Archives for January 2011

January 26, 2011

Are You Missing Half the Ingredients to Happiness?

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that in the end, all of the things we aim for are ways to increase our happiness and that happiness is our ultimate goal as living, breathing human beings.

It does take a bit of a genius though to achieve a high and sustainable level of happiness. Coaching others, I’ve realized that many people seriously lack in happiness because they have a bad understanding of what happiness is and what actually makes us humans in general happy. So, I’m gonna tell you.

The Two Sides of Happiness

One of probably the best things psychologists have done lately is to deconstruct happiness. Their conclusion, which I support wholeheartedly, is that although happiness has many sides to it, there are two basic ingredients that compose it.

The first ingredient is pleasure. It’s the basic, positive emotional state you get when you do certain kind of activities. We sometimes call these activities our passions. Examples of passions include: reading, writing, dancing, painting, organizing, evaluating, solving problems, talking, listening and so on.

The second ingredient is fulfillment. This is the more complex positive emotion you get when you look back at the things you have done and you find that those things are meaningful to you, because they’re aligned with your values.

Some people – such as myself – find fulfillment in helping others develop, some in making others feel happy, some in building a thing and some in creating a piece of art or poetry. Generally, we feel fulfilled when we have a contribution to something larger than ourselves.

Here Comes the Problem

In my experience the number one way people sabotage their happiness is this: going for one of the two ingredients above, while ignoring the other. Thus, two types of people are shaped, for which I have coined up names:

1. The party person. This is the person who knows how to have fun but not how to get fulfillment. Party persons do the things they’re passionate about; they typically have a lot of hobbies and they party a lot (therefore the name). However, they often end up reflecting upon their lives and feeling unfulfilled because something is missing.

2. The spiritual person. This is the person who is aware (mostly intuitively) of the importance of contribution and a higher purpose. Spiritual persons seek a higher plain of living and they stick to their key values. However, in their strict spiritual journey, they often work themselves like a mule and they forget to have some fun.

Of course, there is also a third type of people who don’t go after pleasure or fulfillment and they pretty much gave up on life, but I don’t even want to talk about them.

The Complete Life

By this point you probably already know where I’m going: you can only have a truly happy life if you:

  • Acknowledge both sides of happiness, pleasure and fulfillment, and
  • You seek to balance them out in your life.

Me, I love public speaking. When I’m doing a speech and I’m in front all those people dissecting a topic I’m knowledgeable about (such as people skills), I feel very good. At the same time, after a speech, I have this perception of having helped those people in the audience open new doors in their lives and I also feel fulfilled.

It is the mix of pleasure and fulfillment that’s key. I believe that what you want to do is combine activities that give you pleasure with activities that give you fulfillment every day. Better yet, find activities that give you both and spend as much time as possible doing those kinds of activities.

Get out there and wisely make the best of it. If life is worth living, life is worth living right.

Image courtesy of BoSquidley

Filed Under: Inspirational, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , 12 Comments
January 21, 2011

The Bold Guide to a Fast Track Career

If patience is not one of your virtues and you have a strong desire for success, than a fast track career is for you. As a matter a fact, I barely meet anyone who doesn’t crave a fast track career, in which they can grow like a kid on steroids.

Well, a kid on steroids is not a healthy thing, but a fast track career, provided it grows organically, is. I know plenty of people who were successful managers by 25, top managers in Fortune 500 companies by 29 and flourishing entrepreneurs at 33.

It can be done and there is a recipe for it. Here are the key ingredients, from my perspective, of a fast track career.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

I find that most people start off with big career dreams, but they forget about them quickly enough. They get distracted by the comfort a safe and warm job, the free cookies and the company teambuilding programs, and career progress stops being a mental priority for them.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a coach is that once something stops being a mental priority, you pretty much stop working towards achieving it. This is the sad little story of the careers millions of people have.

If you want to have a fast track career, it’s essential to keep your eyes on the prize and never forget your goals. Enjoy the benefits a particular job, but don’t let them sidetrack you: mentally, emotionally or behaviorally.

Don’t Stay In One Place Too Long

The people who make really fast progress in their career and get to a place most only dream of, all have one key trait in common: they are predators.

They don’t let anything keep them in one place for long. When they’ve learned a job, they immediately seek advancing in the company. If they discover they can’t advance in the company, they immediately start looking for another company. They act fast, they move fast and they are ferocious about it.

Fast trackers don’t let senseless norms keep them from moving forward. In my experience, this is in huge contrast with the behavior of the average employee, who will bitch about a job with no growth potential but will stay in it for years.

This doesn’t mean fast trackers have no ethics. If a company invests in them for two years and helps them become top professionals, smart fast trackers know to pay their dues. However, once their dues are paid, they seek the bigger better thing without delay.

Put Your Needs First

The fundamental thing that stops most people from being predators and having a fast track career is that they care too much about the needs and opinions of others and they put those first. Thus, they sacrifice their own goals to help the team, to not seem selfish and so on.

If you want to make fast career progress, it is essential to learn how to gain confidence and put your needs first, without ignoring the needs of others. This is commonly referred to as assertiveness, and it is one of the essential life and people skills to master.

Probably the most important part in becoming assertive is a mental leap: realizing that you do not exist in this world primarily to serve others, but to serve yourself and make the most out of your life.

 

This is not bad or immoral, it is the mature and healthy attitude that people with self-respect have. It is also the way to fast career progress.

Image courtesy of EdoM Photography

Filed Under: Attitude, Career, Success Tagged With: , , , , 6 Comments
January 16, 2011

How to Start a Conversation

Some people seem to naturally know how to start a conversation. They can kickoff conversations anywhere, from a party, to a seminar, to a queue at the supermarket. I’ve always admired these rare people.

On the other hand, working as a social confidence coach, I often meet people who don’t know how to start a conversation and struggle with this, either all around or in particular types of situations.

Learning how to start a conversation easily and effectively has been one of the key points in developing my people skills, and this is a big part of why I also enjoy teaching it.

Forget What You Thought You Knew About Starting a Conversation

Chances are, you already have a baggage of concepts on how to start a conversation from word of mouth, family education, books and articles.

My first recommendation in order to boost your conversation skills is to leave them behind, because most of them probably come from limiting mindsets. I’m talking about mindsets that overemphasize the importance of politeness or make impressing others the conversational priority.

I find that most advice on how to start a conversation makes you come off either rigid and insecure (at best) or creepy (at worst). So I’m going to take you into a somewhat different frame for starting conversations.

I think you first need to get a good idea of how to develop your conversation confidence. Once you get the attitude component handled, starting conversations with anyone becomes a walk in the park.

Check out my instructional presentation on this topic on this page, which will teach you a simple, 3-step formula for developing your conversation confidence.

The Golden Rule: Be Friendly

Forget about impressing people right off the bat when you start a conversation. You’ll have plenty of time to impress with your slick, charming self. I have one golden rule for starting a conversation and that is to be, or at least appear, friendly.

Your goal is not to impress, it is to show that you are a relaxed and sociable person who wants to have an enjoyable chat. That’s the best way to engage another person in a conversation.

When I work with my clients to help them improve the way they initiate a conversation, we focus on developing a friendly vibe more than anything else. And a friendly vibe is demonstrated mostly by your non-verbals.

So instead of focusing on coming up with clever conversation starters that will instantly woo the other person, focus on:

  • Smiling and holding eye contact;
  • Breathing regularly and relaxing your body;
  • Keeping your posture open and non-threatening.

Ask Good Questions

One of the most important tools for engaging another person in a conversation is your curiosity. Your curiosity best manifests itself in the way you ask questions, which is one people skill I think is critical.

First of all, you want to ask big, open-ended questions that require more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and create for the other person the context to really talk about themselves.

Secondly, you don’t want to stick with the typical questions as conversation starters just because other people do so. The questions you ask, in my view, should be authentic and reflect your honest interests. You have much better chances of taking a conversation somewhere by putting your real interests forward.

Yes, Preparation Is Fine

If you struggle with starting conversations with some people or in some contexts, it’s OK to use conversation starters you’ve learned ahead of time and practiced before. Equipped with good conversation starters, you will have a tool for engaging people and you will feel more at ease.

However, it’s really dangerous to become depended on lines and conversation starters. This instructional presentation on conversation confidence I made explains why. If you have trouble starting conversations, it’s a must to check it out.

On the other hand keep in mind that at a certain point, as your conversation and people skills sharpen, memorized conversations starters are best to be left behind. Furthermore, remember that good conversation starters reflect your authentic curiosity. They’re not lines you use robotically; they’re adjusted to you and to the social context.

A Conversation Is a Two-Way Street

I often find that lots of people hesitate to talk about themselves, especially at the beginning of a conversation. They may believe it’s impolite or they may not be comfortable with opening up, so they choose to bombard the other person with questions as an alternative.

Nobody wants to feel like they’re in an interrogatory when they’re having a conversation: What do you do? Where do you live? Where do you work? Where are you from? What hobbies do you have? That is too many questions for two minutes of conversation.

Study people who are able to start conversations with ease in a semi-obsessive-compulsive manner like I did, and you’ll notice they are very open and talkative, and they have something to say about almost anything. This is why I believe that learning how to start a conversation is an exercise in opening up more.

If I were to synthesize how to start a conversation in one concise phrase, it would be this: have a combination of friendliness, curiosity, authenticity and verve. This mix is an almost magical key which opens many doors in social interactions. And more open doors mean more options.

Image courtesy of Batara

Filed Under: Communication Skills, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 16 Comments
January 10, 2011

How to Overcome Shyness

Almost fifty percent of people describe themselves as shy. If it didn’t have such dire consequences on ones life, shyness would almost be a fashionable thing. However, it does have bad effects and this is why knowing how to overcome shyness is important.

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Do a search on the web for ‘how to overcome shyness’ and you’ll discover thousands of articles and ten times more tips on this topic. Try to put them into practice and sadly, you’ll also discover that much of the advice on how to overcome shyness is vague, impractical or just plain wrong.

Doing social confidence coaching with people with shyness, I’ve realized that there’re only a handful of ideas and techniques which provide consistent and powerful results in overcoming shyness. I want to share the most effective ones with you.

Overcoming Shyness Starts with Stretching

No, not physical stretching, but emotional. Here’s the thing: it is common for us human beings to stick to doing what is easy and comfortable for us. Thus, many shy people, because they don’t feel comfortable around other people, will tend to isolate themselves.

They will spend many hours alone, watching TV, playing computer games and secretly fantasizing about a better social life. This only works against them because it reinforces their shyness and makes the people skills they may have atrophy.

Learning how to overcome shyness starts with doing the opposite: gradually getting more out of the house, exposing yourself more to social situations and interacting more with people. Since this may feel uncomfortable at first, it’s a form of emotional stretching.

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Stretching yourself and interacting more with people works great because it gets you used to social situations and the social anxiety starts to drop. Also, your people skills steadily improve and that’s how to gain confidence.

Get Some Accurate Feedback

Working with shy people or people with an inferiority complex, I often notice that they have a hugely distorted image of themselves and how they come across to others. They usually think they are weird and that other people realize this in the very first seconds of talking with them.

If you are somewhat shy, getting some accurate feedback about your social persona from other people will be highly valuable for you in overcoming shyness. It will help you get your feet on the ground by realizing you’re an OK person.

What you basically do is ask a number of people who know you and trust about the way they see you. You can ask them a few questions about the qualities and the flaws they see in you, about the first impression you create and so on.

You can ask them all of this in a relaxed conversation, or you can request them to give you feedback using an anonymous feedback form. Feel free to test various methods.

Cut Down Mind-Reading

Mind-reading is the process of trying to figure out what a person thinks or how they feel by reading subtle cues in their behavior, words, voice tone or body language.

However, since these signals are hard to interpret accurately and shy people often exaggerate in their interpretations, this process is a lot like trying to read other peoples’ minds and it provides grossly inaccurate results.

If you want to overcome shyness, you’ve got to realize that you can’t read other peoples’ minds and that whatever interpretations you’re making of each small gesture are probably wrong. As you do so, you can move on to consciously reducing your mind-reading and thus overcoming your shyness.

Learn To Let Go Of Perfectionism

The final part of the answer to the question “How to overcome shyness?” has to do with changing your self-imposed standards.

Make sure to check out my free conversation confidence guide for more details on solving this issues, as well as as how to transform into an authentic and  confident person in social settings. Get it here.

Shy people tend to be insanely perfectionist. They ask of themselves to come across as ideal and they have a low tolerance for people not liking them or not approving of them. If you want to enjoy social interactions more, abandoning such absurd standards is a must.

Now, notice that I didn’t say “let go of perfectionism”, I said “learn to let go”. This is because it’s a process. It will call for identifying your perfectionist social expectations as they manifest in your habitual thinking, then addressing them by changing your thinking in a conscious manner.

By the way, I have a free social confidence guide for you that will teach you how to do this and overcome shyness.

A Systemic Approach

Overall, overcoming shyness effectively takes not only the right pieces of advice and techniques, but also applying them in a systemic style. This implies:

  • Setting gradual personal development goals for yourself;
  • Working on them daily and rewarding yourself;
  • Persisting and getting back on track if you quit;
  • Mixing the internal cognitive change with the external behavioral change.

As you do so, you will see gradual progress and the occasional leaps forward. You will rewrite your map of the world and your social habits. As a result, you will experience more social freedom and a richer social life. That’s how to overcome shyness the successful way.

Image courtesy of fanfan2145

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills, Psychology Tagged With: , , 40 Comments
January 6, 2011

How to Make Small Talk

Many people don’t know how to make small talk. Often, these people are busy, results-oriented individuals, they have big goals and they don’t see the point of making small talk.

Thus, there is a double challenge I’m going to address here: not only clarifying how to makes small talk with style, but also what is it’s precise significance in social situations and interactions.

Why Making Small Talk Matters

Small talk is often seen as meaningless conversation motivated by social politeness: It lacks meaning and value, but you do it because that’s the proper thing. Well, I couldn’t disagree more with this idea.

In my definition, small talk is conversation on safe and somewhat superficial subjects (the weather, the news, the hottest movies or the latest fashion), but it is not meaningless conversation.

Personally, I’ve learned to stay away from meaningless conversation. If I don’t enjoy it and don’t find significance in it, I do one of two things: I change the subject or I eject. Other than the topic, there is nothing small about small talk and this is why knowing how to make small talk matters as a people skill.

Before anything else, you need to realize that if you struggle with making small talk, it’s to a large extent a confidence issue. People who are confident in social interactions are naturally able to make small talk and connect with others.

So one way or another, you’ll need to get this handled. My conversation confidence presentation will provide you a solid foundation for this. So check it out here for free and learn the secrets to being a confident conversationalist. It’s loaded with practical advice.

Keep It Meaningful

Making small talk makes a lot of sense with people you’ve just met. Imagine asking a person you know for 30 seconds: “So, how’s you sex life?” That is waaay too intrusive! Small talk on the other hand provides a method to ease into the discussion.

When I make small talk, the subjects may be superficial for comfort, but they’re subjects I care about and I approach in straightforward manner, staying away from clichés. This way, I make the discussion meaningful for me and frequently, as a result, for the other person.

Even if I’ll chat with a person I’ve just met about the weather, I’ll make the conversation meaningful. For example, if it’s winter I’ll mention how I don’t like the cold weather, how it probably has something to do with the fact I was born in mid-summer and how I can’t wait for the summer and the sunny beach.

Focus on what is interesting as a topic and on what is real within you. You’ll make the talk fun even though you keep it small.

Have a Life

It’s easy to make small talk when you have a lot of things to chat about. One key realization I had as a social confidence coach is that people who know how to make small talk well have a rich inner and especially outer life.

Conversation is for them just a matter of expressing that. It’s much harder to make small talk well when all you do is work a repetitive job or play on the computer all day.

A rich lifestyle creates content and it helps you engage others. If you don’t have one, it’s time to create it: read, travel, try new things, take on various hobbies, do some charity work and of course, socialize. Not only that this will help your conversations, but it will make your whole life a lot more rewarding as well.

Care about the Vibe More Than About the Topic

A conversation is much more than an exchange of facts and ideas. It is an exchange of energy. What many people miss is that when you know how to make small talk, it means you can create a positive exchange of energy.

The topic is just an excuse, so it doesn’t have to be a deep topic. When I’m out with my friends, we’ll spend hours talking about clothes, pubs, scooters or trends. And we’ll have a blast because the vibe of the entire interaction is positive and relaxed.

When you’re making small talk, you want to focus more on being friendly and positive than on picking the right topic or saying the right things. Smile, relax, joke around, be spontaneous and be silly.

Remember that your vibe comes mainly from your attitude, and watch this instructional presentation I created, as it will give you a sensible guide to improving your confidence in social interactions.

Don’t Get Stuck In Small Talk

Last but not least, keep in mind that small talk is not a destination. It’s just a temporary station. If an interaction with a person goes well, do move the conversation to deeper and more personal topics.

You can talk about topics such as family and relationships, career plans, life goals, challenges and so on. You now find yourself in a new land: the land of big talk.

Ultimately, a strong bond between two people is created when they talk about the most meaningful things, in the most meaningful way. Conversation is very much like a journey into a mysterious forest, and a deeper you go in it, the more intriguing it gets.

I believe that knowing how to make small talk is one of the key people skills to master. From there, if you also know how to have charisma and engage others in more intimate conversation, you can get outstanding results with people and you can build a highly fulfilling social life for yourself.

Image courtesy of Ivan Makarov

Filed Under: Communication Skills, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 16 Comments
January 3, 2011

How to Gain Confidence

It’s mind blowing how many times I will coach a client and we’ll reach the conclusion that whatever they’re not getting in their life is the result of a confidence issue. When you know how to gain confidence, you can open up a lot of possibilities in your life.

On the other hand, who truly knows how to gain confidence effectively? There are hundreds of articles, books and trainings on gaining confidence, but do you see many people making substantial progress in this area?

The Deceiving World of Gaining Confidence

When it comes to the advice on how to gain confidence, I think the 80/20 rule applies very well: about 80% of the advice you’ll find out there creates 20% of the results and 20% of the advice creates 80% of the results.

To put in another way, there is a lot of self-help junk out there which does little to improve self-confidence, yet it spreads like the plague. For this reason, my aim with this article is to focus on and bring out those methods for gaining confidence that provide the best results.

These are confidence gaining methods that:

  • I’ve applied personally with consistent success;
  • I’ve seen my social confidence coaching clients apply successfully as well;
  • Are in line with what is now known in the filed of psychology about human emotions and human learning.

Developing Yourself

Your mind is always trying to gauge your level of skill in specific areas in order to generate the optimal level of self-assurance. This is why the first thing I think you want to consider in how to gain confidence is constantly developing yourself.

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If you want to be confident as a speaker, develop your speaking skills. If you want to be confident as a bowling player, develop your bowling skills. The people who invest time and energy in a systematic way in their personal development are also the people who gradually gain more confidence.

There is a catch though: even if this is the first important step, it can be insufficient. Often, our self-image doesn’t keep up with our skill level and our personality. This is why, for example, highly competent and successful people can still have an inferiority complex.

So you may find yourself needing to address your self-image issues directly. I see this phenomenon all the time with my coaching clients seeking to gain confidence and improve people skills, and it is a sign it’s time to do some belief-change work.

Test Your Beliefs

Here’s a common occurrence: let’s say you lack the self-assurance to express some of your opinions because you believe others will find them weird and they’ll judge you for them. So you keep those opinions to yourself, which only reinforces the belief that it’s bad to express them.

A lack of self-confidence often becomes self-sustaining because we never test out the beliefs which support it. If you were to give yourself a push and actually express those opinions, you may find out most people actually find them intriguing, not weird.

This is what I call testing your beliefs in reality. Just because you believe with certainty that something will happen doesn’t mean there is solid, real-life evidence that you are right. Most of us believe strongly in many silly things.

The effective way you can find out if your beliefs are grounded in reality or not is to test them out. Get out there, face your fears and you may be surprised what really happens.

If you want to overcome your limiting beliefs, you simply must watch my video presentation on conversation confidence. It will show you exactly how to crush your insecurities, using a scientifically proven method. Go here to check it out.

Move From Irrational To Rational Thinking

These is the cherry on the cake, and the thickest layer at the same time. I’ve been noticing for some years now a huge correlation between self-confidence issues and irrational thinking. And I don’t mean negative thinking, I mean irrational thinking.

The people who struggle with confidence in some areas interpret some things or they see part of themselves in an unrealistic manner. Those who are scared shitless most of the time have such a way of dramatizing and misinterpreting things I don’t even want to talk about it.

From my perspective, a large part of the answer to the perpetual question “How to gain confidence?” is this: change the way you habitually think.

This is not one single action, it’s a gradual process: it means identifying your irrational thinking, combating it, finding and applying more realistic ways of interpreting events. You can find the guide for this in my free conversation confidence presentation.

As you do so, you’re slowly changing your cognitive schemas and you will naturally improve your confidence from that.

As a coach, I take pride in providing real results for my clients, gaining confidence included. I do so by encouraging them to aim high in their growth but be highly skeptical when choosing the methods they use. That’s how to gain confidence effectively.

Image courtesy of bejealousofme

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Psychology Tagged With: , , 34 Comments