Before you start tackling your four weeks of challenges, I want to tell you a little about this course. You know, the WWWWWH so you understand the purpose of these challenges and the way they work. This way, you’ll find the best way to apply it to your life so you get the most out of it.
Who
This program is for anyone who believes that their social skills are subpar and wants to improve. If you want to get better at starting conversations with strangers, building trust and connections with people, and opening up and talking to anyone, this program is for you.
What
This program is a series of social challenges that require you to talk to new people and say or do things that you are not used to doing. The challenges are very straightforward and it’s clear what you need to do and how you need to do it. You also have all the resources to figure out what to say or do.
There are four challenges per week and you can choose how to go about completing them. I chose four because it gives you an extra day during the work week, plus the weekend to make up any missed challenges.
When
Now that you have purchased the program, you have lifetime access to it.
It is best if you complete the challenges in succession as laid out in the program, but you don’t have to. You can go through them at your own pace.
Also, once you go through all of the challenges, you can go through them again, pick and choose which ones you want to keep working on, or even create your own challenges by altering the ones given to you.
Where
Different challenges have different requirements – some force you talk to strangers and some allow you to talk to anyone (friends, family, acquaintances, strangers, coworkers, etc.).
When you need to talk to strangers, it’s best to find a public area where there are many shops, stores, restaurants, etc. These are usually malls and downtown areas.
But many of the challenges can be done at work with coworkers, at home with family members, or wherever you want with whomever you want.
As long as you are completing the challenge, it doesn’t matter where you are.
Why
Let me tell you a quick story:
I grew up with a friend who, from the outside, seemed like an ordinary, unattractive, uninteresting person.
He wasn’t very good looking. And his style wasn’t any better – t-shirt, jeans, skate shoes, and a zip-up sweatshirt.
He wasn’t athletic because he quit playing hockey and picked up chain-smoking cigarettes instead.
And he didn’t have any cool hobbies or outside interests that would draw people into his world.
But you know what? Everyone wanted to be his friend.
As a freshman in high school, he had popular seniors driving him to their parties.
When he goes to a bar, with a line going down the street and around the corner, he doesn’t have to wait to get in. Because he’s already friends with the bouncers. And when he goes somewhere new where he doesn’t know the bouncers, he befriends them instantly, granting him and his friends access denied to everyone else.
But it’s not just the party scene he dominates. I can’t count the times he’s gotten free food or extras at restaurants. Or the free trips his friends take him on (that would be way out of budget for most people).
And even his friends’ moms all love him.
You know why?
Because he has immaculate social skills. People want to be around him and do things for him simply because of his personality.
If you level up your social skills, you’ll notice a similar effect. People will want you around. They’ll want to do things for you.
It’s my mission to help people live awesome lives – lives they love living. And the best way I can do that is by helping them boost their social skills and social lives.
This program is a means to that end.
I created this specific program as a set of weekly challenges because they “force” you to learn. I have other methods of teaching people that work well for some, but not for others (like my flagship course Friends From Scratch which teaches you everything you could ever need to know and more about how to make new friends).
For example, even though I have FFS students who have had massive success, going from lonely and depressed to fulfilled and happy with more friends than they can make time for, there are some who read through the course, tell me it’s great information, but never act on it.
I don’t want people to invest in my expensive courses if they won’t take action. So I created this.
It’s much cheaper and it literally tells you exactly what to do (FFS requires more “work” from the students before they can put the skills to use, which gives them the highest chance of success). And this program doesn’t produce a specific result (in FFS you’ll make new friends in less than a month), but it will improve your social abilities.
After completing these challenges, you’ll find it easier to talk to people, open up, and build rapport, all of which are major components of socializing.
How
So, how does this course boost your social skills?
Improvement and confidence come primarily from three things: competence, repetition and positive experiences.
Competence: I teach you enough to understand the underlying principles, but I don’t dive too deep into them because it’s not necessary for this program. If you want to learn more about why social skills work, read my blog, my emails, and search Google. There’s plenty of information out there and it just doesn’t belong or fit here. Understand that taking action is much more effective than reading more info, and you have enough info in here to make good progress. I highly recommend sticking with this program as it is laid out instead of trying to “learn more” until you’ve developed these skills and have new goals.
Repetition: This is the cornerstone of this program and it’s where most people fail (and the reason their social skills are lacking). People simply don’t spend enough time talking to other people and working on their social skills. This program changes that. All of the challenges are to be done a number of times (for example, ask 10 strangers the question “XYZ”). This forces you to get repeat exposure to the same task, which gives you more practice and a better understanding of how people will respond. If you do a task enough, it becomes second nature. These challenges show you what to focus on and how to practice it. If you go out and repeatedly conquer these challenges, they will eventually become your default actions.
Positive Experiences: You may be scared to start a conversation with a stranger or tell an acquaintance a secret. You fear the dreadful scenario where you screw up and imagine the worst possible reaction. But in reality, failure isn’t nearly as bad as you imagine. You’ll realize that people aren’t mean and rude like you think and that awkwardness isn’t a big deal. And these challenges show you how to do it right so that you are likely to succeed. Then, by doing them more often and having better experiences than you originally expected, your confidence will grow and make it easier to do in the future.
So, your increased competence, repetition, and positive experiences will improve your skills and confidence.
And the more competence, repetition, and positive experiences, the more improvement you’ll see.
Remember, you can complete the challenges at your convenience, but to get the most out of it, do them consistently. And to get even better, do the course over and over. Continue cranking out the challenges that you find hardest, and you’ll see progress faster than you can imagine.
But don’t get ahead of yourself. Slow down and just go through the challenges once. Your mission right now is to complete the program. Do that, and you’ll get an awesome boost to your social skills.
Now get on it.