”People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
Ever looked at popular guys and wondered why they attracted so many people towards them?
They weren’t all that good looking nor did they have any special abilities but people genuinely felt amazing around them and wanted to be around them all the time.
Working in the cut-throat corporate world is a tough business and it is not for everybody. I often struggled with networking and building relationships in my first couple of years until I delved deeper into my knowledge of human behaviour and realised that there is not very much to each person.
On a fundamental level, humans seek pleasure and run as far as possible from pain. I realised as Freud did, that people would go as far away as possible even if it was for a small amount of pain.
Pain in this context didn’t have to be something big but it would be just an unpleasant person making your coffee or a co-worker who constantly would talk about their problems.
I also discovered that a lot of people would also go to great lengths for some momentary pleasure.
Below are some of the tips and tools that I have used multiple times in the corporate world and beyond that have helped me attract new people, and gain new relationships and new friends in and outside of my workplace.
The first one is a mindset shift and the rest are practical tools you can use to make yourself and others feel amazing around you.
Use cautiously…
Radiate Like the Sun – The Mindset Shift
In our office café, there used to be a very charming barista that the employees of my company would do anything to be served by. She was around 4 feet 11 inches, from an Asian background, and had extremely bright red hair.
What made her so charming was the fact that she radiated so much positivity and life around her that people felt attracted to her like a bug is attracted to light.
This is because you radiate your feelings and the people around you will often catch however you’re feeling on the inside.
How many times have you been sitting somewhere and as soon as someone specific entered you felt like a dark cloud had come over the place?
That’s because people radiate the energy they feel and when you spend enough time with bitter, resentful or angry people you often begin to take that energy from them and bring it into yourself.
When you radiate positive energy intentionally you will find that people start to be drawn to you like bees to a flame. So, what exactly is your vibe right now?
The best form of energy you can radiate is what I call intentional energy. This is where you intentionally change your vibe and energy instead of it waiting for it to change by something external event or person.
The more we begin to control our emotional states ourselves, the more control we will have of our emotional states.
The biggest mistake we often make is we wait for something good to happen to us instead of having the good happen within us.
Happiness and positivity are internal processes that we cultivate ourselves and are something we should never give away to external forces to control.
So what are some of the fastest ways to change our states immediately? I have outlined two of my personal favourites below to create intentional positive energy.
Gratitude for Positive Energy
The practice of gratitude has been around since the beginning of time and that is because it works.
However, most people do gratitude wrong. This is not something that you think of for a few minutes and then go back to being normal but it is a muscle that needs to be trained regularly for you to enjoy its fruits.
Below is the step-by-step process on how I practise gratitude daily, especially when I’m having a bit of a rough day.
Firstly, you will need to sit in a quiet place with your eyes closed; somewhere you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes by your phone or other people. Use a bathroom cubicle if you have to but make sure you won’t be disturbed.
Action:
Start with yourself and then expand. So you start with your physical body so start by directing your focus firstly on your breathing… take three deep breaths and feel gratitude for being able to breathe with ease.
If there is one thing the pandemic has taught us is that breathing can become a luxury very fast. Be grateful in your heart for the breaths you are able to take as for many it would be their last breaths that day
Work your way down to your physical body and start to feel your hands and feet. Slightly move them around and if you are able to move these around you are amongst the luckiest people in the world.
So many don’t have the luxury to do this. We direct our focus here to truly imagine how difficult and different life would be without our health.
Once you have spent a few minutes truly feeling and appreciating your physical gifts you can expand to outside of your body.
Start to think of your family and how grateful you may be for them to be around.
Think about those days where you may have felt like utter rubbish but then a certain someone put a smile on your face and it was the most precious thing
You can expand to your friends and colleagues next. Try to truly appreciate their roles in your life and imagine how different or difficult your life would be without them
You can finish your gratitude on your job or your achievements. Many people are struggling these days with finding work so if you do have work how lucky are you? If you do not have work, how lucky are you to be able to qualify to work?
This gratitude process is just a quick exercise that can be done in minutes which will allow you to feel more relaxed and less anxious during the day.
But as I mentioned before, this is a muscle that will need to be cultivated via repetition, and what you will notice as time goes on is that it actually becomes easier for you to do the more you do it.
Visualization for Positive Energy
I make sure this is one of the first things I do with any new client and the reason why is because many times we don’t know what we want until we actually try to visualize what we want.
Upon waking each morning I spend between 5-10 minutes just visualizing how I would like my day to go.
I imagine myself sitting in traffic (and being happy about it because I’m listening to my favourite audible book), I visualize myself at work and everything going my way, etc.
I even visualize things not going my way but me expertly handling the crisis like nobody else and coming out on top. Visualization is a very powerful technique for a number of reasons:
Firstly, the brain often cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is reality. You could literally reminisce about your first kiss and you will feel the goosebumps and the nervousness from that night all over again.
If you don’t believe me, close your eyes and think about that moment right now. For most of you, just me mentioning your first kiss has already created an abundance of saliva in your mouths (urgh that’s disgusting).
Secondly, Your mind gets directed towards the outcome that you want. The reticular activating system (RAS) is a network of neurons that are located in the brain that works as a missile guidance system. Wherever you point it, your brain will be locked and focused on that target.
As soon as you start to tell your brain that this is how you want the day to go, it will gather all of its resources to make sure you head that way.
It is a reason why you one day notice a new type of car or a particular Karen haircut and all of a sudden you start seeing it everywhere.
Your RAS takes what you focus on and filters out everything else whilst sifting through gigabytes of data to present to you only the information relevant to you. There is a great short article on Medium if you want to learn more.
Lastly, this teaches your brain that you are in control and that you have full power over how you use your internal resources for the day.
Instead of allowing the day to happen TO you, it teaches your brain to start taking control and look for ways to make things happen FOR you. In a world where everybody is a victim because of circumstances, let’s try and be winners by paving our own paths.
Now that we have the mindsets out the way let’s get into some fun NLP techniques that I have been using for years with great success.
The Anchoring Technique
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, otherwise known as NLP, an Anchor is a very powerful technique.
This is basically where an external stimulus triggers a particular internal state or response. Did you know this is very strongly used in modern-day marketing?
Take an example of a modern-day men’s fragrance advert. The ad would basically start with a 6 foot 2 athletically built, incredibly handsome male waking up in his enormous and spacious apartment.
You would see him going to his closet and choosing an expensive suit to wear followed by an expensive watch. He would then proceed to leave for work in his supercar or trendy motorbike.
Just at that moment, you would see a stunning blonde running into his arms (usually in a red dress) to kiss him goodbye. What has this shouted at your subconscious mind? This man is highly successful.
Just as there are a few seconds left to the ad, there will be a flash on the screen and you will be shown the fragrance that you should buy (followed by a whisper of the brand name).
All this build-up of a certain lifestyle as well as a certain level of success has been anchored in your brain and associated with the fragrance.
So next time you even walk past the fragrance at any retail store your subconscious mind will tell you to pick that fragrance so that you can feel… successful.
So what happened here? The fragrance has been anchored to the feeling of success and just like that you have been programmed to buy that particular brand’s fragrance.
We can use the same principle when it comes to leaving a positive impression on the people you meet and below you will see how it works.
The process is to associate as many positive emotions with you as possible in one single blast so that it completely overwhelms the person to the extent that they start to feel attached to the positivity around you.
Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? Well, it depends on how you use it.
#1 Show Your Pearly Yellows
When you meet anyone the first thing you should do is offer a big wide genuine smile. This is the first thing to do to start the anchoring process as people often remember a nice smile.
If you don’t believe me, how many times have you walked somewhere and found a stranger just smiling at you for no reason?
How often did you then think about that smile throughout the day?
Did that smile feel good for the rest of the day?
How many people did you then smile at because of that smile?
Do you see the power of the smile? Why are you smiling right now? Stop it.
#2 Be Scary Generous
Immediately if you can and this depends on the setting, offer something to the person you’re speaking with.
Whether this is a cup of tea, water, or even a stick of chewing gum (actually be careful with this one you don’t want to offend). This associates with gratitude and starts to build up the positive emotions in the person you’re speaking with.
If you remember being a child and I remember this often; I always used to get extremely happy whenever I was offered something. I even looked forward to going to the dentist because of the sweets I would get on the way out.
People liked to be given things and the funny thing is most of the time you won’t even have to give because people just like to be offered things. Why? Because it shows that you care and we’re working on becoming caring people here.
#3 Run on Memory Lane
The next thing will take some finesse on your part. You will need to jog up an extremely positive topic or memory for the person to completely throw themselves into.
In the past, I’ve used a number of different topics but the two that are my favourite are asking about their children or asking about an upcoming holiday that they may have booked and are probably counting down the days down to.
The goal here is that you ask just one or two questions for them to start talking and telling you about their children or their upcoming holiday.
If it is someone that you see on a regular basis, you can ask them what fun things they have planned for the evening or weekend.
Basically, all we want them to do is start talking enthusiastically about a topic they are passionate about, and for most people, it is usually their children or an upcoming getaway.
We have now stacked up a bunch of positive emotions and are about to hit climax.
#4 Let Them Climax on You
Finally, this is where the actual anchoring takes place. Once you have a build-up of positive emotions we need to associate all of these good feelings with you.
There are a number of ways to set the anchor; some can be physically on them or just through you.
In all fairness, this step isn’t even necessary as already you have given your friend the gift of positivity but if you are really keen on associating all those good feelings with you then you can do one of the following.
The simplest is to do a gesture you don’t do often. For me, it is to rub my chin or my nose at the height of the positive emotions when I don’t want to physically touch the person I am speaking with.
If you are okay with touch (and the person you are speaking with is okay with being touched) then the best way I have done it without being creepy is by gently touching the arm usually by the elbow in a platonic way.
Sometimes you can get away with playfully punching the person which would also work but if you are not sure stick with the gesture.
So we have elated the victim’s positive emotions and now have associated them with you in a specific way.
Usually, the actual touching of the arm or the gesture isn’t required as when doing the above several times with the person they would automatically associate positivity with you but if you want to consciously trigger an anchor at specific times then these can be useful.
#5 Be Trigger Happy
Triggering anchors can be fun when we want to give the person the gift of positive emotions.
If you have used a gesture like a scratch of the nose or the chin if these have been done properly and enough times, you will see the person you’re speaking with lighten up unexpectedly.
The same can be done with the touch of the arm which I have found super helpful when I have a friend who is not particularly feeling so great and needs a facelift.
But Dont be Drunk with Power
Triggering anchors that have been set up can be fun but they can be misused and I cannot endorse such behaviour.
An example of this could be in a meeting where you need your boss who you have been priming all this time to listen to your ideas.
So you decide to scratch your chin while you’re explaining your new idea which he magically seems to associate with strong feelings he has reserved for his summer holiday.
I recommend that all techniques be used not just for your benefit but mostly for the benefit of others.
Questions are a great powerful tool and you may have heard before that the best gift you could give someone is a great question.
So ask about people’s days, their dreams, their holidays, their families, and children but do so without a selfish motive but from the goodness of your heart and then anchor those feelings often so that they can feel great often.
Happy anchoring!