By allowing your gaze to drift away from the face some of the time, you won’t make yourself or other people feel self- conscious. Instead, it will give them a feeling of comfort and genuine warmth in your company and will allow you to gather your thoughts. Any more eye contact than this, and you could come across as too intense; any less, and you give off signals that perhaps you’re losing interest in them or the content of their conversation.

2. Posture is the next thing to master — get your posture right, and you’ll automatically feel good.

Next time you notice you’re feeling a bit down, take a few moments to notice how you’re sitting or standing. Chances are you’ll be slouched over with your shoulders drooping down and inward. This collapses the chest and inhibits good breathing, which in turn can make you feel nervous, uncomfortable, and low.

Good posture should be easy and relaxed on the spine, and there should be no tension in the muscles — just imagine a thread running through your spine and being gently lifted upward.

3. Head position is a great one to play with, both with yourself and others. When you want to feel confident and self-assured, keep your head level, both horizontally and vertically. You can also use this straight head position when you want to be authoritative with people and you want them to take you and what you’re saying seriously.

Conversely, when you want to be friendly and in the listening, receptive mode, tilt your head just a little to one side or other. You can shift the tilt from left to right at different points in the conversation as well as nod your head to encourage people to continue speaking.

4. Arm movements let people know how open and receptive we are to them. We use them to hug and to push away, so keep your arms relaxed at the side of your body or behind your back. This shows you are not scared to take on whatever comes your way and you meet challenges full-on.

In general terms the more outgoing you are as a person, the more you tend to use your arms outwardly and away from the body. The quieter you are, the less you gesticulate, and the movements are smaller. Try to strike a natural balance and keep your arm motions midway. When wanting to come across in the best possible light, a very simple rule is not to cross your arms. Obviously, if someone says something that you disagree with, then by all means, show your disapproval by crossing them, but otherwise, don’t.

5. Legs are the furthest point away from the brain, and consequently, they’re one of the hardest parts of the body to consciously control. They tend to move around a lot more than normal when we are nervous, stressed, or being deceptive.

In most situations, especially interviews or work meetings, it’s best to keep them as still as possible. Be careful, too, in the way you cross your legs. Do you cross at the knees or ankles, or do you bring your leg up to rest on the knee of the other?

This is more a question of comfort than anything else. Just be aware that the last position mentioned is known as the “figure four” and is generally perceived as the most defensive leg cross, especially if you do it just after someone says or does something you don’t like, because the natural tendency is to grip the ankle and squeeze, which shows people your tension.

6. Orientation, or angle of the body, gives an indication of our attitudes and feelings toward others. We naturally angle ourselves toward people we find attractive, friendly, and interesting and angle ourselves away from those we don’t.

This includes the way we lean in and out from people, as we will often just tilt from the pelvis and lean sideways or forward to share a bit of conversation. Being directly face-on to someone can be adversarial, like a game of chess. In situations where there may be tension or stress it is better to approach softly from the side than straight on.

7. Hand gestures are so numerous that it’s hard to give a brief guide. Palms slightly up and outward is seen as open and friendly. Palm-down gestures are generally seen as dominant, emphasizing, and possibly aggressive, especially when there is no movement or bending between the wrist and the forearm.

This palm up, palm down is very important when it comes to handshaking, and where appropriate, you should always offer a handshake when meeting new people. The handshake should be upright and vertical, which will convey a feeling of equality.

8. Distance or proximity to others is crucial if you want to give off the right signals. Stand or sit too close, and you’ll be marked as “pushy”; too far away, and you’ll be “standoffish.”

Neither are what we want, so observe when in a group situation how close all the other people are to each other. If you move closer to someone and he backs away, you’re probably just a little too close to his comfort zone. You’ve “overstepped the mark” and should pull back a little to your previous position.

9. Mouth movements can give away all sorts of clues as to how we’re feeling. We purse our lips, bite them, and sometimes twist them to the side when we’re thinking or maybe holding back a sarcastic or angry comment we don’t wish to reveal.

Nevertheless, it will probably be spotted by others, and although they may not know the comment, they will get a feeling you are not pleased. There are also different types of smiles, and each gives off a corresponding feeling to the recipient. Genuine smiles show the teeth and wrinkle the corners of the eyes.

10. Your ears are also important, even though, in general terms, most people can’t move them much. However, if you’ve got two ears and only one mouth, try to use them in that order. If you listen twice as much as you talk, you’ll come across as a good communicator who knows how to strike a balanced conversation without being self-centered or, at the other end of the scale, a wallflower.

Practice these 10 simple ways to improve your communication skills, and you’ll reap the rewards in your personal and professional life. People will find you more attractive, more open, more presentable, and more professional.

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There are people who don’t like me who have never actually met me or had a conversation with me. That’s fine with me. I won’t invest emotional energy into things I can’t change. I will endeavour to be the best I can be and if my best still generates critics and people who find reason to dislike me (which it will), that’s okay.

The only person I can change is me, so I’ll focus on improving, educating and developing myself rather than trying to create a fan club or convince people to like me.

While it’s normal and very human to have the desire to be needed, liked, loved and important to others, it’s also crucial for our development to get clear about who we are and what we stand for, and to live a life consistent with those values - to like ourselves. Otherwise we simply become frustrated People Pleasers.

Newsflash 3: It’s okay to disagree with people. Even people you like and respect.

Newsflash 4: Some people’s overwhelming need to be liked is the very thing that makes them hard to like (there’s some irony for you).

Newsflash 5: For many people, their need to be liked is actually a significant barrier to their personal and professional growth.

When it comes to this issue, you might want to ask yourself these questions:

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According to the research of psychologists, neurologists, and other scientists, setting a goal invests ourselves into the target as if we’d already accomplished it. That is, by setting something as a goal, however small or large, however near or far in the future, a part of our brain believes that desired outcome is an essential part of who we are - setting up the conditions that drive us to work towards the goals to fulfill the brain’s self-image.

Apparently the brain cannot distinguish between things we want and things we have. Neurologically, then, our brains treat the failure to achieve our goal the same way as it treats the loss of a valued possession. And up until the moment the goal is achieved, we have failed to achieve it, setting up a constant tension that the brain seeks to resolve.

Ideally, this tension is resolved by driving us towards accomplishment. In many cases, though, the brain simply responds to the loss, causing us to feel fear, anxiety, even anguish, depending on the value of the as-yet-unattained goal.

Love, Loss, Dopamine, and Our Dreams
The brains functions are carried out by a stew of chemicals called neurotransmitters. You’ve probably heard of serotonin, which plays a key role in our emotional life - most of the effective anti-depressant medications on the market are serotonin reuptake inhibitors, meaning they regulate serotonin levels in the brain leading to more stable moods.

Somewhat less well-known is another neurotransmitter, dopamine. Among other things, dopamine acts as a motivator, creating a sensation of pleasure when the brain is stimulated by achievement. Dopamine is also involved in maintaining attention - some forms of ADHD are linked to irregular responses to dopamine.

So dopamine plays a key role in keeping us focused on our goals and motivating us to attain them, rewarding our attention and achievement by elevating our mood. That is, we feel good when we work towards our goals.

Dopamine is related to wanting - to desire. The attainment of the object of our desire releases dopamine into our brains and we feel good. Conversely, the frustration of our desires starves us of dopamine, causing anxiety and fear.

One of the greatest of desires is romantic love - the long-lasting, “till death do us part” kind. It’s no surprise, then, that romantic love is sustained, at least in part, through the constant flow of dopamine released in the presence - real or imagined - of our true love. Loss of romantic love cuts off that supply of dopamine, which is why it feels like you’re dying - your brain responds by triggering all sorts of anxiety-related responses.

Herein lies obsession, as we go to ever-increasing lengths in search of that dopamine reward. Stalking specialists warn against any kind of contact with a stalker, positive or negative, because any response at all triggers that reward mechanism. If you let the phone ring 50 times and finally pick up on the 51st ring to tell your stalker off, your stalker gets his or her reward, and learns that all s/he has to do is wait for the phone to ring 51 times.

Romantic love isn’t the only kind of desire that can create this kind of dopamine addiction, though - as Captain Ahab knew well, any suitably important goal can become an obsession once the mind has established ownership.

The Neurology of Ownership
Ownership turns out to be about a lot more than just legal rights. When we own something, we invest a part of ourselves into it - it becomes an extension of ourselves.

In a famous experiment at Cornell University, researchers gave students school logo coffee mugs, and then offered to trade them chocolate bars for the mugs. Very few were willing to make the trade, no matter how much they professed to like chocolate. Big deal, right? Maybe they just really liked those mugs!

But when they reversed the experiment, handing out chocolate and then offering to trade mugs for the candy, they found that now, few students were all that interested in the mugs. Apparently the key thing about the mugs or the chocolate wasn’t whether students valued whatever they had in their possession, but simply that they had it in their possession.

This phenomenon is called the “endowment effect”. In a nutshell, the endowment effect occurs when we take ownership of an object (or idea, or person); in becoming “ours” it becomes integrated with our sense of identity, making us reluctant to part with it (losing it is seen as a loss, which triggers that dopamine shut-off I discussed above).

Interestingly, researchers have found that the endowment effect doesn’t require actual ownership or even possession to come into play. In fact, it’s enough to have a reasonable expectation of future possession for us to start thinking of something as a part of us - as jilted lovers, gambling losers, and 7-year olds denied a toy at the store have all experienced.

The Upshot for Goal-Setters
So what does all this mean for would-be achievers?

On one hand, it’s a warning against setting unreasonable goals. The bigger the potential for positive growth a goal has, the more anxiety and stress your brain is going to create around it’s non-achievement.

It also suggests that the common wisdom to limit your goals to a small number of reasonable, attainable objectives is good advice. The more goals you have, the more ends your brain thinks it “owns” and therefore the more grief and fear the absence of those ends is going to cause you.

On a more positive note, the fact that the brain rewards our attentiveness by releasing dopamine means that our brains are working with us to direct us to achievement. Paying attention to our goals feels good, encouraging us to spend more time doing it.Therefore, ultimately our brains want us to achieve our goals, so that a sense of who we are can be fulfilled. And that’s pretty good news!