Think for a moment and answer me with honesty. Have you ever had a conversation with someone, after some event or activity, where a person goes like ‘once you said this, or that, she did not like that at all’. And you be like, ‘That is not the case! She was totally okay, you are wrong at your assessment.’
This is very common. Two people, trying to uncover someone’s feelings through facial expressions, through gestures, through pitch and voice.
I am saying this without any exaggeration. After having read this book, titled ‘READ PEOPLE LIKE A BOOK’, you will never ever look at communications the way you have been. It will equip you with the tools, that every time you interact with someone, the person will feel robbed and powerless against your aura. This is what a great book does. You do not remain the same person after having finished a great book.
What makes this book so great? I will try to uncover that to you to the best of my abilities.
Beginning with the title of the book, let me clear the confusion that most people might have because of the title.
This book is not about understanding people’s personalities and mindsets to learn their intentions,
Rather, this book is focused towards physical appearances, facial gestures, and body language to understand people’s behavior.
Patrick King, in this book, has tried to explain various gestures and their meaning in different cultures so that people do not consider any single gesture to have only one meaning. Like in America, eye contact is a symbol of confidence, while in Japan, the same eye contact is a symbol of disrespect, so understanding people becomes a tricky affair when more than one culture is involved.
One might question why we need to read people’s behaviors and expressions. I have got 2 reasons for that. No 1, it will be revealed to you why somebody did what they did. No 1, if you are smart enough, you will be able to predict their next move. This is the power that will raise you to levels of success that you could never have imagined.
Perhaps the most powerful sentence from the book is on page 42, which says, ‘You can’t defend yourself and listen at the same time’. For the ego-driven person, the argument is not an exchange of facts, logic, and ideas. It is a struggle to prove you are right. Once you do that, no matter how strong the opponent’s logic is, you are never going to listen, because listening was never your aim. Your only aim was to defend yourself and that shuts down every other thing, including listening.
Let’s discuss the core principle of the book. It says that no matter how good you are at conversations. There are certain expressions that your body and face gives at the times of conversations that are beyond your control to hide. You might smile through your lips, but that smile would be devoid of an actual and natural smile that lifts not only the corners of your mouth, it also lifts your complete face, it gives a glow and shine to your eyes. Similarly, every part of your face, as well as gestures are consistently radiates the signals that, if someone could read, will have an unfair advantage over the other.
This book helped me best understand the difference between extroverts and introverts.
Up until now, I only thought of one difference, extroverts are social, and introverts are nonsocial.
Patrick King says that extroverted people are action-oriented in comparison to introverted people, who are more thought-oriented. Introverts are not lazy people; they have a different way of doing things. For an assignment given to complete in class, a group of extroverts will do it together.
An introvert would prefer giving a deep thought to it, and going alone in the project. They do not want group discussions and steal their ability to think and ponder. What a lovely way of explanation from Patrick king.
As you proceed in the book, you will realize that while first portion of the book explains to you the expressions and behaviors. 2nd portion of the book will explain to you how to use those tools.
For example, if you know someone is lying to you and you have got some sort of evidence for that, do not reveal that evident outwardly. Let the other person talk out his made up story. He is going through a hard time trying to convince you of something that is not real.
A few random questions from and a few counter questions would reveal it all to you. For most part of that conversation, you have to talk as little as possible, and let the other person entangled in his self-created traps.
If you are interested in books like this one, i will highly recommend you to read my review on the book, ‘The Diary of a CEO’ by Steven Bartlett’
Books like ‘Read People Like a Book’ have the potential to drastically change someone’s life. Highly recommended to be read and shared.
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