Each of us wants change in our lives. We want to become a highly acclaimed speaker, a best-selling author. We want to move up the ladder at work, or build a business empire. We want to introduce ourselves to an important person or ask for a raise at work.
Yet, there’s a hitch: While many of us want hese things, we hear our inner selves saying, “That would be awesome! But I could never do that.”
And it’s our job to shush that inner self. Because if we just sit around and wait for confidence, it will never come. Here are four actions to immediately boost our confidence and go after the future we want.
Adopt a “high-powered” pose.
Think of Wonder Woman, standing tall with her hands on her hips. She exudes confidence just through her posture. Columbia University and Harvard University conducted a study on body posture. It found that a confident body posture actually effects the chemical balance in our bodies. Specifically:
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The research was conducted on 42 students.
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First, a saliva sample was taken from each subject and his or her testosterone and cortisol levels were measured.
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Second, the subject was asked to sit in either a “high-power” pose or a “low-power” pose for two minutes.
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Third, a second sample of saliva was taken from each subject and his or her testosterone and cortisol levels were measured again.
The results showed that high-power poses increased testosterone by 20 percent (which boosts confidence) and decreased cortisol levels by 25 percent (which reduces anxiety).
So, take a lesson from Columbia and Harvard: Start your day by standing tall with your chest out and hands on your hips for two minutes. You can focus your breathing for those two minutes by breathing in deeply for a count of 3, hold for 1, and then breathe out fully for a count of 5. This is a great combination of breathing exercises, meditation, and power poses.
Say an incantation.
Incantations are not the same as affirmations. An incantation is an affirmation, times a hundred….