making people feel comfortable (long)

This is something of a continuation of my last post. Here, I tried to go into more detail on my ideas.

SERIOUS "heart to hearts"
I remember a while back. I went to a basketball game at my high school. I was 16 at the time. A girl I knew came up to me after the game was over and asked for a ride. I had zero social life (I didn't go to parties), so of course I said yes. After all of thirty seconds, she started spewing about her life and pouring out her heart. She was all but destroyed. So, I listened. When the last turn to her house came, I kept driving. I drove and listened. After another hour of her sobbing, she stopped talking and I dropped her off. This pivotal event was the defining moment when I realized that I wanted to understand conversations and body language.

When I sit down with anyone now, I focus on that person. When I listen, I listen with my heart. I try to speak objectively and only after they have finished their point. I try to be as relaxed as I can and look as far into their eyes as I can. I also try to have "soft" eyes. Someone once told me that when I "fix" my gaze on them, they feel that I am only looking at them. In response, they feel important in the conversation.

I think one of the biggest things in making people feel like sharing is that they feel safe. I could go on for a while about this, but body language has a lot to do with it. Generally, if you are ready to give a person your full attention, I think that you should be calm and relaxed. If a person is going to share, they are opening themselves up to you and could very well become emotional about it. If you are calm, they will feel better about launching out. If I'm going to open up one of my wounds, I need to know that the person (or people) are grounded and are going to be relatively sane. Now, I'm going to define sane as a consistently slow and objective voice, calm and relaxed posture, and a presence that is at rest. They may have drastically differing ideas than I, but I still need them in that moment to help my climb back into reality when I'm done.

When I look at a listener who I would confide in, they have a presence. They are confident. They are very slow in their actions. They think a LOT. They differentiate between emotion and fact. They look at risk-reward analysis. They take in as much as they can. They ask me questions. Their questions are slow and thoughtful. They look at finding a solution if one is needed. They encourage me. I think this last one is key to bringing me back to Earth. They make me think about things from their perspective while taking into consideration my own.

BODY LANGUAGE
Eyes are a big part of non-verbal communication. Most of the time, people don't like being stared at. However, it is to everyone's benefit for you to give casual glances and friendly eye contact. I remember writing several times on the power of eyes. I think the fastest way to relax people with your eyes is to have the same look as when you are getting ready to laugh. Pop your eyebrows for a second. This is what many people do when they see something they like. If I just raise them a little bit or briefly pop them, I've found that more people talk to me than if I just left my eyes as though I were reading something. I just try to relax my face and have something of a grin all of the time.

Body position can play a role as well. When I see someone lean forward as I begin conversing with them, it makes me feel important. They want to be closer to pick up more input. I've noticed that I'll do the same if I feel like I'm not getting enough (enough being volume, pronunciation, etc). However, some people are not confident enough to take this as a compliment and become a little gun shy in the spotlight. If they react with a deer-in-the-headlights look, we have to adjust. In this case, I'll usually try to reposition myself so that I am closer without having an aggressive body position.

LAUGHTER
Does making people laugh make you more approachable?
Does a commonly held sense of humor attract people?
Is the converse true? (if you are tense/apprehensive, will that rappel people?)

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard or read that a girl thinks that one of the most important features of a guy is a sense of humor. Thousands maybe? This is another reason for my sarcasm. I find so many times that people are down or too serious about something. I just don't know how they get by without making fun of the situations they come into. I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, I'll call her Maddie, seems pretty stressed as of late. I was over at her house the other day and she was all up in arms about her living situation probably changing soon. Well, she just moved into her current pad. On top of that, she has to learn some music BY EAR for a recital in less than a week! That would have me freaking out for sure, mainly because I don't play the flute. I know she's a good musician, but it came down on her so far that she was whining about what she was going to wear to work the next day. I said, "Well, I'm not as educated on women as I would like to be. However, I'm willing to take this challenge on! Some people wear latex, some wear plastic wrap, and some wear nothing at all! But I'm going to suggest that you wear clothes. I think that they might really fit well on you! Shot in the dark!" That was just enough to break the tension and get her to relax.

I love how easily humor loosens people up. I've learned that, generally, people don't like being tense. It's not how we live life to the fullest. Wow, I'm thinking back to May when I spent $50 on a ticket to go see Ron White. Why on EARTH did I do that?!??? Why did ALL of those people do that??? The Buell Theater was crammed for that show. All he did was stand up and talk about his life. That sounds rather boring in and of itself, but he made fun of it in the precess. Some of his jokes are crude, but I rather enjoyed his main joke. I think everyone else did too.

Alright, here's his statement. Don't go after looks; go after someone you can enjoy life with. This is something that I totally agree with. Here is basically how he said that statement. "I just got married again last summer. She's a beautiful woman, just younger than I am. I'm really lucky too because she is smart as hell. Who knows why she married me, but whatever. If there's one thing that I could pass on to the young people here tonight, it would be don't marry for looks. That's so stupid." He gets fairly crude here and if you'd like to hear it, ask me in person or email or something. "You can fix anything on a person. If she gets a belly, you can have a tummy tuck. Liposuction will fix that butt. Breast implants and plastic surgery continue on down the list. But you can't fix stupid!"

It was simply his ability to say something that believed in his life in a way that made people laugh that made him the millions that night. I'd bet you anything that all he had to do was ask anyone in that whole place and they would have bought him a drink.

Does making people laugh make you more approachable? I would give that a resounding YES!!!!
Does a commonly held sense of humor attract people? I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here and say yes.
Is the converse true? (if you are tense/apprehensive, will that rappel people?) Again with the whole yes idea.

CONCLUSION
I'm going to finish up with the approach that I've been using for the past couple of years. What I do is explain an idea and openly offer my opinion and thoughts. Then I'll ask, "What do you think?" Once in a while, you'll get the arrogant bastard who sincerely doesn't care about the topic. They will say something like, "Well, that would make sense if this person had any value to them." Other than those people, generally the people who offer their opinion will be genuine in their answers and feel validated even if you disagree on one thing or another. This is where I learn the most. (i.e. I hope that someone disagrees with something in this post.)