Body language: the key to your subconscious | Ann Washburn | TEDxIdahoFalls

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

How we hold our body both demonstrates and determines who we are and our level of success. What are you telling people about yourself? Or worse, what are you telling your self about yourself?

Have you ever had one of those buttons
pop up on your computer screen that says,

"Software update available.
Do you want to install it now?"

Our computers use programs
to process vast amounts of information,

and programmers know
that if we are running faulty programs,

we get faulty results,

and this is why we have
the upgrade process for our computers.

It turns out your subconscious
works much the same way.

In fact, our subconscious will process
up to 40 million pieces of information

every single second.

And in order to process
those huge amounts of information,

our subconscious chooses programs.

The thing is we've been choosing
those programs since we were a child,

and now as an adult,

we may still be running the same programs
and getting messy results in our life.

So who wants an upgrade button
for their subconscious programming?

I have figured out how to access mine,
and that's what I want to share with you.

I want you to play
with me here for a minute.

Everybody, fold your arms.

Good, now look down
and see which arm is on top.

OK, unfold them, now fold them back
with the other arm on top.

How does that feel?

It's awkward, it's uncomfortable.

This person over here
is like, "Arms do not do that."

(Laughter)

But what you're feeling there,

in science, they have a term
called cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance states
we can not hold

onto two conflicting ideas
without discomfort.

Our brain can not hold

onto two conflicting
ideas without discomfort.

You can all unfold your arms now.

I don't want you to fold
your arms the whole time,

but what you felt there
was the feeling of a conflicting program.

So cognitive dissonance is
one of the parts that gives us

an opportunity to upgrade
our subconscious programming.

And here's the other part:

when it comes to communication,

there are three main parts
to our communication.

There's the words that we speak,

and then there's the tone of those words.

Have you ever gotten in trouble
for your tone of voice?

Yeah, it has messages with it.

The third part is our gestures
or our body language.

So when we don't know

what messages we are sending
with our body language,

and they don't match the words we speak,

people will discount the words they hear
to believe the gestures they see

because our subconscious understands
the difference between those two messages.

But and how can our brains send out
two different messages at the same time?

It's because your subconscious

is what runs the majority
of your body language,

and remember, our subconscious
is working on programs.

Our subconscious or our whole brain
is inherently out to conserve energy.

Our brain wants to conserve energy

and knows that it's easier

to maintain the current programs
than to adopt a new one.

So, when we put these two ideas together,

we now have access to this update
for our subconscious programming.

Let me explain by telling you
where I was in my life not too long ago.

In fact, it was only about six years ago

that I was at a place
where, let's just say, it was very hard.

I tried to interact with people,

and I found people to be
very argumentative,

to be unpredictable,
to be hard to be around.

It was just not fun,

and I decided that everybody
on this planet is just mean;

it's just the way it was.

In fact, I got to where I would send
my kids to school in the morning,

and then I would hide inside the house,

and I wouldn't answer the door,
and I wouldn't answer the phone,

because no matter how hard I had tried,

the results I was getting
were not matching the effort

I was putting forth
to interact with people,

and I felt stuck.

So this is where I was,
and I saw people having opportunities,

but I couldn't seem
to catch one for myself.

So even though in my life,

I had worked as an engineer
in flight simulation and explosives,

this is the point in my life

where I changed and started studying
communication and body language.

As I learned these two parts
that I just told you,

I started to recognize
they would give me a choice

to change the way I interact with people.

I began to put it into practice
because I wanted to understand

why some people could figure
these things out, but I wasn't.

So let me teach you a little bit
about body language

so you can understand
what's going on here.

When somebody feels weak, if I feel weak,

I will use weak, closed body language -

my shoulders will come down,

I'll fold my arms, I'll look down,

maybe even my weight goes on one leg,

because I feel weak.

But by contrast,
when somebody feels strong,

their body language opens up.

They might put their arms
down to their side,

their shoulders go up,
their chin goes up, they'll smile,

their weight goes on both legs.

Now remember, in my life, at this time,

I felt weak, but I wanted to be strong,

and so I decided
I was going to figure this out.

I looked around me at people
who were successful.

I looked at celebrities,
I looked at business owners,

I looked at people around me
in relationships,

who were having
very strong, powerful relationships,

and I realized these successful people

were not behaving exactly the same as me.

So, here's how it looked for me.

Since I felt weak, and I was afraid of
the people I was interacting with,

I very often folded my arms.

I kept my arms folded a lot,

and if anybody had asked me why,

I'd tell them,

"Because I have nowhere else to put
my hands when I'm not using them.

I don't want them just hanging out here.
I'm going to fold my arms."

But when I watched
these successful people,

the majority of the time
when they were using their hands,

they'd put them down to their sides.

So I decided I was going to try it.

And if you could have been
in my brain at the time,

it would have been very entertaining
because as I walked around,

I had this dissonance
going on inside of my head

because my old program
was saying, "People are unsafe."

But I was choosing to send a message

that I felt strong, comfortable,
and open around people.

So I said, "My hands will go here
when I'm not using them."

That doesn't mean
I walked around like this -

that would be very weird -

but it does mean
that when I wasn't using them,

I put them away here.

But then my subconscious would say,
"It's more comfortable to fold your arms,"

and I'd say, "No, I want my arms here."

"Fold them", "Here", "Fold them,"
"Here", "Fold them," "Here." -

that's what it felt like in my head.

But after a little while, my subconscious
decided, "You know what?

It’s going to be easier

to just adopt the new program
and not keep arguing with her."

And I began to feel differently.

People around me started to notice.

You can feel this with me right now.

Some of you may have heard of
this scientific term, it's called gravity.

You heard of that one?

It pulls down on us really well,

and during the day, it likes

to pull down on our shoulders
and pull down on our chin.

So, everybody, let your shoulders
come down and your chin come down.

How does that feel?

People tell me it feels tired,
it feels burdened, it feels depressed.

But now, instead,

pull your shoulders back up
and pull your chin just above level.

How does that feel?

It feels empowered,
like, "I am awake, I can do it."

You've just felt the difference
in changing or choosing a new program.

In fact, in 2009, there was
a study that was published

in the European Journal
of Social Psychology,

and in there, what they had done

was they asked people
to fill out a self evaluation,

and they did the self evaluation

either in a slumped stance
or in good posture.

The people who had good posture

rated themselves higher
on their self evaluation.

It turns out your grandma was right,
because she was pretty smart,

she kept telling us to sit up straight.

But that is an opportunity
to feel different on the inside of us.

So that's one of the things I did
to start changing my programming.

May I share two more with you?

What I noticed about me -

actually, let's talk
about you for a minute.

When it comes to body language -

I watch body language everywhere I go,
and I've worked with thousands of people -

what I found is the majority of people
will use a lot of push-away body language.

They push away,

and then they wonder
why they are not getting job promotions,

or raises, or opportunities,
or relationships in their life.

But they're pushing things away.

In fact, the fastest way to see somebody
use push-away body language

is give them a compliment.

When you give somebody a compliment,
how do they respond?

"Thank you."

And they throw the compliment away,
or they'll explain it away.

I love it, I do little tests all the time.

I'll give people a compliment then I watch
their body language after the compliment.

And often, people suddenly
have to brush off their pants

when they get a compliment,

or they brush their shoulder.

Or my favorite was: once I gave a lady
a compliment, and she said, "Ohh, thanks."

(Laughter)

And I'm like, "So, that was
a disgusting booger

you had to flick off your finger."

When we have compliments coming to us,

if we can't receive a compliment,

how are we going to receive
other things coming to us?

So I recognized this

and decided I wanted to access
this program that was inside of me,

whatever it was.

And I realized the easiest way to do this

would be to change
how I reacted to a compliment.

So, now instead
of pushing compliments away,

I decided when somebody
gave me a compliment,

I would scoop it up in front of me
and place it gently in my heart.

So I would just go like this

while using the magic words, "Thank you."

Have you heard these words? They're good.

So try it with me, "Thank you."

Oh, do it again, that's fun.

"Thank you."

Notice how a lot of your mouths,
the corners of your mouth,

went up when you did that

because you felt the difference.

You felt the difference.

So when you use this body language,

It's changing the program
in your subconscious.

As I was doing this in my life,

people started to notice
the difference in me.

One of the people to notice the difference
was my teenage son.

Because at this point in my life,
he was 13 years old,

and we had been moving around quite a bit,

so he had gone
to four different junior highs.

Anybody ever been the junior high?
Crazy place junior high.

And he'd been to four of them.

So he comes home one day

after the first day
in his fourth junior high.

Now I need a volunteer.

Oh, awesome! Would you come up
and be my volunteer?

So he'd just gone his first day
on the fourth junior high.

What I'm wanting from you

is I need really great
teenage boy body language.

Can you do that for me? Oh, nice.

There you go.
Yeah, get that phone out there.

Let's put that away for just a second,
but fold your arms for me.

And just freeze, but turn this way
so that everybody can see you.

Has anybody ever seen a teenager before?
That's pretty good body language.

(Laughter)

Yeap, exactly.

So here's my teenager,
and he's standing like this, and he goes,

"Ugh! Mom, tell me
why the kids keep picking on me?"

And I'm like, "Oh! Alright.
I'll tell you, I'll help you with that."

And he's like, "Is it body language?"

And I said, "Yes, dear, that's what I do."

And he goes, "Ugh, fine. Tell me then."

I knew that with that attitude,

I had time to only share one piece
of body language with him.

And I wanted to share something
that would send a different message out

but also send a different message
to his subconscious.

And so I chose legs.

I asked him, I said, "At school,

do you stand with your weight
on one leg like this?

And he goes, "Yeah, mom, we all do. Duh!"

And I'm like, "Well, Mr. Attitude.

Did you know when you stand
with your weight like this,

it sends a weak message,
it sends a message that you feel weak,

that you could be easily
knocked off balance."

So, I said, " Instead, if you'll come
put your weight on both legs,

when you're at your locker
or up in front of the class,

now this will send the message
that you're strong in your foundation,

and people will treat you differently."

He rolled his eyes,
and he was like, "Sure, mom."

So thank you.
Thank you for being my volunteer.

(Applause)

So I waited, and I thought,
"Well, we'll just see what happens."

It wasn't maybe until two weeks later
that he comes home,

and he walks in the house, when he saw me,

I could tell he had something
he wasn't quite ready to share with me yet

so I just waited patiently.

And he comes over, he stands
next to me, and he goes, "Mom, it works,"

and he ran out of the room.

(Laughter)

But he tried it.

At the end of that school year, I gave him
the option to change schools again,

and he said, "No, mom.

I have more friends
and better results at this school

than in any of the schools I've been to."

And the only thing I taught him was legs.

But that teaching him of that helped him
access programs in his subconscious.

So it turns out

that you have an update available
for your subconscious programming.

The question is
are you going to install it now?

Change your body language,

and change your results.

(Applause)