“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your body doesn’t lie. It’s actually a walking truth-teller; it doesn’t even know how to lie.
But your brain does. Your mind contradicts, pretends, and steps in to referee, all the time.
Take a bite of something that tastes horrible to you and your face will instantly contort.
Do it at your boss’s dining room table to a meal his wife cooked and your brain will step in and scream, “Stop the face! No disgusting face! Smile, man, smile!”
Instantly.
But if you were being filmed, and you rewound the tape and played it in slow motion, there would be a flash, a brief moment when your initial revulsion to the taste of the food would show, right before your brain stepped in and stopped the fight.
It happens so fast the conscious mind of the boss might not catch it, but his unconscious will.
Micro-messages. The body doesn’t lie, but the brain does.
And it lies all the time, takes truth and twists it into a version that suits our sights.
Quite literally, the vista we view through our lens on life is strictly a reflection of what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing.
Our brains skew the data to fit what we expect.
So when your friend/family member/colleague acts “weird” or “off” and you ask them what’s wrong and they say “nothing” and you don’t believe them, it’s because of the micro-messages you can’t quite pin down.
Given a choice, believe the body, not the words.
“We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains.” ~John Medina, author of Brain Rules
