- Quick Note: Similar to the Law of Attraction article, we’ll cover different aspects of this list and go more in-depth in future articles. And don’t forget that you can join my free extreme confidence building workshop here.
Imagine for a moment a lonely, slightly overweight and sensitive kid sitting in a small Jr. High School classroom of only a handful of students. A kid that knew how to fight back physically, but was unequipped for emotional and verbal battles of dominance. Unable to fight back and unable to command respect from people. Completely lost in the world…
There’s another kid in the classroom drawing on the whiteboard in front of the class and the substitute teacher. Some of the other kids and even the substitute thought it was funny and the kid drawing thought himself king of the world. The remaining students? They ignored it to mind their own business, focusing only on not getting themselves caught in the crosshairs.
In the picture was a group of students on one side, excitedly and happily watching what was happening…
On the other side was another kid being horrifically tortured to death. I was told that kid was me. In front of everyone. And the kids that thought it was funny joined in:
Nobody will ever love you. You’re worthless. You’re nothing in this world but a fat sack of shit.
No Help
Nobody ever helped me and it got to the point where I started to believe what people said and became depressed and suicidal (years later I would learn how to overcome it, which you can learn how to do here). Obviously, I couldn’t command respect from anyone and I was at the bottom of the hierarchy in the class. I was completely alone. Not even the substitute wanted to help me, not that any of the actual teachers ever did either.
If they would only swing first then I wouldn’t get into as much trouble, but they were socially smarter than I was and knew that if I fought back in the only way I knew how I would be the one to get into trouble.
Which is a big reason why I hate our “education” system. It’s dog shit.
But why am I sharing one of these exhaustingly, embarrassingly horrible stories with you?
Because you need to know that you can fight back, and the best way is to win before it even begins. Because realize that people, like animals, assess each other for levels of dominance before fighting so that we can avoid getting hurt. Therefore, the more dominant you come off, the less likely people will pick on you and the more you can command respect. But first, we have to understand why dominance will command respect from people:
What Is A Dominance Hierarchy
Here’s the definition from Britannica:
Dominance hierarchy, a form of animal social structure in which a linear or nearly linear ranking exists, with each animal dominant over those below it and submissive to those above it in the hierarchy. Dominance hierarchies are best known in social mammals, such as baboons and wolves, and in birds, notably chickens (in which the term peck order or peck right is often applied)
Why Dominance Hierarchies Are Important
Because first, they help form the building blocks of “Social Power”, the ability to charm and magnetize others into giving you what you want. And second, people aren’t as willing to abuse dominant individuals as dominant people trigger more submissive feelings and respect in people. Neither will dominant individuals allow others to disrespect them.
People will horridly and catastrophically abuse those on the bottom of a dominance hierarchy. And when you think about it, you’ll remember times in your life when there was someone in a group who everybody seemed to relentlessly tease like they were Jason Voorhees in a horror movie origin story. Sure, they might awkwardly smile at the time but the message was clear: nobody respected that person. Once upon a time, that person was me, and today I’m going to show you a few ways I’ve changed it so that you can gain social power and command respect, the respect you deserve.
Because simply put; the higher up the dominance hierarchy you reach, the more social power you obtain which equals more juice you can squeeze out of life and people. And after you read through this article you’ll become aware of different ways to use the tips in this article to better your life, your social power and get the things that you want in life easier.
Let’s get started!
Believe in Yourself
- Update: Here’s the more in-depth article!
When you stop and think about it, you’ll recognize and understand that if you don’t learn how to believe in yourself then nobody else ever will, nor will you ever get what you want out of life. In addition, learning how to believe in yourself is the foundation of everything else in this list and accomplishing anything in life!
While we wait on the full article, here’s an infographic with some quick tips:
Stand Up For Yourself to Command Respect
- Update: As you continue to read through the article you’ll realize learning how to stand up for yourself is an invaluable life skill to have because otherwise, people will run over you. Let’s keep that from happening, click here to learn more and check out this link for my free confidence building workshop.
I had problems with this a long time ago and many others still struggle with, some of whom you may know. I didn’t understand how to stand up for myself and I didn’t command respect from anyone, not even myself. I grew up completely, utterly and repugnantly disgusted with who I was and realize that I don’t want that to happen to you.
I’m currently working on a series about how to stand up for yourself. But in the meantime, the first step to learning how to stand up for yourself lies in your voice tone because your voice has power (check out this article to get a deep, powerful voice).
To see the power that your voice has, check out this clip from a BBC documentary (skip to 1:25 for the cool experiment):
Why Learn How to Stand Up For Yourself?
People will still challenge you even after learning how to give off a dominating presence through your voice and body language. As a man, it’s your job to learn how to stand up for yourself. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a jerk about it, but you do have to enforce your boundaries.
In fact, Charisma on Command has a great video breakdown of how to stand up for yourself without being a jerk:
Always “DARE”; Never “DEER”
As long as you’re not hurting anyone then nobody has the right to tell you how to live. You’re a person of power and that means believing in what you do and standing behind your beliefs. And these acronyms how to deal with people who apply social pressure on you to conform in some way. Basically, when people try to shame you:
DEER (never do these) stands for:
- Defend
- Explain
- Excuse
- Rationalize
DARE stands for:
- Deflect
- Agree and Amplify
- Repeat
- Exit
Why Are These Important?
Because of the next item on our list; frames. The things that we believe in might not be things that other people believe in. And people will get mad about it and try to win you over to their way of thinking. Regardless of if it’s even good for you or not, most of the time people won’t care, they want to validate their own egos and fight you over the dumbest of things. Sometimes they might believe that they’re looking out for your best interests. But they don’t understand what will make you truly, completely happy.
When you understand how to deal with moral shaming attacks, you look powerful to the people around you and people will respect you for standing up for what you believe in. Meanwhile, whoever loses will look bad and lose respect. If you want to command respect from people then it’s insanely important to understand both frames and how to dismantle moral shame attacks.
Understanding Frames is Crucial to Command Respect
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a psychological frame:
… framing is a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes, that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events.[2] In other words, people build a series of mental “filters” through biological and cultural influences. They then use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a fram
Essentially, a frame is how you see and interpret the world.
Here’s an easy example: think of gang wars. In a gang war, there are two (or more) gangs going to war with each other. But who’s right? Which side’s correct?
If you’re in gang A, then you’ll say that gang A is in the right. But if you’re in gang B you’ll say gang B is right. But, if you’re a normal citizen you might say that both are crazed, violence-addicted societal dropouts who weren’t hugged or spanked enough as children.
That is an example of three or more competing frames, different ways of seeing the world. Using this same metaphor, we can say the same about politics. No matter which side you’re on, the other side is wrong about most issues.
Most issues are a battle of frames (including beating depression) when you think about it:
- Taxes and wealth distribution
- How you should live your life
- Etc.
Which leads us to social pressure:
Command Respect Through Social Pressure
Social pressure is that feeling you get when your boss, sits silently while you explain what went wrong. There’s this awkward tension that builds up inside of people that forces them to feel like they have to do something.
It’s the feeling you get whenever you stand up in front of people to do any kind of public speaking.
Are you under any real pressure? Is anyone threatening to murder you or harm you in any way? Not at all, but it still feels like it’s a high stakes situation.
It’s psychological and in your mind, but that doesn’t make it any less real. In fact, it’s as real to us because in times when we were still living in small groups, being ostracised from the group meant literal death. And if the chief of the group didn’t like you and decided to cast you out, that meant you died!
Just because it’s not tangible doesn’t mean it’s not real, like emotion in general.
Why Is Social Pressure Important?
Social pressure is important because high-value men and women are comfortable with it and outstanding at exerting it. Social pressure is another way to command respect because only high-value individuals [back thousands of years ago and to a lesser extent even today] are comfortable enough to exert social pressure. Therefore, by learning how to see it, combat it and even exert it yourself you give off the impression that you yourself are a high-value individual. And other people will pick up on that.
We’ll dive into social pressure more in-depth in a follow-up article, but for now, here’s an excellent article by Lucio over at The Power Moves (he calls it ‘soft power’).
And notice that you can exert social pressure through your body language:
Dominate With Your Body Language to Command Respect
A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind – Morihei Ueshiba Tweet This
Dominant men and women are comfortable men men and women. That means, to command respect you have to have open body language (get the ultimate guide to perfect posture) and allow yourself to take up the amount of space you need to be comfortable (though there are differences between how men and women will go about it). Closed body language transmits discomfort and even fear whereas open body language signals power and will command respect.
Why? Because it’s easy to attack someone with open body language. Someone with open body language broadcasts comfort and openness as well as power because they leave themselves open to an attack. They’re not afraid because they know they can handle whatever happens and this registers in our brains as confidence.
But lastly, don’t forget another component of being able to command respect: becoming charismatic. Because only focusing on the dominance side of things will command respect, but it can piss people off. Add both to gain real social power:
Charisma and Charm Is The Final Piece
The items on this article will help you command respect and create a dominating presence, but that’s not the only piece of the puzzle. If you only focus on the dominance side of things you will command respect from people, but you’ll alienate and cause them to resent you.
If you want true social power, you have to soften it with charisma and charm. Because realize, that even the powerful aren’t invincible and you’ll need friends to have your back.
Like the previous points, we will dive much deeper into charisma and charm but for now check out the cheat sheet on how to confidently, charismatically and easily charm people to get started on learning charisma.
Keep Moving Forward
-Alexander
Infographic Re-Cap
Thank you for reading to the way to the end and congratulations on learning a few different ways to naturally, quickly and smoothly command respect from the people you meet! Make sure to keep this article saved somewhere because we’re going to be adding links to each point that goes in-depth to maximize your happiness in life. For now, here’s an infographic re-cap of the information that if you received value from consider sharing to help someone else 🙂
