5 posts tagged “connection”

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• It is harder to argue when you are holding hands.

• Know that showing appreciation and attention, especially when you least want to show them and the other person most needs them, will always bring you closer than asking for them.

• First look to the other person’s positive intent as you hear what what is said.

• Saying less often gets you more of what you want from him.

• Looking directly and warmly at her, rather than away, often brings out the part of her you most enjoy.

• Making and keeping an agreement usually helps the other person feel more safe, respected and cared for in the relationship.

• First try to act in a different and positive way before you verbally ask for a change in someone else.

• Don’t interrupt, especially when you most want to.

• First answer the other person’s question.  Answer it directly, without preface, qualifiers, countering, second guessing, answering questions she or he did not ask or raising other points first.

• Do not answer a question with a question, including questioning that person’s question of you.

• Find out whether the other person feels you’ve answered her or his question or otherwise responded adequately before you move onto your question or another point or topic.

• Showing resentment and resistence will most likely escalate the hardening of sides between you.

• Rather than describing what you don’t like, ask for a specific change.

• Be willing to make a change before asking for one.

• Don’t ask for more than one change at a time, unless you want them all ignored.

• Know that the more changes you ask for the more resistent you’ll face, and the more likely it will be for you both go to your heads to think, rather than to your hearts to feel.

• Use factual language and few words to describe what you want changed.

• Use emotion-laden language, and more words, to describe what you like in the other person.

• Women: Say and move less, especially when you want to do the opposite

• Men:  Give her more eye contact.  If you don’t feel comfortable answering her right away, tell her so directly.  Then tell her when you will get back to her with a response.

• In the middle of your hottest moments of discussion, remember what you most like in the other person and take the time to express it.

•Of course all these apparently wise pieces of advice are much easier to offer than to live by.

All Jokes Come Down to One of Four Themes
Anywhere in the world, all jokes can be reduced to just one of four themes, according to Dr. Richard Wiseman, a British scientist who’s been conducting mass participation experiments about what we think is funny. * (See below)

What’s the Funniest Animal?
Wiseman also found that if you insert different animal names into the same joke, one animal evokes more laughter than any others.  Guess which animal? **  * (See below)

Well, how hard is it to get others to laugh?
Mysteriously difficult, according to scientists, and many professional comedians.  In fact, it is easier to get others to cry or smile than to laugh.   While you need to evoke a response in only one part of the brain for the first two, you must stimulate a more complex “laughter circuit” involving many more parts of the brain for laughter to happen.

Several researchers, including John Allen Paulos, author of Mathematics and Humor discovered that when we attempt to understand puns, we process them in left side of the brain. Yet more complex, non-wordplay jokes are sent to the right side of the brain to comprehend, triggering many more parts of the brain along the way.

Researchers, Wendy Wapner, Suzanne Hamby and Howard Gardner, in a 1981 paper, entitled “Brain and Language”, described the left side of the brain as a “highly efficient, narrowly programmed linguistic computer.   In contrast, the right hemisphere of the brain constitutes a suitable audience for a humorous silent film.”  Perhaps that’s why comedians often use their body and props to silently act out a part of their story – to activate more parts of your mind.

4. What Makes You Laugh?
What makes us laugh?  Here’s three clues from the researchers: incongruity, superiority and the pattern of three.

Incongruity
A joke: “I went to my doctor for shingles. He sold me aluminum siding.”
When we see or hear something incongruous, we are surprised into laughter, often as a sort of relief.  This may be a primitive response for alerting your community in ancient times that an apparent danger, is, in fact, nothing to fear. V.S. Ramachandran, in “Phantoms in the Brain”, wrote, “The main purpose of laughter might be to allow the individual to alert others in the social group that the detected anomaly is nothing to worry about.”

Superiority
Those who tell us funny stories about their own foibles  - or those of others - help listeners feel momentarily superior to the jokester or to the people who’ve been made the butt of the joke.

The Pattern of Three
Joke: “My favorite books are ‘Moby-Dick,’ ‘Great Expectations,’ and ‘Rock Hard Abs in 30 days.’”

Comedians have long believed that jokes work best in a pattern of three parts.  Offer two straightforward examples, then a third one to shatter the pattern.

Wiseman, that scientist we mentioned at the top of the column, is a professor at the University of Hertfordshire and the director of its Perrott-Warrick Research Unit.  He is probably Britain’s most well-known psychologist – at least since last year when he took his humor research to the world via the Internet.  

His mass-participation experiments cover emotions, from lying to laughter.  For example, he asked participants to detect who was lying after being exposed to accounts offered on television, the radio or in print.* * *

In the Fall of 2002, Wiseman decided to learn about global differences in humor and opened a web site (LaughLab.co.us). The server for the site broke down when Wiseman got three million hits in the first five days after the site opened.

Among other studies, he asked visitors to contribute their favorite jokes and rather others’ jokes, on a 1 – 5 rating scale.  He’s received over 40,000 jokes. About two-thirds of the submissions are so off-color, violent or otherwise offensive that he chooses not to post them for site visitors.

With Wiseman’s permission, here’s a description of one of the mass participation experiments.  Wiseman and his colleagues asked people who took part in LaughLab to answer questions that involve making various estimates, such as: “How many words are there on one page of a typical paperback novel?

A) Under 500
B) 500 - 600
C) 600 - 700
D) 700 - 800
E) Over 800”

They found that people who are good at this type of question (the correct answer is under 500) “tend to have good frontal lobe activation. Those who had wildly inaccurate estimates have very bad flexible-thinking skills.”

People who answered this question correctly tended to prefer more complex jokes, such as, ‘A scientist and a philosopher were being chased by a hungry lion. The scientist made some quick calculations, he said ‘its no good trying to outrun it, its catching up’. The philosopher kept a little ahead and replied "’I am not trying to outrun the lion, I am trying to out run you! ‘“

“’People whose answers were way off, often liked simple jokes such as, ‘What’s pink and fluffy?  Pink fluff.””  or “ ‘Which day of the week do fish hate? Fry-Day.’”

~  ~  ~   ~
* Almost all jokes, according to Wiseman’s research, seem to involve one of these four themes:
∑ 1. “Someone trying to look clever and taking a pratfall.”
∑ 2. Husbands and wives not being loving.
∑ 3. Doctors being insensitive about imminent death
∑ 4. God making a mistake”

* * A duck

* * * Of those options, people are most likely to detect lying they hear on the radio.

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.

We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced.  To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face.  What to get out a mirror now, before you read further?   Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?

You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face.  Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so.  The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.

In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion.  Look at yourself in the mirror  -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.

In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.

Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.

The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face.  The left often looks less happy than the right.  Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.

Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression.  The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.

The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.  

“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
 - Live Ullman, actress, author

Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others.   The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.

The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.  

The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain.  You express them more in the left side of your face.

We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.

The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.

Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.

How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye.  And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side.  Therefore, you are more aware of their right side.  

But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face  which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side.  You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.

“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching.  Sit facing each other.  

Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face.  Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence?  Does the left look more reserved, serious?  

The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face.  In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition.  As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.

“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
 - Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist

“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment.  Get out your driver’s license.   Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper.  Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.  

You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family.  Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.

“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself.  If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise.  

Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face.  Flop over one side of each negative.  Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.  

Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made.  Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces.  

You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.