Can Authentic Networking Build Instant Intimacy With Someone You Just Met?

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a Mastermind session with my friends from the Mindvalley Tribe, which, by the way, is an amazing community that is totally changing my life. Please, check Mindvalley out, we are pioneering in a much-needed educational revolution.

Back to today, we had this amazing opportunity to get together and discuss networking. If you've never heard about what a Mastermind is, I suggest you take a read in Napoleon Hill's famous book, Think and Grow Rich.

A Mastermind group is when two or more people get together to advance in a common purpose. If you feel this sounds familiar, it's because you might have heard something like it in the Bible as a sure way to get things done.

Everyone that wishes to succeed in life at anything should read this book from Napoleon Hill. It teaches us the methodology we need to put together in order to create a vision that gives your life purpose, and the processes required to materialize anything you can come up with into reality.

This book along with How to Win Friends and Influence People from Dale Carnegie create the cornerstones necessary to success.

In preparation for this session today, our host, Darcie Adler made us some thought-provoking questions:

• Can we develop a connection by matching someone else's energy?
• What motivates comfortable conversation?
• How do you feel about the person you want to connect with?
• Can thought-provoking questions be a way to go from small talk to more meaningful conversations?

What I'm going to share with you now are the answers I wrote to them in preparation for this awesome encounter we had today. Enjoy.

First, we need to address the "instant" side of things.

It immediately called my attention when the subject brought the word "instant" with it. Because it's a certain thing that we are getting more and more impatient in each generation.

Like Simon Sinek talks about what he calls the millennial question, when young people feel frustrated with their jobs after a few months by believing they are "not making an impact".

Yes. You can build instant intimacy with people you just met, but you need to be conscious not to be expecting that all your connections will be instant and meaningful. You might just not connect with some people, and that's ok. In the same way, it's ok for someone to just not feel connected with you.

What we will talk about here is not a fireproof way for you to become an absolute human magnet. It's more like what you can exercise on a daily basis to communicate better and create more meaningful connections with people.

Dealing with rejection.

A big part of this development is dealing with rejection. It's ever more clear to me how feeling welcome and accepted plays a huge role in people's lives. I believe this is rooted in our survival mechanisms. We need to be part of a group to survive. By instinct, we get anxious about being rejected.

But I have some secret to tell you: no matter how hard you get rejected, you will be just fine. Believe me, I've been into situations where all I wished was to dig a hole on the ground, despair inside it, and die down there never to come back to the surface again. But now, years later, I'm better than I was before, mostly because I decided to accept this risk.

And guess what: being rejected doesn't hurt me anymore. Because I understand when it happens that it probably is more about the other person, than about me. That it's not personal, and that even if I did something which makes me responsible for this rejection, I can just be mindful, recognize it, learn and get better.

Most of the time, it's just that the person is distracted or focused on other things, and you failed to grab their attention. Which is something for you to work on and get better.

Because every day, in every way, we get better and better and better.

Can we develop a connection by matching someone else's energy?

Matching someone else's energy is about consciousness. Which is something our society is getting pretty bad at. It's not our fault, actually. It's more about the environment we are in, being fed information all the time.

We are not stimulating our brain with what he needs to exercise consciousness. Watching television all day, scrolling up and down on Instagram, letting YouTube decide what is going to play next.

Believe it or not, 100 years ago, Napoleon Hill was already talking about this. Looks like it is a problem that came before all this technology was even created. He calls it "drifting" in his book Outwitting the Devil.

Exercising consciousness about others.

Being conscious of how other persons are feeling and establishing a connection is about recognizing what we have in common and where we are different, and incorporating this throughout our conversations.

I've recently watched a great documentary series called "Tiny House Nation" on Netflix and saw an amazing example of this in the host of the program, John Weisbarth. He has an amazing feeling on how to recognize his guest's emotions in clever and fun ways, even when it's something that he clearly disagrees with; very interesting to watch.

Now I'm gonna share with you two tools to exercise our consciousness about people that we are talking with, even if we just met. Those are Mirroring and the Johari Window.

• Mirroring the other person is a tool for us to train our consciousness of their physical state. Receiving that input, processing it, and reacting to it. It consists of simply observing the person and reflecting on their actions. This is something that happens naturally when we are connecting with somebody, without the persons involved noticing it; but it can work the other way around, and you can do it to create a connection. This is so powerful and can be done so discreetly, that you can even just match the other person's breath, and it will give you meaningful results. Proof of this is that one of the principles in tantric sex is matching your partner's breathing pattern. Think about that.
• The Johari Window is a tool for us to understand where we are similar to the other person and where we are different, then recognizing this in our communication with the said person. This tool also helps us to be mindful that there are things about ourselves that even we are unaware of and need to work on understanding. This leads us to be humble in our approach to others, and stay mindful that there are things we need to work on for our development. I'll leave you this article on the Johari Window by Communication Theory for you to take a look at if you are interested in knowing more about how it works.

So, if we notice, establishing a connection is about consciousness and empathy. Accepting ourselves and being ok feeling vulnerable with this new person we are meeting; while also accepting their vulnerability and making them feel welcome.

Genuinely welcoming others regardless of their vulnerability will take us a long way with many people.

What motivates comfortable conversation?

I'll take the liberty to quote myself now on something I just said:

"Accepting ourselves and being ok feeling vulnerable with this new person, while also accepting their vulnerability and making them feel welcome. Genuinely welcoming others regardless of their vulnerability will take us a long way with many people".

Having this kind of posture projects a lot of confidence and makes people feel comfortable with us. Showing that we are not afraid of feeling vulnerable or being rejected also transmits confidence. Having positive energy as well is contagious and makes people wish to get closer to us. Those are things we should cultivate in our character.

At our mastermind group today, some participants talked about recognizing what the other person is telling you and genuinely caring about it. It was said that there is something in the tonality of our voice which the other person can get that shows if you really care or if you are just making small talk.

I totally agree. You not only need to care, but people can pick up if you are just making time, or are interested in something else and not being upfront about it.

My advice to you: learn how to care. Because meeting and connecting with people is something very deep, that gives us great satisfaction thanks to the same survival mechanisms we talked about at the beginning of this article. Trust it, it works, and you will get passionate about it.

How do you feel about the person you want to connect with?

We need to make a commitment with ourselves: "no matter what, I'll do my best".

In my work, I focus on doing my function, but if I'm walking around the company and happen to find a customer needing help, I'll do my best to provide for him what he needs. I'll personally take charge of that mission.

We need to have the same posture regarding our networking, as in every other area of our lives.

We need to focus on our RAP (Relationship Action Plan), but be mindful that anybody who manages to get in contact with us deserves our best.

Exercise the principles Keith Ferrazzi talks about in his book Never Eat Alone and his Mindvalley course, Mastering Authentic Networking.

Interview the person, connect with them, identify where you can help them, have packets of generosity ready, and become proficient in delivering them in a mindful, emphatic way. This will sharpen our ax for when we meet people in our RAP. And you'll get surprised how what we sow can come back from unexpected places as well.

Can thought-provoking questions be a way to go from small talk to more meaningful conversations?

Yes. Netflix's series The Crown has a great example of this when in the second episode of the third season "Margaretology", princess Margaret becomes the last resource for the Crown to try convincing the current president United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, to bail out UK in a moment of need, and she is specially briefed not to talk about former president Kennedy, with whom Johnson worked as Vice President and feels deeply shadowed by; at least in fiction.

Which she actually does.

When she does that, silence takes the room in the scene creating a tense environment, and she follows making several remarks about knowing how he feels, magnifying, even more, this tension. But she does that clearly referring to being the younger sister to the Queen of England, always shadowing her; which creates an instant connection between them.

But this is a classical example of that meme with "Expectations vs. Reality". When we try those things, particularly for the first time, it usually doesn't end up being like our expectations.

So, my advice to you is to only do this if you really feel comfortable taking the risk. Copywriters do this to catch attention, starting their message with affirmations that will shock their target audience, so they stop to listen to the message, even if enraged. But they have tested means of turning those emotions around.

So, if you are an experienced copywriter and understand communication psychology, or if you are a very witty person that developed those abilities in your culture escape, go ahead. Remember the Johari Window: know yourself.

Conclusion

I believe we can safely say that it is, indeed, possible to create an instant connection with people we just met. Those tools we discussed here will surely help you in this process, and remember: don't be anxious with your outcome, detach yourself from it and don't take rejections personally; genuinely care about the people you meet, it will make a huge difference, and just like Les Brown used to say: you gotta be hungry! Get out there and test yourself, so your ax will be sharpened when it's needed.

Here is a bonus for you that got here so far. Thank you for your time.