Arguments are negative and f*ck up your happiness. And since happiness is your primary priority you should avoid getting into arguments. Because people don’t argue over points, they just pretend to, they really argue over pride. Because no one likes being contradicted and everyone takes it personally.
The biggest social sin is breaking rapport, when you break rapport you convey that sh*tting something out of your mouth is more important than the respect of the person you’re talking to. Breaking rapport is hands down the best way to get people to dislike you.
If you want to be charming, and live life on a higher level, you want to make people feel good about themselves. That means avoiding getting in arguments. Sun Tsu said the best way to win a war is to avoid a war in the first place – the same logic applies to arguing. You get nothing from an argument except for resentment and tension. The smart move as a player in the game of life is simply to avoid the argument in the first place.
The best way to avoid arguments is to remove negative people from your life. Negative people love to be negative, that means breaking rapport, disagreeing, playing “devil’s advocate” and offering unsolicited “constructive” criticism. Positive people just want to be happy, have fun and talk about positive things like winning, greatness and all the awesome sh*t that’s going on in their lives.
When you get rid of negative people you solve 99% of the problem. Occasionally though you’ll have a minor disagreement with a friend. The way to avoid it turning into an argument is just to either ignore the comment or acknowledge that you’re just going to have to agree to disagree.
Unfortunately though, sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where you’re forced to be in the negative people.
In those cases, it’s important to know:
How To Win An Argument
Rules Of Engagement
The rules of engagement are the conditions that need to be met for you to step of your peaceful perch on the pillar of happiness:
- You’re arguing as a last resort because they’ve pushed you past the point of disrespect and you need to regain your honor as a point of pride. This means the pain of staying silent now outweighs the pain of causing a scene as the social violator.
- You’re morally right, your opponent is being disrespectful and persistent, and your opponent provoked the argument.
- You know you can win the argument (never fight when you don’t think you can win)
- Define what a win looks like (almost always it’s submission of your opponent and regaining your honor)
- Define your end game, what kind of close you’re going to use (see below) and how the win is going to look.
- Your safety is not in jeopardy, this is the most important rule. Never, ever get into an argument with someone who looks violent or has nothing to lose. A braindead thug with nothing to lose will happily risk going to jail and f*ck up your entire mission over an argument at a bar.
HOW TO CLOSE AND ARGUMENT
Once you find yourself in a situation where the rules of engagement have been met and someone has opened an argument against you, it’s your job to close it. You’re a peaceful warrior, and you walk softly, but you also carry a big stick, and sometimes you have to use it.
But not all arguments are created equal and you need a different close for each type of argument. The three key closes are the tease, the professional close, and the hard close.
The Tease
The tease is for when the girl you’re dating thinks she can say something cute and try to bust through your frame. Since you only spend your time kind women who like masculine guys this doesn’t happen very often. And when it does, it’s not a big deal.
A quick tease in her direction, said with a playful sh*t eating grin will nip the argument in the bud, something like: “If I wanted your opinion, I’d tell it to you.” The key to the tease is that it’s done playfully. This defuses the tension and will usually break her state, make her giggle, reinforce your frame, and make her more attracted to you then if you’d taken her seriously and gotten into an argument.
The tease when done playfully, and without malice is a beautiful thing. This is not a “neg”, a neg is an insult, a tease is still a term of endearmeent. When you tease a girl you’re not actually breaking rapport.
The Professional Close
The professional close is the close you use at work, in your own business, or in public when you want to maintain your honor, without becoming the social violator.
In the comments section for my video, How To Stop Other People From F*cking Up Your Life, commenter: ywed14 asked suggested: “You should do a piece on how to deal with work place snakes who are always trying to get people fired.”
My advice is to start your own business and I feel sorry for any guy who has to be subjected to colleagues for 50 hours a week talking about sportsball. Some of the most negative people I’ve met were people I worked with.
The best advice I can give is to avoid all workplace arguments and focus on getting paid and getting the f*ck out of the corporate game. But sometimes, to retain your dignity as a man you can’t let things slide. That’s where you have to use the professional close.
The same applies to your own business. Being a benevolent dictator of the walled garden that is RLD, I censor most of the negative comments on my site, but for the sake of instruction, I’ll respond to some negative comments in a professional way because I think other guys can benefit from the back and forth.
Ultimately, I want to keep things positive and lead by example. Because in business you want to present the best version of yourself.
The same applies to social situations. Every couple of years, someone I don’t know will bring someone I don’t like into my orbit, in those cases the professional close is the way to go:
- Assuming the position of the reasonable man, with the reasonable argument
- Conveying your reasonable argument in an unassuming tone (iron fist in a velvet glove)
- Getting them to define the terms of their attack (as opposed to letting them use critical theory)
- Casting doubt on their assumptions through unassuming questions
- Redirecting the spotlight of social shame from you back to them
- Box closing them into either acknowledging defeat or embarrassing themselves through contradictions
- Giving them a tiny olive branch in return for acknowledging defeat, to allow the conversation to move on to more pleasant topics, to present yourself as magnanimous and level up to those around you
The Hard Close (UPDATED JANUARY 2020)
In today’s climate I no longer recommend using any type of hard close for arguments, with every phone having a camera, the last thing you need is someone filming you losing your temper and posting it online. The best and now only method is to walk away from an argument if the professional close doesn’t resolve the situation.
Summary
- Avoid arguments if at all possible
- Remove negative/argumentative people from your reality
- Try and defuse argument before it happens
- If defusal doesn’t work, consider leaving the situation before argument escalates
- If leaving isn’t an option follow the rules of engagement
- Use professional close and win the argument
- If professional close doesn’t work, don’t escalate the situation, remove yourself from situation
- Reflect on how to further avoid arguments in the future, especially if arguin is a consistent recurring problem
