One, Powerful, Easy, Small Habit

Make One Person Smile Today

This month was the 30^th anniversary of the movie The Breakfast Club.  Do you remember that movie?  Allie Sheedy played the Character Allison ‘the Basket Case’.  Allison had some prophetic lines.  She said “When you grow up, your heart dies.”  And “You don’t have a choice, we all become our parents.”

And it’s true in a way.  It’s physical, mental and cultural entropy that we don’t even notice as we go through life.  The heat death of the individual.  But, you can fight it.  You can rage against the dying of the light.

You have to commit to being a student of life, to having the mind of an apprentice.  You can’t let the crust of the known concrete the daily adventure of life and the cultivation of new things and new paths.

Of course we become our parents, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  It doesn’t have to be done without choice.  Your parents gave you a lot of good and a lot of bad.  Think of it as two lists.  Picture that you’re holding a list in each hand.  One contains all the shit and baggage you inherited.  The other has all the wonders and joys.

You get to choose to embrace one and you get to crumple the other one up and throw it away.

You get to change, potentially for the better, every day.

I have been learning and practicing this week by running social experiments as I’m traveling.

One of the things I’m practicing is creating tiny habits.  We all know about broad habit changes and how habits work.  You remember me talking about the fact that there are keystone habits you can change that will create cascading changes in your life.

Tiny habits are an extension of the habit theory.  If you’re struggling with embracing new habits then perhaps you’re trying to do too much. Trying to ‘bite off more than you can chew’.  Try choosing something so small that it’s impossible to fail then build momentum on that success.

My tiny habit this week was to make one person smile each day.  This tiny habit is extremely fun and rewarding in an otherwise dreary day.

I know this sounds super easy but ‘not so fast’.  My week started Monday morning with a dash to the airport.  When I travel I’m not anti-social per se, but I’m a professional traveler and I’m usually dialed in to what I’m doing and not interacting much.

I would have to change that.  I would have to interact.  Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a naturally outgoing person.  I don’t like being in strange places with strangers.

How do you interact with strangers?  How do you do it in such a way as to get them to smile? Where does one find behavior to model?  Who are the experts?  Not the naturally adept but those who have broken down the mechanics and deconstructed successful social introductions.

(By the way, where were these guys in Middle School when I needed them?)

Well it turns out that this is a social problem that has been studied by a group of contemporary psychologists known to us as PUA’s or ‘Pick up Artists’.  The challenge of talking to strangers it seems is the same as the challenge of meeting women in bars.

Now, it’s a bit easier for me because I just want to make people smile, not get them into the sack or get their phone numbers.  I’m not in bars. I’m just out walking around in the world interacting with all kinds of people.

How do the pros do it?  They use charm.  They use body language.  They use banter.  And they user rapport building.

First let’s look at the body language you use to ‘open’ a stranger.  Let’s say there are two people talking.  How do you approach them and send the right non-verbal message?  How do you not look creepy or needy?

It’s all about body language.  When you enter the environment whether it’s a boardroom, a Laundromat or a coffee shop you go in with strong body language.  Head up, smile, body upright and shoulders up.  Don’t slouch, don’t look at the floor or scan around in a panic and keep your hands out of your pockets.

Walk into the environment and approach people not like you own the place but like you are having so much fun and you are so confident of your own joy that there is nothing in the approach that could change that feeling.  You’re on top of the world.

This is the body language you have when you approach people   Make sure you smile.  Smiling is very important.  Show those teeth.  You look wonderful and engaging when you smile. You should do it all the time.

Last thing is eye contact.  When you engage with people you need to make and hold eye contact.  If you’re smiling and open it won’t be creepy.  Smile with your eyes.  Eye contact is an extremely powerful and human thing that we seem to have gotten away from in our world.

When you make eye contact hold it.  Don’t quickly look away because that shows a lack of confidence.  That’s a display of social weakness.  It worries people.  When and if you do start to engage you can hold the eye contact for a few seconds, release it and come back to it so that it’s not some sort of creepy staring contest.

The eyes are the windows to the soul.  Good solid eye contact sends a very powerful message that you are confident in your own skin and interested in connecting with that other human.  If you can only manage the tiny habit of eye contact, try that.  Just try to catch the eye of everyone you walk past and if you catch their eye give them that big smile.  Guess what they will usually do in return? Yup.  They will smile.

Yes, I am indeed talking about actively approaching and talking to strangers.  Does that scare you?  What’s the worst that can happen?  They don’t engage.  You haven’t lost anything.  What’s the potential upside?  You meet some cool new people and have a meaningful interaction with them.

If your goal is simply to make them smile then there is really no pressure.  Keep it simple. Don’t be outcome focused.  If your goal is to convert them, sell them or bed them then you are going to feel the pressure and it will color your interaction.

Drop that emotional attachment to the result.  It’s not about you.  It’s about them.  Simplify – make them smile.

Case studies from a travel day.  How did my Monday travel day go?  I started by having to get up too early.  Fight traffic. Missed my first flight. Got my second flight delayed… Sounds like a wonderful day, right?  A nightmare scenario?

I should have been grumpy and whiny, right?

Ah contraire mon amis.  I had a wonderful day engaging strangers and making people smile.

At my 3^rd attempt to find the right place to check in for my flight to Toronto which I had already missed I arrived out of breath and damp at a ticket counter staffed by three women, two of which looked to be having some sort of negative, gossipy conversation.

I put my plan into action.  I fixed my body language, put on a big smile and approached them with “Are you ladies complaining again?”

This is an example of what the PUA’s call banter.

The supervisor of the two was a bit knocked out of her frame of reference but read my body language and engaged.  She started to explain that they weren’t complaining they were talking about dealing with difficult people.

I made solid eye contact and commiserated with them and shared some of my wisdom on the subject about how it’s not about you it’s about them and you can’t take part in their negative interactions.

I built rapport.

They worked on getting me rescheduled and a boarding pass, but the system wouldn’t take my Global Entry status to get me the expedited security.  The woman next to me was having the same issue.  But, now these two were solidly on the bus.  They were members of team Chris.  They worked that system 4 different ways until they got me my expedited security.  Problem solved.

I made them smile.

I had a couple hours to kill so my next stop was Starbucks.  The woman who had been checking in next to me was in line behind me.  I turned to her with my body language, smile and eye contact and said “They should just dispense the coffee with the boarding pass!”

Banter.

She engaged. She told me all about how this is the only place that struggles with the global entry process.  We talked about the weather.  She made the grave mistake of mentioning how hard it is to run in Boston in the winter.  It was on.

Rapport.

That interaction ended with us trading business cards and my promise to introduce her to my coach and send her the information about my road race.

Next I was sitting at the gate and the guy next to me is talking on the phone using words that are familiar to me.

I opened him with “Sounds like we’re in the same industry.”

Banter.

He engaged.  Telling me all about it. I was able to tell him I had dinner with his boss’s bosses earlier in the year.

Rapport

We traded cards.  Another contact in the industry.  Personal network expanded.

He may have even smiled.

Finally I made it to my appointments and got some solid work done.  We made our way to the hotel at the end of the day to check in.

I turned to my colleague, who is a woman, and referring to the young lady who was helping me at the front desk, with the appropriate body language and smile, said “Doesn’t she have a great smile?”  The young lady just lit up.  She was beaming.  She proceeded to personally walk me around the lobby and point out all the features of the place.

I definitely made her smile.

Have you gotten my point yet?  Small habits can change you.  Small habits can change other people and change the world.

The same skills that PUA’s have been practicing for years in the art of seduction are not specific to sweaty romps and one night stands.  These are the social skills of interacting with other humans.  These are basic human skills that can change your life.

Body language, smiling, eye contact, banter and rapport.  Whether you’re an engineer, a teacher, a consultant or a sales person life is about human to human interactions.

Make someone smile.