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My Five-Step Program for Reading Body Language: Be a Body-Language Expert; Be a REBLE

The REBLE program is an easy-to-follow, five-step program I created to spot lies and get to the truth. REBLE is an acronym that stands for Relax, Establish rapport, Baseline behavior, Look for deviations from the baseline, and Extract the truth. I like the word “rebel” because according to Urban Dictionary, it means “a person who stands up for his or her own personal opinions despite what anyone else says. A true rebel stands up for what he or she believes is right, not against what’s right.” I believe that everyone should have the courage to stand up for themselves, speak their minds, and do what they think is right. I didn’t always have the courage to do this when I was younger, but I do now. And once you have it, you’ll never lose it; in fact, your courage and confidence will only get stronger. If only the poor kids who are being bullied today had the courage and confidence to be able to say “Whatever!” to cowardly bullies, they would defeat them and walk away with their heads held high.

Kelly O’Clair, a friend and colleague of mine, and I are currently brainstorming a program to empower teenagers and adults who are being bullied at school and in the office. People of all ages and backgrounds can use the power of body language. My REBLE program is meant for anyone who wants to:

• Build amazing rapport and relationships with people.

• Win trust and gain respect.

• Have the courage to stand up for themselves.

• Confront those who are deceiving them or their loved ones.

• Never be a victim of mental or physical abuse.

• Never be taken advantage of or caught in a scam.

• Have the confidence to go after what they want: that new job, a promotion, a new romantic interest, whatever.

• Determine whether someone is lying to them.

• Get the truth while maintaining rapport and respect.

• Collect accurate and truthful information.

The REBLE body-language program isn’t just about detecting deception, honing in on verbal and nonverbal deceptive tells, and getting to the truth; it’s also about finding your confidence and building strong, healthy relationships and connections with people. You will learn how to build rapport with people and how to assess their personality preferences so you can adjust yours to meet theirs. You will learn that people tend to like other people who are similar to them. You will also learn that most people inherently want to be honest—even terrorists and criminals! In fact, when my detainees “broke” (when they finally gave up resisting and told the truth), every one of them said the same thing to me: “It’s such a relief to not have to lie anymore.” People want to be respected and feel good about themselves; knowing this was partly why I was so successful as an interrogator. Yes, I used all the approach techniques I was taught, as well as my analytical and questioning skills, but I also focused on the human factor. I forced myself to look at every single detainee, no matter what his background was or what he had done, as a human being first. It wasn’t easy, but I knew if I could show them respect as fellow human beings, even though I abhorred what they did, they would reciprocate that respect. (I admit that sometimes that was really difficult. I would feel the corners of my mouth turn down in disgust while talking to them, and then quickly try to smile, hoping they didn’t see the micro-expression leaking out of my face.) I got respect and, more importantly, a lot of important intelligence information out of them. Not all interrogators, especially tactical interrogators, agree with or follow my method, but for the strategic interrogation environment, where I had the time to build relationships, my method worked well. Being a nonthreatening female also worked to my advantage.

My program debunks the prevailing myths about reading body language, such that even the naysayers will want to incorporate this program into their everyday lives. I use this program. It works. I used it with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and even though I had no “program” for what I was doing in the interrogation booth at the time, I knew that I was succeeding. And, of course, I’ve used it to start my own company, The Congruency Group. We live in a big, complex world, and unfortunately there are a lot of bad people out there who have bad intentions to harm others. I know, because I’ve seen many of these people up close. Use my five-step body-language program to take control of your life and protect yourself and those close to you from being hurt, let down, taken advantage of, or deceived.