You just got Dale Carnegie'd SON!

The day started out really great.  I had my whole work schedule planned out, there was no wandering aimlessly looking for things to do - it was a day to get shit done and I was pumped.

It was about 2:00PM when I received the email.  One of my project managers asked me if I had filled out an internal survey regarding some details about our client.  Nothing too urgent or important, she just wanted to check in on the status.  I told her that I filled it out and sent it along, thinking that I would be praised for getting this done without anyone having to remind me.  That was wrong.

Though this was an internal deliverable - not going out to the client - but it still had it's importance.  This project manager was none to pleased to find out that I sent something out regarding her client without having anyone check it.  

Stage one stress levels - commence

I responded and sent her a link so she could check it over.  As I sat with my fingers crossed, all I could think was "Please don't be filled out wrong, please don't be filled out wrong".  The first words of her email back to me were "This is filled out wrong".

Stage two stress levels - activated

We went back and forth a couple emails explaining what was wrong and how this should have been handled.  My responses were very short, not in a defensive manner, I just knew that I was in the wrong and did not want to dig my hole any deeper; I decided it best to try and lay low.  Turns out this was a bad idea as the next move was to bring a director into the conversation to see how to handle this.

Complete freak out - you bet!

I then received two emails, one from each, explaining the importance of this survey and how proper peer review protocols are to be handled.  My heart racing, and brow sweating, I had to make a move.  I couldn't just lay down and die.  These people smelled blood, and they were gonna get it!

I sat back and gave myself a quick ZEBRA (if you don't know what that is, check out my video post from last week: ZEBRAS!!!).  I had to stop my mind from thinking and bring my adrenaline levels way down.  Once calm, I remembered that this is the exact reason I am trying to master the art of conversation - to know how to deal with every human to human interaction.  In my fit of stress, I had totally forgotten everything I learned and reverted back to everything that was wrong.  Coming to my senses, I sat down, composed my thoughts, walked over, and said the following

"I totally understand and agree.  These surveys are important and we want to make sure the correct people are checking them so that we can produce the most accurate results.  It’s no excuse for not checking in with either of you, but in my defense I was instructed to update the file as I did. 

I’m sorry for this inconvenience, I realize that this could have easily been avoided by simply emailing one of you.  In the future, I will make sure that everything I send out, whether it’s internally or to the client - especially to the client - gets checked by a second pair of eyes.

What steps can I now take to mitigate this mistake?"

I looked back to everything that Carnegie had taught me, and put it into this response.  I started off by agreeing with them, getting them saying "Yes" right off the bat.  I then expressed that I understood their point of view.  I did throw in a little defense, but I made it completely non-threatening and explained that it was "no excuse".  I made it entirely about the other person.  I didn't say how filling out the survey affected me, why I filled it out wrong, what I thought about the survey.  Everything I said was catered to them. 

But the main point was that I was completely and utterly sincere.  I cannot stress this enough, you cannot fake this.  I saw this situation from their perspective and realized how frustrating it must be to have someone go over your head and send in wrong information with your name on it.  I was genuinely sorry, and it showed.

Her response:

"That was a fantastic response. Very appreciated."

It was over, just like that.  No more novels, explaining how I was wrong, or what I should have done.  I showed that I understood the entirety of the situation from their perspective and there was nothing else to be said.

Back to the grind

DAM it's been a while.  I really suck at this whole consistency thing, but I'm back and motivated to write!

I feel like I kind of got side tracked for a couple posts.  Don't get me wrong, the stuff I wrote about was important and has certainly helped me, but it strayed from the topic of conversation.

This last week has been great for me.  I had some time off to enjoy the greatest weekend of the year - the D1 NCAA National Wrestling Tournament.  From noon on Thursday to midnight on Saturday it was non stop wrestling - Bedlam if you will.  Over the weekend I had some great times with friends I haven't seen in a long time.  Catching up is such a joy now.  I try not to focus on getting my point across and making sure what I have to say.  I simply sit back and enjoy watching others enjoy our conversation.

So anywayysssss.  This week I did what I always do when I get bored at work - scour amazon.com and buy shit.  Only this time I didn't buy useless shit that I will never use - OK the 250 incense variety pack might have been a little excessive, but who cares???

I learned there is a great amount of literature on the subject of conversations, but more specifically charisma.  This word has certainly sparked my interest.  While conversation is really just the act, charisma is more of the lifestyle.

You develop charisma, you have charisma, you are charisma.

OK so I'm still not entirely sure on what it means to have charisma, but I quickly realized that it brings more useful Google searches than "Art of Conversation".

I want to get back on track here and talk more about the science of conversation, but also bring in the science of charisma. After reading a couple things I have developed a list of books I want to read and people I would like to research.

Bill Clinton - Apparently, this dude was the man.  He knew how to command a room, really control an audience.  Not really sure why he had to screw it up by getting head from some fat intern, but I don't care about his politic.  I'm interested in his personality.  What drew people to him, and further more, what did he do to keep their interest.

The Clinton Factor - So I don't know if this guy was so obsessed with Clinton that he broke down his every action into easy to follow steps, but that's what this book is.  It's pretty much a how-to book on bill Clinton's personality and public speaking abilities - down to the last body language movement.  Very excited to start reading this.

Marilyn Monroe - This chick was the cat's meow.  Everyone wanted a piece of her, hell people still have posters of her in their college dorms.  The cool part was that she could turn it on and off.  It was a conciousable (not sure if that's a word) skill that she had.  I see here name pop up every now and then in books and articles I've read so I'm interested to learn more about her,.

The Charisma Myth - Like the Clinton Factor, this breaks down the science and art of charisma, but on a more general level.  Not sure about the details, but it came highly recommended from my trusted sources on amazon lol.

And of course, I'm still reading "How to Win Friends and Influence Others".  Dam that book is good, but they tell you to read each chapter twice, taking notes the second time - it takes sooooo long.  But I'm almost done, and I'll start posting about those chapters soon as well.

So let's get back into it.  I took a little break, but get ready for some posts! (that is, if I don't get lazy and just stop)

Oh, and happy birthday dad!!

ZEBRAS!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Andy Kaufman!

Just thought I'd post the Mighty Mouse video for those who haven't seen it.  Sit back, open your mind a little, and enjoy!

Here He Comes to Save the Dayyyy

Have you ever thought about doing something, only to have that little voice in the back of your head talk you out of it?  Don't lie, this shit happens to everyone.

"What are you doing? That's completely crazy"

"Your not good enough, who are you to do this?"

"It's too late to start something new"

Sounds familiar?  This is our minds putting up a warning signal.  It wants to stick with what it knows; we have identified with thing we call "Myself" for so long and our minds despise any change.  When we stray from the definition of "Myself" that we have and take on something more challenging and important, we are changing a little bit of that definition; we are changing what we see as our identity.

This sends our minds into panic mode.  We continually feed our egos with what we think our identity is or what it should be, and we grow comfortable with this definition.  Anything that changes this is a personal attack serving to take away who we are, and we become frightened.  We see these voices as our protectors and thank them for saving us before we make mistakes, but really we should be scolding them for holding us back.  Identity and Myself don't have to have concrete, set in stone meanings to each of us.  To get to success, we MUST destroy these voices.

The best way to do this is simply by making them visible.  Bring conscious, unbiased observation upon these voices.  Listen to exactly what they are saying.  Write them down in a notebook (I find this extremely effective).  This way, we can really analyze how ridiculous they are.  Look at the most successful people and they all did exactly what our voices are telling us not to do.  Don't even bother asking them their opinions or for permission anymore, you already know their response.

Since the voices come out when we sense a change in our identity they tend to speak the loudest when we're about to do something important.  Something significant, something different, that most people would not even think to do themselves.  Rather than listening to them and backing away slowly, we should get excited.  Now that we know they signify some change, we should embrace that and trust that it means we are growing.  From now on, we should know that when we hear these voices, we should really do the opposite of what they are suggesting (Obviously within reason - that voice in the back of your head saying "Don't light your school on fire" is probably a good one to listen to).

Yesterday, those voices were SCREAMING in my head.  It's a rather silly situation, but an important one I feel none the less.

Every couple weeks we hold this "Toastmasters" meeting at work - a public speaking workshop where we hone our skills talking in front of an audience.  I was assigned the role of jokemaster and thought to take it in a slightly new direction.  Though I was excited, those good ole' voices came along to temper my expectations a little.  "Who are you to try something so different?" "You're not funny enough, no one will laugh".  This was all I heard all morning, and I bought in.  I was freaking out, thinking that what I was about to do was so unprofessional, my boss would scold me afterwards; I even played out a scenario in my head where I got fired.  Ridiculous, I know, but this is the craziness we all know to be true.  Once I wrote down what these voices were saying, it wasn't hard to see they were wrong.

Have you ever seen the old Andy Kaufman skit where he nervously mouths the lyrics to the "Mighty Mouse" them song?  If you haven't, stop right now and look it up on YouTube.  It's hysterical.  Well that's what I did as joke master; a reenactment of this skit, if you will.  Now, this is no ordinary skit.  It's predicated on a LOT of awkwardness and a weird kind of funny that most people probably don't understand.  That's where the voices kicked in and spoke up with authority, but in the end my mind was made up and I went through with it.

It was a hit!  Everyone laughed, even the people who had no idea what I was doing; I even got a couple "Nice Job"s from the senior managers.  But that wasn't what made me feel good afterwards.  I had heard the voices in my head, even accepted them as truth for a bit, but recognized this as an opportunity to overcome them and went through with it.  I was proud of myself.  I feel like this is a muscle that needs to be flexed, and the more you flex it, the easier it gets and the more voices you can dismiss.

Whatever the reason for the nerves, I now see the value in being able to control them.  Though the anxiousness served the purpose of the awkward character in the skit, it would be incredibly beneficial if I was able to control my state of mind.

Different situations call for different states, but I want to have a set plan to calm myself down when I get anxious, or to rouse myself up when I'm too lax.  Some things I plan to look into:

1) Mediation - I've been meaning to do this for a while now.  I hear just 15 minutes a day could work wonders to quiet our minds and put us at ease; such a small time commitment is surely worth that.
2) NLP and Subconscious processing - Honestly, I'm still not really sure what this is, but it sounds extremely interesting and can probably help out in many areas of life.
3) EXPERIENCE - Get out there and talk to strangers, do outrageous things, push the limits.  Even cause a little bit of trouble - as long as you don't go completely destroying everything

Is it worth it?

I can think of a lot of times I look back on things I've done and asked myself this question, reflecting on some sort of outcome.  Rarely do I take the proactive approach and ask myself this kind of question before or during I take on another project in my life.  Here, I think the question turns from "Is worth it?" to "What is the purpose?"  I'm not talking about weighing the pros and cons of doing something new, this comes after you have already established that it's something you want to do.  I'm talking about having a clearly defined objective or goal; a reason for changing from the way you do things today.

I met this guy at the gym who invited me to join a group of his that does one of them "Insanity" workouts every Friday (Man, that workout is no joke!).  After this intense workout, the guy came up to me and said "Now if only i can look like you."  Instinctively, I told him this took years to do and that it wasn't worth it.  I didn't really think about it too much before I responded, but I considered it while in the shower (I don't know about you, but I do some GREAT thinking in shower, or any other time when I don't have a pen and paper handy).  I didn't immediately recognize the magnitude of what I said, but in the shower I realized having a great body really wasn't worth it.  This was just a by product of my wrestling career.  I won't go into too much detail (I'll leave that for another post), but I had some tough times throughout my wrestling career.  The workouts, the drama, the weight loss; it was all physically and mentally draining.  The amount of work I put into my wrestling career is not equal to just being in shape.  It's the disclipline it taught me along the way, the mental endurance, the intense highs and deep depressions that I went through.  It made me a better person, and that is why it was worth it.  The great body is simply an added bonus, but alone is certainly not worth the cost you pay.  The only reason I was able to stick it out so long was because these were the things I focused on.  Getting in shape and having a great body were pretty low on my list of reasons for wrestling - they would have to be; any sane person would certainly not go through this hell just to look good.  I focused on becoming a better person, seeing myself in 5, 10, 50 years down the road with some new obstacle and reminding myself "I went to Hell and back while I was wrestling.  If I got through that alive I can certianly get through this too."  It raised my standard for hard work, and I knew that I can handle anything life threw at me.  I went into 7th grade a boy terrified of the spotlight, and came out of college a man ready for the real world.

I don't mean to stray too far from the main point of this blog, but we have to look at ourselves and ask why we are working towards the things we think we want.  There's some part of me that wants to be good at talking to people so I can have a lot of friends and everyone will like me and think I'm cool, but this shouldn't be the main objective.  Everybody can think I'm great, but at the end of the day I may very well be completely miserable.  The main reason I want to master the art of conversation is simply to learn.  Learn about other people, learn their point of view, learn the different thinks that make other people happy in hopes that I can apply them to my life as well.  This is the real purpose of my mission and I didn't realize this before that reflection session in the shower.  Now that my purpose is clear I can continually go back to that and see if what I'm doing is really serving to advance towards this goal.  I can now stay on track and limit my distractions.