If I told you right now that you are looking amazing, you look beautiful, will that boost your confidence? In all probability, it will. You see, confidence is not just a feeling.
It's an actual skill that can be built by taking the right kind of actions. And it's also not just a mindset. There is a huge physical component to confidence.
The more confident you look, the more confident and competent you are perceived to be. That is why today we are talking about 13 super easy research-backed ways that can make you look and then eventually feel more confident, even if you're currently struggling. And you can come back and refer to these whenever you are going through a low-confidence phase. This is something called the enclosed cognition effect. It suggests that what you wear can impact your mood, your confidence and how other people perceive you.
When you dress well, it creates a psychological association with confidence and with success, both in your mind and in the minds of others. And that also influences your behaviour. So go ahead, wear an outfit that makes you feel empowered, that makes you feel good in your own skin, even if it is a simple change like wearing a structured jacket or accessorising or putting on makeup.
Any simple thing that can instantly make you feel good, make you look good in your own skin. And you can take it a step further by dressing up in something that will get you looks or get you attention in public. Now, I don't mean revealing clothing.
Don't wear that. Just something dressier than usual. For example, let's say that you are going to your kirane wala shop or you're going to the market to buy groceries.
Dress up and go. It basically makes you stand out. And this signals to your brain that...
you are worth standing out because you are giving yourself permission to be seen, to be heard, to take up space. And that is where confidence building starts. Sometimes, even when you are not in the best mood, just by putting on a smile, even if you don't feel like it, you actually start to feel better.
Smiling activates neural circuits in your brain that are associated with happiness and with positive emotions and also with confidence. So even forcing a smile can trick your brain into releasing these feel good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, etc, which lead to boosting your mood and therefore improving your confidence. If you're ever in this space where you are doubting yourself, just go to a mirror, look at yourself and smile at yourself. Maybe give yourself a high five as well.
So whenever you are having this bout of underconfidence, let's say you have a presentation to give and a few moments before that you're feeling not so confident in your own skin, go to the bathroom mirror, look at yourself and smile at yourself. Sometimes when you are nervous, you must have noticed that words start to feel more rushed and it makes you even more unsure of what you're going to say. You fumble, you make a mistake and that further diminishes your confidence. So when you start to feel like this, what you want to do is slow down a little bit. Just take a pause, slow down and start speaking slowly.
Just do that act of speaking slowly. And what that does is basically it gives your brain time to organize your thoughts. And when your thoughts are more organized, you feel more sure, more calm in the way that you are speaking. You are not just rushing to get to the next sentence.
You're actually taking your time to make a coherent sentence. And that... projects confidence that also makes you feel more confident in your own skin. Also keep in mind that pauses while speaking are not a bad thing.
Pauses are important when you speak. They give context. They also signal to other people that you are sure of what you're saying. You just want to convey it in the most efficient manner.
A couple of ways that you can improve this aspect of your personality is to pace your words by pausing after each sentence. So after you speak each sentence, pause for a sec. second or two. You can also record yourself to hear the difference between rushed and calm speech.
You can record yourself while you are reading, read out loud and record yourself speaking and that will help you understand how you speak and whether you need to increase or decrease your speed of speaking. Eye contact is a non-verbal cue that signals confidence, it signals trustworthiness, it builds connection. it activates the social areas of your brain making both you and the other person feel more present in the moment and feel more engaged with each other.
Now eye contact can be hard for people who are introverts who have not had a lot of exposure in communicating with people and it's also hard when you are somebody who feels shy or if you're not sure of your position in the social dynamic, right? So in that case, whoever you are speaking to, start by holding eye contact with them for just three seconds, right? Whenever you're speaking with them, just look them in the eye for three seconds and then you can look away while you're making a point, make it feel like it's a story.
You also don't want to stare for too long, you don't want to just stare at them continuously for a minute and then become this person who looks creepily at everybody, right? If that is also not possible, if looking in their eyes for three seconds is also something that's very very uncomfortable to begin with, start by looking at their eyebrows like right here or under their eyes like right here. So you're not directly looking at them in the eye and what that does is while it will make them feel like you're looking at them in their eyes and that builds that connection from their end, it also puts you a little bit at ease and you don't feel like oh my god my entire world is about to crumble. And by the way, aka means also known as.
I believe somebody had asked me this a while back in the video, so just clarifying. Your body language influences your mind, your emotions. So taking up space is rooted in the idea of embodied cognition, which basically states that our physical posture and our gestures affect our mental health. It's not just mind affecting body, it's also body affecting.
mind, right? So when you take up space, you signal to your brain that you are dominant, you are in command, you are assertive. This actually has been shown to impact your hormone levels also.
So it lowers cortisol when you do power poses, when you do confident poses, it reduces the stress hormone in your body, as opposed to let's say when you're hunched, or when you are like this, right? That signals to your body that you're in a stressful environment. And that's why your body is reacting this way.
It apparently also increases testosterone levels. Testosterone is a hormone that's associated with confidence, with assertiveness and expansive postures actually increase the production of that hormone, making you feel more powerful. Now, this does not mean that a woman will start feeling like a man or a man will suddenly be raging around filled with testosterone. No, that is not how much testosterone is released in your body.
It's just this sensation that happens that makes you feel more confident in your own skin. So how do you do this? One is by standing tall, standing straight, standing with your back straight. Don't be hunched over.
Don't shrink yourself when you're communicating with other people. Don't cross your arms and stand like this, right? Whenever you're feeling actually stressed out in a social situation also, just practice this.
Take a deep breath, straighten your back, you know, lower down your shoulders and pull your chest up. And that will instantly make you feel a lot better. It will make you feel more comfortable in your own skill and thereby it'll boost confidence. Move with purpose, use expressive gestures. A lot of you have commented on how you like how I use my hands in videos.
And that's generally how I speak when I'm even communicating with other people in real life. This is how I speak. I use my hands a lot.
And I've always been this person who uses her hands to communicate. So this is expressive gestures. You are not just communicating with words, with what you're saying, with your expressions, but also your body language. And this shows that you are not afraid of taking up space. And this doesn't just influence how other people perceive you, it trains your brain to feel more powerful, more grounded, more self-assured and that's always a great thing for boosting your confidence.
Now this is going to sound silly but giving yourself a high five in the mirror each morning and then bucking yourself up in the mirror before you have like an important thing coming up can be a really great confidence booster. You must have seen people do this in movies a lot, right? If they have an important event coming up, they have an important presentation coming up, or they have to go on stage, they will go in the mirror, look at themselves, and they'll hype themselves up.
They're not just doing it for fun. It's actually, there's like scientific evidence backed on this. When you do this, you are actually telling yourself that you're worthy, that you have confidence, that you've got this.
You are signaling to your brain that, hey, you know, nothing can beat me. I have got this. And that definitely boosts confidence. Try it. the next time you have a presentation or you have to go to college and give a speech in front of your class or something like that hype yourself up in the mirror the more you do this the more natural it will start to feel initially it might feel a little bit awkward and that's absolutely all right anything new feels awkward anything you try for the first time feels awkward over time it doesn't anymore right and another way to make this feel less awkward is to basically high five yourself in the mirror every morning i have also spoken about this in a previous video this is a technique that was given by Mel Robbins at least that I know of.
I got to know of it from Mel Robbins and basically you just high-five yourself in the mirror each morning and that signals to your brain that oh my god you're starting the day on a great note and this is going to be an awesome day and that is definitely a confidence booster. This practice also strengthens your sense of self-effectiveness. Your belief that you can accomplish the tasks and challenges that are handed to you by life, right? I know it sounds like a small gesture and a weird gesture, but it really sets the tone for your confidence when you do it repeatedly. Self-deprecating language basically reinforces the negative beliefs you have about yourself.
It lowers your self-esteem, your brain starts to believe what you repeatedly tell it. Even if it is just in jest meaning even if it is just as a joke and that diminishes your sense of self-worth over time. What you want to do instead is shift to a more positive or a neutral sort of language when you are talking to yourself and when you're talking about yourself.
That rewires your brain to perceive yourself as a more confident and a capable person. Small ways to do this is whenever you catch yourself using negative language just reframe it right there and then. If you see somebody else using it. negative language for you reframe it right there and then stop consuming humor on social media that is self-deprecating right that is i think one of the biggest ways in which we keep ourselves stuck in this loop of thinking negatively about yourself you are a sum of what you consume and that includes the content that you're consuming so if you're constantly consuming self-deprecating content that is what you're going to believe about yourself and that takes a hit on your confidence whether you like to admit it or not it definitely does does and that is not what you want okay the light outside is going I am quickly going to turn on my softbox so that you can see me properly when I record the rest of this video So now if you're already stuck in that zone or if you're somebody who's been doing this for so long that you don't even realize when you start using self-deprecating language, what are some things you can do? One is to just surround yourself with positive language.
So stuff like daily affirmations, create a Pinterest board of affirmations and read them first thing in the morning. Unfollow all the accounts that do self-deprecating humor that messes with your mental health more than you realize. Another thing you can do is replace your negative self-talk with constructive criticism.
So every time you get a thought that says I'm not good enough, turn it into constructive feedback. So if you think you're not good enough, let's say you think you're not good enough because you scored XYZ on a test or because your project did not get the required numbers in performance from your boss, right? Go ahead, reframe that and give yourself constructive criticism on how you could have improved that it's basically detaching your self-worth from what other people are saying about you from what your thoughts are saying about you to something that's more constructive right you are not your project you are not bad because your project was bad it was just your project that was bad and that differentiation is very important Now I have picked this up from two places. One is of course Mel Robbins book which is the five second rule and the second is this TED talk and I'll leave a link to it in the description as well. So both of these people basically tell you that whenever you start to feel stuck or scared to do something, count down to five in your mind and then immediately take that action, right?
This basically helps disrupt your brain's default state of overthinking. So a lot of the times our lack of confidence happens because we start overthinking or sweating the small stuff, right? Let's say that you have to go in office and give a speech for a party or maybe you have to go on stage and give a speech, right? If you build up all of these scenarios in your head where you're constantly thinking, oh my god, how am I going to do this?
Oh my god, what if I do this? What if I fall? What if something falls on me? What if I fumble? What if people judge me?
And once you enter this loop, you're constantly in that loop of overthinking. So following the five second rule, basically right before you go on stage, you count down to five and you just immediately go, your brain does not have time to process the overthinking. It basically breaks that pattern of thinking and immediately puts you into action mode. It shifts your focus to action.
And overrides that fear response in your brain. So the fight or flight response, overrides that habit. Whenever you're procrastinating small tasks, or whenever you're stuck in this loop of overthinking right before taking a huge action, just do this.
Whenever you're nervous, just do this. Count down to five and immediately move towards that action. 99% of the times, you will not even remember that you were overthinking. Simple.
It follows the same principle as the five second rule. The idea is to give yourself 20 seconds to take action. And this basically pushes you towards action oriented psychology. When you act quickly, you don't have time for fear or doubt to take over.
You basically bypass that overthinking loop and you bypass your brain's natural hesitation, which is a fear response generated by the brain's amygdala region. This basically brief moment of bravery can push you past that. initial discomfort. It will help you build confidence because you're just taking small, small action continuously.
As soon as you override that fear response and you take that action, 99% times you'll realize that you can actually take that action. Anything that would have led you to not take that action because of overthinking would have not been true actually. But if you had let your brain's fear response, if you had let your brain's overthinking stop you from taking that action, that would have cemented the older belief in your brain that would have cemented that earlier spot of hesitation in your brain as telling your brain that you are not good enough to do that, right? So when you give yourself just 20 seconds and take action, you just override that fear response.
And it is so so so helpful in boosting confidence. And the more you do this, the more you realize that you can do this. And then that just becomes an internal belief system in your brain that you are confident. So the next time you are afraid to do something, take a deep breath, count to 20 and just take that. Action.
Take charge of your life. Become proactive with the things that you want. What does taking charge or taking a seat at the table mean? Most of us, when we go through life, we go through life on autopilot. We are living in the background, right?
We are always afraid of being seen. We hide in the corner in office meetings. We put our head down in class when the teacher is asking a question because we don't want to be picked first. When you keep doing such actions repeatedly, it basically signals to your mind that you don't deserve to be in positions of power, that you don't deserve to be in places where you can be the leader, where you can take the lead.
And the only way for you to change that is to assert your leadership, is to actually take charge. So the next time that an office meeting happens, put yourself in the center, make your voice heard, give an opinion. don't just fade away into the background. The next time your college teacher is asking for people to volunteer for a college project, put your hand up, take that charge, put yourself into positions where you will be noticed.
Earlier, I never used to believe that this actually makes a difference, but it really does, right? It makes a difference literally, and it makes a difference figuratively also. Literally because It makes you seen, it makes you heard, people will start to notice you, people will start to notice you for the important things. If nobody knows you exist, how are they ever going to notice you for important stuff, right?
It's an act of assertiveness, it is an act of taking back your power. Psychologically, it reinforces your sense of inclusion, it reinforces your sense of competence. It makes you believe that you are competent enough to do this.
And when you start to believe that you're competent enough to do something, that boosts your confidence, it boosts your confidence in group settings. It's a small way of stepping up into your authorities. This is actually a great hack for people who struggle to strike up conversations in group settings, in public, with strangers, etc. The more you start to assert yourself, the more you start to make yourself be seen in such situations, the more you will be able to strike up better conversations that improves your communication as well. Now, this tip is especially helpful for days where you are feeling down, where you're doubting yourself.
Not all days can be similar. Even somebody who is confident, I consider myself to be a pretty confident person, but there are days when I will have my moments of self-doubt. There are days when I will feel low, when I will feel like, oh my God, I am not doing anything right. I don't know how to go about this. I feel like an imposter.
Those are the days when you need to take out from your arsenal your list of past. achievements, right? So I do this by saving you guys'messages that you send me in your DMs, the comments that you guys leave. I have created a folder with screenshots of all the lovely stuff that you guys have said to me and I have kept it because honestly on the bad days, this is like a warm hug. It's like a boost of confidence that you guys give me and I absolutely, absolutely love that.
It reinforces this belief that I know what I'm doing. I know where I'm going and I don't need to be so unsure of myself all of the time, right? You can create an actual physical jar of stuff like this. You can write down the things that you achieved, put it in a jar and anytime you're feeling low, you can take out and read a chit and that will boost your confidence. It will boost your sense of self-worth.
It's very, very powerful. I promise you. Reflecting on your past achievements like this, reflecting on the good stuff that you have been through, basically triggers your brain's reward system right it boosts your dopamine levels and that boosts feelings of accomplishment that boosts your pride and that positive reinforcement actually builds confidence it builds your self-belief and that is what builds confidence so keep a wins journal keep like a wins digital journal paper journal whatever works for you and then celebrate the milestones by rewarding yourself and also make sure that you celebrate your wins as small as they may be i have this notorious habit of just moving on from one goal to another after i've accomplished a goal i will just move on to the next one and i have spent the past year year and a half actually teaching myself to celebrate my wins the small wins as well right so we recently hit 300k subscribers on the channel thank you so much for that by the way um And I went out, I had like a little pastry, I had it with my friends, everybody congratulated me and it wasn't huge, it wasn't something phenomenal but even this small thing is something that I never used to do earlier.
But ever since I have started doing this, ever since I have started celebrating the small victories in my life, it has made them a lot more meaningful. It has also made them last longer in my head. It's made their impression be more impactful and that actually boosts confidence.
I was really surprised by it. So when I look back on that day and I think like oh my god we are like three lakh people on this channel. That is an insane number of people and it gives me goosebumps. It's still giving me goosebumps and that just reinforces my belief in what I'm doing right now.
I have one goal planned for next year and once I achieve it I will let you guys know and also we will do a little Q&A and a live stream once we hit 500k subscribers on the channel. So I'm just waiting for that to happen really quickly and when we get there we shall do a live stream Q&A. I will release a community post for questions that you guys maybe want to send me and we can take all those up.
Fingers crossed we will get there very very quickly. If any of you asked me Aditi what change has had the most profound impact on your personal journey I'm going to say exercise. There are a zillion factors. But the most impactful thing has been exercising.
From the day that I started exercising regularly, there has been a big shift in my mood, in my confidence levels. Initially, when I started, exercising was all about losing weight. But slowly, it became less about that. It became more about feeling mentally stronger, more in control of my life, feeling resilient.
And after a while, even a short walk in the park just clears my head. It gives me the energy that I need to go about my walk, right? So exercise obviously releases endorphins. And... It is the brain's natural feel-good chemicals.
It improves mood, it reduces anxiety and when you're in a good mood, it is very difficult to feel underconfident. Plus, it improves how you look and how you stand in your body. Your posture thing that we mentioned at the beginning of this video, that improves so much if you exercise regularly because you build muscle, you stand taller, you feel more confident in your skin and that obviously, well, boosts internal confidence as well.
Everybody gets embarrassed. It is how they handle this embarrassment that makes the difference. Believe me when I say that I have had my fair share of embarrassing moments.
I was once walking in the park with a friend and I was on my phone, I was texting and I didn't even realise and I walked and I fell straight into the bush. And this is not a friend like a close friend who I would have felt comfortable having this experience with. This is a boy that I had a crush on honestly.
And it was the most embarrassing thing in my life. But well, what can you do? I fell, I fell. That also gave me an important reminder that you should not text while walking.
And we laughed it off and that's that. And that is just one occasion. I'm a very clumsy person so I keep falling. There are times when I'm just standing and I have fallen. And in embarrassing ways too, like in office and stuff.
But If I let that hold myself back, I would have never stepped out of the house, you guys. So laughing off your embarrassing moments really helps your brain reframe that experience, right? So now when I look back on it, it's just a funny story to tell people. It's this thing that I have and then I'm like, oh my God, Aditi is so clumsy. And you know, she fell and that was so funny.
And anytime I tell the story now to people, they laugh. I get a laugh out of it. And it's a beautiful experience to recount. So it makes it less emotionally charged when you can laugh at yourself, when you can laugh at your embarrassing moments.
It activates emotional regulation in your brain that reduces stress, that reduces anxiety, it reduces all of the anxiety related to other people's judgment also, right? You signal to yourself and to other people that you're not overly concerned with small mistakes. Everybody makes small mistakes and when you're not sweating the small stuff that automatically signals to your brain, to other people that you are a confident person, that you have high self. confidence.
Stop beating yourself up about minor mistakes. Nobody remembers them. Five years down the line, are you going to remember them?
Probably not. So that was it for this video. I am putting all of the points on screen once again so that you guys can see this is everything that we spoke about today. How to use super simple, super easy ways to boost your self-confidence to look more confident when you are struggling with confidence. These things start from a physical aspect first.
But when you do these repeatedly, they actually boost your internal sense of self-esteem and confidence, right? So let me know in the comments which of these tips resonated the most with you and which you are most likely to use when you are in a situation where you're not feeling confident enough. And go ahead and check out this video next because YouTube says that you are going to love it.
And I am going to see you guys very, very soon in the next one. Sorry for the light change in this one. Hopefully that doesn't really bother you guys.
again it can be an embarrassing moment if i put it like that in my head but we are gonna roll with it and this is how this video is gonna go out and i will see you guys very very soon in the next one bye