Be More Charismatic By Treating New Friends Like Old Ones

Be More Charismatic By Treating New Friends Like Old Ones

Hitting it off with new people can be quite a challenge for some of us. When you don’t know someone, there’s a barrier of awkwardness between you. Charismatic people are able to break that barrier. One shortcut for doing this is to think of someone new you meet as an old friend.

Photo by HND.

Like a lot of people, I get all kinds of nervous in social situations, especially when I’m chatting with someone new at a party or networking event. It’s hard to talk to people you don’t know. To get past this, try to imagine you do know them, suggests Leil Lowndes, author of How To Talk To Anyone. Time reports:

When you first meet someone, imagine they’re your old friend. According to Lowndes, this will cause a lot of subconscious reactions in your body, from the softening of your eyebrows to the positioning of your toes. And added benefits of this technique is that when you act as though you like someone it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy you might really start to like them. Lowndes says, “What it boils down to is love begets love, like begets like, respect begets respect.”

Like most social shortcuts, it sounds a bit silly at first, but it’s just a mental trick to relax so you’re a little more open and approachable. However, your mileage is definitely going to vary with this one, so use this tip according to your own discretion. If you’re loud and bawdy with your friends, you probably want to leave that out when you’re chatting up a potential employer at a job fair, for example.

It’s a decent tip for calming your nerves and making small talk a little less awkward. Check out the rest at the link below.

7 Body Language Tricks to Make People Like You [TIME]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments