Why People Don’t Respect You: 7 Habits You Need To Break

We've done several videos on this channel about how you can command respect through very subtle behavioral shifts. But there's a flip side to this, and it's that you can lose respect through very small behaviors. And you're probably doing several of these today, which is why in this video, I want to talk about seven common behaviors that I see all the time that you're likely doing that are causing you to lose respect and what you can do instead so that you stop. So now, the first one of these has to do with first impressions, and it's when you just can't wait to share your achievements or your accolades in the first few minutes of conversation. And this most often occurs when you want someone to like you. You're trying to impress them, right? It's somebody that you're interested in romantically or professionally, whatever. When I was in New York, I most often saw this in the form of receiving a business card as the first moment of conversation, right? Somebody would hand over a card and it invariably would say, a really prestigious company and an interesting role, because they wanted everyone to know that if you're in entrepreneurism, perhaps people are talking about what they fundraise, how much their company sold. It can take many different forms. But for you, ask yourself, do I constantly find myself talking about one particular prideful thing that I have, that I'm a musician, that I've earned money, that whatever it is for you in the first few minutes of conversation, because if it's coming up all the time, chances are that you're shoehorning it in there. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't talk about these. You should absolutely talk about your values and the things that you're proud of. But you want it to arise organically. So first, connect with people, build some rapport, crack jokes, generate a feeling of trust. And then as conversation naturally organically arrives at a place where they're asking you what it is that you're up to, then you can share it and they'll be genuinely interested and you won't alienate them. The second of these has to do with your attention. So just ask yourself. Pretend that you're in a scenario where you're speaking to someone, you're in an interesting conversation, and somebody comes up and says something completely off topic. How do you handle this? What I see a lot of people do, and I do this as well, because we want to be inclusive, is immediately pivot to this person, answer their question, go back, and then somebody else says something, and now you're in six different conversations. This is intended to be kind, but what you communicate is that nobody here needs to respect my time and attention. You can interrupt me no matter what I'm talking about, and I'll just pivot immediately. The people that I most respect have a way of handling this that is both kind and generates respect. When they're talking to someone and I've been the one interrupting with a completely off topic comment, they don't flinch. And I stand here realizing that it was kind of rude of me to to just try to interject into a pre existing conversation. As they wrap up their thought, which might occur in 10, 15 seconds, they always then return to me go, hey, you were saying something. Or they introduced me to the person and they pull me into that conversation and it makes me respect them more but also not feel excluded from the conversation. So doing that is going to be much better than simply trying to include everybody by answering every question immediately. Third of these also has to do with group conversations and it has to do with how you handle being interrupted in a singular conversation. Now, one of the things I grew up on the east coast, right? Friends interrupt each other. It's not a mean thing to do. But how you handle these interruptions, do you cede the floor immediately or do you at least finish your point? That is what generates or loses respect. And even amongst friends who all love each other, there tends to be the case that there are some friends who are held in higher esteem and higher respect and some who are not. If you find yourself towards the bottom of that, and this is one thing to change. So if you're speaking to someone, you're in conversation and somebody interrupts you, cracks a joke, whatever, doesn't mean that you can't see the floor to them. But at least finish your sentence strongly. Doesn't mean trail off going like oh, while this person takes over, it means finish that sentence in the same speed and the same volume that you were going to. When you arrive at a period totally fine, that person can take over. Friends are allowed to do this in a non mean way to one another without having to cut one another off and be rude about it. And but you definitely, definitely, definitely want to finish your sentence. It helps generate respect a ton. This fourth one has to do. Again, these aren't things that bad people do. It's just something unfortunate that happens. I had a friend that I very much liked and one of the things that would happen is he would constantly talk about new business ideas. And at first it was really engaging because they were Fun, interesting ideas to talk about. But after weeks and months and dozens of these ideas that he was going to do, none of them happened. So it meant that when he would come in to speak about one of these things, I would immediately tune out because I knew that what he was saying was so much hot air. So if you lack follow through, if you're talking about big plans for your future, places you're going to visit, businesses you're going to start, nothing wrong with that inherently. But if you don't do it, you're training the people in your life to just tune you out. So either shut those conversations down or even better than follow through on the bold plans that you're stating, it's going to make you a much more interesting person and maybe one of these great things will happen. You'll take a cool trip, you'll start a cool business. The fifth one, again, personal experience I've done, I've been on both sides of many of these, to be quite frank. The fifth one, I was at an event rather recently and there was a handful of people hanging out and someone entered the room that was moderately well known. We all recognize this person. And a person in the conversation who had been there for the, you know, 20 minutes prior to this and had been very quiet, disconnected, disengaged, immediately perked up and all of a sudden was so interested in this person, so eager to connect, so friendly, all of these other things. And I know that it made me and everyone else who was in that table who had been there previously feel a little bit weird, a little bit grossed out by how try hard this moment was. And it was sub communicated clearly to the person they were trying to connect with because they got out of there so, so fast. So if you find that you are changing your energy levels instantaneously when someone that you're attracted to enters a room, or maybe it's a mentor, someone you'd like to do business with if you find that that's completely variable, depending on what you think you can get from someone in a conversation that is going to lose respect. Now, naturally there's going to people that you're more interested and less interested in and you're going to converse different amounts with all of them. But a much better strategy is to keep a higher level of baseline enthusiasm and willingness to connect. If you're out in public, doesn't mean you need to have an hour conversation with everyone. But the simple act of being friendly, engaged, not staring at your phone while you talk to one person, and then locked in on another is going to make you come across as much less of a try hard and a much more genuine person, quite frankly, because it is more genuine to do that now. Sixth one thankfully, it's not the most common of all of these, but you might see it on Facebook. If you've been part of this, I forgive you, but change it. It's when people start selling to their friends and family and you've seen it on Facebook. It's the mlm, it's the, you know, buy my fit tea, whatever the hot thing is today, they start monetizing their social network and you've probably been on the other end of a call from a family member or an acquaintance in high school who was trying to sell you on one of these things, respect immediately goes out the window. Now, I am absolutely not anti entrepreneurship, but if you are starting any kind of business, I don't care if it's structured like a pyramid or whatever, you should be able to sell to a market that is people that you don't know because the product speaks for itself. If the first people that you're thinking of going to in any business venture are your family and friends, chances are that you're just converting those social links that you have into currency. Because if you didn't have the social link, the they wouldn't be interested in buying. And that's the case with a complete stranger. Totally fine if you have a business to sell to friends and family if they're interested, but don't make that your primary source of income. Revenue, whatever. I know this isn't most people, but I had to include it because it's the one of the biggest ways that acquaintances just drop off and plummet in respect. And it's become much more common unfortunately with social media. So don't do this. The last one, the biggest, the most common, it's a catch. All we've all done it is lapses in honesty and integrity. This can take many forms. But when people see you go back on your word and it doesn't even have to be going back on your word to them. I've been in situations where I've seen someone who has cheated on their boyfriend or their girlfriend and immediately the respect just plummets. If it's again the situation that I talked about earlier where you're talking about big things you're going to do when you're not following through, if you're hypocritical and you're judgmental of everybody who does a particular behavior and then when you're thrust into a situation, you do it. Respect is just gone. So be very, very careful here with your word. When you follow through on this, it generates massive respect. And of course the flip side is that in hard situations where you do the right thing, but it's hard, everyone around who witnesses it has a massive amount of respect. And it's where that cliched phrase, you know, oh wow, I respect that, even though they might not agree with it comes from. So just keep this in mind. It's probably in 50% of my videos. Do your best to be honest. Do your best to remain in integrity. Now this last one again is massive, but one of the things that can help support it is if you feel like you don't need to please everybody. And part of that comes from having a stable foundation of self love. Now I've done some videos on this in the past, but one of the best primers that I can think of is a book by Kamal Ravikant that is called Love Yourself like youe Life Depends on It, and you can check it out today for free courtesy of this video's sponsor, Audible. Love Yourself like your life depends on it has a simple yet profound message about the importance of loving yourself and of course, how to go about actually doing that. And it makes an excellent audiobook since it takes on a sort of hypnotic quality where the lessons can really sink in. So I highly recommend checking it out right now. For a limited time, you get three months of audible for just $6.95 a month, which is more than half off of the original price. You can get one audiobook and two Audible originals with that absolutely free, and you visit audible.com Charisma or text Charisma to 500500 to do so. When you join Audible through that link, you get access to a huge library of audiobooks, which means that you can learn just about anything in all that time that is already being taken up with commuting or doing mindless daily chores around the house and those kinds of resources. These types of things like Love yourself like your life depends on it and tons of the other ones that are available on Audible have been some of the most instrumental for my growth. So if you wish that you were spending more time on personal development, but you're finding that time is really too hard to make, Audible is a fantastic solution and Love yourself like your life depends on it is a great place to begin. And again, for a limited time, you can get three months of audible for just $6.95 a month, which is more than half off of what you would normally pay. With that comes one audiobook and two Audible Originals absolutely free. To do so, go to audible.com charisma or text code CHARISMA to 500. 500. Either way, I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.