Things to look for:

- People of fake amusement have overly short or overly long laughs. They sound forced if you pay attention.
- Real smiles involve the muscles around the eyes. Fake smiles use only the mouth. Look in the person’s eyes to see if they are being genuine.
- People who fake interest don’t ask more questions about the subject. They don’t actually want to know. It’s more common that they may quickly agree with you and move on. For example, they may say something like, “Yeah! And anyways…”

The number one tip I can give you is to pay attention to what happens around you. There are so many details that you can pick up every day just by being attentive.

I finally started learning to be confident when I observed confident kids and mimicked their mannerisms. I acknowledged that I wasn’t confident and that I needed to improve. I forced myself to pretend I was confident until I felt it. It took years for me to truely feel confidence and no longer fear speaking to large groups, but it only took a couple of minutes for me to act it. I found that acting confident was the way to be confident.

Before you’re a confident person, you have very real fear of situations in which you are the center of attention. Things like giving a speech to a class, talking to the opposite sex and sticking up for your opinion even among friends can make a person very nervous and embarrassed. The underlying fear behind these feelings is that something bad will happen; someone will laugh at your speech, a girl will shut you down or your friends would yell at you. When you fake confidence, you’ll see firsthand that those things don’t actually happen often at all, and when they do, they aren’t terrible.

So what you need to do, is watch a confident person. Watch how they walk, listen to how they talk and try and replicate their actions. Pretend that you are them when you interact with others. Practice by forcing yourself to talk to absolute strangers. If you screw up or get to nervous, the worst possible thing that can happen is that you walk away and try again.

At first acting confident will feel strange. You know that it’s not what you really want to be doing and you’ll have nagging feelings of self doubt. If you’re serious about being confident, you’ll be able to give it try and try again until it starts to become a habit for you.

Attraction to another person, whether male or female, is never a choice and because of this, if you read people well and understand conversational manipulation, you can create a situation in which someone is attracted to you. I’m going to be writing from the male point of view, but many of the same psychological ideas apply to women.

You want what you can’t have:

As humans, we always seem to desire the things that we don’t have and become less satisfied when we don’t have it. See my article on wanting what you can’t have for more detail.

You get one chance, maybe:

People are never good as we expect them to be. When we meet someone, we create an impression of them in our head and as we learn more information about them we modify the image we’ve created. That’s one of the reasons that “mysterious” guys seem to do so well with women. The best chance you’ll have at attracting someone is shortly after you meet. For some people, they can be attracted almost immediately but many people need to see you a couple of time. Once you’ve blown it one time, you usually don’t get another try.

Subconscious attraction:

There are certain qualities that EVERYONE is attracted to. For example, how many people do you know that would say confidence is a turn off? Some people take it too far and are completely full of themselves, but confidence is never a bad thing to have. Another thing all people are attracted to is humor. Everyone has a different sense of humor so what’s funny to you may not be funny to the person you’re going for, but everyone rates humor positively.

Some people are extremely friendly. They’re psychologically programmed to be very responsive to persuasion. To influence these people, not much more than a hello and friendly face is necessary. Many people however, are moderately to highly resistive to persuasion and apprehensive of meeting new people. With these people, you need to build rapport in order to influence them. One important thing to keep in mind is that you need to stay in control. If you let them control the conversation, you’ll be out of your element and not nearly as effective as you could otherwise be.

Everyone loves to talk about themselves. You’re going to want to ask questions about their life that aren’t too personal, give them the opportunity to brag a little but be careful how you phrase your question. For example, instead of saying “Where do you work?”, try saying “Tell me about your work.” Notice how the second statement is not a question. In this situation, you’ve maintained control by not asking a question. As long as you have a friendly tone of voice, saying “Tell me about your work” won’t be interpreted as a command but subconsciously they’ll begin building rapport with you. Stay friendly, confident and patient and you can make miracles happen.

Every fear can be worked on and every fear can be improved or eradicated. What it’s going to take is a serious and concentrated effort on your part to confront your fear and think it through. Does it make any sense to be afraid of bears when you live in downtown New York City? Does it make sense to be afraid of flying when airplanes are statistically better at flying than birds themselves?

One thing you can always keep in your mind is that no matter what you fear, you will not increase or decrease your chances of being in that situation by being afraid of it. Being afraid of snakes doesn’t make them more or less likely to bite you. Keep this in mind and confront your fear today. Save your worry for something real if you must worry at all.

Body positions:

People in submissive stances have generally closed off bodies.

Making the body small:

Hunching inwards reduces the size of the body, limiting the potential of being hit and protecting vital areas. In a natural setting, being small may also reduce the chance of being seen. Arms are held in. A crouching position may be taken, even slightly with knees slightly bent. This is approaching the curled-up regressive fetal position.

Motionlessness:

By staying still, the chance of being seen is, in a natural setting, reduced (which is why many animals freeze when they are fearful). When exposed, it also reduces the chance of accidentally sending signals which may be interpreted as being aggressive. It also signals submission in that you are ready to be struck and will not fight back.

Head down:

Turning the chin and head down protects the vulnerable neck from attack. It also avoids looking the other person in the face (staring is a sign of aggression).

Eyes:

Widening the eyes makes you look more like a baby and hence signals your vulnerability. Looking attentively at the other person shows that you are hanging on their every word.

Mouth:

Submissive people smile more at dominant people, but they often smile with the mouth but not with the eyes.

Submissive gestures:

There are many gestures that have the primary intent of showing submission and that there is no intent to harm the other person. Hands out and palms up shows that no weapons are held and is a common pleading gesture. Other gestures and actions that indicate tension may indicate the state of fear. This includes hair tugging, face touching and jerky movement. There may also be signs such as whiteness of the face and sweating. When the submissive person must move, then small gestures are often made. These may be slow to avoid alarming the other person, although tension may make them jerky.

Defending from attack:

Basic defensive body language has a primitive basis. People will subconsciously assume that the other person will physically attack, even when this is highly unlikely.

Covering vital organs and points of vulnerability:

In physical defense, the defensive person will automatically tend to cover those parts of the body that could damaged by an attack. The chin is held down, covering the neck. The groin is protected with knees together, crossed legs or covering with hands. The arms may be held across the chest or face.

Fending off:

Arms may be held out to fend off attacker, possibly straight out or curved to deflect incoming attacks

Using a barrier:

Any physical object may be placed or held in front of the person to act as a literal or figurative barrier. This can be a small as a pen or as large as a table. Straddling a reversed chair makes some people comfortable in conversation as they look relaxed whilst feeling defensive. You can also use a barrier to conceal your aggressive nature. If you hold a book across your chest, you will be perceived more defensively than aggressively, and put other people more at ease.

Becoming small:

One way of defending against attack is to reduce the size of the target. People may thus huddle into a smaller position, keeping their arms and legs in.

Rigidity:

Another primitive response is to tense up, making the muscles harder in order to withstand a physical attack. Rigidity also freezes the body, possibly avoiding movements being noticed or being interpreted as preparing for attack.

Seeking escape:

Flicking the eyes from side to side shows that the person is looking for a way out.

Preempting attack by giving in:

Preempting the attack, the defensive person may generally use submissive body language, avoid looking at the other person, keep the head down and possibly crouch into a lower body position.

Preempting attack by attacking first:

Aggressive body language may also appear, as the person uses ‘attack as the best form of defense’. The body may thus be erect and thrust forward. Sometimes, people will display both aggressive and submissive body language when they’re feeling corned. For example, the upper body may exhibit aggression while the legs are twisted together.

By definition, hope allows a person to sit around and wait for something to change. It’s as effective as a wish to your fairy godmother. What you need to do instead is analyze the situation and change something. To change things, you need to make the change happen, not just hope and see if anything happens. It won’t.

Examples:

You work as a server in a restaurant. You don’t get tipped as much and you’re falling behind on your bills. You hope every day that you’ll be tipped more.

The solution: Don’t hope. Do something. Perhaps you should look for a different job. Do some research on how successful servers get large tips.

You feel strongly that abortion shouldn’t be legal. You hope that the supreme court will ban it.

The solution: Stop just hoping and do something! It’s easy to think you can’t do anything because the decision isn’t yours. If you feel strongly enough, you should be active. Perhaps you should write your congress, form a local group, or start a website.

The bottom line is that you need to be the change you wish to see. You can’t just hope, because hope in itself is useless.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed? Like you just can’t handle things anymore? Maybe bill are piling up. Maybe someone you love is in the hospital.

Take a second and think. Can you think of anything that hasn’t worked out eventually? When person X died two years ago and you thought it was the end of the world, didn’t that feeling go away? The last time your bills were over your head and you were late making payments, wasn’t that resolved?

Is there anything in the past that hasn’t worked out?

Everyone has past problems, and everyone has current problems. But all of your current problems will eventually become problems of the past, and for that very reason, you need never despair.

I decided to try this tactic myself and see if it worked for me. I knew two women, neither of them substantially more attractive than the other but one of them had previously received more attention from me so was used to it. All of a sudden, when we were to hang out, I asked her if Woman #2 would be there. Woman #1 was surprised, how could I be asking about the second and in her mind lesser woman, when I was with her. I kept this up for a week, working Woman #2 into conversations whenever possible. Finally, I switched my attention back to Woman #1. Everything was the same except Woman #1 desired me more and spent more time trying to please me. I believe she knew she had to compete and therefore stepped up her game.

Both of my examples deal with “getting the girl” or relationships, but you can use this tactic whether you are a woman or man and in platonic situations. Try it out with two friends, one who you always spend time with and one who you’d like to spend more time with but frequently has excuses. In this situation, you’d ask the second friend (who you’d like to spend more time with) more questions about the first friend.

I’d love to hear from you if you have any success (or disappointment).