Former Spy: If You’re Easily Offended, You’re Easily Manipulated! Psychological Trick That Makes People Respect You! This 1 Trick Catches A Lie In Seconds!

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid. But what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on The Diary Of A CEO has left behind a question in this diary. It's a question designed to challenge, to connect and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand. On one side, you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it. And on the other side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it. 51 questions, but across three different levels, the warm up level, the open up level and the deep level. So you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night and on first dates and everywhere in between. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below. You can get yours at thediary.com.

Evy Poumpouras (0:51)

If I'm easily offended, I'm easily manipulated. So if you are that person where you are reactive, reactive, reactive, you're number one. Shut the f**k up, because if you're looking to be respected, you need to manage yourself. But there are times that people are going to cross you in disrespect.

Steven Bartlett (1:05)

How do you deal with it?

Evy Poumpouras (1:06)

So there was a guy post that's talked to the intelligence communities and it really, really helps when you're dealing with people.

SPEAKER_3 (1:11)

And so one of the ways you deal with that kind of behavior is Evy Poumpouras, the former Secret Service agent turned human behavior expert. From protecting presidents to interrogating the world's most dangerous men, she now teaches people how to develop mental strength and persuasive communication skills.

Steven Bartlett (1:26)

How did they train you as a Secret Service agent to have that strong mental foundation that you have?

Evy Poumpouras (1:30)

There's a lot of things. So first, one of the biggest things that holds people back is the idea that I'm special. You're not that special. For example, I was one of the first responders at 9-11. I watched thousands of people die. And one of the things that got me through it was understanding I wasn't alone in it. And when you learn that, you can get through anything. When you tell yourself, nobody knows what I'm going through, nobody can help you because it's just you going through it. Now, the next thing, what's most important is this tool that we don't pay attention to, our body. And there's a study where they started recording people walking. Then they laid it to convicted felons and they said to them, who would you pick as prey? They all picked the same people. They were f*****. So there are simple things you can do with your hands, your voice, how you sit. And I will tell you everything. But also, the other thing that's actually interesting, which you didn't ask, but I will volunteer this information, are the strategies to tell if somebody's being truthful or not. And it's, that's Lie Detection 101

Steven Bartlett (2:22)

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Evy Poumpouras, when you think about the books that you've written, the content you produce and all that you're fundamentally doing for people, in your own words, how do you summarise or define that? What is it that you think you're doing for people with the content, the books you've written, et cetera?

Evy Poumpouras (3:21)

It's a great question. And I don't know if I have a clear answer. I think always, I think about how am I serving other people? I always go back to that. I remember even when I wrote my book Becoming Bulletproof, actually my book was supposed to launch right at the height of COVID. I mean, it's when the world was shutting down. And I remember I had a PR person, my agent, the publishers. Everyone's like, hey, you know, this COVID thing is happening. All the media tour glitz went away. Why don't we postpone the launch of the book? And nobody was advising me to launch the book. Nobody. Everyone's like, don't do it, don't do it. And I remember I was like, all right, I need to kind of tune everybody out. And I paused and I thought to myself, why did I write this book? I wrote this book to help people. Okay, so if the goal is to help people make them more resilient, help them live less fearlessly, the world right now is in a state of fear. So if I follow that principle, then right now I should launch the book. And I remember against everybody's advisement, I launched it.