Speaker Paul Long keeps his audience entertained as he talks about how to create resilience and build connections with people.
Learning the power of meaningful connection
By Janet Weyandt, YSN
When something bad happens, how long does it take you to shake it off?
Speaker Paul Long shared his tips for “Reframing Resilience” last month during BrandSource’s Young Professionals University (YPU) and Convention 2024, where he gave attendees concrete steps toward changing their outlook.
Boisterous and eccentric in bright colors and a bow tie, Long invited the audience to look at him and shout out some of their thoughts. The answers he got were polite: “Fun,” “bow tie,” “muscles,” “confidence.”
“I know there’s some people thinking other things,” he said; at other events audiences have called him Pee-wee Herman or complained he was too energetic. “You may think this is an exercise about me; it’s not. It’s an exercise about you, an exercise about how you see others and how you experience the world. I am whatever you see me as, and so are your customers, your staff, friends and family.”
FUNdamism
Long, who wrote a book about “FUNdamism,” boiled down the tools for changing your outlook into three parts: F for foundation, or identifying what makes you unique; U for understanding others’ perspectives; and N for next steps.
It’s all about shifting your focus so you can see the positives, he said, and there are always positives.
“We’re so laser-focused on what’s not working, we can’t clearly see what is,” he said. “Somebody you know is struggling with this right now.”
Disrupting the Patterns
One technique to break out of old patterns of thinking, or to help someone else break free, is called “brain pattern interrupt.” In short, it means saying something unexpected to disrupt the response that happens by rote.
For example, Long said, in his voicemail greeting he asks for the typical information, then asks callers to relay their first celebrity crush. The point is to surprise people and create ways to build rapport.
“Imagine every time you connected with someone, you had a goal to make them feel appreciated, make them smile or make them laugh,” he said. “What might happen in your cycle of influence, your life, your business? To get more appreciation, give more. Being kind doesn’t take much.”
How to Connect
- Make people feel appreciated: Tell them why what they’re saying is important to you or how it makes you feel.
- Make someone smile: Smile first. Ask them questions that remind them of things that inspire smiles (like family, pets and food). Share a relatable experience to create a connection.
- Listen with intention: Say things like “Tell me more” or “Help me understand.”
- Express genuine interest: Confirm your understanding by restating what you’ve heard.
Another way to connect is to laugh with people, but inspiring laughter can be tricky, Long warned. One simple way to make someone laugh is by being self-deprecating, but sometimes self-deprecation comes from a place of low self-esteem.
Another way is to work puns, movie lines or music lyrics into your conversation, Long said, even if the only person laughing is you.
“Does anyone ever work movie lines or lyrics into conversation just to see if they notice?” he asked. “If they do, you become best friends. If not, who cares? You did it and you’re smiling anyway.”
Change Your View
Matt Botler, brand manager at Cocoplum Appliances in Vermont and a YPU attendee, said he took a lot of good information away from Long’s session.
“In a very old industry, it was a wonderful way to think of things,” he said. “It’s such a radical way of thinking. Paul gave real solutions you can implement tomorrow, and I thought it was very impactful.”
The bottom line, Long said, is that you can change the way you view the things that happen in your life, and help other people do the same.
“How many bad things have to happen for us to classify a day as bad?” he said. “Resilience is the ability to not allow bad moments to become bad days, months or years through an unwavering connection to the present, others and oneself.”
YSN publisher AVB BrandSource is the nation’s largest merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, mattress, furniture and CE dealers.
