Body Language Basics...

Body language is a term for communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language or other communication. It forms part of the category of paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not verbal language. This includes the most subtle of movements that many people are not aware of, including winking and slight movement of the eyebrows. In addition body language can also incorporate the use of facial expressions.

First, to change your body language you must be aware of your body language. Practising in front of a mirror seems silly but this will give you good feedback on how you look to other people and give you an opportunity to practise a bit before going out into the world.

There are many ways which will help one to improve body language. A few among them are

1. Don’t cross your arms or legs – You have probably already heard you shouldn’t cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open.

2. Have eye contact, but don’t stare – If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. If you are not used to keeping eye-contact it might feel a little hard or scary in the beginning but keep working on it and you’ll get used to it.

3. Don’t be afraid to take up some space – Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin.

4. Relax your shoulders – When you feel tense it’s easily winds up as tension in your shoulders. They might move up and forward a bit. Try to relax. Try to loosen up by shaking the shoulders a bit and move them back slightly.

5. Nod when they are talking – nod once in a while to signal that you are listening. But don’t overdo it and peck like Woody Woodpecker.

6. Lean, but not too much – If you want to show that you are interested in what someone is saying, lean toward the person talking. If you want to show that you’re confident in yourself and relaxed lean back a bit. But don’t lean in too much or you might seem needy and desperate for some approval. Or lean back too much or you might seem arrogant and distant.

7. Smile and laugh – lighten up, don’t take yourself too seriously. Relax a bit, smile and laugh when someone says something funny. People will be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you seem to be a positive person. But don’t be the first to laugh at your own jokes, it makes you seem nervous and needy. Smile when you are introduced to someone but don’t keep a smile plastered on your face, you’ll seem insincere.

8. Don’t touch your face – it might make you seem nervous and can be distracting for the listeners or the people in the conversation.

9. Keep you head up - Don’t keep your eyes on the ground, it might make you seem insecure and a bit lost. Keep your head up straight and your eyes towards the horizon.

10. Slow down a bit – this goes for many things. Walking slower not only makes you seem more calm and confident, it will also make you feel less stressed. If someone addresses you, don’t snap you’re neck in their direction, turn it a bit more slowly instead.

11. Don’t fidget – try to avoid, phase out or transform fidgety movement and nervous ticks such as shaking your leg or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly. You’ll seem nervous and fidgeting can be a distracting when you try to get something across. Declutter your movements if you are all over the place. Try to relax, slow down and focus your movements.

12. Use your hands more confidently – instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. But don’t use them to much or it might become distracting. And don’t let your hands flail around, use them with some control.

14. Lower your drink – don’t hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, don’t hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead.

15. Mirror - Often when you get along with a person, when the two of you get a good connection, you will start to mirror each other unconsciously. That means that you mirror the other person’s body language a bit. To make the connection better you can try a bit of proactive mirroring. If he leans forward, you might lean forward. If she holds her hands on her thighs, you might do the same. But don’t react instantly and don’t mirror every change in body language. Then weirdness will ensue.

16. Keep a good attitude – last but not least, keep a positive, open and relaxed attitude. How you feel will come through in your body language and can make a major difference.

Take a couple of these body language bits to work on every day for three to four weeks. By then they should have developed into new habits and something you’ll do without even thinking about it. If not, keep on until it sticks. Then take another couple of things you’d like to change and work on them.

If you feel that my blog is helpful, please comment on it.

Dial-Up-Connection

Dial-Up-Connection is a way of accessing net through land-line connection. This is a simple one.
For a successful connection the following steps should be followed.
1)Go to Internet properties and select connect to the network option.
2)Now select set up a connection or network.
3)We get various connections in this,among those select set up a dial up connection.
4)On double clicking we get the rules for setting up the connection such as
i)Dial-Up-Phone number is nothing but the number given by the ISP(Internet Service Provider).
ii)Username is the phone number of land phone being used.
iii)Provide the password given by ISP.
5)Click on the connect button.
6)Now it verifies the user name,password and thus finally connected to dial-up-connection.
This is very much useful to those who live in rural areas.

Me and my laptop

This is my first ever experiment with the web and to giving myself a public visibility. I’ve been longing to create blogs of mine and publish it over the network of networks, yes, Internet I mean. I’ve just got myself a DELL Inspiron 1525 which comes pre-loaded with a genuine Vista Home Premium.

Pretty well, the operating system “Vista” looks very pleasant and showy. Not to say much about it because everybody knows what Vista is! Presently, I’ve created a partition of 20 and 40 GB in which I use one for storing my designs and programs and the other for my personal favorites such as movies, songs and other cool stuffs.

Focusing the academic side, I’ve recently installed the Intel 8085 Simulator which can simulate the assembly codes. The simulator is very well designed, but the sad part of it is that, it comes only with a year of license.

For my designs, I’m basically using Adobe Photoshop which gives me an immense enthusiasm to design wallpapers and art work of my own. I’ve created a few designs played with colors around. It basically took only 2 days to have a working knowledge over it. The rest is given to the hands of Trial and Error..!

The ever inspiring creation of Microsoft – The Visual Studio 2008 (Express Edition), grabs my eyes every time I gaze through the start menu of my Vista. I exclusively love working in Visual Basic, which gives an awesome environment to create windows applications in .net framework. I don’t know what that really means! But anyways it sounds very geeky to me, so I thought of just getting it on!

I’ve also installed “openoffice.org 2.4” which is an open sourced collection of applications (a suite) that resembles the Microsoft Office. Hence I’m very well assured that I’m not into pirating things and using them. Such open source products help in destroying piracy and help in the sustaining of humanity.

My Future Plans:

My friends have already switched over to Linux Ubuntu and I’m also a bit attracted towards it. Major problem in this regard is that, I’m very new to computers and using Linux straight-away is going to be a million dollar question and a thing to happen in the dreams… he he he!!! Not having experience using Linux is also very bad. Hence, I’ve planned to install it in SunVXM Virtual Box.

Where I can install and run Ubuntu inside Vista. Don’t ask me how! My friends are to configure me with that!

For the forthcoming techfests and stuff, I’ve planned to show my talent in the web designing part. As the first step I’ve just started to give a try over HTML and XML.

Please comment on this!