What's the best way to control your body language?

Even if people don't know anything at all about body language, subconsciously they will pick up the messages from your body language and get a "feeling" about you based on that. But there are ways that you can control your non-verbal communication, and they are much simpler than you might expect!

What doesn't work - But most people do

If you try to control your body language it will come across as fake. And the feeling they'll get about you will not be a good one.

Trying to control your body language consciously is incredibly difficult as there are so many things going on at once, and it's impossible for you to control them all. Something will leak out and you'll have conflicting non-verbal communication that screams "I'm not being genuine!"

Consciously, you're very very unlikely to be able to control all of your non-verbal communication in such a way that will appear genuine.

The trick to correct body language

There is a trick that you can use that makes things much simpler.

All you need to do is decide on the non-verbal message that you want to communicate and then tell yourself (convincingly) that this is exactly what you are.

So, as an example, if you work in sales, you'll want to appear genuine, caring, trustworthy, honest and reliable. So tell yourself that you are all of these things. Tell yourself (and believe it) that you really care about the person you are talking with and you have their very best interests at heart.

In fact, that's what you should naturally feel as that's what you should be doing! You really shouldn't be trying to manipulate people while hiding behind body language that says "I'm one of the good guys!". That's not nice.

But i've worked on sales, and I know what it can be like. You have goals to meet, you're a bit nervous, you're worried that you might not get the sale and your pay-check will suffer. All of that stuff can happen even if you are very genuinely acting in the very best interests of your client.

They'll pick up from your body language that something isn't right and they'll likely lose trust in you.

To overcome this you need to constantly keep telling yourself that you are helping the person. Keep reaffirming this over and over and genuinely feel really good that you are able to help this person.

When you do this, and you don't try to control your body language is any way at all, your natural body language will also communicate this message and you'll come across as genuine.

You don't want to only do this in sales, do it all of the time.

Here are a few tips on things you should say to yourself in order to help display the correct body language for the situation

• When you're chatting with friends say to yourself, "I like this person, I'm very interested in what they are saying and I respect their views."
• When you're approaching somebody to ask them out on a date say to yourself, "I'm very interested to get to know this person, they are friendly and I'm genuinely curious to know them better."
• When you don't want an officer to write you a ticket say to yourself, "I respect this officers authority and I am genuinely sorry that I made a mistake"
• When you are asking for a flight upgrade say, "This person is busy and I respect their time, I really appreciate them helping me."

Obviously, to get out of a ticket or to get a flight upgrade you need to say the right thing too, but saying the right thing while displaying the wrong body language is not going to get you anywhere. 

In a future post I'll be talking about subtle language patterns that you can use to get what you want in any situation. But think about your body language as the foundation upon which you can layer those language patterns. Without that foundation they're not going to do you much good at all.