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 Boost Your Confidence
Confidence is an emotion that you feel, and as such, it’s pretty difficult for others to see if you’re confident or not just by looking at you. Phrases such as, “He looks confident” are commonplace but what specifically are people seeing to make such assumptions and how can you benefit from it? To answer these questions why not try the following little experiment. Go on, it will only take a minute.
- If I asked you to behave like a person who was experiencing sadness, what would you do? Have a go now, pretend you are an actor/actress and notice what you do to get into the role.
- Do you hunch your shoulders, frown and look down towards the floor? These are just some of the things that you might do. How do you feel doing this? Chances are that you will feel sad.
- OK, stop that and start to behave like a person who is experiencing happiness. As an actor/actress, how do you portray happiness?
- Do you stand up tall with a smile on your face and look straight ahead? Many people who experience happiness do a similar thing. Do you feel happier now?
The point of this experiment is to prove something to you. How you hold yourself (your physiology) has a direct effect on how you feel. So just as when you feel sad you will tend to hold yourself in a certain way, by changing how you hold yourself you can change the way you feel, hopefully to something better!
So what feelings do you want to experience more of?
Nearly everyone wants to feel more confident in certain situations, even the people who you think are already confident want more. Now there are many ways that this can be achieved however by adapting the experiment above, you can learn a quick and easy way to feel more confident whenever you want to.
- When it’s safe to do so, close your eyes and imagine someone who personifies confidence to you. They could be a movie star, sportsperson or anyone you know. Notice everything you can about this person and see how they sit, stand and move. What qualities do you notice about how they hold themselves, their facial expressions, mannerisms and their breathing etc?
- As you get a good impression of how your confidence model holds her/himself, in your mind, float up out of your body and down into theirs. What does it feel like to be in their body, how does their confidence feel? Start to move your body exactly the same way as your model does and copy everything that you believe they do confidently.
- As you do this become aware of any differences in how you feel. Do you feel as confident as your model? If not keep looking for what they do that you may not have noticed yet. As you become aware of anything new, add it to how you are already holding and moving yourself.
- When your model is feeling really confident, become aware of what they say to themselves and how they say it. Is it encouraging, supportive, and warm? Does this increase their confidence further? How confident do you feel as you do this now and how confident will you be after years of doing this?
- Anchor this feeling. (If you know how)
This can be a fantastic exercise to boost how you feel about yourself quickly and effectively because your mind and body are intrinsically linked. Your mind can effect your body and your body can effect your mind. As you practice exercises like this not only do you feel more confident in the present, your mind and body will start to learn new ways to act helping you to become a more confident person for the rest of your life.
Do not underestimate what can be achieved from an exercise like this. Allow yourself to do this for 5 minutes a day and you may soon notice beneficial changes take place in how you feel.
This technique can be adapted in lots of ways. When you can do the above exercise easily why not experiment for yourself and discover what works even better for you.
As always, if you want any more help please do call +44 (0) 2476 739 022.
Have fun and be confident!
The following book may help you.
Instant Confidence by Paul McKenna >>
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