Smart, intelligent people don’t get passionate about things. They maintain a certain distance, because only fools and child-like personalities feel something and get carried out by emotions. That’s what smart, successful, business-like people teach me every day. I found out this morning a great way for avoiding communication whilst taking part in a it and look as if you were actually contributing with constructive arguments when in fact you were simply not listening.
Firstly, you control every movement you make. Gestures are not signs expressing what you feel inside, as it would be natural, rather they become a statement you make, a play you put in act at every circumstance. Signs of a calm, rational person, regardless of what you actually are in that precise moment. So movements rather than being an expression of oneself become an outfit, a way to alter the outside image one wants to present.
Secondly, you keep the tone of your voice always low or flat, and you do not listen to the meaning of what the other person is telling you, not even the words if possible, otherwise it would be natural to alter slightly your tone of voice and you don’t want that. That’s weak, that’s emotional.
The way you can be bullish in a conversation without appearing so and without listening to anything you are being told is to speak over someone at every single occasion, whilst maintaining a calm tone of voice. Don’t let your interlocutor say anything more than “Ah, Bah, Boh, No, But, Yes but, I don’t, Why” that’s it, as soon as they start replying to your statements, start talking over them very calmly, yet firmly.
This will drive the other person insane if he/she is a human being and you will feel satisfied with yourself because it will only prove your point that he/she is clearly wrong, insane, or “negative” as it’s in fashion nowadays to say and it will be evident instead how available you were to have an adult conversation, which the other person is clearly too emotive, or too negative, or too irrational to have.
The conversation will therefore not change anything in you and that will grant you the strongest psychological asset, the feeling of being right and the luxury of not questioning yourself, so you can keep being the image you have induced yourself to think you are after reading the last positive-attitude book published by The Economist in collaboration with the Harvard Business School. You’ll be on the right track of becoming a great component of the big machine, which will lead to fewer problems in life. Maybe you will fail the purpose of being alive and never become a (better) human being, but you will fit flawlessly within an efficient work organisation. It’s all a matter of priorities isn’t it 😉