Contest for "Best First Impression Story"

I am currently running a contest for the Best First Impression Story. Just email me a one or two paragraph story about a first impression you had about someone that illustrates credibility or the lack of credibility. Your story can be from your work experiences or your personal life. It doesn't need to be in fancy language, just a story from your great wealth of experience.

The prize for the best story is $100 dollars and a 30 minute phone coaching session with me.

The stories will be judged by three writers. Email your story to: Patti@pattiwood.net by Friday March 15, 2011. Or if it is easier, just give me a call and tell me the brief story over the phone. My cell number is 678-358-6160.

Story Example

As a circuit judge, I read first impressions in traffic court. One day in my traffic court I had some one ticketed for running a stop sign. I tend to asses someone immediately if the person appears 1. -Guilty, 2. - Guilty, but he or she won't tell a bold lie, they feel bad or 3. - Innocent. My gut tells me this guy is a 2 - Guilty but willing to learn a lesson. Sure enough, during testimony he said, "I don't FEEL I ran the stop sign." I interpreted the use of the word FEEL and his body language to mean he knew he might have run the stop sign. So I had him take a video camera and tape 10 to 15 cars going through that intersection with the stop sign then come back to court. He came back in after viewing the video and with his face and voice expressed a mixture of wonder at the facts and embarrassment at his mistake and said, " I watched those other cars run that stop sign, and I realized I had run it too." I feel it is my job not to merely punish people but ultimately to make them better citizens in the future. In his case, I was glad he learned something and admitted his guilt and I let him off with a warning.


Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://PattiWood.net. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Trip to San Francisco and Snow and First Impression Story

Love to hear your snow adventure.
Two weeks ago Atlanta had 30 year record snow and ice.
For me, what could have been a stressful trip to speak in California turned into a wonderful adventure. I live on a hill in Decatur Georgia. When it is icy you can't get out of my house and back down the driveway to the street. In fact, because of the hill you can't easily walk down. So I had paid three cute little boys to clean my big icy hill of a driveway. The boys rang my doorbell and I opened the door to see two ten year olds and a six year old holding a shovel, a rake and brown respecitively. What a first impression! Who could resist their request to clean my driveway.
My city Decatur had no snow plows or snow emergency procedures, so they had police barricades on the worst main roads in the city. Unfortunately two of the roads are the only way in and out of my neighborhood!
My friend Charlie got in his Four by Four, snuck through police barricades, yes copys with multiple cars blocking the roads in and out of my nieghborhool.(Reminding me of the old Goldie Hawn Movie Sugurland Express or any of the Smokey and the Bandid Movies.) Charlie drove up and down icey hills and through blocked roads to pick me up early Thursday morning for my trip.
Once I was in the car, Charlie, who owns two car insurance businesses, said, "I thought you were crazy not to be able to drive yourself, but Decatur hasn't done any clearing its a iced over mess." Charlie managed to get through two more police barricades on iced over North Druid Hills ignoring the fact that other cars were stopping and turning back from the barricades so we could get on to our highway I285The highway had two lanes out of six open and guess what? There wasn’t any traffic!!! We should have taken pictures.

I got a flight out and stayed at a fantastic hotel called The Palace in San Francisco.

I had a wonderful meal at the Pied Piper restaurant at the Palace hotel last Thursday evening and met an interesting guy who does training internationally and owns a coffee house in San Francisco. He was leaving for China this week. (I just read a very insightful article on China in “The Week” It discussed the coming storm as the country pollutes its water, has more elderly people in need of support than people working, and because of its large popluation, an increased need to purchase goods for all it people.for goods throughout the world. )

Later I spoke to a gentleman from Malaysia. He shared with me that he is part Indian part Chinese and was raised in a big house with floor to ceiling books in the library that sounded like the library at the Biltmore. At 14 he left Malaysia for London and was accepted immediately into college. He went on from there to law school at Cambridge and then worked in international banking. He rides his bike or the bus everyday to his current job as a house council for a Bank. That fact alone impressed me! He talked about the chain of restaurants in China he just opened with his partners. The Chinese love cheese and California wine. Who knew! We also all shared favorite books. I told them about the novel I was reading by humorous British author David Nicholls “A Question of Attraction.” (He reminds me of the author of “About a Boy” Nick Hornsby.)

For the main course I had the vegetarian pasta with spiral macaroni pasta, mushrooms, parsley with truffle oil and a dollop of sour cream on top. It was wonderful. I have tasted a lot of pasta. This was a truly unique dish!

Then I had the dessert of chocolate peppermint cake. It was served on a beautiful long clear glass rectangle plate with pink ice-cream and raspberry sauce. It was so lovely, I even took a picture of the plating that I will send.

The next day I had breakfast in the hotel court. Check out the link for Photos it is a extremely impressive hotel. Make sure you click to the court photos. It has this enormous glass ceiling like a garden conservatory in a Victorian home. In fact, the restaurants and lobby were gorgeous!

Http://www.sfpalacerestaurants.com/pied-piper

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://pattiwood.net/. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.