ple don’t care how much you know until they know how much
you care . . . about them.” Zig Ziglar is right. The secret to mak-
ing people like you is showing how much you like them!
Your body is a twenty-four-hour broadcasting station reveal-
ing to anyone within eyeshot precisely how you feel at any given
moment. Even if your Hang by Your Teeth posture is gaining their
respect, your Flooding Smile and The Big-Baby Pivot are making
them feel special, and your Sticky Eyes are capturing their hearts
and minds, the rest of your body can reveal any incongruence.
Every inch—from the crinkle of your forehead to the position of
your feet—must give a command performance if you want to
effectively present an “I care about you” attitude.
Unfortunately, when meeting someone, our brains are in over-
drive. Remember Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? He said of Cassius,
he “has a lean and hungry look . . . he thinks too much . . . such
men are dangerous.” So it is with our brains when conversing with
a new acquaintance. Our brains become lean. (Some of us are
fighting off shyness. Others are frantically sizing up the situation.)
And hungry. (We’re deciding what, if anything, we want from this
potential relationship.) So we think too much instead of respond-
ing with candid, unself-conscious friendliness. Such actions are
dangerous to impending friendship, love, or commerce.
When our bodies are shooting off ten thousand bullets of
stimuli every second, a few shots are apt to misfire and reveal shy-
ness or hidden hostility. We need a technique to ensure every shot
aims right at the heart of our subject. We need to trick our bod-
ies into reacting perfectly.
To find it, let’s explore the only time we don’t need to worry
about any shyness or negativity slipping out through our body lan-
guage. It’s when we feel none. That happens when we’re chatting
with close friends. When we see someone we love or feel com-
pletely comfortable with, we respond warmly from head to toe
without a thought. Our lips part happily. We step closer. Our arms
reach out. Our eyes become soft and wide. Even our palms turn
up and our bodies turn fully toward our dear friend.
How to Trick Your Body into Doing
Everything Right
Here’s a visualization technique that accomplishes all that. It guar-
antees that everyone you encounter will feel your warmth. I call
it “Hello Old Friend.”
When meeting someone, play a mental trick on yourself. In
your mind’s eye, see him or her as an old friend, someone you had
a wonderful relationship with years ago. But somehow you lost
track of your friend. You tried so hard to find your good buddy,
but there was no listing in the phone book. No information online.
None of your mutual friends had a clue.
Suddenly, WOW! What a surprise! After all those years, the
two of you are reunited. You are so happy.
That’s where the pretending stops. Obviously, you are not
going to try to convince the new person that the two of you are
really old friends. You are not going to hug and kiss and say, “Great
to see you again!” or “How have you been all these years?” You
merely say, “Hello,” “How do you do,” “I am pleased to meet
you.” But, inside, it’s a very different story.
You will amaze yourself. The delight of rediscovery fills your
face and buoys up your body language. I sometimes jokingly say
if you were a light, you’d beam on the other person. If you were
a dog, you’d be wagging your tail. You make this new person feel
very special indeed.
Technique #6
Hello Old Friend
When meeting someone, imagine he or she is an old
friend (an old customer, an old beloved, or someone
else you had great affection for). How sad, the vicis-
situdes of life tore you two asunder. But, holy mack-
erel, now the party (the meeting, the convention) has
reunited you with your long-lost old friend!
The joyful experience starts a remarkable chain
reaction in your body from the subconscious softening
of your eyebrows to the positioning of your toes—and
everything between.
In my seminars, I first have people introduce themselves to
another participant before they’ve learned the Hello Old Friend
technique. The group chats as though at a pleasant semiformal
gathering. Later I ask them to introduce themselves to another
stranger, imagining they are old friends. The difference is extraor-
dinary. When they’re using Hello Old Friend, the room comes
alive. The atmosphere is charged with good feeling. The air
sparkles with happier, high-energy people. They are standing
closer, laughing more sincerely, and reaching out to one another. I
feel like I’m attending a terrific bash that’s been going on for hours.
Not a Word Need Be Spoken
The Hello Old Friend technique even supersedes language. When-
ever you’re traveling in countries where you don’t speak the native
tongue, be sure to use it. If you find yourself with a group of peo-
ple who are all speaking a language unknown to you, just imag-
ine them to be a group of your old friends. Everything is fine
except they momentarily forgot how to speak English. In spite of
the fact you won’t understand a word, your whole body still
responds with congeniality and acceptance.
I’ve used the Hello Old Friend technique while traveling in
Europe. Sometimes my English-speaking friends who live there
tell me their European colleagues say I am the friendliest Ameri-
can they’ve ever met. Yet, we’d never spoken a word between us!
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
An added benefit to the Hello Old Friend technique is it becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy. When you act as though you like someone,
you start to really like them. An Adelphi University study called,
appropriately, “Believing Another Likes or Dislikes You: Behaviors
Making the Beliefs Come True” proved it.10Researchers told vol-
unteers to treat unsuspecting subjects as though they liked them.
When surveyed later, the results showed the volunteers wound up
genuinely liking the subjects. The unsuspecting subjects were also
surveyed. These respondents expressed much higher respect and
affection for the volunteers who pretended they liked them. What
it boils down to is love begets love, like begets like, respect begets
respect. Use the Hello Old Friend technique and you will soon have
many new “old friends” who wind up genuinely liking you.
You now have all the basics to come across to everyone you
meet as a Somebody, a friendly Somebody. But your job isn’t over
yet. In addition to being liked, you want to appear credible, intel-
ligent, and sure of yourself. Each of the next three techniques
accomplishes one of those goals.
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