Body Language and Self-Confidence
Body Language and Self-Confidence
Confidence is one of the most important skills in life that you can acquire. I am sure you know how important even a little bit of confidence can be in everyday situations, whether it’s negotiating with your boss for a raise, buying a car, giving a presentation, or meeting your partner’s parents. But have you ever wondered how to appear more confident instantly by adjusting your body posture and gestures? here is a fruitful body of research confirming that body language tells a volume about us.
A classic study by Dr. Albert Mehabrian gives us this insight: “the total impact of a message is based on: 7% words used; 38% tone of voice, volume, rate of speech, vocal pitch; 55% facial expressions, hand gestures, postures and other forms of body language.”
If you want to check if it is true, then I encourage you to watch a movie in a foreign language, I bet you will accurately guess 93 percent of the content by watching body language. Body language will reveal underlying emotions, motives, and feelings. People will evaluate most of the emotional content of your message, not by what you say but by your nonverbal signals.
One of the ways to become more confident is to start behaving like a confident person. This means keeping certain posture, gestures and expressions.
Here are three steps that you can take to start seeing a difference immediately.
As you follow these three steps, you’ll start to appear more confident, which will make some of your encounters more successful, which will instill more confidence in you, which will then make even more of your encounters successful, and so on. Think of your confidence like a giant snowball with lots of inertia – tough to get started, but once it’s rolling the momentum will take over.
Working on developing good posture is the first step.
I used to have awful posture through most of my life, which caused lots of lower back pain. It wasn’t until I made a conscious effort to focus on standing up straight and strengthening my lower back that the pain went away. I also used the help of the local physiotherapist to move forward.
Here’s how you can get started:
- Stand up as tall as you can, like you’re a soldier, or puppet and somebody just pulled the string that’s attached to the top of your noggin
- Pick your chin up and look straight ahead – stop looking down while walking around, there’s a whole world out there for you to see
- Pull your shoulder blades down and back as far as possible – his will feel strange if you spend a lot of time hunched over a desk
Here are few additional tips I got from my physiotherapist. If you have trouble pulling your shoulder blades back, try standing with your heels, bottom, and head against a wall, and then pull your shoulder blades back until they’re touching the wall too. Do this daily and increase the length of the stretch each time.
If you spend all day in a chair, try this: sit down in your chair, and then stand back up without having to rock forward. If you have to lean forward even slightly, you’re doing it wrong. Sit straight up like you’re always ready to stand without having to lean forward. Your lower back will probably get tired sitting like this because it’s not used to the new position – work on it.
This is probably the hardest step of all, as you’ve probably spent years developing poor posture without even thinking about it. Spend a month making a conscious effort to have better posture however, and you’ll be well on your way to a more confident appearance. Pretty soon you won’t even have to think about it!
Slow down to shake nervousness
For some people, nervousness can be quite incapacitating and leave them feeling terror-struck at a time when clear thinking and togetherness are required. It’s difficult to impress a future employer in an interview, or inspire an audience, if your hands are shaky and sweaty, your mind is blank and you’re trying so hard to catch your breath that talking is an afterthought.
A little nervousness before an event is not necessarily a bad thing and can even help to improve performance by increasing levels of alertness and vigilance. However, if nervousness becomes bothersome to the point where it affects your ability to perform negatively, then there are a number of things you can do to help yourself.
- Carbohydrates will calm down the mind as they release serotonin in the brain; however, they aren’t so good for those trying to cut back on their sugar intak All carbohydrates like rice, pasta, potatoes, and bread have been described as comfort foods, because they can act as a mild tranquilizer on the body. It is important to stick with complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat breads and pastas when you are eating them, to help to keep the body satiated.
- It’s not as it seems – it’s helpful to know that while you may think your nervousness is glaringly obvious, it never looks as bad as it Many people who feel sure that everyone notices their nervous feelings are surprised to hear friends and colleagues remark on how confident they seemed!
- Deep breathing is one of the most helpful tools to help with Breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose (try to breathe from your diaphragm rather than from your chest), hold your breath in for a few seconds and then release your breath slowly from your mouth. Repeat 4–7 times and notice the difference.
- Try to be prepared for the event that is making you nervou he more solid your preparation, the more confident and less nervous you will be.
- Watch out and stop any negative thoughts about possible bad outcom To help you do this, change “What ifs” to “So what’s.” here is a separate chapter in this book on dealing with negative and limiting thoughts and beliefs.
Smile
People don’t smile enough these days. Smiling however has many benefits. It makes you seem more friendly and approachable. It makes you look more attractive. And, while smiling comes easily to some people, others naturally have more serious expressions or may feel awkward about smiling.
If you’re one of those people and would like to learn what smiling can do to you, read on.
Smiling raises your confidence as it affects your emotions because of a brain-body connection. It triggers scientifically measurable activity in the let frontal cortex – the area of the brain where happiness is registered.
It reduces stress that your body and mind feel, almost similar to getting good sleep, according to recent studies. Smiling also helps to generate more positive emotions within you that generate more positive emotions, which generate more positive emotions, and so on. It is just like hich Nhat Hanh said: “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
Each time you smile you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. he act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.
The endorphins realized by smiling also act as a natural pain reliever. Finally, the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant and mood liter.
What can you do to smile more and in more genuine way? Here are few things you can try
1. Practice smiling in front of the mirror
Here is something I’ve done for almost a few years in the morning: Stand in front of the mirror and smile. Practice to activate both your mouth corners and your eye sockets. You will know whenever your smile is genuine, because you will immediately feel happy and relaxed. he power of a smile, even practiced in the mirror is that it can invoke the emotion immediately.
2. Imagine a situation of joy before an event
One of the best ways to make your smile more genuine and real comes from researcher Andrew Newberg:
“We just asked a person, before they engage in a conversation with someone else, to visualize someone they deeply love, or recall an event that brought them deep satisfaction and joy. It’s such an easy exercise, and we train people to do it in our workshops.”
3. Become comfortable with smiling
A lot of people see smiling as something that makes you weak. Personally, I’ve found that developing a better smile starts with being very comfortable to smile a lot. If in your head, you can imagine yourself going through the day and smiling lots to everyone and everything, that’s often when a happier life starts.
Yes, this might be just a small change in thinking. And yet, for me personally, that was the most important part to smile more every day.
4. Smile at a stranger
You’ve probably heard it said that smiling is contagious. Usually when you smile at a person, they can’t help but smile back.
Put that theory to the test and make the effort to smile at a complete stranger at least once a day – whether it’s someone on the street, someone at work or school or someone sitting beside you in traffic. Imagine that one friendly gesture setting of a chain reaction that causes your smile to go viral. Pretty good feeling, isn’t it?
In reality, some people will think you’re weird and some won’t smile back, but don’t let that stop you! Think of your smile as a good deed or an act of kindness that could make someone’s day just a little bit brighter.
But if the other person does smile back, and most will, you’ll have shared a special moment with that person, a fleeting connection with another human being.
Smile
People don’t smile enough these days. Smiling however has many benefits. It makes you seem more friendly and approachable. It makes you look more attractive. And, while smiling comes easily to some people, others naturally have more serious expressions or may feel awkward about smiling.
If you’re one of those people and would like to learn what smiling can do to you, read on.
Smiling raises your confidence as it affects your emotions because of a brain-body connection. It triggers scientifically measurable activity in the let frontal cortex – the area of the brain where happiness is registered.
It reduces stress that your body and mind feel, almost similar to getting good sleep, according to recent studies. Smiling also helps to generate more positive emotions within you that generate more positive emotions, which generate more positive emotions, and so on. It is just like hich Nhat Hanh said: “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
Each time you smile you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. he act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.
The endorphins realized by smiling also act as a natural pain reliever. Finally, the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant and mood liter.
What can you do to smile more and in more genuine way? Here are few things you can try
1. Practice smiling in front of the mirror
Here is something I’ve done for almost a few years in the morning: Stand in front of the mirror and smile. Practice to activate both your mouth corners and your eye sockets. You will know whenever your smile is genuine, because you will immediately feel happy and relaxed. he power of a smile, even practiced in the mirror is that it can invoke the emotion immediately.
2. Imagine a situation of joy before an event
One of the best ways to make your smile more genuine and real comes from researcher Andrew Newberg:
“We just asked a person, before they engage in a conversation with someone else, to visualize someone they deeply love, or recall an event that brought them deep satisfaction and joy. It’s such an easy exercise, and we train people to do it in our workshops.”
3. Become comfortable with smiling
A lot of people see smiling as something that makes you weak. Personally, I’ve found that developing a better smile starts with being very comfortable to smile a lot. If in your head, you can imagine yourself going through the day and smiling lots to everyone and everything, that’s often when a happier life starts.
Yes, this might be just a small change in thinking. And yet, for me personally, that was the most important part to smile more every day.
4. Smile at a stranger
You’ve probably heard it said that smiling is contagious. Usually when you smile at a person, they can’t help but smile back.
Put that theory to the test and make the effort to smile at a complete stranger at least once a day – whether it’s someone on the street, someone at work or school or someone sitting beside you in traffic. Imagine that one friendly gesture setting of a chain reaction that causes your smile to go viral. Pretty good feeling, isn’t it?
In reality, some people will think you’re weird and some won’t smile back, but don’t let that stop you! Think of your smile as a good deed or an act of kindness that could make someone’s day just a little bit brighter.
But if the other person does smile back, and most will, you’ll have shared a special moment with that person, a fleeting connection with another human being.
Your homework for today
While walking down the street with your head held high, shoulders back, and a genuine smile on your face, make direct eye contact with at least five strangers that walk by and give them a simple “hi.”
The first few times will feel really awkward, but who cares – you’ll never see them again. As you get more “missions” under your belt, you can progress to other more challenging objectives, like striking up a conversation with a stranger, giving a speech, etc.