Body language

Is one of the hardest skills to master

Why?

Because in short, it’s about being truthful with yourself.

Human beings have a truly incredible ability to see what they want to or, for that matter, refuse to see the obvious in any objective way

In some circles this is known as “Seeking” and “Denial”.

Seeking is where you want to see signals that are important to you – even if they’re not really there -

While Denial is when you refuse to see signals that conflict with what you want to see.

For example, a man is talking to an attractive woman and she crosses her legs

He see this as a flirtatious gesture and in some cases it can be but in this context it is actually an attempt to end the contact – “I’m shutting my legs so you can’t come in”.

He is seeking what he wants by imagining the positive while at the same time refusing to accept that she doesn’t want to go further, she is denying him

He increases his advances and eventually she is forced to openly reject him.

His self esteem is damaged and later he describes her negatively as a tease.

He misinterpreted the signals because psychologically he could not, or would not, accept the truth of what he was seeing

So often body language is read as we want it to be and then we find ourselves frustrated when rejected

This applies to both sexes as we are all exposed to each other

The key to understanding body language is the ability to be objective

So again we come around to knowing yourself so that what we see is not filtered through our perceptions

The little signs can be learnt

Body language can also be learnt

However to become good at reading body language we need to go beyond the basic signs so that they can be put in the context of the bigger picture

As with many other skills this takes time and practice

However we all interact with each other every day so use your time to learn this useful skill