How frustrating it is when you can't convince people to do the right thing, to take the right decision?
How much helpless do you feel when people don't listen to you?
After trying everything, you will feel that people resist you, but it is not like that. What you are lacking is a better way to communicate with people.
Only 7% of our communication is based on the words we use.
About 31% is based on the tone of our voice and 53%, the major chunk of our communication is based on our body language.
So, what you thought was your best, was only the 7% best of your communication.
Imagine what you could do, if you can communicate in a 100% way.
Sometimes people are unable to understand our words, but they can understand our body language, if we can converse with them in the right way.
If we can copy their body posture, body movements, and their voice tone, we can grab their attention, making them listen to us and think about what we are saying.
In psychology, it is called mirroring, and in NLP, it is called creating a rapport.
It is the best way to understand people, from their point of view, so that you can communicate with them in a better way.
Why does it works?
We love to spend time with people who are like us. We make friends who have qualities like us, or do things like we do.
We join music and dance groups because of the common interest we share with the people of that group.
The thing is, we love to live in harmony. We are always trying to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us.
So, if we find someone, who talks like us, has body movements like us, our subconscious mind picks up these activities, and immediately, we will develop a liking for that person.
How to Mirror people?
The first step is to listen to them closely. Most people like to talk about themselves. They don't want to hear what others have to say, but they want others to listen to them.
If someone is talking and we listen to them closely, we can find out a lot about them. It can tell us the tone of their voice, do they speak fast or slow, is their voice harsh or soft, do they like to talk about themselves, or their activities/problems or things about other people.
The next thing to do is to observe their body movements and posture.
How they sit, how they breathe, do they take long breaths or short breaths, how they use their hands while talking. While sitting, do they lean back or forward, while walking do they take long steps or short steps.
The more we practise it, the more easily we will notice these things.
The third step is to repeat all the body movements subtly, not in a mimicking way so that the person may get offended, but in a way that only their subconscious mind will notice it.
Have you got them in sync?
Once you learn to mirror people effectively, they will get in sync with you, i.e., they will repeat your body movements. They will lean back if you lean back in your chair, they will yawn, if you yawn in front of them.
To figure out if they are in sync with you or not, you can move your hands/head slowly, and if they repeat the same movement after you; you have got them in sync. Now they are ready to comply with you; they are ready to listen to you.
After listening to your opinion more attentively, they will try to find reasons in your words.
Because they see a shadow of themselves in you, but subconsciously.
The more you will practise this technique, the better you will become in it.
This technique is used by professionals from all over the world, from good communicators/speakers to salespersons to hypnotherapists.
Many con artists use this technique to grab people's attention only to rob them afterwards, like we have seen in the movie, "Focus" by Will Smith.
So, if you know about this trick, you will be able to prevent yourself from being manipulated by con artists and clever salespeople.