One of the biggest challenges to developing superior communication skills is that you already have your hands full in those situations where you need help. Take a typical scenario - meeting new people.

If I give you tips for listening more effectively and you rush off to practice the tips you may not get very far no matter how hard you try. Why? Because you are likely to be self conscious when you need to be other conscious. Standing in front of the new people you want to meet you freeze and you feel so unsure of yourself that you cannot remember even one of the listening tips.

You need the ability to switch off self consciousness whenever you choose to do so. Sounds obvious only how can you do this? By switching your attention off of yourself and onto the other person.

When you are feeling self conscious you will tend to pay too much attention to the thoughts inside your head, how you are feeling and how you look.

Ironically, to develop great rapport you need to pay close attention to the other person. How is she feeling? How does she look today? Is she relaxed or tense?

The Three Elements To Ridding Yourself Of Self Consciousness

1. Turn off the inner dialogue that makes you feel self conscious

One way to do this is to touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue when you are not talking. We tend to move our tongues when we engage in inner talk even if only very slightly. When you put the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth you interrupt the negative inner talk pattern.

Sounds simple. It is! I could write more and more about this tip but it would not help you as much as just using it. I will leave it to you to test it for yourself.

2. Give yourself a lot of external stimulation

To keep your focus off of yourself you need to put more and more attention on the other person. If you only listen to her words you still have plenty of idle brain power that will drift back to make your self consciousness grow.

Instead you need to give your conscious mind so much to pay attention to that you are totally absorbed in the other person. Become fascinated by how she expresses herself and not just by what she says.

Keep stacking on more details to simultaneously pay attention to until you are challenged without feeling overwhelmed.

Here is a list of some elements to focus on:

• rate of breathing

• speech rhythm

• pupil dilation

• changes in skin tone

• speech patterns

• metaphors

• posture and movement

• combinations of the above

The more you pay attention to the other person the less self conscious you will be because you will have become other conscious. Which is in fact the hallmark of people who make friends easily. Your clear interest in the other person will shine through.

3. Patient Persistence

The final point to remember is that patience and persistence wins the day. Play with these strategies a little each day and you will start to exhibit the traits of people who are supposedly gifted with people skills.

People skills are a matter of strategy. Learn the strategy, practice it and you too will enjoy the benefits that come to those who get along well with whoever they meet.

At the same time you need to earn the riches that await you. Many know what to do but few do what they know.