How Important Is a Good First Impression?
A lot of people wonder about the importance of the first impression. Understanding how much it really does matter is an excellent thing and can do wonders for your social success.
Traditionally,
we are told that the first impression is very important and we should always be careful because we need to make an excellent one. But how much of this is true? Is this an empowering mindframe? In my experience, it isn’t.
The first impression you make upon a person does matter. In fact, I’m willing to go even further and admit that those first minutes of interaction with a person matter more than any other equal number of minutes in the same interaction.
However, that doesn’t mean that a good first impression in essential. Here’s why: an interaction presents many opportunities to influence a person’s impression about you. Thus, any first impression can actually be corrected with ease.
This is really good news. Even if you screw it big time in the first minutes of a conversation, you have many more minutes to change that first impression.
Sure, that first minute may count more than any other minute. But what if you’re making conversation with a person for 30 minutes or more (which often happens)? You have plenty of chances to change that impression. It may take more than one minute, but you have sufficient time.
The point of this is to not stress yourself about the first impression. Ideally, you want it to be a good one. But if it’s not, it’s really not that important. Rather than looking at the first impression you make, look at the overall impression and learn to make a good one.
Learning tricks, lines and gimmicks to create a good first impression doesn’t have a lot of value if the follow-up is terrible. You want to develop your conversation and people skills as a whole.
When you’re confident on these skills, you can relax about the first impression you create and you can engage people in conversations in a natural way. Interestingly enough, this also ends up helping you to create a good first impression.
Keep in mind that any first impression, good or bad, will not last if the rest of your social behavior is not aligned with your initial one. Even more, use this knowledge to improve yourself and your social life.
