5 Easy Ways to Fake Your Personality

Posted 7 months ago at 2:30 pm. 2 comments

Wouldn’t it be so amazing if you could fake your personality and be instantly liked by anybody, anytime? Of course it would! Who wouldn’t want to have a charming personality 24/7 - that kind of thing would come in handy in life! But being a bit more realistic, sometimes we are forced to go into situations where having a better personality would immensely pay off. Sometimes we need to add a little smoke and mirrors to make ourselves appear great, even if we don’t feel that way.

There are five easy, simple ways to fake your personality:

1. Dress comfortably for you.
2. Be prepped and prepared for what you’re going into.
3. Smile!
4. Pretend you are interested and observant to everybody.
5. Look fully relaxed and at ease with yourself.

And now, getting into greater detail:

1. Dress comfortably for you.

Forget about “dressing for success”! Most people feel uncomfortable when they step up their wardrobe, because dressing to the nines feels unnatural to them. And if dressing up feels unnatural to you, you’re not going to be comfortable and at ease with yourself - no matter how hard you try. The best advice is to dress slightly above what you consider “normal”, but not so decked out that you feel out of your league. You should look fabulous, of course, but not like you are about to walk down the red carpet. Dressing up comfortably can naturally make you feel a step above the rest - and if you feel great about yourself, your personality will shine!

2. Be prepped and prepared for what you are going into.

You may be all smiles and have this totally fake, charismatic air going on, but that house of cards is going to collapse if you don’t have a clue how to talk the talk. If you’re going to a party, research a bit on the guests and what their interests are, for the purpose of small talk. If you’re going to join a club, find out all you can about the organization’s topic. If you’re giving a presentation, learn all you can about the subject and go all out! Present yourself as an expert, and people will think you are amazingly witty and knowledgeable!

3. Smile!

This one should be obvious, but a lot of people don’t smile. How many times have you ever walked in any store - say, the supermarket - and said to yourself “Wow, everybody looks so… sad today…”? When you smile yourself, you automatically boost up your mood (try it right now!) And smiles are contagious, as well - we all know when one person starts smiling, we all start smiling, even if we have no idea what that one person is smiling about. We automatically think of smiling, carefree people as having bubbly, effervescent personalities; on the opposite hand, we also automatically think of frowning, sad people as having sullen, upset personalities. Turn that frown upside down, and fake that smile!

4. Pretend you are interested and observant to everybody.

Not interested in what somebody is telling you? Fake it all the way. Nod your head when they say something that sounds profound, open up your eyes as if you’re thinking “Wow, that’s so fascinating!”, and use hand motions when it’s your turn to talk. People with personality are naturally interested in what everybody else is doing, thinking, and saying. If you want to fake having the personality of a social butterfly, you have to be able to give the impression that you actually care what’s going on around you. Other people love to blather on about their lives, hobbies, whatever, even if it’s the most boring topic on Earth. Look interested in what everybody else is saying, and you’ll appear to have a wonderful personality!

5. Look fully relaxed and at ease with yourself.

People who are the most affable are people who constantly look fully relaxed and at ease with themselves. No matter how many people they talk to in a given day, socializing appears to be a natural part of them. If you want to fake having a great personality, you must make your movements, your voice, and your movements seem very natural and fluid, not choppy, and mechanical. Nothing says “fake personality!” more than having the social grace of a robot. This tip might take some practice, but it’ll pay off in the long run.

So what are you waiting for? Start faking your golden personality today!

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Posted 7 months, 1 week ago at 9:30 am. 2 comments

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” - Mark Twain

Action, action, action! Personal development skills all revolve around that one word - action. Whether it be installing a new habit, starting up a new lifestyle, or even taking the guts to quit your unsatisfactory job, if you don’t take action towards your goals, those goals are worthless. Hopes and dreams take you only so far; you have to add in the last few steps to make them a reality.

Speaking your mind and actions are something that go hand and hand with one another. Often times, people are able to dish out their opinions and advice on a multitude of subjects… sometimes when the person doesn’t even know anything about the subject. Of course, this leads to major incongruence. Apparently we speak our mind, but rarely take our own advice.

In late December / early January, lots of person development bloggers wrote on the subject of “New Years resolutions”. Everything from why your resolutions will not fail to keeping up with your resolutions was covered. Consequently, I wonder how many people’s resolutions failed because they didn’t take action on what they truly desire; I also wonder how many of those same personal development blogger’s New Years resolutions failed themselves because they didn’t take their own advice.

Advice is great. This website has a multitude of advice for you, from motivational pieces to pieces that I hope can change your life in some great way. But this website - and all other websites similiar to it - can only do so much. It can’t push you to take action on your plans. This website can motivate, can inform, can change, and can mold you into a brand new personal, capable of amazing things. But motivation, being informed, and changing and molding yourself is only part of the equation. Action is the missing piece.

You can have the most perfect, detailed plans on how to get exactly what you want, but without action, those plans are better used as birdcage lining. You can be the most motivational speaker out there, but if you refuse to take action to share your talent with the world, what good is your gift? Action is the key to unlocking your destiny.

And it doesn’t even have to be the right action to begin with! Lots of people start out on one path, turn around, then start on a brand new path when it didn’t work out the way they expected. That’s fine! Too often we get in this phase of action paralysis, when we decide we can’t move on because we have to “explore all of our options and decide what to do”. That’s not proactive. That’s not living. That’s excusing yourself from making real progress towards your dreams. I’ll be the first one to say planning is essential in any endeavor. You need to know exactly what you want and a fuzzy idea of how to get there. But to use planning as an excuse to stay stagnant is for losers. (You’re not a loser, are you? I hope not!) Just pick a path and go down it. It doesn’t matter if it’s exactly what you want or not. Your life is going to go by anyway - you better make the most out of every day. Find out later that’s the wrong path for you? Ditch it and start a new one. You have nothing to lose!

Nothing to lose at all. What’s the absolute worst that can happen? You go down the wrong path and end up back where you started? You go down another wrong path and end up worse off than you started? So what! Just pick a different route and go down that! The worst thing of all is no action, because if you don’t take action, you’re no better off than where you are now.

I know a lot of you who read this article are personal development fans too. But be honest with yourself. A year from now - when you’ve all but forgotten your New Years resolutions for 2008 - are you going to be staring at a bunch of empty goals and plans from the past year, neatly typed up and printed out? I hope not.

Take some action today. Decide on a goal, get a basic plan written up on how to achieve it, and move towards it! And whatever you do, don’t give up. Don’t ever stop taking that action to get what you want.