Hello,

I am new to both these forums and NLP as a whole, hopefully this will be a productive stay. I hope to learn a lot and find people with similar experiences, problems and their possible solutions!

I've gotten to a point in my life where I wish to change quite a few things about myself. Annoying problems that have been present for more than half of my life and I've only recently realised them and understood how much I have been missing due to them in all of these years.

To give a bit of information about my situation, before I ask for advice. According to socionics I am the Craftsman type, in my opinion one of the more contradicting types out there. Being extremely passive and emotionless on the outside it yearns for excitement, action and sociolizing on the inside, a very difficult situation indeed with a potential for deprsession. The cold, emotionless and unfriendly look is "enchanced" with my not so brilliant social behaviour, the reasons of which are too long and deep to explain, so the final result is that I, more often than not, come off as arrogant, rude or emotionless - all of which leave a terrible impression of me. One may think I just need to learn manners, well I am actually very polite, but when it comes down to conversations, things just happen, my response is automatic, because I have learned it during my youth. (My guess here is that it acts as a irrational protective mechanism from my childhood)

But now I want to change this, I want to smile, be friendly in conversations and express my feelings more openly, lessen the negativity and, to give a metafor, be like the sun instead of being the moon.

I want to change my responses in social situations and as I understood NLP can teach me just that, new behaviour. I mean the situation now is absurd, I won't say "Hey, nice shirt" to somebody, even if I was tortured by the Spanish inquisition. I am not antisocial or anything, I easily have conversations, but they resemble a work interview rather than friendly chatter and joking. When I see how others get along, I know I am doing something wrong, because I know what I wish to do, but I can't do it, as though my mouth and body aint mine.

So I would like to ask for help, namely DVDs and books that would help me accomplish my goals, I've read the introduction book by one of the Russian authors and even though it opened my eyes and nicely explained the principles and possible results, it was just that, an introduction and left me wondering how to accomplish those results by putting NLP principles to use. Since I know there are many wiser people out there I would like to save time by not reading useless material and hope that you can recommend me the material that will help me accomplish the following:

- Change my social behaviour
- Become more open and friendly (finally have a smile on my face!)
- Learn better body language
- Build confidence (I am confident in 90% of the situations, but it's the other 10% that truly matter)

I thank you in advance and hope to change, because it is really important for me.

Seeker

PS. I reluctant to give more personal info at the moment in my profile, I know some bad stories that happened to people I know, maybe in time