ESSENTIAL TIP: Speak up, speak out, slow down.

Think about how you speak.  More to the point, think about how others react to your speaking.  If people have to ask you to repeat, or worse, if their eyes glaze over as you're speaking and they seem to lose contact with you, chances are that you're either mumbling, or not articulating your words and word parts, or speaking so fast that no one can interpret exactly what you're saying.  So remember three things: 1. Speak up: don't mumble: project your voice enough that you are easily heard by the person farthest from you; 2. Speak out: articulate your words, don't slur them together; 3. Slow down: listen to yourself: especially when we're nervous or excited, we increase our pace. Gauge your pace, slow down if you need to.  Well-paced, clear, well-modulated speech is not only considerate, it helps you appear -- and be -- more confident in any situation.

ESSENTIAL TIP: Feel.

Go to the Post Secret blog.  If you are not able to connect with some of the people who have shared their deepest, most wonderful, most horrific, most amusing secrets with the world, check your pulse.  Chances are real good that you're not alive and should start covering yourself with dirt.  Or better yet, maybe you should create a post card and send it in.  We are a species blessed with emotion, and yet we are largely embarrassed to show it.  Emotion is what connects us to each other and, at the end of the day, is actually the driving force behind getting things done. When we try to feel what others feel, we listen better, we connect better, we engage better, we stop thinking of others as assets, obstacles, allies, enemies, idiots, and political tools, and begin to see that they are people just like us, sometimes with the same agenda, sometimes with a different one.  It's not easy.  In fact, it's the hardest thing you'll ever do.  But if you want to be a good communicator, emotion is where you connect.  At Post Secret, you should feel tears.  If you don't, there's a real good chance that you suck as a communicator.  Work on feeling, and you work on living.

ESSENTIAL TIP: Look at people.

A lot of us have a hard time looking others in the eye.  Lots of reasons for this: embarrassment, shyness, cultural issues, the fact that you're lying through your teeth (OK, we'll hope that isn't one of them).  And yet this is the principle way that we make the initial connection with others, particularly in western -- and especially in American -- culture.  You could argue that until you look someone in the eye -- really look at them, not the Eye Look that's the equivalent of the Air Kiss -- you don't really see them, don't acknowledge them, don't allow them to be part of your reality.  So, cultural issues aside, look at people.  You can't communicate with someone if you don't acknowledge their existence.