Behavioral Science of the Human Mind

Part 2: The Power of Observation©2011 Applied Mind Sciences

The Power of Observation is all about seeing and hearing everything around you but remember you must FIRST

believe to see!

How can you look and not see or listen and not hear?

What I want to do in this series is teach you how to see

everything and hear everything. In other words, you will become a trained

observer.

Believing is seeing takes you out of your subconscious mind and places your filters in the conscious mind.

Here the “Central You Concept” is disabled and you see and hear everything as raw sensory data.

You see and hear everything first THEN you choose to evaluate it or discard it - SNAPSHOT!

The other day I came out my back door and a Mocking Bird immediately appeared no more than 5 feet from where I was standing. I saw it immediately sitting in the bush besides my door, not moving but simply watching me.

I FIRST saw it, then I observed its behavior, then I evaluated it as something worthy of thought.

I know animals do not observe humans for the sake of learning. There was some other reason the Mocking Bird was so close and quiet.

I quickly deduced that it had a nest in the bush and was standing guard over its nest.

Predatory animals do observe but not for the sake of mere observation but because of hunting for food.

A predatory animal has no ego like we humans. It will not attack if there is a risk it will be injured. You can not cajole it into attacking. It will observe its prey first seeking to see if it is worthy of an attack.

While camping in Utah one summer, I spotted a mountain lion observing me in camp. It watched me for about 20-minutes until I picked up my rifle and turned toward it. It knew what a rifle was and immediately took off.

I spotted the mountain lion because my filters are in my conscious mind and I evaluated its behavior realizing it was observing me as a hunter and not as entertainment. The minute I seized my rifle it was gone.

Carryovers From Part 1

1. Seeing is believing!

2. Early man relied on his conscious mind to judge “friend or foe” encounters. Most of these encounters involved FEAR!. Fear is reactionary and a result of instinct rather than rational thought. Early man spent most of his life in his conscious mind and his filters resided in his conscious mind.

3. Modern man spends most of his life in his subconscious mind and embraces a lustful lifestyle. His filters reside in the subconscious mind. Lust causes self-centeredness and hence his filters remove everything that is not self- serving.

Let’s talk about filters and how your subconscious mind

prevents you from recognizing opportunities

On the right is sculpture of Michelangelo's “Moses Receiving the Commandments on Mt. Sinai” at the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome sculpted for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

What is unusual about it?

Here is the full view of the bas-relief of the tomb.

Why would Michelangelo depict Moses having horns on his head?

Michelangelo depicted Moses with horns growing out of his head; a fact that had stumped art historians for centuries. Why? Here’s the answer:

“It happened, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mountain, that Moses didn't know that the skin of his face shone (was radiant NIV) by reason of his speaking with him.” (Exodus 34:29).

In Ancient Hebrew, the word radiant is “keren” and it is also the word for “horns”. So the reason for the oddity was a mistranslation of Exodus 34:29.

The one essential common element of all filters is that they are all ATTENTION diverters. We have spoken about attention earlier (also distraction); what is very interesting is that filters are generally viewed as bad when some are really very good.

I had a friend who lives in Chicago, fall on hard times and needed assistance. When I got to him he was living in a cheap hotel and had a room so small when you put the key in the door you broke the window (I slay me).

His room was about 50 feet from the Loop (the overhead train that circles around Chicago). The noise was deafening when the train went by, and it went by often, but my friend had filtered it out. Amazing, but when you thing about it, my friend really does hear the train but yet he pays no attention to it, so in actuality, it is like he doesn’t hear it at all! So filters divert attention, and take away our focus; so let’s talk about focus.

The Incredible Power of Focus

One of the more important points I have made has been the idea that you really do create your own life and your own reality.

Many people, after continuing to experience the same old ups and downs and personal dramas over many years, get to the point where they dismiss this idea as charming but useless -- or just plain wrong. "If I'm creating this, then I'm certainly not doing it on purpose," they say. "It sure seems like this is HAPPENING to me, rather than that I'm creating it." They just assume that it's all BS because "this and this and this and this are going on for me, and I have no control over it, and anyone who thinks I'm creating this doesn't understand what I'm going through." Essentially, they are resigning themselves to becoming a victim of circumstances… the Central You!

We live in a universe of infinite complexity and many forces -- way too many to keep track of – that operate on us. Yes, it is true that we are NOT in control of everything that happens, because we are not in control of most of those infinite other parts of the universe. In fact, the only thing you have total and complete control over is...YOUR OWN MIND. That is, if you learn how to exercise it.

Control over your mind gives you tremendous power. By exercising control over your mind, you can get the rest of those infinite other parts of the universe to begin to march in formation.

The person who says, "If I'm creating this, it certainly isn't on purpose," is right. They are not creating what is happening to them "on purpose." Who would purposely create failure, or bad relationships, or any other kind of suffering? You can only do something that is not good for you, that is harmful to you, if you do it subconsciously. This means if you are creating something you don't want, you must be doing so subconsciously. Your mind is running on automatic pilot, based on the "software" (subconscious programming) installed when you were too young to know any better, by parents, teachers, friends, the media, and other experiences and influences. The key is to become more conscious, more aware...to get yourself off automatic pilot. Once you do this, you stop creating all the dramas and other garbage you don't want in your life.

How do you do this? One way is by remembering and using a very important piece of wisdom. What is this important piece of wisdom? I'm glad you asked…

Whatever you focus on manifests as reality in your life.

You are always focusing on something, whether you are aware of it or not. If I spent some time with you, and heard your history, I could tell you what you are focusing on. How? By looking at the results you are getting in your life. The results are always the result of your focus.

The problem is this focus is usually not conscious focus; it's automatic or subconscious focus. We subconsciously focus on something we don't want, and then when we get it we feel like a victim and don't even stop to think that we created it in the first place.

We don't realize we could choose to create something completely different if we could only get out of the cycle of subconsciously focusing on something other than what we want.

Focusing on what you do not want, ironically, makes it happen. Focusing on not being poor makes you poor. Focusing on not making mistakes causes you to make mistakes. Focusing on not having a bad relationship creates bad relationships. Focusing on not being depressed makes you depressed. Focusing on not smoking makes you want to smoke. And so on. I think you get the idea. The mind will create what you focus on both GOOD and BAD!!!

Focusing The Mind

The truth is your mind cannot tell the difference between something you think about or focus on that you DO want, and something you think about or focus on but do NOT want. The mind is a goal-seeking mechanism, and an extremely effective one at that. Already, all the time, it is elegantly and precisely creating exactly what you focus on. You are already a World Champion Expert at creating whatever you focus on. You couldn't get any better at it, and you don't need to get any better at it.

When you focus on anything, your mind says: "Okay, we can do that," and starts figuring out how to do it. It doesn't ask whether you're focusing on it because you want it or because you do not want it. It ALWAYS assumes you want what you focus on and then it goes and makes it happen. The more frequent and the more intense the focus, the faster and more completely you will create what you have focused on, which is why intense negative experiences create intense focus on what you do not want, and tend to make you re-create what you don't want, over and over.

Conscious Intention

Most of the time, for most people, all the focusing and thinking is going by at warp speed, on automatic, without much, if any, conscious intention. Our job today is to learn how to direct this power by consciously directing your focus to the outcomes you want. Once you do, everything changes. This does, however, take some work, because at first you have to swim upstream against the current of your old, unconscious habits, and the current can be swift and strong. Trained observation actually teaches you to focus on what you want.

First, you have to discover all the things you focus on that you do not want, and I'm willing to bet there are quite a few -- way more than you think. To the degree you're getting what you don't want, you are focusing, albeit subconsciously, on what you don't want.

Spend some time over the next few weeks making a list of all the things you do NOT want as you notice yourself thinking about them.

Second, you have to get very clear about what you DO want. Then, you have to examine each of the things you want and be sure they are not just something you do NOT want in disguise. For instance, saying "I want a relationship where I am treated well" would not even be an issue if you had not had relationships where you were not treated well, and even in making this seemingly positive statement you are focusing on not wanting to be mistreated. Saying "I want a reliable car" wouldn't even come up if you weren't focusing on the fact that you don't want a car that breaks down and needs a lot of repairs.

After you've sorted out the things you habitually focus on that you do not want, and know what you do want, you have to begin to notice each time you think about an outcome you do not want, and consciously change your thinking, right in that moment, so you’re instead focusing on what you do want. Remember, you do NOT have to avoid things to be happy and get what you want. The urge to avoid something is a result of having had a negative emotional experience regarding that thing, and trying to avoid things requires you to focus on them, which tells your brain to create them. Not good. You will be surprised how often you are thinking about what you do not want, how difficult it is to catch yourself doing it every time, and -- most of all – how difficult it is to switch your thinking to what you DO want.

The solution?

Practice, practice, practice. Persistence, persistence, persistence!!!

It's a very good idea to write down what you want, very specifically, so that your Fairy Godmother, were she to read it, would know exactly what to give you without any additional explanation.

Then, read what you have written to yourself, preferably out loud, several times a day, while seeing yourself, in your mind, already having what you want.

Believing is seeing and not the other way around as the world teaches you!

Another way to change your focus is to ask questions. As an example, I'll ask you one right now. What did you have for breakfast this morning? To answer this question (even to just internally process the question), you had to shift your focus from whatever your mind was focused on (hopefully, to what I am teaching) to today's breakfast.

This means that to change your focus, all you have to do is...ask yourself a question!

3-Steps to Controlling Your Mind

1. Awareness

The first step to changing anything is becoming aware that it's happening, especially if it's your mind. Pretend your mind is racing, and you finally realize that you're thinking. Most people at this stage get extremely frustrated and "try" to force their mind into submission. It doesn't work! Why? Because, what you focus on expands. The more frustrated you get, the more you're focusing on frustration, so you'll get even MORE frustration and more thinking... on and on!

So the first step is to simply become "aware" of the fact that you're thinking. Nothing more. When you notice that you're thinking, smile to yourself, and say, "I just noticed myself thinking... interesting..." Now notice what happens inside of you when you do this... something VERY profound. If "I" just noticed "myself" thinking, perhaps there are really two completely separate identities running your life? There is the "I" and there is the "self."

The Power of Choice

The "I", is the real you...the intellect, the "I" behind the mind, that runs the show, the heart, the soul, the true conscious being, the choice maker.

The "self" is the desires, emotions and will of the mind; if left to run the show, it will run in endless circles until the edge of insanity.

The moment you do this, the moment you become "aware" - you are no longer a slave to your mind. You have won. After you become aware... do nothing, just lay there for 3 seconds and notice how it feels to be present in who you really are, not the mind, but you, the "I" - there is a great feeling of peace behind that presence in the "I."

Why?

Because when you are aware like this, you're aware of the power of your choice making. You now have the power of choice.

2. Relaxed Focus

"What you focus on expands." Now that you have become aware of your thinking, all you have to do is "direct" your mind into a place that will bring you into a deep, deep place of relaxation. Think about it, if before your mind will relentlessly race into any direction you give it; why not pick a direction that will give you peace and restful sleep? But, most people don't know what that direction really is. It's really easy. If you focus on anything your body does or feels subconsciously, you will begin to become more and more relaxed.

For example your breathing, the feeling of the pillow on your head, the sounds of nature outside (unless you live in the city), the warmth of your body. These are all things that happen, yet your conscious mind doesn't think about them. As you know, "What you focus on expands"... So what would happen if you focused on something that is happening in your "subconscious"? That's right, your conscious thinking would diminish, and your subconscious mind would begin to take over the entire process of you falling asleep! It really is that simple, and it works every time. The easiest one is your breathing. And I promise you if you just try this tonight, you will be shocked: "Wow! It worked!"

3. Repetition

As I said, the easiest one to focus on is your breathing. In the beginning, you'll find this easier said than done. Begin by taking your focus onto your breathing. Take a deep breath in; hold it for a short while, slowly exhale. Count "1“ Breathe in again; hold it shortly, exhale slowly, and count..."2" . Why count? Because in the very beginning, you may find it challenging to hold your focus. In fact, you'll be surprised as you may not even make it to "5" the first time. This is because your subconscious ever-thinking mind will butt in and interrupt.

You may randomly go off into a barrage of thoughts again. If this happens, what do you do? Simply become aware, and begin focusing on your breathing again. As you become aware, 2 or 3 times, your mind will give up. When you get to "10" or "15" breaths you will feel a wave of relaxation in your body. This is the silent "click" as your mind shifts from the high frequency Beta brain-waves into Alpha brain-waves. Your subconscious mind will do the rest! The following exercise will teach you how to see and recognize things that are unworthy of attention, but still recognize that they are there. In other words, attention will be paid to it and then discarded CONSCIOUSLY.

EXERCISE #1

You look but you do not see: First of all, I want you to get a pencil and paper and find a painting in your home. Place a chair in front of the painting and write down everything you see. Do not stop until you have listed at least 100 aspects of the painting. Be sure to look at every aspect of the painting. Project yourself outside of your subconscious mind. This exercise is designed to keep you in your conscious mind for observation purposes. The way you perceive the painting is different then seeing the painting. Seeing the painting is first, perception is second. Do you see the difference? No one is asking you to tell us how you feel, just recognize what is in the painting. Feelings are from the subconscious mind; reality is conscious. Stick with reality when you see.

A women will list the emotional aspects of the painting such as, “the colors are warm” or maybe, “the women are dressed nicely and trying to impress the men.” Here you will begin to see that you are allowing emotions to take over. Look physically at the painting. Yes, note the colors but not how they make you feel.

Men have a tendency to list the physical aspects such as, “It takes place in this big field” or maybe, “The picture is rectangular and in a very ugly frame.” Men have it easier in this exercise than women because men employ their psyches in the physical and intellectual planes. Women employ their psyches on an emotional and spiritual plane.

In this exercise I want both men and women to list only their physical observations. It doesn’t matter which painting you use; writing down 100 aspects is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

THINK outside the envelope of emotions. Look and observe and try to see what is there. If you continue to do this often, with different paintings, you will find that wherever you go you will begin to pick out details that eluded you in the past WITH NO EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE ATTACHED.

Pretty soon, with some good effort, you will begin to look at pictures as a snapshot in your mind and pick out all of the details.

Remember what I said, “I spoke earlier about the pictures of the heart. These pictures are your belief system. We animate these pictures into either fantasies or visions.

A newborn baby, suffering from neglect from its mother, does not have language to express his/her anguish. Even when it develops language and ages, the baby cannot consciously remember the neglect, but the pictures stored in his/her subconscious are still there and manifest themselves by affecting the thought process.

After the thought process I have described, we express these fantasies, or visions, through action, which in turn, is called behavior and conduct. Past experience plays a very major part in present behavior/conduct, but not all childhood traumas translates into adult behavior.  

Another such action is words! Except for love, the power of words, inspired by a vision, or fantasy, is the most potent human force. Visions evoke strength; fantasies evoke power, and there is a very big difference between strength and power.

Visions are good; most fantasies are bad, but a healthy fantasy is not to be discarded. The mind works by the ear! Words create pictures and pictures talk back. The inner dialogue is called thinking. Sub-conscience thinking is the combining of sounds and perceived images. How a person feels about this unconscious dialogue, determines “conscious decisions."  If we don’t feel anything, our hearts say, in effect, “Return to sender.” We constantly want to feel and demonstrate these feelings. This is the inherent problem between love and lust. Love is born in the intellect and seeks communion. Lust is born in the emotions and seeks companionship.”

What we see, we then animate into pictures, and the mind stores these images, and forms its belief systems from them. If you don’t SEE all of the details you only have a partial picture. Imagine seeing an ocean without waves, or flowers without color? Partial pictures form wrongful belief systems. All “seeing” eventually makes it into the subconscious mind because the human mind chooses to react to all stimuli entering the five senses. However; to avoid filters you must train the mind to pay attention to what is seen FIRST in the conscious mind and then the subconscious mind takes over.

Let’s go one step further. What you are doing with this exercise is teaching your subconscious mind that every detail is important AFTER the conscious mind pays attention to it FIRST. In the past, you looked at something and your mind only remembered what your subconscious mind thought was important; however, now you are REPETITIVELY teaching it that everything is important CONSCIOUSLY FIRST. This is how the mind learns, and this is why your teachers always assigned homework and you had to repetitively cram for finals. The mind learns by repetition –CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS!

Now it makes a man wonder, can this be the answer to all of your problems? What if you can train the mind in the opposite direction… REPETITIVELY! BINGO, this is exactly what we behavioral scientists do, in order to get you away from wrongful behavior. Remember the mind uses the very same mechanism to learn good things as well as bad things. It is just that you have perceived that bad things are more fun. And seeing bad things can really be more fun. Happiness and pleasure, in the short-term, seems to outweigh long-term joy! Listen up: short-term happiness has a tendency to push away long-term joy, so be aware of this and strive for the long-term joy. It is simply a matter of training yourself to do it!

You listen but you do not hear…

Hearing is the second most intensive sense we have. It allows us to detect events without the benefit of light or a direct line of vision. It is also alerts us to potential dangers. In people that are blind, hearing does become more acute but it is less a blessing than might at first appear. The blind hear more sounds but are confused as to both the origin and the location of these sounds. Instead of aiding their awareness of their environment, it actually hinders their awareness with overwhelming noises that often caused feelings of fear.

Strange sounds and noises cause anxiety in all creatures; its one of our survival instincts. A loud or unusual sound will cause the nervous system to respond with alarm. A sighted person would immediately look in the direction of a strange sound to assess potential danger, but a blind person can only wait for either nothing or something bad to happen.

Improving Auditory Perception

Eliciting a change in auditory perception can be as simple as providing clues as to what to look for. For example, if you play two musical notes on half tone apart such as a C and a C#, they will sound discordant, but they will also create a third vibration known as a pulse tone. Inside the sound you can hear a beat or a pulse. Unless you are a musician who has studied musical theory as well, it is unlikely you would have knowledge of this phenomenon and just as likely to never have noticed the third tone. However, once it is explained it becomes self-evident. A friend of mine has played music since he was a child but the first time I told him of this he immediately went to his piano and played the two notes and sure enough there it was, a third pulsating note. The sound was always there but now he could “hear” it because I made him aware of it.  Similarly in the following exercise much of the initial improvements are brought about by the mere awareness that we are capable of sensing much more than we originally thought. Before we go into the exercises it’s important to know the mechanics of hearing and of a recent development in our scientific understanding of how the brain processes auditory information that gave rise to our third training exercise called “Audio Calibration”.

What the Ears Sense

The ears sense pressure waves that travel through the medium of air or water at frequencies that range between 16 Hz to 20,000 Hz. These pressure waves enter the auditory canal and cause a membrane in the ear (eardrum) to vibrate. This vibration is transmitted through a series of tiny bones that amplify the kinetic energy. This energy is finally transformed into an electro-chemical signal and transmitted via the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex within the brain where this signal is “heard” as sound.

A curious fact is that the auditory nerves are stimulated by both external vibrations that enter the auditory canal and internal vibrations transmitted directly through the body. Low frequencies such as bass tones can pass through and resonate in the bones of the skull and jaw and vibrate the auditory nerve itself. The skull and jaw act like the sounding board of a guitar or violin and just as the shape of those instruments affect the sound they produce, so our experience of sound is affected by our physical structure. This is somewhat unusual since no other sense organ can receive direct stimulation of its enervation, its transmission cable. For example if you could shine a light on only your optic nerve you would not see a light. 

It is thought that the low frequency sound waves stimulate the body's nervous system producing an adrenaline/endorphin high. If this is true then this helps explain why the armies of all cultures have gone into battle beating drums and making loud noises, and why young people like to listen to loud music.

The low frequencies act as a stimulant. This may also explain why music and chanting can reduce pain. The auditory signal created by the chanting of a Mantra releases endorphins, a morphine-like chemical that inhibit pain, but also literally drowns out pain signals through what is known as cross talk.

All cranial nerves carry a non-steady current, which produces magnetic fields that can both broadcast and receive EM (electromagnetic) waves. Because cranial nerves are densely packed together, when the auditory nerve is stimulated it generates an EM pulse that can be picked up by other cranial nerves. This is known as cross talk.

For example, experiments show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils to dilate. The auditory nerve can cause a stimulation of the optic nerve.  It is believed that this is why watchmakers, surgeons, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by uninvited sounds; the sound causes their pupils to change focus thus blurring vision. This is also explains one reason why a warrior yells at the moment of attack, to create an instantaneous and uncontrollable disruption in the opponent's nervous system. This also reminds us that having a quiet place to practice is a good idea since noise is a bigger distraction than you might think.

In addition, the auditory nerve picks up internal sounds produced by the body's natural processes. These include: muscular movement, heartbeat, breathing, blood flow, digestion, and an ambient “static noise” of the nervous system (The hissing sound you can hear when quiet). This allows one to listen in on and monitor certain internal functions like respiration and heartbeat, something again no other sense can do. 

But it is recent research that offers the most evidence to support the idea of improving hearing. We know that the sound signal is sent to an area of the brain called the auditory cortex where it is turned into sound. How exactly the process is done is a mystery but what scientists have discovered is how the sound is sorted.  The auditory function, centered in the cortex, contains a three-dimensional map of the sound space picked up by each ear.

This indicates that the auditory cortex is highly specialized to accurately detect the direction and position of sounds in the space around us. This specialized ability would suggest a much more accurate fine tune auditory perception. Whereas the eyes, without moving the head, can detect objects only within a slightly less than 180 degree field, the ears can detect the positions of sound sources a full 360 degrees acting like radar to accurately detect moving objects within hearing range. This would be a valuable skill for a martial artist and we devised a simple biofeedback exercise that seemed to work called “Audio Calibration”.

Exercise #2 You listen but you do not hear…

Okay, this next exercise is really a lot of fun. Learning to listen is not the same as hearing. Taking this even another step further, if you can hear what the other person is saying, are you listening? Next, are you hearing everything?

Again, remember, “The mind works by the ear! Words create pictures and pictures talk back. The inner dialogue is called thinking. Sub-conscience thinking is the combining of sounds and perceived images. How a person feels about this unconscious dialogue, determines “conscious decisions."

Words talk back in the mind and create unconscious decisions, because the mind animates the words. Once again, if you are not hearing everything, you have an incomplete unconscious dialogue.

Okay, this is what I want you to do: Please take a pencil and paper and place a chair in your backyard. Close you eyes and listen. Pick out each and every sound distinctly, and then write it down. You will hear things like birds, insects, the wind, etc but listen and write down every sound you hear.

Again, you are training your mind to hear everything by making everything important. Pick out each distinct sound one-by-one. The ear needs to be trained. Just ask any musician or songwriter. I like opera and I listen to it quite often. I am constantly amazed how every time I listen to it, I pick out new instruments I hadn’t heard before. I also speak Italian, and as I follow along with the words in Italian opera, I am amazed, once again, by how many of them I hadn’t heard previously.

Getting back to the exercise, when you learn to listen, you will hear everything, and have all the necessary input to form good pictures in your mind. By repetitively doing this exercise, you begin to teach and train the ear to hear everything, and that everything is important. Try both exercises and sit back and be amazed.

How to Detect LiesWatching facial expressions in order to determine whether a person is lying might just save you from being a victim of fraud, or it could help you figure out when somebody's being genuine. Jury analysts do this when assisting in jury selection. The police do this during an interrogation. Of course a polygraph does this, but it is a little heavy to carry with you. Therefore, you have to learn the little facial and body expressions that can help you distinguish a lie from the truth. 

Observe how the person smiles. Forced smiles are easy to spot since they only involve the muscles around the mouth. The person will appear as being overly relaxed and not really happy. Look at the mouth and see if the teeth are showing. A real smile will reveal a bit of teeth but a forced smile may or may not.

True Smile - In a real smile, more facial muscles besides the mouth are involved. A dead giveaway is tightening around the eyes, which sometimes causes crows' feet. Very few people can fake a smile and still control their eyes in this manner.

Watch their hands, arms and legs, which tend to be limited, stiff, and self-directed when the person is lying.

The hands may touch or scratch their face, nose or behind an ear, but are not likely to touch their chest or heart with an open hand.

Check for sweating. People tend to sweat more when they lie.

See if they are telling you too much, like "My mom is living in France, isn't it nice there? Don't you like the Eiffel tower? It's so clean there." Too many details may tip you off to their desperation to get you to believe them.

Observe eye contact - Notice the person's eye movements. Contrary to popular belief, a liar does not always avoid eye contact. Humans naturally break eye contact and look upwards when remembering something.

Liars may deliberately make eye contact to seem more sincere. Liars also tend to blink more often. A typical right-handed person tends to look towards his left when remembering something that actually happened (remembered images, sounds and internal dialogue) and towards their right (constructed images, sounds and kinesthetic sensations) when they're making something up.

Be sensitive to the person's emotional expression, specifically the timing and duration, which tends to be off when someone is lying. Emotions can be delayed, remain longer than usual, and then stop suddenly. Likewise, they might not match appropriately with verbal statements. And, as with smiling, facial expressions of a liar will be limited to the mouth area.

Pay close attention to the person's reaction to your questions. A liar will often feel uncomfortable and turn their head or body away or even unconsciously put an object between the two of you.

Also, while an innocent person would go on the offensive, a guilty person will often go immediately on the defensive.

Listen for a subtle delay in responses to questions. An honest answer comes quickly from memory. Lies require a quick mental review of what they have told others to avoid inconsistency and to make up new details as needed.

Be conscious of their wording. Verbal expression can give many clues as to whether a person is lying, such as:

•Using/repeating your own exact words when answering a question •NOT using contractions •Avoiding direct statements or answers •Speaking excessively in an effort to convince •Speaking in a monotonous tone •Leaving out pronouns (he, she, it, etc.) •Speaking in muddled sentences

Equivocation: "Non-Answers" for example: Q: "Are these your drugs?" A:"I don't even smoke." Q: "Did you kill that man?" A:"I don't even own a gun."

In essence, these subjects ARE answering TRUTHFULLY, however, the answers they are providing do not address the actual questions in any way.

Using humor and sarcasm to avoid the subject. Allow silence to enter the conversation. Observe how uncomfortable and restless the person becomes when there is a pause.

Change the subject quickly. While an innocent person would be confused by the sudden shift in the conversation and may try to return to the previous subject, a liar will be relieved and welcome the change. You may see the person become more relaxed and less defensive. Watch his or her throat. A person may constantly be either trying to lubricate their throat when he/she lies OR swallowing to avoid the tension built up

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