Category Archives: Self Love

How to love yourself

Posted on by

I used to wonder if it would ever be possible for me to love myself. In my early twenties I saw this as a place I would never be able to get to. Now, I chuckle as I am reminded of that time. This idea, this struggle of not being able to love myself, I remember it vividly though it’s inconceivable to me now. I’ve done a ton of work on my relationship with myself. A decades worth. It’s ongoing, in fact. And in this post I’ll share some nuggets I’ve learned for anyone who is struggling with how to love yourself.

How to love yourself

How to love yourself 

Loving yourself is not some place to get to, you can flip that switch today. At this very moment. That might tick you off and some of you reading this might want to kick me for saying this (but I’ll tell you how below): Loving yourself is a decision.

It’s a decision you alone can make. It’s a decision you don’t just make once but constantly. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.

This is really hard idea to understand, especially when you’re struggling with how to love yourself. So how do you flip the switch?

The first step to a better relationship with you…

Well, first you have to accept the struggle you’re in. Stop asking yourself “why can’t I love myself?” and stop getting caught up in the WHY of it all. Just accept that at this moment, right now, you don’t love yourself.

It’s easy for you to get caught up in trying to figure out why you don’t love yourself and how to get there. But this thinking will only lead you in circles and keep you stuck. So first stop asking why. It’s time to start asking yourself new questions. And commit this to memory: The quality of the questions you ask yourself is equal to the quality of the life you live.

If you ask yourself questions like “why can’t I love myself?” you’ll search for answers. The reason you come up with will only validate the struggle. It will stop you from changing the way you think and feel and how you treat yourself in future. So notice the why questions that you’re asking yourself that are negative and don’t work. Now, fill that space with a new question, like….

How can I learn to love myself?

How can I be kind to myself today?

What can I do – one simple action today – to change the way I feel about myself?

What qualities do I love and appreciate about myself?

These are better questions and they’ll help you to shift how you feel. And remember, you have to be willing to let the love in. Start small. Think of one quality you love about yourself and let that be your focus.

When you internally ask why questions, most of the time you’ll stay caught up in the past. That’ll never serve you to move forward. The why doesn’t matter. The what’s next does.

The only one who suffers from not loving yourself is you. And this negativity will permeate into all areas of your life and all the choices you make. You’ll choose partners that aren’t good for you or don’t treat you well. Your career will reflect the worth you give yourself and that will expand into the areas of finance and your lifestyle. It’s all connected.

Accept the way you feel and give yourself a moment to feel it

When you’re in a space of struggling and wondering how to love yourself. The best thing to do is stop everything and go be by yourself somewhere. Get quiet. Feel how you feel. Give yourself five or ten minutes to feel the negative emotions you have for yourself. If you’re mad about something you did in the past, allow yourself to feel the anger you have for yourself. If you hate you’re body, allow yourself a few moment to feel really sad, frustrated about your body.

Emotions are like the knots of tension you can get in your physical body. When you put pressure on a muscle from physically working it, the build up of lactic acid will cause an uncomfortable knot to occur. To release the knot you have to put pressure on it. You have to push into the knot for the tension to release. It’s the same with emotions. Feel them. Don’t suppress or avoid them, you have to feel them and then they dissolve. Your negative thoughts will literally weaken and dissolve.

So, right now, if you’re reading this and you’re feeling negatively towards yourself, take a moment to close your eyes. Take yourself back to a moment that triggers your feelings and allow yourself to feel them. It’s surprisingly a very calming and therapeutic experience to go through.

Fill the space with something positive, something new

After you feel and release the emotional tension, think of one thing you’re grateful for. Something simple. It could be your heart, a tree outside, the home you live in, or a person you love. Feel how grateful you are.

Then, when you’re feeling positive, think of one wonderful trait about yourself or a great thing you’ve accomplished in your life. Follow this with scheduling one nice thing you could do for yourself today. One small action that would help you to feel good about yourself.

Make this a ritual

Loving yourself involves training. If you’ve spent years having negative thoughts about yourself, it’s going to take a while for your relationship with you to change. So anytime you feel mad, sad, frustrated, angry at yourself or about yourself, stop and allow yourself to feel your negative emotions. Follow this with a thought of gratitude and recognize something great about yourself. Then, take one action that day to love yourself. Consider this your new regular – perhaps daily – ritual.

Any mindset shift requires emotional leverage

Even though you want to change, you’ll continue to be and think negatively about yourself until you get the impacts it’s causing on your life and behavior. If you really want to make a shift, if you really want to start loving yourself more, you need to really get what you’ve been missing out on by allowing yourself to think this way about yourself.

The best way to do this, is to take some time to write out a list of the all the impacts of you thinking this way. What are the impacts on you and your life? If you don’t love yourself, what are the impacts on other people? What are the impacts in your relationships? What are the global impacts? Seriously, what are the impacts on the world.

Whether you believe that there are impacts on the world at large, there are. Every person on this planet has a gift to give. Are you contributing your gifts? Are you making a difference? Are you leaving this world better than the one you came into?

Hating yourself is like a doubled-edged sword. Whatever you think internally expresses itself externally. If you don’t love yourself it’ll be all over your life and the results you can produce.

You really want to get this. Getting the impacts will help you realize that you have to put in the effort to change. When you get the impacts the choice to love yourself becomes easy and critical.

What to do when you really can’t think anything positive about yourself

Find someone to hold you bigger than you hold yourself. Find someone to love you. Find someone to treat you well. A sibling. A friend. A parent. A relative. A colleague. A coach. A therapist. Find someone who will hold you to your greatness. Find someone to love and acknowledge you and who will tell you your great.

Then, it’s your job to listen.

And it’ll probably take you a long time to let the love in. But just keep trying.

I know this from experience. In my early twenties, I am grateful to have had a mentor that took me under his wing. He said to me: “you’re a beautiful gift to the world”. Every time he said it, it felt ridiculous to me. It felt wrong. I didn’t believe it. But the more he told this too me, the more I start to let this idea come into my own head.

Overtime, things shifted and I started to care more for myself. Eat better. Sleep enough. Have a bit more fun. Eat nutritious foods (like soursop). I started to treat myself kindly. I started to see how my negative chatter didn’t work. We all need other people to see us bigger than we see ourselves. Sometimes we need it more.

So find someone to hold you big until you can hold yourself.

One thing you can do today to start loving yourself more today…

Set a timer on your mobile device or computer. When it goes off acknowledge one great thing about yourself. Pat yourself on the back daily for something good you’ve done or a trait you love about yourself. Remind yourself to do this, until it becomes natural.

And don’t forget…loving yourself is a double edged sword. Put the love in and it’ll flow out. Your life will expand from simply loving yourself a little more each day.

How to overcome self limiting beliefs

Posted on by

Do you ever wonder if you have two personalities? First there’s the confident, positive, driven you. Then, there’s the you that tells you you’re not enough. That you’re never going to figure it out. That you’re not loved or worthy. If you shared what is in your head about yourself right now, what would you say? Go ahead, write it down. Get it out of your head and put it on a piece of paper. Look at what you wrote. Would you say what you wrote down about yourself is limiting you? If you answered yes to that question then the good news is you are here and you’re about to learn how to overcome self limiting beliefs.

But first, what you wrote down, is that the truth? My guess is, that if you are reading this right now you might be saying something that isn’t that kind about yourself. Maybe what’s in your head is actually quite negative and when you finally wrote it down, you looked at it and felt like crap about it or had a moment of “whoa, I actually think that?” . Maybe you’ve revealed something to yourself that often goes overlooked and on autopilot.

Whoa, that’s deep right?! The first time you become aware of your own self limiting beliefs it can be tough to process. Afterall who would want to say outloud to any other human being: “I am not enough”, or “I don’t feel loved”. Truth is you’re not the only one. You’re human and 100% of us have these thoughts from time to time.  Though, some people have these thoughts more frequently than others. Unfortunately, most people never learn that they can tame them. You can control and overcome self limiting beliefs. Read on to learn how.

How to overcome self limiting beliefs

Why you feel this way

Self limiting beliefs are created slowly and repetitively over time. Over the course of our lives we all experience moments of pain or pleasure that get ingrained in our nervous system. When those moments happen we make them mean something, we add language to them. For instance, you raise your hand to speak at a work meeting and your idea gets made into a company joke. Your brain might record this moment as a painful experience. You might make it mean that you’re an idiot and you should make sure you’re more prepared with what you say before you share your ideas. You might come to believe that you should never share ideas off the cuff, or that you aren’t smart. This is how a belief system gets formed. And guess what’s crazy, you created it. Your internal self merged with your external world and boom. You learned something and it turned into a belief.

Self limiting beliefs are nothing more than rules or commands to our nervous system about how we are going to respond, they shape our thoughts and create a filter on our reality. Beliefs shape your daily experience whether you’re cognizant of that or not. What beliefs do you have that you see might by assumptions about yourself, about others, about the world? You use beliefs to help you understand the world around you. They help you feel certain about your future, make you feel safe and secure. We all crave a sense of certainty. When we are certain we can typically feel a sense of peace, calm, allowing us to either reduce or increase stress we have about a person or thing.

And here’s the kicker: You create your belief systems. Your beliefs about yourself and the world around are shaped during your childhood. You learn what to believe from all your experiences, and from role models. These beliefs are so ingrained that we think them sometimes without really questioning why we think them or where they originally came from. That means, you might be limiting yourself and no knowing it. So it’s critical you start to tune in, to notice your thoughts and to ask: Is this belief serving me or is it a self limiting belief?

The other crazy part about self limiting beliefs is we anchor them into our bodies. A song comes up, a word is said, and boom, our brain attaches to a memory and draws out an emotion that’s consistent with it. And that memory triggers us in a present totally unrelated moment. So the question becomes: How do you take control? How do you overcome your self limiting beliefs?

Awareness is always the first step

Our thoughts, patterns, behaviors and belief systems serve us at different points of time. Maybe for some period of time a belief you hold has worked for you and now it no longer does. Once you start to become aware of your thinking you can make more conscious choices. You can then assess whether what you’ve been doing, thinking or feeling truly works for you!

Beliefs are not facts. You have the power to change them. It might be time to do an audit on what you belief. Consider these questions about some of the beliefs you hold to be true….

  • What is great about this belief?
  • What are the negative consequences that are associated with me having this belief?
  • What have I missed out on by having this belief, who have I affected?
  • Where has it limited me in my life?
  • What are the labels you’ve given yourself because you think or feel this way?
  • What expectations have you set for others based on your belief?
  • What value am I gaining by holding onto this belief?
  • What good intention does this or did this belief provide me with?

Remember that when you created this limiting belief consciously or unconsciously you did it with good intentions. The question is does it still serve you or is it a self limiting belief? What new belief could you take on?

See the Big Picture

Let’s take this a step further, now that you have assessed the value and or challenges of a belief add more senses to it. Visualize how the belief has impacted your life.

  • How do you picture it in your mind?
  • What emotions do you feel when you imagine it to be true?
  • What does it look like?
  • What does it sound like?
  • Is there a smell or feeling attached to this belief?
  • Does it have a taste?

Open your eyes and write it all down. You may have noticed that visualizing makes your beliefs more intense, more vivid.

Now the ultimate question…

Do you want to change this belief?

Changing anything in our lives starts with a decision. That decision for things to be different than they have been in any other moment before this. From that decision we have to commit to what is necessary to change and take action to ensure things are different. In order to do that ask yourself these questions. If the following were true how would you act differently?

If you believed responsibility for this change rests in your hands, what would you do?

If you believed change happens instantly when you commit, what would you do?

If you believed things must change now, what action would you take immediately?

Choose your ritual

Before you move to believing a new more empowering belief, you have to toss the old self limiting beliefs away! The way you choose to do this is up to you. Burn it. Write it down and throw it away! Or, say your self limiting beliefs out loud to a friend and yell out how it’s such BS. The time for that belief to be ruling your life in any form is over!!

Step up and build your new belief

Now we get to step up into our new empowering beliefs. Here is where you can consider: Who do you really want to be? What do you desperately want to achieve in your life?

Consider your ultimate outcome for yourself, write it out in full.

  • What would you need to believe about yourself in order to achieve this?
  • What would you say, what would you think or focus on when you were challenged as this new version of you?
  • What are things you can do to condition this new empowering belief?
  • What actions can you take right now to strengthen this belief?
  • Is there any roles models you want to align with?
  • Is their a quote or tagline you want to create for yourself to ingrain this new belief in your mind?

Remember your old beliefs were built one strand at a time. Building new beliefs is like building a muscle. Transformation is a process, the level of pain we endure is somewhat up to us. Just as this self limiting belief wasn’t made overnight you may notice it wanting to creep back in. So we repeat the pattern of breaking this belief over and over until it is completely annihilated from our body and minds. If this old belief creeps back in try approaching it with curiosity. Why did it show up? What triggered it? 

Pay attention to your thoughts. It may not feel as comfortable to have this new belief as it did with your old self limiting belief. It’s like a new pair of shoes, it takes time to adjust. Be your own observer, watch what works for you and what doesn’t. Monitoring and altering your thoughts is a major step in getting what you want in life.

Learn more about Kay Walker at http://iamkaywalker.com

Having fun. Why increasing your fun will lead to a better life

Posted on by

Take a moment right now to think about the current level of fun you’re having in your life. Seriously, take a second to rate how much fun you’re having on scale of 1 to 10. What number did you give yourself? Need to up your fun level? Read on to learn the critical importance of having fun and why increasing your fun will lead to a better life.

Wh having fun is good for you

Having fun. Why increasing your fun will lead to a better life

Are you having too much fun, too little or,  just enough? It’s important to strike a balance. Too much fun and you won’t be productive; too little fun and your life may lack fulfillment.

And let’s clarify “fun” for the purposes of this article. True fun activities are ones that are frivolously joyful. They have no agenda. And, they are things you do for the sake of doing them. Plus, they don’t produce any other outcome but to make you laugh or smile.

Fun is not a priority for many people

Most people don’t make fun a priority, though having fun is CRUCIAL. Most people put responsibility and their survival needs first. Technically though, isn’t fun a survival need? Ever thought of it this way? Think about it, if you’re always doing what you have to do (and not necessarily want to do) you’ll suck your levels of joy and happiness dry. You’ll mentally drain yourself. The joy you experience from living your life will dwindle.

Is a life worth living if it doesn’t inspire you? Really. Take a moment to consider that question. Isn’t the entire point of life to be happy. To enjoy what you’re up to? To feel fulfilled?

Why fun is critical to happiness

Research backs up these claims. Here’s why increasing your fun will lead to a better life…

Having fun amplifies your joy and fulfillment levels

This is probably a pretty obvious result that comes from having fun.  And it’s an important one. If you ask most people what they want most in life the response is commonly: “To be happy”.  That’s the entire reason for living. Having fun raises your happy factor. It has you produce more positive emotions, the ones linked to your pleasure centers of the brain.

When you engage in fun activities that get you in a state of feeling good, your brain learns to activate the pathways that produce positive emotions faster. The more you have fun the easier it is for you to live in the positive emotional states we all crave.

Having fun increases your productivity

When you have fun you create more energy. You physically rev up your body. Most people don’t understand that, “the more energy you make the more you have”. Think about it. Simply jumping up and down for a few minutes has you feel more full of energy. So, when you have fun you can actually create more physical energy, rather than drain it (which is what activities that are not fun do tend to do).

When you have fun, your brain goes into a relaxed state called your Default Mode Network. During this state your brain makes critical connections. Creativity happens when you allow your mind to lock into it’s DMN mode versus its – neuroscience term here – Task Mode Network. This is what state it’s in when you use your rational thinking brain regions to do activities that are necessary, but aren’t exactly “fun”.

Having fun has you create miraculous things in life and business

Because you allow your brain to go into creative states when you’re having fun, naturally you bring that innovation into your life. You start to see things you haven’t before. New pathways of action become obvious. Your ability to generate ideas is more of an asset in a today’s information-packed world than it ever has been before.

Having fun builds human connection and gives you a social edge

Many fun activities will cause you to interact with other people. Being open to new people, new communities will also help you foster great friends or business relationships.

Ask yourself this question: Is it more enjoyable to be around people who you consider fun, interesting and maybe a bit quirky, or people who are all serious all the time. Being fun gives you a social edge. You bring interesting ideas to the table. If you have more fun, and become more fun by nature, people will want to be around you.

Having fun gives you existential meaning

Fun seems purposeless, but it is in having fun that you connect to yourself in deep ways. Playing connects you to life. It connects you to yourself. It’s in moments of fun where you start to see an new level of life unfold.

Real fun versus fun fallacies 

Most people don’t really know how to have fun. You’ve been conditioned by living in a world where external gratification and fast fixes are a priority. There’s a difference between fun activities that cause you to smile and be giddy just thinking about them versus fun activities that drain your energy. Some activities in your current “fun list” might even wreak havoc and get in the way of what you truly want in life.

There are also activities are fun in moderation. For instance, cooking and eating a beautiful meal with a partner is a fun activity. Food is fun in this way. However, craving and devouring large portions of food without appreciating it makes food no longer fun.

The same goes with alcohol. It’s fun to share a glass or two of wine in a social setting with friends. But there’s a fun fallacy that comes with alcohol. For instance, consuming large amounts is fun at the time, but it drains your energy and messes with your mood. Fun that has a delayed negative payoff isn’t real fun.

Real fun activities are things you do for no reason at all. Painting a picture. Kayaking out on a lake. Playing tennis. Shopping for a new outfit. Playing an instrument. Sing! Come up with a roller derby name for yourself! Learn something totally new that’s something you’ve always want to explore.

How to have more fun

Let your freak flag fly

Be silly. Really silly. Be totally weird in the comfort of your home. With yourself and with anyone you live with. Shake your booty. Start the day with dancing. You can be fun anytime. You can bring fun anywhere you go. A simple way to connect to your fun side is to think of a fun time you had. Close your eyes and bring yourself back to that moment. It will put you in an immediate mental state of fun.

Do things without a reason

When you think “this is a useless thing to do”, it’s probably fun and very useful. Having that thought is a signal that you should go explore that pointless hobby or activity. You may find that pointless activities are the most valuable uses of your time. I dare you to try it.

Connect to your kid-self for inspiration

What were you obsessed with when you were a kid? Did you love to sing? Dance? Read? Or were you one of those kids that was always on the go, running around expending energy and playing sports? Think about what you loved and start there. Go do an activity that is in line with something you used to love doing, but don’t do anymore.

Spend time around or interacting with kids or animals

This is sure to unleash your fun side. Kids and animals are often a direct line to getting into a mood of play and fun. It’s natural to them because they haven’t developed or don’t have the rational brain regions that adults have. (In other words, they don’t have a boring switch)

What can you do that is fun today? What activity can you plan that is fun to do next week. Inject some frivolous fun into your life right away and see for yourself the difference it makes. Your world might just get a bit more colorful.

Related articles to this “Having Fun” post:

 

How to achieve your dreams

How to achieve your dreams

Posted on by

Statistically speaking, most people have consistent dreams for accomplishments they’d like to achieve, over and over, year after year, but they never pursue those dreams. They never take action on the things they really want in life.

Most people settle for a comfortable, okay, good life, not an extraordinary one. Which means, that most people never experience feeling truly fulfilled. Most people aren’t sucking the juice out of life they are taking a sip.

Why do you think this statistically true? Why are 70% of Americans living lives they are kind of, sometimes, inspired by?

The most basic answer to that question is this: Most people don’t believe they can have what they want. Not believing messes up the whole pathway to achieving what they dream about. There are a few reasons why this happens:

  1. Most people are conditioned at a young age to believe that you can’t “have it all”. Some people even learn that if they do want it all they’re greedy. It’s the “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” principle.
  2. Most people are surrounded by people that are living comfortable, decent, average lives. They start to shape what’s possible for them by what’s possible for others. Their own bar in life then gets determined by the people closest to them.
  3. Most people relate to their future from their now. They look at what they want and if it’s a far cry from what they have they often decide it’s too hard. Or maybe they go after their dream for a while but when they fail a few times they decide they aren’t good enough and settle instead.

We all deeply desire to achieve what we want in all areas of our lives. Problem is, most people squash their own desires because of the three points above.

This means, YOU are the only thing in the way of you not realizing your dreams! Bottom: If you don’t believe you can, you won’t take action. It’s that simple.

So how do you cultivate your belief muscle? How do you go from not believing in yourself to believing?

How to achieve your dreams

Honor your little voice. Everyone has a little voice in their head. Some call it the Universe. Some call it their authentic self. Some call it their higher consciousness. Some call it God. If you listen, you’ll hear your little voice speaking to you. It’s always directing you to what you want and need to do.

Honor that voice. If you don’t, you’ll create resistance against what you authentically, instinctively want and know is right for you. Think of your relationship to your inner voice like an elastic band. The more you pull away, the more resistance you create. Not honoring what you authentically want is a recipe for struggling to feel fulfilled and at peace with your life.

Incremental progress. Set small goals for yourself that are easy for you to achieve. If you want to lose 30 lbs for instance, focus on what you need to do in week one, such as: Buy workout clothes, a gym membership and go to the gym once. When you accomplish something simple acknowledge yourself for making progress. Accomplishment precedes accomplishment. Start small and you’ll gain momentum to keep going.

Own your failures. In anything you’re trying to achieve you will likely fail in some way. It’s more likely that’ll you’ll experience failure than not (especially when going after giant dreams). So, if you want to achieve a big dream you have to make friends with failure. The simplest way, is to use failure as a metric. When you fail you’ll learn what not to do and that will get you closer to what you need to do to produce the outcome you want.

Learn from each failure and you’re good. Anytime you fail ask yourself: What do I need to do next time to achieve the outcome I want?

Surround yourself with growth environments and people. You are strongly influenced by the people and environments you put yourself in. You will unconsciously take on their behaviors and set your bar to their level. Instead, set your bar by people you admire. Model their behaviors. And bring other people to your level if they have a low bar for themselves.

Obsess about your passions. Sometimes you’ll decide you need to lay a dream to rest because you realize it isn’t for you anymore. That’s fine and part of the process. It comes with growth. But, there will be dreams you have and things you want that speak to you and don’t go away! Listen to what these are. They point to your passions and the gifts you have to share with the world.

When you discover what you love, want to learn more about, excel at, and want to share with others, get obsessed. You’ll start to see more pathways opening up that you need to follow. There’s a brain region that allows you to key into aspects of your physical environment that you decide your passionate about learning more about.

Willingness to work for the dream for the sake of the dream. You have to want the dream so bad that you want to work for the dream even when you can’t see how to get there or if you ever will. That’s the kind of attitude it takes to get there. The good news is, if you have this kind of mindset you will eventually get there. It’s predictable. If you take action and you’re strategic you’ll inevitably win!

Personally, I’m grateful and blessed to have learned very early on in life of the personal power I carry and that I am able to make my wildest dreams come true. This has come with much struggle and adversity. But through it all, most importantly, I’ve learned that there is no way else to live but to go after your dreams. Life sparkles when you do. And who doesn’t want to wake up every day to a life that sparkles and a feeling of deep fulfillment and gratitude?

How to be likeable

How to be likeable …How to become the most sought after person in the room

Posted on by

How to be likeable

Learn the habits of exceptionally likeable people

Learn how to be an exceptionally likeable person…

It’s a scientifically proven fact that all people unconsciously answer two questions when they meet someone for the first time:

  1. Do I trust this person?
  2. Do I respect this person?

All people do this. When we trust, we feel safe. It’s linked to our base survival needs.

So where do you think you fall on the likeability scale? Think about for a moment.

Even if you self-rate fairly well, you are going to want to up your game in establishing trust and credibility with people you want to build relationships with. If you want to know how to be likeable – and for people to see that you are a trustworthy and credible person, who they must get to know – then you have found the right resource.

To cut to the chase and get our downloadable magic laws of likability,  it’s free here. Or grab our People Magnet Formula ebook on Amazon. (TIP: Free to Amazon Prime members.)

Or read on…

Here are some things you can do to learn how to be likeable:

How to be liked as soon as someone meets you

1. First and foremost, you need to be great with you

Likeable people are charismatic, engaging and curious.

Likable people are charismatic, engaging and curious.

Consider that your relationship with yourself is your foundation to everything. If you don’t trust or believe in yourself than no one else will. Likable people like themselves!

So, focusing on building and nourishing a great relationship with you is paramount for your success in all areas of life.

When you’re good with you, people will feel your vibe. They’ll feel they can trust you immediately. You’ll exude confidence and be someone other people like to be around.

2.Do what you say you’ll do like it’s a law

Honor your word. When you tell someone you’re going to be somewhere at a certain time or do something, DO IT!

When a challenge arises and you can’t do what you said you’d do, as soon as you realize the issue, communicate about it and re-promise. Be someone people can depend on because it’s rare. It’s a simple way to immediately show that you’re someone others can count on.

3.Use your body to express warmth and approachability

Use body language signals to express that you’re inviting and friendly. Don’t cross your arms or legs. Smile. When you’re listening to people lean in or nod your head to show you’re listening to them.

And dress polished too. You may also want to consider you’re unique style because they way you dress attracts specific people.

4.Be hyper-curious

The secret to how to be likeable is to be charismatic. Charisma is a quality unique to likeable people.They get highly engaged in others and they focus on them. Let people you’re with lead the conversation. When they speak, be highly interested and engage them. Make them feel as if what they are saying is magical. Not in a fake way. Really find something intriguing in what they are saying and get curious about it. Listen carefully. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is fascinating. Find out what makes them tick. They will walk away feeling listened to and experience that you really care – and they will like you.

5.Be authentic and truthful

Great people can easily detect liars and inauthenticity. So to learn how to be liked, one of the traits you need to take on is be open and honest. There’s nothing to hide.

Admit to your mistakes when you make them. We all make mistakes and when you are honest about them, you show you’re someone that can be trusted. Tell on yourself. Here’s a quick example: “Not very many  people know this, but I was fired from my first  job. But I kind of deserved it.  After that I smartened up. But what I learn from that was…”

Use these five tactics and you’ll be instantly likeable.

And, if you’re someone who wants to be seen as extraordinary in business and life you’ll want to grab this free PDF guide: 11 Laws of Likeability. It’ll have you make incredible first and lasting impressions with everyone you meet.

How to be liked