The Intentionality of Improving Social Skills
And highlights + a review of the charisma university course
This Tuesday I went out to the infamous Comedy Cellar in NYC with some friends. After three prior failed attempts to catch a famous drop-in comedian, Aziz Ansari stepped through the door for the last set of the night.
At first glance he wasn’t even recognizable. His hair was a bit disheveled and his belly looked a bit receptive towards being recently married.
But once he opened his mouth, he by far the funniest comedian of the night. Yes he was famous. Yes he was a professional who had already made millions on Netflix. But his confidence radiated through as he joked through topics on marriage, kids, psychedelics, and therapy, whilst the whole time roasting couples in the crowd
And I sat there, mesmerized with only one thought in my head….HE’S GOT RIZZZZ!!
Okay fine, maybe it’s more like stage presence. But rizz, charisma, stage presence, magnetic energy, whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same.
Last year I spent some time binging through the Youtube rabbit hole on how to be more likable. And in the last few months I started diving into it again.
On face value - it sounds sad. You want to work on being more likable? Just be yourself. And yet if you give anyone that generic advice and then throw them into a sales role, they will likely fail out of that job.
That’s because sales on its own is a great way to actually quantify the effect of charisma that is never apparent in normal social situations. For example, most of the time your friends or acquaintances won’t tell you when you’re an asshole, a boring person, or hold any unlikable traits. Instead, they’ll just slowly remove themselves from your life. Similarly it’s the same way in an interview how a company won’t give you feedback when they fail you for “culture fit”.
So improving overall social skills is really important! And in last years post I pointed out two additional great end states to get to for improving socially:
Exerting less energy to converse with anyone - especially for introverts. Imagine if you could chat in-depth with anyone like you’re taking out the laundry.
Finding ways to reduce the amount of time towards connecting or discovering if you can connect with someone else.
And while those were good intentions, I realized actually finding my way there was a little harder.
So this year I ended up buying a course from Charisma on Command to intentionally improve. So far, I’ve finished most of it and honestly I’m truly not sure how much it has helped. But it has opened up my eyes to a couple key insights that I think encapsulate most of what matters:
Building a genuine interest or curiosity for the people around you, no matter who they are or what the first impression is like.
Creating expressive body language, maintaining a strong voice, and generating inner confidence to manage social anxiety when it comes up.
Intentionally bringing up your values in conversation and finding ways to connect on shared interests.
Finding ways to showcase that you’re there to have fun.
That’s really it. The rest that involves storytelling, sales, leadership, flirting, etc…all kind of build off of just having a strong baseline of the four things above.
But memorizing those four tenets isn’t really going to do anything. And so much of the course is about how they push learning charisma to be like a habit. You learn a concept, and then immediately must set a timer on your phone to practice that same skillset later in the day.
And it makes sense. Because socials skills are at the end of the day…skills. Skills get developed through time and effort and practice. And it’s a byproduct of repetition that can come more naturally than others, but for many has to be worked on intentionally.
And so towards the end of the course there are some small journaling exercises that I really liked.
“What happens if you were just 10% more considerate in your daily life today?”
“What would you do differently today if you were just 5% more intentional with your actions?”
“If I bring 5% more awareness to my deepest needs then I would….”
“If I take 5% more responsibility for my life and well being I would…”
They are questions that not only set some intentionality towards achievement, but also make you ponder philosophically how your life could change. How would what you’re doing affect the people around you? What is possible within your reality when you give yourself a compounding 5 to 10% advantage every month or year in how you treat others?
It’s not something I know for sure. But I’d like to realize that at least acknowledging what can get better is always the first step in the right direction. And continuously imagining it for the betterment of how we treat everyone whether it’s our families, friends, lovers, etc.. is something I want to continue to realize for the near future.