Have you ever had that experience that you’ve known someone forever? Even though you’ve only met the person for the first time? What exactly is their secret?
How Dreaming Holds the Secret Key
When I dream, my dream feels real to me. My mind and body become part of the dream to the point where I have had times recollecting whether it was a dream or it was an actual experience I’ve had. In my dreams I can feel objects, see visually with complete accuracy and hear everything.
The most interesting thing is that during my dreams I feel as if I’m going through a journey that lasts 2 to 4 hours at a time. However when I wake up and I try to go over the details of the dream consciously it never feels as long as the actual dream itself. Most of the time the dream can be summarized in a few minutes.
Our Subconscious Time versus Clock Time
When I’m dreaming, the amount of time I experience in my dream is what I call subconscious time. Subconscious time is not the number of minutes or hours that have passed according to a clock, but the amount of time that seemed to have past based on a feeling.
However the amount of time that has actually passed to experience a dream is usually a few minutes. Those few minutes is what
I call clock time. (The amount of time passed on a clock.)
The Secret to Making People Feel Like They’ve Known You Forever
The secret to making people feel like they have known you forever is to be able to share stories that take place over extensive periods of times and share them within a few minutes. Usually these are stories that date back to childhood that tie into the present. Or an event that took place ten years ago that relates to who you are today.
Quickly answer the following questions without pausing.
Do you feel closer to someone who has described their weekend or their whole summer?
Do you feel closer to someone who has described their summer or their past year?
Do you feel closer to someone who has described a year of their life, or ten years of their life?
Not all, but a huge majority would have always chosen the latter for all the questions.
Let’s say that two people talk to you for five minutes each, one talks about their weekend, the other talks about their whole summer. Both people have also shared the same level of detail. One person described about their stay at hotel for the weekend. The second person described their stay at the hotel for a summer. LOGIC states that we should feel equally close to the same people.Yet we naturally feel closer to the person who shared about their summer.
If you span a story that is 10 years long, the subconscious time experience of the listener of the story will be ten years long. This is the equivalent of the listener having a dream that felt like it lasted ten years. (I say equivalent because as a story is being told the listener, their subconscious is creating visuals and emotional details so quickly that the conscious mind can’t keep up and is not aware. It’s similar to knowing that we all dream, but we don’t we consciously remember the dream nor how the dream was formed.) But the dream just happens to be exactly the same story you shared with him.
So now the person listening feels that they have gone through ten years of life experience with you. Even though consciously we know this isn’t true, but it’s too late because our subconscious mind believes this.
The great thing is that the feeling of experiencing ten years of life through the story that was shared is now being associated with the person telling the story.
If you tell them a weekend story, then they only feel like they have experienced a weekend with you. But you tell a story that has a 20 year span, you force their mind to go through 20 years worth or experience with you.
Since time is a measurement of how close we are to someone, if we can get someone to feel like they’ve known us for ten years, then we can get them to feel close to us as well in a matter of minutes.
Wrapping it All Up
If you only have a few minutes with someone and you want to develop a great relationship, then share a story that takes place over several years or from your childhood. This will give them the feeling that they have known you forever.
Part 2 we look at the role of emotions in getting people to feel like they have known you forever.
For more tips on conversation you can try out my e-book Art of Conversation, where there are dozens of tips on how to connect with people quickly and confidently.
Related posts:
- The Art of Conversation-Introducing People with Style
- How to Be Interesting to Other People
- Art of Appreciation – How to Compliment People
- The Art of Active Listening- Listening Skills
- Secrets to Talking to People when Religion is Brought Up
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