Secrets From Psychology That Make People Respect You

For many men, Don Draper is the epitome of confidence.

You're happy with your agency. You're not happy with anything. You don't want most of it. You want all of it. And I won't stop until you get all of it.

But what most people don't realize is that confidence actually comes in two flavors. There's the external confidence that you project, which can make closing deals, making friends, or seducing happen more naturally. But there's also the internal confidence. You feel how comfortable you are in any given situation. So in this video, we're going to be analyzing what Don can teach us about both levels of confidence and how mastering each level can take you from being nervous to completely confident in any situation. Now, at the most basic level, we have the way that Don carries himself. Obviously, he's a good looking guy, he's got nice suits. But it's his relaxed body language that is the most interesting. For instance, he almost always sits asymmetrically and spreads himself out comfortably. Will actually cause you to relax if you do this yourself. Don also moves freely around most environments, which signals a sense of comfort and ownership. Wherever he is, he acts like the boss everywhere. Now, you don't need to take it this far, but simply having your feet at least shoulder width apart when you're standing or leaning with your arm draped over a chair in a way that doesn't prevent someone else from sitting there goes a long way towards projecting confidence. Additionally, you'll see Don subconsciously signal that others need to work for his attention. He leans back in his chair even when he's in a position where you'd think he'd want to win someone over. Like with clients, this flips the dynamic and makes them work harder to win him over.

I've been in the winter. It's quite a shock coming back.

Well put, but that could be any vacation. This was very, very different.

Don creates a similar effect with his eye contact. In the beginning of many interactions, he's aloof, making limited eye contact, almost disinterested in what is being said. You're going to ply me with drinks and convince me what a terrible mistake I'm making.

That is quite a drink.

If you're sitting opposite him, this will make you want to try to win his attention. It feels good to get the person who isn't paying attention to you to to do so. And when the other person has done that, Don gives his full piercing eye contact. On special occasions, like when he's making a point.

What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons or.

Nailing a pitch like he does on this campaign for lipstick.

She wants to tell the world, he's mine, he belongs to me, not you. She marks her man with her lips.

Or seducing you like he does all the time in the show.

My name is Don.

The biggest thing to take into your own life from Don's variable eye contact is not that you need to ignore people to be cool, but that when you are making your key points that you want paid attention to, hone in those narrow, piercing eyes. Keep people captivated, and they show confidence in the words that you're speaking while emphasizing your most important points. Now, you can do everything that you've talked about up until now fairly easily, but a much more difficult element of body language to master is what you don't do. And if you pay attention to Don, you'll notice notice that he doesn't fidget. And that takes us to the next deeper layer of confidence, which is non reactivity. This is something we actually talked about in our video with James Bond. This is much harder to fake because our emotions often get the best of us in these high stress situations. And this is one area where lacking in confidence can really be a detriment. You overreact to your own mistakes and end up making things worse. But when you can remain non reactive, it shows that you're not pressured by what's happening around you and that makes you come across as more powerful. For instance, watch how Don reacts when two men hit on his wife in Rome and how he calmly role plays that he doesn't even know her. Contrast that with their insecure overreactions to him.

May I join you, Yankee? Hey. Go home. Are they making fun of me? A little bit. I'm only in Rome for one night.

The sense of comfort and power that Don conveyed simply by not reacting is surely part of what drew Betty to him in the first place. This same level of low reactivity is especially important if you're a leader in times of crisis. Now, feeling your feelings is important, but left unchecked, they can get in the way of pulling together to get out of a serious issue. Keeping emotional expression in check actually inspires resolve in others. In addition, simply remaining silent when things are going wrong buys you valuable time to think without exposing you as someone who is totally confused and lost. Don is so good under pressure. Not because he's just fast on his feet. That's actually an illusion. It's because he slows down enough to think calmly and react in the way possible. Watch how he responds when a client doesn't like his pitch. And I'm going to have to speed it up a bit because he gives himself a full 20 seconds to think.

Gentlemen, before you leave, can I just say something?

As a general rule, we are more demanding of fast responses from ourselves than we are from others. People give themselves only 30% as much time to respond as they would give someone else, which is why so many of us find it hard to pause when doing a public speech, even though we know it's a powerful tool. So when you are in a stressful situation and it feels like you need to do something right now, pause. You're almost always better served from a presentation perspective and a decision making perspective to take a deep breath and slow down. Otherwise you're going to look frantic and out of control. Now, the next sign of a more deeply internalized confidence is not trying to convince other people. And that might sound odd, because when you think of Don Draper, you might think of the salesman who is all about persuasion. But being persuasive generally is very, very different from trying to convince any. So, paradoxically, Don makes many of his sales by not badgering clients and instead framing himself as an equal partner in a negotiation. He's screening them as much as they are screening him.

Call it a day, gentlemen. Thank you for your time.

Is that all?

You're a non believer. Why should we waste time on kabuki?

Sit down.

No, not until I know I'm not wasting my time.

Now, this is effective because one of the ways that we determine if we want to associate with anyone is by how much they seem to want and need us. We, of course, like people who are interested in us, but not too much. Much better is to share your interest, whether it's with a date or a client, but to walk away if it's not reciprocated. Now, one caveat here is that if you walk away in an emotional huff, you're not signaling confidence or power. You're signaling petulance. And that makes other people just glad to be rid of you. Now, don' guilty of this from time to time when people don't like his ads.

Hope you enjoyed looking in the window. Give me a minute. Out. Get out. Done.

Excuse me.

Get your things and get out of my office. Now.

Resist the urge to yell or to tell a date or a client how sorry that they're gonna be for blowing the opportunity, and instead step into the mindset that says, well, looks like we're not a match. I wish you the best. Now, this finally takes us to the deepest layer of confidence, and that is the belief that no matter but you will be okay when you've internalized this confidence comes easy. Now, it all sounds nice, but how do you develop this belief so that you feel it in any situation? One of the fastest ways to build any belief is to live it. So you show yourself that you're gonna be okay by doing exactly the things that you think you wouldn't be okay if you did. And you don't have to jump off of buildings. In this case, I mean social things. So this is what Don does in the final seasons, and I'm gonna have to quickly catch you up on the plot of Mad Men for the next clips to make sense. For those of you who don't know, Don's real name is Dick Whitman. He stole his lieutenant's identity when he was in the Korean War in order to escape his old life and get out of the war. And he's lived with that fake name and even somewhat of a fake Persona ever since. He displays the outer veneer of stoicism and confidence while behind closed doors, his family and even sometimes his career and emotions are crumbling. But in the final seasons of Mad Men, Don tells the truth at great personal cost. First, he tells Hershey's his client the truth about his orphaned childhood, which loses him the account and gets himself fired.

I was an orphan. I grew up in Pennsylvania in a whorehouse. Do you want to advertise that? If I had my way, you would never advertise.

Later, he confesses his moral failings to Peggy while at a retreat in California.

I broke all my vows, scandalized my child, took another man's name.

And finally, after he's been honest out loud, he has the courage to reveal the emotions that made him abandon his old life. And it's all set into motion where a man at the retreat confesses to feeling unseen and unlovable.

I had a dream I was on a shelf in the refrigerator. Someone closes the door and the light goes off. And I know everybody's out there eating. And then they open the door and you see them smiling and they're happy to see you, but maybe they don't look right at you and maybe they don't pick you. Then the door closes again, the light goes off.

Don is sitting there shell shocked from his conversation with Peggy. But as he listens, he goes from completely ignoring him to totally understanding where he's coming from. Despite the validation from business success and affairs with many beautiful women, Don still feels unlovable and when he finally recognizes that same feeling of being unseen and unlovable, he can authentically connect with his man. This is the deepest layer of confidence. It's not about always looking cool or always saying the right thing. And it's not even about getting other people to respond to you in a favorable way. It's living your life, at least socially, like you will be okay no matter what. And that means that you can tell the truth even if it loses you a client. You can tell the truth even if it makes you feel weak. Because when you live the truth believing that you're going to be okay no matter what, you won't stay feeling weak for long. Instead, you'll stop feeling like you always need to say the right thing, and you'll stop worrying that someone else might reject you, because you know that you will never reject yourself. And when you combine this deep internal confidence with the ability to project external confidence, every interaction becomes easier and more fun. And you may begin to even look forward to the situations that previously stressed you out. Now, if you're interested in the fastest way that I know to build both deep confidence and that external showing confidence, I put together a video program to fast track you to the point where you feel centered in any social situation so you don't feel like you're hesitating or grasping for what to say to make an interaction go amazing. This is our flagship program called Charisma University. It's a six week program and every day you will get a step by step action guide to make confidence your default mode of being. And it focuses both on the presentation aspect as well as that inner game aspect, which is nice because it takes the guesswork out of everything. You just follow the guide and you get the results. So if you want to fast track to more confidence, more charisma, you can learn more about the course with the the button on the screen or the link in the description. We have had thousands of members go through this course and get a ton out of it, so I hope that you decide to join if this is an area of your life that you are looking to improve. Either way you are okay and you will be okay. I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.