The idea of finding someone that I can admire has been in my mind a lot lately. I want someone who will impress me and I can be excited to share in their passions and their growth. My honest fear is that if I find that person will I be someone who they can admire? Telling myself that I already am, and being confident in my achievements and my self-actualization is of course what I do, but my path of self-improvement is a never-ending task. The question is, are YOU someone who you can admire?

Being good with people and having charisma can be taught in a simple weekend workshop and some good ongoing motivation and guidance. I see it every weekend in the graduates of our courses. However I often see people plateau on their journey. Their technical conversation and people skills are good, their motivation for improvement is good, but something is still missing. Being admirable.

Here are some ideas for developing an admirable life and personality:

Try something new each week.

Drop in on a yoga class, cook something you have never made before, volunteer at a soup kitchen, or walk around saying “Hi!” out loud to people you pass on the street. New experiences shape the people we are; it even shapes the neural pathways in our brains to think differently. Being successful at new things that you try will also build an immense amount of confidence. Success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success. This is a cycle you can create by having small successes throughout your life.

Manifest Positivity

Studies show that a positive mindset has a significant effect on health and well-being. We all have rough times and negative things that happen to us all the time. Those with positive attitudes don’t deny that there are bad things; they just choose to focus on what will get them where they are going rather than dwell on what will keep them stagnant. Try first just identifying thoughts and actions that are negative and that you want to change. From gossiping about people to restructuring your negative thoughts about yourself; first identify the negative, then choose to re-write the thought or action into a positive. For example, if I am in a bad mood and start saying I’ll never be successful, I turn it around and say in my head, “No, I choose the positive. I will be successful in getting what I really NEED in life.” Just taking a moment to identify and re-write thoughts or actions that are negative will have a huge impact on how you view the world. In turn no one will call you Negative Nancy or Debbie Downer behind your back anymore.

Declare who you are and what you want.

Read the post called Confidence and Conversation Exercises and spend some time trying to answer some of the questions. Many of the questions there are meant to make you see where in your life you may want to work on. The idea is to sit down and go on a date with yourself. What would be the things that you would want someone to try to find out about you? How are you interesting and admirable? I know for me a major strike against a woman is when I ask her what she does for fun and she says, “I like to hang out with friends, go shopping, you know, the usual stuff.” Especially the shopping comment, that is like male-kryptonite. Talk about style and fashion sure, but not shopping. We just see money symbols in your eyes when you look at us.

Develop a good social circle.

Ups and downs are part of life. No matter how positive and confident you are, no matter how many exciting fun new things you add to your life, it is supportive friends and family that help us through our tough times. Looking for supportive friends is a skill in and of itself. Start with never turning down and invitation and start inviting people to all those new things you yourself are trying. Also check out a post called Building a Social Circle

Be someone you find admirable and people will not be able to help falling in love with you. Not to mention you just might meet some people who read this blog that are doing the same thing, ok well at least people who are trying to be admirable in their own way too. Be the person you want to date and you will draw the same kind of people to you.

This is Part I, stay tuned for the QnA session Part II soon

So many people try to change from the outside in. I see it every weekend. Guys feel if they can just learn a method and approach a lot they will become more confident. For those without a lot of limiting thoughts in their heads this works great. However, for some it makes it worse. The first place to being confident is removing what is holding you back, and that is negative thoughts.

The first step is to just start listening and identifying what you are thinking. This is an interesting experience. If you have ever tried meditation you soon realize there are thoughts in your head that you are totally unaware of. What I want you to do is listen to the big thoughts that are negative about yourself or what you can/should or can’t/shouldn’t do.

Once you begin to be aware of the negative thoughts about yourself it is time to change them and catch yourself in the act. First identify the thought fully. Don’t say things like “I don’t think like that!” Whatever we resist makes it stronger. Instead Identify the thought and replace it with a positive thought:

Negative thought:

“Why would she like me?”

Identify and replace:

“Ok I used to think ‘why would she like me?’ but now I choose to think ‘Why wouldn’t she like me, I am a great person with a lot going on. If she doesn’t like me it is her loss!’”

With every thought you replace you are training your brain to have a more positive outlook. Being positive is such a huge thing scientists are even studying how thoughts affect our health and well-being. Study after study shows optimism and positive thinking alone can bring us better health as well as a more successful life. Once you remove the negative it leaves more room for the positive effects of confidence building.

So try this little technique for changing from the inside out. This was a very important thing that I have done throughout my life to become more confident and successful.

What if someone wanted to know who you really are? What would they ask you and what would you tell them? These questions are not easy to answer. You have to have a strong lock on who you are, and have to make some decisions about where you are at and where you want to go. These questions will cause you to have to think a LOT about your life; that is the point of this exercise. When you are able to confidently answer all of these questions you will start to see strong gains in confidence and a better self image.

1. What is your passion?
2. Tell me 5 interesting things about you?
3. What makes you really happy?
4. What is one character trait you have that you appreciate about yourself?
5. What are the important things you need in a partner?
6. Why are those things important to you?
7. If someone wrote a list of things about you that fit their needs in a partner, what would they be?
8. What are your dreams for the future?
9. What are 3 defining experiences in your life that have made you who you are?
10. Name 3-5 beliefs you have about yourself that hold you back, and you would like to change.
11. What are your weaknesses and how could each weakness be viewed as a strength?
12. What really scares you about meeting a partner to enter a long term relationship with?
13. What are your assumptions about most of the opposite sex out there and their attainability, worthiness of a relationship, and their thoughts about you?

Five Topics

Think of five different topics you would enjoy talking about, as well as someone of the opposite sex would enjoy talking about. Come up with an open ended question to start you off into that topic. Ex. “What is your relationship situation?” for getting into a talk about relationships.

Emotionally Relating

Make a list of every positive emotion you can think of. For each emotion write down a short headline to a story, moment, or experience, when you felt that emotion.

Story Telling

Write down a story from your experience. Headline it, add emotions, details, and tell it from the “I” perspective. Now take that story and add more emotions and details. Remove extraneous facts and explain how and why you felt those emotions during that time. Keep adding more details and emotions until the story is so expressive you know there isn’t anything else you felt that is not in the story.

Deal-Breakers

What are the things about the opposite sex that are deal-breakers for you? A deal-breaker is any character trait, action, or belief that makes them immediately disqualified from ever being your romantic partner. Here are a few I want you to add to your list

1. Physically abusive
2. Verbally abusive or insulting
3. Lies more than once about anything important. (Or lies frequently about anything)

Don’t list things you think you should; list what you feel strongly about. Remember a deal-breaker is something that if it is revealed, you don’t just walk, you run away. Any present or future romantic relationship with this person is over if a deal-breaker is found.
Also don’t feel bad about adding a deal-breaker that others might not agree with. If you don’t want kids, and you find out that kids are important to your partner, that is a deal-breaker. Don’t expect them to change, either you decide you are truly ok with having kids, or you find someone else.

The first step is re-indexing your entire life story. Mostly we index our stories and memories based on things and events, not emotions. So when you try to think back to a story where you felt a certain emotion you don’t have an indexing system. So it’s time to re-index your brain.

Take a moment and write down every emotion you can think about. At first only write down positive emotions. Small list huh? Well get researching. How many more emotions can you come up with. Have a goal to write down at LEAST 10.

Now that you have done that go back and next to every emotion think about your life and the stories in your life about YOU. Write down a headline that hooks the story. Next to each of those emotions try to have at least 1 story that demonstrates that emotion.

What you have now done is re-indexed your brain to recall stories every time you identify an emotion.

As soon as she tells you something, figure out what emotion she is giving you. If this is difficult, role-play with a friend telling stories or statements. Once they are done repeat what emotion they were giving you and have them tell you whether you are close or not.

Now you are ready to relate. When they gives you an emotion you then say “I can relate to that. One time [insert headline]. [Tell story that relates to her emotion].

Just remember to describe your story using as much detail about how you felt at the time. Don’t sit down and pre-plan your stories. If you have to, take one story and write it down and re-write it adding as much detail about emotions that you felt, then polish it up. After doing that to one you will understand and be able to tell all your stories like that without pre-planning.

Recently in a seminar we had a client who said the conversation just always stalled out because he couldn’t find anything interesting to talk about. My response was “Talk about things that are interesting to you then!” I sat him down and we nailed down 5 topics that he enjoyed. Fashion, Food, Fitness, Relationships,Travel. Then i asked him to come up with an open ended question for each topic so that he could easily keep the conversation going.

Fashion: You have a nice style. [Reward] So tell me what you think the most common fashion mistake guys make. [be ready to disqualify]

Food: What is your favorite type of food when you go out to eat?

Fitness: Damn girl look at those guns (her biceps), your in good shape. What is your fitness routine?

Relationships: What is your relationship status. What is the best thing about being in a relationship for you? oh there are tons here. Great topic to get things moving toward sex.

Travel: What is your favorite traveling story that happened to you?

After we got these nailed down he felt comfortable that he wouldn’t run out of things to talk about that he was interested in. This wasn’t making a routine, it was just focusing him in on what he likes to talk about.

The most important part of this all though is keeping it about you and her and making every topic personal by relating and eliciting the emotions about the topic not the facts…