In a moment of craving some social connection, I sat out on a short little quest to approach a lady an nice Saturday evening on Kungsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden. How did it go?  Well… Fears for sure was present!

There’s a new week a ahead of us – challenge yourself and do some fear facing. Grow yourself and your self-esteem. Take a step towards freedom – in mind and body

AND – let me know what you’re up to. Social commitment is some powerful SH*T!

/Alexander 🙂

What’s up guys? New week – New week challenge! Dare yourself to face some fears of yours this week. Big, or small, one or many. It’s totally up to you. But do it because you owe to yourself – life’s short, start optimizing it!

Chose something that gets you excited, or at least the thought of yourself on the other side of that fear barrier. What would you like to do, what would you like to be able to do? Play with that thought.

Why do I care? I‘M SICK OF HEARING ABOUT HOW MUCH SUFFER THERE’S AMONG PEOPLE OUT THERE! I want people to experience the feeling of living LIFE – the life of FREEDOM. In mind and body. It’s as simple as that. I’m on this journey myself, and I know how much better it has med my life. How much more fun and meaningful everything gets. There are so much hidden suffer out there, and I’m confident that fear exposure is one of those things that will give the greatest return on energy investment. Now you can choose to ignore me, but I’ll be back every Sunday to remind you:).

A FRAMEWORK FOR HOW TO HELP YOU THINK ABOUT AND FACE YOUR FEARS:

IDENTIFY THE FEAR

1. DEFINE WHAT FACING THE FEAR WOULD LOOK LIKE
2. DECIDE IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO IT – IF SO, TAKE ACTION INSTANTLY!

If you’re new to this, you can start with just doing the two first steps – increasing your awareness. Turning on the fear radar. Link to video specifically on that: https://youtu.be/lR6RyPgyGmI

Let me know down there in the comments what you’ll be doing this week!

Good luck,

/Alexander

The video I refer to in this video, breaking a bad mood with MOOD BOOSTERS. However, it’s a live recording so it does get a bit all over the place at times:).

In this video, I’m talking about observing your fears – The Fear Radar! How being mindful and conscious of what fears are around you is the first step towards setting yourself free. Realising how much you are limited can give you the proper motivation to start changing some things for real. Facing fears and start moving you towards a life of freedom.

So, I dare you to do this during the week, as I will be doing! Also, I’m since I’ve been through this process before, I’m also going to face some actual fears of mine. I have the ambition to do start sharing these small daily facing fear moments on my Instagram story. Add me there If you want the most current action on what’s going down in my world! Alenils is my name.

Good luck, and do commit to me in the comments if you’re up for the challenge:) /Alex

FEARS. Yeah, they do control your life whether you’d like to admit it or not. Of course, you’d like to change that, because I know, that just like me you seek a life of freedom. A life that isn’t consciously or subconsciously run by those anxiety-filled emotions crawling around within. Fear of what other people will think of you, fear of what you will think of yourself, or even fear of death. It’s a risk/reward game we often chose to bet safely on. The thing is, we are miscalculating that whole ratio. It’s subjectively unbalanced. And that’s why I’m every week challenging myself – and YOU – to face some kind of fear over a 5-day period. Big or small, singular or plural – you decide!

The rules are simple. You shall choose to face a fear that means taking some action that aligns with your values and believes, but also brings you closer to your goals. Closer to becoming the kind of person you’d like to be. A free mind. For instance, if you want to get over social anxiety, you need to be talking to some people. If you want to be able to handle rejection, you need to practice getting rejected! If you want to be able to jump of a cliff, you need to be able to coop with some heights! You see, as long as you design the challenge the right way and follow through on that goal, YOU CAN’T LOSE IN THIS GAME! This is a super important mindset you NEED to embrace if you’re not to hurt yourself along the journey.

What do you mean Alex? Well, to avoid creating emotional scares that only will make things worse, you need to baby step it and set a low minimum bar. For instance, if you want to overcome the fear of talking to strangers, your challenge could be to say hi to a random person. Then just doing that and only that, would be a win! If that person rejects you it doesn’t matter, because you got to practice in there and exposed yourself to rejection. An INVALUABLE skill to have, handling rejections that are!

The actual outcome of the interaction is not important at this stage. It’s all dependent on your skill level, and what’s the next action on your fear scale. Which means that next time – if you’re ready for it – you can raise the bar. We want to be constantly levelling up. Or well, you can, of course, fail If you don’t take the minimum action you sat out to do. Then the game will TEMPORARY be over. But we all have bad days, so don’t beat yourself up about it. Remember to have fun with it, see it as a game, and of course – there’s always next time!

So, just take a minute or two and think about ONE fear that is limiting you in life, and how different life would be without it. Play this vision out. And then ask yourself what the lowest hanging fruit would be; what kind of facing fear action could you take to expose yourself to this. Lastly, just consider how acting on that thought would add a ton of excitement and purpose to your life for the coming days. Not to mention the feeling within if you’d actually execute on this thing. There’s no harm in fantasizing, right?

Let’s take my week challenge as an example; I’ve been of my interview game for a while, something I want to have close by heart if I’m to produce great content. Also, I want to truly understand how people think and work – hence I’ll be asking people If they’d like to do a short interview with me on the topic of freedom.

So that’s what my week is going to look like – setting off on a mission to set myself and the world free. There’s no turning back now. I’ve made it my personal goal in life to do this. This is my calling, and I will dedicate my life to make this vision come true. A vision of a free-spirited world. Woho, have I lost it or what?!

Feel inspired, but past experiences tell you this feeling will pass? Social commitment is a GREAT WAY TO FOLLOW TROUGH, that’s why I’ve been able to keep these weekly challenges up (this is my 108th in a row). So, commit to me down there in the comments, just write #FF1 if this is your first Facing Fear challenge, and I personally will be asking you if you followed through or not at the end of the week. I’m creating a movement, so spread, share or tag someone that you’d like to challenge on a facing fear challenge this week!

See you in the week and good luck,

/Alexander

In this WEEK’S CHALLENGE, I’ll outline a strategy for how you and I can become a more productive and effective person. Now I’m just packaging it – It’s all based on the author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss’s best productivity tips. And we are going to learn this skill through the framework outlined in the book THE FIRST 20 HOURS by Josh Kaufman. Skill you say? because YES – it is a skill! Being productive can be learnt, but until we’ve invested some effective practice. 20 hours that is.

Now I’ve set a goal for myself to start some kind of business before the first of October this year. That means that ALL my week challenges strongly must align with taking me there in an effective way. This increased pressure on delivering valuable output, has made super conscious of my inability to get things done. Distracted, unfocused and constantly multitasking – eating, googling random stuff that pops up, YouTube rants. My mobile addiction has seriously started to frighten me. I’ve got the attention span like any other person these days – horrible that is! And I’m sure you’re not far behind.

This is currently what’s hindering me from advancing – and if I want to live that amazing life I dream of, I MUST learn the skill of how to be productive. And you know what, I think the FEAR of letting these dopamine stimulating things go, is a big part of it. I need to face my fears and commit.

SO, if you feel the slightest resemble – join me and commit as well! I can guarantee you’ll be frustrated as shit and wished you’d never signed up for it. BUT, in the end of the week you’ll also be looking back at all the things you’ve accomplished and, above all, have a new solid system that brings your productivity game to a new level!

First off, we need to understand what it is that we are trying to do and get the concepts clear:

“Productivity = Output / Input

Productivity is generally regarded as a measure of outputs divided by inputs. All of the activities that you get done in a day may be considered your output and the time you put into them are your inputs.

Efficiency = Doing things right

Efficiency is a measure of how well you do those things. If you are able to get more outputs from the same inputs, you are said to have increased efficiency.

Effectiveness = Doing the right things

Effectiveness is a measure of doing the “right thing s.” Highly effective individuals and companies act in ways that move their highest priorities forward on a regular basis.” ( source )

Basically, we need a system or a method for identifying the most important things to work on – and then make sure that execute on those things with a high level of efficiency. Increasing the overall output in relation to the time we put into it.

Now in the book `THE FIRST 20 HOURS  Josh Kaufman has structured a 4 step process to learn any skill effectively with high efficiency:

1. Deconstruct a skill into the smallest possible sub-skills
2. Learn just enough to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice
3. Remove physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice
4. Practice the most important sub-skills (with feedback), for at least twenty hours

So let’s walk through them and apply Tim Ferris productivity tips.

1. Deconstruct a skill into the smallest possible sub-skills “Deconstructing the skill before you begin also allows you to identify the parts of the skill that aren’t important for beginning practitioners. By eliminating the noncritical sub-skills or techniques early in the process, you’ll be able to invest more of your time and energy mastering the critical sub-skills first.” – Josh Kaufman

There are literally is THOUSANDS of tips and tricks for how to be more productive. But after listening to and watching hundreds of thes, you start to see recurrent themes. And since my huge admiration to Tim Ferriss, I’ve put together his best tips here. Most of them coming from the book the 4-hour work week and his podcast and YouTube channel.

“Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.

If I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of one another:

1.) Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time. (80/20)
2.) Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important. (Parkinson’s Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.”

-Tim Ferrriss, The 4-hour work week

“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” – Wikipedia

Tim also gave this advice in one of his YouTube videos:

Identifying the important tasks:

1. Which one of these, if accomplished would make everything else easier or irrelevant?
2. Which of these, if checked off, would leave me satisfied with my day?
3. Which of these, if done, creates more time for me next week.

Shorten work time:

Define the outcome and only give yourself a certain time to accomplish it. Work in 25-50 min sessions, (the Pomodoro principle) and use a timer set for 25-50 minutes before taking a short ~5 min break. I’m using the App: strict workflow / Task Timer to keep count and see the accumulated time of my focused work sessions. It works offline too.

Now, this is a habit we want to build and it can be broken down to Que-routine-reward. For the theory of this check out “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg.

The que: Starting the timer

The Routine: the focused work

The Reward: This is up to you to design it the best for you! It can be enough to just get up and jump around, feeling proud for the progress. Some may want to treat themselves with something good. For me, I have attributed each minute to a certain monetary value. So for 25 minutes of work, it equals 2,5 SEK. And I’m using that money to pay of a debt to myself on money I’ve lost on stocks. Making that loss worth it! You can also use it like earning up money for treating yourself with something you want to buy. Or watch time for a funny series or YouTube videos – be creative. But acknowledge the power of the habit loop!

2. Learn just enough to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice  “Learning helps you plan, edit, and correct yourself as you practice. That’s why learning is valuable. The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.” – Josh Kaufman “Instead of trying to be perfect, focus on practicing as much as you can as quickly as you can, while maintaining ‘good enough’ form.”  – Josh Kaufman

So don’t watch another productivity video – have the faith of only applying this and only this week. Don’t overwhelm yourself with other things. Less is more.

And when it comes to the self-correcting part our timed work session – this is how we define “practice time” in terms of developing this skill. This means we need to be aware of when we’re failing. It’s simple – as soon as we’re not doing what we set out do before starting the work session, we fail. So, to be awake to this, we are simply going to have a piece of paper and an analogue pen and make a mark when we get distracted. Put a pin there, and then continue with your thing. Likewise, if you thought of something you need to do, take a note of it and then get back to your business.

For self-improvement purposes – you can also write the conditions of your work; like time of the day, music, being hungry, tiered, and see how it corelates to your ability to focus. And by that see when you are doing your best work and identify those factors to be able to easier get to this beast mood in coming work sessions – getting to know yourself.

3. Remove physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice “There are many things that can get in the way of practice, which makes it much more difficult to acquire any skill.” – Josh Kaufman

“Here are three barriers to rapid skill development to consider and eliminate prior to practicing a new skill:

1. Limited access: If it’s too hard to get started, or it takes too long to get started, you’ll find an excuse not to start. If you want to learn to play the guitar, place your guitar in the middle of the living room with a sheet of music next to it. Doing so will make it easy and effortless to pick up the guitar and start practicing.” *

Use the tools that suits you best, you don’t need a whole lot of aps. A regular watch and a piece of paper might just work the best for you. The principles as super simple – keep it that way if it suits you! For me, I like the gear, makes it more of a game.

2. Distractions: “Skill development requires your undivided attention while you practice. Practice in areas that you consider boring while you are free from distractions: no television, ringing phones, or incoming e-mails.” *

This is key when it comes to working focused and disciplined. REMOVE ALL DRISTRACTIONS. Don’t have your phone visible. If your work allows it, block internet or certain pagers and any kind of social media (I use AdBlock and Strict Workflow). Food is another huge on for me – can’t eat and focus at the same time. Chose music that makes you focus – I can only do non- vocal. NO PHONE. You know what works for you – or should I say don’t work for you!

2. “Self-consciousness: The fear of looking incompetent is the largest barrier to skill development. Adjust external expectations and laugh at yourself for the first 20 hours (without losing enthusiasm for learning the skill).” *

You will fail in the beginning. Your multitasking brain is used to being all over the place. But have faith in the process, and think about your why – imagine the impact it would have if you got so much better!

4. “Practice the most important sub-skills (with feedback), for at least twenty hours “Once you start, you must keep practicing until you hit the twenty-hour mark. If you get stuck, keep pushing: you can’t stop until you reach your target performance level or invest twenty hours. If you’re not willing to invest at least twenty hours up front, choose another skill to acquire. The reason for this is simple: the early parts of the skill acquisition process usually feel harder than they really are. You’re often confused, and you’ll run into unexpected problems and barriers. Instead of giving up when you experience the slightest difficulty, precommitting to twenty hours makes it easier to persist.” – Josh Kaufman

Since I do weekly challenges – This means we’re going to practice this for 20 HOURS in just one week! MAN, that’s a huge commitment. Or is it? I probably work 80-90 hours throughout the weeks, my real job and this YouTube channel put together. So just staying super productive for a fourth of that time really isn’t much to ask for! Quite the opposite really, in theory, we should get more done and free up time to do other things!

So that’s it – that’s the objectives of the week: implement these two principles for a total of 20 hours.

• Start with asking yourself the three questions in the morning or in the evening to define what’s the most important tasks you need to do during the day. Or when you’re sitting down with a project of yours. Then brake those tasks down to tight deadlines and work in 25-50 minute sessions before taking a short break. Implementing the habit loop – the que, the routine, the habit. And don’t forget to remove all distractions!

So that’s it! I’m going all in on this one, loves when there’s a measurable outcome. 20 ours here I come! And I’m going to get so much done. Commit to me down there in the comments, social responsibility is one the major things that makes us follow through. That’s the reason for me doing these challenges for over two years. I’m committing to you guys EVERY week. It’s power in that.

Thank you for watching, thank you for pursuing a life of freedom – the world needs to be a happier place, and free people for sure makes that happen!

CIAO.

/Alex

“I refused to do anything, that wasn’t in the best interest of the goal I have set for myself” – Will Smith.

So many things to accomplish, so many things to experience and so many people to meet. But there’s a whole lot of efforts and fears to overcome to do all that. A whole lot. But I’m determined. You have no idea.

SO WHAT DO YOU WANT?

A new 6-month goal starts NOW. I want to see If I can make a living out of this, or something relating – I want the freedom to live a life on my conditions. Everything I do has to aline with this goal in (an effective way). I’m going to break it down into different themes to give it the proper attention. First out – business and sales – SELLING OF MY STUFF. For multiple reasons:

– it’s one of the skills needed to run a business of my own

– sales skills are great ( & key!) for practising social skills and charisma

– less stuff frees us from shit stealing our attention

The objectives: – Sell off everything I don’t need. Making sure to always have an add out there. – CAN I MAKE A 10 000:- IN APRIL? ( ~1200 USD)

Want more inspiration for selling your stuff? Check out GaryVee ‘s #2017flipchallenge video – How to make $20,170 in 2017 | The #2017FlipChallenge : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_8S…

Secondary: Reading Tim Ferriss’s “The Four-Hour Chef” so we can make sure to do this journey in an effective way! This week reading, next week implementation.

UPDATE: realised the book was HUGE and 80% if the content was about learning how to cook. Instead found a great summary of learning fast methods, so I’ll be breaking down and understanding this video! Shortcuts DO Exist! 4 Hour Chef/First 20 Hours/Little Book Of Talent Animated Book Review/Summary https://youtu.be/IX1wYFiumAs

Tim Ferriss: “The Four-Hour Chef” Talks at Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj3Rs…

Learning how to Learn: THE 4-HOUR CHEF by Tim Ferriss | ANIMATED CORE MESSAGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k069…

Learning how to Learn: THE 4-HOUR CHEF by Tim Ferriss | ANIMATED CORE MESSAGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k069…

Good luck guys, and let me know if you’ll join!

P.S my new mission statement: To apply all the best self-improvement tricks and & techniques in a structured and effective way to make all those things happen. Living Life, A life of freedom. A life on my terms. I want to prove to you that it can be done, and I’m inviting you along for the journey. If you dare. Because it’s going to be hard and scary as ****. But that’s what living is all about – if you ask me ;). And I can close to guarantee you that it will be the best decision you ever made. Yepp, pinky promise. Videos in the description: One Thing Arnold Schwarzenegger Told Me That I’ll Never Forget | Will Smith Vlogs How to Improve Sales Skills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6MGJ…

Today I’ll dare you to start something. If you invested 30 minutes each day this week, and it would make you feel, happier, more fulfilled, excited and perhaps set you off on a trajectory that would change your life – would you do it?

It’s with that kind of anticipation I’m throwing myself into next week’s challenge, where we once more will face our fears, grow and move towards a life lived on our conditions. A life of freedom. Because by putting up weekly personal development challenges we make sure to gradually move towards that vision.

And this time it’s going to be all about pushing that ignition button. Putting in some time and focused effort into that thing you’ve been thinking about for so long, but just haven’t got around to do anything about. Starting – or even restarting –  a project. Whether it’s learning how to play an instrument, deciding to meet someone, building a homepage, starting a business – I’m sure you’ve got something in mind that just hasn’t been happening.

The thing is, we get caught in everyday life and reaction mood – acting on what’s screaming the most in front of us. But what we must remember is that these tickling thoughts and ideas floating around in the back of our heads are tremendously important to our wellbeing and sense of feeling fulfilled. Living purposefully.

But I don’t have time? Well, It comes down to prioritization, as Tim Ferris said, If you don’t have time, you don’t have priorities. We need to trust the benefit of investing time in something that might not have any quantifiable measurable outcome. Sometimes we just have to do the things that can’t logically be reasoned for. Or even if doesn’t seem like it at surface level, take a chance and risk our most precious good – time.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Enough talking, the objectives of the week is going to be super simple and straightforward.

• At least on 30 minutes each day – Monday through Friday – sit down to work on your project. I could give a ton of general tips and ideas for how to approach this, but I think that will just overwhelm and have an opposite effect. So instead I’ll leave you with these three general tips.

1. SCHEDULE IT. 30 minutes each day, put it in the calendar and decide when, where and what you’re going to do! For me, first thing when I get home after work. Then reward – food.
2. Decide what kind of outcome you’re aiming for. Is it just practice time with the guitar, is it doing 5 tutorials for web design, or perhaps outlining a 6-month strategy – just have some kind of goal so you know in what direction to go for. And if the goal is to not have any goal and just have fun – then that’s your goal! It primes the expectation levels, and feeling good about something almost always have to do with what you’re expecting to get out of it.
3. FIND THE EXPERTS. Look to the experts and try to break down possible actions to the ones that give the most bang for the buck. YouTube ‘The Parreto principle’ if you don’t know what the 80/20-rule is. Spoiler – it’s golden.

So that’s it! For me this week is going to be all about relaunching my channel. Thinking through my strategy and plan for what i want out of this, and how I’m going to go about getting that. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about something. Now, this -challenge is actually going to stretch over 2 weeks, because that’s the time I need for this to be done properly. But I’ll keep you updated with at least one video. 

Social commitment is golden – so let me know what you’re doing down there in the comments. AND if you do want any specific tips, let me know – I’ve got tons to give!

Have a great week,

/Alexander

The Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address VIDEO: https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc

New week – New challenge! This week we’ll be focusing on having great. Deep and meaningful conversations. Now since I’m no expert, I’ll present 3 expert tips that gives the most bang for your buck when it comes to getting better at deep conversations. I will also outline a clear implementation strategy for the week ahead. YouTube how-to videos in all its glory, but it won’t magically transform you unless you put in some real effort, and a good strategy is half the battle.

But why all the effort? Just imagine yourself being able to truly connect with people, being so caught up in a conversation that time isn’t present anymore. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. If not, it’s about time. More to it, the better you get at this skill, the quicker will you be able to reach this state. Creating special bonds with people you’ve just met is kind of a thrill. It’s Almost addictive. Perhaps you have friends you’ve known your entire life, but never really got through with. Perhaps this will enable you to finally crack the code. Connecting and being more likeable and remembered will favour you in so many ways. Doors and opportunities you can’t imagine will open.

As an example, I can just mention what happened to me this morning when I was down at the gym. There’s a super nice lady that always works out the same time as me on Sundays. And a few week’s back I complimented her for always being so happy and dancing around while resting between sets. Gradually I’ve gotten to know her better, applying all these conversational skills. And this morning when I was about to say goodbye and leave, I told her to have a great day and keep making people smile. But before I had the  opportunity to leave, she asked me if I was single.. Pausing for a second before answering, trying to figure out if she was hitting on me or not ( she’s 50+).

“Yes I am”

She then said that she had a perfect girl she wanted me to meet, and invited me to a Sunday dinner a few weeks from now, where she will to introduce me to this girl. We’ll see how that goes, but the point being – if you’re able to have good conversations and just talk to people without any hidden agenda but because you enjoy it, it will give you so much in return. AND, you’ll start to enjoy it the better you get at it. I know because I used to dread conversations like these, bus as I’ve improved – I now crave them.

But deep conversations don’t happen without first establishing some rapport and progressively deepening the connection. If this is all distant to you perhaps you should go back and look at the previous two week’s challenges, since this is the third and last part of how to develop conversational skills. It started with approaching people and striking up that initial conversation, and we then moved on to more surface level conversation techniques, but still highly usable in a deep conversation context.

But so – just as last week – these tips I’ll be sharing are hi-jacked from Improvement pill’s YouTube channel. That means I don’t own any rights to the videos, I just use it for the purpose of education and don’t make any money out of it. I do recommend you to go check out his channel as it holds a ton of value. Link to the original video can be found here (LINK – Communication Skills – Deep conversations).

SO, IN ORDER TO HOLD A DEEP CONVERSATION THERE ARE THREE KEY THINGS YOU NEED TO DO:

1. SHARING – Share and be vulnerable, by opening first you will make the way for the person you’re talking to also share something deep. Link to where this is talked about in the video: https://youtu.be/eyA2uIMkAAk?t=1m35s

2. LISTENING – A key feature to be trusted with continues sharing from there part, is to make them feel that they really are being listened to and have your full attention. Link to where this is talked about in the video: https://youtu.be/eyA2uIMkAAk?t=4m38s

3. RELATING – Being able to identify what emotions the other person conveying, so that you can relate and follow up by sharing something similar. Link to where this is talked about in the video:

The objectives

Once a day, Monday through Friday, aim to have at least one conversation lasting at least 15 minutes to enable you to build enough rapport to go deeper. I know from experience that this won’t happen if we don’t plan and schedule it. Everyday life will happen, and yeah You’ll just “do it” tomorrow instead. For me, this means I’m going to schedule 2-3 face-to-face interactions, and have a long phone call or Skype conversation the other days. I’m going to shoot for 30 minutes. Important is to not jam it all into one day, daily is key for efficient progress so we can evaluate, tweak and improve while it’s still fresh.

Good Luck, and commit to me if you really want to do this!

/Alexander

In this week’s challenge we’ll be focusing in on developing our conversational skills. It’s the second week,  & video, with the focus of connecting with people. Last week was all about that initial first approach, and this one will take us one step further on the connection scale and building rapport. This will be done by implementing a few expert tips presented in this video. We’ll then practice one technique each day this week, and ideally putt ourselves in as many conversational contexts as possible. And next week we’ll finish off with a challenge aimed to improve our ‘deep’ conversational skills.

But so why should we give a whole week’s attention to this? Well, there are tons of reasons backed up by studies. But I chose to speak from my own experience, as the results of my increased ability to talk to people simply put have made me enjoy life so much more. What I used to dread I now seek out, with both strangers and people I know. What used to drain me of energy and result in social anxiety, now gives me energy, joy, happiness and a sense of belonging. Belonging to the people of this earth.

Now this may sound cliché or over the top, but I can’t help but to feel this sense of connection to something greater when I truly connect with someone. Now this occurs more during the ‘deep’ end of the conversations, but to get there, we first need to learn how to build rapport and get past that surface level acquaintance. Hence the focus of the week!

The tips that are presented comes from the YouTube Channel Improvement Pill. I don’t owe any rights to the videos, nor do I make any kind of money from them. I simply just help to structure an implementation plan for learning these skills. All rights to him!

And so, the objectives are to focus on one of these tips per day. Otherwise we’ll get overwhelmed. Now beware, we run the risk of this happening with tip 3 and 4 to. So Dumb it down and make it as simple as possible, think about the main principles, not all the examples and ideas that are presented. For instance with the statements, chose one kind to do.

The tips

Day 1 – [ Tip#1 – Be efficient with your speaking ] @ 2:13

Day 2 – [ Tip#2 – Use Pauses instead of fillers to emphasize ] @ 3:05

Day 3 – [ Tip#3 – Conversational Threading ] @ 3:35

Day 4 – [ Tip#4 – Use Statements instead of questions ]  @ 6:00

• Opinion statements

• Cold read statement

• Random/spontaneous statement

Day 5 – Implement them all, but rotate them for every new conversation you have. You can think of the Acronym  EPTS or perhaps this will make you remember; Efficient Pauses ‘Thrills’ ‘State-men’

Good Luck everyone, and let me know what you think of the tips or if you have any good ones of your own!

The last week’s videos:

The original video: Communication Skills – How To Improve Communication Skills – 7 Unique Tips! By IMprovement Pill