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The Ultimate Body Language Book

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Chapter 5 – Seeing Eye To Eye – A Look At <strong>The</strong> <strong>Language</strong> Of <strong>The</strong> Eye<br />

Catching People Who Fail To Recognize You<br />

It’s your twenty-five year class reunion and you’ve shed over thirty pounds and dropped your geeky<br />

look. From across the room you recognize an old crush so you make your way over. You give her an<br />

eyebrow flash at a few paces and she flashes back but then draws her brow into a wrinkle. She’s shown<br />

that she recognizes you, through the eyebrow flash, but isn’t sure how, hence the flexing of the grief<br />

muscle between the eyes.<br />

When the eyebrow flash is done outside of a class reunion, it can be even more confusing because a<br />

person has many more variables to consider when trying to place you. Chance meetings happen all the<br />

time, but the further they happen from a context in which we expect, the more difficult it is to place<br />

people. Sometimes we get stuck hanging because we eyebrow flash and the person doesn’t flash us<br />

back. But even then, and usually subconsciously, their mind will begin to fire and they will<br />

automatically try to place you. In the meantime we naturally feel embarrassed for not being recognized,<br />

even though we haven’t verbally acknowledged them. Trying to start a conversation with an exclassmate<br />

who hasn’t returned an eyebrow flash can be risky and embarrassing producing an awkward<br />

conversation. <strong>The</strong> eyebrow flash, therefore, is an excellent tool to help us avoid even more pronounced<br />

embarrassment than necessary. Simply put, if you don’t get a flash back, don’t bother starting a<br />

conversation because they don’t remember you!

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