I'm curious, Gents. Have any of you guys ever had a woman in your life try to guilt trip you into
something? Maybe it's your new girlfriend. She's trying to get you to cosign on her new car loan.
Or maybe it's your mom. She wants to volunteer you to help move a friend
into a new apartment. This weekend at work, you've been labeled the can do guy.
So guess what your boss has done to reward you. Gents, I don't know about you,
but I don't like to be stepped on like a doormat. So in today's video, Gents,
I'm laying out how to stand up for yourself like a grown ass man.
You ready, Gents? Let's do it. And really quick. In case I wasn't clear,
candy, that woman you met at the gentleman's club last week,
your new girlfriend do not cosign on that loan with your mom.
Remind her, hey, I've got family obligation on Saturdays. But here are three phone numbers
for moving companies that your friends can call to be able to get quotes. Now,
those answers seem obvious, but for a lot of us, let's just face it,
we like to think of ourselves as friendly, as nice guys that want to help others.
And we find ourselves in situations where we're saying yes to all of these things, or they're
just falling on our laps and we can't say no to them. Hence, we're overwhelmed. We've got too
much on our plates, and really, it seems like we're kind of being walked on by other people.
Gents I know this because I used to be that guy. So what changed? How did I stop being a
doormat? If I had to boil it down to one thing, I would say it's because I became a more assertive
person. Now, in case you're not familiar with the term, assertiveness is a communication
style in which an individual expresses their thoughts, feelings and beliefs in a clear,
honest, and respectful manner, while also respecting the rights and opinions of others.
It involves being able to stand up for oneself and asserting one's needs and
boundaries at the same time. You listen to others. You're willing to compromise.
You're willing to negotiate. You want to help. But first and foremost,
an assertive man advocates for himself and his own needs first.
The idea here is that you need to be in a position of strength. You need to be able
to help yourself first before you can help others. We see this all the time.
We're on an airplane. You're sitting next to a kid, okay? Before you put the
oxygen mask on the kid, make sure that you've put it on yourself. Otherwise,
you're going to pass out, right? So how can you develop an assertive
communication style? First up, you want to redefine your relationship with no.
You want to become comfortable saying it. And here's the deal. You can be brief.
No is a complete sentence. You don't owe people an explanation. Yes,
some people will ask for it, most likely your boss.
But understand, the majority of offers things that people are asking coming
your way. You have the right to be able to say no. I know this sounds
so simple, but so many of us are programmed to immediately say yes.
We want to help. We want to be that person that steps up. The problem is,
if you are constantly saying yes to good, you're not going to have
any room in your life for whenever great opportunities come their way.
That's what reminds me of I'm always thinking to myself, you know what? If I say yes to this,
I'm going to have to say no to another opportunity. That could be so much
better for me, so much better for my family. Now, the next step to developing
an assertive communication style is to know who you are and what you stand for.
For a lot of guys, this is simple. They've grown
up with a set of beliefs. Maybe it's from religion.
Maybe it's just simply the values of their family or they've actually thought through
it. This is one of the hardest things for most guys to do because most of us would
rather stay busy than take the time to actually think about where we're going
and what we're working for. Seriously, I got to hand it to my deeply religious friends
and growing up Catholic, I understand a lot of the, hey, these are the rules.
This is how we play. And it really gives you a simple playbook for
being able to say yes and no to a lot of situations. If you're being asked,
hey, I want you to donate time to this thing right here on Sunday.
If you are a religious person that spends your Sundays with God,
it's like, hey, I'm sorry, that day is reserved. Now, I had a great friend,
he worked in high level management consulting. And guess what? Saturdays were for family.
Sundays were for God, and that was his rules. He did turn down some job offers,
but he found a company that would work with him on that. And hey, he had set his boundaries.
He understood who he was and what he stood for. So is Antonio saying you need to find religion in
order to make sure people don't step on you? No, that's not what I'm saying. You can be agnostic.
You can choose to live however you want,
but you need to make that choice. You need to think through what's important
to you. What are your values? Honor, courage, commitment, whatever they are.
Make sure that you align as that type of person, because once you've gone there,
you're not going to do that because it goes against you are a committed person. You're
in a relationship. So when you have an offer, come from with a coworker.
She's very attractive, you've had a few drinks, but, you know, hey,
I don't go past a certain area. I've got boundaries here because I know I'm
in a committed relationship. You know who you are and you stay on that path.
Now this word's come up a couple of times, but I want to give it its own point and that is setting
boundaries. I know for me time boundaries are pretty important. I've got a bedtime,
or at least time I like to go to bed, try to I've got a time that I wake up in the morning.
I've got gym time. I've got certain times that I have for myself and my family. Because if I
didn't set these time frames then my work which can become all consuming.
I've got five businesses, you can bet that they would come in and eat up my time if I
let them. Another boundary is my relationship with alcohol. I've talked about this before,
but throughout my family we've had a number of alcoholics.
And I realized in my early twenty s I loved to drink and party. And I got arrested for doing
that kind of stuff. So I realized, you know what, this is not the path I want to go down.
So I made a deal with myself and my future wife. I'm like,
you know what, I'm going to give up drinking. I'm going to stop drinking.
And I had a very bad incident in Ukraine, not super bad. I just basically got really drunk
in front of her family and threw up on myself. Not the kind of Antonio that I wanted to be.
And so I set this boundary of you know what, I'm just going to give it up. And at the time
it was good also financially because I really couldn't afford to be drinking
and spending all this money on alcohol. So it had this positive effect on my bank
balance and I just started to identify as a person that I just don't drink alcohol.
And it is something that was tough because I had so many friends that would want to let's
go out and get a drink. Let's meet up at this bar where pretty much everyone is drinking.
The key here though is to identify and see yourself as this type of person.
I just gave it up. I realized that I didn't probably have good genetics for being able
to handle alcohol and that I looked at who's the person that I want to be and I made the
commitment that I was no longer a drinker. I was just somebody that didn't drink alcohol.
Now gents, if you're enjoying today's video, do me a favor and smash the like button. Seriously,
by hitting that like button more men are going to find this video.
Men that need help because yeah, they're getting walked all over.
Now, really quick, I want to deal with some objections. I know that some of you guys are
saying, well, Antonio at my job in which I am just walked all over, that's not going to fly.
If I tried to tell my boss that I've got these boundaries, guess what, I'm going to lose my job.
I'm going to get fired. And my response to this is then they're not
really boundaries. And let's just face the truth here, you are compromising on these.
So they weren't boundaries. Otherwise you wouldn't have taken the job, you wouldn't have agreed to
showing up and working those particular hours. And I understand you're in a tough situation.
You've got a family to support, you have people that are depending on you. And I
would say though that you need to recognize this and this is a really important step,
having the conversation, even if it's just with yourself,
preferably maybe writing down in a journal, recognizing that this situation is not
sustainable. It goes against where I want to be, what I believe in, how I see myself.
And again, your values, your boundaries, so start looking for work. All of a sudden that's going to
be more aligned with your values again. My friend that was in management consulting,
anyone that's worked for McKinsey Bain, you guys know, I mean, crazy hours that they ask.
But he was really clear. I'll be up at 03:00 in the morning on Monday catching whatever
flight to wherever you need me, but I'm not flying out Sundays. And he did this early on.
He found a company that would work with him on that and they were able
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Let's deal with the issue of you being attacked or pressured into making a decision right now.
This happens at work, this happens with family. You're an event and everyone's trying to get
you to commit to, I don't know, maybe taking this family trip that you know is outside your budget.
You honestly don't want to be around a lot of the people. You don't have the
best relationship with them. But you're being pressured.
You're being pushed into this new role at work. Again, extra hours that you don't need,
you don't want and you're not even going to get paid for. Guys,
at this point, you can take a few tactics here.
First up, you want to respond on your schedule, delay the decision, don't feel that you have
to make it right now. They may be pressing on you, but this is something you can say,
hey, I need to check with my spouse. I need to go back and look at my calendar.
I need to go back and look at our budget. We really need to make
sure we can pay for this. You're going to have to be transparent.
You're going to be honest. I always find that's the best way. But if you're pretty transparent
with your family about, hey, we can't afford this trip, then that is a legitimate reason.
Maybe someone's going to step up and pay for you, then that's pretty nice
family. I don't know why you don't want to hang out with them. Point being, though,
is you are giving yourself a bit of distance so you don't have to make the decision right now.
Can you ask them to clarify the needs? Yeah. That girlfriend that's pushing you
into cosigning on that house, it's like, okay, wait a minute. We're entering this right here.
You understand that this is something that we're not going to be able to get out of,
that both of us are going to be on this. You just want to clarify that she understands what
cosigning is in the same way that you understand what cosigning is. Because, believe it or not,
people can have different understandings about what seems to be something that yeah,
isn't it obvious? Well, the thing is, it's not always to people.
And that's why maybe they could be offended because they didn't realize how big of a risk
financially this is for you versus for them. Or maybe they did realize it and you realize,
you know what, Candy, I'm going to step out of this relationship. You
were a good time for a week, but yeah, not long term material here.
And no offense to any women out there named Candy, I just seem to be using this name as
an example. And again, if you're being pressured, if you're being attacked, know that stepping out
of the situation is always an option. This is big, especially if you've got a spouse.
And she's pushing I've had it with my spouse that we have been kind of going at it,
and I've simply realized, you know what? We're getting emotionally compromised here. She's
crying, using the tears on me. And I've just had to say, hey, I call my wife Love all the time.
It's kind of a hack. And I know that there's some, like, psycho chick apparently in one of
those TV shows called Love, but my wife is not psycho. She's great, but there are times that
we have our disagreements and I've just simply said, hey, Love, I'm going to go for a walk.
I don't want to say anything I'm going to regret and I step out of the situation. I'm
not giving up on our marriage or even on the conversation. I just realize I need to remove
myself from it before I say or do something that has happened in the past that I end up regretting.
So we've talked about becoming more assertive. Now let's talk about some tools that you can
use to actually take steps in that direction. Now this first 1 may seem a little bit extreme,
but it's about giving you perspective on the limited time you've got left.
So have you ever seen these calendars? They are designed specifically to show
you how many months that you have lived and how many months you have left. Now,
I know some of you guys may be thinking, oh, that's really depressing. But the stoic in me
says, hey, this is what makes life so sweet and helps you really take stock and put more value
in the moments you do have left because you've got a very limited resource here.
Time. I know for me, looking at how much time I have left with my son,
there's a great example. I've sat there in an article I'll link to it down in the description.
It talks about when you are 18 and you're about to move out, you really don't have that much
time left with your parents. Yes, you'll come back to visit them, you'll see them,
but unless you live right next to them, these are people you're probably not going to see on
a daily basis going forward. You really only have so much limited time with your kids,
with your spouse, with your family, working and chasing your dreams of starting that company,
taking that nonprofit to the next level so that you can help and make a bigger impact.
I say all this because to me it gives me the energy to be able to make those tough decisions,
to be able to make the changes in my life. So I'm not a doormat because when I realize I'm getting
thrown, other people's crap on me and I'm doing this, all of sudden a, I realize I'm not pursuing
my dreams and I've only got so much time left. And maybe it does create a little bit of resentment,
a little bit of anger, but that can be used not in the sith way, but basically you guys
get the point to be able to make changes in your life so that you're no longer being stepped on.
Next up, take your bucket list. Yeah. All the things that you want to accomplish,
which do you have one? And then run it through the priority matrix.
So usually a priority matrix I reserve for work. But what I like about this is
you can see things which are urgent and important, and you can realize that most
things are non urgent and non important that are on your daily to do list. And
what things are you doing that are aligned with I know for me, building my dream home.
We've been pushing harder. Just bought a lot. Really excited about this.
But I realized, my gosh, my son is heading off to college. He's never
really going to live in this. Now we have a new baby, so I'm keeping the cycle going.
Point being is I realized we need to move in to this new home. I need to build this
place because I keep talking about it and if I don't take and make sure my
goals are aligned in that direction, then they're not going to happen.
Now the subcategory is to actually break everything into your calendar.
Any of you guys pretty much live through your calendars.
I know I do. Everything scheduled in there.
And I realized a while back that everything for work is scheduled, but my family time
wasn't scheduled. The time that I was driving my daughters around to various ice skating and ballet
shows and practice and all that stuff wasn't in there. And I needed that in there so that whenever
I'm just talking with my wife, I can actually and this helps with negotiation, not just with my
wife, but also with myself about saying, hey, I'm spending this much time at work every single week.
I'm spending this much time with my daughters. I've got my workout
time in there scheduled. And being able to actually see that and talk with your boss,
he maybe doesn't even know how many hours you're working.
And if he does, and if he's overworking it, then again maybe look for another job. But this right
here, I know for me, just be able to visually see this is so powerful for being able to make better
decisions about where I'm going to be spending my time and gives me the power and strength again, to
be able to say no to things that do not fit into that alignment with my goals, with where I want to
be taking my life. Now, this next tool I think is one that a lot of guys have trouble actually doing
because we don't want to be a complainer, we don't want to be someone that is bitching about things.
But I do think it helps when you talk about things and there are so many places, yes,
hopefully you've got a friend, a few trusted people that will listen to you. Not necessarily
give you advice, but just listen and be there as a sounding board. And one thing actually,
if you have someone keep you that you respect that maybe has given you too much advice,
just say, hey, do you mind just listening because this is what I need right now.
Just be clear, people can't read minds. I also find just simply there's threads
over in reddit. There are Facebook groups where men can actually kind of lay this
stuff out there and have a sympathetic ear, somebody that gives them a response.
And I know it's sometimes maybe not, they're not always giving you the hard advice that
you need to hear. But there is something to be said about just the reassurance knowing
that there are other people out there that have gone through this and more importantly,
have overcome this. Now gents, at this point I want to hear from you guys down in the comments.
I know you guys have so much to add. And to make this more interesting,
I've got quite a few challenge coins I'd love to send your way for the best
comments. We're going to be sending at least probably a dozen challenge coins.
All right, Jen, so what video to watch next? How about what to do when life is not going as
you expected. This happens to a lot of us. And in this video, I give you my thoughts.
And again, good video, guys. Check it out. Life if not going as expected.
Boom. Right here.