Managing State Through Body Language

Emotion is created by motion. The way you move changes the way you feel. Your face has 80 different muscles. As Tony Robbins says, “For most people, this is the largest area of unemployment in the country.”

Your state, that internal cocktail of emotions, energy, and beliefs, determines your perspective on the world and what is happening around you.

Feeling optimistic and energized? You'll see opportunities and possibilities everywhere. Feeling down and defeated? Challenges will seem impossible, and the world is a much bleaker place.

By mastering your state, you don't necessarily change the world itself, but you shift the lens, coloring your perception and influencing how you react and engage with it.

Most people go through life wanting something else, but they have the same thought habits, and thereby, they keep falling back to the level of results they’ve always had.

Communication

Some people make it to the point that they understand they need to change their communication towards themselves, which leads to affirmations and focusing on self-talk. This is a great start, but it often leads to an exclusively verbal approach.

Just like in the external world, internal communication can be broken up into:

• Verbal: 7% (the words themselves)

• Tonal: 38% (tone of voice, pitch, volume)

• Physical: 55% (facial expressions, body language, posture)

Backed by Science

Dr. Paul Ekman, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco, told the Los Angeles Times June 5, 1985): "We know that if you have an emotion, it shows on your face. Now we've seen it goes the other way, too. You become what you put on your face. ... If you laugh at suffering, you don't feel suffering inside. If your face shows sorrow, you do feel it inside."

Knowing this, along with keeping the above breakdown of verbal, vocal, and physical communication in mind, we know how to directly influence your emotional state.

Knowing that the body and mind are linked, you can start to understand how powerful control over your state can be. Studies like the 2010 research by Cuddy, Carney, and Yap suggest that holding powerful poses can increase testosterone levels.

When you feel down, you might slouch. But by consciously adopting an assertive posture, you're tricking your brain into a more empowered state. This creates a positive feedback loop, where your body language influences your mind, reinforcing your confidence and actions.

Applying this in real life.

Personally, I lack sleep right now as I’ve just become the father of beautiful twin girls. Having to feed them throughout the night, I currently lack some sleep. Of course, this is a very low price I am more than willing to pay for my family, but that’s not the point. The point is you have a choice: you can either embrace how tired you are and start communicating internally and externally that you are tired. We can all imagine how that would look and feel.

• Verbal: You would tell yourself and others you are tired.

• Tonal: You would do this at low volume at a slow speed of speech.

• Physical: You would be slumped over and look down.

If you are not sleep-deprived but talk the way I have just described, I can guarantee your energy will decrease. 

I chose to write about this subject right now because the power of this tool is helping me through this season in my life. I choose not to be the victim of the circumstance and not to react but to create the state I would like to be in.

Reacting VS Creating

Pick any state you would like to be in. You can even model other people who embody the state you would like to experience. Study how these people apply the 3 keyways of communication: verbal, tonal, and physical. If you have experience in the state you are targeting, remember what you were thinking, how you were standing, how you were breathing, and how you were speaking, and just move into that new state.

It’s no coincidence the words greatest athletes have routines of moves or power stances that get them in the most powerful state possible at key moments.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this extreme. You can focus on little things like your breathing, posture and movements.

Like with everything the beginning is difficult but after a while your new state will make you act in the way you desire which invariably brings the results you are after. Once you have the results the feelings are very easy. It’s always the start that is the most difficult. The only thing you can do now is take control and act.