I recently attended a seminar put on by Mackenzie Childs on Emotional Intelligence called, “Micro Expressions: It’s All Over Your Face.” It was terrific. Sit back and enjoy whilst I share why it was terrific.

First, meet Mackenzie Childs, MS, Organizational Psychologist, and Cognitive Behavioral Coach. Mackenzie is an articulate, bright, deep-thinker with a sense of humor and mischief in her grin. She has such an enjoyable personality with the brains and data points to match that it is impossible not to lean in.

Second, the content was just as enjoyable as her presentation. This quote in particular landed for me. It’s the concept to “think without thinking.” This comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. “The task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.” It is referred to as our adaptive unconscious. Mackenzie further explained it is the power of intuition or the “gut feel.” It is how we make immediate decisions with only seconds of data and how we actually do this every day, all the time.

As I leaned in, Mackenzie talked about how much our facial expressions involuntarily reveal true emotions, yikes, and how fast this occurs, in under a second. It is these microexpressions that reveal our true emotions and how often, and interesting, it is that our microexpressions and our words do not always align. Double yikes!

Finally, I recommend Mackenzie’s monthly workshops on Emotional Intelligence to anyone interested in human behavior, how we behave at home, at work and why we do the things we do. I can’t wait till next month!