How to Make People Desperate for Your Approval - Machiavelli

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How to Make People Desperate for Your Approval - Machiavelli

Key Points

True power operates by subtracting itself from the equation while multiplying its influence
People recognize your power when their emotional reactions to you reveal your impact on them
Strategic silence and calculated absence create more influence than constant presence or noise
Transform attacks into opportunities by remaining curious rather than defensive
Creating intellectual and emotional space that others rush to fill gives you control over outcomes
Fear requires only recognition of capacity, while love demands reciprocity and creates dependency
Your composure under pressure becomes magnetic because it offers stability others lack
Don't defend your character - explore the dynamics that created the misunderstanding instead
Consistency of response (not mood) creates emotional climate rather than adapting to others' weather
The less you need others' approval, validation, or understanding, the more they want to give it
Distinguish between genuine needs for connection and emotional demands disguised as needs
People value what is scarce - your emotional availability becomes precious when not freely given
When you stop participating in drama, less drama occurs around you naturally
Genuine authority based on self-possession is unmistakable and attracts recognition rather than requiring imposition
Victory means remaining yourself while others lose themselves in reaction to your stability
Most sophisticated power isn't power over others, but power over yourself that others find attractive
Your influence should emerge from authenticity rather than performance or manipulation
Create conditions where conflict becomes unnecessary rather than learning to win battles

Full Transcript

Language: en
There's a moment when you realize that
everything you've been taught about
power is backwards. It happens in a
split second, usually during a
confrontation you thought would destroy
you. Someone is screaming in your face,
their voice cracking with rage, their
finger jabbing the air between you. The
room is silent except for their fury.
Everyone is watching. This should be
your destruction. Instead, you feel
something else entirely. You feel
elevated. Not because you enjoy their
pain, but because you understand
suddenly and completely that their
emotional explosion has just handed you
something infinitely more valuable than
whatever they think they're fighting
for. You've just been given proof of
your own power. Most people seek power
through accumulation. More money, more
followers, more titles, more noise. They
believe influence comes from addition,
from becoming larger, more visible, more
present in the world of others. This is
the thinking of children playing with
blocks, stacking them higher and higher
until the inevitable collapse. True
power operates on a completely different
principle. True power subtracts itself
from the equation while multiplying its
influence. It becomes less visible while
becoming more essential. It retreats
into shadows that somehow cast
themselves over everything in the light.
The ancient strategists understood this
paradox. Machaveli wrote that everyone
sees what you appear to be. Few
experience what you really are. But he
was describing something far more
sophisticated than simple deception. He
was mapping the architecture of
perception itself. The way human
consciousness creates hierarchies of
significance. When you make yourself
partially invisible, you don't
disappear. You become mythical. You
transform from a person who can be
analyzed and predicted into a force that
can only be felt and feared. Watch this
principle in action. Sarah walks into
the conference room where her colleagues
are discussing the failed marketing
campaign. The room goes quiet, not
because she's the loudest voice, but
because she never speaks unless her
words will land like surgical strikes.
She doesn't sit at the head of the
table. She chooses the chair that allows
her to see everyone while remaining
slightly outside the main circle. When
Marcus begins his defensive speech about
budget constraints, she doesn't
interrupt. She doesn't even look at him.
She examines her fingernails with the
kind of focused attention usually
reserved for rare manuscripts. The
silence stretches. Marcus's voice grows
louder, then uncertain. By the time she
finally looks up, the entire room
understands that his explanation has
just been weighed and found wanting,
though she hasn't said a single word.
"The budget wasn't the variable," she
says finally, her voice carrying the
quiet authority of someone who has been
thinking while others have been talking.
The variable was assuming our audience
thinks like we do. She pauses not for
dramatic effect but because precision
requires time which they don't.
Another pause which we should have
The meeting ends with a complete
restructuring of the campaign initiated
by people who believe they thought of
the solutions themselves.
This is not manipulation in the crude
sense. This is something far more
elegant. The creation of intellectual
and emotional space that others rush to
fill. Unaware that the space itself is
your design. You don't push people
toward your conclusions. You arrange
circumstances so that your conclusions
become inevitable destinations for their
own thinking. The digital age has
created new landscapes for this ancient
art. Consider the phenomenon of the
viral call out. That modern ritual where
moral outrage becomes a performance of
virtue. Yesterday, someone posted a
screenshot of your three-year-old tweet,
taking it completely out of context,
demanding you explain yourself to their
10,000 followers. The old response would
be defensive, clarifications,
justifications,
apologies.
The new response recognizes opportunity
disguised as crisis. You don't respond
immediately. Speed suggests desperation.
You don't respond angrily. Anger
suggests they've touched something real.
You don't respond at all for exactly 47
hours. long enough for their outrage to
peak and begin its natural decline.
Short enough that your silence is
noticed rather than interpreted as
absence. When you finally respond, it's
not to them. It's a new post seemingly
unrelated about the fascinating
psychology of projection in digital
spaces. You don't mention them. You
don't need to. Anyone who reads both
posts understands immediately who
inspired your sociological observation.
But more importantly, you've transformed
the narrative from person defending
themselves to expert analyzing a
phenomenon they've personally
experienced. The original attacker is
left in a peculiar position. They can
escalate, which now looks like
harassment of someone who has moved on
to more interesting topics. They can
defend themselves, which acknowledges
that your post was indeed about them
while making them appear reactive. Or
they can ignore it, which allows your
reframe to become the dominant
interpretation of the entire
interaction.
You've turned their attack into evidence
of your insight, their moral posturing,
into a case study you can examine with
clinical detachment. This transformation
of attack into elevation follows a
deeper principle. Machaveli observed
that since love and fear can hardly
exist together if we must choose between
them, it is far safer to be feared than
loved. But he wasn't advocating cruelty.
He was describing the mathematics of
human psychology. Love requires
reciprocity, demands proximity, creates
dependency. Fear requires only
recognition of capacity. You don't need
to harm anyone to make them aware that
you could, that you understand exactly
how to reach the soft places in their
carefully constructed personas. The
truly sophisticated practitioner never
needs to exercise this capacity. Its
mere existence, properly communicated
through strategic absence rather than
dramatic demonstration, creates what
military theorists call deterrence
through uncertainty. People don't know
exactly what you're capable of, but they
sense it's more than they're prepared to
test. This uncertainty becomes a kind of
gravitational field around your
presence, subtly altering the behavior
of everyone within its range. James
discovered this accidentally during his
first year at the law firm. He was the
youngest associate, expected to be
grateful and invisible. During the
weekly partner meeting, senior partner
Davidson made a comment about bringing
in fresh blood that knows how to take
direction without asking inconvenient
questions.
The other associates laughed nervously.
James said nothing. He didn't even look
up from his notes, but something in his
stillness made the room aware that his
silence was a choice rather than
submission. Davidson repeated his joke
louder this time, fishing for a
reaction. James continued writing, his
pen moving with the same steady rhythm
as before. The silence stretched until
it became uncomfortable for everyone
except James, who seemed completely
unaffected by the growing tension.
"Something wrong with your hearing?"
Morrison? Davidson asked finally. James
looked up slowly, his expression curious
rather than defensive. I'm sorry. Were
you addressing me specifically? I
thought you were talking about the
recruitment strategy. His voice carried
no challenge, no sarcasm, just genuine
Because if you're asking for my input on
how we might better integrate new
associates, I have some thoughts on
that. The brilliant thing about this
response is that it created a fork in
the conversation where every path led to
James's elevation. If Davidson backed
down, he was retreating from a challenge
issued by the youngest person in the
room. If he escalated, he was being
drawn into a substantive discussion
initiated by someone he just
characterized as helpless. If he tried
to clarify that he was joking, he was
explaining his humor to someone who had
calmly chosen not to understand it as
such. Davidson chose escalation. By all
means, Morrison, share your thoughts on
integration. James' response redefined
the power dynamic in real time. He
didn't defend himself against Davidson's
characterization. He didn't acknowledge
that any characterization had been made.
Instead, he used Davidson's invitation
to present a detailed analysis of
associate retention rates, client
satisfaction correlations with team
diversity, and competitive advantages of
firms that better utilize junior talent.
He spoke for exactly 4 minutes using
data Davidson couldn't challenge, and
insights that made Davidson's joke
appear not just mean-spirited, but
strategically short-sighted. When he
finished, the room sat in silence. James
returned to his notes with the same calm
attention as before. The meeting
continued, but something fundamental had
shifted. Davidson never targeted him
again, not because James had threatened
him, but because James had demonstrated
that attacks would be transformed into
opportunities for demonstration of
competence.
Within six months, James was being
assigned to the firm's most complex
cases. Within two years, he was being
courted by competing firms. The
associates who had laughed at Davidson's
joke were still hoping for
acknowledgement. This principle extends
far beyond professional environments. In
intimate relationships, the same dynamic
operates with even greater subtlety.
Consider the moment when your partner
launches into the familiar attack about
your emotional unavailability, your
failure to communicate, your mysterious
distance that keeps them feeling
uncertain about where they stand. The
conventional response is defensive
explanation. I do communicate. Here are
examples. Your perception is unfair.
This response accepts the premise that
your emotional patterns require
justification, that your internal
landscape should be accessible for
inspection and modification. The
advanced response recognizes that their
complaint is actually evidence of your
power. If your emotional distance wasn't
affecting them, they wouldn't be
mentioning it. If they were truly
certain about where they stood, they
wouldn't need reassurance. Their attack
reveals their dependency on your
approval, your attention, your emotional
availability. This is not cruelty on
your part. This is simply the natural
result of being someone whose inner
world seems worth accessing. When they
say, "You never tell me what you're
really thinking." You don't defend your
communication style. You become curious
about their statement.
That's interesting. What makes you think
I'm thinking something other than what
I've shared? This response doesn't deny
their perception, but it requires them
to explain the basis for it. Usually,
they can't because their complaint isn't
based on evidence, but on feeling. They
feel like they don't have complete
access to you, which is true because
complete access to any interesting
person is impossible. I just feel like
there's always something more going on
with you, they might say. There probably
is, you respond simply. There's always
something more going on with everyone,
isn't there? This acknowledgement is
simultaneously validating and
frustrating for them. You've confirmed
their intuition while making it clear
that this depth is a feature, not a bug.
You've transformed their complaint about
your mystery into a recognition of your
complexity. Instead of defending your
right to privacy, you've made them aware
that privacy is what makes any person
worth knowing. The conversation that
follows this reframe is entirely
different from the conversation that
would have followed a defensive
response. Instead of debating your
communication patterns, you're
discussing the philosophy of intimacy
itself. Instead of justifying your
behavior, you're exploring the dynamics
that make relationships interesting.
You've elevated the discussion from
personal criticism to intellectual
inquiry. And in doing so, you've
reminded them why they were attracted to
you in the first place. But here's where
the strategy transcends individual
interactions and becomes a way of being
in the world. The person who masters
strategic absence doesn't just use it in
moments of conflict. They build entire
personas around the principle that less
presence creates more impact. They
become the friend who doesn't text back
immediately, not because they're playing
games, but because their responses are
thoughtful enough to require time. They
become the colleague who speaks rarely
in meetings, which makes their
contributions feel more significant when
they arrive. They become the partner who
maintains independent interests and
friendships, which keeps them
interesting rather than predictable.
This is not emotional withholding or
manipulative distance. This is the
recognition that scarcity creates value,
that mystery maintains attraction, that
people treasure what they cannot
completely possess. You're not
withholding yourself to create
artificial scarcity. You're maintaining
the aspects of yourself that existed
before any particular relationship,
which keeps you whole enough to be worth
relating to. The truly dangerous moment
comes when others begin to recognize
your pattern and attempt to counter it.
Someone might say, "You're always so
controlled, so calculated, it's like you
never let anyone see the real you." This
accusation is designed to make you prove
your authenticity through emotional
demonstration, to break your composure
in order to validate their perception of
your humanity. The sophisticated
response recognizes this as a test
disguised as an attack. They're not
really complaining about your
self-control. They're trying to breach
it. Your composure isn't evidence of
calculation. It's evidence of genuine
self-possession. The person who is truly
comfortable with themselves doesn't need
constant emotional validation or
reassurance that they're being perceived
correctly. You might be right, you
respond thoughtfully. though I'm curious
what makes you think there's a real me
that's different from what you've
experienced.
This response neither confirms nor
denies their perception. Instead, it
questions the assumption behind it. What
is authenticity exactly? Is the
controlled version of you less real than
the uncontrolled version? Are people
more themselves when they're emotional
than when they're thoughtful? These
questions don't require answers. They
simply introduce complexity into what
your challenger hoped would be a simple
accusation.
They transform the conversation from you
should be different to what does it mean
to be authentic.
Once again, you've elevated personal
criticism into philosophical inquiry.
The pattern becomes clear. Every attack
contains within it the seeds of its own
transformation into something that
serves your interests. This isn't
because you're manipulative, but because
you understand that conflict properly
handled is always an opportunity for
clarification. When people challenge
you, they're really asking you to define
yourself more precisely. When you
respond with precision rather than
defensiveness, you end up more clearly
articulated than before the challenge
occurred. This principle operates on
every level of human interaction. In
social media arguments, instead of
defending your position, you ask
questions that reveal the assumptions
underlying the attack. In professional
conflicts, instead of justifying your
methods, you invite examination of the
standards being applied. In personal
relationships, instead of defending your
character, you explore the dynamics that
created the misunderstanding.
Each time, the result is the same. The
focus shifts from your supposed
inadequacies to larger questions about
communication, values, and human nature
itself. You transform from defendant to
philosopher, from target to teacher,
from victim to observer of fascinating
social phenomena. The ultimate
expression of this approach comes when
you realize that you don't need to win
these interactions in any conventional
sense. Victory isn't convincing others
that you're right. Victory is remaining
yourself while others lose themselves in
reaction to you. Victory is maintaining
your center while others are pulled into
orbit around your stability. Machaveli
wrote that the lion cannot protect
himself from traps and the fox cannot
defend himself from wolves. The
implication is that different situations
require different approaches. that
adaptability is the highest form of
intelligence. But there's a deeper
reading. The most effective strategy
combines the fox's clever evasion with
the lion's confident presence. You don't
need to be the strongest force in any
given situation. You need to be the most
coherent one. Coherence under pressure
becomes a form of power that others find
simultaneously attractive and unnerving.
They want to be around you because your
stability makes them feel more stable.
But they're also unsettled because your
stability makes their instability more
apparent. This creates a complex dynamic
where people are drawn to you precisely
because of qualities that sometimes make
them uncomfortable. The key to managing
this dynamic is understanding that their
discomfort isn't your responsibility to
resolve. Your job isn't to make others
comfortable with your self-possession.
Your job is to remain possessed of
yourself regardless of their comfort
level. This doesn't mean being cold or
unresponsive to others needs. It means
distinguishing between genuine needs and
emotional demands disguised as needs.
When someone says they need you to be
more emotionally available, are they
expressing a legitimate need for
connection or are they demanding that
you manage their anxiety about your
independence?
When someone says they need you to be
more communicative, are they asking for
clearer information or are they asking
you to fill silence that makes them
uncomfortable? When someone says they
need you to be more predictable, are
they asking for reliable behavior? Or
are they asking you to become less
interesting so they can feel more
secure? These distinctions matter
because responding appropriately to
legitimate needs builds relationships
while responding to disguised demands
for emotional management destroys your
effectiveness in those relationships.
The person who manages others anxiety
becomes responsible for others anxiety
which creates a dynamic where your power
is constantly being donated to the
maintenance of their emotional
stability. The alternative is to become
someone whose emotional stability is so
genuine that it influences others
towards stability rather than demanding
that you destabilize yourself to match
their fluctuations.
This requires a fundamental shift in how
you understand your role in
relationships. Instead of being someone
who adapts to emotional weather, you
become someone who creates emotional
climate. Creating emotional climate
happens through consistency of response
rather than consistency of mood. You
don't need to be happy all the time. You
need to be grounded all the time. You
don't need to be agreeable all the time.
You need to be reliable all the time.
Reliability in this context doesn't mean
predictability. It means that people can
count on you to respond from your center
rather than from reaction to their
energy. This kind of reliability becomes
magnetic because most people live their
lives buffeted by emotional weather
systems they don't understand and can't
They experience their moods as forces
that happen to them rather than states
they participate in creating. When they
encounter someone who seems to have a
different relationship with emotional
experience, someone who appears to
choose their responses rather than be
chosen by them. They recognize something
they want to understand. But here's
where the dynamic becomes complex. They
want to understand your emotional
self-possession, but they also want to
test it. They want to see if your
stability is real or performed, genuine
or calculated. These tests come in many
forms. Some people will try to provoke
emotional reactions to see if your
composure breaks. Others will create
crises to see if you'll abandon your
center to rescue them. Still others will
withdraw their approval to see if you'll
pursue it. Each test is an opportunity
to demonstrate that your stability isn't
dependent on their validation, their
approval, or their emotional state. This
demonstration doesn't require dramatic
gestures. It simply requires
consistency.
When they try to provoke you, you remain
curious about their need to provoke
rather than reactive to the provocation
When they create crisis, you offer help
without absorbing their anxiety. When
they withdraw approval, you continue
being yourself without pursuing their
validation. Over time, these
demonstrations accumulate into a
reputation for reliability that becomes
its own form of influence. People begin
to seek your perspective, not because
you've convinced them you're right about
everything, but because you've
demonstrated that you're not thrown off
course by the kinds of things that
destabilize others. Your opinion becomes
valuable because it emerges from
stability rather than reactivity. This
is where the strategy transforms from
technique into identity. You're no
longer someone who uses strategic
distance occasionally when it serves
your purposes. You become someone whose
natural way of being in the world
creates strategic advantages simply by
being authentic to your own nature.
The distance isn't calculated. It's the
natural result of being centered in
yourself rather than scattered across
other people's emotional weather
systems. The person who achieves this
integration discovers something
remarkable. They don't need to manage
their influence because their influence
manages itself. People are drawn to
stability without needing to be
convinced of its value. They seek out
centered perspectives without needing to
be sold on their importance. They want
to be around someone who isn't
constantly adjusting themselves to
accommodate external pressures because
such a person makes them feel like
adjustment might not be necessary. This
natural influence operates according to
principles that seem paradoxical but
prove consistent in practice.
The less you need others approval, the
more they want to give it. The less you
need to be understood, the more they
want to understand you. The less you
need to be included, the more they want
to include you. The less you need their
validation, the more valuable your
validation becomes to them. These
paradoxes aren't contradictions. They're
expressions of fundamental truths about
human psychology. People value what is
scarce, respect what doesn't need their
respect, and trust what doesn't depend
on their trust. When you become someone
who doesn't need these things from
others, you become someone who can offer
them authentically rather than trading
them for your own psychological needs.
The final level of mastery comes when
you realize that this approach isn't
just a strategy for managing difficult
people or situations. It's a way of
being that attracts easier people and
creates more manageable situations. When
you stop participating in drama, less
drama occurs around you. When you stop
engaging with manipulation, fewer people
attempt to manipulate you. When you stop
being reactive, fewer people try to
provoke reactions from you. This isn't
because you've isolated yourself from
challenging interactions. It's because
you've changed the context in which
interactions occur. People who are
looking for emotional entertainment find
you less interesting as a target because
you don't provide the kind of responses
they're seeking. People who are looking
for stability and genuine connection
find you more interesting because you
offer something they actually want. The
shift happens gradually. Then suddenly
one day you realize that most of your
relationships have become easier. Not
because you've learned to manage
difficult people more effectively, but
because difficult people have largely
removed themselves from your orbit. They
found more reactive targets, more
dramatic scenarios, more emotionally
volatile environments where their
patterns can play out with greater
satisfaction. What remains are
relationships with people who appreciate
stability, value depth, and respect
boundaries. These relationships don't
require the sophisticated defensive
strategies you've developed because they
don't involve the kinds of attacks and
manipulations those strategies were
designed to handle. Your influence in
these relationships comes not from your
ability to handle conflict, but from
your ability to create the kinds of
interactions where conflict becomes
unnecessary. This is the true
sophistication of power. Not the ability
to win battles, but the ability to
create conditions where battles don't
occur. Not the skill to defend yourself
from manipulation, but the presence that
discourages manipulation attempts. Not
the technique to manage difficult
people, but the gravitational field that
attracts easier ones. You discover that
influence properly understood isn't
something you exercise on others. It's
something that emerges from who you are
when you're being yourself without
apology or adjustment for others
comfort. This kind of influence doesn't
need to be maintained through effort
because it's generated by authenticity
rather than performance. It doesn't need
to be defended because it's not
dependent on others recognition or
approval. In the end, you realize that
the most sophisticated power isn't power
over others at all. It's power over
yourself that happens to be so
attractive to others that they naturally
orient themselves toward it. They don't
follow you because you've convinced them
to. They follow you because following
someone who knows where they're going
feels better than wandering without
direction. They don't submit to your
authority because you've imposed it.
They recognize it because authority
based on genuine self-possession is
unmistakable once encountered. This is
what Machaveli really understood when he
wrote about the prince who could be both
feared and loved. He wasn't describing
someone who manipulated emotions to
control others. He was describing
someone whose genuine authority was so
apparent that others wanted to be in
relationship with it rather than
opposition to it. Fear and love in this
context aren't opposite reactions to the
same person. They're complimentary
recognitions of someone who has achieved
something rare. Complete ownership of
their own experience. The shadow you
cast isn't darkness imposed on others.
It's the natural consequence of standing
firmly in your own light. And those who
choose to stand within that shadow
discover that it's not cold or
threatening. It's the kind of protection
that allows them to find their own light
without having to compete with yours for
space to shine. You influence from the
shadows not because you hide from the
light but because you've become the
source of illumination that makes the
shadows possible. This is power that
serves itself by serving others.
Authority that strengthens itself by
strengthening those who recognize it.
Influence that grows not by taking, but
by creating more space for everyone
within its range to become who they

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