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Dr. Aziz explains how over-smiling, excessive agreeing, and constant apologizing signal submissiveness and cost you respect. He suggests a 7-day smiling fast and other conscious experiments to build awareness and presence instead.
Dr. Aziz explains how over-smiling, excessive agreeing, and constant apologizing signal submissiveness and cost you respect. He suggests a 7-day smiling fast and other conscious experiments to build awareness and presence instead.
Today I want to share a simple tip that you can use right now to have people treat you with more respect. And this applies to all situations, relationships at work, socially, or just even at a restaurant, you know, talking to the server or something like that. Like, people will treat you differently when you do this. What is this? It is eliminating your excessively approval, giving signals of other people. And if you're a nice person, you're doing this without even knowing it. One example is you smile a lot. Basically, before I get into the specifics of what you might be doing, there's a feeling inside that you have of like, I want to make sure that everyone feels okay and feels good and liked and loved. I don't want to make anyone feel like they're not enough or that I'm upset with them or they're not doing enough for me. Right. So therefore, what am I going to do? Well, I'm gonna smile like when I see them, like, hi, how's it going? And then when they're talking, I'm gonna say, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, I hear you. All right. You know, excessive agreement and nodding. And if there's any sort of. We both start talking at the same time. I'm saying, I'm sorry, you go ahead, you go ahead. Right. You know, and I'm playing it up a little bit here, but it, there's a thousand and one little gestures, patterns that you have when, when first meeting someone and interacting with someone and being around someone, and all of those are just like telegraphing loud and clear on a subconscious level, on an energetic and emotional level. The person might not even realize it. And what you're saying is, I'm less than you. And, and I got to make sure that you're not upset with me, me, and that you like me and chimps, chimpanzees do this kind of grimace, smile thing. And I go. And it's. You know what that signal means with the chimps? It means all is well. It's a submissive gesture, like, don't be upset with me. And that's what we're doing all the time. So what do you got to do? Well, you got to eliminate that. You got to start to become aware of it and consciously change it. I was just hearing from a client, one of my group programs recently, who was saying, you know, I consciously stopped smiling so dang much when I would meet people because he'd meet people, you know, he'd just be like. And he just started to have a more neutral expression as he listened to people and the same thing, you know? What are your patterns? Do you laugh a lot? You know, someone says something like. And you're like, I don't know if that was even funny or not. I just laughed because I think I'm supposed to so they feel like I like them. Here's the thing. It's not being cruel or mean to reserve the liking. I don't know if I like you yet. I don't know if I agree with you yet. I don't know if we're friends yet. I don't know if I want to date you yet. I don't know if I want to work here yet. I don't know if I want to hire you yet. I don't know yet. Because you haven't finished talking. We haven't spent any time together. Isn't that more true? I mean, I might have a theory or a feeling or an intuition, like, oh, I think I'm gonna be friends with this person, but I don't know. And so instead of jumping to, like, I approve everything you say, right? You just wait. So they're talking and you're listening, and you're like. You might give some acknowledgement, like, but it's way toned down. And then they finish and you say, yeah, that's interesting. You know, I want to ask you about that, right? So you pause. You, like, and I am still engaged with you. There's still a warmth in my presence. It's just reasonable. The other one is jacked up to a 12. And when it's jacked up to a 12, it's repulsive. People, whether they know it or not, they might know it. They might be like. And as I've worked with more clients, they'll tell me, as they've grown and become more assertive, they're like, I went on a date with this person. They were, like, so pleasing. It was like, I just got to get out of here, right? Because they know this stuff. Like, I do, because we lived it for a long time. But a lot of people might not be that aware of it, but they just like, I gotta go. And then it's so painful because a person is wanting approval so bad. But what's happening is you're psychologically being like, damn, give it to me. I need it. And this is a human. It's a fundamental human, like, dynamic where someone is like, give me something. I need it. We're kind of like, I don't want to now, right? So what do you do? Become aware of what you're. You know, see if you can make a list. What are the top one, two, maybe even three things that you do regularly? Pick one of them and consciously turn it down from a 12 to a five. Or try like I'm going to do a, you know, seven day smiling fast or I'm only going to smile if I actually genuinely want to smile. Play with that. Find out what it is. Share down below in the comments. What do you find you do that are approval demonstrating like I approve of you and therefore our approval seeking gestures and we can all learn and grow together until we speak again. We have the courage to be who you are, to know on a deep level that you are awesome.
