The Simple Guide to Conscious Learning

When you are able to learn effectively, you pretty much have living the life you want in your pocket. Oddly enough, very few people are good conscious learners. Some may know a lot of stuff, but when it comes to actually developing, their learning gets stuck.

There is one thing I found out about a long time ago, which helped me a lot in improving the way I learn and make more, faster progress. It is also something I constantly talk about in my training and coaching programs.

This thing is a simple, powerful model of human learning and personal development. According to the model, our competencies develop in 4 stages:

  1. Unconscious Incompetence – you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know. This is the stage when you are not aware of your flaws or specific areas where you can improve.
  2. Conscious Incompetence – you still don’t know, but at least you know that you don’t know. This is the stage when you’ve realized your flaws or specific areas where you can improve.
  3. Conscious Competence – you know, as long as you practice consciously. This is the stage when you have discovered how to improve, the specific changes you need to make, and you practice them consciously.
  4. Unconscious Competence – you know, without even thinking about it. This is the stage when you have practiced something so much that it became automatic and you now do it naturally.

Of course, once you reach the last stage in one area and you have a new skill, there are other areas where you are at the first stage and where you can evolve through the 4 stages. So this is not really a learning cycle, it’s more of a learning spiral which can go on your entire life.

What effective learning means is moving from one stage to another. Effective learning is conscious, step by step learning. And it’s about skills, attitudes, not knowledge, which is just an intermediary step in the process.

If you look at human learning through this model, you can realize that all human failure in learning is triggered by certain personal or process flaws which make us get stuck at one of the first 3 stages:

  • People who get stuck in stage 1 don’t even think about where they can improve, are not very self-aware or they are too proud to see their flaws.
  • People who get stuck in stage 2 know what they can improve but don’t decide to do anything about it, they try to figure everything our by themselves or they use the wrong ideas and methods to improve.
  • People who get stuck in stage 3 don’t act sufficiently and consistently enough, they don’t plan their practice, they get distracted and they procrastinate.

Look at this model of learning and think about the stages where you tend to get stuck. We all tend to have at least one which is our sticking point. Becoming more aware of this and working on perfecting your learning process is one of the best ways you can use you time and energy.

When you are able to learn effectively, you pretty much have living the life you want in your pocket. Oddly enough, very few people are good conscious learners. Some may know a lot of stuff, but when it comes to actually developing, their learning gets stuck.

There is one thing I found out about a long time ago, which helped me a lot in improving the way I learn and make more, faster progress. It is also something I constantly talk about in my training and coaching programs.

This thing is a simple, powerful model of human learning and personal development. According to the model, our competencies develop in 4 stages:

  1. Unconscious Incompetence – you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know. This is the stage when you are not aware of your flaws or specific areas where you can improve.

  1. Conscious Incompetence – you still don’t know, but at least you know that you don’t know. This is the stage when you’ve realized your flaws or specific areas where you can improve.

  1. Conscious Competence – you know, as long as you practice consciously. This is the stage when you have discovered how to improve, the specific changes you need to make, and you practice them consciously.

  1. Unconscious Competence – you know, without even thinking about it. This is the stage when you have practiced something so much that it became automatic and you now do it naturally.

Of course, once you reach the last stage in one area and you have a new skill, there are other areas where you are at the first stage and where you can evolve through the 4 stages. So this is not really a learning cycle, it’s more of a learning spiral which can go on your entire life.

What effective learning means is moving from one stage to another. Effective learning is conscious, step by step learning. And it’s about skills, attitudes, not knowledge, which is just an intermediary step in the process.

If you look at human learning through this model, you can realize that all human failure in learning is triggered by certain personal or process flaws which make us get stuck at one of the first 3 stages:

  • People who get stuck in stage 1 don’t even think about where they can improve, are not very self-aware or they are too proud to see their flaws.

  • People who get stuck in stage 2 know what they can improve but don’t decide to do anything about it, they try to figure everything our by themselves or they use the wrong ideas and methods to improve.

  • People who get stuck in stage 3 don’t act sufficiently and consistently enough, they don’t plan their practice, they get distracted and they procrastinate.

Look at this model of learning and think about the stages where you tend to get stuck. We all tend to have at least one which is our sticking point. Becoming more aware of this and working on perfecting your learning process is one of the best ways you can use you time and energy.

Why Attitude, Not Aptitude, Determines Your Altitude

The more I coach others and the more I grow, the more I’m convinced that attitude tramples aptitude; that in your relationships with people, in your career and in your life, the attitudes you have matter sooo much more than your skills.

A Communication Coaching Story

One of my clients realized at a certain point that when she started to get mad in a conversation with someone else (which was quite often), although she would still speak using tactful words, her voice tonality would change and make her come off as angry and bitter. Obviously, this would make a lot of these discussions go badly.

The thing is, this person had realized this aspect about six months before. Since then, she tried to consciously control her vocal tonality in conversations where in created problems, but she barely managed. Why? Because the change in her voice was automatically triggered by her getting angry, and it was very hard to fight that.

Even if she managed to control her voice for a while, as soon as she would stop paying conscious attention to it, the voice would almost instantly go to the tonality dictated by the anger she was feeling. After six months of this, my client opts for some coaching focused on addressing her anger and changing the attitudes behind her voice tonality.

Why Attitude Tramples Aptitude

For every behavior and for every way of communicating or relating with people, there are skills and also attitudes that make it possible. The skills are the automatic ways of doing things, which create results. They develop by practicing those things, in those ways. The attitudes are the beliefs we have, which generate the way we interpret things in a certain context and the way we react emotionally.

You can teach a person all the best ways to do things. You can teach a person how to communicate assertively, how to speak in public with impact, but if their attitudes in those contexts don’t back them up, they will not be able to consistently practice the behaviors necessary to develop those skills.

Your attitudes determine to a great degree what you are able to do and what you are not, what you are able to practice and what you are not. This is why for example, a lot of people go to trainings and learn all sort of cool ways of relating with other people, but they never develop cool people skills.

It’s funny that I describe what I do as developing communication skills, or improving people skills, because with most of my clients, I spend more time developing the relevant attitudes than the actual skills. I constantly find that when the right attitudes are in place, the skills will develop in a very fast and natural way.

Time to Take the Right Action

Look at the soft skills you want to develop and identify the attitudes that would support developing and maintaining them. How much time and energy do you spend working directly on your skills, and how much directly on your attitudes?

If you invest more in your skills than in your attitudes, I have some news for you:

  1. You’re not the only one; this is what most people do;
  2. Unless you naturally have the right attitudes in place (which is very, very rare), it’s a very good idea to shift gears and invest much more in developing your attitudes.

Work smart! You are wasting your resources working on your skills if the right attitudes are not there. Attitudes make the real difference between champs and chumps.

Taking Success Advice from Successful People Is Not a Good Idea

I was recently watching the last The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, in which he said goodbye to NBC and his fans. His memorable last words were: “If you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you: amazing things will happen”.

I’m sure Conan O’Brien is a cool guy and I think he has some great achievements, but if working hard and being kind were the only two ingredients for amazing things to happen in one’s life (aka being successful), we would have a lot more successful people, living amazing lives.

I believe that sometimes, successful people can give powerful success advice. I personally know some who do. However, I believe this is rather the exception than the rule, and in most cases, taking success advice from successful people is not such a good idea.

The main reason is the fact there is a huge difference between being successful and being able to understand success and teach it to others. Here are some phenomena which often happen with successful people:

  • They’re naturals. They do things in a certain way out of instinct, and this gives them results. But they don’t really know what exactly they’re doing which gets them success, even if they think they do. So they will often give advice like: “Just be yourself. Act naturally.” Ha?
  • They may consciously try certain things which give them the results they want, but they try multiple things at once and they’re not able understand which one of them exactly works and is the true source of their success.
  • They discover things which help them get results, in their context, and they wrongly believe these things apply to everyone, in every context. They generalize quickly, ignoring the specifics of each human being and each situation.
  • They lack the skills to present and explain their ideas for success in a very clear and meaningful way, which would make the advice truly useful.

I know that successful people are given a lot of credibility in offering advice for success, and sometimes for personal development. People think that someone who has success is the best to teach it. Considering the points above, you can see why this is faulty logic.

Successful people need a lot more than success to also provide solid success advice. They need a high degree of awareness, analytical skills, scientific, critical thinking, communication and people skills. Only then, you can rely on them to give powerful success advice.

Beyond successful people, I believe there is one other category of people which is usually much better at giving success advice. I call them modelers. They’re the people who observe, study and model successful people, extracting the patterns of success.

Why are they better at giving success advice? For one, because they generally have a lot more of the skills presented above, which are required to understand and teach success. And also, because they don’t stop at modeling just one successful person.

It’s great that you’re looking to understand success and use this understanding in your personal development. In this journey, remember that choosing the proper sources for success advice can be just as important.

Debunking Subliminal Tapes

For a lot of the people who know me or read my stuff, I have a sort of reputation as a debunker. A big part of my activity involves discovering and promoting some ideas for personal development and improving people skills, another big part involves showing the flaws in other ideas, to facilitate effective growth.

I believe there are a tone of people skills and personal development ideas out there, most of which only generate marginal improvements, and this is why I think debunking some can be as important as supporting others.

Today, my focus is on debunking subliminal tapes. And I’m going to use for this an excerpt from the book “Psychological Foundations of Success” by Dr. Stephen Kraus, a Harvard-trained scientist and a business consultant. I think his words do the debunking better than mine ever could.

Let’s consider an example of success snake oil: subliminal self-help tapes. These tapes are a multi-million dollar business, and it is easy to see why. Their promise of easy, effortless change is a marketer’s dream. Simply listen to the tapes, we are told, and although the subliminal messages in them can’t be heard audibly, they tap the power of the subconscious mind to bring about massive change and success. If you want to lose weight, for example, there’s no need for the inconvenience of exercise or the sacrifices involved with healthy eating – simply listen to the tapes and pounds will melt away. And losing weight is just one example – other tapes promise to boost self-esteem, improve memory, increase worker productivity, and even aid in the recovery from sexual abuse. There’s only one problem: they don’t work.3 If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is – and effortless change via subliminal tapes is indeed too good to be true. Every independent scientific study has reached the same conclusion – these tapes are a waste of money. […]

Despite numerous studies demonstrating that subliminal tapes are worthless, people continue buying them in large numbers. The problem is that manufacturers of these products have become experts at deceptive marketing, and they conveniently ignore the carefully-conducted studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the tapes. As Anthony Pratkanis put it, “Tape company representatives are likely to provide you with a rather lengthy list of ‘studies’ demonstrating their claims. Don’t be fooled. The studies on these lists fall into two camps – those done by the tape companies and for which full write-ups are often not available, and those that have titles that sound as if they apply to subliminal influence, but really don’t.”

These deceptive marketers often point to one study in particular, known to many as the “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” study. Conducted in the late 1950s, this study flashed the messages “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” briefly on a movie screen. Thousands of moviegoers were supposedly exposed to these messages over the course of six weeks, and the result was reportedly an increase in Coke sales of 18% and in popcorn sales of nearly 58%. Reports of the study fueled international outrage – several countries outlawed subliminal advertising, and the Federal Communications Commission threatened to strip the broadcast license of anyone using subliminal advertising. Amidst this well-publicized furor, a much quieter development was unfolding. Researchers throughout the world were trying – and failing – to replicate the dramatic findings of the Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke study. A Canadian television show, for example, flashed the subliminal message “Phone Now” during its regular airing. Not only was there no increase in phone calls, but when viewers were asked to guess what the message had been, none of the 500 who guessed did so correctly (interestingly, nearly half reported feeling hungry or thirsty, demonstrating not the power of subliminal persuasion, but rather the power of suggestion – those familiar with the Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke study experienced what they expected to experience). This and other failures to replicate the original never got the widespread publicity of the initial study. The media sells stories, and the story that marketers are manipulating our unconscious minds sells well, whereas a story of carefully-conducted research failing to confirm the initial results is decidedly less sexy.

Here’s another fact that didn’t get much publicity: James Vicary, the author of the initial study, admitted in 1962 that he had simply made up the results to attract customers for his failing marketing business. Regardless, this “study” and others like it, fueled by a growing distrust of advertisers, became ingrained in American popular culture. By the early 1980s, more than four-in-five Americans had heard of subliminal advertising, and of those, two-in-three believed it could be effective in selling products. By the 1990s, $50 million a year or more were being spent annually on subliminal success products, despite a total lack of compelling evidence that they work.

How’s this for real personal development science?

Get Your Stuff Together Instead of Using Distractions

To a great extent, I’m a hedonist: I believe in doing the things you enjoy, maximizing your pleasure and not compromising pointlessly. At the same time, I notice that a lot of times, doing the things we enjoy is an ineffective way of running from the things which don’t work in our lives, a way of distracting ourselves.

What are distractions? Well, they’re pleasure-giving activities (which is good), used to shift our attentions from thoughts or facts that make us feel pain. Which can be very, very bad. Using distractions is like covering your eyes so you don’t see something you don’t want to see, or sinking your head underwater so you don’t hear something you don’t want to hear.

Very common things like listening to music, dancing, drinking, eating, sex, watching a movie, playing games, taking a vacation, even reading inspirational stuff, are all very pleasurable activities, which can also be used as distractions.

Why can using distractions be bad? Before I answer, I’ll mention the good part: there are specific contexts when using distractions can be a constructive way to handle things. For example, if you recently lost a job you had for many years, or a relationship you had for many years, the initial psychological pain will usually drop naturally, as time passes. So, some distractions can be a good way to not think about the event for a while, and then go back to the event with some distance from it. This way, you will not suffer as much.

But (there is almost always a ‘but’ with me)…  more often than not, distractions are only a way of mentally running from the things you don’t like so you won’t have to deal with them. They work as a quick remedy for the suffering, without fixing the problem. As the real problem is still not addressed, your mind will constantly refocus on it, and you constantly need to fight back using distractions, which is usually either hard or impossible.

There’s more: as you use a distraction more and more, you often build tolerance to it and you need bigger doses to get the same effect. This is one way to create alcohol addicts, eating addicts, sex addicts, and yes, even partying addicts. Needles to say that because all of this, distractions are a poor long-term solutions to suffering.

The effective solution in the long run is to address the things you don’t like and get your stuff together (and I’m using a euphemism here). Practically, there are only 2 ways you can go, both typically involving personal development:

  1. Either you change your external reality, handle that job you’re bored with, that relationship which doesn’t work anymore, that extra weight and so on, or
  2. You change your internal reality, you change your expectations and beliefs, so you learn to accept the external reality and it doesn’t bother you anymore.

I don’t think one way is always best. Sometimes it’s important to take action, sometimes it’s important to let go. You will have to decide on your own which way to get your stuff together works best, depending on the specifics of your situations.

Either way, it starts here: stop and think about the things you enjoy a lot. Maybe so much that you see them as a way to ‘escape’. Could they be distractions? If the answer is yes, then what are you distracting yourself from? As you identify and address the issues in your life and get your stuff together, you become more able to do the things you enjoy independent of the distraction they provide.

The Ultimate Tool for Managing Your Emotions

One key area of personal development which I notice a lot of people are interested in is managing emotions. This interest has good reasons, as your emotions influence your options and your options influence your results. Plus, it just feels bad to feel bad.

Managing emotions is also one of those key areas of personal development where a lot of people struggle. They read books and articles, go to trainings, try various methods and techniques, yet most of them don’t seem to be able to get rid of those pesky negative emotions they don’t want in their lives.

I believe that managing your emotions is an often misunderstood part of self-improvement, and this makes place for a lot of emotional mastery tools which provide nothing more than false hope or a short lived relief, often for big sums of money.

The Tool I Recommend

Considering this, I’ve decided to write a piece about the primary tool I employ for managing emotions, both with myself and with my clients, and which is by far the most effective I know: CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or Therapies). It represents a systemic approach to managing your emotions through changing thinking and behavioral patterns.

CBT has also been turned into CBC – Cognitive Behavioral Coaching – which is what I actually use in my communication coaching activity, but given the major similarities between the two, I will refer to both using the more commonly known name of CBT, to simplify things.

My intention here is not to describe Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in detail, nor to provide a manual on how to use it. You can find this kind of information in many other places.

My goal is only to show you why I think it’s an excellent tool for managing emotions. This will also make my life easier, as whenever I am asked what tools and why I recommend for dealing with fear, guilt, anxiety, depression, anger and so on, I will simply point people to this article from now on.

My Exploration of Emotional Mastery Tools

Over the years, I have looked into various tools for managing emotions. When I say ‘looked into’, this means I have:

  • Used the tools one by one for myself and looked at the results;
  • Gave them to others for testing or interviewed people who have used them;
  • Searched for scientific research to back them up and analyzed the data.

The tools for managing emotions I have looked into include: NLP, EFT, The Sedona Method, positive affirmations, hypnosis, meditation and subliminal tapes. I have found some of these I mention to be effective in managing emotions to some degree, but none of them capable to be a complete tool for this purpose.

Some tools provide only a short term improvement of the emotional state, with no long term change; some of them work inconsistently, for some people but not for many other people. Some tools support the process of managing emotions but do not provide it themselves; some of them just create a placebo effect. Some tools are pure bullshit.

What actually bothered me is that a lot of these methods are marketed as powerful, miracle solutions to get read of all unwanted emotions and they don’t even live up to 10% of the promise.

What amused me is how some people will use an emotional management method for years, will encourage others to do the same and will think it’s a great method, even if it hasn’t really helped them improve more than marginally. That’s the definition of insanity to me.

In the end, I stopped at CBT. Ironically, it’s one of the first tools I have found, but I abandoned it before truly testing it because it didn’t look… sexy enough. It seemed rather repetitive, analytical and programmatic, and I was attracted by some of the flashier tools out there.

Why CBT?

Now, I can tell you about my positive results in managing emotions using CBT, I can tell you about the consistent positive results my clients who used CBT effectively got, I can tell you about the inner logic of the techniques employed.

But from my perspective, all of these pale by comparison with another argument: the fact that worldwide, there are over 2000 rigorous scientific studies on the techniques and principles of CBT, which prove it to be highly effective. In terms of scientific support, it is light years away from almost any other tool out there for managing your emotions.

I know a lot of other methods claim to be supported by science. Don’t be fooled! Anyone can make claims such as these, quote fake research or create bias research, designed to support a certain conclusion. There is a lot more to getting scientific backup in the area of personal development than meets the eye.

CBT is not a miracle cure. It involves getting used to it. It involves a lot of work for identifying your current thinking patterns and beliefs, seeing what is irrational or non-constructive in them, and changing them gradually through cognitive and behavioral techniques.

It’s based on 3 R’s: reprogramming, repetition and reinforcement. If you stick to these three ways, you will see real progress and change in your habitual emotional reactions.

At the end of the day, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy promises less and offers more than any other tool I know for managing your emotions, which is why I recommend it whole-heartedly.

The Law of Attraction vs. Science

I like to think that people are becoming more intelligent in their approach to personal development, getting a better, deeper, more realistic understanding on human psychology and life. Then I see the exploding popularity of ideas such as the Law of Attraction, and it makes me wonder.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the Law of Attraction is a concept promoted by New Thought writers, widely spread through the release in 2006 of a film called “The Secret”, followed by a book with the same name. It states that you attract in your life what you think about, not just through motivation, but also through other means. In other words: thoughts become things.

So if you think about what you want and really focus on it, you will make it manifest in your life. On the other hand, if you think about what you don’t want, what you’re running way from, like a lot of people do, you will attract more of that in your life.

I think that if the formulation of this so called ‘law’ of attraction would have stopped at the first part, saying that your thoughts affect your motivation and thus your results, it would have been just fine. And this is something I can agree with whole-heartedly. What you think about has a great influence over your emotions, which has a great influence over your behaviors, which has a great influence over your results.

But nooooo, the Law of Attraction takes one giant leap further by stating that your thoughts directly alter the very fabric of reality. Thoughts are sending out magnetic signals which rearrange the reality and attract what you’re thinking about back to you. The supporters of the Law of Attraction say it is science and it is supported by what is now known in the field of quantum physics.

Well, let’s look at what science truly has to say about this and more specifically, let’s look at this through the thorough eyes of the Scientific American, one of the most credible science magazines:

The brain does produce electrical activity from the ion currents flowing among neurons during synaptic transmission, and in accordance with Maxwell’s equations any electric current produces a magnetic field. But as neuroscientist Russell A. Poldrack of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained to me, these fields are minuscule and can be measured only by using an extremely sensitive superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) in a room heavily shielded against outside magnetic sources. Plus, remember the inverse square law: the intensity of an energy wave radiating from a source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source. An object twice as far away from the source of energy as another object of the same size receives only one-fourth the energy that the closer object receives. The brain’s magnetic field of 10x15 tesla quickly dissipates from the skull and is promptly swamped by other magnetic sources, not to mention the earth’s magnetic field of 10x5 tesla, which overpowers it by 10 orders of magnitude!

In other words, as much as you would like to think, you’re thoughts are not powerful enough to directly change reality. If you want change, you actually have to get your butt off the couch and do something about it.

It doesn’t stop here. Supporters of the Law of Attraction also state that your thoughts can have radical influences over your own body. Here is one quote relating to this from the book called “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne:

The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.

Are you fucking kidding me? Any person with some decent knowledge of human physiology and psychology can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. This idea borderlines on insane: even if you can consciously influence some activities in your body through your thinking, you can’t directly control the process of gaining weight this way, just like you can’t directly control some of the muscles in your face.

I find it amusing that the Law of Attraction is even labeled as a law. Because when I think of a law, I think of something which has been tested and confirmed through serious scientific research, using scientific methods. In this case, it simply does not apply. The Law of Attraction is over-simplified and pumped-up personal development, made out to sound like science.

Nevertheless,  a lot of folks buy into it. I sometimes meet people who are eager to improve their lives with just one big self-improvement idea, and they talk to me about the realism of the law of attraction like it’s plain as day: “It’s been proven! Haven you seen ‘The Secret?” I did. But when I want stand-up comedy, I still prefer George Carlin.

Focusing on your goals is an important piece of the puzzle called getting the life you want; but it is still just one piece. Effective planning, action, perseverance and adaptation are also important pieces. Take these into account as well in your personal development, and then you’re talking.

Facing Your Fears the Right Way

Facing your fears is one of those ideas in the realm of personal development which is getting so wide spread I think it’s becoming dangerous. Why? Because I believe facing fears can be done in many ways, and some of the more popular ones have more negative consequences than positive ones.

The basic premise of this advice is that by facing your fears and doing what you know is right, not only that you get the desired results, but you also make the fear go away as you get used to the thing you’re afraid of. Sometimes, this truly happens, which is why in principle, getting out of your comfort zone and facing your fears is solid advice.

However, sometimes (more often than a lot of people would like to admit), facing your fears does nothing to lower your anxiety and actually reinforces them. Let’s dig into some human psychology and cognition, to find out why.

Imagine a person who is afraid of public speaking. So she decides as part of improving her people skills, to face this fear head on. So she forces herself to speak in front of 500 top managers, at an important business conference. She thinks this way she’ll get read of her fear once and for all.

She is up on stage, looking at the people and feeling scared like she’s in front of an execution squad. She feels the fear, she sees the audience, she’s thinking to herself: “Damn, I’m scared! This was a bad idea”. What happens in this situation is that mentally, the intense fear and the public speaking situation get linked one with the other, and the fear of public speaking only gets reinforced.

In my coaching activity, I have met a lot of people who go around facing their fears every day like this. And most of the time, they are still afraid of those same things they’re facing for a long time. They’re running around scared half the time. I don’t know about you, but I call this self-torture.

There are better ways to do it. Methods like CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), which I often use in my coaching practice, provide some solid, well documented ways for facing your fears effectively. Here are two essential traits they have:

1. Gradual exposure. You don’t face a stimulus which triggers fear at its highest intensity. You start with a low intensity one, and as you get used to it and your fear decreases significantly, you move on to one of a higher intensity. If for example, you are afraid of public speaking, you start by speaking in front of 10 people who seem friendly.

2. Combining the behavioral with the cognitive. As you face your fears, you also focus on addressing your automatic thinking and your limiting beliefs which fundament these fears. Your combine using the right external tools with using the right internal tools.

If you do it this way, over time, the fears you’re facing will actually drop and eventually disappear. It will take time and practice, but you will see it happen. This means you can start to enjoy the things you dreaded, that you experience more freedom. It’s what I like the most about personal development.

Smile! Real, Fake, People Can’t Really Tell

As a communication coach, to smile is one piece of advice for improving people skills I can never give enough of. At the same time, once in a while, some people express concerns about it not being real and appearing fake. Although I’m a big believer in authenticity, I think when it comes to smiling, real or fake, the advice is still fundamentally solid.

Here’s one reason why. Let’s start with a test I bet you’ll find interesting. It’s a “spot the fake smile” test and it’s based on the research of psychologist Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions.  You can find it here, on the BBC website. Don’t just keep on reading; take the test.

.  .  .  .  .

OK. Did you take the test? How many of the 20 smiles did you identify correctly as being real or fake? The first time I took the test, I got 13 out of 20, which is just a bit more than if I would have picked the answers randomly.

The good news (for me) is that I’m no exception. Most people get similar scores at spotting the fake smile. According to psychologists who researched this area, people in general are pretty bad at spotting a fake smile from a real one. You’ll find out more details about this at the end of the test.

Smiling typically reflects friendliness and a positive state; it’s a great way for social bonding. There are particular ways you can go wrong with smiling and come off as weird, but you can learn about them and calibrate yourself at the context to improve your people skills. The general rule remains: real, fake, smile damn it!