“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carl W. Buechner
We can be tempted to do all kinds of things to impress people. But at the end off the day, most of these things are secondary. Sure, they may remember how we looked, or how we dressed, or something else about us, but more than any of these things, they’ll remember how we made them feel. Were we friendly? Did we show interest in them? Did we make them feel welcomed, affirmed, loved?
The challenge is that it’s all too easy to get caught up in how we’re feeling in the moment, and forget about how we’re making the other person feel. (I know I’m guilty of this more than I’d like.) Maybe we’re trying to impress them, or perhaps we’re afraid to say anything because we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. In either case, the focus is on us.
But even though this may be a temptation for some of us, we can still choose to shift the focus. Even if we aren’t the best conversationalist, or we don’t always know what to say, we still have a choice to show interest in the other person. And the good news is that if they know that we truly care about them—that we’re interested in them and what they have to say—that’s something they’ll remember for a long, long time.