Ways to gain confidence in yourself

1. Assume the pose of a winner, and stay like that for two minutes

In her famous speech for TED that had more than 30 million views, Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist from Harvard, speaks about body language and confidence casting. The psychologist’s advice is to ’power-pose’ before any difficult task. Do it in the morning right after you wake up, in an elevator, or in front of the mirror – any place will do.
The ’superhero pose’ looks like this: set your back straight, pull back your shoulders, slightly raise your chin, and place your feet in line with your hips. Feel the power flowing into you, and keep this position for two minutes. Try breathing deeply and rhythmically. You can also assume the pose of a starfish, raising your arms in a V-shape. Imagine that you’re an Olympic champion on a pedestal.
Experiments show that people who use this method achieve better results than the rest. Our body language not only affects how others see us but also how we see ourselves.

2. Imagine your future

A bright and detailed vision of what your life will be in the future helps you overcome the fear of failure. Hal Hershfield, teacher of marketing technology at New York University, invited the participants of his study to imagine what would happen to them in ten years’ time.
After that, he showed some of the respondents their ’aged’ images and then proposed that everyone became investors for start-up projects. Those who’d seen their ’aged’ pictures were twice as inclined to invest as those who hadn’t. It turned out that when we see the pictures of our future and imagine them vividly, we strive to make them come true as quickly as we can, thus acting more decisively.

3. Say thanks to your life

This is another way to see new horizons before you, despite any recent  stress. A beginner business coach and single mother Jenn Scalia was having a  hard time getting on with her life after having been fired, divorced, and  finding herself in a lot of debt. To solve her problems, she decided to invest  in herself and take up a number of online courses in personal development, as  well as perform several daily practices. All this helped her increase the income  of her business training project from zero to half a million dollars. My first everyday practice was giving thanks. Every night, I recalled all  the wonderful things that happened to me and that I’d seen in my life. The next stage of my self-training was giving thanks for things I had yet to achieve. For example, instead of saying, ’I want to have two new clients this month,’ I told myself, ’I’m so grateful to have two terrific new clients now.’