People Gravitate Toward Certainty

Ed Mylett shares something I’ve been observing about charisma, confidence, and influence. He says that people don’t need to believe you in order to be influenced by you. They need to believe you believe in what you are saying. In other words, influence is more a matter of your own sense of certainty than it is about how well you can change someone’s opinion.

We’ve all probably heard that person before who comes from a totally different perspective and viewpoint than yours. Maybe you’re listening to them and you disagree with what they’re saying, but you still feel drawn to it because of the amount of conviction they have in the way that they’re saying it.

There’s something magnetic about a person who so wholeheartedly believes in what they’re saying. You can feel it. And in certain ways, it starts to bend reality toward that viewpoint because it lands with such force and charisma.

Something I can certainly relate to, that I think challenges a lot of people, is self-confidence. So many people lack a baseline level of self-confidence and it affects how they show up in the world. When you’re low on confidence you’re less likely to assert yourself, take chances, and put yourself out there. 

This means that you gain less traction than you could have and it slows down your trajectory. When that happens, you feel bad about yourself because you see the gap between where you are and where you could be, and it perpetuates the cycle driving you deeper in it.

So when someone else has that confidence, that certainty, it’s attractive. More people pay attention to it because they want to feel that way themselves. Something that we can’t find within ourselves we seek in others. It’s a source of inspiration, admiration, and veneration.

This all points to one truth - People gravitate toward certainty. So if you want more people contributing to your cause, buying your product, or wanting to spend more time with you, you just need to come off with a little more certainty and they will naturally follow.

I’m working on all of this just like you are! So keep pushing, gaining awareness, and improving. That’s all we can do anyway!

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