We've all wondered it from time to time how do you get someone to like you. I've
got some pointers today and I hope you stick around for all of them. How to get
someone to like you? You know what I learned this from some little kids. I've
shared with you before that I spent, wow probably 12 or 13 years of my career
doing child custody evaluations. I did a lot of psychological evaluations and
interviews with children, with little kids. And they taught me so much. I used
to have this instrument that I would use with children called the sentence
completion test and it's not really a test, it's more of an exercise to dry
out some of their thinking. So there are sentence stems and then there's a
blank at the end and you read the stem to them and they fill in the blank. And
one of these was, to make friends you have to - Now how did you answer that?You
know what over 90 percent of the kids that I showed that stem with had the
same answer. "Be nice." Yeah! To make friends, you have to be nice. Aren't you glad you
watched? Yeah it's that simple. You be nice. You know what one of my
colleagues, I think that I've admired for a long time is Mark Gungor. Mark has
a viral video that went out about a tale of two brains, you've probably seen it.
Where he talks about men's brains and women's brains. Well Mark is a pastor,
he's a counselor, he's a thought leader in the area of relationships and in his
book "laugh your way to a better marriage." Mark said this, he said it comes down to
two words. Yeah you know where I'm going with this don't you? Be nice. Be nice! And
notice that you've got a choice here too. Be nice how do you get people to like
you? Well that's pretty much it. You know what we did a video not too long ago,
about how to form a good first impression. Go check that one
and another one also about how to get people to open up to you. I described
in those two videos a quadrant system, I call it the influence quadrant. You're
going to get some mileage out of that if you go look at that in the context of
how to get people to like you. So I won't repeat all of that here, you can watch
that in the other two videos. But it occurred to me that one of the things
about being nice that I think would be really useful here, is to give people
gifts. Alright now, I'm not saying this because I want you to send me a gift
although I wouldn't reject it if you did. I'm talking about social gifts. Four
social gifts. I was introduced to these social gifts by Dr. Ann Demarais who wrote a book about first
impressions. And then she described what social gifts are. There's four of them
okay? You can get people to like you more by giving these social gifts
consistently. So let's look at the four social gifts. The first one is
appreciation and gratitude. It's a social gift. You can give this to anyone as you
asked your mind well, "what is it that I'm grateful for about that person?" And try
to be as specific as you can. Giving the gift of gratitude and
appreciation changes how people respond to you. Okay, because they feel something.
Think about how you feel if someone expresses appreciation for you. "Hey you
know what, I sure appreciate that you did that thing for me." Yeah doesn't that just
feel awesome? It does. And the person who's delivering the gift goes up in
your esteem and your liking of them because they give you the social gift.
Same things going to happen for you if you want to get people to like you more. Give
them some gratitude and appreciation, show them a little love here, okay?
Second social gift - connection and commonality.
What do you have in common with that person? This is very validating when you
meet someone for the first time for example and you're talking a little bit
about what you do or they're talking about what they do and you find
something that matches, that comes together that you have in common.
Gives you a little connection with that person, doesn't it? Yeah. So give the
social gift of connection and commonality. It usually sounds something
like, "oh you're interested in leathercraft? I used to do leather craft
when I was a teenager. Loved it. What have you done recently?"
Okay if that's something that you have and I just picked leather craft as an
example. But it might be a sport, it might be a hobby, it might be a place. You see
this all the time. You know when you go to a show and the speaker or
the comedian or the entertainer up on the stage says, "I'm from Lubbock, Texas
and you get cheers from back there in those seats, right? Everybody's, "yeah Lubbock ,Texas!
or wherever it is, they get all excited. In fact you guys who are from Lubbock
Texas, you're getting a little excited right now, aren't you? Yeah, because
there's some commonality. You're like, "oh wow that's my place." And it causes people
to like you more when you identify something that you have in common. That's
social gift number two - connection and commonality. What's another gift that you
can give? Number 3 is - enlightenment and knowledge. Enlightenment and
knowledge. Remember think of this as a social gift. It's something that you're
giving to someone. If you can increase their fund of knowledge, they will
naturally like you more. Try to focus in on something that is relevant to them or
some of the things that you have in common, this way you can kind of magnify
the social gifts. It usually shows up in the form of, "hey did you know" and then
you give them that piece of information. Okay or "you know
what I heard" and then you give them the new piece of information. This particular
social gift is all about increasing their fund of knowledge and they will
like you more as they receive that gift from you. Let's go to the fourth one -
elevation and positivity. Now you knew I'd get to positivity right? Because I'm
the positivity guy. Yeah of course we're going to go there. Elevation is just what it
sounds like. What does an elevator do? It lifts people right? it takes them to a
higher place. You want to lift or edify or enrich them and particularly their
mood. That's why positivity is so important in
this equation. So as we elevate people, it can be as simple as smiling. Just give
them a good genuine smile and that lifts them a little bit. You see people smile,
it just changes your day doesn't it? Try this out on the street. You know as
you're walking along and you see somebody and just give them a big old
smile right? They're going to think you're up to something. It might weird him out a
little bit but we're talking about helping people to have an elevated mood.
Humor is an important part of this particular social gift. To give them
something that they can laugh a little bit about or chuckle okay or just
experience a little bit of elation and joy in the moment. So smiling, humor
having a pleasant disposition, having a positive attitude about things. That's
the fourth social gift. How do we get people to like us more? Be nice and that
also means giving some social gifts. You don't have to do anything to give me to
like you, I'm just really glad that you're here. Thanks for joining me at
Live on Purpose TV.
i standing in the street alone alone