Body Language Quotes

Yes, you.

Mae West Quote on Body Language and How To Better “Hear” What Your Body Is Telling You

“I speak two languages, Body and English.”
Mae West

Beyond the Quote (236/365)

Are you in tuned with what your body is telling you? Are you aware that your body has a language that needs to be learned in order to be understood? It’s no different than learning your ABC’s for the first time. You might hear the various sounds coming out of people’s mouths around you, but until you actually learn what the letters represent, how those letters form into words, how to pronounce those words, what those words actually mean, and how to combine them to express ideas… all you’ll hear is gibberish. And, unfortunately, gibberish is about all people hear when they listen to their body.

“Attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 28)

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 27)

“If your posture is poor, for example—if you slump, shoulders forward and rounded, chest tucked in, head down, looking small, defeated and ineffectual (protected, in theory, against attack from behind)—then you will feel small, defeated and ineffectual. The reactions of others will amplify that. If you present yourself as defeated, then people will react to you as if you are losing. If you start to straighten up, then people will look at and treat you differently.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 26)

“Pay less attention to the words that people say and greater attention to their tone of voice, the look in their eye, their body language—all signals that might reveal a nervousness or excitement that is not expressed verbally. If you can get people to become emotional, they will reveal a lot more. Cutting off your interior monologue and paying deep attention, you will pick up cues from them that will register with you as feelings or sensations. Trust these sensations—they are telling you something that you will often tend to ignore because it is not easy to verbalize.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery