You may not realise this,
but I think that the source of most of the pain that people feel in their life,
the source of most of their failures in life, why they hit a wall,
why they can't get any further in life is because they don't understand people.
People don't know how to make things anymore. They're so
techno-obsessed, they're so into their algorithms,
they're so, think that they can get anything easily or quickly
and we're gonna find ourselves in a world where bridges are gonna fall apart.
People don't know how to design things or make things
or write a book anymore. I think we've lost a sense
of psychology, of what really motivates people.
I think people, we're living in times when people have never been more self-obsessed,
more self-absorbed. Social media plays a huge role in that.
And so, people are kind of locked into their own little world.
You may not realise this, but I think that the source of
most of the pain that people feel in their life, the source of most of their failures in life,
why they hit a wall, why they can't get any further in life
is because they don't understand people. They don't understand what motivates,
they can't get inside the mind of the other person.
They're always thinking of themselves. And because of that,
they don't have the ability to persuade or influence people,
to get them to move in the direction they want. Their relationships with people
are very thin and brittle, there's no real deep empathic connection.
It's getting worse and worse out there. But also a lack of self-awareness.
Everyone thinks it's the other person that's narcissistic
or aggressive or is envious
or has a dark side or is repressed
or is short side, "not me, no." So, a lack of self-awareness and the lack of
what really motivates people. And I encounter it all the time.
I do a lot of consulting with very high power people.
In business, in politics. And I was always shocked
at how they can be so smart about some things but be absolutely ignorant about people.
Like they hired somebody who ended up being the partner that stole the company.
As if a person like that doesn't leave traces behind them
in their past that they were gonna do that. On and on and on,
I can give you 100 different stories of the same thing.
So, I'm always shocked at how people don't have a sense
of the psychology of the people they're dealing with.
They don't know how to judge people's character. They're basing their opinions of people
on their appearance, whether someone's charming
or good looking or articulate
and they're not looking behind the surface, behind the mask.
Well, I'm basically challenging this idea, this notion, that people have
that acting in life in being social and in wearing that mask is a bad thing
as if we need to be more authentic and be just be who we are.
And I think that's completely bogus. I think humans are actors.
From the age of two years old, three years old,
we learned how to manipulate our parents by crying when we needed to cry, being charming,
saying certain things. We learned how to act.
And when we grow up, I have earlier in that chapter,
I make the point that if you met a person that said
exactly what he felt every time, you would hate that person.
He would never have any friends. So,
let's be honest about this, we're all acting. When we're in the office,
we're not telling our boss exactly what we think about his stupid ideas
or what he's wearing or his clothes or etc., we
say what we think is appropriate for that situation.
We are courtiers. And I wanna bring some honesty into that and say:
stop fighting that need to be an actor, in fact, what you wanna be is you
wanna be a better actor. You wanna be good at this.
You need to be truthful about yourself, you need to be honest about who you are
and you need to be honest that you have a dark side,
that you have aggressive impulses, that you can feel envious.
So you need to be truthful about yourself. But being a social animal which is what we are
means that you have to
mould what you say and how you act to the situation that you're in.
You can't just simply blurt out what you feel. That's being an animal,
that's not being a human being. A human being controls his emotions,
has the ability to control what he or she says. I see 1000 times in business situations,
the number one sin that people make mistakes in, in negotiations or in meetings
is they talk too much. They say things that they shouldn't have said,
they reveal things about themselves that they shouldn't.
You need to have more self-control, you need to be better at wearing that mask
and you need to enjoy this sense of being a good actor and playing the role.
Some of the best people, who are the most successful
are really good at playing a role.