Have you ever noticed a person who, when making a
suggestion in a meeting, glances in the direction of someone
from whom they are seeking approval? It may not be the
person to whom they are making the suggestion, but it is the
person whose feedback and acknowledgment they rely on for
feedback on how they are doing. This is characteristic of
someone who is externally referenced, in that they need
feedback from an external source to know how they are doing.
Someone who is internally referenced has an internal yardstick
that they use to know how they are doing. Someone with this
preference is much more likely to look straight at the person to
whom they are making a suggestion, or even not to look at anyone
but perhaps to be looking at the next item on the agenda.
Someone who is externally referenced is much more likely to seek
feedback than someone who is internally referenced.
It works the other way round: How we behave influences how
we think and feel. If we hunch our shoulders and tense our
necks, we are likely to think about the problems in our lives. If
at the same time we look down and (usually) right, we will also
feel the emotions attached to those problems. Saying “keep
your chin up” to someone who is feeling down is very sound
advice. By lifting our heads up we disconnect from our feelings,
which are experienced in a head down position for most
people. And when we say “distance yourself from it” we are
inviting our listener to imagine themselves outside of
themselves in their thinking and to dissociate from their
feelings. By changing one or two factors in the way we are
thinking about a situation, we can significantly change how we
feel about it.
1Work with a partner to do this.
2 Ask your partner to think of a time when they didn’t feel at
ease with themselves, when they felt out of balance,
possibly stressed in some way. Ask them (but only briefly)
to step back into this time so that they are seeing, hearing,
and feeling it again.
THINKING WITH YOUR BODY 75LOOKING FOR
APPROVAL
“Keep your chin up!”