Body Language

Improve your Body Language for Confidence

Improving on your body language will certainly help you form a stronger relationship with those around you either at work or personally.

Your body language is giving out a lot of negativity and faulty signals which people pick up and act upon. Once you learn the signals you can change how people feel and react to you or at least reduce negativity.

You have many unspoken signals that are being sent out to others constantly. You are unconsciously speaking another language and you are telling people how you feel about yourself, how you feel about them and your view of the world and you don’t even realise it.

Successful people avoid bad body language like the plague.

Here are twenty tips to look out for!

1. Don’t twiddle or fidget with your hands or fingers. Again when you’re feeling nervous or on edge or anxious, people tend to want to move their hands, touch their face and correct clothes such as straitening a tie or tucking in the shirt into the belt and so on. You speak with your hands; don’t let your nerves speak through your hands. Keep them still.

2. Don’t put hands in your pockets, it indicates that you are hiding something which is usually the way we are feeling which is often negative. We also instinctively hide our hands if we are in trouble, nervous or lack in confidence in any scenario. Just imagine standing face to face in front of someone in authority, there is a tendency to want to hold and fidget with your hands or conceal them from doing so.

3. Never walk around with your head down because when you’re worried, anxious or nervous and especially depressed the head always goes down. Especially in the presence of your superiors, if you are feeling in any way inferior or lacking confidence it can feel natural to want to put the head down. Don’t., always keep your chin slightly up.

4. Hold good eye contact for 10 seconds at a time but don’t stare nor let it be intimidating or aggressive. Try to keep good eye contact but don’t let your eyes dart all over the place. And when you look back into someone’s face briefly look intensely into their eyes and let them feel your confidence. Try not to keep looking down as this shows submission but look sideways as this indicates confidence.

5. Never slouch or lounge about. You never see a soldier leaning all his bodyweight onto one side. Stand straight and upright with some authority and control even if you have no authority in the environment that you’re standing in, just don’t stand in a slouching or slanted way. Confident people never lean or slouch all over the place whether that is sitting down or standing up. Confident people sit and stand upright with shoulders slightly back or the chin slightly up.

6. Walk tall; walk confidently with purpose and direction. Walk in a controlled flowing manner swiftly with large strides. Don’t shuffle along. Don’t rush around or scurry, just walk in a swift and controlled manner keeping your eyes and face ahead of you without looking around.

7. Provide a strong and firm handshake and do not crush the other person’s hand. This will just indicate the other person’s need for dominance or control. It also lacks warmth and sensitivity to how the other person is feeling, especially when you don’t know each other.

Make sure your handshake is firm but balanced. There’s nothing worse than two people engaging in a handshake and overly pressing the other’s hand, as this shows that two egos are now clashing for possibly some upper ground or betterment over the other.

8. Good grooming including fresh breath especially fresh mint or spearmint which indicates you care about your appearance as well as white teeth. Always make sure you are well trimmed. Stubbly beards with nose or ear hair is a real turn off and indicates lack of grooming consideration or caring about your own appearance in the eyes of others.

Make sure you smell good with good quality aftershave and or deodorant but don’t overdo it. Overbearing strong smells of aftershave or perfume is an indication of insecurity.

9. Never walk past people without smiling. Even if you don’t know them, just a gentle placid smile indicates you’re a pleasant person or you’re not worried person because worried or stressed out people are unable to smile. Confident people will always smile and often give you a great beamer!

10. Never ever cross or fold your arms in front of you. You just never ever should do it. It indicates negativity on all sorts of levels. At the simplest level you are indicating that you are putting up a barrier in front of the person you are talking to you. And what makes this worse is if you’re smiling and indicating some sort of sincere conversation. It indicates a contradiction to how you’re really feeling. Crossing your arms is something you do when you’re cold, negative and nervous or need to protect yourself. Folding or crossing arms wherever it happens is a display of self guarding.

11. Avoid excessively yawning. If you’re tired and need to keep yawning do it discreetly.

12. Never ever gossip with people you hardly know. You just don’t do it. Gossiping and spreading others personal details around along with your own interpretations of the mannerisms or behaviours indicate you cannot be trusted with anyone’s information.

You’ll find that the people who you will never hear talking about anybody are often the people that can be trusted. Because they don’t have a need to be talking about others personal information, like she did this and he did that and did you know this and did you know that.

This indicates a loose undisciplined and untrained mind. Keep control over your tongue and don’t let it become loose.

13. When standing still in front of people, stand with a wide stance but not too wide but just enough to show strength and confidence. A doorman or nightclub bouncer does not stand with his feet together and often you will see him standing with his legs wide apart as this indicates power and dominance and sense of position and power, does it not?

14. Tonality of speech is important. Don’t shout or scream but talk in a steady and controlled evenly heard voice. Can you recall the really loud person in the workplace who you often regularly hear roaring with laughter at the top of their voice?

Does that not indicate insecurity? Also when speaking, make sure you know what you’re saying and deliver it well and straight to the point without umming and erring as this often indicates you’re making it up as you go along or you are not sure of what you are saying.

15. In certain conversations you might want to reinforce your words with open handed gestures such as gesticulating your point with palms up but never palms down as this is dominant and controlling. Only talk with your hands in a deliberate manner when you choose to as opposed to nervousness in an uncontrolled way. Upwards open palms show honesty when talking.

16. Try to communicate with an open body using open gestures or openness of body position. Meaning legs and arms open as opposed to crossing anything over closing oneself off.

17. Avoid watching the clock.

18. Turning yourself away from others when they are talking.

19. Exaggerated nodding, or excessively praising or complementing others signals anxiety about you needing approval.

20. Avoiding eye contact makes it look like you have something to hide.

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