I've learned a lot about myself over the past year.
In particular, I've realized I'm generally unpleasant to be around.
I prefer being alone. I hate being out of routine for more than 2-3 days. I'm either thinking about nothing or everything with little in between. Mulling over ideas. Strategizing a project. Ruminating on a problem. The quality of my days depend on the quality of alone time I have with myself, which can hurt relationships because I'm unpredictable and will decline most invitations to go out, leading to fewer invitations over time.
At first, I thought this was a character flaw.
I wanted to change it.
We've been raised to be kind in all circumstances, never show teeth. We're often told to "let loose a bit" and exchange our version of fun for theirs. We're afraid of looking like bad people because we hold a delusional self-image. One that is noble and kind, but one that we can never live up to.
When I was too kind, I was taken advantage of. When I would try to lighten up, my life would only get worse. I felt like I was putting on a mask. My focus would split, progress would slow, and the goals that brought me joy would now bring me pain.
After some thought, I realized that being unpleasant is a sign you're on the right path.
When I observe people I look up to, their mission comes first. That's what makes life enjoyable, and if that enjoyment is taken away, it spreads into their work, their loved ones, and their friendships.
If you know what you want, and you don't fold to what others think you should want, you are going to be unpleasant to be around, because the byproduct of knowing what you want is being disagreeable.
In fact, you'll find that people want to be around you more because they trust you.
They can feel that you aren't putting on an act like everyone else.
The trap of being too agreeable
Highly agreeable people hate conflict.
They will do anything to smooth the water.
And that's exactly where the problem occurs: They will sacrifice their values, goals, and vision in order to avoid hurting other people's feelings. Most people are agreeable because they don't care about something so much that they have no choice but to be disagreeable.
It doesn't matter if they agree to go out and party every weekend.
They don't have progress toward an important goal that is impacted by their drop in mental capacity from that partying. Their health goals aren't impacted. Their creativity isn't being used, so that doesn't matter either. Feeling terrible is their baseline operating state because they can't muster up the strength to say no to pleasure, because that would make their friends start pushing them to go out with them.
If you are unhappy with how much you're being paid or how you're being treated in a relationship, you will avoid standing up for yourself.
Three things happen there:
Problems silently build into ambient anxiety that can’t be escaped until you have difficult conversations
The dreams of others take priority over your own, making everything feel unfulfilling and bleak
You don’t get what you want out of life – you die with regrets
The good thing is, you don't need to become a nasty person to turn it all around.
How to be more disagreeable
High-agency people are disagreeable.
They have to be. Because if they want to act toward their own goals, they must first disagree with the default path that society wants them on, then they must say "no" to all the distractions that attempt to pull them in a different direction.
Steve Jobs was notoriously disagreeable.
He had a vision and was uncompromising in achieving it, which was often shown with his intense perfectionism and brutal honesty.
Now, we don't need to call our employees' work "shit" in company meetings or park in handicap spots for no reason, but we do need a reality distortion field: a concept used to describe Job's ability to convince himself and others to believe deeply in his vision.
Most people can't replicate Job's genius or personality, and we have to be careful of blatant manipulation, but everyone can create an aura that people can't help but be attracted to, helping you achieve your vision that much faster.
Obsess over what you want
Answers are given to those who obsess over the question.
Solutions are given to those who obsess over the problem.
That's how you acquire new knowledge.
You sit with the problem. Wrestle with it. Consider giving up. Reach the brink of insanity. And eventually, it yields. It may take a week for a small problem, decade for a life problem, or millennia for a cosmic problem, but there is never a problem that cannot be solved.
The most important task in your life is to figure out what you want.
Because if you don't (and most people fall into that camp), you will be manipulated and taken advantage of without being aware of it.
You can't be distracted from a non-existent goal.
You can't learn a thing if you don't have an aim for your learning.
Humans are goal-oriented creatures. We need purpose. What we act toward creates who we are. When others assign us the goals that lie in the default path, we do so without question, and we slowly become a clone working toward a life that we didn't choose.
To figure out what you want, obsess over it.
There shouldn't be a day when you don't think about the life you want, the goals you should pursue, the actions you should take. That simple act begins to rewire your mind. You begin to notice what you don't want, like the job, the financial instability, the lack of fulfillment. Your mind starts to error correct. You try new things. And slowly, the picture of what you want becomes clearer.
Being disagreeable is a feature of knowing what you want and not compromising on it.
Believe you are better than most people
This may not sit right with you.
But you need to believe that you can do better than someone else.
Not in the sense that you are somehow superior to them as a person, but that you can create something that is just better enough so you have a chance to compete.
The reality is, what most people create isn't that good. The world is 99% consumers and 1% creators. The creators aren't some magical beings that have some secret you don't. They simply knew that they had to create in order to get what they wanted, and they didn't want the life that came from being a cog in the creation of something they didn't care about.
If you don't believe that any product, writing, design, or the rest can be better in some major or minor way, you are lying to yourself. Again, to avoid conflict.
When you believe that something can be improved and act on that belief, you have the potential to contribute something valuable to the world.
If you don't have anything valuable to offer, nobody is going to care enough to pay you, support you, or join your cause. All of the above are necessary for getting what you want.
Create a plan that stretches what's possible
You know what you want.
You have something to improve – something to create – which moves you toward that.
Now, you need a plan that brings order and clarity to both your mind and the minds of those you will need to persuade for the resources (time, attention, money, labor, knowledge) necessary to build your vision.
But not just any plan.
Success is a measure of the people who care about what you do. Investors, friends, employees, potential customers won’t care about a boring plan they’ve heard before.
Steve Jobs was famous for demanding products be delivered in timeframes engineers initially called impossible.
This does a few things:
Increases potential for flow state – when the task is just on the edge of being impossible, you become one with that task and distractions disappear.
Forces creative thinking – when I have a 4-hour deadline for my work, almost magically, I find a way to get the highest quality work done within that time.
Demands ruthless prioritization – pressure eliminates the ability to think about "nice-to-haves" and forces you to focus on what's necessary.
This is a recipe for being disagreeable. If you even think about being distracted from your vision, everything falls apart, and since your vision is intertwined with your identity, you will do anything to avoid that reality (if you actually have conviction in your vision).
Master persuasive communication
There's a stark difference between persuasion and manipulation.
Persuasion: inspiring people to act on something beneficial for both parties
Manipulation: misleading people to act on something beneficial only for the manipulator
If you give anything your attention, you are being both persuaded and manipulated. Most of your beliefs and personality are the result of others’ ideas sticking in your brain.
Unless you live in the void, you are both persuading and being persuaded. You may as well study it for conscious pursuit of mutual benefit.
If you want to get what you want, you can’t get there alone. You need investors or employees. And even if you don't need those because you're on a "solo" path, you need an audience, customers, and resources. The only way to have control over those is to master persuasive communication.
To be persuasive, you need two things:
Enough research to articulate your argument – so you can back up why you think your way is “better.”
A compelling story that illustrates a transformation – the mind makes sense of the world in stories, and stories get people to care about what you do.
If we were to tie everything together to create a reality distortion field:
You know what you want in life and are not willing to compromise on that.
You believe that something needs to be improved. In other words, you have a problem to solve that leads toward what you want.
You have a clear and strategically achievable plan to reach what you want.
You can inspire others to aid in your mission when necessary, removing potential roadblocks that would prevent you from making progress.
Now, you don't need to start the next Apple to be disagreeable.
You simply need to have a meaningful goal you can't pull yourself away from and have the knowledge to act toward that goal without distraction.
Whether it be your health, career, or relationships – the underlying reason you don't get what you want is because you avoid conflict, and you do not set the conditions that make that conflict worth resolving.
– Dan
One more thing.
The build a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge starts on June 16.
If "what you want" involves talking about your interests, building an audience for your work, or having an organic method to get more customers for your business, consider enrolling before the start date here.