Adele might be the best singer alive. Her music is soulful and moving. But what's really
fascinating about her is that the honesty to her music extends to her interviews and
her off stage interactions. So, in this video, I want to explore what makes Adele come across
as so genuine. Learning where that feeling arises from is going to make it easier for
you to spot fakers in your own life and it will make it possible for you to become more
genuine yourself. Doing that makes people you barely know trust you even more and want
to get to know you better.
So let's begin with the first thing that you'll notice in any interview with Adele--her smile.
Adele's smile lights up a room and comes across as incredibly genuine. This isn't just
a random perception. There are three muscular differences between smiles that we view as
genuine, and those that we view as fake. You may have seen this in an earlier clip that
I did on Will Smith, but if you didn't, very quickly, here's what they are.
First, a real smile is pulled back to the sides and not just up. Second, a real smile
usually has a relaxed lower jaw. The more open and relaxed that the lower jaw is, the more
happy that a person tends to appear. That's why when you see someone in a picture with
their jaw completely open, you assume they're laughing or cracking up, and then, third,
a real smile creates tension around the eyes. Now this one is the most interesting because it is
quite, quite tough to fake, which is why the eyes are usually what give away a fake smile.
You can see cheese all you want but you have to honestly feel amused or happy to get that
genuine tension around the eyes.
Coming back to Adele, her smile is infectious because she has these three things to the
extreme. She conveys that she is genuinely happy to see people, to laugh at their jokes,
and to have a good time with them. That level of real happiness makes her instantly likable.
Watch how warm she is when she greets Jimmy Fallon.
Even though it's a bit over the top right there, you don't doubt her sincerity because
her smile is hitting all three of those main points that create the sense of a real smile.
Along similar lines is how she talks about her fame, her worries, her weirdness. No matter
what she is discussing, she does it with that same sense of realness. She's not trying to
maintain a reputation, she just shares what's going on in her life. Sometimes, that's means
talking about ultimate first world problems, like not being able to make a reservation
because she's just too famous.
So you see right there? That incredibly warm smile, and she's also very comfortable laughing
at herself and teasing her own fame. But from time to time, she talks very frankly about
what it is like, as you'll see in this next piece.
In here, isn't that necessarily charismatic to talk about not being able to make a reservation
at a restaurant, but some celebrities want to be relatable so bad, that they hide behind
the facade of "my life is exactly like yours,"and we know that is not true.
Because Adele is willing to talk about these kinds of things, even in passing, she comes
across as more real. But beyond that, even though the specifics of her life and many
celebrities' lives are unrelatable, she shares the emotion behind her experiences, and we
can all identify with those.
So listen here of how she talks about her excitement and nerves at the first commercial
for her new album coming out.
There she talks about first world problems. She reveals insecurities. She's just honest.
She isn't trying to manage your perception of her. Some people, celebrities and otherwise,
work very hard to come across as relatable, or down to earth, or cool, or put together
, and Adele doesn't seem concerned with pushing any of those images. It's paradoxical, but
by not trying to control how she comes across, people tend to like her more. So why does
this work? And how the heck can this channel even exist? If the answer is simply, don't
care what other people think and people will love you. Well, the answer isn't that simple.
Of course, we care what people think of us. And, of course, we'd like them to think positive
things about us. But the only way to do that is to stop straining to control other people's
opinions of you. You have to express yourself honestly, and then, let people form their
own opinion--good or bad.
So if you tell a story to appear cool, and then, keep checking in with that person to
make sure that they got it, and they think you're cool, people are going to think you're
a loser.
And if you tell a story to appear humble and really play it up? People are going to think
that you are arrogant. It will backfire. Here is the underlying point. When people sense
that you are invested in controlling their perceptions, they lose all faith in you. They
see you as fake. When they sense that you don't care to control their opinion, they
see you as real.
And the way to create that sense, to get that sense in other people, is to do something
called congruence. Take a look.
You know how Adele's facial expression and tonality match the content of what she was
saying, what she was talking about, how she was excited, and then saying the word weird
at the end. That is congruence. If she had said, "The song came on and I was like Oh,
my god, that's so amazing." She have no congruence at all, and maybe you know someone who talks
like that. Being congruent means that every thing matches. That's tone, that's body language,
that's facial expressions, everything in line with what you're saying.
Watch this acceptance speech and how she gets genuinely emotional during her thank you,
and how she laughs when she talks about the good time that she's had there.
It's tough to not like someone who displays that kind of emotion in an honest way. She
isn't too cool to cry, or too sullen to make fun of herself. She's just real.
Now, obviously, her voice is stellar, but I really believe that it's Adele's willingness
to be honest in front of an audience that takes her to the next level as a performer.
She writes her own songs and she puts it all out there when she sings. Take a look.
If you're not one of the best actors in the world, the only way to create these moments
is to truly feel what you say, and then, you need to allow the things that you're feeling
to come through in every possible way that they can. That's tonality, body language,
eye contact, word choice, all of the things that we worked on here in this channel. That
is the expressiveness part.
The last thing that I want to add is about how freely and genuinely Adele offers praise. She's one
of the best singers alive, and, yet, she can still express honest admiration for the talents
of other people. Here she is talking about some of her favorite artists.
A similar thing. Here she is, again, reacting to James Corden singing.
He's actually quite good.
You can see how happy that compliment makes him to hear. And by the way, if you want to
rock out to the rest of the duet, I'll put a link in the description. Going back to Adele,
though, she even makes these compliments when people are amateurs compared to her. Here
she is reacting to a talk show host singing a lullaby in his native language.
Adele doesn't need any ironic detachment. She can love and appreciate the talent of
others without feeling threatened herself. This is often very hard for people. We usually
worry that someone else's talent or success is being compared with our own. So we take
the role of a critic and evaluate people harshly in order to protect our own egos. People like
Adele focus on what they like and they ignore the comparisons, plus they let the people
around them know when they found something that they love about their work or their art.
This makes the people around you feel amazing and it's going to improve your life just because
you have a more positive outlook.
So one more bonus on top of this video for the artists out there since we are on the
subject, I feel that this piece of advice from Adele was spot on.
And the songs I was writing, they were great to the ear, but they didn't move me.
Okay, so if it moves you, then you will move others.
That's the only thing that I can put it down to.
That's kind of the thrust of this whole video, which is, to move others you first need to
move yourself. You probably heard me say the word "real and genuine" more time in this
clip than I've ever done in my entire life, but that is the word that comes to mind when
I think of everything that I've seen of Adele.
She fully gets into the emotion of what she's doing, whether that's speaking or performing.
She's absolutely committed and she knows that honest expression is the best way to move
other people, even it that means praising them for something that she does professionally.
So we got a chance to see some of the really powerful ways to make a great first impression
in this video, including, of course, the three things that make for a great smile as displayed
by Adele.
If you're curious about some of the other things that lead to that great first impression,
since that smile is one piece of the puzzle, we've actually set up another video that you
can check out. It goes out into the 4 emotions that guarantee a great first impression anytime
anywhere as long as you hit those in the right order. And, yes, that order is critical.
So, if you're interested in that, go ahead, click the link that I'll have pop up here and
it's going to take you to a page where you can enter your email and get immediate access
to that video. If you have any other people that you'd like me to do, please, please let me know
in the Comments. I have not thought of doing Adele until I read that suggestion in the
Comments, and I'm super glad that I did. If you've enjoyed this video and you want to
see more like it, please subscribe to the channel. We have, at least, one new one coming
every week. I'm working on the schedule to make sure that it's two new ones or at least
one throwback. So, if you want to see more videos like this, go ahead and subscribe.
And, also, I should let you know that next week, I'll be doing another Game of Thrones
video because you guys voted on that in the Comments. So my job this week is to watch
the old season. Huge thanks to you, guys, for that. Until that's done, I hope that you've
enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next.