How to Cultivate Gravitas

7 habits to practice so people take you seriously

Gravitas means you have weight. People tend to conflate it with somberness and over-seriousness, but the men who have the most gravitas usually have an equal amount of charisma.

Gravitas means you have responsibilities that you take seriously, but you don’t take yourself seriously. You treat things with the tone and attention they deserve.

Modern society is constantly trying to tear down the gravitas of fatherhood. Most media portrays fathers as bumbling boys whose greatest contribution is the occasional “dad joke.”

No wonder many men refuse the call to true fatherhood. They see weak men who get no respect, and they run far, far away from whatever that is.

But true fathers have gravitas. They have a weight that attracts and influences. If you want to have an influence on your children and on others around you (including young men who are looking for good models of fatherhood), then you need to cultivate and promote your own gravitas.

Here are a few ways.