5 Tricks People Use To Manipulate You

You might not realize it, but people are trying to control and manipulate you all the time. Now, sometimes this comes from a genuinely positive place, like when a parent tells their son that if he eats his vegetables, he'll grow up strong like Superman. But people don't always have your best interest in mind. And that's why in this video, I'm going to give you five phrases that are strong indicators that manipulation and control are headed your way. Now, two caveats before we begin. The first one is that this isn't always the case. These phrases can be used sometimes sincerely, sometimes, and in fact depending on the phrase. Oftentimes they're just flags for you to listen up. And second is that not every time someone tries to persuade or control you doesn't mean that you should fight it. There are genuinely good things that people might try to move you towards. I tell you these phrases so that you don't have a knee jerk emotional reaction to do exactly what they say, but so that you can pause, think about it, and make your own mind up. So the first phrase to watch out for is is. You said, this is a favorite of high pressure marketers. They want to trap you in commitment against your own position. So if you've ever gone to a timeshare thing where they tell you, we'll give you 100 bucks on this gift card if you just listen to our spiel about this hotel or whatever, they often ask you questions, do you take a vacation every so often? Do you like the beach? Would you like to save money on your next vacation? And of course you say, yes. Then they trap you at the end by going, good, since you like all of these things, you should sign up for our timeshare. And when you say, no, no, I don't want that, they go, but you said this is very, very common. It's a commitment tactic. And when you sense that it's being used against you without your best interest in mind, I don't advise you to fight back. Logically, they have planned for this and they're going to try to corner you in ways that you can't see. Instead, accept the inconsistency. It can feel uncomfortable. But you say, you know what? I'm just the type of person that one minute says something and the next minute has a completely different thing. Or actually, I don't care if I save money on vacation, I like overpaying. This is also the same dynamic that goes up in those Internet pop ups that say, yes, I want the newsletter or no, I want to wallow in misery. Forever. Just go ahead and hit the no if you don't want. Whatever it is. The second phrase that you need to look out for is I would never. Now, this one is often used by friend groups, and again, it's not necessarily with negative intent, but it does impose restrictions on what you might do. So friends will say, I would never date that person, for instance, or I would never go to that college, or, oh my gosh, I could never do that. And it's a subtle way not of telling you you can't do that, but of saying, in this circle, that's not what we do. And if you sense this and you sense that it's coming from a place of judgment and of trying to control you, a great answer back to this is, listen, maybe you're right, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. But I know that we are different. And just because we're different in this respect doesn't mean that I'm better or worse than you. We can make our minds up differently. Great way to just sort of fight back against the pressure to conform. The third one, and almost every entrepreneurial friend that I have has heard this, but you'll hear it in other areas of life as well. Trying to end relationships is don't throw away blank. Now, this plays on a fear of loss. Humans have a natural, inborn loss aversion. We often are more afraid of what we stand to lose than of what we have to gain. So when my friends were going to quit their jobs, they were really focused on what they stood to gain. They, their bosses, and well meaning family members would say, don't throw away your career. Don't throw away everything you worked for in college. And when you make people look at what they stand to lose, it can paralyze them into inaction. That's one of the strongest things that keeps people there is this fear of loss. Say that you're ending a relationship, you might not have been happy for a long time. That person says, don't throw away everything we've built. And rather than focusing on things that haven't been good, the direction you'd like to go, all of a sudden, ding, ding, ding. That fear of loss is triggered and you don't make the change. When this happens, it's not necessarily right or wrong for you to make the decision. What you can reply back and say to them and yourself is, you know what? I'm not focused right now on throwing this away. That's not my goal. I'm focused instead on this new path. But I do understand and accept that if I move in that direction, I might have to give this up as a consequence. Worked really well for entrepreneurship. If you don't focus on what you stand to lose, it also helps you have more motivation to pursue the direction that you are moving in. The fourth thing that you want to be wary of, there are many here. This is why there's actually more than five phrases. Is anything that comes in a romantic or a sexual relationship that tells a man what a good man should be or a woman what a good woman should be? And unfortunately, the romantic relationships in our world are rife with manipulation and control. So, for instance, at the very onset, say you're out, a guy walks up to a girl, approaches her, tries to hit on her. She's not having it, and she politely rebukes him. You probably have seen, and I hopefully not have done, the guy who just, oh, man, she's a. Or she's a hoe, right? He just immediately says that there's something wrong with her. On the flip side, if this happens to a girl I've seen and been on the other end of the experience where she goes, oh, that guy's gay. You know, he's whatever, she just dismisses. The thing that underlies this is that they are disqualifying you as a potential person partner in an attempt to make you behave differently. You might not behave differently with them, but I'll be darned if that doesn't influence how you behave with the next person. It's kind of like this cultural pressure in a relationship. If somebody wants to move a little bit faster than the other person, they might say, you're being a prude or you're being a tease. And again, this is a push to do the opposite of that bucket that I've just pushed you into. Similarly, as things go on, if one party wants the relationship more than the other, the other is not sure about this person or just isn't at a point in their life where they want a relationship, they might hear you're being immature or you're afraid of commitment, and those things make them feel little and like they haven't grown up. And when really the best thing for them might be to be single all of a sudden, in an attempt to be mature, they do what that other person wanted from them. In all of these cases, the thing to do here is to just call it out, right? Say the truth. If you have a relationship with that person, they're telling you you're immature. Say, honestly, I don't think it's immature. To not want to engage in a relationship that I'm not ready for. To me, listening to my own needs and not just caving seems like maturity. If you can call that out in your own head and verbally, it's going to save you a lot of trouble. The fifth thing, and this is one that is often implied, though if it were stated, it would be, this is how we do things in this industry, or this is how we do things around here. Many years ago, Ben, co founder of Charisma on Command, hurt his hand, and he had, like, a pulled tendon or ligament. Went into a surgeon to get it checked out, and the guy took one look at it, said, okay, do this. Okay, it's a full tear. I know it's a full tear. What we're going to have to do is we're going to go into this hand, cut it open, take a tendon from this hand out, open this one, and staple it together. And essentially, you're going to be in a cast for six weeks in both hands. By the way, your job is typing at a computer. And so he was nervous. He said, shouldn't we do an mri? He said, no, that would be a waste of time, and was very dismissive of it. And it made him go, oh, okay. Similarly, when I first started with entrepreneurship, there was a project that we had. We were doing editing for this big thing. It was like about $1,000, and I didn't know anything about it. And the first person we went to sent over a contract that said, here's how it's going to work. You're going to wire me the money tonight, and I'm going to get started on the project tomorrow. And I wanted to ask, wait a second. Isn't that kind of backwards? But I felt like I'm such a newcomer, I'm supposed to just go with what this industry does. And in fact, I don't want to accuse him of being a liar. Now, what can happen is these people don't often have your best interest in mind. The thing to do is to get a second opinion. Ben got a second opinion on his hand, found out partial tear, just rested for three weeks, no surgery needed. Saved him a huge, huge issue with that particular business decision we had to make. We got a second opinion, right? We went to another guy. He said, no, we're going to pay in milestones as we go. So you're only paying after you're seeing some of the work that I've done. So my point here is that when you enter into a new space or a new industry. There's this implicit desire to fit in, to show that you're a cultured and professional and so you may go along with whatever pressure that person tells you. And then if you don't, they might say, wait a second, you don't trust me. This can make you feel like, oh gosh, I have to do it or else they're going to think that I don't trust them. The correct thing to say here is, look, it's not that I don't trust you, it's you got to own that you're a newbie. I'm a complete newbie here and it would be silly for me to make any sort of decision without getting a second opinion first. Has nothing to do with you personally. If you do that, you dismantle that you don't trust me response and quite frankly, you can save yourself from making horrible health and business decisions. So those are the five phrases. There's quite a few more. Right. I think I touched on probably seven or eight. But the point here is if you can keep an eye out for this, you do not fall into these controlling, manipulative traps. And if you're interested in more high level, I recommend the book Influence and also predictably, irrational. Now, they are not sponsoring this video, but if you want to check one out, you can use our link to Audible below. I believe you get one free book with a one month trial of that or just check them out in any format you like. And I say that because next week I'm going to be doing a video on myths, the worst things that I have believed in my life and the truth about them that saved me from issues, heartache, call it whatever you want. And these books are referenced so if you're interested in there, go ahead and check them out this week. Either way, I hope that you guys enjoyed this video, that you learned something and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Video.