The Superpower That Ruined the Game:

A kid taught me something about the 4 LAWS — and he didn't even know it.

He had action figures lined up across the floor. Each one had a superpower. One could burn you. One could freeze you. One had light speed. One controlled electricity. All destructive. All scary.

He was collecting play swords, drawing fighting creatures, inventing battles. And then he invented a game.

"What Would You Do?"

Here's how it works: He puts out a situation. You pick your power and make your first move. Then he tells you what happens to you.

We played a few rounds. Explosions. Freezing attacks. Lightning strikes. The usual.

Then I stopped.

"My superpower," I said, "is that I can make everyone friendly when they come near me."

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"They lose their anger. They become real friendly. And I get to see what they need — and give it to them."

He set up the next attack. "Okay, make your move."

"You're already friendly," I said. "You came near me. When you leave, you'll be mean and angry and dangerous again. But right now? We're helping each other."

He stared at me.

"You can't use that power."

"Why not?"

"It would ruin the game."

He was right. That power does ruin the game.

Because the game is based on fighting. On attack and defense. On who hits harder, who survives longer, who destroys who. And when someone walks into the room and makes everyone friendly?

There's no game left to play.

That's the 4 LAWS.

But here's the thing — when I tell people I have a superpower that makes anyone friendly, they think I'm speaking in metaphors. They think it's a nice idea. A philosophy.

It's not. It's a mechanism. And I want to show you exactly how it works.

The Monster and the Person

Imagine someone walks into the room angry. Yelling. Disrespectful. Maybe it's your teenager. Maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's a coworker.

Most people do one of two things. They fight back — match the anger, raise the volume, escalate. Or they give in — surrender, appease, let the disrespect slide just to keep the peace.

Both responses feed the monster.

Here's what I mean by "the monster." Every person has two sides. There's a respectful, friendly, loving side — the one you fell in love with, the one your child was before all this started. And there's the monster — the angry, hostile, disrespectful side that shows up when things go wrong.

Both sides are real. Both sides are that person. But only one of them can be in front of you at any given moment.

The question is: which one are you feeding?

The Law of Respect — Three Steps

The Law of Respect says: Exclude the disrespectful. Include the respectful. Give importance to what remains.

That sounds simple. But it changes everything when you understand the mechanism underneath it.

Step one: Exclude the disrespectful.

When the monster shows up, it gets filtered out. Not with yelling. Not with punishment. Not with a lecture about how "we don't talk that way in this house." It gets filtered out with selective inattention — you simply stop giving it your energy, your attention, your emotional reaction.

Why? Because disrespectful behavior feeds on your reaction. Every argument you enter, every time you raise your voice back, every time you engage with the hostility — you are fertilizing the monster. You are giving it exactly what it needs to survive and grow.

Selective inattention starves it. The behavior expires because you stopped feeding it.

Step two: If it gets physical, the Law of Limits takes over.

This is critical. We're not talking about standing there while someone hits you. If the disrespect crosses into physical danger — throwing things, hitting, any threat to safety — you take immediate protective action. You create distance. Right now. The Law of Limits handles physical safety. No negotiation, no hesitation.

But most disrespect isn't physical. Most of it is verbal. Tone. Attitude. Eye rolls. Slamming doors. And for all of that, the filter stays up. The monster gets no food.

Step three: Include the respectful and give importance to what remains.

This is where the superpower activates.

When you stop feeding the monster, it starves. The anger burns itself out because there's nothing left to burn. No argument to win. No reaction to provoke. No power struggle to escalate.

And when the monster finally leaves — and it always does, because it can't survive without your attention — the other side of that person comes forward. The respectful side. The real one.

That one gets past the filter.

That one receives your full attention, your warmth, your presence. You give it importance. You listen. You connect. You find the need underneath all that anger — and you satisfy it.

Where attention goes, energy flows, and that is what grows.

The disrespectful side got ignored. It shrank. The respectful side got attended to. It grew. You didn't punish anyone. You didn't win an argument. You didn't force compliance. You chose what to feed — and what to starve.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

I've been a clinical psychologist for over thirty-five years. I specialize in the most defiant, explosive, oppositional kids you can imagine — the ones who've been through every program, every medication, every consequence chart. Nothing worked because everyone was fighting the monster. Everyone was giving it their full attention.

The moment you stop fighting and start filtering, everything changes.

The child who screamed at you for twenty minutes? When the screaming gets no reaction, it gets shorter. Then shorter. Then it stops. And what shows up instead? A kid who says, "Can we talk?" A kid who sits next to you on the couch. A kid who starts making eye contact again.

That's not wishful thinking. That's the Law of Respect doing exactly what it does.

What This Is Not

This is not ignoring your child. This is not pretending everything is fine. This is not being passive.

This is the most active, intentional thing you can do. You are running a filter — in real time — that decides what gets your life force and what doesn't. You are choosing, moment by moment, to starve destruction and feed connection.

It requires discipline. It requires practice. The monster knows how to push your buttons — it's been doing it for years. Your old reflexes will scream at you to engage, to argue, to "set them straight."

That's why we train. That's why the 4 LAWS Academy exists — to build the brain pathways that make this response automatic instead of exhausting.

That kid understood something profound without knowing it. He understood that a world built on fighting can't survive a power that makes people friendly.

The 4 LAWS is a psychology superpower. Not a metaphor. A mechanism.

Exclude the disrespect. Starve the monster. Wait for the good side to emerge. Then give it everything.

And yes — it ruins the game. Because the game depends on fighting. And once you stop fighting, there's no game left to play.

There's just connection.

Dr. Eduardo M. Bustamante is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with over 35 years of experience treating disruptive disorders. He is the creator of the 4 LAWS framework and author of "The 4 LAWS of Trust and Talent." Learn more at 4lawsacademy.com.