The School of Greatness - 662 Mastering Body Language and Confidence

Episode Date: July 4, 2018

There are two things that can make or break you when it comes to achieving greatness: your body language and your confidence. If you don’t have confidence, you’ll never be able to put yourself out there to the world. You need the confidence to try, and it’s confidence that will help you get back up after your failures. Once you have the confidence to get out there, your next obstacle is your first impression. Your body language tells someone a lot about you. Sometimes, it may not be what you intended it to say. Having proper posture, giving people a big smile, and treating everyone like an old friend will go a long way. These are really important lessons, which is why I wanted to bring you a mashup from Chen Lizra, Jordan Harbinger and Vanessa Van Edwards. I’ve received such an overwhelming response on the past mashups I wanted to bring you another one. I really suggest you go back and listen to the episode multiple times. There’s so much great advice from all three of these guests, you can’t absorb it all in one sitting. Take a new nugget of information each day and apply it to your life. You’ll quickly learn how not only your life can change, but these tips will also affect the people around you. So learn how you can master your body language and improve your confidence, on Episode 662. In This Episode You Will Learn: How Cuban culture heals the body (6:48) Where we should put our energy to become happy (8:05) The role tempo plays in your body (14:55) What men are commonly missing (18:00) Common misconceptions we have about first impressions (19:53) How your smile affects others (23:10) What makes popular kids popular (28:55) The biggest killer of relationships (30:52) What an ambivert is (32:07) What matters more than IQ (33:13) How you can make your interactions count (35:53) Plus much, much more

This is episode number 662, Mastering Body Language and Confidence. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Theodore Roosevelt said, each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. This episode is all about how do we master our own body language, understand body language, be able to read it from other people, and also increase and improve our confidence in the process

of that. This is a series that we've been doing based on your feedback. We've had 660 plus episodes, some incredible individuals on lots of different topics in the world. And we wanted to do a series where we brought the best ideas from some of them for specific episodes. We've done some on sex and relationships. We've done some on spirituality, leadership, business. This one's on confidence and body language. We've got Hen, Liesre, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jordan Harbinger.

This is a powerful one. Some of these episodes have all done incredible individually on their own, have crushed it on the downloads. So we wanted to bring some of the best moments from each one of those and bring them together so you can have this incredible standalone episode as well. If you enjoy this, share it with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 662, all about mastering body language and confidence. Before we dive in, quick shout out to the fan of the week.

Again, we've got over 3,100 five-star reviews over on iTunes. If you haven't left a review yet, go leave one right now for your chance to be a fan of the week. This is from Limitless Heart Life Coaching. Says, I'm a life coach and college counselor for teenagers. And after listening to the School of Greatness podcast for a few weeks, I purchased two copies of the School of Greatness, one for me and one for a male 16-year-old client.

We recently read this book together. And let me tell you, it was a huge game changer for not only connecting with my client, but also helping him truly transform his life. We recently read this book together, and let me tell you, it was a huge game changer for not only connecting with my client, but also helping him truly transform his life. He's a football player who wants to play Division I football, whose grades were less than stellar last year. Well, after reading School of Greatness with me and listening to Lewis's podcast every morning, this kid is now rocking a 3.7 GPA and is a starting defensive

back for a very competitive high school varsity team. Scouts will be looking at him for sure next year. But more importantly, as he listened to the podcast and read the book, he was able to identify where in his life he was holding back, making excuses, and lacking integrity with his academic work ethic. I can't wait to use this book and podcast with other clients. Thanks, Lewis. So that moved me. I really appreciate that one because as a football player in the past who struggled with grades, I could have used this book myself to improve everything in my grades and school. So, you know, I create the podcast, the book, the events that I would want to read, listen to, or attend.

So I'm so grateful that the book has made an impact on you and on your students. And I appreciate that. If you haven't got a book yet, School of Greatness or The Mask of Masculinity, you guys can get it at Barnes & Noble or on our website, lewishouse.com as well. All right, guys, I'm excited about this one. Master your body language and increase your confidence. I got to find a way to heal the body. Looking back, it wasn't really the seduction. I thought it was the seduction. It was what Cubans had in their culture that caused my body over time to heal from the trauma. Like, I'm pretty sure I'm down to about 2%, like the very loose of 2%, but I cleaned my

body from the trauma. What did they have in the culture that allowed you to free yourself? One of them is the sabrosura. Sabrosura is the sensuality that's inside each and every one of us that sits on physical self-love. So think about it as a society that doesn't have material things

for that many years. Like you're talking about a country that got locked because of communism and socialism where there's no advertising on the streets or anywhere. Not on TV and not on the radio. No advertising. You're in a sterile place.

And then you don't have internet on your phones, and you don't have the crazy technology that we have, and everybody's still on the streets connecting like in the 50s and the 60s. Old school. Talking to each other in person. Yeah. Yeah. Knocking the door when you need somebody rather than texting and WhatsAppping.

And they didn't have material things, but everybody didn't have material things together. So there was that solidarity. And then what happens when we don't have material things? Where do we put that energy to become happy? What do you think? With each other. Right. With ourselves, with each other, yeah.

In human connections. Yeah. And exactly the point, right? Like if you can't be out there, then you go in. So they found ways that create a natural high through body movements that release dopamine and endorphin. And it's constant, right? Yes. It's all the time. It's all the time. Just like it's all the time for us on our phones. It's all the time. It's all the time. Just like it's all the time for us on our phones, it's all the time, but it's real in real life. Yes. Yeah. So this is one of the things.

And on top of that, when they're moving with the sabrosura, and there's sabrosura for women and sabrosura for men, it actually sits on physical self-love that gets released in the body, and you feel that warmth, and you feel good suddenly about yourself. You feel confident. Also confident, but also love. Yeah. Like you feel the love.

Like you feel good about yourself. Like people that I get to experience the sabruzo, I'll say, do you feel it in your body right now? And they'll say, yes. I go like, where? Like stomach, chest, what are you feeling? Heat. That's self-love.

Yeah. Physical self-love. So really what brought me to Cuba, if we really look at it in a deeper way, was that they had the knowledge to heal my body and seduce me on the road. Exactly, yeah. At the same time. Yeah, exactly. When do you think we started to lose the connection with our body?

And why do we lose the connection in general? Oh, that's a really good question. The really interesting thing is going to Cuba, this is what fascinates me about Cuba. It's like taking a time machine back. Yeah. So I take the time machine back and experience the way things were. And then I take it back here and I see the way we live. And in that you understand many things.

So what happened to us gradually is that we wanted to become more effective. We wanted to be more productive. We wanted to produce more. We wanted to achieve more. We wanted to have more, right? We wanted to sell more. We wanted to market more capitalism.

That's what happened to us. So as that happened, we had to start giving up things. So we gave up romance. We don't have time for romance. People don't have time for romance mostly. They're too busy running fast. Some people don't have time for their kids. We want to achieve.

We want to fulfill ourselves. And it's not a bad thing. It's all about balance. If you notice, more and more people are thinking too much and not feeling enough. And that's where you start to see people also get sick. Because the body signals when we're out of balance. But then they don't listen to the signals. They shove caffeine.

They shove medication and they keep going. But the body tells you to stop. And you're not listening. So what is the body going to do? Make you sicker. Shut down, make you sick stop and you're not listening. So what is the body going to do? Make you sicker. Shut down, make you sick, depressed, anxious. Right, which is what we're seeing today. Yeah, wow.

And what happens when we rediscover our natural sensuality or our bodies? Well, it's not just the sensuality, right? It's basically this. So we've got the five elements of somatic intelligence, and it's really about coming back to our true nature. So when we're in true nature, everything's balanced, and we're at our optimal place. And we have to keep the elements balanced, and we got to also think about the fact that we need to balance between material and social.

If one takes over the other, something comes out of balance. So what's our true nature? Yeah. So we've got five elements. And then you call this somatic intelligence. Yeah. The five elements of somatic intelligence. So one is elegance. I'm not talking about clothing. I'm talking about our being. So elegance is the possession of ourselves, the quietness of being ourselves. It's that when you've got that, you know, the past generations, the way they were and the way they behaved, they had elegance in their being. Obama is very elegant. Very elegant.

In how he behaves, right? And we admire him for that. Yeah. He's like a role model for how, in the being. I'm not just talking about, you can just mute him and look. There's something about his being that says elegance. The same with Michelle Obama, right?

So that's the element of confidence. Intention is the one that is connected to meaning and drive. So, I always get up at the end. When we think intention, if I'm let's say standing right now like this, what does my body say? Maybe unsure or quiet or reserved or shy or... Exactly, right? Or avoiding or... But I'm not in the situation.

And now, what am I saying? I'm going to shift it. So now what am I saying? Now, what am I saying? I'm going to shift it. So now what am I saying? More confident, I guess more interested, more elegant. So what I did is I went from avoiding the situation into being in the situation.

The intention is always forward going. And it's the element of doing, right? It's like we're right there and it's the goal and it's the thing the energy goes there so when the body is towards there it's like ah right now somatically if your body isn't is in that position then you're really already like getting yourself to be there because it changes the chemistry in our body so you know how amy cuddy talks about the power pose right so if i put people into elegance, which is the being, and I put them into two minutes of elegance, and I will ask them at the beginning,

how do you feel right now for your confidence before we do that? If they're feeling really bad, they will describe it between zero and four. If they're having a really bad day. By the end of it, they'll say probably six to eight. Because the chemistry in the body changes in two minutes, which changes the behavior, which changes the results. So this is the being, the quiets, the noise and the turmoil, right? And this is the doing. So it's like I'm going and I'm doing.

They have to balance each other. If I'm just too much in tension, I'm not really. You're off balance too. Right. If I'm just really elegant, what's missing right now? The doing. The doing. Yeah. I'm not really. You're off balance too. Right. If I'm just really elegant, what's missing right now? The doing. The doing. Yeah.

Right. But if I've got both, then I'm with the intention and I've got that thing that calms down the nerves and all these things. So having that slight doing elegance calms nerves? Is that what you said? No, the elegance calms nerves. Got it. The doing doesn't calm the nerves. You get the nerves because you're doing and you're taking risks and stuff.

But when we have the elegance in there, it balances the doing and it creates. If I go into meetings and I'm really nervous, I'll put tons of elegance in. And it quiets the system. Yeah. Right? Then I come in more balanced. Now. So that's intention.

Intention. Yeah. The next one is tempo, which is the element of enjoyment. So tempo, let's say that this is the tempo that we take. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast. It works for both. Right? Most people now, their tempo of their body is addiction.

Addiction to the race of the pace. So I'll give them a thing and they're like, they get there and they're already thinking of the next thing and they haven't even gotten there. They're already like, you know when they get da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? But if I take enjoyment, I'm enjoying myself. I'm enjoying the journey.

Right? Versus got there. It's the same tempo. One, there's no enjoyment. And then the one, I'm like, I'm taking, I'm taking the juice of life. Of course.

Which is all about, I'm not just about getting to the end goal. I'm going to enjoy also the journey. Experiencing the journey, yeah. Which is what happens to us with stress and anxiety and depression is that we get so about the next step.

Right. That we're not there. Yeah. We're not present anymore. So this is the tempo. When I change your tempo, I can change your tempo. And that would release

endorphins and dopamine. And in the session, you sort of just feel good. Yeah. Because you're high now. Right. Because I slow you down a little bit.

We're running faster than the natural tempo. And I break that down into just celebrating the small wins of your day. Like what are you grateful for in the morning? Every little win, like acknowledge it as opposed to waiting for the end journey of like the big goal at the end. Like what's the, you know, smiling at someone down the street, like appreciating that moment. That's enjoyment. That's when you're really enjoying your life and you're not trying to

get to the end goal where you're gonna die anyway. Exactly, you can't take anything with you anyways. No, and people live life like it's a trial life. But what about the years you're going through? Those are the ones that count. So then you have the sabrosura. And the sabrosura is, like I said, it's the sensuality that sits on self-love.

So it's connected to love. And the sabrosura, as you can see, it's not just any sensuality. Because, like, I can just move with sensuality, okay? That's sensuality. But if I'm moving with the sabrosura, there's something extra, right? And I'm doing the female one right now. And what is that? It's because when I'm looking at my hands,

I'm looking at them as if they're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And that's where self-love is. I'm not going like my fingers look like really fat. Yeah. And I hate them and I don't like my nails and that. Whatever we think translates into how we also move. Because if I look at the flaws, I'm missing the beauty of it. Then I'm missing the love. And that also affects. So it's how I look at the flaws, I'm missing the beauty of it. Then I'm missing the love. And that also affects.

So it's how we look at ourselves. It's how we think about our self-talk and our negative thoughts. But that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is also when we talk about containing other people. And you know when people get, let's say, aggressive? Yeah. Right? When we talk about men who are taking things away.

So what do they have really strong? Which element right now? Their intention. Exactly. Right? So they have a really strong intention. They know what they want. What's missing?

Elegance. One, right? That place of respect, of honor, of being a gentleman. What else is missing? Well, they're not playful, I guess, if they're being aggressive. Well, sabrosura, love. Yeah, yeah. Right?

Love is about bettering off the other person. Right. It's not about taking something. So it's not really the elements that we need to tone down. If you see there's a minus and a plus, it's which ones are missing that balance it. Right? So if we look, and I'll explain to you, Mr., in a minute, if we look, for example, at, and let's look at a culture now,

not a person. If we look at the U.S., which element is super strong right now? We look at the U.S., I mean the attention, right? Right. Yeah. What's missing? What got turned down lately mean the attention, right? Right. Yeah. What's missing? What got turned down lately? The love, the elegance.

Exactly. Those, if we think Obama to Trump, those got turned down. Right. And this is why it's not working. You have to keep them in balance to be in true nature. And mystery, that's the trickiest one because this is where not just the playfulness is, but that's where the seduction is. Right.

And that's where there's that energy of like, mm-hmm, right? Right, yeah. And that's where people get scared because there's a gray area there. Right. You can't really box it because it's a life energy. One of the sort of common misconceptions is that our first impressions that we make on other people are the first thing that we say or the first interaction that we have. And that sounds reasonable when you're thinking about making a good first impression with people in general. However, what we know from science and what we know, and I'll back up and prove this real quick, is that our first impression is not made when we open our

mouth. It's made when we become a blip on the other person's radar. And so what I mean by that is our perception of other people, and this is evolutionary psychology 101 here, is that we do snap judgments of people based on what we see. And we have to do that. It's a safety thing. Women are 10,000 times better at this than men. That's not a scientific measurement. Because they have a safety question that is just the elephant in the room every

single time. It's the person safe. Whereas you and I, I only think about that when it's like face tattoos and serious dark alley type stuff dude yeah and other even then if i'm in a civil if i'm in a movie theater and there's a guy who's six six and has face tattoos i'm like hey man yeah what's the popcorn i don't care yeah right but if i'm outside at night in hollywood or something like that then it's a different story but for those

perceptions that we make they're made completely non-verbally. And you can test that just by going out for a walk right now. And then, or maybe after the show, go out for a walk and see when you make a judgment of the next people that you see. And it's going to be before you talk to them, unless they sneak up on you, in which case you got other issues. But the reason this is important is because since we're making those judgments, the second we see people and it's happening at a subconscious level in our brain, that means that our first impressions are always made non-verbally. And so this is really, really important because people who spend a lot of time thinking, what do I say? How do I start this conversation? What do I do to approach this person and get them

to like me? That all becomes far less relevant. It's not as much important about what you say or even how you're saying it. It's more about who you're being and the way you're saying it and beforehand. Exactly. Yeah. It becomes far less relevant to the actual connection that you have with that person. And before you get into the drill, I'll back that up by giving as a positive example of this. There's so many times, like when I was single years ago, even like not even the last time I was single, but years ago, like in my early twenties when I was just like, you know,

trying to like say hi to every girl. I always, yeah. I always felt like I'd never knew what to say. I always felt like this dumb kid. It was like, I don't have anything clever to say. I'm not like this smart kid, but I was like, you know what? Let me just practice using the gifts that I do have, which is I can smile. I can smile and come up to someone with like positive energy, be open hearted and just like smile and look them in the eyes and not like stare into their soul or whatever, but just like creepy style, kind of make them like a little bit like uncomfortable, like, Oh, that's interesting that the person has the confidence to look at me for like two seconds

and smile. And then just kind of like keep walking or whatever, or say hello. And when I would do that, I would always feel like if I came with a big smile, like genuine, almost a hundred percent of the time, the girl would talk to me or whoever I wanted to talk to would talk back. And it'd be like this friendly conversation, just like that one little cue of big heart, big smile. And there's a lot of switches being flipped in the subconscious mind when that happens, which is the safety switch go, well, okay. Dangerous people often don't smile, which isn't true by the way, but it is,

that's why dangerous people do overemphasize the smile is because they're often overly charming because they are dangerous and they're predators. It's another, that's another thing for, I did a show with Gavin DeBecker, the gift of fear. We talked a lot about that, but yeah, you're right. You're flipping a lot of the right switches, which is, look, this person is friendly. This person is maybe safer. This person isn't judging me right now or has judged me in a positive way, which is great. So there's approval there. That's very welcoming for a lot of people. And then of course, you having other friends in the same room is also

very helpful. Any situation like that, that comes about can be add to a positive first impression. And so, but I never said anything like unique or clever. It's just like, Oh, we can have conversation by just being positive. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of guys, I think when they're dating, especially if they don't know how to start conversations, or even if you're going up to your favorite speaker at an event or something like that, often people are like, oh, I don't know what to say. And it's like, well, it doesn't really matter because here's what's happening. If you're not saying anything, I'm getting a weird vibe from the creepy, quiet person who's just staring at me trying to figure out what to say because your

body does weird stuff when your mind is otherwise engaged. So it's better to just turn that off. Because if you're thinking, hmm, what do I say? What am I going to do? Then you just look like you look strange and you look unapproachable and the gears are turning. And we don't think, and you guys can probably back this up, if a guy walks up to a female and he is nervous,

a lot of times if he looks like the type of guy who shouldn't be nervous, like if it's Louis and he walks up and he's like nervous and fidgety, you're not thinking, oh, how cute, he's nervous. You're thinking, okay, what is going on here? This is creepy. I don't get it. Why is this person creeping me out? And we mirror people naturally. Like I will mirror your emotions. Women will mirror our emotions. They'll mirror each other's emotions. That's a human thing. So if I'm nervous and anxious,

other people are going to start to become that way in the interaction. And they're not going to go, oh, well, you know, he probably just has a little bit of anxiety because he's not used to being in a room full. No, that's not what's happening. What's happening is they're going, he's nervous. What's he going to do? Because I'm nervous now and I don't know why. And since I don't know why, I'm just going to leave because that's going to make me feel not nervous, which is where I want to be. That's my comfort zone. So you end up making other people feel strange, whether through eye contact that doesn't match the rest of your body, eye contact that seems like there's an intent behind what you're doing that's not the words that you're saying.

So all of these things goes back to the body can't lie, that first takeaway. The body can lie. It's just very hard. But the body certainly will give away and betray your intentions. It just might be that the other person's perception of your intentions is incorrect. Does that make sense? Of course, yeah. And so what we try to do is create positive first impressions that we now know have to be nonverbal,

and they have to be positive, they have to be open, and they have to make sense, and they have to portray the intent that we have, which is hopefully positive, friendly, open, loving, whatever sort of positive adjective we want to throw in here. Right. So what's the drill then? So the drill, I call this a doorway drill. Is this kind of an art of charm staple? And what this is, is, you know, when you're confident, you naturally are upright. Like you, you basically just did this upright, open body language, smile on your face, chin up, ideally chest forward, shoulders back. You don't have to be like, you know, Superman pose or anything. Uh power posing things have kind of been there. Those studies are hard to replicate. I'll put it

that way. But if we, if we remember what we look like in this position and we're doing this socially, and this is how we feel positive, open, loving, open-hearted, I think is the word that you used. If we do that, every time we walk through a doorway, we no longer have to do this manually because what a lot of people do is they go, oh, good, right. Open, tall, positive body language. Put a smile on my face. That's going to work next time I go into a place and start a conversation. But the problems crop up when you're trying to do what we just talked about, what you just talked about, and you're trying to remember to do that at all times. Not going to happen. It's kind of like telling

yourself, remember to notice things. It's an impossible task, right? You can't do it. You can't be mindful of your verbal and nonverbal communication and stay present in a conversation. It's too many things for your brain to concentrate on with different parts at the same time. It's very difficult. I don't know anybody who's good at it and still looks natural doing it. So we have to relegate the positive, open, friendly, nonverbal communication to the level of habit. And the way we do that is with the doorway drill, doing that upright, shoulders back, chest up, chin up, smile on your face. Every time you walk through a doorway, even in your own house, when we have that, when you have that posture going, I don't know how I should count how many times I walk through a doorway.

And I'll tell you to illustrate my earlier point, I've tried to count in a day, how many times I walk through a doorway, but you can't because you just can't remember to count every time you walk through a doorway, just like you can't remember to straighten up, put your shoulders back. Every time you have a conversation, it's impossible. You're not going to do it. You need to make it a habit. If you do it every time you walk through a doorway, let's say you walk through a doorway a hundred times on an average day in your office or house, you will eventually have the habit of having upright, positive, nonverbal communication. And you got to do it every day because I just got off a plane. I've been sitting like this for two hours. You got to reset and you have to constantly reset every time you sit up, stand up.

reset and you have to constantly reset every time you sit up stand up i have always been fascinated by the popular kids right like these these magnetic sort of like what makes a kid cool or popular whatever that is and van sloan did a really interesting research experiment with teenagers can you guess what makes the most popular kids popular? Like what is it? It could be anything from attractiveness to clothing to the way they talk. If you had to guess. Listeners guess too. What makes a popular person popular? Yes. Their confidence?

I don't know. Their outgoing? I would have guessed outgoing. That's exactly what I would have guessed. Like extroverted, talkative, which was like, I was like, oh, please don't let it be that. So first of all, it wasn't attractiveness, which I think is very important for people to keep in mind. It wasn't the most beautiful girls or the hottest guys.

What it was is the most popular kids also liked the most people. That makes sense. And like now that I heard that, which is exactly what you just said. I suppose just five people, they're like, you know, everyone. Yes, exactly. It's like what he found was is that the most popular kids, when they were asked, who do you like? They had the longest list.

And that also meant that they were liked by the most people. And this was measured by typically, they smiled more in the hallways. So they would do the, you tell me if this is right. So men, when they know, see someone they know, they give the upward, Hey, nice. I see like, it's like an acknowledgement versus if you don't know someone, but you want to acknowledge them, you give them the, the downward nod. Is that right? Probably. Yes. If you're conditioned that way, I try to just smile at everyone. Okay. So that's, that's the cool kids. Cause you like, you train yourself

to this. I just started smiling everyone in the hallways too. Just like, hey, how are you? Good to see you. Just a compliment or something. Without realizing it, and that's what I kind of wrote about in your chapter, was without realizing it, you were actually activating a scientific principle

that we like people who like us. Makes sense. You're not going to like people that hate you. No. Or ignore you. Or, and this is the real killer of relationships people do not think of. We talk a lot about toxic people, right? Difficult people, toxic people.

But actually the killer is ambivalence. You're not sure. Yeah. You're not sure. Do they like me? Do I like them? Yeah. Uncertainty.

Were we friendly? That actually takes up more mental energy than the toxic people. And they did a study with police officers where they found that police officers who have more ambivalent relationships versus police officers who had a lot of toxic relationships, the ambivalent ones actually had less efficiency. They had less happiness and career satisfaction and they skip more days of work. That's because if you, if someone's toxic toxic, you know you don't want to sit with them at lunch. You don't want to stop by their desk. It's clear.

Ambivalent, you're like, should I invite them to lunch? Right. It's not safe. You're like, I'm sure. Right. And I think that that's the key word is safety. And so ambivalence,

when you like someone, you clearly are like smiling, nodding. Hey, what's up? Good to see you. The person's like, I'm liked. And like that is the greatest feeling of safety in the world. And so if you go to a conference, you have a big conference coming up, you're really nervous. I don't want you to think about being extroverted, especially

if you're an introvert or ambivert. No, like don't pretend. Ambivert? Ambivert. Ambivert. Yeah. What's that? I'm an ambivertivert is, um, if introvert or extrovert never felt right to you, it's when you can flip into extroversion if you need to, or in the right situation. So like for me right now, I'm not that nervous, right? I'm a little bit nervous. You make me a little bit nervous, but like not terribly. Um, like learning one-on-one situations, conferences, I'm okay. Nightclubs, bars, those kinds of things. No. So if you are in those situations, going to a conference, don't think about how can I be more extroverted? How can we be more outgoing? It's actually, how can I just like more people when I'm at a conference

and I do this, you were at WDS. So I go every year and all of my trainers, my science people trainers come with me. And I say like, our one thing is we're inviting everyone to sit with us. We are inviting everyone to come to lunch with us. If you see someone standing alone, we say hello. We invite them to come over. Like that is our number one goal. And so that, that's an easier way I think to tackle like big groups or conferences. It's just, how can you like more people? That's cool. I was very focused on IQ, right? Like growing up, like book smarts, technical skills. I never heard about PQ. I never heard about social or emotional intelligence. So there's all these IQ tests and things like that. But I found that what a really good way to start is like, where are, where is your smarts, right? Like socially, what are your social strengths? Like we even have like StrengthsFinder 2.0. I'm working on something right now where I want to do like social strengths 2.0. Like what are our social strengths,

which are just as important as some of our capabilities. And so the quiz is sort of like, okay, where are you at right now? Right? Like how good are you decoding? So we're talking about social intelligence. There's really two things we're talking about decoding. So spotting cues, spotting hidden emotions, decoding lies, and encoding. Encoding are the signals that you send out to others. So we're kind of testing both sides of that. Got it, got it. And I read that people with a higher EQ or PQ

also make more than people. $29,000 more per year, according to this research. Than someone with a high IQ or lower? Lower EQ. Yeah, lower EQ. So higher EQ, you're going to make more. That's with a high IQ or lower? Lower EQ. Yeah, lower EQ. So higher EQ, you're going to make more. That's right. 90% of the time.

That's right. And that's because we are interacting with people in ways that we don't even quantify or realize. Every time you send an email, that email has to be received, processed. There's a difference between having someone respond to it right away and having it sit in their inbox for five days. Yeah. Negotiating, interviewing, around the water cooler. People still and having it sit in their inbox for five days. Yeah. Right. Um, negotiating, interviewing around the water cooler. People still have water coolers in their office, right?

Like I, I, and I, my team is all virtual and I still am using that PQ every day, all day. I, one exercise that sometimes I think about, you can do this if you're listening is in the course of a day,

make a note of every single interpersonal reaction that you have. It will shock you how many of those there are and how big of an impact they have, right? Like, even if it's just like a casual coffee, all the possibilities that could come out of that interaction. And then, so you make one column where you mark out all the interactions you have. The second column is if that interaction went as good as it could possibly go, have. The second column is if that interaction went as good as it could possibly go, what magic could happen for you? So much, so much, but instead a lot of our interactions are like average. So you get average results. Exactly. And when you, you know, I'm thinking about it, I'm probably like, I have hundreds of these interactions a day potentially, especially with social media and

emails and in person. And if you're at events like yesterday, yesterday I was at Oprah's event, super soul sessions. And there was like thousands of people, but I met a lot of people. Yeah. Even for like 10 seconds, I met people. Yeah.

And I remember there are a number of people, even I just met and gave him a hug. Like they always left a comment like, man, you give really good hugs. Yes. As opposed to just like, Oh,

nice to meet you off. Like they always said something. Yeah. That was like a positive reinforcement. And for me, it's like maybe the next time and maybe months when I see them, but they'll remember I gave them a good hug. Absolutely. So that was, you took something in the interaction,

even in 10 seconds and you made it above average. Yes. I have awkward long hugs. I try not to make them awkward, but I try to make them like, not like super awkward, like get off me, but like just a little extra, like an extra second. Like right when they start to pull away, I squeeze a little bit more. They're like, Oh, okay. Sometimes it goes

bad, but most of the time it's worse. I mean, I have a theory that you should greet everyone like they're an old friend. That's good. Yes. That's what I do. Cause if you have that mentality, same with an email, you give so much more like excitement, whatever. It's like, Oh my gosh, you haven't seen this friend in three years.

How would you greet them? That is the way that I think. Maybe not screaming up to that. Right. Like that's the girl scream. Right. Two girls get together and like, I told you like the volume would go up once I got excited.

Yeah. Cause like we, we scream, we go up. Um, what I was going to say also about that, which is really very smart is it doesn't need to be a five minute interaction. It can be 10 seconds. A lot of the time we focus on productivity. We focus on efficiency. We focus on maximizing our business revenue. All those things are great. But, if we focus on some of the social aspects of that, it makes it so much easier. Like let's not just optimize our IQ, our business acumen, let's also optimize our social acumen because you make that list of every interaction you have and all the good things that could happen if it went really well. It's magic in every other area. Magic. And I love this stuff because I feel like this has really been kind of the key to my results in my business and life. Because I would probably have, if I took an IQ test, I probably wouldn't even, you know, I don't know.

I don't even know what the rankings are. I don't even know what the lowest is. I'd probably be at the bottom. And so for me, it's like, I just feel like I stack and stack and stack. So much good PQ, is that right? Yeah, yeah. EQ, PQ. Exactly right. SQ, whatever you is that right? Yeah, yeah. EQ, PQ. Exactly right.

SQ, whatever you're calling it, social, yeah. And I feel like people care more about how you make them feel, you know, as opposed to how smart you are or whatever. And that quote, that famous quote, I think it's by Maya Angelou. People don't care how much you know until they know what you care, is one quote. Yes, and then people remember. They remember what you say, but they remember the way you made them feel.

Oh, God, quote, quote. Those are my two favorite quotes. Yes. So I saw that quote, that second quote, what I just explained with the skydivers, that is the scientific reason behind that quote. So in the book, I talk about these quotes we share all the time,

like the Dale Carnegie, how to be interested to be interesting. Like what is the science behind that? Yeah, not just like, oh, that's a cool philosophy. Because now that Maya Angelou quote, you actually could think to yourself, what emotion do I want to infect today? Right? Like, is it gratitude? Is it excitement? Is it fulfillment? And like, by the way, this doesn't mean that you cannot be vulnerable. This doesn't mean you can't have a bad day. This doesn't mean that you can't go into a meeting and be like, I'm so sorry. Like I'm

feeling really down. In fact, I have those days. We all do. I regularly do not cancel meetings on those days. I feel that I would rather go in and say, listen, like I am just overwhelmed. Yeah. Like I'm off. I'm overwhelmed. I'm sorry for that. Because I also want to catch theirs. It's not just a one-way street. We don't just infect. I also like to be infected by others. Oh, do you feel more confident after this already? Do you feel like you know how to command a room

and how to optimize your body language in any setting? If so, let me know. LewisHowes.com slash 662 is the link to share with your friends to get all the show notes and to get the links for each of the individual episodes that we talked about in this episode as well. Share with me over on Instagram at Lewis Howes. Again, share with your friends, tell them to click on the link, swipe up all the good stuff. If you think it'll help them be a resource and a tool for mastering their own body language and increasing their confidence as well. Again, big thank you to everyone that we featured on these episodes.

You can check them out on our show notes. I am so pumped, guys. We've got some big episodes coming up, some huge names coming up. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, click the subscribe button. And as Theodore Roosevelt said, each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. Continue to face your fears every single day. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.