Make the First Move

If you want to be connected, if you want to feel connected, then you get to make the first move.

It’s simple:

1. Smile

2. Wave

3. Open or hold the door

4. Invite someone else to go ahead of you

5. Express gratitude and appreciation to someone else

6. Give someone a compliment that’s about them (not what you love or think)

7. Send flowers

8. Visit someone who may not get much human contact

9. Volunteer

10. Call someone

11. Send an audio message to someone you haven’t talked with in a while

12. Send a video message; ditto

13. Offer to take a neighbor dog for a walk

14. Sign up for a tour

15. Offer to read to other people

16. Sign up for a park and rec class

17. Join a gym

18. Walk your neighborhoods, combining smiling and waving

19. Greet anyone within reasonable physical proximity to you, all day

20. Get out of your home

21. Go to the library

22. Walk around your town

23. Walk in nature

24. Raise your hand in a meeting

25. Speak up kindly

While I could go on to list a hundred, you get the idea.

Making the first move is vital for our own feeling of self-connection. Self-connection fuels our own confidence and competence, which in turn spirals upward. That feeling of self-connection leads to self-belonging.

In all of this in order for us to feel seen, valued, and heard – which is the core of Connection, we can start by reaching to someone else, doing something that literally moves our body and our brain.

Move your body = move your brain.

First Move. Get up, get after it.

Every gesture and movement matters when you’re focused on the power of Human Connection.

NOTE: The First Move is in the Connectivity Framework (7 clear elements to help teach how to connect), in my book Connectivity Canon; here’s the the link to buy your own copy. FYI – less than 126 copies remain….

The picture here is a good human standing up, participating – making the First Move – in a workshop I lead for the Bar & Restaurant show a few years ago. Her name escapes me and I wanted to share that this is one view of what Human Connection looks like.