Here’s a neat trick that you can use to covertly create really good feelings in other people. When you can do this covertly, people will feel good without knowing that you are consciously trying to do this. All they will realize is that whenever you are around, they feel really good about themselves. They will start to see you as a really charismatic person. Whenever they hear your voice, or see your face, they will immediately begin to think happy thoughts.

When you aren’t around, and they start to think about you, they will begin to automatically think and feel happy thoughts and feelings. Is this something you think you might have some uses for?

The trick is to make some really positive assumptions about them, and then allow them to prove you correct. There is something strange about this; the mechanism is something deep and subconscious. When you assigning a positive trait to another person, and really assign it in a deep and meaningful way, they have an almost unconscious drive to live up to that label, so long as it is a good and positive one.

Of course, if you do this with manipulative attempt, people will see your fakeness from a mile away. Do this genuinely and people will be their best around you.

For example, if your boss comes in and starts telling you what a great and hard worker you are, on a Friday afternoon, you know something is up. You will naturally feel some resistance, but he’s your boss, so you can’t really tell him how you really feel.

If on the other hand, if you are sitting in a meeting, and they are discussing who to send to meet with a potential client that could mean big money for your company, and after a few moments thought, he looks at you and says”

“You’re the best we’ve got. If anybody can land this contract, you can. If you can’t do it, then it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Then you know she’s being totally honest, and you will feel inspired beyond belief to land that contract, whatever it is.

When you speak to people on a social level, you can still inspire those same good feelings in others. The trick is to assume positive things about them, and then talk to them as if those positive things you assume about them are already obvious to everyone.

Linguistic presuppositions can come in really handy here. Linguistic presuppositions are sentence structures that assume one or more things to be true in order for the sentence to make sense.

If I say that my cat is really smart because she can run to the door two minutes before the mailman comes, that presupposes many things:

I have a cat.
My cat can run.
It’s possible to measure the intelligence of a cat.
My cat is really smart.
My cat can predict when the mailman will come.

Another example based on making people feel good about themselves. Say you are talking to somebody you’ve just met. You’ve talked to them for a few minutes, and learn that they are a kindergarten teacher. If you say:

Wow, kids must really like you. How long have you been able to use your communication skills to inspire people to learn?

What does this presuppose?

They have good communication skills.
They inspire people.
They help people learn.
They have been doing it for a while.

Now, the specific structure of the above example is a question that starts off with “How long…” The important thing to remember is that any answer they give, even if they shrug their shoulders, indicates that they’ve accepted your presuppositions as true. They would have to be extremely suspicious, or have extremely low self-esteem, if they took each element of the sentence and overtly disagreed with it.

When you can take some good assumptions about another person, hide them inside a sentence that only requires a yes, no, or one word answer, you are doing pretty good.

Another sneaky way to do this is to give them a quick, sly compliment, and then follow it up with an easy to answer, and seemingly obvious question.

Example:

Wow, you must be really good with kids. I think that people that are good with kids are the most important people in society. We would be completely lost without them. When did you know that you wanted to be a kindergarten teacher?

The important part is to not allow him or her any time to respond to your compliment, and then ask a question that most people would ask by itself.

The problem many people have with giving compliments is that they have an ulterior motive, and they give the compliment, and then wait for the thank you. This is an indication that on some level, they are really fishing for a “Thank you,” rather than giving an honest compliment.

When you give somebody a compliment like this, without giving them a chance to respond, then quickly focus their attention on some normal, often asked and easy to answer question, the compliment really sinks down deep, and makes them feel really good.

These are just two techniques you can use in your daily conversation that will really boost your charisma, and your ability to make people around you feel really good about themselves. And when you have high charisma, and are surrounded by people that feel good about themselves, you’re doing pretty good.