Detailed Summary

How will you spot someone and understand whether he is lying or telling the truth? Can you know if the person is feeling comfortable around you or not? How to predict what another person is going to do in the future?

These are the questions that FBI agents have to deal with daily. And the answers to these questions are hidden in the non-verbal cues of the other person because body language can disclose all the inner emotions and feelings that our words don’t say.

Understanding non-verbal cues is a great talent. You can learn to be aware of the secret signals people reveal by their body language on daily basis. Joe Navarro spent his 25 years of life as an FBI agent specializing in behavioral assessment. After being retired, he wrote many books on body language, and one of the most important books is What Every Body is Saying.

What Every Body is Saying Summary Key Points

Are you craving to learn the non-verbal language to understand what others interpret? This book, What Every Body is Saying, mater you the art of nonverbal language (gestures and facial expressions) to upgrade the ability of your understanding.

30% is your tone, while 60% is what your body says

According to the research, 60% of what we speak is not getting out of our mouths because 60% of our saying comes out from our body language, and the remaining 30% is what we say by mouth. The thing is, most of the time, we’re not even aware of the things we’re saying with our bodies.

We might be sending signals without realizing it, or we might not put our best foot forward because we’re unaware of how we’re being perceived.

That’s why it’s so important to be aware of how you communicate – both with your words and your body. And that’s why Joe Navarro has written What Every Body is Saying– because it helps you do just that. This book lets you see how you’re being perceived and adjust your communication accordingly.

Non-verbal communication, i.e., gestures, postures, and body language, is more valid than verbal communication. Sometimes, we don’t understand what our person’s cues are trying to say because we do not learn about reading them, which is why most of us get fooled by others.

The limbic brain: Freeze, Flight, and Fight response

You can have one more alternative next to fight or flight and freezing. It’s the reaction you have when you don’t know what else to do, and your brain is desperately trying to find a way out. The reason it’s next to impossible to prevent or hard to control our body language (Did you ever not try touching your face or neck when you’re in a stressful condition?) is that it’s embedded in our limbic brain.

Joe also explains this situation as “The honest brain” because its outcomes are sudden and genuine. This is why listening to what it’s telling us is so important. If we’re feeling stressed, it’s best to take action and address the root of the problem. Otherwise, we might end up in freeze mode.

When you freeze, you enter a state of paralysis where you stop responding to the outside world. It’s a primitive response that’s been hardwired into us over centuries of evolution, and it’s one of the reasons why humans are so successful as a species. We can shut down all communication and physical activity until the danger has passed.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, the next time you can’t seem to get your body to calm down, just stop and take a breath. It may not fix the situation, but it’ll give you the space to assess it rationally and figure out a plan of action.

You might also like to read the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor Summary

Develop situational awareness to master non-verbal cues

You can’t master the art of reading people if you don’t have a good foundation. That’s why you should start with the basics. To be able to read people like a pro, you need to develop situational awareness. This means having as many details at a certain time as possible. It’s not an easy skill to learn, but you can do it with practice.

Practice, practice, and practice because there is no other way or shortcut to success other than practicing a lot.

Read people like you read a book. What does this mean for your ability to read people like a book? It means that you need to be able to gather as many details as possible about any given individual or group of people. This includes knowing their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. The more information you have, the better you’ll be at understanding what they think and feel.

For example, do you know what F4 does on your laptop’s keyboard? Don’t cheat!!

If you don’t know, don’t worry!! Most of us don’t. That is what we are talking about. Practice and focus on your surroundings. Don’t just focus; try to understand the cues and gather all the details.

To understand when someone’s mood is off, you first have to know how their mood is when they are normal.

What else you can learn from the book What Every Body is Saying?

• What body parts are most honest?
• How do you threaten people sometimes without even knowing your hands?
• How to spot people lying when a question is asked?

What Every Body is Saying quotes

“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” Joe Navarro

“Research tells us liars tend to gesture less, touchless, and move their arms and legs less than honest people (Vrij, 2003, 65).”

Joe Navarro

What Every Body is Saying reviews

“Its language is easy to understand. Very informative regarding body language n nonverbal communication skills. In short, I liked it very much. It’s worth reading.” Sanskriti Kaura

“It’s a good book, but it doesn’t offer a lot of information you don’t already know. Everyone knows about pacifying behaviors like tugging at your collar or touching your face. It’s still interesting.” Abby king

To whom would I recommend the What Every Body is Saying summary?

• The young person or a student who thinks or feels like he is being deceived and misunderstood by his friends.
• Anyone whose work is based on communicating with other people and building relations.

Link: https://amzn.to/3vkYJsZ