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I also have a huge amount of confidence in my own abilities - probably too much at some times. I have always thought that I could do anything, learn anything, accomplish anything that I wanted to, and I have always been successful in school, the military, as a professional executive, etc.

My toxic feelings of inadequacy show up and hit me in social situations -


I had that thing for a long time, too; since a kid, everyone else seemed to know what to do in social situations. What -- I miss a memo?

I don't think that I "got over" it -- I just stopped doing it.

I heard Tony Robbins speak on the teevee one Infomercial Night, and the part that caught my ear was his admonition to find someone who was getting the results you wanted to get and "mirror" that person (by which he meant, essentially, mimic). My XO at the time was the Social Lubricant -- though his initials weren't K and Y -- everywhere we went. He just glad-handed his way through a room. Texan, you know. They're like that. And my Safety Instructor Pilot was another Texan and Ever So Much More So like that.

I noticed that they were always welcome everywhere they went. So, Tony Robbins in ear, I just started copying them. Literally. I'd say the things they said when meeting someone for the first time. I'd shake hands the way they did. And, like the XO, I'd essentially pretend everyone I met was a new crewman. So I had to have my mojo working, right? Like a real O does.

And one day it wasn't mimicry anymore -- it was just me.

After that I read How To Win Friends and Influence People -- the Original Self-Help Manual -- by Dale Carnegie and added those principles in to the mix. Cliff's Notes version: Ask people about to talk to you about themselves, and you'll be the most popular guy in the room.

And on a DITY-move from one coast to the other I listened to an audiobook version of Boothman's How To Make People Like You in 90 Seconds Or Less, which is really an elaboration of Carnegie, full of mirroring like Robbins.

And so I was done. Give it a try.