Determining whether or not somebody's nervous
or anxious is pretty easy, because people
have a hard time hiding it.
So let me explain.
There's essentially usually two responses
to anxiety non-verbally.
So there's either, you know, you're going
to get into a whole flight and fight response.
So basically what it is is either people move
around a lot, or they're stoic and still as
all hell.
All right.
So they either move around a ton or don't
move at all.
So it's like the guy who's really anxious
on a first date sits really, really carefully
and doesn't move.
Or fidgets and moves their arms or moves their
legs or taps something.
It's one of the things we tend to do.
So what you're going to look for is, to determine
whether or not somebody's nervous, the first
thing is essentially fidgety sort of behavior.
All right.
So tapping or some sort of constant movement
in something.
All right.
Now some people have bad habits.
Some people just tend to fidget a lot or move
a lot, so it may not be an indication of anxiety
for them.
So you'll tend to, like, so if you sit down
on a date for example, you sit down on a date,
and all of a sudden, the biggest non-verbal
indication of anxiety on date in men is the
rubbing of the thighs.
I don't know why they do it, but they do it.
I do it.
I've caught myself doing it.
They basically take two palms on your thighs,
and they rub them.
And it's like essentially trying to get, you
know, sweat off your hands or whatever.
So that's reliable.
Another thing you're looking for is what's
called pacifying gestures or soothing gestures.
Essentially what people do when they're anxious
is they rub themselves to calm themselves
down.
So it's similar to, like, in board room meetings
you see people really confident, but when
they talk about a certain area that they're
not confident about, you'll see them slowly
rub their fingers together.
All right.
Or like women will play with the back of their
neck, rub the back of the neck, or rub their
hands in a certain way.
It's basically we're anxious, so we try to
soothe ourselves by calming ourselves down.
Think of, like, a baby crying, and the mother
kind of slowly tickles the baby or, you know,
caresses them in a certain way to calm them
or soothe them.
We do that to ourselves.
It's a self-soothing mechanism.
It's very, very interesting.
So I look for ways of people pacifying themselves.
And it's cool because if you can spot people
in your day-to-day interactions that are anxious,
and somehow you can help them with that anxiety,
it's immediate rapport.
