Communicate your feelings

- Maybe you need to show appreciation for someone's work, align your team on an important or urgent issue or show confusion with someone who is being unclear. Well, communicating your authentic feelings isn't as easy as we think in digital communication. I want to share the four most effective digital body language signals to communicate your feelings. Number one, exclamation marks. Number two, periods. Number three, question marks. And number four, emojis. Here's the exciting news. The most boring marks, periods and exclamations have now inflated to be some of the most powerful tools in language. First, the exclamation point used to be only used in informal writing or comics. Now it's been inflated into an overly excited tool that you can use everywhere from chat, text, and email, you name it. Exclamation points have three meanings. Urgency, excitement or shouting. Here's what you need to know about exclamation points and their meanings. One exclamation point means basic human warmth. You are mirroring the other person's tone and acknowledging their energy. Two signals excitement. Three signals enthusiasm, and four exclamation points signal giddiness, sarcasm, wit and depending on the words, it can also signal anger. Second, periods used to be just about basic punctuation. They simply ended a sentence. Now periods can signal anger and even fury unlike any other punctuation tool. Multiple periods, known as dot dot dot can also mean an unfinished thought. Get this, a recent study showed that even with identical messages, response with periods at the end seem less sincere than those that didn't. Third, question marks used to only represent genuine interest. Today, question marks can signal interrogation, interest or anger. And the use of multiple question marks have inflated meanings. For example, one question mark can signal an honest question or genuine interest. Two question marks can signal confusion, what do you mean? Three can signal frustration. I don't understand you. And four can signal anger. What are you getting at or where is this? A question mark by itself is also powerful. In just one keystroke, the question mark pushes for clarification. And fourth, emojis are one of the most powerful cues of tone in our voice today. Thanks a lot, smiley face will come across as much more sincere and genuine than thanks a lot, angry face coming off as frustrated. If you have multiple of the same emoji, it also indicates the strength of that feeling. One smiley face may mean happy, three smiley faces may mean excited or extra happy. You can use these four signals to communicate your authentic feelings. When you're conscious of your emotional tone in your messages, you'll immediately see improved communication and collaboration on your team.