Ruth Greenwood

Metamorfus Blog

April 21, y

One is GoodConfession: I still, occasionally, envy people who have a gang of friends. Like they’re surrounded by a permanent mobile party—a big, energetic, and happy-looking molecule of people. Some people crave that kind of personal crowd and feel a bit lost without it. (If that’s you…wow.)

I, on the other hand, am half of a two-atom molecule, like salt, NaCl. If I’m talking, it’s usually to one other person at a time. And I usually have one best friend (meaning someone who knows more about me than I post on Facebook and we actually talk sometimes). Some of our deepest conversa-tions happen side by side, like the brothers in the photo, or on a bus or while doing something together like running or washing dishes. No need for full-frontal face-to-face, so I’m not caught up in wondering if that’s a bored ex-pression or if there’s too much or too little eye contact.

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And side by side, we two shy people go places and feel less awkward, be-cause each other is there. It’s good to have a wingman. Or wingwoman.

My usual wingwoman is overseas for a month. My usual wingman is on the injured list. And it’s the for-real party season, so I’m devising my strategiy for flying solo; I’ll tell you what I’m trying and what worked. Stay tuned!

(One tip I’ll definitely try—looking only at someone’s left eye when we’re talking. When people talk face to face, all of us look at only one eye at a time. And because the right brain is where we feel emotion, and the left eye is connected to our listeners’ right brain, you’re more likely to connect. Looking at only their left eye makes us look more confident, too, since our gaze isn’t shifting back and forth from one eye to the other. If you test this out, please share your comments below.

Pirate exception clause: My source says that if your listener has an eyepatch, glass eye, or crossed eye on the left, best to look at the bridge of his or her nose instead.

By the way, this tip came from a website for pharmaceutical salespeople, who are the most ferociously outgoing people on the planet. Are they right?)

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