You can presume a lot about a person based on how they walk. If you see them make long strides with their head forward and arms swinging, they appear determined and focused. If you see a person just shuffling their feet with their arms dangling at their sides, they could appear aimless or aloof. But what about a person who is walking with their hands clasped behind their back?
Well, body language experts believe that walking with your hands behind your back reveals a great deal about your mindset and your personality. They believe that, by keeping your hands behind your back while walking, a person is removing a distraction from their field of vision. This can allow a person to better process complex ideas, difficult emotions, or mentally work through problems as they walk. In short, walking with your hands behind your back indicates deep overall thoughtfulness.
@the.mcfarlands not an ounce of stress in that walk 🥹 follow us on IG: itsthemcfarlands 👈 #dad #dan #dadsoftiktok
It’s not just deep thinking either. Other experts believe that walking with your hands clasped behind your back shows off confidence but without intimidation. By walking with your hands away from your torso, you’re fully exposing your chest and belly rather than being in a traditionally defensive position. While you may be walking deep in thought, it also allows people around you to know that you can be approached and will respond without malice. This is in contrast to body language in which the arms are in front of the body, indicating that you’re closed off or not in the mood for interaction.
@yajairarh40 Old people know what they are doing with this walk. #walks #saturdaymorning #carync #fy
However, while walking with your arms behind your back can be seen as an invitation, it can come off as authoritative, too. By walking tall with your chest fully exposed, it mentally communicates that you’re calm and in control of the situation, not worrying about any incoming threat. This is partially why you see world leaders, military folks, teachers, and other persons in such roles walk this way in order to appear authoritative yet approachable. By having your arms behind you, your defense appears down but your authority appears up simultaneously.
Alongside the psychological body language aspects of this type of walk, it also has some physical benefits. While walking with your hands behind your back shows a more confident posture, it improves your posture overall, too. Putting your arms behind your back naturally pulls your shoulders back and opens your chest, allowing your spine to straighten up and align. While it won’t improve your posture instantly, habitually walking with your hands behind your back can turn proper posture into an instinctual habit as well.
So, if you’re heading to and from places and your mind's racing with stress, you may want to try putting your hands behind your back. The posture helps reset your mind and keeps it calm while searching for solutions to your every day problems. Will it work? Maybe. Maybe not. Some things cannot be willed into existence. However, you’ll at least appear like you have your act together (and great posture, too!).
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.