Page 103 - Getting to the Heart of High Performance
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encounters our instinctive first glance is into the eyes of
the other person.
The second most expressive area of the face is the mouth.
In fact, the smile is the most contagious of all emotional
signals. This holds true worldwide, across all cultures and
age groups. Wearing a smile will serve you well, because
the human brain responds most favorably to happy faces.
It recognizes them better and faster than faces wearing
negative expressions.
Smiling does more than predispose others to smile back at
you. It also moves your emotions in a positive direction. In
fact, all emotions work this way. If you intentionally set
your facial muscles into a frown, you’ll trigger negative
feelings inside. If you put an expression of panic on your
face, it will stimulate a sense of fear. Merely by changing
your expression, you can create noticeable changes in the
autonomic nervous system. As Malcolm Gladwell states in
Blink, “Emotion can start on the face.” 11
The Power of Demeanor 87
