How to Give memorable and genuine compliments: Weekly challenge #26

 

Purpose: to educate people in how to give genuine compliments to people

We continue in the path of connecting with people – as it is the focus of this September month!

This week’s challenge is about learning how to give memorable, genuine compliments and applying it throughout the week! In fact, at least two a day to be specific. Stay tuned and I’ll tell you all about it.

Why ?

When it comes to connecting to people, one of the most powerful things you can do – if executed in the right way – is to give a thoughtful and genuine complement. Just think about it, do you remember the last time you got a compliment? How did you feel?

  • I talked to my mom the other day and she told me that her friend, which I met a while back, told her that I seemed like such a nice and carrying person that was so easy to connect with!

it just made my day when I heard about that – it still warms me up thinking about it, and that wasn’t even straight to my face! It’s simple, in most cases, we like people that like us! (There’s always exceptions)

So that’s what we’re going to work on this week. Practicing giving genuine real complements in a thoughtful and authentic way – Make the person you’re talking to feel good!

The problem:

This isn’t as easy as it seems – it comes with some skill development, but don’t worry, I’ll tell you the key things that will set you up with all you need to know!

The problem, or trap, with giving compliments is mainly two fault:

  • People can think that we’re just saying stuff because we have a hidden agenda and a suck up.
  • We think that people will think that we are just saying stuff because we have a hidden agenda and are a suck up.

On a deeper level, when you give a genuine compliment, there is less risk of you getting taken for being fake with other intentions because your body language; When we lie or say something we don’t mean, our body language gives that a way in a heartbeat. Even though the other person receiving it can’t pin point it, they feel something is of, because subconsciously they are receiving all these kinds micro expressions that are telling a different story. But when we are genuinely telling the truth, all our thousands of micro expressions will be aligned with what you’re actually saying. It’s in harmony.

HOW – THE OBSERVATIONAL COMPLIMENT

The solution is to give genuine and authentic compliments that actually has some thought behind them – an observational compliment! To show them that they’ve earned your like, you don’t’ throw good compliments around to anybody.  These things give your compliment a higher value.

IT’S NOT on a surface level like, oh nice jacket, you’re so good looking no, it’s deeper than that, it requires some thought and brain activity to go into it.

The first step to genuine compliments is active listening and observational skills, so you actually have some ingredients to cook that delicious compliment on! It should be unique customised for that person; it shows them that you care and take notice. So be specific! Try to find out their goals, interests and passion areas, likes and dislikes. This means You have to be genuinely interested of a person! For real. Be curios and ask questions and make the connections.

And if you are to give a compliment about someone’s nice jacket for instance, make sure you really mean it and be specific about it. A warning is in place though – those kinds of compliments are much easier taken for being shallow and something people just say to make people like them. But if you for instance say, “oh man, you really have a nice collection of those levis jackets, that one in particular would just go perfect with your grey Nikes you had the other day”

Why does this work? Well, the person is going to notice that you really listen, you put your time and energy into relay picking up on the details, drawing conclusions based on what has been said that is actually correct – you don’t just do a routine script that you pull on every other person, this is customized and unique and requires full attention! Time and focus is something rare, and not something we are being spoiled with from people. Maybe our best friends care enough, but that’s usually it.

You have to be careful though, compliments are like money, if you keep creating new ones, you’ll get inflation, and the value of it will decrease. Inflation will strike. Especially if they’re shallow.

VIP persons that gets a lot of complements, even genuine ones, may have been affected by this phenomena, and then it’s even more important that the complements are rare and unique to not just be one among all the others.

The Objective:

  • Make two genuine complements per day, and it should be to different persons throughout the week! And I want you write down a few notes for each interaction so you in the end of the week can read through it all and make some reflection about the week that has past – evaluate yourself!
  • That’s it, to sum it up, to make a genuine compliment, be genuine but add some thought to it – be specific and mind the details.

Final words

Remember your reasons for doing this; write down you’re why, so you’re motivated to follow through. Also, to increase the likelihood of doing this, commit to me in the comments or any friend of yours, and it will give you that extra willpower.

Also , credit to #RamitSethi who has taught me most of the things I’m saying here. Great source when it comes to developing social skills.

I wish you the best of luck, see you on the other side brother (or sister)

And don’t forget to subscribe so you can follow me in the week and the evaluation in the end of the week!

Question: Let me know in the comments the last time you gave someone a complement, what was it, and how it was received.

/ Alexander.

 

 


Posting schedule:

SUNDAYS: New Weekly Personal Development Challenge

WEEK DAYS: Depending on the challenge, but at least one Video/Vlog at the Wednesdays

FRIDAY: Evaluation of Week Challenge

Join us, raise your standards, and start the journey to become the person you’ve always wanted to be,

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/With Love, Alexander

 

Weekly Challenge #25: Connecting with people – Adding value to conversations

Weekly Challenge #25:  Connecting with people – Adding value to conversations
Alexander Nilsson
September 11th 2016

Hey guys and welcome to this week’s challenge!

As you all know, “connecting with people” is a big area, and that’s why we are going to make it the focus of this month (September) and brake every week down to smaller challenges with that end goal in mind.

Social skills are properly one of top most important things you can develop within yourself with the highest payback. Your job, your friends, and your love of your life – they will all in 99% of the cases come down to your social skills.
One of the common problems we run into when having conversations with people, is the art of balancing the amount of questions we ask, in contrast to actually bring something of our own to the conversation. Personally,
So, this week I’ve been listening a lot to Ramit sethi Social skills advice, a highly successful guy that know this area better than most people. You’ll find YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ramitsethi

In brief, he says: ask two questions, and then make a statement or add something of your own!

I want you to actively think about this during at least two conversations per day, and make some reflection about how it went when you’ve finished the conversation. Of course, next level is to play around with what kind of questions that are engaging, and how you can connect what the person just have said to make a relevant statement about! Depending on what social skill level you’re currently at.

That’s it, that’s all we’re going to do this week! Super simple, now just make sure to follow through and do it.

Commit to me in the comments, or any friend of yours, and let’s do this. If you have any comments or thoughts, don’t hesitate to ask.

See you in the vlog, and don’t forget to subscribe if you want to become the best version of yourself!

Weekly Challenge#24 – The 6 Phase Guided Meditation Practice

Hey guys!

It’s time for a new challenge! And this time we are all about mentally conditioning ourselves each morning, to prepare ourselves for the day that is about to embark upon us, conditioning our mind to be ready for everything. And we are going to do that by trying out a morning meditation practice! But, It’s not mediation in the classical sense, but it’s a daily ten-minute routine we’re we are actively going to engage our minds in 6 key areas that will set u up for success.

The purpose of this challenge – to implement a structured morning routine that mentally condition us to be in tip top for the day that lies ahead of us – to be able to perform at maximum capacity with clarity and intention over impulse.

WHY?

Now, more often than before, we keep get bombarded with all the benefits of meditation, it just all around us; we got strong correlation to happiness, better heart health, more focus and clarity. I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten numb to all the good stuff. I know I should be doing it, but it’s so hard. Especially since I’m going to be starting my new job as a mechanical engineer this week, I better make sure to get my shit together on a mental level, been a little bit stressed out lately. I need to be able to show up as the best version of myself everyday – and I bet that is true for you as well.

Now of course there is good to question the mainstream of what is popular before just jumping on the trend train, but when so many great leaders and innovators start to proclaim it, it’s hard not to fall into it. Especially when I’ve tasted the good stuff that meditation can bring, but still quite haven’t managed to implement any kind of consistent routines or accurate use of these methods.

HOW?

I’ve been hungry for the meditation eureka practice, the thing that would change my life, and it probably took me like 4-5 years until I actually first started to try some kind of meditation. Actually I think it started as recurrent powernap session, which then occasionally transformed to some kind of mediation practice. But it’s hard, it’s so hard to find that inner piece, and emptiness that they say you shall have.  Is that even possible…. I actually did a meditation challenge a couple of months ago, which turned out alright, but it didn’t change my life. However, I’ve been lacking that practice lately. But classical meditation is not what this challenge is about, no, this is something different, this is guided meditation, which frankly I’m not sure really is meditation at all.

The 6 Phase Guided Meditation Practice

Skärmklipp

Guided meditation is when there is engagement by in the actual meditation; you or somebody else guides you trough a series of questions or statements. There’s active thinking in the process in contrary to what meditation seeks to attain, and this is something I’ve done sporadically a year back with an old recording of Tony Robbins called hour of power, where he makes you do some gratitude practices, incantations visualisations and so on. Not far from what our challenge will be all about. But it’s quite old, and I think it needs some fine tuning to reach perfection. Although I still use it regularly as well, and it serves it purpose!

But so last week I stumbled over this video and got stuck in a 35 min talk about this thing called guided meditation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waYNEDZxEPY). I just knew this was something for me – it was the real deal.  A 6 phase guide mediation created by an inspiring entrepreneur Vishen Lakhiani, and he did just what I’ve had a taste of and I’ve tried it a couple of time and really like it. It seemed to hit all the right nails. So what we are doing here this week, is Vishen Lakhiani  6 Phase guided meditation which takes you through a series of questions to condition you to perform at you best throughout the day!

The 6 areas we need to meet on our life to make everything stick – in his words – are addressed in the guided meditation for you to actively engage in and think about.

  • Compassion (The feeling of being connected to people, animals, the nature, all of it)
  • Gratitude (The practice of being happy of what has been, and what is, not only what we might attain in a distant future. Three areas are concerned; personal life, career and yourself)
  • Forgiveness (Learning to forgive – being at peace with the world and all the people in it. When we do mistakes we call it circumstance, when other people do it, it’s character. These negative charges limit us and drags us down.)
  • Vision for your future (The ideal image of what lies ahead of you. We overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in 3 years.)
  • Perfect day (Creating the sense of being in control of your day, intention over impulse. When you imagine and tell yourself you are going to have a good day, it’s not that bad things won’t happen, but we take notice of the god things to greater extend, and less focus on the bad things.)
  • The blessing (Feeling a bigger source of support, spiritualty, and for an atheist like me believing in my future self.)

I really recommend you to watch the whole video by himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waYNEDZxEPY

 

The Objectives for this week:

  • Start every morning with listening to the guided meditation practice

Now he has an app you can download and listen to this guided meditation (just search for “Omvana” in Appstore ) , but in its 20 minutes long. In the talk I listened to, he did a 10 minute version of the same routine, so I’ve put together an MP3 file with only that audio which you can download here I know how hard it is to take time to do new stuff, speciously at the morning, so I think 10 minutes is a good start and what we should aim for this week. So all you’ve got to do i to listen to his guided mediation for 10 minutes each morning! That’s it, that’s all!

The 10 min meditation Practice:

Download the file: http://media.alexandernilsson.nu/2016/09/A-15-Minute-Mind-Hack-to-Massively-Enhance-Your-Brain-Power-and-Emotional-State-Vishen-Lakhiani-1.mp3

Just copy the link into the webrowser and then when it has loaded, right click on the player and choose “save as”.

Or watch the original video: https://youtu.be/waYNEDZxEPY?t=22m41s

Final Words

Before I wave you off, I just want to emphasise something; I don’t know about you, But at least I’M FULLY MOTIVATED. But we all have our personal reasons for taking on a challenge, and if it is something that requires time and energy, we need to motivate ourselves properly. So ask yourself why you should do this, and be vivid and detailed for the reasons, evoke emotions. Ideally you write down plenty of reasons for why you MUST, why you CAN and Why it will benefit you. But I know we’re are lazy people, so if you don’t have the energy, just make sure you feel motivated to do this, otherwise you’ll probably quit!

Also, as I always mention, commit to me in the comments or any other friend of yours, that you are going to do this five-day challenge. It will dramatically increase your chances of following through. I

Good luck, have fun, see you in a future state!

/Alexander