Presence

Presence is a life-changing guide to growing your self-confidence that shows how posture, mindset, and body language all expand your feeling of empowerment and your communication skills.

You know that playing to your strengths will make you more confident but how do you do it? While some self-help books will tell you to use affirmations, they don’t always work. Unless you utilize the power of your core values.

To get started, follow the pattern one Stanford psychologist used for a study on strengthening core values. First, write out everything that’s important to you. You might include ideals like spirituality, diligence, or love.

Once that’s done narrow down just one that you feel is your core value. Then, write an essay about it, including why it’s important to you.

Although simple, this technique has the power to make you more confident and better at handling stress.

And multiple studies confirm the potential this exercise has to improve your courage. One had a group of participants write about core values while a control group wrote about general subjects.

Once the essays were finished, researchers put participants into stressful situations to see how they reacted. Those who had written about random topics had an increase in stress hormones, while those who wrote about core values had none.

Writing about your core values will give you a major confidence boost. Consistently utilizing their power isn’t so easy though, but we’re going to learn about that in our next lesson!

Do you feel like there are some aspects of your life that are out of your control? The author once got a message from a woman named Cassidy who was really struggling with these feelings. Cassidy had been a great track and field athlete throughout school, but once college was over, that part of her life was gone, and her confidence had gone with it. Sometimes all it takes is just feeling helpless to make you actually powerless. Breaking the cycle takes an understanding of two systems that govern this aspect of your life. The approach system makes you want to try new things and be adventurous. It’s alive and well in outgoing people who are good at taking advantage of professional and social opportunities. The inhibition system does the opposite and keeps you cautious. This might help you stay safe, but sometimes it gets out of control and makes you feel helpless as you focus on times when you were powerless. If you’re feeling stuck ruminating on something you can’t control, remember a time when a win made you feel empowered. This will activate the approach system and help you improve your situation. It’s especially helpful if the event is related to your core…