What Are You Telling the World?
by Kare Anderson, Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter
The secret is all in
understanding a code.
It is a most elaborate code that is
written nowhere, known by none, and yet understood
by all. That secret is how we tell each other,
without words, what we really feel.
How do other people perceive you, especially upon
first meeting you face-to-face?
How well do you anticipate another person's
discomfort before that person freezes up and becomes
paralyzed, withdrawn or even destructive in a
situation?
Whichever side of the table you are on, these skills
are crucial to your ability to lead, mentor or be a
"MVP" valuable team player with your
staff, vendors and customers.
Whether you making a presentation or listening, the
boss or support person, being interviewed for a job
or conducting an interview, selling or trying to
decide whether to buy, your ability to project a
comfortable confidence and approachability --
and to detect another's degree of comfort -
will always play a huge role in your ability to
sell, lead or otherwise get things done - with
others.
Early Warning Signs of Increasing Emotional
Intensity
Here are some ways to observe increased emotion.
Learn to look out for them in yourself as well as in
others.
Sweating: Might indicate an increase in
some emotional feeling.
Blinking more: Might indicate an
increase in some emotional feeling.
Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal
or fear.
Blushing: Might signal embarrassment,
shame, anger, or guilt.
Talking louder and faster: Usually
signals anger, fear, or other excitement.
Talking slower and softer: Might signal
sadness or boredom.
Body gesturing: Signals a negative
emotion, usually fear or anger.
Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates
the presence of emotion.
Are You Out on a Limb?
Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many
gestures usually takes away from the potency of your
natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud
or at great length diminishes your power and
credibility.
Most people cannot help "leaking" their
feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to
noticing the often subtle signals that indicate
strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.
Your body is a hologram of your being; a
three-dimensional movie that is constantly running,
showing others how you feel about yourself and the
world. As you walk through life, is your body saying
what your words are saying? Your body is a
three-dimensional "full-motion" billboard
to the rest of the world. Even if people are
consciously reading your body language, they
subconsciously react to your body signals.
Tour Your Body for Vital Signs
For example, if you are literally uptight - rigid in
any part of your body, especially your face, where
most people focus most of their attention in
conversation - people will instinctively resist or
react against you and your comments. This phenomenon
is akin to bounding a hard rubber ball on a concrete
surface and then on a soft carpet. The ball bounces
higher and faster against the hard surface than the
soft one, of course, just as others react more
against your "hardened surface."
Suggestion: Whenever you are entering a
potentially volatile or even new situation, loosen
up physically. Walk, stretch, and work on the areas
where you tend to hold most of your tension.
Probably - like many conscientious, hard-working
people - you hold your shoulders higher and slightly
more forward than is natural, with one of the
tendons in your neck tightened up even more than the
other. If someone can give you a quick 10- to
15-minute shoulder and neck massage, you will enter
a situation more relaxed and others will respond
more softly to you.
This is a good time to get acquainted with your body
again, as you were as a child. If you don't know
where you hold your tension, and most people don't,
take a tour of your body so you can know what needs
the most loosening - and exercise.
Are you shouldering the world's responsibilities, or
perpetually drooping? In your determined drive
toward success, do you plant your feet solidly on
the ground in a life gesture of hostility, defiance,
or taking ground?
Perhaps you have a forward-leaning posture, with
your head tilted slightly forward, as if ready to
spring into action, actually expressing a lifelong
pattern of flight away from psychologically
threatening situations when you thought it was part
of your makeup to leap forward to new opportunities.
To be depressed is, in fact, to press against
yourself. To be closed off is to hold your muscles
rigid against the world.
Being open is being soft, with no instinctive
muscle-clenching, such as the jaw-tightening that is
a growing pattern in Americans, even into their
sleep. Hardness is being uptight, cold, separate,
giving yourself and others a hard time. Softness is
synonymous with pleasure, warmth, flowing, being
alive, drawing other people toward you rather than
forcing them away.
Are you itching to get at someone? Is a colleague a
pain in the neck? Are you sore about something? What
is your aching back trying to tell you? Is there
someone or something on your back? What about your
ulcer, allergy, or muscle spasms? Is there someone
you cannot stomach? What is it that you would like
to get off your chest, or your back?
Your body speaks to you all of the time, telling you
your own needs. Listen to it. It is your free and
most sophisticated medical feedback testing system,
continuously showing you your inner tensions, state
of mind, and habitual life attitudes.
When you are misaligned and tense, you expend
outrageous sums of extra energy in the everyday
gestures of life. Because the body is a
high-viscosity substance that is 60-80% water, your
bones are floating in a relatively fluid
environment. Over time, despite that apparent
fluidity, you have tightened the muscles around
every major experience of pain, fear, or anger.
In Western society, we usually hold the tension
somewhere in our upper bodies, whereas in many
Eastern cultures, the tension tends to be held in
the lower body.
We all hold great muscle tension around certain
bones in blind remembrance of fearful events, long
after the actual events are probably long forgotten.
You continue to tighten these muscles each time you
think you are experiencing similar situations, thus
guaranteeing that you make your pattern of
uptightness increasingly habitual, until it becomes
an almost permanent condition you no longer
recognize as not normal.
Ah, the misleading appearance of maturity. You might
never recall what initially made you afraid, but you
can note where your body reacted to protect itself.
Then spend more time in your exercise and massage or
other bodywork to relax and loosen those muscle
groups.
We go through life making decisions, closing down
and limiting ourselves unconsciously. If you don't
begin a regular practice of exercise and stretching,
you are guaranteed to lose mobility sooner as you
age, robbing yourself of the most positive and alive
present you can offer the world every day - a loose
and relaxed presence.
Stay open literally by getting in motion more
frequently. Stand and stretch at least every twenty
minutes when you are sitting and working. Try to
walk, hopefully in sync with someone else, in fresh
air and sunlight, at least thirty minutes a day. As
Dr. Dean Ornish wrote in his most recent book, Love
and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing
Power of Intimacy, our survival depends on the
healing power of love.
One of the safest and most natural ways to move
closer to others is to walk with them. Walk farther
to the restaurant. Walk and talk on the way to the
meeting. Walk with your loved one, rather than
sitting at home, to come down from your day
together. Motion is emotional and makes every event
more vivid and memorable. Literally move toward the
one you want in your life and loosen up together.
Your life could depend on it.
Kare
Anderson is a trailblazer in media, business,
and politics and a former journalist for the Wall
Street Journal, Le Monde, UPI,
and other newspapers. Kare was Pacific Telesis'
first Wideband and Cable Division Director, a
co-founder of a national public affairs and
advertising firm, and now president of the Say it
Better Center. In government, she was a state
senator's chief of staff, co-founder of nine
political action committees and appointed
commissioner. Kare's a frequent strategic
communication coach to leaders in business and
government. Visit her website http://sayitbetter.com
