Here is a brief excerpt from the first of several articles written by Nick Morgan and featured by PublicWords, a family-owned and operated company. It was founded in 1997 by Morgan, one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches. Nick is supported by his wife and business partner, Nikki Smith-Morgan who is a fellow communications coach and online marketing specialist.

To read the complete article, check out others, and learn more about PublicWords, please click here.

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The second step to brain mastery and powerful communication follows directly on from the first.  Now that you’ve taken inventory of your gestures, it’s time to learn to control and shape them.

Here’s the surprise:  once you take charge of your own gestures with the right techniques, you’ll be well on the way to controlling the emotions and reactions of the people around you.  That’s because of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons were discovered by accident, when an Italian researcher noticed that monkey’s brains lit up in the same regions as the ones that fire during eating when they simply watched someone else eat.  What the research team eventually determined was that these mirror neurons – as they have come to be called – are essential for the human ability to have empathy for other people and indeed other creatures.

But even more importantly, mirror neurons make it possible for us to understand and entertain another point of view, or another person’s pain.  Without mirror neurons, communicating successfully with other people would be difficult, if not impossible, because no one would be able to engage in sympathetically understanding another person’s emotions – the source of human connection, agreement, disagreement, conflict, and all the rest.

In short, mirror neurons make communication possible – and then up the ante on communication by making emotions contagious when we witness them in others or radiate them outward to others.

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A passionate teacher, Nick Morgan is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas—and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to take on the investment community. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has helped design conferences and prepare keynote speeches around the world. His methods, which are well-known for challenging conventional thinking, have been published worldwide. His latest book is Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, published by Jossey-Bass. His acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard Business Press and reprinted in paperback later as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action.