November 23, 2010

Why General Culture Is Bullshit

It cracks me up to see so many people who think that having a good general culture is a crucial thing. They believe they should know all sorts of stuff on a wide range of subjects including literature, art, history, geography and politics.

Personally, I couldn’t have a poorer general culture (although I do tend to create the peculiar impression that I know a lot of stuff). My standard answer to a question such as “When did Napoleon invade Russia?” is, depending on my mood, either “On a beautiful morning” or “Don’t know, don’t care”.

Furthermore, as I don’t try to improve in this area, you can imagine I don’t give general culture a lot of value, as opposite to the high value I give good people skills. Here’s why:

General Culture Is Not Practical Knowledge

Most of the knowledge considered to be a part of your general culture has a practical use that stops at superficial conversation. Beyond that, there isn’t much you can do with it. When did knowing the best neoclassical painters practically help for someone, apart from a guide in an art museum?

Sure, there are principles and concepts in various fields that are of practical use to us in everyday life. I believe it’s good to know about the Pareto Principle or the best social media websites. However, that’s not the kind of knowledge general culture is mostly about.

Skills Trample Knowledge

I think I say something like this almost every day: quit reading; start doing! Even practical knowledge has little value if it’s not assimilated and developed into a skill or an attitude. This assimilation process is not based on reading, it’s based on practicing.

It is your skills and attitudes that make you a successful professional, a charismatic person or a great leader; not your general culture. And developing skills effectively means, in my experience, about 5% absorbing information and 95% applying it repeatedly.

This is why it doesn’t surprise me that the most cultured people I know are fairly unsuccessful.

General Culture Makes Boring Conversation

Have you taken part lately in a conversation on German poetry or something like that? Whenever I am, my mind is screaming: “Get me out of here!” and I obey it. It’s no wonder that such conversations are habitually called ‘small talk’.

I find that a conversation on a particular subject in the area of general culture is only interesting if all the persons involved have a strong interest and thirst for knowledge on that particular subject. This, of course, rarely happens. Like it on not, many people would rather discuss relationships than the political system in Ethiopia.

If You Think It Makes You Interesting, You’re in for a Big Surprise

Another idea I consider outdated is that demonstrating a vast general culture will impress others, because it is a very attractive trait.

First of all, the only people you’re gonna truly impress are my grandma and her girlfriends. Secondly, if you want to play this angle, there are a lot more attractive traits than knowing a lot of shit. Consider traits like wits, confidence, people skills and authenticity; these are the ones that give you an edge in social interactions.

It Gets Worse

That part of me that provides communication coaching for a living can’t help but notice that many times, using your general culture as the base in making conversation is a way of hiding oneself. If you’re talking about stuff, you’re not talking putting yourself out there. That doesn’t make you charming, it makes you boring.

I’m sure that at one point in our history, knowing the history of many countries was a very important thing. I suspect it was a way to separate the upper class from the common people who didn’t even have access to that kind of knowledge.

Today on the other hand, general culture, at least in the traditional way of defining it, doesn’t do squat for you. Maybe that’s a sign we need to either leave this concept behind, or reinvent it.

Image courtesy of practicalowl

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Success Tagged With: , , 27 Comments
October 27, 2010

The Worst Job in the World and the Way Out

One of the things I like about coaching is that it creates insights not only for the client, but also for the coach. I recently had a mind blasting insight during a communication coaching session about what is truly the worst job in the world.

It’s not pool cleaner or pig farmer. It’s rather a type of job than a job, which impairs people’s lives in a very cruel way and they often have no idea what’s going on. The worst job in the world, as I see things, is a warm job.

What Is a Warm Job?

You know: it’s not hot, it’s not cold – it’s warm. You may like the company and get along well with your colleagues, but you find the job kind of boring and it’s not really what you want to do. You don’t love it enough to say you have an awesome career but you don’t hate it enough to quit it.

There is a huuuge practical problem with a warm job, because a warm job keeps you stuck. If you truly hate your job, you desperately try to find a better one. I’m not a big fan of negative motivation, but I have seen cases where it helped people move forward to much better jobs.

However, if you have a job which is kind of OK but not really what you want, you will tend to stick with it for a long, long time. The worst job in the world is in my view a job that keeps you in your comfort zone without being highly rewarding, and this is exactly what a warm job does.

I know people who for the past 5-7 years or more, every time I meet, they tell me they would like a better job, as their present one is OK but it’s not exactly their dream job. Nevertheless, they are still in that same job. It is a warm job and it makes these people waste many years.

Escaping From a Warm Job

Because of the odd emotional dynamics it creates, a warm job is probably the hardest to get out of. This is precisely why I say it’s the worst job in the world. However, there are ways to motivate yourself and get out of it.

Working with people to help them improve their people skills and make meaningful career changes, I discovered 3 action steps work best:

1) Have a clear vision of what you want. Know your values, your motivations and your passions very well. This way, you will be fully aware when you are not in your ideal job, instead of just having a vague impression that you’re not.

2) Set big, bold career goals for yourself. You won’t get the motivation to leave a warm job until you make a firm decision to aim for the best job possible for you, to be all that you can be in your career. Big, shinny goals are a prerequisite for good motivation.

3) Set small action steps. I believe this is the most important part and what will truly get you out of a warm job. Small, step by step action steps create that continuous drive to keep moving forward. Set them daily and act on them.

For example, you may aim to spend 30 minutes each day looking for a new job on the Internet, and 2 hours each week networking with people who may be able to help you find a better job.

If you look purely at short term benefits, a warm job is certainly not the worst job in the world. However, if you look at things in perspective, a warm job is one hell of a way to sell yourself short. It’s important to keep improving (not only in terms of people skills) and keep moving.

Image courtesy of Steve Kay

Filed Under: Career, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , , 10 Comments
October 14, 2010

Improving Sleeping Habits and Change

Hey People Skills Decoded fans!

Interesting news: Steven Aitchison from Change Your Thoughts has just released an ebook called “How to Become an Advanced Early Riser” which I encourage you to check out.

I’ve read a pre-launch version of the ebook (I know people) and it really got me thinking about some of my sleeping habits, which is one of the best things a book can do in my perspective.

How to Become an Advanced Early Riser is a practical guide for sleeping less and feeling fantastic (at the same time). It covers some of the most important factors that influence the quality of your sleep, and it provides easy to understand and well structured advice for changing your sleeping habits. Find out more about this ebook here.

Speaking of change, there are a few YouTube videos I’ve found so valuable that I’ve bookmarked them. Some of them are from the area of people skills, some from related areas.

Today, I want to share one such video with you. It’s called “Who Moved My Cheese?” and it’s a short cartoon version of the best selling book with the same name by Spencer Johnson.

It’s a wonderful story about change, inertia, courage and personal beliefs which can provide real inspiration to both individuals and organizations in need of embracing change (who isn’t, right?).

Food for thought: What are the most important you want to make in your life? Are you trying to deny the real value some of them?

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Filed Under: Lifestyle, News Tagged With: , , , 7 Comments
October 6, 2010

Regrets of the Dying / Living

I’ve recently read this article called ‘Regrets of the Dying’ which I found to be breathtaking. The author worked for many years in palliative care, with patients on the dying bed, and the article synthesizes the most common regrets these people had.

Not only that I enjoyed this article, but it also inspired me to write my own reply article to Regrets of the Dying, with a focus on the regrets of the living.

Regrets as Life Lessons

I’ve never worked with people on their dying bed and I hope I never will. However, as a communication coach and a (sometimes) social animal, I did have my share of interactions with people who:

  • Were getting old and becoming highly aware of the passing time;
  • Were getting sick and becoming highly aware of their fragility;
  • Were seriously contemplating their lives and deaths for some reason;

Being sort of a collector of life lessons and people skills wisdom, I was curious to find out what regrets these people had looking back at their lives, to extract valuable lessons. So I asked many of them about this and consequently, I got my data on regrets of the living who are contemplating dying.

The Essential Three Regrets

Since I have a passion for people skills, the regrets I focused on finding out were of course in the area of people skills and how these persons interacted with other human beings. Here are the 3 essential regrets I’ve discovered:

1. I wish I did what I wanted instead of what others wanted.

I had many people telling me things such as:

  • “I wish I didn’t study and work in Engineering because my family wanted me to do so. I whish I had chosen Sociology instead, which was my real passion.”
  • “I wish I didn’t get married so fast because all my friends were getting married and expected me to do the same soon. I wished I had stayed single longer.”

In moments of meaningful contemplation, almost all the people I know seem to discover that living the way they want is or would have been much more rewarding than living a life pleasing others, no matter who those others are.

2. I wish I didn’t take what others thought of me so seriously.

When people look back at how they have lived their lives, many tend to discover they’ve spent a lot of time worrying what others thought of them. Of course, they also discover this was a huge waste of time, because most worrying was pointless.

Knowing they are going to die soon gives people a lot of perspective on how important others’ opinions about them are. Almost every time, they discover they’re not important. You could probably piss off half the people you know and that still wouldn’t have any serious negative consequences on your life, so it wouldn’t really matter.

3. I wish I’d spent more with the most valuable people in my life.

A vast number of people discover they misallocated their time resources. They didn’t spend enough time interacting with the most valuable people in their lives and they’ve spent too much time interacting with part of the rest. Why? Because they falsely believed they didn’t have a choice.

If you think about it, your life is a sum of experiences. So the quality of your life is fundamentally the quality of those experiences. If you realize at a deep level that you’ve wasted your most valuable resource on secondhand human interactions, then no excuse for doing this seems sufficient.

There is one key difference between the regrets of the dying and the regrets of the living. The dying don’t really have the time left to correct their mistakes. They can only teach others valuable lessons, about people skills and life.

The living on the other hand do have the time; but they need to stop every once in a while, look back at their lives and ask themselves: Is this how I want to live the rest of my life?

Yes, I’m talking about me and you…

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Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , 10 Comments
September 8, 2010

How to Meet New People and Make New Friends

I remember many years ago, a woman told me how she is often bored because she doesn’t have a lot of friends. She was living in a city with over 3.000.000 people. I was shocked. I was wondering: “How can you live surrounded by so many people and not have enough friends to spend some quality time with?”

Since then, this scene has repeated itself many times, with many other persons. After a while, I realized how common this phenomenon was and it no longer shocked me.

I began thinking how I could assist others to meet new people and make new friends; thus my current profession plus a marginal obsession for social dynamics and improving people skills.

The Loneliness Paradox

Most of us walk on the streets every day passing by hundreds of other people. And yet many of us lack a good social circle, both in terms of quality and quantity.

It’s obviously not a problem of options. As a person who at one point consciously increased their sociability factor, I can tell you that there are not only a lot of people, but also many cool people out there, eager to meet new people and make new friends. It is a problem of confidence, strategy, people skills, or any combination of the three.

The good news is that you can develop any of these and get the kind of social life you want. In this article I will give you the fundamental points to developing your social circle and enriching your social life.

Meeting New People

One great way to meet new people is, in my view, taking on social activities. These activities can include sports, classes, hobbies, volunteer work etc. There are dozens of examples of specific social activities, which is exactly why I think it’s pointless for me to give you a few.

The point is to use social activities to get in environments where there are other people and by the nature of the activity you interact with them. At the same time, you want to get involved in activities which you believe you might enjoy; not just any social activity.

The other great way to meet new people that I know is getting your current friends to introduce you to some of their other friends. Of course, this doesn’t apply if your current friends are in a faraway town or if they don’t have any other friends, but it does apply in any other scenario.

I often tell my friends to give me a call whenever they’re going out with a group of cool people or to a fun party. I’ve repeated this to a few of them so many times that now they are in the habit of thinking about me whenever they go out. It helps if at one point, you can return your friends the favor, but in my experience, it’s not a must.

Making New Friends

Keep in mind that interacting with a new person does not automatically make that person a friend. Friendships happen when two people feel connected in some way. They discover they have things in common, they like each other or they got used with being part of each other’s lives.

Once you’ve met new people, you will need to keep the ball rolling in order to develop friendships. Two things come to mind on how to do this.

The first thing is to be very sociable. When interacting with somebody: talk about yourself and open up, ask the other person questions, listen actively, make jokes and focus on positive topics. Apparently simple actions like these and mixing them the right way are a reflection of good skills with people and the very fabric of making friends.

The second thing is to take the initiative and ask people out. If you interact with a person and you’re getting along well, that’s more than a good reason to initiate future interactions.

So if for example, you meet a person in your photography class you enjoy interacting with them, give them a call sometimes and ask them to join you for coffee, or something similar. As the interactions get rolling, if you get along even better, a friendship develops.

On paper/ your monitor, it may appear very easy to meet new people and make new friends. The trick is to skillfully apply ideas like the ones above. And the emphasis is not initially on the word ‘skillfully’, but on the word ‘apply’. Most people I know with poor social lives essentially need to get off their asses more.

One of the reasons I teach people skills is because I have seen and I have experienced for myself how fulfilling a rich social life can be. We live now in a world with more social opportunities than ever. I’m convinced it’s a worthwhile task to make good use of them.

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Filed Under: Lifestyle, People Skills, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 10 Comments
August 15, 2010

Beyond People Skills: My 3 Life Lessons

This article is written at the invitation of fellow blogger Abubakar Jamil, as part of the Life Lessons Series. You can find out more about this project and the people involved on his blog.

It’s a very enjoyable activity for me to look back at my life so far, at the experiences I had, to reflect on them and to draw lessons. It’s something I do periodically, in a systematic, pen & paper way, and something I encourage everyone to do.

As I’m doing this process now, there are 3 very valuable life lessons which stand out. They go beyond improving people skills and they’re the lessons I want to share with you.

Life Lesson 1: Your weaknesses are your strengths.

When I was a teenager, I was frequently described as ‘annoying’ because I asked a lot of questions and always wanted details about things I didn’t quite understand. The result of this was that I started asking questions about why it’s bad to ask a lot of questions. I never got a satisfying answer, but I also didn’t want to annoy people so I ended up shutting up a lot more.

As time passed and I got seriously into psychology, I began to see all the potential benefits of my tendencies to ask a lot of questions. I was basically an analytical person, which enjoyed decoding various phenomena. So instead of repressing this side of my personality, I decided to express it and find the best ways to do so.

Now, the fact I ask a lot of questions is what makes me have a good understanding of how people skills work; get a good grasp of my clients’ needs and provide real results through my coaching services. I still annoy some people, but I don’t mind that anymore. I know that if I look in perspective, my weakness is my strength.

Life Lesson 2: Perfectionism kills productivity.

I started writing at the same time I started coaching. I remember that it took me then almost 4 hours to write a one page article related to people skills which I now write in less than 2 hours. Part of this visible increase in my writing speed is due to the fact my writing skills have improved a lot in the passing years, and part is due to the fact I stopped being a perfectionist about my writing.

When I was writing articles for the first time, I felt this need to make them look perfect. I wanted the perfect structure, style, words and ideas every time. Later, I realized that perfection was not necessary. My readers wanted very good writing and high quality ideas (this made them read my stuff and buy my other services) but they did not require perfection.

By being a perfectionist about my writing, I was using a lot of time for each article, without a significant increase in the benefits to justify it. So, I gradually started to tolerate imperfection and give less time to each article. I continued to have a high standard in my writing, but I no longer sought perfection. Because perfectionism was killing my productivity.

Life Lesson 3: Hope is not enough, you need a good strategy.

This is a lesson which fortunately for me, I’ve learned mostly from the experiences of other persons around me. I say fortunately because it was a lesson learned mostly through big failures and loses.

I have seen people in my professional network lose a lot of money and fail miserably with all sorts of business ideas. And most of the time, these people had one thing in common: they weren’t applying realistic business strategies. They had a lot of hope and optimism, but no real understanding what it takes to make their business ideas work. They were very slow to learn from their mistakes, to develop their strategies, and so they’ve made businesses plummet.

I have seen this happen beyond managing a business, in managing a career or a life. And it’s the same pattern: hope is good but it is not enough. At the end of the day, you need to know what the heck you’re doing and have a solid strategy to reflect it. Hope is a good companion, but not a replacement for competence.

These are my 3 life lessons. What are your most important life lessons?

Image courtesy of Paco Alcantara

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , , 21 Comments
August 10, 2010

Rich Online Social Life and No Offline Social Life?

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter tend to have curious effects on people and their social lives. One thing I notice is how many of those who use them tend to fall into one of two opposite categories:

  1. The people who have a rich, active offline social life and use socialization through social networking sites as an extension of this one. Social media is for them an opportunity to communicate more, with more people, from more locations.
  2. The people who basically have no offline social life and use socialization through social networking sites as a replacement for it. Social media is for them a way to compensate a lack of face to face interactions, by spending a lot of time communicating online.

Now, can you guess the people from which category I believe have a problem? That’s right, the people in the second group. Those who don’t balance their online social life with their offline one. And I believe their problem is two-folded: it has a component related to impact and one to relationships.

Weakening your impact

The first side of the problem is that by interacting almost exclusively online with the people you could also be interacting with offline, you considerably diminish your impact. Offline communication may require more time and effort, but it definitely has its rewards in terms or the influence you can achieve.

This is why I’m a big supporter of things like public speaking, networking face to face and having good people skills for face to face interactions. Usually, you will get the best results by mixing and balancing online with offline communication.

Having superficial relationships

The second side of the problem is that by interacting almost exclusively online with people, your relationships often end up being very shallow. Face to face interactions can have a lot more depth and a bigger emotional charge than the ones on the Internet. They can make relationships develop easier and become much stronger.

Those who have few face to face interactions often feel lonely and a lack of real connection with other people. From an emotional perspective, they essentially have second rate, noticeably less fulfilling social lives.

In general, my experience as a communication coach is that too much of an online social life by comparison with the offline one is a sign of a shy, insecure person with not so good people skills. Not chronically shy, those people don’t even chat online, but still. Many of the geeks who a decade ago played Nintendo all day long are now represented by geeks with fake social lives.

Getting out of the shell

Do you have 2000 Facebook friends and only 2 live friends? Do you spend a lot more time interacting with people online than offline? Do you often feel lonely and disconnected? These are all different pieces of the same puzzle.

The first step to improvement as a person in this group is recognizing the costs of not having much of an offline social life. The second one is to fight your natural tendencies to compensate a lack of face to face interactions through stuff like chatting on MySpace, and instead going out there to socialize.

As you gradually push yourself to interact more with people, your people skills improve and your social confidence with it. You experience more social freedom and more fulfilling relationships. It is only when you have the option and skills to interact with people using a wide range of channels that you can make the best social choices.

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Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, People Skills Tagged With: , , , , 11 Comments
July 16, 2010

Is the Road You’re On Really Necessary?

“What do you want?” – I ask my coaching client.

“I want to advance in my field; to reach the top.” – he replies.

“Do you like what you do, in this field?”

“No, but that’s beside the point”.

I listen, I ask more questions, I try to understand him. Turns out he wants to advance in his field because he believes once he gets to a certain place in it he will obtain the recognition of those around him. And getting that recognition will give him a sense of validation, of self worth.

“What if you don’t really need to go through all this process to feel worthy?” – I ask him. “What If you just need to work on your self-esteem and sense of intrinsic worth, which is a more direct and effective road?” He looks at me puzzled.

I find that most people are going on roads which are not really necessary to get what they want. They struggle working jobs they don’t really like, dealing with people they can’t stand, having a vague thought that this is the only way. But they really haven’t thought things through. It is more of an automatic reaction to the world they live in. And if they do think things through, they often discover that their struggle is pretty much unnecessary.

This happens because most of us chase things like money, fame, status, without asking ourselves two very important questions:

  1. Why do I want these things, what is the final destination?
  2. Is there a better way to reach this final destination?

When you ask yourself these questions and take some time to explore your motivations, as well as your options, you often become amazed at how much simpler, less stressful things can be, and how much you may have deluded yourself.

I think that it’s a fundamental trait of the society we live in, the fact that it teaches us to delude ourselves. Schools, families, commercials and public figures try to get us chasing all sort of stuff, thinking that it will make us happy and there is no other option. Look just two feet beyond their common messages, and you will often see something else.

In particular, I think there are a couple of messages we consistently get, either explicitly or implicitly, which are actually myths and tend to put us on roads we don’t really need to take in order to reach our destinations Messages like:

  • You always need to work hard to get what you want;
  • Work is by its nature un-enjoyable and you just have to tolerate it;
  • More money will make you more happy;
  • The respect and validation of other people is the most important thing to strive for;
  • Your health and your needs come second to the needs of others.
  • You can’t really be happy. Grown people live lives of struggle and compromise.

Do any of these messages sound silly to you? That’s because they are. I can’t name one person I know, who guiding herself by these ideas managed to have a rich and fulfilling life, in a sustainable way. Not even one.

I believe that the best thing you can do is to stop every once in a while, look at the road you’re tacking, fully realize where it’s heading and what alternatives you have. Doing this and acting on your realizations, you will set yourself on a path which is significantly different that the path most people are on, and also much, much more rewarding. It is the path of the wise man.

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Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Lifestyle, Success Tagged With: , , 12 Comments
July 11, 2010

Happiness Really Is in the Little Things

I’m on a train going to visit my parents. Next to me, there is this old lady with an enthusiasm to envy. She’s looking out the window and saying: “Look at all the trees! They’re so green! And look at all the beautiful houses!” I look at her attentively for a moment and I realize she’s probably in her 80’s, but her face is shining with youth, joy and vitality.

Meanwhile, I’m on my laptop, hurrying to answer all my emails before I reach my station, noticing that I’m loosing my Internet connection, thinking to myself “Damn! This isn’t fair! Why is this happening to me! I need to answer my emails!” and getting myself annoyed by the situation.

Then I suddenly realize how silly I am, in the way I think, feel and act right now. And how silly the vast majority of us humans are. Here we are, living in the most evolved society that ever existed, a world which our ancestors 2000 years ago didn’t even dream of, and we’re bitching about things like our Internet providers.

I instantly hear myself thinking: “Fuck this!” A split second later, I close Outlook with a click, deciding to leave my emails for later and I abruptly… relax. I start looking out the window; I notice: the trees are beautiful. Very beautiful! And I don’t even like green. Or so I thought.

How many moments of joy and happiness do we miss out on each day, because we get distracted and pissed off by small problems? How many of them do we miss out on in one month, one year and one lifetime? I don’t even want to make this estimate.

In psychological terms, it is called habituation: the process of getting used with something which exists in our lives all the time or a lot, so it no longer evokes the same emotional response. What it basically means is that our mind no longer interprets that thing as special. It sees it as normal, as a given, it takes it for granted.

This is how we take for granted almost everything in our lives. The personal car, the big plasma TV, the instant communication available with anyone on the planet at anytime, the skills we have as people and the things we can do. Then we start getting really frustrated when for some reason, one of these is no longer available to us. We feel cheated, betrayed, as if life owes us something. Forget silly: this is hilarious!

And so my lesson for the day emerges: if we want to live truly happy lives, we need to stop tacking things for granted. We need to look at even the smallest things in our lives and realize how great, how extraordinary they are. Then we can laugh at almost any modern life problem we have.

When you are able to enjoy the little things in life, not only that you become a lot happier, but you also radiate it. So in social interactions, you exude this positive energy which gets you noticed, impresses people and attracts them to you. This is one interesting way to improve your people skills.

I don’t believe in destiny, but if I would, I’d say that it’s manifesting right now: the old lady got off and now there’s this 8-9 years old kid who just climbed aboard with his mom in her place. He’s full of energy, he’s bouncing left and right and singing “Happy Birthday” like it’s the epiphany of musical creations. He’s so exited about this song!

This must be the second pointer to the same lesson, for reinforcement. I’m looking at the kid and I’m thinking: “I hope school and habituation don’t mess with his head too much”. My station is near; time to close…

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Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Lifestyle, Psychology Tagged With: , , 16 Comments