How to read thoughts of people you meet?

Posted by: Malik Mirza on: May 22, 2010

• In: action item | Book Review | Food for thought | Inspiration | Inspiration, motivation, self help, books | Self Help
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How can you tell if the person who is speaking to you is telling truth and truth only? Hand gestures, facial expressions and body movements – what does non verbal communication tells you? How can a person tell a lie ‘successfully’?

For example, a woman can give a man ‘a look to kill’ and say lots of things without saying any thing!

Those people who can understand from gestures and nonverbal communication of other people are called ‘perceptive’ i.e. they can perceive and understand their listeners. It is said and believed that women are generally more perceptive.(Do you agree to this?)

Most of the basic communication gestures are the same all over the world. When people are happy they smile; when they are sad or angry they frown. Nodding the head is almost universally used to indicate ‘yes’ or affirmation. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate ‘no’ or negation is also universal and may well be a gesture that is learned in infancy.  When the young child has had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop his parent’s attempt to spoon feed him and in this way he quickly learns to use the head shaking gesture to show disagreement or a negative attitude.

How to lie successfully?

The difficulty with lying is that the subconscious mind acts automatically and independently of our verbal lie, so our body language gives us away. This is why people who rarely tell lies are easily caught, regardless of how convincing they may sound. The moment they begin to lie, the body sends out contradictory signals, and these give us our feeling that they are not telling the truth.

During the lie, the subconscious mind sends out nervous energy that appears as a gesture that can contradict what the person said.

Some people whose jobs involve lying, such as politicians, lawyers, actors and television announcers, have refined their body gestures to the point where it is difficult to ‘see’ the lie, and people fall for it, thinking that they are telling the truth.

To be able to lie successfully, you must have your body hidden or out of sight. This is why police interrogation involves placing the suspect on a chair in the open or placing him under lights with his body in full view of the interrogators; his lies are much easier to see under those circumstances. Naturally, telling lies is easier if you are sitting behind a desk where your body is partially hidden, or while peering over a fence or behind a closed door. The best way to lie is over the telephone!

When the adult tells a lie, his brain instructs his hand to cover his mouth in an attempt to block the deceitful words, just as it does for the five-year-old and the teenager, but at the last moment the hand is pulled away from the face and a nose touch gesture results

One of the most valuable ways of discovering whether someone is being open and honest or not is to look for palm displays.

Just as a dog will expose its throat to show submission or surrender to the victor, so the human animal uses his or her palms to display the same attitude or emotion. For example, when people wish to be totally open or honest they will hold one or both palms out to the other person and say something like, ‘Let me be completely open with you’

When someone begins to open up or be truthful, he will expose all or part of his palms to another person. Like most body language, this is a completely unconscious gesture, one that gives you a feeling or hunch that the other person is telling the truth. When a child is lying or concealing something, his palms are hidden behind his back.

The above ideas ar from the book of Allan Pease ‘Body Language – How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures’.

So – do you observe non verbal communication of other people? Share your thoughts and experience.

In my previous post (http://wp.me/pHUHq-aj) in which I asked what is common between Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh, there can be many answer. The author of the book: A whack on other side of your head states that the common thing between these two is their common middle name i.e. ‘the’!. However, in order to be creative, you may think of many options…..

Tags: Allan Pease, body language, Food for thought, learning and growth, life style, Malik Mirza, Non verbal communication, observation, reading other person, Wisdom from books