Are You Destined for Social Mastery? (Pt2)

If you haven’t had a chance to read part 1 yet on “Are you Destined for Social Mastery?” Then feel free to click on the link below.

Are you Destined to be a Social Master? (Pt1)

You’ll find out why I have the picture above as you read the blog.

I know it hasn’t been 30 days yet, but I hope that some of you are rewiring your brain to be social masters. Don’t ignore the fact that you need to socially reprogram yourself first. Most people miss this step, and it’s very critical to your success.

In this blog I’m going to share with you a story about me, and why you have to act what you believe in.

Quite a while back, about a year ago, I started to put affirmations on my wall. One of my affirmations that hangs right above my computer is this

“I am surrounded by people who are more successful than I am in all aspects of life, and am grateful for those that helped me achieve my success.”

Now that doesn’t mean I don’t hang out with people who are “less successful” than I am. But that does mean staying away from people who don’t have the same drive to advance their professional and social life, and who are big complainers. People that complain about being single, or how much they hate their job, or how much this city sucks to live in.

And so along the way I took some of my first steps to get rid of that negativity. I started shedding and seeing people less often that did not contribute to my life in a meaningful way. Shedding an old social lifestyle can be hard to do, it’s like mourning, especially if it’s a lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to. We get comfortable and don’t want to work hard at creating a whole new social network.

But what also happened was that even though I was shedding old contacts, I still ended up attracting similar new people into my life. I didn’t feel that they were going to educate me in a way that would shine a “Wow” insight into how to run my business or my life. I wanted to be able to exchange ideas with great minds, people who were passionate, who took action, were engaging in life, who wanted to exchange ideas freely and offer feedback, and help me get out of my freakin’ comfort zone.

When I realized that most of the people I met weren’t pushing me out of my comfort zone, I knew I was meeting the wrong group of people for me.

I sat down, and I questioned myself.

“Why was I not meeting the people I wanted to meet?”
After some thinking, I realized it’s because I secretly rejected successful people. It sounds strange, but it’s true. I rejected success in my life. The same success that I was seeking. This was a huge hypocritical belief I had in my life. And this is how I knew personally that I wasn’t going to surround myself with successful people in my life.

I looked at the results and actions that were being produced.

• I hardly ever asked out anybody that was more successful than I was in life out for coffee or to meet up just to chat. (Being around another person’s energy can make a huge difference!)

• I never asked more successful people for advice on how to get ahead in the world of business. I was always secretly afraid that they were going to charge me for the services or somehow rudely say no. Which to this date the worst answer I’ve gotten is a “no.”

• Even when I would get invited to drinks with a group of people who held a small seminar, I would politely decline. I never got to know these people on a personal level.

Even though I was hoping to meet all these wonderful people in my life I never quite did. Once I truly became aware, I started to match my actions with my beliefs. And not only that I had to take the right actions and learn to act more like the successful people I wanted to meet. And this was the tricky part…I had to be coached by others, I had to observe, and get out of my damn comfort zone.

What’s resulted? I’m not going to lie, I don’t associate with people like Tony Robbins, or Jack Canfield yet (they’re on my list of people to meet). But I have met people who I consider great people.

People like Ronald Lee of Man Meets Woman, Andrew Parkes, Ricky Shetty who is a great connector, my wonderful girlfriend, Simon Chu and Edward Leung, and Margie from Vibelife.

SOOOO…look at yourself. Ask yourself a simple question. Are you doing what you believe in. If you want more dates in your life with attractive women, then are you actually doing the first steps which is talking to attractive women?
Don’t be a hypocrite….Do the actions that are congruent with your own beliefs. Beliefs don’t do much without the right action.

P.S. “Do you want to know how to be Irresistible to People with a step by step guide? Do you want to build the right social relationships to advance your career to earn 10%, 20% or even 50% more money in a lifetime?

I have completed my e-book. “Art of Conversation: Enhance Your Charisma for Success.” I’m offering 20% off at a price f 15.95 CDN before in launches on my own website. (The normal price would be 19.95 USD). This 160 page e-book comes with a 100% money back guaranteed for 30 days.  The book is  FREE to try during that time.

Some things you’ll learn:

• Learn how to approach groups of strangers, a step by step guide
  
• Make others feel fantastic so that they will offer you FREE advice and help your career
• Learn the 13 Deadly Sins that kill your conversation and end your trust and likeability with another person.
  

When you e-mail me at Vincent@conversationarts.com, I will send you a Paypal link that is 100% secure. I never see any of your credit card information and the e-book will be delivered to you instantly via web.  Act now before the launch on my site.  Offer expires Sept 10th, 2009. Order Your Copy Today.

Is What You Know Killing Your Social Life?

Are you Destined for Social Mastery?

Are you Destined for Social Mastery in your life? (Part 1)

According to Malcom Gladwell, author of Outliers, to be a true master in life at any activity you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice time, and with the ability to dedicate yourself to always making incremental improvements in that skill. This is why even if you do talk for more than 10,000 hours in your life, doesn’t make you a good conversationalist?

The question remains, well how exactly do you get to the point of social mastery in the first place. Others give up too soon before really trying to learn any skill, and most of us give up the very first time. It took me a very long time to understand the procedure of how to get great at conversations. Conversations isn’t just about talking, it’s a whole procedure of how to get better. In this blog post I want to share with you some important findings, that if you read every word, could lead you to be a social master in life.

1) You have to change the way you think. The way you’ve thought is leading to where you are today in terms of your social conditioning. Your social conditioning comes from many places, your parents, hanging out with friends that no longer improve in life the same way you want to, and from co-workers.

Now here’s the tricky part, it’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do. You HAVE to for 30 days in a row…recondition yourself in the social skill you want to improve upon. Let’s say you want to be a better networker, the first thing you need to do, is to write down an affirmation that is similar to “I’m an excellent, fun, passionate and enthusiastic networker. I meet people to help them, and in return they are more than happy to help me.” You have to say it with meaning.

Anytime a negative belief comes through, just say to yourself, thank you for sharing that thought, but I CHOOSE to think “I’m a dynamic networker that everybody loves.”

2) Visualize your success. Close your eyes, and visualize for the next 30 days the type of people you want to network with, and people you want to associate with. Take about 7 minutes out of your day. This could be at a tradeshow, your favourite pub, or at a cocktail party. But it’s essential you do that for 7 minutes. Most people don’t realize how powerful the ability to imagine is. Our brain thinks in terms of pictures (about 94% of us do) and yet that we ignore or are ignorant about this particular learning style. STOP! Close your eyes…think of a red car in your mind. Now that you’ve opened them…how many of you spelled out the letters R.E.D. C.A.R. in your mind? Now how many of you actually saw a red car in your mind?
Don’t fight the natural way that you brain thinks. This may take time to get use to, but visualize and imagine the success you have with your conversations.

3) Take the time to read about successful networking tips or about improving your social skills. This is important. Choose one skill to master and stick with that for the first 30 days. For some people, it’s about managing their social anxiety, or it’s about approaching strangers, or it’s about continuing conversations. But for the next 30 days Google articles that are about the topic you want, and spend at least 10 minutes reading articles on that subject. This will help recondition your subconscious.

The hardest part is getting it done for the 30 days in a row. This has been shown that this is the best way to start immersing your mindset into a new conditioning and belief system. This isn’t easy, you’ve been conditioned for years on how to talk, ways to behave, and so it can be extremely hard to shed that.

Now here’s your challenge. 1) Write down an affirmation right now! If you can text someone on the phone, you can write an affirmation.
2) Imagine yourself talking to someone you really want to meet. An actor, someone you admire, and imagine that conversation going very well.
3) Find an article that will help you get started on the area of conversation that you really want to master. This should be an aspect early in the stages of conversation, such as approaching, how to remember names, how to shake hands, and how to make a great first impression and so forth!

Now if you’re already going to say…that’s a lot of work to yourself…this is EXACTLY WHY you aren’t getting the dates you want, the friends you want to meet, and getting the business contacts you hope for. You won’t even put in the time, and purposely follow the correct strategy to being a social master. Keep following the strategy you have now…and all you get is what you’ve got.

When you’ve completed those exercises….look for the second part of social mastery, which is, “Are you a Social Master Hypocrite?” on my next blog post.

*FREE* How to Mesmerize Others by Storytelling E-book @ http://www.conversationarts.com

My first *REAL* Successful Pickup

Sometimes I look back and think to myself some of the greatest things that have happened to me in life. And when I reflect upon them, it brings back some sentimental value.

I don’t usually talk a lot about my days of pick up and being a dating coach, since I do mostly Conversation Coaching for professional purposes.

A friend of mine went out one night to a local restaurant to grab a beer, and I had just gotten into what was called the pick up community and reading stuff from all these dating gurus. The hostess sat us down and right behind us were two women.

One of them was petite, and I thought was really cute. They had just finished their dinner, and it was the perfect time to try out some of the concepts and communication skills that I had read about in some of the books. As my friend was talking to me, I asked him to stay silent.

As they got up, I just asked them in some what confident tone, but inside I was absolutely nerve wracked, “I was wondering if you would like to join us because we have a pitcher of beer coming, and we’re always looking for good company to chat with.”

As the two women looked at each other, I knew that this was a sign to look at who would lead the group. Women will often look at each other during such interactions to seek approval from each other. So instead of letting them decide, I talked to the one who I believed was more dominant female leader of the duo after I convinced her to sit down, then started to talk to the petite girl with these wonderful cat’s eyes glasses. She was well dressed, and later I had found out she was studying fashion. I asked her about what she did, and strangely enough we worked for the same company, around the same part of town, just different locations at the time. She had this high pitched voice, which I found absolutely adorable at the time.
I was able to engage her with about my work that I was currently doing, but what about my dream of being this successful coach that was going to help other people chase their dreams and become successful as well.

At the time she smiled, and seemed very charmed by the ambition. This was because our company didn’t employ a lot of dreamers, but more people that were robots with no set goals in life.

My friend was busy talking to the other girl and just chatting with her, while I kept talking to the girl I was particularly interested in. Then when she finally decided to go and leave, I asked her “So what’s your number?”

She had taken one of my business cards at the time, and looked at me and gave me the “Well I have your number I’ll give you a call.”

This is where it gets tricky in communication. Because in communication how do you ever know if someone is saying something as an initial defense mechanism, or how do you know if someone down deep inside wants to test you? Most of the time it’s hard but it’s a crap shoot. In sales, if you know you’re going to lose the sale most of the time, there are such things as recovery techniques that help close sales more often. Even one of the greatest sales people Zig Ziglar made this mistake one time while selling pots and pans…and the prospect was hopping mad after because he took what the prospect said too literally!

In dating communication this is no different. Recovery techniques are not special offers, but you don’t settle for what’s said on face value instead, you need to be confident and assured.

I looked at her and said quite strongly “Bull Shit, you’re not going to call me. Give me your number.” What was particularly strange about that line was that it was very out of my character. I don’t usually swear, and I’m usually not so assertive. But on that particular day, the words came right out of my mouth from my subconscious.

The petite girl with cat’s eye glasses looked, laughed at me, and then wrote down her number on one of my business cards. I was so mind boggled, “Did she just give me her number” I thought to myself. “And did she just laugh at my remark?”

I was really excited. I had tried out a new communication concept, got the result I wanted and it was absolutely mind blowing. I felt so good about it. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a man, not apologizing for the fact that I found this girl attractive.

As she wrote down the number, I was just glowing. I even called the number at the moment to ensure that it was real. Some people might say it’s needy, but the order that things are done, and how you say things can persuade people quite easily.

After getting the number the two women left for a friend’s birthday party. I ended up being very proud of myself. It was my first number that I learned to get with new principles of communication. Before that I didn’t meet any interesting women for 5 years. My life in dating was terrible, this is why it helps to have a dating coach and communication coach as well. It really changed my life for the better and I’ve met wonderful people with great memories since.

So did I go on a date with the girl or did she flake? Well we actually did go on two dates and had a nice dinner. The chemistry just wasn’t there unfortunately, but I do bump into her once in a while and am always warmed by her voice and her smile.

I never realized this till much later, and was too stubborn to seek help earlier, but a few communication tools made a world of difference in my life with friends, family, and my relationships.

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If you’re interested in knowing how to tell a Great Story to impress a crowd or your first date sign up for your *FREE* e-book on Power Storytelling at http://www.conversationarts.com

Do You Know if You’re Getting Laid Off?

Welcome Conversation Artist!

I am very excited, this morning I finished writing my e-book: Art of Conversation. At the moment I’m working hard to bring to get it out on my website.

And I am also very excited to be presenting my power storytelling workshop to LOVE (Leave out Violence) in Vancouver.They are a wonderful charity who works with at risks youth teaching them.

Also please note, that I have moved my Art of Conversation Workshop to Aug 9th (Sunday) from 9am-5pm. If you are interested please feel free to contact me at 604-782-0801 or visit our website at www.conversationarts.com for more details.

Do You Know When You’re Getting Laid Off?

I was recently having a conversation with a close of friend of mine, who works for a very well known corporation. I asked her, “How important are social skils at work?”

She responded , “I think they are very important at work, and let me share with you a story. When the recession started hitting hard, and cutbacks were being made, one of the first people to be laid off was a senior manager. She would always do her job,and was quite technically superior at her job. But she never really talked to people at the office. She kept to herself and did what was needed to get the job done. The trouble was that no one really knew who she was, and I think that’s why she was one of the first to be let go, even after years of hard work. I don’t think the other managers and partners in the company found her personality fitting into the culture.”

As I listened to the story,and reflected on it afterward, these were the conclusions I came up with.

1) Your technical skills will get you so far in life. After that your soft skills such as communication,your personality and ability to work with others will help you keep the job you are in now. Seniority didn’t matter in that particular case, they were looking for a way to lay her off because quite frankly people didn’t feel that she fit in.

2) If people don’t know who you are, they aren’t going to care about you, and why will they defend you when they have to make decisions about who to lay off. You have to talk to people and get them to know you.  “I think she’s a hard worker” vs.”I really like working with her.” Do you see the difference? Which one has more power for you to remain at your job?

3) Take an interest in others at work. It’s the opposite of number 2. Not only do people need to understand your personality, you need to be able to take an interest in people at work. We are still human beings that want to be valued and listened to and not just treated like we’re another worker.

Call To Action:

Ask yourself? If you work inan environment with other co-workers and managers, what three actions can youtake to increase your social presence at work? In the next week, take thosethree actions and continue to be social at work.

Are You Being Relevant?

I once had a student in my class who was assertive and asked me, “Why can’t I find people who want to talk about the issues that I want to talk about. Why is that people are so afraid of being challenged?”

I asked him if he took an interest in what other people were doing, and if he made an effort to talk about what other people wanted to talk about, not just what he did. Unfortunately he was so determined to find people that had only the same interests that he had. He would connect with other people on one main interest, but the moment there was not a second one, he dismissed them as being a potential friend.  He later admitted that he had a tough time maintaining any long term friendship.

I was saddened to hear this from him, but he was missing one key factor in developing long term relationships. Being relevant to another person’s point of view.

Sandy, is my best friend, she’s doing her graduate degree in  urban development in Hong Kong at the moment. For myself, I know very little about development and city landscapes, but I do take curiosity into why she finds it so fascinating and I listen. I ask her questions that explain more of her opinion. I make her feel valued. And most of all, if the topic is important to the other person, I keep the conversation relevant to that person.

This is a part of being charismatic. Haven’t you ever had a time when you were talking about a favourite topic of yours, and then within 15 seconds of talking, the topic completely changed and somehow you feel a little left out and ripped off that the conversation thread never fully finished?

I know I have. And that’s due to poor listening skills. When someone comes up and talks to you, ensure that you allow yourself to be relevant to the topic they are talking about. If my friend talks about urban development, I might ask her about which cities does she believe are the most eco-friendly. Or I might ask her, tell me what would you change about the city landscape if you had a chance? What more would you like to see, green spaces, transportation, wider roads? Just don’t change topics too suddenly…destroys the rapport building process.

Be curious, be relevant to the topic being discussed, and the more you become relevant to the topic that people are discussing, the more you will be known as the person who knows how to charm people.

Just Practice Listening

In this day and age, it can be very difficult to be a good listener. And part of the reason why is because we’re constantly being bombarded with information, that any many times it’s so difficult to keep our minds quiet. There are many times, including now, we’re I’m constantly chatting to myself. I’m thinking several different thoughts in my head, and it can be hard to silence them. Even when I do try silence the thoughts in my head, I have the thought about silencing my thoughts.

To be a truly great listener, requires more than nodding your head, and responding to what’s being said, it’s about being in tuned to the underlying message that someone is not saying. And in order to that, you need to be able to quiet your own mind down, and trust the intuition that is inside of you.

One of the greatest things I learned as a coach with the Coaches Training Institute, was “How can I trust my own instincts?” The simple answer is this…you just do. But in order to fully develop that, you need to be able to learn to silene the noise in your head that serves no purpose. This way instead of listening to the chatter in your head, you can start to not only listen with your ears, but with your eyes, and your body. It sounds strange, but the “gut feeling” that you have, is your body listening to the other person as well.

If you ever want to be a great listener, learn to quiet your mind, either through yoga, or meditation. Whatever activity that will help you stay calm and allow you to relax your mind. When you are relaxed, that is when you will be able to fully listen not only with your ears, but with your heart as well.

Talking to your Managers

It was interesting, I was having a conversation with my girlfriend, and she was a little concerned because she works in an accounting firm. During her previous year and half of working she had mentioned that she developed great relationships with two senior managers, but unfortunately both of them have moved on because of maternity leave. At first she was quite worried, but then she knew that she couldn’t just coward and shy away from meeting the third manager, the one she worked with the least.

It felt a little strange to her, to build a new relationships with the senior manager she worked the least with, but she realized how important it was to foster a relationship that wasn’t just about work. She shared with me that it was important to understand who her managers were, and what their personal life was like so that this would allow for their professional relationship to grow even more. In case she had any questions, or any problems that she knew that she could go to this manager without any problems or feel discomfort.

Ironically most working professionals will understand this in their mind. My girlfriend not only understands this, but she puts it into practice. (She was one of the only 2 people to be promoted from a junior associate to senior associate after her first year when she worked. She works for a big four accounting firm in Vancouver.) And this is what I believe is partially her success her ability to work hard and foster the professional relationship with her managers with a personal relationship touch that doesn’t go overboard.

However, most people aren’t doing that. They treat work too professionally, and therefore when they need to bring up a legitimate concern about work, it can be hard to bring it up  or for these associates to ask for help. What results is that many upper managers, and C- level executives often feel that they are left out of the big picture.

Make it a point that if you work in a large corporation to take the time to know your  managers on a more personal level. This will help bring team cohesivness, and bring down anxiety when you need the attention of the managers or directors that you work with.

Finished Teaching Class

Approximately five hours ago, I just finished teaching the course Art of Conversation at the Vancouver School Board. I still remember when I got my first teaching gig at the VSB, I was excited, and was using my conversation skills not only to meet people but to potentially change their life around. The possibilities were endless. To this day my first set of students were a lively bunch, they were animated, many of them young, some of them a little older, but it’s been fun so far. Since then I’ve taught a lot of my students simple things that they weren’t aware of.

The thing about being a Conversation Coach is that it’s my job to really push people to be better at not only what they talk about, but how to say things. Many people that take my class are shy, and down deep inside I know that if they continue to be shy they’ll be left in the background. Last time I checked there’s not a lot of soft spoken C- Level executives.

But now that this set of students has graduated from the course, I feel that many of them were able to get something out of it. I’m hoping that I continue to feel the joy of helping people out the way I did the first time I taught a class.  Truly I’m grateful to help people continue to have a better social lifestyle, personally and in their business.

I look forward to working with them again in the future. It’s always exciting!

Storytelling to Motivate

Art of Conversation -Storytelling has been one of the oldest forms of communication. Even before our ancestors were able to verbally create words, they were telling their stories in caves with pictures and dye. As time went by and verbal communication came into the every day, people of the past sat around fires in caves, in battlefields to discuss the victories of the day. And even today when we go camping, many of us share ghost stories, or stories of humour to bond. Storytelling is powerful.

It does what statistics will never do, which is move people to massive action. Stories allow us to emotionally experience something that a number can not do. Nor will a PowerPoint presentation be the key to ensuring that the people you work with will remember the information. Do you know what a PowerPoint presentation is? It’s a text book on screen…and how much do you remember from your textbooks?

Your presentations need to engage your audience. And the best and simplest way to keep their attention longer, to have them remember information longer, and to also ensure that they are moved to action is by stories. Strangely enough telling stories is a delicate art. This is why though there are a lot of different books out there, not all of them make it as best sellers. So how do you ensure that your presentation is the equivalent of a best seller. Here are the four essential elements to every great story.

1) Keep Your Perspective Consistent. When telling a story either tell in the first person “I” perspective, or the third person perspective of the character. Notice that all great movies will either use the “I” or they will have a third person character involved. They don’t go “You did this…or you did that.” I’ve never ran into an excellent story that even remotely used the second person perspective.

2) Details. The details you give the story are very important. They should be rich, and vivid and include as much of the senses as possible. Visual details, sounds, and even olfactory senses if the story does have one. People like to imagine.

3) Emotions. Emotions are keys to story. Or else what happens is that you really don’t have a story at all. Evoking emotion either through your tone of voice, or through the use of emotional words will help people understand you more. There is nothing else that we have in common other than emotions. We all have emotions in common.

4) A Conflict and Resolution. What challenge did the character have to overcome? What did the character learn along the way. If you just discuss about the conflict and don’t tell people how you resolved the situation, then you’re going to leave people feeling miserable. Don’t do this unless this is your goal. People like positive endings, and a great ending will leave a great lasting impression to move people to action. Those are the four essential elements, next time you read a great story, or you see a great presentation notice the story format. Notice that every successful motivational speaker, or sales person also is a great storyteller.

Visit http://www.conversationarts.com for our upcoming FREE Workshop on Complimenting.