Meeting New People Made Complicated

You’ve seen tons of posts like “XYZ Made Easy” and “5 Easy ways to XYZ”, both from me and from other bloggers.

Well, it’s holidays now, so let’s have a special post . Today, we’re going to do the exact opposite. Let’s look at every detail of how COMPLICATED meeting people really is!

Even BEFORE you meet people, they’re already judging you

Let’s say you’re out socializing, and you notice someone pass by in your peripheral vision. Your subconscious is already pre-judging if they seem interesting/important enough to warrant a closer look. If they do, you’ll glance at them directly.

At this point you’ll start assessing their body language, clothing, and a bunch of other factors we’ll get to in a second. Before we get there, though… this gets crazier than you’d think!

Let’s say you’re in a bar, standing and talking to some friends. The entrance is somewhere behind you. Some person you can indirectly see looks towards the entrance and keeps looking. Then another person looks. And another… by this point you consciously realize something is happening. More people turn, soon over half a dozen people have turned towards the entrance and just stare. This gets you intrigued so you turn around…

Now, wait a second! Even before you’ve turned around, you’re already pre-judging the situation! Maybe a super-rich person covered in gold chains just walked in, or some celebrity appeared, or a fight broke out. But whatever it is, you already pre-judged the situation as interesting based on other people’s reactions.

You consider someone interesting before you got even a single glance at them!

Body Language (and clothing)

So you decided someone is interesting enough to at least look at. The moment you glance at them, you subconsciously assess a whole bunch of things:

• Do they look healthy?
• Do they look dominant or submissive?
• Calm? In control?
• How about their clothes? Wealth, social status, style?

Your body language sends an enormous amount of information. One often-quoted research puts your communication as:

• 55% body language
• 38% voice tone
• 7% words

I have no idea how they came up with that figure, but it feels pretty accurate in my experience. (And seeing that statistic, guess what we’re going to cover right after body language )

With slumped shoulders and gaze averted to the ground, you seem timid and with low self esteem. On the other hand, confident, upright posture looks energetic. Crossed arms and legs look cold, open body language looks welcoming.

Hey, there’s so much to cover here… and as luck would have it, I already have! Just read my post on body language basics, there’s plenty of cool tricks in there you can apply immediately!

Voice Tone

So once you notice someone and then look at them, you might decide they’re interesting enough to talk to.

Have you ever paused to think how much your voice conveys about you?

If you talk too fast, that can be perceived as insecure. (And often means exactly that. I would know.) – If you’re confident that what you’re saying is very cool and interesting, you will speak slowly, with plenty of deliberate pauses and accentuation. Paradoxically, that makes it interesting.

If you speak too quietly or don’t pronounce well, you can start losing people’s attention. You can be talking about the most interesting subject in the world, but if I can’t hear you, I’ll start glancing around and get distracted.

A monotone voice is boring. It makes you sound like you don’t care about the subject you’re talking about at all! Put some emotion and interest in that voice! (Watch FPS_Doug or Lil Jon for a great example .)

There’s a ton more you can tell by a person’s voice, and it’s all a bit hard to cover in writing (plus we have a bunch of other cool stuff to cover in this blog post), so I’ll just leave you with one more interesting thing to notice.

Some people end almost all their declarative sentences with a pitch rise. Like a question.

This sounds a bit child-like, and it definitely shows uncertainty and approval seeking. Almost like they’re asking for permission to talk to you. A person like that might say:

“Hello? I’m calling from XYZ corporation? You inquired about our 6-month membership plan?…”

Each of those sentences is a declaration, but they pronounce it like a question. The voice tone is a bit hard to convey just in writing, but hopefully you get the idea. That’s one thing you can notice from now on!

Facial Expression

This one deserves a category of its own.

You have dozens of facial muscles, and researchers have found that your face can make several thousand different facial expressions. The language of your face is literally a whole alphabet, through which you can get across an enormous amount of meaning.

It also means that faking an emotion is impossible! If you just try to move your facial muscles without really feeling the emotions, you’re bound to miss out on the dozens of micro-muscles controlling details of your facial expression. Maybe enough to fool most people, but not enough for well attuned people (who’ll get a gut feeling that you’re lying), or modern facial recognition software.

(Here’s a quick test by the BBC you can try yourself – can you recognize the fake smile?)

But there is a way to get the right facial expression. How? Just feel the emotion!

That’s right, just think of something that makes you feel the emotion you want to convey, and then just let your face convey the message. With a bit of practice, you can get ridiculously accurate, because your face has so many expressions to choose from.

(If you want to know more about facial expressions, look into FACS.)

Sustained conversation

Most of what we covered above is short-term, when you first meet a person.

Of course, once in a sustained conversation, the balance changes a bit. Gimmicks like flashy clothing become less important. Your personality becomes more important.

Also, when the conversation lasts more than a few minutes, other parts of your personality start shining through. Aside from fun and energy, people will start to pick up hints of your maturity level. Hints of insecurities and any faking you might have been doing (practicing cool body language without really thinking that way).

But all in all, it boils down to…

Your inner game – the key!

All of the above are indirect representations of what’s going on inside your head.

• Body language – represents how you feel about yourself, the world in general, and the people you’re talking to specifically
• Clothing – how you see yourself (geeky t-shirt). Do you care about looks or about comfort?
• Voice tone – how confident you are, how comfortable in yourself, how you feel about the topic you’re talking about
• Facial expression – ’nuff said

They’re all an extension of your inner game. As Dr. Paul Dobransky says:

Fix your inner game and your outer game will follow.

And that’s why I usually blog about personal development. All this complicated socializing stuff takes care of itself once you have your life in order.

Merry Christmas!