7 Psychological Superpowers The Most Unique People Use To Set Themselves Apart
You don't need to be a superhero to be special.
Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock Some people have an incredible "superpower" that sets them apart from the average individual. What's the superpower? Restraint.
Success, happiness, or whatever word you use to articulate what you want, often involves what you don't do. Restraint from one action can be a springboard to a more useful one, like talking to listening.
We live in an unrestrained world. It's getting louder, angrier, more chaotic and pretentious. That's why it's the perfect time for you to behave in the exact opposite fashion and wield these psychological superpowers to your advantage.
Here are 7 psychological superpowers that set the most unique people apart from everyone else
1. They don't act like show-offs
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If you're a smart person, you might have the tendency to want to show it off. You want people to know you're smart.
While there's nothing wrong with displaying your intelligence, the costs for showing it off too much are high. People don't like being corrected, and they don't want a mirror reflected on their own inadequacy.
If you're in a work setting, showing up your boss is a surefire way to make the relationship contentious, even if only subtly.
Showing people up, in general, means you lack an important type of intelligence — social intelligence. If you had social intelligence, you'd know that letting other people take the spotlight makes them feel important. And they'd connect that feeling of importance with being around you.
Paraphrasing author Robert Greene and his 48 laws of power, it's much more clever to resist the urge to display your cleverness (move in silence; let people think you're less intelligent than you are). It's almost always better to understate your intelligence than overstate it.
2. They resist groupthink
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We lie to ourselves a lot. One of the main lies we tell ourselves is that we're open-minded. On the whole, we're not.
You've cobbled together an identity based on narratives. You tell yourself stories constantly, and the ones you repeat often become part of your personality. You're prone to adopt narratives based on groups you belong to. You do this because human beings are naturally tribal animals.
The problem with this occurs when you're unable to even hold views that deviate from your group's list of stances. No one's budging. If you're able to form your own worldview — a legitimate one should contain elements of contradictory philosophies — you'll have the benefit of not being a wild person participating in mud-slinging contests.
It's pretty much impossible to form an original worldview because you have to form it by picking up established narratives (unless you're a truly original thinker, which you're not). Just knowing how difficult it is to form untainted beliefs gives you the humility to second guess your own opinions.
The end goal? Be able to say that you've put thought into which components of group narratives you decided to adopt. And then, stay out of the herd altogether. You're going to have to sit on the sidelines while everyone else bickers.
Don't even participate in the discourse. Improve your life instead. At the end of the day, most of what happens in your life can be seen and shaped through the lens of your individuality.
No matter what group you belong to, the experiences, memories, and emotions you have are unique to you. And you can only genuinely look to yourself to reshape any of the above.
3. They don't care what people think about them
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Want to know a great trick for letting go of other people's opinions? Read a book about space or watch a YouTube video about it. Take Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," for instance.
A passage reads: "Our sun is just one of the one hundred thousand million stars that make up our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way is only one of the many galaxies in the local group. The local group, in turn, is just one of the thousands of groups and clusters of galaxies which form the largest known structures of our universe."
Now, think of your place in that universe. Why are you so preoccupied about "what will happen" or "what others will think" when you're already essentially dead? Because human beings are the only known species arrogant enough to place themselves at the center of the universe.
Everyone does it, but the less you do it, the freer you are. That's the thing about freedom — it's often a consequence of what you don't do. Once you decide to stop caring so much, it will allow you to do what you want.
Are you going to let other people — infinitesimal pieces of existence in the expanse of the universe — stop you from living your life the way you want to live it?
4. They don't place blame
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This is about taking ownership of your mind. If you don't own your mind, someone else or circumstance will. Owning your reactions to what happens to you gives you a source of power no one can corrupt.
Like most of us, we get angry when someone treats us unfairly. When situations don't go our way, we feel sorry for ourselves, but if we're lucky, we catch ourselves thinking this way and instead focus on the role we play in the situation.
You've heard this before. It's so cliché. Why add personal responsibility to this list? Because it's really hard and goes against our nature. Also, there are times where the blame should be placed somewhere other than on yourself, but it's often fruitless.
Sure, you might be able to convince the person you blamed that they're wrong, but at what cost? To what degree did each of you play in the situation (you're apt to take more percentage of the victim category than you should)?
You might be able to bend the universe to your will and make the circumstances around you better — as opposed to just being better — but, again, at what cost? Though you may not always accept responsibility instantly, being able to do it even some of the time goes a long way.
5. They don't wait to talk
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Have you ever been in a conversation where it's clear no one is listening? Each person talks and the others are waiting for a millisecond of silence to jump in.
But by dialing back your tendencies, being a little more restrained in your actions and your thoughts, you become a better observer. When you become a better observer, you realize that you can get further ahead by doing less.
If you let other people talk, listen to them, and give up your need to jump into the conversation right away, everyone will love you. People love to talk. Let them.
While they talk, listen. If you really listen, they will give you all the information you want to know — their hopes, fears, desires, needs, likes, dislikes. Just sit there while they "spill the tea."
Then, you can do little things that make them feel like you're a great conversationalist and someone they can trust, even if you barely talk. Repeat what they said back to them, ask them a question that makes them continue to talk, and genuinely highlight when they bring something up you have in common.
You can use this technique in a real conversation or the conversation — the zeitgeist, blogs, and social media. Don't jump in the debate. Watch it while everyone reveals their cards.
6. They never let their desires pull them in every direction
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Ambition can be good and necessary. It can also be poisonous.
By focusing too much on results, it makes things less fun. It starts to feel like work.
Every time you do something you don't really want to do because you think it will help you get something you desire, you feel bad, misaligned, incongruent.
Think about it. What status games are you playing right now? What objects and circumstances are you lusting over? Are you being controlled by a desire for the output or the need to do the input?
It's important to remind yourself constantly that you can be happy with what you have at this very moment. Even if life gets better outwardly, adjust to it quickly and begin running on the hamster wheel all over again.
It's better to just do the things you love, right now, and forget about the future.
7. They don't take everything so seriously
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Imagine a society where everyone tended to their own well-being first before shouting into the sky about the government or what's on the news? If we did that, we'd realize that while things are nowhere near perfect, the sky isn't falling.
You can probably see this in your own life. The things we tend to take seriously at a high level have little to do with what's going on at the ground level, otherwise known as our actual life.
Get out of the outrage machine right now. It's not worth your sanity. Then, even in your own life, try to stop taking everything so seriously. Focus on your career, but don't make your career your life.
Be prudent, save, budget, but don't become a worry wart. Spend time with your friends and family without worrying much about anything beyond them.
From the perspective of the universe, you're dead. Clutching on the steering wheel of life gives you the illusion you have control. You don't, really. Just live.
Ayodeji Awosika is an author and writer who wants to help people define their own version of success by offering strategies, insights, and tools to achieve it. His work has been featured in publications like Business Insider, The Huffington Post, and Thrive Global, among others.