Self-esteem / Confidence

[Ali Quadir]

What I discovered is a confident person emits an odor that says, "right on" and others want to interact with that 'right on" type of stand up person. I noticed this because when I started to stand up straight and look people in the eye (a rather challenging exercise in courage as I was imprinted to be a "traditional" female in a patriarchal household)...

I was imprinted as a pup in a patriarchal household with a very strong alpha, there's only space for one alpha male. Not that anyone was "a bad person" it's just the way us mammals work.

I like your smell analogy... That's exactly how it is. Did you notice that as soon as people start acknowledging the smell it actually gets stronger? It's a dynamic process I think. The recognized alpha person is strengthened in his role by the response of those around him.

I find that it helped me tremendously to look at evolutionary sociology to solve this problem for me. There is a normal evolutionary reason for what we do. And we can look at evolution to learn what we need to do differently to escape our lot in life.

What if confidence is not a noun but a verb?

It most certainly is. It is subconscious behavior for most, but it still is behavior.

This is something taught by NLP. Some NLP concepts make me itchy but I think they are right on about this: change your state of mind by moving your body in a new way. If you were confident, where would your shoulders be? How far apart would your feet be? Where would your hands be moving? How fast would they be moving? How about moving that way now, even before you feel confident, and then your body can report back a feeling of confidence? But this is just a more formalized way to do exactly what you both described.

It is a perfect example. I recommend your formal way to anyone who wants to try to kick start his confidence... Your body posture influences your mind. If you are sad but smiling you'll be starting to release neuro transmitters associated with the smile. This knowledge is to our benefit. Stand up straight, broaden those shoulders. Move slightly slower, lower your voice. Look people straight in the eye.

Avoid expressing agression. Confidence and agression are close. I almost got in a fight the other day with a guy who mistook a confident smile with a staring match. He really started to posture, puffed up chest, staring me down... I wasn't interested in proving anything so I looked down, made myself small, scurried around a corner and laughed my ass off when I saw him wander of with his still puffed up gorilla chest and his head high in the air... My dog expresses the same vibe when she's warned off an invader.

It's much more fun when you know how it works. And smart people tend to be better at it, but only after they figure out how it works. Before that their tendency to be in their head only hinders their confidence. Confidence has nothing to do with logic what so ever. It's a primitive mammalian language.

It's really helped me to watch the Dog Whisperer show. Two thirds of his work is on getting people to use effective body language. They learn it in order to control their dogs, but they wind up as more effective human beings.

A great recommendation... Animals are extremely sensitive to what fairyfarmgirl calls this odor. Dogs always recognize the high status individuals in groups.