Legendary Geek

17 Reasons you’re a TERRIBLE Negotiator

2012-08-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

At one time or another in our lives we had to do some form of negotiating.

Whether you’re an investment bank CEO, insurance salesman or simply trying to buy something, negotiation skills are the key to getting what you want for what you want.

The problem is, not many people can negotiate effectively and they often either get the short end of the stick or are completely ripped off without even knowing it.

My guess is you’re probably one of these people. Why?

1. You don’t know what you want

Sometimes, you don’t know exactly what you want which puts you at a terrible disadvantage that other people can take advantage of. For example, you can’t just walk into a car dealership and say, “I’m looking for a car that’s nice and affordable,” you’ll probably walk out of there paying more than you expected for a car you didn’t really want. Car salesmen like other people want to squeeze the most from any deal and they are trained to do it. So you know they will use every trick in the book to get what they want.

Before you even start negotiating, you have to know exactly what you want and stick to it. Using a car dealership as an example, you have to have your mind set to buying a Prius. Keep your mind focused on the idea that you want a Prius. Do your research beforehand and find out what is the best for you.

2. You don’t say what you want

You know what you want, the idea is in your head but you don’t actually say anything. You let people tell you what you want or give you an offer without providing your own counter offer and in the end you may actually get convinced that it’s the best. Don’t let this happen!

How can you negotiate if you don’t say and stand by what you want? Once you do this, then the negotiating can begin.

3. You have a horrible delivery

It’s not enough to know what to say, you have to be able to deliver too. Have you heard the way lawyers speak during the case? Their delivery is impeccable. They speak confidently and carefully and that’s why they are excellent at negotiating as well.

4. You love arguing

Some people might think negotiating is very similar to arguing. Actually it is but with one crucial difference. At the end of an argument, one person is left happy while another is left upset and sometimes humiliated.

Now ask yourself, would you go through with a deal, if in the end you felt humiliated? Of course not! This is not the goal of a negotiation. At the end of negotiation both people are supposed to feel satisfied that they made the right decision and they are more than likely going to want to deal with you again.

5. You talk too much

It is important to talk but it’s also important NOT to talk too much. When people talk too much, they tend to reveal a lot of their weaknesses and sometimes just simply irritate their counterpart.

6. You’re short tempered

When you don’t get what you want, you immediately throw a fit. No one wants to negotiate with someone like this especially in the business world. Easily getting upset shows immaturity which people don’t want to deal with.

If you have temper problems, then you have to work on them, otherwise it could cost you.

7. You’re not realistic

You start out extremely high or extremely low. Most of the time, this is just not realistic. Though it’s good to start higher or lower than you expect, you have to be sensible. You can’t sell someone a bottle of water for $10,000, even if you are stranded in the middle of the desert. Most people would rather take their chances if there is hope of getting a better deal somewhere else.

8. You panic

When the negotiation isn’t going like you planned, you panic and take the deal you don’t really want. Panic is the worst thing you can do because this can be exploited. Keep your cool and you’re well on your way to becoming a cut throat negotiator.

9. You don’t do your research

You never do your research before you make a deal and that’s why you’re easily manipulated and get the short end of the stick. Learn everything you can first so that you can spot lies and easily estimate values on situations.

10. You don’t choose your environment

You negotiate in an environment that you’re not comfortable in. Sometimes it’s good to have home field advantage over somebody. If it’s possible, take them to your favorite restaurant or somewhere you feel more comfortable. This will give you confidence, help reduce stress and you’ll feel less nervous.

11. You don’t know your counterpart

You never know who you’re dealing with. You either underestimate or overestimate them and usually end up losing out. You have to know what type of person you’re dealing with and you can use this to your advantage. For example, If necessary, buy them a small gift they would enjoy, even a drink would do. This would lighten the mood and make negotiations go smoothly. You can also use their weaknesses to your advantage.

12. You don’t have options

You go in without having any options so you become desperate. You have to have and maintain your walk away power so that if you don’t end up settling, you have other people who can make you the deal you want. Plus, if you can mention some of your possible alternatives during your conversation it puts pressure on them.

13. You can’t compromise

You’re too stubborn and you refuse to make a compromise. Sometimes what you want just isn’t feasible. It’s hard to deal with but you just have to accept the fact and compromise.

14. Your body language sucks

Body language can tell a lot about what you’re really thinking. Your voice can scream confidence but your body gives you away. Your body can tell other people whether you’re desperate or not. You have to learn good body language and practice your poker face to be an effective negotiator.

15. You don’t expect the unexpected

You’re usually taken by surprise because you didn’t anticipate the different directions the conversation would go and you can’t respond accordingly. You are supposed to expect the unexpected.

16. You don’t ask the right questions

You don’t ask the type of questions that bring progress. You have to know and ask questions that are highly relevant and a negotiation will go the way you want.

17. You don’t practice

Practice makes perfect. I’m not trying to sound cliché; I’m just stating a fact. When you do something over and over, you develop a knack for it. Any time you come across something that could turn out to be an argument; you should try to NEGOTIATE instead. It will develop your skills while at the same time save you a lot of time in screaming and hair pulling.

Photo Credit: Global News Pointer

How to Be More Social… With Everyone

2012-08-10T08:28:00.006-07:00

Though a nine hour debate with your closest friends about Kirk vs Picard can be extremely exciting and fulfilling, it doesn't doesn't do much to expand your social circle.

What about getting to know other types of people?

How awesome would it be to have the social skills of the likes of Van Wilder, Hitch or Dwight Stifler?

Life would be epic, wouldn’t it?

When you walk into a room, everyone knows who you are and is dying to talk to you.

You throw the type of parties that people love and want to attend.

You know everyone, so you get invited to major events and get a lot of extra perks.

So how do you get there? It’s actually easier than you think. But it does take one very important thing on your part. That’s getting out of your comfort zone. After all, you’re usually there and how’s that working for you?

My guess is probably not as well as you want.

Advantages of Better Social Skills

First let me go through some advantages of improving your social skills. These should get you hungrier and more motivated to become a better version of yourself.

Relationship building: Identifying with people can lead to relationships and a times amazing friendships. In life, you can’t really succeed without the help of other people. You have to have the skill of leveraging the relationships you have to get what you want. As the saying goes, no man or woman Jis an island.

So, imagine you’re friends with a club owner, bartender of door bouncer. Wouldn’t it be a breeze to get in? You would also get a lot of extra perks like VIP access and free drinks plus think about the social proof. People love getting to know people who know other people.

Amazing communication skills: You have to be able relate to different types of people especially when you want to express both your thoughts and ideas as well as get a message across. Building your influence would be a breeze. Just look at how Barack Obama is able to move entire crowd with only his words.

Good communication skills can also get you out of a dead end job or better yet get you promoted! Nowadays it’s not just about qualifications; it’s also about social skills. You have to be able to deal with people if you want to lead. Most fairly hard working but socially inept people wonder why others who are seemingly less qualified go further in their careers.

Improving your social skills (Getting Started)

Learn to talk

It’s not enough to make words come out of your mouth to form a sentence. You also have to have excellent conversational techniques, most of which have nothing to do with your actual words.

Examples of these are:

Good body language: As they say, actions speak louder than words. If you look like you’re completely bored to death, people won’t like talking to you. It’s definitely a big turn off. So sit straight and make your body face whoever you’re talking to. It shows that you’re interested.
Maintain eye contact: Don’t go overboard with this or you’ll look creepy. Just give enough eye contact to show that you are really engaged in the conversation and people will enjoy talking to you.
Smile: Make it look like you can’t live without their beautiful words. Smile and nod in agreement once in a while.
Forget about yourself: Become more interested in others. People love talking about themselves. Use this fact to your advantage! Encourage people to keep talking by asking them questions about themselves. This is the most powerful trick of most excellent conversationalists. I can guarantee you that you don’t even have to say more than 10 sentences in a 2 hour conversation and people will love you for it. Also spice it up with a few "really" and "you don’t say" hooks… trust me. Also disagree with what they say once in a while. You will gain a lot of respect that way.

Train yourself to share your thoughts

It’s good to be able to regularly share your thoughts and ideas. This shows that you are a real person and you have something valuable to give to the world. Regularly sharing your thoughts helps you make the transition from passive to active. Just make sure you’re not rude. Be respectful and don’t overdo it. People don’t like someone who talks too much either.

Update!

Get updated! What’s going on in the world right now? What’s the latest in pop culture? Find an answer to these and you will have excellent conversational topics. It’s that easy.

Get cultured

Try to get yourself interested in art, music and learning about other cultures. You can even learn a new language on top of this. You will then have a better approach to dealing with different types of people. After all, what’s acceptable in one culture might be taboo in another.

Practice Patience

You have to be patient. You can even win the hearts of the most difficult of people if you just practice patience. This is probably the hardest thing to do because some people can be excruciatingly obnoxious and make you feel like doing nothing more than punching them in the face.

Learn from the best

Learn from people you already know who are reasonably popular. You can be direct and ask them how they do it or you can just observe them for yourself. You can then adapt some of their traits with your own unique style.

You can also search the net, there are a lot of experts and books that will help you become more social. You could also continue reading Legendary Geek for more ways to make life awesome! J

Follow the people

The best place to learn how to deal with people is not on the internet but by actually dealing with people! You can go to parties, clubs, concerts, rallies. It can be anything that potentially involves directly dealing with people.

A few years back, I took a job working at a fast food place for a couple of months to help pay for a new laptop. Though I was only doing it for the money, I learnt a lot about dealing with all sorts of people. It was frustrating at times but it was an interesting experience.

Taking up an activity that forces you to socialize can be good practice. You don’t have to work at a fast food place like I did. You can also play sports which also help you develop a sense of teamwork.

Research shows that retirees who engaged in social activities were far much happier than those who just sat home and watched TV all day in their free time.

The single most important silver bullet I can give you is to become more interested in others. Turn the “me” into a “you” and more and more people will love you for it.

The Beginner's Guide To Grabbing Life By The Balls

2012-08-06T15:25:00.001-07:00

About four years ago, I made a decision that probably changed my life.

I was 15, doing horribly in school (a C if I got lucky), shy, had no girlfriend and generally lived a mediocre, uninteresting life. I never took risks and never achieved anything. After all, if you don’t try then you can’t fail right? I could honestly say that the highlights back then were things like finishing a video game before my friends or rocking the latest shiny gadget.

That’s not to say I don’t still enjoy these things (Geek for Life!) I just realized that I wasn’t living up to my full potential. I was letting opportunities pass me by and when I thought about my future, I saw myself in a dead-end job with no real achievements I can be proud of. In short, I was not living, I merely existed.

Of course it took being told that I missed my chance with a girl I had a crush on who by some miracle liked me back. Kind of surprising what things can motivate you. It sort of forced me to re-examine where my life was heading.

I became determined to grab life by the balls, even if it killed me and you can too (well... except for getting killed part.)

Getting Started

Before you continue reading, you have to be sure that this is what you want. The things you are going to have to do will take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to experience most of what life has to offer.

So be warned. This guide can and will increase your awesome levels by over 1000% if you actually take action!

Enough of that… Let’s get down to business.

Discover Your Inner Geek

Wikipedia defines a geek as someone who is heavily interested in a hobby or subject. So basically, it’s all about knowing yourself and following your passions. Think about it, when you’re doing something you love don’t you just feel the rush? Of course you do.

Want to know what your potential you have the potential to develop? Think about something that you do almost regularly that you love and somehow seem to lose track of time while doing.

It can be anything like doing sports, writing, playing guitar or singing. If you love it, do it and practice till you rock!

It is important to choose one or two things at a time though because this trains your brain to focus attention and get things done. You don’t want be a “Jack of all trades but master of none.”

The beauty about becoming an expert in something is that you can even turn it into profit! Believe me; almost any passion can be turned into profit. Even something as seemingly pointless as playing video games!

Think Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. For those who don’t know him, Jonathan is living proof that money can be made by simply being good at video games. He started as a professional gamer winning over $500,000 from competitions and now he sells his own line of computer equipment. Not bad for a video game geek.

Another example of simple passion turned sudden unexpected profit is Ana White, an Alaskan mom whose love of carpentry saw her starting a blog and building a family supporting business around it. Not bad for a carpentry geek either!

Where there’s a passion there’s almost always like minded people who you can connect with.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Though it’s important to develop your passions, you shouldn’t let them take over your life to the point that you neglect other very important things. Keep it balanced.

Take up something new

Take up something new. If opportunities aren’t coming your way now then there’s obviously something you’re doing wrong, right? After all Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Are you insane? By this logic you probably are.

When you take up new things you can discover talents you never knew you had. Those can be turned into powerful passions that can lead you to great things.

What I do is take up something that I would never think of taking up. Something that I once told myself I would never be caught dead doing or I was scared to do. You should do this too as long as it’s not illegal. You never know what could happen.

While I was still in high school, I took up drama and participated in the school play. Normally, I would never have thought of doing this but I did and guess what? That’s where I met my first girlfriendJ.

Earlier this year I tool up rock climbing. It’s an awesome experience and I have conquered a few rock formations. I’m thinking of doing sky diving next. Funny thing is, for some reason I’m more afraid of bungee jumping than skydiving. Is that weird?

What happens when you do things like this is that you gradually stop being afraid to take risks and you are more open to amazing opportunities.

Get Lucky

It’s actually easier than it sounds. I recently watched a show by Derren Brown called The Experiments. If you don’t know who Derren Brown is, he’s an English illusionist and mentalist. He wanted to test a theory on what exactly luck was.

What he did was to start a rumor in a small town in England called Todmordern about one of the statues (of a dog) in a local park. The rumor said that the dog statue was lucky and if you patted it, some of the luck would rub off on you as well.

As the rumor spread more and more people went to the park, patted the dog and claimed their luck had dramatically increased. Was the dog really lucky? No, it just created a sort of placebo effect.

What actually happened was because they believed in the lucky power of the dog and because of this they created their own luck. How did they do it? They were more willing to take opportunities that came their way and so it seemed like they were lucky.

This experiment proved that the difference between lucky and unlucky people was their willingness to take opportunities. That’s all.

The problem with most people is when they go looking for luck; they are hoping a very specific thing happens to them so they block out anything else that probably comes their way.

For example, if you go to a party with friends specifically hoping to meet cute girls or guys and then you fail to hit it off with anyone, you will feel upset and unlucky. Instead go there to have fun with your friends instead and everything else usually falls into place.

So the next time you are presented with an opportunity you should be more open to taking it. It could be an opportunity to help someone or take part in something. You never know, it could lead to something awesome.

Expand Your Social Circle

Just get yourself out there and meet new people! You can meet your current friends’ friends and make them your friends… if that makes any sense. This can open you up to a lot of possibilities. New friends introduce you to new things and experiences which help you create your own luck.

I got the rock climbing idea from a friend I met at a party. He explained it in a way that made it seem so interesting that I had to try it!

Go where other people are gathering and socialize. It could be a party, a concert, a mall, a conference, even a convention. Where there are people, you should go.

Make the sort of friends you see will really add some value to your life. If you make friends with someone you think is awesome, you will also become awesome by association.

Not sure how to make friends easily? I’ll give you a little life hack. People LOVE talking about themselves. No really, people will find you more interesting if you seem more interested in them. Ask a lot of questions but don’t get too personal. This can creep someone out especially if you’re meeting them for the first time. So keep it casual. Also smile and nod a lot, it helps to show interest.

Get Fit

Become a healthier you. Develop healthy habits and do some exercise! That’s right, get off your butt and make some sort of stressful repetitive muscle movement. It’s the least you can do. You only have one body, so take care of it.

You don’t have to join a gym, just have some sort of regular routine like going for a morning or evening jog. Here’s a body hack for you. If you can do one push up today and keep increasing by one push up every day for a year, by the end of it you will be able to 365 pushups! Impressive, isn’t it? Try it! Do a pushup right now and follow the program.

Why does it work? You’ll only be exerting yourself a bit more everyday so your muscles will not have time to fatigue. They would already be used to the pushups so pushing a bit more won’t tire them out.

The great thing is this system also helps with other forms of exercise like jogging. Keep doing this and you could be running marathons by the end of the year.

Eat Healthy

Enough double quarter pound McDonald cheeseburgers for breakfast and pizzas for lunch every day. Get into the habit of eating healthy as much as you can. I’m not saying go radical and give up junk food forever, I’m saying cut down. Tell yourself that you should only eat junk once a week or once a month. It’s sort of like a reward for eating healthy.

Start eating more salads and fruits. When you get a craving, pick a fruit you love instead of a candy bar. You can’t tell me there isn’t any fruit you like. Pick your favorite and the transition from lazy sloth to lively human being will be much smoother.

Plus if you don’t already know how, learn how to cook! There’s no need to spend so much money on eating out and ordering in if you have the hands to feed yourself. It’s an awesome skill and you’ll love doing it.

We’ll that’s it… the beginners guide to grabbing life by the balls. Hope you enjoyed it reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have anything to add or have questions, feel free to comment. I’d love to hear from you guys.

P.S. I hope you will take action. You should LIVE and not merely EXIST.

P.P.S. If you like this please email it to at least 2 people using the buttons below thanks :)

Photo Credit: Relaxing Music, crabrock, Brian Cribb, z4zita, Tanya Puntti, Apricot Cafe