Now, do a quick scan: Are your shoulders slumped? Is your jaw clenched? Are your arms crossed over your chest like a shield?
If a stranger walked into the room at this exact moment, what story would your posture tell them?
Whether you think you’re communicating or not, your body is constantly talking. In fact, research suggests that a massive 55% of what people think of you comes purely from body language—not the words you speak.
Your posture might be screaming “I’m insecure” or “I’m bored” without you whispering a word.
Want to change the narrative? Here is how to take control of your non-verbal signals and project instant confidence.
Why and How to Appear More Confident
You may wonder why you need to “appear” more confident when appearances shouldn’t matter so much.
Why should you worry so much about what your body language is communicating?
Because appearances matter whether we like it or not, and what you communicate with your body makes a huge difference in your self-confidence and ultimate success in life.
You can appear more self-assured and boosts your confidence by better understanding and managing your body language.
By adjusting your posture and gestures and sending other appropriate signals in specific situations, you receive positive feedback from those around you.
You feel assured you aren’t sabotaging your success by neglecting the perceptions of others.
More importantly, when you practice powerful, positive body language, you’re sending messages to your brain to reinforce confident feelings. Confident body language actually makes you feel more confident and appear more confident to others.
Let’s look at some of the ways you can alter your physical presentation to seem more confident and feel invincible.
Credit: iStock
1. Practice smiling.
Smiling not only makes you more attractive and trustworthy, it also improves your health, your stress level, and your feelings about yourself.
Smiling slows the heart and relaxes the body, and it releases endorphins that counteract and diminish stress hormones. It also has been shown to increase productivity while performing tasks.
According to several studies, smiling can trick your brain into feeling happy, even when you feel sad as you’re smiling.
Action Steps: When you wake up in the morning, stand in front of your mirror and smile at yourself. Yes, you will feel foolish, but practice smiling to yourself for a minute or two.
When you’re in your car or alone at your desk, practice smiling. Be aware of the impact smiling has on other people, and remind yourself to smile more often with others.
2. Pay attention to posture.
You practice good posture when your position sitting or standing creates the least amount of strain on supporting muscles and ligaments. When you sit, your back is straight, your rear is against the back of the chair, your feet are flat on the floor, and you bend your knees at a right angle.
When standing you should be able to draw an imaginary straight line from your earlobe through your shoulder, hip, knee and the middle of your ankle. Good posture is essential for avoiding back and neck pain, prevent muscle aches and keeping your bones and joints in proper alignment.
It opens airways to ensure proper breathing, which allows all of your organs and tissues to function properly. Good posture also reflects a confident demeanor to others. When you stand straight, with your shoulders back and head held high, you look self-assured and poised.
Action Steps: Notice your posture right now, as you are reading this post. Are you slumped in your chair with your back bent, neck forward, and shoulders hunched? Practice sitting and standing with correct posture.
Look at yourself in the mirror and make adjustments so you feel the proper alignment of your body. Wear a rubber band on your wrist or some other physical reminder to stand or sit up straight.
Ask a family member to notice your posture and comment when it’s bad. When you enter a room of people or a meeting, correct your posture before you walk in the room.
3. Use power poses.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy revealed in her 2012 TED talk that standing or sitting with certain poses for as little two minutes raises testosterone levels and lowers cortisol (the stress hormone).
These poses can impact your performance, as well as your success at work, with clients, and in your relationships. Many of the poses involve opening your body and taking up space, making you feel more confident and powerful.
Says Cuddy, “Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources.”
Action Steps: Watch Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on body language. Make note of the various power poses she explains. You can also read this article to see pictures of people in these poses.
Select two or three poses that you might practice by yourself and in professional situations when you want to appear and feel powerful. Practice doing these poses every day for a few weeks until they feel natural.
4. Use engaged body language.
If you want to reach an agreement, win the girl, persuade someone to your side of things, engaged body language gives you more confidence and sends powerful messages to others to win them over.
Engaged body language involves using open gestures, smiling and nodding, and mirroring the expressions and movements of the other person. Once you’ve reached your goal, seal the deal by offering a firm handshake, saying “thank you”, and using good posture.
Action Steps: Think about upcoming situations in which you want to reach an agreement or win someone over. Practice the encounter beforehand using confident body language.
In casual conversation, practice mirroring expressions and movements so you feel confident about it before your big meeting.
5. Remember your arms and legs.
Crossing your arms suggests you feel defensive, self-protective, and closed off. Crossing your legs away from another person can suggest you dislike them or feel discomfort.
Crossing your ankles can signal you’re holding something back and not expressing it (unless you’re a woman who was taught to do this as a “ladylike” position).
If you clasp your hands behind your back, you might be saying you feel bored, anxious, or even angry. Hands clasped and crossed over the genitals is a self-comfort gesture that reveals vulnerability or shyness. Tapping your fingers and fidgeting tells others you are bored, impatient, or frustrated.
Action Steps: Begin to pay attention to what you do with your arms and legs in certain situations. Notice how you are feeling when your arms and/or legs are crossed. What is the other person saying or doing, and why might you feel defensive or closed off?
Begin to change the position of your arms and legs. Put your hands in your lap when sitting and by your side when standing. Crossing your legs at the knee for comfort is fine, as long as it’s not combined with crossed arms.
6. Have a strong handshake.
A firm, solid handshake is a universal sign of confidence, and everyone, including women, should have one. A handshake should be strong, but not crushing, offered with a cool dry hand and a few up and down shakes, as well as a few seconds of eye contact.
It is a sign of mutual respect from both parties and makes a great first impression. A sweaty, limp, “dead fish” handshake has the opposite effect. Whether or not you feel confident, a firm handshake will boost your feelings and make others see you as more confident.
Action Steps: Ask several people you trust to assess your handshake. Have them make note of your grip, the feeling of your palms, whether you pump their hand appropriately, and if you make eye contact.
Make note of their feedback, and practice your revised handshake with people you don’t know.
7. Dress for confidence.
Credit: iStock
In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, subjects who wore doctors’ lab coats scored higher on attention-related tasks than did those who did not.
Clothes do make a difference in how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us. Dressing confidently is more than wearing the trendiest fashion. It’s about feeling good, looking poised and being self-assured and having confident posture in all situations.
It’s also about sending the right message to the people you are with. You can boost your confidence in yourself and your attire when you dress appropriately for the occasion, know the audience, reflect your personal style, and understand the impact of color.
Action Steps: Does your wardrobe add to your confidence or diminish it? Do you often find yourself in sloppy clothing or not dressed appropriately for the situation? Dressing well will add to your confidence, even when you are feeling down.
Determine your personal style by looking at magazines or blogs to see what you like. Learn about the impact of wearing certain colors by reading this article. If necessary, purchase a few classic pieces to add to your wardrobe that makes you feel confident and powerful.
8. Stop fidgeting.
Over 500 managers surveyed by Adecco USA, a workforce solutions company, said that one-fifth of the candidates they’ve rejected for a position were fidgeters. They felt it betrayed a lack of confidence and a lack of preparation for the interview.
Fidgeting, like twirling your hair, shaking your foot, or biting your nails, is an obvious sign of anxiety and nervous body language. These nervous movements draw attention away from what you’re saying and distract people from your message.
Avoid touching your face or neck which also indicates you feel anxious. Fidgeting sends the message loud and clear that you aren’t self-assured.
Action Steps: Do you have some regular fidgeting habits? Have others commented on these behaviors in the past? Start to pay attention to how you fidget and what triggers these actions. Think about what you can do to replace this nervous body language when you encounter the trigger.
You could hold your hands in your lap, use your hands to gesticulate when you speak or hold a pen and pad. If you shake your foot or knee, place both feet flat on the floor. When you feel the urge to fidget and have nervous energy, take a few deep, calming breaths.
9. Practice appropriate eye contact.
Eye contact suggests you’re truthful, engaging, and approachable. Confident eyes impart a sense of intimacy in your interactions and make the other person feel more positive and connected to you.
However, too much eye contact can send the signal you’re aggressive or maybe even a little strange.
When eye contact goes from gazing to staring, it makes people uncomfortable and actually activates their sympathetic nervous system. According to Michael Ellsberg, author of The Power of Eye Contact: Your Secret for Success in Business, Love, and Life, “In order for eye contact to feel good, one person cannot impose his visual will on another; it is a shared experience.”
Action Steps: If you feel uncomfortable making eye contact, start to get comfortable by practicing with family and friends. Look them in the eye for about 50–60 percent of the conversation ideally.
When you break eye contact, look to the side rather than down. Looking down signals lower-status, shame, and/or submission. As you get more confident with eye contact with family and friends, practice it with people at work or out in public.
10. Move around confidently.
There’s a difference between fidgeting nervously and moving around the room or a stage with confidence.
If you stand stiff as a board when you speak, you appear stiff and uncomfortable. But if you’re able to take steps away from the podium or your chair, you show you own the room rather than feeling owned by it.
Action Steps: Confident speakers can comfortably walk or move naturally, whether it’s to point something out on a presentation or get closer to the others in the room. Practice moving this way in a more informal setting to gain confidence.
Of course, you don’t want these movements to look staged or awkward. Moving just to show you can isn’t the goal. You move for a purpose or to show you feel comfortable in the setting.
11. Watch your feet.
You subconsciously tend to point your feet toward the leader of a group or a person you’re attracted to. If you can’t wait to leave or feel uncomfortable, your feet point toward the door.
Action Steps: If you want to signal that you’re engaged in a conversation or interested in the people to whom you’re speaking, point your feet their way.
12. Take up space.
When you enter a room or social event, don’t allow your nerves to show by physically closing yourself off and taking up as little space as possible. You may feel like you want to disappear, but your body should communicate otherwise.
Even if you feel awkward, try to appear as though you are the person everyone’s been waiting for. Not in a cringe-worthy way but in an “I feel so comfortable here” kind of way.
Action Steps: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and your arms uncrossed. If you’re sitting, have your feet firmly planted, and lean back as though you’re at a good friend’s house.
13. Keep your chin up.
Literally and figuratively. When you speak, walk in a room, or listen to others, keep your chin tilted upward a bit as you stand or sit tall. Become a presence in the room by looking like a proud lion rather than an ostrich trying to bury its head.
Action Step: Keep your head held high, and allow your confident posture to reinforce a positive attitude which also shows through to others.
Examples of Insecure Body Language
Now you know how to give off confidence with your body gestures and movements, but let’s reinforce what you want to avoid with your body language.
Here are some insecure body language habits you want to abolish:
Lack of eye contact
Tucked chin
Hunched shoulders
Crossed arms
Turning away from others
Fidgeting
Foot shaking
Lip licking
Hands in pockets or otherwise hidden
Nail-biting
Hand wringing or shaky hands
Frozen face or unhappy face
Rocking on your feet
Stepping backward
Pacing
If you notice any of these in yourself, the first step toward change is awareness. Now that you are paying attention to these nervous body language behaviors, you’ll be prepared with ways to change them.
Remember, when all else fails, just take a deep breath, stand up taller, and smile. Those three steps will make you immediately more calm and comfortable.
Final Thoughts
You don’t have to wait until a professional or social occasion to work on the skills we’ve outlined here. Practice them in safe settings around your family and friends.
Even when you’re by yourself, remember to sit up straight, smile, walk with confidence, and stop fidgeting. You can even put sticky notes around the house to remind you to work on specific new habits.
The more you practice, the more confident you’ll feel to apply these skills when you need them most.
Barrie Davenport is the bestselling author of Confidence Hacks: 99 Small Actions to Massively Boost Your Confidence and the creator of the Simple Self-Confidence course.
