How to Seem More Confident
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This is an edited extract from – Step Up: Confidence, Success and Your Stellar Career in 10 Minutes a Day by Phanella Mayall Fine and Alice Olins (Vermilion, £12.99)
When people feel confident they exhibit lots of verbal and non-verbal clues that give off an air of control, contentment and aplomb. Simon Cowell calls this this X Factor and we tend to agree with him. What you’re aiming to achieve (or at least be able to fake) is an aura.
The physical realisation of women with confidence, as we’ll explain more fully further on, is that our body
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language becomes more expansive, we intervene earlier in conversations and we work with a calm, relaxed air. Even faking confidence can make us feel more self-assured. It’s that old belief cycle again: feed the cogs’ confident behaviours (fake or not) and in time they will spin into bona fide confident feelings. If it feels like a charade then that’s because it is – and that’s OK too. In time, these acts of confidence (speaking up in meetings, pitching an unexpected story to the editor) will become self-fulfilling.
Workout- Visualising the
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Confident You
When we have done something confidently – as we now know – we actually become more confident. But what if you could trick your mind into believing that was the case?
(2 minutes) Close your eyes and focus on what it is you’d like to do with confidence.
(1 minute) Focus on your breath: make it even, focusing on the outbreath to calm your body and inner voice.
(5 minutes) Now take five minutes to relax. Imagine the moment twenty seconds after having done what (before) you weren’t self-confident enough to do. Imagine it
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in depth – what actually happened? What were the sounds and smells? What was said? Notice how easy and natural it felt. Now, notice how relaxed and serene you feel being confident in what you’ve achieved.
(2 minutes) Now press rewind. Practise replaying how it went, how calm and self-assured you were – as if you’ve just had that experience, ‘remembering’ in detail how you felt and what you ‘said’ and ‘did’.
When it’s time to do it for real, you will have tricked your brain. It will know the confident you – the one that is
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calm and relaxed in the face of a hurdle it has conquered before. Now you have acted, the circle of increased confidence can carry on.
For more tips see: @TheStepUpClub
And to buy the book click on: http://amzn.to/2cEHonH
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stepupclub - 14 Sep 16
This is an edited extract from – Step Up: Confidence, Success and Your Stellar Career in 10 Minutes a Day by Phanella Mayall Fine and Alice Olins (Vermilion, £12.99)
When people feel confident they exhibit lots of verbal and non-verbal clues that give off an air of control, contentment and aplomb. Simon Cowell calls this this X Factor and we tend to agree with him. What you’re aiming to achieve (or at least be able to fake) is an aura.
The physical realisation of women with confidence, as we’ll explain more fully further on, is that our body language becomes more expansive, we intervene earlier in conversations and we work with a calm, relaxed air. Even faking confidence can make us feel more self-assured. It’s that old belief cycle again: feed the cogs’ confident behaviours (fake or not) and in time they will spin into bona fide confident feelings. If it feels like a charade then that’s because it is – and that’s OK too. In time, these acts of confidence (speaking up in meetings, pitching an unexpected story to the editor) will become self-fulfilling.
Workout- Visualising the Confident You
When we have done something confidently – as we now know – we actually become more confident. But what if you could trick your mind into believing that was the case?
- (2 minutes) Close your eyes and focus on what it is you’d like to do with confidence.
- (1 minute) Focus on your breath: make it even, focusing on the outbreath to calm your body and inner voice.
- (5 minutes) Now take five minutes to relax. Imagine the moment twenty seconds after having done what (before) you weren’t self-confident enough to do. Imagine it in depth – what actually happened? What were the sounds and smells? What was said? Notice how easy and natural it felt. Now, notice how relaxed and serene you feel being confident in what you’ve achieved.
- (2 minutes) Now press rewind. Practise replaying how it went, how calm and self-assured you were – as if you’ve just had that experience, ‘remembering’ in detail how you felt and what you ‘said’ and ‘did’.
When it’s time to do it for real, you will have tricked your brain. It will know the confident you – the one that is calm and relaxed in the face of a hurdle it has conquered before. Now you have acted, the circle of increased confidence can carry on.
For more tips see: @TheStepUpClub
And to buy the book click on: http://amzn.to/2cEHonH
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