Stop Blaming, Start Owning: The Inner Power Nobody Can Take From You
Manipulative narcissistic people are always creating drama around themselves. If they can push your buttons and control you that way, then they’re the ones that have power. People want to bring you down constantly. You have some power.
The number one sign that someone’s a narcissist is the point I’m trying to get everyone to understand is stop complaining. Stop blaming the world. Stop blaming this person or that person or that force or that thing going on in society and look at yourself and look at how you are responsible to some degree for what happens to you.
Now, of course, there are things we cannot control. You’re going to be suffering. There’s going to be inevitable pain. Some of that pain comes from people. People can be pretty awful sometimes. There are difficult people all around you. Manipulative people, people who are very egotistical or out for their own agenda. Okay, that’s one element. Then it’s painful all the changes that are going on in the world and keeping up with it and it’s extremely difficult to be successful in this world. There’s so many forces against you. It is so competitive.
So if your attitude is I’m born, I only live once. Life is like a kind of adventure. I have to go out and be excited and make the best of everything that happens. And I have to be opportunistic. So opportunities will be coming your way. If you have that attitude where you’re excited, you’re open, and you’re looking, things will happen to you. So you have some power, but it has to come from within. It’s no one’s going to give you anything in this world. And I’m trying to train you to always look at yourself, to look at the role that you play in your failures and the bad things that happen to you so you can develop this inner strength and this resilience. That is the number one skill that you’re going to need in this world today.
My Own Story: Powerlessness Before Power
I didn’t have success until my late 30s and even my early 40s. I went through a long period of 20 years where I couldn’t figure out my career and I felt that anxiety and I felt that powerlessness. I couldn’t figure out what I was meant to do and I tried this job, that job and other jobs. I couldn’t find my niche. I had depression. I even felt suicidal. So I understand very very deeply from within that sense of not having power or control over your fate. I also had some really really terrible bosses. So I know the pain of having to work for others.
My own powerlessness looking at people in the world that I saw who were kind of controlling the game. What are the laws that they were using? And so I want to give you the feeling that so much you cannot control but what you can control is your own psychology, your own mindset. You have to go into battle. This world is like battle. There’s conflict everywhere. There’s so much competition. You have to have a tough warrior type mindset and resilience about you. And that’s what I’m trying to inculcate in my books. But I understand very deeply why people are so anxious and insecure because I have felt that for many years myself.
We’re All Narcissists to Some Degree
I make the point in the laws of human nature that all of us are to some degree narcissists, that we should stop judging and thinking well that person is a narcissist but I’m not, I’m so noble, I’m so saintly. The person who says that, who says I’m not a narcissist, I’m so noble, I’m not like that, is actually a great narcissist because they think so highly of themselves, they think they’re so different from anybody else, but they’re not different.
We are all self-absorbed to some degree or other, right? We’re interested. If we hear our name in a crowd, our eyes light up. Oh, they’re talking about me. We all have that reaction. Get over your high-minded thinking that you’re different. We all have that reaction, right? We want attention. We want recognition. Okay?
But some people are what I call deep narcissists, right? Most of us are self-absorbed, but at moments in life, we can get out of it and we can show genuine interest in other people, in their story, in their lives, and what’s happening to them. But there are a lot of people who can never get out to that point. They are so insecure. There’s a reason why there are deep narcissists. So, it’s understandable. They had probably a very tough childhood in some ways, but they can’t get out of their own self. They’re so deeply enmeshed. They’re so insecure that everything is about themselves. Every little thing that happens triggers their insecurities, right? And they’re very dangerous people to be around.
So yeah, almost inevitably the difficult boss will be a narcissist because if they had empathy, they would treat people better. They would treat people differently. And oftentimes people who rise to the top in this world today get there through their narcissism because they’re so, you know, they’re so ambitious. They’re so out to get something for themselves. They’ll screw anybody around. They don’t care, right? They have no compunctions. Most leaders in life are to a higher degree narcissist. I believe most bosses. Some are healthy narcissists. They can make things, they can do things and others are not healthy. Our narcissists, they’re all about trauma and turmoil and getting everything for themselves.
“It’s Not Personal” — The Skill That Sets You Free
The one thing you have to know is it’s a life skill you have to develop is it’s not personal. You have to keep repeating yourself. It’s not personal. It’s not about me. It’s not personal. It’s not personal. It’s not personal. Over and over and over and over again. And when you say it’s not personal, it’s not personal, it’s not personal, it’s not personal, you’re pushing them a little bit outside of your head. You can start looking at them instead of thinking about them all the time.
The next thing you have to do is manipulative people, their whole game is drama. They are trying to play on your emotions to get you upset. And that can be getting you excited and then getting you insecure and doubting yourself up and down. They’re trying to constantly manipulate you. If they can push your buttons and control you that way, then they’re the ones that have power, right? So, manipulative narcissistic people are always creating drama around themselves and you’re going to be caught up in it, right? And so, the main thing you have to do is not react.
Not react. You can say something in response, but inwardly you are not reacting. You are cool, or calm, you’re saying it’s not personal, it’s not about me, it’s about them, right? I am not going to react. If you can do that you can create some distance, then you can deal with people like that, right? And the problem is they like to push your buttons, they like to make you upset and emotional, and when you don’t react it can also make them even try doubly hard to push your buttons, etc. The power lies within you.
I want to tell you, you can either give them the power to keep pushing your buttons and creating the drama or you can have the power and withdraw and be strong within yourself. And when you do that, when you tell yourself it’s not about me, it’s not personal, it’s their issue, it’s their problem, I’m not going to get caught up in the drama, it is a wonderful feeling.
How to Spot a Narcissist
The number one sign that someone’s a narcissist is if they say, “Oh, no. I’m not a narcissist,” which means they’re separate. They’re different from everybody else. Which is a very narcissistic trait. The idea that you’re always better than other people, you’re superior, is a sure sign of narcissism. So, by saying, “Oh, no. I’m not a narcissist,” you’re definitely unconsciously revealing the fact that you are a raging narcissist. And I’ve known many narcissists in my life. We all do. So, I’m not special that way.
And I noticed over the years that there is a kind of a facial quality to narcissists. It’s hard to verbalize cuz it’s more for me a feeling, but their eyes are a kind of a giveaway. So, narcissists often give the impression that they’re interested in you, they like you, they’re listening to you, which you think is kind of a contradiction. That doesn’t sound like a narcissist, but it’s not the kind of attention where they’re really interested in you. They’re trying to get something from you. They’re trying to get you to like them so that they can now use you, right?
So, the way I see it is there’s a kind of a deadness in their eyes. They’re looking at you, they’re listening to you, but you can see they’re not really connecting. They’re the wheels are spinning inside their brain about what they can do with the information you’re giving them. You can recognize that they’re not, it’s not lighting up. There’s not a feeling of warmth of interest in their eyes, right?
There’s also a kind of, I’m thinking of the people that I’ve known in my life and certain facial qualities, and there’s this kind of smile that is slightly demonic where, I can’t really describe it, which is why I say some of it’s hard to verbalize, but it doesn’t feel like it’s directed towards other people. So oftentimes when you smile and you laugh, it’s a social thing, right? You’re responding to other people. You can’t really control it. Somebody tells a joke or you hear something and you’re laughing and there’s kind of a communion going on between you. But the narcissist, there’s something they’re just stuck inside themselves. There’s kind of a demonic quality to when they laugh and when they smile. I know I’m not being brilliant at describing it. If I see it, I know it right away.
Narcissism, Creativity, and Leadership
If you want to become a better person, which is what all the self-help books are, all the podcasting is about, you’re not going to become a better person until you admit that you have flaws, that you can now look at them and then work on them.
A lot of really great artists, famous writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers are definitely narcissists, right? And you have to be to some extent because you have to be inside your own head, inside your own images, your own dreams, your own visions and you believe in them strong enough. You know the world is a tough mean place. People want to bring you down constantly. It’s not easy to create a film or a book or anything like that because people are so damn critical, right? They want to bring you down. And so you have to have a lot of self-belief in this world to get ahead.
You have to really be able to shut out all the crap people throw at you. People are awful. You have to be very tough. You have to be narcissistic. A lot of business leaders are narcissistic because to get to the top, you have to have that level of self-belief and you have to have charisma. You have to be kind of an Elon Musk. So a lot of high functioning, high level people are narcissists. Some of them can control it and they channel it into something productive, like a good business, like a work of art. Others are brought down by it because it’s like a demon inside themselves and it takes them over and they can’t control it in any way.
You Can Never Fully Know Another Person
You can never know completely another person, right? You’re trapped in your own body. You’re trapped in your own mind. So, you don’t know the thoughts of the other person. You’re often not aware of what they really think about you, right? So to think that you know someone is very dangerous because it’s based on your own projections, on your own preconceptions based on your own childhood, your parents, etc.
So it’s very dangerous to think that you know someone that you have pigeonholed them because people are complex, they’re changing, they’re never the same. You think someone is outgoing but then they have introspective traits. You think somebody is mean but that they also can be very kind at the same time. People are complicated. You can’t fit them into these categories. Everybody’s an individual. Everybody’s different. They have their own backgrounds, they came from different social classes, different ethnicities. It’s arrogant to think that you ever know anybody.
So you have to begin from this position almost like Socrates of complete ignorance. I don’t really know them and then you kind of can start to maybe understand to a better degree who they are now. I can’t understand or I can’t be inside like my wife’s skin. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I can know what she’s feeling. And it’s a different thing because we’re intuitive. We can pick up the moods of other people. But we don’t usually, it’s a skill that you develop, but you sense that someone is upset or someone’s excited, and there’s cues and you can feel it in their body language.
And so you know in that moment when you said something, it upset them and then you can analyze what happened. So I said something and I picked upset body language. What is it that I said? Did I trigger an insecurity? Did I make her feel like she did something wrong? What is it? Then from that knowledge, you can begin to maybe understand her insecurities, her weaknesses, what her world is like.
People Are Characters in a Movie
But the most important thing I like to say in that score is when you go to see a movie, you’re interested in the character because you don’t know them. They’re a stranger. And slowly things are revealed about who they are. And it’s exciting. You know, they’re evil, they’re good, they’re a mix of these things. That’s what makes you want to watch the movie, the characters involved, right? But we have a hard time translating that into real life.
And I want people to think of the people they interact with as characters in a movie. They are strange. They are weird. They have their own fantasies, their own dreams, their own childhood traumas, their own childhood joys, right? And just as you get inside the character in a film, you want to get inside the skin of other people and understand what makes them tick and what their world is like. And it’s infinitely interesting cuz people, as I said, are weird. They’re strangers. They’re like alien creatures. And it should be exciting to try and understand more and more about them.
But never ever have the belief that you’re going to know people completely. They’re always going to surprise you. They’re always going to elude you. There’s an element of mystery you can never get behind.