winds,
If anyone else has caught themself doing this, how did you manage to find that 'middle-zone' between being too nice and too much of an asshole? Especially if it's in an office setting, where you work alot?
As far as an office setting, you need to treat things differently there. A hierarchy is usually set in place, so becoming unwilling to do certain things is only going to get you negative attention from people you need to work with and possibly get you fired. If you have people at the same level (or under you) trying to get you do responsibilities that you know you aren't supposed to do, then maybe having a talk with them and helping each other understand your roles might help. But you need to be careful about coming across as a conceited asshole at your job, otherwise people will just come to resent you.
As far as the 'middle-zone' in general, I think part of the problem with most nice guys is that they are
proactively going out and trying to do things to make themselves "less nice." They don't really understand what it means to maintain a strong frame, and in reality, it's more of a passive approach than it is a proactive one. Instead of marching around commanding people to do things, you kind of just passively deny requests from people that aren't worth your time (or don't benefit you in some way). For example, with a girl, you might be having a casual conversation with her when she suddenly says, "hey, can you grab my drink on the counter? I left it over there." And instead of saying "oh, sure! Right away!" you respond with "it's like 10 feet away from here. You're a big girl! You can grab it yourself."
In the above example, you didn't go out of your way to make your dominant frame known; instead, you saw that she was trying to place you in a weaker frame, and you basically denied that request and playfully threw it back at her to let her know you aren't a doormat for other people's feet. She might be slightly taken aback for a second (especially if your fundamentals were a bit weaker and she thought you were lower caliber than her), but ultimately it will cause a boost in attraction as long you as don't look fazed by her reaction (so that she can see you are congruent with your dominance).
- Franco