by Simon Pais

Confident Non-verbal Communication

Your non-verbal communication which is more frequently but narrowly referred to as body language, is a universally overlooked area to improve your confidence in communication and general self-perception. The majority of people aim to build their confidence but rarely consider the power of communicating confidence non-verbally.

If you’d like to improve your confidence around women then you have even more reason to read this article. Women love a confident man and they are extremely adept in picking up non-verbal signals. They will pick-up your non-verbal signals that you wouldn’t even have a clue about.

You need to have high self-awareness in order to be aware of your body language. It’s a matter of knowing what you do in certain situations. When you have poor body language others can see fear in you.

Here are four examples of body language that is counter-productive in developing confidence and how you can solve them to not only communicate more powerfully but to internalize the confidence:

1. Moving eye contact – people with low confidence levels rarely make eye contact and when they do, as soon as the other person returns that eye contact the person looks away. You do not look silly looking the other person in the eyes. In fact, you look weirder and would be annoying the other person more so when you do not make eye contact.

Good eye contact will show the person you are listening and that you are interested in what they have to say. However, you can have too much of a good thing. Excessive eye contact is non-verbal aggression. Dr. Peter Andersen, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Body Language, says you will make the other person feel comfortable with about 60% eye contact.

With practice I found that you will develop an intuition or ‘gut-feeling’ when you make the other person uncomfortable. As an example when you make to much eye contact, they’ll begin to not make eye contact with you or maybe fidget. At the moment, too much eye contact probably isn’t your concern as you’re trying to develop confident body language but you still should be aware of the problems with excessive eye contact.

2. Weak touch – otherwise known as haptics, touch involves bodily contact. What haptics we are interested in to develop confident non-verbal communication is mostly the handshake. You will rarely use any other haptics other then a handshake in a normal social situation. It’s not as if you normally go around patting people on the back or stroking their arm. That’s just strange!

What did you feel when someone shook you’re hand with a soft handshake? I bet you wondered if they cared about you at all or if they lacked confidence to show this concern. This is a ‘girly touch’. A good handshake depends on the receiving person. Most of the time you want a firm handshake but occasionally with say the elderly you don’t want to be crushing their hand! When greeting ladies be aware that they don’t have gigantic and hard hands like many men so just go a little less firm. A firm handshake shows you care and is an initial way of communicating confidence when meeting someone.

3. Stay away – looking at body positions relative to one another now otherwise known as proxemics. What I mean by “relative to one another” is the distance between you and the other person. You are most comfortable with an intimate or well known person being close to you as opposed to someone you just met. However, people with low confidence will have a much wider radius of comfort. A more confident person will not show fear when someone “breaks” their comfortable proxemics. This doesn’t mean they are comfortable with the closeness, it just means they don’t show the uncomfortably. They desire the other person to stay away but they cope with the situation.

An excellent example of this that I can remember is two Australian Politicians on October 8 the eve of the 2004 federal election. John Howard was greeted by opposition leader Mark Latham aggressively. While Mark Latham did pull John Howard towards him when shaking hands (aggressive haptics), Latham made his body position aggressive by being extremely close and towering over the shorter John Howard. Despite this, Mr. Howard non-verbally stood his ground in confidence by continuing the handshake and smiling towards the cameras. I’m sure John Howard would have felt uncomfortable but he still gave out signs of confidence.

It was said Latham attempted to get revenge for Howard squeezing his wife’s hand too hard at a press function which I found to be funny! If only they were both able to read this!

4. Carry yourself – the last non-verbal communication technique I feel is valuable in developing confidence is kinesics. It involves body movement. Possibly the most important kinesics in confidence is posture. A slouched posture not only screams an unconfident person, but it has a physical and psychological effect on the person with the poor posture. The physical effect of slouching your shoulders forward is it causes your chest to compress inwards. Your chest compressing simulates expelling air causing you to breathe shallowly. This means if you have poor posture you will have poor breathing.

The psychological effect of poor posture is poorer confidence. Using arguably the world’s best golfer Tiger Woods as an example, he’s taught to maintain good posture as he approaches each shot. By having good posture he is able to breathe correctly and physically get his body into the right state of confidence. From this his mind is able to focus on the shot ahead.

I know once golfer’s lose this state of confidence through poor posture, the affects are surprisingly strong. The golfer’s chest begins to tighten and everything heightens. They then lose their state of control, calmness, and confidence causing poor performance.

The same relates to everyday life. To practice a confident posture, roll your shoulders forward, upwards, and then back down to almost complete a circle. Watch your shoulders as you rotate them and if they are behind to what they were prior to doing the activity and you are comfortable, you’ve done the activity correctly.

Having learnt about these areas of non-verbal communication, all that’s left to do is practice your new skills. Do not make the mistake of no action. Your self development will not progress forward until you move forward. Go out and practice your confident non-verbal communication skills.

by *ejk*

Confidence Is Sexy

He walks down the street with a purpose to his step, and people notice him. He is aware of this. He especially likes the looks he gets from the ladies.

She is sitting on a bench awaiting the 10:15 bus to arrive when she sees him approach from the opposite end of the street. There is just something about the way he carries himself. If she were asked to describe him using only one word, that one word would be: S-E-X-Y!!!!

Confidence is sexy in both men and women. However, the amount of confidence that should be displayed and still considered to be sexy differs between the sexes. Some women have had the misfortune of being labeled cold or uptight for appearing too confident. Whereas the same amount of confidence, when shown by a man does not draw such harsh criticisms.

Confidence sends a message of strength, bravery, competence, and skill to others. These positive qualities tend to attract others to the confident person. People are more likely to look for the guidance of a confident person in times of trouble and crisis. This is because confident people are strongly believed to be more level-headed, able to think beyond emotions when problems or emergencies arise. Confident people tend to rise further in work careers and in other areas of life because their strong belief in themselves results in the trust of others, especially of those who can help them to further careers and social standings.

The appeal of these qualities, so often equated with confidence, (strength, bravery, competence, and skill) hearkens back to the time of the cave man. It was only those cave men who showed great confidence, strength, bravery, competence, and skill against such great adversity, who won the affections of cave women. Confident cave women appealed to cave men because it signaled that she was also quite capable of surviving the harshness of the world they were living in at the time. This encouraged mating between cave men and women, allowing the continuing survival of the human species despite the heavy-perils to life that savage animals and environmental conditions presented for man at the time.

Today most of us live in comfortable homes, safely protected from the elements. None of us has ever had to face-down a lion in a battle for life and limb. Sexual relations are not just for the sole purpose of the continuance of the human species as it was back then. The steady growth of human populations throughout the world is testament to the fact that the human species is not in jeopardy of being lost. Still, we find confidence just as sexually-appealing today as those early cave men and women did.

You can gain the confidence that will get you where you want to go in your career and life. Build your confidence. Walk with a purpose to your step. Draw the attention you desire from the opposite sex with the best known aphrodisiac: confidence!

Did you know that exercise can help boost your confidence levels? Have you ever noticed how the really fit guy in the gym confidently lifting large weights, always seems to have a crowd of gals close to him? Have you wished for that kind of appeal with the ladies? Or how about the woman that men just can not seem to take their eyes off of, out on the dance floor with her tight, toned body, confidently grooving to the music? Would you like to have what she has? You can have the confident and fit body that commands the attention of others, through exercise.

Our society puts such an emphasis on physical beauty that it seems natural that the more fit and physically attractive a person the more confident they will be. Your sex appeal will increase with confidence and your confidence will increase the more attractive you are, and being in shape helps.

So the next time you’re at the gym, hold your head high, even if you’re not feeling so confident about yourself, this simple gesture holds a lot of power and you can certainly fake it. The more confident you feel about yourself the sexier those around you will find you.

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by Ron Sombilon Gallery

Build Confidence With your Voice and Body Language

Body Language

Stand tall. Use your body to project confidence.

When your head is down and your chest is collapsed, you are not depicting confidence. When you’re looking depressed and you’re acting nervously shy, you do not look confident.

Lift your chin up, have good posture, breathe deeply, make eye contact, and give people a firm handshake. This will actually make you feel more confident.

You can do this anytime and anywhere.

Portraying confidence in your physical appearance will, without question, help you feel more confident. Confidence is an emotion. Emotions are generated in the body. So that is where you must start.

Confidence starts with confident use of the body.

This idea applies when you are talking on the telephone, as well.

We recommend that you do not sit at the telephone, whether or not you have a headset. Stand up and walk around a bit.

You need to act confidently in order to think confidently. Walk confidently and be confident.

When you are starting a project, imagine yourself as the master of that activity or topic. Imbue yourself with that person’s confidence until you’ve got it as your own.

Physically reflect confidence. As you act out the physical characteristics of confidence, that same confidence will be projected in your voice. It will be present in all of the ways you present yourself, regardless of how you are interacting with others.

Confident people are confident because they use their body in confident ways!

Find Your Voice

Finding your voice involves the way you speak.

You need to speak in a confident manner. Use words that exude confidence.

Replace timid words such as “if” with words that are more definite, such as “when.”

Use a tone of voice that indicates certainty.

If you want to feel certain, sound certain.

These sounds will trigger in your brain a feeling of confidence.

Confident people are confident because they speak in confident ways!

by JimmyMac210

The Secret to Real Confidence

Sometimes the best secrets are hidden in plain sight. When it comes to developing confidence, there is one “secret shortcut” that took me years to understand, but it’s so painfully obvious that I want to kick myself sometimes for not being aware of it all along. The “secret” I want to tell to you about is acceptance.

Understanding the importance of acceptance requires a little creative thinking. It is important to remember that confidence is never an “all or nothing” situation. We all have confidence to some degree, but it is a fact that some people have much more that than others. It is also a fact, that no matter how low your self-esteem may be right now, you do have some confidence. So it’s a sliding scale, and just for the sake of argument, let’s say that the confidence scale goes from one to ten, with one being least confident and ten being supremely confident.

To further make this point, let’s say that right now your confidence level is a three on this scale, and your friend’s confidence is a six on the same scale. Now, it’s obvious that your friend is twice as confident as you, but at the same time his confidence level is still only a six out of ten, so it certainly could be a lot higher and your friend is very aware of this.

Now here is where the power of acceptance comes into the picture. Imagine that your friend, whose confidence level is a six, feels very bad about himself because his confidence isn’t higher. But let’s say that, unlike your friend, you understand that your confidence level is low, but you feel OK about that, and you’re not judging yourself because of it. In effect, you are saying “my confidence level “is what it is” and I feel perfectly comfortable with that.”

Now, who is going to be perceived as being more confident, you or your friend? YOU ARE! Every single time. Because if you accept your confidence level (no matter what it is) and are perfectly comfortable with it, you are going to come across as much more confident than your friend who does not accept his confidence level. You see how this works?

Another way of saying this would be, no matter what your confidence level is, accepting it and being comfortable with it will instantly make you more confident! Are you having an “aha” moment yet? I know I did when i first began to really “get” this idea. And the irony is, this is such a simple idea. Nevertheless, I overlooked this critical point for many years. Maybe you have too…

But once you understand the importance of acceptance, you can use this knowledge to immediately boost your confidence. All you need to do is begin where you are right now and make it a point to accept your current situation and your current level of confidence. Do NOT feel frustrated with yourself or your situation. Begin with a good feeling about where you are right now at this very minute. After a day or two of thinking this way, you will definitely notice a difference. When you begin any confidence building program from the point of view of acceptance, you are certain to see greater results in less time.

But be warned, if you begin trying to make changes in your life from a position of frustration, or self disapproval, you will find it much more difficult to create the results you want. Find a way to make peace with yourself and your situation where you are right now. Remember, the key to the whole thing is to start by accepting yourself just as you are right now. You absolutely can do this, and it WILL make a difference. Every single time.

Question by d3aDlYgAm3R101: What are some good ways to gain confidence?
I sometimes lack confidence in school and other times have a lot (rarely). I try to get a good night sleep, but that doesn’t really help. What are good ways to gain confidence?

Best answer:

Answer by Healthy Helen
1. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself
When speaking in public it’s common to feel like everyone’s analyzing everything you say. But they’re probably not! Remember the audience hears people speaking in public all the time – you’re not doing anything unusual so they won’t be scrutinizing you. It might help to look at the back of the room, not at the faces looking at you. Also bear in mind that you won’t look as nervous as you feel.
2. Stay calm and use positive body language
Breathe deeply, take your time and talk slowly and calmly. Use positive body language – stand up straight and project your voice.
3. Use props such as slides and charts
This makes your presentation more interesting, and gets the audience’s eyes off you for a while!
4. Make your body language work for you
Up to 80 per cent of first impressions are formed by body language, so make it count. Show you’re interested in what people say by smiling, facing the person, making eye contact, leaning forwards, nodding and generally appearing attentive. You can use hand gestures to emphasise your point and show you’re enthusiastic about what you’re talking about.

Add your own answer in the comments!

Question by Emily: How do I gain confidence in an audition?
I am fourteen years old, and I have an enormous passion in musical theater. I find it exhilarating to be on stage, and have no trouble with that at all. My only problem is that I cannot do auditions. I feel confident seconds before it is my turn to audition, but once I get up there, I try to sing my number, and I completely freeze. My throat closes up, my hands become clammy and sweaty, and I end up apologizing after about three notes, and walking out. I feel crushed, because I dream more than anything else on earth to be on stage, but I simply lack the confidence during auditions. If anybody has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Best answer:

Answer by horserider
practice in front of your dog parent etc. just do your best!

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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Question by SadToday22: What is the best way to regain confidence in yourself?
I used to be very confident in myself, but due to a toxic job & boss who verbally abused me daily, I am now dealing with a lot of emotion and feel I have lost all confidence in myself because of the abuse. How do I get my confidence back?

Best answer:

Answer by let54
though question. This is something you need to solve on your own. My only advice is take risks…

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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Question by hi: Can you be unimaginably arrogant in some aspects and have no confidence in others?
Lets say you walk around really cocky like you are on the top of the world and people should worship you and everything you do is great and right.

Then deep down inside you don’t have the confidence to do what you really want and to get the things you want or even having the confidence to talk to a girl.

This is quite common right?

Or lets say someone projects over confidence and arrogance but in reality has no confidence at all.

Best answer:

Answer by HangingChad
Yes, I find that most arrogant people are in reality very insecure about themselves.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!