Kate Murphy

I think part of it, particularly with him, he radiates something, but part of it is because he becomes so focused.

And you talked about also how a signal of him not being engaged is leaning back.

And we all sort of have these signals or these ways of engaging our fostering synchrony and cutting it off by either our movement, our attention, really our interests, and also really crucially, how much we are within ourselves.

How distracted are we?

And how concerned are we of what we're going to say next?

And is this person liking me?

And then you can see you've lost it.

It's almost like when you're engaging with another person, you're becoming totally tuned into that person like you would if you were watching a movie and you were totally engrossed and you lost everything else around you.

And that's wonderful when you can achieve it, but it doesn't always happen because there is stuff going on in our head.

It's kind of like meditation when you are engaging with another person to acknowledge you have these distractions, but then bring yourself back to the focus, which instead of being breathing or breathing,

some type of chant or something, your focus is returning to the individual and to this interaction between the two of you and trying to maintain or build that sync with the other person.

Well, I'm pathologically curious.

So, I mean, I am so interested in other people.

That's probably why I became a journalist.

But in times when maybe I am distracted and I'm thinking about something else, I think really the best way to stay in it is ask questions.

Be curious.

Ask questions.

Let anything about the other person that you're curious about, ask that question.

Ask that question because people, I'm telling you, you know this as well as I do, I'm sure, being a journalist, is people want to tell you.

They're looking for an opening to share with you.