Body language

In Dutch language the same word is used for both ‘attitude’ as well as ‘posture’, and even for some specific cases of ‘being embarrassed’. It shows an interesting link to our verbal language and our body language. It being the same word would indicate that our interaction would be most clear as long as our words and our posture say the same thing.

Sounds logical and true, yet it doesn’t happen like that all the time.

Ever seen someone positively affirming a statement while shaking their heads? Or saying something like ‘Trust me’ while looking away from you?
In cases like that ~ and there are many, many more ~ the verbal language and the body language state totally different, even opposite things. And while we can pick and choose the words we are going to say in order to get what we want, it is a lot harder to have our body, our posture to agree with our statements; especially when those statements are not actually stating the factual truth as we know or understand it.

Refining this principle, our facial expressions can tell a lot about our feeling about something. It is not just the rolling eyes of a disagreeing teenager, but our facial expression can tell if we are angry, unhappy, or thrilled ~ independent from the words that are spoken.

The reason for this is that both our body language as well as our facial expressions are directed by our subconsciousness and so they convey the message we hold in our subconscious selves. So as soon as our subconscious self knows we are not telling the truth ~ or even telling a big fat lie ~ a discrepancy is created between our words and our body language.

The interesting thing is that this also works the other way around…
What if we grew up with a message that says we will never amount to anything worthwhile, we are stupid, can’t do anything right etc. Pretty soon, our subconsciousness will file this away as ‘truth’, and this ‘truth’ is then reflected in our body language.
While it can be very hard to counter the perspectives we grew up with from a logical place, the other way to change this false ‘truth’ about ourselves is through purposely changing our posture. To start doing physical exercises that help us create a posture that says ‘I’m worth it!’, ‘I can and will reach my goals because I’m good at my trade, my profession’.
And pretty soon our subconsciousness starts to reevaluate this truth about ourselves, and will ultimately change the ‘false truth’ we grew up with into the truth we are living in our lives right now.
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