I've got Ann Washburn with me today at Live On Purpose TV to help us learn how
understanding body language can help you.
I always love it when I can find an
expert and I found an expert in flight simulation and explosives. This is
Ann Washburn and you've moved on from flight simulation and explosives? - Yeah because
if that's what you want to talk about today, I better change my talking points.
- It's fun that you have that background but you're currently a speaker
and presenter and your area of expertise
is in communication especially body language. - I am a body language expert.
- Which is why you're here today. - It's powerful and it's so good because I
love our topic how understanding body language can help you because when I
look at body language out in the world, people have these really stereotyped
views of what body language even means or how it helps you and the most
important thing is to understand this, when it comes to body language or
communication in general, there's really three parts to our communication. I call
them our three voices of communication because we have our words, we have
the tone of those words and then we have our gestures or our body language
and so here here's how we know that there are different pieces of
communication that come from each one of those because when you talk to somebody,
say your wife, do you get in trouble more for your words or for the tone of your
words? - Probably the tone. - Yeah, we more often get in trouble for our tone of
voice than we ever do for the words that we speak and so the fascinating
thing to know is when it comes to communication, the words you speak, if
they don't match your body language or your tone,
people actually discount the words to believe what they see so there's a mixed
message, they discount the words, they believe them less because they're seeing
in your body language. - Right and they're going with that or trusting it more than
the words that are coming out of your mouth. - Yeah, even though they don't even
realize they're doing it because we're wired as humans to pay attention to body
language, the problem is, we're just not taught what the messages are that are
being sent and because I know, because how many classes in body
language do you have going through school? - Well I think the only ones I've
had are the ones I attended at your facility. - There you go and that's why I left
light simulation and went into body language is when I learned that there's
so much power in understanding your body language to improve your communication.
I changed my career because I want people to have the same shortcuts that I
have in my life so that's what.. - It's like your cheat sheet. - Exactly.
And so when it comes to this miscommunication, miscommunication is
costly in our world because we live in a world where we interact with people all
the time and in order to achieve a goal, we have to be able to interact with
people along the way and then what really bites us is that we get
miscommunication going and now we don't understand what happened, why we're not
interacting with these people, why our relationships are going down so we need
to know how to improve our communication because when we can improve our
communication, we can improve all the results of our life so if you have a
goal and you want to reach your goal, you have to be able to communicate better.
Now when it comes to those three voices of communication, guess which one people
actually pay the most attention to if two different messages are sent? You know
what, what I was first hearing when you said that is what when do people pay
most attention, we usually pay most attention to the words when we're trying
to communicate, we think that the words are the most important part but the
part that we really notice and pay attention to is really more of the
nonverbal stuff, the body language. - In fact, studies show that when
our two conflicting messages that are sent, people will only pay attention to
the words 7% of the time and they'll take the meaning from the nonverbal, the
other 93% of the time. - Wow so that's why it's so important to
understand this. - That is why it's so important and so this is how
understanding body language helps you is by knowing what messages you are sending
to people and one of the fastest ways to see this going on in your life is to
give somebody a compliment because when you give somebody a compliment,
they very often use this kind of body language, like they're rejecting it, like
they're pushing it away or they'll even say "Oh, thank you." And now they don't match because people
have this belief inside of them that they don't want to take from somebody
else and so they want to not take even the compliment or if I
receive the compliment somehow I'll be prideful. We've got these mixed up programs
inside of us and so I just one week just for fun, I just went around
giving compliments everywhere I went just to see how people respond. - You're
doing a little study. - Yes, I was. I didn't tell anybody. I went
everywhere, I went to the grocery store, I went to my kid's school, I went to
businesses, I just gave compliments and it was
fascinating to me the majority of the time people would reject the compliments
and sometimes it's not this blatant, sometimes it's as simple as they
suddenly need to brush their sleeve off, it's like, oh thank you and
then they're brushing it off or they'll, I had one time, I mentioned this in my
TED talk, I had one time, I gave a person a compliment and they said "Oh, thank you."
and they like flicked it away and I was like wow, get rid of that disgusting
compliment. - Wow that's interesting. - Yeah and so we're constantly pushing things
away. The problem is this, our brain does not distinguish pushing away something
good and pushing away something bad and so if
we're in the habit of pushing things away from us then we actually push away
a lot of good things. - And you're talking about the just the motions and it might
be subconscious, we don't even know
that we're doing it. - Most of the time. Body language is
like your heartbeat just because you don't pay attention to it doesn't mean
it's not happening in fact, it's even more like you're breathing, you can
control your breathing but as soon as you forget about it, you go back to
breathing again.- Back to whatever is automatic. Whatever
you practice. - That is the important words that you just said right there. When
you you go back to what is automatic. - What is automatic or programmed in maybe.
- Yeah and so this is why when I mentor people, it's fascinating to me when they
come in and they're like "I just I need more resources in my life. I don't make
enough money and man, I just wish my family treated me better." And they're
pushing it away and I'm like, let's talk about your body
language and they're like, no no, I just need to have more income and I'm like
then you can't see it by pushing it away, we've got a change. - So it changes
something psychologically if you change the the actual movements. How
would you suggest that someone receive a compliment? What would be the opposite? - So
okay, I'm going to teach you that but I got to go with one thing that
you just said right there because here's something that he just said that's
really important, he said that there's like a psychological connection to our
body language. This is why when I did that TED talk is called the key to
your subconscious programming, our body language actually comes from our
subconscious programming and so if we upgrade our body language it actually
helps upgrade our programming inside of us. Studies show the people
studies show that if you upgrade your body language you usually will like
yourself more. - Hmm and other people will like you more too. - Yeah but it starts with
you feeling different and so to receive a compliment,
when someone gives you a compliment, just imagine scooping it up in front of
you and just placing it in your heart while you say thank you.
- Thank you. - Because now your words and your body language matched and it
causes a lot of conflict when they don't match. People can't understand you
when you are confusing by sending two different messages and so just
that simple thing. You guys should try too. Ready? Thank you. I just dare
you to try it because I like to do little studies.
So I did another little study where while I was giving people compliments, I
practiced receiving them to see how people would respond. - Oh wow yeah.
- and sometimes it was fascinating because I remember I had this one lady, she had
come across the parking lot to give me a compliment about my hat
and when she gave me the compliment, I just turned to her and I said "Oh, thank
you." And her response was like this "You're welcome." Her shoulders went up
and her chin. She was expecting me to
reject it and when I received it, her shoulders went up and her chin went up
and she was like, "You're welcome." and she just walked away like she was happier. - That is
great. - But we're just so programmed in this rejection of good things and so
if you change, if you upgrade and you start receiving things, it changes how
you feel about you and it also changes how people see you. You want
another quick quick shortcut? So here's another one. Have you ever heard of the
afternoon slump? - Yes I'm familiar with it. - Yes, it's caused by gravity. I'm just
kidding. - Which is always on. - It's always on and what it is,
in the afternoon, we start to get weighed down and our shoulders come down
and our chins come down and so really, if we will - that has an energy to
it - Can you feel it? Yeah, as soon as you try them. - You have to kind of,
like gravity. - Just let it suck, get it out, and you start to feel it but now
just try pulling your shoulders up and your chin just above level, not level
but just above level. - So it's going to feel higher than normal?
- Yes it'll feel higher than normal, it feels different in fact, most of the time
we'll take a deep breath when we do that because it will changes the energy.
Absolutely. So if you couple that one with like you just
put your hands down to your side right here, this is what I call relaxed hands
because people often when they are, when they have
programs running through their head where they are
beating themselves up or they're comparing themselves to other people and
putting themselves lower which is what we often do, is we compare our worst
trait to somebody else's best trait and so what we'll do is we'll close our
hands in front of us. Anyway you close them in front of you is called a gate.
- It's like a barrier. - It's a barrier because we're feeling less than, we're
feeling like we are weaker than. - We could protect maybe. - And so if you put
your hands down to your sides, this is relaxed hands . Now that doesn't mean
walk around like this because that would be creepy,
don't do that okay but it means after you've used your hands,
you can put them away here and this is relaxed open
and and the thing is this will feel
really awkward to people the first times they try it because when I first tried
this, oh my gosh, I put my hands my side and I was like, oh I can't do
that, that's like, that's so weird. - And then you go back to the gate. - Yeah
because I was really afraid of people seven years ago. One of the
reasons I went into engineering was cause I didn't have to interact with people.
- That's why we have engineering. - I know and so when I was coming into this
new career of being a body language expert, I had to try things for me first
and it was really really hard but as I did it, here's the
bonus. is that as you put your shoulders back, your chin up, your hands
relaxed and your feet pointed forward, it actually causes
feelings of confidence to be fed to your subconscious. - There's a whole different
energy to it, you feel it. - Yeah, absolutely. -Try it. - So I highly I hope
you'll use some of these pieces that I shared with you, I hope you'll use them
too.- Yes, thank you. - Because this is how understanding body language really helps
you is by knowing and messages you're sending to other people, being able to
align them with your words instead of saying oh yes, I want more and pushing it
away, learning to just turn your hands around and say yes, I want more and
now you send a complete message and you avoid the costly
miscommunication. So hope you guys like that.
- There you go. Was that helpful? - Yeah, that was awesome. Thank you. - There are so
many different places in our life where understanding body language can help us.
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