We invest much energy and time in trying to become a popular person. We beat ourselves up at the gym to have a nicer body; we starve ourselves to lose weight; we go under the knife to change physical attributes; and we go into debt to buy designer clothes and other material trophies. And what is the outcome of all of these efforts? We are more isolated and lonely than ever.
Do you want to know a secret? The key to being the most likeable person at work or at home is to be the person who is best at establishing safety with others!
Why is safety the only quality that truly matters?
Our nervous system is built like a sounding board. Much like a mirror, our neurobiology perceives and reflects the internal state of the people around us. Research shows that when we see someone else in pain, the regions of our brain associated with pain get activated. We don’t have to be neuroscientists to witness our mirror neurons at work. Just notice how we tear up while watching a sad movie, although the sad story is not actually happening to us. Emotions are indeed very contagious.
When two people are interacting and one person’s internal state is not calm and balanced, it will activate threat-related neurons and the stress response in the other.
In fact, our nervous system appears to play a very important role in how we feel and behave without us even realizing it. Steven Porges, who developed the polyvagal theory, specifically uncovered compelling data on the role our autonomic nervous system plays in the regulation of affective states and social behavior. Most of our physiological responses occur without our awareness, due to neuroception—a sub-conscious process of threat and danger detection.
When we define others in a negative way, are critical and or contemptuous towards them, their stress response gets activated. The stress response shuts down the brilliant, thinking part of our brain and slows down critical functions, like our immune system. Needless to say, being under the emotionally hi-jacked state of our stress response does not feel good.
We will have a very hard time making friends and influencing people if we elicit the stress response in others when we interact with them.
Three million years have passed since the Stone Age, and we now seem to reside in the threatened brain era, where it is estimated that we activate our fight or flight response over ten times per day. Six hundred million years of evolution have yielded us a brain that has the propensity to assume the worst. What can we do practically to intercept our built-in negative bias and master the art of building safety with the people that matter in our world? Here are some ideas:
- Say what you will do and do what you say.
This is one of the best-kept secrets describing the quickest and most effective way to build trust with anyone. It appears to be challenging in the midst of it all to prioritize and remember all the things we said we would do for all the people in our lives. But if you wish to be more popular at work or at home, being the person others can truly depend on is gold. Knowing our own limits and not over-promising and over-extending ourselves is critical too. It is much better to say “no,” than to say we will do something and not do it. Being a man or a woman of our word is a potent ingredient in being liked and having influence over others and, may I say, it is extremely rare.
- Replace judgment and resistance with compassion.
When another behaves in a way that rubs us the wrong way, we take it personally. At that point our threat-related neural activity increases and the right hemisphere part of our brain, which governs our relational ability, shuts down. It is then easy to slip and slide into becoming judgmental, defensive, and resistant to connection. What if instead we choose to focus on feeling compassion for the other person’s temporary inability to relate to us in a healthy way and take the high road in reinstating the sense of safety between us? Research from Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism has uncovered that nothing releases bursts of dopamine (our “feel good” neurotransmitter) in our brain as much as compassion does. If you become associated with dopamine release in another, you can actually become addictive in a good, positive way!
- Practice having power over your mind.
When something in another triggers negative emotions in you, redirect your attention to identifying at least three positive things about them. Although not visible on the exterior, emotions are perceived under the surface through contagion neurons. And if you have any concerns that thinking positive thoughts about someone who is upsetting you is letting them off the hook, think again. Redirecting our attention from a threatened brain state to a calmer state will allow us to have the clarity of thought to handle this, and any other, situation effectively. In addition, this practice is critical to the mastery of self-control, a rare skill that everyone admires and is attracted to.
- When emotions run high, use “I language.”
Communication between two people is nature and science at work. Since it is natural for two people to have differences, we must exercise caution when expressing any discomfort we feel and not put our fellow human beings down. When we do, safety is immediately removed, and the person across from us is no longer interested in resolving our differences. They are now busy defending themselves.
When views, perceptions, and understandings are shared with “I language,” they do not trigger defenses. We feel honored and special when someone shares their feelings as opposed to defining us in a negative way. Think of your last, heated discussion with another. How would that conversation have ended if you had expressed your feelings and needs instead of blaming the other person for how things turned out?
- Invest wholeheartedly in your healing!
We don’t typically like to admit it, but we are complicated, powerful systems that come with no directions, driven most of the time on autopilot from procedural memory. As much as we prefer to be known as easy-going, we all have varying degrees of wounds, past pains, and baggage we carry along with us, which frequently get triggered when we least expect it.
We are hot beds of emotions driven by our never-ending efforts to get further away from pain and closer to pleasure. Nothing is more powerful than being the admired person and role model we strive to be. We do this best by processing, unpacking, and making coherent stories of our past experiences that otherwise hold our spirits hostage and disrupt and sabotage every effort and good deed we make toward connection and belonging.
As it turns out, it is not the perfect exterior but a well-regulated interior that appears to be the most attractive attribute we can bring to our personal or professional life.
Although we can continue to play the part, use the right words, wear the right clothes, and do things the way others like us to, we know that maintaining a status quo façade is an ineffective way to create authentic connection and trust with the people in our microcosm.
If we want to make a difference and be part of a small revolution, nothing can set us apart from the crowd like being people who are predictable, accountable, reliable, and who say what they mean and do what they say.
You can be the person others know they can depend on, no matter what. You can be the one they always feel calm and safe around.
And I promise you, a person like that is definitely the one everyone wants to be around and everyone wants to follow.