If you’ve ever been stuck in a situation where you know that you’ve met the person across from you, exchanged names, but for the life of you can’t recall the person’s name? A likely outcome of this awkward re-encounter would be where you’re simply hoping and waiting for that person to say something, well, anything that will jog your memory. If you don’t mention the person’s name and they remember yours, you can come off as insincere, which probably isn’t a desirable outcome in becoming charismatic. How do you prevent this awkward situation occurring in the first place?

It’s innate in human nature to crave recognition, acknowledgement and acceptance in any social circle a person feels they belong to or want to become a part of. One of the most effective things you can do towards taking that step in becoming more charismatic and generally good in connecting with new people is making the habit of remembering names. Taking a page from Dale Carnegie’s classic on interpersonal skills, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, he says that “A person’s name is to him or her is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

I’ve had countless instances where people I’ve met over the years would remark on how impressed they are on my remembering the names months after our first encounter. It doesn’t take that much effort and sets the foundation for taking that first encounter to the next level, be it personal or professional.

It’s so simple yet so powerful. The act of taking the time to remember a person’s name may seem cumbersome at first but it will pay off in spades in the future when people know you’ve taken the time to remember their names and greet them with a warm smile from ear to ear. In return the person you’re interacting with will want to become more invested and get to know you on a more personal level. This simple distinction will set you apart from the mass of people who don’t employ this habit.

One little secret that I’ll reveal about how I remember names is that after meeting a new person, I’ll ask them how they spell their name try to commit it to my short term memory. After a natural lull in conversation, you can politely excuse yourself and go to the corner of the room to jot down the person’s name on a napkin or input it into your cell phone. Once you’ve exchanged contact info, I’d go so far as writing all the little details that I’ve learned about the person so that the next time you meet the person you can pick up where you’ve left off hit the ground running in re-connecting with that person. If you’ve got a knack for connecting with people you can go one even step further and enter a person’s personal details into a spreadsheet and commit it to memory. I actually review this spreadsheet once every few months to refresh my memory and it only takes a few minutes, but it makes it easier to pick up where you left off in case of a random encounter.

By making the effort to remember someone’s name and even going so far about learning more about a person that goes beyond scratching the surface (say their passions or their kids) the next time you follow up you’ll be glad to find out that they’ll be readily impressed by your social savvy and even warmly receptive if not enthusiastic to connect with you again.

In any given day, we are given countless opportunities to engage in something we didn’t expect. For one reason or another we are too immersed in our own lives to be aware of opportunities, and if we are aware we consciously block those opportunities rather than accepting them to create joy that arises from the spontaneity in everyday life.

I am deliberately being as general as possible here by using the word “something”, because opportunities or offers can come in any shape or form. It can stem from a smile from a stranger, which can warrant you starting a rewarding conversation to being chosen to be interviewed at random and being asked “do you touch yourself at work?” (I’ll explain this later on…

Now to be explicitly clear, we’re not talking about unwelcome offers that are a threat to your own safety or are outside of your values and belief system; rather, I’m talking about the type that are non-threatening that you’ve determined and feel you can engage in fully with joy, ease and lightness.

The rule of thumb of your own acceptability of an offer or opportunity should be “Does this threaten or harm me? If not, can I have fun from this offer/opportunity?” If you’ve said no to the former and yes to the latter, then you can begin experience the joy of accepting unexpected offers!

What do you mean by “accepting an offer”?

The inspiration of this article comes from my improv (improvisational comedy) training at The Second City. I use the concepts I learned from my improv training to add more fun to my everyday interactions. The main concept or “technique” in order to create a scene or in this case, an interaction, and move it forward is to accept offers.

Accepting an offer is simply saying this statement to yourself (verbally or in your head) in the skit/scene or in this case real life, “Yes, and…”. The point of the “Yes anding” something is to heighten and explore the scene.

An example of this technique in action in a scene would be:

Mike: “Hey Franz, did you want catch the Patriots game with me and Geetha tonight? We have an extra ticket because August bailed on us”

Franz: “Yeah, and we can all pretend to be Manchester United fans talk with an English accent, bring horns to be loud as possible and try to convert Patriots fans to the real football!”

Here, you can see that Franz has accepted Mike’s offer and heightened and explored it. It may seem absurd, but the sheer fact of trying to convert hardcore Patriots fans to the “real football” amidst insulting American beer as a drink for girls can be daunting and well… fun! If Mike and Geetha are willing, they can further “yes anding” Fred, with the end result being fun, spontaneity and havoc ensuing!

How you can apply this in everyday life

A few weeks ago, I was walking towards the men’s change room to get changed for my tempo run. As I was walking I looked into one of the Studios at the school gym where I go for training. As I looked in, I saw a room full of women who were doing some sort of Tae-Bo like cardio workout program, where the instructor enthusiastically invited me (a complete stranger) to join in.

After asking myself, “Does this threaten or harm me? If not, can I have fun from this offer/opportunity?” and determined that the offer was safe and fun (alongside my utter inability to turn down offers of this nature). I fully committed to the offer and as a result, had a fun and amazing workout that was even better than the tempo run I originally planned for.

“Do you touch yourself at work?”

Just the other day, when I was walking towards the library to get some studying done for one of my accounting courses, I was stopped by a scruffy looking reporter holding a microphone with his cameraman.

What happened afterwards went along the lines of this:

Reporter: “Hey, do you have a minute to answer a few questions?”

Me: “umm.. sure.. what did you want to ask?”
Reporter: “We wanted to ask you a few things about your job”
Me: “hmm.. okay…
Reporter: “Where do you work?”
Me: “I’m not at liberty to say” (because I’m not supposed to divulge details like that)
Reporter: “Do you hate your job?”
Me: “Well, I wouldn’t say that I hate it but, it’s unrewarding and unfulfilling…”
Reporter: “So you hate your job then.”
Me: (taking a clue here and accepting the offer) “Yeah, I hate my job”
Reporter: “Why do you hate your job, though? Does your job entail you having to touch anyone?”
Me: “Haha. NO.
Reporter: “Do you touch yourself at work then?”
Me: “Yeah…sometimes…*shifty-eye + big toothy grin*”

Obviously that isn’t the truth, but I had effectively heightened and explored the interaction by accepting his offer by employing self-deprecating humour with the outcome being laughs shared by all.

*** Note *** I don’t condone using self-deprecating humour all the time as you want people to laugh with you not laugh at you, through my experiences and training I deemed it appropriate to do so.

After the interview, I found out they were shooting for a promotional campaign for Staples Business Depot up here in Canada, posting their mini-interviews on their website and was given a $20 gift certificate for my time all from a quick 2 minute interaction. Not too shabby huh?(I’ll link to the interview when it goes live).

As you can see, above are examples from my own life of accepting unexpected offers. I feel that our time on earth too short to be drowned under the crush of waves that we call “life”. By employing this basic improv technique, you can create a sense of joy along sharing it with others by putting smiles on faces of people you interact with that will be guaranteed to resonate throughout the day.

Have you ever used the technique of “yes anding” unknowingly and “going with it”? Were there any situations in hindsight that you could have done so? Let me know in the comments!

If you learned anything or liked this article, please Digg it. I appreciate your readership

Lately, I’ve been thinking and experimenting of the simple yet powerful gesture of smiling in everyday life. I examined this gesture on two fronts; how it effects others and how it affects oneself.

Generally, I’m a pretty happy guy and as such, I smile a lot… well, no.. I smile pretty much all the time. I smile from ear-to-ear with a big toothy grin. I smile until my eyes can’t be seen (I guess I smile with my eyes). I smile with my whole body and an open heart.

The precursor to the delivery of a warm smile is the initiation of direct eye contact. So how does this affect others? Through my own extensive experimentation by initiating eye contact and smiling at people from all walks of life; on the street, streetcars, subways, buses, malls – pretty much anywhere and everywhere, people will almost unconsciously respond in kind with a warm smile as well. In terms of meeting new people or strangers, it instantly creates a connection between two people through something so universal, simple yet profound in sparking a connection with someone.

Naturally, however, making direct eye contact with a person is seen as a VERY aggressive gesture. It sends a shot of adrenaline through our bodies and the other person because it’s a biologically hardwired response to view direct eye contact as a threat, challenge or act of aggression. But when you follow up immediately direct eye contact with a warm smile, it automatically lowers a person’s defenses because there’s such a contrast between direct eye contact and a warm smile and instantly makes a person feel “good”.

Why it works that way in my opinion is that a warm smile signifies whole-hearted acceptance of a person. When I smile at a person, I picture where the person might be headed to, what’s on their mind, what were they thinking before I made eye contact. When it’s coupled with the fact that its towards a new person, the effect is amplified in your favour because this sort of “risk-taking behaviour” is generally not practiced by society at large.

The foundation that makes this gesture consistent and powerful is your mindset or belief system when you smile in this fashion. When it comes to myself, I *love* meeting new people, understanding them and blowing past the usual superficial pleasantries like “what do you do?” or “where you’re from?”. While most people are trapped in their own selfish thoughts of what’s to be done in the future, what happened in the past, what needs to be done today in order to make it through the week. By getting down to the core essence of a person, you break that pattern of stress or insecurities. I like to get to know what drives them through life and by discovering their passions, you can open a whole new world of possibilities in connecting with someone.

During this process, you need to open yourself up as well, because how much the other person will open up is correlated to your level of openness. When you employ that sort of mindset, you will notice a marked improvement in your relations with new people, colleagues and friends in general.

How this affects oneself is simple. If you were try to feel depressed when you’re forcing a smile from ear to ear, it’s simply not possible. You can trigger the way you feel by how you express yourself physically. Like direct eye contact, you’re biologically hardwired this way. When you smile for a set amount of time, you’ll literally change how you feel and as such change your mood further adding momentum to your reaching out and connecting with someone.

Here’s an exercise that you can try out for yourself. Try to feel depressed when you’re smiling and looking up at the ceiling. I’ll bet you a pint of beer (or non-alcoholic if you don’t drink) that it’s VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE to feel depressed when you’re doing so.

*insert I had my friend Rob Wilkinson message me on Facebook and here’s what he had to add about smiling:

“did you know that smiling is Scientifically Proven to make you Happier? Smiling actually creates endorphins which stimulate natural responses that effect mood. That’s why it actually helps when you try and get someone who’s up to try and smile.”

Try this stuff out. It’s good for the soul

What are thoughts on smiling? Let us know in the comments section!

Related Links:

The Art of Smiling