Moment 172: 5 Body Language Rules To Read Anyone INSTANTLY!: Robert Greene

00:03body language yeah i'm gonna talk about that does it you know you said earlier it's one of the things we can't lie about is there anything that you still look for in today when you're trying to read someone their body language are there certain cues is there postures or well you know you got in reading non-verbal communication it's a different form of intelligence. It's not algorithms. It's not formulaic. It's human. It's emotional. It's empathetic. It's a reading without words. It's attuning yourself to other people.

00:39So I attune myself to people's emotions, to the vibe that they give off in an overall sense. A gestalt is one thing that I like to do. So if I had to give it a word, I would say anxious, or I would have to say outgoing and extroverted or I would have to say impatient or whatever. There's an energy that kind of defines them. It's a word and that word is not precise, but there is an overall feel that I get from a person. And then I'm always looking at specifics.

01:12It's not like I'm sitting there consciously in my head going through a checklist. I'm just feeling certain things. and I'm feeling that the eyes are kind of dead. They're not engaging with me. And you can't put that into words, but you know the feeling. So when someone's looking at you, but they're not really looking at you, you know what that feels like, don't you? And a lot of psychopathic people, a lot of narcissists do that. So part of their face pretends to be interested in you.

01:48They are looking at you in the eye, but they're not really looking at you. They're thinking of something else. They're seeing in you what they can get out of you. They're seeing you as an object, right? Eyes are hard to lie. They tell you something. Now, actors, very skilled actors, can kind of create some of these impressions. But one thing that they can't fake is the tone in their voice. and actors will tell you that it's the hardest thing to actually consciously control.

02:19So the voice of a person tells you a lot about their confidence levels, tells you a lot about, you know, how just about their general emotional tone, about their character, about who they are. It's very difficult to fake. And when it's hesitant, when it's like stammering, when it's not, you know, You can kind of sense something from people's voice, and it's very hard to fake. And then the smile. The smile tells you a hundred different things if you know how to read it.

02:52There's the authentic smile, which I'm not going to fake right now, but it lights up the whole face. You really feel joy. You can't forget your eyes go up, your cheeks go up. Everything kind of connects together, right? the fake smiles you know yeah we've all seen the fakes just when the mouth goes up from the rest of the face doesn't bother steven i really like you you're really wonderful you know most the time most smiles are fake but you can kind of when you see the genuine smile and you go that's what caused the genuine smile you should become aware of that and then body language tells you a lot. Like is somebody, when they're talking to you and you're standing up at a party, is their body kind of facing another direction while they're talking to you? Are they kind of looking out that way while they're talking to you? That means they're not really interested in you.

03:52They're not really engaged in you, right? Also, when you catch people by surprise and they don't have the time to put on a fake smile, I often tell people to do this. Like there's somebody in your office and you don't know whether they're a snake or whether they're actually genuinely your friend, you suspect go either way, you kind of approach them from an angle, right? And you surprise them and you come up to them, you go, they look at you. And for a second, you detect what we call a micro expression of disdain. And then they put on the smile. That micro expression, which scientists, psychologists have studied last for like less than a second, much less than a second.

04:39You have to be able to read it, but it reveals that they actually like you or they're totally false. They can't fake it. So if you come straight on though, oh, hi, Stephen, I love it. Great to see you. They come in, oh, they kind of pretend, then they try and act and you can get clues like that. There's so many ways to read body language. It's such a fascinating subject. I could go on for hours about it. How important is it, you know, you're talking about colleagues and team members there, and earlier you said that people are contagious. How important do you think it is to the success of our lives, and I pause there because success means it's a personal thing, it's a professional thing, to surround ourselves with the right group of people and to be intentional about that? It's very important. I have a chapter in, excuse me, in the 48 Laws of Power about infection. And I think it's an experience many of us have had where you're around somebody who seems at first glance to be very interesting. And they become your friend, maybe.

05:48They're very dramatic. And they have all these stories to tell. And they seem almost slightly larger than life and you engage with them and then you become friends and then slowly slowly slowly it becomes clear that that they're a little bit nuts right they're always talking about how this person screwed them how that person screwed them how this boyfriend or girlfriend was so awful and so nasty you're going to you're going to realize is this true or is it maybe they're that They are the problem.

06:23But now they're your friend and now you're emotionally attached to them. And now they have room to play all these kind of games on you. And all of their drama starts infecting you. And it's like, God damn it, I want to get away from this person, but I can't. They've infected you with their negative energy and it gets under your skin. And so you have to avoid people like that. You have to read before you get involved with them that they are a drama queen or a drama king because there are just as many men out there who have this quality.

06:53You have to see that they play the victim of everybody else, but actually they kind of bring it onto themselves. Some people are genuinely unfortunate. Bad things have happened to them, and it's not their fault. I'm never saying it's a misconception about that chapter, that you should avoid everybody who's unfortunate. There are people, and a lot of people out there, whose circumstances have made them, you know, what's going on. It's not their fault, right?

07:24But there are other people you have to recognize that the bad things that happen to them are things that they have brought on because they have this infecting power. It comes from deep insecurity. You don't want them in your life. Being around insecure people will make you insecure. Being around confident people who kind of know what they're doing, who've got their act together who are trying to make things and accomplish things because there's so many people out there who talk and talk and talk but never do anything being around people who do things who get things done who've made a business who've made this, that or the other their goal to be around because they'll infect you with their positive energy