situation. As soon as we get something we want, we want something else, a phenomenon that’s known as the grass-is-always-greener syndrome. And even though getting what we want is never satisfying, we still pursue our next want, hoping that one will make us happy. Desire motivates us, not possession.
The farther away or more difficult our want, the more we want it—people want things that are taboo and elusive. For example, older adults who have a lot of distance from their childhoods often wish they could be kids again, which is impossible.
The grass-is-greener syndrome is wired into the human brain and comes from three sources:
Even though the grass-is-always-greener syndrome will always exist, people don’t always take advantage of it. For example, advertisements are heavy-handed, and politicians might be good at riling us up in the moment, but none of this is persuasive in the long term because it doesn’t present a future.
In this law, we’ll first look at how to control our own nature. Then, we’ll look at how to make people like us.
To avoid being enthralled by this law, reflect on what you sincerely want and like so that when you do feel pulled towards something, you can tell if it’s because you actually want it or if it’s because someone or something (such as the grass-is-green syndrome) is influencing you.
Additionally, you can redirect this law to motivate yourself. A feeling of dissatisfaction can spur you out of the complacency you develop as you age.
Finally, you can escape this law by channeling your syndrome into coveting a deeper connection with what you already have:
Now that we know how to escape this law, we can learn to use it on others. When we want people to like us or our work, we often reveal everything about it, leaving no room for imagination. We might think we’re being honest, but in fact, we’re being lazy and self-absorbed. It’s easy to be ourselves because it requires no effort.
To make yourself or your work desirable, instead of defaulting to honesty, imagine what other people want. If you can figure out how they see you and your creations, this will let you create an image that’s imaginative, fantastic, and alluring.
There are three strategies to making yourself or your products desirable:
Strategy #1: Be strategically absent. If people see you regularly, they’ll understand you and what you want, and this will make them lose interest. There are a few ways to be absent:
Strategy #2: Create the impression that others want you or your work. People want things that other people want and fear missing out, so if you can make yourself appear desirable to some people, others will start to find you desirable as well. There are a few ways to do this:
Strategy #3: Associate your work or yourself with something transgressive or unconventional to harness induction. Today’s world full of constraints—everyone’s every move in the digital sphere is monitored—and people want things that aren’t allowed. Here are some options:
You need to constantly use these strategies because as soon as people get what they want, they’ll want something else, so you need to constantly keep yourself and your work out of reach.
Extended Example: Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel spent most of her early life coveting what she didn’t have and then being disappointed when she got it. Later, she learned how to use this phenomenon to make people covet her.
Growing up in a convent, Coco secretly read romance novels and dreamed of being rescued by a prince. After leaving the convent, she became a courtesan for a man named Balsan and lived in a chateau, but even though she’d gotten what she wanted, she still wasn’t happy. She felt restless and envied the more high-class or beautiful courtesans. She tried seducing other people’s boyfriends or husbands, but even when she was successful, she wasn’t satisfied.
One day, she stole some of Balsan’s clothes and mixed and matched them with her own. The other courtesans were envious of her androgynous, transgressive style and Balsan found the outfit so charming he got his tailor to make one of her designs. Now, people coveted Coco and she became a successful fashion designer.
To maintain her and her fashions’ desirability, she used these strategies:
She created an air of mystery around her perfume by making it smell like a bouquet rather than a single flower so no one could tell exactly what it smelled like. She sprayed it in her store but pretended she didn’t know what it was when shoppers asked. She also slipped unlabelled bottles into her most prominent clients’ bags.
She harnessed transgression by including masculine elements in her designs for women’s clothes. This made the wearers feel like they were breaking out of gender conventions.
She let photographers into her shows and let seamstresses make sketches of her work, encouraging piracy because it would put her work into the public eye.
In the previous law, we looked at what people want. Now, we’ll look at what people don’t want—to die.
Humans are the only animal aware of our inevitable mortality, and while this awareness and cognitive ability are why we’re top of the food chain, they also make us sad. To avoid this sadness, we try to think about anything but death. Most people take this so far that they don’t even think about being alive—instead, their minds circle the same few fears, irritations, and hopes, and they only give their surroundings half of their attention.
Interestingly, the more we try to repress death, the less alive we feel, which is known as the paradoxical death effect. This is because when we avoid thinking about death or desensitize ourselves, our anxiety about it strengthens. To avoid feeling this anxiety, we try to make our life more controllable by doing less, dulling our psyche with an addiction, avoiding new things so we can’t fail at them, and avoiding spending time with people because they’re unpredictable. All these responses actually make our life more death-like—isolated and unchanging.
Similarly, when we don’t repress death, we actually feel more alive. An awareness of death makes us pay more attention to the people and world around us. We realize nothing is permanent.
In the past, humans dealt with death by inventing an afterlife and rituals associated with it. Moving from life to an afterlife couldn’t stop the physical pain of death, of the pain of separation from loved ones, but it did make death less frightening and even gave it some pluses.
Today, however, now that we know more about science, it’s harder for people to believe in an afterlife. We’ve come up with a few new strategies to make death less painful:
In this law, we’ll look at how to control our own nature by learning some strategies to feel more alive.
There are five strategies to becoming more aware of death (and therefore feeling more alive):
Strategy #1: Make death more concrete. We tend to think of death as an abstraction, but this makes us feel less physically connected to the world. To make death more visceral:
Strategy #2: Become aware that other people die too. Imagine the people you know dying and how it would change your life. Try to imagine their fear and vulnerability to death. Then, think about how in a few hundred years, everyone who was alive at the same time as you will be dead. This will remind you that you have something in common with everyone—mortality—and it will help you be more empathetic and drive you to connect with people. It will also help you deal with even the evilest people—they’re mortal too.
Strategy #3: Acknowledge that time is limited. When we avoid thinking about death, it’s easy to procrastinate, because it feels like we have unlimited time. In reality, we don’t, and we usually have less time than we think we will. Learn to make use of time by giving yourself deadlines for goals. When you have time pressure, your body will release adrenaline, energy, and concentration.
Don’t try to evade thinking of death by thinking there’s no point in doing anything. You won’t be happy if you feel like you’ve wasted your life.
Strategy #4: Don’t shy away from pain and difficulty in life. Our tendency to do this is rooted in our fear of death, and as we learned, hiding from death dulls our lives. When you encounter something painful or some adversity, don’t focus on the discomfort, focus on how the experience will teach you something and make you stronger.
This strategy requires practice—you won’t immediately be able to see the good in the bad.
Strategy #5: Embrace the Sublime. Death is the ultimate manifestation of something we can’t understand. Try to access the Sublime by:
Extended Example: Mary Flannery O’Connor
Mary Flannery O’Connor and her father both had lupus erythematosus, a life-threatening disease that ultimately killed them both. Flannery felt the presence of death throughout her life and used it to live more fully.
When Flannery was 10, she wrote vignettes describing her relatives. Her mother wasn’t impressed—she wanted her daughter to be a southern lady. Her father, however, loved the stories and professed that his daughter would grow up to be a famous writer.
When Flannery’s father died, she experienced the concreteness of death and threw herself into writing. She moved away from her mother and went to the University of Iowa to study writing. Her stories were well-received and after she graduated, she started working on her first novel.
One day she fell ill and was ultimately diagnosed with lupus. She’d seen how quickly the disease had killed her father and realized she might not have much time left. This motivated her to pay attention to every experience she had, which made her feel more alive. She was also motivated to keep writing—she realized that without the threat of imminent death, people were selfish, unaware, and complacent. She could use her words to enlighten them.
No matter how sick she felt, she kept writing until she died at the age of 39.