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You'd Better Look Me In The Eye When You Say That? Not Always.

Byizoldast

Welcome to today’s Physical Talks. Why do we sometimes look off into space during our conversations? Hint: It’s to improve those communication moments. See more below. Some people say that someone who won’t look you in the eye must be lying. That’s not necessarily true. There are a lot of other possibilities. Ever been caught…

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Sending and Receiving – How We Move Through The World

Byizoldast

Are you a sender or a receiver? How can you tell? Do you find yourself getting “feelings” or hunches about situations and people? If you do, you might be a natural receiver? If you get those vibes, those belly clenching moments, listen to them. They are trying to give you information. Armed with that knowledge,…

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Derek Sivers' "If not hell yeah, then no." – My lesson on saying no

Byizoldast

I recently read Derek Siver’s excellent, short book, “Anything You Want.” One of the chapters is titled, “If not hell yeah, then no.” It means that unless you are excited to do something, don’t do it. Say no. Then, you leave yourself open to cool new opportunities that you will be thrilled to accept. I…

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On Touchstones – We need them in storytelling and in life

Byizoldast

Everything in my life has been coming back to relevance. As I develop this new phase of my life, I am trimming away anything that doesn’t serve me. I have modified my patterns of behavior, thought modes, and emotional triggers. My motto is: If it doesn’t serve me, it goes. That perspective makes things easier,…

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We Are With You – On supportive creative communities

Byizoldast

Yesterday, I facilitated my “Present Out Loud” workshop at Balticon (the Maryland Regional Science Fiction/Fantasy convention). The workshop is on how to present/read your work at bookstore events, interviews, audio narrations, and workshops. We worked on breath technique, voicing, characterization, and how to differentiate your narrator from your characters and their dialogue. But mostly, we…

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The Mother of Communication? – lessons on writing, talking, and connection

Byizoldast

Yesterday, at Balticon, I had the honor of sitting on a panel that discussed how to adapt fiction to stage or screen. One of the questions the moderator asked was to define the nuts and bolts of doing that sort of adaptation. One of the other panel members said that you needed to only the…

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Communication Thursday: Just Exactly How Do You Inhale? (part 2 of proper breathing)

Byizoldast

In the previous post, we talked about proper posture when standing or sitting to communicate. To recap: stand with your feet hip-width apart (draw an imaginary line from your second toes, through the center of your ankles, the center of your knees and then up to the hip points [the parts that just out to…

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They all say to stop and breathe, but how exactly do we do it?

Byizoldast

Oh my goodness there are a ton of posts on mindfulness, meditation, and anxiety reduction. Almost all of them have some form of, “stop, be still, and breathe to calm yourself.” It’s great advice. And it works. The trouble is, how do you stop, be still, and breathe when you might be scared, anxious, nervous,…

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Relatively pain-free mobile-friendly website redirects instructions

Byizoldast

I spent last night figuring out how to optimize my various websites for mobile devices. Per google’s new rules (http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-algorithm-change-mobile-friendly), priority is now given to websites that are mobile-device friendly. If you are tech savvy, here’s a website with the java script for redirecting your pages. (I send big thanks to the person who wrote…

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Voice-to-Text, a primer

Byizoldast

I love Voice-to-text (V-t-T). As the technology improves, conducting business via V-t-T becomes  easier and more accessible. Business and communication become more portable and that creates more flexibility in how and where we manage our affairs. For example, I can now write emails and texts while walking my dog. I can give quick answers to…