Former FBI Agent: If They Do This Please RUN! Narcissists Favourite Trick To Control You! They're Controlling You Like A Puppet!

Joe Navarro (0:00)

I was in the FBI for 25 years. I have sat with spies and enemies of this country, and I learned a lot about human behaviors. Imagine being able to read other people and circumstances faster. It gives you a tremendous advantage in your life.

Steven Bartlett (0:15)

I want to hear everything.

Joe Navarro (0:17)

So one of the first things I teach is...

SPEAKER_3 (0:19)

Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent turned world-renowned body language expert.

SPEAKER_4 (0:23)

He helps people decode body language to improve communication, trust, and influence.

Joe Navarro (0:28)

One of the things that I found in negotiations is we as humans communicate quite a lot with our faces. For instance, we push this together when we don't understand something. And then the minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to lead the lips and then we begin to tighten them. Another behavior is that when there's lack of confidence, insecurities, people immediately. So once we understand these behaviors, you can take command of any situation.

Steven Bartlett (0:56)

Confidence, is this something that you're born with? Or do you think confidence can be trained?

Joe Navarro (1:00)

It can absolutely be trained. So the FBI actually teach confidence. And there's a lot of strategies. One of them is the most powerful gesture that we can use. And you see Musk do this a lot. But what I tell people is that the easiest way to learn confidence is to...

Steven Bartlett (1:17)

Joe, we actually videoed my interaction with you when I met you. And I've got the video here.

Joe Navarro (1:23)

So, one of the things you immediately did was... Don't do that. It's a no-no.

Steven Bartlett (1:31)

Joe, zooming out, if someone asked you in the street and they wanted a two-sentence answer, who are you and what have you spent your life doing? How would you answer that question?

Joe Navarro (1:46)

With one word, teaching. I think I've spent my whole life teaching. Even when I was in the FBI, starting in 1984, a lot of my job was obviously being an FBI agent, investigating crimes, chasing after spies and so forth. But, you know, I hired on in 1978, but as early as 1984, I was already teaching. And I love it when people get it and they see a behavior. They understand the underpinnings, the foundation of why we do certain things. I'll give you an example. Sometimes you'll come to a horrible scene and people immediately gasp. They take in air and then they cover their mouths. Or there's one point difference on the scoreboard and people are like this and they don't understand.

This is back where we were surrounded by lines and tigers and we learned to cover our mouths so as not to broadcast our breath, so that they couldn't see where we were or find us. And so the human body has a few shortcuts, I should say, the human brain. They're called heuristics. And so one of them is to freeze. So when we hear a loud sound or we see a predator or a dog, we freeze. Obviously whoever ran 300,000 years ago was bitten. And so we have these shortcuts and it's always fascinating to me to share why we have these behaviors and why we... And you realize he just inhaled, so you can hold your breath, and then we cover our breath so we don't broadcast for the predators to smell us.

Steven Bartlett (3:42)

You spend your time writing books, you spend your time teaching in various different contexts these days, whether it's on stage or in other environments on the internet. What is it that you're giving people?

Joe Navarro (3:57)

That's a profound question that I don't think I've been asked. I think the simplest answer is knowledge. Knowledge that perhaps they didn't have time to acquire.

I grew up very poor. I was a refugee from Cuba. And I lived in an area of Miami, which was mostly elderly people. So I was by myself a lot. So I would go through garbage bins collecting things to read. It's that knowledge that I was fortunate enough to acquire. The love of reading. And I run into a lot of people who haven't had that benefit. Maybe they don't have a love of reading and of learning. I see myself as, okay, I have this knowledge.

I have sat with terrorists, spies, bazooka-yielding enemies of this country. And other people never had that opportunity. And I've learned a lot from that and from my reading. So why not share it, make their life a little easier?

Steven Bartlett (5:10)

When you say make their life a little easier, if I am to receive your knowledge, how would my life be better? How would I be more productive?