How YOUR Own Body Language and Nonverbal Communication
Influences Everything from Your Decisions to Your Life
Kevin Hogan
Page 2
Self awareness is the starting point. In most of these politically sensitive
situations where others may or may not have a perception about you, where others really may not even notice you, it's important that you are confident and calm....feeling more comfortable so when faced with situations that are truly significant, you are better prepared for THEM.
What's the Problem With All This?
Your perceptions of others perceptions is like taking a picture in the dark without a flash. You really haven't got a clue as to whether you are on track or not.
And this is a key problem with trying to be overly "sensitive" or "politically corect." It's one reason that those who aren't politically correct often appear so calm, comfortable, confident and certain. It's because they've become virtually immune to possible perceptions of others in the environment.
Usually, but not always for the better.
The problem with all of this is that the force of influence of others in the environment combined
with your own personal concerns about what others think of you reduces your field of
possible information and entertainment sources. The field gets smaller and you see two things.
1) A world that you are being shaped into instead of the world as it is.
2) A world that is based on others political, religious, values instead of behaving in a natural
and normal way.
And all of that is "exposed" in your own body language and nonverbal communication....to others....to yourself.
I'm going to use picking stocks as a metaphor for everything we do in life and business, but as you will see the concepts map over to....everything else.
So, before we come to stock picking and portfolio selection, let's briefly look at your office.
Think in terms of NON-verbal communication...
The Right and Left Brain
If you're like most right-handed people, the left side of your desk is a mess and the right side
is clean. (I know you're wondering how I can see your desk.)
In fact, about half of right-handed people who have that mess on their desk have a
stash of emails and letters that are six months old that still need to be dealt with eventually....
and they aren't on the right side of the desk.
Why?
How can I know that?
It turns out (to overgeneralize) that the left brain which is a bit more linear, computational and logical
is activated more intensely when you look to the right. Rule of thumb: Left brain doesn't like disorder.
The right side of the brain is more the home to emotions, feelings, autobiography. It doesn't care
about disorder, it cares about the woman at the cash register scanning the Playboy at Barnes and Noble. (Just reading that makes you a little anxious, true?)
When right-handed people look for an extended period of say, one minute, to their left, they begin to feel uneasy and experience anxiety and feelings of fear.
Now imagine that you have two prospectuses (Descriptions of stocks you can buy) sitting on the coffee table.
One is to the right and one is to the left.
To over generalize you will tend to look at the prospectus on your right (because information coming
in the right eye filters more to the left brain and the left eye to the right brain) will receive a more
analytical analysis on your part. The prospectus on your left is more likely to receive an emotional
and usually negative (because most strong emotions are negative) bias.
You'll be more likely to pick the stock that is featured in the prospectus on the right because you
simply didn't feel good about the one on the left.
Now, let's complicate the universe.
Will you go broke because of nonverbal communication?!
Cool?
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