Social Dynamics

[SkyFire]

I am going to be very blunt here in this post, and I apologize if I offend people along the way. But I give you my word, that everything I am about to say, is based on my life experience. Also, since I am a male, my experiences will relate more to guys, apologies to the female readers. So, here goes.

 

First concept: Respect

 

I could never understand how social dynamics worked, until I learned and understood what respect is. Respect can be summed up as an interaction between thoughts and actions. Thoughs and actions of yourself and the people you interact with. The way you think reflects in the way you act. The way you act makes others think certain thoughts and thus act back accordingly. If you are constantly feeling insecure/angry/fearful/depressed or any other negative emotion, it is going to reflect through your actions; thus other people will pick up on it and respond accordingly.

 

Example you approach a girl and you are extremely nervous. Your mindset is a nervous one. So in an attempt to get to know her, your words and body language will be directly affected by your insecurities. She will pick up on it and think you are unconfident, and will 99.9999 % of the time.

 

But now, lets reverse the situation; you walk up to her smiling and carefree, ready to meet a new person and explore what they have to offer. Your mindset is now a confident one, and that confidence is going to reflect through your body language and actions, the girl will pick up on it, and she is going to be more friendly and open to meeting you (unless she is not very attracted to you).

 

By now you are probably wondering; how is this related to respect? This is how;

 

How you see yourself will reflect through all of your actions, and others will judge you accordingly and have a certain level of respect for you.

 

Meaning; as you see yourself, others will see you that way as well. If you think that you are a loser, others will see you as that because the vibe you give off will reflect your mindset. If you constantly see yourself as a fun person, your actions will reflect those thoughts more and more until you BECOME that person.

 

Now let me show another more abstract example of how this concept applies; suppose a person is extremely insecure. When other people see this insecurity or this weakness, some may choose to exploit it and use the person like a tool. The reason that insecure people are easy to manipulate due to their low self esteem, is because they will believe and do just about anything just for people to start thinking better of them.

 

Second Concept: Power, Strength and Weakness

 

These three words are closely related. Also the concept of their workings is very much related to the concept of respect which I will clarify a little later.

 

Power and strength are concepts that are similar, but not the same.

 

Power - having power in a certain situation means having a certain advantage over others in that same situation. A driver of the car holds power over the car and it's passengers; he controls where the car goes. However, the road has power over the car and the people inside because it is the surface the car travels on, and so on. Just think of having power as having a particular advantage in a situation.

 

Strength - The possession of a positive quality and being better at it than others. For example, being physically strong and/or mentally strong, but the main focus will be the mental strengh. Also lets say you are better at soccer than your friends; meaning you have strength in the game of soccer. Every person is different so people's strengths are vastly different. Look at it as an area you are good in.

 

Weakness - Absense of a positive quality/presense of a negative quality. An area you are not good in. As with strength, some people are worse at certain things than others.

 

Having strength can give you power in a situation. The more strength you have, the more power you can obtain. More power will always mean that you will have more respect. People might not LIKE you, but if you have power you will get respect. The weaker you are, the less respect you will receive.

 

If you have people's respect, they will think twice about making a tool out of you.

 

But first you must KNOW what your strengths are in order to utilize them. You need to know yourself well enough and be able to honestly say to yourself what you are good at and what you are not. This is very hard to do, as your ego will always put up a mental barrier and you will find yourself just seeking to mentally validate all your flaws. After you allocate all of your strengths and weaknesses, you must work on your weak areas as well as improving your strong ones.

 

So basically knowing all of that, a few things can be derived:

 

1. You are the master of yourself. YOU choose your own fate (for the most part, not talking about random freak accidents)

 

2. In order for others to like and respect you, you MUST like and respect yourself.

 

3. You as a person are a combination of your beliefs and what you choose to do according to them in certain situations.

 

The concepts of power and respect are present all around us in everyday life. They have a great effect on people's relationships with eachother.

 

This also applies to dating;

 

An insecure man will try to validate himself to a woman by always giving her attention, always buing her stuff, and, most importantly, always giving in to the woman's will.

 

A confident man does not need anyone's validation other than his own, so he does not care so much about validating himself to a woman.

 

The MAIN point I am getting to is this; if you are unhappy with your life the way it is right now, the only person that can do something about it is YOU and you can start by changing the way you think of yourself. Find your flaws and fix them, find your strengths and utilize them. Know who you are and what your beliefs are. Only then can you begin to take steps to changing your life around.

 

 

Want to know something funny? It took me years to understand all of this. I was so blind in my past that I created a mental barrier for myself and could not see past it. I was the insecure fool running in circles within my mind trying to find out what is wrong with me. Until it finally hit me; If you can conquer yourself, the world is yours for the taking.

[sebring]

Years to understand this and by your profile you're only 19?

 

Um...I think that's not years...it's nanoseconds and good for you. I'm quite a bit older than you and all I can say is Amen!

[Entropy Smith]

Not bad...where'd you'd get that from?

[KAT MOMMY]

Hey, first you get the money, then you get the power and then all will respect you. That is the code I was raised on and it is still true to this day. i agree with all your points except for you being responsible for the way people view you. Sometimes that is true but not all the time especially not here in the south. Major disadvantage because alot of people her just don't know any better and dont' want better so they fear what they don't understand and try to destroy what they can't conquer. It's the way these people view things. And they are fast to go off what they think of you rather than to get to know you first. Sad but true

[jettison]

Hey, first you get the money, then you get the power and then all will respect you. That is the code I was raised on and it is still true to this day. i agree with all your points except for you being responsible for the way people view you. Sometimes that is true but not all the time especially not here in the south. Major disadvantage because alot of people her just don't know any better and dont' want better so they fear what they don't understand and try to destroy what they can't conquer. It's the way these people view things. And they are fast to go off what they think of you rather than to get to know you first. Sad but true

 

"first you get the money, then you get the power and then all will respect you".

 

That's not the way that all of us were raised. I don't respect money for money's sake, and I don't respect someone with money more then I respect someone without it. In fact, I'm aot to respect someone with money even less when they go out of their way to show everyone how much money they have in an attempt to display "power". Especially saying "all" will respect you is just erroneous.

 

Some of the very richest people the world has ever known were also quite poor monetarily.

 

As for the OP, it has a lot of great points. Barclay said, "We perceive our world to be", and I've read quite a few books that contend "You are whatever you think you are." That is very true when it comes to friendship, the opposite sex, family... People like to throw out the word "confidence" without knowing what it really means. You can't just "act confident". You either are or you aren't.

 

However, for the people that are confident, just wait... the ego is a fragile beast that always needs feeding. Go through a divorce, lose a close loved one, get cancer... and then come back and tell me how confident you feel. There are a lot of wonderful, joyful people out there who are hiding behind masks of insecurity because their world has handed them some tough speed bumps on which to navigate. The "rich" person has so much inside them to offer that their love is overflowing. They can reach out to these people, bring them into the fold, make them feel love, and make them believe in themself. I like to surround myself with these kinds of people as much as possible.

 

So, no matter how much I enjoy and appreciate this piece, it's rather worthless all by itself if not accompanied by the real message. Good for you if you're confident enough and believe in yourself enough to bring all that you wish into your kingdom. However, if you don't follow up that power responsibly by helping your fellow man and those less fortunate then you, then there is really nothing rich about you at all.

 

That's how I was brought up. That's my truism.