How to make a good impression!

How to make a good impression of yourself

Are you good at making friends? Do you have great relationships with people from work or school? Making good impression is the first step to have a great relationship with people. Having great relationship with people makes your life fruitful. If you know the way to make a good impression of yourself, It will probably help you with a lot of situation in your life, such as getting a job or finding boyfriend or girlfriend… I was not really good at making friends when I was in high school until I studied abroad. I learned a lot of way to be socialized from American people. Also, I have a contract job that selling the products to some customers, I have taken some special courses just for making good impression. It really helped me for a lot of situation. So today, I would like to give you some tips for making good impression.

First, the most important thing is facial expression. When you see someone for the first time, you would probably see some parts of the person’s face. So it means your facial expression is the real first impression of you. What kind of facial expression do you think you need to make? Probably most of you would think that you should smile to make a good impression. Well, actually not necessarily. Probably for 90% of the situations, it is ok to smile to make a good impression. That’s because of 90% of the situation you see someone for first time, its natural and not rude to smile. But for some situations, you cannot smile. Like for serious meetings or when the person is really angry or upset or not in good mood. Since you all are Japanese, probably you are good at sense the situation. As soon as you sense that, you are going to need to make a serious look. But this is the rare case. For most of the time, you just need to smile and greet nicely. But good smile is really hard to make. Because if you smile too much, it will make you look weird. It the smile is too fake, you will look fake too. Probably sending a half smile is the best. You can be friendly, but not too casual. Do not forget to look into the person’s eyes. But not too much. Also you should not get too close or be touchy to the person especially for Japanese persons.

Next, you need to listen to the person well. It would be rude if the person asks you about the subject the person had already talked about and you can’t answer. You need to listen carefully and make rough guesses for the next thing the person is going to say. I have an experience when I met my host family in Germany, they were talking to me about their house, since it was right after the long flight from Japan, I was really tired. And also they had really strong accent so I needed to concentrate to understand what they were saying. So I was just smiling and saying ‘yes’ to make good impression. Then they stopped smiling and said ‘Yuki, this is not funny’. They were actually talking about the neighbor’s dog were run over by a car. It was such an awkward moment. As you can see through my awkward experience ever, you really need to know what the person is talking about ‘just smiling’ will not work most of the time. It does not mean you need to be a ‘Yes person’ who says ‘yes’ for everything just to make a good impression. You can say ‘No’ or ‘I don’t think so’, but you need to be clear why would you say that. If you are reasonable enough, the person would not feel bad about you saying no. The way you say it is important too. Do not say ‘you are wrong’ even when the person is wrong about something. It could make a better impression by not always saying yes if your opinion is reasonable enough.

Sensing the situation is pretty important too. You can’t just keep talking or stay quiet. It could make the person feel awkward or strange. Also, you need to see if the person wants to talk more or not. If not, you need to make an excuse to leave which would not make the person awkward. Usually you do not really have to talk for so long when you see someone for first time.

These are the some of the tips to make good impression I wanted to tell you today. These techniques helped me in a lot of situations. Now I am not afraid of talking to people that makes me positive about everything. You can even feel better about yourself. I hope these techniques can help you in some situation like they did to me. Especially if you are doing job hunting or looking for boyfriend or girlfriend, please give it try!

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