Conveying Confidence

When used in sequence, the head, face, and eyes proffer the clearest indication of attitudes toward other people. Because of this fact, the head, face, and eyes are critical to express confidence and project magnetism. For the man or woman with low self-esteem, it will prove advantageous to learn to cast yourself in a more self-assured manner, which in turns makes you feel more confident about yourself.

Tilting your head, face, and eyes in the direction of another person makes you appear more magnetic. As everyone knows, messages accompanied by eye contact are more favorably read by receivers than are messages sent lacking eye contact. Less well known is the fact that eye contact alone may improve the sending of messages but it is not necessarily a major contributor to magnetism. Warm, amiable eye contact is unbeatable for magnetism.

Creating warm eye contact is no mean task. To improve this subtle dimension of nonverbal behavior, make a tape of somebody on TV who maintains warm eye contact. Observe the person's glance quite a few times. To practice the person's warm eye contact, first imagine the expression in the person's eyes, then emotionally emulate it. The eye contact may appear warm in part because it is escorted by a smile.

Grand Postures

Posture likewise shares a message, and supplements or detracts from personal magnetism. Leaning toward another individual suggests that you are happily disposed toward the person and to what he or she has to impart. Leaning backward betrays the opposite. Openness of the arms or legs serves as an important gauge of liking or caring, which in turn may quickly augment to magnetism. Normally, people maintain closed postures (arms folded and legs crossed) when discoursing with people they dislike.

The charismatic individual relentlessly restricts communicating animosity unless it is soundly advisable to do so, for instance, when intimidating an antagonist. Rearing up straight (assuming a person is able-bodied) generally reflects solid self-confidence and charisma. Personally magnetic people hardly ever stoop or slouch when relating with others. Shrugging the shoulders is another aspect of posture that can expand magnetism. Accompanied by a warm facial expression, a shrug will often be interpreted as "I'm not totally buying it, but why not give your thought a try?" The "shrugger" is therefore giving the other individual some bit of encouragement. A subtle gauge of the potential contribution of posture to charisma is that people tend to overrate the height of people they perceive to be magnetic. This positive distortion often goes by a magnitude of two inches. A physical factor contributing to this insight is that magnetic people typically rear up straight, thus appearing roughly two inches higher than their slouching counterparts.