This Blog is Dedicated to our dear friend Karen.
When she left this life she left a hole in our hearts as well as several to be read books.
We, her friends, will read these books for her.
This blog will be a sort of book club for us to post our thoughts and feelings about the stories and feelings we have of Karen while we read.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro - # 93




I knew I had to read this book since my husband is fascinated by the subject of body language and is always telling me things he has read about it. I actually wondered if I had suggested this book to her but Christian said no he had never read it. So I am not sure who suggested it to her but it's for sure interesting to learn what people are saying to you without words. There are so many involuntary things that people do that give away their true thoughts or intentions. For example did you know that when you first say hello to someone if their eyebrows go up it is a sign they like you and are excited to see you. If their eyebrows stay where they are and they may even squint a bit they are not a fan of yours or find you not trustworthy. Pay attention it's pretty interesting. . .

There are a lot of great examples like this through the book that were very helpful to the author in his many jobs especially as an FBI agent trying to figure out if people were being honest in their discussions.

Although I found the author's discussions on body language pretty interesting I sometimes wondered if he himself suffered from a bit of an odd personality. He seemed to pick up body language cues but not so much other ones that seemed kind of common sense to me. Here is my favorite example in the book. He discusses how he had a meeting with a colleague for five hours let me repeat that FIVE hours (can you imagine??). Afterward the colleague was standing at the door and they were reassessing what they had discussed and he noticed the guy had one foot pointed towards the door. He then said "You really need to leave don't you?" The colleague said yes I'm so sorry I don't mean to be rude but I need to go make a phone call. The funny thing is I'm not so sure the colleague really needed to make a phone call but was thinking dude five hours of talking to you I really need a break!!!

If you can look over the odd things like that you can really learn a lot about things to be aware of in your every day life and what people are saying just by watching their feet or if they touch their neck. By the way touching of the neck is often a soothing technique people use when they are nervous or unsure of themselves to help calm themselves down. Who knew?

I would have loved to discuss this book with Karen after we both read it and put into practice some people watching to see what we both noticed!

2 comments:

  1. Intetesting. I will have to add this one. I knew about the eyebrows bc I do that! I'm not good at hiding my feelings so practice those little things.

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  2. I'm guilty of the neck-touching. Especially if I'm meeting someone new or helping a patron at the library!
    -Kris

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