I hated high school. It was a very judgmental place where I felt very much invisible, even to the people closest to me. It was difficult because things weren’t going too well at home either, so I felt completely alone. What bothered me wasn’t so much that people treated me like I wasn’t even there, it’s that people treated me as if I was my value and not a human being.
In other words, I knew that if I was a famous billionaire or millionaire celebrity they wouldn’t leave me alone even if I wanted them to—although in both scenarios I’m still a human being worthy of at least getting a, “Hi, how’s your day.” So, why is it that I’m a human being who’s not being treated like he’s a human being but would be if he were “high-value”?
The Answer To Why You’re Alone
Enter, the stereotype content model (SCM). The SCM in social psychology is a model that basically states when you’re high-power (powerful) and high-warmth (friendly), you’re the person everyone wants to be around. However, when you’re low-power and high-warmth, you’re the person nobody cares about. Guess which bracket I was in in high school?
So, when I discovered this concept, I had graduated high school but was still alone and, well, lonely. That’s because I was still in this low-power bracket. I hadn’t achieved a high net worth overnight or gotten famous. I hadn’t changed my behaviors to command respect by maintaining eye contact or adopting more dominant body language. So, what do you think I did?
Leverage Social Psychology and Power Dynamics To Get Noticed
Well, I had to get powerful. That’s when I came across a concept called power dynamics. There are three forms of power in the world. Information, weaponry, and resources. So, I figured if I wanted to be viewed as high-power all I needed to do was make some more money because lots of money meant lots of resources, which meant lots of power. And, if I mixed that power with warmth—if I were powerful and friendly—then I’d be the person everyone wants to be around.
More Money, More (Social) Problems.
However, this was quite possibly where I almost made a grave mistake. In our world, perceptions are reality. Even if I became a billionaire with connections to celebrities or something like that that made me “high-power”, if I didn’t find a way to signal to everyone that I’m high-power they would never know. That’s because no one knows your net worth unless you tell them (or it’s on Google) and no one knows you have powerful connections unless you prove it. The analogy I like to use is that the undercover millionaire pretending to be a penniless beggar always gets treated like a penniless beggar until he does something to change the way people view him.
So, you could start bragging about how high-power you are to try and push yourself into that high-power bracket, but that’s not a very high-warmth thing to do. So, what do you do?
For Real Social Success, Don’t Raise Your Value To Get Noticed. Raise Your Quality.
Enter, the high-quality man. This is an individual with all of the positive traits that directly impact their personality to where it’s easier for them to get their hands on more resources, status, connections, friends, and so on. In other words, this is the guy who you don’t know how successful they might be, but judging by how they carry themself, you can tell they’re going places in life if they aren’t already there. They have high self-esteem, they’re emotionally intelligent, they have a secure attachment style, and most importantly, they know power dynamics.
With these traits, they appear to be in the high-power bracket because they have all of the traits that we associate with a good leader. So, they’re able to connect with other powerful people and develop skill sets that enable them to make more money. By being high-quality, they have the ability to get noticed easier because they focused on what people care about most.
Your success in the social and dating marketplaces isn’t determined by your value (having good looks, lots of money, etc.), it’s actually determined by your quality. Being high-value creates interest, but being high-quality creates attraction. People will be interested in you for your value—if you have lots of money or are super famous—but attraction is built by being an attractive person, which involves being friendly, leaderlike, charming, charismatic, and generally positive things that money can’t buy. And, attraction is what you want to get noticed because interest eventually fades away if it doesn’t transition into something more worthwhile.
Get Started Raising Your Quality
So, here are a couple of tips to get you started on being more high-quality and more high-power. First, don’t overreact in social situations. That means no yelling, getting angry, or anything like that. Overreacting is considered submissive and, when you’re a man, more dominant behavior is typically more respected. That doesn’t mean you should never do these things, suppressing your emotions is unhealthy. It only means you need to accept these emotions when you feel them so you can gain more control—power—over your mind and body.
That way, you can avoid appearing low-power to the people around. Next, is to develop a deeper love for people. When you do less overreacting, you don’t want to take your lack of reactions too far and come across as cold. By developing a deeper love for people, you’ll be able to mix that dominant behavior with a warm friendliness. This will begin to develop your charm and the emotional intelligence trait of high-quality men.
After working on your charm some, let’s develop some charisma. You’re going to need to know your WHY. Your WHY is your purpose, it’s the mission you’re on. When you share that WHY with others, you come across more charismatic because they see you as being on a mission which makes you appear more leaderlike. Depending on how well you deliver your WHY when telling others, it may also make them feel inspired which means more social points for you.
Take Action To Get More Happiness
You don’t need to feel lonely and you definitely don’t need to be alone. When I began working on raising my quality, I created a Google Form and listed out 33 characteristics. I did this as part of a “brand analysis” to figure out how people view me and what exactly I’m most seen as. These characteristics ranged from aloof, cold, and mean to practical, sexy, and clever. I messaged the form to almost everyone I knew and asked them to fill it out. The primary response was that I hold the characteristics of someone who’s charming and charismatic.
I have no doubt in my mind, that if you begin working on raising your quality, you’ll eventually be seen as the same and get noticed by the ones you want attention from.
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