Permanent Zen Blog: How to feel and be confident at will
Confidence is not something people are born with or simply have; rather, it’s something you can create. It’s the feeling of certainty that you can accomplish what you set out to do; it’s an emotion you can train yourself to access in an instant. How you feel is the direct result of your state, and your state is a direct result of how you physically and mentally manage yourself in the moment.
Here are some steps that you can take to access your inner power in order to create a state of confidence instantly:
1. Assert Yourself
Assertiveness is defined as “direct, honest, and appropriate ways of standing up for your rights while respecting the rights of others.” It’s the golden mean between non-assertiveness and aggressiveness.
If you ever feel like a doormat, you’ve probably just been non-assertive. The goal of non-assertive behavior is usually to avoid conflict; however, the habit of non-assertiveness can erode your self-respect and make you feel spineless, resentful, helpless, or out of control. Non-assertiveness, endured too long, can easily morph into aggressiveness. When you act aggressively, you deliberately violate or ignore the rights of others or carelessly disregard their feelings.
True assertiveness requires a mixture of compassion and boldness. You need to be able to empathize with the other person's situation and respect her rights. At the same time, you need to keep your own goals in mind and have the moxie to insist that the other person understand your situation and rights.
2. Project your Voice
Voice projection is the strength of speaking whereby the voice is used loudly and clearly. It is a technique employed to command respect and attention, as when a teacher talks to a class, or simply to be heard clearly.
Breath technique is essential for proper voice projection. Whereas in normal talking one may use air from the top of the lungs, a properly projected voice uses air properly flowing from the expansion of the diaphragm. In good vocal technique, well-balanced respiration is especially important to maintaining vocal projection.
To test your diaphragmic breathing, take a few deep breaths in and out and feel the hand on your belly moving out and in as you do so. Now place your hands, with fingertips touching, across your belly, just below the ribcage. Breathe in and feel your belly move out, then breathe out making a hard, quick “Huh” sound – you should feel your belly contract as the sound comes out. Repeat several times.
3. Watch your posture
You know that the way you feel affects your body, and your posture has a powerful impact on your emotions and on the way that others perceive you as well. Research at Harvard and Columbia Business Schools, shows that simply holding your body in expansive, "high-power" poses for as little as two minutes stimulates higher levels of testosterone - the hormone linked to power and dominance - and lower levels of cortisol, one of the stress hormones. If you are feeling insecure or depressed, don't round your shoulders, slump, and look down. Hold yourself erect and expand your chest so that you tell your mind to feel upbeat and assured.
In addition to causing hormonal shifts in both males and females, the researchers found that these powerful postures lead to increased feelings of power and a higher tolerance for risk. They also found that people are more often influenced by how they feel about you than by what you're saying. So before you go into a situation in which you want to project your most confident self, start by standing up straight, pulling your shoulders back, widening your stance and holding your head high.
4. Using Pauses While Speaking
Researchers at the University of Michigan reviewed recordings of 1,380 introductory telephone calls made by 100 telemarketers of both genders, researchers analyzed the speed, fluency and pitch of the speakers’ voices and then correlated that information with their success rates in convincing call recipients to participate in a survey.
Overall, the study found, the ideal manner of speech is not too fast but not too slow, not overly animated, and punctuated with frequent, short pauses. A speed of about 3.5 words per second was considered ideal. Slower or faster speakers weren’t as effective at getting people to listen to their pitch. Researchers also found that people most responded to speakers with an even-keeled voice, as opposed to animated speakers with lots of pitch variation in their voices.
5. Feedback, not Failure
Feedback is positive. Failure is negative. A clear difference exists between these two ways of thinking. Feedback enables us to learn from our mistakes – for instance, we have to put in more efforts, change our behavior or adjust our priorities. Failure, on the other hand, evokes adverse feelings such as erosion of confidence, a poor self image or lack of incentive to improve which inevitably leads to low level of achievement.
Let’s take two dance students, Jane and Jill. Jane performs poorly in her endeavors to produce the required grace. Instead of looking upon it as a feedback that more diligent efforts are required to obtain better results, she is beginning to feel like a failure. Such feeling perpetuates her poor performance and pretty soon, she is going to quit being a student. Jill, on the other hand, thinks differently. She convinces herself that to achieve top performance, she has to consistently exert herself for improvement. One can see the sharp contrast here that separates a self-fulfilling failure and a winner who eliminates failure from her thinking to achieve success.
There is no such thing as failure, only useful results. 'Failures' are feedback that we need to correct our way towards a desired outcome. We can negatively label what we do which falls short of success as ‘failure’ or alternatively, we could view it positively as feedback or information to enable us to seek revision or improvement
And also…
6. Keep a Success Log
It’s easy to focus on what’s going wrong and ignore what’s going right. A central premise of the theory that underlies cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is that negative or unhelpful thinking contributes to negative mood states. Therefore, a common tool used by cognitive behavioral therapists is to help clients acquire evidence that does not support a negative thought.
Increase your awareness of your strengths and talents through keeping a success log, so that at some point during the day you are filling yourself with pride and a high sense of achievement. A success Log will document convincing evidence that the world is not so black or white — and that life is not as bleak or dangerous as you once one thought. Over time, you will accumulate more and more instances that support a more helpful way of viewing your life circumstances. Writing your successes down will also help you to recall that genuine emotion and will help you embody it if you need it at a later time when you're entering the meeting room or walking up to the podium
About Permanent Zen
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