Lesson 2

The value other people give to your actions is proportional to the value you give them yourself.

Talking about a few of this lessons with friends of mine, I realized that many of them have one thing in common: they are stuff we all know deep down, but writing them down solidifies the concept in a very beneficial way. I suggest whenever you have an insight, take that phone out of your pocket and write it down. I personally find it very helpful.

We have a great deal of influence over other people's perception of us and our actions.

Adam Lyons has great examples explaining this concept. In one of his talks at the 21 Convention he tells a story of how he rushed inside the ladies room to talk to a friend of he's, and she was peeing, but he gave no importance to that, he gave no value to the situation, and the girl kind of accepted that behavior. RSD people call it setting the frame. I chose to use the word value, but it could also be called level of importance, or relevance. I used the word value because it has a wider meaning.

Let's use a simple example, let's say you drop your bottle of water over your food at lunch time, in some public place. Maybe a restaurant, maybe the college food court, etc.

Now, a great deal of the value people give to that act of clumsiness will be determined by your own reaction to it.

An example of giving that action a lot of value would be to curse loudly, get angry, take the plate and throw all your food away.

This way you loose in all ends of the spectrum. If people didn't notice you already, they will. It will become a much greater deal, you will develop a bad mood and your whole day will be affected. Also you will lower your own value, by letting this affect you so much, as you show that your life is either lame and monotonous or very unhappy, and also a little weird, otherwise you wouldn't take something like this so badly.

That's probably the worse case scenario, so lets try to improve from that as much as we can.

An example of avoiding to give it much value is to slow down. This types of situations in particular will make most people accelerate. Try to pick their food up, act really fast and even clumsier than before, and this will build up, so i recommend you do the opposite: Slow down. 

Whenever I feel stressed, or Insecure, I stop, sit down, and take a few good deep breaths. It works like magic.

Take a few seconds to understand the situation. Laugh it off, course with a smile if you need to course, and don't be loud.

Transmit the feeling that you understand that this can happen to anyone, throw your actions, let everyone know that its not a big deal. 

Another example:

Say a female friend of yours uses your computer and finds out you have porn on your history record on that browser. You could either try to deny it and come off as someone who is surely very insecure, or be like:

- "yeah everyone does it dude, its normal, get over it."

With a smile, and playfully.

Very different reactions will come from those two approaches.

Even though you can influence a great deal on other people's perception of you and your actions, some of it is left to situational and personal circumstances. The other person might have had a terrible day, don't expect to be able to control other people. 

I like to think of it as an equation:

V1 = K x V2

V1 is the value you give to your own actions

V2 is the value other people give to your actions

K is a situational constant that cant be controlled and that's affected by personal situations the other person is facing, and situational circumstances. k may make V2 bigger or smaller, that just depends, but its always dependent on V1

Own your reality, choose to give and take value from things as you feel convenient or appropriate. 

Hope this helps.

Jason