If you’re trying to impress others (to not lose face) do this.

Play down your own intelligence to boost the ego of an intelligent person

There are people who think that smart or talented people are always functioning from full ego and narcissism, and they feel that to make friends with someone like that, they have to fully devote themselves to the worship of their idol’s intelligence. While I don’t mean “curb your insecurities” because who can curb those, I mean don’t take the approach where you think you can make friends or find an alliance between yourself and a non-narcissistic person by emphasizing how dumb and incapable you are in comparison to them. I also don’t suggest you’d do the opposite and try to level up with them artificially, as in turn into a narcissist yourself. In fact, both the groveling and attempts of one-upping are quite narcissistic in strategies and don’t develop into real friendships.

Unfortunately, a difference in IQ and capacities are TRULY the most deciding factor in a true friendship. NOBODY wants to be friends with someone obviously dumber than themselves. There are people who might want to use and abuse people dumber than themselves, therefore, if you MANAGE to make a friend by groveling, you will be making friends with an abuser and it’s not worth it.

Never lie

Although you don’t owe a full disclosure of your affairs to others, at least not in normal circumstances, you should never LIE. When you speak, what comes out of your mouth should be true at least to a reasonable extent. (As in unless the truth would reveal a private matter as opposed to a secret.) Once people find out you lied, you’ll look like a moron.

Never tell people you’re better at something than what you actually are

Especially if the people you’re trying to impress are talented at something, it would be a big mistake to pretend as if you knew a thing or two about the same matter yourself. If they know what they’re doing, they’ll also know that you don’t and you’ll wind up looking like an idiot who doesn’t even know what they don’t know.

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