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.