Seven nonverbal strategies for a stress-less holiday

Strategy Five: Many situations can be diffused (or inflamed) by intentionally using your voice. Besides the words you choose, the emphasis, tone, volume and speed play a crucial role in how someone listens, interprets and reacts to what you say. You can choose all the right words to say and still sabotage your message because it’s the emotional connection to the emphasis, tone, volume and speed that creates the reaction and the memory. People will remember how you make them feel long after they remember what you said or thought you said. (Remember, “the happy place” from Strategy Two can change your voice pattern, too.)

Strategy Six: Your facial expressions tell the world what you’re feeling. Monitor those reaction facial expressions such as the ever-so-easy and favorite eye roll or pouty frown. Research with Botox patients has shown that blocking a frown can really change how you think and feel. Try this little experiment, no Botox needed: Look up, throw your arms up to the sky and try to frown—your body movements are tied to your emotions and your emotions are tied to your movements.

Strategy Seven: My favorite and the most powerful—your breathing. Train yourself to maintain low, abdominal (natural) breathing. The more you experience the calming effects that low, abdominal breathing has on your body, brain and voice, the easier it is to maintain low, abdominal breathing in all situations. The goal is to maintain natural breathing even while others around you are not. Our breath supports all our nonverbals—most importantly, our voice. It is our breathing to which people react when they hear our voice patterns. How you are breathing at the time determines how you will be perceived. When you and the listener are breathing low and comfortably, you are in rapport. If either of you is breathing shallowly or rapidly, there has been a break in rapport, a distraction or a threat. If you remind yourself to breathe comfortably, the situation will diffuse even quicker.

People really do pay more attention to what your body says than what your mouth does. That’s why it’s so important to be intentional and plan your strategies before the holiday gatherings begin.

Sharon Sayler, MBA, is a Communications Success Strategist and author of What Your Body Says (And How to Master the Message). She shows people simple, powerful, easy-to-learn ways they can gain the nonverbal advantage in important situations such as court appearances, job interviews, negotiations…anywhere where the outcome is critical. Visit whatyourbodysays.com.