Body language

I will always be amazed by the stuff that you can find on the internet so casually. Scrolling through twitter, I found a link of a video that caught my attention. It was a TED talk about body language, a subject that I always found very interesting since I was little. According to the video, body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success. You can watch it here:

To be honest, this speech left me a warm feeling in my chest and a great confidence, like I could achieve anything I wanted. Because it's true. I have experienced this myself sometimes, and I know some facts about body language related to some of my acquaintances' experiences.

First of all, the "Wonder Woman pose":

I learned this from my mother. She does look like a powerful, confident woman, unlike me, because I usually just stay hunched most of the time — as I said in an earlier entry, I'm very pessimistic so this posture is the normal thing for me. So when sometimes I'm feeling down or not very confident, she always says to me "honey, straighten up, put your hands on your hips and smile!". And it does work! I strongly believe that changing our posture can change our moods, make us more or less confident and more or less perceptive. And I can prove it with some anecdotes.

For example, in high school we had a new ICT teacher who was very, very, very intimidating. All of my classmates were afraid of him, and he liked to treat us like "fools" because "we didn't know the most simple things about technology". And of course when we had to give our homework, he loved to pick someone to be in front of the whole class and ask them, so he culd get them to say something wrong and embarrass them. So one day he called a girl, he got in a "Mr. Burns posture" and said: "You know? When I see you with your legs crossed, your notebook hiding your face and your nervous laughter... It's like you're at my mercy. I feel powerful! Mwahahahahah!"

I swear to god I will never forget that teacher

Also, my father loves to tell me some stories of "the old times", and he once told me one referring to body language. He worked as a seller and he had to read a book about body language for his formation in that job. Surprisingly, the knowledge of the body can have a great effect in business and negotiations, as he discovered soon. He had to sell some books to a customer who wasn't very convinced about them, and they had a reunion. My dad noticed that the customer had his arms crossed: that meant that he wasn't being perceptive. Then, he pretended to drop his pen so the customer would pick it up and have his arms open. After that, it was easier for my father to convince the customer, and he finally sold those books.

On the other hand, I studied body language and self-defense at P.E. when I was in high school too, so I learned a lot about hand movements and stuff (have you seen "The Mentalist? Jane usually catches the criminal because of body language). Also, I learned that this subject is an important factor in self-defense, as we can see in the basic posture: 

"You have to try not to transmit hostility but quite the opposite, so you won't keep a threatening or defensive posture. This facilitates the element of surprise in the response. Standing with both hands raised to the height of our face and showing the palms of the hands is a basic position for the start, because it protects our head and let our hands be near the opponent, accelerating our response time."

Actually, our P.E. teacher told us that he used that once, when a guy with a knife wanted to rob him. The thief thought he had all under control, because he was threatening an unarmed man in the middle of the night. But the poor guy ended up on the floor crying of pain with a broken elbow. Yes, appearances can be deceiving.

This is why I think it's very important to learn the control of your own body. It can be the difference between success and failure, and it can have a great influence in your confidence. So while we practice our writing skills, I highly recommend you to look for some interesting body language facts, too, because they can help a lot when giving a speech or something similar. And I'm sure that this fascinating subject will be the key to reach our dreams, as shown in the video.