You Can Read Anyone by David J. Lieberman

• Simply, a person wrongly accused will be more likely to go on the offensive, while the guilty party usually assumes a defensive posture.
• It is often said that a person looks at the world as a reflection of himself. If he sees the world as a corrupt place, he feels at some level--albeit probably unconsciously--that he is corrupt. If he sees honest working people, that is often how he sees himself.
• Projection is why the con artist is the first one to accuse another of cheating. If you are constantly being questioned about your motives or activities, the accusations should set off alarm bells in your mind.
• Language powerfully impacts how we perceive and, consequently, feel about what we hear.
• In a subtle way, sometimes even unconsciously, the language a person uses reveals if he is concerned you will not like, accept, or believe the news.
• Self-esteem is often confused with confidence, but the two are quite different. The distinction is very important. Confidence is how effective a person feels within a specific area or situation, while self-esteem is defined by ho much a person "likes" himself and how worthy he feels of receiving good things in life. Simply, a person can feel good about himself yet not feel positive about his chances under certain circumstances, and vice-versa.
• A person's confidence in a particular situation is based on a variety of factors: previous performance, experiences, feedback, and comparisons.
• Self-esteem and confidence are distinct psychological forces, and both impact the overall psyche differently.
• When we are anxious or stressed, our ability to focus is often diminished.
• The real secret to reading someone's confidence level lies not in observation but in filtering out the signs intended to give the impression of confidence.
• When we are nervous, we take things more literally. When we lack confidence in a situation, our mind tries to get its bearings, and we often cannot see beyond face value.
• A confident person is able to focus on the objective, and the "I" disappears. A nervous person has an ego consuming his thoughts because of fear, worry, and anxiety, and he can't help but focus on himself. He's literally self-aware of everything he says and does.
• A person engaging in perception-management generally over-compensates. If you look for it, it is glaringly obvious. Remember, the confident person is not interested in how he is coming across. He is unconcerned with his image, unlike his perception-management counterpart, who is consumed by other's impressions of him.
• Any superfluous gesture in a serious situation is a sign that someone is trying to act calm and confident.
• When caught in fear, we regress step by step to ever more infantile and animalistic drives.
• Our world, and how we interact with it, is largely determined by our own perceptions and our perceptions are anchored in our self-contempt--the way we see ourselves.
• Generally speaking, the more optimistic a person is about her future, the more forgiving she is of the past. The principle is most evident in situations when the past is directly associated with the future.
• Mood is rarely indicative of a person's present situation; it is more often a function of the future and sometimes the past.
• Our ability to gauge whether a person is interested is not difficult, if we can see clearly. The problem is, the more we want something to work out the less accurate our ability to objectively discern another person's interest.
• Remember this general rule of thumb: people act in their own best interest.
• The basic premise is this: a persons interested in something or someone wants more information than someone not so interested.
• A person's confidence is inversely proportional to his interest level.
• The more interested we are in something or someone, the more consumed and concerned we will be with our ability to obtain the object of our interests. Our perspective narrows, and we become hyper-focused. We observe interest through the lens of confidence and vice-versa.
• Remember, the greater someone's perspective, the more clearly he sees reality; the opposite is also true. By artificially narrowing someone's perspective, the less clearly he sees, forcing him to run toward what he wants.
• One important criterion defining a friend is how interested the person is in your life.
• Lots of people are willing to "cheer you up" when things aren't going well, but it's more difficult to find someone who will congratulate you when things are going well.
• A true friend tells you what you don't want to hear.
• Strong emotions cloud our perception of reality.
• A person seeking t manipulate or control others almost always presents the image of a "helpful" person.
• Emotional states are either self-induced, externally caused, or a combination of the two.
• Look and listen objectively not only to the words but also to the message.
• When emotions creep into your thinking, temporarily suspend your feelings and look in front of you, not inside yourself.
• Within human beings, three inner forces exist, often at odds with each other: the soul (our conscience), the ego, and the body. The soul seeks to do what is right; the ego (or lower soul) wants to be right; and the body just wants to escape fro all of it.
• In short, the body wants to do what feels good; the ego wants to do what looks good; and the soul wants to do what is good.
• True freedom is not about being able to do whatever we feel like doing; rather, it is about being able to do what we truly want to do, in spite of what we feel like doing at the moment.
• By definition, low self-esteem means a person does not feel in control. Remember, self-respect comes from self-control, so any circumstance robbing him of his freedom takes away his last vestige of control.
• In the person who feels disrespected or out of control, a lack of self-respect causes an out-of-proportion response to any situation.
• A person who doesn't get along well with anyone may be harmless, but he can also be dangerous. Either way, be alert, particularly if he has a penchant for violence as illuminated in the previous two sections.
• Our personality is basically an interface between the world and us, and how we relate. But, because both the person and his world are in a constant state of flux, it can be difficult to get a consistently accurate read using personality-typing.
• Human nature is the hardware running the program we call "thought"--input in, input out. It does the same thing every time, based upon the commands entered. Although rarely simple, it is an equation nonetheless, once you understand the psychology behind the commands.
• You can tell what someone is thinking because, in reality, he's not thinking. Outside of real creative though, human beings are actually forced into conclusions about how and what they see. What often passes for thought is really a response based on emotionally pre-programmed choices.
• Ninety-nine percent of human actions are irrational.
• Being right becomes more of an emotional priority than doing what is right.
• A person's instinct is to protect the psychological self, in much the same way, you protect your physical self. As you will go to great lengths to protect your body from harm, you also seek to protect your self-image.
• When your physical self is threatened, you engage in what is referred to as the "fight-or-flight" response. Similarly, when your psychological self is threatened, the mind engages in what is called the "accept-or-deflect" response.
• Everything we experience shapes us--either by adding to self-esteem or subtracting from it.
• Human beings are wired to be pleasure seekers. By the nature of reality, pleasure is attached to meaning. Therefore, when we do what is right--and seek meaning over temporary gratification--we gain pleasure; when we do not, we feel depressed, anxious and suffer from poor relationships.
• The pleasure/pain mechanism is what keeps us moving in the right direction.
• The less ego someone has the more reality he sees. Thus, he makes better choices because he can see clearly what's in his best interest and is more meaningful and pleasurable.
• The more engaged in life you are, the more meaningful and thus pleasurable your experiences will be. The more you withdraw into temporary comfort or pursue illusions driven by the ego, the less pleasurable life becomes.
• People with higher self-esteem have greater confidence in their ability to think and act effectively, particularly in new situations. They can persevere more easily when faced with difficult chances and are not consumed with the possibility of failure. Remember, the less self-esteem a person has, the greater his ego and the greater his concern with what others may think of him, as well as his own preoccupation with performance.
• A person wants to do something, but if it is not worth the effort, he will not take action--no surprise here. What is newsworthy, however, is that the effort required impacts not only our decisions to take action or not but also changes how we think and feel about the situation.
• Almost everything we do or believe is to justify our behavior ot the world and ourselves.
• To reduce guilt, we have to make sense of our previous behavior. To feel better about ourselves in general, or things done to us, we build a vision of the world and ourselves that is consistent with what we need to be true, not with what is true.
• Don't fall into the trap of believing the person who has a big ego likes himself. We must remember that the ego and self-esteem are generally inversely related. No matter how much a person appears to be happy with himself, if he has a big ego, he is not--he is miserable.
• Differentiating between self-esteem and ego can be difficult.
• Someone doing extraordinary things can feel depressed and suffer from low self-esteem if he hasn't achieved the level of success he aspires to because he's pursing his objective for ego based motivations and needs the accolades and praises of others.
• The person most dangerous to others is the one with the big ego and little or no self-esteem. The most dangerous to himself is one with a diminished ego and little self-esteem. The reason is an arrogant person is more likely to direct his anger outward.
• The more accepting we are of ourselves, the more accepting we are of others. Conversely, this person needs to "see" others as deficient or less in order to feel better about himself.
• A person with high self-esteem is gentle with his environment, while the arrogant person can often be seen hitting, banging, and forcing inanimate objects to do his will. Just as he tries to do with people, he insists on imposing his "will" onto things and demanding they take heed.
• When self-esteem skews high, then confidence equals action. Put simply, a person is driven to go after what he wants when he feels good about himself and his chances of success. But because he's acting responsibly, as confidence in his ability to be successful decreases, his desire to put in effort dwindles as well. Therefore, as effort increases, likelihood of action.