5 Ways to Instantly Appear More Confident

Today I’m going to teach how you to appearmore confident.

Why? Because confidence is one of the mostimportant skills in life that you can acquire (other than learning to use theForce, obviously).

Now, I’m not teaching you this stuff justso you can become some sleazy pickup artist. I’m teaching you because I knowhow important even a little bit of confidence can be in everyday situations,whether it’s negotiating with your boss for a raise, buying a car, giving apresentation, or meeting your fiance’s parents.

We’re naturally attracted to and will haveour opinions swayed by those who have (or appear to have) a lot of confidence.Nerds usually get the short end of the stick in the “naturally confident”department, but that doesn’t mean we can’t acquire it like a new skill,Matrix-style! If you’ve started losing weight, I’m sure part of you still feelslike the old you, even if you’ve changed physically – it’s time to take pridein yourself and truly be comfortable in your own skin.

Here are five steps that you can take tostart seeing a difference immediately.

Stop slouching

If you can develop good posture, a traitthat always seems to bypass nerds, you’ll appear approximately 145% moreconfident within seconds (I definitely made up that stat, by the way).

I used to have awful posture through mostof my life (which caused lots of lower back pain). It wasn’t until I made aconscious effort to focus on standing up straight and strengthening my lowerback that the pain went away. In order to stay on target, I actually hung a“POSTURE!” post-it on my bedroom door so I wouldn’t forget each morning. Here’show you can get started:

Stand up as TALL as you can, like you’re apuppet and somebody just pulled the string that’s attached to the top of yournoggin

Pull your shoulder blades down and back asfar as possible – This will feel really weird if you spend a lot of timehunched over a desk

Pick your chin up and look straight ahead –stop looking down while walking around, there’s a whole world out there for youto see

If you have trouble pulling your shoulderblades back, try doing two back exercises (say, lat pull downs and dumbbellrows) for every one chest exercise in your workout. This will build up themuscles in your upper back and allow you to actually pull those shoulder bladesback together. Want something easier? Try standing with your heels, butt, andhead against a wall, and then pull your shoulder blades back until they’retouching the wall too. Do this daily and increase the length of the stretcheach time.

If you spend all day in a chair, try this:sit down in your chair, and then stand back up WITHOUT having to rock forward.If you have to lean forward even slightly, you’re doing it wrong. Sit straightup like you’re always ready to stand without having to lean forward. Your lowerback will probably get tired as hell sitting like this because it’s not used tothe new position – work on it. Do planks every other day (working your way upto two minutes), and you’ll have a rock-solid core and incredibly strong lowerback.

This is probably the hardest step of all,as you’ve probably spent years and years developing poor posture without eventhinking about it. Spend a month making a concerted effort to have betterposture however, and you’ll be well on your way to a more confident appearance.Pretty soon you won’t even have to think about it!

Slow down

I am terrified of public speaking.Seriously, I hate being in front of even a small crowd. However, at my old jobI was put on stage in front of thousands of people to introduce bands and Isounded like I belonged up there. You know how I did it? By taking a deepbreath, slowing down, and practicing. I still get really nervous, but I’ve learnedto manage it so well that nobody notices.

What’s the importance of slowing down? Whenyou get nervous, your voice tends to go up a few notes and you’ll talk fasterthan you realize. These are two dead ringers for “scaredy cat.”

I’ll never forget presenting my seniorbusiness proposal back in college. About thirty seconds into my presentation –which I thought was going well – I noticed my friend Deepa in the back of theroom frantically waiving her arms at me, mouthing “SLOOOWWW DOWNNNN.” I quicklyreadjusted my speech, talked WAY slower than I thought I needed to, and tooklonger breaths between sentences. She later told me that she couldn’tunderstand the beginning at all but the rest of it came out perfectly. The restof that class was molded by that presentation, so thanks Deepa for saving myass!

If you get nervous in front of people nomatter how big or small the group, talk slower than you think you need to, anddon’t forget to breathe. In your head it might seem way too slow, but out loudit’s just right.

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