Michael Ellsberg - The Power of Eye Contact: Your Secret for Success in Business, Love, and Life

I welcome your comments, questions, critiques, feedback, corrections, stories, experiences, and anecdotes. Please write to me at michael@powerofeyecontact.com. I wont answer everything personally, but I will read it all and will answer the most interesting questions and queries.

I may also post your questions, stories, or anecdotes on the books blog, www.powerofeyecontact.com/blog. So when you write, let me know if youre OK with that, and if so, how youd like me to identify and credit you (name, website, etc.).

I have put many free downloadable bonuses to this book on www.powerofeyecontact.com/bonus, including a free teleseminar series covering the topics of this book, audio interviews with experts, my free ebooks How to Host an Eye Gazing Party and Beauty Secrets for Better Eye Contact (that roar of clicking sounds you hear around you is the onslaught of straight male readers rushing to download that last title), and a free subscription to my Power of Eye Contact newsletter with stories, tips, insights, updates and event invitations.

In writing this book, I was often asked, Is the importance of direct eye contact universal, or does it apply only in some cultures and not others?

Theres no question in my mind that norms around eye contact must shift from culture to culture. However, I decided not to delve into the topic of eye contact and culture in this book; it seemed too easy to slip into overgeneralization and stereotype. Instead, I have written the book from the perspective of the world I know, attitudes and norms prevalent in the urban northeast and west coast of the United States. For more thoughts on this topic, see the endnotes.

A note on interviews: Over the course of eight months researching and writing this book, I conducted more than three dozen interviews with scientists, psychologists, public speakers, business people, dating coaches, sales professionals, fighters, athletes, spiritual teachers, and others who generously shared their time and their insight into eye contact. My understanding of the topic was immeasurably deepened thanks to their contributions.

Oftentimes, I felt that interviewees thoughts and words were more interesting coming straight from themallowing their own unique personalities and voices to shine throughas opposed to my own paraphrasing. Thus, I frequently chose to present their words directly in interview format. I mark these passages clearly with last names to indicate who was speaking.

I have edited all interviews for space, clarity, and flow while preserving the essential content and voice of the speaker.

MICHAEL ELLSBERG

NEW YORK, NY

JUNE 2009

L ets imagine a game.

You will be asked a series of questions about the personal and professional life of a person you have not met or even seen: Is she happy? Sad? Does she enjoy her job? How are her family relations? Is she in love? Is she energized by life? Beaten down?

To base your answers on something other than sheer guess, you will be given a clue: You will be allowed to observe one body part (or pair of body parts) of this person, in real life, for five minutes.

Which body part would you choose? The feet? The hands? The nose? The mouth?

The answer, I think, is obvious. Most of us would choose the eyes.

[T]he mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes, Cicero tells us in the first century B.C . For thousands of years, from high literature to proverbs and folk wisdom, and in spiritual traditions around the world, the eyes have held special significance as the windows of the soul.

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! the Bible tells us.

Saint Jerome, presaging the Moral Majority by over 1,500 years, warns women of good morals: Avoid the company of young men. Let long haired youths dandified and wanton never be seen under your roof. Repel a singer as you would some bane. So that they may avoid such temptations, Jerome warns women to play their emotional cards close to their chest: The face is the mirror of the mind and a womans eyes without a word betray the secrets of her heart.

If the eyes offer a direct line to our desires, emotions, and feelings, then when two eyes meet, the fireworks of human connection begin. A lovers eyes will gaze an eagle blind, writes Shakespeare.

These last three quotes above are quite remarkable. Three of the greatest stylists in the history of languageTwain, Whitman, and Emersonare all telling us essentially the same thing: Their chosen medium of artistic self-expression, the written word, is impotent next to the power of the gaze.

Have you ever said I want to be able to look him in the eyes and tell him...? Implicit in this phrase is the idea that we cannot tell a lie when we are looking someone in the eyes; whatever our mouths say, we believe that our eyes will tell the truth.

What is it about the eyes and the gaze that holds such power for us? Why do they reveal such depth about our inner world? And what is it about direct eye contact that we find so meaningfuland so potentially terrifying?

In this book, we are going to go on a journey into a rich, captivating, and sometimes mysterious topic. We will talk with a diverse, merry, and cantankerous crew of people who have thought a lot about this subject, including scientists, poets, spiritual teachers, sales professionals, a legendary sports coach, fighting champions, professional public speakers, psychologists, dating experts, a pickup artist, and even a Playboy centerfold included for good measure. They will all help us unlock the mystery of our eyes and of eye contact.

But make no mistake: the aim of this book is neither theoretical nor poetic. The ultimate aim of this book is to help us lead better livesto get more of what we want from lifeby mastering the power of eye contact. If you can imagine an area of life that is important to you and that involves relating to other humans face to face, then eye contact is a crucial part of it.

Yet it is possible to botch eye contact. It can be done very, very poorly. Or not at all. It can be done in a way that repels rather than attracts. Eye contact can go wrong in many ways. There is a good chance you are making some of these mistakes right now, without knowing it. In fact, some of your social interactions may not be going as well as youd hoped because of it.

I know this, because I used to be awful at eye contact. Not just awful, but scared and terrified of it.

That was before I learned the secrets presented in this book. The good news is that its not that hard to become really good at eye contact. People now tell me all the time that they feel safe, comfortable, appreciated, respected, understoodand even sometimes energizedwhen met by my gaze.

I wasnt born this way. (Actually, maybe I wasall babies are natural eye contact pros, as well soon see. But we lose this facility quickly as self-consciousness develops.) I learned how to have this quality of eye contact.

I learned all of this over years. But Ive put all of what Ive learned over these years of experience, observation, and research into this book. Now you can learn in a matter of weeks what took me years to master. I know because Ive seen friends, family members, and readers transformed by the lessons and examples contained herein.

While there is a lively trade in books on body languageand many of them, including some cited here, are excellentthere has never been a book that dives in depth and exclusively