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Crafting a Personality and Capitalising on it

How do we craft a personality that is socially charming yet true to our roots?

How do we mingle and meet new people without feeling awkward or shy about it?

How do we not lose ourselves while following all these blah blah etiquette rules?

Welcome to part 2 of my Chic Girl Mentality series. 🤍

Today, we will focus on crafting a personality that is still you but better.

First, let’s talk about people in social settings. You’ll meet people who are confident, secure and socially charming. You’ll meet quiet people who may be equally socially charming or just very shy and conscious. You’ll meet the braggers and the doe-eyed followers. There’s a lot of different types of people in the world and knowing how to gracefully navigate most of them is nothing but a learned art.

People, regardless of their bank balance, are insecure of what they do not have yet. This can be looks, money, experience, lifestyle, and so on. How do we capitalise on this without exploiting or manipulating anyone?

By knowing how to tell a story.

That doesn’t mean that you need to become a public speaker or politician, it just means that you need to be able to craft intriguing stories about yourself, using your own life and experiences, to “sell” an interesting version of you socially. We’re all interesting people but only a few of us know how to say that we’re interesting without saying that we’re interesting.

Experience 

People, even those with money, will always be more attracted to those who have experiences, especially, unique ones. Whether it’s travelling to exotic locations or trying new culinary destinations, or wearing unknown designers, knowing obscure artists or writers, or being at the top of your industry… experience is the most important thing to cultivate first.  You already have experience. If you went to school, high school, college, joined clubs, your first job, any travelling, etc - these are all experiences.

Make a list of 5 of the most interesting experiences you think you have.

Hobbies and interests 

Have a couple of lowkey hobbies that you feel enthusiastic about. Whether it’s doing some charity work on Sundays, or cooking, or pottery, whatever it is, keeping a hobby is healthy. 

There should be something to you that an acquaintance can remark about: “CSB? Oh yes, I’ve heard that she’s a great dancer.” 

Vulnerabilities 

Certain vulnerabilities must never, ever be shared. It will 100% be used either as gossip or blackmail. 

However, coming across as someone with no weaknesses is rather untrustworthy- it makes the other person feel that you’re clearly hiding something. 

Make a list of vulnerabilities that are small and you don’t mind sharing. These should be vulnerabilities that will never ruin your reputation in any form but can be used as a form of bonding with empathy. 

And make a list of hard core vulnerabilities you know you should never share with anyone. Keep it memorised rather than written down. 

Experience + Hobbies or Interests + Safe Vulnerabilities = Personality

Storytelling 

Now that you have some experience, hobbies, interests, and your “safe” vulnerabilities sorted even if it’s limited - what will make it stand out is the art of storytelling. Some storytellers can make even the most mundane experiences sound magical - it’s all in the words and delivery. There’s a reason why every Holy Book is a story, packed with lessons and morals - it’s impactful, easy to remember and recall and relatable. Craft your experiences into stories. Use those 5 experiences that you noted down and start writing them down as stories.

Take up an online storytelling class or watch videos. Start honing this skill by writing and reading good literature. 

Refine your 5 experiences further. Run it through chatGPT, say them out loud and most importantly- start testing them out on people. See what makes them chuckle and what doesn’t; what makes them empathise and what doesn’t.

A famous comedian whose name I can’t remember does the same thing. He creates his set. He goes to a small pub and tries it out on the audience there. And the first set is always the first. The audience may not laugh at his jokes, they might boo him or sometimes, he might get a laugh out of them. But every time, he goes home and refines his set further. Once his set is fully refined, and he accomplishes his goal of the audience peeling with laughter at every joke, that’s when he goes on national TV / on tour etc etc.

The most important thing is to craft your stories of your experiences in a way that it delivers the value you want the person to remember about you.

For instance, if I want to be seen as creative and innovative, I won’t tell the person in front of me, “oh, I’m soo innovative and creative!”

Rather I will weave that into a story. “When I was 24, at my first job in the advertising space, we were losing clients left and right. And one weekend, I was on a trek on the mountains - it’s one of my hobbies - this idea hit me, and I suddenly knew exactly how to get our clients back. My team was hesitant about my idea, and we got a lot of pushback, but we went ahead. The night before my launch I was so nervous, I got hardly sleep. And you won’t believe it, but the idea worked! The response was fantastic.”

Let the other person come to the conclusion of you being innovative and creative. Human beings love to deduce things and jump to conclusions and provided you set the context the right way, you should be able to project the version of you that is the best part of you.

Vocabulary 

A sign of a good education- even if you don’t have it - is a diverse vocabulary. I’ve always had a little more respect and awe for those who are articulate, can speak smoothly and speak confidently. I’ve noticed that my American friends, for instance, tend to talk fast with lots of filler words, and sentences tend to end with a pitch up instead of down, which to me indicates hesitation or indecision. Speaking slower, ending your sentences with pitch going down to indicate a full stop rather than up makes you seem like a refined speaker even if your subject is utterly stupid. 

Body language and mannerisms, social interaction 

Watch old classic Hollywood movies to really understand this - especially romantic ones. Choose ones with a femme fatale or siren-like female lead, and watch how she enraptures the male lead or the audience around her. 

A combination of fantastic storytelling and body language will take you places beyond your dreams. Some of the biggest frauds, scammers, politicians, criminals are also some of the best storytellers. Humans are attracted to stories, we pick up body language intuitively, we can sense when someone is nervous or isn’t. Unfortunately the world isn’t a kind place and will not necessarily help you out of your shyness- in fact, that might just make you the best target for exploitation. 

Storytelling + Vocabulary + Body Language = Your Best Personality

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Lonely i dont have any friends night in coming

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Sigh fatphobic me is making her comeback

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Im so stupid and useless

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I'm fcking obsessed i look like a freak and a burden and i will lose what meant the world to me

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Lower-Intermediate Chinese: TV show study resource: study with TV-show break-down, line by line [Ode to Joy 欢乐颂]

STUDY “ODE TO JOY” WITH JEN WHO BREAKS DOWN EACH SENTENCE LINE BY LINE IN A QUICK AND EFFICIENT WAY TO HELP YOU LEARN CHINESE SPOKEN IN TV SHOWS, [NO INTERSPERSED BITS OF ENGLISH SPOKEN BY THE TEACHER OR TOO MUCH EXPLANATION OR ‘FLUFF’]

What’s good about this resource?

1. Very little English is spoken, as we all know intermediates looking step up to upper-intermediate want as little English as possible when learning.

2. Sentences are repeated several times both in the show and by Jen to help you hear clearly and remember

3. You can almost watch it like a TV show as it cuts each sentence and repeats several times but goes straight back to the TV show and plays the next sentence. There is little ‘fluff’ for example when the teacher says “XXX means YYY” and “if you want to say ZZZ you can say AAAA”. We don’t want this English interspersed in our learning!

4. there is a round up of important points and the end where the teacher speaks a little English and gives extra examples to help clarify new words. this is useful for bridging the intermediate gap or you could skip it because its the same content as the first part.

The full playlist is below:

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I knew it but i still stayed and now i feel abandonned as hell

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When i'm waiting or left alone i feel so lonely and abandonned like i can really feel my chest hurting and if i don't distract myself i just cry

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I know you care but pls act like you do 🙏

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our nightwalking is cancelled... so i can't tell him. i'm so fucking disappointed. that is hard enough to tell

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Im fucking tired of doubting every other day. Shouldn't i just break up? Obviously he doesnt understand me...

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Stupid nice girl

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I know it’s been a while i wasn’t there. I tru to avoid tumblr now I’m not in this shit anymore. But that doesn’t mean I’m perfectly okay. I relapsed sometimes. I’m still fucked up even tho i don’t pretend to. It’s kinda pathetic tbh. One minute I’m okay, the other one my chest is hurting, i can’t breath thinking about how much I’m disgusting, how much i was shameless showing my naked body and how much he should have been disgusted. I’m thinking about running away, never showing any part of my skin again.

I’m thinking about how fun it was but now it becomes too dangerous. I’m thinking about how much I’m scared he finally see me as i feel: a human garbage. and my chest is hurting very bad of all this overthinking, this sickness bc some part of me knows: this isn’t real. The oain isn’t real, the thoughts isn’t real, everything is fine and my sick mind is just making up stories bc he enjoys me suffering.

But if i can’t trust myself, how am i supposed to libe ? Don’t get me wrong, i wanna live. I know I’ve been making progress. I know you can fall sometimes off the path and that is okay. But shit the ground is harsh and sneaky.

I can handle it alone. But handle a relationships on this path is hard. Once i move a step forward, i fall so badly i move two steps backward.

I still don’t fully trust. Because deep inside me, i know I’m ugly. Not my face or my body, i can’t tell about these (Body dismorphia yay). But my personality, my mind, my soul, all uglies. Worst thing is i pretend not to be: i have created an illusion and I’m waiting someone discovered the catfish. Could be him. Or maybe i won’t let him. He deserves better than a girl who hates both them bodies.

Like i said, I’m fucked up.

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i hate myself so much that i feel like i'm going crazy and the thought of my physical existence makes me want to die so badly it hurts

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I guess why he didn’t introduce me to his friends: I’m huge and would embarrass him 

I guess why he didn’t introduce me to this girl in particular: she’s beautiful and thin and charismatic and I can’t stop thinking about her and about how much I wish I'd look like her 

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I don't know what all these guys sees in me and love it but I don't like what I see in myself

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i deserve the best. if you can’t see it, then i don’t need you, just walk away. you want to be my best? act like it.