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Body language: common pit falls

There is a big possibility that you may have tried using body language to figure out what other people feel but found the accuracy not so 100%. This sometimes happens because there are common pitfalls that people who are new to the body language reading process don't take into consideration. Learning those pitfalls will make your body language reading accuracy move to above 90%.
The pitfalls are as follows:

• Cultural differences: there are some slight differences between cultures. For example, Italians may keep small private distance while English people may keep a big distance. Interpreting the private distance in both cases, without taking the cultural differences into consideration, may result in getting inaccurate readings.
• Body language is perspective dependent: If someone takes the negative evaluation posture as soon as he sees you, then this doesn't mean that he doesn’t like seeing you; he may have been thinking of something bad right before seeing you for example.
• Body language detects states of feelings and not personality: if you see someone taking the confidence posture then this does not mean that he is a confident person; it would mean that he is confident at the moment. However, you can still know his personality by watching for the repetition of the same postures over and over. If that person always takes the confidence posture then he is confident by nature.
• People have habits: some people have the habit of folding their arms or putting their hands in their pockets; make sure you filter out the habits.
• Use your mind: some people may take the defensive posture because the weather is cold, others may scratch their nose because they just want to scratch it; to avoid wrong results, use your mind in addition to the knowledge

As you've just seen, very slight changes to your body language can have a big effect on your relationships with people. In my book, How to make someone fall in love with you, I described how slight changes, such as keeping your back straight, can increase the chances of having people fall in love with you. The more confident you appear, the more attractive you will become; nothing can make you appear confident more than a straight back.

2knowmyself is, without doubt, the only complete guide to body language information on the entire internet. If you dare challenge this statement, then check the 2knowmyself’s body language section and you will know what I am talking about.

Ok, take me back to the 'body language' learning page

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