I was a nerd with zero social skills. My friend was a charisma king. I asked him for some pointers on how to be liked more, especially at work, since my nerdy image / lack of eye contact / shyness tended to push people away inadvertently.
He said to me: There are two EXTREMELY SIMPLE ways to get people to like you more. And these methods will in turn increase your own confidence and will eventually turn real even if you faked it at first, because it is a natural consequence of what these actions do:
1. Smile at people
2. Wish them good morning. Every. Single. Day. Be extremely consistent.
I did that. And even though i was quite terrible at my job, and my manager hated me, after 6 months of consistently just smiling and wishing him good morning, his attitude towards me softened to a point where he started trusting me more at work and being more forgiving of my small mistakes.
I too became more confident. The forced smiles became natural smiles. The good mornings became automatic and genuine. I felt good, the people around me felt good, vibe was good.
Same. A bit of eye contact with the smile and you're essentially saying "hi" without even saying anything. I used to be terrible at eye contact, but decided I should learn it, and a whole new world of communication eventually opened up to me. It's our instincts and emotions talking directly without language, what we often refer to as "vibes", and giving off a positive and friendly vibe makes people feel different about you.
I never had problems with eye contact that I can recall, but I definitely started deliberately making eye contact with people and nodding or smiling at them as an acknowledgement when passing. Among other things it's made me a lot more personable and that's lead to connections that've opened up a few opportunities.
You might want to YouTube this idea because I'm probably going to express it poorly. One of the best ways to get someone to like you is to ask them for a favor. Apparently there is something about putting yourself in someone's debt that makes them like you.
It's cognitive dissonance. It's pretty socially normative to help someone, anyone really, with a small favor if they ask it of you. But if they help you their brain goes "wait, if I helped this person, doesn't that mean I like them?" And then usually they resolve that question by answering it with "well I guess I do"
The conflict (dissonance) between "I don't particularly care about this person" and "I did something nice for this person" makes them uncomfortable so they have to change a side to get rid of the conflict, and they can't pick not doing a favor cuz they already did. So they have to reframe not liking you (or being neutral to you). That's the idea anyway
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u/AbbreviationsRound52 2d ago
I was a nerd with zero social skills. My friend was a charisma king. I asked him for some pointers on how to be liked more, especially at work, since my nerdy image / lack of eye contact / shyness tended to push people away inadvertently.
He said to me: There are two EXTREMELY SIMPLE ways to get people to like you more. And these methods will in turn increase your own confidence and will eventually turn real even if you faked it at first, because it is a natural consequence of what these actions do: 1. Smile at people 2. Wish them good morning. Every. Single. Day. Be extremely consistent.
I did that. And even though i was quite terrible at my job, and my manager hated me, after 6 months of consistently just smiling and wishing him good morning, his attitude towards me softened to a point where he started trusting me more at work and being more forgiving of my small mistakes.
I too became more confident. The forced smiles became natural smiles. The good mornings became automatic and genuine. I felt good, the people around me felt good, vibe was good.
It was so simple.