How Positive Body Language can help improve business and personal relationships

Body language is intricately entwined with the daily business of living. It consists of a set of involuntary gestures and movements, which help us to foster relationships with others. Conversely, you also get the opportunity to interpret the signals sent by others. Positive body language allows the sender and receiver to interact in a friendly, warm and genuine manner. By learning the different body language postures and gestures, we increase the likelihood of being liked and coming across as approachable and warm people. Positive body language and subtle non-verbal gestures help to add comfort, dignity and respect in our daily business of living. In fact, it would be right to say that body language comes into play in every aspect of life, including personal interactions, confrontations, business environments, on the sports field, meetings, discussions and negotiations. Human beings are intrinsically wired to communicate and we can never not communicate.

Why you should learn about Positive Body Language

Although body language is involuntary and intuitive, our gestures can be controlled and regulated. Positive body language helps us to demonstrate assertive behaviour, without being aggressive. Assertive body language helps you to express your opinion, without being unnecessarily loud or offensive. These skills come into play every day of our lives and help us to become better communicators and human beings. In general, our colleagues, loved ones and acquaintances will be more disposed to like and support us if we connect on a higher level. Our body language helps other people to get an inside track to our feelings, emotions, thoughts and mental status, at any point. You can effectively use your body language to support, reinforce, complement and substitute your words and your communications are likely to be understood as they were intended. Keeping your body language in sync with your words has as much to do with eliminating negative or contradictory body language as it does with emphasising the positive aspects. Demonstrating contradictory body language can convey the impression of deception, falsehood and untrustworthiness. In the workplace, appropriate body language can convey respect to colleagues, warmth to co-workers and generally prove to be a useful tool in conflict resolution. People are much more likely to trust someone who sends out cohesive communication signals. Similarly, reading other people's body language can help you to identify reliable co-workers. In addition, delegation of responsibilities also becomes easier for someone with positive body language – people are more willing to take on additional responsibilities. During meetings and conferences etc, you can expect to build a healthy rapport with participants by showing interest, making eye contact and smiling at people. Body language plays a pivotal role in personal relationships too. It is a good idea to gauge your partner's or spouse's mood, for example, before interaction. Regulating your own gestures, expressions and postures also helps to pave the way for loving relationships built on a foundation of honesty and understanding. Overall, the benefits of learning about positive body language can be summarised as shown below:- • Increased levels of self-awareness, so that you are able to regulate your own body language, in order to help you achieve the right outcomes. • To help sharpen our perception and understanding of others' body language, so that we are able to respond appropriately. • To use your body language in a mindful and conscious manner, instead of leaving responses entirely to the subconscious. • You will be able to consciously bring your attention to subtle gestures and expressions that you have probably never noticed before. In other words, you will be able to fathom a person's emotions without having to be explicitly told about their feelings. • You will also develop a deeper sense of understanding and empathy and pace your words and body language accordingly. • You can effectively control other people's reactions to you by observing your own gestures, which may precipitate reciprocal gestures and responses from them. If these have been negative in the past, you will learn how to eliminate negative body language. • The cues and signals of positive body language can be effectively used to lay emphasis and improve clarity on public speaking platforms. You cannot stop the messages conveyed by non-verbal gestures, but you can learn to regulate and control them. • As you complete the course on body language, you will be in a much better position to evaluate your own body language. You will be able to determine the non-verbal signals that help to accentuate your communication and eliminate those that detract from it. • Your communication and interactions are likely to become effortlessly interspersed with enthusiasm and sincerity. This will automatically evoke a similar response from listeners. • Good posture during speaking also helps to minimise distracting, random gestures that take away from the impact of the communication. You will learn to become more confident and will gradually become adept at reducing nervous tension during interactions. Positive body language techniques can help you to interact more effectively with family, loved ones, customers, clients, bosses, subordinates and friends. The new knowledge that you learn will help you to change your life for the better. You will be able to genuinely look and genuinely listen, simply by looking and listening without conscious observation. In most cases, people tend to mirror what you feel. If your body language expresses interest, warmth and empathy, you are likely to elicit the same response from others towards you. In effect, your entire body can be used as an instrument of speech and you will finally learn to help your body to speak as eloquently as your spoken words. Also, remember that body language is a continuous process and is fluid in nature – it is happening all of the time, so you cannot really rewind or pause in order to recall cues and their interpretations. In the modern world, interaction and communication has much to do with the sharing of ideas, than the typical sermonising that used to characterise speeches in the yesteryears. By opting to learn and practise positive body language, you can learn to put forward your best self in a natural manner.