Category Archives: Focus

Choose the Positive to Erase the Negative

I remember when I was in Junior High school. I used to play golf with my friends after school at the local nine hole course. It was around seven bucks, so we could afford to play once a week. The first four holes were pretty easy. Big. Wide. I could slice and shank the ball all over the place and not worry. The sixth hole was where I had problems. I was a water hole. I could never figure out why I almost always plunked the ball in the middle of the water. Sometimes I could even catch any air, I would just burn if off the tee straight into the drink. I never had that problem on other holes. I could always hit monstrously long towering drives if I had a big patch of green in front of me.

Some grass, of course, is greener than others. I had to help my friends put in new grass, or sod as they call it, in their backyard once. I never knew deciding on a grass was so involved. You can choose based on the weather, how much effort you are going to plan on putting into it, how much money you have, how much money you want the neighbors to think you have. I never knew that there was so much choice. I guess when you don’t put yourself in situation where you realize that you can choose, you don’t notice all the choice that is around you.

My friend was telling me that choice is a funny thing. You can choose which direction you want to drive, you can choose where you want to sit, and you can choose where you place your focus. Some people only place their focus right in front of them, which can cause problems, while others tend to take a longer view of things, placing their focus off in the distance or the future, to see things they hope to create instead of focusing on things they fear. Because usually, whatever you place your focus on, becomes your reality.

I guess the only real good thing about helping out friends with home improvement projects is you usually get treated to a really nice meal afterwards. He bought some really good steaks that he barbecued on their new barbecue. Rib eye’s. And she makes this secret recipe which is mouth wateringly fantastic. She gives me bottles of it sometimes, but she’ll never give me the recipe. It was the thought of that which kept me going through the whole sod planting ordeal. And all this time I thought grass just kind of grew on its own.

My friend had  really good idea. He told me, and I’ll never forget this, that just before I tee off, to close my eyes and imagine that the lake is really a big green fairway, and I wouldn’t have a problem. I tried it, and much to my surprise, it worked. Metaphysical advice in junior high school. Its always good to realize that when you focus on a postive outcome, the negative has a way of disappearing.

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Find the Right Fit

I had a rude awakening this morning. As I was heading out, I noticed that I had forgotten to take out the trash last night. As stepped out for my morning walk, I noticed that the garbage truck was just pulling up. I ran inside, grabbed my bag of trash (today is burnables day) and ran down the five flights of stairs in my apartment. I got to the trash truck just as they were finishing up, and the trash man told me they couldn’t accept my bag, because it was the wrong color. Furious, I turned and walked back upstairs in shame, holding my improperly colored garbage bag. I thought of plenty of insulting things to say to that garbage man. Stupid rules. I can understand rules, but the wrong color? Some rules are meant just to annoy me, I’m sure of it.

A friend of mine used to have a rule about girls that he dated. He was looking for a specific type, with a specific personality. He had a really good job as an investment advisor for a very large company. He was looking for a girl to settle down with, as he was reaching that age. He had set up a system, so that he could, after only a couple of dates, determine if the girls personality and intelligence level met his criteria. Some of the girls wanted to date him again after he’d disqualified them, and although they seemed to be determined to get another shot at him, he refused to change his standards. At the time I wasn’t sure if I believed that he was really searching for “the one” or if he was just using it as an excuse to date as many women as possible.

I had a girlfriend, way back in high school that I knew wasn’t right for me, but we went out for a long time anyways. I was really relieved after we broke up, and she was as well, because we had spent so much time trying to keep something going that shouldn’t have been started in the first place. I realized that you can’t make something fit, regardless of how much you want it to. I think many people try and do things backward, in a way. They tend to create a image of what they think they want, and instead of taking the time to sort through the possibilities, and make a determination whether or not something fits, they try to fit things where they really don’t belong. I think it’s a lot easier, in the long run, to figure out exactly what you want first, and then spend your efforts to find the right fit, instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Which is exactly what my friend was doing. He found his girl, they were exceptionally compatible, and ten years later, they are still incredibly happily married with three kids. It turns out he really did know what he wanted, and determined as early as possible. You really have to develop courage and a strong belief in yourself to pull something like that off. Many people just roam through life and take what they can get.
I suppose that’s exactly what the sanitation worker did as well. Who knows how much trouble he’d get into if he showed up at the sanitation processing plant with the wrong color bag. It might throw off the whole system they got. I’m sure he wanted to finish his morning route and whatever he needed to do back at the sanitation processing plant as quickly as possible. When you have a clear destination in mind, it’s easy to reject things that will only slow you down, and not waste time with somebody that is too busy to learn the rules of the game.

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Paint Your Future Brightly

I was sitting in the barber shop this morning. I didn’t have to be anywhere until one, so I had my morning free. I usually get my hair cut with a number two blade, but there is one lady I like to go to at this specific barber shop because she does a really thorough job despite it being a rather easy haircut. I should cut my hair more often, but I tend to let it grow until it is a bit too long. Then after I decide to get it cut, I usually wait another two weeks. It’s kind of weird that way I do that sometimes. I know I have something that I need to do, and when I look at my schedule and see that I have some free time, I think “oh yea, then I can go and do…” The problem is, I often fill up my free time with activities that don’t really give me much benefit. It’s almost as if when I have a big block of free time, it gives me the luxury of procrastinating even more.

Not that procrastination is always a bad thing in every situation. I was at an art museum with a buddy of mine last weekend, and we were looking at all the paintings. He was actually going there to try and get a phone number from one of the girls that worked there. He kind of knew her, but wanted to go with a friend. He thought it would be too obvious if he showed up by himself, asked for her number, and then left. He thought that he would appear to desperate. After putting it off for a few weeks, we finally went. The way he was describing his plan, he made it sound like he was planning a jewelry heist or something.

One of more interesting paintings was one by a guy whose name I forgot. The guy painted it when he was well into his eighties, and it was his first work. They had little biographies of the painters under each painting, as none of them were world famous. This guy had wanted to be a painter his whole life, but as it said on the card “life kept getting in the way.” Some of the cards had just the basic biographical information, and other cards had a lot more. This had a message the artist wrote, which was kind of advice. It said as follows:

Gentle reader. Painting can be a difficult task. Sometimes you have a spirit in you that you have to release. If you cannot release it, you will lose it’s flavor forever. You must imagine the painting finished before you. You must imagine your future on that blank canvas of your mind, so that you can overcome any obstacles that stand you way. You must make the colors bright, and the images crisp. You must bring your future to the present, and  push out all that stops you.

The funny thing was that my friend read that quote probably twenty times. He was standing about a meter from the girl whom he wanted to ask out, and when he finally got the courage, she said yes. And when I asked him about the quote on the way home, he didn’t even remember what I am talking about.

And finally my barber came in, but because I was in such a hurry, she wasn’t able to do as thorough a job as she normally does. I’ll never make the mistake again of missing on one of her fantastic haircuts. I learned my lesson.

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Step Back – – – Contemplate

I was flipping through the channels recently, and I came across one of those medical dramas. You know the kind, where they shift between the tension between the doctors and nurses, orderlies, and patients. It’s interesting how no matter what jobs people find themselves in, they will always come up with the same kinds of conflicts. But the thing the struck me was that it reminded me of once when I was sitting in the waiting room of the emergency room at the hospital. A friend of mine was suffering from extreme side cramps with what would later be determined to be a burst appendix. Because it was so crowded had been waiting for almost an hour by the time they wheeled her in for emergency surgery.  Probably the most disturbing thing was a man who had been waiting there with his kid, who was having some kinds of troubles. And he got into a pretty heated argument with the receptionist, as he had been waiting longer than any of us. Because he was speaking in broken English, and it was apparent the receptionist only spoke English they were having a difficult time communicating. And it didn’t help matters that he was distraught because of his sick daughter, she was distraught because of the many people waiting for more medical care than was available, and there really was nothing she could do. It’s horrible when you find yourself with a communication problem like that.

It reminds me when I was on the beach once, waiting for a friend. I was kind of learning against a wall they had separating the boardwalk from the actual sand. I was standing in the sand area, leaning against the wall, facing the ocean. It was really beautiful. The sun was off to the left, and was going to be setting soon. I was hoping my friend would arrive so we could enjoy the sunset together. But then again, it was one of those times where you are just relaxed and content to sit and let whatever happens happen.  Which is probably why I became so curious about the guy who started talking to me. It seems he was some kind of a performer, and would walk up and down the beach until he found a large crowd, and put on his show, and accept whatever donations they felt were appropriate. He started talking in sentences that didn’t really make much sense, but there was something intriguing about him, so I just listened, wondering where exactly he was going with all of this.

He sorted of reminded me from my friend from Australia, that I see every once in a while. This guy is a philosophy major, who is always going off on weird tangents, but he usually makes a lot of sense when you look below the surface. It’s like you have to take a step back to and figure out how to look at the broader concept of what he is talking about to make sense of it all. Sometimes you really need to pay attention to what is being said so you can really understand it. And many times he doesn’t make any sense then and there, it’s only when you begin to think about this that you can later find ways to apply it to your own life. He also likes to surf, which is probably why I started daydreaming about him while this guy was talking about whatever it was he was talking about.

Which ended up being that he was a fire eater, among other things. He had a bag with him, and while we were talking, or rather while he was talking and I was listening, enough people showed up. He kind of just broke off right in the middle of his story and then put on his fire eating show. And also he walked on fire, and rolled around on broken glass, and all kinds of cool stuff. All in all I think he collected a couple hundred dollars from the crowd. Not a bad take.

After my friend was wheeled into the emergency room, someone finally was able to summon the courage to intervene as a translator for the poor guy with the sick daughter. Turned out she just had diarrhea, and was dehydrated. That’s why she wouldn’t stop crying. Another person in the waiting room offered a solution that calmed his daughter down enough so the poor man was able to enjoy some peace until he finally saw a doctor. While we were waiting for my friend to come out of surgery (from which she fully recovered) he left and gave a gracious thanks to all that helped him.

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Grow and Improve with New Ideas About Yourself

I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and there was one guy that was droning on and on about something. I don’t remember exactly what it was, perhaps a commentary on the life of fruit flies or something else as equally boring.  I started drifting, like you do when you are in middle of something that you can’t exactly escape from, but it just wouldn’t be right to lay your head down and take a nap.

I was reminded of a place I used to work a long time ago, where we were having some product development problems. It was one particular product that the company had been working on for quite some time, and it just wasn’t quite working out. It as a kind of medical device that wasn’t supposed to be a great application that doctors could use during surgery. It was designed, at least in theory, to help the doctors perform the surgery quicker with more efficiency, and to make it easier for the patient to recover after the surgery. Because the patient would recover quicker, it would result in a reduced stay in the hospital, which would mean less money spent by the patients insurance company. All in all a win win win situation. A win for the doctor, a win for the patient, and a win for my company that was developing this product.

The problem was the product itself. it was a great idea, on paper. The problem was finding the right materials to put together in the right proportions to make it work in real life just as well as it worked on paper. No matter what we tried, nothing seemed to work. Hence the meeting. We were talking about another thing to try and see if we could make this work.

Like sometimes when you are in a relationship with somebody, and when you start to see this person, you start to have all these good feelings. Like everything is going to work out ok, and all the problems in your life have disappeared. It’s amazing when that happens. Every time you think of this person, you can’t help but to feel those fantastic feelings. But then sometimes, something happens. Those feelings start to fade, and maybe you realize that you were not really in love with the person, but in love with the idea of being in love. And you are faced with the difficulty of breaking it off with that person, and feeling the respect enough for yourself to say that it’s time to move on, and find somebody that is truly compatible.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. That’s what can happen you don’t realize that it might be time to move on and try something new. It’s like some people have this huge fear of being able to make a decision. Some people just can’t choose to do this, whatever it is. Because when you really understand something, and choose to do this, you can begin to realize that there is a whole world out there waiting to be discovered.

Which is why I think we stayed with that particular medical device longer than we should have. Nobody wanted to admit that it really was a great idea, but only on paper. When the manager of the research department finally made the decision to scrap the project. Most of us were relieved that he’d made that decision. Because once we freed up our energies to create new ideas, and make new things, we were able to sell many more products and great ways to keep people healthy.

And personally, I’m always amazed when I come across couples that are no longer couples, but remain great friends. Because they were smart enough to realize that one of the best ways to respect yourself, is to really get to know the person you are with, not for who you wish they were, but for who they are. That is where true respect and appreciation can come from. And they can free up your energies to find people and ideas you can really grow and improve with.

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Crystalize Your Focus

I was listening to an interesting radio show the other day. It was one where people could call in. I don’t think it was live, as I was listening over the internet. It’s a pretty major market in the U.S., so they have a fairly large internet presence.

The topic was “free or all Friday” or something like that. I think normally it is a politically themed talk show, with the kind of slant you’d expect from a politically themed radio talk show. But because it was “free for all Friday” they had abandoned their normal programming, and let callers talk about whatever they wanted to. They had some interesting debates between two and even three callers at a time.

So one guy started talking about how you are capable of really improving your life with this new technique he was talking about. I’m not sure if he was selling something or not, because the other guy kept interrupting him. Anyways, the guy kept saying that because you are paying attention to this, you can really start to become aware of the fantastic opportunities that are around you, every day.

Now this started sounding a little new-agey to me, so while I was listening I started surfing around, and looking on other websites. And I happened across a web site that specialized in crystals, among other things. I guess that’s what happens when you click on the ads on a page about new age thinking.

I had a friend once who was really interested in crystals. She was always telling me that proper crystal meditation, or meditating when using crystals properly can really help you increase your focus on what you want to do in life. She even went so far as to say that the meaning of life itself was only realized when you fully pursue happiness. The reason that people have difficulties, is they tend to only focus on short term happiness, rather than long term happiness. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your focus on what will provide lasting results. Other people tend to focus on things that will produce happiness, but only in the short term.

Like some people like to eat fast food a lot. When they think about eating, then tend to think of what will taste good right here, right now. One thing my friend recommends that you do, when making a decision is to always pause. She calls it the one hour rule (at least when she applies it to eating.) She says imagine what you would feel like in what hour, if you ate what you wanted to eat, and then bring that feeling back into the now, and inject it into your decision making process.

She said that when you take the time to do that, you can’t help but to have a more informed choice, and that can easily turn into a better choice.
Of course, it takes time to get into the habit of doing this, but I’m sure that because you’ve done things before that you are proud of, starting a new habit is old hat to you, not like some people.

I actually ended up buying a crystal from that website, a rose quartz double terminated one. I don’t know if it will have any metaphysical effects, but it sure looks cool.

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Use The Right Angle for Lasting Results

The other day a friend of mine was complaining to me about this recent diet she was on. She has been struggling with weight for a better part of her adult life, and tried diet after diet after diet. She lost quite a bit of weight on the low carb diet, but whenever she started to really see results, she got an unbelievably strong craving for chocolate. Rollo’s to be specific. Personally I find rollo’s to be pretty tasty, but I’d be hard pressed to eat more than a couple.

She was telling me that she has a tremendous amount of willpower at the beginning, and she is able to maintain this willpower, but for some reason it begins to fade after a couple weeks. She says it’s like a contest in her mind between the positive idea of seeing herself in the mirror a little bit slimmer, and the intense physical cravings that start to grow out of control when she has gone a couple weeks of really sticking to her diet.

Diets are an amazing thing, when you think about it. If you walk into any major bookstore in the United States, you’ll a huge section of diet books. Low carb, low fat, the Hollywood diet, the popcorn diet. You name it, and somebody has written a book on how get thin when you try their diet. Most Doctors (and most people) realize the simple truth that if you limit your food intake, you will lose weight. Many have noticed that all these fad diets are merely a tricky way of limiting your intake.

One of the things I think they miss out on is how you should pace yourself, whenever you start a new lifestyle change, which any certified dietician will tell you that is exactly what a diet is, a lifestyle change. But the problem most people run into is they start off too quick. Like when you go to the gym, and you haven’t worked out in a long time. If you try really hard the first day, you are going to be sore. So naturally, most coaches, and fitness trainers will tell you that it is important to start slow.
People really want to get in shape, and that’s fantastic. If they use this desire to train too hard, too early, they will become sore, and stop training. So their strong desire can have the paradoxical effect of thwarting their progress. I was overhearing a personal trainer coaching a new client at a gym once, and I heard her say:

“You need to start slow. The most import thing is to do something, anything. Don’t make the mistake of going for too much, too soon. That is what people that get stuck in that yo yo effect do. If you start slow, and increase your activity slowly over time, you will build up an incredible amount of momentum that will slowly but surely become part of your lifestyle so much, that you will feel completely lost if you don’t do something physical every day.”

I could tell this girl was a fantastic trainer, because she was incredibly fit herself, and her new client was exclaiming how excited he was because the trainer had such a long waiting list. She must have discovered some secret someplace that kept her in so much demand.

I guess it’s kind of like when I was in high school physics, and I learned that to get the maximum distance from a projectile, you need to launch it at a forty five degree angle. If you throw it steep, it will go high, but won’t go very far. If you throw it too shallow, like a baseball pitch, you will get a lot of speed, but it will fall to the earth rather quickly, and you won’t get much distance either. The secret is to throw it at just the right angle, to maximize the distance. If you don’t take the right angle, you will put in too much effort at the beginning, and it will fizzle out too quickly, and not give you the distance that you need. Balance is key.

So I suggested to my friend that she set her sights a little bit lower, instead of trying to lose 10 pounds in two weeks. When I suggested that she lose ten pounds in six months, she looked at me as if I was crazy. When I asked her to imagine herself two years from now, and what her life was like after she’d made it a habit to live so losing ten pounds every six months was a piece of cake, she smiled.

“I’d be in pretty good shape, for life!”

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Shifting Road Rage into Scrambled Eggs

The other day I was riding my bike down to the supermarket. I was only going to pick up a couple of things. Dozen eggs, loaf of bread, maybe some peanut butter. I was trying to remember what it was that I was after when a car served just ahead of me, almost knocking me into the light pole. He didn’t even honk or turn and see if I was ok. People like that really make me mad. I get really angry when people are out driving around, and cut people off right and left, without even looking around to see if they are causing any danger to anybody else. It’s like they don’t care if other people live or die. The whole world belongs to them, and you’d better get out of the way. These are the things that can lead to road rage, rights, high blood pressure, and if something like this happens to you in the morning, it can ruin your whole day.

Like sometimes I’ll be driving to work, and the traffic is just totally backed up. And the interesting thing is, is that sometimes there really isn’t a reason for the traffic to be what it’s like. And no matter what you try and imagine, now, it’s hard to come up with a reason for this. And that can be totally frustrating. You are just sitting there, not moving, and you don’t even know why. The radio doesn’t help, they just say try to use this exit, or that exit. But it doesn’t really help because since you aren’t going anyplace, you can’t very well take the next exit anytime in the next three hours.

Which is why I usually bring some audio books in the glove box. I don’t usually like to listen to music in the car unless I’m driving at a reasonable speed. If I’m stopped, and can’t get anywhere, I usually prefer to listen to people talking rather than upbeat music. I’d read the paper if it wasn’t so dangerous. Sometimes I’ll pop in a language tape, sometimes I’ll pop in a lecture. Once I put in a lecture that was about the great tonal shift in the English language. Supposedly it happened about a generation before Shakespeare. Which is interesting because he wrote all these fantastic plays, and was using a language that had recently undergone a drastic change. Had Shakespeare lived a generation earlier, or had the great tonal shift happened a generation later, Shakespeare’s plays wouldn’t be as accessible as they are today. When you find something like this that is really fascinating, and really appreciate the coolness of it, it’s hard not to be amazed at how much stuff there is out there to discover.

Similar to people who make it their life purpose to discover things. Like scientists, doctors, and artists, and certain types of engineers. Some people can get so involved into what they are looking for they seem to use lose track of where they are going. Like when Edison was discovering the light bulb, he burned through about seven thousand different filaments until he found one that would be economically feasible. Because he was able to lose himself in search for new information, and be able to apply it in ways that would help a great amount of people, this tends to happen.

Which is why I enjoy doing things like this. And sometimes I totally lose track not only of time, but of how many eggs I have in the refrigerator. Which is kind cool because sometimes when you run out of eggs, you can find other things that are just as healthy that you hadn’t noticed before. And it’s important to stay healthy, so you won’t have to rush to the hospital, like my neighbor did when he almost hit me. He later apologized, and told me that he didn’t turn around because he knew I was ok, and he knew that he would have plenty of time to apologize later. And I was glad the heart attack he thought he was having turned out to tendonitis, from doing too many pushups.

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Powerful Focus on the Present to Create an Automatic Future

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you just stopped thinking about the future? I don’t mean forget your three year plan for a while, or even take a break from your exercise routine. I mean totally, completely live in the present. I read a book on dating that said the best thing to do when you meet somebody for the first time was to walk up to them completely cold. That is, not have any clue whatsoever what you were going to say until you actually opened your mouth and started talking. Just make it up right there, and let the words come out however they may.

Sounds pretty terrifying, and it is, at first. Then something really strange happens. You start to get really creative, and think of wonderful things to say right there, right in the moment. It’s like by releasing all the worry and anxiety about what you think you should say, you open yourself up to really pay attention to what is going on right here in front of you. And when you are talking to somebody, and you really feel present here, you can really begin to feel something special. It’s hard to describe if you have never been able to experience this, now.

I was reading a novel once, I believe it was The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver. In this book, these cops were talking to an expert on magic and illusions. And he was saying that there really is no past, because all the memories we have are fairly inaccurate. And the present is unknown, which really only leaves us with the present. And when you focus too much on a future, through worrying about something that isn’t likely to happen, you lose mental energy. And when you bring up stuff from the past, that you don’t remember correctly anyways, you also lose mental energy.

By focusing your energy on the present, you can really begin to notice the abundance that has been around you all the time. Waiting patiently for you to dive into it and let the world know what it is you want.

Of course you always need to have an eye on the future, so that you can plan to be successful in the way that you want. It’s just as important to keep learnings from the past handy in case you discover an opportunity where you can apply them to receive immediate benefit. The trick is to leverage learnings from your past into your future by choosing the right actions and thoughts to have and do now, in the present. When you can optimize your present thoughts and actions, your future will pretty much take of itself. All you have to do is show up and meet it.

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Instantly Kill Social Anxiety And Let Your Brilliance Shine

And our next speaker will be telling us the exciting news about [insert your specialty here], please show a warm welcome for [YOU]!

You stride up to the podium, completely calm, right? Not a worry at all, right? No probably don’t even need note cards, since when you speak in front of a large crowd you feel the same as though you are speaking to an old friend over a couple of beers, right?

How about this. You are meeting a friend for a drink, you think it’s going to be just the two of you. You show up, and there are about six people that you don’t know. You slowly walk up to the table, and your buddy says “Hey! He’s here! I’ve been telling these guys all about you!” They all beam looks of expectation you’d normally see just before the curtain opens at Cirque du Soleil. Of course, since you are completely at ease and outgoing without need for any preparation going into any social situation, you can handle this situation flawlessly, right?

Or how about this. You see a fantastically attractive member of the opposite sex standing across the room. You flirt with your eyes a few times, and you’re pretty sure you see a brief flash of something that could be a smile. Of course, being the socially at ease person you are, you naturally stroll over, confident that your social and conversation skills are sufficient to easily decide within a few minutes of conversation whether this person is a match for you or not. Right?

Well, if you fall a bit short in the above situations, please raise your hand and join the human race. Social anxiety is one of the biggest obstacles known to mankind. People consistently rank the fear of public speaking higher even than dying. There’s a reason at high school dances boys stand on one side of the gym, and girls on the other. 

Luckily, I have a couple tricks that can help you easily overcome this. One is a realization that you probably already know, and the other is some mental practice that you can do that will consistently give you an edge as you practice it.

First the realization. What are you thinking of in these situations? If you can, imagine now that you are in one of the above situations, and pay attention to your thoughts. What are you thinking of? Your faults? Your weaknesses? The worst thing that can happen (or more accurately about a billion worst things that can happen?) Well guess what, whenever you are in a social situation, everybody thinks those thoughts. People don’t have near enough brain energy to focus on their own worst fears AND be cognizant of what you might be afraid of at the time.

Of course, this is easy to forget when you are hit with the unexpected adrenalin shot of social pressure, but the more you practice remembering, the easier it will get.

This realization really sunk in for me when I was taking a public speaking class. During one of the speeches, I was the first to go. I don’t what it was, maybe because I was talking about a subject that I was really familiar with, or the teacher was really nice, I’m not sure. But I was really relaxed. And during the middle my speech, I paused and actually scanned the room and noticed the expressions on everybody’s faces. They were all terrified. They were all thinking “oh no i’m next!” I probably could have been speaking Portuguese, and they wouldn’t have noticed.

Many times people will pretend they are not nervous, but trust me, they are doing their best to keep their game face while they think “oh no oh no what do I say???”

The trick I spoke of earlier is to focus outward as much as possible whenever you are in those situations that can make you feel less than comfortable. The idea is to stay out of your head as much as possible. Focus on their eyes, their nose, how their lips move when they talk, their boobs (ok, maybe not the boobs,) their ears, earrings, mustache, haircut. Try to figure out from their breath what they ate last, the sounds in the room, their posture, how many different colors they are wearing. Anything to keep the focus OUT side your head.

Of course, they key is to remember these two tricks when you get into those situations. If you know you are going to be in a situation, like a speech or a first or second date, no problem. Just make sure to rehearse doing this in your mind beforehand.

If you find yourself in a situation where you are suddenly on the spot unexpected, it’s good to set up a signal system to help you remember the two keys:

They are just as afraid as you.

Focus on physical things to reduce your own fear.

One thing you might do is use the pegging technique, and attach one to each thumb. Of course, like any new mind technique, it will take some practice. Another way to do this is to purposely go into situations that make you feel a little anxious and then just practice these techniques until you become natural.

While you might not become incredibly charismatic overnight, the more you practice these techniques, the easier it will be for you to be at ease in all situations, so you can feel relaxed enough to share your true self with the world. You owe the rest of us that much.

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