Distance students at the University of Practical Psychology, as a rule, achieve excellent results in working on themselves: they “pump” in all the parameters that can be pumped, and quickly enough. How do we do it?
It’s a matter of principle. The principle of choosing the right skills to practice.
Any skill can be assessed according to two criteria:
- Simple or compound
- Depends only on you or not only on you
It’s important: for training, select only simple skills that depend only on you.
A simple skill is clear how to do it — for example, smile. A composite skill consists of many simple ones, and it is not always immediately clear which ones — for example, the ability to speak well in public.
The second criterion is easier — you can easily determine whether the skill depends only on you. Keeping your posture depends only on you, but the ability to negotiate also depends on the other side.
I will give examples:
- Watching for relaxation is a simple skill that depends only on you.
- Being confident is an integral skill that depends only on you.
- Keeping eye contact with the interlocutor is a simple skill, it depends not only on you
- The ability to negotiate well is an integral skill that depends not only on you
Main thesis: you can effectively develop only simple skills that depend only on you. Do not set yourself development goals in compound skills or in skills that are beyond your control.
funny example: a familiar auto-instructor told how he was joking with students. When they ask how to avoid an accident on the road, he shrugs and replies: «Just don’t crash into other cars.»
Good advice! It is clear that this is a joke, but if you think about it, the truth just happens. Don’t crash and that’s it — that’s the solution. But it is impossible to train such a skill, it is a composite skill that depends not only on you. In order not to crash, you need to do a lot of different simple actions, and the situation in any case will depend, among other things, on the actions of other drivers.
How to put into practice
For example, you want to become more sociable. A skill that depends on you, but is a composite one — immediately break it down into simple ones and train them. Practice the ability to quickly get into any conversation, the ability to support any topic, acting skills, do facial gymnastics — you can find many simple skills.
For example, if you want to learn how to negotiate — a skill that depends not only on you — look for exactly which part can depend only on you, for example, the use of «Total Yes», «Declaration of intentions» or the ability to ask the right open questions. After that, train exactly the part that depends on you and during any communication, concentrate not on the result of the conversation “We need to agree”, but on your fulfillment of “Total Yes”, “Declaration of intentions” and everything else.
I will repeat again!
- choose only simple skills for development
- to develop, choose skills that depend only on you
If you keep these two principles, your development will go much faster and the results will please you.
And I’ll add: if you look to the workshop exercisesyou will see that they built on these principles.:
- Time tracking is a simple skill, it depends only on you
- Healthy sleep is a simple skill, it depends only on you
- Writing goals for the year is also a simple task that depends only on you.
Who wants to — you can check all the other exercises, make sure everything is correct. That is why the work in the workshop goes as quickly and efficiently as possible! But even if you decide to practice some skills on your own, follow this principle and you will be satisfied with the result.