Self Confidence Through Body Language

When building self confidence, many people focus solely on the mental attitude and completely forget about the physical. Confidence of any sort is a combination of mental and physical processes.

If you want to have more self-confidence then it is important that you understand how your physiology affects your confidence levels and how to use your physiology to become more confident.

The word emotion comes from the Latin word emovere which means moving and displacing. Even in English it is motion with an E in front of it. Basically this tells you that how you move your body determines how you feel.

Try it right now. Sit or stand with your head slumped forwards looking down, your spin curved, your shoulder slumped inwards and see how you feel.

Do you feel full of self confidence?

Probably not because this is how a depressed person holds their body.

Try this … sit (or stand) with your back straight, your shoulders back, your stomach in, your chest out, your head upright looking forwards and tell me how you feel.

I would imagine that standing like this you feel more confident. Think for a moment about confident people - Superman, Wonder Woman, Oprah, Arnold Schwarzenegger - and look at how they stand and sit. Their physiology is exactly that which I've just described to you. Why? Because it makes them feel more confident.

If you don't have a lot of confidence then standing or sitting like this will feel strange simply because you are not used to it. If you practice this enough it will become second nature and you will find yourself with a confident physiology without having to think about it.

Initially, you are going to have to think about it and remember to consciously hold this self confident physiology. I'd recommend you study some confident role models. It doesn't matter if they are fictional characters from TV or movies or really people, so long as they are confident. Just watch James Bond walk and you will see how he is confident. Does he let his shoulders slump forwards and look depressed? No.

Copy their physiology and practice standing in that way. You may be a bit shy at first so do it at home to get the hang of it. Once you are used to it, then you can take it outside to public places. Notice how differently you feel when you use this self confident physiology. Notice also how differently people react to you.

Whilst self confidence is a mental process, it does come from your physiology. The more you use a confident physiology, the more confident you will become longer term. It won't be long before you find yourself using the confident physiology without even thinking about it.