Adele: How to Be Authentic

Adele might be the best singer alive. Her music is soulful and moving. But what's really fascinating about her is that the honesty in her music extends to her interviews and her offstage interactions. So in this video, I want to explore what makes Adele come across as so genuine. Learning where that feeling arises from is going to make it easier for you to spot fakers in your own life, and it will make it possible for you to become more genuine yourself. Doing that makes people you barely know trust you even more and want to get to know you better. So let's begin with the first thing that you'll notice in any interview with Adele. Her smile. I was actually this far from Adele's smile lights up the room and comes across as incredibly genuine. This isn't just a random perception. There are three muscular differences between smiles that we view as genuine and those that we view as fake. You may have seen these in an earlier clip that I did on Will Smith, but if you didn't, very quickly, here's what they are. First, a real smile is pulled back to the sides and not just up. Second, a real smile usually has a relaxed lower jaw. The more open and relaxed that the lower jaw is, the more happy that a person tends to appear. That's why when you see someone in a picture with their jaw completely open, you assume that they're laughing or cracking up. And then third, a real smile creates tension around the eyes. Now, this one is the most interesting because it is quite, quite tough to fake, which is why the eyes are usually what give away a fake smile. You can say cheese all you want, but you have to honestly feel amused or happy to get that genuine tension around the eyes. Coming back to Adele, her smile is infectious because she has these three things to the extreme. She conveys that she is genuinely happy to see people, to laugh at their jokes, and to have a good time with them. That level of real happiness makes her instantly likable. Watch how warm she is when she greets Jimmy Fallon.

So happy you're here. Oh my gosh, I love you. Oh, I love you. I love you. We got to say I love you.

To each other because even though it's a bit over the top right there, you don't doubt her sincerity because her smile is hitting all three of those main points that create the sense of a real smile. Along similar lines is how she talks about her fame, her worries, her weirdness. No matter what she is discussing, she does it with that same sense of realness. She's not trying to maintain a reputation. She Just shares what's going on in her life. Sometimes that means talking about ultimate first world problems, like not being able to make a reservation because she's just too famous.

Well, what if no one cares?

Then though, this is shut the front door.

The sooner you realize that you're Adele. How do you do that? I spent my life. It's me, Adele.

So you see right there that incredibly warm smile and that she's also very comfortable laughing at herself and teasing her own fame. But from time to time, she talks very frankly about what it is like, as you'll see in this next piece, booking restaurants.

Yeah, do you have to go? And they go and under what name? And you go, adele. The Adele. No, I never drop my name in case they call the paps. Well, then I have to get someone else to call it because I can't drop my own name. I can mean dropping the A. That's my point. I quite like the phrase here.

Isn't that it's necessarily charismatic to talk about not being able to make a reservation at a restaurant. But some celebrities want to be relatable so bad that they hide behind a facade of my life is exactly like yours. And we know that that's not true. And because Adele is willing to talk about these kinds of things, even in passing, she comes across as more real. But beyond that, even though the specifics of her life and many celebrities lives are unrelatable, she shares the emotion behind her experiences and we can all identify with those. So listen here to how she talks about her excitement and nerves at the first commercial for her new album coming out.

Then it ended with three dots, as in to be continued. And I mean, I was watching it. I like X Factor. So we were watching it and I just like shit myself. Like absolutely lost the clock when it came on. And I got really excited as if it wasn't me as well. But I didn't have a Twitter account, so I just saw what was on there. If you're not on there, you have.

A Twitter account, right?

Well, I do have one, but I don't have access to it. I don't.

Why don't you have access to Twitter? Is that.

Is that because I might say something stupid?

She talks about first world problems, she reveals insecurities. She's just honest. She isn't trying to manage your perception of her. Some people, celebrities and otherwise, work very hard to come across as relatable or down to earth or cool or put together. And Adele doesn't seem concerned with pushing any of those images. It's paradoxical. But by not trying to control how she comes across, people tend to like her more. So why does this work? And how the heck can this channel even exist if the answer is simply don't care what other people think and people will love you? Well, the answer isn't that simple. Of course we care what people think of us, and of course we'd like them to think positive things about us. But the only way to do that is to stop straining to control other people's opinions of you. You have to express yourself honestly and then let people form their own opinion, good or bad. So if you tell a story to appear cool and then keep checking in with that person to make sure that they got it and they think you're cool, people are going to think you're a loser. And if you tell a story to appear humble and really play it up, people are going to think that you're arrogant. It will backfire. Here is the underlying when people sense that you are invested in controlling their perceptions, they lose all faith in you. They see you as fake. When they sense that you don't care to control their opinion, they see you as real. And the way to create that sense, to get that sense in other people, is through something called congruence. Take a look.

Kick out of seeing your own stuff on a shelf. Yeah, where's my albums? Yeah, I do. Actually, the other day I went to go see my friends and their new baby and and hello came on in the car and it felt exactly like it did when I was like 19 and hometown Glory came on the radio. So that was pretty nice because I didn't think that would bother me, but it was. I was like, oh my God.

Like, you know, Adele's facial expression and tonality matched the content of what she was saying. When she was talking about how she was excited and then saying the word weird at the end, that is congruence. If she had said the song came on, I was like, oh my God, that's so amazing. She'd have no congruence at all. And maybe you know someone who talks like that. Maybe being congruent means that everything matches. That's tone, that's body language, facial expressions, everything in line with what you are saying. Watch this acceptance speech and how she gets genuinely emotional during her thank yous and how she laughs when she talks about the good time that she's had there.

Oh my God. Honestly, I've come out for a night out with my friend Ida. We're new mums. We've literally come for A night out. I was not expecting this. Thank you so much. It's very strange to be here. And thank you so much for letting me be a part of your world for a night. It's amazing. We've been pissing ourselves laughing all.

It's tough to not like someone who displays that kind of emotion in an honest way. She isn't too cool to cry or too solemn to make fun of herself. She's just real. Now, obviously her voice is stellar, but I really believe that it's Adele's willingness to be honest in front of an audience that takes her to the next level as a performer. She writes her own songs and she puts it all all out there when she sings. Take a look.

Nothing compares. No worries. Okay. This would take.

A gimmick. If you aren't one of the best actors in the world. The only way to create these moments is to truly feel what you say, and then you need to allow the things that you're feeling to come through in every possible way that they can. That's tonality. That's body language, eye contact, word choice. All of the things that we work on here on this channel. That is the expressiveness part. The last thing that I want to add is about how freely and genuinely Adele offers praise. She's one of the best singers alive, and yet she can still express honest admiration for the talents of other people. Here she is talking about some of her favorite artists. I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, I was very excited last night because there was some teasers, Rihanna's new record. And I am like, I'm on the edge, living life on the edge, waiting for in a good way. I'm the biggest RIRI fan. Like, I love her, so I'm very.

A similar thing. Here she is again reacting to James Corden sing, and he's actually quite good.

It's no secret that the both of us are running out of time. That was amazing.

You can see how happy that compliment makes him to hear. And by the way, if you want to rock out to the rest of the duet, I will put a link in the description. Going back to Adele, though. She even makes these compliments when people are amateurs compared to her. Here she is reacting to a talk show host singing a lullaby and in his native language. Adele doesn't need any ironic detachment. She can love and appreciate the talent of others without feeling threatened herself. This is often very hard for people. We usually worry that someone else's talent or success is being compared with our own, so we take the role of A critic and evaluate people harshly in order to protect our own egos. People like Adele focus on what they like, and they ignore the comparisons. Plus, they let the people around them know when they found something that they love about their work or their art. This makes the people around you feel amazing, and it's going to improve your life just because you have a more positive outlook. So one more bonus on top of this for the artists out there, since we're on the subject, I thought that this piece of advice from Adele was spot on.

And the songs I was writing, they were great to the ear, but didn't move me. Okay, so if it moves you, then, oh, yeah, it will move others. That's the only thing I can put it down to.

That's kind of the thrust of this whole video, which is to move others, you first need to move yourself. You've probably heard me say the word real and genuine more time in this clip than I've ever done in my entire life. But that is the word that comes to mind when I think of everything that I've seen of Adele. She fully gets into the emotion of what she's doing, whether that's speaking or performing. She's absolutely committed, and she knows that honest expression is the best way to move other people, even if that means praising them for something that she does professionally. So we got a chance to see some of the really powerful ways to make a great first impression in this video, including, of course, the three things that make for a great smile as displayed by Adele. If you're curious about some of the other things that lead to that great first impression, since that smile is just one piece of the puzzle, we've actually set up another video that you can check out. It goes into the four emotions that guarantee a great first impression anytime, anywhere, as long as you hit those in the right order. And yes, that order is critical. So if you're interested in that, go ahead, click the link that I'll have pop up here, and it's going to take you to a page where you can enter your email and get immediate access to that video. If you have any other people that you'd like me to do, please, please let me know in the comments. I had not thought of doing Adele, and until I read that suggestion in the comments, and I'm super glad that I did. If you've enjoyed this video and you want to see more like it, please subscribe to the channel. We have at least one new one coming every week. I'm working on the schedule to make sure that it's two new ones or at least one throwback. So if you want to see more videos like this, go ahead and subscribe. And also, I should let you know that next week I will be doing another Game of Thrones video because you guys voted on that in the comments. So my job this week is to watch the old season. Huge thanks to you guys for that. Until that's done, I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.