SIDDHANT CHAUDHARY Co-Founder, LifePlugin | Experience Design
Siddhant blends art, tech & spirituality crafting experiences that invite participants to shift perspectives and rediscover purpose & meaning
We’ve gone through this before, you stand at a social set-up scanning through the room and your mind starts forming a judgment of everyone around you;
Hands crossed in front of their body, a frown on their face.
Yep, that’s not a person who you’ll be speaking to.
Exaggerated gesture, loud voice and constant storytelling
The crowd already has their eyes on them, why would you even bother?
Sulking on the couch, a drink in their hands while they scroll through their phone.
Going through heartbreak maybe? Yeah no thanks!
There is no
better time
to build
yourself
Unlocking Your 'Tell'
Maybe it’s something your brain does subconsciously, maybe you’re not the best at catching social cues so you do it as a mental practice. Our minds tell us everything we want to know about a person through their body language and it’s something all of us do, or have done at some point in our lives.
But what does one’s body language actually tell you about them?
Let’s find out together.
Our bodies are closely connected to all of our emotions, and they are wonderful means for displaying our feelings—smiling, crying, etc. Not only that, but it frequently works both ways as well; a concept known as “embodied cognition” holds that our physical experiences have the power to infer or even shape our mental processes.
For example, holding a hot mug of coffee might make you feel kinder and more welcoming toward others; similarly, some bodily sensations can affect how we make decisions or judge things.
Our body language and thoughts are inextricably linked, and the capacity to detect nonverbal clues from ourselves and others may be a highly useful instrument for communication and self-awareness.
This can be achieved by learning to identify and respond to very basic body cues.
For simplicity, let’s segregate ourselves and the people around us into 2 categories:
Watchers and Listeners:
A watcher is someone who holds themselves around people, through visual dialogue, this could include body cues like ; good posture, extended eye contact and a sense of ease in how they talk i.e, no fidgeting, no body jerks that might break a conversation or maybe even open shoulders.
It’s good to hold eye contact with them and use visual cues even in your language, to help them draw mental pictures throughout your conversation by using phrases like; “look at this” or “I can picture this going like that”, etc.
Now coming onto watchers, they’re usually people who interact with the world around them less by visual clues and more with auditory signals, what this means is that you might often catch them avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, dressing down in social situations or even looking deep in thought, almost in a state of remembrance.
Now this is the category of people that you don’t want to respond with heavy eye-contact with as it might catch them off guard, it’s always a good idea to avert your gaze every once in a while when speaking to someone who interacts like a listener.
You might find it easy to categorize people into either of these categories, but it might be hard for you to understand what to do when someone’s approach clashes with that of your own in a social setting.
The key is to figure out which one of these resonates the most with your way of interaction and more importantly, to realize that now you expect everybody to interact with this in their minds, which will not always be the case.
So find ways to build a rapport while responding to other people’s non-verbal cues while appropriately drawing boundaries, verbally or otherwise to make the best of your social interactions.
Sources: nih.gov-Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience
Reading minds through body language | Lynn FranklinxTedX
