6 Ways Your Body Language Says More Than Your Words Could | by Jennifer Thompson | ILLUMINATION

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“Don’t fake it till you make it — fake it till you become it,” — Dr. Amy Cuddy

Your body language can sometimes say more than words could. The saying about “first impressions” is truer than realise. When you enter a room, it’s your energy and essence that people “see” even before you say a word, and this is made up partly by your body language.

Social psychologist Dr. Amy Cuddy, famous for her study on “power poses” is a thought leader in the study of body language. And it’s something she knows firsthand. At age 19, Dr. Cuddy was involved in a car accident resulting in brain damage, causing her IQ to drop by 30 points-from near genius levels to just average.

Dr. Amy Cuddy

As someone who defined her identity around her intelligence, you can imagine how she must have felt. It shook her confidence as much as her abilities. But, despite her brain damage, she made her way through college and even got accepted into the graduate program at Princeton.

At Princeton, especially true during conversations and presentations, Amy Cuddy discovered that it was her lack of confidence that was holding her back, not her IQ,

Later, as a Harvard psychologist, she studies positive body language’s impacte on a person’s confidence, ability to influence, emotional intelligence, and success.

Positive body language includes appropriate eye contact, active engagement/listening, and targeted gestures. Her research shows positive body language can make you more persuasive, likable, and competent.

Here’s how positive body language works:

1. Changes your attitude.

Cuddy’s research found that consciously adjusting your body language to make it more positive has a powerful impact on your hormones and improves your attitude.

2. Increases testosterone.

Research shows that positive body language boosts testosterone levels by 20%. For both men and women, more testosterone can lead to greater confidence, causing other people to see you more positively— as someone trustworthy.

3. Decreases cortisol.

Positive body language decreases the street hormone — cortisol — by 25%. Conversely, stress increases cortisol levels impeding performance and creating adverse health effects over the long term.

Decreasing cortisol levels reduces stress, enabling greater mental clarity. In addition, decreasingIn addition, decreasing cortisol levels and increasing testosterone creates a powerful combination for leaders.

4. It improves your emotional intelligence

Albert Mehrabian, a researcher of body language, found that communication is 55% nonverbal. Conveying the correct body language based on various social situations can make you more likeble.

People judge you on your body language sometimes more than your tone of voice or even what you say. Positive body language will make people like and trust you more.

5. It conveys competence.

Researchers in Princeton, found that a one-second clip of candidates for senator or governor was enough for people to predict which candidate was elected accurately. This was just from judging the candidates body language.

6. It helps you negotiate

There’s no doubt that body language can make you more persuasive and influence others to your way of thinking.

The use of mirroring —” adopting the posture, gestures, vocal qualities, and language of the person you’re speaking with in interpersonal communication” can increase your liebaility and persuasiveness.