PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Be More Attractive & Charismatic | Vanessa Van Edwards

Vanessa yes this is actually the third time you've been on the show can you believe it and I mean I love our interviews so much when you reached out I was like yes let's do it again yes and one of the things we wanted to talk about was something that was different yes and one thing that has changed is that you've had a second child now I have yes CLA yes and I'm sure Sienna is a very vious 5-year-old y yeah so one of the things I want to talk about CU I actually just visited

back home to see my brother and the way he's communicating now has definitely changed he's more patient he's a better listener what are the things that you've learned I know this is your second sh but I'm sure You' get reminded about experiences oh yeah second kid is more cuz everything you thought was a fluke the first time is real really yeah because it confirms it so one thing that um I think about a lot and this is I think helpful for everyone whether you're a parent or not is um how we form our communication Styles

right so as adults we have communication Styles ways that we communicate on text or email like even down to how we use exclamation points so Sean are you an exclamation point user or no depends on the person I know one of the conversations you said we have to adjust based on who we're talking to so I do adjust sometimes but I would say mostly not mostly not I think and anyone who's watching this for highly competent folks folks who lean higher the competent scale which they have they're competent communicators it is physically painful for them

to add exclamation points like they they like it sounds like I'm yelling it's too enthusiastic whereas highly warm communicators they love an exclamation point they have an exclamation point after every sentence right they love emojis they word love words like wow yay whoop Fab okay so that even just down to our way we communicate there's different styles so we actually form our communication Styles starting around age three oh this is amazing to think about so there was research that was done incredible amount of data where they had three-year-olds come to their lab not really really

they're caregivers and they ask caregivers to rate their child's personality on a number of different traits and so the caregivers filled out this huge survey of their children everything from agreeableness to um extroversion to organization to conscientiousness all the personality traits then they followed these children for 25 years wow it's a long study it's a really long study and when they went back to these kids now adults at 2728 they had them do the same test for themselves and what they found with the results were shockingly similar the way that caregivers described them at age

three was shockingly similar to the way they described themselves at age 28 interesting so what I think about is okay if our personality are communication style is nature or nurture right three is not birth right right can we change it right if we have a communication style that isn't working for us can we change it if it's been ingrained in us from three and then second what can we learn about ourselves and also how can we help our children develop communication styles that really work for them so as I have a second I'm seeing how

different they are same parents same home same city and they are radically different and so um it's been thinking a lot about how our communication Styles grow and it's not about the lifestyle right cuz you guys are the same parrots you're treating them the same same values yes it's really just the fact that they're same bedroom like we moved my daughter out of her bedroom so that we could have the baby so same crib same chair same and still radically different now she's only eight months old but I'm already seeing the differences and so I

think you know one thing that people could think about is what forces shaped your personality so um was that genetics could be you know is the way your parents parented you um is there things along the way that shape the way that you communicate I think that those are interesting things to think about when we're talking about you know how we relate to others right right so are you adjusting based on that now that you have observed it to to treat them differently or should you like is is is that the way it should be

done for parents that are seeing such vast different personalities amongst babies yes yes with an exclamation point I like exclamation point yes I I even verbally add exclamation points that's how much I like them okay so here's my Approach especially now that I'm a parent I really think this so I was grown up I was I was grown up I was taught the Golden Rule growing up you know the Golden Rule treat others as you would like to be treated right that was what I was taught and I think that that is a fundamentally flawed

way of looking at life and so I am not parenting with the golden rule I actually don't teach the Golden Rule every one of my students knows I'm much more for the Platinum rule the Platinum rule you know plat by the way the play here is that Platinum is more precious than gold okay um and the Platinum rule is that you should treat others as they would want to be treated and I think this is a really important thing to think about is we if we are let's just take um conscientiousness right right conscientiousness is

an aspect of our personality there's five aspects of our personality you know them as ocean openness conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness neuroticism and I love talking about neuroticism if and it was always the one that I don't know about about one because that's that's the biggest difference between my kids is I have a high neurotic and a low neurotic okay yeah okay so um actually's let's do neuroticism so neuroticism is um our emotional stability high neurotics are reactive to their environment they have a lot less internal emotional stability they are worriers typically um they actually feel negative

experiences more strongly most people think neuroticism is a choice actually it is a chemical difference in how we process people who are high in neuroticism this is me We Carry long forms of a certain Gene called the serotonin transporter gene this Gene means that high neurotics produce less serotonin more slowly so what happens to a h neotic is I'm in the car my husband's a l neurotic I'm a high neotic that that pairing goes really well by the way is that is that a is that a formula it can be really helpful like opposites help

each other in a lot of ways there's strengths and weaknesses to both which we'll talk about both yeah we're in the car someone almost hits us okay we go at the same time both my husband and I our cortisol begins to flow and we're likeo that was close but as a high neurotic the serotonin which is helps calm you down it helps you feel okay um it's kind of a sense of belonging is slower so my husband immediately everything's okay his body produces serotonin and he's forgot about that little accident within a couple of minutes

me I'm still in cortisol even 20 minutes later I'm a little bit jumpy and that is because my body produces less serotonin more slowly meaning I feel negative experiences more strongly that is why worriors worry they are literally worriers because it hurts them more when something bad happens right whereas a lone neotic is like it's no big deal if something goes wrong we'll deal with it because they can recover so quickly so um there are benefits pros and cons low neurotics are emotionally stable they are very calm they can usually control their inner experience they

are great in a crisis right they are the one the rock who Gets You Through they are very levelheaded they can keep you calm they can stay calm they're the people you want next to you if something's going wrong sure High neurotics prevent crisis from happening in the first place right high neurotics are like we don't want a crisis to happen right so we're going to get all the emergency gear we're going to have plans b c d and e right so both are incredibly important you need to have both right so um knowing that

I see I have a high neurotic daughter and I believe my little is a lone neurotic already I can see this and so for my high neurotic I know that she experiences negative experiences more strongly so if I I'm a h neotic I'm going to treat her with more care in that way I'm going to tell her the plan ahead of time I'm going to tell her the backup plan whereas my little one I let her do things that I never let my my first child do CU I'm like she'll be all right sure so

I'm trying to treat them as they should be treated as opposed to how I would treat them right and that's how I approach all relationships right right and it's something that people don't really think about right I would imagine if you're not aware of that the person that has low neuroticism would be like oh this person is way too reactive like calm down c c down don't worry about it don't worry about and vice versa I'm sure the other person is like why are you so calm all the time like you're not being proactive you

a robot like do you have any emotions it's it's it's certainly a barrier yes and so this is I think something that is when we know it it frees us right so one is think about the three to five most important people in your life are they high medium or low you can be high it's a scale right so high medium or low for your high neurotics in your life a gift you can give them is knowing their worry triggers God right what triggers their worry like for me my husband knows that not having a

plan kind of triggers my worry so he really good at trying to get a plan for me right um he would never do a surprise party for me right he would know that would not make me happy yeah um so what are their worry triggers and second how do they worry are they verbalizers or are they closed I don't know closed downers shutter iners right so there are two different kinds of worry so um extroverts typically verbalize their worry they want to talk it out talk it out talk it out talk it out talk it

out talk it out and they don't want you to solve it right they verbalize it until they're like done empty then you have um High neurotics who usually introverts are they shut down they want to retreat they want to be alone they want to process they want to think they do not want to be talked to bothered touched anything they need to process before they can even begin to talk about it it is a gift to allow your worrier to worry as they naturally worry if you try to pry out um an introvert they're they

feel very violated and unsupported when all you're doing is trying to understand but they're not ready yet they might even go further down the rabbit hole of of and push you away yes whereas a high neurotic if you try to shut down their verbalizing they will not stop worrying right they they feel super unheard and so it's a gift to give them that treat them as they want to be treated um if you are a high neurotic and you have a low neurotic in your life it's very important to understand that they do not understand

how you experience that things so when they say don't worry they don't mean it in a mean way right they they really don't they really think they're trying to be helpful right right um they also are going to say things like calm down I was just going to say that I was like do not use that word do not use those two words the wor like right what is the famous phrase never in the history of calm down has calmed down every ever calmed anyone down that is the way it works so true so we

should try to avoid that but when they do say something like calm down or no worries they really are coming from a good place the last thing you want to do is react at them right they really they're lost they're like what is happening cuz they don't experience negative experiences like you do yeah and so the best thing you can do is when you're calm is try to explain your triggers to them and how you like to worry very interesting yeah okay so that's just one of the personality traits but yeah my favor for sure

I mean just the fact that you're aware of that I think is is good because I think people just judge the other person without really understanding the fact that we we're just wired differently literally physiologically differently absolutely yes and like I think that that's you know we talk a lot about accepting difference that is one of the ways we can accept difference sure right is understanding how we're wired differently um and understanding someone's personality traits and um will willing to adjust your communication style to match theirs got it got it so this is the first

thing that has changed since our last conversation it's a big change obviously yeah the second change that's happened is this rise of AI oh yes let's talk about AI yes some some really interesting stuff some really scary stuff I don't know if you've ever seen deep fake interviews that are being done one example is like Joe Rogan interviewing Steve Jobs or Sam Altman who's the founder of open Ai and I like it gets me thinking because if someone never heard of this interview or Joe Rogan you would almost think that they're actually having a real

life conversation and I don't know if you've gotten to that point where like someone has deep faked your speak You' done it yourself I did it to myself okay so this is my question is what is it that is the essence of the way humans communicate that even AI today won't really be able to replicate like what is the thing where if you heard an AI speak versus a human speak what is the difference that like no this because of this this is the real Vanessa van Edwards or the real Joe Rogan how do we

tell those apart I think think the only way right now and this could change in a couple years but right now and I created deep fakes of myself to see how it would go oh so interesting right um it did not get right not even close intonation and emphasis vocal power it was really interesting because we uploaded my audiobooks so that's you know 12 hours of me speaking we update we uploaded podcasts where I was speaking conversationally so it had dozens of hours of me speaking and it did not get the intonation right it was

my voice yeah but I'll give you an example so I have a certain kind of cadence that I speak with I'll emphasize different parts of a sentence my deep fake would emphasize the wrong things oh interesting and so at the end of a sentence it would do differently it would sound different than how I actually sound I would never talk like that but it would make it so the emphasis was so wrong that you you knew it wasn't correct and it wasn't helpful like I emphasize words based on what I think is helpful to The

Listener right so like we talk about neuroticism I emphasize neuroticism because it's a hard word I slow it down and I want you to hear it the AI doesn't know that's a hard word yeah so it's not going to add emphasis or more um eloquence to that word to help the listener understand whereas I am thinking very quickly what's the most important word in this sentence right what's the word that someone's going to be hard CH so they didn't get that right um however however I think there's a lot of opportunity um and I am

not that scared mostly because I don't think it's helpful to me but also because I think there's some things that I literally don't have time to do that AI can do for me sure for example people have asked us hey I would love to have an option on your website where um I could listen to your articles well the only way to do that before was having like a really awful AI voice be like confidence strategies Chang so now we can turn on my voice so people can listen listen to something kind of like me

for the articles could never have time to read all 700 articles on my website but at least my voice can kind of do it it's better than having a random AI voice do it sure sure um I also think that people aren't thinking about AI in terms of communication and relationships so I'm working on a LinkedIn learning course right now on AI for communication oh how did that work so we're drafting it right now I'm really excited about it because most people think of AI in terms of like productivity you know getting things done being

more efficient but I'm like oh no no AI has it's the shortcut into more Charisma so right now if you want to write a charismatic email for example it's hard right you have to think um you know I the definition of Charisma from the research is a combination of high warmth and high competence most of our emails that we write nowadays are very sterile they lack no warmth and no confidence because we're in a rush we write a thousand emails days and it's hard to write warmth and confident emails so first we have to make

our emails not sterile that's hard then we have have to make them the perfect balance of warm and competent warm is words that Inspire connection happy best both collaborate connect um emojis exclamation points words like Yay way yay fab right competent is um words that make you want to get things done power efficient brainstorm um lead streamline effic efficient uh numbers graphs charts percents dollar signs those are all competent right so trying to sift through all the words and replace them and not make it too Longo that has a lot of brain power now you

are already charismatic so you have to work to get yourself into this email who's got time for that sure and most people are one or the other right if they don't they are actively thinking about it most of us have an imbalance so a highly warm person really struggles to add competence that feels authentic and a highly competent person really struggles to add warmth that feels authentic well now that we have ai you can write a Bare Bones email and you can tell it if you know what to tell it hey can you make this

both warm friendly and likable as well as competent powerful and efficient and within 10 seconds you have a very charismatic draft for you to edit that is efficient Charisma sure and so I think there's so much wonderful potential there in terms of using it to communicate better so when you're spitting that out into the AI model what break that down so assuming most people are having inperson conversations yes and they can't use AI to have these conversations just yet yes you never know what's going to happen what is actually happening that allows you to have

that warmth of communication but also show competence in an in-person conversation well first of all a lot of my students you I'll I ask them to write first because it trains you so whether you do that with AI or not it's helpful to actually practice with writing first because it's very hard to do it in person so like I think of it as like a practice step ladder the hardest is in person that's the last way I want you to practice because when you're there is so many inputs happening right now that we're in person

we're making eye contact I'm looking at your nodding your posture your hand gestures I'm thinking about my posture my hand gestures I'm also very aware that there's cameras around it's a lot so to add warmth and confidence on top is too hard so okay don't practice in person then it's the phone no actually then is video video like is a little bit smaller than phone then chat then text then emails so I actually would like you people to start actually in those steps it does train you to use those words so in person if we

were to skip all the way to the top there are four ways that we send warmth and competence our words that's one way our body language gestures posture facial expressions our voice our vocal power our Cadence our volume our tone and our ornaments the clothes we wear what's in our background our earrings your glasses your watch what you're drinking what you're holding in a profile picture what's behind you in a profile picture ornaments yeah so you have a lot of options four channels that you can choose to play with because you can add warmth and

competence to any of them right so my goal is like okay I want you to be authentically warm and competent I don't want you to do something that doesn't feel natural to you which channel do you like the best which which one feels the most comfortable to you and then I'm going to give you there are 96 cu's you can play with like a recipe 96 96 crazy they're 96 now I I tried to create an encyclopedia of all the cues and they're probably more than 96 but I was able to kind of group them

like for example head Behavior just head Behavior alone there's probably 10 to 12 so there's up and down nodding there's horizontal nodding there's the side nodding right there's a head tilt there's um uhuh like vast nodding like so even just in that so I try to bucket them but you have 96 cues at your disposal to play with and so you can choose which of those channels you want to optimize first okay I have so many questions just from that context right so one of the difficult things that at least I have when I enter

like an inperson conversation particularly in group settings right I would say I think you're an Ambert right I'm an Ambert I'm similar as well and I do need to recharge when I'm in these in-person conversations and when I'm out of practice ractice right maybe I've been focused heads down you know maybe some of us have had a baby and they haven't had that experience of like getting at the rust of speaking and I review the 96 Q's MH but for me I always seem to be in my head totally during the conversations to know where

my hands should be to know what my tone of voice should be to know what questions I should ask and I often find myself not being present sometimes because of these things that I have to think about yes is there any things that you can do before maybe you go into a group setting that can help you get maybe a little bit less social anxiety or just help you kind of maybe even during the moment to help you actually have these conversations in a more natural way and be more present yes so um there's a

couple answers to this I'll give all of them so the first one is your Chemistry so there is a lot of research to show that if we are in a fear mode that is very contagious it's almost impossible to be charismatic when you're feeling afraid or anxious and that's a big statement I know but um it comes from a study so uh they wanted to study how fear Works socially right so they brought people into their lab they split them up into two different groups the first group they wore sweat pads they're horrible sweatsuits that

catch your sweat yeah um under your armpits and they had them run on the truck chmill sweaty exercise Sweat Right the second group they had them wear sweat pads and Skydive for the first time so fear induced sweat they took these sweat pads and they had unsuspecting participants the participants had no idea what they were smelling smell these sweat pads now they had no idea what they know they didn't even know they was sweat yeah but they put them in an fmri machine and they gave them to smell these sweat pads gross right um people

who smelled the fear sweat pads their own fear part of their amydala lit up so somehow their brain could smell that fear sweat and they began to feel afraid interesting and so this is the first of many studies they just beginning to look at the cues that we don't even know we're sending through our pheromones maybe through our sweat I mean you know right or even like down to cues we can't control our blink rate you know blink rate is a you I didn't talk about it in my book because you can't control it right

but higher blink rate is associated with more nervousness I'm blinking right now you're blinking more I know the moment so I like I it was in my book and my edit and I were talking about it I was like you know what I'm going to take it out because the moment someone thinks that their blink rate they start blinking more I know it's horrible it's like once you see someone yawn right like exactly it's a really weird thing so there's all all these cues that we don't even can even control okay so one is before

you even show up I think it's really important to work on your Chemistry that's twofold do not go to events that make you really anxious or nervous I I am a big believer in that if there's someone that you're dreading seeing don't see them cut them out of your life sure right like I don't go so for example I was just at a big conference we were talking about it I did not go to the welcome party the welcome party is not for me y me neither the Amber verts I I cannot do it loud

really big spaces with like lots of wandering around not for me I did not go to the closing party I love the workshops I love the books talks I love sitting in the audience listening I love like the sidebar conversations so I know I say know that about yourself like don't put yourself in those situations because it's really hard to be charismatic second if you have to go into one of those conversations or you're a little bit nervous I do think that laughter is sort of like the secret key to unlocking and changing your Chemistry

it releases all kinds of endorphins it makes you feel happier and so I have a laughter playlist that I watch on YouTube which is like a ton of funny videos that's what I'm doing when I'm putting on makeup that's when I'm doing like before I walk into a room I'll call a funny friend I listen to funny podcasts like I think laughter like it immediately snaps you out of it right that's that um the second thing so we talked about the question was about going into an event that makes you a little bit nervous and

if you can try to have a wingman wingman or Wing wingman always helps yeah very interesting one of the cues that we we didn't talk about you know we talked a lot about like the different ornaments and the physical Natures but one thing that I was curious about is smell and smell as we just brought up is the only thing that you can actually go through when you're in an inperson experience where you're job interview or a date or an interview like this so talk to me a bit about smell between different genders as well

and what are kind of what's like a safe smell that you can use for any different scenarios that yeah just allows you to be there's so much research being done on this which is really exciting so there's like the pheromone side of things and the synthetic side of things so your natural scent versus scents you can add so one is there is somehow a scent to fear right like that's why getting your Chemistry right is the most sexy thing you can do like confidence I think has a smell in its own way that's why I

said like laughter I think is the fastest way so that's one thing the second thing is in terms of Attraction um they've done a lot of research in this where they take um like people's worn shirts and they have coup's smell shirts I've heard about this you know um and they you actually go to speed dating events that are based on smell I think it's called smell dating actually um and they are very effective uh we can tell a lot about someone by if our smells match up and so you're talking about the natural formance

natural no no they literally people had to wear I think these shirts for two days no deodorant no soap no lotions and they put them in Ziploc bags and then you smell and you pick your partner that you want to go on another little speed date with M yes and by the way this is like so weird one of the studies I read I forget which one it was they added in siblings shirts and people thought their siblings were disgusting no way yeah like they raided people and like across the board people anyone they didn't

know was their sibling scent they they rated that one as like the lowest most unattractive scent so like there's something yeah oh yeah yeah like they're there's a lot of reach this it's so interesting so um your natural sent I actually think um is the most important um I think it does it can attract the right person now do I want you to come in like sweaty from the gym no but do I love dating at the gym yes do I highly recommend trying to date in scenarios where your scent will be more prominent yeah

like go on like Meetup hike hike meetups like go to the beach you know meet someone at the pool like meet someone at the gym go to dance classes like yeah like there's something to that like if you're looking for your partner that's kind of what people talk about maybe like around Vibe like I just can't explain it but I just feel so comfortable around this person physically yes okay the other really weird thing is this is like the weirdest you're going to be like what okay so there was a study so researchers know that

smell is really powerful so much so that there was a hypothesis which proved to be true that we really like to smell people but it's socially unacceptable to smell each other right um they think it's one of the reasons why we get so close to handshake is like that we get into smelling distance it's why a lot of cultures hug or cheek kiss is cuz even bowing like we're getting closer to their scent right when you bow you're actually getting closer to where their neck is exposed okay so their hypothesis was that if you handshake

with someone in the next 10 seconds you will touch your own nose CU you're trying to smell their hand you mean like so like we shake hands shake hands your nose will start itch in like the next 10 seconds or you'll really want to touch your face H like I do I want to touch my nose very bad right right do you I mean I'm like actively think I'm trying not to actively think about it just for the sake of it but so like they they're what they studied is that your nose like kind of

tingles yeah because it wants you to bring your hand to your nose so you can kind of smell it guess weird naturally you're just bringing it back right but like wa watch so like this is the this is the weirdest thing I've ever said on YouTube but like go to a networking event or a business event and just watch you will see that people will shake hands and within like 10 to 15 seconds they inexplicably touch their nose or their face right something around it you're saying something around it cuz their hypothesis is it's our

way of like very subtly being like are we good like do we have like chemical match and now that I'm aware of it it drives me crazy CU I don't want to touch my nose right right one thing I do is I when I'm at a networking event let's say like I have an instinct of grabbing my drink cuz maybe I don't want an just actively touch my nose this is pretty much touching my nose right 100% yeah that is a for sure thing or like touch your glasses yes I really want to itch my

nose right now like it actively itches interesting it wasn't itching before and it do you think that's just for even oh this is not dating this is like this is anyone any yeah this is any because their hypothesis in the study is that as humans we're looking for just chemical matchups and also we want to see are you afraid right like from a caveman perspective wouldn't you want to know if someone was with you if they were afraid that would tell you something right and so there's a lot more research to be done in this

area but um so natural smell is something and then the last thing is synthetic smell so they just study this I just put it on my YouTube channel the most popular scent in the world on humans so like not just like in a room is vanilla so for for women and men I I've never smelled a man who smelled like vanilla but I wear vanilla perfume because of that study well and you weren't wearing that before no because I I I this is a study I've known about I wear I've been wearing it forever because

of that study and that's just a neutral thing that allows you to have like trust like ability all of these combined or what's the deal there they think um that food related scents make us happy because food we like food we like it makes us feel safe and vanilla is a food related scent right like it is and so um maybe there's something to that I think there is something to that like you know real LS will often bake cookies in the oven before they show a house because they're something about walking into a house

and smelling freshly baked cookies that makes you feel at home sure right um and so I think it works like I've done all kinds of very casual experiments with food related sense um I did a ridiculous experiment back in my early days where I read a study that people like men especially like yeah food related Sense on women and this is when I was single I'm married now but um I thought this was like a hilarious stud and so I took I popped popcorn in the microwave and then I opened the bags and I rubbed

The Buttery inside of the bag all over my arms and my neck and then you went to the gym no then I went to a fra party and like like I was like dancing with the guy and he was like dang you smell good and I was like wow it is flat out butter popcorn that he smells but he actually commented on it I didn't do it again cuz it really is greasy and it makes you break out but um it did work like literally the guy was like dang you smell good and I was

like it is literally popcorn but that's so fascinating and you think it'll work for women as well or do you think it'll it's more for men I don't think a woman would be like into a guy that smell like a movie theater right right I think it only goes only men would be full [ __ ] I think but like I would be so open to someone running that experiment like you know go out smell like some popcorn and just like see what happens wow okay yeah this is why I so interested like smell is

is not something people really think about so much right we think more on a visual sense um but this really aligns around the topic around trust right kind of building that trust when you first meet someone maybe it's not just around smell but what are some things that we can do maybe we haven't met this person before or maybe we are trying to sell something to someone or negotiate and we just want to build that trust but there's not a lot of time right because I think people can do that through Emil you time you

don't need time talk to me trust is built almost immediately like in the first few seconds and so um actually less time is sometimes easier um because our Instinct so the research is very clear on this that we make our first impression within the first few seconds of seeing someone it's solidified as we start to talk to them but it's very very quickly that's cuz our brain wants to take shortcuts and and it's also in the first few seconds it's hard to lie to someone and so we're trying to like look and see like size

someone up very very quickly so it's good news I think it means you only have to worry about the first few seconds really and if you're showing up authentically and you're not going to an event that you don't like it's easier to show those trust signals um the way that I like to think about it is you want to show that you were on the same page as someone physically on the same page as some yes and so we like people who are engaged fully with us and aligned with us so that's what I think

about as like alignment so that goes all the way from our toes to our head so you'll notice like we are angling towards each other it would be hard if I were sitting like this and talking like this to you oh yeah I've had interviews like that it feels weird right yeah I just feel like there's something about go here you know just line there is something about it and I actually not only disengages you to me it also disengages me to you so um physically aligning so as you're talking to someone seated or standing

video or not like I drives me crazy when I see people on video with their video camera here and they're typing here and they're like uhhuh uhhuh right like I I love that like this camera is right here like I can align with everyone watching say like I respect you I hope you don't use a lot from like you know all the way over there um so physical alignment toes torso head toes torso head it's called fronting right so angling we're on the same railroad tracks that's the very first thing and trying you'd be surprised

how often we do it accidentally where people will pull back you think you do this but you'd be shocked at how often people pull their shoulder back it's all blading is that because they're not comfortable or they want to get out of the situation not comfortable um don't want to seem too eager ah you know there's that sort of thing of like hey what's up how are you a lot right more than girls okay yeah um and so you'd be surprised how often you will catch yourself blading pulling your shoulder back or or even like

you know leaning back and angling away so angling forward um eye contact is the next kind of alignment right like we want to make eye contact it doesn't have to be 100% right so 100% eye contact is actually an invasive cue right like if someone's like staring you down it's like very weird right so it's 60 to 70% eye contact okay right so as you're meeting oh it's so good to see you it's okay to look away it's okay to be like oh my gosh this is such a a great place sure sure 60 to

70% eye contact produces oxytocin which makes us want to connect and bond um and then the next smiling if you feel authentic I never want someone to be like smiling when they don't feel like smiling that's actually a bad cue so how do you know if someone is having an inauthentic so a fake smile doesn't reach all the way up into the upper cheek muscles so these upper cheek muscles they pull up your smile so if I like I can smile like this there's no activation here right this a toal uncomfortable by the way right

now right it makes everyone uncomfortable I'm like hey good to see you yeah right like that is also a pet peeve if someone walks into a room or hops some call hey yeah good to see you it feels bad I would rather you say hey it's nice to see you right I would much rather you take away that smile so if you feel like smiling great that's an alignment cue if you don't do not fake it till you make it sure in that area um you know someone is actually happy to see you when it

reaches all the way up into that upper right theyig theow feet um only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles so when you see them activated you almost always know that it's real okay it's hard to fake that right right um You can do it with practice like I can do it because I practiced it enough but um it took me like a year yeah and you're an expert so most people you you'll know this is the sign okay um and the next one if you're able to do it is like vocal alignment

and this is like Advanced right this is like very Advanced so this is for my people who really want to dial in their communication so vocal alignment is when you try to match and mirror the voice that you hear not mimic them but I'll give you an example so have you ever seen two girls greet each other where they go oh my God it's so good to see you hi yeah what they're actually doing is vocal alignment they're they're actually showing I love you so much we're meeting in the same wo waveling okay but so

it's not fake you're saying no when you see this is humans do this right we do this so um I believe I believe there was that looked at Larry King interviews I forget exactly what it was but they found that people match the vocal tone Cadence pitch of the most powerful person in the room got it so we are already all already doing this um but I like to bring awareness to it um because it's a way that if you're nervous as as you can miss it right like you're so wrapped up in your own

nervousness that you're like a lot of the times people will hold their breath on their first words they'll go hey good to see you right right right right and theyve like thrown away that that word so like I like you have a much more like calm energy right so like when I'm talking to you I'm I bring my vocal tone down I speak a little bit more calmly when I was talking to my girlfriends I talk much faster much more oh very much so if you will watch an interview with Lisa billu So Lisa B

is one of my girlfriends I love her at impact Theory you'll notice I talk differently it is different then I I I I match up cuz she's like she's up here she's talking like this she's hug hand gester she's like hey girl I'm so excited to have you here and I am too right right so like I'm trying to respect you by like matching where you where you're at um because it's your home it's your interview right so I want to match where you're at and so that's a very Advanced way that you can do

that got it now the reverse when you're trying to see if someone is trying to let's say manipulate you or if someone is lying to you I'm more certainly more on the other side where like I'm I am try to be more aware of that but some people are just they're not they're not there right they just kind of miss all these different signals totally so what are some of the simple ones that you can look out for that okay like this is a pretty obvious signal that someone's like it's a signal of like I

shouldn't trust this person is that what we're looking for yeah more like red flags around that right so when we're looking for I shouldn't trust this person what you're looking for is mismatches so when someone is congruent their words match their tone match their body like it's all in alignment you're like yes when you see mismatches that's when they're like what like what's happening so this can happen in a lot of different ways so the very most obvious way is facial expressions to words so if someone says I'm so happy to be here yeah and

they look so unhappy mismatch right so okay in that sense I wouldn't think that they're a con man but but I would think oh they're having a hard day and they're trying for me you know right like I was like okay I'm going to try to make it easy on them cuz they're not having a good time right so someone saying they're happy and not being happy is the first big one the other one that I look out for a lot is contempt so contempt is a one-sided mouth raise so one y um we tend

to think of it as like a smirk kind of partial happiness but actually it's like quite a negative micro expression it means like disdain or superiority so people often do it when they're like right yeah yeah I you mentioned this in the last one where you were able to predict like a crazy amount of chances that they would be divorced just from that one expression John gotman can predict with 93.6% accuracy if a couple will get divorced by looking for contempt that's wild so that's a mismatch someone saying um yes I love her right like

that is that's that's a mismatch I would want to dig deeper on that usually doesn't happen in that obvious of a way usually it's like you're in a meeting and you share an idea and someone goes yeah you got to pay attention right to to see that's when I'm like like that idea did not resonate then that doesn't mean the idea is bad it means maybe I have to explain it a different way maybe they have a question maybe they have self-hate like you don't always know why the contempt is there but it's a mismatch

of this should be a creative brainstorm session and for some reason you're showing disdain superiority disrespect so contempt is a mismatch I like to look for more subtle ones are um mismatches in hand gestures or mismatches in body language gestures so for example if um in this culture in American culture Western cultures this means yes up and down nod means yes a horizontal nod means no it's different in India Pakistan and Bulgaria right India is is this is yes could be either um so in Western cultures um so if someone says you know um yeah

I I really like her and they're shaking their head no that's a little bit of an odd mismatch right like do that though like without they just don't think about it right but it just all the time because someone's like so you say hey what do you think of the new girl well yeah yeah she's great right cuz they're like what do I say what do I say what do I say what do I say what do I say right now you have to be careful because some people use body language gestures as what are

called punctuates punctuates like um there's uh there's a famous interview I forget who it is either like Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon where they do this all the time like they're constantly shaking their head no so them that's just how they emphasize their words that wouldn't but if someone all of a sudden is like you know she's great right she's great right with like a lip purse which is like a withholding gesture that's like a mismatch right like that something's not right there or um Liars are very bad with matching their hand gestures to their

words in our uh lab we studied Liars I love I'm fascinated by by deceivers um because I think it's so interesting what happens to our body in guilt which is a little bit different than fear so Liars have a really hard time with tense so um if something true happened in the past I use past tense oh what did you what did you do on the night of the incident well I went to my girlfriend's house I we watched a movie we brushed our teeth we had a little snack we went to bed all passed

a liar didn't really happen and they rehearsed parts of it and so they'll mess up their tenses what happened the night of the incident I went over to my girlfriend's house and we're watching a movie and and we realize we realize we have to brush our teeth so I brush my teeth like the tenses are not right because he's actively thinking about and and they're rehearsing and like in their mind it's present interesting right so they mess up tenses they also mess up gestures so for example it's really hard to lie with our gestures so

if I were to say um okay let's do a little experiment so will you please um hold up the number three but say four four horrible right yeah four just try it four yeah my also just went that way for a little bit I don't know if you saw so that would probably be like that's you're working really hard yeah it's really hard to do that so if I say I have a big idea very hard like my brain does not like it and so Liars their gestures are often true H so like you'll see

like leaks in um mismatches in their gestures or no hand gestures at all yeah that's you often see like they'll like grip their hands because they don't want to give themselves away and the more you know this person and the patterns of how they respond or act the the easier that it is to be able to tell that right yes so like in chapter six I talk about how to spot a bad guy right like how to SP a bad guy or bad girl whatever um which is knowing understanding their patterns their baselines and also

understanding your own patterns and baselines so this is not just for others like I think it's a fundamental life skill that everyone should know what they do when they lie not to be better Liars but to catch yourself when you feel like you're lying like there like I know what my tells are right and so in the book very easy I can go through the exercise um you turn on your video camera you share what you had for breakfast yesterday tell me your most embarrassing story make up an embarrassing story and try to convince me

it's true okay so that's what you record um that's how you recall what you had for breakfast yesterday what you whatever you're doing when you recall looking up to the left uh touching your face that's your recall truth behaviors your most embarrassing story are your recall nervous behaviors what you do when you're recalling something that made you feel really nervous to differentiate nervousness and guilt yeah and then your em fake embarrassing story is what you do when you're pretending got it God that's a very quick exercise um that helps you identify I know what my

tells are like I know what I do when I lie what what are your tells I'm not going to tell you are you crazy that is private information don't tell anyone your tell that don't tell you're but you know what's most helpful is when I catch myself in self ception like I have been with people and they'll ask me questions and I'm like oh my gosh I am lying like it I it's been so helpful to me cuz I catch myself when I'm lying to myself about super interesting and so like that's why I think

it's a really helpful skill is like I think we actually lie to ourselves far more than we lie to anyone else for sure for sure and the inner voice in our heads right yeah and it could be even limiting beliefs I would imagine people that tell themselves that they should not earn certain money or deserve this kind of person we don't even realize it and maybe there are gestures that we can be more aware of to tell that you'll see like you'll you'll do your guilt gestures when talking about certain things about yourself or there

are certain people that you notice you use a lot of those tells with that person and you're like I was like why and I realize like they kind of make me lie a little bit like it's downplay yeah or I know certain things about them that I'm afraid to say and so I'm enabling bad behavior because you don't think they'll be happy for you or no no like I have um someone who has their own toxic patterns this is the person who I realize it with and I was enabling that bad behavior by not saying

anything right so like if you have a toxic person in your life or a difficult person you can tiptoe around the issues the elephants in the room yeah and I realized like I was doing it a lot around them where I was like trying to be like extra careful because I was worried that if I said something I'd offend them ah God I don't want to tell them the truth and that I was like I don't want this relationship it was a really like amazing moment personally cuz I was like whoa yeah why am I

dancing around truth around this person like it's not serving me it is making me nervous it is making me lie I pride myself in not being a liar and so it made me really set back from that relationship cuz I was like I don't want to do this around them and I didn't realize how often I was dancing around things that's so fascinating so all of these gestures that we're just not even realizing it can not only help us to see if someone is perhaps lying or not being truthful but we can also realize who

are the people in our lives that we doing this to ourselves too yeah and it's not just gestures by the way a lot of it can be vocal so for example one of the most common um lying red flags that which this is one of mine and I actually worked on it a lot because I also do it when I'm nervous um so is the question and flection used on a statement so the question and flection is when you go up at the end of your sentence like you're asking a question like every Canadian but

it's actually a statement yes new zealanders and Canadians do this and I think that's actually one of the reasons so there's research on this why we sometimes research this is not my opinion research when we look at cultures cultures that use the question reflection are typically seen as less competent I think it's because they're literally their accent is questioning that's so true Canadians are too nice right exactly and so like sometimes Canadians will question their own name my name is Vanessa yeah right which is an immediate like dip in confidence so um vocal tone is

a huge CU it's not just gestures so for example people will often ask the lie so one of the things we did in our lab is we had people record two truths and a lie okay for us so that's a very fun game you deliver two truths and One Lie and we try to guess which is the lie and people often ask their lie so they would say for me um can you guess which one is a lie I live in Austin Texas I love dogs I love cilantro right okay so I made that obvious

for you but people will often ask it because they're asking do you believe me so it's not just gestures it's it's vocal tone it's Cadence changes tense changes yeah wow and someone that's like at advanced level they'll know that the other person is thinking that and yeah you got to use those Powers too to good use guys Ian look like I have a whole section of the book of like use these powers for good not evil right because they they can be used for evil they can people do I mean you know how we wield

our influence is the choice we have to make and so I had a real difficult kind of like a existential crisis writing my last book because I was worried I was like what if people use this Dem manipulative and the truth is they could um and so I try to give as many positive examples as possible I also think that people who use cu's in a manip inative way with bad intention they will eventually be caught yeah we cannot control our scent we cannot control every CU we cannot control our blink rate we cannot control

our pup pupil dilation we cannot control nasal Wing flare we cannot control a lot of cues and so I think that um Bad actors will eventually be caught because if you have bad intention that's all we're looking for is do you have good intention towards me and so it only lasts for so long for sure at least I tell myself as I was writing the book I was like well the I would imagine the far majority of the work that you're putting out would allow people to tell more easily those people that are being more

manipulative or using it in a negative light so I 100% think that's the case um final kind of Point around this idea of feeling guilty or feeling certain ways when we're with others yeah one thing that I suffer with I don't know if this is something for you but not so much anymore but I know a lot of people are going through this which is imposter syndrome yeah whether they achieve a certain amount of success or maybe they're not and they're still not thinking that they're worthy of it or having these limiting beliefs around it

um what are some ways that we can improve our selft talk right not the way we communicate with others but ourselves to help us feel more comfortable with you know being interesting right around others and not being too humble or too down on ourselves where we don't even get the attention that we deserve for the work that we're doing mhm um well first of all I think that if you feel impostor syndrome it means you're doing something right and what I mean by that is people who are doing big things who are pushing their boundaries

who are stepping outside of their comfort zone almost always feel imposture syndrome so I would say one it means you're probably pushing yourself right like you wouldn't feel impost synd if you were in a safe place right and so that means like maybe you're reaching good right like maybe you're upleveling great maybe you're out of your comfort zone okay fun things happen outside of our comfort zone so that's the first reframe is like at least you're feeling something that is challenging like at least you're not so safe and hiding I think some sometimes the opposite

of feeling imposture wom could be hiding of course another opposite is confidence which I would prefer but I think it means like you're doing something big and good right it's like I think that's a good thing so that should be commended so if you feel it it means all right like learning is around the corner like that's a good thing and so that's the first reframe is like it it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong okay I think a lot of people feel like oh my God I feeling posture syndrome I'm wrong I'm doing something

wrong I'm not in the right place no it means you're doing something right that's the first thing the second thing is the only way I have a lot of impost and a lot of awkwardness I call myself a recovering awkward person the only way I'm able to get out of that like out of my head out of feeling that way especially in interactions or even like doing interviews or YouTube videos is this this study this is a study that changed my life okay okay let dig in so I think impost syndrome comes from when we're

trying to impress people we're trying to be smart we're trying to be um likable we're trying to be funny right it happens when we're trying to be something and have people think a certain way about us successful smart impressive that is a lot of pressure it's almost impossible to not feel that way when we're trying to have someone think that we're amazing right such like we don't feel amazing it's too much pressure so's a different Paradigm to think about so this is a research study that looked at popular kids okay like high school or oh

yeah the original connectors right so they studied thousands of high school students across a variety of high schools and they wanted to look for patterns of popularity why were certain kids popular in these schools and in grades in each grade in each school and they had hypothesis they thought well maybe they're the smartest do they have the highest GPA maybe they're most the most athletic they're quarterback or whatever right cheer head cheerleader are they the most most athletic are they the funniest are they the tallest are they the richest they looked at all these things

that we often think of for being likable popular impressive successful um none of those were patterns those no there there were kids who were popular because they're athletic but that was not the pattern for all the kids there was one single big pattern for all the popular kids across all the school funny nope and and wouldn't it be horrible if it was funny how much pressure you have to know you have to be funny at all times right thank goodness no yes okay um did we say looks not looks that was a big hypothesis not

looks what I thought it would be okay those were my and there were popular kids that were attractive but that wasn't not every popular kid was attractive I don't know I mean I was not popular so this is definely not I'm not like what am I no I'm having to guess very far away from I was say why do you think I read this study like breath I was like what is change your lives I was like yeah would I wish I read this in high school actually I didn't wasn't out then no I feel

so the pattern was the popular kids had the longest list of other kids that they liked that one of the things they asked every kid was list all the kids in your school that you like and the popular kids had the longest list in other words they were not going around being the funniest the smartest the most impressive all they were doing was thinking of all the ways they could like people more Super interesting how to win friends that influence people basically the funny thing is like he never put it quite that sustin Dale Carnegie

like he never said like forget being impressive in fact that that was not the mess of his book he often said like tell stories be impressive and this is hard like some D Carnegie's advice is hard it's pretty hard yeah right or like be interested that's part of it but it's literally just trying to like the person you're with that's it forget about impressing them forget about being funny forget about mentioning all your cool things no it's literally just how can I like you more that that is actually the key to likability and so I

think that that is the only way I was able to get out of my impost synd room is it took all the pressure off of having to be great that's so interesting we all just want to be loved yeah at the end of the day to loved I like you yeah that phrase that feeling is the most powerful feeling in the world if you share I like you with someone else you give them permission to be themselves you are saying I like you just as you are you are worthy and you are valued that is

the greatest gift you can give someone that's all we want interaction the other person does not want to hear how amazing you are maybe they want to laugh but like that's not why they're there all they want to do is do you like me do you like me do you like me do you like me do you like me do you like me and so the sooner can find a reason to like them and share that you like them the more likable you are right and it's so funny cuz you would always think that the

more successful someone is or the more money someone has sometimes it's even the extreme case like those people need way more validation and when I think about like how do you surround yourself with people that are way more successful than you is like it is kind of De advice right you just make them feel her you make them feel important and find authentic reasons to like them like think about the people you like most they're often like not the richest or the prettiest or the funniest you just genuinely like them for who they are there's

a reason for that right like so I think that that impostor is like forget trying to even show someone you're great or be great it's it just takes that whole Paradigm and throws it out the window that's so interesting get out of your head and more more into your heart at the end of the day wow well I think that's a powerful way Vanessa to to close us off in a warm way but also like you research and studies I just want to ask when is the next book coming out cuz we're all waiting at

this point I know I know so I just had a baby so um I think so I think of my work as I have a research year a writing year and a launch year that's typically how I think of it so right now I'm in research year so um I'm researching and so my next book is going to be you know I have cu's Captivate it will be another CW word okay it will be any hints or any any n be another CW you can get if you want well we'll have to do around four

so I'm researching right now um kind of my big idea for the book it requires some research and so um yes I'm researching so maybe two years maybe three two years some of you might be listening to this when it's out right never no so yes whatever it might be go check check it out yeah and where else can people find you online so um my books are on Audible if you like listening I read keys and Captivate I had so much fun with the vocal power on those books yeah yeah it's not AI red

it's it's no it's me it's legit me real person promise yes so it's really me painfully recorded over many many days uh and also my book are on Amazon and then of course science people.com is where we have all of our free trainings so I have like a bunch of audio trainings and video trainings on likeability I also have one on how to deal with difficult people if that like part piece of today resonated with you we didn't get to dive into it um that's that's what I'm thinking about a lot these days beautiful all

right round three complete thanks so much for checking out guys bye check out love to dig into the book Vanessa obviously as you just mentioned 2017 was the last book uh that came out and you were already working on cap to Bay so right now we're almost nearing well let's say 2022 and been five years right so like obviously you had to toddler and everything but like talk to me about the process of now coming in with this new book yeah so I it's funny because Hughes actually started with a very specific accident which is

I was in 2006 2007 there was a lot happening in the news it was very exciting at the time so uh Britney Spears went on Dat line because she was uh kind of going crazy Lance Armstrong was lying on television Amanda Knox was like about to happen and in that time period I started this little folder on my computer called curious cues now little did I know that that that would turn turn into something later where every time I saw a queue that I was like that's odd or that's interesting or why did they do

that I would take a screenshot or a snapshot or a screen flow or a note and I put it in that folder and the same thing for anytime I saw um someone do something really charismatic someone said something did something gave me a look where I was like I was like hit by their Charisma and that could be a a character or a person I would put it in this folder you know over the years I was putting stuff in there and it wasn't until after Captivate where people said so what are you going to

work on next you know Captivate blew my mind I couldn't believe how how well it did I it shocked me it it truly I was like you know because I'm a recovering awkward person you know and so I wrote it for other awkward people and I'm just I was so amazed there were so many other awkward people right because awkward people don't out loud talk about how awkward they are right no one like me I'm awkward yeah but actually the book in a weird way it allowed awkward people like people now will come up to

me in the street and say I'm a recovering awkward person and we hug and I'm like yay for awkward people so that book that book sort of surprised me and so the next question I got was you know what are you working on and so I Revisited that folder because it was it was getting really full it was getting really big and I was like I wonder if there's any patterns so for fun because why not I love I love a good spreadsheet I just love a good spreadsheet I started to categorize all the good

the bad the emotion cues and I started to notice a lot of the same patterns like a very very simple one so I love watching the show Shark Tank have you ever seen that show love it yes Shark Tank Dragons Den some parts of the world where a panel of sharks or investors listen to entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and they invest their own money I've watched the show for years and there's so many cues in that show and so I had asked my team to code my research partner and I Jose paa coded 495 Shark

Tank pitches wow 4 you must be a professional investor by now I mean I mean right right and and he was looking for cues he was looking I was like there is something here there is some patterns with why all these ideas are are pretty good right everyone who gets to Shark Tank no one's you know has a horrible horrible idea they're all pretty good why is it that some you know like right away oh this is going to be good and all the sharks are like throwing their money and others all the sharks are

I'm out I'm out I'm out so he's he started to categorize the cues I had some hunches so we were looking at everything from hand gestures to First Impressions to eye contact to verbal like verbal things like we noticed a couple things right away so one we noticed that umh Kevin Steeples have you ever seen the steeple gesture Right Touch his fingers together and um he he often holds this pose but when he's really like thinking very carefully and doing math in his head he's a Tapper how kind of how kind of tap and we

started noticing all these other cues and so I was like there is something here and so that was the the birth of the idea for cues was is there a system to the tiny signals that we send to each other we usually think about cues in terms of decoding like spotting uh looking for hidden emotions with facial expressions but we don't as much think of them for encoding encoding is the side of people don't talk about which is the signals we send to others and so I wondered could I create a catalog a system of

the 96 cu's that we send back and forth and could we learn them in a way that we can control them so that is the that is the Genesis of the next the it was all Shark Tank well did do you know any of the people from Shark Tank we actually had Matt Higgins on who's like a guest Shark Tank on on the show yes yes I actually um I got to meet um one of the pitchers and she got offered a deal and so I was able to talk to her sort of in- depth

about what happens because remember that we're only seeing a very shortened version of the pitch which almost in a way more helpful and she actually said that um they don't let you practice very much so what you're seeing on there is is very real like they don't let you do retakes so that made me feel even better about sort of the cues that we're seeing and that they don't they don't let them do retakes or practice takes or anything so what we're seeing is a shorten version but still a lot and and they pull out

the juiciest ones of course course I think there's a lot to learn from that because I think most people who are my my recovering awkward people or even my my folks who are brilliant strategic creative but can't get by on their ideas they feel underestimated they feel stuck they feel like they're overlooked for opportunities I think it has very little to do with their book smart their technical smarts the actual content of their ideas which is proven by Shark Tank it actually has to do with the cues they're using to share those ideas and if

we can just fix those cues we overlooked less I think we're um our potential is hit more now I know some people probably are probably thinking like what is a q specifically I think you touched on it a little bit tiny signals and you know maybe some people think about it as like a just like a physical action but there's obviously other cues categories so I'd love to kind of get an overview about that thank you Sean that's why you're such a good interviewer I'm talking about cues and I haven't even defined them oh yeah

let's go to it okay so a q is a subtle but Power F signal that humans send to each other and they are broken down into four different categories that I use so non-verbal our body language our voice tone our voice and how we project and portray our voice our volume our Cadence our pitch our verbal of course the words that we use in slacks chat email text and iners phone and the last one is imagery so the colors that we wear uh the kind of jewelry that we wear even down to the kind of

headphones we use what what's behind us you know our background that's all a big part of our non-verbal our brand our Q brand how we're coming across to others interesting got it so even the cues that you've presented yourself on Zoom today the red colors the red lipsticks the the global maps I mean what is the cue you're trying to send over there I'm curious okay exactly so um luckily I think that the the biggest problem is that we're missing opportunities we're not using our cues to help us and or we're sending misaligned cues so

we can use are cues to answer questions so for example my background right so I I picked a world map I have all of I have pins in all of our favorite places I have some heart pins in the places that I've lived with my husband the reason for this is because the biggest qu question that I often get is is your book in other languages are Q's Universal does this work for my culture and so I switched my background to be a world map because it in a way answers that question ahead of time

the moment I put this map up I started getting that question less it was like an immediate answer to the question sometimes I'll even rotate my background to have teaching AIDS behind me so I'll have um you notice in some of my YouTube videos I'll have serotonin oxytocin and dopamine and that's because I know that I can come across as highly warm so one of the things we can talk about also is the science of Charisma there's a formula to Charisma warmth and competence and so in human interactions 82% of our judgments of others are

based on these two single traits warmth and competence this yeah and this is incredibly important research from Dr from Dr Susan Fisk from Princeton University so I noticed that in a video I will come across as highly warm I'm a Smiler I'm a hand gesture user right I I lean in I I laugh at my own jokes so I can come across as highly warm and so one thing one way that I balance out my warmth of competence using competence cues so when I add the science behind me literally molecules behind me that balances out

my warmth cues that I'm sending with my body so you can also use cues to balance how about you how about your background do you ever think about what's in the background of your videos your zooms now I'm going to just based on how you've broken it down but I'm I'm curious for someone that maybe are listening that just doesn't have all of the research and the experience that you have how can someone analyze like you discovered it very well like the that you were more you come across as more warm and versus is you

know you know the other way around and how how are people how can people self-analyze themselves to know you know where they fit in love it okay so there's two ways that we can do this um the first is with our verbal so body language can be hard to guess right that's why I have to have a system for it but verbal is actually much easier so we talk about the two categories warmth trust likeability friendliness openness collaboration the other side is competence power capability productivity efficiency those are the two categories that we're always looking

at so basically when we first meet someone we when we see someone on video in a meeting we're trying to decide can I trust you are you on my side do you like me and can I rely on you are you smart are you g to say are you going to do what you're going to say um is what you're saying true so those are the two questions we're constantly trying to answer about someone not just in a first impression but all the time so what you want to do is send cues to immediately answer

both those questions as quickly as possible so the way that you assess if you're doing that already is with what I call an email audit you want to do an email audit Sean should we do it yes I would love to it's really hard to just guess so I like to do this really in a quantifiable way so here's what I want you to do you can pause this video or you can um do this afterwards I want you to go into your email sent folder and I want you to look at your 10 recent

most important messages so this isn't like the little emails you send checking in on some you know maybe to a boss or a client or a family member or a friend 10 important emails and the more vary they can be the better so hopefully not all the same person sure uh either print them or save them on your desktop and what I want you to do is count the number of warm verbal cues and the number of competent verbal cues this is going to show you what cues are you are you using when you're trying

to send important messages to others now warm words are any words that give you any of those warm feelings trust the warm and fuzzies connection openness collaboration Smiles emojis are warm so any emoji that you use that counts as one warm word so a hard a smiley face that's one warm point an exclamation point one warm point for every exclamation point okay so if you use three exclamation points that's three points in the warm column okay okay on the competent side these are words that are getting things done efficiency capability um facts also uh any

percent number or data that's going to be a point in the competence column got it so if you do this right and you'll you'll do this hopefully all 10 emails one of two things will happen you'll easily be able to identify oh wow I'm using a lot of warm or I'm using a lot of competent or you'll find no war or competent words at all and you'll notice that your emails are sterile they're all very dry to the point there's no emotion words there's no words that trigger or stimulate anything both of those are very

interesting because when we think about warmth and competence people who don't signal enough don't have enough warmth or competence cues we call them our they're in danger zone when we don't when we're with someone who doesn't signal enough to us we end up being curious and that goes to scrutiny that goes to judgment and that goes to skepticism so one of the biggest mistakes professionals make is they'll do this audit and they realize wow I have no cues here at all no wonder people are having trouble communicating with me right right it's funny because like

I think just just like mirroring which we'll probably go into I find myself and probably like others when I receive an email or I send an email and like let's say I'm very warm to this person but they respond with like Sean comma space oneliner I'm like oh yeah I'm definitely not to use any exclamation marks in my next email so I almost change depending on what the response is right so uh should we just be looking at like the initial emails or how can we avoid the bias there yeah so I I would love

a mix if you really can do it it would be great if you do some initial emails some deep emails some emails with someone you email with all the time because we are constantly sending these cues out and you might even see patterns like for example one of the ways that we've we've discovered in these email audits is that will will do really great with their warmth and confidence cues up so when they email their boss their manager an investor oh my goodness so much warmth and competence a beautiful balance but when they email down

or laterally they don't have any good warmth or confidence cues at all so the more varied you can make it to test it that's going to mirror how you are in person how you are in video and that can also explain to you why maybe you think you don't make a good first impression or why you make a great first impression but then Things Fall Apart or why you're great on the first three dates but not the next five dates right so even that can begin to sort of Identify some patterns which is kind of

fun and also can I read something oh can I read something to you I think you'll find funny yes okay so you mentioned like mirroring a little bit we also verbally mirror so you might notice that you are matching the person you are emailing with so if you are emailing with someone who you know use lots of exclamation points and emojis you feel pressured right as a human we feel pressured well gosh she sent three exclamation points I better use at least one at least fun okay so this is so funny so you know the

the Blogger Tim Urban yes yes okay so Tim Urban highly competent so Tim Urban I love wa but why his blog highly highly competent he sent out this tweet and it got 68,000 likes last time I counted 525 retweets are you ready Tim Urban said I spend a lot of time deciding which sentence in the email is going to have to take one for the team with the exclamation point meaning and there are certain people who are very high in competence it is physically painful for them to use emojis and exclamation points right if this

is you you're like oh I have to just sacrifice it and that is a natural instinct knowing H this email is too competent I better add some warmth I got to add some warmth somewhere and so we have this natur Natural Instinct not only near and match but also we know we have a sense when we're out of balance the funny thing is so Tim Urban sent this tweet out okay and in response a highly warm person the opposite wrote what happens to warm people so here's what highly warm people think I always start with

an exclamation point after every sentence then realize wait they can't all have exclamation points I sound like a lunatic then pair them back one by one until only a single exclamation point remains as a highly warm person so you're the kind of person which one are you by the way Sean do you know which one you are I feel like I'm a bit of the mixture of the both but I lean one towards the other depending on who I speak to so I'm like a chameleon in some sense so that's very highly charismatic so this

is here's the problem and here's the Gap that I talk about talk about a lot in in Q's which is highly charismatic people have the perfect blend of warmth and competence they're able to dial up into warmth when they need to stimulate warmth and collaboration and trust and they're able to dial up into competence when they want to be productive efficient capable if most of us have a mismatch or an imbalance most of us are higher in one of those of the other so if you're higher in warmth you love using emojis you're um typically

people come to you and they spill their life story they're always telling you all kinds of things you prioritize being liked that can be difficult because if you have too many warmth cues without enough competence cues people people Overlook you people dismiss you people ignore you people interrupt you on the other side you have highly competent people these are I love working with engineers and uh you know people who are very technically minded they are off the charts in competence their problem is that they are seen as very capable very credible very dependable but people

say they're hard to talk to cold intimidating and so they struggle to get Buy in because people don't trust them people feel like I don't know if he's on my side they don't get invited to after work happy hours they often feel like they're carrying the burden or the load on the team because they're trying to get everything done so the The Sweet Spot here is making sure that you're able to hit both of those warm being highly warm and highly competent and what's funny is we this affects every aspect of our communication down to

the exclamation point yes like your warmth and confidence scores and in the book I give a a Charisma quiz so that you can actually identify exactly where you are in warmth and competence your warmth and competence dictates every aspect of your communication even down to how you use exclamation points which is just crazy that is crazy and do you recommend then to stay in the middle and adjust based on who you're talking to because it's kind of like a chicken in a egg right knowing that you're going to mirror and also the other person is

going to mirror based on how you you know how much warmer you are how how competent you're trying to sound they're also going to mirror that so do you try to set the tone and just kind of stick to it or do you try to migle around so I always say you want to hit the sweet spot and by the way everyone is a little bit different so if someone's naturally higher in warmth you're going to be trying to add competence cues purposefully so the closer to the middle you can get the better if you

are with someone or talking to someone and you notice wow they are highly warm just like me or they are highly competent just like me you can dial into them to respect them I think that talk about mirroring and matching that's a respect issue it's basically saying to someone I respect you so much that I'm going to mirror and match where you're at so I would say the default is always that balance trying to hit that perfect balance of Warth and competence and then flexing depending on your goals what are your goals do you want

to make them feel comfortable or do you want to be as as as charismatic as possible got it got it now I'm I'm always curious because last time we spoke when we were talking about Captivate you had some of the most like fascinating research processes like you're talking to be you're discovering like breakdowns of alpha males and I think we were talking about like being in a treadmill and like going up to a random guy um so like your research process is always fascinating and and would love to kind of dig into that and I'm

more more curious to know like what are some of the things that maybe you had a belief about that after this process of researching through cues that you no longer believe or you were maybe surprised by yes I love the belief challenging questions the great thing is that in the last few years I realized that the more data we have the better right so a lot of my early work was with smaller groups which is which is great it's great for qualitative analysis now we're trying to go over go after some of those bigger numbers

so 495 Shark Tank pitches right that's a lot of data um or big big surveys I think that one of the things that I was really surprised about is we have a big facial expression test where we have people look at facial expressions and then answer facial expression I think it is and Dr emman has researched that there are seven universal facial expressions across genders and cultures and races when people make these seven faces it means the same emotion even even though the words are different different languages and so I was curious which are the

easiest faces to identify and which is the hardest ones to identify you would think if there are these seven years Universal facial expressions anyone could spot them we would all know what they are right and so we started this quiz and I think we have over 30 to 40,000 people who have taken it which is a huge amount of data right and one thing that really surprised me is that the simplest of the micro Expressions is the micro expression people get most wrong that really surprised me so the most simple of the micro Expressions is

contempt contempt is the most misunderstood micro expression it's a smirk or a one-sided mouth raise so if you raise one side of your mouth man yeah yeah you know what I mean yeah that little smirk this is what just shocks me is people tend to think that that smirk means fake happiness or yeah everything's okay you'll notice thousands of LinkedIn profile pictures have this one-sided mouth rais smirk yeah but actually this smirk is a sign of disdain or scorn specifically it's a it's a signal of better than and this is a a study I talk

about in Q's which was done by Dr John gotman and he found that when couples so he was studying couples and why do couples get divorced and he wanted to know is there a predictor of why couples some couples say together why some cou get couples get divorced so he brought all these couples into his love lab and he tested them on a variety of different variables from Reading their body language to IQ tests to interviews he found there was one single indicator that a couple would get divorced and it was so accurate that he

could watch a silent video of a couple talking and tell you with 90 3% accuracy if they get divorced what and it is contempt that if a couple is talking and he's watching the video and he notices that one of the members of the couple shows contempt towards the other with 93% accuracy that couple will get divorced the reason for this is because contempt is one of the only emotions that doesn't go away so of the seven micro Expressions happiness comes in a burst and then it fades anger comes all at once and then you

calm down fear comes then you selfit but contempt is an emotion that if it's not addressed it sits and it festers and so in a relationship work relationship romantic relationship social relationship if you feel contemptuous of the other person if you feel better than um like you just respect them and that's not addressed it grows and it grows and it grows and that's why at the end of a very bad marriage you have couples that can't even look at each other in the eye and so I share this because that one little cue that contempt

microexpression is really powerful for decoding and encoding one if you see contempt on your partner's face on your colleagues face on your friends face on your Investor's face face you want to immediately say is everything okay let's back up for a second let's pause any questions what can I do like that's a window that's an opportunity to fix something right right and then encoding is make sure that in your profile pictures and your pitches on your video calls go watch a recent video call and make sure you are not accidentally showing contempt H so a

lot of us you're saying are just subconsciously doing this without even knowing and does it mean content most of the times when someone is smirking okay so should we get into the deep science on this you want should we go deep on it yeah let's go deep okay so it's a really good question because there are two ways that we show facial expressions or emotions one is contempt however we don't always know where that contempt come from comes from so for example you might watch yourself on a video call or watch say let's say someone

else let's not make it personal let's say that you see someone a video call and they show contempt right they flash a one-sided mouth ra on other side you go oh they hate me but they hate the person that's talking yeah we don't know the source of the contempt so it could be contemptuous of the person talking it could be contemptuous of the news they delivered it could be that they're really and they're contous of that they could have had a self-hatred thought so you even have people who have a lot of self-hatred a lot

of pessimism a lot of depression they will show more contempt but it has nothing to do with other people it's their own it's a it's a manifestation of their own internal feeling so when you're looking for contempt it's not oneand done it's hm they just showed contempt in the part of the meeting where Sarah was talking and we were talking about budget I wonder why is it Sarah is the budget is something at home I'm going to keep watching or I'm going to pause and say hey any questions here does this budget make sense I'm

that person says you know here's what doesn't make sense to me ah that was the that was what caught them up or nope no questions for me I wonder why let's keep watching so we're looking for clusters of these cues the the backup science here which I just want to be super accurate I think that when we're Q readers we have to make sure that we're being as nuanced as possible is there is a very small portion of the population that uses contempt as a punctu that's what that's called a facial punctuates yeah so punctu

is that um they use a facial expression all the time as like a default it's it's almost like someone who's like a fidgeter so for example I have a friend who uses disgust facial expression as his punctuates when we uh raise our nose up we crinkle our NOS up and we flash every of our teeth so this is disgus like we smell something bad we go oh right right right yeah so it's a very negative expression so you'll see this oftentimes when you ask someone so you know what do you think of the new girl

and they go oh yeah yeah she's pretty good and you know no they're pretty disgusted by that person yeah well my friend who uses that as his punctuates so how's it going oh good good all the time he's that discussed facial expression so for him I know that's his there but I think it helps us be more accurate yeah I love it I love it well speaking about kind of these subconscious things that we do in pictures obviously the last time uh you know unit spoke was 2017 and with the pandemic and all these things

everyone's on their mind in terms of online dating and what photos are going to be showing up and how they want to look like it's it's the central topic right that most people have met and and are continuing to meet what are some of the things that people can do listening today the single folks that are trying to put themselves in the best light or maybe like not overdo it either so that the real reality meets what actually shows in photos which is also another problem in online dating um talk to us a little bit

about kind of the things that you know you've you've researched or learned about online dating photos oh man there's so much juicy research on online dating because yeah it's a really easy thing to study so there's actually some really great research out there um there's here's a fun one I'll start with the fun one then we'll go to the serious one okay so the fun one I put this one in my book because I had to I just had to my editor was like Vanessa I was like I have this is so amazing and funny

one research study yes there was actually a research study that looked at this looked at men heterosexual single men holding cats because the hypothesis was that if you hold a cat do women these are only het heterosexual males do women perceive that man as being softer right is it a warmth Cube that's what they looking for so can you guess Sean should a should a heterosexual male hold a cat is it warm and fuzzy or is it not so good what do you think oh I mean I noticed you didn't include dogs in there but

I did not include dogs you did not include dogs in there so my intuition would say dogs are generally warm and fuzzy so cats yeah I guess I guess not but I would imagine most people would would say that it's a warm and fuzzy thing right so you are right most most people think that it's sore and fuzzy but you should never hold a cat ever if you are if you are a heterosexual male do not hold a cat even women who like cats don't like a man who holds a cat really wow this is

according to one research study but the reason why I like these kind of things is because it it shows you the power of a Quee right so if we are looking at someone's profile photo really fast our brain is trying to take in as many of those cues as we possibly can so it's not just your face and your body and what's behind you and what you're holding and your clothes it's all of those things put together so what I would do if I were you is I would open up your profile photos or the

Prof photos you're thinking about using and I would try to again do a little profile photo audit how many warmth cues are you sending how many confidence cues are you sending there's actually an exercise I like people to do while they're reading because as they find a cue in the book they can give it a point on the picture so so for example one that we see a lot um in female pictures in fact one of the studies we talk about is that um this CU is in thousands of paintings over the last couple hundred

years because it's so often used to depict people which is a highly warmth CU a head tilt so women especially we love a head tilt in our profile photos um whenever I look at my friends dating apps I I love love looking over the shoulder of my single friends and just like trying to help them pick the cues woman after woman is always with their with their head why why is this so so a head tilt is a universal cue that we do when we're trying to hear something better so if I were to say

Do you hear that do you hear my daughter yelling in the background right go you tilt your head up and that's because logically this makes sense we want to expose our ear my hair then Falls away from my ear so I have less blocking it so I can take in as much hearing as possible so we recognize the head tilt as a universal I'm listening CU and what do we want most in a partner to feel like we're being listened to and so the reason why a lot of people especially women will default to a

head tilt is because it is a warmth cue and women by default typically want to be warmer sure this is not good or bad but I think it's something to consider when you're looking at pictures does that make sense yes for sure yeah I do notice this like a lot of mostly right yeah I don't I don't see a lot of guys doing this for sure well this is my this is this is my this is where I think we can get really we can really level up our game here so first of all I

if if you're a female and you like the head tilt and you want to do it in your profile photos great just know it's a high warmth cute right it literally is like I'm listening to you I'm gonna be a great listener I am warm to you so just be aware of what you're sending if you want to do that for men and by the way the degree of the head tilt is important right like the far farther over that I go the more ditsy I look so if I were to have my head tilted

all the way over I am higher higher higher in warmth the less I tilt the less warm I am until I'm back in equal right it's literally a degree if you were to see a girl who had her entire head exposed especially laughing with an open mouth yeah right that's the ultimate she is really high in warmth all the way warm to ditsy right we worry right we go all got wrong angle to use on LinkedIn EX exactly you just exactly what you the the cues you use on your dating profile should be totally different

than your LinkedIn profile in fact those should be very different pictures they should be different pictures for men a head tilt is a great back pocket secret cue because it's a warmth queue and a lot of men are overly competent in their photos they usually will do their head straight usually not smiling kind of like a smise right serious if they had their guns showing maybe their closed body with their gun showing maybe they're not making eye contact or looking off in the sunset yeah high high competence high high competence which for uh someone looking

whether male or female whe if you're homosexual or heterosexual is that what you want to attract right if you are using all competence cues you are going to Signal High competence and that means you're only going to get people who are high competent right so it's just about thinking about what kind of person do you want to attract and what cues are you using to signal that so A warmth cue for a man a subtle one not you know all the way over just a subtle one can be a great way to add a little

bit of warmth if you have been told you're cold or intimidating or you feel like you have trust issues in your relationship maybe try to add in more head tilts because it's going to warm you up powerful powerful this is why we love having you on oh yeah details the details yes I love they details but like in a picture that's what we're looking at and you'll and I've watched people you know they'll look at a picture they'll look at a picture they go I don't know just not for me yeah yeah right but they

can't explain it right they can't explain it so what I love to do in those situations is wait pause okay this person is not for you why I I don't know it I just feel like they're just not my person and then I'll break down warmth Q warmth Q confidence Q confidence Q danger zone Q so the one area we haven't talked about a lot is our danger zone cues contempt Falls The Danger Zone Danger Zone cues are things that turn us off that irritate us that we don't like and so I'll say you know

comp comp comp danger zone or Danger Zone Danger Zone Danger Zone Danger Zone Danger Zone and they go ah that is why and so a lot of the times that I don't know why this person resonate with me is because they're not sending the right cues love it love it yeah I think it goes same for the Charisma which is the other way around the positive side of like oh man like I don't know about something about this person this girl this guy they've got the theah the The X Factor but I just can't explain

it you know and that's I love that you just you're able to break it down to the to the the the nree science you know I mean it's funny because when you ask people to think of the most charismatic people they know immediately people can think of the person right like they can say oh like my best friend my mom my boss my teacher immediately when you ask them what's Charisma they usually can't answer they're like ah you know it's that like that feeling that you get uh it's that person so it's it's a very

unique trait that it factor it's hard to break it down for some reason we don't know how to how to read it we're intuitively looking at it but I think that the more that we can think about Charisma in Practical terms the more we can control it and the more in control we feel you know I'm as I mentioned I'm a recovering awkward person I used to feel very out of control in social interactions I yeah would go on video meetings or I'd go into negotiations or I'd pitch myself feeling scared because I didn't know

what to do with my hands I didn't know how to use my voice I didn't know how to come across in the way that I wanted to come across sure I think that control is sort of an antidote to anxiety if you struggle with social anxiety I think control is actually the hidden um I think we talk a lot about confidence and confidence is great but confidence is a byproduct of control when you're in control of your cues you get confident and that's how we fight I think any of that social anxiety sure yeah so

let's let's kind of continue on to this to this topic where so you've got the online dating you follow Vanessa's advice nail the date and you've got a physical date now you're you're in your first date where do you sit in the table this is something that I've always curious about like do I I've almost had like better interactions when I'm sitting right beside them sometimes but it's kind of been a mix right sometimes you want to sit right across from them I would love to go I have a Graphic for you I have a

Graphic I have a Graphic for you so I have the same exact the same exact problem right anxiet comes when we don't understand something or don't know something okay so there is research on seating science if you can believe it there is research on seating science so first the first thing we should know is that when we're talking about interactions between human there's actually four different zones of space so these are the four different zones of space so very basically and these numbers change a little bit based on culture the brackets are about the same

so I'm going to give you some averages sure so first we have um the intimate Zone the intimate zone is 0 to 18 inches apart so 0 to 18 inches apart it's about here and that is because when someone's in your intimate Zone you can basically smell their breath right like if someone's in your intimate Zone you're probably gonna go in for a kiss so that's why it's called the intimate zone is because you're very close you're making lots of eye contact UM and it's usually where we we're we're in preissing mode so Z to

18 in is the first Zone that's the intimate Zone the second zone is the personal Zone this is about a foot and a half to 3 feet away so leaving the the intimate Zone about 3 feet away then there's the social Zone which is about six feet away that's where we've been social distancing right like just far enough and then beyond seven feet is the public zone why are these important that depends on where you sit so if you want to create intimacy with someone you want to be in a seat that is closer to

them not too close right like by the way I think this is the secret reason why at bars when people are sitting right up next to each other in bar stools they become immediately close this why you spill your life story to the person sit next to you to a bar is you are forced into intimate Zone I literally it's like a byproduct of our space it's the same reason why um loud bars and nightclubs work so well for creating intimacy why so many people go home after them is because it's really loud so what

do you do what was that like the moment it's loud you lean in and have if you've noticed at a loud bar or nightclub or networking event you're in someone's intimate Zone talking into their ear basically right right and that intimate Zone creates a sense of intimacy so the first thing I want you to think about for seats is what kind of intimacy do you want to create if you've if it's a slow grow right if it's like we're just getting to know each other you know um she's been she or he has been in

some hard relationships maybe that three-foot is great like across the table or corner to corner if you are like no like we're really hitting it off I I want to get close and I want to get close fast like consider stay next next to other at a bar consider sitting next to other in a booth consider sliding your chair over to sit closer to them the second thing to consider is um angles so when we are with someone and fully aligned with them our body is also fully aligned with them so you'll notice that people

tend to angle their toes towards their crush this is anecdotal I I don't know if I mentioned this in the last video that when we really like someone even we're tuned to our boss like our we're really the most VI the VIP in the room we will subtly angle our toes towards that person just because we're our brain is sort of on them so thing to think about is wherever you're sitting at the table you want to try to angle your body your toes your torso and your head so that you're in full parallel lines

with theirs that is a way to literally show someone I'm on the same page as you I I I am so aligned with you and so into you that I literally want to stand as you stand I want to sit as you sit it's less about mirroring and more about alignment that parallel those parallel l so wherever you are make sure you try to get parallel got it I have a diagram for business seating but I don't think we're sitting talking about business seating but um it's also critical to think about where you want to

sit around a conference table too that's also a very important aspect of meetings yeah well let's get into that I mean I I actually just had one question around the the dating aspect because I I've heard that for when guys interact with Sky friends like guys don't always kind of sit face to face they like to sit side by side and like right you know like what did you do and that's just a little bit more comfortable but is that actually hurting them when they're in a date with someone that in know you're trying to

pursue romantically yes exactly so the reason why uh two friends male male female female often will sit next to each other in a car at the bar walking down the street and they're talking like this is because they're not going in for a kiss they're not trying to create so like when we're on Parallel Lines it means we're trying to get intimate right like that's kind of what we're trying to say to someone and so with friends it's okay that you're not going to be physically intimate you're trying to be emotionally intimate so it's okay

that you're not totally aligned as long as you're not across the room yelling at each other right you're still in each other's personal or social space which is still okay got it got it I'm just looking at the time right now Vanessa I actually had some interesting questions that I wanted to ask you or really more uh a breakdown so I've kind of selected some of the most award common situations that most people go through and maybe we can just kind of sprinkle in some of the some of the things you found with q's uh

so probably the most common one uh that most people go through is asking for a salary increase right so you're talking you're in a room with your boss or maybe you're on Zoom you know what are some of the things that people can do on the other end to ensure that they have you know a higher likelihood of getting that raise Yes actually actually at one point I hope I can remember all the tips I filmed a whole like 30 minute tutorial on how to raise your rates or ask for a raise because there's a

lot of things you can do both in prep and the actual meeting but from a cu's perspective the most important thing you want to do is use trigger the actual feelings you want your boss to feel what I mean by this is I think the mistake that most people make when they go into either raise their rates or ask for raise is they'll use negative words because they're trying to show if you don't give me a raise this thing will happen so not threatening exactly but they'll say something like um you know I I love

working with the company but uh I've really felt overworked um it's been a really tough year and you know I want to stay at the company but I just don't know if you know I'm feeling I'm feeling a little disengaged and so one thing that's really important to me is I want to talk about our compensation package so they're using words that are slightly negative because they're trying to justify why they want to raise their rates right but I actually want you to think or or and or they'll use really really um positive words which

is good but they're all focused on their own feelings so I've been working really hard I've been working lots of long hours um I really I feel like I'm giving a lot to the company so they're using a lot of positive words that are for them what I want you to think about is what feeling do you want your boss to have to feel empowered to give you the raise and this depends on your company so if you know your company's in high fast growth like some companies over the last few years are just growing

like crazy then you would want to stimulate that growth right you want to use all those growth words so we've been you know killing it it's been amazing we've been growing so fast I love the trajectory of the company that way you're reminding your boss of all the things that are growth related lots of money lots of opportunities helping to empower them to make a decision from that place on the other hand let's say things aren't going so well at the company where uh there's what what is everyone calling it now the um the great

resignation right everyone's resigning all the time and again the mistake here would be to mention the great resignation right because that's going to trigger fear a boss usually does not want to make or give a raise out of fear right you don't want to get a raise very few people are going to give a raise out of scarcity or fear mindset so you don't want to talk about that but you do want to talk about Solutions if your boss is trying to head up a a company that's struggling they want to hear relief they want

help they want Solutions so the word you'd want to use for that kind of boss would be you know I I want to help in 2022 I want to step up I want to make sure that I'm a leader in this company that I'm your right hand that I'm supporting you as much as possible as we keep growing so you're using solution relief together solve because what does a boss want a solution a pro you know a a partner someone who's going to help them solve something so I want to think about where what kind

of emotions would your boss want to be in what I talk about in the verbal section of the of cues is that the words you use are often contagious so if you show up to a meeting and you're saying oh I've been so stressed just been so busy man it's been rough what a challenging time those words trigger all of those feelings of stress and problem and Challenge and so the words you use really change the emotion of the other person you're with yeah no I totally agree and it's like you mentioned partnership right so

you your boss trying to get your boss to make a decision out of fear or loss aversion is maybe like slightly okay for you in the short term but it's just going to hurt that long-term relationship because they're going to have resentment over that you know the continuation of that right especially if he did end up giving you a raise after and they'll be stingier right like no one makes generous decision they've proven this in the lab we are not generous when we feel afraid we are not generous in scarce mode and so they might

give you a little a little bum but it's coming from a scarcity place so they're going to be stingier got it got it so the second one is the approach right so you're on this other side of the street and obviously you know covid times and everything but the most awkward thing that I found is like you're waiting for the traffic light to hit but you're both on the other side of the street but like you don't know like when to wave you don't know like when to make eye contact or smile cuz you don't

know if that other person is looking at you or now or sometimes they looking down cuz they don't know either like what is kind of the the the the rules for something like that um or if there isn't really any a role I'm curious to know like when you do approach someone that you don't know um is it better to approach them from behind the side the front always the front always always the front we yeah we never like to approach from the side or behind especially if if you're going to physically touch someone right

like if you're physically touched like this it's like we want to whip around and see who that was so even like doing that wide circle around someone even being like hey hey good to see like right even angling around towards them and I'm a big fan of like if some if I know someone sees me I'm always the first reader like I don't I have taken it I've decided in my life I'm I would rather risk being it's like I would rather risk being the first grader and having them not me then not greeting and

having it be awkward for the next five minutes right that's true right like you got to make that decision what's your risk and I would much rather be like hey they didn't see me hey they didn't see me hey oh they saw me hey right I would much rather do that than I'm just gonna wait are they looking at me are they looking at me I I I'm not gonna s oh oh yeah hey no I know I saw you I I wasn't sure if that was you awkward awkward horrible awkward awkward award recover right

like you got to choose your your risk there so I would always rather be first grer so I'm like a big I'm a big I'm a big waiver like I'm a big big waiver like I'm always hands up no matter where I am bar networking event street I'm like hey Judy hey s good to see you my my husband walks through the door hey babe like I'm always first breeder and I think that by the way that there's a lot of science we talked about this in our last interview we love to see the palm

of someone's hands we love palms palms are like the underrated part of our body when we see a palm we know they're not concealing something we that we're being acknowledged we know that um someone's being open right we hate a fist right so instinctively we do not like seeing fists that's why we get when we see a fist with someone like oh they look so closed and angry it's because it shows that I'm white knuckling so it shows I have tension and anger it may be concealment who knows what's in there it's how we punch

right like we know that we could be injured that way and so the anot is an open Palm so I'm open Pal all the time like when we started this video right I was like hi yeah there you go yeah so it's almost of like hi yeah yeah evolutionary is is it is the idea that it's um a lot of that is just kind of survival instincts for us it kind of D or even like yes I there's a lot of biology in there but I also think a lot of it's learned right like we

know that when our friends greet us and people like us they they're open palming towards us all the time they're like oh my gosh it's so good to see you come in for a hug hey so how's it going tell me everything hey like so we have Associated we have learned that when we like someone we do lots of open Palm gestures towards them and when someone doesn't like us what do they do closed right we don't see their hands at all maybe they're like this listening to us maybe they're their fists are crossed maybe

they're like this so we have learned that ah this is positive is negative or or concealment is negative got it got it man I mean every time you come on there's so many things I learned that I realize even after five years even the things that we've talked about I just realized like there's always practice that you need to do refreshers that you need to do um so first of all I highly recommend people to check out the book cues um first of where can they find that and is yeah yes so Q's wherever books

are sold it also already got picked up internationally which I'm so grateful for so it should be intern I know it should be internationally available too it's also being translated already so I'm super excited about that I also record the Audi book if you feel like listening to me for another seven hours you're welcome to listen to the audio book and of course there's Kindle and it it should be um in bookstores as well as on Amazon and in your country too I love it I love it now as as a final question I'm just

uh obviously like I could talk about this for for hours and hours but is there a specific cue or something that you just feel most people listening to this today can take a way to help create uh you know positive Lasting Impression in their next interaction or help them with their careers or social life dating life you know uh anything that we didn't maybe touch on yeah you know I'll give one of the it's very current to the time and it's an aspect of a que I talked about but I didn't get to talk about

this part which is space we think about in person we forget that space rules are also happening virtually especially on our video calls on our FaceTime calls we are video calling now all the time not only meetings interviews negotiations but also FaceTiming and video calling on dates right like sometimes that's our first impression on video the same space rules apply so right now I made sure so I'm standing on a piece of tape because I know that the distance between my nose to this camera is more than 18 inches the biggest mistake that people make

is they break space rules on video so they on camera and they're 18 inches away now if I were to do the entire interview like this you'd be like whoa back up right right it's invasive and so the biggest mistake we make is we hop on video or we get on a video call we're right in someone's intimate space and they're like uh so immediately they're tricking your alarm Bells so the very first thing is especially in your first impression make sure that when your video pops on or you answer the phone your nose is

at least 18 inches away from the camera 18 in is nothing right like if I like that's like nothing right even just a little bit farther you're signaling you're in the personal Zone which is a safer place to be if you're feeling intimate you know that's when you can go a little closer right like tell me more Sean tell me more and we know that so that's a really easy one that I see people in their profile photos too just make sure H Ines are more H right cuz on camera it also has a different

distance right so like I'm wondering now if I'm too far away sometimes perect you are perfect okay this is a good measure okay it's perf also because I can see the top of your body I can see if you're making gestures so you'll notice also like I make sure that the camera hits right at my waist so that you can see most of my gestures so the other the other reason secretly I want you to be more than 18 in apart is that you people can see your hand gestures beautiful beautiful this is very helpful

I guess people can just take a snapshot of this of our angles right now and just see you know this is like the right distance to make so thanks for being on the show Vanessa yeah my pleasure I've been researching a lot about you I've heard you through Lewis Lewis house he's awesome yeah he's he's he's a big mentor of mine so been you know listening to your episodes and your TED talks and it's amazing amazing what like the research that you have and the the ability to communicate that to so many people so it's

it's amazing what you've done so far so congratulations yeah yeah thank you we you know I I'm a total science geek and I love looking at research and so um I'm really scratching my own itch and I'm just so excited that there are other people out there who like research and people as much as I do so I feel pretty lucky yeah and I got to ask for someone that is studying you know really bringing the idea of people skills into a science I'd love to hear a bit of the background of how that you

know what what really drove you to study this industry M yeah um well I I joke that I'm a recovering awkward person um and yeah yeah and I just had a really hard time in school with the people side of things you know the technical skills were easy relatively and finally a professor said to me I was I think I was negotiating to get out of a a group project I was like please let me do it on my own like I'm terrified of the group and you know I I I was just afraid to

speak up and I was I really I just didn't have the tools to do it and so he looked at me and he was like Vanessa the point of this project is not the prompt it's the teamw and I was like what and he was like the what I want you to learn is working with people it's not the actual essay and project and that like blew my mind and he was like this is a skill you have to have if you're gonna be successful in anything that you do and so he really was the

one who pushed me he gave me a couple books um and he was like just start you know take your people your book smarts and apply them to people smarts and so I started to read about the science of people and that was the first time where I was like wow this isn't just a soft skill you know you often hear oh people skills it's a it's a soft skill you can't really learn it there's no there's no real hard science to it but I realized that there was and you could absolutely learn it if

you weren't born with it interesting so I mean I think I think what a lot of what you talk about is so relevant because a lot of us weren't taught that when we were in high school or even when we're in University it's something that we kind of stumble on to and you know I've personally you know let's say when I was younger I was quite bullied and it's very difficult for people to jump back into that of state of confidence or being able to be sociable because they think that it's not really something they

can develop um and I guess what you're saying it's it's something that can be taught yeah and I think you're right you're not alone that our our system kind of approaches people skills as um a byproduct a lot of it thinks oh you know what when they're in the classroom they'll pick up some people's skills on the on the playground at recess they'll pick up teamwork while they're playing their Sports maybe they'll learn a little bit about that it's sort of like a byproduct whereas it's amazing to me that in 15 years of of elementary

school and high school there's maybe a health class or two on communication relationship true you're not alone with that yeah for sure and now you're teaching thousands of peoples around the world about how to become more confident and the importance of body language let's dig into that a little bit because it's it's so fascinating for me and I'm sure for a lot of people listening you know I think a lot of people have to go through these situations where you're meeting new people especially if you're an entrepreneur or some sort of an artist you're constantly

meeting new clients or you're doing job interviews and I want to go over some of the hacks that you talk about quite a lot um first of all what what are some of the biggest mistakes you think that people are making today that is not displaying the type of image that they want yeah um so actually I think that's it's a tie in with some of the myths about body language so um some of the when I tell people you know I study body language I study people skills they're always like oh yeah body language

I know body language good eye contact a good handshake and good posture and I'm like that's a really good start but it's like so little of the it's such a little part of the story so some of the biggest mistakes actually come from those myths um for example eye contact most people are taught that good eye contact is good body language and that means 100% of the time but actually um 100% eye contact is a territorial cue so when you make 100% eye contact with someone it's actually incredibly invasive and a little bit creepy interesting

um and so men especially have been taught in dating or at networking events you know kind of look them deeply in the eye be confident yeah and and that is um only half true so in in the average conversation the um ideal amount of eye contact is between 60 to 70% it is definitely not 100% in fact when you do 100% you actually raise red flags in their brain but make them want to take a step back interesting and so it's 60 to 70% and that means absolutely speak with him or her with good eye

contact but feel free to look around to gaze to look down at your drink to use your natural processing skills when you think like for example most people when they're talking they'll kind of look at you and they'll they'll they'll think up they'll look up to the right or left they they process by looking out that's how we naturally process right the other person when they don't see you doing that they're like are they not thinking you know are they trying to be aggressive and so 60 to 70% is that is that sweet spot interesting

very cool um let's talk a little bit about some of the hacks that people can take away with because I think there's a lot you mentioned that I don't think we can go over everything during the interview but you mentioned that there are one or two things that people can do uh to make a great first impression So within the first 30 seconds I think is people can really make up a visual image of who you are what you represent what your values are so for someone that is trying to to make this first impression

what is that one thing that they can do first nonverbally and what is one hack that they can take away with verbally something that they can say whether it's a you know I guess it could be different from a dating or interview but what is that one thing that you think could have there's a commonality between all of those sure it's actually very similar um there's 30 rules of body language which is kind of cool and um almost all of them apply to romantic and professional ship so luckily um the science is the same just

different examples so I would say like the biggest you know if I had to pick one I would say that when we study leaders so one of the things I love to do in my lab is study Alphas uh both alpha males and Alpha females I find them fascinating um I I I'm always on the prow for Alphas like I I go to 24 hour I I'm working out and I'm like always looking on the treadmills for other for like Alphas male female and I will approach them and ask them to come into my lab

and take my personality test and that doesn't creep them out oh my gosh they're so honored really always always yeah I'll come up to them so in my first impression right I need to make a really good first impression really fast so I see an alpha male on the treadmill and boy oh boy do I want his data right like I really want his data really bad and so I know that I have to instantly make a good impression so he doesn't think I'm a creeper yeah so um the very first thing I do is

actually use the science that they do themselves which is um research shows that when we are first when we first see someone the very first place we look is actually not their eyes it's not their face most people think it's the eyes and face it's actually their hands um we very very briefly and less than a millisecond glance down at someone's hands before looking at their face and we do this as a survival mechanism to make sure that um a they're not from caveman days are they carrying a rock or a spear um it's how

we gauge friend not Foe and so I always always make sure that my hands are visible and both explanatory so um like for example the open Palm gesture we're on video now but see but open Palm gesture even like approaching like hey do you have a minute you know even that it's showing your palm it's actually the universal open-mindedness gesture so um having your hands visible and then having them explanatory uh for example like using your hand gestures in your elevator pitch that's what really really charismatic people do they don't just say you know like

Ted speakers for example like they take the stage and they say um I today I have a really big idea and they widen their hands and they I'm want to talk to you about three things that change my life and they hold up the number three and they say and I'm going to give you specific strategies to tackle that are going to change your life and then they have these really great hand gestures so think about in your elevator pitch how you can do it so what I do is I'll often approach the treadmill my

hands very visible and I'll say hey do you have just a second I try to wait till they're like not running when they've slowed down their face um and usually they're like uh sure they have no idea what I'm approaching them um and then I I tell them um I'm a behavioral investigator I run a human behavior research lab uh here in Portland and I would love and I always like gesture to my heart my heart gesture that's actually Universal gesture for passion I would love to be able to study you I know that sounds

crazy so I acknowledge verbally that I I know what they're feeling is when you verbally affirm what you think someone else is feeling they feel like they're heard I know this sounds crazy but um I believe that you're an alpha and I love studying alpha males we're running a research experiment on it would you have five minutes to take an alpha male quiz for me and uh I have never been told no I've been told I can't do it right now or I have to do it in a few weeks I the same thing with

females yeah um because usually they're very honored and and most of the time they ask me what is an alpha male or alpha female how do you know that about me and how can you be sure I really am like can I they basically are like can I be sure that I really am yeah so how do you know I'm curious like you go up to these people and I'm sure it's like the most random question that they've ever been asked in their entire lives but they're probably not creeped out because you're you're you're using

the 60 70% Rule and you're asking them the question but how do you know if you are an alha male or an alpha woman like what what makes you think that they are yes so um it's the first the first thing is the is not measurable and then we'll talk about measurable so the first thing is not measurable which is based on what's called thin slicing so thin slicing is a term that was developed by Nini ody at TS University who basically found that when we look at a face or a picture or we see

someone immediately our brain takes a very quick Judgment of them and that judgment is usually 76% accurate where we can decide their personality traits there are five different Universal personality traits that everyone has and we're about 76% accurate in guessing those traits just from looking at a picture of someone so it's even more accurate if you see them in motion or in movement um so the first one is my gut instinct right like I'm scanning I'm scanning the gym I'm scanning the crowd and looking for anyone that just finin slice pops out at me as

someone who I think is um a leader then I usually go into more of the measurable things so uh for a man uh how square is his jaw um for a woman I'm looking for a a physical presence of how far back are her shoulders and what is the distance between her shoulders and her ears in other words does she Turtle down typically leaders uh don't Turtle they're not very in that bow position they typically yeah they typically have a greater distance between their shoulders and their chin um so I'm look I'm looking for those

kinds of cues uh right off the bat now I can't measure them with my ruler as I do in the lab um I mean I could but I think that would be a little weird yeah um so I'm I'm I'm kind of I I judging them I gauging them um to try to take in their measurements um and then a lot of it has to do with vocal cues um as soon as they start speaking to me how relaxed are their vocal cords typically leaders have very very relaxed vocal cords they use with called a

resonance point when they speak so uh the difference is if you if I if I get tense my vocal cords you can actually kind of hear that there's some tension in my voice I don't know if you can hear that I'm making them purposly tense right now now listen to the difference if I speak on the out breath I hit more of a residence point so if I say hello I get a much deeper resonance point where my vocal cords are very relaxed um it's hard to do that on on command I didn't even do

it very well just them you can kind of hear the difference between that and so I'm listening for how relaxed are their vocal cords how close are their resonance Point um typically leaders and Alphas speak more with that nice beautiful resonance uh for both men and women so that's kind of what I'm looking for sounds like you go after the alpha males a little bit more Vanessa um well In fairness I'm at the gym and typically the the gym is a a a beacon for those alpha males I do find more Alpha females um at

networking events and professional like professional events I I find them more there than at the gym no I mean you got to balance pleasure and work too right so for sure exactly exactly I hope this doesn't make me sound like a total creeper no not at all not at all okay so we talked about the non-verbal cues that we can do in terms of a first impression what what is something that you could say or that we could say say in let's say on a first date uh on a networking event or at an interview

that one thing or one sentence that we could say could that you know could help us connect with more people that could leave a more memorable connection yeah um I like to approach people verbally with what I call the like radar so um there's something called the similarity attraction effect which is basically that we I know we don't like to admit it but we like people who are similar to us similar in all kinds of ways favorite color favorite food similar values we just like people who are like us um we even like dogs who

look like us so um we are always look on the lookout for who's like me who's like me who's like me that's kind of what we're doing when we're at networking events and we're on dates and so what I do is I actually verbally approach people with this like radar in mind where I am actually trying to find how are we alike so when I'm asking questions I'm not actually asking this like ones we hear the boring what do you do where you're from the weather right like because it's hard to find like from that

what I'll often try to do is figure out what's similar so um did they watch the game last night um do they also know the host from how I know the host right which is a very different kind of question for how do you know the host um what do they think of the red wine I love red wine right like so I'm actually on the hunt for I am similar to you because I know that a that's authentic right I'm looking for things that are genuinely there B I want to like them more and

so the more things I find that are like me I like them and B I want them to like me more and so if I show that we're similar we do that and so all of my questions are typically oriented in that um framework and that makes you incredibly memorable interesting so for in this case where you know we we might we might not be in person I'm going to put you in the spot a little bit here and you are the person that uh was let's say we first met what are some of the

questions that you would ask and I love the way you you framed it it's questions it's not you're not trying to put something out there to impress anyone it's actually a question it's actually you know you're giving something yeah yeah so like in a in a typical SC scenario oftentimes I will ask um so what personal passion projects are you working on um I'm I'm passionate about a lot of things and I'm just very curious and so typically they I've I think maybe like a handful of times has someone mentioned something that I genuinely don't

want to know about um most things even if it's something that is isn't the same as me I can still find something to ask about it I think someone said recently um oh I I build miniature houses and I was like wow you know I I'm not a builder and I'm not super into Miniatures but I think that's really interesting and so I was able to be like wow like where do you find inspiration for the houses that you build like are they templates and she's like Pinterest and I was like I love Pinterest right

and commonality I see right we had the commonality there and then we were able to talk about how she finds things on Pinterest that works and so um that's like a really that's sort of my go-to question and um you learn so much about people very quickly when you ask that question Ah that's a really good point actually and I love I love that question you you nailed it it's it what are your passion projects that's the question I would love to been asked um and I think you know when we're going through these conversations

especially when we don't really know the person there's a lot of Silence that happens and we call it the awkward silence and you know some people say that it's only awkward if you say it's awkward but what are some of the ways that we can handle in terms of non-verbal because I think verbally it's I don't know how that would work what are some of the things we can do non-verbally to feel comfortable with uncomfortable silence yeah well I'm a um it's funny that you bring up silence because um I was terrified of Silence like

that awkward silence like I terrified yeah me too so much so that I would be talking to people and actually interrupt them because I was so afraid that a silence was coming um which is the worst way to interact and someone called me on it and very gently very nicely I actually wrote a blog post about it and I decided to take a vow of silence so I actually was silent for an entire week um Last Summer I do it every summer I'm doing another one coming up this summer hopefully you'll join me um I

don't even write I'm completely silent and I go to networking events um go on dates with my husband like I do it all except I'm totally silent because I learned to force myself into that space and amazing things happen in the silence amazing things when you allow people that extra second or two um to process to think they will often go deeper with you they often add something they will ask you a question that maybe they were hesitating on and so I love the silence um so first respect it right see if you can let

it go for another second or two maybe even take a vow of silence with me um the non-verbal thing you can also do is um you can do a slow triple nod so the slow triple nod um is kind of like a non-verbal dot dot dot you're basically telling someone please tell me more um and so it's a very if you have that silence and you don't want to jump in right away or you're not sure if it is silent or not like you don't know if they're done right like they're saying something and you're

like are they done yeah you can do that one two three triple nod to show you're waiting you're engaged you're listening and so that is a non-verbal way you can um it's a nice filler between silences I just I unconsciously just did the triple knot as soon as you said that I don't I don't know why it's called mirroring that your mirror neurons firing yeah I can't help it I feel like you're like psychologically just making my mind yes it's all a psychological yeah no mirror neurons that's um it's really nice it's you trying to

relate to me and I did the same thing back to you I love that and this kind of reminds me for the people I I I had Chase Jarvis on so the people that listened to that episode talked really deep about that but it's um have you heard of the posa before the what the Yeah the the meditation yes did Chase do it I I I know Chase from creative live but did he do one of those uh no I think he said that his wife did it so I'm trying to like pressure him into

doing it but I don't know if he's gonna actually because he's he's just got the role of CEO as creative life so I don't think he's I know got the time for that yet we'll have to Ping him together yeah for sure for sure but that's kind of what it reminded me of um well I just want to wrap it off and I you know I think what really differentiated you in terms of really breaking this down is is how much you can break it down and how much just talking just hearing you talk about

identifying alpha males and you know the shoulder distance to the ears I mean it's fanatical that's awesome that you can get to that point um and it sounds like you can really analyze a lot of things the people that are listening that may not be as attuned as you because for you you can really present this this genuine authentic person about yourself um but for the people that are listening that you know are just kind of getting into the tune of things how do they how do they uh differentiate themselves in terms of trying to

be authentic and trying to become the most genuine self while being able to apply these new skills new people skills that they're learning such as making eye contact or remembering when to lean back it may feel uncomfortable or even unnatural for the other person when they're not really sure which steps goes where so how do they still remain uh maintain their genuin yeah of two things first something that we talked about today hopefully resonated with you where you were like oh wow interesting or I've got to try that that's the thing you should start with

and you should only work on that first so sometimes people they'll try to take on two or three tips at once and they end up sort of as this like body language Frankenstein where they're like I'm doing hand gestures and eye contact and smiling and nodding and like you're like all over the place right so um pick the one thing that kind of piqued your interest and just run with that for at least a week don't even think about other stuff and in a note in your calendar or in like a reminder set to relisten

to this or the other cues you want to try but just focus on one that gives your brain enough bandwidth to be able to process what's going on and be authentic without being too distracted that one cue it can kind of just be a light reminder and the second thing is gentle autocorrect um sometimes body language you'll realize oh my goodness I'm in a really low power pose you know I have my shoulders pulled in I have my head bowed and all of a sudden you like jerk your head up and you jerk your shoulders

back um it's it's just a gental it's like a self- autocorrect right it's like oh it's a notice gosh that's weird I have my shoulders pulled in maybe this person makes me nervous that's a good thing for me to know and then gently autocorrecting it because that way you're learning your triggers along with the behavior change which is actually the most powerful way to maintain the behavior change yeah and I think that also relates to having this vow of silence I think when you're silent you really understand yourself more and how you think and you

know how you apply yourself as well so I think those two defin relates yeah absolutely I I hope that um those of you listening you know even if you want to take a vow of silence for one night like one networking event or you know just a few hours it was one of my most powerful life experiences and um I would love to support you in that Journey because um I'm I was terrified of silence and now um it's where I've learned to grow the most so hopefully that maybe that resonated with you and you

can try it with me I love that so just to end it off what's the one thing that you learn about yourself during this vow of silence that when I'm speaking I'm not learning and that's you know I think we go into dates and networking events and we're like what can I tell them to impress them what can I tell them so they think I'm funny and I'm smart and I'm whatever um and that actually is not what makes people anything you say is actually not what makes someone think you're smart and intelligent um people

EMA me I'm not joking you I actually could send I thinking about posting the emails actually anonymously but people sent me emails I was I was at networking events but I just wasn't talking yeah um and I had a little card that said I'm taking a vow of silence I would like to learn to be a better listener please tell me about you that's all I had um and so I would show that card to someone and they would be like oh oh and then they would just start talking right they would start telling me

about them and I would just listen and Nod and I would use all my non-verbal cues I was like my non-verbal was on full charge and um they would write to me I had multiple people write to me afterwards saying that it was one of the best conversations they ever had which is kind of funny because I wasn't saying anything it it's not a conversation it's it's a interesting yeah it wasn't a conversation but they had a great conversation with themselves and that's great and I learned a lot and so um actually they thought I

was really impressive even though I didn't say a word so um it's a very interesting way that our our Minds interact and so I would say that silence is actually maybe one of your most powerful cues you can use yeah I already in that I love that