5 Exciting Places to Meet New Friends

If you’re trying to overcome social anxiety, you are probably hoping to make new friends.  For many this is a scary prospect as having never been good at doing this, you may not know where to go.  Considering to beautiful weather we have been having, and that fall in not that far away, I have decided to create this list of 5 amazing places where you can easily make new friends.

1. If you love sports, take up a new sport or join a new league.  Being part of a team is an excellent way to meet great people.
2. Do you have children?  If so, take them to the park.  Not only will you have fun with your children, but you’ll meet other parents with whom you share the common bond of parenting.
3. If public service is your thing, volunteer somewhere. No matter where you volunteer, if you’re working with other people, you make new friends.
4. Another option is to take a course in something you want to know more about.  Whether you decide to go back to college and take up a new career path, or just take a pottery, karate or dance class, you’ll meet people with these same interests.
5. Get out and go to events that interest you.  There are many great events where you can make friends.  Many town and cities often have festivals during the summer.  Now only do many of these festivals have great food, but you’ll find hundreds of potential new friends at them.  Car shows, computer shows home and garden shows, and even flee markets are all examples of places that you might want to try.

Now go have fun and make new friends, but just remember.  These are just suggestions.  The places where you will make friends with the most ease are the places where you have fun, and are comfortable!

The Art of Building Relationships – Part 2 – Congruency

In the first part of the series, I took time to explain what rapport was, and how you will be able to build better relationships with it.  In this part more on the inverse, and how body language, and incongruence can lead to bad or untrusting relationships.  Congruency can almost be said to be a metric or how consistent you are with your self in your communication.

In most cases, when we think of communication we relate it to the words we say with our mouths, and maybe the tone of voice we use to say them. Many people never realize that their tone of voice, and their unconscious body language have a huge effect on the way that people respond.  This because short of the words we say, the other channels are normally processed unconsciously.  When we are incongruent, people tend to get a feeling that something isn’t quite right about us, or that we’re strange or weird.

If you didn’t do your homework from Part 1, you’ll may want to from this point on.  I am designing it specifically to help you to be more aware of what is happening around you which will be crucial in developing strong rapport skills.  If you did do it, think now about what you noticed.  When people were communicating well, what feelings did you get from them?  What was their body language like when you had this feeling?  What about when they were communicating badly?

Now here’s your homework for Part 2.  I want you to find the answers to the same questions as in Part 1 only this time while you are in conversation.  Answer the same questions for the person you are speaking with.  Are you confident?  Are you nervous?  How is that reflected in your body language?  How is it reflected in your tone of voice?  What about the speed of your voice?  If you slow down your speech, what happens?  If you speed it up what happens?

In Part 3 I will begin to explain how you can learn to build rapport.  I hope to see you back!

The Art of Building Relationships - Part 1 - What is Rapport?

Whether you're here because you want to learn to get dates, conquer your social anxiety, or just because you want to learn to be more socially inclined, at some point you will need to know how to build relationships. Maybe the first thought that pops into your head when you read the word "Relationship" is the thought of romantic relationships, but there are many other types of relationships that we build all of the time. The social interactions we have with friends, family, colleagues, cashiers at stores, and even people we meet in passing all require a relationship of one form or another. A relationship is defined as an emotional or other connection between people, so in reality we have a relationship with everyone that we are connected to in any way. Your ability to build rapport is essentially your ability to build good relationships.

The art of building good rapport could very well be one of the most important things you will ever learn. Imagine if you could walk into an interview, and have the interviewer feel comfortable with you almost immediately.  Imagine striking up a conversation with a group of women you’ve never met before and having them feel like you’ve known each other for years.  Gaining good rapport building skills will have positive effects on every aspect of your positive life. As your skills improve you’ll begin to notice how people are more at ease speaking with you as new doors open to new possibilities in your life.

As you anxiously await part 2 of this series, where I will delve deeper into building rapport, you may wish to do a little bit of homework.  Start to pay close attention to the interactions around you.  Watch both positive and negative interactions, and try to determine how different aspects factor into them.  Watch the postures of the people involved.  Listen to the tone, and pattern of their voices.  Watch their movements.  Most importantly, notice how all of this affects the conversation.  

Until then, have a great time observing those around you!

Quitting Smoking - The Night Before

If you're like me, you're pretty good at putting thing off until the last minute. Seeing that I have set my goal to quit smoking tomorrow, this means that tonight, I will need to get everything in place. Here are a few things you may want to do the night before you quit.

1. Make sure you have your stop smoking aids ready to go. Go buy them if you haven’t already and make sure to read the instructions so that you know exactly what to do in the morning.
2. Search your house for empty or partially empty cigarette packs and throw them all away.   The more you can avoid thinking about smoking, the better off you’ll be.  If you have packs sitting around, you’ll undoubtedly be thinking about smoking constantly.
3. Get to bed a bit earlier than normal and get a good sleep.  Hopefully if you are more rested in the morning, you will also be less stressed, and you’ll probably think less about smoking.
4. Unless the directions for your stop smoking aid says otherwise, don’t wait until you have the urge to smoke to use them. If you use them first thing, you may completely avoid the cravings all together.
5. Try to avoid stressful situations tonight.  They may not affect tomorrow at all, but why risk losing sleep because of stress if you don’t have to?

Whether you’re quitting with me tomorrow, or planning on quitting in the future, I wish you the best of luck.

The Secret to Learning to Just Let Go and Be In the Present

Do you often find yourself worrying about stupid things to the point that you rarely have fun?  Personally, this has always been a problem for me.  I used to worry about everything and as a result I did just about nothing.  Recently though, that has all been changing as I have learned to focus my attention on the present and live life. In just a few hours today, I was able to do three things that would have left me with a crippling pit in my stomach just a few months ago.  So how did I get to this point, and how can you get to this point?

First you need to understand what it means to be present.  Take a moment to concentrate on everything that is going on around you right now, at this moment.  Forget about what happened before this moment and what will happen after this moment.  Just focus on everything that you see, hear, and feel right now.  This is the present. All of the pain and worry we feel comes from what we have experienced in the past, and expect to experience in the future.  So when you are in the present, you are focused on what is happening right now, instead of what has happened in the past or will happen in the future.

Once you have experienced being in the present you can begin to learn to let go.  It can take a lot of practice to be able to be in the present all of the time, so it makes sense to learn to bring yourself into the present at times when you being in the present is most helpful to you.  Doing this is actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it.  The next time you start to feel a pit forming in your stomach, just start to focus on everything that is happening right then at that moment.  Listen to the sounds, feel the breeze and see the colors all around you.  Then continue what you are doing, focusing on it one moment at a time.

Of course you wouldn’t want to do everything without considering the consequences, but even when you are in the present you know the difference between right and wrong.  You still are able to use your past experience to make decisions, and make choices that work toward what you want in the future.  The only difference is that in the present you don’t dwell on those facts, and can make the best out of every moment.

I have no doubt that if you take the time to learn to be present, you will have much more fun in life.  I cannot even begin to explain the difference that this has made in my life and I can only hope that it will help each of you, my readers, as well.

Further Reading

If you would prefer to learn more about being present, I highly reccomend reading "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle Read more about this book...

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61) by Eckhart Tolle Read more about this book...

Finding Encouragement in Discouraging Situations

Just as with anything else you put your mind to, it’s inevitable that you’ll experience ups and downs as you become more confident in social situations.  Perhaps one day, you may be a social animal, while the next you might feel like hiding.  While the ups can be very gratifying, the downs can be very upsetting and discouraging.  It is important as you venture toward a more social life that you learn to let these negative experiences roll off your back. 

Most likely people have told you “Just shrug it off” many times in the past, never explaining how one can simply drop failure and not dwell on it.  In fact, it may very well be impossible to do so.  If there were no such thing as failure however, there would be no need to “shrug it off.”   A world without both success and failure couldn’t exist, could it?

That answer to that question depends on how you choose to look at any given situation.  Lets assume for a seconds that we are running a lemonade stand.  Yesterday our goal was to make $10, yet we only made $8.  In this case we can choose to consider the day a failure, or choose to look at the success we did have during the day.  So perhaps the day before we had only made $5.  Perhaps during the day we discovered a method of enticing new customers.  Perhaps we improved the flavor of the lemonade.  Despite not meeting our goal, we still had success, and the day was not a failure.  Instead of shrugging off your failure, you turn it into a success.

Having the ability to see your success even when you fail to meet a goal is a very powerful tool.  This gives you the empowerment to transcend the negative effects of failure and to remain positive. You will feel more energetic and capable of accomplishing your other goals.  In addition to all of this you can look deeper and learn how you can better set your goals. I will write more about this in the coming days.

On a Personal Note

I have recently applied these principles myself.  I had set a goal for myself to write a minimum of 1 blog post per day. During the past week, I found that to be impossible.  I would get half way through a post before drawing a complete blank.  I’d save the post and move on to another idea.  No matter what I was writing, I would get about half way though the post, and get stuck.  I didn’t let it discourage me though.  I worried a bit about the effects not posting might have on my readers, but didn’t focus on my inability to complete a post.  Instead I looked at the fact that with each post I started to write, I was half a post closer to another great post for my readers.  In addition those posts will get more review, and consideration than my posts normally would leading to overall better articles.  So in the end despite the fact I couldn’t manage to give you, my readers, something to read last week, I was still successful.  When I am able to finish those posts, you will be reading posts that have received much more thought and time than most of my writing.

Dating 101 for the Socially Anxious

Ok, so you've managed to overcome your anxiety enough to get a date, and now you're feeling the dread of the infamous first date. How can you do it? What will you say? Will you sink or swim? Ooooh, the anxiety.

Don't Panic. Did you bring your towel?

Relax, most of your anxiety is most likely caused by irrational fear.  Ask yourself why you are feeling what you’re feeling.  What are you afraid of?  How does that make sense?  Once you know the answers to those questions, you can reason with yourself as I discussed in  “Inner Dialog - The Craziness in Us All”.  Beyond that, the most difficult part is being prepared to be social.

How Do I Prepare?

There are a few things that you can do to prepare for your first date that came make a huge difference.  Watch some of your favorite movies again.  Make sure to learn some of your favorite lines, and scenes so you can talk about them later.  Listen to your favorite music, and remind yourself why it is your favorite music. Get to know your likes and dislikes again, and rehearse talking about it with your self, and other people whenever you have a chance.  This will give you a ton of material to talk about while you are on your date.

Talk About Things You Know

I’m sure there are things that you’re very confident with that don’t cause anxiety.  Working these into conversation can be very useful.  As well as the benefit of having more material to talk about, this can lead to other advantageous side-effects.

Talking about the things that you are intimately comfortable will help you to think about those things.  While you are thinking of them, you will slip into the same state you were in as you experienced them.  This will help you to be more comfortable, confident, and prepared to forge forward.  Your anxiety may disappear altogether.

Where Should We Do?

The answer to this question depends on you.  I would suggest doing something that you are comfortable with.  If you are comfortable going out to a particular restaurant, go there.  If you have a ton of fun, skydiving, do that.  Whatever you’re most comfortable doing, that’s what you should do.  This will allow you to be more comfortable to begin with.  If you’re not comfortable doing something, it will only add to your anxiety, but if you do something you are comfortable with, you’ll tend to forget about the things that cause your anxiety and have fun.

But What if I get Rejected?

I wish I could say that rejection isn’t a possibility, but fortunately it is. If you’ve done as I have talked about and you still get rejected, you’re love interest isn’t interested in the same things that you are.   In fact, if he/she isn’t interested in the things that are important to your, you should be the one  rejecting him/her. 

If your date is genuinely interested in these things, you won’t get rejected.  If you do get rejected, that just saves you the additional anxiety of having to reject your date. 

And Now the Date

Now you can plan and go to your date.  You will be prepared to talk about the things you are most comfortable with, do something that you are comfortable with, and be able to get yourself into a state where you are empowered.  Now it’s time to let your anxiety fade away and know that if you should be together, you will be.

Blogging as Therapy for Social Anxiety – Can it Help?

Lately there has been quite a bit of news about how blogging can be therapeutic and I have been reading along. I have been blogging for over two years, and I had never stopped to think about how it might be therapeutic up until I started seeing articles pop up on Digg, Slashdot, and the news.

Even then I started this Blog with no thought as to the therapeutic opportunities it could offer me.  It wasn’t until a few days ago that I started to realize the changes I had made without noticing them.  Prior to starting this blog, I would troll the social networks, waiting for people to add me to their friends lists, and never adding them myself.  I would start to write comments and then chicken out and cancel them before posting them.  It was pretty bad.

Now things are different.  I regularly add new people on the social networks I belong to.  I even message people and strike up conversation occasionally. When it comes to commenting, I now find myself easily posting positive responses, and occasionally having to pry my hands from my keyboard to avoid posting negative responses.  I’ve taken some time to consider how much of this change can be attributed to blogging itself.

I have come to the conclusion that in conjunction with the various techniques blogging has contributed quite a bit to my accomplishments for a number of reasons.  First of all, it has given me a reason to reach out and contact others.  When you combined with my understanding of my irrational fears, I could suddenly overcome the fears to do whatever I had to do.  Secondly, whenever I write an article I learn a slew of things that I didn’t notice before.  I’ll sit for hours writing and re-writing as I discover more about how the different techniques work for me.  Of course while I’m doing that, I come up with hundreds of ideas about how the techniques could possibly be improved, and come up with other related techniques to experiment with in the future. 

I really do believe that blogging is therapeutic, especially when you blog about your problems.  Whether you meet new people with the same problems, or learn more about your problems it is all beneficial in the end.

Related Articles:

Blogging: Group Therapy of the 21st Century – ABC News

Blogging now Considered a Therapeutic Tool – Yahoo Tech

Blogging as Therapy – The Obvious

Blogging seen as Good Therapy – Dr. Deb

Can I Always Be “Present?” – Thoughts About Being In the “NOW”

When I first read “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, my first thought was “How can I always be in the now, and still have things to work toward?”  It seems like goals are always in the future, so it would seem at first glance that Mr. Tolle would have us believe that we shouldn’t have goals. This thought scared me until I discovered that when I was in the present, I still had goals as much as I did when I wasn’t in the present.  When I am in the present, however, my perception of my goals is very different.

Explaining the difference in my perception of my goals in the present perspective versus the future perspective is very difficult. In a way, while in the present, I feel detached from my goals. It feels almost as if they might belong to someone else.  In this state, I no longer feel intense pressure to accomplish the end result of the goals, but feel the reason to accomplish the small piece that I am working on right now.  While I am in focused on the future, however, I feel the overwhelming pressure of the whole goal stacked up against the miniscule piece that I can accomplish right now. 

After realizing this I have come the conclusion that you can live your life in the “NOW” all of the time.   You can draw on your past and ideas for the future, but in the end both the past and future are just there to give you a plethora of possibilities that you can draw upon to live life now. 

Inner Dialog - The Craziness in Us All

When you pass someone on the street who is muttering unintelligibly to himself, you most likely take a moment to consider, how crazy that person must be. If you're thinking about it though, you're having your own conversation about it, just internally. This internal conversation that we all have is what is known as "Internal Dialog."

Our internal dialog plays a huge role in how we will feel, act and react in social situations. If your internal dialog is positive and reassuring, you will be much more comfortable than if it is negative. This is why, as social anxiety sufferers, it is important that we pay attention to our internal dialog. Even a small change in our internal dialog can contribute very quickly to putting our anxiety in check.

The biggest difficulty I have had in noticing my internal dialog is that when I am in an anxious situation, my mind empties, and I forget to pay attention to my thoughts. At one point, I was nearly convinced that I would never be able to to remember what I was thinking while I was anxious. Fortunately I didn't give up and eventually discovered that if remembering your thoughts is just like most other things in life. You have to practice it.

I came to this conclusion by considering the things I am good at. Why does my anxiety drive me when I am on stage playing drums? Why does it do the same when I am at the center of attention in meetings? The answer had been in front of me all along, yet it was never directly stated. Just like playing drums, or being able to make highly detailed technical presentations, I had to practice paying attention to my thoughts to get good at it.

Now I, and you can begin to get to the heart of the craziness that we feed ourselves in our own minds. We can start to do away with those crazy limiting beliefs, self-criticisms and illogical fears. The one thing we're still missing is how to get from point A to point B. How do you practice paying attention to your thoughts?

Start here - What are you thinking about right now? Good, find a way to remind yourself to think about it again in 5 minutes. You might want to set an alarm or find another way of cuing yourself to think about it. I haven't tried it, but perhaps one could use NLP to install a trigger. Personally I started by using the time I spend driving to and from work to monitor my thoughts.

Once you become proficient at paying attention to your thinking at your set times, expand it and try to remember to pay attention in more and more stressful situations. Perhaps someone just said something that upset you - What are you thinking now?

So far I have focused completely on paying attention to what you are thinking, not trying to change what your internal dialog is. The truth is, that even just consciously realizing what you are thinking may cause a drastic change in the way you feel. This is probably because one you've consciously taken control of your thought process, you realize that your fears are irrational. Should that not be the case, there is still plenty of hope left.

Now that you know what you think to yourself while you are anxious, you can start to attempt to change your internal dialog. As crazy as it sounds, you can talk to yourself internally. Ask your internal dialog, "Why, when I am in this situation, do you tell me this?" It may surprise you to find that you will get an answer. Don't tell your inner dialog that it is wrong to have this opinion, but instead ask it how it believes this is beneficial to you. At this point, the answer may or may not make sense to you, but just as if you were talking to another person, keep asking questions until you understand why your internal dialog "feels" this way. At this point, you can begin to reason with it.

This was initially difficult for me, but it helped me to imagine that I was actually talking to a different person. Now you need to consider the reasoning your internal dialog had for presenting you with the dialog it did, and come up with suggestions in how it can better help you in the future. "I think it would be better in this situation if you were to tell me this and this because of this and this, don't you think?" Continue to reason with your inner dialog until you can come to an agreement on something that would be more helpful to you.

During this process you may notice that your inner dialog may have justify what it tells you using actual things that have happened to you. In this case you will want to remember these, and write them down when you are done, so that you can reflect on these. I would recommend bringing these up to your therapist if you are seeing one as these may be key to helping you in the future.

If you follow this technique, and take the time to do it correctly, you will probably notice at least some improvement in a fairly short time. Some people may notice a huge change immediately, but as with all good things, these changes can also take time.

The Curse of Self-Limiting Beliefs

In many ways, the beliefs we have define the people we are. Whether positive or negative they define how we interpret and react to each and every situation we experience. Usually it is easy to tell the difference between our positive and negative though, but one type of beliefs, self-limiting beliefs, can often fall into a grey area where they are difficult to realize.



One subset of self-limiting beliefs is very dangerous because they masquerade as positive beliefs that have some potential benefits even though they still limit our over all potential. These beliefs often come in the form of "I can still do this even though I can't do that" or "Even though blah blah blah holds me back there are other ways I can accomplish this." Both of these forms of though may affirm that we can do something, but they limit the range of possible approaches we have to accomplish it.



There are also much more obious self-limiting beliefs. For instance one might think to himself "She would never go out with a guy like me." or "I will never make that much money in my life. Both of these may very well be true, but just as easily as they could be true, they could also be false. If you limit yourself to not trying, how will you ever know?


The negativity associated with these beliefs may not be immedietly noticible because it is implied from the segment of possibilities that we believe we "can't" do even if the belief expresses itself in a positive way. In other words if were to have a problem with walking forwards for some reason, the belief that I could walk to my car backward instead would be a self-limiting belief. This implies that I "can't" walk to my car forwards, and thus I am intentionally excluding the possibility of walking forward because I am afraid to do so. In this way, the limiting belief gives me an excuse to only walk backwards because I can, allowing me the to more easily put off learning to cope with walking forward comfortably. Now I know that is a stupid example, but it explains the general idea very well.

You may be wondering how you can know if a belief is a limiting belief. You can start by thinking of a situation you are uncomfortable in. What beliefs do you have about your ability to deal with that situation? How would normally act and what would you say. Next think about what your internal dialogue would be telling you. From this you should be able to infer how your beliefs limit you to the resources you normally have available to you and exclude the other possibilities.

Once you have identified your limiting believes, you'll need to find a way to expand your possibilities. Sometimes just understanding what was holding you back, and that there are other possibilities will be enough. In other cases you may need to boost your self-esteem, or learn new things to open up new possibilities. No matter the case, identifying, and coping with your limiting beliefs will definitely open new possibilities for you.

10 Things You Should Do Before Going Out This Weekend

With Memorial Day weekend just a few days away, I thought it would be a great time to put together a list some of the things you can do before going out to help reduce some of your social anxiety.

1. Take a shower or bath - You may already take showers before you go out to make sure that you are clean, but take one even if you don't need it. The warm water will relax you, causing you to be more comfortable.
2. Shave - You don't have to shave off whatever style of facial hair you have. Just touch it up so that you are comfortable that it looks good.
3. Listen to Music - More specifically, listen to music that will help put you in the state you would like to be in. It helps to put some consideration into how different types of music affect you specifically. My favorite song to listen to right before I leave or right before I get out of my car is Clawfinger's "The Biggest and the Best" because it puts me in a very resourceful, confident and determined state.
4. Watch Something Funny - What better is there to put you into a state to have fun? Comedy will lighten your mood and make everything a little bit easier.
5. Exercise After Your Shower - Getting excercize will put you in a more powerfull mood, but perhaps what is more important is what breaking a light sweat might do. We release pheremones in our sweat, so this may help make you more attractive to women. Just remember you don't want to smell bad, so don't over do it.
6. Dress Nice - I'm sure you've heard the expression "Dress for Success." The better you dress, the better you'll feel about how your dressed. In other words dressing better will give you one less thing to not feel confident about.
7. Eat a Healthy Dinner - I'm sure you know its good to eat healthy, but do you know why? If you're going to be drinking, having food in your stomach is always a plus, but also, eating healthy can give you a sense of accomplishment before you leave your house.
8. Have Some Material You Can Use - Do you ever have those awkward moments where you don't seem to have anything to say? Before you go memorize some jokes and information that you think might be appropriate for the social situations you will be in. You'll be much more confident when you know that you have something to say.
9. Clean Up Your House - Is your house a little messy? Would you be embarassed to have people come in? If so, clean it up. You'll feel much better if you do, plus you never know what might happen.
10. Have Fun - This is by far the most important thing on my list. What is the point in going out if you arn't going to have fun yourself? The simple fact is that if you're having fun, others will be drawn to you because they want to have fun as well. If someone makes fun of you, they're probably just jealous becuase you're having fun and they're not so help them have fun to.

I wish the best to all of my readers this wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I'll be out and about as well, so wish me luck as well. Just be safe.

10 Tips for Approaching That Hot Girl

1. Just do it - It doesn't matter what the outcome is in the end, you will never know if you don't try.
2. Approach quickly - Don't give yourself the opportunity to talk yourself out of doing it
3. Be yourself - Don't act differently than you normally would. If you do try to be something that you're not your body language will give you away.
4. Trying and failing is better than standing around - Who would you have more respect for - The guy who just stands around looking dumb or the guy with the balls to approach her?
5. Don't offer to buy her a drink - While doing so might get her to listen to you for a few minutes, it will immediately throw you into the same category as all of the other chumps that offer to buy her drinks. There are better ways to get women to talk to you.
6. Be fun - Don't interview or interrogate her. She's there to have fun, and if you show her that you can have a good time with or without you, guess what she's going to want?
7. Don't be hard on yourself - No matter what you do managed to do, dont be hard on yourself if you fail to do what you wante to do. Look at what you did accomplish, and next time try to do better. If you thrive on your failure instead of concentrating on your successes, it will be harder next time. If you look at your success for what it is, you'll be more successfull next time.
8. Dress well - You don't have to wear a suit and a tie, but you definitely don't want to be dressed in the cloths you wore to work on your car that afternoon. While looking nice may not be the key to unlocking the door into a relationship, it will help get you get those first few words in.
9. She's not the only girl in the world - There are alot of available women out there and if she chooses not to talk to you, that's her loss because someone else will get the opportunity. Plus going into the situation realizing that its ot the end of the world if she shoots you down will make you less nervous and more likely to succeed.
10. Be Confident - You have nothing to lose, only something to gain. If you are 100% confident approaching and talking to her she will respect it, especially if she is really hot. Hot women are used to men being intimidated by them so she'll be interested in you when you're not.

Motivating Yourself for Change

When my wife of 3 years left me 2 years ago I was in for a real shock and a number of lessons in motivation. I had been pretty lucky most of my life, and I never really had to motivate myself to do anything. Everything I wasn't motivated to do had been done for me. I never had to look for a job, work to meet new people, or do little things like clean my house.

Within a month, my house was a wreck, my bills were unpaid, I was lying on the couch whenever I was home more depressed than I had been with my life leaving me, and worst of all, I was living on a diet of beer, fast food, and tv dinners. I say that is worst of all because food has always been important to me, and cooking was one thing that I had always been motivated to do.

For weeks I laid there feeding myself the excuse that it was my wife's fault because she had left me and made me feel so horrible. Finally one day, I woke up, looked around and had a revelation. She was gone, and wasn't coming back. More importantly, it wasn't her fault that the house was a mess, it was mine. I realized that I had to find a way to force myself to do these things that I didn't want to do. Over time I was able to put together a couple of things that worked for me.

Right now you're probably wondering what my housework has to do with social anxieties. Actually it had quite a bit to do with it. First of all, not only was the mess depressing on its own, but the feeling that I couldn't manage to avoid or fix the mess was also depressing. Because I was depressed, it was very difficult for me to get out, be social, and improve my anxiety. On top of that, the same motivational ideas that led to me being able to clean up for my self applied to motivating myself to do things I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise while working on my anxiety.

Here is a list of tips that I have come up with:

1. Don't Threaten or Force Yourself - Have you ever noticed that if someone threatens you, you feel more resistence to doing what they say? Well the same applies to when you threaten yourself. Instead of forcing yourself, you need to find other, more positive methods that will motivate you to do whatever it is you are doing.
2. Consider the Advantages - Take time to think about all of the good things that will come from whatever it is you need to do. If you need to clean, consider how nice it will look, how good you will feel when it is done, and whatever other advantages exist. If you're working on a particular social skill consider the many doors it will open for you, how good accomplishing it will make you feel, and any other advantages you can think of. Don't however consider the negatives such as how long it will take, how much work it will be, and how much you hate doing it.
3. Modify Your Perception of the Task - If you still arn't motivated to do whatever it is after considering the many advantages, you probably have strong negative feelings associated with the task. I use NLP in these situations. If you can think of a particular events that led to you experiencing these feelings, dissociating from them can help to minimize those feelings. If not, or in addition to that you can use triggers to associate positive feelings into your perception of the task. I am not an NLP guru, so I won't even attempt to explain how to do this, but I will reccomend finding an NLP therapist, or reading a book. If you choose to read a book, I would reccomend starting with "NLP: The New Technology of Achievement." Of the NLP books I have read, this one is written the best for beginners.
4. Break Tasks into Smaller Tasks - Whenever you can find ways to break up your tasks into smaller tasks that are more easily accomplished. This way you can concentrate more easily on the smaller, less overwhelming tasks rather than the ultimate task as a whole. When you complete each small task you will feel a sense of accomplishment which you can use to motivate yourself to complete the another small task. As an example, when I clean, I don't clean my whole house, nor do I clean my livingroom. I clean one couch, then another couch, one end table, the other, different sections of the floor, my bookshelves, and finally the TV. Each thing is a seperate task after which I congratulate myself, and take a well deserved short break before moving on to the next task.
5. Rituals are Your Friends - By rituals I'm not referring to ritual sacrifice. Instead I refer to ritualistic patterns that you can employ that will help you to form good habits. If you look back to the previous example, I clean my living room in that same order every time. With anything that you will need to do over and over again, creating a ritual for yourself can be amazingly helpfull, but don't start or stop at the end of your tasks. As part of your ritual, include something at the beginning to get yourself in the right state to do the task, and at the end to congratulate yourself on a job well done.
6. Rituals can also be Your Enemies - Not every ritual is beneficial. In most situations that we deal with on a day to day basis we develop some form of ritual. These rituals can actually be triggers for the negative feelings we have toward doing something. So it makes sense then to try to find these non-beneficial triggers and do something to change them. The trick is to identify these rituals in your life and do something to change them. For instance if you have trouble approaching people in bars, identify your rituals. For instance, if you walk into the bar, find a seat at the bar, buy a drink, and then look around for someone to talk to try something different. Walk into the bar, talk to someone, then sit down and order a drink and see if that makes a difference.

Coping with Limiting Beliefs

About a month ago, a co-worker said something to me that just about made me fall off of my chair laughing. I have always had alot of respect for him, and believed that he was one of the most confident people I knew. On this day, he ed me this girls picture on myspace and said "I almost think she's interested in me, but I must just be dreaming. I could never get a girl like that." As soon as I was able to stop laughing I said "Man, you really need to do something about your limiting beliefs."

To put things in perspective, this guy has just about everything he needed -Good looks, a good sense of humor, a sweet car, and (or so he had had me convinced) confidence. The part that I found funny was that I looked up to him, yet the girl he showed me was slightly below what I know I am capable of attracting.

This was a classic example of a limiting belief and I had to find a way to explain to him what a limiting belief was, and get him to talk to her. It hadn't been very long since I had dealt with my limiting beliefs, and I still didn't completely understand how I had managed to change them. I don't know if he ever did talk to that girl again, but a couple weeks later he was showing us pictures of his new girlfriend who I have to say was much more on his level.

At some point in time, we all experience limiting beliefs wether they are about women, our career, our family or anything else. These are the things we believe that tell us "I can't because..." I many cases we say we "can't" when in fact we can. Perhaps whatever we're speaking or thinking of might be difficult or possibly its something we really shouldn't do, but in fact we really are capable of doing it or at least trying to do it.

Step 1
With that in mind, The first step to ridding yourself of your limiting beliefs is to remove the word "can't" from your vocabulary. For instance if you were asked to do something you had neither the tools nor the knowledge to do, change the way you think. Instead of saying "I can't because I don't have the tools and I don't know how" to "I could learn how to do it and find tools that would work, or possibly find someone else who is more suited to do it." In this case I have used a situation where you probably shouldn't do whatever it is, but you continue to recognize the fact that you are capable of doing with the right resources. Another case would be if someone asked you to kill someone. Hopefully your limiting belief response would be "I can't do that.", but now that you have removed "can't" from your vocabulary, you might say "I am capable of doing that, but doing so would require me to go completely against my beliefs so I won't."

Obvoiously there may be reasons why you should do something despite knowing that you can in fact do it. You probably shouldn't pick up that girl in the bar if either of you is married. Perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to take on a project that you don't have the resources to complete on time. I'm sure you can think of many other situations where this applies.

Step 2
Learn to change your thoughts. Eliminating the word "can't" from your vocabulary may help remove it from your thoughts, but it probably won't work completely. Fortunately, the part of your brain that feeds you these thoughts learns very quickly. In order to do this you just have to reason with that little voice.

First, think of a situation where you know you have limiting beliefs. Ask that voice, in your head, "In this situation, what would you tell me." Pay close attention to the thoughts that come to mind, and pick out the limiting beliefs. At that point, ask the voice again why those specific limiting beliefs are important to it. Next you will want tell that voice that you understand why what it is saying and explain how you recognize that it is looking out for you in feeding these thoughts to you. Finally you need to negotiate with the voice and come to an agreement on how it can replace the limiting language with more empowering language.

I know this sounds like the mutterings of a psychotic person, but what I am speaking of is actually very natural. The "voice" I speak of is that inner thought dialog that we all experience. Once you have come to an agreement with that "voice" simply ask it if it could try to handle similar situation in a similar matter.

After you have completed these two steps you should notice that many of your limiting beliefs are pretty much gone. You may experience some self-doubt at times, but in these cases you can reason with your mind once again.

Systematic Desensitization for Social Anxiety

As a person who experiences social anxiety myself, I know that the amount of anxiety can be different in different situations. With me, for instance, I have little or no anxiety when it comes to meetings at work, or speaking and performing in front of large groups of people. If you saw me in one of those situations, and then saw me out at a bar, you probably wouldn't recognize me because I freeze up so bad. There are other situations where the amount of anxiety I feel is somewhat in between those two, such as cashing out at a store, or talking to someone on the street.

What does the amount of anxiety have to do with Systematic Desensitization? First we have to know what it is. Systematic desensitization is a method that therapists use to incrementally lessen the amount of fear we have in a specific situation by slowly exposing us to situations in which we feel more anxiety. The good news is, you don't necessarily need a therapist to use systematic desensitization to your advantage. If you are motivated it can help you overcome your anxiety as long as you take the time to do it right.

The first thing you need to do is pay attention to how you feel about various situations. In a given situation, how badly do you experience anxiety. Figure out, on a scale from 0 (no anxiety)to 10 (the worst anxiety), how bad your anxiety is in each situation. Now write out the situations in order from least anxiety to most, along with the number you gave it, in a list on a piece of paper or a document on your computer.

Here are some ideas for situations that you might want to put on your list:

• Calling a friend
• Calling a business (utility company, travel agent, bank, doctors office, etc...)
• Saying "Hi" to someone passing by
• Asking someone passing by a question
• Asking for help in a store
• Talking to the cashier while cashing out at a store
• Carrying on a conversation with a waiter/waitress
• Going for an interview
• Talking to random people in a bar
• Approaching random people at a store to get an opinion
• Giving a presentation in front of a small group of people
• Giving a presentation in front of a large group of people
• Starting a conversation with a beautiful woman or handsome man

Now you are ready to begin to desensitize yourself, but you need to be carefull. If you attempt to move too fast, you could easily make your anxiety worse by getting into a situations where you reinforce your fears. This is why you ranked the situations, you should start with the 1's and slowly move up to the situations where you experience more anxiety. Now you need to get yourself into these low anxiety situations 5 or more times a day. Each time you are in the situation pay attention to your breathing, making sure to take deep, relaxed breaths. Pay attention to your feelings and anxiety levels. Each night, sit down with your list and note how your anxiety has changed.

Once you are comfortable in a situation on your list, move on to something a little bit less comfortable. Just don't over do it, and move to a situation that you arn't ready for. You may notice that as you move through the list your anxiety in the higher anxiety situations on the list may be lessened.

It is possible that at some point on the list the anxiety in all of the situations will suddenly drop quite a bit or be completely gone. This is because of the way our brains work. Our brains use fear to protect us from dangerous situations. This is a function that ensures our survival by keeping us from getting hurt or killed. Unfortunately, our brains interpret emotional pain in the same way that they interpret physical pain, so when we get emotionally hurt our brains cause us to feel fear when we get into the same or similar situations. These associations are known as triggers. In any given situation there can be more than one trigger, which can cause the fear to be greater overall. A situation that you originally ranked as a 7 on your list may have only one trigger where a 9 might have 4 incuding that 7. If you eliminate the association that causes the anxiety in the 7, it will no longer exist in the 9 and your nine will drop down on your list.

With patience and perseverance, doing this should help you minimize your social anxieties. You may also wish to consider using other methods in conjunction with systematic desensitization in order to possibly speed your progress such as:

• Seeing a Therapist
• Seeing a Hypnotist
• Using NLP Techniques
• Using Self-Hypnosis techniques

Good luck and please remember that if you are not careful using this technique, you can reinforce the fears that cause your anxiety. Please remember to progress slowly and carefully so that this does not happen.