Your body language may shape who you are | TED Talk by Amy Cuddy

It’s pretty obvious that your body language indicates something about you to others — if you’re giving off body language that you’re feeling uncomfortable, people will probably pick up on it. Similarly if you appear confident, people are likely to expect you to be confident.

Whether or not you care about that is a personal decision — perhaps you simply don’t care what perception other people have of you. However, there’s another aspect of body language that you really ought to care about — but you might not know about it at all.

This other aspect is the effect that your own body language has on how you actually feel. Like I said already, lacking confidence can lead to body language that shows your lack of confidence. But what I hadn’t really thought about before is the effect in the opposite direction — having body language that indicates low confidence can actually make you feel less confident. Making small changes to the way you sit or stand can positively impact your own sense of confidence and wellbeing. Pretty cool and not too hard to put into action.