The social presence theory

If you can go outside, even for a walk around your home, make use of that. It is extremely important to get some sunlight absorption in your body, as it prevents depression and sluggishness while ensuring a healthy level of melatonin and serotonin in your brain.

Having a new routine can be refreshing for a few days but it gets hard to maintain it.

It is imperative that we stick to a routine, shower, and dress every day, preferably waking up early, and at the same time.

The German sociologist from the early 20th-century Max Weber wrote charisma is a quality that sets an individual “apart from ordinary men,” and causes others to treat him as “endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.”

Charismatic Leadership Tactics range from the use of metaphors and storytelling to nonverbal methods of communication like open posture and animated, representative gestures at key moments.

The more charismatic leadership tactics used, the more individuals will be seen as leader-like by others.

After spending years building relationships with trolls and trying to understand them, journalist Ginger Gorman shares her findings in the the book Troll Hunting:

• They are not uneducated persons, that lack social skills and live in their parents' basement.They have partners, children, and full-time jobs.
• They show leadership skills as commanders of large trolling gatherings.
• They are socially intelligent and capable of to identifying users’ weaknesses with precision.

The absence of nonverbal feedback leads to an “empathy deficit,” and this is what sociopaths suffer from.

If someone says something negative in person and makes you cry, he/she will possibly feel uncomfortable. Unless they're psychopaths, your misery will generate an empathic response and lead them to have mercy. If someone tweets something negative and makes you cry, no amount of emojis can transmit the image of a crying person. If there is no social cue to evoke an empathic response, they might continue their negative assault.

Even high-performing employees can face a decline in job performance and engagement when working remotely. This can be due to:

• Lack of face-to-face supervision, which leads to a two-way communication gap and even mistrust.
• There is a delay in the procurement of information as remote workers aren’t able to sense the atmosphere and real-time events at the workplace, leading to a lack of ‘mutual knowledge’.
• A sense of isolation among remote workers, leading to a feeling of less belongingness within the organization.
• Distractions at home due to unplanned work-from-home transition, with employees balancing childcare and many other responsibilities along with work.

A few specific, research-backed steps that can be taken to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees:

• Establishing Structured Daily check-ins, by establishing a daily call or touchpoint.
• Providing several different communication technology options, using virtual communication tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc., and making use of video conferencing.
• Establishing clear rules of engagement for communicating with the coworkers or the managers, according to the levels of urgency.
• Providing opportunities for remote social interaction by talking about non-work activities, thereby reducing the feeling of isolation among remote workers.
• Offering encouragement and emotional support by listening to the workers, acknowledging their stress, and keeping their needs and issues in focus.

• Think outside the box when defining the format that works best for all team-members;
• Avoid activities where people are singled out and might feel embarrassed. These create the opposite of the trust-building effect needed to build strong teams.
• Effective teambuilding allows teams to tackle an achievable challenge together. Working through a challenge together increases oxytocin and group cohesiveness.

A good story can make us laugh or cry, our bodies can tense with a dramatic horror movie, or we are flooded with relief when the hero comes to the rescue. This experience is called transportation.

Transportation allows us to experience a story's movement through its characters. The characters' struggles and their rewards become our own.

Good stories catch your attention, connects you by drawing you in and move you to action. Stories that don't capture your attention will fail to deliver their message.

When participants remain engaged with a story and see characters overcome conflicts, they will empathize with the characters and be more willing to act on these feelings.

Your environment affects your personal relationships. Technologies like social media are making conversations harder and less engaging. But getting rid of it isn't necessarily the cure-all for most of our social interactions.

 If you have you've been feeling disconnected you can develop your conversational skills if you persist.

Be engaged and listen to what they are saying. Show interest, ask questions and clarifications. This shows others that you care about what they are saying, and about them in the bigger picture.

Geographically close friends (and neighbors) have the greatest effect on happiness.

Individual happiness cascades through groups of people, like contagion. So make friends with people who live near you.

Happiness can come from noticing and embracing a wide spectrum of emotions--both good and bad. 

So don't ignore negative feelings. Embrace them--and then actively work toward overcoming whatever issues you face.

When people experience breakups they go through the ‘protest’ phase initially, and the rejected lover becomes obsessed with winning back the person who has quit the relationship.

Rejection, paradoxically, makes the rejected person love the partner even more. This is called a ‘Frustration Attraction’, and can be categorized as an addiction.

The rejected lover experiences high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, and are visibly stressed out. These chemical reactions trigger many to do crazy things to win their ex back. Such feelings are erased quickly if the lover starts dating a new partner.

Some people also feel increasingly passionate and loving after the breakup and are more likely to forgive their ex.