I rarely make posts so close together like this but I've had a string of events pop up recently that made me want to write this.

Around this time last month I received a threatening email from someone people would consider to be quite "powerful". Essentially what had happened was that whilst I was away on vacation I passed down most of my work to a girl who I would go as far as to call my secretary. Essentially she handles the work while I am away. My mistake in doing this was that she focused entirely on gaining profit and failed to notice that a piece of content we had implemented in our project (a video game) belonged to a fairly big individual. Fans of this individual took to twitter apparently bombarding his page saying that our company had stolen his work and used it for our own gain. Immediately the next day I receive an email directly from the man himself fully threatening me and my company. I did have the intention of posting a transcript of the email here but I'm quite certain it would become very clear who is who so for the time being I will omit the details.

The gist of the email was the person directly insulting me, my company and everything we stand for. I could quite literally feel his anger through the page. The man threatened me with court cases, suing my company and then went as far as to suggest an internet character "assassination". He stated that he had over half a million followers altogether and could easily ruin our reputation if he so wanted.

I read the email and laughed to myself. This is how I respond to any sort of negativity.

What you need to do is fully understand the person before looking at the situation. Now this man had crossed many lines and made statements that were blatant lies. If I wanted I could have insulted him back, keeping the fight going.

What I actually did was apologise to him fully explaining the situation that the person I placed in charge made a terrible mistake and was completely aware of her actions. I then went on to provide some alternative solutions that would benefit him.

His response was still angry but of a more irritated tone. In this email he simply stated that I should fire the person who made the mistake and continued insulting the work before leaving me with a threat. If he were to hear anything like this again about our projects, he would directly "ruin" me without informing me first.

I responded by thanking him and telling him to have a lovely day.

I've read a lot of books in free time and the one thing that always interests me about conflict is how much people overlook it's effects. When most heated conflict situations arise, the majority of the time, the individual is trying to provoke a reaction. This man emailed me with the intention of getting me to give him that reaction. The flexing of muscles, repeated threats, most specifically the section where he told me of his following amounting to half a million followers. This was said to scare me, putting me in a begging position. Even after I responded and explained the full situation, rather than accepting and leaving it there, he switched from insulting me to insulting my workers and then leaving threats. His goal was to gain a reaction and a reaction he didn't receive. Now don't misunderstand me, I did my research. He was not joking. If he wrote an article against me or any of my projects, we would be in deep water and this isn't even counting being taken to court. So why wasn't I moved?

  • I understood what the person wanted from me; a reaction. Whenever someone attacks you directly, the very first thing you need to consider is the reason they are doing it for then find out WHY they need that reason. So for instance, the reason this individual was directly attacking me was because he wanted a reaction. The reaction from me would then give him free pass to do what ever he wanted.

Consider a nightclub situation. A man is with a girl. You insult the guy's looks. The reason for this is that the girl will notice and ideally the goal would be to have her leave him and join you.

So what if the person isn't trying to gain a reaction? What if someone dislikes you or your product and just want either make their opinion clear or straight up insult you?

I have stated before in my previous posts that the majority of my workers are females. The reason for this is that women are simply easier to work with provided they respect/trust you as their boss. This isn't to discredit men, men are often ambitious. Every male I have ever hired had ambitions to do something greater in the future. (This is good), the women however just go with the wind. I'm paying them a good salary why would they need to look elsewhere?

I had a situation once with one of my girls who happened to be a professional concept artist from Russia. She worked with Ubisoft as a concept designer after university then later joined me. I adore this girl due to the fact that she shares my vision for success. Rather than focusing on payment, she was more focused on making sure the concepts were always exactly on point. I could give her a task and she would spend a week researching it thoroughly, even giving more research than I had on the topic. One night she apparently had some free time and decided to surf the web seeing what people thought about our upcoming projects. Unfortunately she stumbled onto an online forum board where people were discussing her work and past history. She read posters insulting her style, her painting and claiming she had no idea what she was doing.

This is one of the times I actually saw an emotional woman. Firstly she emailed me explaining what had happened then called me after. The words seemed to really affect her and I could tell she was crying. Essentially she felt as though those comments would make our company lose money and that she would be to blame. Following this, I teach all my workers the same mindset.

What you need to understand is that not everybody will like what you produce. People need to drill this into their heads. But the problem with this issue is that it produces fear. When you strip it down, people aren't actually scared of the specific scenario happening. The book "The power of now" describes this perfectly; When you look at a fire in front of you, you aren't afraid of it. You know for a fact that if you put your hand in it, it will hurt and therefore you don't put your hand inside it. Now when someone else takes that fire and puts it in front of you, you become afraid because of uncertainty.

When we receive negative comments or news, it isn't what is said to us that affects us but what it means going forward. She wasn't afraid of the words but what it meant for her career and projects. When I started out programming for tiny indie games online I would always feel heavy anxiety when checking the reviews. I was terrified of people looking badly on my project then leaving bad reviews and that's exactly what happened. I created one game that I had tested 50 times over, finished then uploaded only to see that multiple people found a game breaking bug. Keep in mind that this is AFTER I had uploaded it and advertised it. It was a terrible experience.

This is where the stoic mindset comes in. Once you fully understand that you aren't going to die, these comments won't actually affect you and nothing has changed, you will be absolutely fine.

Let me repeat that again. Nothing has changed.

Imagine you haven't paid your landlord and so you receive a letter from them. Of course you know what it is about but instead of opening the letter, you ignore it for a week. When you finally open it, you see that they are demanding that you pay them rent. Due to a lack of funds, you start worrying terribly. You can't sleep and can't eat without worrying about the problem.

Nothing changed in between the period you didn't open the letter and when you did. This is a very common thing many people don't notice. When you chose not to open the letter, your landlord's demand was STILL there and yet you were happy and carefree. Now that you've opened it and know that he's asking for money, why would you start worrying now? Nothing has changed.

I teach a few people in my spare time and I'm often telling them this statement: If it is raining outside and your cat dies, it is STILL going to rain. If a girl breaks up with you and the weather is sunny outside, it's STILL going to be sunny regardless of how you feel. The only thing you can control is yourself.

Take this post for example. A lot of people won't agree with this and will most likely attack my statements. The ones who really care will go through my post history and try to find something to use to invalidate my posts. Let's say someone leaves a comment down below dissecting my post and find negative things to say against me. I have two options: I could either frantically defend myself by engaging directly with them, commenting back and forth to "prove" that they are wrong or that I am correct.

Or I could acknowledge their viewpoints and move along. Everyone has a unique point of view. It's just that a lot of us don't want to see that view.

Last night I spoke to a man in his early forties who was explaining to me that he received a strong negative email from a person he considered a partner and friend. Due to this, his whole day was ruined and apparently he couldn't think properly after being so ill treated by someone he considered a friend. I simply told him what I wrote here. Whether or not he feels unhappy, the earth is still going to spin. You may as well pick yourself up and keep moving.

I wasn't going to bring this up but I couldn't help but notice that a post was recently made where the OP directly referred to something I said. The title of the post is "TRP focuses too much on women."

I agree with a few of the concepts the OP talks about but he still doesn't disprove my point. Taking the Red Pill should be about improving yourself as a man. Not "lusting after women" as the OP puts it. The most powerful creature on surface of the earth is a successful man. Successful men don't "lust after women", women become a byproduct in your lives. Think of one of the most attractive and successful women you could think of then look at the men they are with. The men always look like they couldn't care less which is exactly the case because they don't. They are successful and know that the woman knows this. If she leaves, they'll get another.

The OP of that post is completely right in stating that we do need our fair share of female experiences but he goes further to state that you will be distracted by women. I am going to quote a mentor online I heard say this statement:

"If you are working on your purpose, there is no woman on earth who can make you move."

He is one hundred percent correct. If you haven't experienced that yet, you simply haven't found what you enjoy doing the most. This is not a bad thing, it's merely a side statement. Lets say you loved playing video games. You end up finding a way to stream yourself playing video games and earn 10k every day. Ask yourself, do you think you will be distracted by women? The only way that a woman is going to make you move is if you let her. If I remember correctly, there was an article recently about a video gamer player "dumping" a woman apparently known as the "world's sexiest weather woman" so that he could focus on his career. It doesn't get any more clearer than that. However I have nothing but complete respect for the OP of that post. He said what was on his mind and did it nicely.

Lessons:

  • Understand the person
  • Find something that benefits them and offer it
  • Whenever you find yourself in trouble, realise that nothing has changed, the earth is still spinning and still will
  • If it isn't going to kill you, what are you worrying for?

I am currently travelling now but when I return I will write another piece to this topic. What I will talk about next time is how to actually make people respect you and how to command and be stern. Think of this post as the softer version for the next piece.

Cheers and good luck

EDIT------

Due to the messages and questions I have been receiving I decided to write a short book on the concepts I have learned if anyone is interested. It details everything from status to body language to confidence and business. You can check it out here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V9KH48S