Archives for August 2011

August 30, 2011

An Empowering Way to Look At Social Interactions

I was recently watching Mark Sisson’s talk about The Lost Art of Play. Mark, who is the author of The Primal Blueprint, takes an interesting viewpoint on playing.

He says that play, in any of its forms, entails three key qualities:

  • It’s not directed towards an outcome;
  • It’s in the moment, and;
  • It’s fun.

So if you look at how many of the things you do on a regular basis have these three qualities, you can get a pretty accurate image of how much time you spend playing and how much time you spend being a ‘serious’ adult.

I think that in our society, we have this propensity of turning play into non-play (or if you like, work). We take a regular form of play, let’s say running, we turn it into a severe competition, we make it about performance and winning, and thus we take the unpolluted fun out of it.

Social Interactions as Play

What does this have to do with social interactions?

Well, I believe that social interactions are fundamentally a form of play.

I didn’t always have this perspective. As a pragmatist, I used to think that you should have a goal in a conversation, and ‘work’ during that conversation to achieve it.

I didn’t realize that from a pragmatic perspective, the goal of most social interactions is an intrinsic one. Paradoxically, the goal is to have fun and be in the moment, without any other extrinsic aim.

Looking back now, I guess I was defining social interaction in an approval seeking and superficial way. And I notice that a lot of the people I interact with as a coach define it in a similar way.

They make social interactions about being liked, being accepted, impressing the other person and so on. They attach a lot of meaning to them and consequently, they feel pressured to ‘perform’ well in any interpersonal interaction they have.

I’m not talking about salary negotiations or a speech in front of 500 people. I’m talking about regular, everyday conversations with friends, people they’ve just met, acquaintances, colleagues or neighbors.

Putting Play Back In Your Social Interactions

If you often feel tense during a normal conversation with other people, you can lay a wager on the fact that in your mind, you’re not treating it as play, but as something very grave.

Thus, you stress yourself during social interactions and you do so pointlessly. Well, it’s time to put play back in your interactions with other people. Here are four tips for this.

Tip 1: Start by consciously recognizing that most social interactions you have are not as serious as your mind mechanically makes them out to be. They’re not that big of a deal. You can allow yourself to relax and act in a more aloof manner.

Tip 2: Breathe. When you take something too seriously, you focus so much and you feel so anxious that you forget too breathe. So, consciously focus your breathing; make it slower and more regulated. This will allow you to relax and get more perspective.

Tip 3: Remind yourself that it’s play, not work. During the interaction, you want to constantly bring back in your mind the concept that it’s not that serious; it’s only a form of play. With practice, this will get easier and you’ll need to do it less.

Tip 4: Treat it as a game. How would you treat an interaction if you deeply believed it was only a game? Maybe you would joke more, be more spontaneous, slouch, or take off that silly tie. Well, do any of these things, and as you change your behavior, your feelings will follow.

Becoming a New You in Social Interactions

If conversations often make you anxious, learning to see them as a play and to have fun without seeking approval is not a walk in the park.

I just gave you a few tips. You need to acquire a new way of thinking and a new way of behaving, as well as a method to practice it systematically, until it becomes a part of you.

In less than two weeks, I’m going to release “Conversation Confidence”: a practical audio guide to making authentic, confident and effortless conversation. If you want to become a confident, relaxed conversationalist, and have more fun with it, this is definitely for you.

Conversation Confidence will teach you step by step how to transform your thinking and behavior related to conversations, and become a self-assured conversationalist who enjoys conversations like a 5-year old enjoys hide and seek.

I’m currently fine tuning this guide, and preparing it for the exciting launch. Stay close.

Image courtesy of lanuiop

Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment
August 24, 2011

Where Does Social Confidence Really Stem From?

Social confidence is the term I use to describe the type of confidence that concerns social situations and dealing with other persons.

I think most people have a profound misunderstanding of what it takes to develop social confidence. The problem is that they treat social confidence like any other type of confidence, and they believe developing it requires the same approach.

But it doesn’t. And so they end up going on this strenuous and unnecessary journey towards social confidence. Ironically, they often don’t even reach their destination, because they took the wrong road.

Social Confidence vs. Mechanical Confidence

I refer as mechanical confidence to the confidence regarding certain tasks or roles, and how well you can perform them.

Confidence as a singer, as a football player, as a car driver, as a lawyer or as an accountant, these are all forms of mechanical confidence.

Mechanical confidence in a certain area is reliant on the education, experience, results and appraisals that you’ve received in that area.

For instance: if you work as an accountant and you’ve received training at a top tier accounting school, you have over a decade of accounting experience, you have done correctly all sorts of convoluted accounting tasks and your clients habitually praise you for being such a good accountant, it’s reasonable to have ‘accounting confidence’.

And it makes sense, as you’re likely a very good accountant, with first-class accounting skills.

In the realm of mechanical confidence, skills and confidence go hand in hand. The way to develop your mechanical confidence in a specific area is typically to increase your skills in that area.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t excellent accountants who lack confidence as accountants, but still, the fact they have those excellent accounting skills creates a solid foundation to develop that confidence.

Social confidence is different. Although for the most part, people treat it the same as mechanical confidence.

By this I mean that they think social confidence needs to be based on social skills and social likeability, so they try to increase these elements in order to become more socially confident.

Most people I work with as a coach believe they need to learn how to be funny, how to make captivating conversation or how to impress others in order to feel confident in social settings and become more outgoing.

But they’re making a profoundly wrong assumption.

The Truth about Social Confidence

The fact of the matter is this: social confidence is not dependent on social skills. You don’t need to be a master conversationalist and a charismatic person in order to have social confidence.

Sure, these factors can elevate your social confidence and it’s a good idea to develop your social skills, but don’t believe for a second that without good social skills, you can’t have and shouldn’t have social confidence. Because that’s a bunch of bullshit.

Social confidence is something you expand from inside yourself. Its foundation is not in your social skills, but rather in your thinking.

Some of the most socially confident people I know are complete slobs with no goals in life, and little intelligence, creativity or allure to bring out. They have little that other people can passionately like them for, apart from their confidence in and of itself.

Yet they can feel confident in a social setting, not because the people in that setting like them, but because it doesn’t truly matter to them whether these people like them or not. They don’t need other people’s approval.

If you’re trying to develop your social confidence by trying to become a better, more likeable person, you’re pointlessly taking the long wrong.

Really, the best way to go is to just work on your social confidence directly. Focus on weeding out your limiting beliefs, embrace the notion that you don’t need the people around you to approve of you, and your social confidence will rise naturally.

And it’s not that unreliable confidence you have during a conversation when you know the other person is fond of you. It’s a lasting and reliable confidence that comes from your outlook on yourself, others, the world and life.

Once you have this natural social confidence, developing yourself and becoming more socially skilled is just an afterthought.

Image courtesy of iChaz

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , 3 Comments
August 7, 2011

The Magic of Making Up

Romantic relationships: the epitome of complicated.

Once in a while, I like to surf on various personal development forums and read some of the recent threads. I can’t tell you how many threads on these forums are started by people who just broke up or they’re on the verge of breaking up with their partner.

They’re scared, frustrated and desperate for some guidance. It’s puzzling how most of us are so evolved in terms of the technology we use daily, yet so primitive in our understanding of intimate interpersonal relationships.

Over the past few days, I’ve been reviewing The Magic of Making Up, by T.W. Jackson (aka T Dub). This ebook is the leading guide for people who want to get back with their ex and save their relationship. It really got me thinking about this topic.

Feel free to find out more about this ebook here.

Is Getting Back Together The Best Move?

I know that many people, under the emotional turmoil of a break up (read: being dumped), have the automatic impulse of trying to make up with their partner.

It’s a natural reaction. Your mind is trying to get rid of the pain, by getting rid of its perceptible source: the break up.  However, before acting upon this impulse, it’s best to ask yourself: is this the best course of action for me in the long-run?

Sometimes it’s better to accept a relationship ended and move on, as hurtful as it may be at first. T.W. Jackson makes a good point about this in The Magic of Making Up:

The truth is, if you get back with your ex and it truly brings you the long-lasting happy ending you want, then the book has served its best purpose.

But if getting back together with your ex is only going to take you down a long and messy road of misery and unhappiness, it’s probably better than you don’t get what you want this time.

The First Step to Stopping a Break Up

Many relationships are worth saving. If you believe your relationship is in this group, the good news is that you can take concrete, strategic steps to stopping a break up or making up.

This video by T Dub has some powerful pointers on the mistakes to avoid doing in the context of a break up, and the first step to actually implement if you want to save your relationship.

Personally, I found the video not only insightful, but also amusing. Because the mistakes to avoid are the exact things I believe most people tend to do in a brash attempt to salvage a relationship and make the pain go away.

The best action steps are often counterintuitive. This is why, frequently, the utmost thing you can do is to resist your first instinct, think things through and act in a lucid, not emotional way.

Rebuilding the Connection

I believe that ultimately, making up is about recreating a lost emotional connection. That’s the only constructive approach to it.

Trying to guilt your partner into making up with you or to plead your way back into a relationship is either A) not going to work or B) work but get you right back where you started from in just a couple of months.

Manipulation is not a productive method to build any relationship, least of all a romantic relationship.

If you got into a relationship with a person and you both enjoyed it once, it’s because you had some sort of an emotional connection. But that connection either dwindled away in time, or it shattered all of a sudden due to various reasons.

Find a way to restore that emotional connection, and you have a healthy relationship again.

This is what I like about The Magic of Making Up. The best thing I can say in my review of this book is that it doesn’t teach you how to trick your way into a relationship, out of desperation. Instead:

  • It helps you understand what caused the breach in your relationship and decide if salvaging it is the best step;
  • It teaches you an effective, step-by-step strategy to reignite the flame, rebuild the connection and get back with your ex;
  • It provides pertinent advice on how to strengthen your relationship after making up and avoid ending up in the same situation again.

Check out The Magic of Making Up here.

If you have a relationship you want to salvage, you definitely need to read this ebook. It’s the best product on the market on the topic of making up and it will not disappoint you.

Image courtesy of CourtneyCarmody

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment