It sounds cliché, but since so few people actually follow this advice, I feel it’s my responsibility to offer it one more time: DON’T DOUBT YOURSELF.
And what I mean when I say that is don’t allow others to make you feel inferior if you’re not 100% accurate on the best
approach to take in a given situation. Don’t allow others to make you feel inferior if you got a name wrong… or if you stumbled over your words… or if you slipped and fell… or anything else that people are usually automatically embarrassed over.
Allow me to illustrate my point with a brief story. A few months back, I brought a date to a bar that devotes a portion of its week to karaoke nights. Now personally, karaoke isn’t really my style, but my date had been jokingly bragging about her skills on the mike, so I was interested in seeing her in action.
I had been to this bar before on both nights with karaoke and nights without, and I was pretty sure that on this night, they were scheduled to host it again. But there was nothing set up, and the crowd was pretty small for the time of night we were there. So I asked the girl working at the bar if they were running behind and when they might be setting up the machine.
Her reaction was pretty dramatic, and for someone like me who’s seen this kind of routine before, pretty transparent as well. I’d been witness to this blatant attempt to make someone feel inferior countless times in the past…
“Karaoke? On a Saturday night?? Buddy, I’ve been working here for over THREE years, and we’ve neeeever had karaoke on a weekend, much less on our busiest night of the week! You really need to come here more often.”
Now in order for you to fully appreciate why I’m even bringing this up, you really had to be there and experience her tone in person. She was jumping on her soapbox… and it was a pretty irrelevant soapbox at that… over the certainty that her knowledge of the bar’s schedule was absolute.
I threw back a little joke asking her if she could recite what’s on the seventh line of the bar’s menu, but I shouldn’t have even given her that much of a reaction. I shouldn’t have given her anything at all. After all, like I said, I’d seen this routine too many times to count before I ever met this bartender. I immediately recognized her inflection as the type of
condescending tone that would make most people feel stupid for being ‘bold’ enough to ask a simple question. This bothered me because I knew from past experiences that if was still unfamiliar with all of the ‘beneath the surface’ stuff, I would have felt like a complete idiot after hearing her response to me.
I would have put all the stock in her opinion and none in my own. I wouldn’t have even noticed that she called it the ‘busiest night of the week’ while the place was nearly empty. I wouldn’t have realized that her words were merely an artificial attempt to up her own status.
I’ll admit I was bothered by her response to me. Not because she made me feel smaller, but because I knew that this little act had been pulled on many others before me, only they probably weren’t self-assured enough to let it bounce right off of them. It really was a shame.
Now was she trying to make me look or feel bad? Absolutely not. This wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about any of her past ‘victims’ either. It was about her. She was really only concerned with making herself look good and feel important, and if I was an unintended and unnecessary casualty in that process, then ‘so be it’ as far as she was concerned.
The sad thing is that she’s just one of many out there. One of many who need to take others down in order to bring themselves up. In the defense of most of these pathetic morons, it really does get to a point where they’re not even aware of what they’re doing. It simply becomes automatic behavior to frame their sentences in a way that implies that not only are they right, but everyone else better agree or they’re dumb as mud.
It’s definitely in your best interest to begin to recognize this behavior from others so that you can guard yourself against the intended effects.
Whether you’re at a party… or on a date… or in a meeting… or in some other relevant social situation, it’s pretty much a
certainty that sooner or later you will encounter someone who frames your opinions as flawed. And then you’ll be on the hot seat, faced with a simple yet powerful decision. Either conclude that they are guaranteed to be right no matter what, or realize that there are no guarantees.
Don’t let someone else make you doubt yourself when you find that person across the bar attractive. Don’t let someone make you doubt yourself when you admit you watch that cheesy TV show. Don’t let someone make you doubt yourself at any point where your preferences affect nobody else but you. It’s your life. Now some of you might read this and initially think I’m saying that it’s okay to take the attitude of “well, this means I get to be right all the time, so anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, and now all my decisions are absolute.” But that’s not what I mean.
When I say don’t doubt yourself, I mean don’t allow yourself to feel bad if you’re ever wrong about something. Have the confidence to admit it, even acknowledge it in front of others, and move on. Being charismatic doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It means you’re self-assured enough to realize that you’re not perfect and that you’re fine with it. Only when you actually realize this will you be able to win the crowd.
I encourage you to look back on the moments in your life when you were both comfortable around others and not so comfortable. I’m confident that you’ll then understand how relevant this
chapter really is. And I know you’ll understand why you have to hold to a positive self-image regardless of the external forces that might challenge it.
Now that you appreciate the purpose of a healthy self-value, you must now combine it with a true understanding of how others are affected by the images they carry of themselves… as well as how external stimuli influence them. You need to understand the mind games that are both consciously and subconsciously played on a daily basis. You need to get the ‘inner game’ aspect of charisma.
The following chapter will explore this in great detail and reveal a truth about others that will guarantee your ability to understand them.
So here we are almost 100 pages in, and we still haven’t discussed any real tips on how to handle that first date, how to score that phone number, how to carry a conversation, or any other valuable tidbits of insight I know you bought this book for. But from the very beginning of this book, there’s been a real method to my madness. It’s very important to note that all the things I just mentioned, for the most part, are outer game issues. And in order to successfully negotiate the challenges of the outer game, it’s vital that you first take the necessary steps to
understand the true key to charisma creation… the inner game. You really need to have yourself together on the inside first. The internal psychology that you bring to the table will be invaluable to your rate of success. Because only through your ability on that inner side of the spectrum will you be able to win others over and magnetize them towards you. Only through your inner game can you ever hope to win the crowd.