What Does That Say About Her?

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” – Naguib Mahfouz

There are certain situations where you have a lot of time and opportunities to get to know someone.

Maybe you’re hanging out an entire evening with friends and you get introduced to a friend of a friend.

Or a girl at work. Or someone at school.

In these situations it’s possible you have many opportunities to go deep and really connect with someone.

You can find a lot of commonalities and take your time getting to know them.

But other times you have very little to go on.

When you walk up to a woman you don’t know and manage to get a conversation started, you only have moments to go deep and build an emotional connection.

It feels like you know very little about her and have very little to work with.

When I know only one or two things about a person, one of my favorite things to ask myself is what does this say about her?

Let’s say for example she only told you one thing about herself, that she likes yoga.

That’s gold right there.

You’ve been working on your listening skills, so you picked up on what she gave you.

You can always ask more questions to find out what else she likes, but first it’s important that you go deep with what she gave you, particularly if you sense what she told you is important to her.

How do you make a connection with her about yoga if you’ve never done yoga or only did it a few times years ago?

The best way is to relate to feelings. You know she likes yoga, but you don’t know yet exactly how she feels about yoga.

You could ask her, “How do you feel about yoga?”

Not a bad question.

You could also ask her more logical questions.

“What kind of yoga do you do?”
“How long have you been doing it? ”
“How often do you do yoga?”
“Where do you take classes?”

Okay.? Not bad.? Asking some logical questions will be an inevitable part of this process. You can’t ask all emotional questions.

But you can also try to probe deeper first based on what you know about yoga.

As for me, what do I know about yoga?

The classes are long (90 minutes.)
I’ve done it a few times.
I’m not as flexible as everyone else.
It’s very meditative.
It helps you to feel good.
It takes patience.
It takes a lot of practice to get good.
It takes dedication to get good.

Based on that, I could ask myself what does the fact that she likes yoga say about her as a person?

Working out is important to her. (The classes are 90 minutes)
She is a very calm person.? (There is deep breathing and meditation)
She takes care of herself.
She likes to feel good physically.? (I like this because it could be sexual)
She is a patient person.
She has a lot of dedication.

You could actually say any of the above statements to her.

“You must have a lot of dedication.”

Or you could reflect those statements back to her in a question.

“What is it about yoga that you like?”
“Does yoga help calm you or are you a naturally calm person?”
“If you don’t do yoga for a few weeks, do you miss it?”
“Did it take a lot of patience to learn yoga?”
“How do you feel after doing yoga for 90 minutes?”
“How did yoga feel once you got really good at it compared to when you started out?”
“How do you feel when you are about to start a yoga session?”

She gave you one thing: she likes yoga.? It doesn’t seem like much to the average guy.

But you ask yourself, “What does that say about her?” And you’ll find an entire world you can explore with her.

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posted in Rapport Skills