Improve Your Mood Around People

UNTIL I GOT to high school, I was "shy." My mom still thinks I am. It was so much a part of my personality, she just can't seem to get over it. But anyone who knows me now would have a hard time believing I was ever shy.

If you think other people aren't going to like you, then when you're around other people, you tend to be somewhat withdrawn. You don't talk very much. You don't open up. The person you're talking to feels, of course, that you don't like him, so he withdraws. His withdrawal is evidence that other people don't like you. See how that works? It's a negative self-feeding loop.

It was easy to fix. I got the idea from Maxwell Maltz's book, Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life. When I talked to people, I started thinking to myself, "They like me." I became more comfortable and talked a little easier, and people responded. I started seeing evidence that people liked me, and the self-feeding loop was going. Now I feel comfortable around just about everyone and they feel comfortable around me.

I saw an ingenious experiment on this recently: Students were paired up and allowed to talk with each other for five minutes. Then one person from each pair was called aside and spoken with privately. Half of them were told his partner liked him. The other half was told his partner didn't like him.

Then all the pairs were put back together to talk some more, and the researchers watched and took notes. Here's what they found: When a person thought the other person liked him, he talked more personally about himself, leaned in toward the other person more, and used more eye contact. And how did his partner respond to this? By doing the same thing. His partner leaned forward more, talked more personally, and looked him in the eye more.

When a person thought his partner didn't like him, he tended to lean back, talk less personally about himself, and use less eye contact. And again, his partner did the same.

Whether you assume other people will like you or not, you're probably going to be right! It will tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy either way. So one simple way to improve your mood on a daily basis is to assume the person you are about to talk to likes you. Try it today.