Public speaking - Tips to Look More Confident Even if you are not

 

The art of becoming a crowd puller is learnt overtime and a few make overs in the style of presentation this article gives a few important tips to develop public speaking skills with ease.

1. Surround You with the Right People

Be around the right people. When you are around people who are negative and always pessimistic, sooner or later their energy will pull you down as well.

When you are around positive people, sooner or later their energy will rub off on you as well and you will become much more positive with your life also. If you can’t meet super positive and successful people in real life, follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

If they have a YouTube channel, consume all their videos. If they have a Blog, read it religiously. The bottom line is, in the age of the internet, you have no excuses.

2. Focus on Your Strengths

When you focus on your weaknesses all the time, your self-esteem is bound to be very low. The reason is that if you only focus on your weaknesses, soon you will be convinced that you are good at nothing. But the truth is there is always one thing or a group of few things that we are all immensely talented at.

The root of low self-esteem is when people focus on all the things they suck at, when you figure out the one thing you are amazing at, and there is always that one thing, you will realize how blessed you are, there is no one like you.

3. Use Affirmations

Affirmations basically mean repeating positive statements to yourself over and over again to the point that you start believing them. Affirmations program your subconscious mind with extreme confidence about your ability to do something.

The belief that you can do something wins you half the battle as compared to others who doubt they can’t do anything because only the people who believe they can do something, put in the effort to make it a reality.

Muhammad Ali said, “It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief and when that belief becomes a conviction, things begin to happen!”

4. Understand the Concept of Subjective Reality and Be a Hero

The concept of a subjective reality is a bit hard to understand but it is one of the most revolutionary strategies you can use to build confidence. The basic idea behind subjective reality is that you are the center of the universe that your consciousness creates for you, and in many ways, your life is like a movie where you are the hero.

A hero faces obstacles in his or her movie but they are still a hero. A hero faces numerous villains in a movie but at the end of the day they are still the most important person in the plot.

This is one of the most powerful cognitive strategies you can use to build confidence. You can learn more about it here: An Amazing Psychological Tactic for Super Confidence

5. Groom Yourself Properly

Start paying attention to the way you carry yourself. It will work wonders on your self-confidence. Even if you are blessed with Greek God looks, if you are unkempt you won’t be liked by people and that will affect your self-esteem.

Take a look at yourself and see if there is something you can change with regards to your appearance. If you are a man, you can experiment with your hairstyle and also see whether a beard suits you or not.

If you are a woman, you have many other options to experiment with your looks. Different people like different looks and frankly fashion trends do change with time. So just experiment and find what works best for you. Once you do, stick to it, until you can find something better.

6. Dress Well

Again, this changes depending on the occasion and fashion trends regarding dressing change with time as well. Always make sure you are dressed for the occasion and wear clothes that fit you well.

You can be a millionaire or a potential Greek God in terms of looks, and yet many people will judge you harshly if you look unkempt.

7. Start Public Speaking

Public speaking is said to be one of the biggest fears of many people. Many people are relatively comfortable if they were asked to speak to the same people one on one, however for some reason, put the person on stage and they begin to feel they are naked!

However, if there is one activity that will desensitize you to the fear of what people think about you the quickest, it is public speaking.

Losing that fear will make you super confident.

8. Talks to People You Do Not Know

Strike up a conversation with people you do not know, whether it is in public transit or at a networking event or in any other social situation.

This will help you get past of fear of approaching new people and building your network which is one of the key elements of achieving success of any kind. Of course, you should not come off as overly pushy or a creep. If someone is avoiding you, you should respect their boundaries.

9. Prepare Hard

The best way to gain confidence is through preparation. The more you prepare, the more equipped you are to deal with a particular situation.

The people who are most confident whilst doing something are those who have prepared hard for something to the point that it feels like a fairly easy routine task for them. Prepare for something so well that doing it becomes a piece of cake.

10. Never Compromise on Self Respect

One of the main reasons that people go through having a very low self-esteem about them is because they allow their self-respect to be trampled upon by others at every step.

Whether it is always compromising upon what they want or allowing themselves to be exploited or taken advantage of, if you compromise on self-respect, there is no way you are ever going to be happy.

This is true for anyone regardless of whether they are treated disrespectfully by their spouse or by their boss. This is also true for people who may be very rich and super successful in the eyes of the world but allow their self-worth to be trampled upon by someone else all the time. If you want to be confident, stop compromising on self-respect.

11. Adopt Right Body Posture - Using Power Postures

Your posture plays a tremendous role in the kind of confidence you have. Normally, people who are depressed tend to look down a lot and slouch a lot and people who are confident and happy tend to walk with a straight back and with their head held high; however, the reverse is true as well!

The way you sit or stand can actually influence your confidence levels directly; it’s not always the other way round! According to a research done by Amy Cuddy from Harvard, people who adopted something known as a “power posture” reported feeling better and much more confident even if they were feeling low to begin with. .

12. Build Confidence through Competence

One of the best ways to build confidence is through competence. You cannot learn how to swim by mere affirmations or power postures alone. There are many things in life that need to be developed as a skill.

You develop skill through practice and by becoming better and better at something. You don’t learn how to swim by jumping into the ocean with no one around you.

You become confident by doing things one step at a time, first by learning to swim in a pool under the guidance of an expert trainer, before you progress to deeper depths and eventually progress to swimming in lakes and rivers and finally the ocean.

You just built your confidence through competence! When it comes to becoming confident at a skill, the number one way to become so is through sheer competence.

13. Stay Productive

The more you can stay productive, the less time you have to think and whine about things. As they say, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. If you do not do much or stay idle, you are likely to fall into a destructive pattern.

Or you may feel depressed about things after a while. If you stay productive, you keep your mind occupied and you just don’t have the time to let the negativity sink in.

Furthermore, staying productive gives you the confidence that you are doing something worthwhile in your life; it’s just a matter of time before you start reaping the rewards.

14. Keep yourself Organized

Many people do just as well whilst being disorganized but it is  found that just by organizing something as simple as the place you  work in makes you  much more confident, because it gives a sense of order in your  surroundings instead of everything being totally chaotic and out of control.

That sense of control makes a lot of people feel better. Furthermore, any sort of success requires organized systems that repeat what has proven to work in a faster and more efficient way. The more you can keep your life organized, the more likely you are to adopt systems that will improve and accelerate your work productivity as well.

15. Do something that you have been delaying forever

Continuing to procrastinate on something is similar to avoiding what you fear. You procrastinate because you feel lazy or are overwhelmed by the task at hand. Either way, you doubt your ability to get the task done immediately, which is why you keep procrastinating on it.

Continuing to procrastinate only makes the task appear more and more difficult and complex in your mind even if it wasn’t that complex to begin with. Make a decision and do the task and get it out of the way.

In fact get things out of the way as quickly as you can on a regular basis. Your confidence and your belief in your ability to tackle any obstacle will soar!

16. Become Knowledgeable

People fear what they don’t understand. People procrastinate when they don’t understand something. They doubt their own ability to do something when they don’t understand it.

On the other hand, some people might take decisions that are too quick and take blind and foolish risks when they don’t understand something as well.

When you educate yourself and become knowledgeable about something you are contemplating about, you become much more sure and confident of your decisions in life.