One Day By Day Analysis

One day, the story says, America's great essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson saw a farmer trying to pull a reluctant calf into a barn. The farmer had a rope halter on the calf and was pulling with all his strength, but the calf had all four hooves dug into the barnyard mud and wouldn't budge.

To be helpful, Emerson got behind the calf, put his shoulder to its rump, and began pushing with all his might while the farmer continued to pull at the other end. The calf only planted itself more firmly.

As these two august gentlemen strained and sweated against the calf's stubbornness, a young milkmaid came out of the milking shed nearby, where she had just milked that calf's mother.

Seeing the struggle, she shook her head and smiled at the brute foolishness
Now, I like to think of that milk as symbolizing the trusting feeling that we want to establish with the other people we deal with day by day. It's the kind of trust we can create with our fellow citizens, through which we can all get along toward common goals--without having to push or pull.

It might surprise you to realize how much your body language--your facial expressions, your eye behavior, your body movements-- does to establish that trusting feeling.

It there is something shifty in your eyes while you're saying persuasive words, if you unconsciously draw back from someone, or press too close to someone else while in conversation, if you fidget while listening, if you address someone over your shoulder or down you nose instead of from an earnest face-to-face stance, if you give an unpleasant, cold-fishy handshake to someone who expects or craves a warm and reassuring one, you, without even realizing it, create a distrust.

Body language and the other forms of nonverbal communication can be three or four times as powerful in impression-making as the words you say. So be aware of what your body says while your words are being spoken. If they're in accord, you'll be