Tag Archives: Social Confidence

Maximum Social Confidence

How To Crush Anxiety

Maximum Social Confidence

If you’ve ever been to any kind of NLP seminar, there’s a lot of pair work.

The instructor will explain a few things, maybe call somebody up to the front, and then demonstrate.

Then he or she will have people get into pairs.

This is usually pretty awkward and slow at the beginning. Especially if there a few hundred people.

But if the seminar is more than a couple days, then it gets easier and easier.

Pretty soon, when the instructor says, “OK, partner up,” and it gets really loud really quick.

Most people take a while to “warm up” to other people.

One of the things about our brains is we tend to generalize.

Meaning that once you figure out how to do something, you can “generalize” that behavior to other similar things.

Tying your shoes, riding a bike, shopping in a supermarket, you learn to do these for ONE thing (shoes, bike, store, etc) you can do that will ALL things (all shoes, all bikes, all stores, etc).

But why not with people?

Interacting with people is in a special class. Because we come with a lot of baggage.

Not only from our childhoods, but from our ancient history.

For the longest part of human history, we rarely interacted with strangers.

That is a pretty recent development.

Luckily, with a little NLP magic, we can “go meta.” Meaning we can train ourselves to thinking of meeting people just like tying our shoes.

Once you have the experience of “getting comfortable with strangers” which you’ve already done countless times in your life, you can switch your brain around.

So the next time you see a stranger, instead of feeling anxiety, you can feel relaxed confidence.

Instead of “wondering” if they’ll “accept or reject” you, you’ll feel the familiar sense of “meeting and getting to know people.”

Of course, our brains don’t naturally “go meta,” it’s something we have to learn to do.

But since you’ve learned lots of other things (I KNOW you’ve learned how to read, for example) you can learn to “go meta” as well.

Which will make meeting NEW people feel familiar.

Luckily, if you want to increase your social confidence, it’s as easy as doing some simple daily exercises.

Just like you would believably be able to do a hundred pushups if you gave yourself enough time, you can develop a ton of social confidence in the same way.

Click Here to learn how.

They are Waiting for Your Ideas

I was in this bar the other night, hanging out with some friends. My friends left, but there was an interesting match on TV, so I decided to stay and see how it turned out. I didn’t even know that team was playing but that quickly turned into one of the more important things that night. As I was watching the game, I couldn’t help but notice all the other people that were paying really close attention to this. Most people could find this very fascinating. Of course, the game eventually ended, and everybody’s interest quickly fractionated into various splinters of interests. I started talking to a guy that I happened to be sitting next to at the bar. Funny that I didn’t notice him before.

We started talking about various things, sports, work, etc. He started telling me about his friend whose roommate just got this massive promotion at work. Massive promotions are pretty good when you can come across things like this. What had happened was this guy used to be a production worker in a factory that produced highly technical products that are used in various high-end electronics. Because of the nature of the work, and the small degree of error tolerances allowed in the manufacturing process, the work was sometimes a bit anxiety causing. One the one hand they had extremely tight technical specifications inside which they had to build a certain amount of products. On the other hand they had very important production thresholds they had to achieve on a consistent basis in order for the company to remain profitable. It was a business that had a very slim profit margin. And in today’s economy, I’m sure you can appreciate how important something like this is.

This guy had been working there for a while, and the management was a bit interesting. The production facility itself used to be part of another company, and they produced elements of a similar product. Then they initial company split up into different smaller groups, to try and maintain their profit, and the production factory was sold off completely to yet another company. Because the production process was very similar, the incoming management company didn’t change much.

While this didn’t present a problem to most of the workers, this guys friend had a bit of a problem. Just before the new management team took over, he had some ideas on how to promote the efficiency and consequently the profitability of the production line. He was just getting enough courage and confidence to suggest these to upper management when they made the change. At first he thought that he was just going to wait until things settled down, and then present these ideas to them. But then something interesting happened. Upper management just kept their hands off approach and was content to let the workers continue to produce, just like they had before. They didn’t have any meetings, or offer any insight or suggestions. It seemed to most of them that they were happy with the way things were. Which of course was fine for most people, because keeping things the way they were is very comforting to most people. Change is very scary to some. But this guys friend had an idea, and now he not only was unsure of whether or not his idea was going to be accepted, he wasn’t sure if his idea was even in line with what the new management team wanted to do. This was all very confusing. He had an idea, but wasn’t quite sure they would be open to hearing it.

For a while, this caused him some anxiety. He had all these ideas on how to make things better, but he didn’t know if he was supposed to voice them, or even if they would be accepted. He wasn’t content though, to keep things the way they were, because there’s no fun in that. He wanted to take things in a new direction, but the wanted to make sure that it was safe to suggest this new direction to management.

So after waiting several weeks, hemming and hawing, he finally thought to himself:
“You know what, what’s the worse that can happen? You have good ideas, you have an idea of what can make things better, if they don’t like your ideas, at least you will let them know that you want to make things better than they are. Because if one thing is certain in all this confusion, you can always improve things. And the more you improve things, the easier they become.”

So he finally strode into the management office, and whey they learned that he had some ideas of how to increase productivity, and therefore profits, they were all ears. What he thought was going to be a brief five or ten minute meeting turned into a three hour brainstorming session, with him at the controls. After the meeting, he got a good idea of where they wanted to take the company, and then gave some very good ideas on how they could easily get there. Soon he was promoted to a manager position, with his salary almost doubled. Now he is the new managing director of manufacturing engineering and design, something pretty good for a guy with only a high school education. And because of his ideas, the company is now extremely profitable, and they seek this guys opinions on all major decisions that upper management makes. Pretty good if you ask me.

Speak Your Mind – And Achieve Your Desires

I was waiting downtown in the hospital recently. It wasn’t the emergency section of the hospital, it was the place where people needed to see a doctor for things that weren’t life threatening. I was holding a number, one of those numbers that you grab like when you go to the post office. There was a big electronic board up and it showed the numbers changing as people went into the office. The peculiar thing was that the numbers weren’t really changing according to how many people went into the room where the doctor was. It didn’t take me long to figure out that people were just crowding their way in, instead of patiently waiting for their numbers to be called. I wanted to speak up, but for some reason I didn’t. Maybe because I was sick, or maybe because I was new in town and didn’t really know anybody there.

It reminded me once when I was in first grade. I used to be really shy. Once I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Back in first grade, you were always supposed to do what the teachers said. It wasn’t recess, so I was afraid I’d get in trouble if I asked to go to the bathroom. So I sat there with my hand on my crotch, I don’t even know if I knew when recess came. I was just a kid, I hadn’t realized that the most general rule in life yet.

It’s interesting when you look at some kids. They just scream out whenever they want something. They haven’t learned to be shy when asking for what they want. i was studying a book on persuasion, and it said the most natural persuaders and manipulators there are little kids. They scream and people ten times their own size scramble to take care of them. It’s like if you are a little kid, you when you want something, you just ask for it. You don’t wait for permission. When you are hungry, you scream for food. When you want something, you don’t rest until you get it. And when you are a kid, the only rule in life is keep screaming until you get what you want.

Finally the teacher saw me and told me to go to the bathroom. When I came back, she told me that it’s ok to ask for things that you want, it’s ok to ask somebody in authority to let you do something. Because if you wait until they notice you need something, it might be too late. I thought that was a particularly nice lesson for a first grade teacher to teach a little kid.

So finally I stood, and walked over to the door. I noticed the people sitting next to the door, and I asked them in a fairly loud voice if there was some kind of line, or do you just push your way in. And maybe it was because I was a little impatient, but I said it loud enough so that most people heard me. And after I said it, I noticed that people started looking at their own numbers and obeying the rules. As it turns out, the nurse that was supposed to be taking care of the number system had a last minute emergency, and wasn’t able to come in until later. I’m glad I spoke up when I did, I might have been waiting there all day.

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