Archive for the ‘Making Friends Skills’ Category

How To Get People To Open Up

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Sometimes you can tell that a friend, family member or loved one is deeply troubled. If you know someone well, changes in their normal behaviour are a good indication that something is bothering them. If you truly care about them, it might help them to talk it through, but it is not always easy to know how to get people to open up to you.

The following are a few tips for how you can get someone you care about to confide their troubles:

1. Gain the other person’s confidence

One way of doing this might be to share something about yourself with them. If you open up to them, they might reciprocate. If you have had a long relationship with the other person, and felt that you already trusted one another completely, you might be puzzled, or even offended, that they have not already confided in you.

Perhaps they are reluctant to burden you with their problems? If you suspect this is the case, you should approach them quietly, tell them that you know something is bothering them, and reassure them that you are there for them if they need somebody to talk to.

2. Let the person know that you truly care about them, and that you are not just being intrusive

Make them see that you are ready to help. Assure them that you are not going to be judgmental, and won`t be shocked by whatever they tell you.

3. Be prepared to be patient

The other person might not be ready yet to open up to anyone, so don’t try to force things. Just be there for them when they are ready to confide.

4. Choose a good place and time

Once the person is ready to confide, choose a suitable time and location to sit and talk. It should be somewhere where you are not going to be overheard, or constantly interrupted, and you should allow an infinite amount of time so that your friend does not feel pressured.

5. Make sure that you really listen to what they are saying

Lean towards them and make lots of eye contact to show that you are interested, and nod to demonstrate that you are following their account. Don’t interrupt, but let them maintain their flow, so that they can get things out of their system.

6. Give some sensitive prompts

If your friend is finding it difficult to express what they want to say, you could try to prompt them with a few gentle, yet probing questions, or make comments that move the conversation forward.

Ask open questions that require more than a yes or no response, and keep your tone quiet and reassuring. Don`t be afraid to let your friend be silent for a few moments though. They might need time to compose their thoughts, so be sensitive and don’t push too hard.

7. Don’t judge

After you have heard what the other person has to say, you must then ensure that you are not judgmental about what they have revealed, and don’t, under any circumstances criticise their behaviour, or else they will instantly clam up against you. Remain supportive and sympathetic.

8. Give some practical help

If there isn’t anything that you can do, remind them that you are always there for them, and that they can feel free to open up to you any time they are feeling low. Knowing that they have a friend to confide in will be a weight off their minds, and talking things over can sometimes be the first step to healing.

So, in order to get someone close to open up to you, you need to be supportive, tactful, discreet and not judgmental. Remind the other person that you are always there to lend an ear when they are troubled, and never betray their confidence.

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How To Get People To Admire You

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

In order to get people to admire you, you need to be someone who is worthy of admiration. You can gain the admiration of those around you almost by following a recipe. The dish you will have prepared is yourself: a better developed, more admirable you.

What do you need in order to get people to admire you?

First, you need to have developed good character traits. Then you need to mix in some integrity and a good values system to which you adhere. Lastly, you need to add a good dash of social skills in order to communicate these to other people. All of these factors contribute toward getting people to admire you.

1. Be selfless

Selflessness allows you to make people feel loved and appreciated without you necessarily expecting anything in return. This can be as simple as being a good listener when people need someone to talk to. Giving up some of your time to help other people, in charity work or just to do something good for a family member or friend is an admirable thing to do.

2. Be tolerant

People will be more likely to admire you if you make them feel special. This involves being tolerant of other people’s views and actions. Also, if you are tolerant of life’s ups and downs and you still come up smiling, that is something that people will find admirable.

3. Be honest

No-one admires a fake, so you need to be honest in order to gain other people’s admiration. That means that you must genuinely care about people and demonstrate that to them so that they believe it.

Behave genuinely with other people and let them know your real feelings. Even if you have something potentially upsetting to tell people, tell them. Just be sensitive about how you do that.

4. Have integrity

Develop a set of core values by which to live your life and then stick to them, so that people know what they can expect from you. Don’t do just about anything for money and don’t do anything to the detriment of other people.

5. Be trustworthy

If you say you will do something, do it. Be the person that other people can rely upon when they need help or someone to talk to. Keep people’s confidences and give good, honest and unbiased advice where it is asked for.

6. Be sensitive and thoughtful

Don’t trample on other people’s feelings or make them feel stupid for thinking or feeling in a particular way. So, think about how what you do or say will affect other people.

7. Be optimistic

There is already so much negativity in the world. People who are negative appear to be fearful and bitter. That is not admirable. Do, demonstrate that you see the good in anything and people will admire you and follow your example. They will want to be like you.

8. Develop your self confidence

In order to inspire admiration, you have to look like someone who sticks to their principles and knows what they want out of life. All this takes self confidence, to roll with the punches when life knocks you and to stick with your principles even if other people disagree with you or even criticise you for your views.

Remember, no-one is admired by everyone and you will always run the risk of meeting up with people who will try to damage your self confidence and say that you are living your life the wrong way.

If you have strong self confidence and your behaviour lives up to the above criteria, you should have some reason to believe that you have developed a good strategy for how to get people to admire you.

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How to Deal with Loneliness

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

We have all had to learn how to deal with loneliness at one time or other. No single person is immune to feeling lonely. People with everything they could ever dream of have felt lonely in the same way as the person with nothing.

Loneliness also has the ability to come upon us at anytime and anywhere we might be at. We can be in a very crowded place and feel lonely just as we might when we are the only person in a room.

However, there are some strategies you can put into motion to help you. Here is a short list of ways to deal with loneliness.

1. Change Where You Are At

One possible way to deal with loneliness is to move from where you are experiencing this emotion. If you live alone, for example, and feel lonely, get out of the house and maybe take a stroll down a busy city sidewalk.

As you pass people by, try to connect with them with eye contact and a smile. Most people will smile back and this reciprocal connection may be the antidote to your loneliness.

Also, being of service to others, like at a food pantry or soup kitchen, can help you feel useful. When you feel useful you will feel connected. Often a lack of human connection can arouse the feeling of loneliness, so doing something useful for someone else can help to reduce your loneliness.

2. Change Who You Are Around

There will be times when you are around people you just can’t seem to relate to. This happens to many people, especially at social events and gatherings. You could be standing amongst a group of people that you just can’t seem to click with.

You stand there just nodding your head with a blank stare on your face because you can’t relate and connect with them. This can cause you to feel lonely. When this kind of situation occurs, politely withdraw yourself and seek another person or group to become involved with.

3. Switch Your Perspective

Factually speaking, loneliness is all in the mind. Again, loneliness is an emotion and is not an object outside of you. Therefore, it becomes possible to change it by changing the perception of how you are viewing loneliness.

One way to do that is to consider that other people are experiencing the same thing at the same moment you are. Looking through your loneliness towards another’s will ground you and help you feel more human because now your loneliness becomes a shared experience.

4. Take Relational Risks

Loneliness is all about you and your perception of our loneliness. But part of that perception is also about how you see your relational abilities. That is, if you believe you can’t relate to others and them to you then you just isolated yourself from connecting with anyone.

Everyone has something in common with someone else that will help you make a connection with them. There is someone in the world somewhere that you can connect with and them with you. And the way to find that connection is to let go of your faulty perception of loneliness and take a risk in allowing yourself to find that person you can connect with.

How to deal with loneliness is all a matter of perceptions and how you think and react to loneliness. Every human being experiences this emotion at some point in their lives. It’s unavoidable because it’s part of human nature. But what you do with it, or react to it, is what will make all the difference in the world to how you life will be affected by it. The choice is yours to make.

Tags: How to Deal With Loneliness
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