Body Language Expert Breaks Down His Own Body Language | WIRED

Key Takeaways

[Music] I'm Joe Navarro I'm a body language expert and today I'm going to be reviewing my own body [Music] language so in May of 2019 I was looking at body language for Wired now we're going to be looking at my body language during that same time period most of my career I spent within the National Security Division A lot of it had to do with looking at specific targets and then it was about well how do we get in their heads and how do we neutralize them so there were some questions about my interlaced hands uh during this initial video and for me that's just one of those uh Comfort behaviors that I use to help myself obviously I'm not in front of the camera all the time so it does provide a little bit of psychological discomfort so often times you'll see me with interlaced hands and and many people do that and it's just that it's a comforting Behavior I find it very useful and if you've ever wondered what to do when you're sitting in a meeting and don't know what to do with your hands just interlace your fingers it's better than having your hands flat or your hands disappear uh totally from the table we may think we're very sophisticated but in fact we are never in a state where we're not transmitting information oh wait wait wait go go back because I did something really weird my elbows came in and my hands went out and I realize that uh when I'm uncomfortable I I do things that actually reflect that now you've probably seen me grab myo my hands together multiple times that's dealing with insecurity but here at this moment what you see is I bring my elbows close to the body and my hands come together here and what I'm in essence doing is being less Territorial and as I evaluate myself I'm I'm saying to myself okay this is something you shouldn't do even if it was just momentary that my gestures should be fluid they should be out here that by self-restraining myself I'm actually taking away from the message and this is one of the advantages of watching a video is that you can see yourself make this mistake and say you know what I'm going to be careful next time to make sure that I don't do it even if it's just uh momentarily in my 25 years in the FBI it was a rarity that a person didn't eventually uh reveal what I needed to know so as I'm looking at the video and I'm having a a good conversation with myself and I realize how often my leg shakes and this is a comment that uh has been made uh I've been made aware of several times and I tend to bounce my leg or my foot tends to shake and I do that subconsciously I think it helps me to relax I think it helps me to to to deal with stress I've done it all my life why are we seeing it here a person that lives in in Florida he all of a sudden is now in New York City in a strange environment surrounded by at least 10 or 15 people that I've never met before and that creates anxiety and how do we deal with anxiety we deal with them through the use of pacifiers the hand touching the hand uh ringing the shaking uh legs all contribute to that uh process if it stands out and people can notice it um it can be uh very distracting so it's one of those things that I'm going to be paying attention to from now on so I just noticed one other small behavior and it's it's a small gesture and that is that I'm pulling down on my jacket this is called a preining behavior and we do that for a couple of reasons you know some people do it because um they want to fix themselves right they want to look right I remember as an FBI agent we always uh pred oursel fixed our jackets and our ties before the jury came in into the room I think I was doing the same here because I was very conscious of how my suit was looking in front of the uh the camera because they kept saying make sure you pull down so the the back of your uh of your suit doesn't uh scrunch upwards the other reason that that we sometimes pren ourselves is because we are physically touching our bodies and in doing so the texture of the material the coldness of the material in this case here uh also helps to uh to uh soothe Us in the same way that a small child will hang on to a blanket or a teddy bear or something that touch helps to to calm us we never really outgrow that even as a as adults we will always U be touching things um to help us uh to calm down and in my case uh obviously to me I can well see that there was a high degree of nervousness there and uh and that's how I was dealing with it you as an audience and even me right now as I'm watching this I I realize I have forgotten all this activity that that's going on and I have to be mindful of what I'm going to say how I say it and what's next often times we look at a video or we see an interview and we forget how many dozens of people were behind that camera and that everything that is behind the camera and everything that happened that day prior to that camera turning on affects that person in a moment in time the best that we can do is appreciate what's said how it's said and then maybe we can dig a Little Deeper but we shouldn't come to too many conclusions just based on a video and what an eyeopener for me is I'm watching myself here and I realize that there were three cameras and 15 people at that moment looking at me and how intimidated I actually felt I'm a highend introvert so watching myself uh being in front of a group is very very uh difficult but I think it's something that we can now with iPhones and and other uh you know smartphones it's easy to do to uh watch ourselves even if it's just for a few minutes and say boy how can I improve on on that and so I think it's a it's a useful tool