How Do You Read People's Emotions?

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One of the main ways that you're evaluating their emotional state is by subtly recreating the expressions they're making in your own body. You're doing micro-expressions. One study found people with Botox injections have slightly frozen the muscles of their face, so they can't actually do this unconscious micro-expression mimicking of another person and understand them. And because they had to work a little harder, the person could feel it. Those people had higher empathy than the control group.

You have the power to wield neuroplasticity to your advantage.

Just as you can change your body at the atomic level by lifting weights, you can willfully alter your brain by...thinking in a certain way. In this episode we explore using your brain to change your brain at the level of neurons and synapses beyond what is possible through other methods like learning a new language or earning a degree in chemistry. With mindfulness meditation, the evidence seems to suggest that one can achieve a level of change that would be impossible otherwise. The more you attempt to focus, the better you get at focusing on command, and so a real change begins taking place - you slowly become able to think differently, to hold thoughts differently and to dismiss thoughts that before led to attention difficulties or what feels like unwanted thoughts or clutter - and that’s not magical or the result of shaking hands with a deity, it’s biological. Listen as author and meditation teacher Michael Taft explains the benefits of secular, scientific practice of modern mindfulness meditation

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