Confident Non-verbal Communication

Your non-verbal communication which is more frequently but narrowly referred to as body language, is a universally overlooked area to improve your confidence in communication and general self-perception. The majority of people aim to build their confidence but rarely consider the power of communicating confidence non-verbally.



You need to have high self-awareness in order to be aware of your body language. It's a matter of knowing what you do in certain situations. When you have poor body language others can see fear in you.



Moving eye contact - people with low confidence levels rarely make eye contact and when they do, as soon as the other person returns that eye contact the person looks away. You do not look silly looking the other person in the eyes. In fact, you look weirder and would be annoying the other person more so when you do not make eye contact.



Weak touch - otherwise known as haptics, touch involves bodily contact. What haptics we are interested in to develop confident non-verbal communication is mostly the handshake. You will rarely use any other haptics other then a handshake in a normal social situation. It's not as if you normally go around patting people on the back or stroking their arm. That's just strange!



Stay away - looking at body positions relative to one another now otherwise known as proxemics. What I mean by "relative to one another" is the distance between you and the other person. You are most comfortable with an intimate or well known person being close to you as opposed to someone you just met. However, people with low confidence will have a much wider radius of comfort. A more confident person will not show fear when someone "breaks" their comfortable proxemics. This doesn't mean they are comfortable with the closeness, it just means they don't show the uncomfortably. They desire the other person to stay away but they cope with the situation.



Carry yourself - the last non-verbal communication technique I feel is valuable in developing confidence is kinesics. It involves body movement. Possibly the most important kinesics in confidence is posture. A slouched posture not only screams an unconfident person, but it has a physical and psychological effect on the person with the poor posture. The physical effect of slouching your shoulders forward is it causes your chest to compress inwards. Your chest compressing simulates expelling air causing you to breathe shallowly. This means if you have poor posture you will have poor breathing.

Louis Beh ®