Ten Magic Words to Make Anyone Like You

Everyone has a strong desire to feel understood.

Feeling understood makes us feel connected.

If you feel like someone understands you and is on your side, you’re going to feel a natural inclination to like this person.

And whenever this person expresses understanding or support, you’re going to get a pretty big dopamine hit. In fact, you’ll probably feel good just by being in that person’s presence.

Let’s imagine that you’re talking to a stranger at a bar.

…or wherever else you’re able to meet strangers. The important point is that this is a person you have never met before. You have had no prior interaction or relationship.

In this context, it’s expected to socialize a bit and make new friends, so this stranger asks you a little bit about you, maybe a little bit about your life story.

You don’t share too many intimate details because you only just met this person. Why trust them with more than surface level casual talk?

One thing you say seems to catch their attention a bit more than the rest, though. The stranger raises an eyebrow, pauses to think, and looks at you with what seems to be an expression of either admiration or camaraderie.

The stranger then tells you:

“You seem like someone who has been through a lot.”

Those ten words, under the right circumstances, are like a magical incantation that triggers a sense of connection like no other.

As a dating coach, I don’t tend to teach canned “lines” for men to memorize. It’s much better to learn and practice basic principles that help you express your most authentic and attractive self without that whole “fake it til you make it” crutch of a philosophy.

However, this line is too good to not teach word for word.

It may seem manipulative because it’s a blatant application of the Barnum effect; everyone has been through “a lot.”

Everyone has experienced a series of challenging struggles in their life that caused them to suffer. It’s such a universally human condition that it’s one of the most fundamental tenets in Buddhism: life is inherently marked by suffering.

However, it is due to this very universality that it gives us the opportunity to connect with fellow human beings so profoundly.

Don’t use it mindlessly.

Sincerely recognize the suffering and the past struggles of the person in front of you as you’re saying it, or it’s just not going to work as well. Your real beliefs and attitudes will affect involuntary microexpressions that give other people a gut feeling about you, after all.

You’ll also need to allow the context for that sentence to form before you say it, but you might find that it doesn’t take all that much for people to give clues that they have experienced growth and maturity as a result of hardship.

It’s especially easier to recognize those clues if you developed enough self-awareness to recognize the signs within yourself. From there it’s a simple matter of pattern recognition.

If you encounter people with their guard up responding with, “Everyone has been through a lot, dipsh*t,” it’s probably because:

It’s the first thing you said to them and it’s making you look like a crazy person.
You creeped them out prior to saying this line (learn the 7 reasons why a woman would call a man “creepy,” and what you can do to prevent them from ever thinking of you that way, from my book).
They’re not open to talking to you for personal reasons, like if they’re already in a bad mood.

Or it could be all of the above.

Nothing is foolproof. But this is certainly a line with a lot of potential.

Use it responsibly.

Have you ever used or heard a clever line? What was it? Tell me your experiences in the comments!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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