Learn how to no-sell.

I have loved professional wrestling for as long as I can remember. As a student of Communications and Media, there are countless examples of how this modern art form is a perfect microcosm for our society at large. One aspect of wrestling that I find incredibly fascinating in the art of selling. For the most part, the men and women working in the ring are not actively trying to hurt each other. (That doesn’t mean they don’t feel anything. Far from it. But they are working together to make a show, not tear each other limb from limb.) However, to make the show as believable and entertaining as possible to the audience, wrestlers will try to convey that these moves and holds deliver incredible pain. This is called “selling” the move. The goal is for the audience to “buy” that the wrestlers are hurting, and thus feel bad for him/her and then cheer him on to victory. (Good guys do the majority of selling, and they want the cheers.) But there are times when you don’t want to show weakness. When Road Warrior Hawk would take a devastating pile driver, he would often pop right up like nothing happened. This is called no-selling. We will all have times in our life when we need to sell. Unfortunately, there will be people in our lives who will actively root against us. They will work to sabotage our work or tear us down emotionally. These bullies and “haters” feed off of the energy we put out, and will starve if we no-sell what they are doing. It’s not easy, sure. You get mad or hurt by their actions. But, by no-selling, you take away the thing they crave; your reaction. Next time someone tries to get a rise out of you, no-sell it and see what happens.