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In attempts to know what people want during a particular moment in time, you should first aim to understand what you would want in that situation yourself. The obvious way to do that, would be to, “put yourself in someone else’s shoes;” a notion which can be extended to mean: an effort to become the person you want to understand. The second-best way, is to remember a time when you were in a similar situation. It is generally easier to predict the actions of people younger than us than those who are our elders, as it is easier to think back and remember times when we experienced similar things. We were once younger, and can thereby guess what may be going through the minds of our younger friends. We can guess at a boy’s attempts to impress an attractive girl, and how a child feels when being scolded about not eating vegetables.
When attempting to know what people want in a situation in which you have never been however, you’re left with the option of forcing yourself through a mental exercise of morphing into them.
Understanding Yourself Helps You Understand Others
Never assume somebody is different than yourself when trying to predict the actions and desires of others, and always visualize what life would be like for you, if you were in their situation. The person who you aim to analyze is you, if you had experienced life differently. Studying yourself diligently, including what your triggers are for certain actions, will make it easier to apply that knowledge to understand the minds of others.
A simple conversation with a hundred people about their most intimate thoughts would expose many similar fears, desires, and concerns. We are all similar to say the least, a notion which our sharing of common ancestors backs up. We share the common structures that our bodies are composed of, we share intimate thoughts, and we share the reasons for actions that we commit on a daily basis. Remember this aspect of humanity, and learn how to be honest with yourself about how you truly feel, including what you’d be likely to do in the various situations within life. The results of your simulated thoughts will be closer to the things that others, who are actually in those situations, do than you anticipate.
We all have perceived pros and cons to everything we do. The reason we commit to acting the way we do is because in our mind, the pros outweigh the cons in that capacity. You are currently learning how to influence people to behave in ways that are favorable to you because you see more pros than cons to doing that. If you saw the behavior that you partake in as having more negative effects than positive ones, you would not be partaking in that behavior.
Stay Tuned to the List of Pros
Everything people do, think, and develop interests in, is backed by positive feelings and thoughts toward that specific thing, action, or thought. One simple example is selecting a product to buy online. A friend of yours may have selected an item out of an extensive catalog because the positives of that specific brand and model outperformed the rest. If you wanted to increase the positive feelings that friend has towards you, you would mention those same positives about the item to your friend.
We enjoy when people agree with us, especially on things that we hold dear. Those who back your choices in life will have your respect. Notice the list of positive factors in the decisions that others make. It will serve to make you seem relate-able and will act to group you into the same frame of mind as others, thereby making them trust you in other facets of life.
Realizing what people like and hold importance in prior to making their decisions is a difficult task. We will never know why people truly do what they do, but we can reverse engineer just enough to get close and assume a list of the deciding factors behind the action which made a person act the way they did. You need to be quick in seeing the good in things, and categorizing what commands most importance in others’ minds. Know what the positives are that drive your own actions and always stay conscious of them. Get into the habit of realizing the driving factors of the decisions that you and those around you make.
Getting into the habit of knowing what drives that actions of others will give you a lot of leverage in making people like you, enjoy your presence, and listen to you. You can use the information that you come up with about the actions others take to your advantage in many interactions with that person. You can also use the positives that drive successful people’s actions as examples and motivations for your own. Begin the adventure of making others like you by analyzing what they like themselves.