My name is Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of this book, Among Others, Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism, Revisited. I've written several books about the topic and this was my first one published 20 years ago, 18 to be precise, 18 years ago, Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism, Revisited. So I'm kind of the granddaddy of the field, so to speak. Malignan Self-Love started as a series of correspondences with mainly victims of narcissistic abuse but also with some narcissists and therapists working with narcissists who found themselves utterly befuddled and bemused by the condition. And so this correspondence was going on for two years and then I discovered patterns in the correspondence. I discovered that there were frequently asked questions. So I collected these questions together and I opened a website in 1997 and then people put pressure and asked for the website to be published as a book. These were the olden times and people still prefer to read physical books. So there was the first edition of Malignan Self-Love published in Prague in 1999. And it was an amalgamation and a collection of the concerns, hopes, fears of people who lived with narcissists, worked with narcissists and suffered the inevitable abuse at the hands of narcissists. My book is a user's manual for the narcissist. When one buys a new computer, one usually refers to the user's manual or the computer is rendered unusable. It's the same with the narcissist. When one gets married to a narcissist, when one starts to work with a narcissist, when one is employed by a narcissist, when one's clergyman is a narcissist, when one's in law enforcement, in the courts, in show business, in politics, etc. Narcissism is an all pervasive phenomenon which permeates literally every major profession and every major field of life. So there's narcissism in the family, narcissism in the workplace, narcissism in religion, narcissism in politics, etc. So this is a user's manual simply. It describes, it dissects and then describes the narcissist's psyche. What makes him tick? Which psychodynamic processes take place? How they interact with each other? How do they fit upon each other? The narcissist's unusual, peculiar, idiosyncratic and very baffling reactions, including for example narcissistic rage or devaluation or idealization, these are things so outside the sphere of common experiences that one might as well be interacting or working with or living with an alien, an extraterrestrial being or a form of artificial intelligence. In the absence of such a manual it is impossible to decipher, decrypt the narcissist. It's impossible to predict the narcissist's next moves. It's impossible to shield oneself emotionally from the hurt and pain and agony that narcissists inflict on people. So my book is simply a shield. It's kind of like in Star Wars. It's a shield because narcissists keep pelting people with all forms of maltreatment and so on. This book is your protective wall, your firewall against the narcissist. Every human being has healthy narcissism. Healthy narcissism is a phase, usually in early childhood and then there's a second phase in adolescence, where one usually forms one's identity and then acquires a modicum of self-esteem and self-confidence, which if realistic constitute a sense of self-worth. So one becomes aware of one's limitations, one's realistic talents and skills, one's abilities and disabilities, one's failings and one's advantages. And this put together, this is the edifice of healthy narcissism. Obviously in the absence of healthy narcissism, people develop other forms of pathologies, for example dependence or codependence. So healthy narcissism is critical. It is when healthy narcissism spins out of control, when it acquires a malignant form, when it remains pure, or even infantile, when it is commingled with primitive defence mechanisms, when it impacts one's ability to assess reality properly, in other words what we call a failed reality test, when it generates and fosters and engenders cognitive distortions and cognitive biases and cognitive failures, when it leads to the suppression of emotions and inaccessibility of emotions, when it gives rise to extremely negative and destructive and then self-destructive emotions such as pathological envy and hatred. When all these are put together, then we have pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism is not an extreme or radical form of healthy narcissism. It is an absolutely different clinical entity. It is so different to healthy narcissism that one would do well to think of it as an entirely different psychodynamic phenomenon. And this is why we need books like Malignant Self-Love and others which describe this phenomenon because it's really, really, as I said, so outside common human experience. I was literally the first to start with the field but there's still, of course, a enormous amount of work to be done and I think knowledge of pathological narcissism, narcissism in general, healthy narcissism and the various manifestations and phases of narcissism is still in its infancy and additionally there is very strong resistance to studying narcissism. There is resistance among mental health professionals, many of whom are narcissists. There is resistance in the media and show business where narcissism prevails. There is resistance among politicians, many of whom again are narcissists and therefore there is a problem with budgets, research budgets and so on which are determined ultimately by politicians and so on and so forth. Narcissists hold many positions of power. Narcissists hold the levers of power and they hold the purse strings. So it's an uphill battle to study narcissism against well-established constituencies of narcissists in extremely well-positioned nexus. Yes, Mr. Trump is an example of a narcissist who made it. The more successful narcissists are, the more they become role models. I mean why wouldn't you want to be Donald Trump? He has the girl, he has the jet, he has the presidency, he has property, he has the billions, he has media exposure. Give me one good reason not to be Donald Trump. Indeed, last year the National Academy of Sciences of Science in the United States in its magazine, The New Scientist, published a cover story calling upon parents to teach their children to be narcissists. I'm kidding you not, because narcissism is an adaptation. As civilization, especially western civilization, becomes more and more narcissistic, as narcissistic values, behaviors and traits are rewarded, the incentive not to be a narcissist declines and the incentive to be a narcissist increases. So modern society incentivizes people to be narcissists. Narcissism is a clinical entity, so one can have narcissistic behaviors and display narcissistic traits and not be a narcissist. But as more and more people behave narcissistically, as they lack empathy, as they become more ruthless and ambitious, as they trample upon others, as they engage in ostentatious consumption, as they emphasize materialistic values over spiritual ones, and so on and so forth. As this phenomena proliferates and take over modern discourse and modern society, then obviously more and more people, especially among the young, will tend to regard narcissism as a legitimate form of conduct, and actually as a currency, a social currency, and a great adaptation. And the horrifying thing is, they would be right to think so. There have been quite a few studies recently by the likes of Twange, Campbell and others that have demonstrated that narcissism is increasing among college students and so on. Although now Twange and Campbell are reversing their position. I wonder why, but it seems that narcissism is increasing. And not only increasing, but as I said, being legitimized. For example, we recently have studies of so-called high functioning narcissists. We have studies of productive narcissists. So narcissism is being, pathological narcissism is being attached to very positive adjectives, high functioning, productive contributing narcissists and so on. So are we about to be taken over by narcissists? I think yes. I think we will end up being led by narcissists, dictated to by narcissists. The benton will be narcissistic. Materialistic values are already prevalent, where they never existed before. Russia is an example. And empathy is, I think, not only on the decline, but it's becoming an extinct commodity. Because it's not working. Empathy is not working. Empathy consumes energy, consumes resources. To be empathic, one needs to invest. One needs to reallocate scarce resources. And what does one get for that? Knife in the back in the best case. So empathy loses its appeal as an adaptive strategy. It's all about survival, all about adaptation, all about the next generation. And in the world as harsh and merciless as ours has become, empathy is a very bad strategy. And narcissism is fast becoming an excellent strategy. I think we are putting the cart before the proverbial horse. I think technology reflects prevailing mores and social developments. I think narcissism was on the rise and technology only catered to this need. People wanted selfies, so they got selfies. It's not that technology made them take selfies, but they wanted a technology which would enable them to take selfies, which would empower them, which would allow them to publish texts inane and less inane, which would let them broadcast or narrowcast, which would buttress their ego and so on. So I think technology is one step behind, actually. I don't think it creates this social phenomenon. I think it reflects them. And then, of course, enhances them to good effect, good commercial and profitable effect. But who are the people who created the technology? Have a look, have a specific look at, for example, Stephen Jones. I mean a prime, probably sociopathic, narcissist. So narcissists use technology to enhance or amplify the narcissism, which in turn allows them to create additional technologies to amplify the narcissism and so on and so forth. So it's a feedback loop. Technology is not an instrument that, in my view at least, it's not an instrument that alters the fundamentals of society, but it's an instrument that kind of cements these fundamentals and renders them socially acceptable, renders them widespread. And I think social media has done exactly this. I was formally diagnosed twice, once in the 80s and once in the 90s by two psychologists, diagnosticians. So I'm pretty certain that I have it. I was never officially diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, which is the closest approximation to psychopathy that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has. Though I did participate in a documentary about me and my brain that implied that I might have psychopathy. Still, I have been diagnosed officially with narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder, the prevailing thinking, the thinking right now is that it's the outcome of environment rather than, I mean, nurture rather than nature. It is supposed to be the outcome of abuse in early childhood. There are many forms of abuse. Abuse is any situation where the child's emergent boundaries, where the child's emergent identity, when they are threatened by the parents or other caregivers or even role models or in extreme cases peers. So when we say that boundaries and emergent identity are threatened, that enlarges the scope of abuse much more than most people think. So if you ask people on the street what is abuse, they would say, well, physical abuse, sexual abuse. And that is all true.  That's all very true.  All these, idolizing the child, all these also constitute a breach of boundaries. They also constitute an interference, gross interference in the child's forming identity. So they are also forms of abuse actually. So narcissistic personality disorder could be the outcome of classical abuse, as I mentioned, physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, emotional. But it can also be the outcome of what is never considered to be a form of abuse, such as idolizing, pampering, spoiling, and so on, which are actually forms of abuse. In my case, I have been subjected to 16 years of life-threatening physical abuse, psychological, in addition to psychological and verbal abuse on a regular basis, hundreds of times a day. And in very critical formative years, between the ages of more or less 4 and 20, it culminated at the age of 16, but it was 16 years of unmitigated, uninterrupted, extreme life-threatening abuse. And so this led, I believe, to the formation of a defense, and this defense is what we call the false self. The false self is the child's sanctuary and refuge on the one hand, and on the other hand it's the child's God. Pathological narcissism is a form of private religion, where the child sacrifices his true self to, on the altar, and to a God, and that God, or that divinity, is the false self. The false self is everything that the child is not. The child is helpless. The false self is omnipotent. The child cannot predict the future and doesn't know many things. The false self is infallible and omniscient. The child is hurting and in pain, owing to the consistent abuse. The false self is emotionless, invulnerable, impermeable, impenetrable. So the false self is everything the child is not. And therefore, if you put all these attributes together, the false self is God, in effect. And pathological narcissism, as I said, is a private religion. Because it is a private religion, it is so hard, so difficult to eradicate. It calls upon techniques borrowed from cults, debriefing former members of cults. Because pathological narcissism is a one-member cult. And what the narcissist tries to do is impose his private religion upon other people around him. So when you live with a narcissist in a family, when you work with a narcissist and so on, narcissist tries to convert you to his religion. He tries to convince you that his false self is not false at all. That he is indeed brilliant and perfect and omniscient and omnipotent. And that you should worship that false self, that grandiose and inflated false self, as he does. The narcissist needs people around him to tell him that his false self is not false but true, and that his fantasies are not fantasies but realities. Because otherwise he will disintegrate. If one realizes that one has been living a lie, one disintegrates. So the narcissist becomes very compulsive and if not catered to, very aggressive in pursuing what I call narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is this fuel that the false self consumes. This deluge or avalanche of attention, admiration, adulation, applause, affirmation, or in the absence of these being hated and being feared, but being noticed one way or the other. All this is needed to sustain the narcissist's house of cards. This impossible narrative, this piece of fiction, this concoction and confabulation, that is actually the narcissist. Don't forget that the narcissist dies at the age of five or six. There is this frozen true self, a baby or a child or a toddler crying at the corner in enormous pain, unable to reach out, isolated and essentially out of growth, never growing. There is this core, but this core is tiny and around this core there is an enormous void. So there is no one there. The narcissist does not exist in any sense of this world. There's no one there. It's a giant void and instead of having an internal mental, emotional skeleton, the narcissist has an exoskeleton. He has an external skeleton. That external skeleton, that scaffolding is the false self. If it were to be removed, because there's only a void left, the narcissist will vanish. The narcissist perceives any attack, any challenge to his grandiosity, any attack on his fantasies, any intrusion by reality, any countervailing statement, any disagreement, any criticism. He perceives them as life-threatening. That's why the disproportionate reactions of narcissists. That's why you have narcissistic rage. That's why you have an enormous aggression, culminating in violence very often. Because a narcissist is fighting for his life, even with the most mild type of comment or is fighting for his life. Because if there's a crack, even the tiniest crack, it will spread. And once it spreads, the whole edifice will crumble and narcissists cannot afford it. That's why narcissists are hyper-vigilant. Hyper-vigilance means that they scan their environment all the time. Am I being challenged? Am I being insulted? Am I being humiliated? Humiliated? Am I being ignored? This constant scanning, which I describe as cold empathy. It is a form of empathy because they need to evaluate other people, read them correctly, predict their behavior and so on. But it lacks any emotional resonance or component. You see, it all coalesces. Every psychodynamic aspect and process in the narcissist is geared towards supporting this utterly implausible, improbable and very often comic creation, the false self. Narcissists are concerned. Narcissists are optimizing devices. They are concerned with one thing and one thing only, and that is narcissistic supply. They are out looking for attention, admiration, adulation, etc., etc., as I've mentioned. They need this narcissistic supply to support the foundations of the false self, and so that's the only thing that concerns them. They might very well be described as drug addicts, and their drug is narcissistic supply. Someone who is addicted to heroin is not concerned with anything else, not with morality, not with ethics, not with his work, not with his family. Nothing matters or concerns him. He is preoccupied with obtaining the next dose, and so is the narcissist. So narcissism and narcissists are about narcissistic supply. Now, if you can provide the narcissist with narcissistic supply, the narcissist will attach to you, will form attachments. And this attachment goes through a cycle, and the cycle starts with something called idealization. So when the narcissist spots another person who can provide him with a, who can become a stable, reliable, predictable source of narcissistic supply, the narcissist starts to idealize that person. He starts to attribute to that person. Personal traits and even a personal history, which have very little to do with a person. The narcissist needs to idealize the person for two reasons. One, if the supply comes with an ideal figure, it is a much higher quality supply.  So narcissists would tend to think of his sources as geniuses, because then the compliments they give him are more worthwhile, they're more high quality. And the second reason to idealize is that when the narcissist idealizes, he takes a snapshot, a snapshot of that person, and then he internalizes this snapshot. And he interacts with this snapshot, not with the real person. From that moment on, there is an internalized object with which the narcissist works, talks to, fights with and so on and so forth. And that object has very little in common with the trigger, with the real person, who then is relegated to the position of an echo or a trigger. So narcissists need to idealize. They idealize you as a source of supply, and then as long as you continue to provide supply, you will be idealized. The minute you cease to be a source of supply by, for example, disagreeing with the narcissist or criticizing him, or even giving him advice, which implies that he is not all knowing, or obstructing him in any way, or resisting him, the minute you stop being an ideal source of supply, the narcissist will devalue you, and will think of you exactly the opposite, the opposite he had thought of you during the idealization phase.  If during the idealization phase he thought of you as very handsome, or during the devaluation phase he will think of you as repulsive, repugnant and ugly and so on. And he will not see any contradiction between the statements he has made during the idealization phase and the statements he is making during the devaluation phase. And so this is the typical cycle, and the concern and the focus and the urge and the addiction and the drive and everything, everything focuses on narcissistic supply. Therefore, it is a myth, and it's completely wrong to believe that narcissists target specific personalities or specific types of people. They don't. They target anyone who can give them supply, period. The people who can give them supply could be educated or not educated, rich or poor, strong or weak, codependent or utterly autonomous and independent. The only relevant question is, can I derive or extract supply from that person? Therefore, narcissists do not love, in any sense of the word. They get attached to sources of supply. The same way that hostages get attached to kidnappers and drug addicts get attached to pushers. They get attached to the source of pleasure, to the source of endorphins, to the source of this feeling of wholeness and contentedness and grandiosity and fantasy. And as long as you provide this drug, they are attached to you, and they are even I would say dependent on you as a source. And the minute you don't provide the supply, they stop. So there's no love there, in any sense of the word. Only 1% of the general population is believed to be malignant narcissists, and only 5% of the population of patients, inpatients and outpatients are diagnosed with narcissistic personalities. Pathological narcissism is a very rare reaction. It's not a common reaction to abuse. Indeed, in the same family you could have 5 children and only one of them would become narcissists, although all 5 were exposed to the same kind of maltreatment and abuse and debasement and so on. So this gives ground to believe that perhaps there is some genetic template or genetic predisposition or propensity to develop narcissism. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain why all children exposed to the same environment and treatment do not develop narcissism. Moreover, children essentially have 3 choices when exposed to abuse. They can remain normal by isolating themselves completely from the parent and by creating a kind of firewall behind which they continue to evolve and develop healthily. For example, by finding alternative figures in their lives, which could provide them with empathy, love, caring. So you will hear very often such children say, well, my real mother was my grandmother as they found an alternative figure. So this is one strategy. Second strategy is to become narcissistic. So the child reacts by developing the false self.  So that's another strategy. And the third strategy is essentially what is known as the Stockholm syndrome or trauma bonding, where the child becomes an extension of the parent, satisfies the parent, caters to the parent's needs, sometimes acts as the parent's parent and so on and so forth and becomes dependent on the parent for a variety of functions, mental and emotional functions. And these people become codependence much later. But the distinction is a bit blurred because narcissists are also codependent. For example, narcissists heavily depend on the sources of supply. And when they are abandoned by these sources, they break down. So they have severe abandonment anxiety, exactly like codependence. Codependence also have abandonment anxiety. And to some extent they are narcissistic. They use their own weakness and their own neediness and their own clinginess to manipulate. They emotionally blackmail and so on. So these are narcissistic behaviors. So the line between codependent and narcissists is a bit fuzzy, although clearly they are distinct clinical entities and they can never be confused. Still both have elements of the other. And I think the reason is that the environment was the same. The environment that creates these three types of solution is the same. There is a common misconception about narcissists. They tend to be demonized and they tend to be thought of as evil. Narcissists are not evil. You can't be evil if you don't care about people. You can't be evil if you don't perceive people as full-fledged three-dimensional entities. But you perceive them as cardboard cutouts or as internal objects. You can't really be evil. Evil implies intent. Evil implies premeditation. Evil implies that you care about the responses of your victims. These responses gratify you or like in sadism. Sadists are evil because the pain of the victims gratifies them, gives them pleasure. But narcissists are none of the above. Narcists don't care. They are utterly indifferent. They are more akin to viruses or predators, natural predators. They abuse because they don't seek, they don't derive pleasure from abusing other people. They don't derive any satisfaction or gratification from the reactions of their victims. They don't pursue evil or malevolent strategies because they lead somewhere, because they lead to any emotionally. They simply do what they do. It so happens that what they do is very painful to people around them. It so happens that what they do can damage people around them, compromise their interests, affect their health, ruin their psychological well-being.  But it so happens. It's a by-product. Perhaps this is the most horrifying thing about narcissists because you see psychopaths, for example. You can understand psychopaths because every one of us is a mini-psychopath. You can understand psychopaths. They want money. They want sex. They want power. Only they want it so badly that they will literally kill for it. So okay, psychopaths are exaggerated versions of ourselves. We have something in common with psychopaths. We all want money. We all want sex. We all want power. We can understand them. We think that their methods are reprehensible and socially unacceptable. But we still understand them. But how can you understand a narcissist? No one has anything in common with a narcissist because narcissists would do the same as a psychopath. They would kill, abuse, extort, threaten and everything. But they would do it utterly off-handedly, utterly indifferently. Utterly like you are not there. Like you don't exist at all.  And I think this is far more terrifying than the most terrifying psychopath. Because I can understand the most terrifying psychopath. He comes here.  I understand that. It's human. Psychopaths are human. Exaggerated humans. Narcissists are not human. They are not human. The lack of empathy is so deep that their inability to perceive other people as people is so extreme that, as I keep saying, they are different species. They are predators in the true sense of the word because they consume other people, devour them, reduce them to riding shells off like absent-mindedly. As some kind of effluence, some kind of by-product of an industrial process. And that is utterly terrifying, in my view. The strategy I recommended 20 years ago was no-contact. No-contact means that if you can at all, then you should immediately sever all relationships, all interactions with Narcissists and just walk away. If it is at all possible. Obviously if you have children with Narcissists, for example. Or if you are dependent on Narcissists for your livelihood and there is no alternative. Obviously you have to be in touch with Narcissists. So no-contact is often misinterpreted and people say, well, I can't go no-contact because I have children with him. That's not the meaning of no-contact. No-contact means that you minimize contact and you render all contact impersonal. You refuse and reject all personal aspects, dimensions and hues of any type of interaction with the Narcissists. So if you have to talk to the Narcissists, you do so via a lawyer or an accountant. If you receive gifts, you return them unopened. If he calls you and begins to talk about your personal life, you turn him down. So it's taking the personal out of the interaction, rendering the interaction or the interface utterly neutral and objective. That's the meaning of no-contact. And of course, in extreme cases, if you can move physically away and never ever see the Narcissist again or talk to him, that's the ideal. And people tell me, okay, but I can't do this with my mother. Why? Why can't you do this with your mother? I can't do this with my adult son. Yes, he's a Narcissist. He abuses me. My mother abuses me. My sister abuses me. But they're family. I can't do that. Why? These strategies apply to all Narcissists, regardless of their biological position in your life or genetic position.  No Narcissist is privileged. If the person is really a Narcissist, and that's also an open question, because currently everyone diagnoses everyone as a Narcissist. But if a person really is a Narcissist, the only way is to walk away. If you want to manipulate a Narcissist, the only way is to either withhold or provide Narcissistic supply. It's very simple. Narcissists are cowards, usually, so they can be frightened away. But again, these strategies are not to be in touch and to depersonalize all interactions. If you insist on being in touch and remaining on personal terms with a Narcissist, then your only viable strategy is via the manipulation of Narcissistic supply. It's the only viable strategy. There are other strategies. For example, there's a strategy called collusion. Collusion is to collaborate with a Narcissist in attacking a third party. So kind of diverting the Narcissist's wrath and rage and everything towards the third party, which you can both together attack or hold in contempt or disdain. Then there is a strategy of being submissive, simply saying yes to everything, giving praise, providing Narcissistic supply on a regular basis, like compliments. That's also another strategy, but ultimately it boils down to withholding or providing Narcissistic supply. No contact is the best approach for the victim. It's the way to win the back. Of course, the majority of Narcissists actually do come back. This is a process called hoovering or reacquisition. It's like the Italian mafia, Italian mob. Once in, you're never out. So once you're in a Narcissist's life, once you are on his index, Rolodex card, you're never out. You're always subject to attempts to reacquire you as a source of supply. You need to be truly no contact, go no contact for a long period of time, or be seriously aggressive for the Narcissist to walk away. Otherwise, he will keep attempting to reintroduce you into his life as a source of supply. He will keep probing, he'll keep testing, and literally no end to this. There's no expiry date or statute of limitation. Narcissists have only the cognitive component. In other words, they can think about other people, analyze them, and immediately spot their vulnerabilities, the chinks in the armor, penetration points, and then they leverage this new gain knowledge in order to kind of penetrate the target, take over, brainwash, convert into a source of supply. And this is what I call cold empathy. Emotional empathy cannot be learned. It's acquired pretty early on, so it cannot be learned. However, Narcissists have something that I call emotional resonance tables. These are gigantic databases and truly gigantic databases.  And they come up with this huge set of heuristic principles. It says, if a person cries, then most people who cry say they are said. So if a person cries, he is said. And if I want to imitate said, I should cry. It's a set of heuristic sentences. I believe the same thing is done in artificial intelligence. And then what they do, they imitate the behaviors very convincingly, and therefore they deceive people very frequently and make them believe that actually behind the facade of invulnerability and impunity and so on, there is actually a soft core kind of a weeping child that just needs hugging, just needs love in order to flourish again and grow and take over this malevolent, malicious adult, which is of course very, very untrue. It's just that Narcissists are the masters of imitation. They are thespian masterpieces, and they have this enormous database and they emulate and they copy and they imitate. This is one of the most striking examples of mimetic behavior in nature, in my view. Narcissists are paranoid, but again, they're paranoia centers around the question, will I continue to receive supply exclusively from the source? So they could be, for example, romantically jealous and possessive, but not for the reasons that most people are. They're romantically jealous and possessive because their so-called intimate partner is a good source of supply, so they'll be very protective of such a source. They could, for example, love their children, but of course they don't love and they don't regard the children as children, but they regard them as sources of supply. They could be very attached to possessions, such as a flashy car or a beautiful computer, but not for the reasons that most people are, functional reasons, but because these are status symbols, signals to signals at large, grandiosity markers, so to speak. So everything the narcissist does resembles very closely what other people do, but the motivation and the psychological background is utterly alien. If the victim no longer serves as a source of supply, they will not feel anything, a relief actually. They go through cold turkey, they go through withdrawal symptoms and they sometimes disintegrate during the withdrawal symptoms because, like any drug, there are psychological aspects. The psychological addiction is much stronger than physical addiction. So they're psychologically dependent upon an addicted to their sources of supply. Once these are withdrawn, they go through cold turkey until they find the next dose and the next provided, the next potion. Narcissists in an off-handed, absent-minded way, totally indifferently, psychopaths are goal oriented and when they want a goal, when they are aiming at a goal and they cannot reach it or achieve it, they would, of course, abuse people on the way. Deep connection, I don't know what is deep connection. Narcissists are utterly dependent upon an addicted to sources of supply. That's a very deep connection in my view. In terms of the instruments that the female narcissists would choose would be different to the instruments of the male narcissists.  But in the past, female narcissists tended to focus more on the home front, family. And so they would tend to drive supply from the offspring more than from their employees, for example. Men are more, where? More focused on money, power. So just the sources of narcissistic supply, sources of gratification were different between men and women, but not the psychology behind it. Many of them are charming and intelligent. Intelligence is a tool intended to deploy to obtain narcissistic supply. Intelligence is also something that allows the narcissists to hold everything together. It is via intelligence that the narcissist creates the piece of fiction that is the false self. The false self requires a lot of creativity, a lot of maneuverability, a lot of initiative, a lot of entrepreneurial skills, a lot of cunning. So maintaining the false self requires a lot of emotional and mental resources. I think only truly intelligent people can maintain the false self in the long run. Less intelligent narcissists usually become somatic narcissists. And the distinction I was the first to make, but now is common, is between cerebral and somatic. Cerebral narcissists derive narcissistic supply from the exploits and the adventures of their brain. So by putting on show their intellect, their intelligence, their intellectual accomplishments and so on, they derive supply from that. The less endowed intellectually narcissists would tend to use their body.  But all of them require a modicum of intelligence because it's very hard work to be a narcissist. Very, very hard work. It's like constantly producing a movie. Absolutely. You need to put all the actors together. You need to allocate resources, scarce resources. You need to make sure that everyone suspends judgment and enters the shared psychosis, enters the belief. It's all about the narcissist life is a big movie. And when you ask narcissists how do they experience their lives? They say that they feel like as though they are actors in a movie. They feel one step removed. They feel very much like members of an audience or at the maximum actors on the stage. So this metaphor of cinema, theatre is very apt and describes the inner experience, the colouring of the narcissist in a landscape. And so it's a lot of work. Every narcissist is a major movie studio. Major movie studio. That cannot be done without some intelligence. And similarly charming charm. You need charm. You need charm to convolve people to be your supply sources.  You need charm. So it's a tool. But it's all fake. Because when you're really charming, you're charming alone in the bathroom as well. But narcissists are not. They deploy charm. It's not part of them. It's a tool. If for example being miserable would do the trick, they would be miserable. And indeed you can find countries and societies where victim stunts, being miserable, being downtrodden, being proletarian is the name of the game. That's what gets your narcissistic supply. Suddenly all narcissists are downtrodden and victims and none of them is charming. Because that's what they, narcissists would do and be what it takes. They have something called alloplastic defenses. Alloplastic defenses is the tendency to blame the world and its denizens for any misfortune, wrong decision, failure, etc. Here is the irony. Alloplastic defenses go together with something called external locus of control. We differentiate, we distinguish between external and internal locus of control. External locus of control simply means that you believe that your life is ruled from the outside, determined from the outside. And ironically and paradoxically, narcissists actually believe that their lives are determined from the outside. That is why they tend to blame the outside all the time.  So they have to believe that they are flotsam and jetsam on giant waves that are... And this also creates an inner conflict in the narcissists because narcissists want to believe also that he is God, or at least Godlike, that he is omnipotent, all powerful. He controls everything and everyone is a control freak. But he cannot carry to the logical conclusion, because if he does, he won't be able to blame anyone for anything. So he stalks someone in the middle and says, well, yes, I am all powerful, but actually I am helpless. Because other people determine my fate and ruin my projects and discriminate against me. So there is this constant fight inside the narcissists. Am I all powerful or am I totally helpless? And this is called external locus of control. Narcissists have this because the reality is that they are indeed controlled from the outside. The false self is alien to the narcissists. It's a piece of fiction. And it's suddenly as though characters in a movie took over the movie. And I think there was the purple rose of Cairo by Woody Allen. There was a movie like that where the characters sprang alive and took over the movie. It's the same with the narcissists. He invented this false self as a form of protection. And then this monster took over, ate him alive, consumed him, and there's nothing left. And the only thing left is the false self. So the narcissist feeling that he is controlled from the outside is absolutely reflective of the truth and of reality. He is. People who know nothing about the subject have cast themselves as experts. And they have YouTube channels and they've never heard of any of these disorders until they realize there's a lot of money in the business. So then they became overnight experts and self-imputed experts. And this creates an enormous confusion. Borderline personality disorder is a distinct clinical entity. It's one of the cluster B dramatic personality disorders. Cluster B comprises four disorders, narcissistic, antisocial, borderline and histrionic. Antisocial personality disorder bears close resemblance to psychopathy but is not the same as psychopathy. It is a kind of a mild form of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a construct that went out of favor about 20 years ago but is still being championed by certain professionals such as Robert Hare. And today is not used in serious literature because psychopathy acquired a lot of media hype and overtones which render it useless as a clinical entity. So today we use antisocial personality disorder as a clinical entity. Psychopathy though still has its adherence. I mentioned Robert Hare but not only Babyac, many others. Still has its adherence and these people claim that psychopathy is distinct from antisocial personality disorder because a psychopath is a predator, extreme predator and while the antisocial person is merely someone who does not accept social mores and social conventions and behaves in ways which are socially unacceptable and damaging to other people. The psychopath in contrast would tend to prey upon people and would tend to be destructive, violent, criminalized and so on. I think this distinction is the same, we have a similar distinction in narcissism where we make a difference between narcissists and malignant narcissists. So the narcissist would be someone who has narcissistic traits and behaviors like sympathies, exploitative and vies and so on. Malignant narcissists would be a narcissist who is also utterly destructive to his environment ruthless, callous, disempathic and dangerous. So I think antisocial and psychopathic is the same like narcissists and malignant narcissists. Same kind of distinction. Antisocial path is an utterly unprofessional term. It is used by the media and by some scholars who don't know better. It simply implies that people with antisocial personality disorder would tend to act against society against laws, conventions, covenants, mores and so on. Another society, holding it in contempt and disregard and disdain, would tend to disparage people who do follow society's edicts and so on. So that's a social path. But that's more of a media creation, it's not a diagnosis. The narcissists, as I said, children react to abuse by adopting a series of strategies. One of them is to become co-dependent, one of them is to remain healthy and so on. And the narcissists reacts, narcissistic child reacts by becoming the abuser.  So I'm choosing to be an abuser. The co-dependent says, if I'm a nice enough victim, I will not be abused.  But the narcissist identifies with his abusive parents or whoever they are. The narcissist actually worships them, admires them and tries to emulate them throughout his life. So the first warning signs are the same things that have been done to the narcissist as a child. He does to others when he grows up. So one of the first signs is the disrespect for boundaries, any kind of boundary.   The narcissist has no respect for any of these. He will try to impose his agenda, his priorities, his fears, his wishes, his hopes. He will try to eliminate you as a separate individual.  And this feeling that you are being taken over, that you are being reduced, that you are beginning to vanish gradually. This is the first serious warning sign. The second warning sign is narcissists abhor emotions because they are very afraid of emotions. Narcissist emotions are largely negative and very, very self-destructive. So narcissists adopt a strategy of denying access to all emotions, positive and negative, so that way they can survive somehow. There's a volcano there, but it's very deep, it's like Pompeii. But narcissists regard emotions in other people as a form of weakness. They hold such people emotional people or people who display emotions or people who confess to emotions. They regard them with contempt and disdain. And they would tend to abuse weak people, disadvantaged people, disabled people, Donald Trump and so on. They would tend to regard any form of weakness as calling for exploitation, for mistreatment. So that's the second sign. So if you go out with a narcissist, for example, he would most likely abuse the taxi driver, the waiter, anyone who is beneath him or below him, or anyone who would not be able to fully react to his abuse. He would do it as a matter of course. Narcissists also don't relate to the person opposite them. Very, very soon after any conversation or interaction starts, it's clear that the narcissist no longer is talking to you, but to some kind of image that he had formed of you. It's a very eerie feeling. It's like the narcissist is talking to someone behind your back.  It's becoming more and more real why you are becoming less and less real in interacting with the narcissist. And that's really a very unique experience. Another thing is, narcissists tend to create unease in people. People feel uneasy, ill at ease. They feel something's wrong. They feel that the pieces don't fit together.  In 1970, there was a roboticist, a Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mogi. And Mogi said that people react much worse to robots who are fully human, to machines, androids who are fully human. The more human they are, the closer they imitate a human being, the more people react with fear and discomfort, which is counter-intuitive. You would have thought that the more human the robot, the easier it would be. But actually it's been proven that people react. So it's the same with narcissists. Narcissists are a kind of human-like robot, kind of android robot. And because it's a very good imitation, I mean it's a superb imitation, people react extremely. I mean their discomfort is extreme. And the problem is they can't put the finger on anything. They just say, you know, I don't know what came over me. I felt overwhelmed. I felt repelled. I felt frightened. So there's another side for you. Narcissists have a very typical body posture, which is the body posture of a visionary, or a member of some kind of self-selected, self-imputed elite, or he stands aloof and observes. He's above all, above the madding crowd, he's above all this. So there's a very typical body posture with the chin tilted up and the eyes gazing afar and so on and so forth. Narcissists would seek to be the center of attention and if they fail, they become grumpy and even aggressive and violent. So that's another test. If you see someone and he tries to butt in or crash the party or whatever, he tries to become the center of attention, then fails for some reason and then becomes aggressive or violent, insulting, humiliating, shouting, cursing, or whatever, then that's a Narciss. Actually, contrary to common opinion, it's extremely easy to spot a Narciss, even on a first date. The problem is that people are so lonely and they seek to alleviate this intolerable condition of being alone. People don't like their own company and so they would settle in compromise for anything. Everyone spots a Narciss, but many people deny that they have spotted one because they would, they prefer even a Narciss to being alone and that's a sad commentary on current day society and so on because up to let's say 50 or 60 years ago, people were never really alone. You had extended families, you had support networks, you had friends, but today people are atomized. Societies are economic. Everything fell apart. All social institutions from the family to the community, everything fell apart. People are so alone that this opened the gates to predators like Narciss. People sacrifice literally their well-being and sometimes their lives because they can't tolerate the alternative of yet another solipsistic evening with, you know, TV dinner. I think love is often mistaken and thought of as an emotion. I don't think love is an emotion at all. I think love is the label slapped upon in the enormous complex of processes, interactions, the most important of which foster personal growth in the partner. So when we take apart love, we find that the two partners, usually two, involved in love, one, do not breach each other's boundaries. In other words, respect each other as autonomous entities. And two, engender growth in the partner, even at the risk of losing the partner because growth sometimes can take partners apart. I think these are the two key measures. I don't think it's a single emotion. I think it's a compound phenomenon involving numerous emotions, by the way, because, for example, it's very well known, it's been substantiated many, many times. And recently there was a book published about this topic. Love is a very close relative of hate and hatred exists in massive doses in every so-called love relationship. So I think love incorporates hate, incorporates productive envy, incorporates fostering growth, incorporates insecurity. I think it's mislabeled as a single emotion. That's why I think everyone fails to give a definition. I think we will be much better observing the effects of love, the impact of love, rather than trying to decipher it or reduce it to a single one-liner. I cry very often. I cry very often, but people, of course, tend to confuse sentimentality and emotions. Sentimentality is a partly culturally determined reaction to triggers. Triggers could be visual, textual, whatever. And it doesn't often reflect any inner state, but it reflects commiseration, which is again a societal reactive pattern. Hitler was crying in movies.  I cry, there is no emotional correlate behind the crying. It's reflexive almost.


This is stock number 7J457LA. We're here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Checking out this super clean 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee This vehicle has the 3.0 liter Eco diesel V6 motor From this HD video, you'll be able to tell that this Jeep is extremely clean all the way around We shoot all of our videos in 1080p So if you have HD capabilities turn them on now so you can see just how clean this Jeep is It's like you're standing right here next to the vehicle with me You can see it has the 20 inch painted and polished aluminum rims No scuffs or scrapes on that rim, and it has Goodyear for Terra 265 50R20 tires, and they look like they have about 60% of the tread left Deep cherry pearl is the color This is a limited package You can see it has the LED headlights or LED running lights Projector lamp headlamps, projector lamp fog lamps Didn't see any dents or dings on the hood Passenger rim is an excellent condition as well. No scuffs or scrapes on that And as we go down this side of the Jeep you can see just how clean the body is How reflective and glass-like that paint is I didn't see any dents or dings down this side of the vehicle You can really see that metal flake and the paint there We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down You can still see the vehicle hear the vehicle and of confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here This back rim is an excellent condition as well and these back tires have just as much tread as the front So we figure that you really can't get this kind of shot from just pictures Can't see the light reflecting off the vehicle. You can't see how shiny the paint is The videos really help us Convey how clean our vehicles are because we hold all of our vehicles to a very high standard The rear gate is an excellent condition as well No dents or dings. It has the backup sensors also a full towing package, which includes a receiver hitch Four pin and seven pin wiring. The eco diesel gives you the dual rear exhaust It's a really good looking Back end on this vehicle has the LED taillights This is a power raised gate Back storage area is very very clean. It does have the factory subwoofer Underneath here. We have the spare tire and a bunch of or a couple of little storage areas has the sunshade so you pull that up like that keeps your groceries from being in the sun when the hatch is closed, of course and Also, if you have valuables or anything computers whatnot tablets Put them under there. Nobody knows they're in the car keeps your stuff safe Press this button. She'll beep at you three times and then that gate will come on down and As you go down this side of the vehicle Just as clean as the passenger side No dents no dings down this side very very clean. This is a one owner Local trade-in they bought it from us brand new Traded it in on a brand new one for a good measure here We'll check out this last room make sure that there's no scuffs or scrapes on that We sell a lot of these vehicles out of state So if you are out of state have the confidence that you're dealing with the right people and the right vehicle Inside the limited package gives you the black leather seats both of these seats are heated and cooled Got lumbar on the driver's seat factory floor mats throughout carpeting is very clean Has power windows power locks and power mirrors also memory driver's seat and those mirrors are heated as well Automatic headlamps. You got the power tilt and telescope Telescopic steering wheel In here you have the 7-inch TFT display you can see that this vehicle does have 33,000 345 miles Current average MPGs 21. I know these get a little bit better, but it has been You know idling and stuff since I've been taking pictures and everything you got the compass or I'm sorry the speedometer digital speedometer here But you also have the compass temperature in the corners and you can configure those however you want We have the 8.4 touchscreen radio has the factory navigation I'll see your heated and cooled seat buttons are right there. This is a heated leather wrap steering wheel Excellent condition this vehicle is a non-smoker. It's never been smoked in has the Quadra Track 2 system So you get your neutral so you could flat-toe it also as the select terrain snow sand mud rock You got a four-wheel-drive low option as well as Downhill assist to control it. There's my microphone cord there Passing your seat is very clean as well. No rips or tears on that and this one does have the Vista Ruff which goes open all the way Really nice feature really airs out the vehicle nice woodgrain trim and We got a factory format on that side Up here. We have the homelink system as well as a rear gate button And then you have your 911 and assist buttons. Those are features of the vehicle never have to pay for those And then your backup camera shows up right there as well Take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll check under the hood Second row seats these seats are heated has the latch child safety system No rips or tears in these seats very very clean They do fold down for extra storage and they go almost completely flat, which is a really nice feature There your heated seat buttons you also have two USB jacks and a hundred fifteen volt hundred fifty watt plug-in You can see that the carpeting and floor mats are very very clean back here Under the hood. We have the three point all liter eco diesel Engine base very clean runs very smooth These eco diesels get great fuel economy Run really nice and quiet This one has been fully safety to and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change All the fluids have been checked and topped off Vehicle itself has been gone through a full safety inspection And is 100% ready to go And to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 400 new and used cars trucks SUVs minivans wranglers you name it. We got it go to our website www.summitauto.com Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle on our lot videos of every single used vehicle that we have all at summit auto comm Thanks for checking out my video if you like it and want to make this Jeep yours give us a call right now 9 2 0 9 2 1 0 8 5 0 ask for one of our sales associates to make this Jeep yours today Once again that number is 9 2 0 9 2 1 0 8 5 0 Thanks for checking out my video if you want like it want to check out more videos go to youtube.com slash summit auto Remember to like subscribe and share in fact in a second you'll see a like or a subscribe button on your left a Link to more used inventory videos like this one on your right And if you haven't been to our website on the bottom a link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out We look forward to help you with the super clean 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee eco diesel limited. Thanks again


What is up everyone it is four days until the show my first ever and Right now. I'm just getting ready to go and smash some arms I've been looking forward to this workout all week or for the last week because it's been probably five days since the last two arms and When you're getting a leaner every workout is is better because you see more detail more vascularity And I've had a few carbs today, so we're hoping for a good pump. I'm just actually saving and editing the five days out video right now and I'm sure you guys have seen that. Well, I hope you have But yeah, I'm taking my tape measure To the gym, so I'm gonna measure my arms before I do the workout and after and Basically, I'm just hoping to have maintained 16 inch arms cold and I'm hoping they'll hit 17 when they've got a pump. So Following this cut I Tell you what? I am not gonna stop I'm not gonna cut again until I have 17 inch arms cold That is one thing I've always wanted and it's something I think that will probably be on the the limits of my natural Genetic potential, but I think I can get there. So I Was smashing my arms when I go back into a surplus but for now As I said, I've had a good pre-workout meal. I had pumpkin some cottage cheese mixed with protein powder and a piece of toast and Worked out to be about 50 grams of carbs 50 grams of protein and Not much fat. So perfect pre-workout meal That was about two hours ago feeling good feeling ready to go smash your workout And that is exactly what we're about to do. So I will see you in the gym And it's about 5 30 at night and I'm just going out to a friend's place to have some dinner Today I had to save save my macros hard because I'm having Chinese for dinner. So what I've chosen is what I chose last time which is Crispy step crispy skin chicken, which is basically a half of a chicken Really moist breast meat and it's just got like crispy skin on it, which I Will either eat or not eat.   It's now four days out But yeah, this is I mean, this is a pretty typical night to be honest. I Come down the gym when No one else is here.  It's awesome to throw some weights around you can You know put your dumbbells out and stuff and I have to worry about anyone and I Don't know. I just feel like in my zone man. I just put my headphones in and And just go for it. It's just the way I like it So it's what I did tonight, but that also means that it's two o'clock in the morning now so and I've still got to go and eat and then go to sleep and Recently I've been getting up at like 6 30 every morning. Dependent like it doesn't even matter what time we go to sleep I'll still get up at that time. So I hope that doesn't happen tomorrow morning or else. I'll be screwed, but yeah Just thought I'd I'd Bring you guys along and hope you guys enjoyed that footage because I certainly did and I hope Hope it came out all good. I felt pretty pumped felt pretty good And yeah, we getting it.  It's gonna be exciting. It'll be real exciting So we're four days out and that's about all I got to say about that. So I'll see you later


While doing some early morning shopping, I happened to get into a small confrontation with a man who'd been before me in the only open line.  Welcoming the jump, I passed the man who loudly said that I was impatient like the rest of my kind, presumably meaning people of my generation. I ignored his comment, which only upset him further, and he nudged me with his cart as I edged past him. It hadn't hurt, but the audacity of the gesture alone made me mad, and in response I grabbed his cart and forcefully pushed it away, sending him jogging after it down the serial aisle. The old woman chuckled softly to herself, amused by the scene, and stepped back so that I could get in front of her. The cashier who'd been oblivious to, or perhaps unfazed by, the altercation with the man, rang up my small selection of items, and dispassionately thanked me for shopping at the store. Awkwardly, I said you too, and hurried away, shouting my thanks to the old woman as I went toward the coffee stand near the store's entrance. I later saw her shuffling through the doors, pushing the cart full of groceries, her little arms barely able to move the burden across the flat pavement. When she neared the curb, I had a moment of empathic anxiety. Imagine myself in her position, pushing the cart off that edge, jarring my frail, ancient body as I held on to the thing before she could reach it, and potentially hurt herself. I sprinted the short distance to her and politely asked if I could help her load the groceries into her car. She smiled, thanked me for the offer, and allowed me to take control of the cart. I effortlessly handled the curb, and upon receiving a general direction from a weekly raised finger, steered the cart toward her vehicle. As we crossed the lot, she commented on her groceries, detailing with a sort of elderly innocence her meal plans, which I nodded along to and complimented when appropriate.  She smiled and mentioned that her granddaughter always drank the stuff, and then almost absentmindedly remarked how she wished the girl would visit her more. We arrived at her car, a surprisingly modern SUV, and I began loading the groceries into the back while she stood by and made further comments on the items. I arranged the bags so that the more fragile items were snug and secure. Using a blanket I found, tucked into a compartment off to the side. When everything was snugly secured, I took the cart to a nearby stall and returned to offer my goodbyes to the old woman. She thanked me, and before I could turn away, grabbed my hand with her delicate wrinkly fingers and forced a $10 bill into it. I of course tried to return the money, saying how her pleasant conversation had been payment enough, but she of course insisted and playfully shoved me away. I made it halfway across the lot when I realized I didn't have my bag. Turning, I saw the woman shuffling around her vehicle to the driver's side and reflectively thanked her elderly slowness as I jogged back to the SUV, knocking on the driver's window softly so as not to startle her, I gestured toward the trunk, and after rolling down the window, she greeted me again and demanded that I keep the money. I waved away the implication that I'd return to try and give it back and explained how I'd accidentally loaded my bag along with hers. She laughed, popped the trunk door, and told me to go on ahead and grab it. Sorting through her bags, I finally found my own and gently pulled it free from the nest I'd made earlier. But the dislodging of the bag shifted the overall collection of groceries, revealing yet another piece of paneling in the floor of the trunk, a compartment just like the one from which I'd grabbed the towel. I went to put it back into place, but my eye caught something odd in the recess, and rather than refasten the panel, I instead undid the remaining latch, revealing the object beneath. It was a small plastic baggie filled with human teeth. I stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of the bizarre collection. Going over my conversation with the old woman in my head, trying to recollect some point at which she might have mentioned losing several of her teeth. But the idea that they could be hers was dismissed when I sorted through them, still in the plastic bag of course, and found that they obviously weren't all from the same person. Some were larger, clearly adult, while others were much smaller, alarmingly youthful. At this point, I really wanted to return the panel to its proper position, getting a really bad feeling about that superficially concealed collection. Sliding my arm through the loops of my bag, I returned the panel, shifted the old woman's groceries, so that they were newly secured, and closed the trunk's door. But before I could back away and return to the tooth-free normalcy of my own car, I felt a prick in my arm, and then another arm, one which before she had been weak, interlock itself with mine and steer me around the car, turning. I saw the old woman, now standing upright, devoid of her former hunched, enfeebled appearance. Her smile stayed the same, kind-eyed and friendly. Only she now exuded a vitality, unbefitting an old woman. It wasn't until she opened the backseat door that I thought to resist, and subsequently realized that resistance was futile. There was first a mounting sensation of sluggishness, and then, as she guided my body into the car, an unsettling and intensifying stiffness, I realized that I'd been injected by something, some sort of paralyzing agent, and tried in vain to overcome, or at least slow the drug's effects. But her strength, which before had been deceptively hidden, was now virtually indomitable, under the paralytic effect. Had the paralysis been instantaneous, I might have panicked a little less. But gradually losing my ability to move, powerless to resist, only made the situation all the more terrifying. She positioned me in the seat, then brought the belt across my body. But rather than buckle me in, she instead fastened the belt to a mechanism of some kind buried in the seat, which she then locked with a key, pulled from beneath her shirt. Next she brought my left leg through a leather loop affixed to the car's floor, and my panic mounted exponentially as I realized I was being restrictively bound in place. By this time, all freedom of movement had been taken from me by the drug, except for my head and shoulders. And using this quickly diminishing freedom, I turned around, desperate to spot someone, anyone, and draw their attention to the abduction taking place in broad daylight. All the while, the woman casually hummed some old hymn or lullaby. Finally, I spotted a person through the opposite window and tried to call out to them, but found that I could no longer open my mouth. I expel the torrent of air through my nose, but this was no louder than the woman's humming, and she even chuckled to herself at the feeble attempt. Her hands, pale and vascular, danced across my body in spidering motions as she checked my bodily restraints before moving on to my other leg. The other shopper continued out of sight, and I felt tears swell beneath my eyes as the completion of my kidnapping seemed imminent. The woman, speaking suddenly, as if in response to some unspoken question, said, I like to keep a few reminders in the car with me. I've only kept the teeth in the trunk because there just isn't any room left in the glove compartment up front. The middle console is full, too. Sometimes, I'll pop a few of the really yellow ones in my mouth, I especially like incisors. They're like chicklets.  I felt the sudden wave of nausea, and my terror reached new maddening heights. But just as I was about to lower my head in defeat, the effort to keep it aloft was exhausting. I saw another face emerge between two cars, a familiar face, and they saw me, too. The recognition was instant, their first expression, a glare of still seething contempt quickly softened into an expression of confusion. And I saw them say something, something that might have been hold on to the person they were talking to on their cell phone. I don't know if the cause was my expression of tearful helplessness, or simply the bizarre sight of an adult being buckled into the backseat of a car by an old woman, an adult they knew to be of perfectly sound body and mind.  Approaching the old woman's SUV, their confusion turned to worry, and then shock as they spotted the odd manner of belting around my body. The old woman hadn't noticed any of this, her attention being focused on my right leg. In an effort to keep her attention there, if only for a few more moments, I mustered all the strength left in me to shift my leg from her grasp, a considerably draining effort, and one that elicited a violent reaction from the old woman. With a disappointed click of her tongue, she removed my shoe and sock, and broke two of my toes. Tears surged down my cheeks, and this sight compelled the man to sprint the remainder of the distance. Even as the pain of my broken toes shot up my leg, I felt elated at the prospect of my rescue. Just as the old woman managed to get the strap around my ankle, she was forcefully pulled from the back seat and hurled against the car in the next spot. The ability to turn my head now lost, I could only stare ahead tearfully, as the man hurriedly undid the loops around my legs. He attempted to do the same for the belt across my body, and I saw his face briefly come into view as he reached across me. His eyes met mine, and I did my best to express, through tearful blinks, my contrition for having rudely pushed his cart away. He nodded, then returned his attention to the seatbelt. He pulled at it, noticed the key locked mechanism, and left my sight again. I heard peripheral sounds of struggle outside the car, and he then returned key in hand. I was carefully removed from the SUV and carried away to safety. As my head bobbled over the man's shoulder, I spotted the old woman sprawled out on the ground, dazed, but alive. The man helped me all the way to my car, where he sat me in the passenger seat. He told me to wait there as if I'd had a choice in the matter, and said he'd call the police and oversee the woman's apprehension. I blinked, the best I could do to acknowledge his order and thank him for his help. He left, and then returned a few minutes later, accompanied by a manager of the store. By this time I'd regained a bit of my movement, mostly in my hands, and didn't need to wonder why the additional buckling had been necessary in the old woman's SUV. Had the drug worn off during transit, I still wouldn't have been able to free myself. Grimly, the man told me that the police were on their way, but that the woman had escaped. He apologized for not having memorized her license plate, but assured me that the police had been given an otherwise complete description of her vehicle, and the store manager had helpfully pulled a record of her transaction. And the accompanying security footage. Unfortunately, he added with a frown. She paid in cash, so no credit card information. I nodded, still unable to verbally communicate my gratitude, and they stayed with me to wait for the police. Days later, there has yet to be any news of her apprehension. But the police assure me that they're diligently working on the case.


Ami is from Sydney, Australia. She's a psychologist and a coach. Give her a big round of applause. Hello. How are you? So as a coaching psychologist, I work with clients who are very educated, capable, powerful individuals. They're often in senior levels of their organizations or in business. But like everybody, they go through challenging times, both professionally and personally. So they come to me to help make sense of all of that. Now, you've been through some challenges in business and personally, and you're also a very accomplished businesswoman. So what would be two pieces of advice that you would give my clients as to how to handle those times? How to handle the challenges you're saying? Those challenging times that just come up for all of us at some point, whether it's personal. I mean, does everybody has challenges? I mean, everybody has a bad childhood. Everybody has challenging times. If your parents are together, you know, they fought in another room and you heard it and you didn't know what was going on. If you were personally abused and your parents were apart, you know, everybody has challenging times. So I think just knowing that is comforting. I think I really value sleep more than most things. I think when you know you're in a bad road, like if it's a bad divorce or a bad financial situation or somebody's sick or something, you have to set yourself up for as much success as possible. For me, that would mean, okay, during this time, or let's say God forbid you break an ankle or something, you have to be home, like instead of leaning into it and getting depressed and just eating junk food in a stressful time, I'll say, let me try to make something positive out of this.  Let's make this a time to like sleep more because you can't be sane if you're not sleeping. So I think sort of mitigate damages and just live in the moment where you know I think of things like a golf game or a marathon. Like when I was going through my divorce, which it's never ending, but I think I'm at the fourth hole now and then you get to the 12th hole and then you might get back. I think if you think of it like that, you're not going to be so, it's not so daunting to think about, oh my God, I have to get through 18 holes of this or 26 miles. So I like to think of it as like benchmarks. It's mentally helpful to just breathe and be like, this is this moment right now and I'm okay right now. I'm healthy. I'm alive. I love my daughter. She loves me. We're good. We're safe. And then tomorrow is another thing rather than like, and the same thing, it could be like cleaning out your basement, which is like, you know, versus just like, let me take this one corner of the basement. I think it's easy to attack things piece by piece. Absolutely. Thank you so much.


Hi everyone. I'm sure you have those occasions when you're required to prepare a slide deck or slide presentation within a short time and you are in panic of thinking on what to put into your slides and you are struggling to even think of what to put into your slides. Well thankfully we have many AI based tools now that can help you to do this and in this video I will be covering one of them. So the tool that I would like to introduce to you is actually Beautiful AI as shown here so you can go to beautiful.ai and it's actually a presentation software just like PowerPoint or Canva and all that that helps you to you know create your slide deck. Now it also includes an interesting feature in helping you to generate slides from a prom from a basic prom so that's the one that I would like to be focusing on. So first thing first just click login and if you don't have an account just create an account down here right if you would like to sign in with Google you can do so as well. So once you reach the dashboard after logging in you will be prompted to take this tour so you just go through the tour together with the you know the assistant so you just follow the steps here right it will tell you what how to you know how to use this tool for your presentation so like now you are searching for beautiful images just follow the the tab here right and then it will it will ask you to kind of explore the the features available right and pretty you know as as I'm demoing to you now as I'm demonstrating to you now you can see how wonderful it is right but simple straight forward nothing really nothing really you know fancy I mean nothing really complicated because you can choose whatever you want to create and so you just add it then you're done then you can go back sorry just go back to your library this is your library this is the one that you you did through the tours is now now what I'm more interested is in fact the the AI tool right so that I mean the the basic one you can explore on your own because it's quite straightforward if you click create new presentation you can choose the template that you like you can see some preview of some of the templates available here I mean the the themes then or you can have you know teams template this is for those who are using the team account you can also have starter templates this is for those who like to use like pre pre-made templates you know and you can also import from your PowerPoint or PPT right but I'm more interested in this one the designer bot right it's available for pro but at the moment it's also available for the those who are in in free trial like my account now so it's something really useful for you to consider okay so let's say I want a slide deck a slide deck about the pros and cons of AI for education this is an example so I just click generate presentation and you ask you to pick the theme right and I will pick this one for example and then create so the AI will generate your your presentation through chat GPT powered by open AI actually so they will try to use your prom just now and then generate the the content and try to change it into beautiful slides right so it says that this can take up to two minutes sometimes longer depending on how many slides will you know will be generated so as you can see this is the slides that you will get right this is a typical format that they had they will generate and you can see next one this is the next one you have all the content ready as well right you can see here and all that and all that okay so they generate all this based on the output generated from chat GPT and if you I mean your job now is to amend or edit some of the content here right and you can see some of the chosen stock photos are also quite quite interesting if you don't like it you can just you know change this you know you can even replace image or remove it right and then place it yourself just find another one very straightforward just like any other tools so let me just pick this one and it will replace but you need if you want to add slide you just add and you have so many format to choose you also have some smart features like diagrams and all that it's quite beautiful actually okay so you can just add them and so on right and if you would like to collaborate like other tools that come by and all that you can just click here invite your friends to collaborate and this is your own this is you as the owner of course you can add collaborators as well and you can also comment on the slides then once you're done you have several options you can actually share this and then view it through beautiful AI or you can actually export it as you can see here if you want to export it as pptx it's available for pro right so the pro is 12 dollars per month if you want to go for a free trial then you can go for a free trial for 14 days before you decide whether you want to pay or not so that you have like 14 days to try all the pro features first you can also export to google slides and if you like to view version history it's also available here but i think um well if you just need to use it to generate some ideas apart from depending on chat gpt because chat gpt can come out in the text output may not be helpful in in a way this one at least is structured in a slight format and you will be able to kind of you know kind of get an overall idea of what to put in your presentation even if you're going to transfer this kind of content to another uh you know design that you want to use like you know don't you don't want to use it and using this design you want to change you can always change it from from from all these features available here or maybe you know in using other tools but i really like this part because it helps you to kind of imagine what are the things that you need to put into your presentation apart from just the design aspect of it so you can tell it out because it's quite minimalistic nothing really fancy very clear cut and the the designs are also quite contemporary thank you for watching and don't forget to support me by clicking the subscribe and like button down below thank you


In this video, I'm going to share with you the one strategy that built my business quickly in the beginning from zero income, zero credibility in my field and in my network in terms of my expertise to a full-time income and expert status within one year. And I've seen many other people duplicate this strategy, so I want to share that with you and I really believe that you can likely apply this as well if you're willing to do the work. The strategy is to have you be featured as a speaker or a guest blogger in front of other people's audiences. Some people call this a content partnership or a promotional partnership. I'm just going to, for the sake of simplicity, call it a partnership going forward. Alright, so imagine your message being shared in front of somebody else's email newsletter featured, featured on someone else's blog, featured in someone else's online group, featured as a guest speaker on a podcast or on a video channel or on a popular Facebook page or Twitter feed or in a magazine or really anywhere where your ideal audience consumes content and gets information. Now you can absolutely do this. When I first started, again, like I said, I had a great interest for my topic but I didn't consider myself an expert compared to many of the other people out there but I certainly was able to help other people who hadn't studied the topic as much as I had. Back then, seven, eight years ago, my topic was how to use social media for business and I ended up approaching other people who taught marketing or business to their audiences but who didn't teach social media and I became the go-to resource for them for social media because I had studied a lot about this. Again, even though I wasn't a well-known name in the field, I hadn't written any books yet, I hadn't made lots of videos yet and I hadn't made any videos yet so I really had nothing to start with except for my passion for the topic, the fact that I had studied it, I had some really helpful thoughts about it. I had helped some people with it, some of my friends actually with it. They found it helpful so as I started approaching other audiences, I really think you can do the same with your current field that you want to build a business in because you have been thinking about it, you've been studying it, you've been helping people with it much more than the average person has. So in essence, you are an expert in your field compared to most people out there. And expertise, expert status is always on the continuum. There will always be people who are more expert than you and there will always be people who are less expert than you. So let me talk about this partnership strategy. A lot of people I think get intimidated by this or they don't like it because it feels aggressive or even unethical and I agree, I agree. I think the reason why a lot of people don't like this partnership strategy is because they feel like they maybe as a consumer of content and products and services, they have been inundated by other people promoting their partners. Oh, meet my friend Joe who has this amazing program and you might get an email like this. Meet my friend Joe who has an amazing program about how to solve this problem in your life or how to achieve this goal. And then the next week, meet my friend Sally who has this and it's like, how come this marketer has so many friends? But these are just promotional partnerships, right? So a lot of times it's been, these partnerships have been done in a way that is very money driven rather than out of true service to one's audience. And that's what I am going to talk with you about in this video to do partnerships in a way that's out of true service and alignment with what the audience needs rather than doing it because just because it pays your promotional partner the money, etc. So another reason why people don't like this strategy or maybe they feel intimidated by it is because there's the assumption, which I think is an erroneous assumption that if someone promotes you to their audience, your message or your product to their audience, that you must also promote their things to your audience. In other words, there is an assumption that it has to be a reciprocal partnership. And yes, that has often been the case, but I have also been involved in quite a few partnerships that were not reciprocal in that way. Someone promoted me, lots of people have promoted me where I wasn't required to promote them to my audience. And vice versa, I have promoted people to my audience where I did not require them to promote me to their audience. So let me talk about the reasons why. So in other words, even if you have no audience yourself, you can still use the strategy and to do it in an authentic and ethical way. So the number one reason or number one way that I recommend is to find a partner. It might be someone you already know or it may be someone that you can be introduced to, or it could be just you're reaching out a cold to a group owner or to a blogger. So all these could work. But find a partner who is getting questions from their audience that is in your wheelhouse. So this partner, for example, talks about topics A, B, and C with their audience. And their audience loves that. But the audience also has questions D, E, and F, that the partner is not an expert and hasn't studied. But you happen to be an expert in topics D, E, and F. Do you see what I mean? So it's related to what the partner talks about, but it's not in the partner's wheelhouse. It's not the partner's passion or it's not their partner's expertise. And so in that situation, you would be a blessing if you approach that partner to say, listen, I know you do such a great job talking to your audience about topics A, B, and C, and it just so happens that I love teaching audiences or I love to help audiences solve problems in the area of D, E, and F. So that's what I do. And my guess is that you have audience members who ask you about that or need this. Is that right? Okay. If so, I would love to share my expertise with your audience so it can help them solve that problem and be a go-to resource for them that you can refer them to. Okay, it would be a relief for your partner that now she has somebody whom she can refer to on your topic. Does that make sense? This is what put my business on the map seven years ago when I first started. Like I said, I approached people who had audiences who needed my topic, but they themselves didn't teach it. And I, you know, and I came along and I taught a free class to their audience, just one session webinar sometimes, or maybe it was a series of two or three. But I was very helpful to their audience. And at the same time, I also made an offering to say, if you want something deeper, I've got another five-part series on this. I'd love to offer to you as a product or as a service and people bought it. And I had several partners in my first couple of years who really appreciated my expertise because it wasn't theirs, but the audience wanted it. And so it really put my business on the map. So I really encourage you to think about your topic and what's related to your topic. That's not what you teach. That's not what you're an expertise in. Seek out partners who are on either side of you in terms of your topics and so that you can partner with each other. Now, again, you don't have to reciprocate. Okay. But if you are a blessing to that person, because they have an audience asking for your topic, then you are relieved to them. You are blessing to them. And they oftentimes will be willing to share it because it's solving a problem for the partner to say, okay, now when people ask me this question, I can direct them to you. Okay. Um, all right. The second wonderful way of getting partnerships is when, um, the partner herself is interested in your topic. Okay. Maybe it's just a personal interest of hers or his. Um, and, uh, and also it happens that the audience might. It's not that the audience has been asking her questions about it, but the audience could also benefit from it. Does that make sense? So find out people who, um, are in your general field, but not your specific, uh, topic and, and approach them as, Hey, you know what? I know you address this and I address this. And if you're interested, I'd love to help you out. Um, and, and just, uh, give you, uh, some understanding of this field or help you personally, uh, in the, on this topic. That's how also I've got some of my partnerships where I was not required to promote them back is I gave a couple of free coaching sessions to somebody in my, with my expertise that helped them. Okay. And then they said, wow, this is something that I think my audience would also appreciate. So why don't you teach a webinar to my audience as well? All right. So, um, the third reason, the third way that I think partnership can be wonderful is when you, you find somebody who regularly shares who has a, a channel of some kind, whether it's a blog or a YouTube channel or a Facebook page or a email newsletter or a magazine where they need to continually churn out a lot of good content. And you notice that the content isn't just their own voice, but that they actually curate and collect content from lots of different people to share in their magazine or to share on their blog or on their website or to share on their YouTube channel or in their Facebook page or in their, in their LinkedIn group or Facebook group. And if you've known, seen that to be the case, then, and, and your topic is one of the topics that they share about.  I'd love to write a blog post for your audience, or I'd love to do a specific webinar to help them on my topic. Would that be useful? And by the way, you know, you could either do that for free for them, or you can even have your partner charge for it, charge a small fee, a five dollar fee per attendance to webinar. And they could even, you could even offer that they could keep all the money. Uh, and you are simply looking for an audience to share your message. And at the end, you could spend a few minutes of your webinar to talk about your service and talk about your product. And a lot of times, again, with partners who have this requirement to churn out a lot of content, because that's what their audience is expecting. Okay, then you would be a blessing. Again, this is all about finding a fit to help other people. You would be a blessing to that partner because you come along and fulfill his or her need and you fulfill the audience's need. Does that make sense? Okay, so, um, there are a couple of ways that a podcast is another place where people continually need guest speakers, et cetera, radio shows, podcasts, also tele-summits. But, but the, the chat, the problem with some most tele-summits is that they usually require you to promote the tele-summit as well. And I usually tell people, listen, I'm happy to speak on a tele-summit, but I cannot promise promotion to my audience because I've promised my audience to, to not do all these promotions, right? So, um, okay, I've given you three great ways to form partnerships. And let me tell you that there are a couple of ways that partnerships are, are sometimes done that I don't personally like. I don't think it's as authentic as it could be. I want to quickly run through them so you could be aware of what they are. Um, one way is where people will promote you just because of the money. Um, they say, oh great, you've got a highly converting product or people love buying your service. And, uh, gosh, you know, do a webinar for my audience. If they buy, then you pay me 25%, 50%, whatever it is of your product. That's called, that's typically called a joint venture relationship, JV relationship, or sometimes people call it affiliate marketing. Uh, I, I think when it's done just for the money, it doesn't respect the audience as much as it could when it's just done to serve the audience. Does that make sense? So I used to do that a lot and I don't do that anymore. Um, it's not my favorite way of partnering, but it's out there, very common. So just kind of look for it and see if you can transform that. If someone wants that, just kind of transform that to one of the ways that I've, I've just been talking about in one of the three ways that I think are more authentic. Um, another way is a prepaid advertising where a partner is willing to take your money in advance. Uh, whereas the, what I just talk about joint venture is usually the partner only gets the money if there are sales of your service or product prepaid advertising, whereas you pay money in advance just to show up in front of an audience. And I really don't encourage you to do that. I really don't recommend it because prepaid advertising typically takes a lot of testing and a much bigger budget to test with before you get to, um, prepaid advertising that really works. You have to test different, uh, advertisements test, test different way, different messages in front of audiences. So I really don't recommend prepaid advertising. And then, um, uh, another way that I don't typically like is when a partner says, Hey, listen, I'll promote you to my audience if you're willing to just introduce me to some other potential joint venture partners. It's not so bad, but, um, again, they're doing it, uh, not for the benefit of their audience. They're really doing it for their own joint ventures in the future. So again, when something's not done for the benefit of the audience, it tends to burn the audience eventually. And I just don't think it's the most ethical and authentic way to go. And finally, very common, uh, way of partnering, which I don't like anymore is I promote you if you promote me. I promote you to my audience if you promote me to your audience. And these deals, I did a lot in the past and I don't like them anymore. Again, it's, it's typically not just, it's not for the sake of the audience as the priority, it's really for the sake of growing each other's email lists. Um, so it's not my favorite. So I really recommend that you use one of the three methods that I talked about earlier on to do your partnerships, because again, this can put your business on the map or grow your business rapidly. I'm open to your comments, that what, how you've experienced partnerships and how you would like to and any questions that you have.