Category Archives: Approach Anxiety

Confidence Beats Everything

Social Conditioning Skills

The other night I watched a sci fi movie on Netflix

Maybe you’ve seen it.

It’s called, “Paycheck,” with Ben Affleck.

He was an engineer, and he and his partner had an interesting way for him to take lucrative freelance jobs.

He’d go to a company, help them invent some new product, and they’d pay him.

And then his partner would erase the portion of his memory, so he couldn’t divulge the secret information to other companies.

But in the beginning, they showed him practicing some kind of martial art.

Even though he wasn’t a fighter, and the movie hadn’t gotten to the part where he had to USE any kind of “fighting,” it made sense.

If you are going to be a scientist and have portions of your brain wiped periodically, you need to stay in “fighting shape.”

Most people recognize that “staying in shape” is important.

Most sports can be improved if you have more endurance.

Boxing, basketball, tennis, even bowling or golf are easier if you’re in good shape.

Any lots of endurance-heavy sports like boxing or basketball sometimes come down to which athlete is in better shape.

Once you are too tired to lift your arms to block a punch, your boxing skills won’t count for much.

Kind of like Mark Twain’s truism about reading.

The difference between somebody who CAN’T read and the difference between somebody who WON’T read is NOTHING.

The difference between a boxer who CAN’T lift his arms due to fatigue, and a boxer who doesn’t KNOW HOW to lift his arms is nothing.

Both are going to get punched in the face.

What’s the best “conditioning” for “life skills?”

Social confidence.

Public speaking, debating, even acting skills can often boil down to who’s got the most confidence, not the best skills.

Even before George Clooney became world famous, and had to go to auditions like other struggling actors, he said confidence was WAY more important than skill.

Robin Williams started out in a TV show called “Mork and Mindy.”

(About an alien named Mork).

How did he get the part?

He showed up at the audition and ACTED like an “alien” the whole time.

When he was waiting, he actually sat in his chair upside down.

That’s not an advanced acting trick.

That’s advanced CONFIDENCE.

The more CONFIDENCE you have, the easier life is.

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Social Confidence

Expand Your Social Universe

Imagine if you lived in a large city, but you only went up and down three big boulevards.

Whenever you thought about going shopping, you’d only think of the stores on those streets.

Whenever you thought of checking out a band or seeing a movie, you’d only imagine what was available on those three streets.

Whenever your imagination drifted to the weekend, and you started to daydream about what you were going to do, it would ONLY cover those three streets.

A goofy example, right?

One of the common things they do in hypnosis training is to get people to forget letters or numbers.

Then they say the alphabet, without the vowels, for example, with a straight face.

Or they count to ten without five, thinking it’s normal.

Everybody watches and giggles.

But it’s really a metaphor for how we live.

Most people are interested in hypnosis so they can hypnotize others, or hypnotize themselves and get rid of some of the junk they’ve been carrying around.

But maybe the BEST thing you can do is to first DE-Hypnotize yourself.

So you can see MORE of the stuff that’s around you.

Because the guy in the three boulevard universe is not so far from the truth.

Most of us go to the same places, do the same things, talk to the same people.

Even about the same topics.

Consider that doing things specifically that you AREN’T comfortable doing can be a useful exercise in de-hypnotizing yourself.

Just going places you’ve never gone, or eating at new restaurants or going to new bars can be helpful.

But what is MOST helpful is to talk to people you’ve never talked to before.

Most of us are VERY closed minded. We tend to hang out with people with similar ideas and beliefs, so we reinforce those similar ideas and beliefs.

Pretty soon we think THOSE IDEAS are all that’s out there.

But there is much more than you could EVER discover.

Of course, you won’t get any ideas from buildings. Concrete can’t talk.

But the people there can.

And you’ll be AMAZED at some of the treasure people have to share.

But they won’t come to you.

You must go to them. When you do, you’ll realize it’s well-worth the journey.

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Social Confidence

Destroy Fear of Rejection

Having more resources is better than having less resources.

If you were having a party, you might consider all the snacks and drinks at your place as resources.

If you were going shopping, you might consider a fat wallet a resource.

If you needed a date on short notice, you might consider all the girls’ numbers in your phone as potential resources.

Some things can switch from being burdens to resources.

Like you might consider a garage full of junk as a burden. Every time you look at them piled up in the corner you’d get a bit of anxiety. Maybe realize that some day you’re going to have to clean up all that junk.

But then you decide to have a garage sale. You move all the junk from the back out to your driveway.

Maybe you make a couple hundred bucks. Not only did all the bargain shoppers pay you for your junk, but they took it away for you as well.

Many people look at other people with a mix of desire and anxiety.

On the one hand, they look pretty cool, and might make good friends or potential lovers.

But on the other hand, they could represent potential rejection.

Depending on your background and history, you might have more of one than the other.

You probably know a few people who LOVE groups of people.

They see them as PURE resources. Nothing negative. Only potential positive.

This, of course, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because they’re looking over the crowd with a positive expectation, they send out a certain “energy.”

So when they interact with people, that positive “energy” tends to generate the result they expect.

Luckily, being able to project that “positive energy” is a skill.

Meaning no matter where you are on the spectrum, you can tilt the scale in your favor.

Until you see EVERYBODY as pure potential. Positive resources you can “use” for any occasion.

Friends, business partners, lovers, whatever you want.

Click Here To Learn How

Maximum Social Skills

Rewire Your Lower Brain

I’ve got a lot of software on my computer.

Software is one of the things I like to buy, even when I don’t really need it.

(Another one of my weaknesses is kitchen utensils).

One common thing about software these days is it’s self-updating.

Or at the very least, when there’s a new version out, you get a button at the beginning that you need to click.

Easy peasy.

Usually it removes the old software, and installs the new one.

Our brains are kind of similar.

Similar in that it’s the software that drives our bodies.

And it’s been continuously updated the past few million years.

Only it doesn’t quite update the same way.

Because of the logistics and mechanics humans, we can’t really “uninstall” the old version and install the new version.

We just get new software built on top of our old software.

You can see this if you take apart your head and look at your brain.

(Just kidding! Don’t do that, you might not be able to put it back together…)

But we do have remnants of our old brain.

The reptilian brain at the base, the mammalian brain on top of that and then the neo-cortex, on top of that.

Problem is each one thinks it’s in charge.

So we have all these conflicting ideas about what to do sometimes.

For example, until very recently, we RARELY saw somebody we didn’t know.

That possibility has only been around for a few thousand years.

So our brains are pretty conflicted on what to do when we’re in a situation where there are a lot of people that we don’t know.

Part of us wants to check it out and see what’s what. Especially if there are attractive people around.

But another part knows that other people can be dangerous.

Luckily, one of the unadvertised benefits (and it’s not even in the owner’s manual) of our new-cortex is we can reprogram our lower brain.

It’s pretty easy, when done consistently, and can lead to some pretty awesome results.

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Naturally Relaxed

How To Make Other People Relaxed

There’s an ancient saying about how we humans represent ourselves.

The way we present ourselves to others, the way we present ourselves to ourselves, and then how we really are.

Most people rarely get past the first once. You might know somebody for a long time and find out later they were living some sort of secret life.

One of the hardest things in any sales or persuasion is making the person feel comfortable.

Unfortunately, when we read sales books we kind of skip past the part about rapport because we “already know that stuff.”

But since it’s the most important part, if we don’t get that stuff right, we won’t get very far.

Because without a degree of rapport, we’ll only be seeing the “pretend” part of the person we’re talking to.

So when we start to elicit criteria, or find out what’s important, they’ll only be telling us things we WANT to hear, not the real stuff.

One of the biggest obstacles to creating that deep feeling of rapport, so you can see the more of their real self, is anxiety.

Even if you go through all the steps, and spend a long time on rapport, they will automatically be as anxious as you.

Humans are like that.

We tend to resonate each other’s feelings and emotional state.

If you’re nervous, they’ll be nervous.

But the flip side is just as true.

If you are calm and relaxed, they’ll also be calm and relaxed. And they’ll do so unconsciously.

Meaning they’ll just feel calm and relaxed, and not really understand why.

They’ll interpret this as YOU somehow being “different” from everybody else.

So if you’re selling something, or creating a relationship, or just trying to make friends, it will be a lot easier.

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Love Life Party

Turn Life Into A Playground

I had a buddy once who was going through some tough times.

He was seeing a counselor, and the counselor gave him an interesting homework assignment.

To go to his local playground once a week, for an hour, and just watch the kids play.

He had a note from his doctor, so the cops wouldn’t think he was a predator or anything.

One of his issues is that he was emotionally closed off. And it had ruined his last couple of relationships, and it was affecting his job.

The idea of watching kids play was to help him “model” their behavior.

Usually it’s the other way around. One of our jobs as adults (if we have kids) is to model good behavior that our kids will copy.

But my friend was trying to do the opposite.

He was trying to copy the kids behavior, at least on a subconscious level.

Being able to run around and play without worrying about being judged or told whatever they were expressing was wrong.

If he could be more like that in his real life, he would have a better time expressing himself.

All of us go through dramatic changes as we grow up. Some worse than others.

We pick up tons of baggage, stuff that we instinctively thought was protective at the time.

Unfortunately, our brains tend to generalize a lot.

If you got yelled out in third grade by your angry teacher, a “correct” response would be to decide that your particular teacher, in that particular context (whatever was going on a the time) was a little bit sketchy.

However, our brains don’t work like that. They are lightning fast, but not very accurate.

So the natural conclusion to getting yelled at by an authority figure, as a little kid is that “expressing myself is sometimes dangerous.”

The more we experience events like that, the stronger that belief becomes.

And for some of us, just the idea of asserting ourselves in public is pretty nerve wracking.

Like if a waiter brings the wrong order, some people would have a hard time asking the waiter to fix it.

However, there are plenty of ways to “undo” those unconscious learnings and generalizations.

The more you do, the more socially outgoing and confident you’ll be.

Imagine being able to express yourself anywhere, anytime, and with anybody, and having absolutely zero fear.

You’d make more money and have much better relationships.

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Social Confidence

No More Fighting!

There’re basically three things humans do when we get together.

This is just as true now as it was back in the stone age.

We fight, we trade or we have sex.

And you can think of sex and trade as really part of the same thing.

In fact, all human relationships are based on trade.

Most of the time, it’s subconscious.

You act naturally, and the person you’re with (buddy or lover) acts naturally.

But if you are both satisfying each other’s needs, that’s when you “hit it off.”

Sometimes it’s partially conscious, partially unconscious.

Colleagues, clients, and other times we interact with people and are on some level trying to “behave a certain way.”

To the extent you can interact with a wide variety of people in a wide variety of ways, you’ll make a lot of friends and make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, for most of us, it takes a long time to “warm up” to somebody.

And just as unfortunately, many of those opportunities don’t give us as much time as we’d like to “warm up enough” to take advantage of those opportunities.

Like that job interview that didn’t go so well, yet the more you think about it, the more things you realize you COULD have said.

Or that cute person you saw, WANTED to talk to, but they left before you got a chance.

Any wonder why there’s that section on Craigslist?

The truth is that no human on Earth is satisfied with their interpersonal skills.

This doesn’t mean that we all suck.

It means that there’s no upper limit to your social skills.

Every single person you talk to will be different, and you’ll need slightly different skills.

Even the same people you talk to over and over are slightly different every time.

No matter WHAT your goals are in life, (even if you’re main goal is to get some goals) they’ll be much easier with more people skills.

They’re the grease that makes society function.

And the better you can slip in and out of conversations with different people, the more success you’ll have.

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Social Confidence

How To See Everybody as Friendly

Some things you learn, and then you don’t need to learn anymore.

Like riding a bike. Once you figure it out, it’s pretty easy.

Then there are some things you learn, and you don’t really need to keep practicing. You’ll still be able to do it, but if you don’t practice for a while you’ll get rusty.

Playing sports or any kind of musical instrument is like this.

Because there are a lot more steps, and you have to go through the four stages of learning, it’s easy to slip back from the top stage (unconscious competence) to the second top stage (conscious competence).

Then there are skills that if you spend any amount of time NOT practicing, they reset to zero.

Anything involving communication with other people is like this. ESPECIALLY when there are emotions involved.

Ask any guy who’s back on the dating scene after being married for a decade or so.

They might have been a mad player when they got married, but if they’re recently divorced, it feels like they’re starting over again.

Why is this?

Why do some skills degrade FAR FASTER than other skills?

Things like sports, playing instruments is very much an EXTERIOR activity.

Unless you’re the lead guitarist for a world famous rock band, it’s EASY to keep your real self hidden while your “exterior” plays the instrument or does the sport.

But whenever we get close to exposing our REAL inner selves, all kinds of emotions come into play.

Which is why you can learn to express yourself openly to one person, but as soon as you try with somebody else, it’s like you’re starting all over again.

All of us were once supremely confident and outgoing. We didn’t care who we were talking to. If we liked them, we laughed and giggled. If they scared us, we screamed and cried.

But then we learned (or were taught through a lot of trial and error) that expressing ourselves is DANGEROUS.

So our brains rely on the “one person at a time” way of learning to express ourselves.

Imagine if you had to RE-LEARN how to play the piano if you switched pianos!

Fortunately, once you UNLEARN that “people are scary.”

Or RE-FINE that learning (from people are scary to grownups are scary IF you’re a baby).

And that will allow you to talk to ANYBODY as if they are an old friend.

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Social Confidence

Help Save The World

There’s a cool concept in economics called the “invisible hand.”

It’s not a reference to God or anything metaphysical. It’s a metaphor for the amazingly powerful intellect of the “hive mind.”

For example, when the space shuttle blew up in the late 80’s, there were three possible causes.

Three companies that made three different components.

It took NASA six months of full investigations to find out exactly what happened.

But the “hive mind” knew within a few hours.

The three companies (we’ll call them, A, B, and C) all went down immediately on the stock market right after the explosion.

But by the end of the day, A and B recovered. C never did.

Six months of experiments later, NASA did indeed prove that the product made by company C was the culprit.

Keep in mind this way back in the 1980’s. WAY before the Internet.

This works equally well in prices.

Nobody needs to know how or why the price of cheeseburgers is suddenly twice as high.

But if anybody’s on the fence, and thinking about opening up a cheeseburger shop, the rising price is a clear signal that people WANT cheeseburgers.

So people open up more shops to satisfy the need.

The “hive mind” demanded more cheeseburgers, and the “hive mind” provided cheeseburgers.

Inventions work the same way. Nobody can EVER predict what will be invented.

But when you’ve got millions of people all independently thinking of how to make stuff better, you’re BOUND to get some awesome creativity.

If there’s one main ingredient in all of these examples, inter-human connectivity and communication is essential.

People need to interact, to communicate, to share and pass along ideas.

Kind of like the old “telephone” game from elementary school. One kid starts with a message, and whispers it into the next kid’s ear. By the time it goes around the whole class, the message is completely different.

For simple messages, this is a goofy exercise.

But when it comes to ideas, it can be magical.

One idea passed through a million minds can transform into a life saving medicine, or a breakthrough in manufacturing, or a much faster way to travel.

Again, all requiring human communication.

The better you can interact with others, share your ideas, take their ideas and make them better, the more you’ll help change the world.

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Social Confidence

Cut Yourself Loose

When I was in high school, I loved science, but my math sucked.

Because I sucked at math, every time I thought about science I had a mix of positive appreciation and negative anxiety.

Then later in college, I went through the same scenario as I kept going through tougher and tougher physics courses.

But once I’d figured out the math, I could enjoy the science without any negative anxiety.

I would actually watch these beginning physics shows on TV. My roommates thought I was crazy, but for me it was pretty cool.

I’m sure you’ve heard the metaphor about the elephant.

When he was a kid, they kept him tied up. But when he was fully grown, they removed the rope.

But since he’d been conditioned to believe the limitations (the rope) was there, when they removed it he never went outside that small circle.

Even though the rope was gone, his belief that it was still there kept him trapped in that small circle.

When you were very young, you were very outgoing. Socially fearless. If something was wrong, you would scream your brains out.

If you were happy, you would laugh your brains out.

But then the adults starting putting those constraints on you. To keep you quiet. To keep you from causing problems.

This happens to all of us.

But here we are as adults, and those constraints aren’t there any more.

But just like the elephant, because we BELIEVE they are there, we act as if they ARE there.

The elephant my think about going outside his circle, he may WANT to go outside his circle, but his fear of the rope keeps him stuck.

Fortunately, we humans are a bit smarter than elephants. We can look back and understand that our situations when we were kids are MUCH DIFFERENT than they are now.

There is NO NEED to feel any social fear at all. No logical reason.

But just knowing this doesn’t help. Because our fears operate on a subconscious level.

And only by going down and rearranging them, and then coming back up, can we live life without any social fear or anxiety whatsoever.

Once you’re able to cut yourself loose from the false fears programmed into your brain when you were a toddler, life will be fun and exciting.

You’ll be able to act without fear, behave and communicate in any way you want, and create the life you desire.

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