She is here! My new niece Maxine was born last week. Her daddy delivered her in their house by himself!
Here are the photos. Notice how Maxine’s big Brother Edwin looks like he is a little in shock in the first photo as he cradles with his dad and new baby sister and in the later photo he reaches out to Maxine. It will be interesting to see how little Edwin who has been the light and life of his family shares that light with his baby sister. I will keep posting the photos and do more and in depth analysis for you.
If you have been reading my blog you know I have been talking about the power of names. I was motivated to write that post hearing my nephew and his wife planning on names for their baby. Maxine was an extremely popular name from 1900 till 1940. It comes from a Latin word meaning the greatest and is the feminine form of the name Maximilian, and first was used in France.
Remember this: Every person you come into contact with effects you…and you affect them.
I was dating someone and after a few dates he commented on how easy it was to be together, how effortless it was to talk, to cook dinner together, or hang out on the couch. We were both amazed at how quickly we felt this ease. By the third date it felt like we had been together for years. And we hadn’t even kissed!
I believe that every person you meet has the power to resonate different aspects of you out to the universe. I have this little musical instrument called a toner and when you strike it with the right thing it sounds incredible. Some people help you play beautiful music. And some people have body language and nonverbal communication and resonates ugly sounds from you.
Have you ever spent time around a friend or a sweetie and just felt serene or elated? You may be matching and mirroring them and they may be matching you so perfectly that you feel extraordinarily safe and peaceful. Look for my blog entries on the topic on this site and articles on my websites so you can make beautiful music.
Patti Wood is known as the Body Language Speaker. Learn more about how to book her for your next meeting at pattiwood.net!
I was reading in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the new trend to send Video resumes to potential employers. What a radical concept. The article discussed discrimination issues that might arise from assessing someone via video rather than a resume. Employers and recruiters were quoted to say that it was just a fad. Personally, having trained employers in assessing job candidate’s nonverbal communication and coached job candidates on their body language for interviews, I am surprised that video resumes and video conference interviews are not already standard interview fare.
You know I discuss the importance of first impressions in my programs and on this blog Recently in one of my political blog entries, I discussed research that found winning candidates could be selected by showing people a silent video clip or candidates speeches lasting a fraction of second. The winners were chosen based on nonverbal charisma factors. And think of the classic story of how in the first televised debates Kennedy won by a landslide, according to the TV viewers and Nixon one a landslide according to the radio listeners. Flash vs. Substance can be debated in that case, but it has the potential to win every time in a job assessment.
I know that videos applicants will be assessed quickly, but will employers be looking for the factors that will be needed for a particular job or just on factors that create a strong positive first impression? We love to look at confident alpha’s body language, but imagine and an office filled with Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney clones!! There are also the simple dangers of having a flashy video from and an attractive applicant beating a dry video from a plane looking candidate. Knowing all this I coach clients for their job interviews that simply being more extroverted in your interview can get you the job. What is your opinion? I know I could make a more accurate assessment of someone’s personality fit for a company and their interpersonal skills from a video.
Patti Wood is known as the Body Language Speaker. Learn more about how to book her for your next meeting at pattiwood.net!
My friend Bob and I went to the movies the other night; actually we spent a good chunk of the evening circling the parking lot of the movie theater looking for a parking space. The crowds were enormous as the new Harry Potter movie has come out. I am excited about reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7).
I love reading about Occlumency where one “rids his mind of emotion and thoughts so they don’t reveal anything about themselves to their enemies.” It is difficult to do as nonverbal communication could reveal your thoughts and emotions. Think of the famous quote, “We can not communicate.” Draco Malfoy shuts down his positive emotions, to become a death eater.
I also love to read how characters like Severus Snape shuts down his mind so successfully that Voldemort and Dumbledore who are the masters of reading others can’t tell when he is lying. That makes sense, as I teach in my Deception Detection course: if someone feels guilty or fears being found out, they’ll leak out their nervousness through nonverbal cues. Snape feels no remorse or fear so even the most skilled Legilimentes, Voldemort and Dumbledore, aren’t able to detect his lies. (for you real Potter fans I know that Volemort may be a spy so he may actually know what Snape is up to. He seemingly reads minds, but if you look at the text closely he could be reading body language. I actually think Snape is really good at reading body language. I noticed on some of the Harry Potter blogs (ok I admit I have blogged about Harry Potter) that fans think Lupin is also keenly observant and reads body language. I tell my audiences you can use your body language skills for good or evil and the Harry Potter series really exemplifies this.
Having read all the Harry Potter books I think that Legilimency is really the skill of reading body language. Note how often they are making Significant eye contact before they get their insights. Muggles call it mind reading (we know they are naive) and Harry Potter compares it to mind reading but I think what they are truly doing is reading body language. Even bad guy Snape says it isn’t that, “the mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader.” Wizards and Witches in the Harry Potter book are often skilled in Legilimency showing the reading body language is a powerful and seemingly magical ability.
Before you read the story below, draw a picture of your family dinner table growing up. Put your name by the seat where you ate and then write in the names of everyone else at the table in the places they sat…. If you ate in front of the TV, you’re that room and the other rooms were other family members, so you can see how far you were from others. Now draw communication lines to who talked to whom the most. For instance, draw a red line between you and your mom if you talked a lot at dinner, and no lines to your dad if you did not talk to him. After drawing your dinner map, shut your eyes and imagine your body language, your voice at the dinner table, and then the body language of others.
- How did you feel at the family dinner table?
- How did others treat you?
- How do act at meetings today.
- Are there any similarities?
“Hide the Vegetables Under the Mashed Potatoes or Hot Dogs Down the Toilet”
Every family has its dinner table rituals, and one of the most important nonverbal patterns that tends to develop at the family dinner table is where you sat, whom you talked to, and how that affects your future conversational behavior at meetings.
I was the baby of the family and significantly younger than my siblings. In fact my sister Robin, who is twelve years older, went off to college the same week started first grade. This obviously affected family dinners. I would be down at the end of the table playing with my food, trying to hide the broccoli under the mashed potatoes, because no self-respecting six-year old eats anything green. At the other end the rest of my family was focused on adult interaction. I didn’t exactly fit in. Oh, I tried… because after all, I did love being the center of attention. I would interrupt the conversational flow with exploits of the number of minnows in my latest catch and how high I had swung on the swing that day. I always had to fight my way into the conversation using an extra loud voice. I had more energy and enthusiasm than a high school cheerleader and facial expressions and chair dancing to rival comic Red Skelton. I would even sit on my feet so I would appear taller at the table thinking it was just a few inches of height that separated me from the fun. My antics would work in the short term. I could always get the first part of the story out. But if I went a second too long, the adults would shush me and continue on and I would be the small, silent food magician pushing potatoes around again.
Occasionally, my enthusiasm would disturb them far too much and I would be allowed to eat in the basement family room in front of the TV. I would hear the family laughing upstairs over the sounds of The Virginian or The Flintstones and would take this opportunity afforded by my absence from the table to flush down the toilet any food I didn’t particularly like. My mother always said, You eat so much better when you’re not distracted by us talking. It was lonely downstairs and I felt left out. But I felt left out at the table as well. Now here is the kicker. Years later I was required to go to grad student meetings, then faculty meetings, and then corporate meetings. Sitting around any conference room table, I felt like the little kid being ignored. I even sat on my feet! But I was silent most of the time. It took several years of speaking in front of audiences at the corporate level to get my confidence up enough to speak up in a boardroom. The patterns created at the family dinner table are very strong.