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Detox Your Life

Lesson 2 from: FAST CLASS: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

Detox Your Life

Lesson 2 from: FAST CLASS: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

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Lesson Info

2. Detox Your Life

Next Lesson: Harness Charisma

Lesson Info

Detox Your Life

today we're talking about detoxing your life. This is the day where we make space for all the new learning that we're about to dio And here are my three goals for today First, how to say no? I think one of the hardest things is setting boundaries and saying no, because we're taught, especially if you're creative or entrepreneur that you say yes to everything right? You have to say yes where you're gonna miss a big opportunity says they were gonna talk about saying yes to the right opportunities and had a nicely, politely and gracefully say no, the ones that don't fit you. They were talking about dealing with toxic people, minimizing toxicity, maximizing nourishment. And lastly, I want to make space and clarity for you to be your best self. Now, today I have to ask permission for something I have to ask permission to reboot and reset. Since I'm teaching a totally different way of interacting, I'm going to be talking about some very new ways of dealing with your calendar of dealing with ...

people. And so I want to ask permission that we can reset the today's a reiss a day that we reset and reboot everything that we've learned so we can start fresh. So today are warm up. We're going to answer two different questions first. How do you think you come across? Okay, now this is I see, like scared faces. Fear my grow expression. I see it. It's okay. We're gonna do it together. All right. So let's start with the first question. And I want everyone to answer this. And you can only give me one word. So when someone first meets you and at home, I want to write this down in your workbook and our monster workbook, I want you to write down. What is the one word you think exemplifies what other people think when they first meet you? How do you want to come across? So when you first meet someone and they walk into a room, you give him your hand to shake. What do you want them to feel and think? What's the one word and again in your in your notebook at home? I want you know, you can actually write down two or three. You want what you think happens and what you want to happen. Okay, So the goal of this course is to make these the same. The goal of this course is that who you want to be and who you are to other people is exactly the same. That's purposeful interactions. And today we're making space so they can be the same. What I like Teoh make this like in this, too is like on a plane. When you first get on a plane, they tell you in the safety demonstration, make sure to put on your oxygen mask before you help those around you. And that is exactly what today is about. Ah, lot of people skills, books and courses they talk about constantly interact with other people. But they don't talk about how you need to do that. First, you have to be able to take care of your own needs and your own boundaries if you're going to connect with people. Otherwise, you're too full of your own stuff to be able to connect with other people stuff. So today is about clearing the way. It is impossible to turn people skills on all the time with everyone, right? If you are constantly on and trying to check with every person you meet, you'll be exhausted. Not only is it impossible, it's not realistic. It's also not authentic. You should Onley want to connect with people who you genuinely find nourishing. So I don't want to teach. You connect with clients who aren't your ideal clients. I don't want you to connect people with friends who aren't fulfilling to you. I want you to only learn how to connect with people who are genuinely good for you, where people that you want to connect with. So I also think that this study is fastening and what they did was they wanted to see brain differences in people who are lonely and I don't have a lot of connections and people have a lot of connections. And what they found was, is that people who report more feelings of loneliness who don't have connections it fulfill them, register rewards less in the brain, rewards that don't even have to do with people so they could win a prize or get a higher salary, and they would register that lesson. The brains they actually felt pleasure less strongly. When you don't have people in your life to share it with, so this not only effects our health, our body, our brain, but also affects our happiness levels and how we register rewards in all areas. So it is totally worth it, Right? Building connection is totally worth it. So let's start with people. I'm gonna talk about people today. I'm talk about places, people. I want to know who are the nourishing people in your life. So think of the people and they can be business relationships, social or romantic, who fulfill you. They inspire you. You look forward to hang out with them. You can't wait to make time in your schedule to see them. It could also be a nourishing business relationship there the clients who you meet with who you don't tell them would work for free right there. That awesome. I won't tell them that they you just love working with them. You love helping them. Let's talk about the other side. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the toxic relationships at home. I have a space in your workbook free to write down who were the nourishing and talks people and why? And that why is really important. So the toxic people in our life we probably know these are These are the people who drain you. They might take advantage of you. You kind of dread seeing them. They reach out to me. They're a client or a friend. You're like, Oh, do I have Teoh? It's that kind of attitude that the people who really don't want to give your energy to. What are the patterns? The reason why I want to look at nourishing and toxic people is because I do want to set boundaries today and those people in your life. But I also want to do this as prevention for the future. So if you look at the nourishing and toxic people who are in your life now who have been in your life and look at the patterns, are they people who don't respect your boundaries as we talked about? Are the people who take advantage of your time or don't respect your time? Are the people who just don't enjoy spending time with? That's how you know when you first meet someone, if you want to go down the path to connection with them, right, the path, the connection, it takes energy. It takes authenticity, have to be vulnerable so you don't want to do that with everyone. So here's what I want you to do. When you feel that nudge. I want you to go back to this section of your book, and I want you to write down why you feel that notion when? Because after a while you're gonna start to see patterns you're gonna start to see, huh? Gosh, this has come up over and over again with this kind of client or with this person, and that's when you can see the pattern and go. Okay, I'm gonna stop it before it starts. Right, cause sometimes we don't remember to take to take to pay attention to our patterns. And so committing them to writing as we talked about is a great way to actually see it in black and white in front of us. I want us to get in the habit of constantly checking in with our people patterns of what's nourishing and what's toxic. All right, but we're gonna doom or on the nourishing and toxic in a little bit. First, I want to talk about places now. I've been talking about people skills for years, but it wasn't until two years ago on my 27th birthday Duma. Um, I figured out that there was another aspect of people skills that was kind of unexpected. And it was this idea of places and context for relationships. So there are three different kind of context or places you're talking about people. There are places that we thrive where we meet. People were like, Yeah, we're rocking and we love it. It could be one on one. If you're an introvert, it could be a big networking event where you feel like you can walk in and just own the room for you. It could be a barbecue or a date night. These are the places that we thrive with people. We feel very comfortable there. Then there, the neutral places where it depends on the mood that you're in. It depends on who's around, not quite sure it can flip. And then there's the places where you feel like you're just surviving. You go. And the idea of trying to make connection is totally out the window because the place the location is too overwhelming now for my introverts, and I am a situational introverts. There are certain situations that make me feel incredibly uncomfortable you will understand this for some my extroverts. Maybe you're like, Was anyone feel that way? We're like I thrive everywhere. What are you talking about? Anyone feel that way? Do I have any extreme extroverts in the room? All right, Okay. Occasionally, if you're a home of your extreme extrovert, we love you. You get to be only in this side of the column. But it's good for extroverts to understand where introverts are coming from, right? Sometimes for extroverts who are like I don't understand how she wouldn't love this party. This section is really important for you to understand the introverts in your life. So let me give you an example. This actually starts with a confession. So my confession is that cool places make me feel really un cool, actually. And staying in a hotel here for this creativelive course. And I walked up to the hotel with, like all my luggage, I had so many prop bags and there was a bouncer to get into my hotel. And I was like, Oh, my God, I'm to cool. This place is way too cool for me to stay here. I do not do well with bouncers. really loud music concerts, nightclubs. I just feel like the most awkward un cool person in the room. So I learned this when someone very nice friend said, I want to throw you a birthday party. Let's go to this really hot bar downtown and we'll invite all of our friends and will be a great birthday party. And she said this was one of the nicest things she could have offered and my stomach dropped. I was like, I might be busy that night, Just like my birthday. I'm like, I don't know if I should do it And I was like, Let me think about it. And so I waited a couple of days and I realized I was really excited to see all my friends. What I was dreading was the location, and the reason for that is because the way that I connect with people, my unique brand of charisma is deep and meaningful conversations. I love people. I love the study people, so all I want to do is ask them questions and catch up with them and talk to them and allowed Bar nightclub. You can't really talk. You could only yell in someone's ear. So for me, I get incredibly awkward because I can't do actually what I love to do with people. So I called her back and I was like, Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I would much rather have everyone over to my house and everyone brings a bottle of wine and we all order pizza. For me, that is a way more fun. Way to interact. I thrive at dinner parties, movie nights and barbecues. Love it. Neutral for me is talking on the phone. I don't always love talking on the phone. It's only OK. I can't read body language. And we all know I love reading. Body language conferences and networking events are okay from the right from of mine survive events for me or nightclubs, bars and concerts. And so that's why I wanted to end on this. We're about to go into the action steps for how to apply. This is that we can actually take control, and this is peak. You Law number three. We can take control of how you spend your time and who you spend it with, and people who are incredibly good influencers and charismatic. They know who they want to spend time with and how they want to spend their time. And that means being like, you know what? I don't love networking events or I don't like talking on the phone. I'm not very good that way. I'm going to try to not do it anymore. Now, of course, is a couple of times we're gonna have to go to those events. We're gonna talk about that. But when you can, you can take control of who you spend your time with and how you spend it. So that's broken down into three different steps. So I want to teach you that is boundaries refueling and blocking. Ready? Um, Greg McCown is the author of Essential Ism, and I want us to be essential ists in this course. You are going to be an essential ist in things that are important to you. And I love this quote. When we say no, we make space to focus on what's essential. So how to set boundaries? This is Ah, this is a big one. People always when I talk about boundaries and saying no, people get kind of nervous, but I promise is a really easy way to do it. So first, I want to get really clear on where we want to set our boundaries. What are some of the survive events, meetings and activities needed? Cancels? If you could pull out that calendar that we've been looking at at home, I want you to pull out your calendar that you transferred with your 30 days of activities, people, activities, air coming up. I want to look at that calendar. I want you to think about what are some survive events you have coming up. Is there anything on the calendar right now? Do you have phone calls to someone have some networking events? Do you have any theme parks you're visiting? That arson survive events coming up. Anyone have any that they can see in the next 30 days? Yes. Yeah, I have this like a coffee meeting with someone that I met at a networking event. And she wants to know more about me and tell me more about her. And I don't really want Teoh. I hear you. Okay. I love it. So what are some requests? I want to get to say no to? You don't want to get to know and we can talk about if you actually want to do that or not. And what are the toxic people you want to distance yourself from? So go back to that toxic slide that we talked about. Are there some people? Are there some business relationships, social relationships that you don't want to have in your life? Here is how to say no. And here is your script for saying no. I'm gonna give you a lot of scripts in this course. You don't have to worry about what you have to say when we break down the script for you first, always start grateful when you're about to say no. So thank you so much for inviting me. Let's pretend that it's an invitation to a someone's group that they want you to be a part of. Thank you so much for inviting me. Always start grateful. Second, use simple direct language, but I won't be able to join the group, and the third step is the most important. You do not need to say why this baffles a lot of people. They think that if they're going to say no, they have to give all these explanations and reasons and justifications why they have to do it. You do not need to say why you have every right to politely and directly say no. You don't have to defend, debate or explain your feelings. So you started gratefully use simple direct language. Number four offer an alternative, and this could be anything this could be, but I would love to get coffee with you. It could be, but I'll send the group to someone who I think would really like it. It could be, but invite me next month. Offering alternatives sort of softens that blow again. It could be anything that you're comfortable with and lastly, stick with it and that is the hardest one, because you might get pushback from that. But sticking with it will teach people, especially toxic people who aren't very good with boundaries that you stick to your boundaries. The first time is always the hardest, but after you do it once they know, Uh, when she says no, she means no. All right, so here's a script. Here's how that works in action now that I broke down the script, so this actually happened to me a few weeks ago. I got invited to a birthday party and she was like, Great birthday party. It's gonna be a 10 PM meet outside. We'll wait in line together. We'll get in. I was like 10:30 p.m. Is my bedtime friend like that is when I'm in bed reading like I can't meet somewhere at 10 30. So here's what I said, using that exact script. Thank you so much for the invite. I won't be able to make it. I would love you to take you out for brunch for your birthday instead, when is good for you? This was met with absolutely no resistance, right? It's very direct. It's very simple, and it's once you stick to the script, you don't feel like you have to defend or debate your feelings. If you need some time to think through what those steps are, let's say you can't remember what those steps were from the workbook. This is my favorite phrase, and it will buy you. Sometimes you can calm yourself down and gather your thoughts a little, which is let me check a few things and get back to you. So if you don't feel ready to do those four steps right on the spot. You can always do this one as a way to calm yourself down and center. What your thoughts are refueling is when you have those events that you cannot say no to. So let's say that you have a mutual friend or you have a client you're working with or a colleague where you just can't say no. You actually have to go on the coffee or do the thing Army with the person. That's where we have to learn to refuel toe, fill up our tank. So first, where do you get your energy? What are the activities that refuel you and hear the three different categories? There's social to their nourishing people and activities. There's physical exercise, sleep, hobbies, and there's a mental reading, writing visualization, spirituality exercises. What are the activities that refuel you? So here's what I want you to do on your calendar. If you have some events coming up that fall into the the survive or the neutral category, I want you to set aside some refueling time before or after to get you in the right mindset, because those air maybe events that you can't get off your calendar, which is totally fine, so I want you to set aside time to refuel before after them. I also want to teach you to me that I use, which is one of my favorite tools called calendar blocking. So this is a way for you to take control of your calendar of how you interact with people again. This is all resetting for the skills that were about to learn first at the beginning of every week or the beginning of every month, Spending on how far you plan out, I want you to look at how you can minimize your survive events, right? So is there any event that you actually could cancel or not go to with what's left? Because there's some they're not able to cancel. I want you to block out time for them. So, for example, for me Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon, our first survive events and coffees. There's a couple of meetings that I just cannot cancel or phone calls. I reserve Monday afternoons and Thursday afternoons. I blocked that out for those calls, so I make sure that every Monday and Thursday morning I'm hiking or playing tennis. And Monday or Thursday night. I tryto have girls nights. I try to have dinner with friends. So that way I don't dread the day, right. I actually know that I have something to refuel me before and after. Then I want you to block the survive events with refuel time before and after as we talked about. And I want you to maximize the nourishing activities, people and events. So the beginning of every week, the beginning, every month, I challenge you to have at least three on the calendar that you can look forward to. And the reason that we do this is because a you look forward to the week, right? You begin to say I have more control over my schedule. It's easier to make decisions about your schedule. So a lot of people tell me that when they're trying to figure out how to deal with people, they're not sure what to say yes or no to. This is a much easier way to say yes or no because you know when you want to meet with them and how you want to meet with them, it also gives you more control over how you're spending your time, and lastly, you have time and space and energy for the rial nourishing people. So in action, this is with everything setting up meetings, planning events, attending parties, building our calendar and meeting new people. Remember how we talked about toxic and nourishing people patterns again? Every time you meet someone new, I wanted to start looking for those patterns. Is this someone who you think will be an 80 client? Or is this someone you think will actually fulfill you and be a really great relationship? Our challenge for today After every segment, I'm gonna offer you a challenge. And the reason why these air so important is because it puts your learning into action. So I want you to set a boundary by saying no to at least one request or meetings could be on email. Could be phone. It could be texting me to practice setting a boundary. I also want you to get at least three nourishing activities on your calendar in the next 30 days, something that you can really look forward to with people. And lastly, I want you to schedule in your calendar toe. Watch this again at the new year at the new year. It's the first of the year, and I want you to put yourself first. Think about what kind of boundaries do you want to set for yourself for the year. Who in your life is fulfilling you and who is not fulfilling you? And what are the commitments you have for next year you really want to do, and how can you be your best self for them?

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Michelle
 

I enjoyed this Fast Class version and am interested in taking the longer course. Vanessa provided a lot of handouts, which I greatly appreciate and found helpful. I feel more informed and empowered as I make a career change.

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