whether you're in sales or you're a coach and you work with clients or you
just want to make new friends being able to connect with people is an essential
skill and it's where all persuasion and influence starts I've been in sales for
more than ten years and I've done years of studying NLP and testing out the best
processes and the best applications and skills for becoming more persuasive more
influential and being able to connect with people anywhere anytime so if that
sounds good to you keep watching hey this is Damon Cart from Life
Mastery Gym bringing you cutting-edge processes techniques and tools to help
you master your life so if that sounds good please click subscribe to this
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video this video is the second part of a two-part video series on connecting with
anyone it is not required that you watch the other video first but I will link it
to this video so that you can watch it especially if you find this one useful
so in this video I'm going to talk more about what is happening internally with
us when we feel disconnected what I'm about to explain to you might seem a
little bit strange because you've never done this before and these processes are
mostly unconscious so the idea behind this is to bring these unconscious
processes in to consciousness so when you think about your personal space
whatever the immediate space is around you we all have a different way of
defining that and this also happens cross culturally different cultures or
people in different cultures will have a different sense of personal space than
other people say for instance a country where it is actually very crowded and
families big large families live all in the same home you will probably have
people who have a smaller sense of personal space in fact their personal
space might be completely internal for most Westerners especially Americans
like myself we have a little bit broader sense of personal
bass and if somebody gets in that personal space we tend to lock up or we
tend to want to get away from that person so what does this have to do with
connection I'm about to show you what you want to do first is get a sense of
what is your personal space and one way that you can do that is by thinking
about if there were a stranger standing next to you now this is not a sinister
looking character this could be a man or a woman it's just someone you don't know
they don't look mean they don't look like a criminal or anything like that
they're just somebody you don't know imagine how close you would allow that
person to get to you before you would say oh okay wait a minute
too close step back or I'm gonna step back or I'm going to move so you can
actually stop this video to do that and take a moment to think about from either
direction from side to side and in front of you because that usually is a
difference there's usually a difference in the sense of your personal space from
the right of the left of you and also to the front of you now if you have done
just that which you might realize is that for most
most people not everybody they need more space in front of them than they need on
the side of them and you may have noticed this and like I said this is
most people some people there are some exceptions most of the time is somebody
standing on the side of you they don't feel like much of a threat but if
they're in front of you and they're facing you that's a more combative
stance so that's a more combative way to look at someone because that's how you
would look at someone or that's the way you would be standing with someone if
you were about to have a confrontation so that's usually a bit how that shape
of that is now like I said it's going to be different for everybody some people
can be more of a circle or like a bubble around them and that's really where you
want to take this is what is the shape of that boundary start eliciting this
and you can get really playful with this and you can start checking in with like
the colors of the boundary what if you change the colors how does that make you
feel you can also get a sense of what it's like inside your boundary and does
that have a different color than outside of your boundary so what we're doing
here is we're really just coding that sense of personal space and how you
create a boundary around you and you might even think about social situations
you can remember past social situations you can think about future social
situations and get a sense of how connected or
disconnected you are and I'm sure that's going to depend who you're around and
what context that is so try this out with a few different situations and get
a sense of what is your personal boundary around you and you can take
this even further by thinking about well who do you allow inside that personal
boundary I'm sure it's people you trust it's probably family members it's
probably close friends you don't mind them being in that personal space
now people you don't know that's a little more challenging and this is why
it can be very very difficult in social situations to connect with people you
have not met or already or you you don't already know now a lot of people find
themselves in this situation we refer to it as social anxiety they want to
connect with people they want to be in that social situation but they're not
sure how to really connect with people so they feel kind of trapped inside
themselves and like everything else is going on
outside around them this is a very common experience and it doesn't mean
that you're lacking in self-worth or you have self-esteem issues but
unfortunately a lot of people think of it that way what you're actually bumping
up against is that boundary of your personal space and where did that
boundary even come from well it normally is forged early in life it's forged
throughout your formative years as you're developing a personality and
we've all had experiences of humiliation and being laughed at and being
embarrassed especially at a young age maybe in grade school or junior high use
usually in those years we kind of build up a protective shield around ourselves
so if we don't know anyone or we don't know the person we're afraid to let that
boundary drop but once we get to know someone what we start to do is we start
to allow that person into our boundary and you can do that right now again if
you want to stop the video you can imagine the last time you were really in
rapport with someone it could be a friend it could have been a family
member and notice where that boundary is more than likely that person will be
inside your personal space and that boundary will go on the outside of that
person so you're including that person in your personal space you're including
them in your boundary now what you can do with this is is really
geordan area which you can do is if you meet a person for the first time you can
expand that boundary to include them and watch what happens you'll start to feel
it right away you will naturally start to feel more connected with that person
now you will want to do this before you actually are in that situation you want
to test this out because when people do this a lot of times fears will come up
so if you're testing it out for the first time in a social situation it
might actually make you more anxious so I recommend before you're in a social
situation just imagine it you can just sit there and you can imagine you're in
that context and you're meeting a person who you've never met before and just
imagine opening up that boundary to them and including them into it immediately
before you even get to know the person now fears often come up and resistance
often comes up what you want to do is assure that part of yourself that
there's nothing to be afraid of here unless you are in a situation where
people are trying to take advantage of you and sometimes it can be like that or
they call them short pens or they called people sharks if you were in a situation
where you think people will likely take advantage of you I don't recommend
opening your border up to them that border is there for a good reason it's
protecting you if you're walking down a dark alley at night I don't recommend
opening your border I would say you want that border in place because that border
does a very good job for you it does a protective job for you which is to alert
you if something moves in your peripheral vision it will alert you to
say okay there might be some danger here I need to keep track of everything
that's going on around me what if you're in a social situation if you're on a
date if you're a salesperson you're working with a client or even better
you're you give talks to groups of people you do public speaking open up
that border to include the entire group you will be amazed at how connected you
will feel and you can take this and even a step further and I like to do this
myself once I know I'm in a situation where there's no real dangers I mean you
could always make up dangers or something something can always happen in
anywhere anytime but in general if you're in public especially broad
daylight or you're Adam mixer our networking party you can even experiment
with completely dropping the boarder entirely
and what happens then is can be even like a zen-like experience you can feel
one with everything you can feel connected to everything and just imagine
what that would do for your social skills if you walked into a place you
were aware of your boundary because you elicited you did the exercises I just
told you about and then you decided to just let it go
drop that boarder imagine how connected you would feel to everyone there without
a border separating you now this does take some work in advance like I said
you want to practice this before you actually go out and do it because you
could actually create more fear and more resistance when you're in the real
situation if you haven't practiced it before so in a comfort of in the safety
of your own home I would recommend trying this out and this is also called
future pacing and in NLP we use future pacing to sort of practice a new skill
practice accessing a new resource in a certain situation so do that try it out
try it out a few times deal with that inner resistance assure that inner
resistance that it's safe to practice us it's safe to either open up the boundary
or let the boundary go all together and you might even want to give that inner
resistance a job and in destructed to know when it's appropriate to let your
border drop or open your border these parts of us that are trying to protect
us we don't want to get rid of them they do a very very good job for us and what
we want to do though is we want to give it a job an update a job a job that
works for the context that we're in I gave you a lot in a very short amount of
time I usually spend in a training more time on this and I work with people and
we troubleshoot it so if you're not getting this right away it's okay you
give it some more practice comment below let me know how the experience is for
you if you have any questions I will answer those questions do give this a
try and notice how you can take a radical leap in your social skills just
by employing this simple technique if you would like some free training on how
to be more persuasive and connect better with yourself and overcome obstacles
check out my website lifemasterygym.com I give away lots of free training
on that website opt-in and get started if you like this video please click like
right down here and of course subscribe if you haven't now I'd love to hear from
you tell me in the comments below about how you connect with people would sort
of processes or techniques or mindsets do you use to connect with people
especially people you're meeting for the first time how do you build rapport with
them rapidly this video is this video is a video series that I'm doing on our the
order I will