Why No One Is Your Real Friend | Stop Expecting Loyalty | Chase Hughes transcript

And I think when people say authenticity, we should note that what we call most people call authenticity is a costume of childhood beliefs. Like my authentic self and how I act is typically what I was in childhood. How I deal with conflict, how I make friends, how I stay safe. All these little patterns that I learned when I was eight or nine. I'm still repeating a lot of that stuff. So when we say authenticity, it's always important to think that it's authenticity plus a removal of ego and a willingness to receive social injury.

And that's the best way that I've ever been able to describe that to somebody. It's like if I'm being authentic in a conversation, then I'm willing to receive a social injury for it. Cody Sanchez said something to me which has stayed with me. She said, um, again, I'm going to butcher it, but words to the effect of, "I won't be friends with anyone in private that won't say something in public that will cost them something." And going to your point about social injury, I think what Cody's actually saying is like that's how I know that they're authentic is they're willing to risk something for something they believe. >> Yeah. >> I also think this is how you know a brand's authentic. like are they willing to cause social ind injury in the near term for something they believe in the long term. >> Yeah. >> You know. >> Yeah.

And a lot of what a lot of the recent brand debacles that we've had is they thought they were doing something to avoid social injury that caused a massive social injury >> because people said you're not being authentic to your audience. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. When they tried to do like get into identity politics and stuff like that and >> Okay. like like extreme virtue signaling and stuff like that. Yeah. >> Which backfires. >> Can we go into this childhood development thing really quick?

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

What What did the kid have to do to feel safe? For some kids, safety was like, >> I don't know, somebody gives me a hug at the end of the day. For some kids, it was like, am I going to eat today? >> For some kids, it's like cracking jokes. >> Yeah. And >> I'm going to crack jokes and keep friends. I'm going to feel safe by becoming really loud and dominating the room. I'm going to become safe by getting really small and shrinking so nobody notices me or I'm going to become safe by being hypervigilant because I don't know if dad drank before he got home or if he's going to start drinking when he got home.

So it's like what did that child what are the scripts that that child needed to run on autopilot to feel safe to make friends and then to get rewards and that would be the third side and the rewards for some kids might just be like appreciation and it's typically just appreciation affection love and that tends to get written in childhood and the kid who writes all these permanent scripts they put them in a backpack and carry them all the way into adulthood.

Yeah. >> And 90% of us are walking around with this exact triangle governing our life. And if you look around at people at work, you see this woman who every time there's a meeting, uh, she wants to speak up a lot, but then she shuts her mouth and her body shuts down and all this kind of stuff. You're seeing an eight-year-old who got yelled at at a family dinner table. >> That's all. But you're just seeing it in a grown-up body.

I have two examples that are super front of mind that completely align with what you've just said. I have two colleagues that I work with and I got six months into working with one of them and I could always tell that there was something not quite right because whenever I was in the room they would they would stare at me a lot and um they would be a little bit more on the pessimistics pessimistic side than I'm used to.

And one day at dinner, I was talking to them about their childhood and they offered up that their dad was his mood could change rapidly and he was always pointing out why something would never work and why and he was an extreme pessimist. And suddenly this person who is in my life suddenly made sense. I completely understand it because you grew up in that environment where to be safe um you >> agree with it >> had to pay attention to to the authority figure and then yeah you had to also you learned maybe that you know pessimism was a way to safety yeah safety and then there's another colleague who's actually in the room over there and I'll ask her before we publish this if I can say this publicly but similar thing she she expressed to me that she had a dad that was his mood would change rapidly and I said to her one day I said Um, I call her [clears throat] Sarah.

I said, "Sarah, you're always staring at me." I said, "Whenever I look at you, you're already looking at me and it's like you're like overanalyzing and overthinking." And she explained to me the same thing. She said, "When I grew up, my dad's mood would just change like this." So, every time I'm preempting, I'm like a radical preempter. I'm thinking 20 steps ahead of like what might go wrong or, you know, which makes her exceptional at her job.

But I would, you know, you know, one might assume that that comes at some kind of cost. >> Yeah. >> So, safety. Yeah. >> Very true. Very true. And the the way that I explain this, if somebody wants to like it's not where you can kind of go back and like sit there for five minutes, put it on a post-it note, and then figure your whole life out. I wish I had a cool a trick to do that. But the way that like I want people to think about this is going back to your childhood, a lot of those things, these are just contracts that were written in a child's voice.

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

What were you around when your all your friends were around? You got made fun of or you had to become really small and that that goes on the friends side of the triangle and that that talks about how the social patterns that are going to show up for me. And somebody says well I keep attracting these negative people into my life. Why do I do that? And that that goes to these patterns because if I do this, I know this is going to happen.

I know that's going to happen. It's just completing a story archetype. So that's the childhood development triangle. And it is really powerful to start understanding our own patterns. And I'm not saying that you can go out there and there's like here's six steps that are going to change your whole freaking life if you if you do these six things. The awareness is what you want. You want massive like self-nowledge and and self-awareness >> uh with the side agreement of I am not special and I'm completely okay if I am never understood because most of what happens uh when we get into arguments with our spouse, we get into these arguments with people at at work, it's our argument to be understood more than it is for us to come to a solution.

I need you to understand me. So getting okay with the idea that you might not never ever be understood is like step number one. Number two, I am not special. And that that helps us to open the door to start coming into a lot of these things. But if you if you're a leader at work, you can start seeing these patterns in your employees and you can be like, I see an 8-year-old there. And if you get to a point where you're seeing some of these a behavior that might have pissed you off in somebody that works for you and you're like, "Wait a second.

Now I can see exactly what's going on because this, this, and this probably happened." You don't need to make some prediction or fortunetelling thing about their childhood, but you're starting to see these patterns and you know now how your team's going to respond in conflict. And if they if it's a conflict and it's social, you're seeing all their friends patterns. If it's a conflict and somebody might be losing their job, you're going to see their safety patterns come out and you'll see your own. >> So, do you think I should go to the key people in my life, maybe my team, and ask them these questions about around how did you make friends?

Is that the question? >> What did you do to make and keep friends? >> What did you do to make and keep friends? And what was the safety question again? >> Like what what did you need to do or avoid to feel safe? >> And the rewards one, >> what did you feel? And this one's always you want to put the word feel in there. What did you feel like you had to do to earn rewards? And what were rewards to you? >> Okay, >> it was appreciation or somebody that's like hyper significance driven, like I've got to have the Rolex.

I've got to have the Ferraris and all this kind of stuff. They never got rewards because their parents ignored them unless they brought home a certificate. Their teacher called and said they did a good job. They played the piano recital and did a great job. And lots of people were acknowledging them and clapping for them. They only got acknowledged when they were socially significant. >> And am I right in thinking here that these are fundamentally interlin in many ways?

Because when you're talking about safety, I was running through my head the things that made me feel safe and they were rewards >> that I could tell my friends about. [laughter] >> So I like I touched all three of them. And part in part because we, you know, I was thinking I was very different to my social group when I was younger. We were the black family. There wasn't another black family that I knew of. um um other than maybe one other kid I think in the area in Plymouth in 1994 or five.

Um so some of the material things I wanted like the the shoes that everyone had made me feel safe cuz they made me fit in. Y >> and that you know and that got me friends. Y >> or at least I thought it did. >> So like for me it really was like an interconnected triangle. >> Yeah. >> That's just one of many examples that I could think of. it does tend to do that and I will typically wait for somebody to figure that out and as they're filling it out they're they're kind of like oh I did this because of this to get to this >> and it you'll see a little cycle start happening.

Uh but it's great for self-nowledge but if you're a behavior profiler that's what's going to run people. You're going to know how they're going to respond to conflict. You're going to know what they're going to avoid. You're going to like if you're putting teams together I know what people I want to have working with each other. And it doesn't have to be some complex 9hour thing. Like you can see this stuff in everyday life.

And you're not saying that I need to radically change. >> No. But what if one part of this triangle or one behavior I've learned for safety or for rewards or for friends is making my life worse? >> Yeah. >> You know what? It could be ruining my life. Like it could be the things standing in the way of me having a romantic relationship or getting promotion or building a business. It's like getting in the way now. Yeah.

What do I do, Chase? >> So, you you've identified the pattern. Let's assume that you've you've got it. You're like, "Oh, I've got this that's that's happening on repeat." That part two of this is I need to focus on that being a kid that belongs to a child and I need to write down like this. Here's how that child wrote the contract, made the promise to themselves, developed the contract. And then even if you make it up like when listen, I'm going to write down a little thing. when did this kid bring it into adulthood?

I need to stay small in order to stay safe. Let's say it's one of those things. And then you just start telling yourself that is a child's voice. That's a child's voice. So you the voice is not going to go away. That's the sad part. That's like me you trying to not complete the sentence Mary had a little in your head. You can't get rid of it. No matter how hard you try to delete that, it's repeated over years and years.

Just like one of these things that that what truly changes for you is hearing a child hearing a misguided child who developed a coping mechanism for the world not knowing that they were like they just assumed I'm going to have this forever. I'm going to need this as an adult. I'm going to bring this into my adult life. Part two of this is you make a like a wallpaper or something for your desktop. And we talked about being negatively uh motivated. away from negative things.

You make a like a motivational wallpaper that has your big limiting belief on it and then take it to an extreme. I had a client that had this if I say small I'm going to be safe. Uh and he was in a b like he owned a business but he wouldn't go get these big clients and he wouldn't he wouldn't go do this. The guy's got three kids and I said, "I want you to make a desktop wallpaper that says, "My kids don't deserve for me to be successful.

And I want you to look at it every single day when you turn your computer on because that's exactly what your belief is saying." Because if your kids truly deserved it, it would override the belief. So you just need to write the belief in plain English. And what it's truly truly costing you in your life is my kids don't deserve me to be successful. My kids don't deserve money. And that's what it comes down to. And every day you look at it, you you have a feeling of disgust.

And there's a hyper awareness of that thing running in your head. You're going to be more prone to hear it when it does come up. And you're also training yourself to hear it as a child's voice, which means you're going to start hearing fiction. You're still hearing the same sentence, but you're hearing a fictional story. There's two parts to this. I I love this, and there's two parts to it that I think I wanted to talk about.

The first is in doing so, in waking up in the morning and seeing my wallpaper that says like my kids don't deserve a great life or whatever. Um, of course it's going to motivate me to take action, which is then going to start to build new evidence once I take action, once I win that big client and I realize that everything's fine, which is going to change my life. And then the second point I wanted to point out is like people listen to podcasts like this and they write this stuff down and then they have relapses and things don't change fast enough.

And I think that can sometimes make them feel hopeless or inadequate because they heard it on the diary of a sea or whatever and then they did it for a bit and they struggled and it didn't quite work out and then they went back to their old behavior. And I think in part this happens because we live under the presumption that this stuff is easy and it's fast and that at some point in the future I can fix my trauma. Like I think one of the best realizations I ever had was realizing that the that I've carried with me in that backpack since I was a kid that the stuff about what will make me safe or what will reward me or how I'll make friends or who I am or whatever my survival mechanisms they will be be with me forever.

And actually instead of trying to delete them like throw them out the backpack what I was able to do yeah >> is like turn down their ability to make the decision. >> That's it. That's it. You've totally got it. And and I would say this for anybody out there that you're trying to go through this and you're having a hard time. I get it. It's totally tough. The number one way that we influence another human being, let me just kind of metaphor this for one second.

Uh when you watch a hypnotist, and hypnosis is anybody can learn to do it. It's a it's a pretty easy thing. So, it looks very dramatic, but one of the things you'll see me do at the beginning of that is like go ahead and give me your hand and I'll hold their hand for a second. Like, put both hands out like this and then flip them over. That's great. Now, just just to test your eyes really quick. Look all the way up and look all the way down.

Look all the way left. Look all the way right. All right. Then, spread your feet a little further apart, a little closer together. Actually, no. Face this way. Now, I'm going to make him do like 50 things. None of the things that I just did with them are meaningful. None of them. Everything was micro compliance. So this is how social media starts roping you in. This is how politics starts roping you in. This is how cult leaders will recruit you into a cult.

Micro compliance and you don't realize that you're going through this massive amount of compliance. So like you go through a doctor's physical and they go through like this 90point checklist. they've made you do 50 things and then they recommend a weird drug or they recommend you get on some other drug. Take some time to think about it because our brain is hardwired for these micro compliances. So I say this to say that if you're going through any of these things and you're trying to change your beliefs or you're trying to change something in your body, use what works for brainwashing and figure out a way that you can get micro compliance with your own goals on a very regular basis. small little wins.

So your brain has that just like hypnosis, just like cult recruiting, just like brainwashing, small little things at the very beginning. So everything in influence should be looked at as a wedge. >> Everything. >> It reminds me of that famous study they did where they got people to give electric shocks to other people, the Mgrim obedience experiment. >> Yeah. and they managed to get a member of the public to give another member of the public lethal electric shocks just through sort of micro compliance but also through authority because the experimenters were like wearing white jackets, white overalls, etc. >> And here's the second thing in that experiment that's going to going to perfectly tie back to this. >> So this experiment that you're talking about happened at Yale University.

It was 1962. Uh, and we I mean there's tons of data on it, but essentially strangers would shock another person seemingly or what they thought was to death just because some dude in a lab coat told them to. But what they didn't account for, and even Dr. Mgram's book was called obedience to authority. They thought it was all about the authority, the lab coat, the guy's tall. Uh, it's a professional setting. But really think about if you go back to our ancestors like the most important resource to your ancestors was your was focus there's nothing more important than focus and the number one way to generate focus and you because you if if I don't have your focus I can't command authority right so focus is always first my focus authority tribe and emotion those are the four things that govern a mammal all mammals dolphins doesn't matter so I have to have focus before authority and they didn't talk about that.

And the way to get focus is through novelty. >> Novelty meaning something unexpected is occurring. So like if you walk past the same bush every day 10,000 years ago and your job is to carry fish from the river and suddenly you walk past that bush and you hear a big ass uh stick snap, all of your focus, all of it is on that stick. Not it's not on your kids. It's not on your health. It's not on anything that's going on.

It's to this new unexpected piece of information that hijacks our brain. Anything novel hijacks our brain. So if you see like and it follows that pathway, focus then authority and then tribe. What's everybody else doing and then emotion then how do I feel about it? So it's and and what happens is we are hardwired to respond to these things. You cannot decide not to respond to novelty. Your head turns to to loud sounds.

All this stuff happens. So the way that if if you're trying to do this like brainwash yourself is change your house up. Change something up in your life. Change your wardrobe. Repaint the walls in your office. Move your furniture around. Buy a new car if you if you can. I want you to like just imagine is how would I influence my dog in this situation? I would need imagery. I would need something to shift. If I move the kitchen table to the side and move all the furniture, when my dog comes out of the bedroom, he's going to know something's different. >> Yeah.

I think this is one of the great secrets of good marketing is that it beats your brain's wallpaper filter. And um I wrote a little bit about this in my last book about this idea of beating the wallpaper filter. I think we talked a little bit about it last time, but I talked about a study where they got a rat and put it in a maze with chocolate at the other end of the maze. And they looked at the rat's brain as it went through the maze the first time and they saw that the rat's brain was like exploded with activity.

It's smelling the walls. It's trying to figure it out like and then they put the rat in the maze the second time and there's like almost no brain activity because it's on autopilot. It knows the maze, so it doesn't need to use any of its cognitive resources. Its cognitive resources can be allocated to new surprising things. The maze is no longer surprising. Whizzes through the maze to the chocolate. And even like as you think about how you got out of your bed this morning and got down to the kitchen, you didn't have to think. >> So you paid no attention.

Yeah. >> Um but you would have paid attention if you walked down there and your like sofa wasn't there. >> Um and how does that then apply to marketing? So like how do you surprise people is like a central question of anyone who's trying to build a personal brand, start a podcast or do marketing. Um but I guess also to to persuade people. So one of the things I think about a lot when I talk on stage >> Yeah. >> is I know I'm competing with your mobile phone, your Twitter feed, or your Tik Tok.

So I have to do something almost like every 10 seconds to like catch you off guard. And Mr. the beast, I guess, is the great master of this and it's probably why he's got half a billion YouTube followers >> because the minute that video starts, >> you're hooked in. You're hooked. >> But this, I mean, that's the power of novelty. I would challenge anybody to take this challenge. If you're scrolling through short form content, watch for something that like jerks your attention, like some kind of weird novelty thing that happens.

And that video is probably short 20 maybe 40 second video that that captures your focus through novelty. The next video, watch for an authority figure, a famous YouTuber, a celebrity, a politician, a pop singer who thinks that they know politics, all that kind of stuff. Watch for an authority figure. Next, watch for a tribe signal. So, a tribe signal is going to be here's how many people agree with this. Here's lots of people doing one thing.

These tickets are selling out. Here's the Taylor Swift concert. Here's everyone cheering at the concert. Here's how you're supposed to behave is basically what that means in the tribe section. You're supposed to do what these people are doing. And then watch for the emotion. So watch for this pattern. It'll be a focus generating novelty. Then it'll be authority. Then you'll see tribe. Then you'll see an emotional video.

And guess what happens after the emotional video? >> Wow. ad. >> Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's timeconuming and we're all very very busy. And if you've never posted something before, there's so many factors in your psychology that stop you wanting to post, what people will think of you, am I doing this right, is the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid.

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And LinkedIn ads also drive the highest B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks in my experience. If you want to give them a try, head over to linkedin.com/diary. And when you spend $250 on your first LinkedIn ads campaign, you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next one. That's linkedin.com/diary. Terms and conditions apply. I heard you say something as well that um if you want to persuade other people, you should make them feel clever. >> Yeah. >> Explain this to me. >> I refer to this as maybe the most dangerous persuasion skill there is.

And what I'm it the 10-second brief is I basically I'm going to put a Lego right here on the table in front of you and I'm going to put another Lego right here on the table in front of you and I'm just going to keep having the conversation to where eventually your brain is going to be like, "Oh, I bet those things go together." So the idea came from you. So I'm going to give you one piece of information and another piece of information, but I will never put them together for you.

And the reason is that any idea that you think came from your own mind, you have no ability to resist it. So all I have to do is make you have an idea. So a regular example of this is let's say you're watching the news and they say uh local Austin woman has been reported missing. Neighbors said that earlier this day people saw her arguing with her boyfriend. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Details after the break. [laughter] >> So, >> yeah. >> And your brain is like, "Oh, I know what happened.

[laughter] Oh, I know exactly what happened." But they make you feel clever. >> Yeah. >> They give you a piece of data and a piece of data, but they don't tell you to put it together. >> The media do this all the time. >> Yes. And if you can do this in a courtroom, it you it will be the biggest unfair advantage you'll ever have in a legal standing because it'll win lots of trials. The way that like if there's a formula on how to use this is here's a piece of information here and it's a piece of information that you will absolutely agree with that makes sense to you and another piece of information that makes sense to you.

It has to be two things that that make sense to your brain cuz it's like you're not going to experiment with something that you're not familiar with. So, two pieces of familiar information close enough together where the brain is going to say, "Oh, you know what I can do? I'm going to put those two things together." >> Isn't this how conspiracy theories take hold as well? >> Oh, yeah. Cuz I, you know, Yeah. You know, there's a big um there's a big enduring conspiracy theory that someone like Bill Gates has done things that are nefarious as it relates to health.

And like I guess the two pieces people are connecting is they're saying, "Well, he's worked a lot. He's very rich and powerful and he's very very interested in health, >> biotech, >> and and vaccines and all these other things." And and you know, someone very very very very powerful. We often think of, you know, very powerful, successful, influential people as being somewhat like evil or not having our interests at heart.

And then someone who's spending a lot of money on like health and medical side of things um is it's quite an unusual thing. So we put two and two together. We have you know we think they have bad intentions because they are a billionaire and that word is you know comes with certain pre preconceptions and then health and then a pandemic happens and I think people you know >> this is how I think a lot of conspiracies >> name a movie from when you were a kid where the bad guy or where the super rich person in the movie wasn't the evil. >> Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. >> I mean it's programmed into the media. It's a definite programming that was very deliberate in our country. It's like always the rich people are evil. Uh but then people say, "Oh, well Tony Stark was rich. They made him a sociopath." >> It's interesting because I think, you know, I can make the case that at some point it's intentional. But at some point also, it becomes such a clear stereotype that you have to follow that stereotype when you're like writing movies or else it doesn't make sense to people. >> Yeah.

And I'm not saying it was intentional within the last like 200 300 years. I'm we're talking about like the brothers grim >> uh ancient fairy tales >> and it w I think it was intentional then like having wealth is bad. There's virtue in poverty. That's the big thing they wanted to communicate to their kids. Poverty is virtuous. >> And of course like we're we're still doing a lot of that stuff today. >> But the reason is exactly what you're saying is correct.

I think it's it's burned into like some collective archetype. >> Yeah. >> Of of what stories have become >> and we wouldn't recognize it. So like if I watched a movie and there was a very successful billionaire businessman, all I have to say is that for you to fill in the gaps. You're thinking private jet. You're thinking how they treat people. You're thinking, >> you know, they're on their phone with a briefcase. You're thinking, you know, that they have what they're wearing.

You know what they're wearing. And I didn't say any of that stuff. >> Yeah. And you made me feel clever because I put all that stuff together. that came [clears throat] came from my own mind. >> And speaking of archetypes, that's the second way that you can win any court case in the world. >> Have you got experience with court cases and stuff like that? >> A lot. >> What is your experience? >> As far as I know, I'm the only trial consultant that offers a 200% money back guarantee uh when I work. >> So, what does that mean as a trial consultant?

What's your objective in simple terms? >> It's always a little different and it depends on whether I'm working for prosecution or defense. I I know nothing about the law, like just about nothing. But I know people. So, I will typically go in and we'll pick a jury and we'll select a jury. And we want to select a jury based on this factor and this factor and based on this zip code. Here's the question that we want to ask to find out which is going to be a good juror and which is a bad juror.

But then I have to figure out questions that are covert. How can I covertly ask a question where the opposing council, the other attorney, won't know what I desire and what I don't desire based on the answer? So, one case I worked for was with a was for a large grocery store company who was being sued