Preface
I’m sure that someone at some point has said to you, “I see what you’re saying,” and that told you that this person understood what you just said. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him or her to have said, “I understand what you’re saying”? After all, we hear people speak, but we can’t see their speech (unless they are speaking in sign language, of course). So how, then, can we see what people say? We can’t. But we can see how people say things—their body language, their facial expressions, the things they do while they speak—and that makes us feel that we can actually see what they say, beyond just their spoken words. For example, I can observe how people lie through words, body gestures, facial expressions, and certain physiological signs.
When I hear people say “I see what you’re saying,” it tells me that they “get” me. It reminds me of greeting of the Na’vi people, the indigenous, albeit fictitious, culture on the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s movie Avatar. Their greeting is “I see you,” which essentially translates as “I can see into your soul and I know you. I get you.” This book is intended to expound on the relationships among hearing, listening, and seeing: hearing the sounds people make, listening to the specific words they use, and seeing their body gestures and facial expressions while they speak.
When what we say and how we say it (through body language) match up, it’s called behavioral congruency. When they don’t match, we have behavioral incongruency; in this case, the body isn’t matching up with the words being said or the true emotions behind those words. I will teach you how to spot both of these. I will also teach you how to look for deceptive tells (deviations from normal behavior that indicate stress) and why you have to look for clusters of these tells to determine whether someone is lying. Understanding what people say goes far beyond just hearing their words, although words and the voice play a key part in detecting deception, as you will soon find out. In fact, I tend to rely more on verbal deceptive tells than nonverbal. I will explain why later on, as you begin to understand the complexities of nonverbal communication.
In Avatar, when the Na’vi say “I see you,” they are saying they can sense the true emotions and inner spirit of others; they can empathize. Empathy is key to building rapport, and building rapport is the process of earning likeability, trust, and respect. Because I practice yoga, I see a connection between the Na’vi greeting and the Sanskrit word namaste. After the end of each yoga session, I say namaste. This word encapsulates my belief that there is a divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra; it is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another. You’ve probably heard the idea that if you look deeply into someone’s eyes, you can see into his or her soul. Have you ever wondered what is so special about the soul? The soul is the true essence of the self; there is no hiding it, deceiving others about it, or faking it. So we know when we aren’t being honest with ourselves, and we know when we are lying to others; we can’t fool ourselves! And why do you suppose the eyes are the gateway to the soul? Perhaps it’s because the eyes are so expressive, and the fact that it’s almost impossible to control their movements and thus hide one’s true feelings or emotions. If you want to be a body-language expert and use body language to help you detect deception, build rapport, and enhance your overall interpersonal communication skills, you’ll need to be able to determine the true emotions behind what people say, in addition to the meaning of the words they choose. Done correctly, this is when the art and science of human interaction meet. You won’t be able to see someone’s soul after reading this book, but you will be able to know when people aren’t being honest with themselves and, more importantly, you. And that’s the whole reason I wrote this book in the first place.