It is a nice feeling knowing that you are popular. Some of us become popular in school without really knowing why. They find that when they go into the work place, some become instantly popular again, while others lose it quite quickly.

We like to feel important. You might find that we strive for importance our whole life. It's just human nature; not good or bad. So people liking or respecting you obviously makes you feel important, but how do you make people like or respect you?

Well you simply have to give them what they want; the feeling of importance. Think about it; how often have you tried to make people like you, and it just doesn't quite work? The reason is that you are trying to reap without sowing. You are waiting for the flower but you never planted the seed. If you want others to make you feel important, then you have to make others feel important. They will reciprocate in time, you just need to be patient. Imagine if you made 5 people each day feel important. That's 35 people in a week. That's 35 seeds that will grow and come back to you. The size of the flowers may vary due to some other factors, but you will definitely see effects unless you were not genuine enough.

You can't just go around saying "you're awesome" to everyone. Rather you must be sincere. You need to find something about a person that they are truly good at and then focus on that. Tell them that they are good at it, and show that you are impressed. Imagine someone being impressed by your actions. You would automatically find this impressed person more appealing.

Okay so you have been making people feel important through laughing at their jokes, complimenting them, and showing interest in them, but you find things seem to fail after a while. If you find conversations are dulling quickly all the time then perhaps you are not being very interesting. You need to find a topic that the other person is interested in. Now you could do some research and find out what they are interested in, such as sports, politics or maybe computer games, or you could simply fall back to the one thing you know for sure they will be interested in; themselves.

The topic most people want to talk about is topics about them; so spur them on! Ask questions about them: "What do you do?" "Do you like this?" "Where are you from?" People love answering questions to a willing audience on the topic they know most about; their own life. Think now to a stranger coming up to you and asking what you do for a living. Imagine this stranger looking so impressed at this and as though you are some kind of courageous hero. You would feel good. You would tell your funny stories. You would like this person. You would start joking around with them. It really is that simple.

If you want to go a bit more complex into this issue you can ask why some people can make people feel more important than others. I call this perceived credibility. If you know someone who a lot of your friends have made positive comments on, then you will perceive this person to be more credible in his/her reactions to you. If this person reacts favourably to you such as giving you a compliment, then this compliment will have a greater effect than one from a stranger. Everyone wants to talk or hang out with famous people because they have very high perceived credibility's; people would get massive feelings of importance by hanging out with these people.

Conclusion: People like to feel important. It's a fact of life and instead of forgetting about it, learn how to use it to brighten up your life. Make some investments into people by giving them your undivided attention and be enthralled by them. Laugh at their jokes, give them compliments, ask them about what's happening in their life. Try it for a bit, and watch the seeds you plant grow into something a lot more beautiful.

For more of my articles on making your life brilliant go to http://www.williamsmind.com/blog

About the author: Matt is a university student studying Commerce and Law. http://www.williamsmind.com/blog