The 1st Step in Judging Someone's Character | Robert Greene EP 384

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:50How do we understand the strength of someone's character, whether they're toxic, whether they have high values? Besides the things that we can see of like, okay, they broke their word or they're negative or things like that. How do we really determine someone's character? First thing you have to do to realize that determining people's character is the most important thing that you have to do in judging them. So if we're looking, let's say we're looking for a business partner or a romantic partner or a colleague to work with, we're going to base our decision on those kinds of appearances. Like people can be very good at deceiving you with being very charming and flattering, or they have a brilliant resume, and you'll be seduced by that.

1:31And what you want to do, the first step in that law is to say, no, that's not how I'm going to judge people. My main value is their character and the strength of their character. And character is something from deep, deep, deep within. The word character comes from the Greek, kairos, which means to carve. And character is something really deeply carved inside the person. It's who they are at their core. It creates patterns of behavior that they can't even really control. It's who they are genetically. it's who they are from the early lives of their parents. So you want to connect to that, you want to see that.

2:05It's not immediately visible to you because people will disguise their character. You want to see that and you want to value it more than anything else. And what you want are people with strong character. And what that means is they have an expression for metal, they call it tensile, where metal is stronger if it can give a little bit, because if something is too rigid, it breaks. So you want people who are adaptable, who can be fluid, who aren't weak, because that metal isn't weak, who have an inner strength and a core to them, but they can bend, they can learn, they can adapt, they can change.

2:40You want to see people who are empathetic, who know how to get along with other people. So if you have two people to choose, and one has a glittering resume, but the other person understands human nature and is superior in a social sense, and it can also have a good work ethic, you choose that other person. You don't choose necessarily the person with that glittering resume. One of the things you look for are patterns in judging their character, because people reveal themselves in the past. They reveal who they are through their actions. They try and disguise it, but they reveal it. So I say in that chapter, nobody ever does anything once.

3:16So let's say you have a friend who does something kind of nasty to you. They talk behind your back. Then they'll say, oh, Robert, Robert, that was just, something came over. That isn't me. You know, I'm sorry about that. That just happened. Circumstances made me do that. And you'll be likely to believe them. But the fact is, if they've done that once, they've probably done it many times. If people gossip and you hear them gossiping about other people, they'll probably eventually gossip about you. You want to be able to look at people's patterns and look at their past and see trends and understand that if they've done certain things in the past, they will continue to do them because we humans have compulsive behavior.

3:56We are compelled to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again. How do we stop that pattern? If we recognize it within ourselves, my character's been off, I've been doing something for years a certain way that I don't want to do anymore. How do we do it so we can strengthen our character, but also say, you know what, I believe this other person can have a stronger character through breaking a pattern. Or is it just not possible? Of course it's possible. At the end of every chapter, I show you how you can turn this potentially negative quality into a positive quality. When it comes to you and your own patterns, you have to first realize that you have these patterns before you can even begin to break them.

4:36It's awareness. Honesty. It's a book about awareness and being honest with yourself. If you don't admit that you have these patterns, then you can't possibly break them. I know in writing books, I have terrible, terrible patterns, stressing so much over things that aren't that important. I have to stop and say, stop being such a perfectionist. It's like you're wasting your time. It's been book after book after book. I'm very aware of it. I'm very aware of breaking that pattern. But you have to see it and be honest with yourself in order to break it. So that's the first step, is seeing the pattern and then not struggling against it, not trying to be somebody who you're not, but finding a way to use that pattern, to use that problem to your advantage.

5:19How do we recognize when we're sabotaging ourselves and what's the things we do most to self-sabotage? You and I could go watch a movie. It's the same movie that we're watching. I love it. I see something. You hate it. You see something else. You don't experience it the same way. We're watching the same world, the same reality, but we experience it differently. Everybody you meet is experiencing their world differently than you are. So you have an attitude that colors what you see. And some people have an attitude that tends towards the negative. And I describe a negative attitude as something that's closed.

5:56So you're not open to new experience. You're trying to close that lens. You have certain beliefs, certain ideas about life, and you're not willing to change them. because that gives you a sense of security. And so you want an attitude that's expansive, where you accept people, you're not always judging them, you're not negative about them, you understand that people can't necessarily help who they are, you're open to change, you're open to having adventure, and that kind of attitude kind of gives you a certain degree of freedom so that the worst thing can happen to you and you're able to transform that into something good.

6:32If we have a setback or a failure in life, which is inevitable, do we do one of two things? Do we analyze ourselves and see what we did wrong and how we could change ourselves? Or do we immediately look outward and blame other people? That person screwed me. Society doesn't like me. Because of these circumstances, I'm screwed and I can never help it. It's the world, it's not me. That's a self-sabotaging pattern of behavior. Because if you're always pointing fingers at other people and blaming them, You're never going to learn from your experiences. You're going to end up being quite bitter. We're not in charge of everything that happens in life.

7:11There are circumstances that are beyond our control. But a lot of what does happen to us is something that we are responsible for. There are amazing studies of the role of attitude and what happens to you in life. So they have this thing called the Pygmalion effect. Teachers who treat a student as if they are smart and going to do well, those students end up doing well. So how you treat people, how you think about yourself has a great impact on what happens to you. When doctors prescribe a new medication, there's always the same trend that when a new medication has been invented, the success rate is like 80 % because people believe in it because it's new.

7:52Two years later, it starts going down. Really? Yeah. It's a placebo effect. So if you believe something is going to work, if you believe that you are great, you deserve good things, that you are a good student, you will end up making those things happen. So how you look at yourself will often determine what ends up happening to yourself. So if you're talking about what causes self-sabotage, if you go through life thinking, God, I'm not really that good. There's something wrong with me. I don't really deserve good things. I don't deserve to have a lot of success. People read that off of you. When somebody feels that they don't deserve things.

8:26It's kind of an off-putting quality in them and it pushes people away. So you create self-fulfilling dynamics by how you look at yourself and your attitude.

8:45Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:35Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

9:51Thank you.