One of the magic qualities I started noticing with the Charisma Arts Method is that women started telling me how much they feel like they have known me much longer than they actually have. This is because I speak in a way that they can relate to.
Face it conversations when you first meet are a bit like interviews. She is asking what is your favorite coffee yet what she means is what does your taste in coffee reveal to her about who you are. When she asks what you do for a living she really could care less, she is really asking you to tell her about who you are.
Us as guys on the other hand feel we can get to know who she is by the kind of stuff she does, what she knows, and what we have in common. This creates quite the impasse. She is thinking about what kind of man you are by the coffee you drink and you are trying to find out what her favorite football team is. It is a wonder a man and woman can hold down a conversation for longer than ten minutes. We are speaking a different language.
So here is how to speak a woman’s language. She wants to know who you are, even when she asks you what that sprocket on your mountain bike does. The first step in speaking a woman’s language is to speak in a way that she can relate to. After talking an hour about our mountain bikes if she knows nothing more about your character she will be bored and move on. However if in describing that sprocket we display the person we are, how we think and feel, she will be fascinated with us.
The reason we get into books and movies in part is about character development. We have to know a character to like them. So for a woman to like you she has to know who you are. If you can remember throughout the entire conversation that the goal is to learn as much about her as you can while simultaneously speaking about everything you want to talk about in a way that she can get to know you, then you will start making a strong connection.
The first step is speaking in the I perspective. The importance of this should not be underestimated. Until I had someone point out to me just how much I was using the “you” perspective or god perspective, I would not have believed it. Even now as instructor I am constantly vigilant about teaching in the I perspective and having conversations using the I perspective. Here is an example.
“You know how it feels when you are out on the water enjoying the peaceful surroundings and just taking that serenity in, that is what I love about being out on the ocean.”
Or
“I love how it feels when I am out on the ocean. I just love how peaceful and serene I feel when I am all alone bobbing up and down on the waves.”
I personally feel that the statement about being on the ocean using the I perspective is more relatable. Hopefully you will agree as well. When someone hears the I perspective they start identifying with me and they put themselves in my shoes a bit. When you use the you perspective, they just imagine themselves in that space, yet if they can’t relate they won’t connect with you. The I perspective allows them to understand me even if they haven’t had a similar experience because they don’t have to accept that that situation would make them feel a certain way, just that I felt that way. They can then relate to those emotions based on their previous life experience.
The other key to this is that you are speaking about emotions. To be relatable I speak about how events and situations make me feel. This is so people can understand me and relate to me. If I don’t explain how I feel when I am speaking about an experience for example, then they have to imagine how they themselves would feel in that situation. When I describe exactly how I did feel, they don’t have to make the leap, they can relate to how I felt because they have situations in their life that made them feel similarly. Who knows, what might make me feel one way would make them feel completely different. That is why it is important to clearly speak about how I felt or thought in a situation.
The last part is I use details. Books are a great example; I can’t get through a single page on a book without learning about the details of the situation that really have no pertinence on the story. From the feel of the air to the texture of a railing as the character glides down the cold hardwood steps in her bare feet. Details evoke emotion as well as the ability to understand and to relate to the speaker.
By speaking in the I perspective with emotions and details, I find I not only display who I am and what I feel much quicker than I did previously, it also encourages people around me to open up and speak in a similar way. This allows for a really strong connection in my conversations to be developed faster than most people are use to. Not only do I genuinely create a connection but I differentiate myself from everyone else in the way I communicate. The key to all of this is being relatable; use emotions, details, and the I perspective.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
This is a great great post. Although soemtimes I still have difficulty getting use to speaking about how I feel about something.. I always talk about how somebody else (usually one of my friends) did something related to her experinces..
Hmm, if I use a friend, how can I put him into an "I" perspective and relate emotions?
Great post. I was in isolation with a woman last night in a bar in Cambridge and she said she liked "War and Peace", and she liked literature because she liked stories about people. I had a great opening there to relate about how reading fiction like James Bond makes me feel excited or takes me away to a special place, or how I enjoy dealing with my clients and how that makes me feel, or how I love cold war history and love learning about the Russian people and mindset. Instead I ...didn't. I talked in the God perspective some, and a fellow Charisma Arts alum was on the fringe of the conversation and I ejected soon after she gave me great stuff so I could get him in isolation and give him some feedback.
I had an opportunity to relate and reveal but didn't make the most of it, but I am happy that in the future I will me more aware of that. I had a lot of fun last night though because it was fun seeing a less experienced alum in sets making the same mistakes I used to all the time (and still do) although less frequently.
It was satisfying breaking things down in real time telling him "I have to see my friend kino" or "SOI" and then later talking game saying overall great job. You could have escelated here, you were outcome dependent with that set etc.
Do you want her to date your friend or you? If you talk about your friend what does that accomplish? She wants to get to know you! If you are telling a story about a friend it should be all about your experience being with him and how you felt and what you saw.
I think we all should raise some money and give SHH a big present for his fantastic posts. Dan dude, thank you so much for all you that you give to the world!
Is is possible to do telephone coaching with you, using skype or msn?
Pieter
I can do skype. To set up a phone consult just sign up for it on the charisma arts website linked off the blog. Email me good times for you and a copy of your email receipt.
Rock on, Dan! i can see so much difference on your previous posts and your current ones. i can see that you mentioned a few times that you did routines, but eventually you started writing more mature posts. it's amazing that you improved a lot since then.
btw Dan, just curious question and i think you can answer this really quick. i think all people have different learning curves but it's inspiring to hear your side of story.
How much did you practice before you nailed everything down? any advices will be great. Right now, i'm still in my head when i do the approaches. there are some points it can be so frustrating and some points that i am successful.
many thanks,
Revmark
I have to admit i didn't go out a lot before i became an instructor. However i felt i had tremendous success within about month. I was getting dates and escalating interactions. I started just using techniques i learned here and there and they worked so well. When I became an instructor the other jump in my game was when i incorporated sexual barriers, push pull, and DQ.
The way i really felt i got better was doing the relate/reward cycle in everyday interactions. This method you can practice anytime.
Kudos for making an effort at passing your ideas to the readers. However, reading your post, especially towards the end, I was getting this strong "Uh-huh, that's smart" feeling. I think this isn't the feeling you should leave readers with, cause you're talking about elementary true human communications and kinda over-explaining it. When you over-explain such a thing, it blurs its elementary essence; people don't get the mental connection from it to their elementary day-to-day communications. It's just like people don't grasp the concept of rapport, as they start to think of it as some contrived dance of eye glances and motions.
"Do you want her to date your friend or you? If you talk about your friend what does that accomplish? She wants to get to know you!"
I never thought about it like that! Interesting...
maybe you can add a short summary after the end of the entry so in a quick glance, we can quickly see the important points to remember. but to be honest, it does not really bother me to read and reread the whole thing; it's just wonderful and captivating. this is just a suggestion.
example:
entry
------
summary
- important points
- R
Ahhh, I see what charisma arts are always on about with the "I" perspective now...in describing how something affects you, you are revealing your character, rather than imposing your interpretation of a situation on someone else...which is obviously much colder, less textured and harder to relate to. 2 different languages entirely...really helpful, thanks Dan.
Post a Comment