RULE 38

Look people in the eye when you meet them …

… especially if you want to show them that you are not the sort of sulky, self-centered, spoiled brat they’ve been reading about in this book.

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Lord Chesterfield was a savvy, hardheaded English aristocrat who lived from 1694 to 1773 and wrote a famous series of letters to his son and godson, advising them on manners, morals, and making their way in the world. So this quotation is more than two hundred years old, but it describes a habit that still annoys the bejabbers out of people like me:

I have seen many people, who while you are speaking to them, instead of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon the ceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred.158

There’s actually an even worse habit. The fastest way to offend someone is to look over his shoulder when he is being introduced to you. You’ll meet people like this soon enough: even when they are shaking your hand, they will look around the room, checking to see whether there is somebody more important or interesting than you are. The message they are sending couldn’t be clearer: “I can’t be bothered to pay attention to you.”

Unfortunately, this sort of attitude seems to have become another generational marker. Jean Twenge cites studies suggesting that young people are far less interested than previous generations in making a good impression or observing basic rules of civility when they interact with adults. MIT psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle told USA Today: “They’re tuned out in some ways to the social graces around them and the people in their lives, in their physical realm, and tuned in to the people they’re with virtually.”159

(Quick Useful Tip: don’t try to listen to music with your iPod earbud or send text messages while an adult is trying to talk to you, unless you want to get an unexpected lesson in what the inside of your iPod or cell phone looks like.)

But ignoring or brushing off people around you is the sort of thing that Chesterfield had in mind when he also warned his son that “an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.”160

A corollary rule: it is highly unlikely that you are the smartest person in the room, so don’t act like it. Again, there’s nothing new about this. Chesterfield warned his son:

Never yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, is very strong, of exposing other people’s weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or of showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it for the present; but you will make enemies by it forever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you.161

It is also worth remembering that while the most fascinating thing in the world is talking about yourself, it is also what is most boring to other people.

So learn to listen, to pay attention to others, and to treat them with respect. This will pay off in several respects: People are actually much more interesting than you think. Those that have lived longer and had more experiences than you might even be more interesting than you are.