Joe Navarro - 'Cool' Body Language

My Twitter friend, the great Joe Navarro, has a piece in Psychology Today that hits the Body Language nail on the head.  Do something smart, check him out and buy his books....

"Cool" Body Language

What cooling behaviors say about our emotions.

  

Published on February 7, 2012 by Joe Navarro, M.A. in Spycatcher

 

About thirty-five years ago when I first got into law enforcement I began to observe that suspects often ventilated themselves during interviews while the innocent did not. This served me well, not in detecting deception, but rather, in seeing which questions caused the suspects discomfort such as when I asked, "Where were you last night?" I used it to gauge psychological comfort and discomfort - invaluable in determining the thoughts and feelings of others.

At this point you may be saying, "Ventilators, don't we do that when we are hot?" Yes and then there was Rodney Dangerfield when he was getting "no respect." All true, but principally we do it when something is bothering us or there are issues. What is great about ventilating behaviors is that they occur in real time, there is no delay. A young man is worried that he will miss his flight and he will repeatedly lift up his baseball cap and run his fingers through his hair. Once he is on board, as happened the other day, the behavior stops.

So lets set temperature aside. What would cause us to self ventilate? The list is long: insecurity, doubt, fear, apprehension, a sense of weakness, vulnerability, or anxiety - all the things cause psychological discomfort. So it doesn't matter if we are taking a school test or being asked questions during an interview for a job, ventilators may show up, especially if we feel psychologically distressed.

So here are some to look for and whenever you see them ask yourself, "Is it the room temperature or is there some issue here?":

1 - Look for individuals to run their fingers through their hair multiple times in quick succession. Women incidentally are less like to do so.

2 - People who wear hats will lift their hat completely off the head or angle it upward in such a way as to let in air. Sometimes also followed by running fingers through the hair.

3 - Women ventilate slightly differently than men when it comes to hair. If they have hair down to the neck they will lift up the hair at the nape of the neck brushing the hair upward - an effort to allow air to cool the neck.

4 - Look for individuals under stress to pull on their shirt buttons or the front of their shirt by lifting it away from the skin. This may be repeated by both hands lifting up the shirt simultaneously just above the pectorals. The lifting of the shirt allows air to flow beneath the fabric cooling the skin.

5 - Pulling at the shirt collar is also often missed when it is done slowly and without much fanfare unlike our comedian friend Rodney Dangerfield who would tug at his neck collar dramatically.

6- I have seen individuals take their shirttail out, undo their pants, and put the shirt back in again, also in an effort to ventilate.

7- It may not look like ventilating, but look for men to lift up or tug on the shoulder pad of their jacket. This pulling action seeks to let in air - which may or may not work because of the amount of clothes.

8- One you may never have thought about, and that is that when we yawn, that sudden burst of air through our very vascular mouth, will also serve to ventilate us (cools our blood like a radiator) as well as pacifies us. Incidentally when you see a baby yawning repeatedly check to see if they are flushed or their face is hot, they may just be communicating it's hot - and yes they could be communicating their tired - either way check on them.

So there you are a few behaviors dealing with ventilation you never thought about and yet we have all done them to relieve us from the heat, but more importantly to relieve stress.

----------------------------------
Joe Navarro, M.A. is 25 year veteran of the FBI and is the author of What Every Body is Saying, as well as Louder Than Words. For additional information and a free bibliography please contact him through www.jnforensics.com or follow on twitter: @navarrotells or on Facebook. You can also read other Psychology Today articles here. Copyright (c) 2012, Joe Navarro.

Seminar Dates

Dates and Locatiions to be finalized by The Moore Consortium and Dynamic-Life Seminars...




Dynamic-Life Academy Inner Game and Human Potential Technology Training.......

2012
September: Brighton - Bristol - Birmingham

October: Manchester - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow

November: London - Jersey

December; Paris - London

2013
January: London - Jersey

February: Oslo - Barcelona

April: Los Angeles - New York -  Universal Orlando

Tickets and booking information coming up.....

Thanks to Derek and Jill at DLS for their organization of this.

Brian Tracy and an awesome post!

Change Your Thinking! 5 Mentality Shifts Wealthy People Live By to Achieve Financial Freedom

One of the most important responsibilities you have to yourself and your loved ones is for you to achieve your own financial freedom over the course of your working lifetime.
In order to achieve financial freedom, it is absolutely essential that you change your thinking in several specific ways. Financial freedom is terribly important to you, for every part of your life, including even how long you live.

Financial Freedom by Design

The first mental shift is from financial freedom by accident to financial freedom by design. Financial freedom must be the center piece of all your work and external activities. Achieving financial freedom must not be something that happens in a random or haphazard way. It must be something that you specifically think about, define, and plan for continuously. It must become a part of your entire world view.
Today, just as you design your dream house, you must design your financial future. You must think long term, many years down the road, and make an absolutely clear decision that you are going to achieve specific financial goals on a time table, year by year until you reach the point where you never have to work again unless you want to.

Wealthy People Think in Terms of Prosperity

Another mental shift you have to make in achieving financial freedom is from a survival consciousness to a prosperity consciousness. Most people are locked into a survival consciousness. They are worried, guarded and careful about money.
Wealthy people think in terms of prosperity rather than survival. They move from limitation thinking to abundance thinking. Wealthy people look upon the world around them as being full of opportunities to acquire and keep the money and they are constantly looking for ways to do it. They look at every new product and process, every technological market or breakthrough, as a possible opportunity to prosper in some way. Instead of thinking about how little they have, wealthy people are thinking about how much they want to acquire.

Change Your Thinking from Security to Opportunity

Another shift in thinking is from security thoughts to opportunity thoughts. You don’t achieve financial freedom by playing it safe. You become financially independent by leading the field. This doesn’t mean that you risk your money or throw it around. It means that you are willing to move out of your comfort zone and to try something new and different before everyone else starts trying or doing it. I have met countless salespeople and businessmen around the country who changed their entire lives by recognizing an opportunity and taking action on it before the vast majority of people woke up to it. By the time the dust had settled they were well established and had made more money in three or four years than they might have made in 30 or 40 years doing something else in an established field.

Change Your Thinking from Spending to Saving

Another mental shift you must make to achieve financial freedom is to change your thinking from spending to saving. W. Clement Stone said that, “If you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you.” We grow up from a young age spending everything we can get our hands on and a little bit more besides. The average young married couple in America spends 110% of their income, making up the difference with credit and loans from their families. With this attitude and approach to life, especially when it becomes a habit, their ability to save, accumulate, and acquire wealth is almost zero.
In study after study on financial independence, it is generally agreed by every expert that you have to save approximately 20% to 30% of your income if you want to finally reach the point where you have enough money so that you’d never have to worry about it again. The wonderful thing is that, once you begin saving more and more of your income off the top, and living on the rest, you will find that you experience no discomfort at all. You become quite comfortable living on a lesser amount.

Change Your Thinking from Hoping to Doing

Financial accumulation requires you to change your thinking from wishing and hoping to thinking and doing. Don’t talk to anyone else about your plans and your activities. Begin to accumulate money quietly and confidentially. Once you begin putting it away, don’t ever let anyone know how much you have. Refuse to engage about conversations about money or to tell anyone about your financial accumulation account. There is something about keeping your plans and processes secret that gives them strength and power and causes them to work even more effectively for you. You will find that wealthy people never talk to others about their money. They are extremely private. Wealthy people have learned over time that the more secretive they are, the more effective they seem to be in acquiring and keeping ever greater amounts of money.
The road to financial freedom is and has always been the miracle of compound interest. When you begin putting money away and then investing it carefully to build a financial estate, the miracle of compound interest clicks in. As you begin to move toward financial freedom, slowly at first, but then faster and faster as the years pass, you will feel absolutely wonderful about yourself.

Announcement

Course dates and seminar dates to follow

He's Either Mad...or Both!

Do you know the definition of insanity?
It's doing the same thing again and again but each time expecting a different result!

How many people do that on a daily basis? 
How many drive the same route to the office only to get caught (unexpectedly?) in the same traffic jam?
How many get on the tube train the same time every morning and bitch and whine at how crowded it is?

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
Yadda yadda yadda!
In other words....
If You Keep Doing The Same Thing Your Results Will NEVER Improve!

Is that insanity?
Is that normal behaviour?
Isn't it more likely that it's just the way some people are wired?

It's pretty harmless in the great scheme of things. 
It appears to me that society is very quick to label someone 'mad' or 'insane'.  It's a cop out.

But, here is a question for you dear reader: What is the definition of EVIL?

Some people, like the Brady's, Sutcliffe's and Breivik's of this world, are classified as evil.

Are they?  Are they Evil?  Or does 'Evil' sell more newspapers and get more attention than 'mad' or 'insane'?  It's a tabloid headline. 

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you!  What people like those three guys and others did is inhuman and totally wrong and they should be damned for eternity, and they shouldn't have playstations and tv's in their cells, they should be made to eat concrete and dirt, they should be whipped with barbed wire and giant flying dragons should crap molten lava on them forever and I know you would like ten minutes in a room with them to really show them something because you have children and it could have been them and if they were going to court you would be outside the old bailey banging on the side of the bus while waving your kids at the news cameras... but, are they evil?

Evil is a state of mind into which pretty much anybody could get.  It's a label used socially to define a group of people as inhuman.

Every year in England and Wales there are about 700 murders.  Only a third of those are thought to be murders that occur in the context of mental disorder.

There is nothing about killing someone or doing something violent that means you are mad.  Research shows us that it appears to be something that all human beings can do in certain circumstances.

We tend to concentrate on the people who look and sound a bit strange - the person with the wild eyed stare or the too short trousers - rather than think the woman sitting next to you on the tube train, or the man you are sleeping with could kill you, in the right circumstances.

That a mentally ill person is dangerous and we all need protecting from them is a very powerful stereotype that goes back to Roman times.  Truth is, the majority of the violence that is carried out in our society is carried out by well people and your chances of being killed by a mentally ill person is the same as you winning the lottery.

I know it sounds like a joke but how many times have you heard of someone who worked in the same job for thirty years, had a nice home, a loving wife and three kids, a mortgage that was always paid on time, bills that were always paid, a stable family, church goer, 2 holidays a year, never drinks or smokes or does drugs and then, one day, they get an axe and wipe out everybody?  When the newscrews ask around the neighbourhood all you hear is 'He was a quiet man, a very quiet man!'

Sometimes the most obvious looking person is not the one you need to watch!

Nobody believes that their kid is going to develop schizophrenia or going to run amok and kill a load of students in Oslo and on an island in Utoya like the aforementioned Mr Breivik.

The strange thing about that case is that, in a murder, the defence argues that the defendant has a mental illness and the prosecution argue that the defendant is sane.  This is the first case I have seen where the defence is saying their client is 'mentally well' and the prosecution is saying 'he's insane!'

And one more thing, spree killers usually kill themselves.  It's a fascinating question why he didn't!

Malibu Beach

 Here I Come!!

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