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Mind not only what people say, but how they say it; and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently reveal what their words are calculated to conceal.
—L ORD C HESTERFIELD (1694–1773), L ETTER TO HIS S ON
Imagine a mirror suddenly dropped down before you during your last meeting, sales negotiation, date, friendly get-together, or confrontation.
Would you be able to spot the subtle nonverbal clues that may be sabotaging you in these situations—and keeping you from reaching your fullest potential?
Are your facial expressions awkward?
Are your hand gestures not quite right?
Do you appear weak or arrogant or older than you are?
Does the way you shake hands discourage people from doing business with you?
Does your body language clash with your words?
Do you have a glaring flaw that everyone notices but you?
We interact with other people all day long, in every meaningful moment in our lives. But we don’t always understand what they’re thinking—nor do they understand our thoughts. If we don’t have well-developed social perception, we may experience repeated failures: losing to the competition, job interview bombs, failed dates, trampled trust. But if we can hone that perception, learn to read people better, and communicate more effectively, that knowledge helps us in every part of our lives. We start to enjoy more exciting career opportunities, more honest friendships, better dating prospects, even more frequent wins at work!
Look at the successful people who cross your path daily. I’d bet most have at least two characteristics in common. First, they possess a sense of serene self-awareness. They seem comfortable in their own skin. Second, they have a better-than-average ability to connect with other people. They know how to put people at ease and create an immediate sense of rapport. Both of these traits stem directly from a strong command of body language.
Uncovering the mysteries of body language—how people communicate their thoughts and feelings without saying a word—is a powerful first step toward mastering any social situation. All successful people know that the ability to detect and react to the split-second signals that skim across people’s bodies hundreds of times each day is crucial to getting what they want in life. When something they’re doing isn’t effective, they’ve learned how to adjust their actions to maximize the moment.
Some people are gifted at body language—certain politicians or actors, for example, have a natural ability to woo others with their mere presence. Others try to emulate those lucky gifted few. They study their “tricks” and copy them, or they pore over body language textbooks to try to memorize individual signals to apply in certain situations.
This approach, unfortunately, has its risks. Authentic, effective body language is more than the sum of its parts. When people work from this rote-memory, dictionary approach, they stop seeing the bigger picture, all the diverse aspects of social perception. Instead, they see a person with crossed arms and think, “Reserved, angry.” They see a smile and think, “Happy.” They use a firm handshake to show other people “who is boss.”
Actually, I think they’re making it hard, way harder than it needs to be.
Trying to use body language by reading a body language dictionary is like trying to speak French by reading a French dictionary. Things tend to fall apart in an inauthentic mess. Your actions seem robotic; your body language signals are disconnected from one another. You end up confusing the very people you’re trying to attract because your body language just rings false. Your customers continue to be unsure of you. Your boss thinks you don’t respect her. Your date thinks you hate him. Your lying teen just laughs at you.
That’s why we need to move beyond the vacuum of disjointed, artificial body language to an approach based on you —your life, your history, your habits. An approach that builds your confidence from the outside in, one that keeps expanding your potential the longer you use it. But most of all, an approach that makes sense in your world, that applies in all situations, that feels natural and easy to use—because it is.
I’ve worked with more than fifty thousand people—from hardened cops to senior-level executives to pampered heiresses—to help them improve their body language, and I’ve come to believe one thing: we are all gifted in body language. Every single one of us has natural ability—we just need to learn how to tap into it. And once we do, the results can be life-changing:
Seeing these kinds of changes in the people I’ve worked with is what drove me to write this book and share this program with you. I want to help you—no matter how stuck or shy or socially awkward you are—to switch on the natural body language abilities that I know you already have.
This program has evolved over fifteen years of careful study, hundreds of seminars and training sessions, and way too many encounters with out-and-out liars. I’ve combined all of the tricks and techniques I’ve learned to bring out this natural ability into one integrated program. You don’t have to comb the research or haul out the textbooks; I’ve done that for you. You can concentrate on creating the results you want. Because optimizing your body language isn’t about studying or memorizing. It’s about experiencing life.
Think of the way we learn to ride a bike, dance, or kiss. We use all of our experiences—our senses, gut instincts, some helpful “instruction,” and a lot of practice. (Especially the kissing!) Once we’ve learned it, we know it; we can do it automatically, without thinking, because at some level, we already knew how to do it .
The 7-Day New Body Language program helps you mine your own experiences, senses, and gut instincts to develop your natural body language ability. No longer will you sabotage yourself unknowingly with negative nonverbal cues or bumble through life on the sidelines. You’ll learn to trust your own natural instincts that tell you if someone is lying, in love with you, or a total loser. You’ll learn to perfect your natural expressions, so you can appear more charming, caring, or cutthroat. Whatever your intentions, whatever your goals, the New Body Language plan starts with your habits at your comfort level and builds from there. Because, ultimately, the New Body Language program is all about creating more confidence:
But why should you listen to me? Because these techniques not only saved my reputation—they saved my life.
I haven’t always spent my days advising people on how to become better in business or ace job interviews or score hot dates. My career as an official body language expert started as a federal law enforcement officer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives, ATF, for short.
I wish I could say getting that job was my lifelong childhood dream, but it wasn’t. As fate would have it, my college career counselor referred me to an old friend who worked for the small law enforcement agency, which, until that point, I’d never even heard of. A few months later, when I told my dad I’d gotten a job with an agency called Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives, he said, “I’m glad you could turn your hobbies into a career.” (That dad of mine—always a jokester.)
In my early years with ATF, while still in the field, I was able to identify and decode the nonverbal cues of skinheads, nazis, and gun dealers who trafficked weapons to felons and teenagers, which allowed me to immediately adjust my approach and my body language to establish rapport and build trust quickly. I became known as someone who could easily detect if a person was lying or not. While I was in the thick of it, out in the field daily, I made the conscious connection between understanding body language and projecting confidence.
You may be saying to yourself, “Sure, it’s easy to be confident when you have a badge, a nine millimeter strapped to your side, and the authority to throw someone in the slammer.”
But I was an investigator, not a special agent. I didn’t have a gun, and I didn’t have the authority to put someone in jail. Other than a badge, I didn’t have any leverage. Yet, at the age of twenty-one, I was inspecting large explosives manufacturers and importers, dirty and dingy old pawnbroker shops, and going inside more than five hundred gun dealers’ homes unannounced, some of whom sold machine guns. More often than not I was alone in the middle of nowhere, enforcing often controversial gun laws to a bunch of gun-toting, intimidating men—all before GPSs and cell phones. As you can imagine, as a representative of the U.S. government, I was never the most welcome guest.
My only weapon—and I carried it with me at all times—was confidence. The confidence that came from the ability to size people up quickly and understand much more about them in seven seconds than they ever would suspect. The confidence that came from using this knowledge to adjust my strategy in an instant. And the confidence that I had this secret weapon of body language awareness—but most of my suspects didn’t.
By the age of twenty-four, my expertise at reading people landed me a slot as one of the bureau’s youngest instructors. Over the next fifteen years, I taught interviewing and deception detection courses to new inspectors and special agent hires at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. By the age of thirty-one, I was teaching body language to more than thirty thousand law enforcement officers and U.S. attorneys across North America for the presidential initiative Project Safe Neighborhoods. I had the honor to work with some of the world’s foremost experts on nonverbal communication, including my mentor, J. J. Newberry, retired ATF special agent and CEO of the Institute of Analytic Interviewing, aka the “Human Lie Detector;" Dr. Paul Ekman, an award-winning researcher into microexpressions and the seven universal emotions; and Dr. Mark Frank, a leading authority on behavioral observation.
These decades of experience in federal law enforcement and deception training taught me how to use body language to prevent disaster and bring the bad guys to justice. They also taught me that people can make mistakes. Sometimes big mistakes, often unintentional ones, but mistakes that leave them shaking their heads in confusion wondering, “What went wrong?”
During those years at the ATF, I came to realize that reading and responding to body language is an awful lot like handling explosives. Used correctly, they can both be extraordinarily effective. But you have to stay aware—you never know when they’re going to blow up in your face.
Ask yourself: Has there ever been a time in your life where you got so caught up in the moment that you didn’t think through all the potential consequences of your actions? Maybe poor judgment cost you a missed business opportunity, your personal safety, a spouse, the love of one of your children, respect from colleagues, or even self-respect.
Now consider this: over 50 percent of what we communicate with others is nonverbal. If you aren’t aware of the raw power of your body language, you are taking an unnecessary risk.
When you don’t realize You Say More Than You Think , your personal, professional, and social life could blow up when you least expect it. And you’ll be left with the scars of failure and defeat. Sound extreme? If you received a box of explosive chemicals and the wrapper said you had a 50/50 chance of getting hurt, wouldn’t you do everything you could to minimize that risk? Or if you had a 50/50 chance of winning the lottery, wouldn’t you buy a ticket? Wouldn’t you agree that walking around not knowing how more than 50 percent of what you say influences others could be a big mistake?
I’m not saying these things to scare you, only to help you realize what’s at stake. That’s why I have so much confidence in this program. I know these techniques will work in your life, because I’ve used them in life-or-death situations. I’ve learned how to spot the most gifted liars on the planet. If I can use these techniques to persuade criminals to surrender, confess, and submit to prosecution—or even not to kill me—you can certainly use them to protect yourself while you’re talking with your boss, customer, brother, or bratty kid.
Consider the New Body Language to be your Kevlar jacket and helmet. Just as I learned to read the signals in the faces and body movements of my suspects, you’ll learn to interpret body language cues with a level of Accuracy that will keep you safe. Then, you’ll learn how to react with the best Application of body language signals to get the outcome that you want. And most important, the combination of these two important facets will help you get the winning Attitude , the confidence to take command of any situation and influence it in your direction. You’ll have the control and be able to change the dynamics of any interaction according to your needs and desires. You’ll have the secret weapon—confidence—that all successful people share.
In the fall of 2003, while still with the bureau, I created Lyin’ Tamer Education (www.lyintamer.com), a leadership innovation company that combines up-to-date human potential research with body language to help individuals and corporations develop their executive presence and ultimately increase productivity and profitability. Thereafter, I opened the Body Language Institute (www.bodylanguageinstitute.com), located in Alexandria, Virginia, where people can get certified in Body Language and Detecting Deception, and become trainers in those two programs.
Since founding my first company I’ve shared these techniques with federal agencies like the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency; Fortune 500 companies like AOL, Coca-Cola, Hard Rock hotels, Cosmopolitan magazine, Lockheed Martin, and Accenture; as well as with millions of viewers of national television from The Rachael Ray Show to NBC’s Today to CNN’s Larry King Live . I’ve seen how the most powerful techniques I’d learned with the bureau could help out everyday men and women, people who struggled with the same faults in confidence despite very different life circumstances. Think about this …
How much money would you save your company if you knew the truth behind a job applicant’s résumé, or if you knew what your employee’s strengths and weaknesses were, before having to spend thousands of dollars on training so he or she could leave your company and work for your competitor a year later?
How much time would you save if you were able to detect if a particular salesperson was open to negotiating?
How many tears could you spare yourself (and lives could you save) if you really knew your kid was telling you the truth when you asked him, “Are you doing drugs?”
That’s what this plan can do for you—help you read any situation with accuracy, determine the best body language application, and transmit the attitude that keeps you in control.
This book will help you grasp the essentials of how to use the New Body Language to get what you want. You’ll learn to strengthen interpersonal relationships, become a stronger leader, manage your nerves better, and attain ambitious new goals. You’ll be better prepared to perform as a persuasive communicator, problem solver, and cunning negotiator. With your pumped-up confidence and enthusiasm, you’ll save time, money, resources, and gain that all-important edge in an often challenging global environment.
To get started, we’ll blast seven established myths of the Old Body Language that may have been holding you back. In their place, we’ll explore the flexibility, versatility, and resilience of the New Body Language and how the 7-Day program will help you develop your natural social ability in a way that’s so much richer than the sum of its parts. Then, starting from Day 1, we’ll go day by day through the week’s lesson plan, each day sharing several stories, exercises, and techniques that will reach down and tap that innate ability, helping you refine and perfect your accuracy when reading body language and your application when executing body language.
Each day you’ll also discover several 7-Second Fixes that pick up on that chapter’s themes, suggestions you can implement immediately to help you effortlessly enhance your relationships with others. At the end of the week, we’ll put it all together in one easy-to-remember process that you can automatically use each time you’re in a body-reading situation.
As you move through the program, you’ll hear inspiring first-person accounts from several of my former students, all members of a Body Language Power Team who’d previously struggled with ineffective body language that had held them back for years. After following the program in this book for one week, they were able to launch businesses, find new love, expand their social circles, discover hidden talents—in other words, make things happen!
T HE M AKING OF THE B ODY L ANGUAGE P OWER T EAM
In the spring of 2007, The Rachael Ray Show contacted me to be an undercover body language expert. My mission: to give two women who were being held back in their lives a twelve-hour body language makeover.
Fast-forward one month and Nicole, who’d previously been unlucky in love, was in a very promising relationship. Julianne, who’d been frustrated with her stagnant career, had landed her dream job as a designer at Tommy Hilfiger.
Nicole and Julianne’s success not only helped inspire me to write this book but also to create a Body Language Power Team (BLPT). As you go through the book, you’ll hear stories from members of my BLPT, a group of people who’ve completed this program. In each chapter, you’ll meet a person who’d previously struggled with certain body signals, but who used these exercises to make a tremendous change in his or her life.
To watch video clips, to meet all the original BLPT participants, to read their blogs, or to share your own success story, visit www.yousaymorethanyouthink.com .
Bottom line: if I could use these techniques to outsmart gun-runners and white-collar criminals, you can certainly use them to discipline your teen, score a hot date, or get that long sought-after promotion. In just one week, you’ll tap into your natural ability to read others accurately, apply body language appropriately, and earn a kick-ass attitude that will affect all areas of your life. From that first date to the one hundredth, from the pushy car salesman to the passive-aggressive “frenemy,” learning the New Body Language will help you get what you need out of any kind of relationship.
Ready for this? You bet you are. Let’s go!