Okay. Let me preface this post with this: This is going to be a rather lengthy post, so to save the time, of those who can't be bothered to read everything I'll be including TL;DR explanations of every chapter along with book recommendations.
After spending a few weeks on this topic, I've identified a singular glaring problem: There is a fundamental lack of understanding in regard to both basic human psychology and social dynamics. After reading a few posts on questions of people I couldn't help but think, "Alot of these questions could be answered by applying basic human psychology and social skills." My goal, then, is to provide the fundamental of both human needs, social dynamics and observation that I've extracted from various lectures and books over the years (these books will also be listed)
I'll be covering these exact topics so feel free to skip to whatever you find most interesting
Human needs and desires
How to become charismatic
Basic conversational ability
Rapport building techniques
Observation
Lets start, shall we?
Desires & Needs
Perhaps one of the most important yet simplistic ideas for becoming charismatic and understanding our psychology is this: We all seek to maximize pleasure and reduce pain. We all like to be admired, to be told we’re correct, to be agreed with, and yet we despise being criticized and disliked. There’s a funny theory psychologists have for the most part confirmed: reciprocal liking. We like people that like us.
This very simple idea is fundamental to all of power plays and most importantly, generating a field of magnetic charm. We want to feel good, we want to be understood, we want to feel important and we don’t want to feel bad. Upon further examination, you may find that a good majority of the 48 laws rely on making others feel good and minimizing pain, as does seduction. Law 1, Law 2, Law 46, Law 43, Law 32, Law 38. Need I go on?
That’s all nice, but how do we apply this newly found knowledge?
Establishing a sense of importance
Perhaps one of the deepest human desires is to feel important.
When someone you want to network with enters the room? Give them all your attention. Turn your entire body to them, call out their name, give them a beaming smile and welcome them in
Presuppose a compliment rather than outright complimenting them. "I know you've already aced the test, but jesus was it hard!" We imply their intelligence rather than outright stating they're smart.
Give small, little strokes to the ego. When someone does something you fancy? “Good job, Tim! You rocked that presentation”
Your first meeting with someone, get their name and wait a length of time without meeting them. When you see each other again? “Nice to see you XYZ!”
Establishing a sense of want
There is exactly one way to get someone to do you a favor, that is to make them want to. To view the world from the lens of another and figure out exactly how to frame your question so that it benefits them. Ask yourself, “How can I make this person want to do it?”
“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.”
This concludes the first chapter! Hurray!
As promised:
TL;DR: People are averse to pain and cling to pleasure. The fundamentals of social manipulation rely on maximizing pleasure associated with you while minimizing the pain. Make people feel good and you’ll have them in the palm of your hand.
Books:
How to win friends and influence people
How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships
Becoming charismatic
People often see charisma as some defined value. That’s a blatantly false idea. Increasing your charisma is a long, challenging endeavor although it’s entirely possible and I have the answers here.
Let’s analyze the traits between charismatic people and then design activities to learn said traits
They speak slowly and clearly while utilizing pauses to emphasize their statements. They use different tones of voices, from booming to whispering and they utilize intonations to make their points more powerful. They speak firmly but not overbearingly.
They utilize gesticulations to empower their speech
They have deep and pleasant voices. They’re able to change the tone of their voice, from friendly and joking to domineering and authoritative and everything inbetween
They tell captivating and engaging stories. They don't share facts, they share stories. They share emotion and passion. They show rather than telling with vivid description. When they tell stories, they convey an entire emotional journey that enraptures you
They involve everyone in the room by reacting to their statements & bring them into the conversation
They utilize heavy eye contact
Practice activities:
Record voice lectures where you utilize pauses, intonation, and different tones. Analyze your weaknesses and then remedy them
Choose a few key gesticulations and use them in everyday conversation
Utilize diaphragmatic breathing to deepen your voice . You’ll succeed when you notice a vibration in your throat while speaking
Create a random story and convey it in a voice recording. Analyze your weaknesses and remedy them
Utilize eye contacts. Maintain constant eye contact when speaking
Books:
Charisma on command
Congratulations! Follow all these steps and use these practice activities (or create your own, who cares honestly) and you’ll instantly see increased levels of charisma. You may even find your very voice captivates you after learning these traits
Next we’ll cover basic conversational ability, be prepared as this’ll be a lengthy chapter.
Conversation
The ability to hold a good conversation is, well, one of the most crucial aspects to increasing your charisma. What’s the point of learning all of the above if you’re unable to captivate strangers with words?
In this chapter we’ll be covering various components of a conversation so that you’ll be able to enrapture anyone.
Lets start with small talk!
Small talk
Small talk is often considered an enemy, often thought to be awkward, a cause for embarrassment and generally just hard. This isn’t the case, small talk is absolutely necessary. Not only does it break down barriers, but with the right conversation and flow it’ll ultimately lead into deeper conversation and ultimately friendship.
There are generally 3 social environments and there are different techniques for small talk in every environment, although simple small talk will fundamentally work in every environment. A warm environment is an environment where conversation is to be expected, such as a party or social event. A repeating environment is one wherein you meet people over and over, say a gym or classes. A cold situation, as you may guess, is an environment wherein being social isn’t expected whatsoever, say a bus or a train.
In a warm environment, you may simply comment on whats happening ie the state of the party and let conversation flow from there. In a repeating environment, it may start off with nodding at someone and evolve into asking them a few questions before evolving into a complete conversation.
In a cold environment, however, you have nothing to rely on. You must create the conversation from scratch. Let me assuage your worries right away, aslong as you convey charisma and confidence, the material of the question doesn’t matter. Recite that to yourself and embody it. Charisma > Your initial question.
With that out of the way, how do we actually get through small talk without seeming awkward?
Match their mood. Have you ever had an upbeat little fuck come up to you while you were clearly moody and tired? Yeah. Don’t be that person. If you see they’re moody put on a moody mask and gradually steer their mood during the conversation
Remember what I said about Charisma > Your initial question? You can open with anything aslong as you’re charismatic and confident, simply avoid complaining. Break down their barriers with boring inquiring questions about their character and lifestyle, gradually steer the conversation into a conductive conversation.
Congratulations! Practice this some and you’ll have weaponized small talk! It’s time to master regular conversations.
Listening & emphasizing
Perhaps the most crucial ability in a conversation is to listen and emphasize with your conversationalist. Remember, people only care for themselves, so talk about them. There are a few tips I can cover in this section but for the most part it’s simply practice
People seldom mention something if it’ isn’t somewhat important to them. If a friend of yours mentions botany, inquire about it rather than ignoring it
BREAK DOWN SEQUENCES! I cannot emphasize this enough! No one likes robotic conversations, “How are you?” “Good, thanks. You?” “I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. How was your day?” B O R I N G. Don’t make the mistake of falling into a repetitive sequence of questions. Offer them some bait. “How are you?” “Good, thanks. You?” “I’m doing wonderful! I went out doing XYZ today. What’d you get up to?” There’s a very big difference, in one sweep we’ve effortlessly transformed the conversation into something with meaning rather than a programmed response
Don’t pivot the conversation into something about you. If you’re talking about construction, don’t go and say “Oh yeah! My brother works in construction.” Source your conversation from their experiences, not theirs.
Emphasize with them and try and think of motivations between why they’re passionate for what they do.
Awkward silence
Awkward silence happens for one of two reasons -
You fall back to repetitive, programmed responses and the conversation fails because of a lack of interest
You cover every detail about the conversation. There’s only so much you can inquire about a girls dog, it’s inevitable you’ll run out of questions
If we fall back onto programmed conversations, we get this - “How was your day?” “Good, thanks for asking” “So what have you been up to?” “Nothing much” “Yeah.” You get the idea.
If we delve too deeply into a conversation, we get this? “What breed is she?” “A golden retriever.” “Ah, golden retrievers are such adorable dogs? How old is she?” “She’s turning 9 this year.” “When did you get her?” “3 or 4 years ago” “Yeah, my brother has a pitbull.” Do you see how this fails in the end? A generous conversationalist will save you from awkward silences but don’t bet on anything.
Holding a deeper conversation
Hopefully, by now, you’ll have identified all the pitfalls that occur during a conversation and how to hold a captivation conversation. It’s time to put this all together. We don’t want a conversation that consists of cold facts and details, we want something that’s emotional and interesting.
Let’s talk about how to utilize questions and statements. Questions should only be used when A) You’re building rapport and B) You’re probing deeper into their character to provide information for a conversation. You want to use the information gleamed from your probing questions, emphasize with their character and form statements that inquire about their motivations, insecurities and desires. Cold facts will never form the basis of an emotional connection, strangers will only divulge when they feel you’re truly interested.
There are two types of questions. One can only be responded to with a yes or no, “Have you been to Canada?” Another can form the basis for an entire conversation, “What motivates you to keep working as a nurse? I mean, isn’t it a traumatizing job?”.
TL;DR Listen to what they say, match their mood, avoid awkward silence and utilize questions and statements strategically.
Books:
How to talk to anyone
The Like Switch
Crucial conversations
The soulmate sequence
Practice activities
Strike up a conversation with someone in a cold environment. Utilize small talk to break down barriers and transition into a deeper conversation
Join a disposable group, ie a club, and practice conversational ability, charisma and power plays all in one. Tie everything together
With that out of the way, lets talk about observation and how we can use it in combination with all of the above.
Observation
As Sherlock Holmes would say, “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance observes.” This so very true, especially in the digital era where you can immediately access learning material. Years ago our ignorance would’ve been excusable with the excuse of education, nowadays? It takes no more than a google search to find books & articles on observation and deduction
Observation is an awfully hard and nuanced skill to learn but it is wholly worth it and rather than bombard you with advice, it may be better to illustrate my thought process.
Perhaps one of my most productive observations was figuring out my coworker was being physically abused. Let’s describe the variables.
X walks is sitting with her legs crossed and she’s hunched over
X is wearing multiple long sleeved layers on her torso yet she’s wearing shorts
It’s a 33c day
X has a hickey on her neck
X has 2 bruises on her legs
X is sitting with her legs crossed, indicative of defensiveness in a cluster. She’s also hunched over similar to a turtle, indicative of defensiveness in a cluster. X is wearing multiple long sleeved layers of clothing on her torso, yet she’s wearing loose shorts. Obviously her outfit isn’t optimized for the weather. She has a hickey and we know she has a partner. She has two bruises uncovered. She’s defensive and hiding her upper torso. Why?
Obviously, you can see where I’m going with this. While the observations didn’t exactly lend to a concrete conclusion, they narrowed down the amount of reasonable hypotheses we could think of. This allowed us to manipulate events that would test whether or not she was truly being physically abused and should our hypothesis be proven false, it no longer matters.
Observation and deduction isn’t a concrete science, there’s room for much error and you can never confirm a hypothesis solely from deduction alone, but they can grant you relevant information you can use to poke and prod, thus expanding your relevant knowledge of the person.
Books:
Mastermind: How to think like sherlock holmes
The Definitive Book of Body Language
Practice activities:
Take public transport and observe people. Figure out where they’re going, try reason their occupation, their dominant hand and whatnot
Watch reality TV shows without any sound. Observe the scenario and hypothesize what’s going on. Turn the sound on and confirm the ideas
Building rapport
Rapport is typically seen as the ability to see the perspective of another, to seem in sync with them. This is one of the most powerful tools you’ll have. The ability to seem similar to your victim when first meeting immediately sets the tone for the relationship. We like people that share our same hobbies and ideas, it’s only natural we’d like people who are on the same wavelength of us.
Have you ever met some random stranger that had you smiling and lowering your barriers within 10 minutes? That’s the power of rapport, the ability to have someone share their entire life story, their struggles and passions within hours of meeting. Another you, perhaps your estranged twin?
Luckily for us, building rapport generally relies on skills we’ve already learnt!
Make it seem like their voice is being heard. Listen to them.
Emphasize with them. View their wants, motivations and desires as your own.
Talk about them instead of yourself.
Insert yourself into their life as the answer to a problem, meet their needs and solve their issues.
Mirror your opponent's body language and vocal tone.
And with that, we’re finished! If you read everything in this post and apply all the advice, do all the activities then you’ll see instant success. It’s guaranteed.
This took hours to write, I'm going to sleep