How To Analyze People - The Ultimate Guide to Speed Reading People Instantly Using Psychological Techniques, Personality Types and Body Language

This chapter will address the following points:

1. Understanding the self in order to understand others
2. An outline of what we can use to understand others
3. Different approaches when analyzing people you know well from those you don’t know quite as well
4. The three elements of practical psychology

Know Thyself

People with a better understanding of themselves are in a greater position to understand others. This holds true in two ways.

The first is that to be able to follow the internal processes of another person, we must first understand how these internal processes work. If we understand that someone’s insecurities affect the way they behave, we know that this will also hold true for ourselves. If we know and can recognize that this is played out in someone’s behavior by self-effacing body language and lack of eye contact, we must realize that our own physical behaviors are expressions of our underlying self-belief. This is why all the material in this book will be as applicable to you on an individual and introspective level, as much as it will be for you to understand others better.

It might be a difficult truth to hear, but those who tend to struggle to analyze and understand people’s behaviors often lack an understanding of their own internal processes and thought patterns. If you truly want to have the ability to analyze other people well and accurately, you will need to be able to come face to face with your own fears, prejudices, and motives first. If not, you will simply be seeing others through the lens of your own fears, insecurities, and prejudices without you knowing it and this will create a false image in your head, of others.

The second way that knowing yourself holds relevance to understanding others is the fact that you have an effect on other people (directly or indirectly), and to understand this effect you must be able to understand your own behavior. Your significance to that person, your communication style and the way you present yourself, consciously or unconsciously, will alter the behavior of the person or groups you are communicating with. If you are acting stern, formal, and in a disciplined manner, those you are interacting with will tend to adjust their communication style to suit. If you are acting joyfully, happily, and laughing a lot, again, this will thus affect how the other parties you are communicating with reciprocate.

Exercise & Practical Application

In order to understand how your behavior affects those you interact with, think carefully about the difference in how you behave when communicating with the people listed below in your life:

• Your partner
• Your children, if you have them
• Your boss
• The school teacher you feared the most
• Your mother
• Your father
• Someone you don’t like or don’t get along well with
• Your best friend

You should be able to reflect and observe that the roles and behavior of these people altered the way that you have presented yourself to them and continue to do so. A great exercise is to reflect on the possible roles you may have for others and how that affects the way they behave around you.

Strangers versus Friends

It will come as no surprise to you that the way you analyze someone will depend on how well you know them, as well as your motivation for wanting to do so. These two factors will determine the material that you’ll have to work with when undertaking your analysis, and ultimately decide the methods and information you will use in helping you better understand what they’re telling you and what makes them tick. Four examples are illustrated below to explain this idea a bit clearer:

Example One

You’ve met someone for the first time, and you want to know if they’re interested in you.

Example Two

You have a business opportunity in mind and you’re considering sharing it with a colleague.

Example Three

You’ve been with your partner for a year now and it is getting serious and you’re considering asking them to move in with you.

Example Four

You struggle to get along with your mother.

As you can see from these examples, you’ll need to keep those three factors; relationship, motivation, and material, in mind when you’re approaching your analysis, as they’ll determine which methods you can use that are detailed later throughout the book.

Exercise & Practical Application

Consider three people that you could benefit from by understanding them better. What is the nature of your relationship? What’s the motivation behind digging deeper into this relationship? How will this affect the material you have available to you to perform an analysis?

The 3 Elements of Practical Psychology

Business and life strategist Anthony Robbins began writing books and conducting several full day seminars decades ago and has helped millions around the world discover and achieve what it is that they’re looking for in life. What he teaches and preaches makes intuitive sense and has worked for millions of people. We will be leveraging some of his ideas to help us understand what motivates us, as well as other people. Why re-invent the wheel when someone has already made a successful carriage that works right?

Psychology is a rather complicated field, we’re not going to go into great depth on it in this book as it isn’t necessary, but what we will do is share with you what is needed to increase your skills of analysis and comprehension. The three elements of practical psychology are tremendously helpful when it comes to understanding how people are wired.

(1) What stops us from moving forward is fear. Fear is crucial. Without it, humans would never have lived long enough to evolve into what we are today. Having zero fear of a sabre toothed tiger was a recipe for instant disaster, dismemberment, and most likely death. 

Things have changed since the Stone Age however and fears do not play a crucial role in our survival. Despite this, it has stuck around as it has been biologically wired into us and causes emotions ranging from apprehension through to panic, in a large percentage of the population. Understanding fear is crucial to understanding people.

The two primary fears that we face today are the: (1) fear that we are not enough and (2) the fear that we won’t be loved. These are both instinctual fears related to survival that plays out in a variety of situations. What used to be a fear that we could not run fast enough to catch a deer to feed ourselves and our family has evolved into a fear that we might miss a deadline at work, lose our job, and be unable to feed ourselves and our family. What used to be a fear that we would be abandoned by our tribe and perish alone in the wild has now become a fear that we won’t feel loved and valued by those around us and thus feel dejected and alone.

For those of you wondering, okay great, now what are we meant to do with this irrational fear? Well, the best answer is to dance with it.

If you will imagine two people ballroom dancing, perhaps they are doing the waltz in this instance. The man will lead the dance whilst the woman follows his lead. Consider the man in the waltz representative of fear, and consider the woman being you. The waltz or dance itself represents life, it continues on until the dance is finished. You will always be there and so are your fears, as the man leads the dance, if you resist and try...