The
Ultimate Guide
To Fighting and Winning
By Dr. Russ Horine, President, Fight-Fast Direct, Inc.
Part 17
“All war is deception.”
– Sun Tzu
Dear Friend:
This is the seventeenth section of
my Fight Guide. As I’ve said all along, this is a journey
– so don’t sell yourself short and skip ahead. You’ll
want to first read Part
1 through 16 HERE.
Now let’s get into a section some people like
to think of as a sort of “mystical magic” – non-verbal
communication. I assure you, there’s no “magic” involved
with this – it’s all hard science that is designed to
place you in a far stronger position when dealing with
dangerous people. Let’s take a look.
“Let him who desires peace
prepare for war.”
– Flavius Vegetius Renatus
Nonverbal
Communication
Believe it or not, words and language
are actually your SECONDARY form of communication. That’s
right, whether you’re aware of it or not, your main
form of communication is not transmitted verbally, but
rather nonverbally.
Here’s
some fun facts:
-
Studies show that 65
– 85% of communication between people is carried
out nonverbally – which means at least two-thirds of our total communication
occurs nonverbally.
-
Over the course of an entire day, the average person
is actually engaged in talking for only about 40
minutes. Yeah hard to believe, but it’s true. The
rest of the time you are busy communicating through
nonverbal body language. (now
that 40 minutes doesn’t include you guys who like talking
to yourself).
-
The people with whom you’re engaged in conversation
with will put more “weight” on your nonverbal
information than on your actual words. Typically
your nonverbal messages are not controlled consciously
-- so it reflects your true feelings, emotions and moods.
The person you’re talking with subconsciously understands
this and uses your nonverbal signals to develop opinions,
beliefs and feelings about you without even knowing
how they did it. Your own experience should reinforce
this notion if you consider how you form almost “instant”
judgments about someone’s character in the first minutes
of meeting them. Yes the brain is a powerful and scary
thing.
-
You will form and solidify an opinion about someone
within the first 4
minutes of knowing them – after which point it will
be difficult to change that opinion. People resist changing
their minds about someone, (a process called “selective perception”), and we will ignore
any information that is contrary that that initial impression.
Not only that, research shows that we’ll even amplify
any information that reinforces that initial opinion.
It’s on the television news all the time. The shocked
neighbor expressing something like “but
he is such a nice, quiet man… I just had dinner with
him. I can’t believe he had all those people in his
freezer.” Even in the face of hard facts to the
contrary, people will tend to hang onto their initial
judgments.
Okay…
so what does all this “non-verbal” stuff have to do
with you protecting yourself and your family? Well
actually a lot,
because your adversary -- if he’s human -- is quite
attuned into what kind of person he is willing to confront.
As we discussed earlier, he is rarely willing to engage
in a confrontation he thinks may end badly for him –
so he’s essentially looking for a victim. It’s all done
by “sizing up” your non-verbal signals mainly because
he can’t ask “Can I humiliate, dominate, rob and/or
beat you senseless with little or no danger to myself?”
Nope, in all my years of research I’ve never come across
that.
My
point is this: Your opponent will always
be actively “sizing you up” by your non-verbal signals
– that is, your body language. It’s why dominant alpha,
males – no matter what their size -- are rarely picked
on by bullies or targeted by predators. They convey
nonverbal signals that they can and will “take care
of business” if necessary. What’s surprising is that
these non-verbal signals cut across all barriers and
are instinctively understood by all humans – no matter
what language they speak verbally.
In the end, your goal should be to
use nonverbal communication to your advantage – to take
“conscious” control over them so you can “sell” a certain
image of yourself. To do this, we need to dig a little
deeper into specific “Power Signals” -- which I'll cover
in my next installment of your fight course.
Til next time…
Regards,
Dr. Russ Horine
Fight-Fast, Inc.
“Tolerance becomes a crime
when applied to evil.”
– Thomas Mann
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