Archives for September 2012

September 24, 2012

How to Not Care What People Think

Are you very sensitive to other people’s opinions? When someone says something negative about you, does it usually hurt a lot? When someone thinks badly of you, do you tend to mull over it incessantly? Then it’s crucial for you to learn how to not care what people think.

It’s smart to take other people’s opinions into consideration and use whatever you find valuable in them. However, if you care too much what others think of you, it’s very easy to get hurt, very hard to do what you want in life and very likely to end up unhappy.

The good news is that you can learn how to not care what people think of you, and you can desensitize yourself to other people’s opinions.

As a confidence coach, I’ve helped many individuals achieve this. I’d like to share with you and prescribe several of the practical actions that helped them the most.

1. Understand Your Reasons Clearly

Most negative opinions directed at you that you’ll hear from others concern things you chose to do, or to believe: “The career you picked is stupid”, “That sweater you’re wearing looks awful”, “Your ideas about marriage are wrong”, and so on.

People who are hypersensitive to such statements or views typically have a weak sense of why they do certain things or why they believe certain things. So when others evaluate these things negatively, it matters a lot to them.

In contrast, if you know exactly why you do something or why you believe something, if you understand your motivations clearly and you know you’re not just acting on impulse or following the heard, it’s much harder to care what other people think.

This is why one of the top advices I offer in teaching others how to not care what people think is to develop a good understanding of their own reasons. It’s like putting armor on you and making your choices impenetrable to naive criticism from the outside.

2. Make Opinions Relative

William Shakespeare once said (in Hamlet, to be more precise): “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so“.

I completely agree with this. Opinions are all relative. They don’t reflect reality; they merely reflect people’s subjective perception of reality.

So the fact a person thinks your hair looks good and another that your hair looks bad has little to do with reality and a lot to do with personal taste. And you might as well follow your own tastes when it comes to your own life.

This is a key idea that you can use to desensitize yourself to people’s perceptions.

When others say bad things about you, remind yourself of the relativity of human evaluations, about the fact they are subjective, not objective. I can vouch from personal experience that this will help you noticeably to calm down and stop feeling bad.

3. Expose Yourself to Adverse Opinions

It’s difficult to care what others think of you if you are used to a wide range of opinions being thrown at you on a regular basis.

For instance, I regularly publish articles on various websites, and in many of them I express some hard-to-swallow ideas. So in the articles’ comments section I get a lot of comments like “This is awesome”, “Brilliant article” but I also get many comments like “This is retarded” or “You’re an idiot”.

And after a period of time, I got used to it. I got used to the praise and I also got used to the ruthless criticism. I still enjoy the praise, but I don’t care about the unconstructive criticism anymore. Now, it actually amuses me.

The lesson here is to stop avoiding hearing adverse opinions and expose yourself to them instead. The more of them you hear, the easier you will take them.

Meet a variety of people, make conversation with them, be genuine and talk openly about your life, beliefs and preferences, even if they may not agree with them. It’s a great way to learn to enjoy appreciation and ignore condemnation.

4. Increase Self-Esteem, Decrease Approval-Seeking

Something I noticed early on is that almost without exception, caring too much what people think is only a symptom of a deeper problem.

This problem is that these oversensitive individuals don’t hold themselves in high regard and they’re perpetually concerned with the approval of others. And in order to get good results, they eventually need to work on this deeper issue and fix it.

Since there is a lot to say on this topic, I have a special presentation for you, in which I discuss how to build self-esteem, stop approval-seeking and gain social confidence. Click here to check it out right now.

Whether it’s learning how to not care what others think or any other positive attitude, it’s always by working from the inside out that you get the best results; from the deeper issues to the surface ones.

Caring too much how others see you is a problem created in your thinking. And ultimately, in adjusting your long-term thinking patterns lies the solution.

This is not hard, but it’s not easy either. It’s just a psychological process, which as long as it’s aided by the right advice, will happen effectively and it will not only transform your emotional reactions, but your entire life.

Image courtesy of bejealousofme

Filed Under: Attitude, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 4 Comments
September 2, 2012

How to Talk to People

Make no mistake about it: in today’s world, knowing how to talk to people is one of the most important virtues you can possess.

If you don’t know how to talk to people it’s hard to make friends, build a social life, grab the interest of the opposite sex or get ahead in your career. But if you do, a whole lot of prospects open up in your life.

The best news I can offer you, based on 5+ years of experience as a social confidence coach, is that you can learn how to talk to people. Good conversation has principles. Know them, apply them repeatedly in social situations, and you’ll drastically boost your conversation skills.

In this article I’d like to share with you these principles and reveal the workings of good conversation. The rest is up to you.

Part1: The Conversation Formula

Basically, there are 3 major components of conversation: 1) asking questions, 2) disclosing information, and 3) changing topics. Do these 3 things right, and you’ll be able to talk to people in all sorts of social settings.

Let’s take a better look at each one of these 3 components and see how you can apply them effectively in conversation.

Step 1: Asking Questions

Questions are the best conversational tool you have to get the other person to share information and engage in the conversation. Thus, you get to know them and their subjective world.

Many books and articles on making small talk will give you lists of questions to use in conversation and encourage you to memorize them. I disagree with this approach entirely.

I believe questions work best when they are genuine, when they reflect an authentic curiosity you have. If you just ask about something because you think you should, but you don’t really care about it, that will usually show.

When you’re having a chat with someone, my advice is to always think about what you honestly want to know about the other person. Then ask questions based on this.

I, for instance, am very interested in people’s careers. So I often ask people I just met “What do you do?” But if you don’t really care about this stuff, by all means, don’t ask about it. Employ your own questions.

Step 2: Sharing Information

A common mistake  that individuals who don’t comprehend how to talk to people make is they ask lots of questions to get the other person to share information, but they don’t share information themselves.

Thus, they end up bombarding their conversation partner with question after question, and the entire discussion feels more like an interrogatory.

A quality conversation combines receiving information with giving information. Even if the other person doesn’t ask you a lot of questions, don’t be afraid to disclose yourself and to share information.

For instance, if I’m on a train and the person next to me is reading a book, and I want to start a conversation with them, I might ask them “What are you reading?” After they tell me the name of the book, I might ask them “What’s it about?”

But after they answer, I usually won’t ask yet another question. Instead, I’ll make a comment apropos what they said about the book, something simple and genuine, and then I’ll tell them a bit about a book I’ve read recently and I enjoyed.

So I’ll combine asking questions with sharing information. This is what makes a conversation work.

Step 3: Changing Topics

A 5-minute conversation can be on a single topic. But long conversations typically need to go through several topics. If you want to have long conversations, which tend to build the deepest connections with people, it’s important to move it from one topic to another.

When you feel the topic you’re discussing is drying out, don’t let the conversation die. Move it to another topic.

My rule of thumb is to try and keep the topics related. For example, after I talked with a person about books for a few minutes, it makes sense to move the conversation to movies, because it’s a related topic. And from one connect topic to another, I can take the conversation anywhere.

However, it is absolutely fine if you sometimes make big shifts in the conversation subject. For example, you move from books to “So, what do you do for a living?” That’s also a normal part of conversation. Just don’t do it every 30 seconds.

By asking questions, sharing information and changing topics, you effectively make a conversation happen. You get to know the other person, they get to know you, you cover a range of topics, and you connect with each other.

The truth is basic conversation isn’t exactly rocket science.

However, I can tell you there are plenty of people who, even after they understand these principles thoroughly, still have a hard time talking to others. Add it’s not a problem related to lack of knowledge, it’s a problem related to conversation confidence.

Part 2: Building Conversation Confidence

You can have questions to ask, yet not ask them because you fret you’ll come across as rude or impertinent. You can have things to say but not say them because you fear they’re not interesting. And you can have topics you want to talk about but not do so because you worry you’ll make a fool of yourself somehow.

You see, knowing how to talk to people and being able to talk to people are two very different things.

You can understand the rules and principles, but if you have fears like the ones I mentioned (which are usually unfounded), you’ll hesitate, you won’t say very much, you’ll stumble over your words when you do, and your conversations will still be sloppy.

The only solution to this problem is to overcome your limiting beliefs and build conversation confidence. This transformation is what you should focus on above all.

Since this is a huge subject, I have created a special presentation in which I’m gonna teach you how to do this. Check it out here and learn the secrets of conversation confidence.

Then take the know-how gained from it and make use of it in your own life.

When you have positive beliefs about yourself and you’re confident, you don’t second-guess yourself, you instinctively know what to say, you are natural and you are willing to take risks in social interactions.

At the end of the day, this is what gives you the ability to talk to people effortlessly and build the relationships you want with others.

Image courtesy of Brandon Christopher Warren

Filed Under: Communication Skills, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , , 8 Comments