What to Do and What Not to Do in Order to Become More Popular

So you want to more popular at work or school or just among your friends? Many things can you do to increase your popularity; try picking up the tab at restaurants or bars more often. Or at all. But does such a tack really make you popular or are you just a sucker that everyone hangs around in order to take advantage of. No, the secret to increasing your popularity usually is based more on elimination than addition. After all, the lack of popularity for a person rarely has anything to do with what they aren't doing and everything to do with what they are doing. So the secret to popularity is naturally going to involve changing the things you are doing that are serving to alienate you from those around you.

Perfect the Fine Art of Conversation

The reason people may not want to be around you may not necessarily be because of anything you say, but the ways in which you go about saying it. Popularity goes up as annoyance goes down. And face it, guys, people are very, very annoyed when someone tries to monopolize the conversation. Being a conversation hog is just one problem area, however. Even if you aren't constantly interrupting and announcing your take on a subject or your experience with a certain concept, you may be making it difficult for people to want to be around you by speaking too loudly. Loud talk is perfectly acceptable at a heavy metal concert where you have to scream to be heard, but the loudest voice in a room filled with polite conversation tends to belong to the most unpopular person there. You aren't Nigel Tuffnel so crank the volume back from 11 to a perfectly reasonable 4 or 5. You only need to speak loud enough to ensure you are heard by those actually listening. And when you speaking, give someone else a chance to be witty or informative or allowed to break the big news.

Accentuate the Positive

Nobody likes the constant presence of a Negative Nellie in their midst. What you may term being realistic others may describe using terms like relentlessly pessimistic, a real down or a load. Popular people are not loads. Changing your perspective toward being a little less realistic in your terms doesn't mean you have to become Pollyanna. Nothing at all is wrong with seeing the world as it really is, which is pretty crappy. But in between the crappy parts it is possible to find some wonderful things. Since most people would rather hear about wonderful things than crap, make it a priority every day to seek out a piece of good, uplifting news and share it. Once you become known as the guy who's always got a great story about wonderful things, you will see your popularity index skyrocket.

Ask Questions

Sometimes a lack of popularity is just a response to someone being distant, detached or just plain shy. Keep this little nugget of information inside your head at all times: most people love nothing more than to talk about themselves. When someone says something about themselves to you and you just sit there and nod or make a meaningless remark or walk away, you are courting major league unpopularity. On the other hand, if you ask questions that are phrased in such a way as to provoke more encouragement of that other person to talk about themselves, you will soon find yourself being invited out to group lunches more often and even to parties. It's not enough to be a good listener in the sense of being able to listen to someone drone on about their problems for hours. Interaction is required and it is the interaction that gets other people to increasingly find it more comfortable to talk with you about anything. Don't mistake asking leading questions with giving advice. Even when someone flatly asks for your advice, they don't really mean it unless your advice corresponds with however they are leaning about a particular subject in the first place. You can mine for these feelings through questions that reveal you are interested in hearing more. Once you learn enough, you can then manipulate the conversation so that they don't drone on in a one-sided fashion any more.

It's true: nobody likes a know-it-all.

It's okay to be the smartest person in the room as long as you realize that by letting everyone know you are the smartest person in the room you are also letting them know you don't care about being popular. If that's the case, why are you still reading? If you do care about being more popular, you aren't really required to dumb it down, you just need to be more particular about when you unleash the little nuggets of knowledge inside that big ol' brain of yours. A big difference exists being acting like you aren't very smart and keeping the fact that you are brilliant a guarded little secret. Rather than admitting that you don't know something or purposely giving the wrong answer to a question, you simply become more judicious about when you do give the right answer or do admit that you know something nobody else knows. Just play it cool and you will actually be more successful in being admired as a really smart person than you would be if you make a continual habit of showing off just how much smarter you are than everyone around you.