If you want to be good at interpersonal dynamics, you kinda have to be a drug peddler…
Your client’s must be happy with the product so that they keep on coming back.
Hopefully, in the best case scenario, they become addicted.
The product, in this case, is you.
See, sustainability is key when it comes to all relationships. And there’s nothing more sustainable than addiction. How great would it be to have the level of assurance that the tobacco industry has in their ability to hit their targets every month?
It’s as if human nature were in your favor.
While there are different ways to sustain different types of relationships, overall, successful people are just really good at finding out how to do it.
When it comes to business, it’s all too easy to start down the hole of resentment and suspicion – into erosion of trust and good-will. Our base nature is to be emotional, to be impulsive. To take short-cuts.
Indeed, it’s far easier to ruin something good than it is to build it.
It goes to say in the competitive world of sales, customer-facing professionals can gain an advantage by being a better product, offering a better drug, if you will.
For most people, there is still a lot of potential in this area for them to unlock.
Maybe just subconsciously, you’ll have already developed many mannerisms and even phrases that will garner a positive reaction.
Your go-to’s – your self-deprecating humor – your sarcastic charm. Your “just another day in paradise”‘s.
Maybe those skills can be sharpened so that you accomplish more?
Getting Better
Like drug peddlers, there’s level to this shit. There are the El Chapos and there are the part-time street hustlers.
There are the Bill Clinton’s of the world, whose charm has been described as to make you feel like you’re the only person in the world, and there is a Drive-thru employee flashing you a courteous smile – making your burger-buying experience just a little better.
No doubt, it’s a good idea to always gauge your people-skills, and find out how you might be able to constantly improve them.
Like being physically strong over being weak, it certainly never hurts to develop a more favorable impression on people. It could be that stacking things in your favor is the best use of your time, anyway. Indeed, you have nothing better to do.
Like a mad-scientist meth-dealer you need to be concocting more and more ways for your client’s to be hooked.
You need to find out what is attractive – you need to be become intuitive with this knowledge.
Similar to how drugs offer a solution to existential suffering, you can do this with a high level of interpersonal skills.
Indeed, our struggles are universal. You will know this if you study history.
And the truth is, reality is undeniably lonely. We are universally struggling against it – if not now, then inevitably, and despite how great things seem at the moment. The suffering of loneliness is the human condition. Now, look right at it.
In a sense, it’s people that are a problem – rejection, false criticism, resentment, laziness, insecurity… but it’s also people that’s provide the solution – servitude, cheerfulness, charm, sacrifice.
You are a drug peddler offering reprieve. There are many areas to study, lots of people to listen to, so that you can make the best drugs – so that you are in demand and a solution to people’s lives.
Now, Smile
A genuine smile is cocaine.
It’s good times, and if it’s a high quality product, it can make everything better. Even if it’s just for a little while.
Also, it’s scarce. Valuable. In demand.
It’s obvious – most people can’t spontaneously and genuinely smile. Alas, too many are caught off-guard, too preoccupied in their heads, too tired from lack of sleep, too caught up the drama of bad relationships – to even return a genuine smile.
But to be someone who can offer this reprieve – a warm smile, reciprocated – is to have power.
Like any skill, a genuine smile is the product of the work you put into it. The work, being in this case, your attitude and your self-awareness. It’s power mostly lies in that fact that it expresses a cultivation of these 2 things.
These 2 things need to be worked out before you can ever even feel like smiling in the first place.
Yes, life sucks, but are you making it unbearably the worst by having shit-perspectives on things? Is your self-awareness sharp enough that you catch yourself dwelling on negativity? Senseless negativity?
Yes, it takes a lot of work to accomplish, but it’s worth it, for it is amazingly effective. For a genuine smile can remind us that there are things to genuinely smile about.
Because in a glimpse, we can feel hope again. We can get a shot of dopaminergic goodness… while the world crumbles around us.
A genuine smile is a sign that there is a solution. We look upon him who smiles genuinely and think: he knows of something better.
Be Competent
You know, I’ll love you if you can get shit done…
Be someone that I can rely on, and not worry about –
make my life easier.
Like a raft in an ocean of apathy and incompetence, rescue me from all this – self-imposed hard-work.
I’ll love you if you can get shit done.
Attitude is not nearly as important competence. As a result, we’ve all, at some point, worked with someone who is a completer utter asshole… but just undeniably got their work done.
To our dismay we are forced to be around them, by the mere fact that they are competent. In a way, it’s endearing – actions of good-will over social niceties. Maybe, it’s over-rated to be likable – a big-smiling goofy idiot. Likeable is just not tolerable, sometimes.
In this world of doing and do-er’s, competence is the only true currency. If you were stuck on an island, the only person you would value is the competent survivalist. He will have leverage over all your resources. Socially, he will be dominant.
Similarly, your competency can become leverage in this way. In your niche, if you struggle upwards while others give up – if you take on responsibility while others shirk it – you can be someone that offers a product that others simply can’t offer. Unable to do so. Too incompetent.
Just by the virtue of being good at shit, you will hook people in. Make them addicted. Then, whether you’re a nice guy or not is just a bonus.
Final Thoughts
Was this a good argument for our inherent drug dealer like attitude towards interpersonal skills?
Who knows. It was a wild concept in the first place.
Perhaps, this painted perspective is a tad nihilistic – the implications of “acquiring” people skills like dishing drugs out to junkies – a means to an end to serve our benefit, robbed of true natural organic genuineness…
Could it be that’s the price we pay for consciously improving these areas? To not see people as people ever again, but as puzzles to solve?
Oh well.