It’s the stuff of cheesy, pop-psychology legend.  ‘Fake it until you make it’!  Yeah, right!  Excuse me if I refuse the snake oil and select a sick bag instead.  Only one problem.  It seems to be true.

First there was Aristotle:

“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.”

Then the experiences of Teddy Roosevelt and the observations of William James. And finally, Robert Greene’s power law 34 :

“Be royal in your fashion: act like a king to be treated like one.”

I’ve recently read an excellent book by Richard Wiseman called 59 Seconds: Think a little, Change a lot.  In it he gives many examples of such ‘proprioceptive psychology’.  Not only certain thoughts and emotions cause regular behaviours, but the causation works the other way around too!  He quotes dozens of academic studies that demonstrate, among other things, that:

• the act of smiling makes you feel happier
• arm crossing increases persistence and performance
• lying down increases creativity
• increased heart rate and eye contact lead to love

In each of these cases, we’re progammed to think that the internal feelings come first, and that the body language is an expression of what already exists.  Not necessarily.  You – or someone else – can make these feelings occur by practising the behaviour.

I’ve found another confirmation of this in an article Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect NeuroendocrineLevels and Risk Tolerance. The gist of it is that those who adopt typical power poses – demonstrating expansiveness and openness – experience heightened levels of testosterone and lowered levels of cortisol.  The first increases competitiveness and openness to challenge, while the second deals with stress.

Let me put it plainly.  Adopting certain non-verbal communication patterns doesn’t just change how you feel.  Deeper than that, it alters the chemistry of your body and brain.

IMHO that’s the real power of body language – what it does to you!  How you then go on to influence other people is a secondary product of this.

Fake it until you make it.  Easy on the cheese… heavy on the chemicals!

Image credit: gnuckx.

Often our lives are characterised by FOG: fear, obligation and guilt.  In many cases, this involves other people. That is what this blog post deals with.  It concerns how to limit fear to the unavoidable, remove obligation when it is incorrectly placed and replace guilt when it is unjustified.

Fear

Who are you afraid of?  Are family, friends or co-workers controlling you with your own fear?  Does their behaviour, words, silent treatment, lies, or manipulation make you fearful?  If you are aware of it, you can do something about it.

If the other person is aware of it, and continues to threaten (whether silently, or in words), this is called bullying or emotional abuse.  Sufferers say often more damaging, long-term, than physical violence.  And, in the realm of those who help men and women with domestic abuse, emotional abuse is subsumed under the heading of domestic violence.  It is often likely to lead to it, and when emotional abuse is present, violence is likely to be too.  A note of caution.  If you have been physically threatened and are afraid of someone, or have already suffered at their hands, this is entirely different.  Organisations such as Women’s Aid and, recommend removing yourself from that situation.  Don’t live in fear of your life, or physical safety, or that of your children or other dependants.  There are many organisations who will help you escape from this precarious situation.

Take advice from professionals who are practised at dealing with victims.

Never forget that the more you fear someone, the more power it gives them.

Violence aside, that ought to make you angry enough to actively and consistently change that emotion when it surfaces, from fear to pity or, better indifference.

Techniques for limiting your fear of people

1. Attend an Assertiveness course, and learn how to communicate assertively, avoiding both aggression and passivity.  Assertiveness and Workplace Confidence is one of our most popular workshops.  Learn how to deal with those who would aggressively demand your obedience.  You are an adult, you are entitled to your rights, you have responsibilities.  Learn this and never be successfully bullied again.  Yes, people won’t like you.  The point is not to be liked.  (In Northern Ireland, we are taught from a very young age not to flaunt our passion, opinion, emotions, or knowledge.  Expect that when you begin to practice assertive communication, many will interpret your directness as aggression.)  The point of assertive communication is to get your point across clearly, and succinctly.  It does not involve shouting, bullying or manipulation.  We recommend this: The Assertiveness Pocketbook.
2. Limit the amount of time you spend in that person’s company.  In many cases, this is achievable.  If you cannot avoid them when you want to, for example in the workplace, then devise ways of limiting the contact.  This may mean shorter meetings, moving desks, changing shifts, restructuring the team, or applying for a transfer.  The less you see that person, the less damage they can do.  The more astute will become aware why you are spending less time allowing them opportunities in which they can attempt to manipulate you.  This is especially effective if combined with assertive communication when you are forced to spend time with them.  They will see less of you, and that they do see, is positively different.
   This is one example of setting boundaries around your time.  We highly recommend Cloud and Townsend’s Boundaries, which deals with protecting you and yours using boundaries. 
3. If your fear is one where you are paralysed in the company of more than a few colleagues, take it one step at a time.  One of the best ways of overcoming debilitating shyness is to begin practising on strangers.  Chat to the guy in the paper shop, or have a longer conversation than is necessary with a random stranger at the bus stop.  This helps build up your repertoire of things to talk about, and makes you realise that you can participate in an interesting conversation after all.  Learn to use body language, clothing, smiles, handshakes to create an air of confidence, and fearlessness.  The feelings will come later, but the appearance of confidence is achievable.  With success, comes the positive emotion of confidence, which in turn fuels the next encounter.    We recommend The Confidence Booster Workout.

Obligation

Who “makes” you feel obliged?  A demanding boss?  A lazy co-worker who will show up the team, if you fail to step in and cover up for her?  An immature parent?  A whinging child?

Are you the person who sorts things out?  Gets things done?  Fixes whatever, and whoever, is broken?  Takes care of things no-one else will?

If your life is taken up with rescuing other people, then you’re heading for depression.

How do I know?  Because I sometimes work with those who deal with depression.  Besides, I’m the Rescuer personality type and I know what it feels like to be consumed with wanting to help fragile victims, taking on the heavy, emotional baggage they inevitably carry around.  And, because I see the Rescuer type every day.
They’re physically exhausted.  And, mentally?

Far from feeling benevolent toward the person they’re rescuing from their own problem, inadequacy or laziness, they most often resent them!

Techniques for limiting obligation to your genuine responsibilities only

• Read Manuel Smyth’s book When I Say No, I Feel Guilty.  Pay attention to his Bill of Assertive Rights.  I have tried to figure out a favourite, but there are four that are equally impactful.

You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.

You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.

You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.

You have the right to say, “I don’t care”.

• Now, go back and read the rights again.  Ponder what each one would look like in your life.

From now on, take care of those things you know are your real responsibilities, and ignore those that others place unfairly upon you.  This is not a licence to drop your responsibilities.  On the contrary, it is a license to take up those responsibilities and carry them out, unfettered by the illegitimate obligations placed on us by others.

Guilt

What if you don’t do something for someone?  Are you taken over by guilt?  Do you groan at the consequences?

If I don’t do this for her, then she’ll suffer!  If I don’t help out, then no-one else will!

Did you ever stop to think that it is not within your circle of concern what the consequences are? And, sometimes it is not even within your circle of influence!  It only appears so, because you have allowed someone else to determine it for you.

Techniques for not feeling guilty

• Ask yourself if you have done something wrong.  If not, then you need not feel guilty.  That nagging voice in your head probably speaks very like your parent/child/boss/friend/neighbour.  It is false.  Ignore it.
  You will train yourself gradually to mute the volume.
• Are you the type that can’t enjoy a success?  You feel guilt instead?  Think of success as a logical, intended culmination of years of planning, or months of study, or days of labour.  It would be a huge surprise if anything other than success was the result.  That is what you are working toward, isn’t it?  Then, enjoy it!

You are the only person who can break the FOG cycle

I’m very fortunate, I know, to have a husband who cares for my mental well-being.  But, I was horrified, though not surprised, recently, to listen to a woman whose husband never asked her how she was feeling.  The thing is, if you never say how you’re feeling, people can sometimes be forgiven for assuming that you feel OK.  That leads to a situation where your feelings are unimportant.

Never underestimate the immense lack of interest of others, even those closest to you, in your contentment, mental wellbeing, physical health or fulfilment in life.

Fear – speak out, be heard in a positive way.  Don’t fall into the trap of becoming aggressive towards those who scare you.

Obligation – take responsibilities seriously, but only those that you decide on.

Guilt – much of it is misplaced.  Decide if the emotion is warranted, and act accordingly.

All of this takes a little practice, I know!  But, it is achievable.

Image credit: mikecolvin82.

For those of you – like me – interested in the heady mix of lie-detection and body language, there was a great piece on BBC Radio 4′s All in the Mind last week.  Here’s the blurb. 

“Trying to spot when somebody is telling lies has probably preoccupied mankind since the earliest humans. Who’s eaten more than their fair share of seeds and berries; who’s scoffed the leftover termite ? For nearly a century we’ve had the polygraph, or traditional lie detector, with its wires and electrodes stuck to the skin – and more recently techniques like Voice Risk Analysis and brain scans purport to detect truth telling from fabrication. But a study at Portsmouth University suggests that in this controversial area, an old fashioned pencil and paper could make more sense at singling out those who are being economical with the truth. Claudia talks to Dr Samantha Mann about an experiment where a simple drawing separated the liars from the truth tellers.”

Listen to the interview here.

According to her staff profile at the University of Portsmouth website, Dr Samantha Mann’s academic interests include:

• Nonverbal cues to deception
• People’s perceptions of deceptive behaviour
• Professional lie detectors’ ability to detect deceit
• Enhancing interview situations in order to facilitate deception detection
• Speech related cues to deception (Reality Monitoring)

For other articles related to the work of Dr Mann, see:

Liars ‘too self aware to twitch’

Liars don’t blink: they keep still and concentrate hard

Drawing a picture is ‘lie detection technique’

Whole truth and nothing but the truth?

See also my own recent blog The Body Language of Honesty.

Image credit: jmendicute.

Readers of this blog will know my interest in lies and how they relate to body language in particular.  I’ve even delivered a workshop called Lies and Damned Lies: How to Become a Human Lie Detector.  I want to use this blog to flag up some general development and stories in this area.

“Researchers are testing how people judge honest behaviour because they are worried jurors could reach a verdict based on the way a defendant looks.”  In connection to this story, check out a link to The Honesty Lab, “the first ever international study to explore public concepts of honesty”.

Just to counterbalance the gender bias in the first story, read here how one in four British woman admit they would lie when it comes to trying to conceive without their partners consent.

Doctors are among the professionals that expect to hear lies from the public.  One doctor speculates that this is “because the NHS is free at the point of delivery [so] its worth is not fully appreciated”.  Interesting…

Priests, politicians and psychologists from Northern Ireland all discuss the pros, but mostly the cons, of lies in society.  It seems there are few of us in this country who tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

From a scientific rather than a social perspective, brains scans seem to provide a way forward in lie detection.  “Brain scans could be useful as lie detectors to show if a witness lies when identifying a suspect in a crime investigation, US researchers believe.”  Perhaps they are even reliable enough to detect criminals and those who lie under oath.

And what about politicians: can they be honest?  Can they give a straight answer to any question?  And could we take it if they did?  I’d be lying if I said I thought we could…

P.S. Related “curve ball” story: Toddlers who lie ‘will do better’ in later life!

It’s true, we’re not the most physically expressive bunch of people on the planet.  But there was an interesting case study in body language last year thanks to two of our dourest political operatives.  And to make it all the more juicy, it was caught on camera for all to see.  I’m talking about the ‘revealing’ body language of Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson during a recent joint interview.

The BBCNI team wheeled in a body language ‘expert’ called Judi James to provide an analysis.  This made me smile for a few reasons.

First of all, I classify someone as an expert if they’ve conducted ground-breaking research or constructed a boundary-crossing application.  Appearing as a guru on on programmes like Big Brother and The Xtra Factor does not count.  Desmond Morris, Albert Mehrabian, Paul Ekman – that’s the level of person who I’d classify as an expert.

(The astute among you will see this as sour grapes at my not being asked to do it.  After all, I’ve delivered different courses at Queen’s University on body language over the years.  By rights I should be the local expert.  So there.)

Second, the analysis itself was rather banal, IMHO.  For instance, Judi noted the “deadpan delivery” of McGuinness as a sign of determination.  Deadpan delivery?  That’s what we do, Julie dear, that’s our national thing!  You might as well observe that Americans are loud and the Japanese inscrutable.  Cultural context, anyone?

Read here if you want to see how unconfortable I am with the extreme direction some body language interpretation is taking.  Or talk to a guy.  Try McGuinness or Robinson, if you think you’re deadpan enough…