Thursday, November 20, 2008

We are Transparent

Current brain research and work by Paul Ekman confirms the old axiom--"actions speak louder than words." Even as we try to control and hide our anger, others will sense it unconsciously. They will detect our feelings through the tiny micro-expressions that pass over our face in a split second, or our involuntary vocal inflections, and incongruent body language. It is almost impossible to hide our emotions from one another. Even if we are unconscious of the messages that we're sending-our listener will "have a feeling." They might not ever decipher these feelings but the unconscious encoding and decoding of messages will continue to influence them and us.

This is why changing our interactions must happen on a very deep level within. If we start with recognizing our own feelings we can then appreciate the nonverbal messages we are sending out to others.

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