Your confidence in yourself and who you are can greatly influence where you are headed in your life and importantly how you interact with others around you. When you have full self-confidence, you see yourself in a positive way and enjoy spending time with those you’re doing life with. Confidence is a state of mind that usually comes from feelings of well-being, having acceptance of your body and mindset and belief in your own ability of doing things.
On the other hand, if you have low self-confidence, you seem to become withdrawn, shy and you isolate yourself from others to avoid any interaction and this may lead to many unfortunate issues. That is why it’s important that when you notice or feel you have confidence issues, you should seek to change that right away.
Low confidence cannot only prevent you from achieving everything you can do in life (by preventing you from taking risks and by making you generally more retiring and cautious) but it can also greatly affect your happiness and your enjoyment of life.
“Confidence isn’t walking into a room thinking you’re better than everyone, it’s walking in not having to compare yourself to anyone” – Anonymous
Ultimately, low-confidence can lead to depression and other mental health issues if it is allowed to continue and it can even end up negatively rubbing off on those around you. For parents in particular who have low-confidence, this is a highly important thing to address before the children grow up and see it or even sense it around you!
You can work on boosting your confidence in a number of other ways like seeking help from professional people or learn by what you’re doing right… now reading this article. Sometimes, small daily routines can start to help with your confidence as long as you do them consistently! Keep in mind that no one is born with an already high level of confidence, those confident individuals all had to go through some challenges to be where they’re today, so you can do it too.
Remember this, confidence will not only make you feel better about yourself, it’ll also let you be in a position to make better choices, take risks that will eventually allow you to achieve the life you want. When you have full self-confidence, your life will radiate with positivity, happiness and you’ll be more likely to push through the challenges that you’ll face daily!
Here are some of the things you can do or practice to gradually transform yourself, the way you come across to others and ultimately, the way you feel about yourself.
1. Body Language
Your body language is one of the single most important tools for conveying the way you feel. Communication is often estimated as being 70% non-verbal or even higher. In other words, what you’re saying with your mouth is far less important than what you say with your body. You can talk the talk, but if you’re hunched up, then you will convey a sense of anxiety and low confidence. Likewise, if you’re shaking, then no one will buy your macho spiel!
So how do you fix your body language? The trick is to appear relaxed. The more you lie back, spread out and let yourself be vulnerable, the less it appears as though you have something to fear. If you put your arm across the back of the sofa and have one leg casually over your knee, then you’ll look relaxed and at ease – as though no one poses a threat to you and as though no one can harm you. This conveys confidence and it also makes you feel more confident.
Another body language trick is to try leaning on things. If you learn against a wall, this communicates ownership. Likewise, if you touch someone on the shoulder, this conveys a kind of ownership which also comes across as confidence.
2. Smile, It’s Good For You
Smiling is perhaps the most confident thing you can do. Want to look more confident when you walk? Then smile as you go! Want to look more confident when approaching members of the opposite sex in a bar? Just smile at them from across the room and you’ll not only appear friendly, but also as though you’re happy to make yourself vulnerable – which again makes you seem relaxed and confident.
Smiling actually makes us feel more confident too due to a psychological phenomenon known as ‘facial feedback’. This means that we will often feel the way we look. Smile and you feel happier. Grimace and you feel angrier. Smiling in particular releases serotonin which induces feel good feeling. Even if the smile is forced, it still works!
3. Start An Exercise Routine
In most cases, people start to exercise because they want to lose weight, build some lean muscles or enter some sort of health & fitness competition. However, exercising can also help boost your self-confidence. It has been found that when you exercise the benefits are immense which includes memory retention, boost your mood, improve your focus, reduces anxiety, depression and a boost in your confidence!
Like anything else in life, regular exercise required commitment and consistency to be able to see the results. When you build regular exercise habits and maintain them, your confidence will skyrocket and the results will be a boost in self-confidence and a healthier you. So take take to create a routine that will keep you active for the long haul.
4. Embrace Power Positions
Just as smiling can work in reverse to change your emotions, so too does your body language influence the way you feel.
When we are confident, we have a tendency to take up more space. What you might not realise is that when you take up more space, it makes you feel more confident. Why? Because it triggers a rush of the hormone testosterone, testosterone being the primary male hormone and also a neurotransmitter that increases aggression and assertiveness.
Psychologists have thus managed to find what are known as power positions. These are positions you can pull with your body that will instantly make you feel more confident and on top of the world.
The most well-known of these is the victory position. Simply hold your hands over your head in a V shape as you might when crossing the finish line victorious in a race. This is in fact a universal position and is something that people do across cultures – even apes are thought to use this signal to demonstrate victory and success!
And apparently, it triggers and immediate increase in testosterone. So the next time you’re about to do an interview or go on a date, try going to the toilet first and practicing a few power positions!
5. Breathe
Our anxiety comes from the fight or flight response. This is the sudden release of stress hormones which are triggered in response to danger. That danger can be physical and immediate as in the case of a bear blocking our path, or it can be less immediate and more abstract – as in the case of speaking up in a group and worrying that people are going to not listen to you or laugh at you.
Ultimately, social ostracisation in the wild would have led to our eventual demise and as such, this is really a literal threat as far as the body is concerned. Unfortunately, sweating and shaking doesn’t help us on a date or in the board room!
And this is why you need to breathe to get your physiology back under your control. Breathing in a slow, deep and deliberate manner will activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn activates the ‘rest and digest’ response. This is the opposite to the fight or flight state and it is characterised by slower heart rate, slower brain waves and a general sense of calm.
Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth and hold each breath for a couple of seconds at a time. Doing this will help you feel normal again and bring that feeling of confidence again to continue forth.
6. Walk Tall (Posture)
Going back to body language for a moment, another time we notably convey either confidence or a lack thereof is when we walk. Our walk says a lot about us and if we walk briskly, powerfully and proudly, then we can make ourselves seem confident, large and in charge before we even start speaking!
Conversely, if we walk in a slumped, hunched and shuffling manner, then we will just seem shy, retiring and scared. To walk taller, the trick that is often described is to imagine that a beam of light is bursting out from your chest. That means you’re walking with your chest slightly poised upwards and it means that you should be smiling and walking briskly.
The problem is remembering to do this! Most of us have been walking pretty regularly now since we were… well one year old! Hence it can be hard to just drop those years of ingrained training and start walking in a wholly different way.
A way around this is to look for triggers to remind you. One of the best of these is walking through a doorway. The next time you cross a threshold, use this as a way to remember that trick and start beaming again! This is important, the more you do it the easier it becomes for you and your confidence will eventually be built.
7. First Impressions
This is especially important because those first impressions mean a great deal. The way you impact on someone when you first meet them makes a huge impact to your overall confidence, esteem and importance in their eyes. Giving yourself time to prepare, be well groomed and wearing appropriate clothing will sure help boost your confidence. Somehow it also allows others you meet to take you very seriously.
So, practice making that great first impression. That means walking with powerful strides and beaming into the room and it means shaking their hand firmly and with purpose not forgetting a gentle smile. If you want to seem confident and make the best first impression then there are few things worse than a limp, wet-fish handshake!
8. Eye Contact
Another key component of creating a good impression when you first meet someone and conveying confidence is maintaining proper eye contact. Holding eye contact suggests that you feel equal to the person you’re speaking to and it gives you more intensity, makes you seem more honest and in other words sends all of those good social signals that we want to send!
So, try to maintain gentle eye contact with a sincere smile. Hold the gaze for a few seconds, then look away while gesticulating and then hold the gaze again. This allows those around you to feel more at ease and thus providing great atmosphere for your interactions.
And when speaking in front of a larger group, make sure that you look around the group and remember to hold eye contact with each person briefly. The more you interact with others, maintaining that eye contact the better your self-confidence becomes. Remember, a simple gentle smile and eye contact can go a long way thus opening huge doors for you!
Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” ~ Lao Tzu
9. Speak More Slowly
One of the things that will help you to seem more confident while communicating is to speak more slowly. We are naturally inclined to speed up as we become nervous and this can lead to us stumbling over our words and seeming less confident and less sure of what we’re saying.
On the other hand, if you speak more slowly, then you come across as someone who knows what they’re talking about, who is confident in who they are and who has thought about what they’re saying. Because you’re giving yourself time, you’ll also be less likely to stutter or to pause and need to use um, filler words. Of course this doesn’t mean you have to be way too slow that you’ll send people to sleep!
10. Telling Stories Can Build Your Confidence
Telling stories also conveys confidence. And this works in tandem with speaking more slowly. You see, one of the reasons we speak quickly when we are talking in public is to get it over with more quickly. We speak quickly because A) we aren’t naturally fond of talking in public and we want it to stop and B) we aren’t confident that what we’re saying is compelling enough or interesting enough and we’re worried that people will stop listening if we don’t finish what we’re saying quickly!
But if you tell a story during your speech then this suggests that you are more natural when it comes to holding court and entertaining a crowd. It suggests that you’re enjoying it and that you have confidence in your own ability to entertain. This effect is felt even more strongly if you slow it down. Not only in terms of how you speak but also in your delivery.
That means that you set the scene, you ask rhetorical questions, you use repetition and you create suspense. This is something that the most charismatic people can pull off tremendously and it has a huge impact when done well. Don’t rush to the point, enjoy the moment, linger and have faith in how interesting you are! You can learn this gradually and build your confidence!
11. Gesticulate
Speaking of the most charismatic people, science also has something to say about this topic. You see, in studies it has been shown that people who are rated as the most charismatic and confident, also tend to gesticulate the most. Gesticulation means talking with your hands, it means being animated and pointing, gesturing and pacing around as you speak.
And the reason that this is associated with confidence and charisma, is because it makes us seem more engaged with what we are saying. Now our body language and our words are congruent and our passion can therefore be felt around the room.
The more you gesture as you speak, the more passionate and emphatic you seem to be about what you’re saying. And this is highly engaging and impressive – it makes everyone else perceive it as more engaging and interesting too as well as you appearing confident!
12. Do What Makes You Happy
What’s your passion? What make you happy and like to do when you have spare time? Get out out there, create some space for it and do it. You don’t want to have the pain of regret later because you didn’t have time to do what you love.
Doing what you love helps you be filled with positivity which will in turn gives you happiness, your health and boost your confidence at the same time. You feel like you are have control of your life when you do what you love and thus building that self confidence you need. When you give yourself time to learn what truly makes you happy, you are practicing self care which is as important as it leads you to building that self-confidence.
Here is the secret, when you love what you do and when you’re in your natural element, confidence and charisma starts to radiate through you!
Final Thought
It is important to remember that confidence is built on the choices we make every single day and of course whatever achievements we attain that brings us happiness. Doing these things allows us to see and feel our journey through life is worthwhile, thus boosting our self-confidence even further.
As mentioned earlier, building Self-Confidence doesn’t happen overnight and it needs commitment and consistency. But when you’re determined to achieve it you will be a different person your journey will a transformational one. When you have acquired confidence, you have the power to conquer the world around you.
Implementing all these above practical ways will not stop or cure your problems in one go, but your self-confidence will gradually improve with your consistency.
Finally, keep this in mind that confidence or self-confidence is like running water in your house as someone once said. “You may not know the details of how it works or where it comes from, but it’s painfully obvious when it’s not there.” Why not start today and be on your way to living the life you always wanted.
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