Relationships | Self-Improvement
Meet Them With Zest — A Technique That Wins Friends
If you ever wanted to impress the person you like, read this.
What is that one thing people truly adhere to? It is the heartfelt compassion but how do you go about showing it to someone that you have never met. You’re a stranger to them, as much as they are for you. How does one become familiar with another to the deterministic point that they both can become good friends?
Well, I have a technique that works wonders. It has served me well, in building relationships with people leaving an everlasting impression forever. There are a few characteristics that anyone can adopt to become pleasant in their communication with others.
In my case, I earned mine through hardships and practice. Simply, you learn by talking with people. You talk with everyone, but first, you have to learn to wear yourself on the outside. Before you take the first step in talking with another.
Why? you may ask. Well, see to come as someone who truly means well. You have to show your authentic self to everyone you meet. That is how people learn to trust you. It is the best hack in any self-help book you can read.
People want to be around others where they can feel safe, and be themselves as well. Where they can use humility to ease the tensions, where another could reciprocate towards them — an understanding is what everyone aspires in life from another human being.
I have always been my authentic self with others, it perhaps has dawned me from my childhood. My internal nature and charisma only grew as I got older crafted through many life experiences where I dared to walk to challenge myself.
You have to understand the fundamental aspect of communicating with another person is to never talk about yourself, wear yourself, and listen to what they say.
Pay attention to their body language, their posture, their voice, the pitch, and volume. You can learn a lot about the nature of a man just by seeing how they behave unconsciously that is how you prepare to employ strategies that help you win others.
Though when you become autonomous as I am. They blend like an activity such as breathing or observing. Wearing yourself on the outside will make it easier.
When you hide under a filter or a facade — it becomes extremely harder for you to open up with another. You look for cues whether the other person talks about themselves allowing you to talk about yours as well. Edward de Bono, the father of lateral thinking said,
If you wait for opportunities to occur, you’re one of the crowd.
You have to make opportunities happen, if you wait for them it won’t matter. You have to learn to take risks, and the best way is by making way for changes. You can’t really predict what will happen, but there are ways you can look past that by looking for all the things that can happen.
That will help you make a simple choice that will have a complex impact on the person. Because most of the times because of a person’s Hindsight bias, it is hard for them to make effective decisions when they use their previous experience as an example to court newer decisions.
If you haven’t used an empirical way of creating a decision it becomes harder for you to implement or even measure an effect of what it will have on the person you are conversing with. The best decisions are made through careful experimentation and thus they win big and make an effective impact.
A very good example of implementing this is an excerpt that I am about to share. I was meeting an acquaintance on the First of February 2020. This was before the whole global pandemic thing started. It was perhaps in its earlier phases. I met her, and we had an awesome blast. It was perhaps the conclusion to our day, so I thought why not drop her at her house.
I booked an Uber, during our departure. She asked me a very peculiar question, “Are you psychic?” — To which I replied. I don’t know, it is easier for me to read people and help them open up about themselves. She insisted that there is something I am not telling her. So When we were walking towards the car, I told her.
Let me show you a magic trick! She was laughing, okayy.
We sat in the car, I said “Hello, Good Day” in my native tongue to the Uber driver and shook his hand with great zest. He smiled, as he could feel the energy and it sparked something he could feel brewing within. He was a middle-aged man in his 40s perhaps. Seemed cold at first, but I was able to initiate a conversation with him asap — he started driving.
There was a corona broadcast that the lockdown is still pending. We started to talk about that, and then he told me that the modern-day youth doesn’t really say hello like you did. He mentioned I reminded him of his brother in law, who also meets them with gusto. He added when they meet me. I feel like I am welcomed and I belong.
When you came in, and smiled at me and said hello. It reminded me of them and their culture. I asked where his brother in law was from. He is from the same state I grew up in. Where I was raised we are taught to meet any man, woman, or child with love and zest. It is in our blood, he mentioned. The man who seemed cold, and distant as most adults are — slowly opened up.
The best way to reciprocate with another person is to complete their sentences. Give them enough room to speak about themselves and complete where they fall short. That’s how it begins to weave, all while my friend was looking at me with a surprised look on her face.
She even spoke to the kind uncle as well. Our journey’s span was 35 minutes, but it felt like those 35 minutes of the journey felt to us like a day of joy.
I was not only able to make him laugh, with joy. But also was able to make his night as well with only minimal effort and pay attention to how he interacted. You don’t really need any toolkit to become a good communicator.
All you really need is practise talking with everyone you meet. Initiate a conversation, remove the “I” and focus on the “you” instead. Instead of talking about yourself, talk only when asked.
When you would wear yourself on the outside, you don’t need to talk about yourself then you can focus on the person sitting next to you. You can work to make their day, or night refreshing.
There is always another way you can take things, that is by focusing on how a person speaks. If their voice is loud, your voice should become soft. If their voice is soft, your voice should become energetic. You have to pay attention to the other perspectives that are aligning with your success.
When you will use your mind to make effective decisions by contemplating all the other factors into the mix, a complex hard man like the dear man I met in the Uber ride, can become a lively child aching to connect. It works, with everyone. We all want someone to listen, to empathize, and reflect upon ourselves.
When we do this, we can win anyone as friends. We can do anything we want to as long as there are people involved. It is a proven fact from my experience that zest is the quality everyone admires. It is as simple as choosing to feel better about yourself.
Even if you have severe depression you can do it. Even if you suffer from severe anxiety, you can still do it. I am talking from experience as I suffer from both. And sometimes in between conversations, I do get anxious, but I pay it no mind because I am focusing myself on you.
The best books I recommend anyone if their goal is to win people to read, The Art of Seduction, 33 Strategies of War, and 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Understanding those concepts and applying them in your frame of reference will help you in winning people, or any communication for that matter.
I, on the other hand, will advise you to fill your theoretical understanding of how certain tactics work by carefully implementing them through practice. Though these books are still basic when it comes to interaction. In my experience, books only show you what and why it is done.
It is you who will choose how you will do it and when, where would you go from there.
People change with every second their mind transforms, thus do a practical observation. Understand how they talk, the best way to win friends is by going out in the world and talking with people. That is how one can learn the art of winning friends.
When you connect with others, be it a stranger, a homeless person, or even a hooker for that matter — It doesn’t matter who they are or what they do. If you can make them feel loved, wanted, and cared for.
That is something really pure and true — one that transcends all worldly bonds, the bond of friendship. You can make a friend anywhere if you want to. Kindness, Compassion, and Gusto are the three forces that will get you where you want to go.
My goal has always been to make people happy and feel joy. If they are happy and feel blessed even for a short moment. I find it worthwhile that I was able to of servitude to someone besides myself. As it gives me joy sharing my heart and soul with another.
Our communication, with the kind man, ended when I reached her house. He came out of the car and hugged me thanking me, “That I was a good lad. I will go far in life with that attitude.”
Afterwards, we said our goodbyes. And my friend asked me surprised like “what the fuck just happened?” — he was cold a second ago, and you made him sparkle like a schoolboy, all lively and joyous.
I told her, that “I told you before entering the car that I will show you a magic trick”, she said with affirmation — smiled at me with her big brown eyes and thus I walked her to her home, on an auspicious evening that perhaps was made for three people who were won over with a compassionate zest.
Thank you so much for reading, and remember to wear your zest.