The 3-Step Guide to Giving Up on Self Improvement
Or, compounding interest on business relationships.
Throughout your career, especially as you’re applying for jobs, moving up the ranks in your company, and pitching big deals, you interact with people who have the power (read: money) to change your life significantly. You’re also making lifetime friends, important connections, and impressions. So many impressions.
Most of the time, I go through life concerned about what others will think of me. Do I speak like an expert in my industry? Am I dressed well enough? Will they remember me?
All valid questions.
The problem, however, is that none of these are questions that I can answer on a day-to-day basis. Sure — in the long run, I’ll know whether my accomplishments and relationships have resulted in a net positive sum. Even looking back from where I stand, I can see that they have. This article, however, has nothing to do self-improvement.
So what can I do today, or tomorrow, to drastically and positively influence people’s impressions of me?
1. Forget about it.
It’s simple. Just forget about it. Get over any idea of your being able to improve ANY part of your personal composition in a way that will drastically and positively change people’s impressions of you overnight. It’s so unlikely to happen that you’d be better off selling everything you own to buy tickets for the next $1.6 Billion Mega Millions.
The problem with focusing on anything you can do to change yourself today is that you are focused on yourself. Have you ever considered that every single person in that meeting when you made a presentation had the same questions going through their heads? Doesn’t every one of us hope to make drastic changes in our lives? Lose weight in one week? Be the hero of the day? Time the stock market perfectly?
Yeah, it’s not going to happen. And that’s OK.
Rather than hoping to strike it big overnight, I suggest that you start to make small investments that will compound over time. Begin to turn your focus away from yourself in your conversations. Get to know the people around you and make it clear that you’re interested in them. Better yet, make it clear that you’ve learned something from them. Do that, and I guarantee that they’ll never forget you.
Follow the next simple steps, and you’ll be richer in relationships (and probably money, in time) than you could have ever forced yourself to become through self-improvement.
2. Remember names.
No sound on earth is sweeter than your own name.
That wisdom comes from Dale Carnegie’s timeless “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Throughout, he demonstrates that remembering and using people’s names will have a tremendous impact on them. So much so, in fact, that he guarantees that you will win their friendship and have the ability to influence them.
It’s not a book about manipulation or false appearances, and neither is this article. What both Dale and I hope to communicate is that there is no more important thing you can do to build a relationship than to remember and acknowledge the things that are important to others. By starting with names, you create a connection between yourself and the very thing that is most familiar to the people you know.
I occasionally visit my Alma Mater. During my time in college, I was friends with a personal trainer (employed by the school) whom I believe to be the kindest person I have ever met. I cannot recall a time when I’ve seen him and he has not greeted me warmly and used my name. Most recently, I was walking across a parking lot and he drove by. It had been several years since I’d seen him last, but he slammed the brakes, rolled down his window, and said “Collin! So great to see you, man!”
We chatted for a while, and as he drove away, I explained to my fiancé that he was one of the coolest guys I know. If I were to hire a personal trainer, I would look no further. The funny thing is, I never knew him very closely. I think we met because we did leg day on the same day and he happened to start up a conversation when we used racks next to each other to squat.
But he never forgot my name, and he never failed to greet me when he saw me. Years later, that random trainer in the gym is still one of the coolest, kindest people I have ever met. And he never volunteered a single piece of information about himself. He didn’t try to make an impression (not like he had to try when he was squatting 400+ pounds), and as far as I’m aware, he never had an agenda. He just remembered my name.
How much of an impact can you make by forgetting about yourself for a moment to learn and remember a new contact’s name? If you see them across town or at a networking event and know their name again, you’ll lock yourself into the top 10% of their trusted business network. Try it and tell me it doesn’t work.
3. Ask questions.
If you do come back to tell me it doesn’t work, I’ll ask you this. When you speak, do you make statements, or ask questions?
Editor’s note for honesty: I’m about to be the pot calling the kettle black. My fiancé reads, edits, and remembers everything I write, so I’ll hear about this one. My charge: I make way more statements than the questions I ask. My plea: guilty.
The difference between a schmuck salesman who remembers your name every time he sees you and your best friend is that your best friend seeks to understand you. The salesman seeks to, well, sell to you. And that’s bad for business.
Once you remember a name, go a level deeper. With every opportunity you get, ask questions of the people around you. Just met a business owner who has a position that you’d love to fill? “Hi Lisa, so great to meet you!” “You own [business]? What gave you the idea to [way in which she does business that differentiates her]?”
So on and so forth.
Have you ever come away from a conversation feeling totally energized, like the person you were speaking with just connected with you and understood you? Like you solved so many questions in your mind and like that person was a total sage? I’d be willing to bet you did most of the talking and that the person you encountered was a fantastic listener. And I’d be willing to bet that you can remember who that person was even years later and that you can find them on Facebook or Twitter almost instantly.
Forget about yourself, remember names, and ask questions, and you will cement yourself as concretely in their minds as the trainer at my university did in my mind, and as your old friend did in your mind.
If any part of the system doesn’t seem to be working out, take another look. You might just find stinky old you piping up again, ready to share your name before you ask someone else’s or maybe thinking you’ll make a fortune overnight if you can just get your elevator pitch perfected. Fuhgeddaboudit!
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