April 1, 2011

Are Your ‘Friends’ Holding You Back?

A few years ago, I was learning to be more spontaneous in social interactions and practicing saying whatever popped into my mind without thinking twice. I ended up saying a lot of witty and creative stuff, combined with even more goofy and retarded stuff.

I remember that during that period, there was one condescending comment I would get once in while from some of my friends and other people who knew me. Or at least they thought they knew me.

“This Isn’t You”

That comment was like a subtle sting: “This isn’t you”, those people would say.

I was puzzled by the remark. What did they expect? I was getting out of my comfort zone and trying new ways of behaving socially in order to sharpen my people skills. Of course I was acting somewhat out of character!

I later started to notice that some of my communication coaching clients were getting the exact same comment from some of their friends during their conscious growth process. Often it was phrased in the exact same words, like some sort of popular slogan.

Why People Reject the Changes in Others

Let’s take a look at the psychology behind this occurrence. What you’ll learn may surprise you.

I think that most of the time, the people who make this kind of a remark, especially your friends, are not ill intentioned. It’s just that they are not used to people consciously changing and it’s something that goes beyond their comprehension.

You see, the average Joe or Jane out there barely changes anymore in terms of personality after the age of 18. If they do change, it’s not a voluntary change; it’s the involuntary results of an external change in their life: new job, promotion, marriage, breakup, business failure, etc.

They are used with adult people having a fixed and predictable personality. So when a person in their social circle voluntarily behaves in a new and unpredicted way, this can actually be anxiety producing for them. They don’t understand what’s going on because they don’t understand conscious growth, so they reject it.

There is another common explanation, and this one has less to do with ignorance. It has more to do with self-interest or envy.

It’s important to realize that for some individuals, your change is not in their interest. The friend who brags all the time doesn’t want you to start teasing them for being such an attention-seeker. The colleague who is less competent than you doesn’t want you to become more self-assured and advance your career, while their career is stalling.

The fact is that most people, as kind and noble as they like to seem, are actually quite egocentric. This is not necessarily bad for them, but it can be for you. On top of that add all the envious people out there, and it all makes sense.

Smart Comebacks for Dumb Comments

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to not take comments like the one I’m talking about too seriously. From my perspective, the best thing you can do is to just let them slide.

Occasionally, you may want to have a short comeback to that kind of a comment, but make sure you don’t get into a debate. Here are some smartass comebacks to the remark “this isn’t you”, for your inspiration:

  • “Me is a very slippery concept right now.”
  • “That’s because I have multiple personality disorder.”
  • “Really? Well, who the hell is it then?”
  • “You’ve noticed” (my favorite, a James Bond line).

Whatever you do, don’t let such remarks from friends or other people in your life make you feel bad and give up on your self-improvement. If you know why you’re behaving differently and you believe it’s the right thing for you, that’s good enough.

In the long run, if the people you call your friends are constantly opposing your growth through their attitudes, whether it’s due to ignorance, self-interest or envy, it’s time to consider applying your people skills in changing your social circle.

If personal development is important for you, then you want the kind of persons in your life that value it as well, not the kind that don’t even know the concept.

Image courtesy of Brian Auer

Filed Under: Communication Skills, Inspirational, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , 10 Comments
June 21, 2010

Stop Trying to Control Your Emotions!

A lot of people think that I teach others how to control their emotions in order to improve their communication and people skills. I don’t. And let me make it clear right off the bat: I believe that trying to control your emotions is messy, dangerous and ineffective stuff.

Emotions are not meant to be controlled

Emotions are not supposed to be something we have direct and instant power over. That would defeat their purpose. Imagine one of our ancestors in the Stone Age who is attacked by a hungry bear, feels fear and has the impulse to run like hell.

But then, he decides: “Hey, I’m gonna control my fear and try to negotiate with this bear.” And he somehow switches off his fear just like that. You would have a dead caveman in the next 5 seconds, regardless of his people skills (a… bear skills). Our species would be extinct if we could all command emotions like that.

So, what is it that I teach within my attitude-based approach? What is it that you can effectively do about those nasty negative emotions you don’t want? The point is this:

Instead of trying to control your emotions, learn to manage them.

Controlling emotions vs. Managing emotions

Managing your emotions is subtly but meaningfully different than trying to control them. When you try to control your emotions, you do so by rejecting and repressing them. It’s like putting a cap over a pot of boiling water and pretending the water isn’t boiling. I see this as a bad idea for several reasons:

  • It requires a lot of effort and is intrinsically painful;
  • It doesn’t really work; you can only control your emotions to a small degree;
  • The emotions eventually bottle up and they overwhelm you;
  • In the long term, the whole process is stressful and damaging to your health.

Managing your emotions is not about trying to reject them or repress them. It’s not a combative process, it’s a transformational process. To manage your emotions means to:

  • Accept they are there and there’s a positive intention behind them;
  • Understand both the external aspects of your life and the internal aspects of your thinking which create them, amplify them and sustain them;
  • Address these aspects and change them, in order to change your emotional reactions.

When you manage your emotions, they do not change all of a sudden. There are leaps in awareness in this process which can create instant emotional changes, but for the most part, the whole process is gradual. It takes place step by step, as you either change how your life is or how you habitually think about it.

Sometimes, negative emotions are just signals that you’re doing things that are not aligned with your values and an external change is required; sometimes they are signals that your thinking in certain situations is irrational and an internal change is required.

Either way, by managing you are not addressing your emotions head on and you are not fighting them. You are going to the root of your emotions, you are pulling out the weeds and you are planting new seeds. This is why in a very Zen way, managing your emotions makes a lot more sense than trying to control your emotions.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 13 Comments
February 15, 2010

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.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , 11 Comments
February 10, 2010

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.

Filed Under: Attitude, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 14 Comments
January 26, 2010

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.

Filed Under: Attitude, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 25 Comments
December 21, 2009

Change Your Life Today, Now, Forever

Apparently, these or some of the expressions which are searched on the Internet quite a lot: “Change your life today”, “Change your life now”, “Change your life forever”. A bunch load of people are not living the lives they want to live, and they’re looking for ways to change that.

And I think that’s great. Unfortunately, for a lot of them, the search process in itself is setup for failure. Because they’re looking for quick fixes; for magic solutions to improve their lives: “Do this twice every day for 7 days and your entire life will turn around.”

In this era when things happen at great speeds, there is a fascination with fast and easy solutions which create big, lasting changes. And this fascination fuels an entire industry trying to provide them. An industry which for the most part, doesn’t even come close to fulfilling the “change your life today, now, forever” promise.

Let’s take a look at two very common examples:

1. Diets. There are hundreds of diets out there, which promise miracle results. Yet what they really provide is a relatively fast weight loss which does not last and is often very unhealthy.

Any person who lost a lot of weight and kept it that way can tell you what the solution that works is: eat less and exercise more, eat right and exercise right. Not just a couple of weeks, but as a constant part of your lifestyle. This way, you will slowly but healthy loose weight and you will keep it off you. It seems to be too hard for most people.

2. Subliminal tapes. There is a multi-million dollar industry of self-help tapes with subliminal messages on them, tapes which promise to change you life, improve your confidence, attract wealth and so on, just by listening to them. Because, we are told, the subliminal messages which you cannot hear consciously go directly to your subconscious mind and create powerful changes.

It certainly sounds great. There is just one problem: it doesn’t work! Every independent study on the effectiveness of subliminal tapes has reached the same conclusion: they are a waste of money. They only sell with the help of powerful and deceptive marketing.

As a general rule, quick fixes do not work to change your life. So why are they so popular? I think is has to do with a couple of things:

  • People are educated into believing that there are special, secret tricks which if you discover, you can use to change your life today, now, forever.
  • People don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into changing their lives, they lack the patience or the will, so they need to believe that quick fixes work.
  • People have a generally shallow understanding of the principles that generate results, especially the connection between effort, persistence and success.

What does work? The effective solutions to change your life generally follow the same one fundamental pattern: they involve continuous personal development. They involve changing the outcome by improving your skills, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors in an active, gradual, constant and strategic way.

Continuous personal development promises to change your life, starting now but not in a moment. And there is one trait it has that quick fixes do not: it really, truly works.

Although the interest in changing one’s life is a wide spread one, the interest in continuous personal development is much narrower. So if you have this interest, and you don’t allow yourself to be tempted by the promise to change your life today, now, forever – my congratulations!

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , 10 Comments