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

Introduction

Are you having trouble understanding why the people around you behave the way they behave? Finding it difficult to get inside your kids’ heads and discovering what makes them tick? Want to be more successful at work and feel that your people skills could do with a bit of work? Need some help with the romance side of things but find you’re bewildered by the opposite sex? Whatever your reason for seeking out this knowledge - this book is here to help!

In a world where communication is key to success, and comprehension is the key to communication, we’re here to take the sting out of analyzing people using a range of theories to underpin how you can practically improve your ability to understand what motivates people, why they behave the way they do, and ultimately, how you can thus get along better with others. A word of warning though; you’re bound to understand yourself to a greater degree once you’ve finished reading!

The principles here are designed to cover any type of relationship, this book will begin with ways to analyze people that you’ve just met for the first time or have only begun contacting regularly, through their body language, and will progress through to higher levels of intimacy in relationships. Throughout the book we will be covering: analyzing someone from their tastes, habits, and appearances, the six human needs, beliefs and values, and concluding with common theories of psychology and psychotherapy that will allow you to understand the driving forces in people around you.

The book is set out in clear chapters, and at the end of each topic you will find an ‘Exercise & Practical Application’ section which provides you with exercises, actions, or things to think about so you can apply what you’ve learned and progress towards successfully analyzing people. Buckle in!

Chapter 1 – Know Thyself to Know Others

This chapter will address the following points:

Understanding the self in order to understand others

An outline of what we can use to understand others

Different approaches when analyzing people you know well from those you don’t know quite as well

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.

Relationship: Recent and surface

Motivation: You find them attractive but you want to know more about them before you make a move. You also don’t want to misread the situation and make a move if they’re not interested in you.

Material for Analysis: You’ll be looking at their body language, their appearance, their language, and to some extent their tastes. You won’t know enough about them to analyze their relationships or their history, but you may pick up some nuggets of information in early conversation that will be useful.

Example Two

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

Relationship: Medium-term and fairly surface

Motivation: You’d like to find out if they have the necessary qualities