The Ultimate Body Language Book

Chapter 1 - Why The Study Of Body Language Is Important
You Have Four Minutes!
You’re on the clock, so make it count!
It has been repeatedly shown that the first four minutes are crucial to formulating life-long impressions
of others. The research has shown that the reality of the matter is that it might even be shorter than this.
Once a judgment has been past, people will vigorously resist changing it. In fact, our first impressions
are so strongly held, that we’d prefer to ignore, omit or distort information about someone as it comes
in that doesn’t fit our impressions than to modify our initial impressions of someone. Add to this, the
fact that only some our time formulating impressions is done verbally through speaking, but all of our
time is spent sending signals nonverbally. Our impressions are made passively, regardless of our desire
to create them, so being caught on an off day can really hurt future relationship. If, say, for example, we
are caught in a bad mood, or happen to be dealing with a rare crisis, the judgment others make during
this period will follow us for a very long time. Shy people who take longer to warm up to others know
this all to well and are often reminded of this fact later. As their relationships flourish, friends will tell
them how their initial impressions of them were quite different from the person they have come to
know. Being shy holds their true personalities from sight, and this hurts them in the short term because
the initial impression they make comes across as indifferent and cold.
Knowing that impressions are so important, we can use it to our advantage by placing added emphasis
on initial impressions and concentrate our efforts. Once this time has elapsed, we can either relax back
to our regular selves and allow our newly created reputation to keep us afloat, or maintain out initial
behaviour. The choice will be ours to make. This book will cover the all important job interview and
skills to portray confidence and knowledgeable and how to pack it all into the typical four minute
interview. Fortunately, this book is almost entirely about formulating and maintaining good impression.
So the rule here is to never ignore the power of first impressions. More often than not, first impressions
are the ones that last for an entire relationship and can’t be easily corrected later. I should also emphasis
that what you ‘say’ is often far less important than what you ‘do’. Listening, and using strong body