Become a “servant” of those you meet. A simple asking someone how you can help them positions you in a posture of mutual submission…. That is highly attractive.

You’re likable. Thanks for the thoughts.

Well your heart is in the right place but unfortunately what you are saying is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Likeable people exhibit these traits naturally due to their attitude towards life, and our attitudes are determined by our underlying psychological makeup. An unlikable person cannot become likeable simply by trying to mimic some of the external characteristics of likeable people. For example when you see a child who is always walking around with his head down you can bet that he has some issues. He is probably very introverted and troubled and has few friends. But you cannot simply tell him to walk around with his head held high and expect everything to suddenly be okay. His outward mannerism are just a manifestation of what’s going on deep down inside. And it’s these internal issues that are actually alienating others and making him unhappy, not the outward manifestations of those issues.

Trying to mask or alter your body language or speech to give people the impression you are different than you really are is fine for a job interview (or if you’re a professional poker player) but if you really want people to like you and you want to be truly happy in life you have to deal with the internal issues that are causing you to exhibit these negative external characteristics in the first place (most people who are not liked by others, somewhere deep down inside don’t think they deserve to be liked).

Of course there are a few rare people who, when continually put through the motions of mimicking happy people, will change internally to a certain degree to match the external (like in the movie “Yes Man”) but they are the exceptions to the rule. Still I guess it cant hurt to try. I think most people will find it a lot harder than they imagine though. For example if you were to go up and question one of those people walking around with a scowl on their faces you would find that many of them were not even aware they were scowling. And once aware they might consciously try to change it but by the end of the day they would forget all about it and their face would look the same again. These people would have to have a friend shadow them everywhere they went and constantly remind them that they were scowling or looking depressed, or whatever.

And it’s the same with compulsive talkers (those who talk continuously and don’t give others a chance to talk or even acknowledge what other say to them). These people have a compulsion to talk like this and even if made aware of it it would be impossible for them to alter this behavior for more than a few minutes.

By the way, when you said “The more someone talks about themselves, the more they will like you” I think what you really meant to say was “The more you show an interest in what a person has to say the more likely they are to like you”.

As for people who are confrontational and like to argue they are also compelled to be that way and they can only be changed from the inside out

Anyway you are correct about peoples characters not being determined by the “breaks” they get in life, and in fact we all make our own breaks in life. We are of course greatly effected by our environments, particularly in early childhood but its also true that we are all born as unique individuals and all have varying degrees of immunity to these negative or traumatic environmental factors(Sadly the majority of people on this planet end up being little more than a product of their environments however). Genetics does not even come into though and has absolutely nothing to do with who we are.