If you want to get stronger, you can go to the gym, and if you're interested in learning
how to code, there's tons of classes you can take on that, but where do you go if you want
to learn how to develop your confidence and your charisma? That's what I'm talking about
today and I want to share with you the four things that I've done in my life that have
had the most impact on those two things in social situations, work environments, all
across the board.
So, the first one is for the type of person who might get into a conversation that feels
like they very quickly run out of things to say, whether that happens after a minute or
after twenty minutes. And the thing that I recommend, the class that I took that helped
me the most with that is "Improv Comedy." First off, because it is scary, right? To
get there in front of people you don't know and try to be funny, let along say anything,
is a terrifying experience, and anything that pushes your comfort zone is going to help
you in social situations. But that's not why I recommend improv comedy. In fact, there
is something that is much, much stronger about that, and that's that you have nothing to
go off of when you stand up there. You stand up there, your mind is blank, and all of a
sudden the audience shouts out a suggestion, and you have to riff off that, which might
sound like it's a very isolated incident, but, really, that's what all sorts of conversation
are. You're talking to someone that give you a conversational threat and, then, you have
to riff on that. And that has helped me more than anything I've ever done. Continue conversations
with people even when they start to stall, so check out improv comedy if that is something
that you have identified as a problem in your life.
The second thing that I recommend is for people who struggle with public speaking, and as
far as I can tell, that's just about everyone. So if you're interested in this, check out
"Toastmasters." And if you're not familiar, Toastmasters is this nationwide group of people
who have chapters in most major cities, and even towns, where they meet and help each
other learn how to public speak. Now, this is fantastic because most of the chances that
you're probably getting to public speak are very high stakes. We're talking best man's
speech. We're talking something that might get you a promotion, and that's going to freak
you out. Toastmasters, extremely low stakes. Everyone is there to learn, so that helps
a lot. But, second, most of the chances you get to public speak are one and done. You're
not getting really valuable feedback from it, so the second time you go in, you're struggling
just as much, and Toastmasters is just the opposite. They have this amazing program and
structure for teaching people how to become better, and it goes all the way down to the
level where when you're speaking, there is someone in the audience who is counting the
number of filler words that you used, and they will tell you at the end how many times
you said like, how many times you said uh, how many times you said uhm, and with this
sort of detailed feedback, you could go piece by piece, making yourself a much stronger
public speaker. I highly recommend it. I know that most companies will be very supportive
if you did this. In fact, I used to go on Wednesdays during my lunch hour, and that
would be the Toastmasters thing that I did, so it was not any extra time in my day. It
was something that fit into my work schedule. I highly recommend checking that out if public
speaking is something you want to improve in.
The third thing is a bit different than the first two and it's something that's going
to help you in those situations where there's conflict that's about to occur, and I don't
mean necessarily any sort of fight, but I mean that somebody might be up in your face and your heart starts
to race, you're not sure how to respond to them, and that is "Martial Arts." Now, I don't
mean so you can punch them in the face, and you win the fight before you've even have
to speak to them. What I mean is that the experience that you're likely to have in a
martial arts class, where you're sparring, and somebody is trying to hit you, or you're
doing jiujitsu and somebody is on top of you trying to choke you, is of an elevated heart
rate, rapid breathing, spiked adrenaline, and there's this fight or flight mode that
you tend to enter the first time you do it.
I know when I first into a BJJ class presenting jiujitsu, I freaked out the first time that
somebody was pinning me, trying to choke me. Now, what you learn to do through martial
arts is to experience that, breathe through it, and remain calm so you can make the best
plan of action to go forward, and this is what you need to do when those social situations
or somebody gets up in your face or try to disrupt you, right? They're trying that, oftentimes,
whether there's this conflict people try to push each other into fight or flight, and
what you need to do is feel that. Feel the adrenaline rising. Feel your heart rate start
to go up, the breathing start to go faster, and learn how to breathe into that, so that
you can take the best course of action forward.
I know this might seem like they're not directly connected, but I promise you, that experience
of dealing with that freak out calmly is going to serve you in so many situations where there's
conflict, and even situations where it might not be on the surface, like you're sitting
down to make your appeal for why you should get a raise or promotion, right? Your heart
rate goes up, you start to freak out. If you have that experience of dealing with that
in a situation where you're actually in physical combat, it becomes easier in those situations
where the stakes are just social.
The fourth thing that I recommend is the one that I personally did the most of, and I saw
the most benefit from it, and that was taking any sort of social environment that I was
invited to, whether it was a bar, a party, a night club, a networking event, and using
that as an opportunity to see and test the kind of first impression that I was making.
Because when you go out with your friends, you've already made your first impression.
If you tell a boring story, it's not like they're going to disappear into the bathroom
and never be heard from again. But, when you go out to a bar, or you're at a networking
event, and you start to tell a boring story, or a boring fact about yourself in the first
two minutes, people, they get out of there. They excuse themselves. They get on their
phones. They go to the bathroom, and you get very, very good real time feedback as to what
is fascinating and interesting to a stranger, and to what is boring. And if you start to
pay attention to this, and you sort of split test. You do one conversation slightly differently.
You lead talking about something that fascinates you, and, then, you do another conversation
talking about your work, and you see which of those tend to go better, you're going to
learn about yourself. Well, this is interesting. People are most fascinated, in my case, by
my passion for music, or people are most fascinated by the fact that I have this really, really
interesting job.
Whatever it is, when you start to test those things, you're going to see that there are
aspects of yourself that are more fascinating to strangers than others, and when you lead
with those, you get a chance to connect with more people. So, go out, be a bit of a scientist
and, then, afterwards, whether it's at the end of the night, or during the middle of
the day, whenever you leave this event, go and play back the different interactions that
you had in your head. Compare the ones that went well to the ones that didn't, and see
what was different, right? And that's going to start to help you to learn about yourself
and the things that are truly fascinating about you, and the way that you present yourself.
What you're going to find is that when you have higher energy, you're more engaged, you're
talking about things that excite you, you're probably going to have conversations that
go better.
So those are the four things that I personally found most helpful in my experience trying
to be more charismatic and confident. Now, of course, at that time, there was no Charisma
on Command course on how to make amazing first impressions. And since then, I've tried to
go back and take everything that I learned from all those experiences; taking what was
good, throwing out what stunk, and put them into one place.
So, if you're interested in that, you're interested in making amazing first impressions, we've
set up a video where you can see, basically, the underlying thing that I discovered in
my dream, which is that there are four emotions that create an amazing first impression on
anyone if you hit them in the right order, and that extends to people in the workplace,
people socially, if you're interested in dates. It doesn't matter. These are human triggers.
So if you're curious what those four emotions are in the order that you ought to be hitting them in,
because a lot of people are doing it wrong, go ahead, click the link here. It will take
you to another page where you can drop your email, and be taken directly to that video.
So, I hope that you, guys, have enjoyed this. If you have any suggestions or questions,
comments, things that you'd like to see me cover, go ahead, write them below in the comments.
Of course, if you're not yet subscribed, we have new videos every Monday and we're starting
based on feedback from you guys. We'll continue if you like it to do throw back videos on
Thursday, of old stuff that you might not have seen from us, updated, cooler, with a
nice little background here.
So, hopefully, guys, you enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.