You’ve suffered from social anxiety disorder and tried to treat it for years. The problem and infatuation with removing anxiety go hand-in-hand. What you resist persists sometimes making problem-solving ineffective.

From a young age we’re tricked to believe in emotional regulation. We believe adults are mature, stable, and happy because of emotional control. “Stop crying and being a baby.” “Don’t be angry.” And of course my dreaded, “Don’t be a scaredy cat.” Emotional regulation has lead to your search here today as you try discover the cure of your social anxiety.

What are the affects of battling your anxiety? What’s the secret to better socialize and start living a meaningful life?

The Hidden Danger of a Social Anxiety Disorder

“Cowards die many times before their deaths.” – William Shakespeare

”To understand the world one must not be worrying about one’s self.” – Albert Einstein

Social anxiety affects you on the outside. You’re in a conversation looking at someone, but really you’re looking within, monitoring what’s going on. “Am I getting more anxious? Is my nervousness dropping? What do they think of me?”

A battle with a social anxiety disorder is life-limiting. Imagine yourself at a banquet of delicious meats and foods on the table with anxiety sitting beside you. If you battle anxiety, both hands grasp the knife and fork for weapons as you focus on slicing anxiety to death. Anxiety sometimes gets hit only to morph into a more intense form. You swing harder only to tire yourself out – all the while you miss a delightful moment of treats.

Your battle with anxiety consumes plentiful amounts of energy that diverts your mind and body from activities, daily tasks, and relationships meaningful to you. If someone was to choke you right now, of all the things you could do (look out the window, scratch your head, laugh), you’d be obsessed with one: breathing again. Fighting anxiety is like being choked as it narrows your repertoire of behavior. There’s a banquet to enjoy in life instead of fighting anxiety.

In conversation you can focus on learning what someone does for a career, how your friend spends free time, or listening to make someone feel heard to live out a value of being friendly, but instead you fight anxiety. This makes a social anxiety disorder an awkward problem. If you have the disorder as characterized by a resistance to anxiety, you’re not present in the conversation and people notice it.

How Anxiety Experts Deal with Anxiety

”If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.” – George S. Patton, World War II general

“Fear is natural. Be with it.” – Thomas Leonard, founder of CoachVille

I picked up a social anxiety disorder at 14 years old. I’m now 26 years old and don’t consider myself cured. “What?! You can’t teach people then you jerk!”

The moment you consider yourself treated from social anxiety or other forms of anxiety is when you’re vulnerable. It’s the same mind-trap as wanting to banish anxiety.

Stephen Hayes, co-creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), was a psychologist when he developed a panic disorder. In an interview I did with him, he applied advice from cognitive therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), but they felt to him as if he had spat into a hurricane.

Here’s one example. CBT uses the term “cognitive restructuring” to be more rationale about anxiety-inducing situations. Shifting a thought of “I’m going to look like an idiot at the party” to “I’m extremely nervous at this party, but I’ll leave in one piece tonight and probably make some new friends!” wasn’t very helpful for him. You may have tried the same restructuring that helped in the short-term only to find the spit flying back at you soon after.

One day Dr Hayes just became an assistant professor when he was in a department meeting watching the professors angrily fight with each other. He raised his hand to ask a question, but couldn’t make a sound come out of his mouth. After 30 seconds, no sound was made and the meeting resumed.

“That event,” says Dr Hayes, “is not what created my anxiety disorder.” If you get humiliated talking to a hot blonde, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a lifetime of anxiety, but it can start an internal battle where you fight the internal experience of anxiety. You start to project the experience where you see yourself fainting and dying in the future.

Imagine a young boy freely running around a playground. Suddenly he falls into a dark, dirty hole called “anxiety”. It’s not his fault he fell into the hole. How the hole got there doesn’t matter because it’s just there.

The child is scared of the black ditch because one day he heard bad creatures live in the dark. Afraid of this, he quickly decides to escape by digging. 10 minutes later he looks up to see no progress made so he digs more dirt out and digs faster. Sweat beads down his forehead.

One hour of strenuous digging later, he glances up with his glassy eyes only to see he’s further from freedom. The child is now more afraid than before.

Has digging hard (attempts to conquer anxiety) freed you? I doubt it has because you’re reading this article hoping to cure a social phobia. Have a pad and pen handy because in this article I’ll ask you to do a lot of tough and fulfilling work that’s counter-intuitive to what you’ve done most of your life.

How to End Suffering Forever

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” – Seneca, 1st century Roman philosopher

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.” – The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Neibuhr

Anxiety sufferers believe anxiety causes pain and must be gone before they can live a meaningful life. Self-talk of social anxiety sufferers include: “Before I can talk with that girl, I need to feel confident”, “I need to be comfortable to get on stage and speak”, and “I can’t make friends as long as I’m a nervous wreck”.

You may believe you can’t make friends or chat with cute girls until this yucky thing that is anxiety disappears. That’s what you’ve been lead to believe by self-help gurus who pronounce you have to think and feel a certain way to achieve a goal. Georg Eifert and John Forsyth, co-authors of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders, wrote something worth burning into memory: “Feeling good is not a requirement for living good.”

When you believe you must feel good to live good, you battle anxiety. The truth is: anxiety doesn’t cause pain – your struggle with anxiety creates undue pain.

Suffering forms from pain and nonacceptance according to Linehan, author of Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. Ultimate suffering is suicide, an attempt to end pain from nonacceptance. You suffer when you don’t want to be hurt, when you don’t want to be anxious, when you don’t want to fear.

You don’t need to be fearless to have a great social life. You don’t need to be fearless to contribute. You can be fear-ridden and live a meaningful life. “You don’t need to think this way or feel that way to be free of social anxiety,” said Dr Hayes. “Instead of wanting social anxiety to disappear and then you can be with yourself and others, it turns out you can go directly and quickly to the end if you compassionately hold your insides.”

Anxiety does not mean something is wrong you – it’s the approach of battling anxiety that causes suffering. Sexual abuse is one unfortunate event in life that causes trauma yet it doesn’t always lead to being broken or living a sexually suppressed life. Victims of sexual abuse can feel anxiety in sexual situations yet live as they please. Psychological health is not the absence of trauma, pain, and negative experiences.

The difference between a free outgoing person and someone shy is not the experience of anxiety, but if the anxiety is held onto, battled with, and pushed away. Escapism constricts your social life because your internal experiences are inescapable. You cannot run from yourself. Drop the mindset of “curing anxiety” altogether. “I’ve learned to never say no to anxiety,” said Dr Hayes in my interview with him. “If anxiety wants to show up, it’s perfectly welcome to do so.”

My question to you is: are you willing to make room for anxiety to be in your life?

Why Doing What You’re Anxious About Works

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” – Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytical psychology

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” – Fr. Alfred D’Souza in Happiness Is A Journey

Do the thing you’re anxious about and anxiety will rot away. That’s a truth of fear and a better lesson self-help teaches, yet the underlying message is to conquer fear and anxiety.

Firstly, fear and anxiety differ. Fear promotes action in the present while anxiety anticipates the future. You can fear being punched in the head by a muscle-jacked boyfriend if you approach a hot girl and he pushes you, but worrying about being punched by that guy before you approach is anxiety.

Fear and anxiety reduce when you experience what you’re afraid of. Neither emotion is worse than the other. A skydiver will likely fear his tenth jump less than his first and a guy who approaches a hundred women will be less anxious than if he had approached none. This is exposure and it works at living with anxiety.

You didn’t learn to ride a bike by reading or thinking about it. You crashed, you fell, you got hurt. There’s no other way than direct experience to ride a bike.

“Exposure therapy” has you repeat contact with what you fear in a safe environment until the fear is extinct or minimized. If you’re petrified to leave the house, it might begin by putting your head out the window, sitting on your verandah, or walking around the garden. If you’re afraid of cafes, day one could be to order a coffee, day two is to order a coffee while holding eye contact, while day three also gets you to ask how the barista’s day is going.

How can you use exposure to step into your social phobia? List three steps on a pad. It could be: 1) go to a mall and sit down, 2) make eye contact with 10 people who pass you, and 3) say “Hey” on the tenth person.

You may feel your heart increasing right now with just the thought of exposure. Don’t battle it. The battling is what causes suffering. Be mindful of your increased heart-rate and shallow breathe. Be okay with it. Continue to write your three steps.

The discomfort experienced signals your evolution. Something different is happening in your life right now! Remember Jung’s words: “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” Whenever I feel discomfort, I acknowledge a transformation – an evolution – is occurring inside me that’ll produce a different a result to what I’ve had in the past.

Be careful making exposure another cure to social anxiety. Cognitive therapies use exposure to reduce anxiety and treat symptoms, but ACT uses it with the purpose of getting you to be okay with feeling anxiety. That’s a big difference.

Anxiety is natural so it makes sense to not suffer with attempts to conquer it. Bootcamp students get a great feeling experience from exposure therapy. We might go to a bar or club with no intent but to be there. The student says “Hey!” to a group and keeps walking. The goal is to be okay with feeling afraid of meeting people so you can live a purposeful life. The belief you shouldn’t be afraid of new people only increases suffering.

If you do what you worry about to remove anxiety, is that another short-term tool to battle anxiety? I suggest you use exposure not to reduce anxiety, but to experience anxiety, feel how it’s normal, and believe a purposeful life is possible with it. Anxiety is natural so be with it.

Lesson: make doing what you’re anxious about a feeling experience that enriches life.

How to Free Yourself From the Fight with Social Anxiety

“One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” – Albert Einstein

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.” – Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War

Creatures relate to things based on their attributes like speed, color, and size. Humans do too but we can abstract these perceptions. We often do not take a fast beating heart for what it is: a fast beating heart. If you’re heart is thumping hard, you may infer you’re about to have a panic attack. Once you learn to categorize something within, it seems like a thing. Anxiety to you seems real and dangerous.

In the past century since Darwin’s work, we’ve categorized anxiety as an unhealthy emotional affect of worry. Anxiety is seen as bad due to the surge of pop-psychology books in the 80s, positive-thinking tapes in the 90s, and now blogging in the 21st century where anyone can chant self-help advice. Western society teaches you to master your emotions, control your thoughts, and move from unpleasant states through manipulation.

Answer these questions to do with categorizing emotions:

• Is “joy” good or bad?
• Is “sadness” good or bad?
• Is “anxiety” good or bad?

You probably answered “good”, “bad”, and “bad”. But is it bad to be sad when your friend dies? Is it bad to be anxious when you’re in a new environment and meet someone you don’t know?

The self-help myth and belief that anxiety is bad cause you to try cut it out like a parasite from your body. You read endless articles on dealing with social anxiety, post in forums desperately seeking help, and beg for anything to alleviate you of this disease. All this makes you more anxious.

You fight anxiety because of the belief and categorization it’s bad. You can also take this control approach because it’s an adaptive method to survive in the external world.

You fear climbing a high cliff for survival and pain reduction. Bruce Chorpita, Professor of Psychology at UCLA, and David Barlow, Professor of Psychology at Boston University, in a 1998 study called The Development of Anxiety confirm a control approach to make life right is important to healthy well-being. Nothing is unhealthy about avoiding an unchained dog growling loudly or taking an aspirin to alleviate a headache.

Problems arise when control is used at an extreme level as rigid thinking and behaving do not work. Not approaching a cute girl because you’re nervous does not work. Calling in sick because you’re afraid to give a presentation does not work. Saying you’re not in the mood to go to party does not work when you’re really staying home to avoid your fear of dancing. It’s once you avoid crossing a bridge because your friend jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge that control doesn’t work.

Anxiety and other feelings like anger typically understood as “bad” are not bad. They typify human experience. The belief you need to think and feel positive all the time is inhuman. Emotions don’t have an off and off switch. Our emotional spectrum of fear, sadness, happiness, anger, and disgust (Darwin’s five emotions) makes you human. Those who accept and experience the five emotions and their lesser ones without defense are healthy.

Here’s a quick exercise to do in this moment. Try to make yourself happy. Give yourself a minute. Now try to make yourself anxious. Give yourself another minute to create this state.

Did you make yourself happy or anxious? You didn’t directly create the emotion. You induced either by remembering a happy or anxious memory, which created the emotion. You experienced something that triggered happiness and something else that lead to anxiety. Emotions like anxiety naturally arise from experience and cannot be easily controlled like a power switch.

One point I must make clear is regulating actions of an emotion is completely different to emotional regulation. It’s okay to accept the one second of anger when your son doesn’t wash the dishes, but it isn’t okay to abuse him about it. You have the power to control the action-side of anger by breathing to gain clarity, thinking about the need that caused your anger, and being assertive.

A Breakthrough Model for Social Freedom

“He who is brave is free.” – Seneca

”Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.” – Voltaire, 17th century writer on social reform

You now know to not resist anxiety, but if you try to not think of a pink elephant, you’re stuck thinking about a pink elephant. What should you do instead of obsessing about the pink elephant that is anxiety?

Before we can answer this, let’s first understand what you were trying to achieve by removing anxiety. Here’s a quote from my special member’s only report The Only Cure to Social Anxiety, available in part three of Big Talkers, where for the first time this breakthrough model of social freedom is revealed and simply applied to socializing:

You’ve heard the terms “social anxiety” and “fear”, but what words are their opposite? You probably think terms like “calmness” is the opposite to “social anxiety” and “confidence” is the opposite to “fear”.

You’ve been “working on yourself” for a few years now and banish fear in pursuit of confidence . You try to erase anxiety in pursuit of calmness. Such actions are driven by the belief that an opposite – more ideal – state of anxiety exists. This belief drives your fear in social situations.

You can see this traditional model to deal with social anxiety below:

Continuing on in the report:

What if I told you an opposite term didn’t exist? What effect would that have on your belief system and actions?

If social anxiety and fear had no opposite, you wouldn’t pursue another state. You wouldn’t seek out calmness to move away from it’s polar opposite of social anxiety. You wouldn’t seek out confidence to move away from it’s polar opposite of fear.

With anxiety and fear being their own states with no opposite, you couldn’t make them transform or disappear into another state. They would simply exist because it’s natural.

What does the new model look like then?

If anxiety is a natural experience to be held, the other end of the “confidence spectrum” becomes freedom. You’re free to experience what you feel!

Freedom is not an alleviation of barriers, but complete acceptance of them. You don’t have to like the barriers. You don’t have to like anxiety, but it’s your choice if you drop the tug-of-war rope with anxiety and allow it to be there.

The problem is not anxiety, but the desire to avoid anxiety. Attempts to move from social anxiety towards confidence, calmness, even freedom – whatever it maybe – snares you in the same trap of fighting anxiety. This new model of socializing and living happy aims to not push you from social anxiety towards social freedom, but to move you to accept social anxiety, which is freedom.

You can quickly comprehend how free you are by asking: “Where’s my focus when anxiety arises?” The free person sees what’s important to them (value-based living) while the anxiety sufferer battles with anxiety (desire to avoid social anxiety).

A girl who thinks everyone analyzes her is not socially free – she will be afraid to speak and socialize. A girl who says what she feels and speaks her mind even when she’s afraid is socially freer than the first girl. Social freedom is therefore not an absence of social anxiety, but the absence of a desire to avoid social anxiety. The later girl lives a freer social life because he knows anxiety and fear is okay to exist. How can you too live a free social life once and for all?

How to Live a Meaningful Life and Treat a Social Anxiety Disorder with ACT

“Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?” – George Bernard Shaw, recipient of the 1925 Nobel Prize in literature

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon, rock band manager and writer

You don’t decide to feel anxiety – you decide to live a meaningful life. Pain exists either way. The push-pull of fear and love is expected if you move towards what you care about like friends and social freedom. Your decision is not whether you feel anxiety, but if you want to reflect on your past and feel proud. How do you go about this? You use the ACT formula.

The ACT formula below is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. CureTogether.org, a place where patients of almost any health problem come together to share their self-experiments, found Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to be one of the most effective yet hidden solutions for anxiety treatment.

There are three components to start living a meaningful life when you suffer from social anxiety: Accept, Choose Directions, and Take Action.

Accept. Follow the serenity creed by accepting what you can and can’t change. If you get anxious around attractive women because you’re short and you think women find shortness unattractive, as erroneous as that belief is, you can’t change your height and need to accept it.

By accepting your height, you don’t resign to the thought you’ll forever suck with women. It means you end your struggle with what is. This creates space for you to do something productive like learn the many other things women want in men.

Acceptance is your willingness to openly live. It is not resignation to your anxiety, a feeling, or one decision. It is a choice you make to approach life each day. There may be a law you hate, but you accept it and openly live with it. Acceptance transforms your suffering into plain pain. Acceptance ends your battle with social anxiety.

Besides, how has resistance to anxiety gone for you? You struggle with the internal battle doing things like screen phone calls, skip parties, and shop at the least busiest of times. The anxiety temporarily subsides but then it explodes straight up again in another situation.

You’re not a bad or messed up person because of your battle with anxiety and use of strategies to deal with it. You’re just using ineffective methods. Can you see how resistance is not working for you and why this first step of “Accept” is important for you?

Choose Directions. Where do you want to be one year from now?

Viktor Frankl was a man confined to life-threatening barriers yet used choice, acceptance, and values to survive and live a valuable life. Frankl was a prisoner of war transported between Nazi camps relentless as the other. Prisoners were stripped naked, called a number instead of their name, starved, placed in gas chambers, and put in dehumanizing moments.

Fellow prisoners committed suicide to avoid the suffering of another day with the Nazis. Some prisoners lay in bed refusing to get up as they submitted to Nazi beatings. Statistic experts estimate there was a 3% chance of survival.

Frankl noticed, however, a common thread amongst those who endured the pain: they had reason to live. What did Frankl do? He stood outside to give a psychotherapeutic speech on concentration camps, studied and helped fellow prisoners, and did what he could to give life purpose. Surviving prisoners imagined reunion with families or completion of a valuable project back in their home country. No Nazi could steal these visions from the prisoners.

Freud said man is driven from sexual instincts but Frankl developed Logotherapy and says your deepest desire is purpose. Carl Jung echoed similar sediments saying, “The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

Again I ask you… Where do you want to be one year from now?

You may struggle to head in a direction because of your language that describes anxiety. It’s typical for anxiety sufferers to be low on life consumed with the anxiety battle. I’ve heard and said things like, “I can’t go to parties until my anxiety is fixed”, “I’d do public speaking, but I’m afraid”, and “That girl is hot and I’d like to talk to her, but I don’t want to embarrass myself”.

Why have you previously wanted anxiety to be gone? To be less anxious? How uninspiring! You know at some level that less anxiety through techniques, anti-depressant medication, or some other remedy doesn’t create a richer life.

How would it feel if your tombstone had written on it:

“[Your name] battled anxiety for 14 years. He dedicated each day to researching techniques, taking medication, and doing what’s possible to dodge anxiety-inducing situations. He had few friends, never volunteered to help the less fortunate, and never married. He was never able to lie down on the beach with the sunset and cool breeze blowing through his hair because he never conquered anxiety.”

Write your tombstone if you died today. We’ll get to the second part of this tombstone exercise soon.

In the meantime, here’s another useful exercise for change to this new model of social anxiety. Spend five or more minutes now writing your list of Life Costs of Anxiety Avoidance. This list is to include as many costs as possible of what you’ve not had because you’ve avoided anxiety. Common life costs of my students battling social anxiety include:

• No partner ever
• No fun at social events
• No promotions at work from weak behavior
• Abuse from strangers for awkwardness
• The frustration from not voicing needs
• A disbelief great goals can be achieved

To further help you choose directions, ask yourself,“What values do I hold?” These values can be outside of relationships because anxiety affects your entire life. You can avoid going to university from your anxiety of being afraid to meet fellow students.

Values are different to goals because a goal can be achieved while a value may never end. You achieve a goal of making friends but you can’t complete the value of being friendly. Values are a path you go on. You may like to think of a value as an intention.

Example values are below along with questions to stimulate value-extraction and the problem of anxiety avoidance to show its affect on what’s meaningful:

1. Example: Loving brother/sister and parent. Questions: What type of brother/sister/parent do you want to be? How do you want to be around family? Problem: I’ve avoided talking about the elephant in the room (what everyone knows is there, but ignores) and prevented a deep connection with family because it’s scary.
2. Example: Great friend. Questions: What does it mean for you to be a great friend? What is it about friendship that’s valuable to you? Problem: Skipped my anxiety by not approaching people and accepting invitations to events that’s lead to few friends and low-quality relations with current friends.
3. Example: Help people with my career. Questions: What do you care about with work? What work do you like? Problem: I’ve stayed at home to avoid my anxiety that comes from meeting with clients and co-workers.
4. Example: Learn new skills. Questions: What would you like to learn? Why learn or undergo training? Problem: Stagnation and unfulfillment from a non-acceptance of anxiety to do with failure.

Take 10 minutes to list various values. Your answers are extremely important and guide you to purposeful living. But don’t let the importance of values bog you down because you can shape your answers later on. Hold values playfully to do this exercise because life and purpose is fun.

If you haven’t located your values, go inside the pain where you struggle the most then flip it over by saying, “What would I have to not care about to not have this pain be hurtful?” If your pain is social anxiety, you may not have to care about being with people, contribution, and loving others. Values reside in fear.

Your Life Costs of Anxiety Avoidance list motivates you to step into anxiety while your list of values motivate and direct you where to go.

Take Action. Once you accept what you can and can’t change and choose directions valuable to you, action is the last step. Act on your values.

You likely already act on your values. Your values are better clarified by what you do. If you avoid your anxiety, you probably value avoiding anxiety. With anxiety, however, it muddies up what’s meaningful to you.

A commitment to take this third and last step of action is itself a value that shows you care about your life.

Spend 10 minutes now to build an action plan that puts you on a path aligned with your chosen directions. (I told you I’d ask you to do plenty of life-fulfilling exercises.) In your action plan, list the first action-step to get you started, which is critical to build momentum and finally live meaningfully.

If you value family, a step could be to phone family members to organize a date for dinner by the end of next month. If you value being friendly, maybe a step for you is to get How to Win Friends and Influence People and Big Talk. Put together a concrete action plan to get going.

Unless you do something different, whether it’s follow ACT or some other treatment plan, you will not generate different results in your life. When you follow these steps, you’ll shift from emotional regulation to emotional acceptance. You’ll go from anxiety reduction to a fully functional being with values and goals meaningful to you.

The “cure” to social anxiety disorder isn’t accepting anxiety to remove it. That’s the same trap. Forget curing anxiety altogether even though it will likely reduce. Live aligned with your values and meaningful goals. It’s not easy. You either be friendly or you do not. There’s no “I tried to socialize” or “I tried to be nice to people”.

Your willingness to live meaningfully is a choice you make through action. Feelings and thoughts come and go, but where you travel is a decision made daily with your feet. Will you join me at the banquet beside anxiety?

Recommended Resources

1. Fellow Aussie Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, has a good overview of ACT I recommend you read if you want to further explore this therapy.
2. For a complete step-by-step guide to go from anxious and lonely to effortlessly making friends, get my Big Talk course.
3. Another good resource (saying so myself) is Big Talkers, particularly part three where you’ll access my interview with Dr Stephen Hayes quoted in this article.

Question of the Day

What will you do this week to live a more meaningful life instead of fighting social anxiety?

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. 14 Social Skills Resources for an Amazing Social Life
2. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated
3. On Achieving Goals – Part 1: Defining What You Truly Want
4. The Decision Tree of Effective Leadership to Create Freedom and Independence
5. Review of Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Self-help is the act of improving yourself without reliance on others. It extends beyond motivation books and popular psychology to include other ways humans communicate. There’s forums, everyday conversations, seminars, webinars, and books.

The term “self-help junkie” was coined to describe someone who attends seminars and buys many books, DVDs, and CDs on the subject. Junkies fuel the $8 billion dollar industry in America alone.

Self-help addicts are sometimes like heroin addicts jumping between experts wanting their next fix. The educational sources become a source of comfort and security to avoid what really is going on as they intellectualize lessons and never build the learning only possible from action. This article reveals the harsh reality about this dangerous industry that some gurus wish you didn’t know.

The Two Dangers of Self-Help

Pennsylvania clinical psychologist Dr John Norcross says self-help can damage you in two ways. Both are costly, time-consuming, and energy-depleting.

The first general danger of self-help is the direct harm, which includes a misdiagnosis or ignorance of a declining condition. Think of it like a well-intended mother issuing aspirin to remove a headache when the cause is cancer. The dangers are real except with personal development the issues are not physical, but often mental and emotional. Selection of the right helpful material is tricky. A wrong decision can leave you worse off.

There’s a lot going in your mind and body unknown to you. You can know your body is sick because you have a headache and feel weak, but you could have one of hundreds of potential health problems originating from poor eating, harmful drinking, disease, and so forth. Similarly, we are unaware of the hidden operations in the mind. It takes a humble attitude of acceptance to respect a lack of mental and emotional control over your life.

The second general danger of self-help according to Dr Norcross is the indirect harm. You exhaust your physical, mental, and emotional efforts on something unsuccessful so you beat yourself up over an inability to change. Once you believe you cannot change, rarely do you change.

Think of self-help like a Do-It-Yourself job at home. You can probably do good landscaping, fix doors, place flooring, and paint. Books, television shows, and a few friends provide you with good advice. However, you wouldn’t remove the home’s foundations, redesign its shape, or relocate it by yourself. Attempts to solve unknown problems or create something entirely new leaves you frustrated believing it cannot be done. People try to redo their minds from the ground up then unfortunately fall short of what they want and believe failure is destiny.

I’ll further expand on these two general dangers in this article. Please note that I am not against self-help. I love it. I teach it! It empowers you to improve your relationships, move ahead in your career, make friends, and enjoy life more. Self-help teaches you to create your reality instead of feeling what is will always be. What you need to get the most from personal development is an awareness of the dangers and myths in self-help shared to you in this article; otherwise you risk wasting time, money, and effort – and ultimately believe something is inherently wrong with you.

Thoughts are Everything, the Truth About Emotions, and How Self-Help Almost Killed Me

The empowerment given through self-help usually originates from improving how you think. The motto is “think better, live better”.

Thoughts are powerful, yet they are not everything contrary to what is preached by advocates of the law of attraction. To think your universe can form from thoughts alone is absurd.

An overt focus on thoughts ignores the side therapists attend to: emotions. Our thoughts influence our emotions and vice-a-versa, yet the influence is limited. You cannot think your way to emotional healing. After all, thoughts and rationalizations are “safe”. It’s easy to intellectually process your problems and talk about them with complete emotional disconnect when you’re afraid of vulnerability and revealing your real self.

I’ll prove how intellectualizing and thinking stops emotional wealth. Dr Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), who I had the pleasure to work with for Big Talkers, has a nice technique I’ll share below. Give the label of “good” or “bad” to the follow emotions:

• Happiness
• Anger
• Guilt
• Joy
• Sadness
• Shame

Done? I’m guessing you labeled happiness and joy as “good” and anger, guilt, sadness, and shame as “bad”. Take a look at this, however. What if your mother died. Is sadness bad? What if you punched your child. Is guilt bad? When you put this into perspective, the thoughts you attach to “negative emotions” shifts.

How do you respond when something is bad? You avoid bad things because they represent pain. If you believe anger is bad, you avoid your anger, feel resentful, misunderstand people, and struggle to manage conflict. If you believe embarrassment is bad, you avoid embarrassing situations and never build the confident social life you want. You spend your life running from what you don’t want.

I almost killed myself because of emotional avoidance (as I share in this video that you MUST watch). I lived in depression trying to avoid things like anger, shame, and embarrassment because these were “bad feelings”. Not letting feelings flow and trying to manipulate them increased their strength.

Dr Hayes says we have a dangerous habit of problem solving with our mind. You need to stop critiquing the experiences in you and just let them flow. Observe them as they occur to you instead of worrying and trying to fix them. This is groundbreaking material I won’t go into further detail because it’s all covered in my Big Talk Training Course and Big Talkers, which I highly recommend you get if this article resonates with you.

Some self-help teachers encourage emotional expression. Students may practice poor expressions of anger and assertiveness, however, then kill themselves like Sydney resident Rebekah Lawrence. This is an extreme case, yet I want you to value the messages sent by your emotions and acknowledge thoughts are not everything.

Positive Thinking

Feeling down or thinking negatively? This self-help CD will cheer you up, but not in the way its creators intended.

Positive thinking is taught everywhere. Every mental health professional I’ve heard recommends positive thinking. I teach it as well. For example, in my Big Talk course I teach people when approaching others for conversation to assume friendship. This reduces anxiety, creates attractive body language, and makes talking easy. Positive thinking helps you better interact with people and them interact with you.

The danger with positive thinking that I see in many “pseudo-spiritual aka law of attraction” teachings is they take positive thinking beyond what psychologists believe is healthy. Dr Norcross says flamboyant claims are made.

Cancer, rape, and poor-wealth do not consistently originate from misaligned thoughts. Victims are made to feel they squandered their mind. They are blamed for environmental influences. Self-blame is unnecessary contrary to what self-help teaches because it perpetuates resistance and shame.

Your entire life is not a product of your thinking. With excessive positive thinking you risk building a life that excludes reality. You may go to exorbitant lengths to avoid a problem by looking for the easy way out. Positiveness becomes escapism.

Your comfort zone can stagnate along with the quality of your life through avoidance. Carl Jung says your dark-side (what you want to avoid) – not the light-side you probably love to focus on – contains the gold you seek. I look back on my life and see that the areas where I have taken a step of courage to breach my comfort zone, I have transformed. Look at your life and you will see the moments you acted in the face of fear created the greatest results. That is the core of transforming your social life with Big Talk and my coaching.

Self-Discipline Myth

Along similar lines as the exaggerated power of thoughts is the undue emphasis on self-discipline. Self-control and courage is important to help you confront what you prefer to avoid because it pushes you outside your comfort zone. However, it depends on the definition of discipline.

Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled says, “With total discipline we can solve all problems.” The more I think about the statement, the more I see its truth. Again, though, it depends on what is meant by “discipline”.

When self-discipline is understood as willpower, self-discipline is overrated – even dangerous. I’ve heard many people express discouragement over their lack of discipline when it’s understood as willpower. They think something is wrong with themselves because they cannot change a habit like wake up early or quit smoking. Eventually they believe change is impossible because they have insufficient “discipline”. We’re made to feel as low-value humans for our innate habitual patterns.

Humans are autonomous creatures, not creatures of willpower. Studies prove 90% or more of your behavior is habitual. We think we’re in conscious control of our lives, but we have behavioral and thought patterns repeating day-after-day. Your patterns simply vary in order.

This isn’t to say habits are permanent, yet to change they require focused effort and systems to assist change. How you use your limited willpower determines if you alter unwanted autonomy, remove a bad habit, and create the life you want.

Most people, unfortunately, waste their limited willpower on resisting people, thoughts, and feelings. Big Talk readers know the importance of acceptance in acknowledging the reality of a problem. Acceptance means you humbly acknowledge your limited willpower, the degree you influence the problem, and the time it takes to stop what you don’t want and get what you do want.

What’s Really Going On?

Can you see the pattern of problems in most self-help? Thoughts are not everything, emotions are overlooked, positive thinking is taken too far, and self-discipline is overrated. There is a sinister amount of focus on intellectualizing, which drives the typical self-help junkie. Any self-help junkie will tell you they have a problem with “using what they know”.

Change can feel impossible by yourself. Years go by as you become a self-help junkie and question whether your dreams can become a reality. It’s okay to seek assistance from a therapist, counselor, or expert in your problematic area. Someone cannot drive you to change, but you cannot change without a drive to change.

How then do thousands of people around the globe change their life? Ad Bergsma in the Journal of Happiness Studies questioned whether self-help books help. Bergsma says hope is often what makes self-improvement programs effective. The downside of hope is it leaves you vulnerable to exaggerated claims and an empty wallet.

This post is not intended to degrade anyone in particular or self-help. Many authors and bloggers do their best to help, yet intention is not all that’s needed to affect change.

Naming all self-help books bad or good is like saying all team leaders are bad or good. It’s stupidly narrow-minded. Great materials exist. You can work on yourself with great results.

Personal development is the key behind my continuing growth. Self-help is just one part of it. I encourage it to be yours as well. Be wise in your choices and be aware of the self-help dangers shared in this article.

I feel my subscribers and website visitors need an awareness of this reality. If you’ve read this to feel better about yourself, that wasn’t my intent. Be honest about what you are avoiding. See the little control you have over your autonomous behavior. Invest in courses for your personal growth. Accepting these lessons could be your first-step towards change – and yes, I am giving you hope.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
2. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change

David DeAngelo starts off by letting readers know that his Double Your Dating ebook is not an encyclopedia, but a reference to being successful with women. It is not intended to be a complete resource on how men can attract women. It is, however, a mighty fine start. He provides strong foundations that any guy must know in order to become successful with women and dating.

After a decade’s experience in learning how to attract women, DeAngelo knows how guys approach the subject of learning how to be successful with women. Too often he has seen guys take a mental standpoint where they mistake themselves for knowing the information while they don’t put the skills to use. He mentions the need for guys to go out and practice the attraction skills he teaches. Many guys seeking advice from him are intelligent, but smart can be dumb. The skills he teaches, like any other, require practice. No great skill or canned pick-up lines will make a guy succeed with women and dating if they are not practiced, adapted, and understood.

There are many canned lines given in the ebook, which give you a strong frame of reference for creating your own lines, but “what to say” is not the basis behind the ebook. The ebook is not filled with lines; it is a holistic reference to become successful with women. The given lines act like the framework for tough situations, such as the complete guide on what to do and say to get a woman’s phone number. The ebook is a powerful reference to create the whole mindset a guy must have if he wants to start dating physically and emotionally attractive women.

This touches on another topic where guys complain about these attraction skills not being their natural self. The author says the majority of guys have no idea how to attract women because their natural self is bottled inside of fear, anxiety, and placing women on a pedestal. Once guys practice and internalize the information, they are then given the privilege to behave as their natural self. Being yourself is an earned privilege and not a right.

DeAngelo’s teachings come from his own experience, and years of studying experts. He has slashed through the loads of dating and psychology advice for men, most of which is useless or harmful, so you can be certain his guidance and tips work. (I have heard him describe his learning experience from the loads of information as walking through a jungle with a machete slashing through the crap that gets in the way of men being successful with women.)

Theory of Attraction and Dating Women

In traditional DeAngelo fashion, he begins Double Your Dating with theory. He briefly goes back a few thousand years to identify the psychological factors of women that remain unchanged to this day. There are inherit differences between the way women and men think, feel, and behave. By taking advantage of these differences – instead of letting them confuse you, like most guys who are unaware of gender differences in dating and attraction – you become more successful with women.

Most men new to attraction and the whole “pick-up scene” make the mistake of assuming women are only interested in handsome, tall, wealthy, and powerful men. These guys may also mistake women as wanting similar characteristics in men that guys want in women. DeAngelo teaches that women are naturally attracted to handsome, tall, wealthy, or powerful men. Though these characteristics instinctively trigger a woman’s natural feelings of attractiveness towards a guy, a man who develops his confidence, social skills, and attraction triggers can elicit more powerful sexual feelings from within her. What matters most is how a man makes a woman feel through his personality and communication. There are plenty of wealthy, tall, good looking men who get women’s attention, but cannot keep it because they disobey the principles in DeAngelo’s ebook.

Helping Men Transform

Two general principles I loved, which stood out from Double Your Dating, is the mindset you must have to become good at something and the need to constantly improve yourself. Though the ebook provides quick, short-term tips to be successful with women, the guys who make the commitment and effort to practice the advice get greater success with women than the guys after quick canned lines. Making a commitment to yourself with persistent effort is a sure way to get the most out of any goal you desire. The second principle of constantly improving yourself will do all guys a miracle in becoming more emotionally and physically attractive.

DeAngelo teaches guys many skills in the ebook that I recommend to people to improve their social skills and feelings about themselves. He shows you how to adjust your attitude, change negative beliefs to empowering beliefs, boost your self-esteem, become a man women know is sexually attractive, and general psychological betterment. The exercises he provides improves many areas of anyone’s life – they are not limited to helping guys become more successful with women.

Become a True Man

One point I think you will love most in the ebook are the strategies and exercises to overcome your fears of approaching women. Too many guys let their fear of approaching stop them from success with women. I felt DeAngelo was speaking directly to me with my past fears of going up to girl and getting rejected.

Another interesting point worth noting is “ass kissing” behavior, like buying a woman’s affection, is to be avoided at all times. In any situation where the motive behind complimenting is manipulative, you can expect a poor response. The basis of the ebook transforms these natural tendencies guys have into challenging behaviors. A guy in control of his life who can playfully tease women communicates sexually attractive qualities.

The personality styles that turn women on is, by itself, enough reason to check out the ebook. These personality styles go beyond personalities that women love – they are an entire life-changing mindset. One particular personality style of many I’ll share with you to demonstrate what I’m talking about is the “aggressive” personality. This personality is not about beating up women or being a jerk; it refers to pursuing a goal with passion, persistence, and determination. Women attract to men that work aggressively towards their passionate goals. It communicates energy, protection, security, and a future outlook, which ties in with the traits that instinctively attract women.

Quite possibly the greatest thing about Double Your Dating, which was added in the second edition, is the action exercises after every chapter. I cannot stress enough the need to practice any skill. Practicing is especially important in the dating world because fear unnecessarily prevents both men and women from dating success. A lot of people develop their fears from thinking too much. The action exercises act like little steps to get guys where they want to be in the dating world. These steps backed by a lot of real-world advice from the author means guys can go from not even being able to approach a girl, to having a great long-term relationship.

Overall, I was very pleased with the ebook. David DeAngelo’s style of writing was casual. I’ve observed his company and products for over three years. It is great to see the success they have given many thousands of men around the world in diverse cultures.

I know readers of the ebook that have more than doubled their dating – they have gone from never having a girlfriend to dating ten women a month. It’s crazy how much success some men now have with women after reading Double Your Dating. These men are now the selectee instead of the selected.

If you’re a guy wondering how you can be more successful with women, DeAngelo’s ebook shows you how. I believe all men, if they practice hard, can “mold with their hands” the kind of success with women they want. If only every man could read it, they would not experience years of frustration, loneliness, and fear that controls their lives.

Double Your Dating has my recommendations behind it! Sign up to David’s newsletter by clicking here. Once you sign up, you will be taken to a page where you can download his ebook Double Your Dating: What Every Man Should Know About How To Be Successful With Women (Second Edition). (If you’re already signed up to his newsletter, just enter a fake name and email to continue to the next step so you can get your copy of his ebook.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Magic Bullets by Savoy
2. Review of The Game by Neil Strauss
3. Review of Catch Him and Keep Him by Christian Carter
4. Review of Elite Social Control by Hamilton Miller
5. Review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers

If you’ve ever felt the need to have an important conversation, but couldn’t bring yourself to it, this book is for you. Author Susan Scott details the exact methods to have conversations we know will change our life and other people’s life, but we procrastinate having usually because of fear. It’s important to overcome whatever barriers we face in communication because a conversation is not about the relationship – it is the relationship.

When people see the word “fierce”, they may think pain, tough, or brutality. As written on the book’s cover, “fierce” means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, and unbridled. A “fierce conversation” brings authenticity into your life as you communicate who you are and what you believe.

Fierce Conversations will get you to have the most important conservation you can have with someone, right now. Fierce Conversations will be especially helpful to you if you have trouble: expressing yourself, talking with others who have trouble expressing themselves, dealing with passive-aggressive people, or resolving an ignored issue people know exists. After all, if you want someone or something to change, you need to initiate the change. If something bothers you, you need to be the one who does something about it.

Whether through fear of hurting a person, receiving retaliation, or someone pointing out our own mistakes, we delay the conversations we need to experience. The problem comes down to how we present ourselves to others in conversations and how we think when we are by ourselves. All conversations are within yourself and some are with others.

From Ignorant Communication to Open Relationships

It is the book’s purpose to achieve four outcomes: interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges, and enrich relationships. These are achieved through the following 7 principles of fierce conversations:

1. Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
2. Come Out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make It Real
3. Be Here, Prepared to Be Nowhere Else
4. Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
5. Obey Your Instincts
6. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake
7. Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting

As a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, Scott leans the book’s examples of principles and models, towards business communication. If someone has communication problems at work, however, Scott says the same problems likely show up in their personal lives – so the book is just as applicable to personal communication. We need to have fierce conversations with family members, spouses, students, and friends; not only with those we share a business relationship.

Scott gives you a series of simple and practical exercises to do at the end of each chapter to help you use the chapter’s communication skills. She also provides insightful scenarios of her experience with clients’ use of communication models and their notable improvements from the change.

Be warned: Fierce Conversations is no emotional walk in the park. You’re forced to face hard questions about your reality. “It takes a certain fearlessness to make your private thoughts public,” writes Scott. “But if what you’re thinking makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably onto something.”

If you choose to awaken to the truth by beginning a fierce conversation, communication opens up to improve your relationships. You will talk about what everyone pretends to not know. Don’t miss having one conversation that could change your life. Achieve success at work and in life, one conversation at a time by getting your copy of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations directly from Amazon.com by clicking here today.

(You may also want to read Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen’s Difficult Conversations for another source of tips to have the conversations you avoid. Both books provide good tips, but lack the psychology and fear of talking about tough issues. Because I never could find a book that explained this problem, I wrote a book that shows how I solved my fears of difficult conversations. To understand the deep psychology of fear in difficult conversations, read the first chapter of my program Big Talk.)

Related Media Links

1. Video and audio links – Links on the Fierce Incorporated website with Susan Scott.
2. Companies, careers built or lost one conversation at time – An article published in a Seattle newspaper by Susan Scott discussing how conversations, one by one, shape our lives.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
2. Review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
3. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie
4. Review of Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner
5. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

Dale Carnegie’s name is synonymous with How to Win Friends and Influence People. Though The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking is not as popular Carnegie’s all-time classic, possibly because of its narrow market in public speaking skills, I believe it lives up to the author’s name. (If you haven’t read Dale Carnegie’s all-time classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, with over 16 million sales you’re missing out.)

Originally called Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business in 1931, Dale’s wife, Dorothy Carnegie, revised the book, and renamed it The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking in 1962 with Dale’s notes and suggestions before he passed away. With many improvements made possible from the couple’s speaking experiences and the Dale Carnegie Organization, this book is a great primer in effective public speaking.

Dale Carnegie taught public speaking for 40 years and has transformed public speaking into a skill anyone can develop. He has seen what works, what doesn’t work, and what works brilliantly. He has helped thousands of people overcome their fears of public speaking to present exciting speeches that hook the audience’s attention.

The book has 5 parts with 14 chapters. It begins with the basics of public speaking. You learn how to choose a topic, express yourself with excitement, and improve your speaking skills. Other bits of advice to improve your speaking skills include how to let others know your thoughts, cut-down the number of points in your speech, and sincerely appreciate your audience.

The most repeated point in the book is to choose a topic that interests you and get excited about it. Convince yourself that what you have is worth sharing and you will convince the crowd to listen attentively to you. Choosing a topic that excites you will make you talk with interest, vocal variety, and good body language because 93% of our communication comes from nonverbal communication when we discuss our likes or dislikes.

This book has the same style of writing as How to Win Friends and Influence People. Many stories are delivered in an easy-to-read language along with the practical simplicity of the advice. While it takes time to develop public speaking skills, the advice given is the easy way to effective speaking because it leverages our natural abilities and knowledge.

A brief review of the table of contents is below for your convenience:

I have left out in-depth detail of parts two, three, four, and five because there are too many points to list here. (I guess you’ll just have to read it yourself!) A full summary of each part is found conveniently at its end for quick reference so you can revise and easily memorize what you have read.

In my opinion, the advice offered on how to give an impromptu speech (a speech where you’re given a topic on the spot) is the best part about the book. I have always struggled to think quickly on my feet by speaking smoothly on a topic I was just given, but the advice Carnegie shares is helping me solve the problem. I am quickly improving, becoming more confident, and talking longer – and these improvements will continue because you learn how to continually improve your speaking skills.

I highly recommend you get this book to improve not just your public speaking skills, but to also improve your conversational skills, remove self-consciousness, and boost confidence. Effective public speaking can give you these benefits. If you haven’t already grabbed your copy of Dale Carnegie’s The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, you can get yours from Amazon by clicking here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
2. Review of Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner
3. Review of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
4. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
5. The Decision Tree of Effective Leadership to Create Freedom and Independence

No longer do you have to try a mumbo-jumbo technique, a psychological trick, or the latest dietary secret to “remove” your fears. According to Jeffers, just do the thing you fear. If reading that statement scares you, you are normal!

There’s no wonder this book has sold over 2 million copies. With fear being so common in society, Jeffers has a solution that gets the reader to act in the face of fear.

Ironically, your fears disappear, or at least greatly diminish, once you “just do it”. When you feel fear, yet take action, anxiety vanishes as you see the irrational nature of the fear. Then you become what people call “a confident person“. You save yourself time and worry in failed attempts to deal with your fear.

Jeffers’ best-selling book is named after a class she taught on fear. The class quickly became a hit. Her students were able to act in the face of their fears and build confidence from their action.

As was common in her classes, the students thought their fears were weird, unique problems. Her students felt different from the rest of society. As students gradually began to share their stories, each class always warmed and filled with a sense of excitement, a sense of hope their “weird problems” could at last be cured.

We think fear is a psychological problem. You may perceive yourself to have some weird mental or emotional problem, but it isn’t some weird problem. The fear we experience is more an educational problem than a psychological problem – an educational problem made clear to you in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

The book’s main message is that fear comes from an uncertainty in capability to handle the situation. Our fears come from a disbelief in our ability to handle whatever life gives us. Jeffers says, “All you have to do to diminish your fear is to develop more trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way.”

Though this may seem contradictory to the book’s main message, the book is not focused on removing fear – as the title goes: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Many of your fears can go away, and the book helps you to remove fears, but as Jeffers shares with her first truth about fear, “The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.” The 5 truths about fear are real eye-openers.

Everybody fears doing, or being, something new because of the uncertainty within unfamiliar situations. If you don’t fear, you don’t grow. Moreover, if everyone experiences fear in approaching something new in life, the problem itself is not fear. The real problem is how you hold fear.

People paralyzed by fear feel helpless, indecisive, and angry; while those empowered by fear are powerful, action-oriented, and loving. The difference between the two categories of people is an educational problem solved by Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Fear, indecision, and anger are transformed into power, action, and love.

As you may have noticed in this review, the book doesn’t only talk about fears. It helps you become more decisive, powerful, action-oriented, and loving. Many of our personal problems relate to these issues that are subtle fears beyond our conscious awareness. For example, a wife stays in her miserable marriage not realizing that she fears the uncertain life ahead of her if she moved out. She continues to remain in the marriage constantly blaming her husband for what occurs in her life. The wife has anger and indecisiveness originating from her fear. You likely do too.

Chapters are devoted to understanding fear, personal responsibility, blame, self-talk, positiveness, and transformation to name a few topics. Jeffers has you control the “chatterbox” within you that makes you worry. I think the chapter on wholeness is brilliant because a whole life prevents us from fearing loss in other areas of life. Another great chapter was on no-lose decision-making. The author made me realize that no matter what choice I select in any decision, each choice leads to its own unique, fulfilling reward. What a great way to remove anxiety in selecting a choice.

The book is well written and simple to read. It doesn’t have the psychological terminology that can throw people off reading books about the human mind. Its simplicity combined with a concise 209 pages will have you quickly finish the book. You can be feeling the fear and doing it anyway in no time. Securely grab your copy of Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway now from Amazon by clicking here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. 5 Truths About Fear: What Fear Doesn’t Want You To Know
2. Review of Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
3. Review of Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo
4. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie
5. Review of Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

The second part of this course reveals the common barriers, problems, and mistakes we face when we apologize and ask for forgiveness. Learning the correct actions and methods to apologize is not enough – it helps your understanding and success if you also know what not to do.

You are also going to discover something called a “non-apology apology”. That is no typo. I’m certain you have heard a non-apology apology given by a politician. You likely have used this poor habit to escape a situation where you wanted to avoid an apology.

Barriers to Apologizing

You know how important apologizing is after reading the first part of the course, but let’s assume you still cannot bring yourself to apologize. The benefits of apologizing have not built enough reason for you to pursue the pleasure and avoid the pain of an apology. Maybe you are experiencing excessive workloads and stress. Maybe you don’t have the courage to confront the person face-to-face. If this is the case, I encourage you to build your confidence and throw away your pride. You will be glad you did.

As explained in part one, we often avoid an apology because of fear. The primary fear I think people have when apologizing is the idea that apologizing puts down your protective shield, which leaves you vulnerable for an attack by the other person. You fear the ramifications of your actions. People with this fear think the problem is best left in the dark because an apology puts the problem under a light to amplify the issue.

A part of this fear may actually be real because the topic you should discuss could be bottled inside of you and your would-be conversational partner. An apology could open a bottle of soft drink. Depending on the severity each of you have been shaken, a lot of fizz could spurt out. Anger, confrontation, and frustration will shoot out when either of you are shaken up and previously unopened to the other person.

Be humble, calm, and lose a self-centered approach to control this fear. If the fear is minor, you simply tell the person your fear and why you have it before giving your apology. That itself can open up communication.

When you apologize, it helps to remember that being scared of confrontation with the person comes from wanting to protect yourself. You fear responsibility for your actions. However, don’t expect the person to treat you like an angel. After all, you screwed up otherwise an apology would be unnecessary.

Another likely barrier to you apologizing is a fear that it signals weakness. You think the person receives a superior power over you. “I’m better than you! I win! You apologized!” Yeah right. A failure to apologize communicates to yourself that you are weak weak because there is an imbalance between your courage and your ego.

When you admit a mistake and ask to be forgiven, your self-centeredness lowers, your courage rises, and balance exists with you and the other person. Weakness and vulnerability is a misnomer about apologizing. “It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity,” said Stephen Covey, author of the bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.”

Your goal in apologizing is not to keep your pride alive or to let the other person “win”. Aim to develop a good relationship. There is no winners or losers. The two of you play on the same team and must work together towards a quality relationship.

The Most Common Mistake: A Non-Apology Apology

We are taught early in life to say “please” and “thank you” to please mum or dad. Most of us never understood the full intent behind gratitude. At the same time, we are taught to apologize by saying, “I’m sorry” because our parents made us. We miss the true reason for an apology.

From a young age we continue to shy away from true apologies by using a bad habit called a non-apology apology. A non-apology apology is a forced apology to the offended person, because it’s the right thing to do, without any realization or belief about one’s mistake. It’s an extension of the forced apology our parents made us give when we were young – except we say the non-apology apology to please the other person.

If you’re after some examples of non-apologies, look no further than politicians. These adorable people are filled with this poor apology. One example is Bill Clinton’s remarks regarding the Lewinsky scandal. President Clinton confessed his relationship with Lewinsky was “wrong”, but failed to experience guilt. It was said about his talk that Clinton aimed to protect what he had done. We see Clinton detached from his sorrow when he said, “It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people.”

Another non-apology I came across was in the NFL. Detroit Lion’s president Matt Millen used an inappropriate term for gays when he confronted a fellow NFL player. “He made an inappropriate remark,” said Millen, “and I reacted inappropriately. I said something I shouldn’t have, which was wrong, and I apologize for that. And I apologize to anybody that I offended with that remark.” That is filled with non-apology apologies.

Another example I found of many was Pierre Boivin, Montreal Canadiens’ President, when he apologized for fans booing the American national anthem. Boivin said, “We apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this incident.”

It is a growing trend to say sorry on the condition you hurt someone – instead of admitting your mistake regardless of someone’s pain that compels you to apologize. The non-apology apology requires someone to be hurt and implies offended people are partially to blame for their reaction. Some more examples:

• “I’m sorry for not mowing the lawn even though it does not require cutting.”
• “I apologize if I hurt anyone.”
• “Please take my apology if you were offended by what I said.”
• Jim Buzinski over at Out Sports is trying to discourage the non-apology apology. He has plenty of good examples of this mistake in his article, Apology Not Accepted.

To show you the delicacy of apologizing, see this apology: “I’m sorry I lied to you. I feel guilty that I’ve let you down.” All you do is insert an “if” into the first sentence (“I’m sorry if I lied to you”) to destroy a good apology with a non-apology apology.

We use non-apology apologies to take the heat off ourselves to keep the offended person quite. It puts the onus on those we upset by implying the victim is wrong. There is no remorse and sorrow like an unregretful child apologizing. A non-apology apology is said to please a person while protecting yourself. You shy away from guilt and responsibility with a non-apology apology.

An awareness of these common barriers and mistakes will have you ready to successfully apologize. Knowing what not to do will guide you with what to do.

You are now ready to improve your relationship by learning how to correctly apologize to heal the damage that set the two of you apart.

Links to all four parts of this course, “Freeing Yourself From Mistakes and Pain: A Four Part Course On Apologizing and Emotional Freedom”:

1. Power of Apologizing
2. Barriers and Mistakes in Apologizing
3. How to Correctly Apologize
4. Finding the Art of Forgiveness: How to Forgive and Be Forgiven

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Power of Apologizing
2. Top 15 Dumb Mistakes People Make in Relationships
3. How to Correctly Apologize
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5. Finding the Art of Forgiveness: How to Forgive and Be Forgiven

If you are woman wanting to start a conversation with an interesting guy, whether it is online through things like MSN, Facebook, and Myspace or face-to-face or text, you must work through two primary challenges or steps. The first step is to overcome your fears, anxiety, and other “inner game” problems. Even if you think you are confident – because you are reading this article wanting to know how to start a conversation with a guy – that tells me you need to solve inner game problems rather than have me write you a few magical lines to use on a guy you like. The second step defines what you say and how you say it. Let’s look into these two steps throughout the article.

Why Friends are Easy to Talk With

Why do you find it easy to talk with friends, but you do not know what to say to a guy you like? The answer is: you know your friends. This makes it easy to talk about a lot of things, which proves the point I want to make: you are able to talk to your friends because you do not feel vulnerable to them. You can talk to your friends because you are unconcerned about their judgments of you. This opens a floodgate of conversational topics that are suppressed when you try to start a conversation with a guy.

Contrast talking with your friends to talking with a guy you like. When you try to start a conversation with a guy, you can talk about a million subjects, but you say nothing because you worry about him liking you, saying the wrong thing, or making a fool of yourself. Your negative thinking chokes your ability to converse until the conversation dies. You don’t think like this around friends. It is important to sort out these inner game issues that prevent you from starting a conversation so you can become a confident woman that naturally attracts men.

Let’s say a girl comes across a guy at a shopping center she wants to get to know. She tries her best to think of something to start the conversation, but her mind is blank. She has inner voices telling her negative things such as, “You can’t do this”, “He won’t even like you”, and “You’ll just make yourself look bad and embarrass yourself”. The lady has already lost her inner game. She is not going to start a conversation with destructive thinking.

Her mind isn’t really blank, however; her destructive pattern of thinking gives her the mind blank. When you suffocate your mind with destructive thinking, you cannot start a good conversation. Winning on the outside starts with winning on the inside. Before you win in the conversation by starting a good conversation, get your inner game into shape. Do not worry what to say when you cannot even speak.

I am going to hone in on how girls can start a conversation with a guy by firstly looking more into your inner game, then we will look into techniques that you can use to start a conversation with a guy. Moreover, these are fundamental conversational rules that can be used for anyone in various situations – they are not limited to girls starting conversations with guys.

Reframing Your Mind

The first path you need to hop on to improve your inner game is boosting self-awareness. Be self-aware of your inner dialog, the language in your mind. I know it is easier said than done so I’m going to teach you one of the most powerful personal development techniques to fight limiting thoughts.

Motivational speaker Wayne Dyer uses the phrase “no limit thinking” to release people from self-limiting beliefs. These beliefs empower or disempower us from anything we do. William James, a 19th century psychologist that pioneered American psychology, said:

“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

You must release yourself from these beliefs to confidently start and maintain a conversation. Be a no limit thinker. Remove the limits you have placed on yourself by using a technique called “reframing”.

Reframing is not a difficult technique. It has you change your interpretation of a situation. Your aim with reframing is to create thoughts congruent with your goals and repeatedly affirm these thoughts to yourself. The better you get at adopting a “no limit thinking” approach, your confidence improves as does your ability to talk with people.

The girl at the shopping center would use the reframing technique by repositioning her current negative thoughts to positive ones about having a great conversation with the guy. Below are some negative thoughts the girl in our example is trying to overcome and to the right of each limiting thought is a good reframe the girl could use:

Negative Thought	Positive Thought Using the Reframing Technique
“I’m nervous.”	“I’m nervous because I care about the situation.”
“I won’t start the conversation well.”	“I will start the conversation well as I can do with my other friends and other people.”
“I’m afraid.”	“I wasn’t afraid last week when talking to a new guy so I don’t have to be afraid now.”
“He is so amazing and too good for me.”	“He farts, burps, and itches himself like any other human.”
“He won’t like me.”	“I don’t care if he won’t like me because I’m the prize. He is the one losing.”
“I don’t have anything to talk about.”	“I have thousands of thoughts that can be used to start a conversation.”

Can you see how easy and powerful it is to overcome the limits you place on yourself? Reframing is an amazing technique. It may take a minute or two to come up with a positive interpretation of the situation, but with practice you’ll become faster and better at it. It can be used in almost any situation to boost your confidence, improve your happiness, and help you succeed.

Now that you have fought off your doubts, fears, anxieties, and uncertainties about having a conversation with the guy, you can approach him and start a conversation. I’ve found that once people improve their inner game with the reframing technique, the second part of this article that provides conversation starters naturally happen. People can start a conversation easily because they reframe the situation, which makes them feel confident and able to talk about anything. Nonetheless, I will share effective techniques and conversation starters below. The reframing technique frees your mind to start conversations, but it is reassuring to have techniques you can rely on to start a conversation.

Situational Starter

To use the situational starter technique, all you do is notice your surroundings. Preferably make it something the other person is aware of or would be aware of once you use it.

In the shopping scenario, the girl could talk about things like the hastiness of shoppers or the weather… Wait. I hear you say this technique sucks. Talking about the weather is the simplest and worst use of the situational technique. It is boring and too common. Both examples would probably be ineffective in the shopping situation, but they can work when delivered by powerful nonverbal communication.

I encourage you to be more creative with situational starters. To make better use of this technique, use more in-depth situational influences for effective conversational starters. These rely on your creativity and involve discussions on unusual things about the situation. Your conversations will be more fun once you follow this advice.

I will give you some examples of good situational starters the girl in our shopping example could use to start a conversation with a guy she likes. The girl could ask the guy how to locate a specific store or item; she could ask him where he got his hat because she would like to buy one for her brother; given the guy looks about 20 years-old, she could ask him for his opinion on whether her 20 year-old guy friend would like an item she thinks this guy has an interest in. This last conversation starter is more of an opinion opener, another good technique to start conversations, yet it still involves reading the situation. Use the situational starter or an opinion opener with creativity, and you have all you need to start a conversation.

You can get more conversation starters to use on guys you like and other people by reading an article I wrote titled “101 Conversation Starters“.

What to Talk About

Once you have started the conversation, the biggest difficulty is overcome. The conversation gets easier with time, but you still need to keep the conversation going. Starting a conversation means nothing if it stops dead. You have overcome your inner game issues, you have approached and started a conversation with him, but if you do not keep the conversation going you are in trouble. I will list some techniques and tips you can use to keep a conversation flowing nicely with a guy, but browse the conversation skills section for more great tips.

What should you talk about? One thing you must not talk about is a boring topic. Do not, and I repeat, do not bore your conversational partner to death. You can avoid boredom by avoiding normal conversational topics such as the weather. Talk about passions, interests, conspiracies, and relationships. It is pretty simple to avoid boredom by talking about topics that have emotion! Talk about topics each of you are emotionally involved in to create an emotional link the two of you will remember.

If you don’t know an interesting topic, let the person be the topic. Myself and other guys love to talk about themselves. It’s only natural to talk about yourself because it’s the easiest topic to talk about. You can harness and leverage this with the guy by asking good open-ended questions.

An open-ended question is a type of question that takes more than a few words to answer. Examples of open-ended questions include: “What do you think about…?” “What’s something interesting you got up to last week?” and “Why do you enjoy…?”

In the shopping scenario, let’s say the girl started the conversation by asking the guy, “Excuse me. I’m after a basketball for my brother. I thought you’d know a bit about it and was wondering what advice you could give me?” The girl would listen attentively using positive body language and show other forms of interest in the guy’s answer. If he doesn’t know much about basketballs, it does not matter. She could then keep the conversation going by asking him, “What things are you interested in then?” What matters is she has broken the ice and started a conversation.

She can increase her chances of keeping the conversation going by asking for his advice on an item she thinks interests him. Again, this uses the opinion technique and is valuable to make someone talk to you. She can guess what he is interested in by looking at his clothes, his friends, what he is currently doing, or anything else that is noticeable. The girl can ask him for his advice on buying a basketball because he is wearing a basketball jersey. She can keep a conversation going by observing the guy, listening carefully, and being a good “detective” snooping around for information.

How to Keep a Conversation Going with “Branches”

Once she asks for his advice and listens attentively, she can keep the conversation going by building onto what I call “branches” that grow from a conversation. Branches are more in-depth discussions about the topic, or even another topic, by listening carefully to what is discussed. There are literally thousands of branches to a statement like, “I enjoy shopping with my friends.” Branches from this could be shopping experiences, stories related to shopping, and why you’re currently shopping.

The girl’s question of, “What things are you interested in then?” is one example of a branch. Another example of branching the girl in our shopping example could use, which continues from the guy’s reply to her question about basketballs, is: “Thanks. You do know a lot about basketball. How did you get all this knowledge?” She can build a conversation about the item and branch out into related topics she thinks the guy is interested in depending on his energy when speaking on the topic.

What If You Fail and Get Rejected?

If you do make a mistake and stuff up the conversation with a guy you like, do not worry. Use the reframing technique by saying things to yourself like, “I stuffed up and am now smarter for next time” or “I don’t care. I’m the prize.” Failure is just another step towards your success of effortlessly starting and continuing conversations. With enough practice, you will achieve conversation mastery.

From this article you have improved your inner game, you know how to start a good conversation, and you know how to keep an exciting conversation going. All that is left for you to do is put the techniques to use when you find yourself wanting to start a conversation with a guy you want to meet. Let me know how it goes for you!

Lastly, if you want to learn more about how you can become a more confident, mature, attractive lady that naturally attracts men, there is one online resource I recommend you learn more about: Catch Him and Keep Him. Catch Him and Keep Him is an ebook by Christian Carter to help you become a better woman so you can find and keep Mr Right. Click here to learn more about it.

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I frequently get asked by people how they can overcome such thoughts where they try to read someone’s mind. They want to know how they can eliminate worry over people’s judgments and thoughts in a conversation because it creates social awkwardness.

I use to have the same problem. I worried over people’s judgments of me – in conversations and in general social situations. I stand at 6’9” (206cm) and attract attention wherever I go. Some people go about their day as I walk by, while others gawk in amazement. (I don’t know if they realize it, but I’m tall and not deaf.) Thoughts such as, “Why are they looking at me like that?” destroyed my ability to socially enjoy myself until I discovered a few secrets I will share with you in this article that transformed me into a confident, happy, powerful person.

Surviving the Brutality of People’s Thoughts

Why are you concerned what people think of you? Take time as you explore your concerns. Analyze your unexplored fears and anxieties. Read on once you have thought deeply about this question.

As you explore your worries and anxieties about people’s thoughts towards you, you will see the problem boils down to worrying if people accept or approve you. Your worries center on accurate mind-reading in hope of adjusting yourself to be accepted or approved by people.

Social acceptance is important for everyone. If our ancestors were rejected and ostracized from their tribe, it was like a death sentence because they had to confront other tribes and animals while hunting and gathering food by themselves. It was near impossible to survive alone.

It is okay to want acceptance. Your fears are a survival mechanism, but because interactions and group structures have changed after thousands of years, you have outdated ways of thinking and behaving. What thoughts and beliefs helped humans thousands of years ago, even you last year, are unlikely to serve you well now. When you worry what people think of you, does it help you survive? Does it improve your conversation skills?

If you think about thinking about people’s thoughts, you see the anxious process does more harm than good. It chokes your social skills as you struggle to release your real, powerful self into the conversation. When you try to determine people’s judgments towards you, your perception of their social judgments creates inhibition and blinds your natural, magnetic personality.

We worry what people think of us more than we know:

• You keep quiet in a meeting as you withhold your ideas in fear of saying the wrong thing and being rejected. From a survival perspective, the fear makes sense because you could be ostracized from the workplace and lose your job, money, and lifestyle. In reality, suggesting an idea will never cause such a drastic outcome (unless you say something absurd like, “Let’s steal from the poor”, but even then your coworkers will probably laugh-off your remarks).
• When you talk to your spouse, you know something needs to be said, but you keep quiet because you fear his or her reaction. From a survival perspective, this could ultimately result in a break up where your genes cease to pass onto the next generation. If you say what is on your mind, however, your relationship strengthens because you discuss what really matters. (Difficult Conversations is a great book for these tough conversations.)
• You avoid doing something silly or unusual in public because you fear other people will label you as “weird”. I know people who do not kiss their partner in public because they worry what the viewing public thinks. The same survival principles hold true again: the fear originates from being ostracized from society. Nonetheless, no one is going to reject you – yet alone remember you – because you did something you consider an embarrassment.

If you do something people consider daring, they may put you down, but they will admire your courage. More often than not, something that is “out there” may not even be “out there” because we fathom what constitutes safety. Giving your opinion in a conversation is not going to determine if you live or die even if it appears daring to you.

Although it is uncomfortable to take action on something you are inhibited over, the return is greater than the initial expense. When you decide to not mind-read people in your conversations, your discomfort increases the same time your power increases. This is as certain as water grows plants. Facing the uncomfortable makes you powerful.

The Innate Gift of Mind-Reading

Our ability to infer another person’s mental state is referred by psychologists as having a “theory of mind”. The survival mechanism of mind-reading helps you adapt to diverse people and is powerful if you know how to use it.

Researchers agree our theory of mind develops around two years of age. Toddlers can calculate people’s desires, intents, and thoughts. If a toddler sees a crying baby, she infers the distressed baby’s mental state. The toddler may tug her mother’s sleeve, pulling her to comfort the distressed baby. Up until then, you will not see empathetic children with mind-reading skills.

If you were like a baby absent of a theory of mind, you would continuously get in social and emotional trouble. A theory of mind helps you to do the closest thing to mind-reading as you dig into a person’s mind. You are able to see the intangible like: a young boy picked on at school feels hurt and alone; your partner comes home from work smiling, leading you to believe he or she had a good day at work; a depressed friend who recently broke up with her boyfriend leads you to think she needs space for recovery. Your inference into mental states helps adjust your behavior to better accommodate people.

What if, however, your friend who broke up with her boyfriend, wants to be comforted by you. Because you guessed she needed space, she would feel neglected, ignored, and more rejected. Inaccurate mind-reading causes relationship destruction.

Tell someone their destructive mental state or intent behind an action, such as, “You’re jealous because you think…”, and you will cause immediate trouble. This is what I refer to as “diagnosing” where we figure out people’s intents behind their actions, which gets us into arguments and detracts from our power with people. (I recommend you read the third chapter on diagnosing of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People for more information about this bad communication habit.)

Mind-reading also frustrates the beholder. We jeopardize our wellbeing from judgments because we have limited ability to infer someone’s mental state. A person laughing at a distance who makes eye contact with you may be giggling at a joke, not you. You think people judge you – a useful process when used correctly – but it too often sends you to mental imprisonment as you become anxious and constrain your real self from entering the conversation. Your theory of mind is too often an unreliable tool to calculate what people think.

You were given the ability to read someone’s mind so you could better adapt to the environment. Someone aggressively staring you down triggers thoughts of potential danger, allowing you to change to survive the threat. You can be over-reliant on this skill, however, by worrying about people’s thoughts when there is no concrete evidence (such as nonverbal communication) that signal you need to adjust your behavior. What is used to survive and better connect you with people, separates you. (You can improve this innate skill to become become better with people by discovering several tricks of psychology to read people’s minds based on the roots of empathy.)

Using the Power Given to You to Become Better With People

Let’s take a look at the paradoxical outcome seen in the following example of someone concerned about social acceptance and meeting a person’s expectations – and be sure to learn from this example. A guy is meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. He worries about being “good enough” for his girlfriend’s parents and living up to their high expectations. He is concerned that if his girlfriend’s parents think he is not their daughter’s Mr. Right, he will be rejected and forced to break up with his girlfriend.

He has two extreme options to select:

1. He needs to gain their approval.
2. He does not need to gain their approval.

Let’s say the guy chooses the first option. In this situation the guy is determined to get the parents’ approval. He analyzes the situation, thinks, worries, and focuses on what the parents could think. He tries to mind-read the parents, which makes him anxious.

When the guy tries to calculate what the parents expect of him, he gets stressed and anxious. His continual analysis of the parents’ thoughts causes awkward behavior. He becomes fidgety, apologetic, and strangled from his natural self. He gets along great with friends, but when it comes to talking with strangers he feels awful.

In this first situation, the guy forward-thinks and screws his chances of gaining the parents’ approval because he is seen as needy and unconfident. The guy needs people to validate his identity, which ironically causes them to disapprove of him.

When you need approval, people sense your neediness and social anxiety then reject you. A weak self causes you to be rejected, which causes you to feel more unworthy – and the cycle continues as you develop an inferiority complex.

Individuals with a weak self-esteem who always worry what others think live in their reality by deriving one’s self-esteem from external sources. They never build true self-esteem that only comes from within. (In my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program, I discuss this weak reality we live in as we yearn for praise and other signals that validate our identity.) When you derive your powerful self from competence, capability, and self-responsibility – instead of external validation that moderates your behavior – you release your powerful self into the conversation (like the guy in the second situation you will soon see).

In the second situation, the guy does not require the parents’ approval. If he finds something funny, he laughs. If he wants something, he asks for it. If he likes something, he says so. These behaviors are different to the first situation where the guy is fidgety, apologetic, and strangled from his natural self.

You may think “he can’t just ignore the parents’ approval of him because he’ll screw up!” The same thought drives destructive mind-reading: you think mind-reading people’s judgments helps your ability to adapt, but more destruction than construction occurs. Your confidence and self-esteem gets knocked down from the destruction of so-called “adapting”.

It is okay to want people to like you without their approval, but not needing approval is different from reckless behavior and not caring what people think of you. Having no need for approval does not mean you run down the street screaming and waving your hands above your head. Do enough reckless behavior and you will be ostracized from society as you get put in prison (or a mental institution). You can moderate your behavior without needing people’s approval.

Beyond Not Caring What People Think: How to Become More Powerful in Conversations

An elimination of harmful mind-reading is only the first step to not care what people think about you. Because you infer people’s thoughts to get along with people, the second step is to replace the anxious behavior with something to help you with people. Behavioral adjustment to get people to like you is what mind-reading poorly achieves.

In our example, once the guy does not require his girlfriend’s parents to validate if he is good enough for his girlfriend, the battle is only half won. He still needs to adapt. He needs to do things like be polite, friendly, joke around, and other things to gain the parents’ acceptance.

Acceptance differs from approval. Seeking approval passes a test to grant yourself permission to be who you are. It is about being “good enough” to meet someone’s standards. On the other hand, acceptance for our purpose builds a positive response to something that is offered. When you seek acceptance, you have a strong sense of self that you present to people, and whether they accept it is up to them. Should people not accept you, it does not diminish your self-esteem because your powerful self comes from inner worth, not external validation. Approval and acceptance are valuable terms you need to reread, understand, and burn into memory.

If you are to be powerful with people, you must build acceptance by doing things people favor, such as starting interesting conversations, being friendly, and using other effective communication techniques. Grow yourself and adapt to situations, but do not feel people must validate your reality. Work towards acceptance, but do not worry for approval. Powerfully confident individuals do not require people’s approval at all. They are concerned about people in their life, but they do not limit or inhibit themselves. They seek acceptance without approval.

Once you know the difference between acceptance and approval, and how to build acceptance, release your spontaneous self that attracts people in conversations. Dr. Maxwell Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics writes about self-consciousness and releasing your powerful self into the conversation:

“The reason some people are self-conscious and awkward in social situations is simply that they are too consciously concerned, too anxious to do the right thing, and too fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing… If these people could let go, stop trying, not care, and give no thought to the matter of their behavior, they could act creatively, spontaneously, and ‘be themselves’… Your creative mechanism cannot function or work tomorrow – or even a minute from now. Only right now.”

The paradoxical effect of releasing yourself in the conversation discussed by Dr. Maltz is that people accept you when you stop trying and start being. We fear revealing our true self into conversation, but when we unleash it, people feel it and become attracted to our authenticity.

The guy in the second situation who does not require the parent’s approval, feels confident and people feel his confidence. The end result: the parents are more likely to accept him. When you rise above the need for people’s approval, your confidence soars, uncertainty ceases to exist, worrying vanishes, and fear of how others see you stops. You are happy with who you are and what you can do.

It surprises me that the purpose of worrying what people think of you is to get them to like and approve of you. Once you do not need approval from others, however, they actually approve of you! It is Zen-like that when you trash that line of thinking, you achieve its goal.

Emotional Freedom in the Present Moment

A great pianist never anticipates, when performing, every detail needed to play a great song. The pianist allows himself to be enthralled in the moment as his natural playing abilities shine through his music. His focus in the moment makes people accept and like his music.

In a conversation, do not anticipate people’s thoughts towards you, then your natural, powerful personality will be seen. You will behave freely as you do with friends. Act as if no one thinks about you because few probably are. Turn-off the imaginary spotlight you see on yourself and you will be amazed at your high self-confidence. Your new-found confidence will radiate into your conversations as you free yourself from inhibition and release your real self.

I want you to live in the present moment instead of anticipating the future. Be in the now as you surrender yourself to the moment. People’s reactions do not matter because all the matters is how you respond right now.

Your thoughts about people’s thoughts towards you is an outdated way of thinking that destroys your ability to make conversation. You block-out your naturally powerful personality when you feel inhibited by your attempts to read people’s mind. If you make the shift to act boldly, build internal sources of validation, gain acceptance (instead of approval), and live in the present moment by not anticipating people’s judgments, you will be unconcerned what people think of you as your powerful self releases into the conversation.

(Learn to become authentic, confident, and people-magnetic without worrying what people think of you with the Big Talk Training Course, which will help you confidently socialize. Learn more about this breakthrough course available for download here.)

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