Transcript

I want to start with a quote that my dad used to say all the time: “Stay silent and be thought a fool, or open your mouth and remove all doubt. Used to say this pretty much any time I said something stupid. This is going to be at the heart of what we’re talking about today, which is the combination of hyper vigilance in a social setting and defensiveness-that is, being hyper aware of how everybody thinks and feels about you and each other, and the defensiveness or the actions you take to try to prevent them from thinking anything bad about you-and in particular, how this combination not only makes socialising really unenjoyable and makes it impossible for you to relax, but also it actually causes the problem it’s trying to solve.

By being hyper vigilant and defensive, you’re more likely to provoke dislike than if you were just relaxed and being yourself, and today I want to help you transition from worrying what people think about you all the time and not being able to enjoy socialising because of it, to relaxing, letting go of your defensiveness, letting people think whatever they want to think about you, and actually being able to connect and enjoy yourself as a result. But this episode is particularly for nice guys and people pleasers, as always, who find themselves worrying about being judged all the time and get quite defensive about those judgments, either trying to prevent them from happening or trying to correct them when they think they’re happening, trying to get everyone back onto liking them or thinking good things about them, and how this constant stress to achieve this goal basically ruins socialising. Now this episode actually comes as a request from my audience.

They wanted to know how do you stop being hyper vigilant? How can you actually relax and enjoy social situations? They’ve very rarely been able to do it, or they can only do it with certain best friends one on one, and it’s something that I made a big change in in my life. So I used to always just be on whenever I was socialising, constant strategizing. I might have looked relaxed, cool, funny, but in here it was all strategy. I was constantly assessing and reassessing and guessing in terms of what everyone felt, not just about me, but about each other, witnessing all the dynamics. You know, I know that that guy’s offending that person, and they don’t realise it. And that one likes this one, but this one is over that one. You know, I was like that all the time, psychoanalysing the situation, and as a result, I might have looked like I was happy and easygoing, but in here I was dead serious.

Of course, most of all, I was worried what other people thought of me, in particular if they thought bad things about me, and even more in particular if they were wrong. There was nothing that I thought was worse than somebody having a bad impression of me that wasn’t correct, and I’d do everything in my power to make sure that they had an accurate perception of me, which was to say that they had a positive one. So if you feel the need to explain yourself and justify yourself, apologise, and you’re constantly scrutinising everybody’s reactions to you to try and guess where you stand, and what kind of justifications you’ll need to make, or corrections you’ll need to make to keep everybody liking you.

And please pay attention, because today is all about you. Most importantly, I want to start by pointing out something that I think will make you want to listen to this episode, and that is everything you’re doing is backfiring on you. What you’re doing is obvious. That hyper vigilance, that getting defensive, the apologetic nature of you, constantly correcting people or trying to force them to feel or think a certain way about you. Everyone can see this happening. They’re aware of it, and it makes them like you less, and it certainly makes them respect you less, so the very thing you’re doing to gain respect and to make people like you and to fit in is the same thing that’s stopping that from happening. And on top of all that, you don’t even get to have fun. Socialising is a mission for you; it’s a job.

You get exhausted when you get home, even if you’re an extrovert, because you spend so much time managing everybody else’s impressions, and you’re not even succeeding at it. So I want you to open your mind to the idea that not only is being hyper vigilant and defensive unhelpful because you don’t have a good time and you can’t connect, but it’s also ineffective. You’re actually causing the dislike that you’re trying to prevent. So today we’re going to talk about defensiveness and hyper vigilance, why it happens, what it looks like, why it doesn’t work, and what you can do to start rewriting this system so that you can become carefree and genuinely easygoing in such.

Situations where the social stakes are high, and so you can finally let go of that burden, that crushing weight of everybody else’s expectations and beliefs about you, and actually connect with people and have a bit of fun. It took me many years to understand this dynamic in my own life. It took me a very long time to realise that being defensive and the hyper vigilance that comes from being defensive was the very cause of my social failing. I spent a majority of my time thinking about what other people were thinking, especially what they were thinking and feeling about me. It was almost impossible for me to just have a genuine conversation with people, because in the background I’m running an assessment programme the whole time, trying to figure out how much they like me and how I can increase that. Every word coming out of my mouth had gone through a filter to try and increase their liking of me. The bigger the group, the harder this was to do.

You know, I could show off to like five or six people, but the effort it took, the calculating each and every one of their reactions whilst speaking, it was like running parallel programmes at the same time. And the one thing it was not was enjoyable. Now it felt kind of triumphant when I when I won, when I knew I had made people like me, especially if it was a big group and I made them all laugh, for example, and I could see clearly that each and every one of them thought I was funny. I’d get a sense of winning, but it was bittersweet because in the next moment I have to win again and again. That doesn’t last. I never trusted that that would last. I knew that I was kind of only as good as my last paycheck. I had to keep cashing it in, which was utterly fucking exhausting.

I didn’t really realise as my goal was to manage other people’s judgments, their perceptions of me, the story they told themselves about who I was. It wasn’t really that I wanted them to see me for who I really was, because I actually thought that guy was pretty, you know, not so great. But I had an idealised version of myself that I wanted them to see, and I knew that I had to present certain pieces of data at the right time to cause them to come to that judgement and have that conclusion. So I was constantly basically assessing where are they currently with their judgement, where do I want them to be, and what do I need to do to move them across that spectrum.

I felt particularly threatened by anybody seeing me as anything other than a good person. I had variations of this: a funny person, helpful person, kind person, interesting person. But all of it was basically to be a good person, and I’d become very defensive and huffy and panicky if I got the impression that somebody thought I was a bad person, even if they were just joking and teasing. But I felt that what they were saying came from a place of truth. If they hinted at something like me being lazy or unreliable or selfish in any way, I would go on the counterattack in a big way to try and stop that from happening. In particular, to try and stop it from spreading.

That’s what a lot of my coaching clients are worried about-a reputational risk. That not only will somebody think there’s something bad about you, they’ll go and tell others, and the others will believe them, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. And this virus will spread throughout the entire workplace, the whole friend circle, the family, the world, and you’ll just be sitting at home, not realising that everyone’s being turned against you because somebody misinterpreted you. That’s one of the greatest fears that a people pleaser has. That’s what the people pleasing is designed to prevent.

Ironically, it’s one of the main things the people pleasing causes. I noticed I would defend myself even if the shit was true. So I would tell myself a story that I just wanted people to see me for who I really was. But if they saw something negative that was true, I would defend against that. So obviously, I wasn’t actually keen on them seeing the truth. I wanted them to see the ideal version of me, and I would try to defend myself against fair charges, proving them wrong, counter-attacking, distracting to a different topic, or straight up just running away-I could never deal with these things head-on in a comfortable, confident way. I always had to either fix them or run. I didn’t really have an enjoyable third option where I could just chill and let people think whatever the fuck they want. I didn’t realise that that was not only possible but preferable.

Defensiveness was one of the main reasons for my sense of humour. Like a lot of nice guys who are extroverted and you’re in groups, often you realise you can’t just do a study of one person and figure out what. They like because every person’s different. You have to find these things that are universally likeable. Some people do it by being good at sports. Some people do it by playing guitar. Some people do it by being funny, and that was one of my ones. I did the guitar thing too, actually. So I realised that my main defence was offence, which was to be funny. If I could keep people laughing all the time, it would be very hard, nearly impossible for them to form negative judgments about me. They just feel good around me all the time, and that would kind of force them to go. Dan’s a good guy.

I’ve combined this with helpfulness and you know agreeableness and going with the flow and all these other things that just made someone really not have the option of thinking bad things about me. Now I didn’t know that that was backfiring. There were people who hated me for people pleasing. There were people who were annoyed with my constant jokes. I was kind of unaware of how badly this was going for me, but it seemed like a sound strategy considering I was often in large groups of you know people with varied personalities.

The fact that all of this correlated highly with my lack of success in romance and dating, a kind of incel phase in my early 20s, kind of never really occurred to me. The idea that, you know, I’ve spent all this time trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Why don’t girls like me like they do everyone else? Why is it not working? The idea that’s because you’re being defensive, that you’re defending yourself quite effectively, you’re defending yourself from love and attraction and respect. You’re doing a great job. That just didn’t occur to me.

Nobody was able to point it out to me. People always like, yeah, there’s something, but I can’t tell you. You know, maybe you’re too nice. That was kind of the best feedback I could get, and there wasn’t someone who was astute enough to be like you’re too defensive. It puts people off, and even if someone like you, you know, you’d prevent that from happening. And it was only last year where it really crystallised for me that non-defensiveness is a trait, and it’s the most Attractive trait, you know. You look at all these lists and all these magazines, and they’ll say things like humour, intelligence, or kindness as the top traits.

What I realise is that the combination of all of those is a non-defensive person. That there is something just utterly lovable and easy to be around, and hard to dislike about someone who doesn’t give a fuck what you think of them. Now, I don’t mean somebody rebellious and contrarian. Someone’s like, I don’t give a shit what you think of me, because they actually do, right?

Anybody who says they don’t care what they think about you definitely does. Otherwise, why did they say that? It’s just a defensive thing to say. But someone’s like, yeah, yeah, I am what I am. Do whatever you got to do with that. It’s the easiest person in the world to spend time with. There’s zero gameplay. There’s zero counter attacks. You never have to worry about how they’re going to react to anything you say. They are non-judgmental, which makes you less likely to be judgmental, and it’s very hard to think negative things about someone who doesn’t care if you think those things.

And like I said, it was only last year that it was made aware to me that women, in particular, find this trait highly attractive, and men find it highly respectable. So if you’re worrying, why don’t I get attraction or respect? Start looking at defensiveness, and this is going to be linked very highly to the problem of hyper vigilance of constantly always assessing and guessing and overthinking and mind reading, because the two go hand in hand. One is a tool to feed the other.

Hyper vigilance gives you the information needed to defend yourself. So, as always, let’s start looking at some definitions to start unpacking this thing that’s happening to you. Start with defensiveness. Defensiveness is any attempt you make to convince somebody else of anything. The attempt to convince someone is defensiveness. It’s taken me a long time to arrive at this definition, this functional definition. I don’t even know what the dictionary says. This is my definition.

It’s not just defending against accusations or pushing back against false beliefs about you-it’s any attempt to change somebody’s impression of anything. Now, the kind of defensiveness we’re going to be talking about is mostly defensive about yourself, trying to convince other people to have an impression of you. But defensive people generally go outside those bounds. They’ll try to convince people of what’s true all the time. I try to convince people of what they think is the right thing all the time. One way you could look at it, it’s an attempt to manage somebody else’s judgments, to steer them towards the judgement that you prefer them to have for whatever reason. And so, of course, non-defensiveness is to.

Let them judge is to make no active attempt to change their mind. Non-defensiveness doesn’t mean passivity, but it means you’ll just give them the data and you’ll let them do whatever they want with that. You’re not even going to pay attention to how they interpret it, let alone try to manage that. Whereas defensiveness is all about managing it. So defensiveness takes many forms.

I’m going to list a few, but there’s kind of two categories. There’s preemptive and reactive.

So there’s the kind of defensiveness that you do before any judgments are formed to try and get in ahead of that and cause the judgement you want to happen, you know, when there’s still a blank slate, and then there’s reactive defensiveness, and that is when they’ve had a judgement that you don’t want them to have, and you try to correct them. So one of the elements of preemptive is hyper vigilance.

So hyper vigilance is a kind of scanning, and people who do this, they sometimes don’t realise that other people don’t do this. I spent my whole life hyper vigilant, not realising that that is a thing that only some people do. It’s not all people do it. I only started to realise that other people weren’t doing it is because they appeared to have no self awareness. For example, somebody telling an offensive joke and they’re offending someone. I’d be watching them, thinking, “How do you not know that you’re offending someone? Like I know how someone’s reacting to my joke as I’m speaking it, and I will adjust the words as they come out depending on the body language and everything I’m seeing. If I start seeing them get offended, I will actually change the nature of the joke while I’m telling it, and steer them back towards humour, I started to realise other people aren’t doing this.

They’re blind to it, and often in quite bad ways. I’d see somebody like hitting on a girl who’s clearly uncomfortable and feels trapped in a corner, and then the guy leans in for a kiss. You’re like, dude, what are you fucking idiot? Like she wasn’t keen at all. How did you not see that? I saw that from the other side of the room without even hearing what you’re saying. Took me a long time to realise that I am scanning and reading and assessing people often accurately from you know the evidence that would come forward, and other people don’t seem to do this. They don’t seem to need to do this.

The difference with like hyper vigilance and just being curiously interested is that hyper vigilance is specifically looking for threats, threats that you’ll need to defend against, threats around judgement. Now it’s not just that you might also look for potential conflict between two people, and that makes you uncomfortable, so you intervene, right? And it’s got nothing to do with you. You like to be the hero, whatever. But in particular, in relevance to this podcast, you’re looking for any threat that somebody is having a judgement about you that you don’t want them to have.

You’re just scanning, ping, ping, ping, like a submarine, looking for those missiles that need to be avoided. Okay, so this is part of the preemptive. You’re looking for the early warning signs that other people don’t even know they’re having, right? Somebody who doesn’t realise that they might get bored by what you’re about to say. You’re you’re scanning for that so that you can get in ahead of the game before any judgement actually lands.

Humour and people pleasing, any kind of persona that you latch onto to realise like this is generally pleasing to people being funny being kind being entertaining being interesting being easygoing nice guys generally find a persona that wins in social situations without them having to like do a nuance contextual one for each person. You know, it’s hard to be a chameleon when there’s lots of different colours. But if you can find a colour everybody likes, sometimes it might even look not nice.

You know, there are a lot of tradesmen, for example, who are nice guys, and they’re actually kind of mean bullies because they’re in an environment where that is rewarded. You know, they’re picking on the apprentice and making his life hell because everybody else is, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, he’s so funny. Whatever his pranks are amazing, he actually feels horrible doing it, and he wishes he doesn’t have to, but he’s picked up on something like the culture, right?

I’ve noticed that this is culturally, you know, according to nationalities and everything as well. And a lot of my conservative Chinese second generation clients-they’re very sort of hyper obedient, high achievers because that is always accepted in their culture. You know, so there’s sometimes there’s these personas that you just put on this mask all the time because it’s a general winner. Or sometimes it falls apart when you go into a different culture with the same mask, and you have to quickly find another generalised mask, which we do.

Sometimes it’s humble bragging, these little like drops of information to plant seeds in people’s head that you’re an impressive person, you’re a good person, telling a story in such a way that paints you as like the self-sacrificing hero, accidentally letting. People know that you did well on your exams. These little things where you kind of get in ahead of anyone’s judgments and let them know, hey, Dan’s a pretty impressive guy. Like, here’s some data, here’s some facts. It’s almost like giving yourself a testimonial, but trying to do it in a subtle way because you also don’t want to get caught bragging because bragging is disliked. Has to be like they accidentally got the information, or you just hint at it and let them kind of join the dots themselves.

Self-deprecating. This is one of the most misguided ones. This idea, like if I take the piss out of myself and put myself down, it makes other people more comfortable because then I’m not arrogant, right? Makes sense on paper doesn’t really work out in real life, but we think it’s a very pleasing thing to do, and it also gets a lot of pity, which we secretly enjoy. Pity for a nice guy is kind of a poor substitute for love. If we can’t get love, we’ll take compassion and pity, and someone going, “Oh, you poor thing”, right? So we’re quite often fishing for that, but we also want to put people in a position where, like, please don’t hurt me because I’ve been hurt enough. I’m already suffering. I already suck at life.

See, what we don’t realise is that often this just makes people really uncomfortable around us, which is the opposite of the point. Right? Anything you do with a motive of managing your reputation, volunteering is a great example. We might kind of try and score brownie points in a way, or you know, taking on the difficult tasks at work to show that we’re reliable, hard workers. Doing what I did, joining a band, just knowing that hey, being in a band’s pretty much a winner, right? So I’ll just be in a band. No, I genuinely liked music too, but if you put me on the spot and said, “What’s your real motive for doing this? I couldn’t have been sure it was just the music. I liked being in a band too. I played rugby for the same reason. I was in a school where rugby was high up in the hierarchy, so I made sure to get in on that and be a rugby player. That’s another winner.

I noticed other types at school, being a skateboarder, for example. That was a good winner. So you might get in ahead with like planning the activities of your life, so that if anyone was to hear about you, they would be impressed, or they would be, you know, they would think that you’re a noble person or a kind person. You know, just racking up those points nice and early, and empathy, showing that you care about everyone and everything.

You know, little flags on your social media and making big, noble, important points about politics and oh my God, the war in the Middle East, and oh, how’s your job going? And you know, I’m so sorry to hear that you had a miscarriage. You know, just constantly trying to show how fucking caring you are, and how much you think about other people, how considerate you are, and how important everybody else’s issues are to you.

Letting everyone treat you as a therapist and shoulder to cry on. I remember a time I was at. I used to work at a hardware store part time in university, and this woman just came up to me out of nowhere and just started bawling about how her son didn’t call her anymore. And I just got teased so much by my workmates, like, how do these people find you, dude? Like, how do these people know that you will sit there and be their therapist? Just, just like something about my face, I used to attract very broken people, and they’d come and just break down right on top of me. And so I was, I was so empathetic, or trying to appear to be so empathetic, that I actually attracted the people that needed to offload, and of course, being seen as a caring person, humorous person, impressive person-it’s great cover for your vigilance.

So while they’re all going, “Oh, he’s so great”, you can be like, Scan, scan, scan, taking notes, adjusting my approach, and nobody will notice because they’re just blinded by the halo effect that you’ve caused, and then of course there’s a defensiveness that you might be a bit more familiar with, which is reactive defensiveness. So this is when you respond to somebody having the wrong judgement about you or about anything. Justifying, you know, you’re justifying when you use the word just. I was just doing this. I’m just asking because of that. I only did it because this, right?

Whenever you do just and because you try to convince them that there was a good reason, and you have good motives for whatever it is you did or didn’t do, that’s justification, right? Now this is not the same as explaining yourself to a genuinely curious person who’s just trying to get to know you, because you would explain yourself. It would be non-defensive, like they might think that your reasoning was bad. You’d let them think that. They might think that your motive was evil, you’d let them think that. That’s explaining, justifying as you. Want to control how they saw your motive and your reasoning. This was why that happened.

Believe that, and now you must think I’m a good person for doing it. It’s the kind of thing we do when somebody thinks the behaviour we did had a harmful outcome, or that we were wrong factually or morally in some way, and we want to show them that they’re wrong about us being wrong because of the reasons it happened. There’s another type of justification which is reframing, right? So this is where you explain away what you did in such a way to try and make them see it from a different angle. Maybe try and make them have empathy for your position. Maybe try and make them feel guilty that they judged you as doing it this way when really it should look more like that, you know. Great example is when you say, “Well, if I didn’t do it, then this would have happened. So you’re trying to say, like, it looks like that happened, but I was actually preventing much worse thing over here from happening. So therefore, like that’s the real frame. Your your your view is too short-sighted. You got to see the bigger picture here. That’s kind of defensive reframing, coddling and adjusting emotionally to people who are starting to get upset, as the one is saying, “Oh, I’m just kidding. When somebody finds your joke offensive, right? Apologising and backing down in a way when you start to see the warning signs that somebody’s anything other than happy, or anything other than liking and agreeing with you, you just start sort of catering to the way they feel. You might even say, you know what, you’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. This kind of apologetic approach, where you’re trying to get them to at least feel something good towards you, like try and make them feel agreeable by you being agreeable, for example, this is defensiveness, and a lot of people disagree with me on this next point. But any apologising for any reason in any situation is defensiveness. I have not been convinced that it’s ever a good idea to apologise in terms of confidence. Right, I’m not going to turn this into a big debate. If I lose you on this point, please just skip it and go ahead to other points. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this shit, but saying sorry is saying please view me more positively. That’s all it’s really saying, in my opinion. Like if you really felt like you did something wrong and you needed to correct it, you would go and correct it. You don’t need to say sorry; just go fix the fucking thing. But if you don’t fix it and just try to make the person think that you have remorse, you’re trying to manage their judgement of you. If they think that you’re callous, that you’re evil or cruel, and you try to change their mind with an apology-that’s just a defensive manipulation. If you like, well, I feel bad for doing it, but if you think I’m evil, so be it. You’re probably right, or maybe that’s not defensive. Correcting people, right? Making sure that your way is the way. It might even be some sort of debate about why volcanoes erupt, or who the best party to vote for is, or you know whether or not rich people are ruining the economy. Like you just can’t help but put in your two cents and really try to win people over to your view, so that they will see you as the intelligent authority, right? Correcting people, and you’ll notice that if you’re really honest with yourself, you always have an opinion. Yet you’re very rarely the expert. You might feel like you’re the expert. Got that Dunning-Kruger effect, where you think your opinions are solid facts because you’re overconfident and too little information, a nice guy really struggles to say, “I don’t know, or “I’m not an expert in that. Don’t ask me. Like, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. Like, a person who’s non-defensive will admit that they’re not really an expert in anything. If they’re lucky, they might have one topic that they’re an expert in, and even then, they’ll try to hedge themselves.

So, a non-defensive plumber will speak very confidently about plumbing, but as soon as the conversation turns to politics or diet or anything that isn’t adjacent to plumbing, he’ll be like, “Luck, don’t ask me. I’m just a dumbass. What do I know? Right? That’s non-defensive. The nice guy would be like, “Well, I saw a video on YouTube, and therefore I’m a fucking expert. So this point, this point, this point, this point, until you believe me, right? They feel this need to dominate. It’s about the only time they’re actually assertive. Passive-aggressive counterstrikes. It’s a strong weapon in the arsenal of a defensive person. These little digs, nice guys love sulking. For example, you know, make someone feel guilty that they saw you the wrong way, that kind of thing, or dropping little hints about their defects and their flaws, trying to like redirect with that counterstrike. All those little nasty little. Fine, or do it your way as always, right? These little quips and digs and jabs just to make sure, like if you’re going to hurt, they’re going to hurt too. And this is closely tied in scorekeeping, that tit for tat thing. Well, at least I didn’t do this, where nobody can give you criticism or feedback without you giving them criticism and feedback to kind of balance the scales. Like every weakness you have, you make sure to find out what weakness they have and try and keep it equal in your head. That’s defensiveness. Of course, exploding in rage, the tantrums, the pukes that nice guys and people pleasers will have periodically when the pressure gets too much and the resentment builds up, and then if none of that works, just fleeing, just running away, hiding, backing down, getting out of a situation, even breaking up or quitting your job, just to avoid the judgments you can’t control. The defensiveness is used until you realise you can’t control it at all, and then usually you’ll flee. Even if that just means backing down and going silent, or it can mean also just removing yourself from the situation altogether. All of this is defensiveness, and all of this is what a confident person doesn’t do at all. Because what all of these tactics have in common is you’re trying to influence somebody into believing something about you or not believing something about you. They’re all an attempt to redirect that judgement. You’re refusing to let them come to their own conclusion without your guidance, without your influence, without your control. It’s like you don’t trust them. You don’t trust them to come to an accurate view of you, which of course isn’t actually what you want. You don’t trust them to come to an idealised version of you, and you’re right not to trust them to do that because if you just give them the raw data, they’re not going to have an idealised view of you. So you feel like you have to jump in and manufacture that, and you can’t just let them figure it out for themselves. All of this comes from your shame, which I covered in one of the previous episodes. You think there’s something wrong with you, there’s something bad about you, and people will be able to see it unless you get in and manage how they see you, and then you can redirect their gaze away from this thing that’s wrong with you. Can paint a picture on the wall of a better version of yourself and make them look at that and make them think that’s true, so they don’t look at you and go, “Ugh, what’s that thing? Right? Non-defensiveness is shamelessness. Right? It’s you believe whatever you want about me, even if you’re wrong, even if you’re incorrect, even if you go and tell 1000 1000 people, so be it, because I’m okay with me, and I’m the only one who needs to be okay with me. Everyone else can hate me. It’s fine. That’s what shamelessness is. And some of this might sound very alien to a lot of you. Might sound impossible. I have to say this. It’s just honest. It’s not bragging. That was me justifying. Interesting. I used to care very deeply what everyone thought about me, and now I just don’t. I just don’t. I worry if my wife is upset or if my daughter’s struggling, and it’s in relation to me somehow.

But their opinion of me-it’s all theirs. I just let them have it. And I used to do the opposite. I used to never let anyone come to their own conclusion about me. And now you can think whatever you want. It’s fine. I’m totally okay with it. I’m at peace with it because I know that’s what’s going to happen anyway. All of my defensiveness didn’t do shit anyway, right? I say this to place the idea in your head that you can get there too. I am not special. This transition was very hard. It took many years, a lot of work, a lot of challenging my own beliefs, but totally possible. So you might feel like the idea of shamelessness is just alien to you right now. I want you to place it as like a milestone on the horizon that you’re heading towards. That one day, your private journal could be published online, and you wouldn’t give a shit. That is possible. I mean, I literally published mine. My books are just basically my journals. Okay, you read my book, The Naked Truth. There’s major secrets about me in there. It’s possible to put all that information out there. Now I took a lot of 1000s of steps to get there, but that kind of freedom is available to you, but not while you’re being defensive. Now we’ll talk a lot more about how to deal with this later, but first we need to tackle a couple of things. One is why are you doing all this defensiveness, and the flawed logic behind it, how it’s actually backfiring on you. Which I want to start with here. I want to put it to you that you defending yourself is doing more harm than good. That it would be better if you didn’t try at all. Okay. And one of the reasons you’re probably still watching or listening at this point is because some part of you recognises that it is not working. It’s not creating great relationships. You’re not at ease socialising. You don’t have comfortable, wonderful, loving connections all the time. If you did, you would have stopped listening to me a while ago. So I want you to acknowledge that, despite all your best efforts to defend yourself, doesn’t seem to be working. So maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. So what are the costs? Hyper vigilance. You cannot fucking relax. A social situation. Every person is a study. You have to stay on your toes. The radar going all the time. Simulation after simulation. Calculation. Trying to figure out what are the most likely things that people think of me and feel about me. What do I need to do about that? How much control can I exert? When should I talk? When shouldn’t I? Am I being awkward? Do I sound weird? I think they think I’m weird. Shit! Do they think I’m weird? Oh, now they’re looking at me, right? It’s a fucking nightmare. How are you supposed to enjoy having drinks with someone with that going on in your head? That circus. I know that circus. All these parallel programmes running at the same time. No wonder you just want to spend all your time alone at home, being reactive and approval-seeking, constantly adjusting, constantly trying to make people like you. They notice this. It’s not respected. They might have some pity for you. They might use and abuse you for their own ends, but nobody’s like, “Fuck yeah, I want that guy to be my friend. They just feel sorry for you. That’s what the good people feel anyway. The others, they’re going to use it against you. You’re manipulative, and not only that, you’re easier to manipulate. Your defensiveness-it’s like a PlayStation controller for abusive people. You got these buttons; they’re just so easy to push. I want you to go over here. I’ll just make fun of how quiet you are, and there you go, easy done, right? Anything that you are reactive to, the manipulators in the group observe that and be like, right, that one works pretty well, and you’re just out in the open. A non-defensive person is so fucking impossible to manipulate. Really, because like, oh, you, you know, like imagine if someone tries to guilt trip you and you’re non-defensive. You shouldn’t have done that. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have. What are you gonna do? No movement, no effect.

Think about those of you who get easily guilt tripped, which means you’re defensive about being wrong. So your father’s, I can’t believe you said that to your mother. You broke her heart. No, I didn’t mean it. Just like this is an easy way to control me. You just make it so obvious for people. And then, of course, all of your defensiveness is manipulation, attempting to control how other people see you and judge you, like if someone was doing that to you, you’d feel manipulated, and then here you are doing it to everyone else and still trying to tell yourself you’re a good person. No wonder you can’t believe that you’re a good person. You’re not. You’re constantly controlling people all the time. You do not meet your own criteria for being a good person. So how are you supposed to feel good enough if you keep undermining it with your behaviour. Loss of attraction. People either pity you, which absolutely drives people up. If you know what I mean, like pity kills attraction. You’ve never been attracted to something you’re pitying unless you’re a serial killer, right? Or they get into heated arguments with you, and I don’t mean fun banter conflicts. I mean they’re actually just mad at you as they try to like win the argument, and you try to win the argument. You turn something that shouldn’t be an argument into an argument. One thing you’re guaranteeing is the panties are going to stay on. You think if I correct them and make them think that I’m a good person, they’ll be attracted to me. No, they’ll just find it annoying that you correct them. That’s all. The non-defensive person is like, “Yeah, think what you want about me. That’s hot. Okay, going, “No, you’re wrong because of these three clear factual points. That’s not hot. All right, you lose respect. See, a confident guy has nothing to defend, and everyone innately knows this deep down inside. You know, only the guilty run, right? As soon as you start defending yourself, you trigger something off in people. He must have something that needs to be defended. Why would he defend himself if he was sure that there’s nothing wrong with him? Those people like don’t go in my room. You’re like, oh, he’s got something in his room. So when you’re defensive, not only are you showing people that you probably are in the wrong, you’re showing that you’re too scared to let anyone think that about you, and that you’re like too controlling to just let people come to their own conclusions, and they just can’t. Respect you because of that, whereas the guy’s like, “Fuck it, I don’t care what you think about me. Like, go look in my room, judge. There’s just something so impossible to not respect about that. Use a double negative there, but when the person’s got nothing to hide and nothing to prove. It’s really hard to not respect them, and the opposite is true. How about the constant exhaustion? You wonder why you’re tired all the time, lethargic. Some of you might even wonder if you have like Crohn’s disease or something, Lyme disease. Like, why the fuck am I knackered all the time? Why can’t I sleep. Why am I just exhausted after every party? Because you’re putting in 10 times the effort of a non-defensive person. For you, going to a party is not going to a party. It’s going to a job where you have to control everyone all the time, and you just came from work. Non-defensive person doesn’t have to control shit. They can go to a party and it’s no different than sitting at home on their couch. It’s just as relaxing because they don’t have to manage anything. Just like when you’re watching TV and you don’t have to manage the characters on the TV, that’s how a non-defensive person sees real people. They’re just characters. I don’t have to do anything about this. The script is already written. I’m just here to watch. This is how it feels for me these days. Now I quite often go to sort of unfamiliar social situations. You know, I’m here in the Czech Republic, don’t really have any close Czech friends, so I often go to like my wife’s social events. People that I either don’t know them very well or they don’t speak English.

I’m a kind of outsider culturally. I’m a bit weird for these people here. A lot of them semi dislike me just because I’m not part of what they’re used to. I don’t know. 20 years ago, that would have ruined. I wouldn’t be able to go to a social event like that, or I’d put on a huge show and try to win everybody over. Now I feel like I’m watching a show. I don’t mean that I’m like dissociated or detached. I can have really intimate connections with the people who do like me, but the ones who are a bit standoffish or just unfamiliar just watch. There’s nothing. There’s no sense of work. There’s no like. It’s no different than just sitting at home watching TV for me. My my heart rate doesn’t go up. Sometimes I get a bit bored of the show, sure, but I don’t feel bad about myself anymore, and I know that you can get there too. But the defensiveness has to stop. And then, of course, you might have associated issues that you don’t realise are connected: sleep loss, chronic anxiety, overeating, drug abuse, porn addiction. There might be all these things that are a coping mechanism for this constant mental burden you’re putting on yourself with your hyper vigilance and your defensiveness. So if you find like life is very hard outside of socialising, it might be because of what you’re doing inside of socialising. So if you believe me, and that’s up to you, that those are the costs, and you’re not even really pleasing people. You’re not winning respect or attraction. They don’t really like you more because of all this. Then you’ve got to ask yourself, why the fuck do I bother doing it all? Why not just let the world burn when I’m not actually causing any good outcomes anyway? But of course, that opens the question: Why do we do this, right? And we need to understand why in order to stop it from happening. Ultimately, you are trying to protect an identity. There’s an idealised version of yourself that you are convinced other people need to believe in. You catastrophize what happens if they don’t. You think very bad things will happen if they don’t see you a very specific way. If they don’t believe in your identity, your brain has convinced you through conditioning that this identity is necessary. That your survival depends on you. You have a literal flight or flight reaction to the idea that somebody sees you differently. So all of this is literally a defence. You’re defending the identity. Now it’s important to recognise that this identity is not actually who you are, who you want to be seen as. The real version of you, the version of you that exists in your journal, you don’t want people to know anything about that guy. I think that guy would be rejected by all. So you’ve got to let go of the idea that you’re just trying to get people to see the truth, and that’s how you’ll sell it to yourself, but ultimately you’re trying to sell them on an idea of you that isn’t real. You’ll even get mad at people for thinking something bad about you because it’s true, but it doesn’t match the idealised version of yourself. And you will have no problem with them believing something wrong about you if it’s positive, and it matches the idealised version of yourself, somebody thinks you’ve achieved more than you actually achieved. You can’t let them believe it. But if they think you failed the thing you actually failed, you defend against it. So really, you got to let go of the idea that you’re honest or that you’re defending the truth. You ain’t, right? You don’t even know what the truth is. You’ve come to believe that if people have certain beliefs about you, about the traits that you have, maybe it’s selfishness, laziness, lack of intelligence, bad at sports, not funny, not interesting, inconsiderate, unhelpful, there’ll be a whole range of things that you think. If they think that about me, big bad things will happen, disastrous, maybe irreparable damage will be done. Cannot allow them to play with those ideas or come to that conclusion about me. Must intervene if they go anywhere near that. Must prevent it from being seen.

You might not have a really clear idea of what the big bad thing is: total rejection, end up homeless because your career falls apart, absolute abandonment. It’ll be some sort of social rejection of some kind, or you might be defensive without even really, you know, being sure of what it is you’re afraid is going to happen. You know something be very bad if people thought you’re selfish, but you don’t know what. It’s amazing to me when I’m having sessions, especially for the first time with a new client, and I just I always ask them like, what’s the big bad thing that’s going to happen? And I said they’ll judge me. I’m like, yeah, but that’s not a thing. That’s just inside their head. Then what happens? Well, then you know they’ll tell other people. So okay, now I got multiple people judging you. Then what happens? I just keep doing this, and so often they don’t actually land on anything, or they land on something so ridiculous that even as they say it, they’re like, “No, that doesn’t sound right. Like I’ll never get a job again. Like really? You’ve been a executive professional for 20 years. You’re never going to get another job. Like you sure? Sure, that’s the big thing you’re afraid of, right? And so people just have the sense of like, oh my God, down that path is some huge horrible thing. I can’t even risk finding out what it would be. Just stop it from happening. And you never question yourself, like, why am I defending myself? What am I defending myself against exactly? If judgement itself is not actually harmful, this way I’ve got to share something I call the brick theory. If I throw a brick at you, doesn’t matter who you are, it hurts. If I throw it from behind you, you don’t even know it’s happening. You don’t see it coming. It still hurts you. Bricks are objectively harmful with throwing, right? If I throw an insult at you, your reaction depends on who you are. If you’re into banter and stuff, you’re non-defensive. You’ll find it funny. Maybe you’ll throw one back, and we’ll have a bit of a laugh. But if you’re very sensitive, I might destroy your whole week. I might ruin you. There are people I could traumatise with a sentence because they’d be like, “Oh my God, the big thing you’ve seen it! Oh my God, that’s why no one loves me, and everything in between. There’ll be a range. It’ll be totally subjective. And if I do it behind your back and you don’t know what’s happening, you’re not harmed at all. You have to be aware of it and interpret it a certain way to get harmed. So defensiveness is subjective. You think that the thing is harmful. You believe that bad things are going to happen. You’re trying to protect yourself, but when I say where is the brick, you can’t point to it. There is no objective harm. That there are people having the same judgments against them, and they’re fine. Nothing bad’s happening. They’re not even suffering at all. So the secret fear underneath it all is, of course, that you’re afraid that it’s true, that there is something wrong with you, that underneath this identity you are wrong, unlovable, broken in some way, and so you defend against the possibility that they will squish past your false identity and see the real you, and once they see it, they’ll tell everybody, and then there’s no coming back from it. So you become essentially addicted to defensiveness. You compulsively react. You’re so afraid of even the slightest trickle of doubt filtering its way out into the social community that you react so quickly and so thoughtlessly that you’re never allowed to experiment with what happens if you don’t do it. There’s a few things in particular that will really trigger you off. Criticism is a big one. That they’re focused on the bad, wrong things about me. Therefore, must I? I must correct them by refocusing them on the positive, or making them feel that the things that they thought were wrong didn’t exist, you know. Try and gaslight them into believing that there’s nothing to criticise. Misunderstanding that they’ll get the wrong idea about me, and it will spread. So I must always correct people. I must always make sure they understand me.

I must get very defensive if I think they’ve misinterpreted me. I must constantly bulldoze my view of myself into their view, disagreement. Even somebody just disagreeing with you on like a technical issue, you’ll start to feel the threat that they won’t like you. That disagreement and dislike are like brother and sister, and they go together. And so you try to get to agreement because you think that gets to liking. This is one of the biggest mistakes that you’ll make. You don’t let people disagree with you. They’ll actually dislike you more. Of course, disappointment-the idea that they had an expectation of you that you didn’t meet-so you constantly aim to set their expectations for them to try and control what they expect of you. And then, when even that gets out of control and they have a higher expectation, you try to meet it so that you’re never disappointing. These are the compulsive things that you react to. Of course, you’re right about something. You are being judged all the fucking time. Humans are super judgmental, right? You’re judged every time someone looks at you. They’re making a judgement. You’re actually right about that. That paranoia is not really paranoia. It’s correct. So that means you have to constantly defend because you’re constantly being judged. You’re just never getting a fucking break until people stop watching you. So when you’re at home alone, finally you can turn off the hyper vigilance. Finally you can relax. But as soon as someone’s aware of your existence, you’re like, right, judgments are happening. Let’s get to work. So you take preemptive action to try and reduce the workload, like judging all the time-that’s a lot of effort. Can I do any of those things? Like be funny or intelligent or whatever? That kind of negates the need to deal with all these judgments. But of course, you’re just provoking more criticism. Now you’re trying too hard. Now you’re bragging. Now you won’t let anybody else have a turn? Now you’re not having enough turns, and you’re too quiet. No matter what you do as a preemptive, preventative measure, there’s always going to be somebody who actually thinks negatively of you because of you you doing that. This is one of the things I was kind of made aware of finally, is that there are people who judge me for people pleasing. There are people who think I’m too nice, too funny. There’s a girl who used to sit next to me in university, and she stopped sitting next to me because I made too many jokes. So I started to realise that these efforts I’m putting into making people like me still trigger a certain amount of dislike. Probably about the same amount of dislike I’d trigger if I just didn’t do anything at all. So all I’m doing is changing why they don’t like me, but there will always be a ratio of people that don’t like me. I mean, you think of someone like Robin Williams as a great example, the actor, hugely popular, never got a scandal, great actor, whatever. Heaps of people don’t like him. He was so depressed he committed suicide. This idea that you can put on a persona that everyone will like-you know that’s not true. There’s people who can see that you’re putting on a persona, and that’s why they don’t like you, and you’ll never be able to fool them. They’re too intuitive, and this is especially with women. Women know when you’re putting on an act a lot of the time. They might tolerate it, they might even enjoy it, but they know it’s there, and if they’re the kind of people who don’t like someone putting on an act, then they won’t like you, even if you’re really good at acting. So you’re wasting your time. You dislike no matter what you do. You dress up nice; that might make somebody think you’re arrogant. You being funny might offend somebody. You being intelligent might make somebody else feel stupid. You just can’t win. So why do you try? You cannot stop people being judgmental. You will never stop them being wrong about you. In fact, everybody’s going to have a view of you that’s different to the one you want them to have, or even the truth. Nobody views you correctly ever. No, no two people have the same view of you.

You can’t control what they view you as. You can’t stop them being judgmental. Even your best efforts will backfire on you. And all of that effort for what? How connected are you exactly? How good is your social life exactly? How much fun are you having when you’re out chilling with people? Why keep doing something that doesn’t work? Why keep doing something that causes the very problems you’re trying to prevent? Because you can do everything right and be the best person in the world, and there will still be scores of people who think that you’re a dickhead. Right? You can think of high-profile people who you know are a good person. Keanu Reeves, for example, he has hate groups. He sucks at acting. Like he can’t win. Those genuine, down-to-earth, helpful guys entertained us all with John Wick and the Matrix. Gives all these donations to kids’ hospitals, and will never say no to a fan who wants a photo. And there’s still people who hate him. I mean, if he can’t do it, what fucking hope do You have none, none. Okay, you know we’re near as cool as he is, and he can’t even get it right. And the most ironic of all, nothing provokes more judgement than getting defensive. And you know this because you judge people who get defensive. When you see someone getting all hot and bothered and sensitive about something, the judgments just flood into your head, don’t they? Oh, you try to stop them. I’m sure you’re such a good person, but they come anyway. Ironically, the person who defends himself the least provokes the least amount of judgement. It’s something where you. Throw a judgement at something, but it just goes into a void. It doesn’t get validated. It doesn’t bounce off anything. A spark doesn’t light up a fire, and it just kind of dies. You know, I saw a lot of this during the #MeToo movement. I’ve spoken about this before. You know, there was the first wave of #MeToo where all the predators, the really bad people, were found out by about the third or fourth wave. People were getting in trouble for just having a bit of awkwardness on a first date. It was getting kind of out of hand. There was nowhere near assault or abuse anymore. And what I noticed is that the ones who tried to defend themselves were automatically considered to be criminals. Right? Somebody, oh, I was just doing this, and no, that’s not how it happened. Straight away they’re like, oh, he did something, right? Hashtag me doing that, motherfucker. But the guys are just like, eh, yeah. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. What are you going to do? They were fine. No cancelled careers. No court cases. Nothing. Now I’m not saying that that’s how you get away with sexual assault is by not being defensive. What I’m saying is, being defensive triggers suspicion, pity. It validates people’s assumptions. Right? You’re saying I have something to hide. The person is like, I got nothing to hide. I’m whatever you think I am. Look through my phone, read my journal. I just don’t give a fuck. Come after any conclusion you want, tell your friends, libel me. Whatever you got to do to make your life feel better, go for it. That person provokes the least amount of suspicion. They’re actually the ones you trust, right? This logic should be really fucking obvious to you, and then you’ve got to ask yourself, well, if that’s logical, why am I doing what I’m doing? Why am I doing something that doesn’t make sense? You cause the problem by trying to solve it. Now jump in here before we get into the how-to’s. This kind of work is what I love to do the most as a coach. I love helping people become non-defensive, to let go of this burden and just enjoy socialising and be as attractive and respectable as they can be. Enjoy being assertive without being defensive. It’s great. So if you’re ready to do this kind of work and you need help, and frankly, it’s really hard work to do on your own. Can do it on your own, but if you want it to take months instead of years, get in touch. Dan at brojo. org. We’ll have a trial session.

See if I can help you make more progress in one session than you have in your entire life. So, how do we deal with this hyper vigilant defensiveness? The headline is just let go. All right, this is all about control. Defensiveness is all an attempt to manage other people. Let go. Let go of the grip you have on how everyone sees you, and just let it be whatever it’s going to be. That’s the theme here. I’ll give you some practical tips, but that’s the main principle to keep in mind. Just imagine the freedom and peace of socialising without tracking, without monitoring, without giving a shit, without trying. Imagine no trying. Some of you already know what this is like because you might have a best friend, partner you really trust, really tight with your brother, whatever. You know what it’s like to be around with someone where you don’t have to be vigilant, you don’t have to think through what you’re going to say, you don’t have to manage their impression. You don’t give a fuck. They know everything about you and they never judge, so you’re fine with it. Imagine feeling like that all the time, but not needing other people to be safe for you to feel like that, because you don’t. All right, you just need to be safe with yourself. You need to take care of yourself, and that doesn’t matter what they do. All right, you have to understand them judging you does not harm you. You harm yourself in reaction to that, but you don’t have to be doing that. Him having a judgement that happens all the time anyway. You are constantly judged negatively. Most people judge skewed to the negative. So if you walk past a stranger on the street, they’ll probably think something negative of you more than they’ll think something positive. So it’s happening all the time. No fucking harm done. Judging alone doesn’t do anything to you. Once you see that, you realise you don’t have to stop it from happening because you can’t anyway, and it doesn’t matter what you do. You can only make it worse. Think of a judgement like background music. You can’t help but notice that you know you’ve trained yourself to be hyper vigilant. That’s not going to go away anytime soon. Like later on, it just transforms into kind of people reading at an accurate level, but just like you notice music when you’re walking through the mall, you don’t have to sing to it, pay attention to it particularly. Can’t turn it off, but you don’t have to do anything about it. It can just exist in the background. As you notice people whispering about you, they can just whisper about you in the background. Just like music, you can just focus on something else if you don’t like the song. You don’t have to do anything about it. You don’t have to fix it. You can let the fire burn through the whole forest. You don’t have to try put it out or dig any trenches. Just let it burn. Okay? How good would that be if you could do that? How fucking sweet would that life be? It’s available to you, no shit. The cost of this approach, you have to let them believe whatever they’re going to believe, including misunderstanding you, being inaccurate, telling other people misunderstood, inaccurate things, and spreading it like a virus with their gossip. Wait, the cost is you’re just going to let that happen. It’s happening anyway, so it’s not like you’re paying an extra cost. People are already doing this. You just don’t hear about it most of the time. Okay, now you’re just definitely going to let it happen instead of it happening without you knowing. And that’s the good news. This isn’t actually a change. This is already taking place. People are already judging you, already talking about you behind your back, already thinking things wrong about you, it can’t get any worse. You’re fine. Now you’re just going to turn off the pointless trying to do something about it, bit, and it’s just going to keep happening anyway. You’ll be fine. The thing to keep in mind, if you believe what I’m saying or the logic makes sense to you, defensiveness makes it worse anyway, right?

So any other approach is better, and and that’s the main thing I’d ask you to think of is like okay, if defensiveness doesn’t work, be open to another way, any other way that isn’t trying to make people think something about you. Now, if I go to an event now, I can just sit there, it can be some boring person that nobody likes. I’m gonna sit there being that guy, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s relaxing. It’s comfortable. You know, find something moderately interesting to engage my attention. Go eat some food, whatever. And only thing I have to do is just let them think all that stuff. I see someone going looking at me. I just go, that’s probably not good. But what are you going to do? You know, so be it. Not like we’re super tight now, right? I mean, if anyone is a good friend of mine, they’re not going to be doing that anyway. So I’m not losing anything. This is no different to if I wasn’t here. I’m just going to sit there and watch. You just got to remember, there is no threat. Nothing bad actually happens. You can just let the thing feel like a threat without reacting to it. And look, there are rare occasions where it sort of matters. You know, your boss’s view of you may affect your career at that company, and so on. And if your work isn’t enough to convince them of the truth. You might feel like I would actually have to go on in there and get defensive if this guy changes mind. He’s not paying attention to the truth. What I’d suggest is rather than going, okay, well I have to change their mind because my career, because that’s a slippery slope where you’re going to justify everybody. I have to change my wife’s mind because she’ll leave me. I have to change my friends’ mind, my family. I have to change everyone’s mind, and you’re back to in defensive all the time, right? What I’d suggest is instead of focusing on keeping everyone liking you and thinking you’re a good person, focus on having a pivot. If my boss has the wrong view of me and blocks my career, how do I get around that without doing anything about the boss? Should I be applying for other jobs? Should I be looking for a transfer to a better manager? Right. Make it so their judgments don’t matter. Now, this is a nuanced practice. Again, this is what I coach people on how to do: is to make your life not depend on the judgments of other people. A lot of the reason that you feel like you have to get defensive is because you got such high stakes pegged to people’s judgments. You need them to think positive things about you, or like big bad things happen to you. So one of the main reasons you’re so sensitive and defensive is because you got so much tied to other people’s judgments. Like your world will come crushing down if you do not manage them to thinking you’re a good person, so ask yourself what is a different approach where instead of managing them, I manage my life so that they don’t matter, right? Especially when it comes to career and your social life, your relationships. If they hated me, what could I do about it? Rather than how do I stop them hating me? It’s a different question, and you have to get creative with the response. But it’s way easier to manage. It’s much easier to apply for lots of different jobs than it is to make your boss respect you. And in fact, if you’re just doing your job well and you stop trying to like get his respect, and he knows you’re willing to leave if he’s if you’re not treated well, that’s the most likely thing that will get respect anyway. You sucking up to him because you desperately need this job. If he’s a manipulative, abusive person, he’ll see that and he will exploit you. When someone does deliberately dig at you, treat it like a video game. Like they can’t actually come through the screen and hurt you. Now, on rare occasions, there is a risk of violence, but even then, you being defensive is more likely to provoke someone into violence than you being non-defensive.

If you’re cool, calm, and collected, they’re very unlikely to escalate unless they’re insane. But if you’re like no, no, and you try to like convince them, they’re going to smell that. It’s like. Fear to a dog or blood in the water to a shark will actually provoke them, but a vast majority of the time, for nearly all of you, there is no real risk of violence, which means there is no real risk. There’s no harm that’s going to happen here if they have these judgments. So even if they throw things at you, little comments, they have a dig at you, tease you in a mean way in front of people, and get them to laugh at you. Remind yourself you don’t actually have to respond. This is not the same as freezing because you can’t think of anything good to say, right? You might think that it will look like that, but if you’re non-defensive, you don’t care if it looks like that. Let them think that you’re stuck for words because they’re so witty and they just dissed you and they whatever they say they owned you or whatever, right? You were cooked, as the young people would say. Be cooked, right? Just look at them like, good one, whatever. And when they’re like, “Whoa, you got nothing to say for yourself? Just be like, “Nope. There’s a great clip. I might try and include it into the editing. We’ll see how it goes. Brad Pitt in the Formula One movie, which I haven’t seen, but I’ve just seen the clip. There’s this journalist baiting his character, trying to get him to have a reaction. Like he did all these things and they failed, and so on. And he just responds with a yip and nope. It’s like, don’t you regret it? He’s like, yep. Like, shouldn’t have you done this and that and the other? Yep. And so you just go, yep, no, whatever. You just give them. There’s no fuel for the fire. You don’t have to play the game. There’s there’s not a real character attacking you. You’re not being attacked. So don’t defend. And that’s really my top practical tip. There’s much more complex things you can learn as your confidence grows, but my top practical tip is just do nothing, an absence of defensiveness, and where possible, an absence of hyper vigilance. Right? Don’t look, don’t react, let them. One way to think of it is that whenever something disrespectful happens, dismiss it, and I don’t mean actively dismiss it, like defend against it, but more like continue as if it doesn’t exist. Someone’s like, “Yeah, Daniel’s always doing stuff like that, right? Anyway, and you just carry on with the topic. It’s like you don’t even breathe air into the thing, you behave the same as if you didn’t hear it. That is probably the most powerful response you can have to any attempt to provoke you. It’s to be unprovoked, right? And if you’re wondering what that looks like practically, you just ask yourself, what would I do if I didn’t hear that or I didn’t notice it? Then what I what I have done, just do that. Keep moving forward. Don’t be taken off your path. If it seems something that you must respond to for whatever reason, I can’t imagine an example. Let’s say there is one, or you just, you know, you’re working on this stuff, and sometimes it’s hard to avoid. You know, you’re at dinner with your parents, and they’re both grilling you, and you feel like just sitting there silently isn’t going to work for you. You can just acknowledge without a reaction. It’s what I call rolling with resistance. Again, I take my coaching clients through this in much more depth. Just this kind of yep, heard that. That’s it. I’m sure you think that. Yeah, I can see how you’d see it that way? Just this acknowledgement that you heard them, that you recognise what they’re saying, but absolutely nothing more than acknowledgement. Oh, you broke your mother’s heart when you quit university. Yeah, I can see she’s pretty upset. That’s it. What do you have to say for yourself? Yeah, not much. You got me. Oh, Daniel, he’s always so lazy. Yeah, if you say so. Don’t you think you’re lazy? Maybe. I get it. I heard you, and that’s all I did. I heard you.

You don’t understand. Like, if someone asks you a question, you don’t have to answer it. Someone accuses you, you don’t have to counterattack that. You don’t have to do anything. There is no have to. So if you don’t feel like responding, you can just acknowledge that it happened and moved on. Uh huh. Right? Like you can just write anyway and just move on. Be amazed how powerful you feel doing this. And yes, it will create an awkward ripple in the mood, and some people will be even more provoked by it, but so long as you remain unprovoked, you can just use this over and over again in the same conversation. So acknowledge, do nothing. Acknowledge, do nothing, and eventually they’ll run out of steam. And all you got to do is outlast them. Now, if you want to get a bit more advanced, I’ll show you a couple of techniques for that. Curiosity is a great one. So rather than defending yourself, you get curious about their motives. Why are they doing this? Why are they saying that? What was their intention here? So you’re always keeping it kind of like it on them, right? Why did you say that? Why would you ask that? Interesting question. I wonder what motivated you to ask that. You’re never actually answering the question. You’re never responding. You’re never taking the bait. You’re always putting it back on them. I find this is really powerful to do, especially when you’re being accused. It’s interesting. You accuse me of something that you could have told me in private, but you do it in front of the group. I wonder why you did it in front of the group. Notice you’re not actually addressing the accusation. And when it’s true, own it. Sometimes you can even do this when it’s not true, just to have fun. But that’s getting a bit more advanced, and you won’t be able to pull it off unless you’re genuinely feeling confident. But if somebody says something true, just take it. Don’t try to defend it. Don’t try to justify it. Don’t try to explain the nuance of it. Just go, yep, that’s me, and just wear it like a hat. You know, you got me. That’s one of my favourite ones. Like, yep, you got me. I got nothing. You know, you say, yeah, that’s probably accurate. You can even admit to the defensiveness as a way to get rid of it, and be like, “Well, given how defensive I felt when you said that, it’s probably true. And now you’ve even like undefended the defensiveness, which is doubly powerful, right? Only a very confident person admits to getting defended. Only a very confident person admits to getting defensive. There’s some background working due to this and journaling type work on your own. You got to make peace with all of your flaws and faults and quirks and everything. So you should write them all down, all the stuff that you’re sensitive about that you know is true. Right, write it all down and just acknowledge it. Like yeah, I am this, and sometimes I am that, and a lot of time I am that, and tell myself I’m not this, but I really am, right? Like, just come to terms with who you are, the flaws of being a human. Everyone’s got them. No point in being ashamed of it because you’re just one of millions, right? You’re not special for this shit, no matter what it is. Right? You’re really into step sister porn. Yeah, well, those videos are pretty popular for a reason, mate. Like you’re just one of many. Just admit it, own it, be the thing that you actually are. If you can make peace with it on your own, then when somebody brings it up, you’ve already practised this. You know, I’m clumsy in a way that’s really just quite inconvenient. I’m lazy. I might not appear to be lazy. I get a lot done. I really don’t fucking want to. I could sit and read a book all day, every day, for the rest of my life. Really, I could. Right? I’m forgetful. I got the memory of like a 90-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. Like it’s insane how much just falls through the sieve, and I keep lots of stuff that’s pointless. I’m addicted to my phone. I’m weak when it comes to sugar.

You know, I’ve got no fucking discipline. I’m sensitive about my physical strength and my toughness. That’s a sore point for me. These are all things that I’ve admitted to myself, and instead of trying to fix them or change them, I just go. These are my things. So when somebody else brings it up, be like, ah, yeah, you fucking got me, you know. And sometimes the defensiveness still comes up. Somebody implies that I can’t do a manly job, and you know somebody else has to do it for me. I get this. I’ve got to prove that I’m a man because all the kids in my school said that I was a boss that comes up, and I’ll just be like, “Yeah, we should probably get a real man for the job. Actually, and as soon as I say that, she’s like, “Ah, just let it go. Just be. Let them think you’re weak. Who gives a fuck? Like, who cares? Who cares if they think that? You know, when my wife catches me sneaking treats. Oh, are you thinking doing the thing with the sugar again, yeah, I am, I am, and I’m hiding it from you. Yeah, I’m a terrible person, right? Like just owning the fucking thing. So you’re trying to disprove it all the time, which doesn’t serve any purpose. And one thing you can especially try to own is the sensitivity itself-not just what you’re sensitive about, but the fact that you are sensitive, that things do get to you, that you do get defensive, that you are vigilant and you feel threatened by certain views and judgments, because one of the things that bullies will try to use against you is the sensitivity itself. Like, just take a fucking joke, mate. Come on, fucking harden up. That’s a very New Zealand version of it, you know, when you’re working on a worksite in New Zealand with tradesmen and stuff, it’s very hard to enjoy yourself because they’re just on you all the fucking time, going for your greatest weaknesses, right? Going for your most sensitive points, whatever it is that you’re even slightly reactive to, that’ll be your nickname from now on. Like they will make that all about it, right? And I’m glad I I worked in some of those roles because it toughened me up a bit. But if you can actually say like, “Yep, that’s my weak spot. That’s my Achilles’ heel. You got me. You got me in my weak spot. Like, if you can say that, then it really kind of de weaponizes it for them. Like, how are they supposed to use it against you if you’re cool with it? And that’s the key with the. Is I am cool with whatever you think of me, even when it’s wrong, even when it’s right. You know, but you got me. That kind of like court thing. I admit I’m guilty, Your Honour. Throw me away, right? Like that kind of attitude is just impossible to bully. It really is. What’s a bully supposed to do with something that you don’t react to? And this is a hard truth for a lot of you have been abused and bullied. They needed you to react. This is a two-person game. Now there’s sort of clumsy caveman bullying where they just beat the shit out of you or whatever. I’m not talking about that, but especially the adult stuff where people pick at you at work and talk shit to you and interrupt you in the meeting and all that sort of stuff. For them to get a thrill from it and for them to become obsessed with you in particular as a target, they need to be entertained by it. They need to see that they affected you. When you double down, ah, you got me. Oh, you hit my weak spot again. You’re always doing that, especially in front of a group. It’s very powerful because it calls out the bullying without being defensive. But this guy, he’s always throwing darts right at the heart. You know, it fucking hurts. Every word out of his mouth is like knives to me. You know. Now everyone’s like, oh yeah, he does say some pretty mean shit, right? And now it’s on him. But you’re like, yeah, no, I admit it. I’m sensitive. You fucking got me, mate. You’re like, oh, you should harden up.

I guess so, because I mean, every time you say something, it hurts my feelings. Funny, it doesn’t happen with the other guys, just with you. But whatever. Like, yeah, you know, when somebody’s trying to tease me and I can tell that they really mean to hurt me, I just, I just don’t find it funny. You know, I’m just sensitive like that. You can call it out. It’s actually very powerful defence without you even trying to defend yourself. But as soon as like, no, I’m not like that. It’s like, oh yeah, here we go. I got me a toy. That’s how it works. It’s terrible, unfair world. But if you want to survive, you got to accept that unfairness and work with it rather than against it. You can’t hope bullies are going away, right? You can’t hope that people are going to start being kind to each other. What fucking fantasy world are you living in? Right, you got to learn how to work with this stuff. It’s no point being a victim. There’s no compassion from the universe for that position, unfortunately. Now, there’s a couple more advanced techniques I’m going to share with you, but please do not even bother trying these until you get to a certain level of non-defensive confidence. This is where you start to have fun with this. This will really start to relax you and turn down the vigilance when you’re socialising. But if you try to do this and it’s actually just another version of you being defensive, it’ll blow up in your face so badly. Okay. That being said, if you’re feeling bold and you’re ready to push it a little bit, this can help you really get to the next level of defensiveness while you’re still feeling defensive. So this can be behaviour that you do in reaction to feeling defensive, to undo the feeling, double down and have fun with it. This is one of my favourites. Even when it’s not true, not only do you own it, you make it even bigger, right? Instead of running away, you go towards. Someone accuses you of something. You say you don’t know the half of it, mate. If you knew you’d be sending me to jail, right? Like you admit to guilt and then some. All right, you make it like they’re being too easy on you, too mild. They haven’t got enough information, and you want to give them more information rather than trying to change their mind. So you can play with like increasing it, so you can double it. Somebody says you’re offensive, and you’re like, “Oh, this is me being polite. You don’t want to see me when I’m being really offensive, right? You can sort of own the fact, like, “Oh God, I’m twice as bad as you think I am. One of my favourites: you add extras. Somebody’s like, “Oh, you never help out around here. You go, “Yeah, but I also steal the food, so that’s that’s a thing. Right? Like double up the number of negatives. So this is instead of doubling down on the same topic, you add extra topics. Like Daniel never gets anything done, and I’m also late. Thank you very much. You forgot about that one, right? It’s just this absolute lack of resistance. In fact, you’re feeding them more, and every time they go, “Oh yeah, and that one, you go, “And this one? Don’t forget this one. You start listing all your faults, right? And then you’re like, “So I’m just a terrible, terrible person. I can’t believe you’re stuck with the burden of my existence. How do you get through the day? Why don’t you have a medal for this? I’m awful. I’m unbearable. How? Like more people should be shaking your hand for having to tolerate me. Now you can stray into passive aggressive here if you’re not actually having fun, and so that’s why I say it’s very careful with these techniques because they have to come from a genuinely playful bantery type place. They come from a counter attack place. It’s the opposite of helpful, you know. And one of my favourite ones is to defend yourself but badly on purpose, you know. Well, at least I’m not, and then insert something terrible that you actually are. At least I’m not a white guy.

Oh wait, right, like just the stupid thing where it looks like you’re about to get defensive, and then you just like stand on your own feet. And you can also reframe everything as playful banter. Like they don’t get to choose the frame. They might be trying to bully you, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what’s happening. You don’t have to let that be the thing that’s happening. You can decide it’s something else. And we talked about this in the brojo community. You can turn everything into flirting. Someone’s like, “You’re the worst person I’ve ever met. You’re like, “Stop it, right? But I can’t believe you’re so lazy. It’s like, are you hitting on me? You you can do that any time you want. You can misinterpret everything as playfulness, as flirting. You know, even if someone’s trying to be mean with you, you’d be like, ah, matey matesy, that’s my brother. You can just be like, I’m not taking this seriously. I refuse to take it seriously. You know, you can even pull that, and someone say, “I can’t believe you said that. You be like, “Oh, I actually believed you were really upset there. That was some great acting. And decide, no, I’m not letting this be what it is. I’m going to make into something else. Again, quite advanced. You have to be coming from a great principle to actually not care what people think of you for this to work, but it can make it really fun. So this way, you don’t need to be vigilant. You can become somebody who reacts so well to a negative attack that you almost hope it does happen because it’s entertaining. Now you might actually get accused of being defensive when you are just explaining yourself or just being rational, debating a point of view. It’s a powerful counter attack that a lot of bad faith arguers do, where they just like make it out like you’re always defensive, so that you’re not taken seriously. It’s better to roll with it rather than push against it because now you are being defensive. All right, now this is a bit of more of a technical one. So there’s a couple of ways you can do this. You can actually challenge them. You can be like, you know, I’ve noticed whenever I disagree with you, you say that I’m defensive. You don’t actually disprove what I’m saying. You just say I’m defensive to try and dismiss it. I wonder why you do that, right? So you can do that thing where you’re questioning their motives again, but you got to do a really calm, just like, huh? Look at this interesting pattern I’ve noticed. No, because you are defensive. Ah, he did it again. It’s like every time, like it’s really easy to overlook that you’re not actually providing any counter argument, facts, or anything. It’s just like this emotional kind of accusation thing you do. Quite powerful. I think it’s working. You know, you can call it out like that, and that utterly neutralises it, shows it as a tactic. Again, very advanced. Or let’s say it’s not an actual debate. This is not something you’re trying to explain it, but you realise, hey, they don’t want an explanation. Fuck them. Like I’m genuinely helping them understand the situation, but they clearly don’t want to understand. You’re just making excuses, but okay. If that’s the way you think about it, then I’ll stop. And you just take take the explanation away. Explanations are reserved for genuine, curious people who fucking give a shit about you. You’re not going to waste their breath on somebody who thinks it’s an excuse or a rationalisation, right? You can say, look, I’m not going to defend myself. I thought you wanted an explanation, but you think that’s just me being defensive? Then I’ll stop. I don’t need to tell you anything. But you clearly don’t want to know, so I won’t tell you. Conversation over. You can figure it out for yourself, right? You can just do this thing. You’re like, I don’t. Even if you’re wrong about me being defensive, the fact that you think I’m being defensive ends the conversation, because if it keeps going, then I might get defensive, and I’m not going to allow myself to do that. So I guess you miss out on the information. I hope that’s what you wanted.

We’re done, right? And you can also apply this when you are getting defensive. Okay, I think I mentioned this earlier already, but call it out when you are getting defensive. You can say, “Ah, you know what? I can feel myself getting a bit defensive here. I’m probably straying away from rationality, so I’m going to step out of the conversation for a bit. So you’re actually saying, “Like I refuse to let myself have a conversation that’s defensive, and so I’m going to back out. Now, if they want you to keep talking, they’re put in a difficult position here, where they would have to make it safe for you to keep talking. So if they’re doing things that provoke defensiveness, because this is a two-way street. Like I’ve focused this whole podcast on you guys taking responsibility for yourselves, but I don’t want to overlook the fact that we are provoked. There are people with malicious intentions out there trying to wind you up and provoke you. You know, I hope I haven’t overlooked or dismissed that. I’m not saying there’s nothing you can do about. Then you got to control yourself, right? But if someone’s doing that and then they realise, hey, if I keep doing that, then the conversation ends and we don’t, we don’t get anywhere with this. They may come to realise, hey, I’ve got to fucking stop doing that, and you can point. That out to them, you’re like, ah, you know what? Every time you say that, I get this guilt trip and I get defensive, and so I’m going to have to walk away from the conversation because I can’t trust myself when I feel guilty. So now they’re going to have to ask themselves, like, do I keep guilt tripping him and not finish this conversation, or would I prefer this conversation gets finished and therefore I have to actually go do something about it, right? And lastly, when you know someone’s trying to hurt you, you can feel them jabbing at you, and you know, like this is a time where I’ve actually got to stand up for myself. Which you know is a separate conversation. I’ve done a separate podcast about assertiveness and confrontation. Defensiveness is when there really is no need for a confrontation, or it would be counterproductive. Okay, but what you can do is you can always turn it around about them, okay? You know, my client a while back he had a great one about defensive during a conversation. He said to the person, “Look, I know you didn’t mean to jab me that hard. You know I’m sensitive about that. That’s not me. But you did mean to jab me, right? And putting it back on them, like I see you. I know you’re up to some shit. I know this isn’t kindness that you’re engaging in. Right, you can sort of bring that frame, that awareness to everyone involved. Like, hey, this person’s not exactly playing fair. Right, this is not a nice way to interact with people. You can point out, like, you know, you seem to insist on like jabbing at things that you know I’m sensitive about. What are you hoping’s going to happen? Again, calling out their motive, like, are you sadist? Are you psychopathic? Is this a narcissistic thing? Like, why do you keep doing a thing that you know hurts me? It’s weird. Just that really sort of curious, but also semi-accusatory tone of like, what are you up to, mate? Like, help me understand. Like, convince me that this is not some bullshit that you’re pulling here. Convince me that you’re not a bad person right now. Sometimes you just call it out. Somebody says something really nasty in front of a group, and you’re like, wow, way to show your true colours. You know, just as kind of shocked, like, I guess we know what you’re all about. Then make it obvious that it’s obvious. You know, does she always talk to people like this? Right, that kind of thing where it’s just like, whoa. Rather than defending against it, you’re just like, jeez. React as if they’ve just done something really just socially not right. Rather than trying to prove yourself right, one of my favourites is to call on their better self. You’re like, “Come on, mate! I know you’re better than that. Do you want to have another go?

You want to try that again? Like that came out pretty nasty, and I know you’re not really a nasty person. Have another go. Try and say it again. Say it a bit better this time. That kind of approach, because now, especially in front of a group, you’re calling on them. You’re saying, like, I think you have a higher level than this, and now they have to choose whether they step up to that higher level or they show the group that they don’t have a higher level. You put them in a very awkward position where, for them to stay nasty, they’d have to admit to the group that they can’t do any better than this, especially if you address anything. And this is when you get very advanced. You’re addressing the kind of things that they might be sensitive about. Be like, you know what? I’ve always thought of you as an intelligent guy, and then you said that. Do you want to take a minute and like say it in a slightly less, you know, sort of way? Like you want to access your intelligence. I think you’re getting a bit upset, so you want to try that again. Again, I don’t want you to stray into counter manipulation. This is just very advanced non-defensiveness. All right, but the simple stuff works just as well. This advanced stuff is for fun, you know. It’s for playfulness, but the basic just not reacting, being curious. That’s good enough for any situation in most cases. Okay, because remember, the overall key is just not defend yourself. Absence of defensiveness, and that will bring the hyper vigilance down. Because if you don’t have to defend, then you don’t have to look for threats. It’s not that the hyper vigilance will go away. It’ll morph into just an awareness, an ability to read people, an ability to see beyond the outside layers of the situation. It can actually be really interesting. Like I like to watch people. I like to see the dynamics into play, to see the hidden conversations under the real conversation. It’s like seeing the Matrix for me. I enjoy it. It’s interesting. It’s not a burden for me because I don’t have to do anything with the information. Again, if you want help with this, get in touch. Dan at brojo. org. Even if we just have one free conversation, I might be able to really turn your life around with this one. It’s one of my favourite topics. Thank you so much for watching or listening. I’ll see you guys next time. Cheers.