July 31, 2013

Dealing With a Personal Development Information Overload

Information overload is very common for people who are into personal development. It’s essentially when you’ve learned so much theory that your mind is overburdened and so it’s difficult to put it into practice.

What happens is that you consume a lot of conceptual information from books, articles, trainings and so on, and then instead of applying it, you get even more information; and more, and more. And when you finally decide to start applying it, you find out there is too much competing information in your head, to many concepts, ideas and voices telling you what to do.

You can recall everything and nothing at the same time, you don’t know where to begin with practicing, you feel confused and overwhelmed. So you become paralyzed and all that information goes to waste, because you don’t actually apply any of it to build real-life skills or attitudes.

info

I think that personal development information overload is very common because many of us, when we decide to improve an area of our life, we want to get all the information from the get go, to make sure he have any hypothetical scenario covered, and only then start using it.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work very well. There needs to be a continuous balance between theory and practice in personal development, otherwise is gets disrupted. Considering this, here are my top 3 pieces of advice for dealing with a personal development information overload.

1. Take a Clean Break

Obviously, you’ll need to stop learning new concepts in order to prevent burdening your head with even more info. However, at first it’s also good to not try and jump into practice right away either. Instead, it’s best to take a short but clean break from both theory and practice.

You see, if you have too much information and you wanna start applying it, you’re like a person who ate an excessively big meal and wants to go jump in the swimming pool. With all that food in their stomach, it won’t be a pleasant experience. What they need is to wait a while and give time to some of that food to digest.

Similarly, you need to wait a while and give time to some of that excess information to go out. Your mind will quickly begin doing a cleaning job in your memory, dump some of the surplus info and keep and reorganize the info it sees as the most relevant.

This does indeed mean that you’ll lose some of the knowledge you acquired, but it’s much better this way. Because with less knowledge, your mind is more flexible, it can dig through the knowledge faster and it’s much easier to apply it.

2. Select Just a Few Ideas to Practice

When you start to practice the theory, don’t try to use it all at once. It’s too much. Your actions will be all over the place and you’ll make little progress in terms of building new habits.

The best route is to select only a few key ides and concentrate on applying them until you feel they’ve become a part of you and you now employ them naturally. If for example you want to be more outgoing socially, pick just 2-3 techniques and apply them. Then select a few more ideas and apply them, and so on.

This is the step-by-step approach to personal development, which is much more effective than trying to make one big jump and be done with it. The human mind works best if it focuses on a few simple tasks at a time. With this approach you’ll make the most progress in the long-run.

3. Set a Theory/Practice Ratio for the Future

In the future you’ll want to prevent information overload from happening again. This implies keeping a balance between how much theory you learn and how much you practice it.

The top way I know to achieve this is by setting a theory/practice ratio that you find convenient and sticking to it. For instance you can set a 1 to 5 hours ratio, which means that after 1 hour of conceptual studying, you need to spend 5 hours applying what you’ve learned. And you only allow yourself to go back to acquiring more info after the 5 hours of practice.

There is no universally perfect ratio; you’ll have to find one that works for you and your personal development goals. Just keep in mind that whatever ratio you pick, it’s key to have relatively short periods of learning theory followed by much longer periods of putting it into practice.

One of the perks of setting such ratios it that it forces you to be selective about what you study, since you’ve put a strict constraint on your studying time. This in turn means that you’ll be particularly picky about what you learn and you’ll be much more concerned with the quality of the information you get.

You’ll want to learn from the experts, you’ll be more willing to pay for information if it’s more valuable than free information, and the benefits will show in the results you’ll obtain consistently.

Your self-growth will be real and effective; you’ll see your behavior, your emotions and your life improve day by day, and you’ll enjoy every moment of it.

PS: I recently wrote 2 articles for DatingAdvice.com. One article is about making women notice you, the other is on how to make a girl laugh. Check them out.

Image courtesy of Will Lion

Filed Under: Personal Development, Success Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment
March 27, 2013

How to Better Yourself

I often say that the best way to better your life is to better yourself. With improved knowledge, skills, habits and attitudes, you can visibly enhance how you live and how happy you are (not necessarily in that order).

To do this, it’s key to have a good understanding of how to better yourself as a person. Self-improvement is not something you just do. You must follow certain steps in order to do it right. And the fact many people defy or don’t even know these steps is why they have such a hard time enhancing themselves.

As a coach, I’ve been helping others better themselves since 2006. And I’ve seen them achieve some impressive changes. Based on this experience, I’d like to give you my perspective on how to better yourself and show you 4 important strategies to follow.

1. Define Precise Personal Development Goals

The truth is that “I want to be a better person” is a resonating ideal, but a horrible personal development goal. Because it’s not specific enough. With such a goal, you don’t know where to start from, you’ll randomly jump from one area of self-improvement to another, and you’ll make little progress.

So, once you realize that you want to better yourself, it’s time to set more specific personal development goals. This entails thinking about the specific areas where you want to improve yourself the most and defining precise competencies to develop.

As a rule, try to only work on developing a few competencies at a time, so you don’t overburden yourself. You not only need to have specific goals, but you also need to program when you’ll work on them so you don’t try to work on all of them at once.

2. Get the Best Information Available

Better

In the realm of self-improvement, there is a lot of information. There are tens of thousands of books and the internet is crammed with millions of articles.

Unfortunately, over 90% of the information available is ineffective. It’s general, simplistic, impractical, repetitive, poorly researched or just plain wrong. It’s so easy these days for anybody to write a few articles and post them online or even publish a digital book, that this niche has become flooded with poor quality material.

The implication is that in order to truly better yourself and do so effectively, you need to seek and find the best information available. Do your research, assess the information carefully, and be open-minded but use your critical thinking at the same time.

As a side note, most high-quality personal development information out there is information that you have to pay for. It’s in the form of books, courses, etc. This doesn’t mean that you won’t find quality information for free as well, or that all paid information has quality.

However, usually, the best information will come from real experts, and these people will provide some information for free but they will also charge for a lot of it. After all, they’re experts, they know how valuable what they have to offer is and they do make a living out offering it. So be willing to invest some money in bettering yourself as well.

3. Take Massive Action

In my experience, real self-growth means 20% at most getting information, and at least 80% applying it. This means you’ll have to spend at least 4 times more time practicing information than learning it.

Personally, I’ve met many folks who declare that they are into personal development, but sadly, all this means for them is reading lots of self-help books and applying almost nothing.

That’s not how you better yourself, which is why such people barely make any changes. They acquire an understanding of what and how they need to change, but they don’t actually change.

Wanna know how to better yourself? Equipped with the right info and precise goals, you take massive action. Always keep this in mind and concentrate on taking a lot of action. Be primarily a doer, not a reader.

4. Use a Social Support System

This is optional, but it’s a great way to speed up your personal development progress. As a rule, we make much more progress, much faster, in any area, if we surround ourselves with people who seek similar goals, who offer us positive advice and help us stay motivated and focused.

With respect to self-improvement, it’s ideal to make friends who are also into self-improvement and to support each other on this journey. You can even form some sort of mastermind group with them, meet regularly, discuss your goals and progress, and give each other constructive feedback.

You most certainly wanna stay away from toxic people who constantly criticize you and try to discourage you from thinking you can change. They will only pull your down when you could be going up.

Bettering yourself is a journey. And it’s not only the destination that can be very fulfilling, but the journey in itself to boot. In fact I think the only real way to do personal development is by enjoying the process at least as much as you enjoy the final outcome.

So as you better yourself, always remember to have fun!

Image courtesy of h.koppdelaney

Filed Under: Personal Development, Success Tagged With: , , , 4 Comments
December 6, 2012

Shy Guys: Their Psychology and Their Recovery

Most statistics state than shyness is somewhat more common for girls than for guys. Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, there are heaps of shy guys out there, and many of them are in fact extremely inhibited.

These guys feel anxious in social situations and they feel particularly anxious around girls, especially the ones they find attractive. They have trouble engaging in conversations and keeping them going, they hide their sexual side, they are often invisible to the girls they like, and if they’re not they often get friend-zoned by these girls.

Unsurprisingly, their social life in general and their dating life in particular look pretty gloomy. And taking care of this issue is one of the most valuable actions they can accomplish.

As a social confidence coach, I work with shy guys on daily basis. Over time, this allowed me to see certain recurring patterns regarding why they are shy and how they can fix this. So, in this article, I’d like to share with you my most important findings.

The Making of Shy Guys

Generally speaking, shyness is the result of an overestimation of the risks social situations pose for you. But what these perceived risks are exactly, why they are perceived and what they signify varies from one person to another, and it varies based on gender as well.

I discovered that shy guys have two limiting beliefs in particular, which feed their timidity.

Firstly, shy guys perceive themselves as losers.

Success and status are very important for men. On average, they are significantly more important for them than they are for women. Men are especially competitive, achievement-seeking and results-oriented.

If a guy doesn’t see himself as successful and as having a good status, if he thinks other guys are better than him, he will tend to feel inferior and insecure.

Of course, success and status are very relative and the problem is that shy guys distort the reality in their heads and make themselves seem much, much worse than they are. And this generates unreasonable coyness.

Secondly, shy guys perceive themselves as sexually unattractive.

Even if they may seem themselves as successful, they still don’t see themselves as sexy. Deep down, they believe that a woman could never be sexually interested in them.

This is why they regularly try to compensate for their alleged lack of sexual attractiveness by being extremely nice with girls they like, paying a lot of attention to them or buying them expensive gifts.

Yet again, this lack of sexual attractiveness is merely a figment of their imagination, a result of some very faulty stereotypes used to understand human sexuality. It has little to do with the objective reality.

Now that you have a better understanding of the problem shy guys have, let’s talk about the solution.

From Shy Guy to Social Guy

A lot of shy guys appear to deem that their lack of social confidence is the result of their shortages in terms of success, status, looks, charisma or sexual experience.

Although these shortages may be to some degree real and they can be contributing factors to shyness, their role is only secondary. As I already alluded to, as a shy guy, the primary source of your shyness is your faulty thinking, not the way you are as a person.

Whatever your condition may be, trust me, I know several guys in the exact same condition who are very confident socially and have no problems making friends or enticing members of the opposite sex.

But your thinking amplifies your flaws, even invents false ones, and embellishes their meaning. This takes places automatically when you’re in social situations, and generates your feelings of anxiety and hesitancy to just be social.

Obviously, the solution is weeding out these automatic thinking patterns and replacing them with more accurate ones. It’s a step by step process which entails:

  • Indentifying unrealistic thoughts you have in social settings;
  • Challenging and correcting these thoughts;
  • Gradually developing a more social behavior;
  • And being persistent with this process.

This is a just a gross outline of the process. I’d like to show you in more detail how to implement it effectively. For this purpose I have created a special video presentation for you.

Go here now to check out the presentation and learn how the psychological process of changing your thinking and eliminating limiting beliefs works. You’ll get a lot of value out of it.

Unfortunately, shy guys miss out on a lot on life. I should know: I used to be one. You notice other guys making friends, having girlfriends and enjoying social interactions, while you’re just being an observer, waiting for something to simply fall in your lap. But it almost never does, and if it does, you’re not able to leverage it.

The good news is that you can change all of this. You can take charge your thinking, eradicate your limiting beliefs and gain the social confidence you want. All you need is the right guidance and the wiliness to apply it consistently. The improvements will follow naturally.

Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon

Filed Under: People Skills, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , 6 Comments
February 2, 2012

How to Be Witty

So, you want to learn how to be witty? I understand you perfectly. The witty person in a social setting is the person who gets all the attention, makes everyone laugh, is liked by everybody and has no problems connecting with others.

As a social confidence coach, I work on a regular basis with guys and girls who want to learn how to be witty and charming. I’ve discovered there is a set of precise steps that if any person takes, it can make them considerably wittier. Here they are, taken and explained one by one.

Step 1: Practice Thinking Outside the Box  

Essentially, what makes a person witty and funny in conversations is the fact they say things that are unexpected and creative. And they’re able to say such things because their thinking is outside the box.

Therefore, developing your ability to think this way is a must step in learning how to be witty and funny. And the only true way to develop it is through practice, which can take place while in social settings but also outside of them.

Let’s say somebody asks you: “Hey, are you gonna run to the market, because I’d like to ask you to get something for me?”

Instead of answering in a basic manner “Yes, I am”, think for just a second and see if you can find a more creative way to answer. For example, you may come up with: “Well, I’m not gonna run, I’m just gonna walk to the market. But yes, that’s the gist of it.”

Now that’s a much more clever and amusing way to respond. It’s guaranteed to get at least a giggle. There is another thing though that you have to do to be able to come up with such snappy comebacks, which is the next step.

Step 2: Really, Truly Listen

Studying how to be witty and charming is to a large extent a study in being a good listener. It’s important to really pay attention to the words and messages others convey, in order to find clever and funny ways to respond to them.

The problem is that most people don’t truly listen. They’re stuck in their heads, thinking what to say next or what’s a smart line they can use, instead of paying attention to what the other person is saying.

In a conversation, listening always comes before thinking out of the box. It’s only once you received the full message and its meaning that you may start to think how you can respond to it. Otherwise your comeback will just seem unnatural and odd.

Step 3: Focus on Having the Right Emotional State

I’ll tell you a little secret few people know: the bulk of your ability to be witty and funny has to do with your emotional state. This is why, when a person asks me how to be witty and funny, I usually tell them that the main way is to manage their emotional state.

When you’re in a conversation and you feel confident and relaxed, trust me, you will naturally find all sorts of clever things to say.

The problem is that most persons who want to be wittier feel quite shy and nervous in most social settings. And when you feel like that, you tend to fumble, stumble, act awkward and not be able to think straight. It all goes down the drain from there.

This is why one of the best things you can do is to focus on changing your emotional state in social settings. Don’t concentrate too much on what you say; concentrate more on how you feel. If you’re in the right emotional state, you’ll also be witty and charming.

To find out precisely how you can achieve this emotional state, check out this presentation I created.

Step 4: Stop Putting Pressure on Yourself

In discovering how to be witty, it’s crucial to realize that you can’t pressure yourself to become this way. Well, you can, but it’s simply not going to work. It’s not gonna get you anywhere.

Paradoxically, it’s only when you let go and stop demanding of yourself to be witty and charm everybody that you start to loosen up, feel more confident and then your witty, charming side comes out with ease.

The fact of the matter is that you’re probably putting needless pressure on yourself to impress in social settings. You need to start seeing social interactions as a casual thing and to stop taking them too seriously. And this is a mindset that you can develop with practice.

I have created a special presentation in which I discuss the exact steps you must take in order to develop this mindset and become confident in conversation. Go here to watch it.

Learning how to be witty and funny is a process. It’s a journey of habit-changing, self-discovery and self-empowerment.

You’ll start seeing results as soon as you begin applying the steps I’ve discussed here, but it is consistent application that creates the overall best results.

The more confident and witty you become, the more satisfying your social life becomes, and the more this whole self-growth journey feel like a worthwhile thing.

Image courtesy of  sebastien barre

Filed Under: People Skills, Success Tagged With: , , , ,
June 16, 2011

How I Eat and Stay In Shape

I cannot believe that up until now, I have not written an article here about the way I eat. Yes, this blog is primarily centered on people skills, but healthy eating and living is such a big deal for me that it’s about time you and I have a talk about it.

In short: I’m going to share with you the way I eat to stay healthy and upbeat. It’s a method I’ve been implementing for the past year, after years of trial and error on other paths. It is creating impressive results for myself and many other people.

The method is primal eating and it is part of a whole primal lifestyle. You can find The Primal Blueprint, the book that fittingly details this way of eating and living, here.

My Evolution of Eating

When I was 19, while reading the chapter on health and energy in a Tony Robbins book, I had the epiphany that a good health is really important, and I decided to make being in tip-top shape a priority for myself. In time, this decision got reinforced continually.

Later, I became a permissive vegetarian, as what I was reading suggested that vegetarianism is the best way of eating and staying healthy. At that point, as a newbie, it made sense.

The only problem was that after a while, I noticed that my energy level wasn’t very high and my mood wasn’t too good either. Also, as I kept reading and researching the topic of healthy eating, I started to question the validity of vegetarianism from a scientific perspective.

For example, I started wondering: If vegetarianism is our natural way of eating, why do most vegetarians have deficiencies in B12 vitamin and need to take supplements? If we are naturally vegetarians, then eating vegetarian should give us all the nutrients we require.

As I continued my research, I stumbled a couple of years ago on the paleo lifestyle and the primal lifestyle. They are similar in nature, although paleo focuses more on eating while primal focuses on the broad range of lifestyle choices: eating, exercise, sleeping etc.

At first, I didn’t pay too much attention to these two lifestyle choices. But the more I read, the more I stumbled upon positive reviews of them. The data started to stack up and it was inspiring.

Eventually, about one year ago, I began to dig into the topic of primal eating and living: books, blogs, scientific research, case studies and so on. I was stoked by what I read, and I quickly decided to go primal. It was one of the best health and fitness decisions I ever made.

Eat Like a Caveman

The crux of primal eating is this: our species (Homo sapiens) has been around for about 1.5 million years. However, civilization has only been around for about 10.000 years, which is like a day within one year if we scale it down. On top of this, heavily processed and genetically modified food has only been around for a few decades.

From on evolutionary perspective, our bodies did not have the time to adapt to this new way of eating and living. For the most part, we still digest food the way out ancestors did back in the Paleolithic period.

Thus, if we want to stay healthy, be in shape, have massive energy and live long, fit lives, we need to eat the way our ancestors did for 99% of our existence as a species. That’s what we are biologically adapted to.

So, what did our Paleolithic ancestors eat? Well, they were hunter-gatherers. They ate mostly meat, fish, eggs, fruit, leafs and vegetables. In these foods, they found all the nutrients they needed to live a healthy life. And we modern humans can as well.

Mark Sisson, the creator of the Primal Blueprint sums it up nicely in this short video.

The Raw Results

We’ve all heard it before that fruits and vegetables are good for us, so no surprise there in primal eating. The counterintuitive advice is to eat lots of meat and to avoid grains. This is where primal eating seriously strays from vegetarianism.

Prior to going primal, I used to eat lots of bread (whole grain), pasta, cereals and cookies. In other words: grain based food. I also avoided meat. However, in the last year, I’ve reversed this process completely.

Looking at the results, it’s been one of the best dietary decisions I have ever made. For starters, I have more energy than I ever had. I am able to focus a lot better, work until late and not feel tiered.

I sleep less, live more intensely and I feel really good psychologically. I have nights when I go salsa dancing and I dance almost non-stop for the entire night. In the morning, it feels like I just had a light workout.

Personally, I can’t illustrate any results related to losing weight. I’m thin as a rail and dropping pounds has never been my concern. However, I do have a friend who decided to give the primal blueprint a try and managed for the first time in years to lose weight and keep it off without starving himself.

Beyond my results, the number of personal stories from people who switched to a primal lifestyle and managed to lose weight, get in shape, gain more energy and boost their mood is staggering.

What I really like about primal eating is that it’s very well researched. It is very convincing from a rational, scientific perspective and it’s in line with the top research in nutrition (which is often not the research most of us find out about).

A Primal Blueprint Review

I find the logic of primal eating and living impenetrable. At this point, I can’t believe so many people still don’t have a clue about it and they’re wasting their lives counting calories, exercising like mad and trying to get in shape by applying narrow-minded nutritional advice.

I strongly encourage you to check out the Primal Blueprint, as I give it a highly positive review, and to try primal living. In fact, I believe it may turn out to be one of the best lifestyle decisions you have ever made.

Mark Sisson, the author of the book, provides in it a complete map for healthy eating, exercising, sleeping and living. The entire blueprint is rigorously researched and it literally makes sense from any angle you look at it.

Even more, primal eating is less grueling that vegetarianism or any diet you can ever go on. It’s something to learn about and implement as a life-long eating strategy.

Image courtesy of  ionea76

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Success Tagged With: , , , , 4 Comments
June 9, 2011

How to Improve Conversation Skills

I see conversation as the glue that sticks people together. If you pay attention to how people bond, socialize and build partnerships, you’ll notice that it’s done mostly through the art of conversation.

It’s a very big surprise to me that throughout most of our formal education, we don’t learn how to improve conversation skills, because I believe they are some of the top skills one can have in our society.

Going beyond formal education, I find most books and courses on how to improve conversation skills to be crammed with platitudes and simplistic advice.

Since in my work as a social confidence coach I help my clients apply effective ways to improve conversation skills, I’m going to share with you the key action steps that, in time, I’ve noticed to contribute the most to mastering conversation.

Start with Conversation Confidence

The majority of persons who contact me and tell me they lack conversation skills, I usually find out upon a thorough inspection that first and foremost, they lack conversation confidence.

It’s not that they don’t have something to say or they don’t know how to converse; it’s that they lack the confidence to do so. They’re afraid they’ll say the wrong thing, come off as awkward or make fools of themselves. Thus, they end up being coy in social interactions.

Many times, 80% of their problem would be solved if they would get conversation confidence. But since they misdiagnose their situation, they seek to learn how to improve conversation skills instead, and they alienate themselves in this quest.

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If you lack conversation confidence, start by getting this handled. Your lack of confidence is based on perfectionism and limiting beliefs, and it is in fact the primary cause of conversational deficiency. Change your thinking; your conversation skills will follow.

Because there are a lot of things to be said on this, I have a free conversation confidence guide for you in which I’ll teach you a 3-step process to become confident in conversations. Go here to get it.

Get More Social

I frequently hear people who struggle in their social interactions saying that they want to learn how to improve their conversation skills so they can then go out and socialize more. They believe if they just get the right techniques, the social animal within them will come out.

In reality, it works exactly the other way around. You go out more, despite your shortage (real or imagined) of conversation skills, you participate in social activities, you interact with lots of people, you make conversation, and as you do so, your skills sharpen.

This may be an uncomfortable reality because in entails that you face your shyness and socialize more, but it’s the only viable option. The primary way to sharpen your social skills is exposure to social situations.

This exposure, along with a constructive mindset, will gradually make your conversation style self-regulate and it will become more engaging, charismatic and powerful. It’s mostly a matter of practice and desire.

Balance the Energy

Think of a conversation as an exchange of energy. Well, whenever such an exchange takes place, balance is always important. You want the energy going one way to match the energy going the other.

This balance is often the missing ingredient in discussions between two people. In many conversations:

  • One person does most of the talking, while the other does most of the listening;
  • One person is whining, while the other is providing support;
  • One person is the entertainer, while the other is the entertained.

Whenever I see or I am in a conversation like that, I feel like there’s something missing and the social dynamic there is not sustainable.

Like most things in life, good conversation implies balance. It is through balancing the energy in discussions that you become able to make them fruitful for both/all the persons involved.

Master Self-Expression

From my perspective, the better you become at communicating opinions, feelings and experiences using language, the more interesting conversation you can make.

Again, confidence plays a big role. So, make sure to check out my free conversation confidence guide to get this area handled.

I find that many people have a very generic and vague way of expressing themselves. They talk in clichés, and they don’t put the richness of their inner world into the outer world. They may be really interesting people, but because they lack in verbal skills, few others ever find out.

Practice expressing yourself with words. Paint vivid and rich pictures in the minds of your audience, using words. This is something I’ve focused on mastering in many of my public speaking experiences and I can tell you that it’s just a matter of practice, repetition and persistence.

With the four conversation pillars above in place, making artful conversation is not hard at all. It’s easy, fun and something you look forward to every day.

In the process of learning how to improve your conversation skills, keep these pillars in mind and give them priority. They will take you and your social life very far.

Image courtesy of moriza

Filed Under: Communication Skills, Lifestyle, Success Tagged With: , , , 5 Comments
May 3, 2011

Why You Struggle With Changing Habits and How to Change This

I have a question for you: how often do you find yourself in a situation where: 1) you know you should change, 2) you even want to change, and yet 3) you don’t change?

If you’re like the majority of us, I’m going to guess that your answer is: “Quite often, damn it!” Join the group, take a seat and pay attention, because the solution to your predicament is close, very close.

It’s Not about Want or Willpower

The standard view in our society is that if a person truly wants to change and to get somewhere, they won’t just try, they’ll make it happen. And if they don’t change in a reeeeally long period of time, then they either don’t want it badly enough or they lack willpower.

Like Yoda says: “Do or not do. There is no try”. Right?

Well, NO. It turns out that the little fella is full of bullshit.

Not changing in the direction you chose is not a problem of want or willpower. You are not lazy, stupid or unmotivated for finding it quite hard to quit smoking, lose that extra weight, spend less time online or change your communication style.

You’re only human, and there is no need to feel guilty. It turns out that the habitual behaviors of human beings are very much influenced by personal, social and situational factors. Thus, the real key to change is not to try harder, it is to improve your change strategy.

How to Actually Change

This being said, I invite you to watch the 53 min. video below for a powerful lesson on the topic. It’s a recent Google Talk where Joseph Grenny shares the real science of changing habits. I came across it yesterday and I found it mind-blowingly smart.

Seriously, this talk could be one of the best pieces of personal development information you’ll ever get. So if you skip it, I’ll personally kick your ass.

Image courtesy of Krikit

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , , , 10 Comments
April 21, 2011

Guys, It’s Time to Seduce with Style

If you’re a guy and you want more social and dating success, there are a lot of personal tweaks you can make to achieve this. Interestingly enough, I find that enhancing your look, which is a relatively accessible change to make, is an often ignored one.

I’m not talking about your looks here; I’m talking about your look; about the way you use your looks and project your personality through clothes, accessories and body-language.

Over the past few weeks, whenever I would talk with another guy about men’s fashion and building a personal look, I would find myself keenly recommending the same one ebook. So, I decided to review it here.

The ebook is called Seduce with Style. It’s the best information product I know for men who want to develop a personal look that boosts their social life and their success with women.

You can get the full details about the ebook here.

Also, check out this free SWS chapter about the 8 most common style mistakes to avoid.

Why Style Matters

Do you need to dress well and have style in order to be an attractive guy? In my perspective, absolutely not. Does it help? You’ve better believe it.

In fact, I think learning to dress with style as a guy is such a good move that if you’re looking to improve your social and dating life, this is what you should start with.

Optimizing your look as a guy involves significantly less effort than other personal changes and you’ll instantly see positive results: people (read girls) looking at you more, smiling more, flirting with you more etc.

Girls typically react to a guy’s look much more than to his looks. Often without even realizing it, they rate guys based on their look and what it sub-communicates. Then they often justify how we they react to a guy by invoking other, ‘less superficial’ factors.

I ignored the power of a stylish personal look for the most part of my life. I didn’t understand look, I only understood looks. But when I did start paying attention to the clothes I wore and to developing a personal style, I was floored by the positive impact.

Eventually, I realized there is a deeper, more subtle meaning to clothing and style, and that your look goes beyond your looks.

My Review of Seduce With Style

AlphaWolf, the author of Seduce with Style, is an Attraction Style Coach. I had an awesome conversation with him this week about the ebook, men, women, seduction and life, and I was impressed by his pragmatic thinking and his passion for what he does.

The ebook he wrote is not your average what-to-wear and how-to-tie-a-tie book for men. It digs into the underlying principles of men’s style and sexual communication, in order to teach men how to develop a seductive and expressive style.

As a guy, you’ll find in Seduce with Style practical advice on choosing and matching clothing pieces, adapting clothes to your constitution, choosing colors, layering clothes and accessorizing.

You will also find a powerful approach to your look as a way of communicating certain characteristics and seducing. One of my favorite sections of the book is the one about the 8 Style Attraction Switches and how to integrate them into your look.

Bottom line: if you’re a guy and you want to become more seductive, definitely take a look at your look. And if you do so, definitely get your copy of Seduce with Style in order to enhance your look.

Check out Seduce with Style here.

When you dress well and you know it, the challenges in your social life don’t disappear overnight, but they do become much easier to surpass.

Image courtesy of glitterygin20

Filed Under: Lifestyle, News, Success Tagged With: , , , , , , 3 Comments
April 17, 2011

How to Impress a Girl

One of the most popular questions among guys is: How to impress a girl?” The desire for men to be successful with the opposite sex is undeniable. Frequently, it is much stronger than the desire to make money, advance their career or live a healthy life.

Considering this, I want to give you my perspective as a communication coach and as a guy on how to impress a girl. I don’t think this inquiry has a simple and straightforward response, but there are some key points that you want to take in and focus on primarily.

If you’re expecting ideas for romantic gifts or cute compliments to impress a girl, this is not it. First of all, because I believe such methods are short-lived, and secondly because any other guy out there who’s not retarded can easily do the exact same things.

I’m going to take a broader and deeper approach on the topic of how to impress a girl. So, buckle up.

How to Impress a Girl Is the Wrong Question

In my perspective, if you’re wondering how to impress a girl, you’ve gone astray. A much better question to ask is the subtly different question “how to impress girls?” I firmly believe the best way to impress a girl is to develop an attractive personality and communication style that girls react to in general.

If you’re focusing just on finding ways to astonish one particular girl, this will probably get you to start obsessing about her, to act desperate and needy around her, and to become a chameleon in order to create a positive impression on her. Of course initially, it may just seem like you’re being nice.

On the other hand, if you learn to impress girls in general, this creates a shift in your attitude. You have more options, become more self-assured and interestingly enough, this is what has the best chances of wooing that particular girl you like.

Dress for Seduction Success

Yes, you look does matter. However, notice I said your “look”, not your “looks”. Your look goes beyond your body and face constitution (your looks). It entails the way you project yourself visually, through clothing and accessories.

While you can only change your looks to some extent, your look is completely under your control. And creating an appealing look for yourself, although it’s not a necessity, will definitely help you a lot in impressing girls.

Here are the main things I believe you want to know and apply in terms of personal fashion:

  • How to choose high quality clothes (not the same as expensive), that fit you really well;
  • How to match clothes in terms of colors, fabric and style and how to add the proper accessories;
  • How to express your personality and stand out in a seductive way, using the way you dress.

Lead

One of the most attractive male traits is leading. This trait is the raw manifestation of masculine confidence and power. In the process of learning how to impress a girl or more, this is a chapter you simply cannot skip.

Now, leading in this context doesn’t mean being the CEO of an international corporation or the president of the United States (although I’m positive that would be of assistance). It means the strong inclination to lead in the interactions with a girl.

Leading is a behavior, not a status. Leading in interactions with a girl involves making decisions quickly, taking the initiative and being firm but gentle. It means saying “Let’s go out for drinks this weekend” instead of “Amm… would you like to… I don’t know… go out sometimes, or something?”

Know Psychology

Myself and many of my close male friends have a huge passion for psychology. So I can’t pass on the opportunity to talk about knowing psychology, because I’ve seen this trait at work numerous times and I think it’s an incredible trait to have as a guy.

Girls simply adore applied psychology. They are fascinated by this topic. Whenever you give a girl the opportunity to learn something interesting about human psychology, to understand herself or others better, she’ll be blown way.

I really encourage you to make the next book you read a book on human psychology; something that’s very practical and preferably not too scholastic. Especially if you’re a guy who spends most of his time reading about Java programming or nuclear physics, this can change your conversations with girls significantly.

There are many other ways to impress a girl. I just pointed out the ones I believe create the foundation of a naturally attractive and impressive guy.

In the end, effectively learning how to impress girls is not done by accumulating tips, tricks, lines and gimmicks to use. It is done by developing your people skills, your confidence and your personality in a seductive direction.

Image courtesy of sebastien.b

Filed Under: Lifestyle, People Skills, Success Tagged With: , , , 20 Comments