The thing you have to develop is called situational awareness. So much for the basics, but how do you become good at this thing? As usual, there’s no shortcut to success. Lesson 3: You have to develop situational awareness if you want to master the art of reading people. Try to catch yourself the next time you freeze because you got “caught in the act” somehow and you’ll see the power of your limbic brain. Some students survived the Virgina Tech shooting simply by playing dead. Remember when people tried to stay still in Jurassic Park? That’s the freeze response in action, and people still resort to it today in extreme situations. By remaining silent, the predator might pass by and let them go unnoticed. Joe says there’s another part of this response, the “freeze” reaction, and it actually comes before flight, with actually fighting being our last resort. Lots of animals freeze in place when a predator is about to sneak around the corner, because movement attracts attention. But actually, that’s only two thirds of the equation. You’ve probably heard of this before as fight-or-flight response. The limbic brain was responsible for getting us safely to the next cave the second we saw a lion thousands of years ago, which is why it’s always on and can’t afford to have us “think things through”. Joe also calls it “the honest brain” because the reactions from it are instant and pure. The reason it’s next to impossible to suppress our body language (have you tried not touching your face or neck when you’re stressed?) is because it’s rooted in our limbic brain. Lesson 2: There’s one more option you can take next to fight or flight. Non-verbal cues are a lot more reliable than words, because we’re trained to adjust speech (and even truth) to the situation from a young age, but can’t get rid of our deeply rooted, ancient physical behaviors. We often don’t understand what other people’s bodies are trying to tell us, because we’re not good at reading them, but when we do, we can be sure what we find out is the truth. Or consider Chris Hughes, who used a simple gesture of respect to let him and his team walk away from an Iraqi ambush unharmed. The example he makes is that two complete strangers can become friends without ever exchanging a word – which is a process he went through multiple times when coming to the US as a kid. Joe describes human communication as a complex puzzle, and the words we use are just a small part of the big picture. However, a very safe bet to make is that more than half of what you say does not come out of your mouth. Some studies agree on those numbers, others include tone in those initial 60%, so it’s hard to say. I remember the opening scene from Hitch – The Date Doctor, where Will Smith says that 60% of communication is body language, while 30% is tone. The numbers often vary, which is why I’m lowballing it here. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: At least 60% of what you say is not coming out of your mouth. The 21 Best Books of 2021 (Fiction & Nonfiction).
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