April 11, 2011

‘I Have No Friends’ Help

Some of the people I work with as a social confidence coach have a decent social life and they’re just looking to enhance it, while some will tell me right off the bat: “I have no friends and barely any social life. I need help.”

When you’re in the ‘I have no friends’ category, you’re in a deeper hole than most people and there is a lot more work to be done in order to lift yourself out of it. However, don’t presume that this makes it harder. Rather, it simply makes it longer.

Why Do I Have No Friends?

If the number of friends in your social circle is zero, you are probably wondering: “Why do I have no friends?” This is a key question to answer. One thing I’ve noticed is a recurring set of characteristics that people with no friends share.

If you’re in the “I have no friends’ category, one or more of the following explanations are probably valid for you:

1. Shyness. Almost every individual with zero friends that I’ve coached or met struggled with shyness or social anxiety. This made them uneasy about meeting new people and expressing themselves authentically, which makes friends making almost impossible.

2. Poor conversation skills. It’s also common for individuals who have no friends to lack certain conversation skills. This is usually shyness related. They often have a hard time keeping a conversation going and moving it beyond fluff. Thus, it’s difficult for them to create a connection with others.

3. Being too nice. Contrary to popular belief, being a very nice person who always listens to others and never says a rude word doesn’t make you the popular person everyone respects. In fact, you come off as needy and desperate; not the kind of person one wants to be close friends with.

4. Having a one-dimensional life. Often, people who have no friends whatsoever not only lack a social life, but they have a one-dimensional life altogether. They may only focus on study or on work, so they find it nearly impossible to carry a meaningful conversation on any other topic.

Now that we know what the roots of the problem are, let’s take a look at the solution.

Focus Primarily On Social Confidence

As a person with the “I have no friends. What to do?” dilemma, the single most important step you can take is to overcome your shyness and boost your social confidence.

Commit to making this transformation, as it will have the most resonating impact, in your social life and beyond it. With more social confidence, it’s easier to get involved in social activities, meet people, make conversation, develop and edge and be yourself.

The process of boosting social confidence basically involves two forms of actions:

1. Getting out of your comfort zone. Interestingly enough, you typically don’t gain confidence first and go meet people second; you go meet people despite lacking in confidence and this helps you develop it. Your internal reality follows your external one.

2. Changing your self-image. I’m willing to bet that if you have no friends, you have a pretty screwed up view of yourself. Thus it’s important to improve your self image and self esteem directly, by changing the way you habitually think about yourself.

If you want to learn how to skyrocket your social confidence in just a few weeks, check out this presentation, where I’ll show you my proven method for building social confidence.

Tune-Up Your Conversation Skills

As you regularly push yourself out of your comfort zone and become more outgoing, this creates more opportunities to practice your conversation and people skills. You’re accumulating social experience and you’re training your social muscle. And just like any other muscle, the more you train it the more it grows.

In addition to this, if you want to accelerate your progress, learn and apply specific principles and techniques for improving your conversation and people skills. For example: learn to read body-language better, learn to communicate expressively or to lead a conversation smoothly in any direction.

Get a Life, Not Just a Social Life

Last but not least, keep in mind that the people who find it the easiest to make friends commonly have a rich live overall. They travel, read, meet lots of people, have hobbies and try new things on a regular basis.

When you live this kind of a life, making conversation, being interesting and connecting with others happens effortlessly. On the other hand, when all you can talk about are a rather repetitive job and a tedious TV watching experience, that’s not a lot to go on.

So don’t wonder “Why do I have no friends?” and dwell on this question too much. Instead, get out there, get a life in general and your social life in particular will flourish organically.

I’ve seen people achieve incredible progress in making friends and improving their social life. The overall blueprint is laid out for you. Put it into practice, learn to calibrate the fine details and keep at it. You’ll see some stupefying results.

Image courtesy of Bert Kaufmann

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 42 Comments
March 23, 2010

Discovering What You Have to Offer

If there is one category of people I know which struggle with their confidence, happiness and people skills, it’s those who don’t really believe they have anything valuable to offer. You have never seen a sadder look on someone’s face!

As a result of this core belief, the people in this category often believe a couple of other disempowering things as well:

  • That they are not employable and can’t find a job;
  • That they are not likeable and can’t find friends;
  • That they are not attractive and can’t find a partner;
  • That they are not useful and can’t contribute to the world.

With thoughts like these in your head, your future will not look very bright. The good news is there are ways out of this mindframe. In helping my clients improve their confidence and their people skills by handling this, there are 3 things which provide great results:

1. Identifying talents. I don’t care if you spent all your life eating popcorn and watching reruns of Seinfeld, you still have talents. Because talents (in my definition) are not dependent on your conscious efforts. They are your natural abilities. They usually develop in childhood, as part of simply living your life, or you are born with them.

We all have talents. Do you know yours? If not, then this is what’s very important for you to discover. Maybe you’re analytical, organized, creative, empathic, a clear communicator, a high energy person, good with numbers, attentive with details, a good singer. These can all be talents, things you naturally have to offer.

2. Identifying hidden skills. Most of us are not very good at understanding what our skills are because we think of a skill as something we develop in formal way, and we get a diploma to certify it. This is rarely the case. Most skills are learned in a more informal way, by simply doing stuff.

Consider the person who allays organizes huge parties for her friends, all their vacations and travelling. This person probably developed very good event organizing skills this way. She is one step away from the money-making business skill of events organizing. And probably, she is not even aware of it.

3. Starting from where you are. OK: even if you don’t really have a lot to offer, what does that mean? Nothing. It’s just where you are right now. You have a lot of space to work on your personal development and get some valuable skills under your belt.

So do not whine, do not feel bad, look at this simply as your starting point and evolve. Take a class, read a book, practice, get feedback, adapt, practice some more. As you learn various stuff, as you grow as a person and as a professional, you start to believe more and more that you have to offer a lot of value in this world.

But for most people, this third point is not the core problem. They have a lot of skills, a lot to offer. They just don’t know it. It’s a self-knowledge and self image thing rather than a real lack of value they can bring. This is why the most important step is a change of perception.

Filed Under: Career, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , 6 Comments
March 11, 2010

I Have People Skills!

At a recent training covering certain people skills, one participant kept asking why we’re talking about various stuff, because he’s an experienced manager who knows all this stuff and has good people skills.

Later in the training, this participant was involved in a role-play where we observed his people skills, especially those related to conflict management. The manager not only broke almost every rule for effective conflict management in the book, but even some which aren’t even in the book and now should be taken into account.

It didn’t surprise me, considering that in my work as a communication coach, I find it common for people with bad people skills to believe they have good people skills. When it comes to this area, it’s easy is to have huge blind spots, the size of the dark spots on the moon.

This particular experience though, reminded me of a scene in Office Space, a dead-on satire on the corporate life and one of my favorite movies. Here it is:

I constantly encourage people to put aside their presumptions about their skills and look at the facts as objectively as they can. Since our mind can fabricate our self-image to a great deal, by looking at the facts they will often discover unexpected things.

The line in the movie scene which names the title of this article gets me laughing every time: “I have people skills!“

Filed Under: Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , 2 Comments