THREE Powerful Social Skills that Bring Respect

Outside of defensive tactics and awareness and the tools that we need to stay safe from the criminal activity of people, I also like to spend time on here talking about things that we need to know when it comes to dealing with people in our everyday life. You're going to spend a lot more time dealing with people in your everyday life than you are physical attackers. And the ability to dwell with them peacefully is a skill set that has to be honed. In this video, I want to share with you three art forms that I live by to live and work with people peacefully. Stick around. Number one is the art of being able to be alone. The art of being by yourself. The art of getting away from everyone and getting to places where you can refuel by yourself. The reason why I say this is an art form is because I believe personally that if we get good at being by ourselves, we're going to get even better with being around others. I'm at a place in my life to where if I'm going to be good company around other people, I've got to be spending ample time by myself recharging. Whether it's a sunrise, a sunset, sitting by the river, sharpening a knife, sitting by a campfire. I could go all day with all the different ways that we can spend quality time with ourselves. I have seen in many cases, maybe not all, that there are some people who always have to have other people around them. As a result of that, they can tend to be some of the most difficult people to deal with. I heard a great quote one time that said, great animals walk alone. You look at a lot of the mighty animals out in the wilderness, a lot of times you'll find those animals walking alone. That being said, spending time with other people is wonderful as long as we're not looking to them for validation. I can be better around other people because I've gotten good at being by myself. I can enjoy people without needing them so much. The second art form to learn is the ability to say no without coming across as rude. You don't have to be rude, but you have to be firm and straightforward. If you don't learn how to say no, you're going to be a puppet the rest of your life. If you're around people at all, you're going to have so many opportunities placed in front of you, and you're not going to want to do all of these opportunities, and you're not going to jive with all of them. I'm going to quote a bible verse. I know not all of you are Christians, not all of you are believers in the scripture, but I think it applies here. It says, let your yes be yes and your no be no, because all else is from the evil one. A lot of people are stuck between their yes and their no, either because they can't commit to things or they're too afraid to tell people no. There's nothing wrong with saying, I'll get back with you, but at some point you're either going to come to a yes or a no. Let's get something straight. It's better to be respected than it is liked. You may think that you are being liked by saying yes. It's very possible that your constant yes could be leading to disrespect. People may tend to like you more if you agree with them all the time, or you say yes all the time, but they will respect you more if you stand your ground. Just understand it's very possible to be liked but not respected. We cannot live our lives in fear of offending people and losing their approval. Listen, you can offend people and lose their approval for much less than saying no to something. We must also know that we don't necessarily get the approval of other people by saying yes to everything. Sometimes if you say yes to this thing, you've got to say yes again, again, and again in order to get the same respect from this person, and it should not be that way. If you don't want to do it or if you can't do it, just tell them no and stand on that and have your reasons, and sometimes you may not even need your reasons. The third art form in this conversation that I want to bring up is the ability to be around people and to not put unfair expectations on them. When it comes to people and in life, we will fly or die by our expectations. We don't want people controlling us, and at the same time, we don't need to be trying to control other people. I've often seen when we have our expectations set too high on a person, we have this tendency to believe that everything that happens outside of our favor regarding these individuals gets looked at as a personal attack in many cases when it's not. In more simple terms, when we have high or unfair expectations on other people and they fail to meet those expectations, we tend to take it personal, and as a result, we will lash out at that individual and do undue damage to a normal working relationship. We need to learn to tell people, no, I'll pass on that, but we've also got to give people freedom to do the same. These things that I'm talking about in this video are the things in life that make us easy to be around, things that make us easy to work with. We don't want to live our life every day feeling like we need everybody all the time, and then we flip the coin and we don't need to be living our life feeling like we owe everybody all the time. Understanding these things is how we can become a lighthouse to other people and a breath of fresh air and an asset to their life. So to recap everything, the art of being able to be alone and to recharge and to become more independent. Number two, the ability to respectfully decline things in life that we know are going to come to our desk as opportunities. And number three, the art of not placing unfair expectations on other people. These things will improve our life today and lead to a much higher level of respect from other people. Take care.