How to Become a Force of Nature

“Meet us in the Monkey Room.”

“Which one is the Monkey Room?” I asked.

Teller looked at me like I was new. “It’s the door with all the monkeys.”

I had just watched Penn and Teller’s incredible Vegas show, and Teller invited me to join them backstage to hang out. We had been at a dinner together a few years earlier and I had given him a ride to the airport, where I discovered that even though Teller is totally silent during his act, get him offstage and you can’t shut him up. (Nor would you want to: he’s an eloquent and interesting thinker.)

Anyway, I walked backstage and, sure enough, came to a door covered with monkeys. I stepped inside and a few people were seated on couches talking while we waited for Penn and Teller to finish signing autographs. I took a seat and realized that directly across from me was one of my favorite performers—comedy legend Steve Martin.

In many ways, Steve was unassuming. He spent most of the night asking people questions, and fawning over Penn and Teller’s show. But there was no mistaking it: the room revolved around Steve. 

Sure, part of it was the legend. But there was something deeper going on—something in the way that he carried himself. On one level, he was completely down to earth. There was not a hint of “celebrity” about him. But on another level, you could not take your attention away from him because of the enormous strength of his personality. 

Most people are painted in vague colors or sketchy outlines. They lack a strong identity. But other people are indelible. Typically we call this charisma, but “charisma” is really a word we use to capture something we can’t put into words. 

I’m not interested in charisma per se. Because it can have two opposite sources. On the one hand, there are people like Steve Martin who have enormous charisma because they are forces of nature. On the other hand, there are people like Bill Clinton who exude charisma because they are nothing in particular, but have a unique power to make you feel seen and visible. For readers of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, there is the charisma of Howard Roark—and the charisma of Peter Keating. I have no interest in the charisma of Peter Keating.

But I’m very interested in what makes the experience of being in the presence of someone like Steve Martin or Howard Roark so powerful because it is deeply connected to the issue of idealism.  

When Steven Mallory meets Howard Roark, Mallory is in the process of a spiritual collapse. Roark revives him. He revives him by recognizing the idealism in Mallory's art—and by embodying that idealism in concrete reality. As Mallory says: "I'm very grateful to you. Not for giving me a job. Not for coming here. Not for anything that you'll ever do for me. Just for being what you are."

What is a strong personality? What makes someone a force of nature—and how do you become one?

Becoming a Valuer

At one level, the answer is simple: your identity consists of your values and character. The precondition for being a force of nature is knowing what you love and knowing what you stand for. It’s purpose and principle. 

By defining what you value and cultivating virtue, you build a strong identity. But while this includes moral values and moral virtues, it includes more than that. To have a blindingly bright personality, you have to be a valuer across the board—to know what you love and know what you hate, and to be committed to filling your life with what you love and ridding your life of anything less. 

Conventional people have likes and dislikes, and treat these tepidly held preferences as effectively innate. A valuer knows that values are formed through a process of thought and action. 

Take something seemingly trivial: color. I’ve always had a mild attraction to deep shades of red. But at a certain point I reflected on why they attracted me. Scarlet represented passion and desire—they spoke directly to my love of valuing. I remember deliberately deciding: this is my favorite color. What followed was action. I bought ruby curtains and filled my closet with burgundy and carmine shirts and sweaters. A preference became a value. 

The action part of the equation is crucial. We speak of “falling in love,” and that captures something important. But love ultimately is something we cultivate. 

I remember adopting my first dog shortly after moving out of my parents’ place. I had grown up with a yellow lab I adored, and so I was eager for a pet of my own. So I found Logos, a rescue beagle. But when I took her home, I took her for a walk around the neighborhood and realized with horror that I didn’t love her. She was cute, but I felt no personal attachment to her. But after a few days, I was relieved to realize that had changed. It had changed because I invested in her. I got to know her. I came to value her unique personality, and soon she was my dog. 

I applied that lesson years later when I was looking for a hobby that wouldn’t demand much of my time. I had been studying piano, but my work had become so demanding that I was unable to practice every day, and knew that each skipped day was eroding my barely developed skills. I wanted to find something that was pure enjoyment, which I could ignore for weeks or months and return to only when I had the time and desire. 

I decided to reconnect with my childhood love of baseball. I didn’t feel any particular passion for baseball at that point, but I knew that would change if I invested myself in it. I started watching games, reading books, listening to podcasts about my favorite team, the Phillies. Pretty soon, my interest became a passion. (I did quickly learn that following the ups and downs of a baseball season can’t quite be described as “pure enjoyment,” but nevertheless, I had my undemanding hobby.)

So we form strong personal values by reflecting on our preferences, grasping the deeper meaning behind them, and investing in them. But there’s one more element that’s vital to experience the full power of your values—intolerance of small differences.

I love baseball and I’m pretty indifferent to other sports (and experience a visceral hatred of soccer and golf). That sharp contrast heightens my love of baseball. But take something utterly trivial…floss. 

I have a really mild preference for cinnamon floss compared with mint floss. But even though the preference is minor, my preference for having what I most prefer is not. I’m wildly intolerant of settling for mint floss when I could have something better—even if “better” here is only a 10% improvement on my second choice. 

I think of this as “turning up the volume knob” on your values. When I was learning how to write, I often found that when my editors pointed out a flaw in a draft, I had been subtly aware of the flaw while writing, but I hadn’t paid that little voice saying “this doesn’t work” enough attention. What I learned was to turn up the volume knob on that quiet voice until it was a drill sergeant screaming in my ear. The result was that the most subtle subconscious cues became impossible to ignore. And just as we can turn up the volume on our thinking, we can turn up the volume on our valuing. That whisper telling you cheeseburgers are slightly superior to hamburgers can turn into an intense aversion to settling for a crappy hamburger when you could have the real thing. 

I’ve been speaking about this in the context of relatively small values, but it becomes all the more important when it comes to your most important values. Too many people tolerate “good enough.” A job that’s good enough. A romantic partner who’s good enough. And so they lead what my colleague Tal Tsfany calls a “can’t complain life.” 

But good enough is not good enough.

To be an idealist is to want the best for your life. Less than the best is unacceptable. You might not be able to leave your current job immediately, but the solution isn’t to convince yourself that settling is okay. It’s to regard not loving your work as a problem to be solved—and doing everything you can to solve it as quickly as possible. 

The Case of Mixed Values

I recently held a webinar on “Five Common Mistakes Even Long-time Objectivists Make,” and someone asked a really interesting question. Did I think that some people upon discovering Objectivism gave up on their “non-Objectivist” values too easily? Maybe they loved the novels of John Steinbeck and learn that his naturalism is inferior to romanticism and decide it’s not okay to love Steinbeck. 

This is indeed a deadly mistake, and one that I made when I discovered Objectivism. When I was twelve I discovered rock music and from twelve to fourteen was convinced my destiny was to become a rockstar. But when I discovered Objectivism I struggled to reconcile the dark themes and muddy sounds of most of the bands I loved with what I thought my philosophy demanded of me.

But what I eventually learned was that philosophy doesn’t give you a list of “approved” values. What it demands is only rationality. The right approach is to think about what it is that you love and why you love it. With Steinbeck, you can recognize that, qua naturalist, his work is inferior to the romanticism of Victor Hugo. You can recognize that most of his characters are loathsome and his themes are false. But you can also appreciate his powerful descriptive ability, and the skill with which he builds the worlds of his novels. You can decide that he’s objectively inferior as an artist to Victor Hugo—and yet personally more important to you. 

Same with rock music. I can recognize that the best song by Tool is simplistic compared to anything by Tchaikovsky. That the lyrics are often at odds with everything I believe and care about. That rock music as such is incapable of speaking to some of my most important values. But nevertheless, I can also appreciate the brilliant musicianship of Tool, the beauty of the lead singer’s voice, the soulful nature of the songs. 

Is this at odds with intolerance of small differences? Shouldn’t Tool’s inferiority to Tchaikovsky mean that I only listen to Tchaikovsky? No, because the values I get from each are different. They belong to different categories. What I’m intolerant of is the difference between rock songs I love and rock songs that are just okay. 

This is a key point because if you get it wrong you could end up concluding that you should only spend time with your romantic partner. We want and need a diversity of values. To be a valuer is to seek the best in each category. And even within a given category, there will be a range of more specific values worth honoring. Yes, Tool is my favorite rock band, but Metallica, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Fall Out Boy, and Haim all provide unique rewards that I would not want to miss out on. 

Embody Your Values

So that’s the foundation: to become a force of nature, you must have strong values. But you must also make yourself a worthy valuer. And that’s no easy task. It involves demonstrating a deep and rare loyalty to your values.

I once coached a student who was extremely shy and reserved. When I asked what his biggest challenge was, he told me that it was being too altruistic. He wasn’t honoring his own values for fear of disappointing other people. His friends would ask to study with him, and even though he could be far more effective studying on his own, he would say yes, He couldn’t bring himself to assert his own desires.

So I advised him to practice little acts of self-assertion. If someone offered him a drink, for example, and he was thirsty, he shouldn’t demur so as to not impose. He should say, “Yes, thanks, I’ll have some water.” If a waiter asked how the food was, he shouldn’t give a kneejerk, “It was great.” He should tell the truth: “Unfortunately, this wasn’t my favorite.” 

When we assert our own ideas and values, we become more real. When we hold back out of fear or politeness, we sell our soul just a little bit. But that little bit adds up. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. 

I’m happy to say that my student came back the following session beaming. “I did it. I told my friends I preferred to study on my own. They were a bit disappointed, but it was fine.” “How do you feel?” I asked. “Amazing,” he said. By the time we had finished working together, he was like a new person. No longer shy and timid, he held himself upright and radiated a newfound confidence. 

Becoming a force of nature requires courageous honesty. What people call “authenticity” really means the refusal to fake your standards, your convictions, your values. It means having the integrity to honor the self in everything you do. 

It’s surprisingly easy to not do this. Your colleague asks you how you’re doing and you say, “Thank God it’s Friday!” even though you love your work and in fact look forward to a weekend of working without the interruptions of the workweek. But you say it because that’s just what people say when it’s Friday. 

It’s really worth coming up with default responses to the typical questions people ask you throughout your life that tend to prompt knee jerk responses—to formulate responses that reflect your genuine beliefs and view of the world. 

“How’s it going?” You can do better than “fine.” 

I was listening to a lecture by the late Zig Ziglar where he advised salesmen to answer the commonplace “How’s business?” with “Unbelievable!” It works whether you’re making a fortune or losing it. Frankly, that’s a bit silly, but thinking about how to honor your soul even in small ways is not. 

I’ve been stressing the issue of values, but don’t forget virtue. To become a worthy valuer is to build your self into a value. This is an entire topic in and of itself, but I want to stress one aspect that underlies every other virtue: holding yourself to high standards. This doesn’t mean becoming paralyzed by perfectionism. What it means is that there are some behaviors that are worthy of you and some that aren’t—there are some things you will do and some things you won’t—there are ways you will allow yourself to be treated and ways that you won’t.

Have you ever heard someone tell a joke that you found offensive and laughed because you were too uncomfortable to say, “I don’t joke about that”? I have, and it’s poison to the soul. 

There’s a myth in our culture that to be truly self-confident is to be “above it all.” Being offended or angered or having any reaction other than cool indifference is to appear weak. It’s B.S. To be a force of nature is to be assertive but not defensive—passionate but not out of control.

I mentioned the CEO of my organization, Tal Tsfany. One of the things I love about working with Tal is that he is able to argue passionately for a viewpoint, sometimes to the point that discussions get heated. But they never get personal. Tal is perfectly willing to fight to the death for a position he thinks is right…and then turn around and say, “You’re right, I agree” if he’s convinced he was wrong. That isn’t weakness—that’s strength. 

Contrast that with a sales trainer I once saw give a webinar where he was responding to comments from viewers. At one point someone in the chat was criticizing his methods: “This is just Spin Selling,” a sales methodology developed in the 1980s. The trainer gave a really defensive answer, talking about how much money he made, and how superior his approach was, but then seemed to catch himself and said to the heckler, “Haha…you’re awesome, you’re the best, I love you.” It was so phony and revealed a deep insecurity on the sales trainer’s part. It would have been more honest and powerful for him to say sincerely, “This training is for people who want to learn what I teach. You’re free to criticize it, but not on the platform I’ve created. If anyone wants to know the difference between my approach and Spin Selling, I’m happy to talk about it, but I’m not going to engage with people who want to hurl insults on my channel.”

Don’t be cool. Be passionate and fiery and fierce. Become a man or woman with standards and values who is unafraid to assert them. “Cool” is cowardice. Pride is powerful. 

A Final Thought

To be an Effective Egoist is to pursue your self-interest—and this requires first and foremost that you build a self. To build a self you need to form strong values and to make yourself worthy of your values. 

One of the most depressing features of our culture is that we are never taught to do this. Our culture’s moral code of altruism teaches us not to form strong personal values—and, should we find ourselves with a personal value, to give it up. 

And when we do get advice on the pursuit of joy, we can read through shelves of self-help books and learn all about how to achieve our goals without discovering advice on which goals to set and how to become worthy of them. 

But we can have a better culture—a culture that values values, a culture that prizes joy, a culture of love. Not the phony Christian notion of love, where you are ordered to corrupt your soul by loving everything and everyone, no matter how loathsome. A culture based on a genuine, ennobling, demanding love—love for existence and the values that fuel human life.

But there is only one moral code that will teach you how to achieve that.

Effective Egoism 101

The conception of earthly idealism I champion was defined by Ayn Rand. Here are three key works that summarize her perspective:

• Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World by Ayn Rand

• Causality vs. Duty by Ayn Rand

• The Objectivist Ethics by Ayn Rand

And if want the full case for egoism, you can buy my book Effective Egoism: An Individualist’s Guide to Pride, Purpose, and the Pursuit of Happiness.