Ways Handle Any Insult Can Suck the Life Out of You- the blackout method
It’s finally the weekend and you are on your way to play a deck of cards with one of your good friends. And the two of you will be playing with a few guys that you’ve never met before.
After you arrive you’re sitting in the garage at the table with several other guys. And everything is going great until you notice that one of the guys at the table is giving you an odd look.
And at first, you try to ignore it. But then it happens again and again. Eventually, the guy looks at you with a stone-cold serious face. And he says “man why is your nose so big” and you do in fact have a really big nose.
And the way that the guy says it makes it feel like an insult and he’s essentially pulling your card. So to speak in front of all the other guys at the table.
So what do you do?? how do you respond in a situation like this? People get insulted all the time and in pretty much any situation. Where someone is insulting somebody in a way that is meant to truly harm and losing the self-confidence of that person. Nobody really wins. But there are some good and not so good ways to respond to insults.
And your choice or how you choose to respond can have a huge impact on. How you are viewed among your friend's group or relative, neighbor group, or whoever you are around at the time of the insult.
Some people repeatedly respond to insults incorrectly(as I have done first in the early stages in my life). and if you do this it doesn’t take long before you are designated as the verbal punching bag or the person who people are constantly making fun of within the group.
So number one way that most guys respond to insults. It’s actually the worst thing that you can do. And it allows the person who insulted you to get exactly what they wanted which is a reaction out of you.
Another way that most people respond to insults is with anger. The problem with anger is that it’s what we would call a dump or weak response or the weakest response.
Anger is the absolute worst way to respond. Because for one it shows that you were actually taking what the guy said seriously.
And two by getting mad this implies that you believe that there might actually be some truth to what the person is saying. Insults that make us the angriest by touching our ego to be the ones that actually have a bit of truth to them.
Which is why they make us so angry. It’s like if you’re skinny and somebody tells you that you need to go eat fatty foods like cheeseburgers.
The honest truth is that you don’t need to eat a cheeseburger and the insult like a homing missile makes a direct hit on the insecurity that you have about being skinny.
And this is why you feel such an intense from the insult. So another reason why it’s a very bad idea to respond to insults with anger??? is that.
Anger destabilizes us. And pretty much the same effect on our body in mind as being chased by a wild lion. And once you become destabilized and your adrenaline gets going it’s hard to calm down.
And you end up making more mistakes and your body ends up engaging in what is essentially a nuclear meltdown now. It’s hard to believe but many people have lost their life.
In one way or another over something as simple as getting too angry over in their life. An insult so you absolutely never want to respond to any insult with anger for the reasons.
I just mentioned. But also because an angry response is exactly what the other person wants to get out of you. With insults however context is also really important because there is a huge difference between insults that come from a total stranger in the middle of a parking lot.
And insults that come from a group of close friends. The context of the situation and who the insult came from will help to determine how to best respond to it.
Now next up, is the second potential way to respond to any insult. And it also happens to be one of the most effective ways and it is with something called deflection.
One of the best ways to deflect something is with humor. Many of the most charming men in the world are incredibly good at deflecting insults with humor. And the reason why??? this is such an effective response is pretty much neutralizes the insult.
Deflecting an insult with humor works well because it doesn’t involve anger. And if you play your cards right. It can not only neutralize the insult. But actually, turn it into something that makes everybody around you laugh and have a good time.
Humor can be a powerful response because it undercuts the insulter and their insult. And quickly diffuses any tension that was created by the insult.
Now one of the downsides to replying with humor or self-deprecation as they call it is that your response should be funny and well-timed. Otherwise, it simply won’t work.
If you try to deflect an insult with humor and your response is too slow or it doesn’t make sense or it isn’t funny at all. You’re definitely not going to get the response that you had hoped for from the people around you.
But even then deflecting with humor is still a better response than showing anger. Now next up is the third way that you can respond to an insult and paradoxically oftentimes it is precisely the best.
And the most effective way to respond and it’s by simply ignoring the insult. To understand how this can be the most powerful response. It is useful to understand that one person. Insulting another person in a way that is truly meant to harm the other person is something that little kids do.
And men who are of a higher caliber can spot when low-quality men feel threatened and feel the need to insult them. Most true insults are the ones that are meant to actually harm you come from people who are insecure and the insults say more about that person than they do about you.
It’s like you’re a parent and a little kid is trying to insult you or like a guy trying to hit you with a baseball from inside the stadium.
While you are standing outside of it. Simply ignoring an insult to an insecure man will appear to be the weakest response. When in fact it is actually the most powerful. And by simply ignoring the insult.
You are basically sub-communicating to everybody around you. That the person who is insulting you. Is of such little value or of such a little importance that the insult just does not even register.
In other words, you are basically saying without actually saying that the other person just simply is not even worth your energy to respond. So to put it simply the best reaction to most insults.
When they come from people we have no relationship with them. Is no reaction at all, because no reaction renders the insult completely powerless.
But what do you do when you know the person who is insulting you. What if it’s one of your buddies or even a girl that you look like.
In these situations, you have two main responses and they are either to deflect with humor or to respond in kind. Which means to send an insult flying right back them.
And both of these responses can be very effective. But they both require a decent level of wit or mental sharpness. So if you don’t really have this. Then these responses might not work very well for you.
But at the end of the day. It is important to remember that any response or even no response is always better than responding with anger or getting mad about it.
What you have to understand is that words alone have no effect. It is only our reactions to them that give them power. And for the most part, we have the ability to choose how much power we want to give them. These are some of the best and worst ways to respond to insults.
