I don't want to talk today about being judgmental, bought, as they say, when I shake hands with somebody, I know who they are. Let's talk about that. Hello and welcome to The Daily Grateful. I am Michael Prose and today I want to talk about shaking hands.
Yeah, you're saying what? Shaking hands and gratitude. I guess I kind of had to throw the gratitude thing in there because this being the daily grateful, but I am grateful for shaking someone's hands because when you when done and done properly, it is an intimate personal connection. Now, you're saying about Michael, you're just shaking someone's hand.
You know, there's an art form to it. There truly is an art form to it. And I learned this when I was in eighth grade at Dunedin Junior High School, our PE coach, Dino Machatius. Heck of a tall, you know, cool guy.
He brought us all out one day. He taught us how to do a lot of stuff. And one of the things he taught us how to do was a proper handshake. And the way you do that, now, if you ever shake someone's hand and they have a firm grip, that's good.
That's good. You ever shake someone's hand, go to shake someone's hand, and they stick their first like their fingers and their four fingers and didn't kind of grab and I don't like those people. I mean, you know, I immediately say, okay, this is that kind of person or what are all these preconceived notions that pop into my head, which are probably wrong because they probably just didn't learn how to do it right. Well, I am going to teach you how to do it right in the way that Coach Machatius taught us all how to shake hands.
And the way you do it is you walk up to the person that you're going to meet by the way. By the way, people just don't shake hands anymore. Well, it's coming back, but right up until the pandemic, people were shaking hands and then it stopped because you weren't no skin to skin contact. So there was no shaking hands.
And then you have germophobes who like Howie Mandel, who will do the fist bump with you that's still skin to skin contact, but it's not a handshake. Okay. And if somebody if I go to shake someone's hand and they want to do the fist bump, I will respect that and I will give them a fist bump, but I'm, you know, we're well past the pandemic now and I'm back to shaking hands and a lot of people are. So when you're going to meet someone or, you know, you're meeting someone for the first time and you're going to introduce yourself to them and they're going to introduce themselves to you, the first thing you do is an intimate act.
You take your hand and you put it on their hand. But before you do that, make sure that you're looking them in the eye, reach out and firmly grab their hand, put you, you know, the inside between your thumb and your forefinger touching their inside between their thumb and forefinger. You want that connection. Don't squeeze, but you want a firm grip.
You also want to bow forward a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit to where it is obvious that you're doing that while keeping direct eye contact. This is so important. And then shake their hand and while you're shaking their hand, you say something to them like you found out their name is Don or maybe, you know, you are not sure what their name is. And you say, well, my name is Michael, your name is what?
Don Don, okay, Don, I will not forget that. And you shake their hand, give them about, I don't know, five or six booboo booms, you know, and then release and drop back and then stand up straight again after bowing down, but do not lose the eye contact. What does this tell you? What does this tell you about the other person?
If they know how to do a proper handshake and they're shaking your hand properly, you know that that person is confident, you know that that person has taken the time to learn how to do this, either by having it done by their family members or whatever they, you know, they were in a coach with jobs, this is 1965 eighth grade class, I don't know. But you get that, you get that feeling when I go to shake someone's hand and they don't give me a good grip, they just barely hold on and they don't give me eye contact. I don't know to think about that person. Okay, that tells me that, you know, our relationship is not going to go real well.
All right, that that's kind of what that tells me or it's going to be a challenge to make this relationship continue in a better way. Be it someone that you're doing business with, be it someone that you're meeting socially being is someone that you want to be friends with, being at someone that you want to fall in love with. You know, the first thing I've always ever done with a girl that I dated, I learned this from Coach Macias, he said, you know, we were in eighth grade, you're going to be in high school and you're going to start dating. Well, I'm going to tell you and he was right about this.
When you meet a girl and you, you know, the first thing you do is you shake their hand and you see how they shake your hand back. It is just very, very, very important. My first girlfriend in high school, her name was Diane and I was in choir with her and I was kind of looked at it thought she was cute, but you know, I'm just, I remember that we were on the stage. We were above in the auditorium on the stage and I walked up to her because I just did not have the nerve to do things.
And I walked up to her and she knew who I was because I hate to say this, but I was one of those people that everybody knew who he was. I wasn't popular, by the way, but everybody knew who I was. I wasn't one of the cool kids if that, you know, but everybody knew who I was because I was different. Anyway, I remember walking up to her and shaking her hand and it took her by surprise.
But that was like the first, you know, contact I had with her and no more contact again until the next summer when I went to Clearwater Beach and had contact with her again. And I didn't settle for a handshake. I asked her for a kiss. But anyway, I built my nerve.
Oh my God. But anyway, the first thing I did was handshake. Every girlfriend I've ever had or wife that I've ever had said to them, it always started with a handshake, always started with a handshake. And that tells you a lot about somebody when you meet them.
So that it is just something that I feel is somewhat important. So get into the intimacy of the whole thing. You have skin on skin contact, you're looking them directly in the eye, you're bowing down a little bit, you're giving them a firm grip and not a hard grip and you're shaking their hand. And then you're pulling away gently, keeping the eye contact.
And you both know each other. You both know each other a lot better than you knew each other before you started this little episode. Trust me, you do embrace it. Be grateful for it.
We'll see you tomorrow.