old that I got to live in Alexandria; my
home city, as my family have lived in Saudi
Arabia since I was just a baby, until that
time. As a child I was so delicate and
fragile, my God has that change formed such a major disturbing and even traumatic
event in my life!
I was so sheltered and protected in my
childhood, coming from that fancy school
in Saudi’s small quite town of Dammam, it
was a girls only school, with only nine girls
in the classroom and all cute teachers
taking good care of us, saving us from
everything; the bad as well as the good,
and driven into the big city of Alexandria
where “nine girls per class” wasn’t even a
dream other than an option!
My parents applied for me in one of the
finest schools in the city where students
per class was controlled so well not to reach any where near those outrageous
numbers that we heard about in other
schools, by all means didn’t exceed sixty!
Imagine that!
I get a good laugh now when I remember
my first day at that school but to me back
then it was rather scary and shocking than
funny, my face turned deep red, I began to
sweat and gasp like a marathon racer while
my eyes opened widely watching that
terrifying crowd of boys and girls together
pushing and bunting all around, and
screaming for no good reason, trying hard
to understand any of this or tune myself
for that new atmosphere when the big mistake happened. There was a very
naughty boy doing God knows what when
that teacher entered and whoop! She
smacked the boy while yelling extremely
loud at him!
It was the last straw, I felt dizzy and
shocked, and suddenly burst into tears
hanging to my father’s neck crying and
shivering, he held me tight and gently
whispered:
“Just give it a few days, and I will be right
here for you all day long!”
I sat next to the window and every now and
then I looked out to the corridor to find
him just standing there, smiling at me giving me back some comfort and
calmness.
But of course he couldn’t do that every day
because he had to work, but he promised
me that I’ll find him right outside my
classroom once the last bell goes on, even
though I still was so afraid and
uncomfortable, crying almost all the time
until I fall asleep on my desk, and just be
that anxious till the end of each day.
Even though that teacher got actually fired,
and the days revealed to me how lovely
and prosperous that school was, it still
took me my whole higher primary years to believe so, and get rid off of my fears and
incredible tears that insisted to strike me
every time I set a foot in there!
That how important and even dangerous
first impressions could be!
Go ahead, do the same, take a quick
journey into your memory, you might have
passed through some kind of an
experience that did leave such an imprint
in your life, probably it was only a few
minutes with someone or somewhere that
eventually gave you an inerasable image
about them; an image that is so hard to be changed even though with days turn out to
let you know for sure how wrong or at
least incomplete, that "imprint" was, it just
never fades away completely.
Statistically first impressions hold more
than 50% of the image people form for
each other, most people decide whether or
not they want to have any thing to do with
you depending on the first impression
you’ve made.
*Isthissuperficial?
For some people it's a kind of lacking
patience or time or both, like in job
interviews; they don't have time to give
more than one chance for each candidate
to prove himself as worthy of the offered
position. Instead they design a detailed
application form and a long "first meeting"
to help them make their decision; once you
won that first impression you get further
chances until you're in.
For other people this is more like what I
used to call: subconscious defense
mechanism; people can look tough from
the outside but deep down they are really
fragile as they can be, they tend to shut off from the start any relationship that may
hold a possibility of hurting them at some
point in the future. They take the first
impression as a sign to tell them (go for it)
or (stop it right here).
So, giving a good first impression equals
winning at least 50% of your way to your
speaker's heart.
But sometimes it's rather complicated to
win those with everybody, because people
are incredibly different with a wide variety
of types, preferences and expectations
which are rather hard to predict, so you find yourself with many questions like:
Should I shake hands or shouldn't I? Where
to stand exactly? How to address my
speaker? Is it appropriate to tell a joke? Is
it appropriate to ask a somehow personal
question? And of course getting that
confused in the first meeting doesn’t leave
a good impression at all!
But you don't have to be confused, you
don't have to stumble all over and ruin
everything for yourself!
You don't even have to leave it to the
chance; you only have ONE first impression with each person, and some times you
can't afford to lose it!
In the upcoming chapters you shall find a
social "manual" that covers the main
principals you need to win every first
impression from now on.
You will find it so easy to make new
friends, to impress your teachers, to be a
star in a family reunion or to do
impressively well in a job's interview!
So let’s go! First Impressions – How to win them all !ChapterIIIIIIII
