10 Personality Development Tips To Cultivate A Magnetic Personality...

1) It’s All About Emotional Intelligence

Building character is pretty much the same as cultivating emotional intelligence. A person with a strong character knows how to deal with the emotional ups and downs of life and is able to stay grounded and centered even if he’s surrounded by chaos. While classical intelligence is all about your ability to solve logical problems, emotional intelligence is all about your ability to solve emotional “problems”.

2) Keep Facing Your Fears

One of the best ways to develop a strong personality is to continuously face your fears. Character growth only happens if you get out of your comfort zone every once in a while. Stop living your life the easy way. Stop hiding from the world. Whatever you are afraid of right now is what allows your soul to grow most. Instead of avoiding your fears you should learn to embrace them and have trust that they will point you the right direction. Always go where your fears are.

3) Find A Struggle Or Hustle In Life

A great personality development tip is to find some sort of struggle or hustle in your life. Find something that really challenges you and then go for it. Proactively choose a difficult and tough path, knowing that it will allow you to grow. Living life the easy way is really living life the hard way. And living life the hard was is really living life the easy way. You need that struggle to build a strong personality.

4) Hang Around People That Challenge You

Apart from doing things that challenge you, it’s also very rewarding to surround yourself with people who are “better” than you. There’s a saying in personal development that we’re the average of our five best friends. If you surround yourself with people who are “go-getters” and push hard to live the life of their dreams, it will challenge you to do the same. Always remember this: The people around you can either inspire you or pull you down. It’s your choice who you hang out with.

5) Learn Form Pain And Chaos

There’s only two ways to deal with pain and chaos: You either drown in it and let it eat away your soul or you transform it. By dealing with pain, adversity and chaos in your life you proactively have to activate all your resources in order not to drown. This creates a lot of opportunity for growth. The more you get hurt, embarrassed and beaten down by life, the more you will be forced to ground and centre yourself.

6) Find Your Purpose In Life

Surrender to something bigger than yourself. I personally believe that one doesn’t have a purpose, one creates a purpose. It’s up to you to discover what your mission in life is and then to surrender fully to it. People with strong character always dedicate their work and energy to something bigger than themselves. They’ve found their purpose. And that’s what gives them their magnetic personality.

7) Discover And Explore The Opposite Sex

Fulfilling relationships and horrible breakups offer some of life’s most rewarding lessons. Don’t hide from the opposite sex. If you’re young, go out and explore your sexuality. Open your heart, fall in love, get hurt, get back up and discover who you really are and who you really want as a partner. In this process you’ll learn to get more in touch with your masculine or feminine polarity, which again will make you more attractive and magnetic as a man or woman.

8) Travel The World

Another great tip is to travel the world. If you want to get the most out of it, travel alone. By getting out of your “cultural comfort zone” and having to deal with all sorts of new problems, you inevitably will grow as a person. Especially if you’re traveling alone, there’s no one there to help you or solve problems for you. You need to organise everything, you need to manage risks, struggle with foreign languages and navigate your way through all the difficulties that will show up.

9) Get A Mentor

Having a mentor or self-development teacher in life can be very rewarding and help you grow as a person. Find people who already have a lot of wisdom and character and learn from them. You could get a mentor, coach, consultant or even a psychotherapist. The emotionally deeper the learning process is, the more rewarding it will be. In fact, going to a good psychotherapist might be one of the best and fastest ways to become more grounded, assertive and strong as a person. You don’t have to figure this out all by yourself, isn’t this some good news?

10) Become A “Giver”

People with strong character care more about giving value than about taking value. Shift from a value-leeching paradigm to a value-giving paradigm. Help other people and have good intentions. Instead of asking yourself “what is in for me?”, ask yourself “how can I help this person?”. This way you’ll leave the world better than it was, and people just like to hang around value-givers a lot more than value-leeches.

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Presentation skills

"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't; the other half have nothing to say and keep saying it."

Anyone can give a speech. Not everyone can give an effective speech. To give an effective speech there are 6 elements you should consider.

1. Be Prepared - Being prepared is by far the most important element. How many times do you practice your speech? As a general rule, you should spend about 30 hours of preparation and rehearsal time for every hour you will be speaking. Use a tape recorder or videotape yourself. This will help you to get an accurate picture of how you speak.



2. Give of Yourself - Use personal examples and stories in your speech whenever possible. Make sure your stories help to emphasize or support your point. The stories must match your message. Use examples from your personal and professional life to make your point. In either case be willing to give of yourself by sharing some of yourself with the audience.



3. Stay Relaxed - To stay relaxed you should be prepared. Also, focus on your message and not the audience. Use gestures, including walking patterns. Practice the opening of your speech and plan exactly how you will say it. The audience will judge you in the first 30 seconds they see you.



4. Use Natural Humor - Don't try to be a stand up comedian. Use natural humor by poking fun at yourself and something you said or did. Be sure NOT to make fun of anyone in the audience. People will laugh with you when you poke fun at yourself but don't over do it.



5. Plan Your Body & Hand Positions - During the practice of your speech look for occasions where you can use a gesture. Establish three positions where you will stand and practice not only how to move to them but where in your speech do you move. Pick three positions, one on center stage, one to your right, and one to your left. Do not hide behind the lectern. When you do move maintain eye contact with the audience.



6. Pay attention to all details - Make sure you have the right location (school, hotel, room & time). Make sure you know how to get to where you are speaking. Ask how large an audience you will be speaking to. Make sure you bring all your visual aids and plenty of handouts. Arrive early so you can check out where you will be speaking and make any last minute adjustments.


It is very important that you pay attention to even the smallest details. You can never overplan. Remember, "He who fails to plan is planning for failure"

Speak In Public With No Fear

Over the years, I finally overcome my fear of public speaking. I can now speak at any function unprepared and even though the nervousness is still there, I am able to control it. It was not easy but I made it with some help from books and a few techniques I develop myself.

Hopefully these tricks will be able to help you as they had helped me in overcoming fear of public speaking.

1) Admit nervousness

All you have to do is admit that you are a bit nervous speaking to your audience. When you do this, the audience will be more forgiving if your nervousness shows up later on. More importantly you will feel more relaxed now that they are not expecting a world-class presentation. Imagine their surprise when you gave them the best presentation ever despite your nervousness.

The best way to do this is by joking about it. Here’s an example of a good one. “On the way here, only God and I knew what I will be presenting. (looking a bit nervous) Now, only God knows.”

2) Redefine your audience

Redefine your audience generally means changing how you see your audience. Instead of seeing them as lecturers who are evaluating you, maybe you can convince yourself that they are all fellow students who are in queue to present after you. They are all equally nervous so there is no reason why you should be too.

Or perceive them as long lost friends that you haven’t seen for 10 years. This way you can maintain eye contact trying to figure out where you have seen him before. To the audiences, they will see a very friendly and personal presentation.

Do not try to convince yourself that they are babies in diapers or that nobody is around as suggested by some books. It is very hard to convince yourself that no one is around when you are actually speaking to them.

 

3) Invest in visual aids

Imagine a presentation with beautiful PowerPoint slides and even more impressive notes given to each of your audience members. Half of the time, their eyes will not be on you. They will read through the notes and your fancy slides. This will help a lot as you can then speak to the people who are not looking at you. When they look at you, you just change your focus to other people who are not looking. Giving a speech to people who are not looking at you is always easier.

4) Make mistakes intentionally

This is another trick I encourage you to try. Once I “accidentally” dropped my notes on the floor, and while picking them up, I warned the audiences that the presentation will be more confusing after this. I heard some laughter from the floor.

The idea is to gain control of your audience. If you can make them laugh and be more interactive with you, your presentation will have that casual feel to it which will make it more memorable than others. Ultimately you will find it easier to do.

5) Speak to one person at a time

One of the most terrifying things about public speaking is the crowd. Just by looking at the crowd, all in silence just to hear you speak, will send shivers down your spine. To overcome this, you just need to speak to one person at a time.

Choose one member of your audience and dedicate your whole presentation to him or her. Just assume that everyone else is not paying attention. When someone asks you a question, change your focus to that person and answer the question as if the two of you are in a coffee shop chatting away. Isn’t that the most relaxing way to handle a crowd?

6) Be impressive with personal opinion

Just like blogging, everyone can copy an article and paste it onto their blog. However, people read blogs not only to know about things happening but to know what that particular blogger’s opinion is on the matter.

When you speak or give a presentation, try to squeeze in a few of your personal thoughts on the matter. Of course these should be prepared early on. However, you should make it as if the ideas are “just in” while you are presenting. That will differentiate your presentation from the rest, and when you see the interested look on the faces of your audience, it will elevate your presentation to another new level, a level where you start having fun.

7) Have fun experimenting

This is the most important tips of all. Have fun with the crowd. Try new ways to give the best presentation to your audience. Maybe experiment with a new funny approach, or walk around the hall instead of being static on the stage. Have fun with experimenting on human behavior and you will see that public speaking is not that bad after all.

Remember that there are no failures, only different results.

Have fun!