Finding myself in an unfamiliar company, due to profession or simple curiosity, I begin to take a closer look at people and how sympathy is formed. Why does someone immediately become the “favorite” of the company? Everyone warms up to him and easily starts a conversation, takes a place next to him, and feels at ease. And the other, on the contrary, no matter how hard you try, will be “foreign,” and neither a smile, nor humor, nor emphasized concern for fellow travelers will make him “one of our own.” They will not be attracted to him, and perhaps even vice versa. I think we feel good and easy not with the most humorous, not with the most well-mannered and friendly people. We feel good with those people with whom we can BE OURSELVES. And the more natural we feel with them, the more we are us, the more pleasant and easier it is for us to be around them. With whom is it easy and simple for us to be ourselves? As a rule, with a person who does not want to please us, who does not pretend to be friendly (and may even remain sternly silent or joke rudely). Which allows, first of all, to be yourself - and automatically gives us the right to the same. Have you noticed? Trying to please, a person seems to drag those around him into this game. Those around them - even if not consciously - feel that their grades are being sought, and they begin to feel burdened by this. Feel stressed. It’s as if we have to correspond and mirror everything that is the same. Do not want. You would rather want to be silent with a gloomy fellow traveler... But what if this is your own trait: collecting social “points” in the form of sympathy from others? Trying to please everyone in the new company? Get some encouragement this way? I suggest a simple method: the next time you catch yourself on this wave, try to step back from what is happening for a moment. Feel the tension in your body, in the air between you and your interlocutor. Be sure that you are communicating this tension to him, that right now, at this moment, he feels it the same way. Breathe, stop. And imagine what kind of state they would like to create before both of you. It will probably be a feeling of peace, security, lightness... concentrate on this, be sure - you are creating a field in which people will feel good. One that doesn't need too many words, too many smiles, nothing too much. In which you don’t need to get an “A” from your interlocutor. Be a little more yourself - and people (yes, yes, now I have to say this phrase) will be drawn to you. Because a person always reaches out to the present. Nothing else. Any objections? Maybe it happened differently for you, please share! Your psychologist Ksenia KrokhinaKsenia Krokhina, practicing psychologist, teacher, creator of the “Harmonization of Personality and Family” project. Waiting for a consultation, appointment +79037372223