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and welcome. This is Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie
Leuts. We have a very special guest for you today. The last time
I had him on the show was eleven years ago. He had a best
selling book that's been translated into thirty two languages around the globe. The name
is Joe Navarro, Joe former FBI agent. That was quite a career in
and of itself, but it looks like your career as an author, as
a motivational speaker, as a train as far eclipsed what was an extraordinary career
in the FBI. The book that I first met you on it was your
first book back in two twelve, was what everybody is saying. I want
to say personally that thank you for it. It has served me, or
the ten ninety nine that I paid for it, I believe I've gotten returns
in the many, many thousands in interviews on my podcast, in dealing with
company CEOs and officials, thussing out what they're really saying rather than what I
hear them saying. So that was great. And now the latest book you
did out a while ago, be Exceptional master the five traits that set extraordinary
people apart. So thank you for coming on the show. Your first trait
is self mastery and you define that. What does that mean? Yeah,
and carry. It's good to see you again. I've always enjoyed the questions
that you ask. I think you have one of the finest shows programs out
there because you ask good questions. Mastery of self. You know, when
I was in the Beer I did thousands of interviews. In fact, it's
somewhere it's around thirteen thousand interviews. And it's too easy always to focus on
the negative things. And so I look back on those interviews and people I've
met over the years, and I looked at, well, what were the
positive attributes. And one of the things that I found was that exceptional individuals
really have mastery over themselves. They had the capacity to fulfill obligations, they
had the ability to focus on what they need to focus on. They are
conscientious, and they had the ability to moderate their emotions so that they're not
not out of control. And of course, uh, you know, within
reason, Um, they don't do things that get him in trouble with drugs
or alcohol or or the law and so forth. And just looking back throughout
history and you think, well, what would be an example in history?
And you look at Leonardo da Vinci, and you think, oh, the
most valuable painting in the world was painted by his man, by this man,
but he had no mastery over himself. In fact, he was looking
anywhere from eight to eleven lawsuits during his life for failure to complete jobs that
he had been paid for, what we call that felony. And so I
was looking at that and sometimes because of you know who they are, we
think, oh they were exceptional, no doubt, nobody painted like he did.
But the man did not have mastery over his life. In fact,
he was always on the run because someone was always after him. And I
think this is something that you know, you and I were talking earlier,
that introspection, being able to look at our lives, being honest with ourselves,
because that is so hard to be honest and say, you know what,
I don't do this very well, or I'm failing here, or you
know, I'm going from my thirties to my forties, and am I still
the same person? Am I not changed? I think that honesty has to
to kick in. And I think exceptional individuals, you know, harness everything
that they can, even if it's not perfect, but they have and they
exercise mastery over their own lives. I think that's a great point. Two
things come to mind. Number one is there's a book by a guy named
Scott Adams talking about failing your way to success. So self mastery means learning
from failure, not being defeated by it. Right absolutely, That's how we
learned to use computers. You know, everyone I talked to, which which
it was, everything from farmers to day laborers to physicians, they took whatever
circumstances they had and whatever failure they had, and they said, failure is
not going to define me. What's going to define me? They didn't put
it this way, but I discerned this from them. What's going to define
me is what I do each day in furtherance of where I want to go
and what I want to be. A young, young man I talked to.
He said he was so poor that everything they read, or he and
his siblings read, they got from garbage cans. And you know, you
could sit there and and take pity on that, and they said, please
don't. I got a lot of reading done. People throw up a lot
of stuff. He was defining his life by where he was headed. He
knew he had to be to educate himself, and so he created the architecture,
which a lot of people don't do. They expect they outsource everything.
Oh, school teach me everything I need to know. No it won't.
One book will not teach you everything you need to know. They apprentice themselves.
They create an apprenticeship for themselves. I was talking to this young man,
and he says, I scavenged for books. I asked people for books,
any book. And he created his own learning program. And and I
think that's what sets extraordinary people apart. That is mastery of self. What
we often see is people say, well, I'm overwhelmed by life and everything
that has gone against me. And and I listen, I understand. My
My family was poor. We live my mother lived on tips, people living
leaving fifteen cents on the table. I understand poverty, but it's what you
do with that and and the concept of or the construct of I don't care
what life presents. I'm going to go the other way. I'm going to
keep create the architecture to go in the other direction. And that's what really
sets exceptional people apart. All right. So I remember a former Speaker of
the House, John Bayner, said, I have to deal with every son
of a bitch who walks through the door, whether I like them or not,
whether I want what he wants or not. I got to deal with
them. And isn't that really an encapsulation, a summation of life. You've
got to deal with these people, A lot of them. You don't like,
a lot of them. You like, Hey, you're in the federal
bureaucracy. There's superiors who you just want to punch out because they just really
But then you realize, I have to make this work. I can't just
act out on emotion. I've got to communicate, which is communicate, build
a bridge and get to where take that bridge where I want to go.
But isn't that like the most difficult thing when you're dealing with people, A
lot of them. Person we seem to be in a society dominated by personality
disorders, and we got to deal with these people on our day to day
life. What can you tell us how we do this more effectively? Joe?
Yeah, And you bring up a great point. You know what,
when four percent of the population is antisocial, at least one percent is psychopath
and anywhere from to the eight percent of certain occupations are just filled with the
narcissistic personality, including as you say, in politics, you never know what's
going to come through the door. But I can tell you this, if
you don't have mastery over yourself, then whatever comes through that door, you're
not gonna be able to deal with it. Because the easiest thing for humans
to do is go emotional, and that's what often happens. Hey, how
did this get out of control? Well, somebody had to be the adult
in the room. Somebody had to control their emotions, and someone didn't.
And that is a very difficult thing to get across if you don't begin to
practice that at an early age. If you grow up with the belief system
that if they're angry, then I have to be angry, otherwise I'm perceived
as weak. You're you're going to have problems all your life, because the
most exceptional people that I dealt with learn to observe that things we're getting out
of control, or that this person has problems, or they come in with
emotional luggage, as I'm sure speaker Baner faced all the time. And the
question is how do we move forward? Because you know there are many ways
to de escalate. You can do it with distance. You can do it
by angling your body so that you're not as intense in somebody's space, by
lowering your voice, speaking with cadence, tilting your head. These things de
escalate and it's up to you. And you said, and I do these
things all the time. I don't see it as weakness. In fact,
I see it as power because by me being in control of my nonverbals,
including my voice, I'm actually in a way controlling them because I can literally
see them calming down. How can I help you? First of all,
what is your name? All right? I have a seat? You know
all the things that you learn in what everybody is saying, and be exceptional.
It's about being able to observe these things and then using the mastery over
yourself so that then you can exert influence on others you, and you have
to realize that this is not a losing proposition. That by me being in
control, I'm exercising dominance the me in it I go emotional, it's over
because once the emotional brain kicks in, right, this is the subcortical area
of the brain. We have the neo cortex, the outer area that thanks
the executive brain, the more primitive area, the limbic system, is all
emotions. And if you're doing everything there, then it's just about physicality,
pushing your chest out, you know, breathing heavy and so forth, and
you're you're out of control. So the exceptional individual learns to control themselves knowing
that by how I look at you, the angles, the distance, the
breathing, I can actually begin to get you to change. That's that's not
just influence, that's power. Sure, And it makes me think about the
media because the media in general, they're just pot stirs. They want to
shift you to that retilient emotional brain. Right then you accept information uncritically and
you just believe whatever they tell you, because hey, when you see a
kid in a horrible situation, it immediately shifts you into that primitive brain emotional
state. And then you just once your critical mind shuts off, they own
you. And you know it's so hard to do that. I've just stopped
watching news for the most part because I felt like I can't control it.
You know, watching like the World Trade Center come down still affects me very
deeply. And I have to be careful when I get into that emotionally charred
state, because that's when for me, I make mistakes. When I'm in
that state, I'll believe things that people tell me because I want to believe
them, not because I've proven a true to myself right. And and that's
part of what you said earlier. It's at self honesty. I know the
things that trigger me. I've been I've been to too many autopsies. I've
been at too many optous autopsies where there were children. To this day,
forty years later, I'm still affected by those autopsies. The little broken hands
at in the Oklahoma building, the the the baby that was well in Youume,
Arizona in nineteen seventy nine. I cannot get that out of my head.
And I have to be careful. As you say, you have to
be careful with emotions. This is why mastery is so important because you know,
I tell people, I give people the example, think of how many
times you've been in an argument, and then an hour later you think of
all the clever lines you should have said. And the reason you didn't think
of those clever lines in the moment is because you want emotional. You want
emotional. It's only when we are cognitive, when we're in the thinking mode,
and emotions are a side that we think of all those Churchillian things that
we could have said, which reminds me of when Churchill. Somebody said to
Churchill, Sarah, if you were my husband, I'd feed you poison,
and he retorted, as only he can, and Madam, if you were
my wife, I'd drink it. You can only think of those things when
your mind is clear. But yeah, we have to be careful not to
be driven to the emotional side. We have to be able to think through
things, all right. So get into a little touchy subject. So men
and women are different, regardless what the medium might be telling us. Now,
they're distinct differences between the sexes, and one is female operating system is
based on emotion and experiential more so than men. Not that women can't be
rational. I'm not saying that at all, but um in dealing in these
interpersonal relationships, men are coming out it often from a logical standpoint, women
from an emotional standpoint. What I'm saying is that that this is the crux
of all the problems that we have in society today. A lot of what
you're saying there, Well, let me answer it this way, because I've
looked at the literature, and what we know is this, our brains are
not necessarily all wired the same way. We know that in women they're the
connections between the right and the left side of the brain. They're more inconnect
interconnected, men less. So we're barely now starting to understand the brain.
We know that the times while we're growing up, we're testosterone sort of is
infused into us at different intervals, and even estrogen is infused at different intervals,
begins to shape us. There are internal differences, and of course there
are the external ones. I think the biggest mistake that we make, and
I tell this to everybody, and it has nothing to do with whether you're
a man or a woman, It is the failure to understand or the failure
to think that you talk to everybody the same way. And that everybody responds
should respond the same way. And I wish universities on a minimum and schools
maximum would begin to teach that, just as you and I carry find our
own way of communicating with each other, and of for instance, something as
simple as turn yielding our agreement behaviors, realize that every single person on this
planet we should address differently because we all. Some people think very fast,
some people are slower, Some people are more pensive. Some people are emotional.
We may not know why they're emotional at normoust we sit there in judgment
over that. The fact of the matter is, and I been. I
was in a room with about seventy six other FBI agents and we had just
come back from the Murrah building and on the wall on the wall were little
hands that had been drawn by local children in and every single man that was
there was in tears. So I don't want to hear about well, some
people are more emotional than others. Let me tell you something. If it's
emotional enough, right, unless you're a psychopath, you're gonna cry. All
these men that were there, I don't remember any women on that particular day,
although there were many there. We were all crying just because of the
imagery. What's important is, because I may be in a position to be
working both with both men and women. Is what are the specific needs,
wants, desires and preferences of each individual when I hold when I hold my
training and we do training around the world. In fact, we've got one
coming up in Amsterdam in June. I say, hey, what do we
use no verbals for. It's not the detect deception. It's to assess individuals
for their needs, their wants, their desires, their preferences. And if
you get this one right, you're gonna win. Their fears. What do
they fear you? As an investor, what do you fear I'm going to
get the losing money losing money right? We don't say I fear it.
You know, I'm doing the due diligence because I don't want that to happen.
But the brain works on fear. And if you can do that for
every person, if you can figure out what are their preferences for talking to
each other, I think we're better ahead. I think to a certain extent,
the media and society wants to park us into these the silos of men,
women alternets. This boy scouts this. No, the Mormons are over
here, and you know it's like stop, stop, we're one species,
but it but we need to be individuated because we all have references. Yeah,
well, I couldn't agree more. It's these preprogrammed responses where you know,
you shoot the messenger without to the message, you immediately discount the message
because you don't like the messenger. And when you were talking before, you
get into an argument, and then an hour later you realize you were wrong
and why didn't I it was wrong then? And the emotions when they kick
in, they're so powerful and they're always there right, just waiting to come
to the surface. Yeah. Yeah, it's um and and that's part of
it. And you know, there's so much good advice out there about dealing
with emotions and so forth. And you know, even programs like yours,
where you know, there's a lot of things I don't know about business,
but you can create your own learning experience so much easier now than in the
sixties and the seventies and in the eighties. So really there's no excuse.
I mean you you you've had the world class speakers on your program. Um,
you know, I don't have time to travel around the country to cashe
spokes. So there really is no excuse for not working on mastery of self.
It really should be should be a lifelong learner, and you're never fully
the master of yourself. So now lifelong occupation, if you will. And
it's the most important one, I think, because it's going to determine your
success in life, your success relationships. And you know, so many times
you say something and because you're in that emotionally charged state and you can't take
it back, and then the wreckage follows. Yeah, and once it's out,
it doesn't go back. Yeah. So you're doing, uh, these
boot camps on the communication. You know, I just have a joke for
you. You know they say that the eighty percent of all communication is nonverbal.
But me and my X, we have that beat. One hundred percent
of ours was not just stopped talking. Huh. That applies to a lot
of lives that I know. Mary Um. You know, over the years,
I've been asked that question, what's the number? What exactly is a
number of how important body language is? I can tell you this. It
is the principal means by which we humans communicate. It is the best way
that we communicate. Empathy. It is the way that we assess for our
mate, whether we play with them for ten minutes or we marry them.
We do this nonverbally. It's how we assess for danger and safety. And
it's certainly assists us in socializing. So when people say, well, so,
what percentage is that, I say, it really depends on where you're
at. You could be staring at a loved one and you know, and
it's one hundred percent or maybe down to sixty in a business meeting. But
it's never much lower than that because I've sat in business meetings where we were
talking numbers and we were all kind of reading each other the way we were
saying the information. What our attitude was is how confident we were. And
you know, all of that was nonverbal. So um, it's an important
part of our lives. And and and I would just caution everybody stop looking
for deception. It's useful to look for issues, right, look for psychological
discomfort, as I teach in my books, but uh, and use it
to communicate effectively. Right. I couldn't agree more. Hey, Joe,
where is the best place to find you? These days? All your books
obviously on Amazon? That's where I purchased them, but the West, which
one's the best to find? Yeah, my website if you go to Joe
Navarro dot net, everything is there. And I've got my books articles psychology
today and uh and this wonderful event that we're going to be doing. It's
two days of intense training in Amsterdam. It's one of my favorite cities,
and we really do a deep dive into how we use nonverbals. And I
tell folks, especially in the you know, most of the people that I
work with are in the financial sector. The most important thing that we can
do is to try to understand the other person, communicate with them effectively.
But also is what messages are we sending? Are we are we sending messages
that you know, sometimes we come across as a little too plightful, maybe
crass, maybe narcissistic, whatever is we have a role to play and what
messages am I sending when I sit there in a meeting and so forth,
And so we explore that those those kinds of things, because it's not just
about reading others. Always remember everybody else is reading you, and the question
is what message are they getting? Do they see you as competent, do
they see you as with hesitation. Do they see you equivocating? Do you
have to bite your lip and pull on your shirt collar to answer a simple
question? Delays in answering a throat clearing. I remember Bob Gates when who
was I think for a while there he was the CIA, then he was
at the Pentagon, and obviously the media would ask him questions he wasn't allowed
to answer it. He always cleared his throat when he was gonna have to
bamboozle us. If you got to clear your throat to answer a question,
I want to ask more questions. That's that's very clearing your throat, Yeah,
exactly. They Well, if you've got a question for Joe, shoot
me an email kl at Kerry Lutz dot com and we'll get you an answer.
And the link to Joe's website is in the show notes this interview.
All the books are available on Amazon or wherever fine books used to be sold.
And Joe really appreciate you coming on spending time with us, and we
really appreciate it, and we will talk to you again soon. That's great.
Thank you for having me, Carrie, and let's not wait eleven more
years. Huh. Definitely, thanks for listening to Carry Lutz's Financial Survival Network,
your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial
Survival Network dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,