Patti Wood Body Language Expert Blog

How to o Solve Changing the Temperature on the Thermostat Arguments.

The E.R.A.S.E.R. Method

How to Solve Changing the Temperature on the Thermostat arguments.

by Patti A. Wood

The E.R.A.S.E.R. Method

by Patti A. Wood

Are you upset, irritated or angry with your partner or roommate because you can’t agree on the thermostat settings? Are you frustrated because you have the same argument over and over again? The ERASER Method is a step-by-step process to create a script of your message and word it in such a way as to make it easy to give and easy to hear! You can avoid misunderstanding and lessen defensiveness in the receiver of your message. It prepares you for positive discussion and makes it possible to ERASE the Thermostat problem.

STEP E Be Exact: Describe the offensive behavior on paper, then answer the ``W'' questions noted above regarding the behavior.

Exact Express your concerns in exact terms. Don't use generalizations like, ``Every time you...'' or ``You never think of me...'' or ``You always...'' Also, don't guess at or express an opinion as to why they do what they do. For example, ``You don’t care about how cold I am or you would...''

Example, “In the last three weeks you have turned down the thermostat to less than 59 degrees all most every night before we go to bed.”

Example, “In the last week we have argued about the thermostat five times.”

STEP R state the result Know the result. As yourself, ``What is the concrete result of the offending behavior

Result After you've described the behavior, the person may still not understand why they should change their behavior. You may need to give them a result, i.e., tell them what happens as a result of the behavior.

Examples:

``When you do that, I am so cold that no matter what I wear to bed I am too cold to sleep”

``In the arguments we both raise are voices and say things we regret later.

STEP A

Aware There are times when it's obvious from the steam escaping from your ears that the person's behavior is upsetting to you. Sometimes it is not so obvious, especially to the offending person. Clue them in. Notice what emotion their behavior arouses in you and communicate it to them.

Example:

“I know that saving money is important to you and I know we need to keep to a budget, and I also know that when I am that cold, that miserable and don’t sleep it affects every part of my life, my work, my time with you and the kids, and I worry that you don’t see how miserable I am and it makes me feel you don’t care about me.

Example:

The arguments affect our ability to have quality time with the kids, I think you notice how upset they get and we both agree that arguing so much is a bad example for the kids.

Notice these statements are worded carefully. Absent are statements like, ``You made me angry.'' By using an ``I'' statement, you avoid arguments. No one can argue with an ``I'' statement. It's pretty difficult for someone to tell you how you do or don't feel about something. Your feelings are your feelings. There are times when this step is very significant.

Granted, there are partners who only need to know what really aggravates you to be motivated to continue the behavior!

STEP S Switch the behavior. Suggest and recommend the behavior you would like to see occurring in place of the current offensive behavior.

Switch Examples:

``Can we sit down with the electric bill and our budget Saturday afternoon when we both have some energy and come up with a compromise that works for us?

“I have looked at our bill and our budget, here they are. What if we choose to each give up two things from our personal expenses that add up to the 20 dollars a month increase in the bill and set the thermostat at 68 at night for two months and see if that works/

STEP E Evidence—establish and agree on the behavior change.

Evidence If you're concerned that the person may backslide into old behaviors, you can ask for an agreement as to what the change will look like. Perhaps you can set a time frame when you both will be observing the changed behavior, or a specific number of times you would like to see the behavior.

Examples: Lets plan on checking in on this date with each other, I will fix your favorite that beef stew for dinner and we can see if we both.

This example includes a reward step see below.

Reward Some people are motivated by rewards; some are persuaded through the prospect of punishment. Think about what motivates the person you are talking to. Would it be helpful to give them a specific reward if they erase the old behavior and switch to a new one? What punishment could you present as a possibility if they don't? Caution—make sure it's something you absolutely, positively will do. If you won't carry through on this step, it's powerless. They must know you mean business.

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.

Signs of a toxic workplace, Narcissism in the Workplace. How do Narcissists effect corporate culture and their employees. Patti Wood Body Language Expert

Here are my rough notes from a media interview on Signs of a toxic workplace

Confusion, miscommunication, silence stressed and defeated body language, people talking behind others backs, rumors, cliques and us against them mentality.

Toxicity creates Confusion, not knowing what truth or fiction is, real or imagined can destabilize you a make employees more susceptible to future deceit and abuse. Toxic cultures/leaders love to confuse you with mixed messages. It destabilizes you and makes you a great target for their abuse. People don’t know who or what to believe they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.

For example, an abuser showers someone with compliments at work, gives them great projects and or jobs with perks and alternates that with yelling and criticism, threats of firing, or other behaviors such as cutting them out of email or project. Then returns with good behaviors such as statements like, “But you’re a great guy and I would never fire you.”

The culture itself may alternate bad with the good. They may heap them with praise and special attention that makes them feel special or create a culture of high rewards, money, great perks, prestige, health insurance then switch with no rhyme or reason to coldness, abuse, overworking and unreasonable expectations and or attacks or threat to withdraw job perks or job altogether later.

That mixture is dangerous. The employee doesn’t know what is real or true. I know people that worked for and or with Harvey Weinstein for example who is highly charismatic and he was known in this work culture to give his full charismatic focus and attention that made people feel special, praise give perks and promise amazing success to his employees and his business associates but yell and scream and abuse and threated to fire a get rid of people.

This is dangerous in the workplace because the employee may let the abuse escalate hoping for the “goodies” and to feel good and safe and be stressed out by the abuse and therefore weakened to disagree defend or stop the abuse. And they may spend an inordinate amount of time trying to please and or keep the toxic person for getting upset or to try to keep the toxic business rolling along, without rocking the boat just to keep their jobs. It is just like an abused wife staying with her abuser. They are hanging on, but not functioning in a healthy way that is good for them or others.

There are also “Sunk Cost” factors and what they have already invested and cannot be recovered in their job creates an aversion to losing more by changing the toxic environment in any way. They may do the least work with the least effort, but they will stay. So again, you have fearful unmotivated employees.

If a business culture is toxic people don’t feel safe, to tell the truth, there is too much risk. They can’t say what is wrong and often because of the stress they don’t have the energy or confidence to do so.

In group narcissism, we see an unquestioning loyalty and admiration for the group and an intense fervor in the persecution of any person who questions the authority of the overarching ideals of the group. It's us against everyone else who we view as other and less than. Cliques form, creating outsiders who feel left out and abandoned and powerless.

The group will do anything to ignore any bad behavior of their fellow narcissists, give him a pass and then another pass, normalize unhealthy behaviors bullying, abusive and dangerous behavior. They will defend one of their own kind, for fear of losing the group. They will even attack any innocent person or persons who threaten the group status quo. The group is their breath, their life, their sustenance, their "supply." In the presence of other narcissists, who reflect back “like” behaviors they don't see their dark selves. In the group, they are whole and belong. They may see damage in others, yet it only serves to make them feel superior. And in fact, their very acceptance of the dark damage in their fellow tribe members may make them think they are good people! They don’t consider the fact that in a healthy group dark damage behavior is called out as unacceptable.

Fromm explains, “[an] individual narcissist, who is out on his own, comparing himself to normal people may see he lacks a moral core unless he is mentally very sick, he may have at least some doubts about his image. But, if he joins a group that has other narcissists, he has none, since his narcissism is shared by the majority” (ibid., p.204). They feed each other giving each other narcissistic supply

For your information

Definition of Essentially, cognitive dissonance occurs when humans experience a state of holding two or more contradictory thoughts or beliefs in their cognition at one time. The result is a state of anxious confusion and a desire to reduce the resultant overwhelm and unbalanced perception.

How to look and feel more attractive Even On Bad Days When Your Feeling Down

How to look and feel more attractive

Be "UP!
Create Attractiveness energy confidence and by moving and holding your body “UP!” If you follow me you know that I created the label UP! to describe all upward posture and movements and facial expressions such as head held up, gestures with up motions. When we are happy our body naturally moves up and holds itself up.

When you hold or move your body the way you would like to feel the posture actually sends a message to the brain, “Hey I am feeling hot, attractive ” As you hold your body the little pharmacy in your brain starts producing the chemicals that match that state, (in as little as a 40th of a second.) and pumps them into your body and you begin to feel up. The combination of your up posture and movement up and chemical "Up" state is felt by those around you. They start to give you attentive nonverbal cues and that makes you feel more attractive. I call this the fake it till you make it technique. You only have to fake it for a fraction of a second before it actually affects how you feel.

Gesture

Attractions is also communicated by gestures. Our eyes are designed to go towards movement so our ancestors could find food when they hunted and prospective romantic partners and others are drawn towards the movement. Also, Research shows that charismatic leaders use gestures four times as many as others do when they talk. Charismatic speakers from Orpah and Martin Luther King from Cesar Chavez to your favorite motivational speaker punctuate almost every sentence with a strong gesture.

Choose how YOU want to feel.
You chose a word that expresses how you want your listener to feel, then choose a word that expresses how YOU would like to feel in a particular situation and then get into a posture that matches it. So if your word is Beautiful or Confident you put your body in an open position, arms away from your body, legs uncrossed, shoulder back, heart forward, extending eye-contact for as long as three seconds, and make your voice go down at the end of sentences. I shared this tip with one of my coaching clients and had him act out his word for a job interview. He chose the word Excitement. He smiled and laughed as he finished doing it. He said that he didn't feel excited at the moment before he started moving his body, he felt afraid. But he said,:"... when I did it was weird" "I brought my shoulders back and smiled and put some energy in my voice. I really did get excited" "It felt like I had just had a big cup of Starbucks."

Lower your voice- a low voice is perceived as more sexy and attractive. In men, it’s a sign of testosterone that makes low voiced men more attractive to women and voices in women are perceived in the emotional center of the brains in men and low and soft voices are interpreted as more attractive.

By the way, we tend to tighten the vocal chords when we are tense and the high, sometimes screechy sound does not sound sexy so move up your body language but bring down your voice.

What makes and Inspirational Charismatic Leader

Inspirational leaders often are shown in research to be high on the “Charismatic Factors.” For example, in the US the popular vote tends to go to the most Charismatic Candidate. The four first impression factors are credibility likeability attractiveness and power and the last three likeability attractiveness and power form Charisma. I discuss at length in my book SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma that charismatic people are shown to have the ability to lead, motivate and persuade people to action.

When you really look at charismatic people those that inspire they often have the power/alpha characteristics tall and broad, big gestures, and deep-voiced and an intense gaze just borderline of staring, (but what charismatic people do has they put in not just the "power" the aspect of eye contact but the likability of smiling and nodding,) Interpersonally that gaze and intense focus make the Charismatic person makes the person they are talking to feel mesmerized, as if they are special an It’s interesting that it’s often how they make the other person or other people feel that identifies them as charismatic, which I think is one of the magical secrets about it.
If you act interested in others, they’ll have a better impression of you, which is why charismatic people also happen to be great listeners. Holding eye contact, leaning in, ignoring their phone, giving the person their total focus even if it's for a short handshake and a one-minute conversation.
They are also talented at drawing out information from others by being superior listeners (They can talk a lot but when they listen, they really listen) They ask questions and want to know about you. They often tend to be great at matching and mirroring the nonverbal cues of the person they are with so again the person feels valued and totally understood. They can often match the zeitgeist or the emotion of the room, client, audience, country. For example leaders like Hitler, used anger which has shown to be the strongest persuasive emotion, that mirrored a segment of the population to inspire them to follow him.

Charismatic inspirational leaders often have ‘Emotional contagion,” meaning very strong, very clearly communicated emotions, and those emotions transfer to the listeners So, we can’t stop watching them when they speak. And inspirational leader’s ability to show and communicate a broad range of emotions that translate into perceived power and charisma.

You will notice that charismatic leaders don’t have to be credible. In fact, when someone is highly charismatic, it overrides our brain's ability to detect whether or not they are credible. We can’t tell if they are honest or not. So charismatic people have superpowers they can use for good or evil. In a research study on the effects of charisma on politics, the researchers found that people with charisma are able to gracefully persuade us to buy from them, vote for them and (as charismatic leaders like Kennedy and Clinton have shown) mate with them. But authentic body language where the words and the nonverbal cues are shown to communicated honesty. The limbic brain can decern when someone is dishonest.

Take Care,

Patti

What Does Resting Face and Resting Bitch Face Mean, Body Language Expert Patti Wood Explains Resting Face

Here is an article I contributed to as a body language expert. I love that many years ago I created the term resting face and now it's part of the national consciousness!

I woke up this morning with two creases between my eyebrows that were so deep, they might as well have been independently memorizing the philosophies of Nietzsche to share at an upcoming dinner party. This state of perma-furrow, thanks to some weird sleeping position I vow to never repeat, left me actually feeling frustrated rather than my everyday situation of just looking frustrated. You see, because I suffer from resting bitch face (RBF), I don’t need additional features or accessories to make me come across as less friendly—with the operative words here being “come across as.” That’s because I’m not actually unfriendly—it’s just, you know, the way my resting face looks. What I wish everyone would realize, though, when parsing answers to the question of what does RBF mean and what does it not is that there are many ways to convey emotions, and not all of them rely on what your face is doing. supporting my contention that having RBF really has little if anything to do with actually having the attitude of a B is a recent study by Ohio State University, which points out that facial expressions don’t always show the full spectrum of what a person is feeling. So, what does RBF mean if not conveying a sense that the person sporting the expression is angry, unenthused, and unwelcoming? To help me fight the good fight against RBF stigma, below, a body-language expert explains the demystifies why RBF is received the way it is.

What does RBF mean, according to a body-language pro?

1. RBF IS ROOTED IN A SMILE—BUT NOT A GREAT ONE

“Your face can make over 10,000 different expressions and over 50 different kinds of smiles, and RBF is actually a smile of contempt,” says Patti Wood, body language expert and author of Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma. “Contempt is a feeling that a person or thing is beneath consideration, worthless, and deserving of scorn. When someone feels contempt, they often feel superior to others, though people in subordinate power positions can feel contempt to their superiors.”

What this amounts to is a kind-of crooked smile, or even a slight sneer. “What you are seeing is one side of the lip pulled back slightly or a very slight raising the outside corners of the mouth and freezing in place,” she says. “The lack of symmetry of the mouth is seen by others not just as unattractive, but that there is something wrong that is being hidden. It alerts the viewers central nervous system to be on guard and creates a stress response,” says Wood.

2. NEUTRAL OR NOT, RBF STILL CONVEYS AN EMOTION

“The broader category of ‘resting face’ is the typically neutral expressions a face shows when not actively showing an emotion,” says Wood. “But because your facial expressions actually do move muscles in your face, whatever emotions you show the most may form expressions. Interestingly, it can be the emotion a person believes they are actually suppressing.”

“‘Resting face’ is the neutral expression of not showing an emotion. But because facial expressions move muscles in your face, whatever emotions you show the most may form expressions.” —Patti Wood, body-language expert

So a neutral-seeming RBF might still be showcasing some trace elements of feelings you’ve pushed down in the past. While you might not actually be angry or feel negatively at all, if you’re one to push down feelings of contempt or frustration or sadness, that maybe what’s showing. That is, even if your face is relaxed, it still shows traces of emotion. And to take it a step further, the expression might inform what you’re currently feeling. “Think of it as like the lingering effects of a lot of alcohol in your body: You will feel it even if you haven’t had a drink in hours,” Wood says.

3. RBF IS INTERPRETED DIFFERENTLY BASED ON GENDER

Men experience RBF at the same rate as women, but when men make the expression, they’re perceived more so as powerful rather than, well…bitchy, Wood says, adding that “smiling differs in males and females.”

4. YOU CAN MINDFULLY SHIFT YOUR RBF

“Do resting-face check-ins throughout the day and self-correct,” says Wood. “Look in the mirror in the morning and throughout the day, and check on the cues that show RBF. Change your expression to be what you feel comfortable showing. You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.” To be clear, that means there’s no need to fake smile, ever.

https://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/what-does-rbf-mean/?fbclid=IwAR2pQOXy6Csiv3IfI0I8_E7ehkbLFumYDSBhDYUtuFp5AMMsMSeZrU8kKdk

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.