Archives for February 2012

February 24, 2012

How to Be More Talkative

Many shy and socially anxious people are interested in learning how to be more talkative. Some people seem to naturally be talkative and connect easy with others. They on the other hand struggle with this.

The good news is that you don’t have to struggle. Equipped with some savvy advice on how to be more talkative, you can get out of your shell and participate more in conversations with other people.

As a social confidence coach, one of my biggest delights is to see my clients speedily become more talkative under my guidance. I want to reveal to you the top four pieces of advice regarding how to be more talkative that they apply to achieve this.

Step 1: Manage Your Expectations

People who are quiet go into social settings with flawed expectations that make it almost impossible for them to be social and talkative.

For example, the may expect that everybody should like them, or they should never say something off beam, or they should never upset others.

With these kinds of expectations, you’re bound to be shy in social situations. Because almost anything you could say risks not meeting one or more of them. This is why an important step in learning how to be more talkative is to manage your expectations.

Managing your expectations means to identify what you, consciously or subconsciously, demand of yourself and others in social interactions. And then, to correct these demands: to make them less perfectionist and more down to earth.

This will allow you to feel more at ease in social settings, open up more and enjoy conversation more.

For a step by step explanation of how to manage your expectations and take the pressure off yourself, watch this exclusive presentation I created.

Step 2: Practice Being More Spontaneous

Another pattern in the behavior of quiet people is that they think too much before they say something.

They wanna be sure they always say the smart, funny or right thing and they never say the silly, weird or wrong thing, which is also related to the unreasonable expectations they have.

Consequently, they tend to over-think every sentence they could utter. And when you think too much about something, you always find fault in it and you often end up not saying it.

An excellent exercise for overcoming this is to practice being more impulsive during conversations. What you do is you say what pops into your head before getting a change to evaluate it thoroughly. You think less and you talk more.

As a result, not only that you’re more involved in conversations, but in the long run, you also build confidence in yourself and become comfortable with being more talkative. This is what makes the exercise cool.

Step 3: Remove Your Limiting Beliefs

Having unreasonable expectations, thinking too much and being quiet in social settings are ultimately mere symptoms of certain beliefs you posses.

Most shy or socially anxious people I’ve met or coached don’t hold themselves in high regard, they think they must be perfect or they think others are better than they are. This is the root of their problem.

If you want to permanently eliminate your nervousness in social settings and become more talkative, you need to get to the root of the problem and fix it from there. You need to change a precise cluster of beliefs you hold.

This is not only a helpful insight regarding how to become more talkative, but also a helpful insight to transform your relationships with others completely. And from there, your whole life.

I have a special free guide for you in which I’ll show you how to remove your limiting beliefs and blast away your anxiety in social settings. Go here to check it out.

Step 4: Treat This as a Process

Today you can become a bit more talkative than yesterday. And tomorrow you can become a bit more talkative than today. And in a few weeks, you’ll have accomplished one mind-blowing transformation.

However, you won’t turn from shy to talkative overnight. Don’t expect this, because you’re just adding to those unrealistic expectations that work against you.

The truth is that human psychology doesn’t work that way. It takes some time and practice to change. Not a lot if you do it the right way, but it does take some.

Treat this as a process, not as a quick fix. Work on becoming more talkative day by day, optimize the process, persist, and focus on making steady progress. This is the attitude that individuals who win at this game have.

I can vouch from experience that learning how to be more talkative and effectively applying this knowledge will open a lot of doors for you. You’ll be able to meet more people, make more friends, get more dates and get ahead in your career.

When you’re comfortable with expressing yourself and letting the world know you as you are, you can do great things with your life.

Image courtesy of bicycleimages

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills, Psychology Tagged With: , , , 14 Comments
February 22, 2012

How to Stop Being Shy

If you’re shy, learning how to stop being shy, whether it’s around girls, guys or people in general could be one of the most important things you’ll learn in your entire life.

Once you understand how to stop being shy, you can become more confident, connect with others better and have and enormous amount of fun in social settings. As a social confidence coach, I’ve been able to observe repeatedly how learning this can turn a person’s life around.

There is a lot of advice out there on how to stop being shy. Regrettably, most of it comes from people who don’t have a real comprehension of the psychology of shyness, and it’s too naive or vague to actually do anything for you.

I want to provide you the advice that truly works. So I’m gonna point out the four crucial actions that if you take, will truly allow you to stop being so shy.

Step 1: Stop Being Shy by Starting To Be More Social

Shy people typically get this the other way around. Many social settings make them feel anxious, so they try to find ways to get rid of this social anxiety from home, so they can then be more social.

But the trick is that to a large degree, you get rid of the anxiety by being more social.

Even if social settings make you nervous, you get into them anyway instead of avoiding them. Even if being more talkative is challenging for you, you push yourself to talk more anyway.

You deliberately do the things you fear. And as you do so, you gain social experience and you gradually become more accustomed to engaging in social interactions. Thus, your shyness dwindles away.

If you find it too hard to push against the anxiety and be more outgoing, you simply have to find social opportunities where it’s easier to do so. Start with those and gradually move up. This is a key idea concerning how to stop being shy.

Step 2: Catch Your Distorted Thinking Patterns 

Working with shy people, I’ve noticed that without exception, they have a way of seeing themselves and seeing social interactions that is largely inaccurate.

For instance, they may see themselves as uninteresting when this is clearly not the case, or they may think others are making fun on them in a social settings although there is little evidence to support this notion.

When talking about how to stop being shy, I always emphasize how important it is to identify this inaccurate thinking.

Doing so achieves two things. First, it gives you more motivation to go out, face your fears and be social, because you know your fears are not rational. Second, it enables you to correct the flaws in your thinking. Which leads me to my next point…

Step 3: Put Your Thinking Straight

I often like to refer to shyness as a mental bug. You’re thinking is bugged: it generates distorted predictions and interpretations, which creates nervousness. And you need to debug your mind.

Once you know what’s inaccurate in your thinking, you can start to practice thinking in a new, more constructive way.

You can begin to see your qualities, not just your flaws, see the things you do right, not just the things you do wrong, and not make a big deal out of doing something silly in front of others once in a while.

This video I created explains in more detail how to correct your thinking effectively and make the fastest progress possible. Make sure to check it out.

As you practice this new type of thinking, it gradually replaces the old type and it builds your social confidence.

Step 4: Keep Walking. Keep Practicing

The last but possibly the most valuable thing to realize is that once you know how to stop being shy, it’s not enough. It’s the implementation that yields results.

I’ve seen many people turn from shy to social: young and old, guys and girls. What they all have in common is that they found a method for overcoming shyness that works and they applied it consistently for at least a couple of months.

And through this continuous application over a period of time, they effectively reprogrammed their thinking, feelings and behavior. This is what enabled them to be more outgoing, make friends and fully enjoy social interactions.

Watch this presentation I designed to find out the exact steps these people applied to eradicate their shyness. If you want to achieve the same results, this is a must see presentation.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep walking; to apply the knowledge consistently.

One of the most common mistakes shy people make is that they give up too soon, often when the results just started to show and their confidence is close to taking off. And this is precisely what keeps them stuck.

Learn, apply, persist and be willing to invest in yourself. This is the recipe for the utmost success in overcoming your shyness. There is a big, beautiful world out there, with lots of cool people in it. And they’re all waiting for you.

Image courtesy of dreamylittledancer

Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 65 Comments
February 2, 2012

How to Be Witty

So, you want to learn how to be witty? I understand you perfectly. The witty person in a social setting is the person who gets all the attention, makes everyone laugh, is liked by everybody and has no problems connecting with others.

As a social confidence coach, I work on a regular basis with guys and girls who want to learn how to be witty and charming. I’ve discovered there is a set of precise steps that if any person takes, it can make them considerably wittier. Here they are, taken and explained one by one.

Step 1: Practice Thinking Outside the Box  

Essentially, what makes a person witty and funny in conversations is the fact they say things that are unexpected and creative. And they’re able to say such things because their thinking is outside the box.

Therefore, developing your ability to think this way is a must step in learning how to be witty and funny. And the only true way to develop it is through practice, which can take place while in social settings but also outside of them.

Let’s say somebody asks you: “Hey, are you gonna run to the market, because I’d like to ask you to get something for me?”

Instead of answering in a basic manner “Yes, I am”, think for just a second and see if you can find a more creative way to answer. For example, you may come up with: “Well, I’m not gonna run, I’m just gonna walk to the market. But yes, that’s the gist of it.”

Now that’s a much more clever and amusing way to respond. It’s guaranteed to get at least a giggle. There is another thing though that you have to do to be able to come up with such snappy comebacks, which is the next step.

Step 2: Really, Truly Listen

Studying how to be witty and charming is to a large extent a study in being a good listener. It’s important to really pay attention to the words and messages others convey, in order to find clever and funny ways to respond to them.

The problem is that most people don’t truly listen. They’re stuck in their heads, thinking what to say next or what’s a smart line they can use, instead of paying attention to what the other person is saying.

In a conversation, listening always comes before thinking out of the box. It’s only once you received the full message and its meaning that you may start to think how you can respond to it. Otherwise your comeback will just seem unnatural and odd.

Step 3: Focus on Having the Right Emotional State

I’ll tell you a little secret few people know: the bulk of your ability to be witty and funny has to do with your emotional state. This is why, when a person asks me how to be witty and funny, I usually tell them that the main way is to manage their emotional state.

When you’re in a conversation and you feel confident and relaxed, trust me, you will naturally find all sorts of clever things to say.

The problem is that most persons who want to be wittier feel quite shy and nervous in most social settings. And when you feel like that, you tend to fumble, stumble, act awkward and not be able to think straight. It all goes down the drain from there.

This is why one of the best things you can do is to focus on changing your emotional state in social settings. Don’t concentrate too much on what you say; concentrate more on how you feel. If you’re in the right emotional state, you’ll also be witty and charming.

To find out precisely how you can achieve this emotional state, check out this presentation I created.

Step 4: Stop Putting Pressure on Yourself

In discovering how to be witty, it’s crucial to realize that you can’t pressure yourself to become this way. Well, you can, but it’s simply not going to work. It’s not gonna get you anywhere.

Paradoxically, it’s only when you let go and stop demanding of yourself to be witty and charm everybody that you start to loosen up, feel more confident and then your witty, charming side comes out with ease.

The fact of the matter is that you’re probably putting needless pressure on yourself to impress in social settings. You need to start seeing social interactions as a casual thing and to stop taking them too seriously. And this is a mindset that you can develop with practice.

I have created a special presentation in which I discuss the exact steps you must take in order to develop this mindset and become confident in conversation. Go here to watch it.

Learning how to be witty and funny is a process. It’s a journey of habit-changing, self-discovery and self-empowerment.

You’ll start seeing results as soon as you begin applying the steps I’ve discussed here, but it is consistent application that creates the overall best results.

The more confident and witty you become, the more satisfying your social life becomes, and the more this whole self-growth journey feel like a worthwhile thing.

Image courtesy of  sebastien barre

Filed Under: People Skills, Success Tagged With: , , , ,