{"id":63382,"date":"2022-04-14T20:18:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T20:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/?p=63382"},"modified":"2022-04-14T20:18:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T20:18:56","slug":"how-your-micro-expressions-affect-your-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/blog\/how-your-micro-expressions-affect-your-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"How Your Micro Expressions Affect Your Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VAB9cUlGrRo?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>The &#8216;micro expression&#8217; is a very subtle facial movement that occurs just before we reveal our true feelings.<\/p>\n<p>Micro expressions are so quick and natural we aren&#8217;t even aware of them. Our faces can reveal our true emotions before we realize it, and according to Paul Ekman, one of the world&#8217;s leading experts on micro expressions, they can be &#8220;critical to understanding what another person is thinking or feeling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They can also affect your presence. As Dr. Ekman writes: &#8220;Presence is the all-important ingredient in social influence, because if you&#8217;re not present with someone else emotionally, then you cannot influence him or her.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In this post I&#8217;ll explain how micro expressions work and how you can use them to connect with the people you meet in a powerful way.<\/p>\n<p>People can see our micro expressions, even when we don&#8217;t want them to.<\/p>\n<p>Micro expressions are those facial reactions that happen in fractions of a second, without us realizing it. They are revealed in the way the muscles around our mouth and eyes contract. And they let other people know what we&#8217;re really thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Many people think they&#8217;re not susceptible to micro expression misreads. They&#8217;re wrong. We all make micro expression reads, but some people are better at it than others.<\/p>\n<p>Learning to control your own expressions is a powerful way to gain more presence, but it&#8217;s hard to learn because it&#8217;s hard to see your own expressions in action. You can&#8217;t see yourself in the same way you see others, because you&#8217;re so used to your own face that it doesn&#8217;t register anymore\u2026 or you notice the wrong things about it.<\/p>\n<p>So how do you learn? For this exercise, you&#8217;ll need a friend who can help you spot what you didn&#8217;t know you were doing, and a camera (digital or regular) with a remote or timer release so that you can take pictures of yourself from different angles and distances\u2014with flash and without flash\u2014as well as film footage if possible (you may have to set up a tripod and film yourself). This exercise<\/p>\n<p>Some of the most common expressions we make are micro expressions. These are facial expressions that last less than one-fifth of a second, but they have been proven to have a powerful impact on others.<\/p>\n<p>Telling someone you are sorry is an expression or a micro expression. It&#8217;s a way of saying I care about you and am trying to make it right. This is an example of your micro expressions having a lasting impact on others.<\/p>\n<p>Once you realize how your micro expressions affect those around you, you can use them to your advantage. You can use them to create more personal connections with others by being aware of your facial expressions and their meanings.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s very important to know the difference between &#8220;expressions&#8221; and &#8220;expressions.&#8221; Your face can express a BEVY of emotions. But you can only control two of them: genuine grins and fake frowns.<\/p>\n<p>The other day, I had my students practice smiling by positioning their faces in a way that made them FEEL happy, then holding it for 10 seconds. My students thought this was a strange request because they believed that if they smiled for 10 seconds, they would naturally start to feel happier. (In fact, most people report feeling more stressed than happy after 10 seconds of sustained smiling.)<\/p>\n<p>The next day, we did the same thing with anger. Having your face in an angry position is an entirely different experience than feeling angry. When you have your face in an angry position, you FEEL angry; when you have your face in a happy position, you can FEEL happy or not-so-happy depending on what else is going on.<\/p>\n<p>This is how micro expressions work too. Yes, we all look at each other&#8217;s faces and thus pick up on each other&#8217;s micro expressions without any training whatsoever &#8212; but are we reading them correctly? Are we controlling them? Are we using them to our advantage? It&#8217;s one thing to<\/p>\n<p>When we&#8217;re speaking to a crowd, there&#8217;s an element that&#8217;s almost out of our control. This is because facial expressions are involuntary actions. The only thing you can do is to be consciously aware that you have them, and then make a choice about how to react in the moment.<\/p>\n<p>This is a big part of being present with your audience. Being present means being aware of your body language and facial expression, as well as your words.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully this post will help you to be more conscious of your facial expressions, and therefore more in control of the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>I am often asked how I create my characters. What&#8217;s the secret? Here it is: I play roles that are close to my personality, with minor alterations to push them just beyond where I think I can go. That way, the character ends up being more interesting than I am. It&#8217;s not so much about creating a character. It&#8217;s about creating a series of flavors that are fresh and unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>What is surprising to new actors is that you get to make an audience feel what you want them to feel. You get to call the shots, and they will follow you anywhere. You don&#8217;t need words or stunts or action sequences; everything you need is right in front of you. All you have to do is express it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In a study of 55 subjects, Ekman and Friesen [1971] found that people who could not control their face muscles reported more negative affect than those who could. Later studies showed that voluntary facial expression may positively influence the way others respond to us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Source: http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2012\/06\/the-expression-of-emotion-on-our-faces\/258948\/<\/p>\n<p>The above quote is from an article written for The Atlantic titled, &#8220;The Expression of Emotion on Our Faces&#8221; by James Hamblin. The article was based on research conducted in 1971 by Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. Wallace V. Friesen. The researchers studied 55 male students from San Francisco State University, who were instructed to make facial expressions while listening to various recordings of different emotional tones in voices, such as anger and sadness. The study concluded that people who could control their facial expressions felt less negative than those that couldn&#8217;t control theirs.<\/p>\n<p>This piece of information is particularly interesting because it shows us just how true it is that people interpret and respond to our emotions based completely on our facial expressions\u2014even if we don&#8217;t realize we&#8217;re doing it ourselves!<\/p>\n<p>How do we know how<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dX7zIpHaAXE?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rGhOuA3rr1k?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8216;micro expression&#8217; is a very subtle facial movement that occurs just before we reveal our true feelings. Micro expressions are so quick and natural we aren&#8217;t even aware of them. Our faces can reveal our true emotions before we realize it, and according to Paul Ekman, one of the world&#8217;s leading experts on micro [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63383,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63382\/revisions\/63383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}