6 Things Socially Successful People do Differently

 

8 years ago, I realized that something in my life had to change. I was tired of spending evenings and weekends on my own and promised myself to build a powerful social circle with a lot of close friends. The only problem was, I had no clue of how to proceed. So I started analyzing socially successful people to learn what they did differently. What I have found out has had a significant    impact on my life and now I share these with you. This is what I found out.

 

 

                                       

1. They Focus on Their Positive Traits, not their Negative Ones

When you see socially successful people, what is one trait they all embody? They have self confidence. I started to realize that self confidence is something anyone can build up over time. These people have flaws like anyone else. But they are aware of what they actually do well.
 

There's a huge power in focusing on your positive traits. When you do, you begin to form a healthy perspective of yourself. This will give you confidence you need to become more outgoing around others. As an exercise, if you had to list five positive traits about yourself, what would those be? Give these traits some thought every day.
 

2. They Live in the Moment, Not in Their Minds

Have you ever entered a party, and felt like there were pairs of eyes watching every move you made? When we experience this, we become very self aware and nervous. To counteract this, when you attend social gatherings it's important to "force your mind out of your head". When you detect that you're wondering what others think of you, start asking yourself questions about the people around you instead. "How do these two people know each other?" "What is she working with?" "Where is he from?" In a study, people who were instructed to focus on their environment reported feeling much more self confident.
 

3. They are Outgoing

To become socially successful, you will have to take the initiative on occasion. Even if you're not naturally born a social butterfly, being outgoing is something you can learn. Instead of waiting for someone to invite you to a party or gathering, find groups that interest you. Many cities have groups based on occupation, hobbies, religion or other interests where you can join to meet others. This is a great first step out of your comfort zone. When you do this, have confidence in knowing that others attending the group may have the same social anxieties as you do. Once you find a group, it's important that you stay persistent and attend meetings regularly. The more you attend the more comfortable you will feel being there.
 

4. They are Adventurous

If you want to become more socially successful, it's important that you open your mind to try new things. By trying new things such as taking a cooking class or learning karate, you expand your horizons, you acquire new skills and you meet people in the process. This is an excellent way to enrich your life and grow your social circle as a result. Is there something that you are interested in doing but haven't tried yet? Try to realize that interest.
 

5. They are Great at Helping Others

Another trait that many socially successful people have is that they are willing to help others. Whether it's finding volunteer opportunities or finding ways to help their friends, socially successful people are willing to go that extra mile. If you're better than others at something and use your skills to help others out, people will respect you for it. You shouldn't help people for the sake of making friends - then you risk coming off as needy. Help people because your skills would actually solve the problem they're having.
 

What skills do you possess? In what way could you use these skills so help others? When you're seen as a helpful person, people will become increasingly willing to give back. In that way, helpfulness is often a win-win.
 

6. They are Authentic

Simply, good reputations attract people. People of good character aren't quick to judge, they won't talk poorly about people behind their backs, they follow through on their commitments and they are friendly to others. When you practice these behaviors, others will notice your authenticity and this will make you more attractive as a person.
 

You've probably been in the situation where it's tempting to talk down on something or someone. Try to resist that urge. If you refrain from this behavior long enough, the urge will eventually go away - it's no longer part of your personality to talk down on others. People will trust you more with their thoughts and secrets as you're seen as a reliable person.
 

In Summary

Ultimately, these six steps are good mental approaches you can take to improve your social life. While you won't experience an overnight transformation, these tips can help you develop the mindset needed to improve both your life and to help you gain more friendships.

Author Bio: David Morin is an entrepreneur at Social Pro Now

 

I can definitely relate to this too as I used to hiold onto negative thoughts, past mistakes and once I started to embrace new ways of living like going out more in making new circle of friends and contacts or in pushing the boundaries in becoming more adventurous and in living for the moment, spear-headed my way of life into a whole different path.

 

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How To Avoid Suffering By Changing Your Mindset

                         
No one likes to suffer.

 

So why are so many people displaying signs of suffering? Stress, anger and regret are common emotions that you feel on a daily basis. As much as we try to avoid them, we always end up bringing the negative feelings in.

 

Leo Babauta has an effective solution for this problem. In his latest blog post, he highlights how to detect and avoid suffering. By doing this, individuals can regain control of their wavering emotions.

 

Perhaps the most shocking concept that Babauta covers is how unhealthy eating and lack of exercise are linked to suffering and fear.

 

The reality is, self-compassion can hurt a progressive mindset. It can dampen the truth, making individuals believe things that can hurt their future.

 

Are you experiencing suffering in your life? How are you addressing these negative issues? Let us know what you think.

The Miracle of the Self-Compassion Habit

Let’s hypothesize that there’s a substance that’s been irritating you and causing problems in all areas of your life: it causes you to be unhappy, to be stressed, to procrastinate, to be distracted, to be angry with people, to be dissatisfied with your life, to be overweight and unhealthy, to not exercise or eat healthy, and much more.

 

Horrible substance, right? Now imagine there were a salve that could ease the bad effects of this substance, and make all those other areas better.

 

The substance is real: it’s your suffering. We all suffer, in small and large ways, every day. And it causes all the other problems I mentioned.

 

The salve is also real: it’s self-compassion. Which sounds too fluffy for most people, but it’s a concrete practice that will have concrete benefits, in all areas of your life.

 

Let’s take a minute to explore suffering, and what would happen if you applied the salve of self-compassion.

The All-Pervasive Effects of Suffering

We don’t always think of ourselves as suffering, if we’re leading normal lives. But in fact, we’re suffering more often than we usually realize, just not necessarily suffering greatly. We suffer in small ways, and that affects our happiness, the happiness of those around us, and our actions and habits throughout the day.

Some examples:

• Stress: Throughout the day, things come up to stress you out, from a new thing to add to your workload to someone criticizing you to the housework not being done. This is suffering, even if it’s usually at a low level (though sometimes it can get to high levels). The salve of self-compassion would reduce this suffering, and allow you to deal with these events/situations more calmly, increasing your happiness levels throughout the day.
• Frustrations: Little frustrations happen all the time, from people not doing things right to traffic being congested to not being able to figure out why software isn’t working right. This is also suffering. Self-compassion can help you calm down from the frustrations, and handle the situations appropriately. You’d be less angry when you responded, which is likely to result in better outcomes.
• Anger with others: Someone has pissed you off — your kid just won’t listen, your spouse has said something critical, your boss is being a total dillweed. You’re suffering, obviously. This can result not only in unhappiness, but in actions that hurt your relationship with others, your career, your marriage. Instead, apply self-compassion, and you can calm down, respond appropriately, even with compassion for the other person, who is also suffering.
• Feeling bad about yourself: There are a million reasons we feel bad about ourselves, from failure to body fat to hopelessness in bad situations. This too is suffering, and it causes us to take harmful actions, like comforting ourselves with food and shopping and alcohol, not taking action, not believing in ourselves. Self-compassion eases this pain, and leads not only to more helpful actions but happiness.
• Feeling rushed: There’s often a feeling throughout our days that we need to rush to the next thing. Walking, we go quickly. Working, we switch constantly to the next communication, next tab, next super-urgent-can’t-wait-do-it-now task. This feeling of constant urgency is itself a source of stress. Self-compassion can ease this as well, and allow us to slow down, enjoy the moment, be happier in each moment.
• Distraction: We live super-distracted lives, wasting huge parts of our day. Distraction is a symptom of suffering — we go to distraction because of fear (we’re afraid of harder tasks, of missing out, of failing) and we think distraction is comforting. In turn, distraction tends to increase suffering — we feel bad about ourselves, we procrastinate on important things and make our jobs and lives worse, etc. Self-compassion helps us see this suffering, ease it, and reduce the tendency to distraction.
• Procrastination: We all procrastinate, on work, on writing our great novel, on learning a musical instrument, on exercise. Procrastination, like distraction, is a symptom of suffering, of fear and thinking we can’t do something. Self-compassion can help with that suffering and reduce procrastination, increasing our creative output, helping us to take care of finances and work tasks and decluttering and all the things we know we really want to do but aren’t doing.
• Not exercising: This is a specific form of procrastination, and so is a symptom of suffering. It also shows how procrastination can cause more suffering, as a lack of exercise leads to worse health, which leads to the stress and pain of disease. Self-compassion can help us start exercising mindfully and joyfully.
• Unhealthy eating: We tend to eat unhealthy things because we are afraid of vegetables and not eating junk, and because we need to comfort ourselves from other suffering, and because we think we need the crutch of temporary pleasures. We don’t. Self-compassion eases this suffering and helps us to be OK with not eating Pringles and donuts, with making our bodies feel better.
• Lack of gratitude: Much of our lives are spent in silent complaint, or sometimes not so silent. We are so unhappy with little things in our lives, which is a form of suffering. These complaints mean we’re missing out on what’s great about our lives. Self-compassion helps us to deal with the pain of these complaints, and instead turn to the amazing things we can be grateful for, which increases our happiness with life all around us.
• Lack of mindfulness: Most of our lives are spent in distraction, unmindful of the present moment. This is a form of suffering, because if we weren’t suffering we could stay in the present much of the time, fully appreciate the moment as it happens. Instead, we’re thinking about the future because we’re worried about it, we’re obsessed with the past mistakes we’ve made. Self-compassion can ease these worries and obsessions, and instead practice mindfulness with each moment more often.

I could go on forever, because suffering takes many forms. But you can see the pattern: self-compassion eases the pain of the suffering, reducing the bad effects and allowing us to choose more helpful ways of living.

 

Let’s turn to a method of self-compassion.

A Self-Compassion Method

This is a method you can practice through a daily habit, to help with suffering in all forms:

1. Notice your suffering, in one of its many forms.
2. Turn towards the suffering, see it as it is, feel it fully, experience it mindfully and in the moment.
3. Accept the suffering, instead of trying to ignore it, avoid it, push it away, kill it. Accept that it’s a part of life, a part of you, but temporary.
4. Wish yourself happiness, wish for an end to your suffering. Give yourself a mental hug, comfort yourself.
5. Let go of what’s causing the suffering. Just release it, or put it aside. The cause is likely something you wish were different. Instead, appreciate things as they are. Be present with reality.
6. Be grateful for the reality that’s happening right now.

This is not always easy to practice, and so I recommend a daily session where you turn inward for a couple minutes, and practice without the distractions of daily life. You’ll get better at the self-compassion habit with practice.

 

But it’s worth the practice. The salve of self-compassion can change your entire life.

 

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