Warming Up To NetBeing

from the desk of Ron Sukenick

When I first learned about the Ultimate Discovery System, it helped pull together everything I'd observed from three decades of watching and working with people. I carried this even further and studied under Dr. Robert Rohm to become a Certified Human Behavior Consultant™, learning in depth about the Four Main Personality Types. Of course, anything that helps you discover more about your own personality style and about the personality styles of other people, is likely to help create deeper connections to them. One of the really important things I've learned over the years is that the deeper the relationships you can create, the closer you can come to moving beyond networking to NetBeing. Then, I found, the more NetBeing is going on in your life, the closer you come to success and to fulfilling your dreams, no matter what form those dreams take for you.

Since I'm intensely interested in the process of building relationships, I'm always on the alert for articles or TV programs on that subject. Last week the Indianapolis Star had a feature story called "Physical Factors May Affect Emotions". This little story was so relevant to the work I do, I had to follow up on it. I did some "Googling" to track down information about the Yale University study on human behavior mentioned in the Star.

The authors of the study, Lawrence Williams and John Bargh, are interested in how physical warmth affects behavior. This is not a new concept, because psychologists have known for a long time that warm physical contact with caregivers during infancy promotes healthy relationships in adulthood. In this recent study, subjects that held cups of hot coffee in their hands for as little as 25 seconds "warmed up" to perfect strangers, while others who were given cups of iced coffee, were less willing to have conversations with strangers. (Isn't that just absolutely fascinating?)

It occurs to me that what I was getting at in my early blog "More Interactions To Start Relationships" is that, in going beyond networking to relationships, we need to turn each part of the networking process into an interaction. I think you'll agree that means being warmer and more personalized in the way we relate to other people.

Remember that Dee Edwards song, "Say it again, with feeling!" Maybe we need to "Interact again, with warmth!"