We human type creatures evolved to make snap decisions and assessments. Shall I turn the steering wheel this way or that? Do I like this colour paint or not? Do I like that person or not?
Why so quick? Because you respond emotionally to something before you figure out what you think. This is what I feel about it… hmmmm now, let’s see, what do I think about it? The trouble is once we feel something about a thing, a place, a person, we will often just use the reasoning brain to back up those feelings with logic, so we can feel justified in our decision.
Bad first impressions
We make snap judgments and often ‘know’ what we think about someone within the very first few seconds of meeting them. We make instant assessments of how bright, funny, sincere and trustworthy and, of course, attractive we find people… in the first ten seconds of our first encounter with them. Of course, sometimes people turn out to ‘prove us wrong’ when we get to know them, but a good number of people will stick doggedly to their first impression of you, no matter what evidence they are presented with later that you are not like that.
First impressions – some things you can help and some things you can’t
We keep a vast store of past associations lodged inside our unconscious minds. When something happens in life, an instantaneous process called ‘pattern matching’ occurs. The unconscious mind searches the memory banks to try to match this new experience to any identical or similar experiences we’ve had in the past to tell us what to do. If I see a closed door in front of me (and I want to go through it) my brain instantly pattern matches to times in the past when I’ve gone through doors and hey presto! I know what to do. This is an appropriate pattern match. If a baby suckles on a nipple, the pattern of suckling is matched to the presentation of the nipple. But pattern matches can be ‘sloppy’ (as when a baby suckles not from a nipple but from a plastic bottle) or even faulty (as when a baby tries to suckle milk from a finger in its mouth). So we can make faulty pattern matches. Phobias are an example of the wrong emotional response getting triggered by a non-threatening stimulus, due to a faulty pattern match.
When people meet you for the first time and form their first impression of you, they are basically doing a pattern match. If you are smart, confident, friendly, competent, etc, they will pattern match you to people they have encountered with these qualities in the past. And because many people like these qualities, you have a better chance of making a good first impression.
Of course, if you are unlucky, they may mistakenly pattern match you to someone in the past whom they didn’t like (just because you remind them of this person) and because of that they may take an instant dislike to you. You can’t be responsible for that, but the new session for hypnosisdownloads.com ‘Avoid bad first impressions’ aims to maximize your chances of creating a good first impression.
You can’t control whether someone likes you or not, but you can certainly influence it. I use hypnosis is this session to promote confidence and project a good image during first encounters.
Every second counts.
Mark
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