How to Make a Good First Impression with One Easy Mind Trick

In both business and personal settings, making a good first impression is essential.

In business, whilst creating a great impression on prospective clients might be uppermost in our minds, future team members, suppliers and investors will also meet us for the first time, and form opinions which will be important to us.

Our initial opinion of someone endures in our memories longer than subsequent encounters because of the primacy effect—that you remember the first event in a sequence better than all subsequent events (except for the last one).

Irrespective, who wants to make a poor impression? These are useful points in making a good first impression:

• Make eye contact.
• Give a nice, warm smile.
• Open with a sincere, friendly greeting.
• Do pay attention to your new introduction—not to your products or services, or a colleague.
• Show the person they have your willing, undivided attention.
• Get your personal presentation on-point.

But how do we get beyond the standard, “Oh, nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah,” in the minds of our new connections?

We simply hi-jack the way our brains work by using this key fact: positive emotions create new, strong, and enduring memories of, in this case, that critical first meeting. Positive emotions hard-wire the event in our minds as a “keeper”.

It is important the context of the situation is right. Often friendliness, optimism, or confidence are appropriate emotions to display, but empathy, sincerity, or respect may be appropriate too. Some prior thought will pay handsome dividends.

So, at that next important first meeting, use this nice little “mind trick”: let your positive emotions flow! Wire your new acquaintance’s brain with new, strong, and enduring positive memories—exactly what you want!

Of course, this principle extends beyond first encounters. It is good for the duration of our relationships and experiences in business and life!

This mind trick is adapted from The Eleventh Key from my new on-line course Get Wired for Success!

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