How to feel & appear more confident
Confident: feeling or showing certainty about something.
For people who struggle with self-doubt, confidence can be difficult to attain. While some may possess this quality effortlessly, it is possible for anyone to develop it if they are committed to enhancing their self-esteem.
When it comes to both appearing and actually feeling more confident, there are a few mind and body language tricks that one can try out. I’ll let you in on a little secret here too, a lot of successful people and I mean a lot only became truly confident because they started out by faking it. Gaining confidence really is a “fake it till you make it” kind of attribute. To give you a starting point for gaining some confidence, I have broken down confidence tricks into two categories; the physical and the mental. Have a read and give these tips a try and definitely let us know if any work out for you!
PHYSICAL TRICKS
There are a few different physical tricks to gain confidence that you can use. To understand these we must first look at body language.
Body language is most of the time a subconscious way of indicating how we humans feel in a situation. If we are stressed out, we will fidget. If we are anxious our shoulders will shrink down and we avoid eye contact. But if we are confident, we stand up tall, we take large strides and we make eye contact.
Eye contact is one of those things you just have to do in order to give off confidence. It will be tricky at first but once you start to practice it confidence will flow through you. When you first meet someone, do your best to make eye contact with them and you will exude confidence all while forming a better connection with them. Obviously, I’m not saying stare at them or anything too intense but make a more conscious effort to hold their gaze.
Good posture will take you far in life and help you to walk straighter, stand taller and appear confident. Other indicators that will make you appear outwardly confident are those such as looking up when walking, having relaxed shoulders, not touching your hair or giving a firm handshake. If you can implement some of these into your day-to-day interactions, they are surefire ways to appear confident. By changing the way your body moves, it will not only give you the look of confidence but also help you to FEEL more confident.
Another interesting physical trick is using power poses. They are the best way to deeply connect with your inner power. You don’t have to do the typical power poses, you can find a pose that helps you to feel connected to yourself and breathe deeply into it. The purpose of these poses is to help you unlock your inner strength and encourage you to bring it with you all day. You can practice all these tricks behind closed doors until you feel ready to bring them out into the world.
Making lists of things you have achieved or things in your life that you are proud of will give you a tangible way of gaining confidence. Being able to see and touch your achievements is a great way to remind yourself of how far you have come. You can also write down your strengths and talents to remind yourself of who you are and what you value about yourself. Finding things you are good at and practising them will boost your self-confidence and this will bleed into other aspects of your life.
MENTAL TRICKS
Say goodbye to limiting beliefs and hello to visualisation! Limiting beliefs come into play when we tell ourselves over and over the same negative story about ourselves. We start to believe we are less capable than we truly are and our confidence begins to crack. Self-doubt and anxiety are the opposite of confidence so shifting your perspective away from limiting beliefs towards goal setting and achieving will help repair some of that broken confidence. Taking steps to reinforce your confidence will eventually make you feel genuinely more confident.
Improving your self-talk is a great way to shift your inner perspective, when you start to tell yourself positive things your brain will actually start to believe it. Asking better questions of yourself will give you better answers, for example; rather than asking yourself “Why can’t I do anything right?” ask “What do I need to better achieve my desired results?”.
Since our brains often allow us to trick them, positive visualisation is a nice way to take advantage of that. When you constantly visualise something your brain will eventually take it as fact thus when that situation comes to fruition these visualisations are doubly reinforced as fact. The brain reads these facts and translates them to self-confidence. What we choose to focus on is so important as we get back what you put out.
Practising gratitude is something we have covered in previous blogs so if you want to read further be sure to check those out. But to quickly summarise - gratitude is key to developing confidence, when you start to feel grateful for your body and your life your mindset will shift from a negative state to one of positivity. A positive mindset allows you to exist in a universe that makes no mistakes and provides you with what you need. The less negativity you see the more confidence you will develop. In order to become confident you need to have a can-do attitude, when you fail you need to pick yourself up and not let the failure overwhelm you. Making mistakes is inevitable, but what really matters is what you do with that failure. You need to grow from mistakes and take them as a lesson. This way your confidence will increase as you start to back yourself a bit more. See your failures as opportunities to grow rather than as a major losses.
My final note to you all is that if you feel as if you have given some of these suggestions a chance in the past and your confidence is still staying low, the best idea is to talk to a mental health professional. There is never any shame in seeking a little extra help. Mental health pros are pros for a reason, so do your best to listen to them with an open mind.