How to Be Friendly

If you study the people who bond the easiest with others and have the richest social lives, it doesn’t take long to realize that much of their social success resides in the fact they are very friendly and gregarious, with both girls and guys. Luckily, you can learn how to be friendly as well, and join their ranks.

As a communication and confidence coach, one of my core activities is teaching others how to be friendly and confident socially, and helping them create the fulfilling interpersonal relationships they yearn for.

The thing is, friendliness is just a set of behaviors and a certain frame of mind. If you understand them, you know how to be friendly. And if you employ them effectively, you become more friendly and social.

With this in mind, here are the 4 essential behavioral and mental changes to make in order to be more friendly.

1. Use Social Initiative Exercises

The biggest component of friendliness is social initiative. Having social initiative means that you proactively generate social interactions or certain phases of social interactions. You don’t wait for others to be social with you before you’re social with them.

There are very specific actions that compose social initiative. You can take these actions, one or more at a time, and practice them deliberately, sort of like exercises. I’m talking about actions like:

  • Attending events that are social in nature: parties, classes, networking events, etc.
  • Walking up to new people or people you know and starting conversations.
  • Introducing yourself to people you don’t know when they join your conversation.
  • Asking the other person questions about themselves during a chat.
  • Talking about yourself and sharing your own ideas and experiences.
  • Asking another person for their contact details.
  • Calling or emailing another person and inviting them to go out with you.

And the list could go on. Pick a couple of these activities today and start doing them more. There is no point in waiting.

2. Develop a Mindset of Likability

Something I’ve noticed early on at individuals that want to learn how to be friendly because they struggle with this is that, at some level, they see themselves as unlikeable.

They don’t think they’re good enough or interesting enough for others to want to interact with them or be friends with them. Thus, they are act cold and unfriendly with others. But this is just a facade, to protect themselves from the rejection they expect to happen.

If this is true for you too (and in almost surely is), then implement the 1st change I mentioned may prove to be quite challenging. You may have trouble even asking a few questions or making a bit of small talk with others, because you keep second-guessing yourself.

This is why it’s crucial to work on your mentality as well and develop a mindset according to which you are a likeable person; you are good enough. Which, trust me, you are. You just don’t fully realize it yet.

Since this is an extensive topic, I discuss it separately in this cutting-edge presentation. Make sure to watch it and you’ll learn the exact steps you have to take to change your mindset and become at ease in social interactions.

3. Choose the Right People for You

A genuinely friendly person can make conversation with just about anybody and enjoy the experience. Nevertheless, there will always be people they find it much easier to chat with, for longer periods of time, they’ll take more pleasure in it and they’ll be much more outspoken.

These are the people they are very compatible with: the people they have a lot in common with in terms of ideas, values, lifestyle, interests and so on.

It’s much easier to be friendly if you’re interacting with a person you match well with. If you usually hang out with people who only talk about marriage, kids and TV shows while you care about personal development, entrepreneurship and travelling, there is a definite mismatch there.

Think about the kinds of people you connect with the best, and then seek the types of activities, places and events where these kinds of people spend their time. Meet the right people for you and you’ll naturally find yourself being friendlier.

4. Socialize On a Regular Basis

It’s hard to become friendly and social if you only go out once every two weeks and you spend the rest of your time at home by yourself.

In order to eventually be friendly without effort, you mind needs to become acclimatized with social interactions. It needs to recognize them as a standard component of your life, which you go through regularly. And this requires regularity in your social interactions.

So, go out more, meet new people and interact with them periodically. Make going out the rule, not the exception. This is how to be friendly on a constant basis: by acclimatization with social contact.

Again, this presentation will provide you practical advice for achieving this and making the process of becoming more friendly as smooth as possible.

Your social life is under your control. Make the right adjustments in your behavior as well as your mindset, and you’ll surprisingly find yourself opening up more with all kinds of people and having lots of fun interacting with others.

That’s when you know that your life can be all that you want it to be.

Image courtesy of NicoleAbalde

How to Be More Talkative

Many shy and socially anxious people are interested in learning how to be more talkative. Some people seem to naturally be talkative and connect easy with others. They on the other hand struggle with this.

The good news is that you don’t have to struggle. Equipped with some savvy advice on how to be more talkative, you can get out of your shell and participate more in conversations with other people.

As a social confidence coach, one of my biggest delights is to see my clients speedily become more talkative under my guidance. I want to reveal to you the top four pieces of advice regarding how to be more talkative that they apply to achieve this.

Step 1: Manage Your Expectations

People who are quiet go into social settings with flawed expectations that make it almost impossible for them to be social and talkative.

For example, the may expect that everybody should like them, or they should never say something off beam, or they should never upset others.

With these kinds of expectations, you’re bound to be shy in social situations. Because almost anything you could say risks not meeting one or more of them. This is why an important step in learning how to be more talkative is to manage your expectations.

Managing your expectations means to identify what you, consciously or subconsciously, demand of yourself and others in social interactions. And then, to correct these demands: to make them less perfectionist and more down to earth.

This will allow you to feel more at ease in social settings, open up more and enjoy conversation more.

For a step by step explanation of how to manage your expectations and take the pressure off yourself, watch this exclusive presentation I created.

Step 2: Practice Being More Spontaneous

Another pattern in the behavior of quiet people is that they think too much before they say something.

They wanna be sure they always say the smart, funny or right thing and they never say the silly, weird or wrong thing, which is also related to the unreasonable expectations they have.

Consequently, they tend to over-think every sentence they could utter. And when you think too much about something, you always find fault in it and you often end up not saying it.

An excellent exercise for overcoming this is to practice being more impulsive during conversations. What you do is you say what pops into your head before getting a change to evaluate it thoroughly. You think less and you talk more.

As a result, not only that you’re more involved in conversations, but in the long run, you also build confidence in yourself and become comfortable with being more talkative. This is what makes the exercise cool.

Step 3: Remove Your Limiting Beliefs

Having unreasonable expectations, thinking too much and being quiet in social settings are ultimately mere symptoms of certain beliefs you posses.

Most shy or socially anxious people I’ve met or coached don’t hold themselves in high regard, they think they must be perfect or they think others are better than they are. This is the root of their problem.

If you want to permanently eliminate your nervousness in social settings and become more talkative, you need to get to the root of the problem and fix it from there. You need to change a precise cluster of beliefs you hold.

This is not only a helpful insight regarding how to become more talkative, but also a helpful insight to transform your relationships with others completely. And from there, your whole life.

I have a special free guide for you in which I’ll show you how to remove your limiting beliefs and blast away your anxiety in social settings. Go here to check it out.

Step 4: Treat This as a Process

Today you can become a bit more talkative than yesterday. And tomorrow you can become a bit more talkative than today. And in a few weeks, you’ll have accomplished one mind-blowing transformation.

However, you won’t turn from shy to talkative overnight. Don’t expect this, because you’re just adding to those unrealistic expectations that work against you.

The truth is that human psychology doesn’t work that way. It takes some time and practice to change. Not a lot if you do it the right way, but it does take some.

Treat this as a process, not as a quick fix. Work on becoming more talkative day by day, optimize the process, persist, and focus on making steady progress. This is the attitude that individuals who win at this game have.

I can vouch from experience that learning how to be more talkative and effectively applying this knowledge will open a lot of doors for you. You’ll be able to meet more people, make more friends, get more dates and get ahead in your career.

When you’re comfortable with expressing yourself and letting the world know you as you are, you can do great things with your life.

Image courtesy of bicycleimages

How to Be More Social

If you tend to be shy, quiet or anxious in social situations, learning how to be more social is one of the most important things you can do.

Put into application the right know-how on how to be more social and you’ll see outstanding transformations. You’ll find it easier to make friends, get noticed and have fun in social settings.

As a social confidence coach, most of what I do is help others discover how to be more social and implement this understanding effectively. I want to share with you some of the key ideas that have helped these persons without fail.

I discuss them in more detail and also provide other powerful advice in this free presentation.

Approach Being More Social Progressively

The common mistake that people who want to be more sociable make is that they try to achieve this all of a sudden.

I know you may crave to be the person who talks with everybody at a party, tells captivating stories and mesmerizes others. And you can become that person. But not overnight.

It’s essential to approach this as a gradual process and take it one day at a time.

For example, you may start by simply getting out of the house more; or asking more questions during conversation, and once this gets easier, move on to something more challenging.

Focus on making progress, not on radically changing yourself in an instant, and you’ll get very far. Anybody who wants to teach you how to be more social and promises a total transformation in a flash is just trying to swindle you.

Learn the Rules and Play the Game

I big issue for many people who want to find out how to be more social is that they don’t have a minimal understanding of the basic social etiquette.

For example, they often don’t know if it’s OK to ask a work colleague a personal question (the answer is: yes) or when is it proper to do so (the answer is: after you’ve gotten to know each other a bit at a professional level first).

Now, I typically don’t give a lot of heed to etiquette. But there are some fundamental norms for social interaction that it’s good to understand. And once you understand them, you can feel more confident in social situations and be more outgoing.

So I encourage you to ask yourself: what do I feel I need to understand better about social interactions. Then seek this understanding you require.

Sometimes just asking some questions to a few more socially savvy acquaintances is enough. Other times you may want to actually pick up a book or do a course on social dynamics and the art of conversation.

One small warning here: don’t overdo it. The point is to learn the basic etiquette and try to comply with it most of the time. Don’t try to become the perfect conversationalist who always follows the rules. That’s impossible and frankly, it would make you quite boring.

Focus Externally, Not Internally During Social Interactions

One thing I often notice at people who are reserved is that they’re regularly inside their head while interacting with others.

They scrutinize their behavior, try to find ways impress, or criticize themselves in their inner dialog. It’s no surprise that many times they seem to not be paying real attention to the interaction.

If this sounds familiar, then a crucial step forward for you is to focus more externally during social interactions. Pay attention to the other person, what they’re saying, and sometimes observe the context you’re in. But avoid being in your head.

This switch in your focus will achieve two things: it will lower your nervousness and it will allow you to have better reactions during the interaction. In time, this will make you more confident to initiate interactions and express yourself.

Work On Your Self-Image

Whenever I coach a person and we explore their desire to be more social, we reliably discover that there is a deeper issue that doesn’t permit them to be as sociable as they would like to be.

Many times they have some sort of an inferiority complex, self-image issues or a lack of self-esteem. Having a hard time interacting with others is just a symptom, but it is not the core problem.

In this case, it’s essential to work on the deeper issue in order to get rid of the symptom. You need to change your thinking patterns about yourself, and weed out those limiting beliefs you have about you. Change your thinking, and you change your entire social life.

You’ll find more in-depth guidance on how to do this in my free presentation on conversation confidence. I recommend you go and watch it right now.

You now have the basic guidelines on how to be more social. In order to see real results, it’s important to capably put hem into practice.

Ultimately, it is proper action that separates the winners from the losers; the people who revamp their social life from the people who just complain and dream of a better day.

Image courtesy of Mark Sebastian

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

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.

Image courtesy of lanuiop

Where Does Social Confidence Really Stem From?

Social confidence is the term I use to describe the type of confidence that concerns social situations and dealing with other persons.

I think most people have a profound misunderstanding of what it takes to develop social confidence. The problem is that they treat social confidence like any other type of confidence, and they believe developing it requires the same approach.

But it doesn’t. And so they end up going on this strenuous and unnecessary journey towards social confidence. Ironically, they often don’t even reach their destination, because they took the wrong road.

Social Confidence vs. Mechanical Confidence

I refer as mechanical confidence to the confidence regarding certain tasks or roles, and how well you can perform them.

Confidence as a singer, as a football player, as a car driver, as a lawyer or as an accountant, these are all forms of mechanical confidence.

Mechanical confidence in a certain area is reliant on the education, experience, results and appraisals that you’ve received in that area.

For instance: if you work as an accountant and you’ve received training at a top tier accounting school, you have over a decade of accounting experience, you have done correctly all sorts of convoluted accounting tasks and your clients habitually praise you for being such a good accountant, it’s reasonable to have ‘accounting confidence’.

And it makes sense, as you’re likely a very good accountant, with first-class accounting skills.

In the realm of mechanical confidence, skills and confidence go hand in hand. The way to develop your mechanical confidence in a specific area is typically to increase your skills in that area.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t excellent accountants who lack confidence as accountants, but still, the fact they have those excellent accounting skills creates a solid foundation to develop that confidence.

Social confidence is different. Although for the most part, people treat it the same as mechanical confidence.

By this I mean that they think social confidence needs to be based on social skills and social likeability, so they try to increase these elements in order to become more socially confident.

Most people I work with as a coach believe they need to learn how to be funny, how to make captivating conversation or how to impress others in order to feel confident in social settings and become more outgoing.

But they’re making a profoundly wrong assumption.

The Truth about Social Confidence

The fact of the matter is this: social confidence is not dependent on social skills. You don’t need to be a master conversationalist and a charismatic person in order to have social confidence.

Sure, these factors can elevate your social confidence and it’s a good idea to develop your social skills, but don’t believe for a second that without good social skills, you can’t have and shouldn’t have social confidence. Because that’s a bunch of bullshit.

Social confidence is something you expand from inside yourself. Its foundation is not in your social skills, but rather in your thinking.

Some of the most socially confident people I know are complete slobs with no goals in life, and little intelligence, creativity or allure to bring out. They have little that other people can passionately like them for, apart from their confidence in and of itself.

Yet they can feel confident in a social setting, not because the people in that setting like them, but because it doesn’t truly matter to them whether these people like them or not. They don’t need other people’s approval.

If you’re trying to develop your social confidence by trying to become a better, more likeable person, you’re pointlessly taking the long wrong.

Really, the best way to go is to just work on your social confidence directly. Focus on weeding out your limiting beliefs, embrace the notion that you don’t need the people around you to approve of you, and your social confidence will rise naturally.

And it’s not that unreliable confidence you have during a conversation when you know the other person is fond of you. It’s a lasting and reliable confidence that comes from your outlook on yourself, others, the world and life.

Once you have this natural social confidence, developing yourself and becoming more socially skilled is just an afterthought.

Image courtesy of iChaz

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.

Image courtesy of HckySo