Archives for June 2011

June 27, 2011

On Health, Life and Love

I’m in writing overdrive. But you’re not going to see the content here on the blog, because it’s for an information product I’m currently working on.

I can’t tell you anything about it at this point, except that it is a practical, bullshit-free guide to making conversation with confidence. And it’s coming along beautifully.

I get so many emails on this topic that I decided it’s about time I create an information product addressing this issue.  There are four or five emails related to this in my Inbox right now, still waiting for me to answer them.

Anyway, since all my writing energy is focused on the guide this week, I decided to share with you on People Skills Decoded a couple of the educational videos I’ve been watching lately and getting a lot of value out of.

The first video is a presentation made by Mark Sisson, who is in my perspective one of the leading authorities on healthy eating and living, and the creator of the Primal Blueprint.

In this video, recorded at The 21 Convention, Mark discusses how to eat and exercise to be healthy, lean and active. If you tend to go with the conventional wisdom on this subject (whole grain cereals and stuff) this presentation will surprise you. Watch it here.

The second video is an old favorite of mine: a presentation on the science of love made by Helen Fisher, a person who actually studies love scientifically. Check it out below or on TED.

Big things are coming. Stay tuned.

Image courtesy of Sister72

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment
June 20, 2011

Wow! 22 Personal Development Guides

If you are a personal development passionate, if you want to make the best out of your life, this is literally a once in a lifetime offer and I’m writing this post to let you know about it as soon as possible.

Some of the best and the brightest personal development bloggers out there have joined forces to give you their e-books, courses and guides in a package like you’ve never seen before. Check it out here.

Here’s why this is an awesome learning and growth opportunity for you:

  • There are 22 products in this package, worth a total of $1087.
  • For only 72 hours, you can have them all of them as a bundle, for only $97.

The package covers pretty much the entire range of personal development: money, career, happiness, confidence, relationships, productivity, traveling, love, and the list goes on.

Some of the tiles in this pack that grabbed my eye include:

  • Focus by Leo Babauta, one of the best and most read bloggers alive;
  • Reclaim Your Dreams by Jonathan Mead, who is an authority on, well, reclaiming your dreams.
  • A Daring Adventure collection, by Tim Brownson, one of the truly good life coaches out there.

What you have here is a compilation of the finest information products in the realm of personal development from people who really know their stuff. Their combined power to help you transform your life is impressive.

I can’t think of enough ways to tell you that you don’t want to miss this opportunity. Each guide in this package sells separately for anywhere between $37 and $77. For only 72 hours, you can get all 22 of them for just $97.

This special offer expires at Noon Eastern, on Thursday, June 23 and it will not be repeated. So you might wanna hurry up. Check out this package here.

Image courtesy of HarshPatel

Filed Under: News, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment
June 16, 2011

How I Eat and Stay In Shape

I cannot believe that up until now, I have not written an article here about the way I eat. Yes, this blog is primarily centered on people skills, but healthy eating and living is such a big deal for me that it’s about time you and I have a talk about it.

In short: I’m going to share with you the way I eat to stay healthy and upbeat. It’s a method I’ve been implementing for the past year, after years of trial and error on other paths. It is creating impressive results for myself and many other people.

The method is primal eating and it is part of a whole primal lifestyle. You can find The Primal Blueprint, the book that fittingly details this way of eating and living, here.

My Evolution of Eating

When I was 19, while reading the chapter on health and energy in a Tony Robbins book, I had the epiphany that a good health is really important, and I decided to make being in tip-top shape a priority for myself. In time, this decision got reinforced continually.

Later, I became a permissive vegetarian, as what I was reading suggested that vegetarianism is the best way of eating and staying healthy. At that point, as a newbie, it made sense.

The only problem was that after a while, I noticed that my energy level wasn’t very high and my mood wasn’t too good either. Also, as I kept reading and researching the topic of healthy eating, I started to question the validity of vegetarianism from a scientific perspective.

For example, I started wondering: If vegetarianism is our natural way of eating, why do most vegetarians have deficiencies in B12 vitamin and need to take supplements? If we are naturally vegetarians, then eating vegetarian should give us all the nutrients we require.

As I continued my research, I stumbled a couple of years ago on the paleo lifestyle and the primal lifestyle. They are similar in nature, although paleo focuses more on eating while primal focuses on the broad range of lifestyle choices: eating, exercise, sleeping etc.

At first, I didn’t pay too much attention to these two lifestyle choices. But the more I read, the more I stumbled upon positive reviews of them. The data started to stack up and it was inspiring.

Eventually, about one year ago, I began to dig into the topic of primal eating and living: books, blogs, scientific research, case studies and so on. I was stoked by what I read, and I quickly decided to go primal. It was one of the best health and fitness decisions I ever made.

Eat Like a Caveman

The crux of primal eating is this: our species (Homo sapiens) has been around for about 1.5 million years. However, civilization has only been around for about 10.000 years, which is like a day within one year if we scale it down. On top of this, heavily processed and genetically modified food has only been around for a few decades.

From on evolutionary perspective, our bodies did not have the time to adapt to this new way of eating and living. For the most part, we still digest food the way out ancestors did back in the Paleolithic period.

Thus, if we want to stay healthy, be in shape, have massive energy and live long, fit lives, we need to eat the way our ancestors did for 99% of our existence as a species. That’s what we are biologically adapted to.

So, what did our Paleolithic ancestors eat? Well, they were hunter-gatherers. They ate mostly meat, fish, eggs, fruit, leafs and vegetables. In these foods, they found all the nutrients they needed to live a healthy life. And we modern humans can as well.

Mark Sisson, the creator of the Primal Blueprint sums it up nicely in this short video.

The Raw Results

We’ve all heard it before that fruits and vegetables are good for us, so no surprise there in primal eating. The counterintuitive advice is to eat lots of meat and to avoid grains. This is where primal eating seriously strays from vegetarianism.

Prior to going primal, I used to eat lots of bread (whole grain), pasta, cereals and cookies. In other words: grain based food. I also avoided meat. However, in the last year, I’ve reversed this process completely.

Looking at the results, it’s been one of the best dietary decisions I have ever made. For starters, I have more energy than I ever had. I am able to focus a lot better, work until late and not feel tiered.

I sleep less, live more intensely and I feel really good psychologically. I have nights when I go salsa dancing and I dance almost non-stop for the entire night. In the morning, it feels like I just had a light workout.

Personally, I can’t illustrate any results related to losing weight. I’m thin as a rail and dropping pounds has never been my concern. However, I do have a friend who decided to give the primal blueprint a try and managed for the first time in years to lose weight and keep it off without starving himself.

Beyond my results, the number of personal stories from people who switched to a primal lifestyle and managed to lose weight, get in shape, gain more energy and boost their mood is staggering.

What I really like about primal eating is that it’s very well researched. It is very convincing from a rational, scientific perspective and it’s in line with the top research in nutrition (which is often not the research most of us find out about).

A Primal Blueprint Review

I find the logic of primal eating and living impenetrable. At this point, I can’t believe so many people still don’t have a clue about it and they’re wasting their lives counting calories, exercising like mad and trying to get in shape by applying narrow-minded nutritional advice.

I strongly encourage you to check out the Primal Blueprint, as I give it a highly positive review, and to try primal living. In fact, I believe it may turn out to be one of the best lifestyle decisions you have ever made.

Mark Sisson, the author of the book, provides in it a complete map for healthy eating, exercising, sleeping and living. The entire blueprint is rigorously researched and it literally makes sense from any angle you look at it.

Even more, primal eating is less grueling that vegetarianism or any diet you can ever go on. It’s something to learn about and implement as a life-long eating strategy.

Image courtesy of  ionea76

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Success Tagged With: , , , , 4 Comments
June 9, 2011

How to Improve Conversation Skills

I see conversation as the glue that sticks people together. If you pay attention to how people bond, socialize and build partnerships, you’ll notice that it’s done mostly through the art of conversation.

It’s a very big surprise to me that throughout most of our formal education, we don’t learn how to improve conversation skills, because I believe they are some of the top skills one can have in our society.

Going beyond formal education, I find most books and courses on how to improve conversation skills to be crammed with platitudes and simplistic advice.

Since in my work as a social confidence coach I help my clients apply effective ways to improve conversation skills, I’m going to share with you the key action steps that, in time, I’ve noticed to contribute the most to mastering conversation.

Start with Conversation Confidence

The majority of persons who contact me and tell me they lack conversation skills, I usually find out upon a thorough inspection that first and foremost, they lack conversation confidence.

It’s not that they don’t have something to say or they don’t know how to converse; it’s that they lack the confidence to do so. They’re afraid they’ll say the wrong thing, come off as awkward or make fools of themselves. Thus, they end up being coy in social interactions.

Many times, 80% of their problem would be solved if they would get conversation confidence. But since they misdiagnose their situation, they seek to learn how to improve conversation skills instead, and they alienate themselves in this quest.

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If you lack conversation confidence, start by getting this handled. Your lack of confidence is based on perfectionism and limiting beliefs, and it is in fact the primary cause of conversational deficiency. Change your thinking; your conversation skills will follow.

Because there are a lot of things to be said on this, I have a free conversation confidence guide for you in which I’ll teach you a 3-step process to become confident in conversations. Go here to get it.

Get More Social

I frequently hear people who struggle in their social interactions saying that they want to learn how to improve their conversation skills so they can then go out and socialize more. They believe if they just get the right techniques, the social animal within them will come out.

In reality, it works exactly the other way around. You go out more, despite your shortage (real or imagined) of conversation skills, you participate in social activities, you interact with lots of people, you make conversation, and as you do so, your skills sharpen.

This may be an uncomfortable reality because in entails that you face your shyness and socialize more, but it’s the only viable option. The primary way to sharpen your social skills is exposure to social situations.

This exposure, along with a constructive mindset, will gradually make your conversation style self-regulate and it will become more engaging, charismatic and powerful. It’s mostly a matter of practice and desire.

Balance the Energy

Think of a conversation as an exchange of energy. Well, whenever such an exchange takes place, balance is always important. You want the energy going one way to match the energy going the other.

This balance is often the missing ingredient in discussions between two people. In many conversations:

  • One person does most of the talking, while the other does most of the listening;
  • One person is whining, while the other is providing support;
  • One person is the entertainer, while the other is the entertained.

Whenever I see or I am in a conversation like that, I feel like there’s something missing and the social dynamic there is not sustainable.

Like most things in life, good conversation implies balance. It is through balancing the energy in discussions that you become able to make them fruitful for both/all the persons involved.

Master Self-Expression

From my perspective, the better you become at communicating opinions, feelings and experiences using language, the more interesting conversation you can make.

Again, confidence plays a big role. So, make sure to check out my free conversation confidence guide to get this area handled.

I find that many people have a very generic and vague way of expressing themselves. They talk in clichés, and they don’t put the richness of their inner world into the outer world. They may be really interesting people, but because they lack in verbal skills, few others ever find out.

Practice expressing yourself with words. Paint vivid and rich pictures in the minds of your audience, using words. This is something I’ve focused on mastering in many of my public speaking experiences and I can tell you that it’s just a matter of practice, repetition and persistence.

With the four conversation pillars above in place, making artful conversation is not hard at all. It’s easy, fun and something you look forward to every day.

In the process of learning how to improve your conversation skills, keep these pillars in mind and give them priority. They will take you and your social life very far.

Image courtesy of moriza

Filed Under: Communication Skills, Lifestyle, Success Tagged With: , , , 5 Comments