Is
Social Awkwardness Holding You Back…?
I was always a shy kid. I was embarrassed easily, and
I always wanted to avoid those situations where I was put
at the center of attention.
(But secretly I wanted to get
that attention without all the feelings of people "seeing" me
in the wrong way, if you know what I mean...)
So I'd be very quiet when I went
to gatherings or social events like my friends' birthday
parties. Eventually, I'd come "out of my shell" when
I found out the other kids were cool and wouldn't make
fun of me.
But every time I was in front of someone new - BOOM! The
shyness would come back.
And as I got older, that shyness started to get in the way of me meeting girls.
I started noticing the girls very early, too. I was attracted
to a girl in my 1st grade class, believe it or not. Her
name was Julie, a raven-haired beauty.
I mean, there were dozens of cute girls around, but I
couldn't seem to get anything started - even in high school
- because I just didn't understand WHAT the heck I was
supposed to be doing.
I knew a lot of girls at the
time that I really didn't want to date, but these girls
also told me they felt that sense of "I'm so confused...
what am I supposed to DO?"
Stay with me here, because I want to give you some information
that will clear some of this up for you...
- Do you think of yourself as "shy"?
- Do you consider yourself "introverted"?
(By the way, shy and introverted are not the same thing...)
- Do you still find yourself
having a tough time handling social situations with people?
- Or
maybe you have a tough time handling interpersonal conflicts...
- Or maybe
it's just handling all the people that seem to want to
help you, but you know they really just want to GET something
from you...
I want to share something with
you that I didn't really come to appreciate until just
the last few years, and it has made ALL the
difference in my social life. And it's made me a more positive
person and much less cynical and angry at the same time.
It's going to sound pretty harsh when I first say this,
but if you think about it for a second, and open up your
mind to the possibility, you're going to know what what
I'm saying is true.
It's this:
People play games with you.
Every day, and in very subtle ways.
Now, we all think of "playing games" as
being a BAD thing. After all, guys feel like girls play
games with them when it comes to romance. Women feel
like guys are playing games with them.
And it all feels like some kind of mysterious conspiracy
to keep us from being successful with the opposite sex,
doesn't it?
The fact is that playing social games is NORMAL.
Not only is this normal...
It's absolutely NECESSARY.
If I were to just walk up to
you on the street and say: "Hi,
I'm Carlos. I'm a man of my word, and I'm very trustable.
I'd like to be a very close friend of yours, starting right
now."
After you stopped looking at
me like I'd just escaped from the local insane asylum,
you'd probably say, "Yeah,
whatever." And then you'd walk away.
Well, if that's not the way that we become good friends
with another person, how DO we do it?
Well, we usually go through a
process. This is called the "friendship" model
of how we allow ourselves to get closer to someone. And
it has 4 important steps.
THE 4 STEPS OF CONNECTION & FRIENDSHIP
STEP #1: Attention
This is where we get a person's attention. For a guy,
it might be going up and introducing himself to a girl.
For a girl, it might be getting her friend to introduce
her to a guy.
Whatever the means, we know that the first start has to
start with an introduction or approach of some kind.
That's gaining the other person's
attention.
And since we use a variety of methods to get over our
fears of rejection and our shyness, you might have to call
these methods 'games.'
After all, when was the last time you walked up and told
someone exactly what you were thinking and why you wanted
to meet them?
Mmm hmmm. Thought so.
Some people call this being "indirect," but
it's still a kind of game.
STEP #2: Connection
After you meet a new person,
whether it's for friendship or more, the next thing we
need to do to create a friend is to find something in
common. This is part of building a "connection."
You may think of it as "building rapport," or
something similar.
And since we are - again - indirectly
searching for these things, we might consider that a
bit of a "game," too.
I was just talking to one of
my female friends today about this, and she used to subscribe
to a "service" where
you would actually be given coaching before you go on a
date. They would give you relevant news stories to talk
about, and each one of those stories was chosen so that
you could find out the important things about your date,
like if they wanted kids, like pets, etc.
Hmmm.
Sounds like a bit of a 'game' if you ask me.
But a good one, because if she were to ASK those same
questions, she might have gotten any number of answers.
STEP #3: Commitment
This is the step where you get to take your connection
to the next level. If you're a guy trying to get a date
with a woman, you'll probably need to get some level of
commitment from the woman, usually by getting her phone
number so you can reconnect and move up to a date.
"We should do something
... sometime. What's your number?"
If you were a woman, you might
point out convenient parts of your connection and gently
'suggest' that you two could "do
something..."
... "Sometime."
We put these things out there lightly like this to minimize
our risk of getting hurt (i.e., getting rejected or turned
down).
This is a kind of a game. But again, it's a GOOD game
in that it gives us the freedom to explore possibilities
and still feel safe at the same time.
STEP #4: Action
Now that you've gotten them to commit to doing something
with you, it's time to make them take ACTION. Whether that's
to follow your plan - maybe a date, or just to show up,
they have to DO something to make the connection real.
They have to act on it.
This is the 'moment of glory,' as they say. The small
games we had to play to get here are now acknowledged as
being okay, because they got us to the goal of finally
getting together with someone so that we can now - hopefully
- drop the games and get REAL with the other person.
But unfortunately, many of those games don't necessarily
go away here - or in other parts of our life.
The truly unfortunate part of this is that people very
often play negative games with us, too.
I used to feel really "played" by
other people. It got so bad that I started to get very
negative about interacting with others, because it felt
like they were just out to get something from me.
And then I started learning some very important techniques
for handling people in social situations.
Now I've been talking about this
concept in terms of creating a new girlfriend or boyfriend,
but this is really applicable to ANY area of your life
where you're trying to create a "relationship" of
some kind.
It could be a business relationship, between you and
your boss...
It could be a romantic relationship between you and a
lover...
It could be a sales relationship between you and possible
client or customer...
Whatever the motive, we need to go through these steps
to create something REAL between people.
But when the games start to become
negative, and we feel like we're in over our heads, the
only thing you can do sometimes is to grab on and hope
that you can avoid getting "played" by
these people.
But very often, they are not people we can escape from.
Sometimes we can't get away from our boss, or we don't
want to throw our relationship with someone out the window
just because we haven't been able to figure out the game
they're playing and put an end to it.
I'm also here to tell you that these situations can be
AVOIDED.
All it takes is some special understanding of what it
takes to get power social skills and awareness that you
can bring to ANY situation.
Because when you know how to handle the games that people
play, you will finally start to feel more in-control of
your own life.
I was out at lunch with a friend
of mine, and her daughter was having problems handling
some kids in her high school that were giving her a hard
time. She asked me what her daughter could do when they
were being mean. When my friend heard my solution, she
told her daughter: "See! That's
why it's good to ask Carlos... He always has a good solution
to these problems."
I'm not telling you this to
brag or pat myself on the back. It's to let you know that
just a few years back I was completely clueless with
what to do in these situations. And that is
what inspired me to learn these social skills. I was sick
and tired of feeling manipulated by other people.
If you'd like to stop being "played" by
the games people play - and learn how to take POSITIVE control so that you can start winning - without deception
or manipulation, or sinking to their level - then you
owe it to yourself to take a look at my Power
Social Skills program.
It's taken me 5 years to learn all the best ways to handle
difficult social situations, and I put everything I knew
into this program.
When we start socially interacting with another person,
our instincts will tell us everything we need to know about
them in just a few seconds - IF you know what to look for.
And your gut never lies...
After all, this is what most of your brain evolved to
do - to figure other people out!
The way we do this is through intricate and subtle social
GAMES.
Go have a look at the new rule book that can give you
back your feeling of power
and social ability again...
CLICK
HERE TO LEARN THE FOUNDATIONAL ALPHA STRATEGIES
FOR WOMEN:
Your friend,
