Hey, welcome back to the Six Figure Mastermind. Marianne DeNovellis here today,
we're talking about first impressions. You know how many decisions you make
when you meet someone for the first time. Let's have a little more control on what
it is when you're across the table.
So how do we make a good first impression?
As human beings, we make over 35,000 decisions a day and I read that
somewhere, I'm pretty sure that's pretty close to accurate when you consider like,
do I want ketchup or not? Do I want to wear this ring or not? Do I want to
take a shower or not? We make so many decisions every day and so many of those
are concentrated on the person in front of us when we meet someone new and when
someone meets you, guess what, they're making the same number of decisions
about you so how do we make sure they're good ones? Well first things first, I just
want to talk to you about this study that I read about. I was watching
this show on Netflix called Brain Games and this show was like super fascinating.
I'm one of those people that likes the 3D image pop brain puzzles and the
brain teasers and I play Sudoku for fun, it's something weird that I do but
this brain game show was talking about the correlation between someone's
trustworthy face and their success in life and what they did is they had all
of these pictures of people's faces up on the screen and they had you pick
which one seemed most trustworthy and then they had the audience you know,
pre-recorded that had picked theirs and most of the time they matched what was
going on live. Generally is a human being, you would pick the same one that the
studio audience had picked and the fascinating thing was, the person that
they picked, they didn't tell us what they were picking from but they were
actually taking a pick from a selection of candidates for office and the most of
the time, I think there was 90%, 95% of the time the same one that we picked
just on impulse not knowing their stance on any policy, not knowing their history,
not knowing anything about this person other than just their face, 90 to 95
percent of the time the person that was picked as the most trustworthy just by
their image was also the one that ran and won the office, whatever office
they're running for, it was City Council, whatever it may be. We so often
makes snap decisions based on what we can see in a
first impression and even if it's you know, just a photograph. Now when you're
meeting someone person to person that's a little bit different because you have
more decisions to make, you can judge based on their tone, you can decide things
based on their voice and their personality and the way they move and
their body language and all of these things come together to determine
whether or not you have a good first impression. Now if you go to the
Limitless TV channel, you'll see a video that I made about the science of smiling.
If you want to make a great first impression, study that video and learn
why smiling is so important even if you're making a first impression over
the phone which I do constantly in my line of work, I make sure that my face
has a smile on it even and especially when I'm over the phone. People can tell,
people can totally tell if you're smiling over the phone and if you're
happy to be with someone, that's always going to leave a good first impression. Okay,
there was some research done at the National Center for Biotechnology
Information that's a big long one the National Center for Biotechnology
Information, there was there was a study done that I looked up was super
fascinating and in this study there is a social cognitive affective neuroscience
study, lots of big long words just simply to say that they evaluated face
trustworthiness and the fact there's a link that'll be in the comments that we
can send to you that shows the research from this
study, it's a really fascinating read but they said and they showed that a lot of
the trustworthiness followed right along with his brain games technique that so
much comes down not only to the shape of the face but the behavior of the face
and just take a look at it. If you and I have a first impression, alright, you
see me for the first time and I have a classic RBF and I won't tell you what
that means but I think you know. RBF is resting face that's not very nice so
this face that's you know, sarcastic or.. I used to be asked all the time
"Marianne, are you okay? Is something wrong?" and I just like "No, this is just my face.
What?" And I actually learned this lesson for my husband because he had the same
syndrome as I do. It's not a real syndrome, it was just a fun trendy word that gets got
made up but he had the same resting face that I did and he said, "You know, I was
looking in the mirror and I studied that and I thought, you know what?
I'm going to change that." And he consciously would raise his ears and raise his
eyebrows at rest. Now just watch what happens, I've got this normal face, watch
what happens when I raise my eyebrows, a little bit of a head tilt happen there
too. When I raise my eyebrows, that conveys interest and when you meet
someone and they're interested in you, it'll establish a level of trust so if
you raise your eyebrows and interest to someone, that actually establishes a good
first impression because the most interesting thing to you, believe it or
not, is you and if someone has same interest in you, that gives a good first
impression so if you want to leave a good first impression,
raise those eyebrows, it'd be interested. Have your attention beyond them. Eye
contact is another one. When I used to work at a bookstore, we would go around
and we would train on how to make a good first impression, help people feel
welcome in the bookstore, help people find what they needed and help them feel
comfortable there and one of the things that our instructors taught us is to
maintain that eye contact, so much so that you study the person eyes so that
you remembered what color they were, making a conscious effort to know the
color of the person's eyes that's across from you and when you have that eye
contact, it also leaves a first impression because again, you're showing
interest in the other person so I mean, don't be creepy about it like,
don't just stare at them like, practice in the mirror, make sure you're making
your face very approachable so raising eyebrows, having great eye
contact, pay attention, just pay attention using as many senses as you can that the
sense of hearing, the sense of sight, even if you're having a conversation
that's close with another person, you can even take their hand if you know the
person and just convey that interest. A first impression probably won't include
hand-holding so you know, maybe stay away from that but be interested and show
that person that you are fully engaged in that conversation. Another thing to
think about when you're talking about first impression, we've
talked about the face, we've talked about a little bit about the tone, about you
know, being interested in that person and being kind and enunciated, you want to
make sure your speak clearly and properly but you also leave an
impression not just with your face and everything that goes on here but top to
bottom. People are making snap decisions about
you within the first half to seven seconds, the first 0.5 seconds to the first
7 seconds, they're making all kinds of decisions about you.
They're judging you based on, guys, I know we don't like to say,
we don't like to admit that we judge a book by its cover but we do, you judged a
book by its cover when you came to this channel, you decided whether or not my
face was one you wanted to look at for a few minutes or not, you decided whether
this banner was a good one you wanted to look at, you decide what to watch on
YouTube videos by their thumbnails and based on the content. You're making snap
decisions like this all the time so why should we be
surprised when you make decisions like this based on people daily interactive
and see for the first time? I don't know what it is but I have a lot of people
give me the feedback that their first impression of me was that they were
scared of me. I don't understand it and I'm trying to so that I don't give off
that first impression. Guys, I'm 5 foot 3, I'm small, I'm like this little pixie of
a lady but apparently there's something about me and the way I show up that for
some people can be a little bit intimidating so I'm taking that as
personal feedback for me and saying, "Huh, what am I doing that's giving that off.
Do I want to give off that impression?" Now I can't go out in anyone's mind and
re-hardwire it and tell them what to think or what to feel but I certainly
can be aware of how I'm showing up, I can certainly be aware of how I'm
communicating, I can certainly be aware of how I dress, I can certainly be aware
of what I want to convey because like it or not, people are going to decide things
about you and make judgment calls based on the first milliseconds they interact
with you, it's just the way it is so if you want them to know who you truly are,
be who you truly are, dress who you truly are, do your hair how you truly are, look
your face as you truly are, spend some time in front of the mirror giving
yourself a handshake, practice this first impression. If you want to give it off a
good one, you've got to know what you're giving so practice it in front of the mirror,
spend some time with that. I'm like totally serious about this, I got to tell
you what, I tell us two people all the time in my classes and my courses,
stand in front of the mirror, look in the mirror and speak, look in the mirror and
introduce yourself and look in the mirror and practice accepting money for
your services. I tell people this all the time and such a small percentage of
people do it, I would say maybe 4% to 10% of the people I share this
with actually do it. Be one of those 4% to 10%, actually try it
and then watch your results explode if you want to have a six figure mastermind
and see that income, you've got to leave that first impression and you've got to
know what that looks like. Okay, awesome. So I actually am curious, I want to hear
about your most awkward first impression moments, I want to see them in the
comments so hit the subscribe button and tell me all about it.