4 Ways to Increase Your Confidence From The Inside Out

Do you want more confidence? If so, it’s not surprising. The reality is that we all feel doubts about ourselves from time to time, and confidence is an acquired trait that takes time to build. Here are 4 ways, including tips for each, to increase your confidence from the inside out.

1. Reframe Your Self Talk

In case you’ve never heard the term “self talk,” PsychologyToday.com provides a good description: “…an inner voice that provides a running monologue throughout the day and even into the night. Cheerful and supportive or negative and self-defeating, this internal chatter is referred to as self-talk.” (Click here to read the full description.)

When you engage in negative self talk, it can lead to low self confidence. But the good news is that negative, defeating self talk can be reframed and become positive, confidence-boosting self talk.

How to do you do this?

Here are 3 ways to reframe or turn around the inner voice so you can become more confident on the inside:

1. Imagine you’re talking to someone else.
What would you say to a friend who was feeling self-defeated and had low confidence? Imagine talking to yourself as you would talk to that friend. Better yet, imagine what you would say to your child or a young niece or nephew. You would want to use positive, helpful language that instills confidence in and conveys encouragement, right? Of course, you would! Agree to let your inner voice say to you what you would say to that friend or child.

2. Rephrase with “How can I?”
Let’s say your manager just tasked you with something that you’ve never done before, and your inner voice is asking, “What if I can’t do this thing my manager wants me to do?” Simply rephrase it to, “How can I do this thing my manager wants me to do?” Instead of being self-defeated, doubtful, and having low confidence, you’re now being constructive and curious. And once you’ve figured out how to do something you’ve never done before, you’ll gain confidence in your abilities.

3. Declare the facts and truths.
First, write down the negative statement you hear your inner voice telling you. When you see it written there on the page in front of you, it holds a lot less power over you because now it’s not just inside you. It’s outside you. Next, write down all the facts and truth that you can think of to overcome the negative statement.

Here’s an example: My writing might not ever be good enough to get my book published…

• Fact: I won’t know if I don’t try.
• Truth: If it’s not good enough, I can keep working hard to improve my writing skills, especially if I get feedback on what to improve.
• Fact: It isn’t always the best writers who get published because that’s not the only measure of a book’s worth.
• Fact: The publisher will have an editor who will edit the book no matter how wonderfully written it is.
• Truth: I can hire an editor, and I can self-publish my book.

Self talk, when it’s not addressed or turned around and reframed, can fester and grow inside you. It poisons your self confidence.

2. Watch Your Language

There’s self talk, and there’s what we end up saying aloud. These two are often closely tied together! That’s because your internal landscape escapes and shapes your external landscape. What’s happening inside of you, your attitude and self talk, will be reflected in the way you present yourself. So, even if you don’t mean for it to, your self talk will sometimes escape from your mind to your lips and be spoken aloud.

Here are 3 things to watch out for and avoid:

1. Frequently using phrases like “I can’t” and words like “but.”
When you notice yourself saying “I can’t” and “but,” notice how you’re putting limits on your mind (remember, “How can I?”). Confident, successful people operate in the realm of possibilities not in the realm of excuses, and they don’t use self-defeating language.

2. The habit of “um.”
We all do it sometimes, but using “um” overmuch is a nervous habit that makes you appear less confident. When you feel the need to pause while talking, actually pause rather than use “um” as a filler. The good news is it’s just a habit, and it’s something you can change with a little conscious effort.

3. Expressing your opinion meekly and without conviction.
If your opinion is important enough to be shared with others, then it deserves to be presented confidently. Pay attention to how you phrase your statements. For example, instead of saying “I believe this would be the best way to proceed,” you could say, “Based on the research I’ve done, I strongly recommend this approach.” Also, express your opinion as a statement rather than tilting your voice into the tone of a question.

3. Use Your Body To Speak

Your internal landscape escapes your lips in the form of the words you speak, but it also influences what you’re saying nonverbally because your body talks too. Is your body language saying what you want others to hear?

According to Jan Hargrave, international body language consultant and author of Let Me See Your Body Talk, the “Research suggests that only 7 percent of the meaning in any conversation is contained in the words spoken.” That means that 93% of what you say is not the actual words you use.

Here are 5 ways to use your body to speak with confidence:

1. Strike a power pose.
One easy power pose to increase your confidence is the superhero pose. Simply stand with your feet hip distance apart and place your hands on your hips. Stay in this pose, standing “in your power,” for one to two minutes. If you want more power poses, check out Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk. She discusses body language in general and shares the research on how standing or sitting with certain poses for as little two minutes raises testosterone levels and lowers the stress hormone cortisol. About 10 minutes in, she shows a series of power poses that you can easily do anytime you want to increase your confidence. She also shows a few “low power poses” to watch for in case you’re positioning your body unconsciously in these poses instead.

2. Make eye contact.
Julia Thomas shares this helpful statistic and advice in her article, Unconfident Vs. Confident Body Language, on BetterHelp.com, “The right amount of eye contact is 50% to 60% of the time by the standards of U.S., European, and Australian business people. Try this trick: Look into the other person’s eyes just long enough to see what color their eyes are.” When you’re not making eye contact, you can look away to the left or right, or you can look up. Just don’t look down. Looking down might signal that you’re deferring to the other person, which, of course isn’t showing confidence. But it can also be misinterpreted in many ways, all of which send negative messages, such as you’re withholding information or lying, you’re embarrassed, or you’re ashamed.

3. Harness the power of smiling.
Smile big – until your teeth show. In his book, The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz points out that if you don’t feel like smiling, then that’s when you must. He says, “Try to feel defeated and smile big at the same time. You can’t.” Cuddy wanted to answer the question: Can you “fake it ’til you make it” and actually experience a behavioral outcome that makes you seem more powerful? As she reveals in her TED Talk, “We smile when we’re happy. But also, when we’re forced to smile by holding a pen in our teeth, it makes us feel happy.” Her research proves that consciously using nonverbal expressions, such as smiling, do govern how you think and feel.

4. Steeple your hands.
In her book’s chapter called “Presenting Yourself: Developing Articulate Body Language in Presentations,” Hargrave describes this hand gesture as “the tips of all five fingers of each hand are touching in a steeple position at his chest, at his waist, or lowered near his hip area. It is the kind of inconspicuous gesture that gives a speaker a boost of confidence to go on with his presentation.” Naturally, you can do this anytime and in any context, while sitting or standing and whether you’re speaking or listening.

5. Be still and attentive.
Avoid fidgeting. Your body will convey the energy of nervousness and lack of confidence when you do things like shifting from foot to foot, jiggling the coins in your pocket, and twirling your hair. Also beware of bouncing your leg, drumming your fingers, or tapping a pen, all of which might just mean you’re feeling impatient, but these nonverbals can also signal nervousness.

4. Take Action

In his book, Schwartz says that “confident action produces confident thinking” and that you should “Act the way you want to feel.” Here are 3 additional confidence-building suggestions from the chapter that he devotes to this topic:

1. Sit in the front.
Whenever you attend a meeting (or church, class, etc.), sit as close to the front as you can. You might feel more conspicuous by sitting in the front, but “remember, there is nothing inconspicuous about success.”

2. Walk 25% faster.
“Throw your shoulders back, lift up your head, move ahead just a little faster, and feel self-confidence grow.”

3. Speak up.
At every open meeting you attend, speak up and make a comment or suggestion or ask a question. Join your local toastmaster’s club to practice feeling more at ease about speaking up.

Keep in mind that none of us arrive in this world with confidence and that, as humans, we all share the need to be accepted by others. Confidence is a feeling of self-assurance that arises from repeated demonstrations of ability over time. It’s up to you to take the action necessary to increase your ability and increase your confidence. Once you do that, you will, one day, become so confident that you’ll forget what it was once like to lack confidence.

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Angela Loeb is into self-development & personal empowerment, being awed by nature, writing, and being inspired by superhero stories. She’s also been a career expert for more than two decades.
http://angelaloeb.com
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