To have a friend, be a friend!

Today I met someone who really made a positive impression on me. We clicked like old friends who've had a thousand conversations and I have been left pondering... What is it about another human being, male or female, that makes it easy to instantly connect?

I can tell in a second after meeting someone for the first time whether I can be friends with this person or whether we'll merely be acquaintances. I will add that I invested a lot in a friendship a few years ago that went sadly wrong and I still wonder how my judgement could have been so off, but it is what it is and I've tried to learn from it rather than procrastinate and allow it to continue to cast a big negative cloud over me. (Trust me, it did for a very long time...).

This feeling of kinship that I felt today has left me with a few questions and I've decided to explore it in order to get to grips with building better relationships.

I remembered a book my parents had at home that really fascinated me as a teenager. I based a few of my presentations at school on things I read in this book and I remember that the other kids were always all ears when I spoke about the basic principles of leading a happy, successful life, as described by the author.

The book was the well known 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie.

I went a-googling and found a summary, taken from this bestseller, written in the 1930's but still as relevant as ever:

Six ways to make people like you

Become genuinely interested in other people.

Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

Talk in terms of the other person's interests.

Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Smile!

Reading this, I realised that the person I met today, did all of the above in the interaction we had. It was from the heart and I could sense that it was sincere. I've been reminded how easy it is to make someone feel special.

So today, I am making a mental note of these six rules, not only to be liked as the heading suggests, but also to pass on the gift of making someone feel special. In this day and age we can all do with a bit of that...