Subcommunicating Insecurites
Monday
Jul 21, 2008
Most AFCs, when interacting with others, are sub-communicating one or more of the following things:
You have high value
I have low value
I think my material is weak / uninteresting
I’m over-compensating / insecure
Needless to say, sub-communicating these things is not going to help your game at all!
Take for example “I have low value”, a belief that used to be a big personal sticking point of mine. Here are some things I used to do a lot, that with practice I’ve eradicated from my game, and social interactions generally which used to sub-communicate that:
Qualifying short-comings
by saying things like “Sorry if I’m not making much sense, I’m so tired” or “I know I look a bit scruffy, but I was in such a rush to leave the house”. For me, the tired one was something I was doing a lot.
Telling stories clearly intended to impress people
- like telling them about ex-girlfriends, and focusing on completely irrelevant details purely to qualify myself (”I was dating this rich model, and…”), or telling people how much I was earning from a given contract I was on, or sending people links to my photography site (I’m a good photographer) when I’d only just met them. It’s possible to do this well (see DHV theory) but in this case, it was the equivalent of screaming out to someone “Please like me and appreciate what a great person I am” rather than letting them figure it out by themselves!
Justifying yourself and your choices
I was having a while ago with a group of people, amongst whom was a very wealthy, powerful, and domineering guy. He asked me where I lived at one point in the conversation – I lived in a fairly rough, poor neighbourhood – and I told him straight up, offering no further explanation. The topic of conversation changed. Later he asked someone else at the table, who lives near me, where he lives, and he started justifying himself. You could feel his social value drop – not because of where he lived, but the fact that he clearly felt that his value was in danger because of that, so was trying to make up for it.
Explicitly drawing attention to supposed high value attributes
I used to ‘peacock’ a lot, and deliberately to try and make myself stand out. Rather than being cool about it, I used to ’subtly’ point out I was peacocking all the time. If someone said “Nice trousers!” I’d say “Yeah, but I think the boots are cooler”, and make sure they saw my cool boots, or turn my lovely flashing LED t-shirt on for people on the street who complimented me on my boots.
Thinking back to these behaviours now makes me cringe a little! But some time ago, they were a staple part of how I interacted with other people. Getting rid of them dramatically upped my game, and my social standing with others. Start to think about your actions, why you’re doing them, and what they say about you.
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Comments
Deline
July 21st, 2008 at 2:33 am
It’s like a pendulum. When you’re AFC, you have to do a ton of crazy stuff to bust out of your self-limiting beliefs. Once you realize it wasn’t that hard to begin with, you can dial it down a bit, but thing time with confidence of having done all the extremes.