The most common tip you hear to be better with women and men is “just be yourself”. Jump in a forum, blog, or conversation where people discuss the secrets of making friends or attracting the opposite sex and you’ll hear the unanimous piece of advice echoed like ancient wisdom. I’ve received many emails and comments on articles like What Women Want in Men saying, “Forget everything. Just be yourself.” I manage to withhold from clicking reply and sending an angry response.

If being yourself is sound advice, it’s as useless as being told to “be confident”. How do you just be confident? You can’t just do it. Unless the word triggers what you need to do like “express your feelings” or “stand up straight”, being yourself is not helpful advice.

It’s time you understood this cliché and what you can do to be the best full you.

Why You’re Told to Be Yourself

“It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.” – Aeschylus, ancient Greek playwright and father of tragedy

Understand the reasons people say to be yourself and you begin breaking down the belief it’s useful advice.

The majority don’t know how to attract women, get a guy, or make friends. Asking the average person how to keep a conversation going is like questioning a poor man for the secrets to be rich. If you ask your well-intentioned mum how you can get that cute girl at school, she’ll tell you to be yourself because she knows no better. Few have studied what makes one good with people.

The second reason someone tells you to “just be yourself” is to reassure you that as a person you’re fine. To change something about you implies something is wrong and flawed. Those who care for you want to preserve your self-esteem.

The third reason someone tells you to “just be yourself” is that’s what most of us have heard about social skills our entire lives. Popularity creates familiarity and belief.

Mention these three weapons to counter the folly advice and you’ll be told “okay, then just be patient” and “it’s not meant to be if it doesn’t work out”. The reasons someone tells you to be yourself also explain this pathetic advice.

Talk to these people about conversational strategies, body language, or NLP and you’ll see a blank look flush over their face. It’s like getting a layman to explain how a bulb is switched on. Most lack understanding and consciousness of everyday systems we take for granted.

The Dangers of Being Yourself

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.” – Mike Murdock, televangelist.

One of the main differences between happy, successful people and their opposite is an attitude of responsibility towards creation. The common miserable man believes he’s a victim of the world. “There’s no point learning how to speak on stage because I’m bad at it.” A belief that being yourself is the way to go creates victimization and laziness to get what you want.

“Just be yourself” excuses you from leaving your comfort zone. It grants you permission to surf the Internet all day, not approach someone you want to talk to, or avoid that class you’re interested in learning from. Such thinking is like: “This feels uncomfortable so it’s unnatural. I better stop.”

An unchallenged body does not know itself. Talk to someone who’s been through severe adversity and you’ll hear someone who knows what matters to them. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

The risk in being yourself and not leaving your comfort zone is stagnation towards achieving your goals. You get your current results in life for a reason. If you’re fat, I guarantee you eat and think different to models on TV or bodybuilders. If you’re lonely, I guarantee you move and think different to someone popular. If you’re shy, I guarantee you talk and think different to a confident person. In this lies the problem of being yourself: you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got and be what you’ve always been.

The Case for Being Yourself

“You never find yourself until you face the truth.” – Pearl Bailey, American actress and singer

If you’re fuming about what you’ve read, I’ve just undermined your belief system of what to do to be good with people. To get what you want, you have to evolve. If you keep your daily habits, your future will be the same if not worse.

Pete Sampras, Wade Gretzky, or Jack Nicklaus didn’t give up after a lost match, missed shot, or lost tournament. They certainly did not think being themselves was the secret to sporting success. Each of them practiced something everyday that wasn’t “them”.

Your true self is not your habitual self. You do what you do now for many reasons. Influences of what you do include friends, family, culture, and general experience in the world. A woman can be a rape victim fearful of intimacy or she can be a loving wife. Experience shapes who you are but it doesn’t define you. You define yourself.

“Just be yourself” has too broad of a meaning to be useful. Getting more focused, there are certain situations where it is good to be yourself depending on context and meaning.

Being yourself is good advice when its understood as not comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to the billionaire or the guy who gets a hot new woman every week, you’ll feel worthless. You’re better off doing what I call a “self-to-self comparison” where you juxtapose your present self to your past self. Your past is too different from others to compare yourself with them. Stop putting people on pedestals.

Being yourself is also good advice for authentic conversation. “When one is pretending the entire body revolts,” wrote French author Anais Nin. Psychologist Paul Ekman gave the term “microexpressions” to describe how the face gives off subtle signals of one’s true feelings. You can say you’re fine about a friend going to a movie without you, but your narrowed lips and eyebrows close together give the person an intuitive signal you’re angry.

Try fake a smile in the mirror and you’ll get a sense for the weirdness of being unauthentic. You can begin to imagine how hiding yourself damages relationships. Most of my teenage years were spent with a mask on covering my true feelings with family because of shame. Your emotional health and relationships eventually suffer when you’re not yourself.

Why then do we act “fake” in relationships? You’d most likely do it because you fear rejection and not being loved for who you are. If someone doesn’t like your mask, that’s only your mask not you.

To be the full you entails vulnerability. The best you entails equal effort, fear, and risk. If this scares you, know that a challenge will cause evolution. The best full you is saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and doing what you can to be trustworthy, reliable, and responsible.

The path to the best you is not easy if you’ve been unauthentic most of your life. People judge and treat you a certain way based on the image they expect you to uphold. Heck, you have an image of you called a self-image that regulates what you do.

The question is what’s yours at the moment and what do you want it to be? As you answer and think about that question throughout the week, keep in mind what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”

The next time you hear “just be yourself”, email or post the link of this article to your advice-giver.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change
2. 4 Reasons Advice and Other Solutions Kill Relationships
3. Job Interview Advice to Ace Any Interview

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

Over the past year I’ve collected some great resources on social skills I’d like to share with you now. Some are from friends of mine, myself, and just others who’ve given good insight into a topic.

From improving your social skills, overcoming anxiety, and starting a conversation, all the way to ongoing conversation, being charismatic, and making people laugh, here are some great resources I recommend you read even if they take you a while to get through (each of these great resources will open in a new window so you keep track of this page):

1. How to Improve Your Social Skills: 8 Tips from the Last 2500 Years

Henrik Edberg has some good social skills insight to share. A lot of what he discusses builds on from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Read some of his other posts on communication and socializing if you have the time.

2. 25 Ways to Relieve Anxiety

I mostly teach people how to deal with their past, rework their mind, and get into the present to overcome social anxiety, but this post has some good alternatives to deal with anxiety disorders. Read it if you’re shy and struggle talking to strangers. It’s unlikely to cure your social anxiety though it will help make you more comfortable in social situations.

3. 101 Conversation Starters People Love

A goldmine from none other than yours truly. You get everything needed to start a conversation with anyone.

4. 40 Ways to Make a Good First Impression

According to research, if someone judges you as “attractive”, “friendly”, and “open” within 100 milliseconds, they’re likely to think you’re all that by the end of the conversation. In this killer article of mine, you’re given 40 tips on body language, conversation techniques, and mind strategies to quickly and permanently impress people.

5. 7 Hacks to Remember Any Name

End the embarrassment of forgetting someone’s name by using seven neat mind-tricks. Charismatic persons like Richard Branson are masters at remembering people’s names. You may not become a billionaire by knowing John is John, yet people will feel special, you won’t feel awkward, and your relationships will be richer.

6. 3 Quick Ways to Never Let Your Conversation Run Out

There’s a lot of garbage advice out there on how to keep a conversation going. Most people just don’t know what they do to continually talk to anyone. You’ll want to read this short article by a guy called Schmidty to help you keep talking to people.

7. 10 Tips: How to Be Funny

Onto some cool skills now that make you a better socializer. Even if you’re a serious type of person, you can lighten and learn how to be funny. Your ability to make people laugh will win you many friends, business deals, and glances from the opposite sex that make you glee in delight.

8. 50 Body Language Secrets You Need to Succeed In Life

Though the start of the article mentions a major communication myth, you get 50 great little tricks to improve your often overlooked nonverbal communication. You can say all the right things when socializing, yet ignore your nonverbal communication and you may look like a weirdo. Get your body language down pat to be cool.

9. 10 Ways to Instant Charisma

You’ll notice this post on charisma summarizes points in other resources mentioned here. Read it if you want to become more likable and win the respect of people you don’t yet know.

10. Tips on Effective Listening

Listening is another topic of many where many “self-help experts” give ordinary advice like “maintain eye contact” and “repeat the person’s words”. There’s more to socializing, rapport, and friendship than the surface aspects of communication. Written by a therapist, this article on effective listening will have you more deeply connecting to people. Listening most times is at least 50% of a conversation so make sure you master this skill if you want to be popular and make cool friends.

11. Presence in Relationships

You might be surprised to see something about presence here. Someone “present” is in the Now. They are fully absorbed in the present moment. Presence is a secret skill in Big Talk. When you’re present in conversations, you’re free from anxiety and you deeply connect to people. You get the feeling of being in the zone as time and worry banishes.

12. How to Make Friends and Get a Social Life

Author Chris use to be a shy, awkward loser. I can call him that because I used to be as well and I’m linking to his article! If you’re not good at making friends and have a social life of stalking others on Facebook, you’ll get a lot of practical tips and theories in this useful resource.

13. How to Network with Busy People

This 12-part series written by Steve Pavlina, a leading self-help blogger, shows how to get in contact and build relationships with hard to reach people so you dominate life. Should you become a successful networker, life becomes easy because you have resourceful and trustworthy connections.

14. Your suggestion

Have something amazing to share with other readers? Contact me or comment below. If I feel it’s a one-of-a-kind helpful resource, it may appear in this list!

I hope you enjoyed these social skills resources. Make sure you follow me on Twitter and like Tower of Power on Facebook for more great resources, books, and lessons to build friends and influence people.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
2. Teaching Your Child Listening Skills
3. Review of Elite Social Control by Hamilton Miller
4. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
5. 10 Almost Guaranteed Ways to Fail in Life

Inaccurate biases make it more strenuous than it already is for an introvert to attend parties, network at events, and socialize anywhere. Introverts must understand the truth about their personality type to maximize their career, build a fun social life, and enjoy happy relationships.

What is an Introvert?

On the playground, children compare their belly buttons with one another. If you had an outtie, you were laughed at and probably labeled “weird”. If you had an innie, you were considered a part of the group.

The feelings of belly buttons in the playground are reversed for the extroverted and introverted personality types. Innies (introverts) are considered weird while outties (extroverts) are the norm. This perception of introversion and extroversion flow from misinterpreting their original definitions, which makes it scary to be an introvert.

Carl Jung brought the “introversion” and “extroversion” terms into our language. Jung defined introversion as “the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one’s own mental life.” He defined extroversion as “the act, state, or habit of being predominantly concerned with and obtaining gratification from what is outside the self.” These definitions when misinterpreted confirm most people’s idea of introverts being self-centered anti-social beings while extroverts happily socialize and enjoy relationships.

Introverts are not narcissistic persons. Just as introverts are not necessarily self-centered, extroversion isn’t synonymous with popularity and compassion for others.

The correct definition Jung gave introversion and extroversion is the direction of psychic energy. Psychic energy is hard to conceptualize, measure, and even describe, which makes some modern day psychologists disagree with the concept, but I like to think of it as a life force exchanged with the world.

The flow of psychic energy describes where your energy tends to reside while you think and socialize. If you have an inward flow of psychic energy, your energy builds from solitude making you an introvert. You get energized from reading, listening to music, and being alone.

If you have an outward flow of psychic energy, your energy builds from interactions with people making you an extrovert. Extroverts need to be around people otherwise they feel drained.

Lets look into this further. The knowledge I’m giving you in this article has given me tremendous freedom and acceptance that nothing is inherently wrong with me. I’ve found the more I understand myself, the more acceptance, self-love, and compassion I have for who I am. This self-love allows me to make great friends.

Introversion and Extroversion Model

Since Jung, the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test is famous for its accuracy at defining people’s personality type. Introversion and extroversion is one of four dichotomies in a MBTI test, but by itself provides a lot of insight into your own way of feeling and behaving. Knowing the signs of an introvert is a great way to understand this personality type.

You may notice the opposite personality type occasionally surfaces from your behavior as you more accurately deduce introversion and extroversion. If you’re an introvert, for example, sometimes you may find yourself excited and energized talking to people. Extroverts also need moments of silence in solitude. Rare persons have the “pure personality type” of extreme introversion or extroversion.

Jung said the degree of introversion and extroversion varies along a continuum. We exist between the two extremes. It’s common as we age to move towards the center of introversion and extroversion by losing the introverted or extroverted characteristics once embodied.

The Challenge of Being an Introvert

According to introvert expert Marti Laney, an innie herself and author of The Introvert Advantage, we live in an extrovert world. Lang says about 75% of people are extroverts, leaving 25% to be introverts.

Like Laney, I’m an introvert! ToP subscribers are surprised to hear I’m introverted. They envision a communication skills coach as someone with wit, has a lot to say, loves to talk with people, and is dominant in conversations. I’ve built up some of these characteristics, but I’m absolutely an innie. I think that’s why a lot of shy people love connecting with me.

From my experiences, I’ve wondered why introversion makes life and socializing feel like an uphill battle. The general perception of introversion is bad for several reasons – some of which were revealed earlier.

Extroverts are put on holy ground reigning over introverts. Extroverts enjoy themselves in conversations, move forward in their careers, give the best presentations, persuade people to buy, and win dates. What about introverts? They are labeled as anti-social nerds that cannot converse with people because they have no social skills. Both beliefs are myths.

If introversion is generally frowned upon, it makes sense then to try and be an extrovert. Can such personality transform occur?

You cannot transform yourself from one personality type to the other contrary to common lies told by self-help gurus. I’m not saying introverts are forever stuck with a suck social life. I’ve found you can change from an introvert to an extrovert in the sense that you can become more social. You don’t really change from an introvert to an extrovert – you embody the characteristics often associated with extroversion.

You may mistake introversion for shyness or anxiety – such qualities and experiences have nothing to do with an introverted personality. Nonetheless, introverts are often uncomfortable meeting people because their personality pushes them away from socializing. Anyone becomes anxious without experience and practice.

Breakthrough Brain Battle: Introverts Versus Extroverts

Nerds in lab coats can see if you’re introverted or extroverted by injecting radioactive material into your body then looking at how your brain functions. You won’t turn into Radioactive Man from the Simpsons, but the findings will help you appreciate how you socialize and feel about yourself.

In a popular study by Dr. Debra Johnson, positron emission tomography was used to look at the blood flow of extroverts and introverts after participants completed a personality test. The medical technique involves injecting patients with a small amount of radioactive material into their bloodstream before a brain scan to see the brain’s activity. Red indicates high blood flow and intense activity.

The first significant finding Dr. Johnson discovered was that introverts had more blood flow in the brain. Their brains were stimulated more than extroverts. Secondly – and more importantly in understanding the difference between introversion and extroversion – Dr. Johnson discovered that introverts had intense blood flow through brain regions responsible for memory, planning, and problem solving.

Extroverts on the other hand, had intense activities in faster regions of the brain where sensory information of sights, sounds, touch, and taste (not smell) is processed. Extroverts were soaking in the visuals of the scanning machines, voices of the researchers, and feelings of the surface they lay on! Fascinating!

Dr. Johnson had extended on Jung’s definition of extroversion and introversion. She concluded based on blood flow in the brain that introverts revel in their inner world while extroverts direct their focus on the outer world.

Benefits of Being an Introvert

Up to this point in the article, you can now appreciate your personality type, which by itself helps you thrive in an extrovert world. You come to see where your strengths and weaknesses dwell. Keep in mind, however, that because we’re all blended with introverted and extroverted characteristics, you’re not excluded from the benefits and downfalls of either personality type.

There are further situations, careers, and skills each personality type is strong thanks to the qualities discussed in this article.

Extroverts thrive in situations and careers like emergency services, mediators, stockbrokers, and pilots that require quick responses. They love logical analysis for quick decisive action. They also have a curiosity for exploration and creation, which leads them to fields of science, marketing, investigation, acting, and entrepreneurship.

An extroverted person tends to focus on the present moment. These people prefer to be around others instead of reading, sitting at a computer, or doing some other social activity.

Introverts on the other hand, thrive in unique situations on their own. They are reliable experts at assimilating information by gathering complex information and filtering it through their experiences and knowledge. Examples of these people include accountants, engineers, computer programmers, and counselors.

An introvert generally has trouble meeting and talking with strangers, but they are good at building deep connections with people by listening, understanding, and appearing calm. Their ability to listen and understand with calmness makes them good writers and psychologists.

If an introvert learns to meet and talk with people, he or she may find the later stage of the relationship easy to maintain. People conversing with introverts feel surprised and intimate to discover a personal self hidden from others.

Your personality does not have to be the sole determinant of success and happiness. Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Clint Eastwood are a few famous introverts in an extroverted industry. I know many successful communication trainers like myself who confidently socialize and enjoy life with an introvert personality.

There’s a lot to love about your personality – stop being ashamed of it. Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, you can build friends, influence people, and live a life you enjoy. No matter your personality, it’s up to you to build the skills that give you the life you want.

(I developed the Big Talk Training Course to help the shyest introvert socialize and talk with anyone. What makes this course even better for introverts is I’m an introvert and know what’s it like to suffer at social events not knowing what to say. I recommend you check out the course by clicking here if you’re frustrated with your social life, have few friends, and don’t know how to talk with people.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Introvert and Extrovert Personality Test – Are You An Innie or Outtie?
2. 14 Social Skills Resources for an Amazing Social Life

For men, this means you’ll be able to cultivate what the article discusses into your life so you can attract and maintain happy friendships and intimate relationships with women. If you are already in a relationship, this is what your woman wish you already knew. Anytime you can get a woman or anyone feeling what you want to them to feel, whether it be over the phone, in a business deal, or placing an order at a restaurant, you will get more out of the situation – not necessarily at the expense of the other person.

For women, it could mean many things. You will gain a clearer understanding of what drives you as a woman in your relationships, why past relationships have failed, and even how to select a real, authentic man that is Mr Right.

The Triad of Dilemmas

I’ve read dozens of books, subscribed to attraction newsletters, talked to attraction experts, talked to women about what they want in a man, tested techniques, and have observed many scenarios comparing and contrasting variables men display in their interaction with women to create a set of complete, holistic characteristics women want in men, which I will share with you in this article. In my search, I came across my first dilemma: experts gave contradictory advice – more so in the diverse stages of a relationship.

At the start of a relationship, dating experts attempt to describe what women want. There are pick-up artists and attraction experts that tell men to neg (a gentle, teasing insult), take advantage of a woman’s insecurities, and advance the relationship as fast as possible. Such people praise themselves as pioneers in defining what women want, but in reality nearly all of them cannot keep a long-term relationship. They excuse themselves as having the power to be selective, instead of dating and keeping any woman that comes their way, though their denial is a facade for deficiencies in their personality.

At the later stages of relationships are marriage experts, psychologists, romanticists, and communication trainers that teach men to listen to women. According to such experts, women want to be heard, understood, and made to feel special. These teachers do not tell you the skills and personality characteristics that create animalistic urges in women because the principles are counter-intuitive to “good relationship communication”. Pick-up artists and other advisers that teach men how to succeed in dating, bash marriage trainers and the like over their teachings because the dating coaches feel long-term relationship advisers transform men into sensitive, new age, wuss-bag, girly men – and I agree to an extent.

Most men that learn communication skills from me fall the trap of applying interpersonal relationship advice at the start of a relationship. It is not so much what they do as it is how they do it. The men become needy, have low self-esteem, and fail to communicate strength. Women don’t want to feel understood, listened to, worried about, and comforted at the early stages of a relationship – such “nice boy” characteristics send them running. Women want to feel indescribable urges that arise from bad boy qualities.

Culture and society creates the second dilemma: society infuses disempowering beliefs and limiting norms into men. I don’t blame guys for their limiting beliefs about what women want – but I do blame them for holding onto them when the truth is revealed. We are lead to believe women only want tall, handsome, wealthy men. Such advice drives men to feel insecure about themselves, which validates their initial belief. They may get rejected on an approach, dumped by a girlfriend, or divorced from a long-term relationship, and reason through their perceptual filters that their shortness, ugly looks, or poor wealth did it to them.

If most experts and society don’t know what women want, surely women know? What better way to get the answer, then from the source itself, right? No. Most women don’t even know what they want – and therein lies the third and last dilemma.

Women preach to guys the characteristics they feel attracted to. They reason, “I’m a woman so I know what I and other women want.” This causes confusion.

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says attraction is one topic of many when our rapid judgments and feelings are unconsciously processed. When our conscious, analytical mind enters the fray, errors occur. Gladwell says we label what we think attracts us to what really attracts us. Few people are aware of what lurks beneath the conscious mind. We succumb to personal qualities that leave us feeling out of control and bewildered.

If these three sources of information create dilemmas in defining what women want in men, what is the source of truth? What I’m going to teach will probably shock you, but put your preconceived notions about this entire topic aside so you can learn. “Empty your cup” as Bruce Lee would say.

Women are Mixed Up

Women say one thing and mean another thing. A woman says she wants you to spend more time with her, but according to David Deida, author of The Way of The Superior Man, if you give her that in certain circumstances, your compliance disappoints her. If a woman sees she can upset you by calling you ugly, she will weed you out of being a potential mate – not because of your looks, but because your weak self-esteem let her easily destroy you. The surface is not a description of the depths.

When women say what they want, it isn’t really what they want – it’s an attempt to rationalize something abstract to them. Attraction is a confusing subject to intellectually understand and experience. Often guys and women cannot explain why they are attracted to someone because attraction isn’t a logical decision (“I keep dating the wrong type of person”). Attraction isn’t decided and it certainly isn’t a choice.

Women are strange – though you probably already knew that. Women say they want nice guys, so men be nice, but a woman does not make the logical decision to be with a guy because he is nice to her with compliments, presents, and gifts. Both genders make emotional decisions on their relationships. If a man compliments a lady, gives her gifts, buys her flowers, and earns her affection, the techniques may work for a while, but he is just being used. Such behaviors are fake, manipulative, needy, and undesirable.

Another confusing characteristic men adapt that women say they want is humor, one of the most universally attractive qualities women want in men. Being funny, however, is not the whole story. A good sense of humor isn’t what they entirely want. Women aren’t crawling over comedians. What they want is a guy who is cocky, has a sense of humor, can tease, and doesn’t constantly degrade himself. Unstoppable confidence combined with humor attracts nearly every woman – even the psychotic type so be careful. (Here’s a good guide on humor to attract women.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. What Men Want in Women
2. How to Be Charming to Men and Women
3. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication
4. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
5. Review of Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo

NLP practitioners have a set of rules known as “NLP presuppositions” that form the foundations for the technology. They are beliefs that govern NLP. The presuppositions give you the foundation to understand how you perceive the world and presents you with the opportunity to change your reality. It is not that the presuppositions have been proven, but rather they give us opportunities and freedom to produce for effective living and better communication.

While few people agree on exact NLP presuppositions, the following presuppositions, in no particular order, are the ones I have frequently stumbled upon. They appear to be widely accepted. Though the presuppositions are simple, and hence can appear idealistic, think of how they can be applied to your life to change your reality:

1. The map is not the territory

This could be the most important presupposition to understand. “The map is not the territory” means we are separate from reality. The menu is not the food. The road map is not the city. The map of the world we have in our minds is not the real world.

We short-change ourselves of our full potential when we believe our mental map of the world is the territory we deal with everyday. If you take your assumptions of people’s behaviors, your position in the world, how people perceive you, or anything as reality – when it is merely your mental map painted from abstract understandings – you cheat yourself from what you can become.

Instead of interacting with the world, you interact with your map. How you treat people and yourself is dependent on the map you hold. Your map can be quickly, and more effortlessly, changed than the world it attempts to describe.

2. Every behavior has its appropriate context

You may get angry in sporadic outbursts because it gives you the space you need from people. You may be a passive person because of its benefits, such as the praise you receive from parents and teachers, which make you feel it is a good behavior. You may be scared of snakes because when you were little a snake-bite hospitalized you for two days.

Unfortunately, the behaviors, phobias, and ways to communicate we have learned from experience – that served us well then – limit our potential. We let the past dictate our future. Instead of using old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that served their purpose in old contexts, you need to adapt new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are most beneficial for the present moment and aligned with who you want to become.

3. People already have their needed resources

This is the weakest of the presuppositions. It is has been reinterpreted and misused from its original intention given by Milton Erikson when he said patients in therapy have the resources to handle their present problems, not all problems.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, you are human. While you may have the resources to solve personal problems, it does not mean you are capable of solving them right now. You need to know the resources you have and how to use them. You need to learn the skills, go through the experiences, discover a book, or whatever it may be, to awaken these resources within you.

You already have the ability to visualize, feel, hear sounds, communicate, and experience other sensations. These innate human abilities are the framework for personal change. In this article, and anything I share with you, I hope to give you the ability to use your resources better to create the reality you want in your everyday awakening life by showing you how to put your frameworks to more effective use.

4. Experience has a structure

You have five senses that give you an experience: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. These five senses hold the potential to change your identity and reality. Because your senses give birth to the experiences you live every moment of life, each habit or skill arises from your senses.

Pleasant-filled and pain-ridden experiences each have their own structures that use the five senses. Recurrent painful memories typically are large, bright, and up close. Painless memories of previously painful moments are typically seen in black-and-white, a single frame, and at an objective distance like in a photo – or even possibly combined with humorous music. Knowing the experience you want and understanding the structures that give off the experience, helps you establish an empowering pattern.

5. If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it

This presupposition is modeling, doing what someone else does. It forms the foundation of NLP where individuals observe successful persons then mimic what makes them successful. Someone who wants similar success to a person they admire are to learn and do what makes the person successful, which leads to their own success. Successful individuals for centuries have modeled successful predecessors.

6. Change what is not working

The old saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” is so true. This presupposition encourages people to stop doing what does not give them the results they want. If you want something new, you have to start doing something new.

It is sick to see parents use unhealthy ways of disciplining their children. Every action by the child gets a consequence placed around it. To the parent’s disbelief, the child continues to push those consequences. The parent thinks it’s the child’s problem, but the parent is too ignorant and stuck in habitual behavior to realize that what he or she is doing is not working.

7. A positive intention exists beneath every behavior

You might yell to be heard. Fight to establish justice. Smoke to feel relaxation. Retreat to feel comfortable. Remain in bed to avoid the pain of what awaits you. These are all positive intentions.

However, a positive intention does not mean the behavior is correct, healthy, or the best option. Rather, knowing a positive intention or fundamental human need exists behind behaviors and communication enables you to act resourcefully. When you see positive intentions, you are more able to separate the problem from the person and update your map.

8. You cannot not communicate

I have come across many people who think it is possible to not communicate. The idea that you cannot communicate is one of the top communication myths.

You always communicate and will always continue to communicate. Your nonverbal communication illustrates the thoughts and feelings inside of you. While your thoughts remain hidden, a snicker in your smile, a wink in your eye, or a sigh of relief communicates a message without you needing to verbalize a message.

9. The meaning of communication is the elicited response

You just gave a brilliant presentation to a board of directors about a new project. Or so you thought. They rejected your idea. Why? There could be many reasons, but the underlying concept I’m painting here is the message received differs to the message sent.

People’s responses show you their meaning of your communication. When you understand the difference between sending communication and receiving communication, you open yourself to intimately understand people. You become aware that people need to verify their understanding of your message, which allows you to adjust future communication with them.

This presupposition encapsulates another NLP presupposition: failure does not exist, only feedback exists. Every piece of feedback you receive is treated as an achievement because it takes you one step closer to what you want. If something does not get you the results you want, it only means you need to correct what you are doing. You need to change what is not working. You will eventually create the reality you want by having the effective flexibility to change.

10. The more choices, the better

The fewer options an individual has, the unhealthier the person. Individuals limited in behavior feel victimized by circumstances that “give no options”. You may consider yourself to be absent of any psychosomatic illness, but there will be unhealthy areas in your life where you feel limited and powerless.

People stuck in negotiations are limited by their constraining choice(s) because choice correlates to power, influence, and change. The more choices you have personally, socially, and professionally, the more control you have over your reality. The better map you develop, the more choices you give yourself to create your desired reality.

11. The mind and body are inseparable

It was previously believed the mind and body are separate entities. Today, researchers, medical experts, and philosophers discover evidence each day about the mind and body influencing one another. Your thoughts and emotions affect your body and vice-a-versa.

Do not underestimate the influence your mind has on your body and the influence your body has on your mind. There is endless amounts of research that proves the strength of the two-way communication between the mind and body. Fields of study now heavily integrate the two entities that once seemed separate.

Body psychotherapy deals with the subconscious mind and body. Your experiences show in parts of your body. One particular example is bottled emotions manifest themselves in pains throughout the body. Emotional pains arise in predictable places over the body. A sore left knee signifies a fear to move forward in life.

Last night, I purged my thoughts and emotions, which remained inside of me for years, to my parents. I woke up the following morning with my worst ever headache. 18 hours later as I write this, I still have a headache, something that has never lasted more than 30 minutes for me.

12. Action develops understanding

Regardless of the number of books you read, people you talk to, or universities you attend, you will not understand what you seek to learn until you do. It is only when you do can you fully comprehend what you intellectualized.

There you have 12 neuro-linguistic programming presuppositions. These presuppositions are given to you as frameworks. They are rules to change your reality. Live by them and soon you will be in a reality that once seemed a dream.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
2. Change Your Words to Change People: Persuasive Power Words
3. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change

She senses the executives are better than her. She feels below standard because the executives are dressed in suits while she wears a basic top and skirt. She does not know the executives very well and finds it hard to socialize with them, which makes her feel less as a person. Regardless of the superficial reason for her difference that makes her feel less than the executives, the real problem is her inferiority complex.

In 1912, a psychologist by the name of Alfred Alder wrote a book titled The Neurotic Character. His research in the book founded a popular area of psychology known as the inferiority complex, a term that describes a sense of inferiority an individual feels about oneself towards other people. It revolves around social status, power, ego, and dominance. You will have an inferiority complex when you feel less than people. You think other people are better than you.

Sally in our example feels inferior because she thinks the executives are better than her. Her inferiority has nothing to do with not knowing the executives, being dressed differently, or having a less prestigious job. Her interpretation of this situation that makes her feel below standard creates her inferiority.

An inferiority complex can arise when you experience an imagined or conditioned feeling of inferiority. As is the case for most people, it is a combination of imagination and subtle conditioning. You feel inferior when an event takes place, which makes you feel less than others (conditioning aspect), and your creative imagination (imagination aspect) would “blow out” your understanding of the event beyond what seems reasonable to another person.

The conditioning aspect in Sally’s example is her actual differences to the executives. She is wearing different clothes to the executives and she is not “a part of the group” based on her employment status. The imagination aspect for Sally is her clothes fall below standards, the executives are better than her, the executives want nothing to do with her because of her difference, plus many other irrationalities she thinks that makes her feel like a lesser human. The big difference between conditioning and imagination hold the answer to cure your inferiority complex.

The First Main Factor of Inferiority: Conditioning

I would be completely lying and doing everyone a disfavor if I said, “The inferiority complex is all in the mind. Just stop thinking you’re inferior because you’re not.” If it were so simple, billions of people would not experience feelings of inferiority sometime in their life. The inferiority complex is society’s psychological black plague that devours too many lives.

My main motivation in writing this article was to provide an accurate source of information to overcome the problem based on what works. The information in this article is a collection of the most useful advice on the inferiority complex I have synthesized over the years, along with specific lessons I have developed to overcome my own inferiority complex; unlike personal development teachers I know of who solely emphasize positiveness to overcome feelings of inferiority.

I did some brief browsing on the web to see what information was available on the inferiority complex, and most of the advice offered is harmful. “Experts” were telling people “things will get better”, “be more positive”, or “it’s not so bad”. If you have the inferiority complex and someone says similar things to you, you will understand the massive frustration caused from the misunderstanding when someone gives you such poor advice.

Positive thinking can be nicely understood through an analogy in a Bible verse. In Luke chapter five (NKJV), Jesus was talking to complaining Pharisees. Jesus replied to them in a parable so they would be more likely to understand:

“No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.”

The garment and the wineskins examples are what positive thinking does to our self-image. A new patch over the bad garment improves the garment a little bit, yet it is still its same old self. If new wine (positive thinking) is poured into old wineskins (your poor self-image of feeling inferior), then nothing good will result. It is a battle of willpower and what is known as creative imagination.

Positive thinking can slightly improve the situation, but in the end it usually results in frustration as your willpower becomes exhausted. Willpower results in an oscillation between the problem and an absence of the problem – failing to create a permanent solution. You cannot use self-determination to cure feelings of inferiority. Whenever willpower fights creative imagination, creative imagination is the victor. I repeat for emphasis: Your creative imagination, which consists of images and feelings, will always conquer your willpower.

From personal experience and coaching others, I know first hand that a better self-image where you do not feel inferior cannot be achieved through positive self-talk, affirmations, and the like. Unfortunately, thousands of people have taught, and continue to teach, that using positive self-talk will overcome your problems. Positive self-talk is often nothing more than an attempt to live deliriously from reality, ignoring what really takes place.

When Doing Becomes Being – Why Failure and Criticism Fuel Inferiority

The primary factors of conditioning that determine whether you become inferior or rise above the circumstance is your attitude towards criticism and failure. Do not forget about the creative imagination component – the stronger influence of feeling inferior – yet criticism and failure most powerfully influence the conditioning component.

Criticism and failure will always bang at your door to success – more so as you achieve your goals. I have noticed that as readers of my newsletter (ToP Tips) and articles increase, so does the criticism. I get excited with this because I know the criticism signals achievement. Any criticism and failure has nothing to do with me – in fact, it usually has more to do with the other person.

You and I will always have our critics if we avoid mediocrity. Anyone that has achieved anything notable, sooner or later receives harsh criticism. Find a dark corner where you can hide from the world if you want to avoid criticism (but then again, you will be criticized for hiding). The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

People criticize you because they either want to improve your life, desire to release their frustration, or have their own problems. Failure and criticism say nothing about you; rather, let them signal personal growth. You can take criticism as a sign of progressing in life. If I had not experienced feelings of inferiority, I would not have worked on myself and personally grown. No way would I be writing this article today. I am certain I would not teach any communication skills.

You will never eliminate criticism or failure. The conditioning aspect of inferiority will never vanish. Therefore, to overcome the inferiority complex you cannot expect to avoid failure, dodge criticism, and achieve perfection. You must learn, move on, and maintain a goal-focused attitude to overcome an inferiority complex.

Criticism and failure will never stop as long as you pursue goals. Problems arise when you let the two burglars get a foot hold within your life. You come to feel inferior by associating criticism and failure with how you see yourself. The thieves steal valuable mental goods important to your success.

You will always do things in an inferior way to what other people can do – there is no ignoring that – but a secret to overcome your inferiority complex is to stop associating yourself with your actions. Stop letting failure and criticism form your identity. Inferiority arises when doing becomes being. When you associate what you do with yourself, actions of doing become actions of being.

A young guy gets poor results at school. He associates his grades with his intelligence – leading him to believe he is dumb. Is he really dumb because he was too lazy to study? No. A guy that gets poor results at school and does not feel inferior, dissociates himself with the result. He does not let his lack of study and effort over the school year make him feel that he is his outcome.

When you feel criticism is a signal of your unworthiness, only then does it stimulate inferiority, shame, and failure. Do not take criticism personally and think of yourself as a failure. Justly deserved criticism needs to be used as feedback to adjust your course of action back on the path of success.

The Three Factors of Criticism – Don’t Let These Get You Down

We all have been criticized. Some people suffer while others flourish and experience great levels of confidence, success, happiness, and intimate relationships. Why is this? What can you learn from this to overcome your inferiority complex?

The underlying reason some people feel inferior from criticism and failure, while other people flourish under such feedback, is how they react to the three components of criticism: the power of the sender, intensity, and frequency. You cannot control the three components of criticism – as is true for any conditioning aspect of inferiority – but you can control your reaction to them (the imagination component).

If you are passionate about boxing and Muhammad Ali said you are a hopeless boxer, his power and status intensifies the criticism. In addition, if his criticism was delivered in an intense outburst, the criticism would have a bigger impact on you feeling inferior as a boxer. If Ali also constantly reminded you how hopeless you are at boxing, this would stimulate further inferiority. The sender, intensity, and frequency of positive and negative messages impact how we feel about ourselves.

What matters, however, is your reaction. Think of a time when the power of the sender, intensity of the criticism, and the frequency of criticism made you feel inferior. If you can – and I suggest you do – make your selected memory one related to your current feelings of inferiority. If you are a shy person, perhaps think of a time when someone told you to stop talking because you have nothing good to say.

Once you have come up with one or several memories, ask yourself these questions:

• What were you thinking when the person made you feel inferior?
• What emotions did you experience?
• What self-talk followed the person’s negative feedback?
• How long did these feelings and thoughts last?
• How intense were these feelings and thoughts?

After answering these questions, if you reacted poorly to the negative feedback given to you in these situations, you should now be aware of how your feelings of inferiority develop. This is big. If you have the inferiority complex or know someone with it, I hope you’re getting excited about this insight.

The powerful lesson we can learn from this is that people’s criticism and other types of negative feedback has no power over you. It is not the events that make you inferior; it is your reaction to the events. It is the thoughts and feelings you experience after the event that determine whether your inferiority grows or dies. The conditioning aspect of inferiority partly manifests through the criticism of others – if you let it – yet your reaction to the event determines how you feel about yourself.

You condition yourself to feel inferior through self-criticism. You become your own worst enemy. The failed events and experiences shape your identity, making you appear a failure.

Harmful feelings trail behind harmful thoughts. You start to feel inferior. You use your creative imagination poorly and begin to evoke images of failure, misery, shame, unworthiness, and low self-esteem. All the negative messages you’ve accepted over time mold your self-image to make you feel inferior. You eventually believe you are inferior. That is essentially how an inferiority complex develops – through your creative imagination.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
2. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
3. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
4. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated
5. 5 Truths About Fear: What Fear Doesn’t Want You To Know

Wow! Talk about a crazy list of contrasting fears! The truth about fears is they are crazy and irrational. What fears do you experience that you think are unique? What fears drive you crazy?

You can fear one side of the story and the other at the same time. It is possible to simultaneously fear talking to someone new and not meeting new people because fear hides the truth. I will reveal the truth about fear to you in this article.

The experiences fear gives you is a smoke screen. It makes you irrational. The acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear does not want you to know the truth about itself and yourself.

Fear can immobilize your body. It paralyzes you from action and achieving what you want. You can want something, but fear sends what seems like a massive electromagnetic pulse through your body to shut down your ability to function. Unless you suffer from poor health, this is a facade, a survival mechanism to protect you from something that will not hurt you.

According to Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, there are five truths about fear. Whatever it is you fear, provided the fear is not physically dangerous like doing drugs, the following five truths apply:

Truth #1

The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.

Fear is a survival mechanism hardwired into the human mind that makes you think danger and pain resides in the darkness of the unknown. Our ancestors feared when they ventured into new lands because the environments were unfamiliar and potentially life-endangering. Fear will continue to protect you as long as you grow emotionally and mentally. Do not want a fearless life if you desire to grow. As Thomas Leonard so bluntly put it: “Fear is natural. Be with it.”

Once you explore territory unknown to you, new fears arise. I know it is uncomfortable to hear that, but I am hear to tell you the truth about fear that it does not want you to know. It is more comforting and exciting to experience growth and live in fear than to live paralyzed by fear. Be excited to know that fear will exist if you live a life worth living.

Truth #2

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.

Truth number two sounds contradictory to truth number one, but be assured that both truths are still truths. You fear because uncertainty looms over your ability to handle the situation. “Fear comes from uncertainty,” said William Congreve. “When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.”

Fear will always exist in your life, but it does not have to exist in the things you do. When you do the thing you fear, whether it was a facade or not, you build confidence in your ability to handle the situation. Personal development expert Anthony Robbins said, “Do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” Action will conquer fear any day of the week, month, and year of your life. By acting in the face of fear, you transform the uncertain into the certain as the unknown becomes known.

Truth #3

The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it.

When ridden with fear, we reason that we will take action once we feel better about ourselves. “When I’m ready, I’ll…” “If I can… then I’ll…” “I’ll wait till I’m…”

You will not feel like a better person or build more self-belief in your ability until you do what you fear. Stop waiting for whatever it is you want to change! Change your ability to take action.

While self-esteem boosts you ability to take action, go the quicker and more direct route: take action to boost your self-esteem. Confidence builds on itself like a good financial investment leading to more positive feelings about yourself. You feel good about yourself when you dive into action. Stop wanting to be a fearless public speaker before speaking in public, for example. Do public speaking to become a fearless public speaker.

Truth #4

Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.

It is comforting to hear truth number four. Reassuring statements have a danger to delude one from reality and the hard truth. Nonetheless, it is truth that everyone fears unfamiliar territory.

Every public speaker and writer I know suffers, or suffered, from fears and insecurities over the judgments of other people. These are strong, powerful people who do not let their fears stop them from reaching their life’s mission.

Fear wants you to think it is a unique psychological problem, but it really is an educational problem. Those around you and those you envy also experience, or once experienced, what you fear. The insecurities you feel are unique to you, unites you with everyone.

Truth #5

Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

Although fear encompasses uncertainty, the certainty of living a fearful life is scarier. The fear of being ill is scarier than seeing a doctor. The fear of having a divorce is scarier than addressing a tough relationship problem. The fear of having no friends is scarier than approaching someone.

When you have a purpose greater than fear, you become courageous. “Courage is not the absence of fear,” said Ambrose Redmoon, “but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Create a life mission that is more important than fear to compel yourself to face things you previously were scared to confront.

Repeat each of these truths at least 20 times every morning and night. When you continually affirm the truth, you will accept it as truth. You will no longer be tricked by fear.

I am excited to finally reveal the truth about fear to you and how fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Follow the five truths in this article and you will see the light that fear hides from your eyes. The truth exists, you just need to see it. Live a fear-filled life!

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
2. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
3. What Women Want in Men
4. Inferiority Complex and the Self-Image

Sexual arousal contains several of the greatest lessons to teach yourself how to become self-motivated. Arousal begins by thinking about someone you find attractive. Thoughts create vivid images that lead to a growing intensity of feelings. As your feelings intensify, blood flow increases to certain body parts, breathing heightens, and your skin becomes sensitive. If you continue to immerse yourself in such imagery, eventually you need to act on those feelings.

The enduring desire and process to goal achievement is no different to arousal. Thoughts lead to vivid imagery, which creates intense feelings. Soon enough you must act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal. You can create an equivalent – if not more intense – desire as physical arousal to achieve your personal development goals while the people around you quit by continuing to reading part two of this article.

2. Stimulating an Intense Emotional Craving to Get What You Want: How to Be Self-Motivated

“The starting point of all achievement is desire.” – Napoleon Hill

“You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emotions play a vital role in goal-attainment. Nelissen, Dijker, and de Vries in their 2007 study titled Emotions and Goals: Assessing Relations Between Values and Emotions emphasize the importance of emotions in achieving goals:

“An emotional state is characterized by a motivational tendency to the attainment or maintenance of a particular, emotion-specific end-state. Some [studies] have further proposed that the goal-directed nature of behavioral consequences of emotions is adaptive, thus portraying emotions as solutions to obstacles and opportunities of physical and social survival.”

As a basic example of the importance of emotions in goal-attainment, let’s say you are on holidays visiting beautiful landmarks and you’re driving up a steep mountain. You get to the top of the mountain and make your way to an eye-grabbing location that borders the mountain’s edge. There is no fences or boundaries placed that control where you can walk on top of the mountain. As you approach the mountain’s edge, you see the steep fall and quickly take a few steps back to feel safe.

The emotion in this example is fear. It is a fear of danger to ensure you achieve your goal of safety. If you had zero fear of falling off the cliff, the chances of you falling – and failing your goal of safety – increase because you are closer to danger than if you stepped away from the cliff. Your emotions help you obtain goals.

Behind each goal you have, there exists an emotional void you seek to fulfill. Aristotle said the desire for happiness is the void behind all actions. Happiness is the ultimate void every human being pursues. Nobody can be happy enough. Knowing you desire happiness, however, is not much help when motivating yourself. There is little benefit in knowing you want to make small talk with anyone to be happy. This is where the pain-pleasure theory of motivation comes in.

Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, made famous the pain-pleasure theory of motivation. The theory states that we either seek to gain pleasure or avoid pain with anything we do. Pleasure involves chasing something. Pain has you run away something. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you,” says Robbins. “If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

By understanding how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you, I believe you give yourself unlimited opportunities to be self-motivated. When you learn to build as much pleasure in something as possible, while building pain in something you do not want, you become self-motivated. Manipulate pain and pleasure to build an intense emotional craving to achieve your desires.

We associate so much pleasure with physical arousal that it strongly drives our behavior to fulfill the emotional void whenever possible. Likewise, you can associate extreme amounts of pleasure with your goal, in becoming confident, for example, that you work towards better confidence under any circumstance. In fearful situations you normally avoid, extreme amounts of pleasure can be associated with fighting fear so it becomes exhilarating to be courageous and act in the face of fear. (This is a core secret of how you can become confident in social situations that I reveal in my conversation skills program Big Talk.)

Well-known motivational speaker Jim Rohn expands on the pain-pleasure theory. Rohn summarizes the primary emotions and desires that bring about change, like the pain-pleasure theory of motivation, into four categories:

1. Disgust – This is the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory. Disgust can occur when you have had enough. You’re sick of something from occurring, which motivates you to not let it occur again. Your pain leads to change.
2. Decision – There comes times in our lives that make or break us. These are fork roads where we need to choose the path on which to travel. The fork roads often arise from outside circumstances that force us to make a decision, such as a partner laying-down an ultimatum that sets the conditions if you’re to continue in a relationship. Make a decision and move forward in life. A wrong choice can be corrected at a later time.
3. Desire – We’re influenced by outside circumstances, but we must have an internal desire – a purpose that originates from within. You are shown throughout this article how to build a desire and increase pleasure with your desired pursuits.
4. Resolve – This state is defined by the decision to commit to a circumstance no matter what. “When confronted with such iron-will determination,” says Rohn, “I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, ‘We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.’” Nothing can replace commitment. When you know what it is you clearly want, resolve will make it happen.

Pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve – these are all powerful states you need to control or they will control you. The question remains: How do you control these mental and emotional states to become self-motivated? How do you build the emotional strength for endurance through the complete journey to attain your goals?

I believe an awareness of either pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve is sometimes enough to create the respective emotion. Knowing about disgust, for example, can help you create disgust to change your behavior and achieve a goal. Nonetheless, I feel there is one technique I am about to share with you that’s amazing for building a burning desire to achieve your goals. With this technique you will remove any lack luster efforts and reluctancy to pursue what you want. It is one of the best goal-setting techniques you will ever use. The technique is simple, but very powerful.

On the piece of paper where we started the exercise earlier on, you are now going to fill in the second column. Label the second column as “Why I Want It”. In this column, you’re going to use the technique of listing 20 reasons why you want what you do to trigger, spark, and amplify your emotional desires to hunger for what you want. Come up with 20 or more reasons why you want what you listed in the first column.

Take your time in coming up with the list. 20 reasons or benefits is a lot of work, but the list created from the hours of work in this exercise will be your psychological fuel for achieving your communication and personal development goals in the weeks, months, and years to come. For me, it is my source of inspiration. If there is one method that I frequently depend upon for stimulating a hot passion so that I can pursue my goals with vigor, it is this technique. No other technique injects so much enthusiasm into me.

If you have troubles coming up with good reasons for your goals, expand on ideas and ask other people for ideas. You can also try to think in themes like: feelings you will experience, how others will see you, physical outcomes, reducing pain, and increasing resolve.

Let’s say your goal is to avoid destructively erupting in anger at family members during family conflict. Here are 10 starter points you could use in the “Why I Want It” column:

1. I want to be a good role model for my children.
2. I want my family to feel safe.
3. I want to ensure we have open communication and that no one is scared of talking about certain issues because of my anger. (Prevent other people being demotivated to talk to me because of the pain they will experience.)
4. I am sick of fighting with my family.
5. I want my family to love me as much as possible.
6. I want my family to be relaxed and calm when talking to me; instead of being provoked by my anger.
7. I hate feeling the shame when people in public see my anger.
8. I want to increase intimacy with my partner.
9. I want other parents to look up to me with how I manage my emotions towards my children.
10. I want my children to think back in 10 years time and be grateful with my emotional management towards their difficult behaviors.

The above is a great example of a list of reasons to achieve the goal of anger management. Once you have listed at least 20 reasons, I guarantee you’ll be filled with fiery emotions to help you achieve what you want. I encourage you to look at your list on a daily basis because of its emotional power in hooking you to achieve your communication and personal development goals. Look at the list frequently and you’ll remain focused and persistent with your goals.

The exercise works because you create a list that summarizes the sale points to make you “buy into” pursuing your goals. The list builds your pleasure, boosts your desire, and intensifies pain to make you persist until your goals arrive. The exercise builds the amount of pleasure you get by changing and builds the amount of pain you get by not changing.

I believe this one technique by itself is enough to create a burning desire. Regardless, I really want you to achieve your goals. I know what it is like to have a down-day where you don’t feel motivated (don’t fret, it’s natural). Here are some quick-fire pieces of advice to help you stimulate an emotional craving for your goals:

• Dress for Success – How often do you see yourself in a mirror or reflection, or look down at what you’re wearing that day? Let’s say 5 times a day. 5 times a day is 1825 times a year. That’s a lot of subtle mental programming. The power of clothing on your mood is amazing. Wear clothing that makes you feel confident and other areas of your life will improve accordingly.
• Be Aggressive – Having an important goal should stimulate aggression. Misdirect that aggression and it can become costly. Do not create another problem with your aggression. Channel your aggression towards a productive goal – what it is intended for – and watch the steam condense into hard results.
• Relive Past Success – Think back to your past successes and relive the experiences in your mind. Past successes are not only stored in your mind, but at the cellular level in your body. Linked to the successes are winning feelings you can tap into for success. On the contrary, think of past failures and you stimulate feelings of failure. The technique builds the pleasure of getting what you want. For a more in depth teaching of this method and other mental reprogramming techniques, I highly recommend Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics.
• Here and Now – Focus on what you can do in the present to allow your creative imagination the potential to develop solutions. When you are obsessed with the past and the future, anxiety rids you of your ability to achieve results in the present moment.
• Details – Defining what you want pulls you in the right direction with specific details. Visualize, feel, smell, taste, and hear the intrinsic details of your desired state to put yourself in that winning state. Just as it is with the process of arousal, you can become aroused by experiencing the details of your goals. This technique is similar to reliving your past successes except you’re free to create what you want with this technique. You’re not controlled by the past.
• Feed Your Mind – You’ll be surprised at how uplifted you get by reading about other people’s passions and successes. Consume at least 15 minutes a day of motivational material from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, and Anthony Robbins. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last,” said Ziglar. “Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
• Create an Ultimatum – Use the desire of resolve that Rohn explains to create change in your life. Make an absolute condition that if something doesn’t happen, so-and-so consequences will occur. Tell others about this to hold yourself accountable. Sun Tzu in the Art of War knew soldiers fought their hardest when it was a matter of life or death. Soldiers given an escape route by the enemy had an option to winning or dying so they did not fight their hardest. Alternatives and exit strategies make it okay to fail. Do everything in your power to create an ultimatum such that you must succeed or suffer severe consequences. This technique increases the pain of not changing.
• Teamwork – Team up with someone who wants a similar goal as you. This technique is frequently used in exercising where trainers encourage newcomers to workout with a friend. When you make your goals known to others – and when they have the same goals – the two of you can work together towards a common cause. Each of you becomes more accountable for his or her own actions because you don’t want to let the other person down. It’s vital the person is supportive or they could demotivate you from setting and achieving your goal.

A word of warning though, as I have repeatedly mentioned, if you must rely on these techniques to provide you with motivation, question whether you want the goal. You can stimulate passion using the various techniques provided above, but I want you to remember that your goal must be what you defined in the first stage of the article. An intense desire to pursue your goal will come naturally if your goal is what you truly want.

Nonetheless, passion increases with the above techniques. You will pursue your goals with a passion by learning how to create a desire for what you have clearly defined. Once you are passionate and persistent towards a goal, zero events can stop you from achieving it. Outside circumstances may delay achievement, but passion with action guarantees your desires ultimately manifest into the results you want.

Be careful with what you wish for because you can get it by following the advice shared in this article. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how to stimulate a passion to get it. I believe this is mysterious state of success philosophers have tried to described for centuries. (If you haven’t done the exercise yet, you’re only cheating yourself. Go back and do it now.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. On Achieving Goals – Part 1: Defining What You Truly Want
2. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
3. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
4. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change
5. 10 Almost Guaranteed Ways to Fail in Life

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.

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