Use Your Body to Help You Reach People

Tuesday

You want to educate your fellow non-Muslims about Islam. Excellent. Bravo. And sometimes you have a difficult time getting the message across. They seem to turn against you. They want to reject your message. You lose rapport. It can sometimes be upsetting.

People who also need to gain rapport so that they can influence others (therapists) have discovered many intelligent ways to gain rapport and prevent losing it. One of those ways is by using your body.

I want you to try an experiment today and tomorrow. You'll be talking with many people in the next two days. Try this: Every time you're talking to someone, notice how they're positioning their body, and make your body's position similar to theirs.

You don't have to match it perfectly, although they probably wouldn't notice if you did. But if the person's head is tilted slightly, tilt yours slightly. If the person has all his weight on one leg and the other one slightly bent, do the same.

Notice how he has positioned his arms and hands. Make yours somewhat similar. Notice his posture. Make yours similar.

This is one of many ways to gain and keep rapport with someone. We'll be covering other ways in the next few weeks. But for now, just concentrate on your body, and see what happens.

What will happen is that people will respond to you better. They will feel closer to you without knowing why. And oddly enough, you will feel closer to them. Over the next couple of days, concentrate on this. If you keep it up, it will begin to come naturally. At that point, you will have increased your ability to influence people.

If we want to reach people, if we want them to listen to us, if we want our message to penetrate, gaining rapport is a skill worth learning. And using your body is a good place to start.

When you can influence people using methods such as the one above or the one in our last article, it's like playing three dimensional chess with someone who is only playing two dimensional chess. They have no idea what you're doing and they have no idea why you are so persuasive. Read more about that here: Influencing People Who Live in a 2D World With 3D Techniques.

4 comments:

Rose 6:35 PM  

Excellent commentary. Yes, there are so many things that can win an argument that have nothing to do with speech.

You do a great job here. Thank you.

Robandrews33304 6:54 AM  

That good. Talk to people at the 'grassroots level'-at bus stops etc. But another thing I do, is to write to my state and local officials and the news media. Letting them know--in a calm wat--not to allow refugees to settle here.

They get enough of this letters the will listen; it's a matter of ENOUGH.It's also better to use postal mail and fax; they tend to get thrown out less.

But a calm rational smooth approach is best. I tend to get emotional a lot about thing I have passion for.

Babs 8:21 AM  

Excellent, Citizen.

Body language is indeed a very important, but often ignored or underestimated, aspect of discussion of sensitive topics.

When I trained as a psychologist our tutors would occasionally film role plays without sound and instruct us to notice body language in the interactions. The subsequent discussions were very interesting, including input from the role-players, along the lines of "I didn't realise I was doing that!" and so on, when they were mirroring each other's stance and posture.

I have been posting and tweeting links to Citizen Warrior to my address book, below the line on blogs and on twitter. Your input is more valuable now than it has ever been.

Keep doing what you are doing!

Anonymous 4:47 PM  

As always, another excellent article. Thanks. This site traps me every time - one can't help following the embedded links, and it can become quite time-consuming, though extremely profitable.

I recently found these two short gems which, along with CW, have assisted me immensely, and helped to stop my head-banging against the wall in frustration at confronting consensus reality...

"How To Debate Leftists And Destroy Them: 11 Rules For Winning The Argument" by Ben Shapiro

"The Little Book of Persuasion: Defend Yourself By Becoming A Skilled Persuader" by Sia Mohajer

Both are available for mere pence via Amazon Kindle.

Now, what was that link I was going to follow.....?

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