So I want to talk about how to get better in your social skills, your charisma, and,
specifically, I want to talk about one thing that you can stop doing that is going to help
you improve so much faster, and that thing, though it might sound like sacrilege, is to
STOP DRINKING.
Now, a lot of people look at me like I'm crazy when I say this. They're like, "What does
my drinking occasionally when I'm with friends have to do with my charisma and social skills?"
Well, there's three main things, three benefits that you can expect to see when you cut out
drinking, and here's what they are. The first one is that your passive social skills, without
even thinking about it, begin to improve when you stop drinking, and the reason is very
simple. Social skills are a skill, right? When you're playing the guitar, when you're
playing soccer or anything else, you wouldn't go get sloshed or have a couple of drinks to
loosen up beforehand because that will slow the learning process down. You wouldn't be
picking up the little things. Now, when you go out to a networking event, and first have
two drinks before you start to mingle and feel comfortable, what you're actually doing
is you are slowing yourself down, and you're going to passively pick up far less than you
would if you just force yourself to deal with it, push through, be courageous, and sober,
and see what happened around you.
The second is that the active building of your social skills drops tremendously, and
this is a huge one because I often think of these debriefs that I use to do, and then,
when I was much more shy, I'd go out into a social situation and I would look around
me, and say, "Okay, what's going on?" And then, I'd come home afterwards and I'd say,
"What happened there? How did it go? Who was I comfortable with? Who was I uncomfortable
with?" And, most importantly, what do I wish that I had done differently? How could I change?
What would I have said instead?
Now, obviously, when you're drinking, the first thing that goes is your recall. So you
go try to debrief after a night that you've had three drinks, you'll go, "Well, I think
I talked to them, and then I talked to them, but I don't really know how we started conversation."
And you cannot get that same sort of learning that comes from dealing with it. And, again,
you are robbing yourself of the experience of being courageous in a social situation,
which, really, is 50% of the battle when it comes to being more charismatic and social
and outgoing, which brings me to number three. And you know the kind of night where you're
just going out when you're out when you're not planning anything special. Well, that's
what happened to me. I was in New York City going out with some friends, not planning
on anything cool when I walked into this bar, and immediately, first thing, saw this woman
that I had to get to know, and I thought, "You know exactly what to do. You know to
be cool, confident, collected. Go do it. Go to the bar and go get three drinks. Better yet,
get four drinks, and then, in 25 minutes, come back, and then, you'll be cool enough,
and comfortable enough to make this woman interested." And no sooner did that thought
pass through my head, then it completely exposed and rocked and embarrassed me because I was
not the man that I wanted to be. I was not someone who could go do those things. I used
alcohol as a crutch to be more comfortable and confident.
You see, while I wasn't chemically dependent on it, and, maybe, you aren't either, I was
socially dependent on it, and when I look around at the bars, networking events, social
events, I see so many people who share this and it pissed me off. I was saying to myself,
like how could you have let this happen, where you're supposed to be someone who feels so
comfortable and has worked so hard, yet, you still use this masking drug to, basically,
cover up the ways in which you're insecure. And from that moment on, that was it. In social
situations, I stopped drinking because it had really viscerally connected with how much
it was stopping me from moving forward in all of the ways I want to. So, I challenge
you. If you sense this in networking events, social events, parties, anywhere, even if
you're just out with friends, and you think, "You know what? To have fun what I need to
do is drink," maybe you're out with the wrong friends or to the wrong event. Maybe, what
you should do, instead, is to learn how to create fun from within, and not need to, basically,
turn your brain off to convince yourself that the things around you are interesting, are
fun, or that you're interesting.
So, I challenge you, for once. The next time that you go out and you feel the urge to match
other people by drinking, or that you think this would be more fun if I drink, or that
you think that I could be more outgoing and confident if I drink, don't. Just don't, right?
And if you're in with this, what you will see is that these benefits, for the first
time, is going to feel uncomfortable. They will begin to accrue. You'll notice things
when you're out. You'll be able to debrief afterwards, break down things that went well,
things that didn't, and you'll have, basically, higher self-esteem because you're on the road
to being the person that you want to be.
So, what I highly recommend is if you're in, go ahead, comment below, say that you're in,
commit, get some accountability there, even if I don't comment back to you. Secondly,
if you have any questions about this--What do I say when somebody asks me if I'm drinking?
How do I deal with drunk people? How do I have fun when I'm not drinking?--write those
in the comments. I'm planning on doing a whole series. Those questions will be covered, but
if you have others, write them in and I'll tell you how I've dealt with them over the
last three years. And, of course, if you want to see these videos, Charisma breakdowns,
others, get tips on how to be more outgoing, charismatic, and to live with higher self-esteem,
subscribe to this channel. I'll be creating more videos like this, shooting from my bedroom
whenever the sun isn't shining too much in the window. So, hope this has been helpful,
and I will see you in the next video.