What's In a Name?

Last week, something brilliant happened which made me realize how important people’s names are to them.

I met a lady on my way to Calgary. She was very nice and talked the whole way there. She was interesting and was genuinely interested in me as well. After one and a half hours of talking we finally reached our destination and she said that she saw great things in me and that I was going to go very far in my pursuits which was very kind of her to say.

But one thing that made her like me was the fact that I had paid attention to what her name was. She said that people don’t pay as much attention to it as I did.

Now, the thing is I didn’t used to pay attention to people’s names either and was terrible at it, but after reading Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to win friends and influence people’ I decided to practice this. Don’t get me wrong this is not a manipulative tactic, if you want to use it then be my guest, but I don’t approve of that myself because or sooner or later you will found out.

I did it because I like to be liked and surely enough that’s what happened.

A person’s name is the most important thing to them and if we do remember the names of the people we meet, people will appreciate you and they would want to listen to you more and would want to talk to you.

If you feel that you didn’t get their name ask again and tell them to spell it, this might sound idiotic but the power this principle has is paramount. If you are bad at remembering name write them down, but try to make a conscious effort, people will appreciate it and the results will be quite surprising.