More than Just Sex (18 page)

So the coast is clear but in order to do anything about it, you must be able to establish rapport very quickly with a wide variety of people, even if it’s just to find out what she’s really like and whether you really like her. You have externalized who and what you are, and it’s time to build enough of a connection to find out if she is doing the same and if that fits with you.

RAPPORT

Rapport is perhaps not necessarily the most powerful or sexy component of interpersonal communication, but it is certainly the bit without which none of the rest can happen. It doesn’t matter how good a driver you are, or how powerful or beautiful the car is – if you don’t have the key to the ignition, then you’re going nowhere. Building
meaningful rapport is the gateway to turning her on and to everything that you will learn from here. Master rapport itself to get her engaged with you and keen to know more. Remember, you need to know more about her, too. We are not just pulling a cute girl here; we are in the business of finding the one who’s right for you.

Have you ever met someone at a party or work, and just ‘clicked’ with them? There was nothing you could quite put your finger on, yet something seemed so familiar. You could be excused for thinking that it was because you had so much in common. But, and please do this exercise right now. Here’s an exercise that will help you understand how rapport works.

Headwork

When you think back now, it just ‘seemed’ like you had lots in common. On closer inspection, however, you didn’t. Yet you still felt like you ‘got’ each other, and the conversation flowed easily from one topic to another.

I remember one client telling me that it clicked for him in a bar after he had just gone to the bathroom and on the way back got talking to a girl. He couldn’t even remember what the conversation was about or how it started, but the next thing he knew it was closing time and he had her number. Now that’s natural rapport!

The more astute among you will remember that I said earlier that only 7% of communication is the words that you use. The rest is non-verbal signals and patterns, which convey the vast majority of your personality and intent.

Sincerity and congruence are the keys here, and once you can fake those, you’ve got it cracked! OK, OK, I don’t really mean that, but once you can gain instant rapport with someone, the car is already started and you can drive it anywhere you want. Fail to build rapport and you are going nowhere other than home alone via the pizza shop… again!

Much has been written (both good and bad) about basic rapport-building techniques, but let’s cut to the chase and the techniques you need to know. It’s simple but not easy, so you really do need to pay attention again…

MIRRORING LANGUAGE

You’ll remember that we are all dominant in either a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic sense, so if you notice that she is using lots of visual descriptions – ‘that looks good to me’; ‘I get the picture’; ‘show me what you mean’ (and you’ll get a secondary clue from her eyes, which will very likely be moving up and to the left or right as she talks) – then you could try using the same kind of visual language yourself. Do you ‘see’ what I mean?

Let me put you fully in the picture. The way we use language (especially when we don’t know we’re doing it) is very literal. ‘Let me see’ literally means ‘let me make a picture of that in my mind’. Whereas ‘that sounds good’ means ‘I have tried that in my inner dialogue and it makes sense.’ Even the phrase ‘that makes sense’ literally means ‘I can make an internal sensory representation of that’.

If you want to build powerful rapport, your job is to make as many connections at this level as you possibly
can. But be warned, you really do have to pay attention. If you are naturally ‘on the same wavelength’, this will be very easy, but if you are naturally wired up to use one set of sensory predicates and she is wired up to use another, then, although you might actually have tons in common, because only 7% is the words, you are (at least on the face of it) 93% incompatible.

Have you ever found yourself in what could best be described as a heated agreement with someone? You both appear to be making the same end point, but you are managing to argue about it just the same? This is exactly what I am talking about. If you use pictures and she uses sounds, you might as well be speaking a different language, because in effect you are.

But this need not be a showstopper. You just need to learn how to communicate, and one of the most powerful ways to build rapport is to match your partner’s use of language predicates, those process words that people use to represent their experiences that we just spoke about, which give away the representational system (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic) and the way that they are wired up inside.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

A girl who’s using visual language might be heard using phrases like ‘looks good to me’, ‘putting you in the picture’ or talk about ‘getting perspective’ or something ‘looking good’. Maybe she can ‘see’ a future with you, or you might even notice that she describes things in visual terms, in
effect enabling you to
see
things the way she does. Of course, if you are predominantly auditory and don’t really make pictures, this will naturally mean very little to you.

If that’s you, then people using any auditory sensory language might ‘hear where you’re coming from’, have an experience that ‘rings a bell’ or perhaps they’ll ‘be in harmony’, in a ‘manner of speaking’. How does that ‘resonate’ with you?

Similarly, if you’re talking to someone who navigates primarily by their feelings and is therefore using a kinaesthetic language, you might hear them say that they ‘grasped your point’, ‘got a handle on it’, ‘smoothed things out’ and ‘felt good’. But get it wrong, and you’ll be ‘all washed up’ before you even know what you’ve done wrong.

While we all have a natural sensory dominance of our own, with a little bit of practice and patience, anyone, even the most blokey of blokes, can ‘get a handle on’ how this works, and ‘see’ that ‘it makes complete sense’ when you ‘think about it now’.

I don’t expect you to become a cunning linguist (easy) overnight, but do try it out. You’ll be amazed at the results if you just match your language (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic) to that which the people around you use most frequently.

The inevitable, and I do mean inevitable, result will be that your partner ‘sees, hears or feels’ you as someone who quite literally speaks their language, understands their view of the world and is therefore trustworthy and someone they are very comfortable to be around.

SPEAKING HER LANGUAGE

BONUS TIP!

When you are in conversation just play back a little of what she’s said then take it wherever you want the conversation to go next; you are in control of the direction if not the content.

Her:
‘I’m from Sweden and I like meatballs.’

You:
‘Ah, so you’re from Sweden. I’ve never been to Sweden, but I’ve heard everyone is really friendly. How do you find (wherever you are)?’

Do you see my point?

This will build confidence and rapport and give you the chance to find out who they really are. Remember, we are not building rapport to influence our way into the affections of another; we are doing so as part of the ‘This is me, who are you? Let’s find out’ process. But without rapport, you will never know if there’s a fit there or not.

MIRRORING BODY POSTURE

Of course, there is also a physical way to establish rapport by mirroring body posture, movements, facial expressions, breathing rate and tonality (basically, almost everything other than the words they use). Put very simply, you copy their behaviour as best you can, but not so obviously that you appear obvious and weird. So, if they speak quickly and tilt their head, then you also (respectfully) speak quickly and tilt your head. The result of this mirroring is that your behaviour unconsciously becomes very closely identified with that of your partner, and forms a positive feedback loop for them.

BUT… and this is a big but! This stuff has been around in the body language books since time began, and if you get caught out doing it, you’re going to look like a sad wannabe psychological player. Unless you are very subtle, my advice would be to just to make plenty of eye contact and concentrate on the language she is using.

If, however, you are inclined to mirror what she is doing, please do it in a much more advanced way. Remember, the
objective here is that she gets the impression that you are ‘just like her’, and therefore she’s ‘just like you’.

I know that subtlety is not something we guys are necessarily blessed with most of the time, but remember, it’s her subconscious you are trying to connect with, so if she becomes conscious of what you are doing, then you’ve missed the point, and probably blown your opportunity.

If you are going to copy her body language, do it in the more evolved and much effective form of cross over mirroring.

To do this, you mirror the same behaviour, but using a different part of your body, anything other than the one she is using. For example, you could mirror her breathing rate by tapping your foot at the same tempo as her breathing. Breathing is perhaps not the best place to start, though, because if you are clumsy and get spotted, it will look like you are paying particularly close attention to her chest.

Instead, perhaps notice if she is moving her foot and subtly mirror it with your hand. If she touches her face, you touch your arm in unison.

We are getting quite advanced here, and into the realm of eyes-open hypnosis. It’s powerful if you can pull it off.

Milton Erickson (the founding father of clinical hypnosis) used cross over mirroring extensively for leading people into trances and to enhance his hypnotic and therapeutic work. It is said that he had the ability to notice tiny ‘tells’, as subtle as small muscle changes, pulse rate and skin-colour changes, all while appearing to do something else entirely. You see the importance of heightening your sensory acuity
that we spoke about earlier. Powerful persuasion is about paying very close but not obvious attention, and reacting accordingly. Erickson would then use cross over mirroring by adapting his own body movements, voice tonality and tempo to a characteristic of his client that he wished to utilize in order to gain complete rapport without them even realizing it. Cool, eh?