May 27, 2012

How to Be a Good Friend

They say friendship is a lost art. I don’t know if that’s an overstatement, but as a social confidence coach, I do know that many people don’t truly grasp how to be a good friend.

Their friendships are frail and superficial. They don’t last and they don’t provide the positive experiences they could. I think it’s important for most of us to learn on our own how to be a good friend.

It’s not something we learn in school, it’s not something our parents teach us past a certain short point. Considering this, I want to share with you 7 key principles I believe it’s crucial to follow in order to be a good friend.

1. Make an Effort to Meet

Many of us are so busy and far from each other today that it’s hard to keep in touch. Nevertheless, a good friend will always make an effort to meet with their friends; simply because they are important enough.

Don’t just wait for your friends to give you a call and invite you to hang out. Take the initiative yourself.

Don’t look at the fact you don’t have a lot of time or they live 500 miles away as an insurmountable obstacle. Look at it as a mere logistical setback that you’ll have to work around. And try to find ways to overcome them.

2. Be Honest

From my perspective, honesty is one of the central pillars of friendship. The fact you’re honest with a person is what makes them trust you.

They know they can rely on you to give them an honest opinion and to be genuine with them. This kind of reliance is what makes people bond and develop strong friendships.

I know sometimes it can be hard to be honest, because you may hurt a person’s feelings or make them feel bad. Nevertheless, even in these situations, honesty is the way to go if you want to be a good friend.  Don’t make compromises in this area.

If you lack the confidence to be open and honest with others, check out this presentation I created. It will show you exactly how to deal with this problem.

3. Be Constructive

There’s almost nothing worse than chatting with a friend and listening to them complaining non-stop, or putting down any positive idea you have. This kind of an attitude can completely take the fun out of an interaction.

A big part of learning how to be a good friend is developing a constructive conversation style.

It doesn’t mean that you never say anything negative. It means that overall, you focus on the positive rather than the negative during a conversation, and you keep it fun and upbeat. When this is your default attitude, you’re the kind of person others always look forward to meeting again.

4. Treat Your Friends as Your Equals

Nobody likes people with a condescending attitude, who constantly tell you you’re wrong and “this is the right way to do it”.

Treat your friends as your equals. Keep in mind that you have your flaws and your strengths, just as they have theirs. You are not superior to them, and they are not superior to you either. Come from this place when interacting with them, and they’ll adore your demeanor.

And if sometimes you absolutely believe that you are superior to somebody, then perhaps they’re not the kind of person you want to build a solid friendship with in the first place.

5. Keep Your Promises

Keeping your promises is the other essential component for building trust besides honesty.

The trick is whenever you have the impulse to make a promise, to first ask yourself: “How hard will it realistically be for me to keep this promise?” so you become fully aware of the realism of the promise.

If it’s very hard or unlikely that you’ll keep your promise, then don’t make that promise to begin with. And if you do make it, then do everything in your power to keep it. Once you go on the path of breaking promises, it’s hard to regain that trust you will have lost.

6. Remember and Take Into Account Your Friends’ Preferences

It’s always nice when a friend invites me to a party with a lot of Latin music, since I like that kind of music, and not to one with a lot of rock music, since I don’t like it.

Besides the fact it creates a better experience for me, it shows that my friend knows my preferences and takes them into consideration. I know my needs and wants matter for them, and this makes them a good friend.

You shouldn’t constantly sacrifice your needs for those of your friends, but you should seek to make an experience positive for them as well as you.

7. Help Them

Last but not least, discovering how to be a good friend means willing to provide help for your friends when they need it.

This help can range from something small but meaningful such as a few words of encouragement, to something that requires more of an investment, such as lending them your car for a day.

These kinds of gestures ultimately prove how strong a friendship is. If two people frequently help each other and they are willing to go to some length to do so, they are not just friends, they are good friends.

Now that you know how to be a good friend, I invite you to take one step further and put this know-how into practice. Actually be a good friend to the persons you want to be to.  It will be worth it.

As a final thought, bear in mind that a friendships goes both ways. So, everything you do for a person to be a good friend to them, it’s only natural to expect in return. If they do not reciprocate, you may want to reevaluate your relationship.

In my experience, it’s those win-win friendships where both parties show a lot of respect, positivity and appreciation for each other that are the most fulfilling. These are the friendships that you’ll always think of fondly and you’ll treasure forever.

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Filed Under: Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , 2 Comments
April 24, 2012

The Importance of Friendship

I believe the importance of friendship is something that simply cannot be overstated. Nevertheless, friendship is something that we as a society pay little attention to.

We seek to make money, achieve success, find love and have a family, but we often mislay making friends somewhere in the category “and others”, which we’ll eventually focus on if we have the time.

As a social confidence coach, I’ve witnessed firsthand the importance of friendship. And I think it’s time to give friendship the right of way it deserves. Here’s why.

We Are Social Creatures

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence in fields like anthropology and evolutionary psychology that we humans are an extremely gregarious species.

For most of our history we lived in bands, tribes and communities where we knew many people and we interacted with them on a regular basis. Being social was the norm.

This until recently, when we started isolating ourselves from others in our spacious houses and apartments, perhaps living with one or two other people that we expect to fulfill all the crucial roles we require in our lives.

Not only that we humans like to socialize with others, but we need it. People who don’t socialize for prolonged periods of time begin feeling lonely, depressed, physically ill and even suicidal. Not having a social life is no joking matter.

This makes a solid case not only for the importance of friendship, but for the importance of a rich social life overall, which includes friends, colleagues, acquaintances and so on. Now let’s take a look at some of the particular benefits that friends bring into one’s existence.

1. Friendship Equals Deep Connection

A good friend is someone you have meaningful commonalities with. Maybe you believe in the same cause, you have similar core values, or you are passionate about the same things.

These meaningful commonalities create a deep connection. There is a strong bond between you and your friends. And this bond with other people gives life a lot more purpose.

2. Your Friends Accept You As You Are

The way I understand friends, they are individuals who know you as you are, with your strengths and flaws, and they accept you and respect you as you are.

Thus, they make you feel appreciated and more importantly, they make you feel worthy of appreciation. You don’t feel the need to impress them and you can always be yourself around them.

3. Interacting With Friends Is Extremely Fun

Since your friends are people you connect with at a deep level and people who accept you as you are, hanging out with them couldn’t be anything other than fun.

When me and my friends go out, we can talk about something as trivial as chinaware, and we’ll still have a blast. Because when it comes to chatting with friends, the people make the experience a lot more than the things you talk about.

4. Friends Are There For You

True friends help each other out. Even more significant, they know that they can count on each other for support, whether it’s a piece of advice, a few words of encouragement, a small loan or a hand to move the furniture.

Being able to rely on a bunch of people like that makes your life better and it also gives you more confidence to go for what you want in life. That’s one of the main reasons why the importance of friendship is stupendous.

So, What’s Next?

Now that you understand the importance of friendship, it’s time to capitalize on this know-how.

The first thing I encourage you to do is to take a good look at your friendships. Based on the ideas I’ve underlines here, would you say you have true friends? How many of them?

If the answer to these questions is “No” or “Yeah, about 0.75 friends”, this is an excellent moment to consider revamping your social life.

I can tell you from experience that no matter who you are, you can have many true friends and enjoy a rich social life. They key is to meet lots of people, interact with them, be open and cultivate the relationships with those people you resonate with the most.

And the key to all of this is to have social confidence. If you lack social confidence right now, this is the crucial trait that you’ll want to develop.

By the way: check out this presentation I created to learn how to gain social confidence and feel at ease socializing with anybody. I think you’ll find it very useful.

Grasping the importance of friendship is the first essential step not only towards making friends, but also towards building an overall better life, in which you are happier, more driven and more successful as an individual.

Will you take the other steps as well?

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

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Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 65 Comments
October 31, 2011

How to Be Yourself

Knowing how to be yourself in social interactions is essential for building a rich social life and rewarding relationships with others.

And like many other people out there, you may need to learn, or better said, re-learn how to be yourself.

Well, I’m gonna guide you on this path towards confident and authentic self-expression.

The Journey of Learning How to Be Yourself

A friend of mine once went to a therapist and told him he wants to be himself more. The therapist asked him: Well, who else do you think you are?

It’s a thought-provoking question. As a social confidence coach, I think for many people, the answer is that while they are themselves most of the time, during lots of social interactions, they put up a front.

They don’t reveal themselves authentically and instead they create this fake social person which they show to others. This persona typically tries to embody all the qualities that others will like and approve of: niceness, chivalry, humor, competence, confidence, a good mood and so on.

Usually this tendency to hide the authentic self is grounded in some kind of insecurity, perhaps an inferiority complex or a negative self-image.

Essentially, learning how to be yourself is the process of dropping this fake persona, replacing it with your genuine person, and becoming comfortable with expressing it.

Now, I’m going to teach you a 3-step process for being yourself, which has been used successfully by my coaching clients.

If you want a more thorough understanding of this process, check out this free video guide.

1. Get In Touch With Yourself

I find that many persons have lost touch with their authentic self. They’ve gotten so used to putting up a fake self in social interactions that they don’t really know who they are anymore.

They don’t know what they truly like and dislike anymore, what they want, or what their real opinions are. Sometimes, they feel seriously alienated from themselves, which can be a source of anxiety or depression.

So the first key step in learning how to be yourself is to get in touch with yourself; with your passions, values, opinions and natural inclinations. The main way to do this is through personal reflection.

Ask yourself questions designed to reveal to you your real self. For instance ask yourself:

  • What movies do I really like?
  • What are my opinions about the current economy?
  • What subjects do I enjoy to talk about?
  • What values do I treasure the most?

Take some time to really think about these things. The better you know your true self, the more you can bring it out in social interactions. This leads me to the second step.

2. Make Small Steps Forward Towards Authenticity

The big practical issue regarding how to be yourself is that most people try to do it all at once. They wanna completely drop their mask all of sudden and be totally authentic with others.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You need to identify the specific ways in which you are inauthentic in social interactions and then correct them one by one.

You need to gradually get out of your shell and become more authentic. And you do this by setting small change goals for yourself and working on achieving them.

In time, these small goals add up and soon enough, you find yourself behaving in a radically new way when dealing with others.

In fact, many people may actually say to you: “Wow, you’ve changed!” Becoming more authentic leaves external clues, and this is definitely one of them.

3. Calm Yourself Down

The vast majority of people who have a hard time being themselves feel somewhat anxious or tense when interacting with others. And when they even think about being real in a context, their anxiety shoots up.

The trick here is to calm yourself down and assure yourself that it’s OK to be yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you, or at least not forever.

You do this through your self-talk. The fundamental skill to master is talking to yourself, in your inner dialog, in a manner that’s constructive and reassuring.

For example, when you feel anxious and the need to hide your true self, you can say to yourself something like: “Is perfectly fine to be myself. This person will probably like me as I am, and if they don’t, that’s their problem.”

This kind comforting self-talk will make the anxiety slowly dissipate and make it easier for you to be yourself during a social interaction with somebody.

You can find out more details about changing your self-talk and enhancing your confidence in my free conversation confidence guide. Make sure to check it out.

As you implement these three steps, you’ll create a positive shift in your self-image and you’ll become a lot more confident in social settings.

How to be yourself is something that’s absolutely learnable. The important thing is to take the right steps, to execute them effectively and to be committed.

I’ve seen numerous persons dramatically boost their social confidence and become truly genuine when dealing with others. If they can do it, so can you.

Image courtesy of I’ethan

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 5 Comments
September 6, 2011

The Ingredients of a Fulfilling Social Life

In the last few years, I’ve given a lot of thought to the question: What makes one happy? I think there is a lot of variation, as each person is different, but there is at least one common thread. And that thread is good relationships.

I think that, on the whole, the people with the most meaningful relationships tend to also be the happiest.

Thus, it’s no surprise that, for example, people with social anxiety, who tend to have few or no friends and rarely go out, are often also diagnosed with depression. Loneliness is not only boring; it’s also detrimental to your mental wellbeing.

Most of us lack a proper map for what to look for regarding our social life. It’s not enough to go out and hang out with people. A social life needs to fit some criteria in order for it to be rewarding.

Therefore, I want to talk about what I deem as the three key ingredients of a fulfilling social life.

1. Quantity

Yes, quantity is important. I don’t believe in having one friend. I also don’t believe in expecting your romantic partner to play all the important roles you want in your life: lover, collaborator, friend, mentor, therapist etc. You’re putting too much pressure on one single person.

The thing is that we have an array of similar but distinct social needs. We want companionship, but also romance, and fun, and deep conversation, and guidance, and support, and a massage at 2 AM in the night.

So the best way to go is to find a palette of people, each one with the ability to fulfill some of your needs. Typically, the more individuals you have in your social circle, the more of your social needs you can satisfy.

2. Connection

Obviously, quantity is not enough. You can know a lot of people, but if the dynamic of the relationships is not adequate, they don’t bring any perceptible value in your life, and vice versa. Quality is also key.

At a psychological level, the measurement of the reciprocal value two people bring into each other’s lives is something I like to call connection. A good relationship, in my book, is defined by a strong and rewarding connection.

This connection can be casual, romantic, sexual, emotional, intellectual, and so on, depending on the nature of the relationship. But it must be there. When you feel that connection interacting with a person, you know it’s a relationship worth having.

You want to have a social life with lots of people in it, but more importantly, with people you truly connect with. At the end of the day, you’re much better off with 10 strong interpersonal connections in your life than 100 barely manifest ones.

3. Authenticity

As a coach, a lot of the people I discuss with tell me they don’t enjoy socializing and interacting with others. As we explore this topic, what I discover almost every time is that they believe they must get the approval of others, and they act in a fake way during social interactions.

Well, when your social interactions are mostly about playing a role in order to get approval and avoid disapproval, of course you don’t enjoy them very much. Who enjoys being fake and on guard all the time?

This is why I see authenticity as a fundamental ingredient. The point it to behave in a genuine way around other people, instead of faking it. Thus, whatever connections you build with people, they are authentic and you can truly savor them.

I find it a lot more productive to meet lots of people, and hold on to those you genuinely connect with, instead of meeting a few people and clinging on to them no matter what. The later kind of relationships is simply not rewarding.

Conversation Confidence

I always notice one common quality that all people with fulfilling social lives have. This quality is what allows them to bring quantity, connection and authenticity in their relationships with others.

And the quality is conversation confidence: the ability to engage others in a comfortable and genuine matter, without making excuses for who they are. With conversation confidence, you can interact with others easily, express yourself and simply unveil the relationships that are meant to be.

Next Tuesday, on September 13, I’m going to release Conversation Confidence: a 4.5 hours audio guide, based on scientific research on the psychology of confidence and my 5 years of experience as a coach.

If you want to be a confident conversationalist and have a rich, fun and fulfilling social life, this guide is the cornerstone. With its release, I’m also gonna launch some cool free bonuses, as well as another website and brand.

Stay tuned. Big things are coming.

Image courtesy of Lulz Photography

Filed Under: Inspirational, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 4 Comments
August 30, 2011

An Empowering Way to Look At Social Interactions

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

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

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

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

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

Social Interactions as Play

What does this have to do with social interactions?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting Play Back In Your Social Interactions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming a New You in Social Interactions

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

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

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

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

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

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Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment
August 7, 2011

The Magic of Making Up

Romantic relationships: the epitome of complicated.

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

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

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

Feel free to find out more about this ebook here.

Is Getting Back Together The Best Move?

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

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

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

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

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

The First Step to Stopping a Break Up

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding the Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out The Magic of Making Up here.

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

Image courtesy of CourtneyCarmody

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment
June 27, 2011

On Health, Life and Love

I’m in writing overdrive. But you’re not going to see the content here on the blog, because it’s for an information product I’m currently working on.

I can’t tell you anything about it at this point, except that it is a practical, bullshit-free guide to making conversation with confidence. And it’s coming along beautifully.

I get so many emails on this topic that I decided it’s about time I create an information product addressing this issue.  There are four or five emails related to this in my Inbox right now, still waiting for me to answer them.

Anyway, since all my writing energy is focused on the guide this week, I decided to share with you on People Skills Decoded a couple of the educational videos I’ve been watching lately and getting a lot of value out of.

The first video is a presentation made by Mark Sisson, who is in my perspective one of the leading authorities on healthy eating and living, and the creator of the Primal Blueprint.

In this video, recorded at The 21 Convention, Mark discusses how to eat and exercise to be healthy, lean and active. If you tend to go with the conventional wisdom on this subject (whole grain cereals and stuff) this presentation will surprise you. Watch it here.

The second video is an old favorite of mine: a presentation on the science of love made by Helen Fisher, a person who actually studies love scientifically. Check it out below or on TED.

Big things are coming. Stay tuned.

Image courtesy of Sister72

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment
April 6, 2011

How to Survive a Crappy Job Until You Find a Better One

A crappy job is no joking matter. Unfortunately, a plethora of people are spending more than one third of their time every week, month and year, working in such a job.

I’m not talking here about a job that’s just boring or unfulfilling. I’m talking about an entire work environment that’s psychologically debilitating. Think manipulative management, lack of ethics and sabotage of your advancement.

The logical and obvious step when you’re in a crummy job is to look for a better one (hopefully, a lot better) and to get out of there as soon as possible. You want to kill your job before it kills you.

Now, the practical challenge is that finding even a decent job, especially in some fields, can take 3 to 6 months and sometimes longer. So before killing your job, if you rely on it financially, you may need to tolerate it for a while.

As I often coach people in this kind of a situation, I want to share with you three of the most effective strategies I know for surviving a crappy job until you find a better one.

1. Reduce the Contact with Your Job As Much As You Can

Until you find a new and better job, you want to dedicate the least amount of time possible to your current one. Take plenty of days off, try to frequently get to work late and leave work early. This serves a triple role:

  1. It reduces your contact with a toxic work environment;
  2. It gives you time to relax, distress and recharge your batteries;
  3. It gives you more time to invest in looking for another job.

I’m a believer in integrity, but when you’re dealing with a crummy job and toxic relationships in the workplace, it is guerrilla warfare. Anything goes. So, use just about any tactic available to diminish the contact with you job.

This is a good time to catch every known type of flu out there, plus a couple of unknown types. It’s a good time to generally feel sick very often. On many occasions, you may not even have to fake it that much.

2. Set up Compensation Mechanisms

If your work causes you distress, exhaustion and lack of fulfillment, then you don’t want any other area of your life to add to this. On the contrary: in order to keep your mental and emotional balance, you want to compensate in your time away from work.

The period when you’re dealing with an almost intolerable job is a very good one to:

  • Develop nurturing relationships and use them for support;
  • Get involved in plenty of fun and relaxing activities (go to a spa, play some paintball, get plenty of sleep);
  • Do meaningful things in whatever free time you have (volunteer for a cause you believe in).

A particularly good idea during such a period is to eliminate as much as you can of the outside work responsibilities than can be stressful. Try to either dump them altogether or delegate them to somebody else.

Case in point: I’ve seen married people who in a period of real torment at work told their caring spouse about their work problems and asked them to take on more of the household responsibilities for a while, until they’ll be in a better job. If the spouse does care, they can help tremendously.

3. Stop Taking Work So Seriously

It’s crucial to realize the following point: when you’re set on leaving a job and will do so in a few months tops, apart from your short term check, the stake is pretty much gone. Being a good employee is no longer required. If you don’t, what is your employer going to do? Fire you?

First off, even if they do fire you, it will take months before your insolence accumulates, becomes evident and the decision to fire you is made. By that time, chances are you will already have another job offer.

Second of all, you’d be surprised how much shit you can get away with. I’ve met many people who are total assholes at work and they haven’t even come close to losing their job. They may get criticized by their boss or peers every now and then, but that’s pretty much it.

Fundamentally, surviving a crappy job is about strategy and attitude. Equipped with these two tools, you can deal with any job, for a while. And when you accept a new job, you’ve better not make the same mistakes again.

Image courtesy of Stepan Mazurov

Filed Under: Career, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , 3 Comments