Natural and normal, not contrived, rapport

Have you ever felt that the person who is sitting next to you just get you? And you can have a conversation with her just by looking into her eyes and nothing is vocalized. There were times you both laughed so hard that you started to tear up, over something silly. Only you two share these inside jokes. That, my friend, is the all natural and normal rapport.

The reality is that we don't connect with that many people... we can't do exercises in order to develop rapport. I think of many things in life can be learned, in fact, I'm educated because of the simple truth that I enjoy learning. There are some skills that are inherently un-natural that we have to be educated in order to acquire them, but there are many more that have to be experienced, failed repeatedly, and finally succeed on our own, without coaching. Establishing rapport is best done naturally, rather than through some contrived exercises, routines, gimmicks, and worst of all, cheapening the process of developing rapport by paying someone to teach us.

Instead of focusing what we can do externally, we should examine ourselves internally, finding who and what we are, and what we can do to grow that inner child into a man. This is the reason why I've started blogging about how to get things done and a few other activities that I've already been doing before getting into the community, which I might blog about in the future.

Once we know ourselves, we are ready to share with people around us. If you've ever wondered what sharing is, take a listen to stories in StoryCorps. There is something passionately compelling about these people and how they tell stories from their lives that naturally draw us into them. Do you think they ever take a story-telling workshop? Or may be a coaching session on how to build rapport? There are many skills we simply are born with, and we instinctively know how to do, once we cut away the bullshit so that we can express who we are.

I've tried to refrain from spoon feeding people, and more importantly, I don't want be another know-it-all my-way-is-the-only-way whatever coach. I think people learn best when they see something that's done right and they find ways to reach there. I can offer some suggestions but definitely do not think that teaching / coaching is such a noble profession, when it is used as a disguise to hustle people.