In this AMA, I answer the following questions about confidence:

What’s the best way – strategies, methods – to really get to know myself and like myself?

How can people stop defining themselves – their actions, life view etc. – by the Nice Guy Syndrome ?

Any suggestions and advice for a work confrontation with a colleague who tries to control me?

How to push through with Radical Honesty without backing down when they’re resistant?

Listen here:

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Full transcript (unedited)

So we’re going to jump into this Ask Dan anything. It’s part of the prize for you guys who on top of the leaderboard. Don’t think there’s too many people making it live today, but I’ve had some questions sent through quite a few actually, I’ll do my best to get through as many of them as possible. All right, I’ll also be publishing this for the rest of the bro do audience to view later. So I’ll keep the names of the people who’ve sent through the questions anonymous and just answer them as best I can. Cool and if you have attended live, feel free to message me at any time if you got other questions or you want me to elaborate on my answers. Alrighty. Alright. Question number one, what’s the best way, the strategies and methods to really get to know myself and like myself? All right? So it’s kind of a couple of questions, the first one, getting to know yourself, and the second one, liking yourself. But getting to know yourself is one of the strategies towards liking yourself. Basically, it’s very hard to hate something you fully understand. So fully understanding yourself will lead to compassion, and compassion leads to love. So if you really want to love yourself, it does help to fully understand. And you know you understand something when you no longer have any resentment towards it, blame you have nothing but empathy. Okay, so you’ll never you’ll never hate someone you have full empathy for. So the best way, strategies, methods, just going to talk off the top of my head here, first and foremost, I think the most helpful thing I’ve ever looked into in my own life is understanding that my behavior is the manifestation of my inner world. So my beliefs and everything that controls my beliefs, everything that happens in my subconscious, will show itself in my behavior, my thoughts and feelings may lie to me. Okay, so especially my thoughts, all these narratives about who I am in my head will often be quite a contradictory story to who I actually am in terms of behavior. So let’s say, you know, you listen to anybody talk about who they are, and you’ll see a big difference between what they say and what they do. You know, the kind of person says I’m a really honest person, they often lie. Kind of person says I’m really kind, you’ll see them be cruel. Person says, I’m really reliable. It’s only on the things they care about and so on. You’ll see that people often contradict their claims about themselves, seemingly no awareness that they’re doing. So it’s not like they’re bragging or lying. They actually believe what they’re saying, but they can’t observe their own behavior the way an outsider can. If you can learn to observe your own behavior detachedly, without judgment, just like you’re a psychologist, unbiasedly reviewing a case, you’re just watching someone behave to try and figure out what’s going on with them, you’ll see some Shocking Truths revealed. It’s the really difficult part is doing this without judging yourself and doing it accurately. So what people tend to do is they have a very biased memory, skew perspective of their own behavior. So people will often say things to me like, I get rejected all the time, but if we look at their behavior, they don’t actually even give themselves a chance to be rejected. They they don’t ask anyone out on date, they don’t ask for a promotion at work. That they’re rejected maybe actually once a year, but they feel like they’re being rejected all the time. Why? Because in their head, they’re constantly rejecting themselves, but out in the real world, they’re not really getting that much negative feedback. So this is the kind of thing that people do all the time. They have this imaginative fantasy world, and then they have the real world, that they interact with the real behavior, and they confuse the two. And the more somebody fantasizes, the more someone more time someone spends in their head thinking about who they are, the more confused they are about what really happened. And that’s where journaling is probably the main tool is to accurately measure what you did, why you did it, and what result it got. If, for example, you think of someone who got gets rejected all the time. Well, how many times did you ask for something and hear an actual no this week? For many of you, the answer will be none that didn’t happen at all. Some. View might be once, but for you to actually be able to say, I get rejected a lot, it would need to be dozens of times, and they’d all need to be nos, right? That would be accurate. You know, I quite often tell myself that I don’t get enough sleep, right? Because my daughter’s always struggled with sleeping since she was born. But then, how am I able to do this session right now? How am I able to think clearly, run a business, take care of my health, you know, do all the things that need to be done if I’m not getting enough sleep. If I wasn’t getting enough sleep, we should see quite catastrophic manifestation of that in my life, crashing my car, losing my job, whatever, like we should see somebody’s clearly sleep deprived, but no, I’m just a bit tired while I do stuff. That’s the truth. So I’m doing all this stuff. It’s like people who consider themselves to be a loser. So this is the kind of self measurement that often leaves people hating themselves. They think of themselves as a loser. Done a whole podcast on the loser identity. And if you’re one of those people listening to me right now, then however old you are, that’s how many years you’ve survived, day after day after day, the universe been trying to kill you the whole time, right? Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy, the universe is trying to destroy you. It will eventually, and it hasn’t yet. So what have you lost? Exactly, you know, if you’re a loser, it means you’ve lost something. Well, what have you lost? You haven’t lost your life, have you? It’s, oh, you know, I was married and I lost my partner. You got before her. You never had her. So how do you lose something you don’t need? It doesn’t make sense. If you actually needed that partner, you’d be dead without or severely wounded, or injured, or whatever, both before and after relationship. It’s more like putting on a hat. You know, you put on a hat and take it off. Did you lose the hat? Well, actually, you were fine without the Hat before you put it on. So what did you really lose, right? I’m not saying that there’s no objectives. Thing is loss. You know, your parents dying, having your hand cut off. There are things that you’ve had your whole life that are taken away and they never come back, sure. But did you lose them? Or did they just go right, like, if someone you love leaves you? Did you throw them away? Or did they walk away? In which case you didn’t lose them, they left. It’s different. The point being is you tell yourself you’re a loser, and yet, if you were to observe your behavior, you do nearly everything to a good enough level you must do because you’re alive, listening to me right now, right? You might look down your stomach. I don’t have ABS, Yeah, but you’re alive, so you’re eating enough food, you’re moving enough not to die, not saying you’re in prime health or anything, but the idea that you’re a total loser? Well, maybe once you end up in the coffin, then you’ve lost everything. So when we’re talking about trying to get to know yourself, it’s about letting go of the stories you tell yourself about who you are, and really in a cold blooded way, just observing your patterns of behavior, because it goes the other way. The same person who calls himself a loser also thinks of themselves as a good person. They think they’re unfairly treated, that they’re trying to be good, and you observe their behavior like, well, where’s the value that you’re contributing? Exactly You know, I get this quite often. It’s one of the ways that I deal with hateful comments and stuff that I go down YouTube, is every time somebody comments something like whatever, they’re implying that I’m not valuable saying something mean, I go to their channel, and every time there’s no videos, they’re not contributing anything, at least not on YouTube. So they’re shitting on me for trying to contribute. And I’ve had 1000s of videos that’s measurable. I’ve done 1000s of hours of content attempts to contribute, and they’ve done none, at least according to the evidence I can see. So who’s really trying to contribute here? I’m not saying that I am valuable, but trying to whereas this person has put out nothing. So this person’s telling themselves that they’re more valuable than me, but evidence wise, I’ve contributed more than they have. So what are you actually doing? And then you write the story. This is how I figured out my whole nice guy syndrome thing. I told myself I was a nice guy, so on, so forth, and I measured my behavior. I’m like, fuck. I’m pretty manipulative. I’m constantly lying. I’m constantly managing other people’s emotions. I’m constantly presenting an image I want them to see as opposed to what I really am. Like, how’s that good? How’s. Nice. It’s quite jarring the difference between what I told myself I am and what I actually did. So it goes both ways. You’ll tell yourself you’re much more of a hero and that you’re much more important and you’re much more special than you actually are according to your behavior. And you also tell yourself you’re much worse and you’re much less valuable and you’re much more of a waste of a person than you actually are, right? And then you know to transition to, how do I get my like to like myself? Is it’s really well, how do I change the patterns of behavior that I don’t like seeing into bad behavior I would like to see? It’s really quite a simple equation. In the end, is he like? If I was to observe myself, what do I need to see? To be proud of what I’m seeing, to admire it, respect it, to be like I like that guy as one person once said to me, you know, become the guy that you hope your daughter brings home one day. And that gave me a lot of thinking, you know, like I sat down I thought, Well, who would that guy be? Because I don’t want to be a people pleaser. I don’t want my daughter to go for that, right? And I don’t want them to be all flashy and caring about money and all sorts of stuff like that. There’s all these things I didn’t want. I’m like, Well, what do I want? What would make me feel relief like, oh god, she found a good one, and I had to unpack. And he’s not just a nice guy. He’s generous and genuine and helpful, but he’s got a spine. He’ll also protect her, he’ll protect himself. He’ll be a good father. There’s all these things. And I thought, well, if I look at my patterns of behavior, not what I tell myself I am, but what I actually did today and yesterday and last week and last year, and what I frequently do on an average day, you know, how’s that compare to that guy? And I found that I was, you know, on point in some areas, but woefully short in other areas, and all I have to do, like myself, is to bring those images together. That’s what I call the authenticity gap, to make sure your behavior lines up with who you wished you were. It really is that simple, but the difficult part is being confused by the story in your head about who you are. You know, a lot of people will measure what they didn’t do. So, you know, I’ve used this example before, but you go to the gym, you say, I’m going to do 10 push ups today, and you only do seven, and your measurement is minus three. I did minus three push ups because it had three less than the goal. But the truth is, you did seven push ups and you’re maintaining your health. So if you did seven push ups and you’re maintaining your health, then you’re on point with your values. You’re a person who takes care of his health. That’s something you want to be, right? So that’s the gist, all right, if you want to get to know yourself, focus on measuring your behavior as accurately and as as objectively as possible, just what you did, not what you didn’t do, not what you could have done or should have done. Just what did you do? Right? And measure it from zero up so you don’t be like I did less push ups than yesterday, as I did seven more push ups than zero. Right? You don’t compare to your previous self’s performance, because we don’t know why that performance happened. Maybe you’re feeling better that day, maybe you’re feeling worse, maybe you’re younger. Well, you definitely were younger. You don’t you don’t compare that. You just compare to zero. Okay, so that was the first question. Thank you for showing an interest in the nice guy brotherhood, a group coaching community program for nice guys and people pleasers who want to become more confident and assertive, to do better in their relationships and their careers. This is also for any man who wants to become more masculine, more bold, more honest and more authentic. So in this program, we focus in on a lot of the people pleaser and approval seeking tendencies that hold men back from achieving full self confidence in healthy relationships, things like avoiding conflict, trying to fix other people’s emotions, molding yourself to other people’s preferences, failing to stand up for yourself, not going for what you really want, and not knowing who you really are. The goal through the support of myself and the other members of the community, is to help you build the backbone to stand up for yourself, to stop caring what other people think of you, to stop getting lost in your thoughts and your feelings and learn how to act decisively based on your own set of core values, rather than what everybody else wants you to do. So we’re looking to replace things like conflict avoidance and procrastination and trying to please others with going for what you really want based on who you really are. So we address. Address all these issues through a number of methods. Firstly, we get together each week for a group session. Now, part of that is what’s called Hot Seat coaching, which is somebody gets on the mic with me, and we do a coaching session in front of the others, and everybody gives their feedback and support, and we can deal with specific issues that’s coming up for that person in their life in relation to building confidence and overcoming nice guy syndrome. We also have group discussions during these calls. We share links and resources, feedback, questions and everything we can do to support each other’s growth. And then also, alongside these group calls, you get access to my full online library of self development courses, which includes things like building rapport, setting boundaries and learning to confront your fears. Now, if you’re interested in the group, we have a deal where you get your first month for just $1 so that you can try it before you buy it and get a sense if it’s really right for you. And if these are the people that are going to help you achieve your goals, once your first month is up, if you want to continue, then we have a monthly membership subscription. It’s $250 US per month for full access to everything. This includes the entire archive of recordings from all the calls that we’ve had so far. And if you come along with a friend, both of you will get a 50% discount for joining together. It was what we call a zero risk guarantee. If at any time you’re unsatisfied with the program, you can quit and you’ll get your money from the last month give them back to you, no questions asked. So come and check it out. If nothing else, for $1 you get access to everything for an entire month, no risk. I’ll even return that dollar if you’re not satisfied, because that’s how confident I am that this program is going to change your life. What’s the best way, strategies and methods to get to know yourself and like yourself? Moving on to the next one we’ve got. How do people stop defining themselves, actions, their life, view by the nice guy syndrome. I’ll follow it up with the questioner on this one, and what he’s saying here is, like, once you’ve actually started working on yourself as a nice guy, how do you start to, like, let go of thinking of yourself as one, which I think is actually a really good question, because I see this with all kinds of mental disorders and illnesses. I see it an addiction with 12 steps and everything, where people say, like, you must always identify as a thing. So an addiction certain therapies which are ineffective, like 12 step, they’ll talk about how you must always see yourself as an addict. And I’ve seen lately a wave, especially in my clients, of people who get diagnosed as neurodivergent so people who have autism or Asperger’s or ADHD, they like, start to cling to that label, like, I’m autistic and I’m just gonna, like, stay that forever. Or people with depression, like I’m depressed, as in, like, that’s my identity. Or I’m an anxious person. I have social anxiety. Now, these labels, these identities, do seem to play a helpful role temporarily. Like everyone I’ve ever worked with who didn’t realize that they were on the autistic spectrum has found it very helpful to find that out. When I pointed out to them, like, oh, okay, I’m not just a freak. This is this name for this thing, you know? That explains why school was so hard, and that explains why I keep picking my nails or whatever, right? So they’ve got this thing that, like, Finally they get this, like, high off that almost, that’s kind of like, oh, okay, this is a thing. I’m not some like, freak on my own. Like, I’ve got a thing that a lot of people have. I think there’s some relief and reduction of shame in the label, and I see that with nice guy syndrome as well. When guys are just struggled their whole life, and they feel like they’re doing everything right, but it doesn’t make them happy and doesn’t make sense. And somebody goes, Yeah, you got the syndrome, man. It’s the backfires on you, like you’re not as nice as you think you are. You’re being fake. That’s where you’re getting these results. And they go, Oh God, finally makes sense. And I think that relief comes from, well, if the thing has a label, and people have studied it, maybe there’s a solution. The problem is, of course, that you’ve become almost addicted to having the label, sometimes defiantly proud of it. You know, I’ve seen people in recovery do this like I am an addict. It’s like, all right, mate, you don’t need to boast about it. You know what? I mean, like, fair enough that you accept yourself as you are, but also you kind of sound like you’re bragging at this point. I say this all the time. With neurodivergent people, do they come up with a big list? It’s almost like they got all these qualifications, like, um, Asperger’s, 88 The insecure, anxious attachment, and they just come up with this, like, receipt of all the diagnoses that picked up. They sound like a first year psychology student. You know, whenever we every single psychology student does this, myself included, you read the DSM and you just diagnose yourself with fucking half the shit in there, and you’ve kind of proud of it, like, I want to give myself more diagnoses, and my friend next to me, you know, like, Oh, you think you’re there, well, I’m this, this and this. I think there’s a kind of victim, Hero thing going on there, where we, like, Look at me. I’ve got a problem. I’m special. So it does have a helpful role in that. You go, Okay, now I know what I need to focus on. I know what’s causing me my pain. I know that there are ways through this. I can’t just sit here banging my head against the wall. If I got nice guy syndrome, let’s go have a look at what the syndrome does and what the potential adjustments are that can be made for my quality of life to go up. But this double edged sword comes at a price, because now there’s two problems, especially with nice guy syndrome, but it applies probably to all of them, because now you start questioning if everything you’re doing is derived from the syndrome. And nice guys in recovery go through a transition of struggling with this where they They now realize that they’ve spent a lot of their life being manipulative, and they weren’t even honest with themselves about it. They didn’t even know they were being manipulative. And now they wonder if everything they do all the time is manipulative, including their recovery from nice guy syndrome. Like, am I just trying to look like I’m recovering so that people will like me, or am I just doing this to tell myself a story of X, Y and Z and so now, even when they’re taking like, the kind of actions they always wish they could have been able to take, they’re more bold and they’re more shameless and whatever, and honest. Now they’re just saying, is this just a new manifestation of nice guy syndrome? Is this just another way of getting what I want is just another way of tricking people into liking me. And I see this with people like, if they’re neurodivergent, suddenly every little habit, tick and trait they have gets labeled as autistic. They’re like, you know, I I always put my toast perfectly cut in half. That’s because I’m autistic, so now maybe just like, your toast cut in half. Like, not everything you do is disordered, not everything you do needs a label, not everything you do needs to change, and particularly that last thing, because in the end, when it comes to recovery from nice guy syndrome, calling yourself a nice guy has limited value. Actually, it helps right at the start to take responsibility, to be like, okay, the way I behave is fake. I’ve been conditioned and programmed to behave this way. I can see it’s unhelpful. It’s harmful to others and myself, and it’s not the person I want to be. So I’m open to changing some shit, and that’s me who needs to change it, because I’m doing this. This isn’t being done to me. That’s great. That’s very helpful. Same with autism, like, Okay, I actually have certain wiring in my brain that makes socializing different to other people for me, and I need to take responsibility for that. If I want to socialize, well, I’m going to have to work with what I’ve got. I’ve got to play the hand of doubt on doubt, right? Because, like, if someone gets their leg cut off, it’s like, Okay, I’m going to have to put something on there and hop around on any crutches maybe, like, I’m going to have to transport myself differently to other people. I can’t just sit around crying about it. But that’s about where the usefulness stops, I think, because now you need to actually decide who you’re going to be, what parts you’re going to keep, what parts need to change, what’s real and authentic and what’s based in lies. And at this point, you can kind of let go of the label, right? You don’t need to say something as nice guy syndrome to be able to say it goes against my core values, or that was a harmful thing to do, or I don’t like it when I do stuff like this, you can just say it like that. You can just get it down to all your traits and behavioral patterns as preferred or dis preferred. I like it when I take care of my body. I don’t like it when I binge on drugs and sugary foods. I don’t need to say, well, I binge on sugary foods because, you know, I have a trauma from my childhood. It’s like, No, you just don’t want to do that. You want to change the behavior. Okay? Because this is where I might get a little controversial. I’m quite against talk therapy, mostly because the scientific consensus is that it’s ineffective. You sitting around talking about your illness non stop, with absolutely no efforts made to correct the behavior that’s harming you, justifying that behavior. So I can’t help it because I have x diagnosis. Is that’s just self serving, that’s just egotistical, it’s narcissistic, it’s just putting money in the therapist’s pocket without you actually having an improved quality of life. I mean, I see this all the time with let’s say guys are really terrible in relationships, and they go get all this therapy, and they’re still terrible in relationships, but now they do it with therapy jargon. They’ll be like, well, that’s my avoidant attachment, and that’s because, you know, my father was dismissive and emotionally neglectful. It’s like, Yeah, but you’re still being a dick in your relationship. So what use is the label if you don’t change your behavior, right? So the original question, how do people stop defining themselves and everything they do? By the nice guy syndrome, you just stop. And instead, in my opinion, anyway, you start to reference your core values. I mean, I literally know mine. Off the top of my head, there’s six of them, and I look at my behavior, and I compare it to them, and I go, does it line up or not, that’s all I need to know. The only sort of labels or words I need to know are the ones that describe my core values, the guy I want to be, the guy I wish my daughter would bring home one day, the guy that if everyone in the world was like this, it would be a better place like I just need to compare my behavior to that model and correct it when it doesn’t line up. I don’t need a label in order to do that, and I don’t need to wave the label like a banner of my head and be proud of it when doing so actually prohibits me from changing my behavior. You know that? Like I said, I I’ve I’m quite critical of 12 step drug rehabilitation programs, mostly because, statistically, they’re very unsuccessful. But this idea that you are an addict, it’s like, Well, not if you’ve stopped using, you’re not okay. Now that doesn’t mean you can go and use again. You’re clearly someone who doesn’t do drugs well, but you don’t need to call that addict. You don’t say, I’m an addict, and therefore I can justify all these like repetitive, harmful behaviors I do as I was like, No, there’s some things you can’t be trusted doing, so don’t do them, period. But you don’t need to call yourself an addict. If you’re being healthy person, call yourself a healthy person for now. If your behavior is good, call it good. If your behavior is bad, don’t say it’s addict behavior. Say it’s bad behavior, and you’re going to fix it, right? So I hope that answers the question. I might have gone a little off course, but the idea is, yeah, the label of nice guy syndrome, I obviously use it a lot, but because a lot of my content and everything I’m putting out there is for the people who are very new to this, and they need to understand, like why it is they do what they do. But once you understand, once you can see the difference between you being authentic and you being a nice guy, then we don’t need to keep calling you a nice guy right now. You just need to look at your behavior every day and go, does it line up with this guy that I’m trying to be? That’s all you need to know. Are you a nice guy or people pleaser who wishes they were more assertive, more honest and better respected by others? Since 2013 I’ve been helping people just like you discover their integrity and imply it courageously, to build deeper meaningful connections, get respected by others and become the confident person you’ve always wanted to be, being able to speak your mind without worrying what other people will think or worrying that it’s the right thing to say, and being able to assertively stand up for yourself and your loved ones. Imagine never feeling the need to apologize for who you are or what you want, and being able to live care free, without shame or the I’m not good enough story in your head. Imagine going to bed knowing that you courageously took every opportunity available to you, and you’ve got no regrets, because you always know what you should be doing in every situation. I’m so confident in my ability to help people like you unleash your highest level of self worth that I give people a free coaching session to test what I’m doing. In this one hour session, we will uncover the biggest barrier to your confidence, whether it’s an awareness problem, you don’t know what you should be doing differently, or it’s a courage problem, you know what you should be doing, but you find it too intimidating. I will guide you to make a breakthrough with your behavior, to get through that barrier in a powerful way, without feeling terrified and without destroying everything you love. I’ve had some people find this first session so powerful that I never hear from them again, simply because they didn’t need anything more after that, it launched them into the highest level of confidence that they’ve ever experienced, and if that’s the result you get, I’m good with that. One client put it this session was more valuable to me than three years of therapy combined. So if you’re tired of trying to keep everybody happy and you’re sick of worrying what other people think of you, and you’re concerned that your people pleasing and conflict avoid. Is going to damage your relationships. Then come and have a talk with me. Worst case scenario, you get to experience what it’s like to talk with someone who actually understands what it’s like to be you. I’ve lived the nice guy experience for decades. I know it inside and out. I know that pain case scenario, and very likely you will have such a powerful insight into a behavioral change that you can make in the next 24 hours to significantly improve your confidence relationships and career. Why ask is that you be honest, open to change and willing to try something new? Why wait another 10 years to discover confidence when you can do it today, fill out the brief form below to apply for a trial coaching session. Do this quickly, because there are limited spots each month, and then I’ll get back to you to book in a time to talk. All right. Next question, yeah, I think we’ll be able to get through these. So there’s a bit of a story here. I’ll read this through, and then we’ll answer it. So guy sent through has got an important meeting with the colleague he’s been struggling with. We’ve got one more project left together. This colleague does not formally supervise them, but they’re both principal investigators of the company that they’re in. He’s still pushing me to work on his preferred topics and to just do coding for him rather than do research, which would be destructive to my career. He left with minimal budget to solve very difficult problem and not enough to hire staff to help talk to my boss, and he’s supportive of my preference to instead do research and make some source code have a separate module for this company, and also to hire staff. It appears from we looked at the contract that my preference is legal, try to declare depend independence on Thursday, of course, the colleague tolerates nothing less than complete subservience, and he has plenty of power as far as connections and purse strings. So I’m concerned as to how it will go. I realized that even for my survival, if he finds some loophole to force power over me, I have to flee. Working under his authority this year has resulted in having regular self, deleting ideation that I’ve only managed to self medicate by getting back into hard drugs. She’s now off and recovering, but if I drop the project, you’ll sue me for breach of contract. So I’d have to find a job in Asia or somewhere any specific or general suggestions and advice for the meeting live with the colleague and the boss. Okay, so I’ll sum up my understanding of it is that you’re working with someone who technically is of equal status to you. They aren’t your direct supervisor or your boss, but he’s been throwing his weight around to make things the way he wants it to, which is bad for you and your career, and you would like to push back and do what you think is right and what is legal according to your contract. And then I see some potential catastrophizing here, which is that something really big and bad will happen if you push for this and that you have to flee, and that everything will go down the toilet, which may or may not be true. I don’t know the situation well enough, but I do get a sense that this is a person who’s taken a mile, one inch at a time and correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you’ve come to the situation because of a history of you backing down to him, what you call forcing power over you. So what I love is that you’re finally going to have a meeting, maybe to stem the tide here and correct this, because this is how I’d frame. This is his power over you is something you’ve given to him. Now, yes, he might have leverage with money or connections or whatever, but in the end, someone can only have power over us if we step back. Right? It’s us stepping back that creates the power. You know, one might look at a say with governments like for governments actually have power. The citizens have to obey the laws and pay their taxes. If all the citizens decide to stop doing that, the government’s now just a small group of people against millions, right? There is no power left anymore, right? If the military refuses to do what the government commands, the government’s now just a bunch of people in suits. The power is gone, right? So power requires the movement on the people who are being subdued, so you have to back down for them to have power. If you don’t back down. Now, their power is just an illusion. So we’re. What you’ve clearly for either legitimate or fancied reasons in your head, you think that if you were to step up and stand up for yourself, and you probably thought this throughout the entire time, that big bad things will happen to you, and because you weren’t willing to face the risk of those big bad things happening to you, he you stepped back and gave him that power. And this is similar to how people are corrupted in the prison system. Never wonder how, like a prison officer ends up bringing in drugs or helping someone escape. Well, it’s one inch at a time. First you do little things that are uncomfortable for the prison officer to reject or push back against. And then once they’ve done those little things, you just keep leveraging up until now the prison officer has done something that he could get in trouble for, and then you use that against them to get to do even bigger things. So sometimes takes years, and a dedicated prisoner will put in the patient time and work to do this slowly so the person never feels it happening. It’s just taking a mile, one inch at a time. And the reason that the prisoner has the power over the officers, because the officer is not willing to go into a meeting with his boss and say, they got me. I’ve been corrupted. I want it to stop now and accept whatever the consequences are. As a result, even worse things happen, and then they eventually get caught and punished anyway, and punished even worse, because they didn’t come forward. The reason I bring that up is because in a situation like this, there is no ideal, comfortable way out, right? It’s already come to this, and you have to get your head around, like working with the options that are actually available and not hoping for a good one. See one way to frame catastrophizing, like worrying that all these big bad things, like he’ll sue you for breach of contract, is that that stems from a hope that something good will happen, right? It’s a kind of like the The Dark Side of the Moon. Like, whenever we hope for stuff, we automatically set up catastrophic fears. So when you tell yourself that you’re a good person, your brain goes, Yeah, but you’re also an awful person. It’s like, you provoke it. So when you tell yourself, like, I hope this just goes well, or like, I hope I can just do what I want with this project. Or I hope he, like respects me, your brain immediately goes well, what if he sues you? What if he does this? What if he gets you fired? What if he puts a black mark on your career, and you’re so afraid of that that you step back so the in terms of suggestions and advice for the meeting, the most important thing is for you to be able to get into that meeting with a nothing to lose mentality. There’s lots of techniques and tips and stuff for negotiation, and I’ll actually message you privately with some content to help with that, but ultimately your attitude is going to be the biggest factor. You know, I’ve done a lot of negotiating in difficult like HR situations like this back when I was a manager, and I’ve also had some people just pay me to come in for meetings and stuff. And it’s the person who’s most worried about losing something that has the least power. Alright? So whatever it is that your word is going to happen, you need to find a way before Thursday to make your peace with it happening and actually have the preparations in place for that happening like nothing is more powerful than a person who doesn’t need what you’ve got. Right? Remember first seeing this when I went with my younger brother, who’s one of my role models for confidence. He went to go buy a new car, and we went to the car yard or whatever, and the guy came, and they were dickering a bit, and he offered him a price, and my brother’s just like, Nah, it’s too expensive. And just walked away. And I thought it was a tactic, and I realized we’ve walked all the way out of the place, and we’re gone. I was just like, but now you don’t get the car. We went to two more places, and he had that same attitude. And eventually he got a car for, like, way too cheap, like, the guy selling it was clearly pissed off about how much that had cut into his commission. And I realized that my brother had something at that time that I was completely unfamiliar with, which is he didn’t care if he walked away with no car at all. He was willing for that to happen in order to get what he preferred. And because he was willing, he got it. And had he not been willing, he would have paid too much for a car, because the guy at the car yard, he’s got more commissions coming. He’s got sales coming. He doesn’t need this one sale. He’s got nothing to lose with you. Or should I say, he’s got slightly less to lose because he wants to make at least some sales, whereas if my brother came in with I don’t need a car. Car at all. I’d certainly don’t need your car. And my brother’s actually the one in the power position. And that was, you know, watching that happen, I was like, wow, what is this? I could never do that back then, at least, but I really wanted to understand what I’d witnessed, because it was so powerful. Like my brother was just this untouchable thing, like the other guys were, you know, their sales techniques and stuff was so high pressure and manipulative and just so uncomfortable that you just wanted to say yes, so it would end. But my brother just didn’t have that discomfort. I wanted to say yes, but it wasn’t my car. So you’ve got this thing where this guy’s in your head, he’s got this power over you. I’m going to sneeze. I think there’s a couple of points need to keep in mind. First off, he’s not your direct supervisor. It really helps to know what the exact legal conditions are before you go into a negotiation like this. To have them written out. You don’t need to remember shit. You don’t need to impress people with your legal knowledge. Have the contract with you, have the relevant bits highlighted. You could even have a print out of like the hierarchy of the business to show unequivocally that he’s not your boss or your supervisor, that he has no legal status, power company culture, power over you. So you go in there with a clear idea of like, what you’re entitled to legally, and then you just stick to that regardless of what chaos they do on their side of the fence. You just go, No, it’s not legal. So I’m going to do this, and you just hold that line. You know, that’s what I do in a situation like this. Because generally, when people are, like, bullying and, you know, dominant in this way, and they sort of pull on purse strings or connections to get their way, that kind of thing, there’s a bit of a smoke show happening. They’re making it look like they’ve got more power than they actually do. It’s uh, the Bernie Madoff or Jeffrey Epstein style of control, where you make it look like you’ve got other people in your pocket, to get people into your pocket and then use them to make it look like you got people in your pocket, like you look like you got money from other people. You got their money by making it look like you got money from other people. It’s, this is the power game. It’s all an illusion, right? And if you can see that and go, Look, this is just another primate. This is just a needy, greedy human being playing tricks to get what he wants. And unless he’s going to shoot me right here in this meeting, he can’t do shit to me. He can’t bear in mind that even if this was to get into some difficult legal battle, you can deal with that later. You can bring in lawyers and stuff, maybe one day, you might even admit defeat and back down. But you don’t need to do that today. Let it escalate. Have a plan for moving to Asia. All right, have a plan for restarting your life elsewhere, at least the gist of a plan. Like, okay, I’ve got my backup option. Like, I used to have this when I first started my coaching career. As most note new coaches go through. I had a lot of kind of duds. I had people that didn’t show up to sessions that weren’t really into coaching and so on, because, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing at lower standards so on. And so about 50% of my sessions were no shows, which was really frustrating for me. I’d have myself all prepared for the call and stuff in that five minutes and like, Oh, can I think he’s coming, and then I get ghosted, or get some crappy excuse, or I’d just be disrespected, like they just didn’t take my time seriously, or whatever. And for a long time, this really bothered me. I just felt like I was helpless. I felt like I was at the whim of these people who were just like, do whatever they want, get away with it, and I’m sitting here suffering missing out on doing stuff, and then I came up with this rule, if someone’s 10 minutes late, the call is canceled, and I’ll write a blog post instead, right? So the most I will lose to someone is 10 minutes. And not only will I only lose 10 minutes, there’s something I’m looking forward to doing if they don’t show up. So it’s actually like, I’d actually get relief if the 10 minute mark passed. I’m like, Okay, well that was clearly a bad fit person because they didn’t show up and they didn’t message me or whatever. And now I’ve got 50 minutes to write something, and I’ve been dying to write about this thing, so I set myself up with this pivot that took all the power back. I’m like, you can’t ruin my day. You can steal 10 minutes, that’s the most you can do to me, and then I’m going to take over and make decisions for myself. And even if you come on in a minute 11, I’m like, you’re going to have to reschedule, mate, you missed out. I’d suggest very strongly, before you go into this meeting, that you have that pivot if everything turns against you and every. Things ruled against you, and there’s everything that’s out of your control doesn’t go in your favor. What will you do to make this of benefit to yourself? What will your pivot be? Right? How will you do? How will you get out of this, or do something else in a way where you’re like, Good, fine, option B. I quite like option B, right? Because that’s the nothing to lose mentality. That’s the real secret to it is, you know, those guys who go out to a bar and all the girls love them because they’re not needy. It’s because the guy knows he’s got a girl at home, right? This is why girls always love you more when you’re in a relationship, because all that neediness is gone. Okay, you’ve got, you got options, so you don’t have to wait for options to occur create them. So let go the idea that this guy has power over you. That’s an illusion in your head. It’s a story you’ve told yourself actually based on your own back steps to his behavior because you didn’t stand up to him strongly enough earlier on, you’ve created the illusion that he has power over you, but you can destroy that illusion right now. Now on, no more back steps. Even if you’re in the wrong, no more back steps, right? This guy could be like, Look, the law says this and I’m doing it. You’ll be like, you can try. Just stay calm. Stay cool. The main thing is, don’t take the bait in this negotiation that you’re about to go into with this guy. Keep in mind that you don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to answer any of his questions. You don’t have to defend yourself against any of his accusations. You don’t have to acknowledge a single word he says that’s nothing to lose. Like you’re going into this meeting, all you have to say is what you feel like saying. All you have to do is ask for what you want to ask for. You don’t have to even acknowledge his existence if you don’t want to, right, know that power. If he says, Well, you did this, just ignore it. Don’t defend yourself anyway. So I want a, b and c, right? It should be like, awkward, how much you’re ignoring them, right? That’s how you take your power back. Is go. You know what? You’re just another primate. You’re just a monkey ranting and raving because you want the banana and I’m just going to talk to this other guys being more rational. No problem at all, right? Because his power over you is going to be in the little inches he takes when he gets a reaction, when he makes you answer a question, when he accuses you and you defend yourself. That’s where his power lies. But if you don’t respond, he’s powerless, right? I hope that helps, like I said, like, let go of the idea that some beautiful, wonderful, good fear thing is going to happen, and instead make it that you don’t need it to happen. You got a backup plan. You’ll go for what you want in this meeting. But if you don’t get it, you’re going to go with option B, which nobody else can do anything about. That’s what option B needs to be cool. Thank you for showing an interest in the nice guy brotherhood, a group coaching community program for nice guys and people pleasers who want to become more confident and assertive, to do better in their relationships and their careers. This is also for any man who wants to become more masculine, more bold, more honest and more authentic. So in this program, we focus in on a lot of the people pleaser and approval seeking tendencies that hold men back from achieving full self confidence in healthy relationships, things like avoiding conflict, trying to fix other people’s emotions, molding yourself to other people’s preferences, failing to stand up for yourself, not going for what you really want, and not knowing who you really are. The goal, through the support of myself and the other members of the community, is to help you build the backbone to stand up for yourself, to stop caring what other people think of you, to stop getting lost in your thoughts and your feelings and learn how to act decisively based on your own set of core values, rather than what everybody else wants you to do. So we’re looking to replace things like conflict avoidance and procrastination and trying to please others with going for what you really want based on who you really are. So we address all these issues through a number of methods. Firstly, we get together each week for a group session. Now, part of that is what’s called Hot Seat coaching, which is somebody gets on the mic with me, and we do a coaching session in front of the others, and everybody gives their feedback and support, and we can deal with specific issues that’s coming up for that person in their life in relation to building confidence and overcoming nice guy syndrome. We also have group discussions during these calls. We share links and resources, feedback, questions and everything we can do to support each other’s growth. And then also, alongside these group calls, you get access to my full online library. Of self development courses, which includes things like building rapport, setting boundaries and learning to confront your fears. Now, if you’re interested in the group, we have a deal where you get your first month for just $1 so that you can try it before you buy it and get a sense if it’s really right for you, and if these are the people that are going to help you achieve your goals. Once your first month is up, if you want to continue, then we have a monthly membership subscription. It’s $250 US per month for full access to everything. This includes the entire archive of recordings from all the calls that we’ve had so far. And if you come along with a friend, both of you will get a 50% discount for joining together. It was what we call a zero risk guarantee. If at any time you’re unsatisfied with the program, you can quit and you’ll get your money from the last month give them back to you, no questions asked, So come and check it out. If nothing else, for $1 you get access to everything for an entire month. No risk. I’ll even return that dollar if you’re not satisfied, because that’s how confident I am that this program is going to change your life. Okay, so this one is, I’m doing better with the radical honesty, which is often pushed back towards my wife instead of good, good guy silence. But I find myself stopping after one sometimes feeble pushback. I’m pretty sure I’m choosing peace over honesty. Any tips I’m pushing through would be appreciated. So it’s not always volatile. He just backs down if there’s even some resistance. Cool. Well, let’s start by acknowledging what’s going well, okay? Because pushing back once is light years ahead of not pushing back at all. Okay? That’s a significant difference when it comes to becoming a more assertive person, like just at least asserting yourself a bit, puts you in a whole different class than somebody doesn’t assert themselves at all, or somebody who’s fake in agreeableness. So give yourself a pat on the back that you’re doing any pushback. Alright. Punishing yourself for not doing even more pushback is actually only counterproductive. It’s just going to shame you, make you feel like you’re not making any progress, and eventually lead to you not pushing back at all. Can tell yourself it’s pointless, and so on. So what I really want to point out is that you punishing yourself and not being even more assertive is actually a secret self sabotage technique to make being more assertive seem pointless, because now you put yourself in a position where you can never catch up to the rainbow. Like every time you’re more assertive, your brain will say, Yeah, but you should be even more assertive, and it can do that for the rest of your life, in general, this is something I wanted to touch on with. This question is your brain will always be able to think of an even better thing you could have done. You will never, ever achieve something so highly and so perfectly that your brain goes I can’t think of anything better than that. Never. In fact, I quite strongly believe that there is some part of the brain whose sole job it is to imagine better, I actually think that’s a survival function, sort of a motivating force to push for us to do things back when we were like living in the Savannah plain and tribes and middle of the food chain. And nowadays, it just gives us depression, right? But you’ve got this part of the brain that just keeps looking everything, you don’t go, Yeah, but you could have done more, and it doesn’t really serve a helpful purpose. At best, it’s like gives me an idea of what to head for, but a lot of the times, it’s asking you for more than you’re capable of doing, which is pointless. It should only ask you to do what you’re capable of doing, and as soon as you do it, that will expand what you’re capable of doing. The more you practice something, the better at it you get. You don’t need to try to do more than you can do, which is impossible. So you’re doing better with radical honesty, it’s the first thing you said, and that’s the most important thing you said. You just keep pushing back, and you will eventually push back more. That being said, what you’ve picked up on is, I’m choosing peace over honesty. So what’s happening is you’re creating emotional discomfort by pushing back, and then your old sort of nice guy syndrome engineering is going like, Alright, that’s enough. Let’s get back to comfort. So there’s kind of like you’re only having a burst of it rather than sustaining it. There’s a little fallacy I want you to notice here. So while your brain is trying to choose peace over honesty, clearly this is not creating inner peace. So when you push back and then back down, you actually get quite uncomfortable, maybe not immediately, but. It shortly thereafter, and in general, you’re uncomfortable with yourself for backing down this way. So I want you to just sort of notice and acknowledge that this does not create more peace for you. This is one of the greatest kind of fallacies that people have around confrontation. They think backing down from confrontation creates more peace. There’s really no evidence to support that it creates an immediate sensation of relief when the other person cools down, because you become agreeable, sure, but you hate yourself more, so the inner peace gets ruined. You sit there going, I wish I had said this. I wish I had said that. That’s not peace, right? And then the other person. In the long run, your relationship with that person becomes less peaceful, right? It leads to more conflicts, because the person doesn’t trust you, because you got no spine, they’ve got their like irresistible urge to keep pushing, to see if you push back. And then eventually, you know, resentment builds, and there’s covert contracts, and then their relationship falls apart. That’s not peace, is it? Right? If backing down was a good way of managing a relationship, I’d be out of a job. Dude, right? Most of the guys that come to see me either can’t maintain a relationship or just about to get divorced, or whatever, their partner’s cheating on them, so on, so forth, all these terrible things happening in their relationships, because they’re not confrontational enough, right? Because they don’t set and enforce strong boundaries, because they’re not clear on what their preferences are, because their partner isn’t able to trust what you say, because you’re always so falsely agreeable, right? So you gotta get it out of your head that you’re choosing peace, you’re not you’re choosing chaos. You’re choosing destruction, you’re choosing the end of the relationship over honesty, right? It’s just your old wiring that tells you this is peaceful. What’s really happening is the tension went up, the tension went back down, and so you felt like that was a peaceful moment. It’s like the relief of having a cigarette without really acknowledging that the craving for the cigarette was caused by having cigarettes, right? Often, your conflicts with your partner are caused by previous instances of you backing down or being dishonest. You know, I’m so honest. My wife and I are very, very honest with each other all the time, and it’s just very rare for us to have conflicts. All that stuff is like prevented, because there’s no build up. There’s no secrets revealed. There’s no hidden resentments bloated out whatever, like everything’s out in the open at the smallest possible level. So the scale doesn’t really go up very much, right? I’m not saying we don’t have heated moments, but we never shouted each other or insult each other, or are at any sort of risk of breaking up or anything like that, and I do believe it’s because we’re quite confrontational. Every day. We have disagreements about stuff. Every day we come to a head where one of us won’t budge on an issue, but it’s not that uncomfortable, especially once you’re used to it, and especially once you know it’s a healthy part of the relationship, it’s just not immediately pleasant, right? So tips on pushing through. I’d say the biggest tip here is just don’t back down. Okay? Often we back down because we see that we’re not going to win this thing, and we’re so attached to winning, we say, well, what’s the point of pushing if I’m not going to win? But what if you let go of winning and standing up for yourself? Is the point you can still stand up for yourself and lose, right? You can be on your way to the ballet saying, you know, just going to say one last time, I don’t want to go to this right, to just focus on holding the truth rather than winning the debate, winning the game, getting what you want right. Because, yeah, people are going to push back. You disagree. They’re going to disagree in return. It’s not like you disagree and they go, Okay, fair enough. That’s not how it works. If you’re hoping for that, that’s why you’re backing down so quickly. You’re like, Oh no, it didn’t work. But what do you mean by work? Right? The other person doesn’t immediately agree with you? No, they’re not going to, they don’t have to. They don’t ever have to, and you don’t actually have to convince them. You know, you pushing back is not the same as you convincing them. If you can separate those two and see that they’re very different from each other, it really helps. Like, assertiveness is just holding the line. Aggression is going over the line into their territory and trying to change things certain this is just preventing their aggression, preventing them from changing your things. So if you go into confrontations knowing I’m not trying to change their mind, I’m not trying to agree with them, this can actually end with disagreement and not get concluded with agreement. That’s fine, but. Yeah, but if I’m sure on this, I’m just going to not change my position. And this is particularly always true when it comes to preferences. Now you might say, like, there’s certain things you can be debated and moved on, and it’s fair enough. You say this is the best way to do something, they go, no, look at this evidence. You know, actually, that’s pretty much fair enough. Okay, I’m going to change it. That’s not compromising who you are. That’s just being smart because someone had a better argument. But when you say something like, I don’t want to do this, that’s not a thing that can be debated. Right? Your preferences? I like, I dislike, I prefer, I don’t want. These aren’t up for debate. You never have to back down on these positions. Now it doesn’t mean you don’t have to compromise your behavior, but your position should never be compromised. So let’s say I don’t know I hate pop music. Might end up that when my wife’s driving, she gets to put on pop music. I don’t always get the music I want, but I’m never going to pretend to like pop music, right? I’m never going to agree that this is a good song. If she asked me, I’m gonna say, this sucks. I hate it, right? I’ll let you listen to her, because I’m not going to tell you how to live. I’m not going to try and make you like metal, right? I’m actually quite compassionate the idea that you can’t make someone like some type of music, so don’t try to make me like your music, right? I wouldn’t do that to you. So don’t do it to me. And you just hold and you’re like, but listen the drumming. So good. If you say it is, then it is for you. It’s not for me. Stop telling me it is. And you just become this kind of like, broken clock, just, like, nope, nope, nope, right? Just I’m not moving on this. It really helps in conflict, especially to eventually resolve is say, Look, I’m not going to try and change your mind, so respect me and don’t try to change mine. It puts them in this position, if they then try to change yours, well, they’re being the bad guy, right? You You’ve now, you’re now on the moral high ground, and they’re going to have to reconcile with them and make them uncomfortable. So if you constantly point out, like, Look, I’m not going to try and change you or convince you your mind is yours to make up for yourself. You choose what you want and prefer. It’s up to you, but I’m not going to change mine on this now either. So stop doing it. Okay, stop trying to convince me. Just state your position and I will respect it, and you can respectfully disagree. Right? My wife and I, we agree on just about everything when it comes to parenting, but there are a couple of key points we’re not so in agreement with for example, I really just don’t want my daughter to process sugar, right? I just don’t think there’s any reason she needs to in her whole life. She can decide that when she’s older. But, you know, I think her life is just infinitely better if that stuff doesn’t go in her body. My wife disagrees. She thinks occasionally a treat is good, and so on so forth. I don’t need to change your mind on this. This isn’t a deal breaker situation for me. When I’m with my daughter, I won’t give her that stuff. And when she’s with Lucy, Lucy can give her whatever she thinks is best. I don’t have to win this. I’m just not going to be moved on it. You’re not going to convince me a giving process sugar to a kid’s a good idea, but it’s okay if you do, because I’m not going to convince you that it’s not either, right? So pushing back does not mean changing the other person’s mind. It just means stopping them from changing yours. So let go of controlling other people, because that’s what’s really under this I think, just focus on holding strong to yourself, allowing this thing to end with discomfort, rather than trying to conclude it all the time. You guys will be alright. You’ve gotta get it out of your head, especially nice guys in relationships, you gotta get it out of your head that everything always has to wrap up nicely and end with pleasantry and end with a sense of like comfort and security. Let tension hang. Alright, it’s you killing tension all the time. That’s actually the secret destroyer of your relationships. Sometimes tension needs to hold. Sometimes they might need two days to process something before they actually come round. And if you intervene early, then they never come round, right? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a debate, heated debate with my wife, and then, like, later in that afternoon, she sort of humbly goes, Yeah, all right. Fair enough. I was like, Oh, I just had to wait. But if I backed down early, I would have actually given her the impression that I agreed with her position and maybe allowed something harmful to happen. It turns out, actually, she just needed to be mad at me for a little while because I pointed out a truth she didn’t want to hear. And that goes both ways. I should point out, there’s plenty of times where i hat in hand go back to her, but all right, you’re right. You know. I needed to sulk for a while, and it’s good that she didn’t back down while I was sulking, because that would have just condoned that sort of sulky response.

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