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Super eye contact

I have experienced the closeness intense eye contact engenders with a stranger firsthand. Once, when giving a seminar to several hundred people, one woman’s face in the crowd caught my attention. The participant’s appearance was not particularly unique. Yet she became the focus of my attention throughout my talk. Why? Because not for one moment did she take her eyes off my face. Even when I finished making a point and was silent, her eyes stayed hungrily on my face. I sensed she couldn’t wait to savor the next insight to spout from my lips. I loved it! Her concentration and obvious fascination inspired me to remember stories and make important points I did long forgotten.

Right after my talk, I resolved to seek out this new friend who was so enthralled by my speech. As people were leaving the hall, I quickly sidled up behind my big fan. “Excuse me.” I said. My fan kept walking, “Excuse me,” U repeated a tad louder. My admirer didn’t vary her pace as she continued out the door. I followed her into the corridor and tapped her shoulder gently. This time she whirled around with a surprise look on her face. I mumbled some excuse about my appreciating her concentration on my talk and wanting to ask her a few questions.

“Did you, uh, get much out of the seminar?” I ventured.

“Well, not really,” she answered candidly. “I had difficulty understanding what you were saying because you were walking around on the platform facing different direction.”

In a heartbeat, I understood. The woman was hearing impaired. I did not captivate her as I had suspected. She was not intrigued by my talk as I had hoped. The only reason she kept her eyes glued on my face was because she was struggling to read my lips!

Nevertheless, her eye contact had given me such pleasure and inspiration during my talk that , tired as I was, I asked her to join me for coffee. I spent the next hour recapping my either seminar just for her. Powerful stuff for an eye contact.

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