Category Archives: Conversational Skills

Social Charisma Super Hero

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Structure Is Crucial

Many people believe they need to have some really interesting stories to talk about to be interesting.

Sounds kind of logical, but it’s not.

If you’ve ever seen a stand up comedian, they usually talk about pretty everyday stuff, right?

But it’s how they talk about it that’s funny.

If you want to become a powerfully mesmerizing speaker, either in one on one situations, or in front of groups, all you need is the stories you’ve got in your head right now.

To start, speak with bigger gestures. Congruent gestures. Don’t be afraid to show emotions on your face. It seems pretty scary at first, but when you really show a wide range of emotions that exaggerate the stories you’re telling,  you’ll turn a normal incident at a stop light into something people will remember for days or even weeks.

The second thing is to break the stories up. If you’re halfway through a story, suddenly switch into a similar story without really finishing the first one.

If you do these a few times, you’ll be creating “open loops.” The brain HATES unfinished business, so every time you “open a new loop” it will create a more desire and attention in your listener.

To make yourself even more persuasive and magnetic, take some time to think of the “emotional flavor” of all your stories. Sad, happy, exciting, surprising, discovery, etc.

Ultimately, these are the three things you’re aiming for:

1) Use a wide range of facial expressions and gestures

2) Create and leave many open loops

3) Take your listeners through several different emotions in a few minutes time

Now, this does take practice, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty fun. You’ll show up at a party or something, and start talking about random, everyday stuff, and people will think you are some social charisma super hero.

There’s another way to generate massive magnetism, and it’s pretty easy.

All you’ve got to do is simply pay attention to, and become interested in the person you are talking to.

After all, the most interesting thing to anybody are things about themselves. If you can get them talking about things they are interested in, and ask the right questions at the right time to get them even MORE fired up, this will also put you in the “social charisma super hero” category in their mind.

All it takes is getting out there, getting social, and having fun.

This Can Help:

Charisma Generator

The Talking Dog And The Pause

Not These Paws!

How To Build Up Interest

Here’s a cool “trick” you can use the next time you’re in a conversation.

It’s used to build “response potential,” which is that feeling other people get when you’re talking, and they focus more and more on what you’re saying.

This is great if you’re giving a presentation, or telling a story, and you want to make sure you keep people’s interest throughout the whole story.

(or if all your friends have ADD, lol)

Anyhow, it’s where you put the pauses when you speak. Most people put them where they’d put a period.

I was walking down the street (pause).

Then I saw this dog (pause).

The dog looked at me and said he was hungry (pause).

The “trick” is to take away the pauses from where the normally go, and put them in the middle of the sentence.

I was walking down the (pause) street and I saw this (pause) dog and he looked at me and (pause) said he was hungry.

When you get to the pauses, you can sort of look around at the people you’re talking to, if you’re talking to a group.

The reason this works is the human brain HATES unfinished business. All TV shows, waiters, writers, all use this to get effect. 

So even if your story is pretty lame (really? A talking dog?) if you put in the pauses, people almost be FORCED to pay attention.

Especially when you DON’T leave them any pauses (room in their brain to process what you’re saying) when you get to the “punch line.”

Most people, when they get to the “punch line” they stop and look around at everybody like they’re waiting for applause or something.

But if you not only put pauses where people don’t expect them, and DON’T put pauses where most people do, people will sense something VERY different about you.

They’ll wonder why, since even though you were talking about some ridiculous talking dog story (or whatever) there’s just SOMETHING about you that keeps you in their minds.

Now, imagine if you combined this with some stories that were interesting on their own!

Of course, this is just small piece of the charisma puzzle.

Body language, belief about yourself, how you look at people, how you use your gestures, all play a part.

But when they’re working together, YOU will be unforgettable.

The Social Snowball Effect

Get Out Of Your Head

Get Out Of Your Head

One of the nicest things you can do for anybody is to simply pay attention to them.

Most of us have all kinds of thoughts, ideas, dreams, that NEVER leave our brains.

Maybe once in a while, we’ll spit out a quick piece of evidence. Maybe we’re afraid people will laugh at us, maybe we’re afraid somebody will tell us our ideas our foolish.

But the truth is, when we are bold enough to speak just a small bit of our true selves, it feels REALLY good when somebody not only listens without laughing, but is genuinely interested in what we’ve got to say.

In order to be the one doing the listening, you’ve got to be careful. Many of us have a subconscious desire to “be right” or “be in charge.” Social status is something that we all crave, and recent studies from Harvard have shown that wanting increased social status is something that underpins pretty much every conversation we have with somebody.

So it can be very, very difficult to put your own opinions, desires and beliefs aside and really listen.

This is one those times when you’ve got to be your higher self. To ignore those lower-self instincts, and live fully consciously.

Because when you do, it’s pretty amazing.

AND it’s incredibly easy. 

The simplest way to really listen is to simply PAY ATTENTION to the words and phrases they use, and HOW they use them.

Then, when describing what they’ve just described, instead of “paraphrasing” them, like some folks teach, use the EXACT same words, in the EXACT same way they did.

Now, this sounds like you’ll come across as fake and manipulative, and you will if you’re not being sincere.

But if you repeat their words and phrases while fully trying to imagine whatever they were imagining when they said it, the results are flabbergasting.

Not only will they light up like a Christmas tree, but they’ll NEVER forget you.

They’ll see you as somebody who really gets them. Somebody who really understands them.

Obviously, this can be easily misused, especially if you’re in sales.

But if you’re just having fun in a social setting, and talking about things they’d like to do in the future, it’s really cool.

A side benefit is that while you’re talking to this person, and they are clearly VERY interested in you, everybody else is going to notice.

And everybody else will notice everybody else noticing. It’s like a snowball effect.

If you do this with just a couple people, you’ll soon develop a subconscious reputation in their minds for being truly charismatic and magnetic.

All by getting out of your own way, and simply listening to others.

Your Inner And Outer Light

Two Way Motivation

Two Way Motivation

It’s easy to “perform” when there are some strong incentives.

If you had a pretty good job, with pretty good money, and had to be there every morning at 7 AM, you wouldn’t have a problem waking up in the morning.

Having an external, negative incentive (you’d get fired if you showed up late too often) is one strong motivating factor.

Most of us are driven largely by negative incentives, or by pain. Meaning we are more motivated to move away from pain than we are to move toward pleasure.

For example, you’ll find no shortage of “diets” that famous people follow to lose weight in order to get those awesome looking bodies we see in the movies.

But here’s the thing. If YOU were going to get a few million dollars to be in a movie, but the ONLY way you would get it if you got yourself in really decent shape, you’d have NO PROBLEM doing so.

It’s not really the specific diet that gets them into shape, it’s the motivation.

Not only negative, but also positive. Meaning on the one hand, they’re terrified of losing out, and getting rejected by Hollywood. But they’re also thrilled at increasing their fame and social status.

This is what happens when you figure out how to be motivated not only by moving AWAY from pain, but TOWARD pleasure.

Most of us move away from pain just long enough so we can sit on the couch in front of the TV for a few hours.

Those that figure out to move toward pleasure, as well as away from pain, tend to do much, much better in life.

Of course, the first thing you need to do is establish your own personal pleasure you’re going after.

I’m not talking about short term pleasure, like that ice cream in your freezer. I’m talking about huge, long term pleasure out in the future.

A perfect relationship, a great career, a feeling of spiritual peace and connection.

Those things will simply not happen if you’re ONLY motivated away from pain.

The thing is that all of us, on a very deep and fundamental level, are hard wired to WANT those things. Those perfect relationships, careers that maximize our skills and intelligence while filling up our bank accounts.

But they don’t happen naturally. You’ve got to get up off the couch and get moving. Sometimes for a while before you figure out where you’re going.

Before you get on the path you KNOW is the right path for you, there will be some trial and error.

This is normal, natural, and part of the process. Otherwise, you wouldn’t feel that thrill of discovery when you DO discover the right path.

One way that can help considerably is to open up your higher self. Get in touch with the part of you that is waiting to be pulled toward the light, rather than merely away from the darkness.

Once you discover the light within, it will be much easier to find the light without.

Learn How:

Kundalini Activator

Do You Have The Brakes On?

Release The Brakes!

Eliminate Internal Resistance

When I was a kid I was in a couple of “races.” 

One was when we had to build these race cars out of wood. The track was just a bit long ramp, and the cars had to coast.

We all had a basic kit to build our cars with, so they were all pretty similar. Adult help was not allowed.

Then we had some kind of tournament where we’d just let them loose, two at a time, until we finally had a winner.

It wasn’t very scientific, more a process kind of thing. Get the kids involved in some kind of project where they have to do things on their own, without any help, and then stand by the results they got.

As you can guess, the biggest difference was resistance. Whoever got their friction levels the smallest had the fastest cars. Since they just coasted, due to gravity, the ones that went the fastest had the least resistance internally (from the wheels) and externally (due to wind resistance).

I remember another time, when I was going on a long bike ride with my buddy. He was having a hard time keeping up. Which was strange, since we’d often trained together and we were in both pretty similar physical condition.

We stopped, thinking maybe something was wrong with his bike. There was. Somehow, his rear brake was slightly engaged, holding him back, and stealing some of his pedaling energy.

This happens quite a lot. Often times we think what’s holding us back is somewhere “out there.” It’s pretty easy to point fingers at others, as it keeps us from owning up to our shortcomings, whatever they may be.

But often times what’s holding us back is something inside. False fears and anxieties, based on stories we told ourselves long go, that we still think are true.

And just like my friends brakes, these false fears are stealing our forward momentum. We are moving forward, but part of us is holding us back. The struggle we feel is completely internal.

Once my friend had uncovered his brake problem, he easily took off ahead of me. Compared to how he was huffing and puffing before, keeping up with me was easy. Too easy, so he left me in the dust.

This is what happens when we learn how to dismantle our internal brakes. It seems easy. So easy we can take off, and leave our old selves in the dust.

Free to sprint up ahead, and achieve things much greater than we’d ever thought possible.

Are you ready?

Kundalini Activator

How To Get Better At Anything

All Skills Can Be Mastered

How To Master Any Skill

The best way to get better at any skill is to simply practice.

This is pretty obvious for things like sports, music, or even cooking.

But we tend to overlook this simple rule when talking about thinking and other behaviors.

Consider feeling confident in certain situations.

It’s long been known that in the mind-body system, not only does form follow function, but function also follows form.

Wait, what?

If you ARE confident, then you’ll ACT confident. Meaning you’ll walk more upright, look people in the eye more often, speak a little bit more slowly and clearly.

However, if you AREN’T confident, you can ACT confident and the REAL confidence will follow.

Now, this is probably old news to you. In fact, this may be pretty obvious and self-evident.

Which is precisely WHY most people FORGET how powerful this is.

We tend to think that life changing behaviors and ideas must come with angelic trumpets blasting and the parting of the heavens.

But most of the MAJOR success you’ll achieve will be through LOTS of small, consistent steps.

Baby steps even.

Consider the confidence angle. If you spent TEN MINUTES, every single day, pretending to be confident, it would add up pretty quickly.

You don’t even have to talk to anybody. Just walk around where there’re other people like YOU are the King or Queen of the Earth.

The more you practice feeling confident, the more you WILL feel confident.

It’s like learning the scales on the piano. At first it’s tedious, takes all your brainpower, and is pretty boring.

But once you get it down, you can do it literally without thinking. 

ALL SKILLS, internal, external, or halfway in between are the same way.

At first practicing them is uncomfortable, takes lots of brain power, and feels weird. But so long as you don’t push yourself too hard, and give yourself plenty of time, there’s literally NO LIMIT to what you can do.

Getting in touch with your higher self is no different. Some people imagine some bolt of energy coming straight from Zeus and opening up your deep mind. 

But it’s really more like developing any other skill.

Spend a few minutes in quite introspection, and simply listen.

Listen for your inner wisdom and guidance. It’s there. It may be very quite, but it’s there.

And the more you PRACTICE listening, the stronger it will get.

If you started today, imagine where you’d be in six months.

Imagine if you started six months ago, where you’d be today.

Ready To Get Started?

Kundalini Activator

How To Avoid Relationship Pain

How To Meet Your Dream Girl

Looking For A Long Term Relationship?

They say hindsight is 20-20. That’s kind of true, but sometimes it’s pretty dangerous. Looking back into history can be helpful, but only when you take in the ENTIRE history.

There’s all kinds of movies where people go back in time and change one simple thing with disastrous results in the present.

When people reminisce about the past, it’s common to wish one or two elements were different, and everything else was the same. This is pretty impossible when you really think about it. Every incident in human life is the culmination of billions of random variables all operating according to different principles.

Since the human brain is limited in its understanding, we often perceive things that are much simpler than they really are.

For example, a lot of guys would like things to be the way like they were in the “old days.” Maybe they imagine their grandparents hooking up, dating a few times, and then having a relationship without much issue.

They compare that to their experiences today, and see a huge difference. The conclusion is usually that women today are much different than women of yesteryear.

There’s a couple things going on here that makes that seem correct, when it’s not true at all.

One thing is something called “survivorship bias.” This means we focus only on the few people that were successful, even when they are the exception to the rule. If you only focus on your happily married grandparents, for example, you’re ignoring all the people on planet Earth their same age who aren’t so happy.

Another problem comes when guys hook up with girls and have sex. Then there emotions get involved, and they try to turn a short term fling (based on how it was created) into a long term relationship.

Unfortunately, long term relationships only really work out when people genuinely like each other beyond those feelings of lust.

Anybody you meet under the cover of lust  may or may not fit that description. Sure it can happen, but when you consider how diverse people are, it’s unlikely you’d meet your soul mate the same way you’d meet a short term fling.

So, what’s the answer?

All this can easily be take care of with criteria. Find out what kind of relationship you’d like. Find out what kind of person you’d like it with. Find out a way to determine if they are a close enough match BEFORE you get too physical and your emotions get involved.

Sure, in the short term, it’s not a lot of fun. But in the long term, you’ll be much, much better off.

Learn More:

Girlfriend Generator

Don’t Argue With Her Unconscious

Roll With The Punches

Roll With The Punches

There’s a lot of misconceptions about what women want.

Often times somebody will proclaim they’ve finally uncovered what women really want. But then you find out it’s because they’ve done a survey. This should tell you right away they have no idea what they are talking about.

Why?

First, realize that attraction is not a choice. What women are attracted to is based on subconscious instincts that they themselves rarely understand.

This is hard to understand from a guy’s perspective. There’s a clear and obvious set of observable indicators of what generally peaks a guys interests. So when any guy describes what is attractive, it’s pretty simple. If a girl is hot, she’s hot.

But since girls are not as attracted to looks as guys are, it’s hard to put their finger on what gets them going.

Here’s another example.

Everybody likes food. Everybody likes slightly different food. Sometimes you want pizza, sometimes you want steak and lobster, sometimes you want something exotic.

It all depends on your mood. If somebody asked you, “What kind of food do you find delicious?” You might come up with an answer that sounded good.

But if you were walking into a restaurant and saw some food you’d never seen before, you may suddenly decide this was your favorite dish of all time.

You simply cannot objectively decide or measure or plan what kind of food you think is “delicious.”

When it comes to being attracted to guys, on a deep level, women are in the same situation.

They simply can’t predict or plan or consciously predict who they’ll find attractive.

Sure, they might give an answer that “sounds good.” But just like in the food example above, that’s going to go out the window when they see somebody who REALLY gets them going.

Does this mean it’s completely hopeless? Does this mean there’s nothing you can do?

Yes and no.

No if you’ve got your eyes on ONE particular girl. If you’ve tried to create attraction and have failed, there’s really not much you can do.

Imagine having a dinner party and cooking some food. But then your guests don’t really like it. Do you think you could “make them like it” by changing your clothes, or putting different music on in the background? Obviously not.

But this is what guys try to do when they try to get that “One Girl” to like them. I hate to break it to you, but if she doesn’t like you, she’s not likely going to. Unless you’re willing to totally change your personality and behavior.

On the other hand, this is great news.

Why?

Because you can generally figure out if a girl likes you or not pretty quickly. And instead of wasting your time trying to get “one girl” to like you, you can spend your precious time finding “a girl” that likes you.

And once you find her, all you’ve got to do is be yourself, and she’ll like you.

The real you.

How To Practice Social Skills

Small Steps

Don’t Go Too Far Too Fast

Most people know there’s inner game, and outer game.

Inner game is based on your beliefs, what you are capable of, and how you feel about yourself with respect to the rest of the world.

Outer game is your actual skills. This can, of course, apply to almost any kind of skill. Martial arts, music, you name it. You can play the piano beautifully in your own home, for example, but collapse into a pile of mush in front of others.

The good news is about your social skills is that you can build up both inner game and outer game at the same time.

Now, most guys don’t consider game as something you can “practice” and “improve” like any other skill. If you were a martial artist, for example, you wouldn’t ONLY practice whenever you had a match. That would be silly.

Instead, when you consider all the time actually performing any kind of martial arts, 99% is training, and only 1% of it is in the actual ring in a competition.

What would happen if you practiced your social skills the same way?

Meaning that most of the time, you practiced, instead of doing it “for real.” Now, many guys say it’s practice, but that’s only after they get blown out and don’t get what they want.

But what happens when you consider it practice before the interaction begins?

First, you’d have to decide exactly what you’re practicing. Eye contact, conversations, number closing, whatever.

Once you’ve got that established, you ONLY practice THAT. Nothing else.

This is something many guys have a hard time getting. As soon as they find themselves in a conversation, they go as far as they can until THEY get blown out, or THEY blow the other person out.

But what happens if you ONLY practiced up to the level of comfort, and nothing more?

Until you are absolutely and completely confident starting conversations, and can do so without a second thought, ONLY practice starting conversations.

As soon as you start one, exit (politely), and look for the next one.

You may find that this skyrockets your social skills and game in a VERY short period of time.

Since you’ll be building up your experience of positive experiences, that ENDED on a positive note, rather than you or them getting blown out, your confidence would soar.

Having a step by step plan can help.

Try this one:

Girlfriend Generator

Looking For A Long Term Relationship?

Measure Twice Cut Once

Measure Twice Cut Once

Most guys have problems with women. Not that they’d admit it, but they do.

This is perfectly normal. Life is filled with problems. Otherwise it would be easy, and nothing would be exciting.

Once I was at this investment seminar, and the guy said that no matter how your investment works out, you’ll be kicking yourself.

If you lose money, you’ll tell yourself you never should have made the investment.

If you make money, you’ll tell yourself you should have bought more.

This is similar to that statement that there are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting what you want.

Why do they say this?

Because all the action is in the pursuit. If you’ve ever had a really big, important, out there goal, that you ACHIEVED, you will likely have experienced “let down.” Once you get it, and the excitement wears off, you can feel pretty depressed. After all, if every waking minute has been spent over the last few years pursuing the biggest goal of your dreams, and suddenly that motivating energy is gone, it can feel pretty terrible.

What’s this got to do with women?

Let’s say you see that girl over there. You’d love to talk to her. So long as you really believe you’ve got a chance, you feel pretty good. Maybe you get her number and you’re trading texts and calls for a couple weeks.

All the while imagining how awesome it’s going to be once you get together.

Then you start seeing each other, and getting physical. Then you start to feel awesome when you imagine if you were to become exclusive, and you wouldn’t have to worry any more.

Then you become exclusive, and that’s when the problems start for some folks.

You’ve finally got what you want, but that wonderful energy of imagining a better future starts to slip.

Pretty soon you’re going through the motions, and your eyes start to wander.

Trouble starts, and before you know it, it’s all over.

How can you avoid this?

It takes some work at the beginning, but it’s possible. It requires you set it up so that you ALWAYS have something better to look forward to in the future.

This requires you KNOW what you want in the future, other than a relationship. It also requires you take the additional time and effort to find a girl that ALSO wants that same thing.

So you can pursue it together.

This is the real glue that binds people together for decades.

Doesn’t matter what that “thing” is. Hobby, sport, financial goals, artistic goals, your own business, whatever.

All it takes is you plan what you want, and choose wisely.