4 Time-Tested Secrets to Know How to Mentally Dominate Someone

Do you want to hear an amusing story today?

If you do, read on because it’s going to be profoundly educational with mind-blowing knowledge.

I was at a professional golf tournament once watching Tiger Woods play. He was absolutely beating everyone that day and throughout the tournament.

However, an interesting phenomenon was happening at the same time.

I was in a building several feet high in the air overlooking the green Tiger was on and I look around the course just to see if anyone else was watching the other players outside of Tiger’s group.

I look to my left and there were only players and caddies. I look to my right and there were only players and caddies. But I look straight at Tiger’s group and EVERYONE on the golf course was surrounding the green Tiger was on.

I was like “What the heck?”

It was an amazing sight to see. Everyone on the course wouldn’t even bother to see the other groups. Everyone was solely focused on Tiger.

Why is this?

Because Tiger’s play commanded everyone’s undivided attention.

And not only did he capture the fans’ attention, but the players’ attention as well to the point where their play was influenced by him.

This is mental domination at its finest and if you read this post further, you will see how he did this without any effort at all and how you can do the same to.

You will know how to mentally dominate someone by the end of this post and you will be equipped with a full arsenal of psychological weaponry that you can use starting today to outwit everyone who is around you and to stop those from influencing you in a negative way.

So with that said, let’s get down to business with the first tip.

Become Extraordinarily Skilled At What You Do

This is an obvious trait of those who are the best at what they do, but it needs to be brought up so you can understand this concept clearly.

When they are extremely skilled, they make others jealous of wanting to have the things they have.

Because of this, the person who is extremely skilled is seen as an exclusive thing that most people do not want to fail to impress.

Additionally, because super skilled people have leverage in the marketplace, they can virtually deny access to anyone who wants to encounter them, so the people accessing the person (or organization) are automatically nervous and because of these nerves, they tend to do something known as “choking,” meaning they perform poorly when dealing with them.

To clarify, this is like someone who is playing in the Super Bowl and they don’t perform the way they normally do because they were influenced by the magnitude of the event.

I bet you’ve seen this when they say “Such and such person choked in the big moment. Is he the right person to carry his team to the championship?”

When you are skilled, you can (not necessarily will), without any effort on your part at all, psychologically trick people into believing that because you are around, they need to feel intimidated by you and they need to adjust their game to fit what you are doing to them.

In essence, you control your competition to make the moves required for you to win.

If you don’t believe me, I have a piece of research that might convince you otherwise.

There was a study done by Northwestern University that studied the effect of Tiger Woods during 1999-2001 (when was super dominant in golf) on players who played against him during those tournaments.

They concluded that those who played against him in these tournaments shot on average .8 more strokes than when he did not play in the tournament or was having a bad day.

And for your information, a stroke is a shot in golf where if you shoot the highest number of strokes, you do worse.

In golf, this is significant because 1 stroke usually determines who can win the tournament or not and if there is a playoff to decide who wins.

The research also concluded that when Tiger was in the tournament, the players would not put as much effort into winning because they subconsciously assumed that because he was more skilled than them, he was already going to be the winner.

It’s called “The Superstar Effect” and this effect was more common amongst those who actually had a chance of beating him versus those who really weren’t skilled enough to win a tournament to begin with.

You can access this study here.

This is really useful for you because most people do not know this research and they might automatically reduce their effort all because you are great at what you do. Hence, you know how to get into your opponent’s head.

However, there are always those who will give their best every time they do business or play, so you can’t bank on this strategy completely.

And this lends me to my next point here:

ALWAYS Focus Your Mind On Winning

Anyone who tells you otherwise, with all due respect for being a person, is downright wrong on this one.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you are broke and you have a rent payment coming up or you will get kicked out of your apartment.

Now let’s assume in the same scenario that you want to do what you need to do for the joy in doing it instead of actually getting the job done.

You have fun and have fun until all of a sudden, you didn’t get the job and you are kicked out.

What just happened?

Your priorities were wrong.

Whenever you are competing for something or doing great work (now I’m not talking about a vacation; there it’s all about fun), you have to treat it as if you have a rent payment coming up and you are broke.

Why is this? Because this gives you no other option but to succeed. It works because an important need will not be satisfied if you don’t win. This need is crucial for your survival and your well-being, so you will consciously do everything in order to win.

That’s how you need to approach everything.

One slip up and your momentum can drop, leading to undesirable consequences for you.

Clearly, you do not want this.

Always focus on what you need to do to win and execute it daily. If you do not keep up with your habits, the competition will open the door and snatch it all away from you the first chance they get.

Always keep this in mind.

Now let’s say you are competing against anyone, whether it’s the leader (aka: the top guy in your field) or just another person. Regardless of who you are, as you can see, they will do everything they can to psychologically manipulate you to perform worse, whether it’s false belief of them being better than you or to make you feel complacent if you are the most skilled in your field.

That’s why this next point is extremely crucial to understand, so listen closely:

Don’t Succumb to Anyone, Even the Leader

Remember, it’s yours for the taking if you want to.

You have to believe that you are the one destined to win and no one else. Combining this self-belief with action and the right strategies will turn you into a god that no one can stop no matter how hard they try.

Everyone is going to try to get into your head because they know most people will be weak inside. Instead, all you have to do is recognize every one of their moves as an obstacle that needs to be overcome without even realizing who is doing these moves.

For instance, instead of assuming you lose the business deal just because you are negotiating with Warren Buffett, just see what the competition is doing and move accordingly with your strategy.

In other words, view the moves as mechanisms you need to navigate, regardless of who you are competing against.

This way, you view everything objectively instead of an immediate intimidation because of the competition or person you need to deal with.

Remember you always have a plan to follow and in most cases, assuming you research it well, it will be correct and all you have to do is stick to it no matter what.

If you need to adjust accordingly, do so, but don’t adjust it when the competition is making you feel intimidated without making any moves whatsoever.

They do this to throw you off your game and to expose any weaknesses in you.

Remember, it’s all in your head. If you can clear your mind of the clutter, you will think straight about what you need to do.

Now here’s a tactic if you are in the business world to throw everyone off:

Before a Big Deal Occurs, Bring in a Lawyer

If you are in the business world, this one might not come as a surprise, but sometimes, this can be incredibly overlooked.

Here’s why:

People who you do business with are not your friends.

Read that sentence again.

A lot of times, they will manipulate the situation to stab you behind your back without looking.

I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say you are doing a simple transaction like buying groceries (you wouldn’t need a lawyer for this one, but it’s just to prove a point.). What happens sometimes is the grocery store will list the price of an item as one thing, but then they’ll ring it up on the register as something higher.

Does this sound questionable to you?

Additionally, if you go and express your concerns about it, the customer service associate and the manager, most of the time, look extremely confused and say “What do you mean,” when in reality, they know exactly what you mean. This is their method of trying to block you off.

They push the conversation longer than needed so they can do everything they can to put all of the blame on you and to hold you liable.

Of course, in this case, they wouldn’t sue you since this is a relatively minor example, but let me raise the stakes and I’ll show you what I mean.

Let’s say you enter a deal where the person you are doing business with is supposed to provide you a service.

However, you are not equipped with an attorney and they are. Let’s say you don’t find it necessary for the type of deal you are in. Therefore, they can use this reality to their advantage and structure the contract in a way that allows them to make changes to it anytime they want without letting you know, even though it’s not fair to you.

This is a setup to blindside you later.

To combat this, you should hire a competent contract lawyer to make sure you get everything you need while not being blindsided and so you don’t go to court.

What this will do is throw off the other side and their plan to blindside you. They will now say “If we try to throw this trick at them, what will happen? Will we get sued? Will our reputation tank? Let’s just provide them the service so we don’t get in trouble!”

With a contract lawyer, you are now the dominant force in the room. Why? Because the law is in charge of them.

If they do what they initially intended to do, they get in trouble and they don’t want that.

Now do you see that they are not your friends?

A business partnership is ALWAYS adversarial. Each side is always plotting against the other somehow like it’s a war to protect themselves from blindsides and to get the most out of the deal.

Of course, the best deals are when both sides benefit greatly, but most of the time, this isn’t the case and their needs to be an element of war involved.

In fact, this is the whole purpose of contracts. It’s because it is NOT a friendship and there is never 100% trust on each side to uphold their end of the agreement or to be fair.

Does this make sense?

You can read about this further in this article here.

This is one step in knowing how to intimidate someone psychologically.

A great book that a lot of business leaders use to navigate scenarios like this is an old legend called “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. This book talks about everything a great war leader does to trap their enemies and the win the war single-handedly and using this knowledge, you can pretty much figure out why people give great deals to lure you into what they have to sell, much like “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” at grocery stores.

This is the power of deception in real life. In most cases, it’s completely legal to do this while also telling the truth and this book will go in-depth as to how you can do this. Of course, it will talk about this concept in war terms and not in business terms, but you can deduce how you can apply it to all aspects of your life if you thoroughly understand what it says.

You can pick up your copy here from Amazon (for a price, of course). And please note, I am an affiliate for Amazon. Because of this, I receive a commission for your purchase if you do buy, but the price you pay will not change.

I can assure you now that if you apply what I talk about in this post to the fullest extent, you will minimize the damage people can do to you since you are equipped with an arsenal of knowledge to prevent everyone from manipulating you.

You can even put everyone in a trap as well with this knowledge without them even knowing it and telling the truth at the same time (after all, you don’t have to reveal everything).

If you got a lot out of this post and you want more insider tricks as to how you can get ahead of everyone else and become a productivity god while blowing your competition out of the water, definitely subscribe to Join the Island, the world’s greatest blog, below with your email so you can receive action-packed blog posts sent straight to your inbox the moment they are published.

Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.

PS: Comment below with what you got out of this post and what you’ll do with the information in it. It’d be great to know.