There are many strategies to try and deal with others. Many books are written about persuasion, body language, positive emotional interaction, and just about any other thing that you can think of that would allow you to interact better with others. What many forget is that unless they live somewhere out in the boonies, they are constantly surrounded by people. There is no better resource to learn how to interact with people than to ‘People Watch.’

People watching is something that not many in North America take advantage of. For example in Europe, you can always find all sorts of little cafés everywhere. People will sit at these cafés for hours watching the people go by, studying them in minute detail. If you are trying to learn how to interact with others, perhaps you should try an old European custom; people watching.

If you are having trouble dealing with people, then I suggest that you do a little people watching yourself instead of buying another round of self help books. Go to your local coffee shop or maybe the mall and just sit back or walk around and look at the people interact around you. If you let yourself watch people in this casual way, you will be able to discover incredible things about them. People out and about usually let go and relax, they show you their private moods and they act on these moods quite naturally. You can study their body language, what they say to each other, how they deal with problems, and how they interact with each other.

You can learn in this way to pick up on their personal signals. You can observe their interactions and figure out their underlying motivating emotions without ever having to interact with them yourself. In this way you are able to begin to recognize the moods and motivations of others and to become far more socially aware yourself.

Take the time to just study people’s body language. See if you can discover exactly what they’re doing and how they are getting along by studying them through their physiology. You can even watch people that are pretty far away from you and try to discover just what they might be talking about and what they might be feeling. When you are up close noticed their facial expressions and how these might change when that certain person might be interacting with a peer, a sibling, or perhaps even a parent.

You can notice different tones in people’s voices. You can discover how people group themselves or how they school in different formations. You can begin to sense what you feel around certain people and question yourself as to why you might be feeling these feelings. By doing this you can begin to go beyond the obvious signals that others give out. You can discover how to begin to even sense subconscious data and in this way begin to use this data to predict human behavior.

People are a great resource and people watching is just a fun thing to do. You get to realize that people are sort of like strange and beautiful birds, and they go about their way using their own natural methods. That these methods are beautiful and captivating if only you detach yourself enough so that you can watch them objectively. Discovering their natural beauty, you discover yours. You discover how you fit into this web of humanity and how you go about interacting with others yourself.

Next time that you get a chance, get out there and watch the people around you. Pretend that you are an alien from another planet and that you are watching these highly interesting beings go about their business in their natural habitat. I highly recommend people watching, it is really fun and you might learn a thing or two.