The first thing an omega needs to do is learn basic social skills, such as how to hold a decent conversation and speak in front of others.

Before I begin, I should mention, this is not going to be easy. (None of this guide will be) It took me years of hard work and overcoming fear to get to where I’m at, and even so, I’m still nowhere near charismatic alpha. It will be hard work, but it is definitely worth it. The nice thing though, is that even small improvements will have large effects at the beginning. There will be lots of little times along the way when you will say to yourself “I did that? 6 months ago I would have thought that impossible.” Also, it might go faster than you because I’m giving you a guide rather than having you figure it out on your own.

I’m not going to tell you what social skills to learn as part of this guide, because I’d be a horrible teacher. If you want to know what you need to learn for social interaction you can go online and find all kinds of advice on how to do this. How to Succeed Socially, for example, is an excellent resource for building social skills. I’d encourage reading through it.

The problem is, reading alone is not going to help you and searching the internet looking for continually more reading is simply going to distract you. You need to interact with people while you learn, but I know when I say that it sounds stupid; if you could interact with people you wouldn’t be reading this. What you need is a plan and something to push you to interact. But I can’t meet you in person and other people have already made concrete plans that are better than anything I could make.

So, I am going to tell you how to get started to learn social interaction skills.

You are going to join Toastmasters and buy How to Win Friends and Influence People. You are also going to join the Dale Carnegie course, if you can afford it.

I took the Dale Carnegie course (paid for by my grandfather) and it was, with no exaggeration or hyperbole, life-changing. I probably got more out of that one evening a week for three months course than the 6 years of courses I spent in university. If you are socially awkward, I can not recommend it enough. Every week you learn new social techniques and practice them in the class. You are then instructed to test them in real life; the course motivates you to test them because the speaker’s are very motivational and you don’t want to be the only one to not have a story of implementing what you learned the next week. It is an amazing course.

The problem is that it costs a lot. When I took it was about $1300; it now looks to be about $1700-2000. That’s quite a bit of money. If your work has some kind of training fund, see if you can get them to pay for you. If you can afford it on your own pay for it yourself. If there is any way you can come up with the funds join this course.

If you can’t, don’t worry too much, there’s a poor man’s version, but it will require more motivation from you. Most of the actual content in the course can be found in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which can be bought for under $10. The problem is that you don’t have the safe practice space and the external motivation the course provides, so its a lot harder because you have to make your own motivation.

It will be less structured, you won’t have the professionals motivating you, and you may miss the nuances training provides, but you can still get the just of it by reading and implementing the book.

So, if you can’t afford the course, buy the book and implement it. However, do not read the entire book in one sitting, you won’t get too much out of it. Each week read a section, then spend a week implementing whatever you learned throughout your normal activities, the next week read the next section and implement, and so on.

Also, join Toastmasters. Toastmasters is fairly inexpensive (<$100/year) and a great way to learn speaking skills, improvisation, and overcome your fear of others. It will provide an organized and non-judgmental environment in which to learn speaking skills.

You can find a club to join here. There should be one near you.  Contact them and, if they are meeting this week, go to the meeting. Not all clubs meet in the summer, so it might be a few weeks before your local club meets next, but make sure to contact them this week, then attend the next meeting. Don’t put it off.

Weekly Goal:

This week you will either sign up for the Dale Carnegie course or buy How to Make Friends and Influence People. You will also contact and sign up for Toastmasters and attend the first meeting if your local club meets this week.

Have this done by next week, so you can move onto the next part of the guide which will go up next Sunday.