If you’ve ever spent time people watching, you’ll understand just how interesting and strange people are. Most likely – whether consciously or not – you’ll have been watching their body language. The social space people take up, the way they use their body to convey emotions and feelings and the way different people interact with one another can all exemplify how important body language is. We might not recognise outright what someone is trying to tell us – but we know subconsciously.
But have you ever considered how you project yourself to others? How can you improve your body language to come across as a stronger and more emotionally intelligent person?
Create Bonds with People
To create a stronger bond or connection with someone, mirror them. In a subtle way, copy the way they sit or how they hold themselves and they will subconsciously be more endeared towards you. Make sure you make eye contact but don’t be afraid to look away – that ensures it is appropriate eye contact and not a staring contest.
Try to sit in a way that looks open and comfortable. Slouching backs and hunched shoulders make you seem tense and unsure of yourself and can be off-putting to those you are trying to bond with. The best way to ensure you are creating strong bonds with people is to watch them and look for cues in how their body speaks to yours – and try to match them. Watching TV or films with actors with strong chemistry can help in showing how you could improve chemistry with others as it can be seen onscreen – and that comes from their body language towards one another, too.
Spending time monitoring what others are doing around you and how you are responding to them also helps. Take some time to ensure your body makes no moves that aren’t deliberate to see how others respond to you when you purposefully attempt to create stronger bonds.
Come Across More Confidently
You can appear in simple ways, using your body language. Standing with your hands on your hips can psychologically provide an internal confidence boost while remaining in a firm stance can make you seem self-assured to others.
Not fidgeting and only making important body moves can also give off an appearance of confidence, as can having a firm handshake and ensuring your body takes up enough social space. Decisiveness has also been linked to this. The way you speak also counts towards confidence. Monitor yourself when you speak and try to omit any filler words such as ‘um’ or ‘er’ which serve no purpose and make you sound vague and unsure.
Practice Makes Perfect
Not all confidence will come the second you start making moves to control your body language or practice ways in which to make faster decisions. It will take practice and a lot of deliberate movements initially. One way in which you could speed the process up, is by practicing on something behind the scenes that could help you build a base appearance of confidence.
There are ways we can expedite our ability to make decisions and come across as being self-assured such as playing chess, which requires often subtle well-planned decisions. Or, as the rules show, the baccarat casino game requires strong decision making and a confident approach, such as when to place a bet or how to appear to opponents. Luckily, there are ways to practice doing this at home to help hone your skills in the area before trying them out in real scenarios in public. As you improve at the card game at home, you may begin to feel more confident when making decisions under similar pressures in other areas of your life.
There are ways to come across more confident and a more emotionally intelligent person by improving your body language, it’s just a case of trial and error to see where your current body language is letting you down and how this can be rectified in a natural way.