Understanding Body Language

The way in which we position our bodies can have an influence on how we might feel about ourselves. When we are feeling insecure, this is often reflected in our body language, where it’s more closed off. Ensuring our posture is more upright and open poses can increase the perception of confidence, even if we don’t feel it straight away.

Bring your awareness to what body poses are you doing throughout the day. Are you retreating with crossed arms and trying to feel small? Can you sit up a little higher, bring your shoulders back and open up your posture? While adopting a more open pose & confident body language won’t fix your confidence issues overnight, perhaps being aware of the way you might sit or stand can influence the way you wish to interact with the world.

The theory of power poses (Standing like Wonderwoman or Superman for 2 minutes) by Amy Cuddy found that it can influence the way we perceived ourselves. Participants’ self-reported that they felt powerful, confident, and positive after the activity. It’s a small exercise you can try while you work towards building long-term confidence in yourself.

If you’re interested in reading more about what follow-up studies found on the impact of power poses vs. power poses you can read more about it in this article link https://theconversation.com/the-idea-that-power-poses-boost-your-confidence-fell-from-favor-but-a-new-review-of-the-research-calls-for-a-second-look-180541

While the consensus is that there can be influences on your posture impacting how you feel, it’s not as simple as changing the way you may sit to dramatically boost your confidence. It may be a small factor you can consider changing while you work on the many layers that can impact how we feel confident, positive or strong. It all starts with little steps, what’s one thing you want to try today?