Open Body Language

Open body language exposes your heart and body (within limits of decency, of course!) and signals cooperation, agreement, willingness, enthusiasm and approval. These gestures are meant to be seen. They show trust.

They say "YES!"

Your body doesn't know how to lie. Unconsciously, with no directions from you, it transmits your thoughts and feelings in a language of its own to the bodies of other people, and these bodies understand the language perfectly. Any contradictions in the language can interrupt the development of rapport.

Nierenberg explains the value of open gestures. These gestures include open hands and uncrossed arms as well as the occasional subtle movement toward the other person that says "I am with you" and shows acceptance: an open coat or jacket, for example, both literally and symbolically exposes the heart. When used together, such gestures say "Things are going well."

Positive, open-body gestures reach out to others.These gestures are generally slow and deliberate. When an open person makes contact with the heart of another person, a strong connection is made and trust becomes possible. (You know the feeling of a good hug? Or a heart-to-heart talk?)

When you meet someone new, immediately point your heart warmly at that person's heart. There is magic in this.

Other common open gestures include standing with your hands on your hips and your feet apart, a stance that shows enthusiasm and willingness, and moving forward in your chair (if accompanied by other open gestures). Leaning forward shows interest, and uncrossing your arms or legs signals you are open to suggestions.

Body Language

Our body language, which includes your posture,X your expressions and your estures, accounts for more than one-half of what other people respond to and make assumptions about.

When people think of body language, they tend to think it means what happens from the neck down. But much of what we communicate to others—and what they make assumptions about—comes from the neck up. Facial gestures and nods and tilts of the head have a vocabulary that equals or exceeds that of the body from the neck down. 

The signals we send with our bodies are rich with meaning and global in their scope. Some of them are hardwired into us at birth; others are picked up from our society and culture. Everywhere on the planet, panic

induces an uncontrollable shielding of the heart with the hands and/or a freezing of the limbs. A smile is a smile

on all continents, while sadness is displayed through down-turned lips as often in New York as in Papua New

Guinea. The clenched fists of determination and the open palms of truth convey the same message in Iceland as they do in Indonesia.

And no matter where on earth you find yourself, mothers and fathers instinctively cradle their babies with the head against the left side of their body, close to the heart. The heart is at the heart of it. Facial expressions and body language are all obedient to the greater purpose of helping your body maintain the well-being of its center of feeling, mood and emotion—your heart.

Volumes have been written about body language, but when all is said and done, this form of communication can be broken down into two rather broad categories: open and closed. Open body language exposes the heart, while closed body language defends or protects it. In establishing rapport, we can also think in terms of

inclusive gestures and noninclusive gestures.

It's Your Choice

The good news is that attitudes are yours to select. And if you're free to choose any one you please, why not choose a Really Useful Attitude? Let's say you just flew into Miami International Airport and you missed your connection for Omaha. You simply have to get on the next flight at all costs, so you go up to the airline desk and shout at the representative.

This is a Really Useless Attitude. If what you want is to get the attendant's maximum help, the best thing you can do is to find a Really Useful Attitude that will create rapport and get his cooperation. I'll probably regret saying this, but I've talked my way out of dozens of automobile-related tickets (I've also failed a few times) and not just for parking infractions.

I'm absolutely convinced that if I'd started by telling the officer his radar was off or by losing my temper and getting angry and telling him I'm the mayor's cousin and I'll never visit this town again, I'd be doomed from the start. If I want the officer to like me, to be understanding and not give me a ticket, then I have to assume a Really Useful Attitude like "I'm sorry" or "Fair enough" or "My, what a fool I am" or "Oh wow, yes, thanks!"

The last time I got stopped, the officer followed me into the village supermarket parking lot and pulled to a stop across the back of my car; I got out and walked to his car. From his physical appearance, with his beard

and body set, I figured he was a Kinesthetic, or feeling based person (you'll learn more about this later), so the first words out of my mouth were "Fair and square." That's because there was no doubt I was in the wrong. He gave me a well-deserved speech about what I'd done and let me off with a warning. The point is that my attitude set the tone of the encounter—because I knew what I wanted.

In face-to-face situations, your attitude precedes you. It is the central force in your life—it controls the quality and appearance of everything you do. It doesn't take much imagination to dream up some Really Useless Attitudes—anger, impatience, conceit, boredom, cynicism—so why not take a moment to contemplate and feel a Really Useful Attitude? When you meet someone for the first time, you can be curious, enthusiastic, inquiring, helpful or engaging. Or my favorite—warm. There's something intoxicating about warm human contact; in fact, scientists have discovered that it can generate the release of opiates in the brain—how about that for a Really Useful Attitude?

Needless to say, all the above are more useful than revenge and disrespect. Ask yourself, "What do I want, right now, at this moment? And which attitude will serve me best?" Remember, there are only two types of attitudes to consider.

A Really Useless Attitude

Any two people can have wildly different attitudes toward the same set of experiences. However, when two people react to the same experience with the same attitude, they share a powerful natural bond. Attitudes have the tendency to be infectious, and because they are rooted in emotional interpretation of experiences, they can be distorted and shaped; they can be wound up or wound down. What happens when people lose control and become angry? They look belligerent (body language), their voice tone is harsh and they use menacing words. They can be very scary to be around. From the point of view of making people like you, or even getting willing cooperation, we call this a Really Useless Attitude. How often have you seen infuriated parents berating their children for knocking over the bananas at the supermarket? Or bored, uninterested shop assistants? Or cranky, impatient doctors? They are all putting out useless attitudes.

I'm not saying whether this is right or wrong; I'm just pointing out that from a communications standpoint it doesn't deliver the message very well. Assuming they have a message. And that's often the point. Useless attitudes tend to come from people who don't know what they really want from their communication.

Remember, the "K" in "KFC" stands for "Know what you want." If you don't know what you want, there's no message to deliver and no basis for connecting with other people. Most people think in terms of what they don't want as opposed to what they do want, and their attitudes reflect this. "I don't want my boss yelling at me anymore" comes with a whole different attitude than "1 want my boss's job" or "I want to be promoted." Similarly, "I'm sick of selling neckties all day long" sends a completely different attitude and set of signals to your imagination than does "I want to run a charter fishing boat in Honey Harbor."

Your imagination is the strongest force that you possess—stronger than willpower. Think about it. Your imagination projects sensory experiences in your mind through the language of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes. Your imagination distorts reality. It can work for you or against you. It can make you feel terrific or miserable. So the better the information you can feed into your imagination, the better it can organize
your thinking and your attitudes and ultimately your life.

A Really Useful Attitude

No matter what you do or where you live, the quality of your attitude determines the quality of your relationships—not to mention just about everything else in your life. I have been using the same bank branch for the last eight years. From time to time, someone I've never heard of before sends me a letter (spelling my name wrong) to tell me what a pleasure it is to have me as a special customer. No matter how hard they try to
improve their "personalized" service, however, banks are pretty much the same all over, and my bank is really
no different from the rest. So why do I still bank there even though two new, competing banks have recently opened much closer to where I live? Convenience? Obviously not. Better rates? Nope. More services? No. It's none of these things. It's Joanne, one of the tellers. What does Joanne offer that the institution can't? She makes me feel good. I believe she cares about me, and other customers feel the same way about her. You can tell by the way they talk with her. This charming lady brightens up the whole place. How does Joanne do it? Simple. She knows what she wants: to please the customers and do her job well. She has a Really Useful Attitude or, to be more precise, two fully congruent Really Useful Attitudes. She is both cheery and interested, and everybody benefits: me the customer, her colleagues, her company, no doubt her family and, above all, herself. What Joanne sends out with her Really Useful Attitude comes back to her a thousandfold and becomes a joyous, self-fulfilling reality. And it doesn't cost a cent.

THE ALGORITHM FOR GETTING WOMEN TO LOVE YOU

Not only were the Venusian arts (the arts of love) excluded from your curriculum—but they're probably the only discipline teachers didn't try to cram into your brain as you passed from childhood through adolescence and then into adulthood. Let's face it, when you studied algebra at school, the only numbers you really cared about were the measurements of the girl in the tight sweater and the digits you needed to get her on the phone. Those numbers added up to something worth getting your hands on. Enter the Mystery Method. If someone doesn't have health and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt an algorithm on how to do that—perhaps a new diet and workout regimen. If someone doesn't have wealth and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt an algorithm for wealth building—perhaps a new investment portfolio. Similarly, in relationships, if someone doesn't have success and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt the algorithm for success there. I invented that algorithm.

I am your teacher and this is your guidebook to discerning the patterns in dynamic social interactions and then using them to your advantage. This body of knowledge, called the science of social dynamics, has become my life's work, particularly as it applies to the world of pickup. It is about more than seduction and sexual conquest; it also encompasses making friends with men and women alike. But, make no mistake, it is first and foremost about getting laid more than you could ever have dreamed possible, assuming that's what you want. And not just laid but, like Casanova, laid by those gorgeous women who have always seemed beyond reach. For him, it was members of the aristocracy; for you, I'm talking about the women you see walking runways in stiletto heels, on the arms of pro athletes and celebrities, and in the pages of Playboy and Maxim. You can have them. The Mystery Method can give them to you.

MASTERING THE SCIENCE OF COURTSHIP

The Mystery Method provides a step-by-step game plan that structtures "courtship"—which is the quaint, old-fashioned term for the sequence of events that results in guys getting laid—for success. Before me, no one had ever defined courtship as a predetermined structure having several phases. Through years of study and experimentation, I identified a process that begins when you meet a woman who interests you. From there, using a finely calibrated ability to influence (not manipulate; there's a huge difference), which this book will help you develop, you build attraction with her. This concept is hugely important: Attraction comes before seduction. But attraction, while necessary, isn't an end in itself. Next, you need to build comfort with this woman you've targeted. (As you'll find out, both are equally necessary for reaching the end-game: sex.) As I teach "courtship." the process of building attraction and comfort will probably transpire over several venues—say, a bar and a restaurant—en route to the final venue, which will likely be your bed, or a hotel room's, That won't happen, however, until you create arousal at the end of the comfort-building stage and then begin a sexual relationship by seducing her.

That's what the Mystery Method does. What it is, is an advanced algorithm thirteen years in the making. I created it through years of trial and error, because I had to. When I was starting out there was no guidebook like the one you have now. I didn't have the luxury of buying a book like this, or attending a seminar, or Googling "pickup artist" online. Armed with nothing but ignorance and desire, I went out into "the field." because that's where the girls were. Step-by-step, I learned first how to "open." Once I learned how to open, I also discovered empirically that in public settings girls of beauty are seldom, if ever, alone. So then I had to get good at opening an entire group, and so on, until my system for seducing women became comprehensive,

battle-tested, and turnkey.

Honestly, had I read a guidebook like this when I was starting out, I would have saved myself about seven years of pain and confusion. Since its conception, the Mystery Method has been modified by some of my closest friends, most of whom were former students of mine who got caught up to speed on my techniques and became great pickup artists in their own right. Just as my students have learned their craft from me, I have in turn learned much from them, and the insights they gained in the field have improved my own methodology. Like any system of self-improvement and personal transformation, the Mystery Method is constantly being improved. It will always be a work in progress because the people using it are constantly changing as well. To

keep it up-to-date with the latest empirical data available, I make systematic improvements every six months, without fail.

Being Yourself

Do you feel nervous when you meet someone new? Physiologically, being nervous and being excited have a lot in common: pounding heart, churning tummy, high chest breathing and the general jitters. But one of these states might send you hightailing it for the nearest dark corner while the other one can serve you well and propel you forward. There is a tendency for panic to accompany nervousness, and this quite naturally makes bodily activities speed up. Because much of your nervousness stems from increased awareness, try redirecting
some of your awareness toward slowing down and being more deliberate. One great technique is to imagine that your nostrils are just below your navel and that your in-and-out breaths are happening down there. The slower you are, within reason, the more in control you will appear. 

The sooner you start telling yourself that you're excited rather than nervous, the sooner you'll be able to convince your subconscious that this is actually how you feel. And, in fact, that's really all that matters. Change your attitude, and your body language and voice tone will change to reflect your new attitude. Keep in mind that most people are as eager as you are to establish rapport. They will generously give you the benefit of the doubt.

Don't try too hard! In a study conducted at
Princeton University, students of both sexes were
questioned about their methods of sizing up people
they met for the first time. Overeagerness was
one of the most reported turnoffs. Don't smile too
hard, don't try to be too witty, don't be overpolite
and avoid the temptation to be patronizing.

As you become more at ease with your attitude, people will begin to notice characteristics that are unique to you—that set you apart from the others and define you as an individual. You will naturally and easily project the likable parts of your own unique personality and have more conscious control and confidence in your ability to create rapport at will.

It's just about impossible to be incongruent when you are operating from inside any kind of attitude, useful or otherwise. Because your attitude precedes you, it is an essential component of the first impression you make on new acquaintances.

Words vs. Tone

Say each phrase below with different tonality: anger, boredom, surprise and flirtatiousness. Notice how your body language, facial expression and breathing combine to alter your emotional state.

"It's late."

"I've had enough."

"Look at me."

"Where were you born?"

To check your tonality, find a friend and say one or two of these phrases. See if your friend can tell you which of the four feelings you're expressing. If it's not obvious, keep working at it until it's clear. body will signal to your brain by mixing up a chemical cocktail that corresponds to the discomfort that the other person is feeling. Then you will both be uncomfortable, and rapport will be that much harder to achieve. When they notice a discrepancy between your words and gestures, other people will believe the gestures and react accordingly.

So, congruity occurs when your body, voice tone and words are all in alignment. And when your body, tone and words are communicating the same thing, you will appear sincere and people will tend to believe you. This is why a Really Useful Attitude is so important. Appearing sincere, or congruent, is a key ingredient for building the trust that opens the door to likability and rapport.

Make sure that your words, your tonality and your

gestures are all saying the same thing. Be on the

lookout for incongruity in others. Notice how it

makes you feel.

We've all seen those old movies where a couple of people are driving along in a car, and they're rocking the steering wheel even though the background shows a road that's straight as an arrow. It's phony—you know they're really in a studio being bounced around in a box. Your senses have told you that something isn't right, something is out of alignment, and so you can't believe what you see. Or have you ever had someone get mad at you and then, in the middle of bawling you out, flash a sinister little smile that disappears as fast as it came? Very chilling. This is another example of incongruent behavior. The smile doesn't belong with the anger; it's insincere.

Recognizing incongruent behavior is another survival instinct. If you're on vacation and you're approached by a complete stranger who grins at you while he rubs his hands briskly together, licks his lips and says, "Good morning, how would you like to invest in the world's best time-share deal," the chances are you'll be on your guard. A quick congruence check is instinctive and is another reason why first impressions are paramount.

Frequently a person's emotions and intentions are misunderstood by those around them. For instance, a woman at one of my seminars discovered that she unconsciously used a tone of voice that was incongruent with her words. "No, I'm not confused, I'm interested," she would insist when tested. And again, "No, I'm not sad, I'm relaxed." This went on and on until she came to the verge of tears and said, "Now I know why my kids are always saying, 'Mom, how come you get mad at us all the time?' And I'm not mad at them. Sometimes I'm just excited."

The same woman also told us that her coworkers accused her of sarcasm but that, to her, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, sarcasm is simply words said with conflicting voice tone. It is structured so the person on the receiving end will believe what's inferred by the tonality. Suppose you let your team down and somebody is heard to quip, "That was brilliant," with a tonality that communicates annoyance.

It's a very different case when you score a fantastic goal and the same person is heard to say with excitement, "That was brilliant!"

Congruity, then, has one unshakable rule and it is this: If your gestures, tone and words do not say the same thing, people will believe the gestures. Go up to someone you know, purse your lips and say, "I really like you," with your eyebrows raised and your arms folded.

Ask them what they think. Even better, go find a mirror and try it. Well? You get my point. Your gestures are a giveaway to what you really mean.

Smaller Gestures

Hand gestures are also part of the vocabulary of body language. They, too, can be divided into open gestures
(positive responses) and closed or concealed gestures (negative responses), except that their range is far more intricate and expressive. I should point out that individual gestures, just like the individual words on this page, don't say much. Only when you're presented with more than one gesture, perhaps combined with an expression and topped off with some overall body language, can you deduce that a particular clenched fist means "Wow, my horse came in first!" and not "I'm so mad I want to slap him!"

A similar set of differences occurs in body language above the neck. The open face smiles, makes eye contact, gives feedback, shows curiosity and raises the eyebrows to show interest. In a casual encounter, a quick look and a lowering of the eyes says, "I trust you. I'm not afraid of you." A prolonged look strengthens the positive signal. In conversation, we may use a nod of the head at the end of a statement to indicate that an answer is expected.

In contrast, the closed face frowns, purses the lips and avoids eye contact. And there is yet another negative
category to add to facial responses. We politely call it the neutral, or expressionless, face. It's the one that just gawks at you like a dead trout.

Frequently I look around at my audiences and recognize people who have heard me talk before. I recognize them because they have "the look of recognition" on their face when they see me. It's a look, or even an attitude, of silent anticipation that any minute I'll recognize them. Well, this look can work wonders—from time to time—with people you haven't met before. If you're on your own, try it out right now. Let your mouth open slightly in a smile as your eyebrows arch and your head tilts back a little with anticipation as you look directly at an imaginary person. A variation is to tilt your head as you look slightly away and then look back at the person with the bare minimum of a frown and/or pursed lips. Practice. Then give it a try. Be as subtle as you possibly can.

Last spring, I rented a bus for my daughter and her friends to be chauffeured around in on the night of their prom. While I was paying at the rental office, I noticed a woman sitting at the next desk over. She had a look on her face that said she knew me, and I racked my brain to place her. I couldn't.

In the end I had to say, "I'm sorry, but have we met before?"

"No," she replied seriously. Then she stood up at her desk, held out her hand to me and smiled. "Hi, I'm Natalie," she said.

I had been obliged to speak first, and she had done the polite thing. She had stood up, offered her hand, smiled and introduced herself. All completely innocent— or was it? I have no idea. But we had rapport, and she had me talking.

Closed Body Language

Defensiveness is shown through gestures that protect the body and defend the heart. These gestures suggest resistance, frustration, anxiety, stubbornness, nervousness and impatience. They are negative gestures, and they say "NO!"

Crossed arms are common to all manifestations of defensiveness. They hide the heart and defend one's feelings. Although you can also be relatively relaxed with your arms crossed, the difference between a relaxed crossed-arm position and a defensive crossedarm position is in the accompanying gestures. For example, are your arms loosely folded or pressed close to your body? Are your hands clenched or open?

Defensive gestures are often fast and evasive and beyond your conscious control. Your body has a mind of its own and is ruled by your attitude, useful or useless. In addition to crossed arms, the most obvious defensive gestures are avoiding eye contact with the other person and turning your body sideways. Fidgeting is another negative gesture, which can also show impatience or nervousness.

Right away, you can see the difference between a person who faces you squarely and honestly, and someone who stands sideways to you with crossed arms and hunched shoulders while the two of you talk. In the first instance, the person is openly pointing his heart directly at your heart. In the second, the posture is defensive;

the person is pointing his heart away from you and protecting it. One is being open with you, the other closed. Being in the presence of these two postures produces very different feelings.

Open Body Language

Open body language exposes your heart and body (within limits of decency, of course!) and signals cooperation, agreement, willingness, enthusiasm and approval.These gestures are meant to be seen. They show trust. They say "YES!"

Your body doesn't know how to lie. Unconsciously, with no directions from you, it transmits your thoughts and feelings in a language of its own to the bodies of other people, and these bodies understand the language perfectly. Any contradictions in the language can interrupt the development of rapport.

In his classic work How to Read a Person like a Book, Gerard I. Nierenberg explains the value of open gestures. These gestures include open hands and uncrossed arms as well as the occasional subtle movement toward the other person that says "I am with you" and shows acceptance: an open coat or jacket, for example, both literally and symbolically exposes the heart. When used together, such gestures say "Things are going well."

Positive, open-body gestures reach out to others. These gestures are generally slow and deliberate. When an open person makes contact with the heart of another person, a strong connection is made and trust becomes possible. (You know the feeling of a good hug? Or a heart-to-heart talk?)

When you meet someone new, immediately point your heart warmly at that person's heart. There is magic in this.

Other common open gestures include standing with your hands on your hips and your feet apart, a stance that shows enthusiasm and willingness, and moving forward in your chair (if accompanied by other open gestures). Leaning forward shows interest, and uncrossing your arms or legs signals you are open to suggestions.

Action Speaks Louder than Words

No matter how hard we try, we cannot get away from the fact that image and appearance are important when meeting someone for the first time. Dressing well goes a long way toward making a positive impression as you begin to establish rapport, but how do you make people warm to you? And how do you project the likable parts of your own unique personality?

Body Language

our body language, which includes your posture, X your expressions and your gestures, accounts for more than one-half of what other people respond to and

make assumptions about.

When people think of body language, they tend to think it means what happens from the neck down. But much of what we communicate to others—and what they make assumptions about—comes from the neck up. Facial gestures and nods and tilts of the head have a vocabulary that equals or exceeds that of the body from

the neck down.

The signals we send with our bodies are rich with meaning and global in their scope. Some of them are hardwired into us at birth; others are picked up from our society and culture. Everywhere on the planet, panic induces an uncontrollable shielding of the heart with the hands and/or a freezing of the limbs. A smile is a smile on all continents, while sadness is displayed through down-turned lips as often in New York as in Papua New Guinea. The clenched fists of determination and the open palms of truth convey the same message in Iceland as they do in Indonesia.

And no matter where on earth you find yourself, mothers and fathers instinctively cradle their babies with the head against the left side of their body, close to the heart. The heart is at the heart of it. Facial expressions and body language are all obedient to the greater purpose of helping your body maintain the well-being of its center of feeling, mood and emotion—your heart.

Volumes have been written about body language, but when all is said and done, this form of communication can be broken down into two rather broad categories: open and closed. Open body language exposes the heart, while closed body language defends or protects it. In establishing rapport, we can also think in terms of inclusive gestures and noninclusive gestures.

Communicating

Everyone seems to have a different sense of the word "communication," but the definitions usually go something like this: "It's an exchange of information between two or more people" . . . "It's getting your message across" . . . "It's being understood." In the early days of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a research project devoted to "the study of excellence and a model of how individuals structure their subjective sensory experience," Richard Bandler and John Grinder created an effective definition: "The meaning of communication lies in the response it gets." This is simple, and brilliant, because it means that it's 100% up to

you whether or not your own communication succeeds. After all, you axe the one with a message to deliver or a goal to achieve, and you are the one with the responsibility to make it happen. What's more, if it doesn't work, you are the one with the flexibility to change what you do until you finally get what you want. In order to give some form and function to communication here, let's assume that we have some kind of response or outcome in mind. People who are low on communication skills usually have not thought out the response they want from the other person in the first place and therefore cannot aim for it.

The skills you will learn here will serve you on all levels of communication from social dealings like developing new relationships and being understood in your daily interactions all the way to life-changing moves for yourself and those in your sphere of influence.

The formula for effective communication has three distinct parts:

Know what you want. Formulate your intention in the affirmative and preferably in the present tense. For example, "I want a successful relationship, I have filled my imagination with what that relationship will look, sound, feel, smell and taste like with me in it, and I know when I will have it" is an affirmative statement, as opposed to "I don't want to be lonely."

Find out what you're getting. Get feedback. You find that hanging out in smoky bars is not for you.

Change what you do until you get what you want. Design a plan and follow through with it: "I'll invite 10 people over for dinner every Saturday night." Do it and get more feedback. Redesign if necessary, and do it again with more feedback. Repeat the cycle—redesign-do-get feedback—until you get what you want. You can apply this cycle to any area of your life that you want to improve—finance, romance, sports, career, you name it.

Know what you want.

Find out what you're getting.

Change what you do until you get what you want.

This is terrifically easy to remember because a

certain Colonel had the good sense to open a

chain of restaurants using the abbreviation KFC

for a name. Every time we see one of his signs,

we can ask ourselves how well the development

of our communication skills is going.

The Benefits of Connecting

Our personal growth and evolution (and the evolution of societies) come about as a result of connecting with our fellow humans, whether as a band of young warriors setting out on a hunt or as a group of coworkers heading out to the local pizzeria after work on Friday. As a species, we are instinctively driven to come together and form groups of friends, associations and communities. Without them, we cannot exist. Making connections is what our gray matter does best. It receives information from our senses and processes it by making associations. The brain delights in and learns from these associations. It grows and flourishes when

it's making connections.

People do the same thing. It's a scientific fact that people who connect live longer. In their gem of a book, Keep Your Brain Alive, Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin quote studies by the McArthur Foundation and the International Longevity Center in New York and at the University of Southern California. These studies show that people who stay socially and physically active have longer life spans. This doesn't mean hanging out with the same old crowd and peddling around on an exercise bike. It means getting out and making new friends. When you make new connections in the outside world, you make new connections in the inside world in your brain. This keeps you young and alert. Edward M. Hallowell, in his very savvy book Connect, cites the 1979 Alameda County Study by Dr. Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Health Sciences. Dr. Berkman and her team carefully looked at 7,000 people, aged 35 to 65,over a period of nine years. Their study concluded that people who lack social and community ties are almost three times more likely to die of medical illness than those who have more extensive contacts. And all this is independent of socioeconomic status and health practices such as smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption, obesity or physical activity!

Other people can also help you take care of your needs and desires. Whatever it is you'd like in this life romance, a dream job, a ticket to the Rose Bowl—the chances are pretty high that you'll need someone's help to get it. If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts. And the better the quality of rapport you have with them, the higher the level of their cooperation.

Establishing Rapport

Rapport is the establishment of common ground, of a comfort zone where two or more people can mentally join together. When you have rapport, each of you brings something to the interaction—attentiveness,warmth, a sense of humor, for example—and each brings something back: empathy, sympathy, maybe a couple of great jokes. Rapport is the lubricant that allows social exchanges to flow smoothly. The prize, when you achieve rapport, is the other person's positive acceptance. This response won't be in so many words, but it will signal something like this: "I know I just met you, but I like you so I will trust you with my attention." Sometimes rapport just happens all by itself, as if by chance; sometimes you have to give it a hand. Get it right, and the communicating can begin. Get it wrong, and you'll have to bargain for attention.

As you meet and greet new people, your ability to establish rapport will depend on four things: your attitude, your ability to "synchronize" certain aspects of behavior like body language and voice tone, your conversation skills and your ability to discover which sense (visual, auditory or kinesthetic) the other person relies on most. Once you become adept in these four areas, you will be able to quickly connect and establish rapport with anyone you choose and at any time.

Read on, and you'll discover that it's possible to speed up the process of feeling comfortable with a stranger by quantum-leaping the usual familiarization rituals and going straight into the routines that people who like each other do naturally. In virtually no time at all, you will be getting along as if you've known each

other for ages. Many of my students report that when achieving rapport becomes second nature, they find people asking, "Are you sure we haven't met before?" I know the feeling; it happens to me all the time. And it's not just people asking me the question. 1 am convinced that half the people I meet, I've met before—

that's the way it goes when you move easily into another person's map of the world. It's a wonderful feeling.

The Meeting

If you make the right impression during the first three or four seconds of a new meeting, you can create an awareness that you are sincere, safe and trustworthy and the opportunity to go further and create a rapport will present itself.


The Greeting


We call the first few seconds of contact the "greeting."

Greetings are broken into five parts: Open—Eye—Beam—Hi!—Lean. These five actions constitute a wel-coming program to carry out in a first encounter. Open. The first part of the greeting is to open your attitude and your body. For this to work successfully, you must have already decided on a positive attitude that's right for you. This is the time to really feel and be aware of it. Check to see that your body language is open. If you have the right attitude, this should take care of itself. Keep your heart aimed directly at the person you're meeting. Don't cover your heart with your hands or arms and, when possible, unbutton your jacket or coat.


Eye.


The second part of the greeting involves your eyes. Be first with eye contact. Look this new person directly in the eye. Let your eyes reflect your positive

attitude. To state the obvious: eye contact is real contact! Get used to really looking at other people's eyes. When you're watching TV one evening, note the

eye color of as many people as possible and say the name of the color to yourself. The next day, do the same with every person you meet, looking him or her straight in the eye.



Beam.


This part is closely related to eye contact.

Beam! Be the first to smile. Let your smile reflect your attitude. Now you've gained the other person's attention through your open body language, your eye contact and your beaming smile. What that person is picking up sub-consciously is an impression not of some grinning, gawking fool (though you may briefly fear you look like one!) but of someone who is completely sincere. Hi! Whether it's "Hi!" or "Hello!" or even "Yo!" say it with pleasing tonality and attach your own name to it

("Hi! I'm Naomi"). As with the smile and the eye contact, be the first to identify yourself. It is at this point, and within only a few seconds, that you are in a position to gather tons of free information about the person you're meeting—information you can put to good use later in your conversation.Take the lead. Extend your hand to the other person,and if it's convenient find a way to say his or her name two or three times to help fix it in memory. Not "Glenda,Glenda, Glenda, nice to meet you" but "Glenda. Great to meet you, Glenda!" As you'll see in Chapter 7, this will be followed by your "occasion/location statement."


Lean.


The final part of introducing yourself is the "lean." This action can be an almost imperceptible forward tilt to very subtly indicate your interest and openness as you begin to "synchronize" the person you've just met.



Handshakes run the gamut from the strong, sturdy bone-crusher to the wet noodle. Both are memorable—once shaken, twice shy, in some cases.Certain expectations accompany a handshake. It should be firm and respectful, as it you were ringing a

hand bell for room service. Deviate from these expectations and the other person will scramble to make sense of what's happening. There is a feeling that something is wrong—like hot water coming out of the cold tap. The brain hates confusion, and when faced with it the first instinct is to withdraw. The "hands-free" handshake is a handshake without the hand, and it is a powerful tool. Just do everything

you would do during a normal handshake but without using your hand. Point your heart at the other person and say hello. Light up your eyes and smile, and give off into a force to be reckoned with! You'll need a partner to work with. Stand about eight feet apart, facing each other like two gunfighters in a cowboy movie. As you say " H i ! " clap your hands together and slide your right hand off and past the other in the direction of your partner. Gather up all the energy you can throughout your body and store it in your heart, then clap the energy on through your right hand (the one you use in a handshake) straight into the other person's heart. This is a long explanation for something that takes no more than two seconds, but when all six channels—body, heart, eyes, smile, clap and voice/breath—are fired at the person in a rapid flash there is a vast transfer of energy. Immediately after receiving the energy, your partner should fire it back at you in the same way. Taking turns, continue fast and focused, firing at each other. Be sure to make contact with all six channels at once. Practice on each other for two minutes. Now the real fun begins. You're going to start firing different qualities of energy: logic/head energy, communication/throat energy, love/heart energy, power/solar plexus energy and sexual energy. You've already fired love/heart energy. Now do the same head to head instead of heart to heart. Keep firing head/logic energy at each other until you both agree that you can feel and differentiate it from love/heart energy. After two or three minutes back and forth, try the other regions: throat to throat, solar plexus to solar plexus, etc.


It gets even better. Figure out which kind of energy you want to send, but don't say what it is. Now greet your partner, shake hands, say " H i " and fire! Your partner must identify the kind of energy he or she is receiving. Take turns.

Practice and practice until your body language becomes subtle and almost imperceptible.


Next, go out and try it on the people you meet. Fire energy when you say " H i " to someone in a supermarket, to your waiter in the cafe, to your sister-in-law or the guy who fixes the photocopier in your office. They will notice something special about you—some might call it "star quality."


that same special energy that usually accompanies the full-blown shake. Incidentally, the "hands-free" handshake works wonders in presentations when you want to establish rapport with a group or audience.

First Impressions

There are three parts of connecting with other people: meeting, establishment rapport and communicating. These three parts happen quickly and tend to overlap and blend into each other. Our goal is to make them as natural, fluid and easy as possible, and above all to make them enjoyable and rewarding. Obviously, you begin the connecting process by meeting people. Sometimes you meet someone by chance—the woman on the train who turns out to share your passion for Bogart movies. And sometimes it's by choice—the man your cousin introduced you to because he loves Shakespeare, fine wines and bungee jumping, just like you. If meeting is the physical coming together of two or more people, then communicating is what we do from the moment we are fully aware of another's presence. And between these two events—meeting and communicating—lies the 90-second land of rapport that links them together.

Why Likability Works

If people like you, they feel natural and comfortable around you. They will give you their attention and happily open up for you. Likability has something to do with how you look but a lot more to do with how you make people feel. My old nanny, who brought me up to be passionate about people,used to talk about having "a sunny disposition." She'd take me out on the promenade, and we'd spot the people who had sunny dispositions and all those who were "sourpusses." She told me we can choose what we want to be, and then we'd laugh at the sourpusses because they looked so serious. Likable people give loud and clear signals of their willingness to be sociable; they reveal that their public communication channels are open. Embedded in these signals is evidence of self-confidence, sincerity and trust. Likable people expose a warm, easygoing public face with an outgoing radiance that states, "I am ready to connect. I am open for business." They are welcoming and friendly, and they get other people's attention.

Connect and Feel Love

Finally, we benefit from each other emotionally. We are not closed, self-regulating systems, but open loops regu-lated, disciplined, encouraged, reprimanded, supported and validated by the emotional feedback we receive from others. From time to time, we meet someone who influences our emotions and vital body rhythms in such a pleasurable way that we call it love. Be it through body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice or words alone, other people make our hard times more bearable, our good times much sweeter. We use the emotional input of other humans as much as we do the air we breathe and the food we eat. Deprive us of emotional and physical contact (a hug and a smile can go a long way), and we will wither and die just as surely as if we were deprived of food. That's why we hear stories of children in orphanages who grow sickly and weak despite being adequately fed and clothed. People with autism may desire emotional and physical contact but can languish because they are hindered by their lack of social skills. And how often have you heard about one spouse in a 50-year marriage who, despite being medically healthy, dies a few short months or even weeks after the death of the other spouse? Food and shelter aren't enough. We need each other, and we need love.

Connect and Feel Safe

Connecting is good for the community. After all, a community is the culmination of a lot of connections: common beliefs, achievements, values, interests and geography. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Detroit. Three thousand years ago, in what today we call Rome, Indo-Europeans connected to hunt, survive and generally look out for one another. Three hundred years ago, a French trader turned up to create a safe haven for his fur business; he started making connections and pretty soon Detroit was born.

We have a basic, physical need for other people; there are shared, mutual benefits in a community, so we look out for each other. A connected community provides its members with strength and safety. When we feel strong and safe, we can put our energy into evolving socially, culturally and spiritually.

The Benefits of Connecting

Our personal growth and evolution (and the evolution of societies) come about as a result of connecting with our fellow humans, whether as a band of young warriors setting out on a hunt or as a group of coworkers heading out to the local pizzeria after work on Friday. As a species, we are instinctively driven to come together and form groups of friends, associations and communities. Without them, we cannot exist.

Making connections is what our gray matter does best. It receives information from our senses and processes it by making associations. The brain delights in and learns from these associations. It grows and flourishes when it's making connections. People do the same thing. It's a scientific fact that people who connect live longer. In their gem of a book,Keep Your Brain Alive, Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin quote studies by the McArthur Foundation and the International Longevity Center in New York and at the University of Southern California. These studies show that people who stay socially and physically active have longer life spans. This doesn't mean hanging out with the same old crowd and peddling around on an exercise bike. It means getting out and making new friends. When you make new connections in the outside world, you make new connections in the inside world—in your brain. This keeps you young and alert. Edward M. Hallowell, in his very savvy book Connect, cites the 1979 Alameda County Study by Dr. Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Health Sciences. Dr. Berkman and her team carefully looked at 7,000 people, aged 35 to 65,over a period of nine years. Their study concluded that people who lack social and community ties are almost three times more likely to die of medical illness than those who have more extensive contacts. And all this is independent of socioeconomic status and health practices such as smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption,

obesity or physical activity!

Other people can also help you take care of your needs and desires. Whatever it is you'd like in this life—romance, a dream job, a ticket to the Rose Bowl—the chances are pretty high that you'll need someone's help to get it. If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts. And the better the quality of rapport you have with them, the higher the level of their cooperation.

People Power

Connecting to other people brings infinite rewards.And whether its landing a job, winning the promotion, gaining the sale, charming a new partner, electrifying your audience or passing inspection by future in-laws, if people like you, the welcome mat is out and a connection is yours for the making. Other people are your greatest resource. They give birth to you; they feed you, dress you, provide you with money, make you laugh and cry; they comfort you, heal you, invest your money, service your car and bury you. We can't live without them. We can't even die without them.

Connecting is what our ancestors were doing thousands of years ago when they gathered around the fire to eat woolly mammoth steaks or stitch together the latest animal-hide fashions. It's what we do when we hold quilting bees, golf tournaments, conferences and yard sales; it underlies our cultural rituals from the serious to the frivolous, from weddings and funerals to Barbie Doll conventions and spaghetti-eating contests.

Even the most antisocial of artists and poets who spend long, cranky months painting in a studio or composing in a cubicle off their bedroom are usually hoping that through their creations they will eventually connect with the public. And connection lies at the very heart of those three pillars of our democratic civilization: government, religion and television. Yes, television. Given that you can discuss Friends or The X-Files with folks from Berlin to Brisbane, a case must be made for the tube's ability to help people connect all over the globe. Thousands of people impact all aspects of our lives, be it the weatherman at the TV studio in a neighboring city, or the technician at a phone company across the continent, or the woman in Tobago who picks the mangoes for your fruit salad. Every day, wittingly or unwittingly, we make a myriad of connections with people around the world.