The art of a handshake

it's Friday not a nice thing to say you know what I'm going to do I'm going to walk right up to you and I'm going to shake your hand how's that hi everybody Michael Kroos here this is the Daily Grateful and I am grateful that I have the ability and the knowledge and the skill to walk up to you and shake your hand in a proper way and today as just part of what I do here I'm going to teach it to you I'm going to teach it to you I didn't always know this I learned this in 8th grade Coach Dino Machachas the physical education coach at Dunning Junior High School remember those days when PE was a class that everybody had to take this was after the Kennedy era and Kennedy said everybody's got to go did you know that they don't have that anymore but anyway they had it then and one of the cool things that I learned at physical education class from Coach Machachas was how to properly shake hands when he came out and told us this is what he was going to teach us today we're all going okay at least we're not out running laps there was that but some of us wanted to go run laps but no I said okay let's do this thing and he said you know when you shake somebody's hand you know who they are he told us that and he's right he said when you shake somebody's hand you know who they are and they know who you are and you want to make sure that when they're learning who you are that they're impressed it's very important I mean just incredibly important that you do that so he said I'm going to teach you how to do it this is exactly what you do because shaking hands is a very intimate very personal gesture this is skin on skin contact and then you know there's eye contact all these things are happening during a handshake customarily it is something that people have used for years I mean hundreds of years you've heard made this deal on a handshake you've heard all of those things but the truth of the matter is is that every good relationship I've ever established in my teenage years and adult life has started with a handshake and every disastrous relationship I've had has started from a lousy handshake I judge people on how they shake my hand because I learned how to do it right and you can always tell if somebody knows how to do it correctly because they're interested in you so let's get down to the mechanics of this let's get right into doing this the very first and I'm going to give you an example of how the first time I used this the very first time I used this and it was beneficial for me it truly was beneficial for me the first thing you do when you're going to shake someone's hand you meet somebody you meet someone in business you meet someone personally you meet someone at church you meet someone in a grocery store and you want to get to know them they want to get to know you do not stand to their side get directly in front of them that's the first thing you do never shake somebody's hand from the side never stand next to somebody have them reach their hand over and shake their hand don't do that it's a total waste of effort they're not going to learn anything about you you're not going to learn anything about them no you've got to be facing them they've got to be facing you very important the next thing you do before you reach your hand out is you make direct eye contact with them direct eye contact with them and then you smile not big but a nice little smile and then you reach your hand out to shake their hand when they return that hand to you you grab that hand you go in and you get a good grasp on it you make sure the areas between your thumb and your forefinger are touching without other persons and then you give a good firm not a hard but a firm grip never ever losing eye contact with them at this point when you have your hand in their hand and you have this eye contact you increase your smile just a little bit just a little bit okay and you give them three good pumps on the hand and you just keep looking them in the eye and keep smiling and then you say it is so nice to meet you or something whatever you want to say you say it now's the time to do it and then slowly release that hand and pull it away continuing to touch as you pull it away very important okay the touching is very important because you're making very close very intimate contact with this other person you're going to know everything that you need to know about them from doing that and they're going to know you as well they're going to know your confidence you're going to know their confidence they're going to know your lack of confidence don't have lack of confidence but you're definitely going to know if they have a lack of confidence they're going to know that so sometimes you meet someone that you are terrified of meeting and the other person really doesn't want to meet you but they kind of gotta this happened when I was dating my very first girlfriend okay I was young 17 I was young when I was dating my very first real important girlfriend and you know we started building a relationship but it came down to where I had to meet the parents I had to meet her father her father and I'm just going back to my teenage body and mine was about 8 feet tall and about 8 feet wide he wasn't any of those things but that's how I saw him when I laid eyes on him this giant man who I could tell was not impressed that he was going to meet me for the first time he heard about me he didn't like me but you know because I'm dating his daughter but he was going to meet me I remember it happened in the driveway of their home walked right up to him gave him direct eye contact he gave me direct eye contact by the way this guy was a he worked in personnel for a great big multinational company he was a big shot and he was a very intelligent man and he worked in big business big corporate kind of guy and I'm a teenage hippie I got a long hair and I'm wearing bell bottoms and a paisley shirt and I walk right up to him and I'm looking direct eye contact I reach my hand out he sticks his hand out we make that total contact firm handshake look him right in the eyes smiling and then as we do the three pumps the smile increases his smile increases this guy's giving me one hell of a good handshake this guy's very confident I am learning that this guy is extremely confident I'm also learning that he doesn't like me because he's not returning the smile he's looking me in the eyes and he's giving me the firm handshake but he's not giving me the smile that I'm giving him but at the end at the very last I remember every second of this at the very last moment of the handshake as I'm pulling my hand away maintaining contact he looks at me and his mouth went up a little bit and I got a little bit of a smile and I said it is so nice to meet you Mr. blah blah blah whatever your last name was I'm not going to tell you but I you know and he did not return that conversation he just kind of looked at me and nodded alright he just nodded and girlfriend is looking at me and she's looking at him and I made an impression on him okay alright I'm this long haired heavy guy with a paisley shirt on which is not the kind of people that he hung out with not the kind of person that he was hoping was going to be dating his daughter but I showed him ultimate respect I showed him ultimate honor and I gave him a proper handshake it worked well it worked you know during the course of my relationship with this young lady we tolerated each other and actually we actually had some very nice long conversations in the living room mostly political and you know music and things like that so it worked I have good memories of that and all of that was made possible by the fact that I walked out because Coach Machas taught me how to do it and I gave the guy a really good handshake now as I have evolved in life and met people I have used a handshake to establish any relationship when I was working in radio and I would meet somebody the handshake came out you know the handshake came out and I gave the firm I could judge people that way and let me tell you there are people that give good handshakes and there's people who give mediocre handshakes and there's people who give lousy handshakes if someone refuses to give me eye contact when they're shaking my hand I don't want to know this person I don't want to hang out with that person that person is not going to be part of my life if they don't give me a firm grip if they just give the four fingers you remember that they need the four fingers come out and they kind of like are holding on to your four fingers no done with you done with you so and how do they feel about you know that they don't have a high opinion of you if they're not willing to make an intimate commitment to you you just know that the handshake is important it is just very very important you know and we almost lost the handshake we almost did COVID came out man I was at a convention I was speaking at a convention in Orlando the first week of March of 2020 and the next thing you know two days after that I shook a lot of hands there but two days after the convention COVID hit and that was it and I'm saying nobody's going to be shaking hands anymore because you're not supposed to touch anybody everybody's wearing gloves it has literally taken this long for the handshake to come back and I'm going to admit it to you I'm nervous about it I carry if I know I'm going to be shaking someone's hands I carry a little body bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket and when I'm done and they're not looking I kind of wash my hands a little bit I do I just do but I'm so glad that the handshake is making a comeback we'll see you next time