How to be confident in yourself: 5 Incredibly Easy steps That Work For All
Presentation is everything. It doesn’t matter how talented, good looking, or intelligent you are, if you lack confidence you’re holding yourself back.
Confidence is the engine behind success. Even in the reasonably low-stakes world of dating it’s one of the most common traits that women are looking for in potential partners.
Likewise, when one looks at the higher echelons of any industry, you’ll not necessarily find the most talented in the field, instead, you’ll find competent, confident, and charismatic individuals.
Like it or not, in almost all areas of life confidence can be the difference between success and failure.
On a rational level we all know that confidence does not correlate with talent, we’re aware that the loudest voices don’t always have the most to share. Yet, the magic-spell of a confident individual can quickly weave a warm and cosy illusion, it can charm away our concerns. Put simply, confidence puts us at ease, it relaxes us.
Given the choice between someone who appears semi-competent and self-assured or a talented but nervous individual, most of us will choose the former.
But what if you lack confidence?
Fortunately for us, confidence is an illusion; it’s little more than a social magic-trick, a hijacking of ancient hierarchical instincts.
When you pull the mechanisms of confidence apart you’ll discover it is ephemeral, it has no substance whatsoever.
This is great news! What it means is that with a little practice anyone can learn to be confident.
The only difference between you and those high-flying confident individuals who seem to breeze their way through life is a little social sleight of hand.
Take it from someone who used to be a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. There was a time when social interactions filled me with dread and the prospect of talking to an attractive woman seemed to be something only a wild-eyed madman would risk. However, when I learned of the illusory nature of confidence, all that changed. Much like the film The Matrix, once you’re aware that you’re living in an illusion it’s impossible to go back.
Like a magic trick, confidence is a series of rather dull and somewhat mechanical actions. Individually, they appear to be nothing special, but when put together they add up to create the illusion of something bigger.
Today we’ll look at just a few steps that will put you on the path to a well-deserved sense of self-confidence.
Let others do the hard work.
As any magician will tell you: magic happens in the mind of the audience. Confidence is no different. This means that confidence is not as hard as you think—you simply need to let others do the hard work for you.
We are all living in a diverse and overwhelming world. The “social jungle” is a complex and shifting environment—the brain is constantly bombarded with data. To survive, the human mind has developed a few lazy tricks, a kind of “psychological short-hand” to help us navigate the world with as little effort as possible.
Social stereotypes are our way of quickly assigning value and character-traits to those around us based upon as little information as possible.
Instinctively we all know what confidence looks like, we have to in order to recognize it in others.
Everyone you meet is constantly doing this, they’re making lazy assumptions based on stereotypes.
So, the first step towards developing a confident place in the world is to investigate your own instinctive rules for recognizing confidence in others.
Write a list of traits that you consider outward signals of confidence. Don’t spend too much time doing this, let it flow as quickly and as unfiltered as possible. Then, use this list as a blueprint for how you’ll present yourself to the world. Trust me, others will almost certainly be using an almost identical psychological list.
For example, we all agree that “shoulders back” is a far more confident posture than hunched and withdrawn.
You already speak the language of confidence, take some time to study and become familiar with your assumptions and stereotypes. When you do this and adopt your assumptions regarding confidence in the world, you can relax, as the majority of the work will be happening in the minds of others!
Body Language
Body Language is one of the primary tools people use for making snap judgments regarding your level of confidence.
Your personally generated list of confidence traits will, hopefully, include simple assumptions about how a confident individual will hold themselves.
These should include:
This is easy to fake. Simply allow your posture in the outside world to mimic what it would look like when you’re comfortably relaxed in your own home or with close friends.
Fortunately, human brains are easily fooled. We all know that faking a smile can help you feel happier, the same is true with confident body language.
The classic phrase “Fake it until you make it” applies here. You’ll find that an act as simple as sitting with your legs apart, rather than crossed, will greatly boost your natural sense of comfort and confidence. Ignore those who, rather childishly, refer to such postures as “manspreading”, this is simply a cynical attempt to undermine masculinity and confident behaviours.
Relaxed and open physical postures are a common signal of confidence across the animal kingdom and are reserved for those with high status in the pack. Adopting these poses, even if initially faked, will influence your brain chemistry and boost your feelings of self-assurance.
Overthinking
Intelligence is a double-edged sword. We all know the stereotype of the jittery nervous genius. Even though they’re a master in their field, socially they seem timid and weak; they think too much!
Overthinking is one of the curses of those blessed with high intelligence. Sometimes too much self-awareness is a bad thing.
In the social realm, we are dealing with primitive and instinctual reactions, overthinking in these areas will hinder your success. It can interrupt the natural flow of social interaction making you appear awkward and out of place.
Confidence is more like dancing than science, it requires one to relax and let go. As with a dance, a single misstep is nothing to worry about, indeed, it can even add a little colour to a performance, or the chance to have a little fun and improvise.
Equally, social interactions require this same kind of relaxed and fluid approach. Confidence is never scripted, it is always calm and reflexive.
Save your mental energy for where it counts, your work. Socially, remember you’re in a dance, you’re doing it for the fun!
Know your strengths
Know what you’re good at!
Often those with low self-confidence have not spent the time to assess their strengths. After all, how can you feel happy in yourself if you’ve not taken the time to recognise what you’re good at?
Take some time to recognise your strengths. Write a list, make daily morning affirmations to remind yourself of your value.
We all know that preparation before a job interview will greatly increase and help you grow the confidence you have in yourself when talking to your prospective employer. In the same way, affirmations and an understanding of what you love about yourself will keep you constantly prepared for the endless flow of “personality interviews” that occur during each social interaction.
Know what you’re good at and keep it fresh in your mind.
Be a good person
It’s hard to be confident if deep down you know you stink.
As we’ve already discussed, confidence is little more than feeling relaxed in the world and adopting the unspoken instinctual language that broadcasts this.
However, it’s very hard to be relaxed if you’re living a life that you’re ashamed of. Therefore, try to be a good person!
A clear conscience is a seed from which true confidence will grow.
Genuine quiet confidence is born from decency and is a world apart from the crass arrogance that oozes from those who narcissistically and selfishly bulldoze their way through the world.
No amount of body language or social tricks will hide a rotten personality, and most people are very good at spotting the difference between arrogance and confidence.
So, try to live by principles. Be honest and decent. Treat others with respect and value. Behave in a way which makes you feel as if you’re adding value to the world.
Equally, learn to shake off unnecessary insecurities. We’re all our own harshest critics. By being open and honest with others, you’ll soon come to realise that some of the things that you’ve been worrying about (that secret kink, your prowess in the sack, your gaps in your education, your snoring, your body image issues etc.) are all perfectly normal and shared, in one variation or another, by most people.
Honestly sharing your insecurities and quirks will turn them from weights that hold you back to strong foundations that will enable you to hold your head high. Take ownership of who you are, warts and all. You’ll soon find that what you thought were weaknesses are actually spices that add flavour to your personality, making you all the more appealing and charismatic.
Remember, a good person isn’t a perfect person, a good person is someone authentic and trying their best in a complex and imperfect world. Strive to be kind, honest, and better yourself; as a result, confidence will be the fruit that grows naturally out of such behaviours.
Confidence is the engine behind success. Even in the reasonably low-stakes world of dating it’s one of the most common traits that women are looking for in potential partners.
Likewise, when one looks at the higher echelons of any industry, you’ll not necessarily find the most talented in the field, instead, you’ll find competent, confident, and charismatic individuals.
Like it or not, in almost all areas of life confidence can be the difference between success and failure.
On a rational level we all know that confidence does not correlate with talent, we’re aware that the loudest voices don’t always have the most to share. Yet, the magic-spell of a confident individual can quickly weave a warm and cosy illusion, it can charm away our concerns. Put simply, confidence puts us at ease, it relaxes us.
Given the choice between someone who appears semi-competent and self-assured or a talented but nervous individual, most of us will choose the former.
But what if you lack confidence?
Is there a way to learn the skills of self-assurance?
Confidence is an illusion - How to become confident
Fortunately for us, confidence is an illusion; it’s little more than a social magic-trick, a hijacking of ancient hierarchical instincts.
When you pull the mechanisms of confidence apart you’ll discover it is ephemeral, it has no substance whatsoever.
This is great news! What it means is that with a little practice anyone can learn to be confident.
The only difference between you and those high-flying confident individuals who seem to breeze their way through life is a little social sleight of hand.
Take it from someone who used to be a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. There was a time when social interactions filled me with dread and the prospect of talking to an attractive woman seemed to be something only a wild-eyed madman would risk. However, when I learned of the illusory nature of confidence, all that changed. Much like the film The Matrix, once you’re aware that you’re living in an illusion it’s impossible to go back.
Like a magic trick, confidence is a series of rather dull and somewhat mechanical actions. Individually, they appear to be nothing special, but when put together they add up to create the illusion of something bigger.
Today we’ll look at just a few steps that will put you on the path to a well-deserved sense of self-confidence.
Let others do the hard work.
As any magician will tell you: magic happens in the mind of the audience. Confidence is no different. This means that confidence is not as hard as you think—you simply need to let others do the hard work for you.
We are all living in a diverse and overwhelming world. The “social jungle” is a complex and shifting environment—the brain is constantly bombarded with data. To survive, the human mind has developed a few lazy tricks, a kind of “psychological short-hand” to help us navigate the world with as little effort as possible.
Social stereotypes are our way of quickly assigning value and character-traits to those around us based upon as little information as possible.
Instinctively we all know what confidence looks like, we have to in order to recognize it in others.
Everyone you meet is constantly doing this, they’re making lazy assumptions based on stereotypes.
So, the first step towards developing a confident place in the world is to investigate your own instinctive rules for recognizing confidence in others.
Write a list of traits that you consider outward signals of confidence. Don’t spend too much time doing this, let it flow as quickly and as unfiltered as possible. Then, use this list as a blueprint for how you’ll present yourself to the world. Trust me, others will almost certainly be using an almost identical psychological list.
For example, we all agree that “shoulders back” is a far more confident posture than hunched and withdrawn.
You already speak the language of confidence, take some time to study and become familiar with your assumptions and stereotypes. When you do this and adopt your assumptions regarding confidence in the world, you can relax, as the majority of the work will be happening in the minds of others!
Body Language
Body Language is one of the primary tools people use for making snap judgments regarding your level of confidence.
Your personally generated list of confidence traits will, hopefully, include simple assumptions about how a confident individual will hold themselves.
These should include:
- Head held high
- Shoulders back
- Straight back
- Sits with legs apart, arms uncrossed
- Maintain eye contact
This is easy to fake. Simply allow your posture in the outside world to mimic what it would look like when you’re comfortably relaxed in your own home or with close friends.
Fortunately, human brains are easily fooled. We all know that faking a smile can help you feel happier, the same is true with confident body language.
The classic phrase “Fake it until you make it” applies here. You’ll find that an act as simple as sitting with your legs apart, rather than crossed, will greatly boost your natural sense of comfort and confidence. Ignore those who, rather childishly, refer to such postures as “manspreading”, this is simply a cynical attempt to undermine masculinity and confident behaviours.
Relaxed and open physical postures are a common signal of confidence across the animal kingdom and are reserved for those with high status in the pack. Adopting these poses, even if initially faked, will influence your brain chemistry and boost your feelings of self-assurance.
Overthinking
Intelligence is a double-edged sword. We all know the stereotype of the jittery nervous genius. Even though they’re a master in their field, socially they seem timid and weak; they think too much!
Overthinking is one of the curses of those blessed with high intelligence. Sometimes too much self-awareness is a bad thing.
In the social realm, we are dealing with primitive and instinctual reactions, overthinking in these areas will hinder your success. It can interrupt the natural flow of social interaction making you appear awkward and out of place.
Confidence is more like dancing than science, it requires one to relax and let go. As with a dance, a single misstep is nothing to worry about, indeed, it can even add a little colour to a performance, or the chance to have a little fun and improvise.
Equally, social interactions require this same kind of relaxed and fluid approach. Confidence is never scripted, it is always calm and reflexive.
Save your mental energy for where it counts, your work. Socially, remember you’re in a dance, you’re doing it for the fun!
Know your strengths
Know what you’re good at!
Often those with low self-confidence have not spent the time to assess their strengths. After all, how can you feel happy in yourself if you’ve not taken the time to recognise what you’re good at?
Take some time to recognise your strengths. Write a list, make daily morning affirmations to remind yourself of your value.
We all know that preparation before a job interview will greatly increase and help you grow the confidence you have in yourself when talking to your prospective employer. In the same way, affirmations and an understanding of what you love about yourself will keep you constantly prepared for the endless flow of “personality interviews” that occur during each social interaction.
Know what you’re good at and keep it fresh in your mind.
Be a good person
It’s hard to be confident if deep down you know you stink.
As we’ve already discussed, confidence is little more than feeling relaxed in the world and adopting the unspoken instinctual language that broadcasts this.
However, it’s very hard to be relaxed if you’re living a life that you’re ashamed of. Therefore, try to be a good person!
A clear conscience is a seed from which true confidence will grow.
Genuine quiet confidence is born from decency and is a world apart from the crass arrogance that oozes from those who narcissistically and selfishly bulldoze their way through the world.
No amount of body language or social tricks will hide a rotten personality, and most people are very good at spotting the difference between arrogance and confidence.
So, try to live by principles. Be honest and decent. Treat others with respect and value. Behave in a way which makes you feel as if you’re adding value to the world.
Equally, learn to shake off unnecessary insecurities. We’re all our own harshest critics. By being open and honest with others, you’ll soon come to realise that some of the things that you’ve been worrying about (that secret kink, your prowess in the sack, your gaps in your education, your snoring, your body image issues etc.) are all perfectly normal and shared, in one variation or another, by most people.
Honestly sharing your insecurities and quirks will turn them from weights that hold you back to strong foundations that will enable you to hold your head high. Take ownership of who you are, warts and all. You’ll soon find that what you thought were weaknesses are actually spices that add flavour to your personality, making you all the more appealing and charismatic.
Remember, a good person isn’t a perfect person, a good person is someone authentic and trying their best in a complex and imperfect world. Strive to be kind, honest, and better yourself; as a result, confidence will be the fruit that grows naturally out of such behaviours.
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Dream specialist and psychological researcher. I'm the author of best-selling lucid dreaming guidebook, "Are You Dreaming?". I also work as a sleep science consultant and dabble in YouTube. It's my passion to share the subtleties, science, and psychology of the human experience. I also have a soft spot for dogs in hats.