Awareness

Nonverbal communication is everything you communicate that is not the words you say. Nonverbal communication is often thought to be synonymous with body language, but body language is only one aspect of nonverbal communication.

Even before we speak or move a muscle, we are communicating nonverbally. What are we wearing? How is our hair styled? How well are we groomed? Even before you say anything at all, you are already communicating information about who you are, your intentions, your background, and how seriously you should be taken.

When we begin to move, the amount of information we communicate skyrockets. How we are standing, how we sit, how we gesture, where we look; all send massive streams of information to whoever is observing us.

When we begin to speak, the words often mean less than the way we say them.

A slight change in pace, tone, pitch, cadence, and inflection, turns, "I'm so happy to be here!" into "I'm so happy to be here." Exactly the same words were spoken, but with two completely different meanings. This is the essence of non-verbal communication: being aware of what people are saying beyond the words they are speaking.

When someone is speaking to you, you must be aware of everything about them, from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet. Humans communicate with their entire body. When we are listening to someone, we must pay attention to their legs, their torso, their arms, their hands, their neck, and their shoulders. After all of that, only then should we also pay attention to their face.

The face has a paradoxical role in non-verbal communication. Our forehead, nose, eyes, and mouth all stream vast amounts of valuable information. Unfortunately, we have all been taught from a very young age to mask our true feelings by controlling our face. When it comes to masking how we really feel, we have spent our entire lives making sure we don't stare, we smile on cue, we pretend to look interested, and we learn to laugh at jokes that aren't funny. This makes the face a wealth of non-verbal communication that we often cannot fully trust.

The rest of the body, however, is an entirely different matter. We never learned to mask our true feelings with our feet, legs, torso, arms, hands, and shoulders. The lower we look on the human body for nonverbal cues, the more honest those cues are. Someone might be smiling at us and seemingly interested in what we are saying, but if their entire body is turned towards the exit, with only their head turned to face you, they are in fact not interested in what you are saying and would rather be anywhere else.

We are all hardwired to be constantly aware of non-verbal communication as it has been the key to our survival for millions of years.

Our brains have the neocortex, which is where our conscious thoughts originate, as well as our limbic system, which can be thought of as where our instincts originate. When we are walking down a dark alley late at night and see someone walking towards us, our neocortex says, "Logically, I have no reason to fear a total stranger," but our limbic system might push us to walk faster or even run in the opposite direction. This is because the limbic system's main role is to ensure our survival.

The sentiment of, "I heard what they said, but something doesn't seem right," is your limbic system telling you that it's detected something suspicious. To be aware of non-verbal communication is to pay attention whenever you get a sense that you're detecting something off, and to pay even closer attention to see what it is.

As an exercise to see just how finely tuned your limbic system is at detecting nonverbals, pull up a video of your favorite - or least favorite - politician and turn off the volume. Now watch them answer questions, and ask yourself if you trust what they are saying. Politicians are extensively trained to mask their true feelings by manipulating their body language, so it's a true test of your ability.

Before too long, you will quickly be tuned into their non-verbal communication, and start to notice changes in their eyes, mouth, jaw, forehead, and eyebrows. Reading a politician's head, neck, torso, arms, and hands is particularly difficult, as they are well trained to not move at all, or if they are moving, to move them in very specific ways. Note also that politicians typically speak at a podium, and tend to be filmed from the torso up, conveniently hiding their perhaps more honest legs and feet.

After watching several videos of politicians answering questions with the volume turned off, you should find that your sensitivity to non-verbal communication has increased. Now, when you watch someone who has no training in hiding their communication, there should be a flood of new information you now have access to. After calibrating your limbic system on politicians, watching celebrities in interviews with the volume turned off should be your next step. After that, begin watching for nonverbal cues in strangers. When riding on the train, standing in line at the grocery store, going for a walk at the park, or anywhere else you see people, listen to what their nonverbals are telling you.

Finally, when you are speaking face-to-face with a friend, family member, or coworker, put your limbic system in the driver's seat and learn to trust your instincts. Should you listen to the words they say? Yes - of course. Should you listen far more intently to what they are communicating to you non-verbally? Absolutely. To become a masterful communicator, it is not good enough to simply focus on words, as how someone is saying something is often far more important than what they are saying.