I began this series on body language by urging you to turn over body language chores to the most powerful part of your mind – your unconscious. I outlined a 3-step process for doing that in order to decode other people’s body language. It remains to talk about how to control your own.

People ask me all the time, “What do I do with my hands?” The real conundrum behind that question is that monitoring your own body language is extremely difficult for the conscious mind and it easily gets overwhelmed. The hands are simply the easiest and least distracting parts of your body to watch while still walking, talking, and chewing gum at the same time.

But here’s the problem. If you think consciously about moving your hands in a certain way as a speaker, or in a meeting, in order to emphasize a point, your gesture will come too late, and you’ll look awkward, bizarre, or fake. That’s because the natural sequence of events, according to recent brain research, is intent – gesture – thought – speech. The gesture actually comes before conscious thought. So if you try to think consciously about a gesture, you’ll start it too late, and it will come out of sequence with your words. You’ll look like one of those coached politicians who gesture awkwardly a split second after they talk, undercutting any belief in what they’re saying.

It simply doesn’t work very well – without hours of practice, at least – to try to reverse this sequence consciously, speeding up your gestures and slowing down your speech. The better way to get this done is to focus on something else – your intent – and let the gestures take care of themselves. Strong intent, or emotion, drives gesture when you’re not thinking about it, so it’s by far the better way to go.

The difficult part is in focusing your emotions consistently and clearly so that your gestures are equally clear and strong. To do that, you have to know what you want and how you feel about it during each meeting, presentation, or interview where you want to show up with effective, persuasive body language. And you have to keep the focus on that emotion – or those emotions – and not get distracted.

Most people go through their days telegraphing their state of mind, and it’s typically distracted. In other words, they’re not clear or focused; instead, they’re thinking about the to-do list, what to get for dinner, remembering to pay their taxes, getting a birthday present for a sister, and so on. When you walk into a meeting with that kind of attitude, you will have no charisma or persuasive force.

The first step to managing your own body language, then, is to forget about your body language and focus on your intent. What do you want to happen? What’s your emotional investment? Are you angry, happy, sad, delighted, excited – figure that out, focus on that, and your body language will line up behind that emotion and start expressing it clearly and powerfully.

Next time I’ll talk about step 2 – what to do after you’ve got your focus.