How to Use Peer Pressure to Your Advantage

In short, use peer pressure that motivates you to get what you want and forget about everything else.

Peer pressure is everywhere – it’s in advertisements, in our interactions with other humans while out in the world, on the internet, and at work. Research shows that our brains work differently when we experience peer pressure[1]. Harnessing these changes can mean having peer pressure work for you instead of working against you.

This article outlines a strategy I’ve found which:

• decreases the amount of time that I waste ruminating
• decreases the delay in responding to others
• helps me express more clearly what I want

And I hope that it can help your process, too. Let’s dive in.

Always Know What You Want

In a world with multiple paths, in order to follow the path toward what we want, we need some information about where we want to end up. The clearer the picture is, the easier it will be for us to get there. This is in part because it’s almost impossible to get to a destination if you don’t know where the destination is. At best, you’ll waste time meandering in directions that won’t help.

The practice of getting clarity about what you want can be overwhelming at a large scale, but is easily applied a situational context. Start with small situations, like knowing what you want to eat and knowing where you want to explore outside, and move on to situations that are more impactful and complex, like where you would like to take your partner out on a date, or how you want to get started on a woodworking project that you recently thought of.

Clearly understanding what you want in a given situation is the first step in being able to take advantage of peer pressure. Without a clear understanding of your destination, you won’t be able to easily identify if you’re moving closer to or moving further away from it – or if you’ve already arrived.

Celebrate Moments of Awareness

Another crucial step in being able to take advantage of peer pressure is knowing when you’re being influenced by others. As we become better at knowing when we’re being influenced, we become more able to harness the power of that influence.

Influence can happen consciously or subconsciously, and probably will always happen subconsciously. One classic example of subconscious influence is telling someone to “not think of a pink elephant” – it’s not possible! Tricks like this are constantly being used to get our attention and influence our decision making without our awareness.

I find that immediately forgiving myself for being subconsciously influenced is helpful in this entire process. Being upset that you’ve been influenced just isn’t helpful. What’s important is having awareness of those moments and celebrating that awareness when it happens – the awareness is a gateway to achieving what you want.

Reflection can help you discover ways that you may have been unknowingly influenced. Think about recent situations that didn’t feel quite right, or where you wished things had gone differently. Here are some questions to ask yourself about the situation that can inspire awareness:

• Did the outcome align with what I want?
• Did peer pressure play a part in the outcome?
• How did my perceptions affect my behavior?
• What could I have done differently to have changed the outcome?

Habitually Express your Boundaries

Expressing boundaries is an essential skill for navigating situations where peer pressure is involved. Being able to gracefully say “no” when you need to is an invaluable skill. However, this skill is dependent on the two previous ones – in order to be able to effectively express boundaries, you need awareness in the moment as well as knowledge of what you do (and don’t) want.

Saying “express your boundaries” can be a bit like saying “be confident” – it’s much easier said than done. However, if this is a moment of awareness for you about the importance of boundaries, celebrate that. Understanding the importance of boundaries is a giant step toward having better boundaries.

Here are some ways you can get better at expressing your boundaries:

• become more aware of your body – our body is the first alarm system to notify us of crossed boundaries. Learn to become more in tune with it through intentional meditation, exercise and diet.
• supercharge your self-care – raise the bar for how you feel and how you treat yourself. This will help you imagine ways in which other people can treat you better, too.
• be prepared – consider situations in the near future where someone might cross your boundary and think about how you can instead get what you want.

Turn the Tables For Your Benefit

Most of what we’ve talked about so far can help you start to become aware of ways in which you’re being influenced, but we haven’t talked in depth about how to take advantage. Let’s dive into that now.

Armed with awareness and the ability to express your boundaries, you can put a stop to a boundary transgressions as they happen. However, also knowing what you want gives you the power to turn those boundaries outward – what was once used for your defense can now be used for offense:

• when you hear that someone else has used a strategy that you’ve been hesitant about, use that peer pressure as an excuse to try that same strategy yourself
• when you hear about someone being proud to achieve something, use that peer pressure as an excuse to feel vindicated about wanting the same thing

and literally toss everything else in the garbage:

• feeling bad when you hear about others’ accomplishments
• feeling bad when you hear that someone else tried a strategy you’d been thinking of

I’ve found each part of this flow to be extremely helpful in more ways than I am consciously aware of. Our passions, our awareness and our boundaries are incredibly wholesome and self-informing things to meditate on. Getting better at each part of this process and in turn, getting better at using the power of peer pressure can have a compounding effect. As we get what we want, our world transforms into the world we want, our desires transform into reality, and we develop new and evolved desires.

Sources:

[1] Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain’s reward circuitry: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01035.x

[2] The extent and effects of peer pressure among high school students: A retrospective analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24310728/