Brett and Kate McKay | at The Art of Manlieness

Last week we talked about why your first impression matters — how amazingly quickly other people form one of you, and how difficult it is to overcome that initial assessment.

We also explained how first impressions aren’t about trying to be someone you’re not, but getting your conversational strategies and body language to match and enhance your true feelings, values, and personality. Sometimes we act in ways that contradict how we really feel, and create barriers to people accessing our best qualities. Improving your first impression clears these obstacles, increasing the chances that new acquaintances will be able to connect with you and better get to know who you really are. Nailing the “mechanics” of a good first impression gives you the assurance that its outcome — good or bad — will be based on actual compatibility, rather than a misfiring of external cues.

There are two components to creating a positive first impression: what you say (conversation) and how you act (body language). Both components are important (you can read more about the art of conversation here), but the latter is actually much more influential.

Nonverbal cues have 4X the impact on your impression than your words do. Thus, how you stand, sit, gesture, and generally hold yourself can either significantly enhance or detract from the overall first impression you make on others.

In order to make your body language a first impression booster, you want it to communicate 3 main things: openness, confidence, and interest.

Body Language That Communicates Openness

Have you ever needed to ask someone to take a picture for you, or looked around the room at a party trying to decide who to talk to? How did you pick? You may not have realized it, but you likely chose someone who looked “open” rather than “closed.” There was something about their facial expression, gaze, posture, and the way they talked and interacted with others that seemed warm, safe, and approachable rather than threatening, hostile, aloof, and/or self-contained.

How do you achieve such a welcoming aura yourself, so that people want to make contact in the first place, and can feel a sense of connection with you once they do?

It’s primarily about opening up what body language expert Patti Wood calls your “body windows.”

Body windows are parts of the body that influence others to see you as more open or closed, all depending on how you orient them. These are places that feel intimate and/or are vulnerable to physical attack. When you “expose” them to others, therefore, the more primal part of people’s brains reads you as more accessible and approachable.

Wood compares someone who keeps these body parts “closed” to a house with boarded up windows — the effect is bleak, creepy, confined, and off-putting; you certainly don’t want to go in. A house with open windows, in contrast, feels fresh, welcoming, and inviting.

Let’s take a look at each “window” and how you can either close or open it: … read more here