18 Ways to Improve Your Body Language

by Henrik Edberg. Print In this article will explore just a few of many pointers on how to improve your body language. You can learn much more about improving your social life and relationships in my Simplicity course (there is a written guide that is close to 50 pages long + a social skills workbook included in that course) and in The Power of Positivity. Now, improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood. There is no specific advice on how to use your body language. What you do might be interpreted in several ways, depending on the setting and who you are talking to. Youll probably want to use your body language differently when talking to your boss compared to when you talk to a girl/guy youre interested in. These are some common interpretations of body language and often more effective ways to communicate with your body. First, to change your body language you must be aware of your body language. Notice how you sit, how you stand, how you use you hands and legs, what you do while talking to someone. You might want to practice in front of a mirror. Yeah, it might seem silly but no one is watching you. This will give you good feedback on how you look to other people and give you an opportunity to practise a bit before going out into the world. Another tip is to close your eyes and visualize how you would stand and sit to feel confident, open and relaxed or whatever you want to communicate. See yourself move like that version of yourself. Then try it out. You might also want observe friends, role models, movie stars or other people you think has good body language. Observe what they do and you dont. Take bits and pieces you like from different people. Try using what you can learn from them. Some of these tips might seem like you are faking something. But fake it til you make it is a useful way to learn something new. And remember, feelings work backwards too. If you smile a bit more you will feel happier. If you sit up straight you will feel more energetic and in control. If you slow down your movements youll feel calmer. Your feelings will actually reinforce your new behaviours and feelings of weirdness will dissipate. In the beginning easy its to exaggerate your body language. You might sit with your legs almost ridiculously far apart or sit up straight in a tense pose all the time. Thats ok. And people arent looking as much as you think, they are worrying about their own problems. Just play around a bit, practice and monitor yourself to find a comfortable balance.

1. Dont cross your arms or legs You have probably already heard you shouldnt cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open. 2. Have eye contact, but dont stare If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. If you are not used to keeping eye-contact it might feel a little hard or scary in the beginning but keep working on it and youll get used to it. 3. Dont be afraid to take up some space Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin. 4. Relax your shoulders When you feel tense its easily winds up as tension in your shoulders. They might move up and forward a bit. Try to relax. Try to loosen up by shaking the shoulders a bit and move them back slightly. 5. Nod when they are talking nod once in a while to signal that you are listening. But dont overdo it and peck like Woody Woodpecker. 6. Dont slouch, sit up straight but in a relaxed way, not in a too tense manner. 7. Lean, but not too much If you want to show that you are interested in what someone is saying, lean toward the person talking. If you want to show that youre confident in yourself and relaxed lean back a bit. But dont lean in too much or you might seem needy and desperate for some approval. Or lean back too much or you might seem arrogant and distant. 8. Smile and laugh lighten up, dont take yourself too seriously. Relax a bit, smile and laugh when someone says something funny. People will be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you seem to be a positive person. But dont be the first to laugh at your own jokes, it makes you seem nervous and needy. Smile when you are introduced to someone but dont keep a smile plastered on your face, youll seem insincere. 9. Dont touch your face it might make you seem nervous and can be distracting for the listeners or the people in the conversation. 10. Keep your head up Dont keep your eyes on the ground, it might make you seem insecure and a bit lost. Keep your head up straight and your eyes towards the horizon. 11. Slow down a bit this goes for many things. Walking slower not only makes you seem more calm and confident, it will also make you feel less stressed. If someone addresses you, dont snap your neck in their direction, turn it a bit more slowly instead.

12. Dont fidget and try to avoid, phase out or transform fidgety movement and nervous ticks such as shaking your leg or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly. Youll seem nervous and fidgeting can be a distracting when you try to get something across. Declutter your movements if you are all over the place. Try to relax, slow down and focus your movements. 13. Use your hands more confidently instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. But dont use them to much or it might become distracting. And dont let your hands flail around, use them with some control. 14. Lower your drink. Dont hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, dont hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead. 15. Realise where you spine ends many people (including me until recently) might sit or stand with a straight back in a good posture. However, they might think that the spine ends where the neck begins and therefore crane the neck forward in a Montgomery Burns-pose. Your spine ends in the back of your head. Keep you whole spine straight and aligned for better posture. 16. Dont stand too close one of the things we learned from Seinfeld is that everybody gets weirded out by a close-talker. Let people have their personal space, dont invade it. 17. Mirror Often when you get along with a person, when the two of you get a good connection, you will start to mirror each other unconsciously. That means that you mirror the other persons body language a bit. To make the connection better you can try a bit of proactive mirroring. If he leans forward, you might lean forward. If she holds her hands on her thighs, you might do the same. But dont react instantly and dont mirror every change in body language. Then weirdness will ensue. 18. Keep a good attitude last but not least, keep a positive, open and relaxed attitude. How you feel will come through in your body language and can make a major difference. For information on how make yourself feel better read 10 ways to change how you feel. You can change your body language but as all new habits it takes a while. Especially things like keeping you head up might take time to correct if you have spent thousands of days looking at your feet. And if you try and change to many things at once it might become confusing and feel overwhelming.

10 ways to change how you feel

by Henrik Edberg

Being able to manage and change your feelings is one of the most important things in personal development. You might have all the logical and rational reasons in the world to do something, but then your emotions can just sweep in and pull everything to a grinding halt. Having your feelings for work you instead of against you can have a massive effect on your life. There are many ways to change how you feel. Here are 10 ways that dont include chocolate, pain or alcohol and that actually work. All of them might not work right away, its a bit like learning to ride a bike. You dont learn it by reading about it and the first times you try you might fall. But remember when you were a kid learning to ride a bike. You just got up of the ground, brushed yourself of and got on that bike again and again and again. 1. Relax This one is easy but just remembering that you can relax when you feel all tensed up can work wonders. You might realise that much of that tension was something you just built up in your own mind. In A guide to the the Huna way mastering your hidden self King Serge Kahili writes this about effort and relaxation: When people are trying to change a habit of thought or behaviour, they often complain that it takes too much effort. Others may criticize them for not having a strong enough will. What actually happens is that such people are trying to force a habit to change by using their muscles against it, and this is true whether the habit is physical or mental. This kind of forceful attempt creates tension that locks up the bodys energy and makes people feel worn out. They end up literally fighting themselves, which is rarely effective. All you really have to do is make your decision by your will, relax your muscles, and direct your attention in the way you want to go, until the new habit is established. If you ever feel that using your will is an effort relax and Start over. 2. Ask different questions We are always asking ourselves questions, but they might be questions that arent really that good. Instead of asking yourself: why must I do this?, ask yourself how can I make this more fun for me? or how can this help me?. Dont ask yourself will I be able to do this?, instead ask how will I do this?. Ask better questions that empowers you. Questions that presupposes that you have the power over your own life. Questions that directs your focus to solutions and opens your mind to new possibilities instead of questions that just makes you feel trapped and lousy.

3. Smile Smiling gives you a boost of happiness. Try forcing yourself to smile for thirty seconds right now. The great feelings that make you smile works in reverse too. By making yourself smile, no matter how you feel, your body will start releasing all those wonderful chemicals that makes you feel happy. Try it right now and feel the difference. 4. Appreciate things This is one of the most simple and effective ways to just feel so much better. Just look around yourself. Appreciate the good food youre eating, the hot woman or man walking past you, the kids playing and just having fun in the mud puddles, all the possibilities in your life, all the great things about your friends and your family, the birds singing Ok, so perhaps it sounds a bit corny. But it really works. And its great to try to change your mindset to one where you appreciate the things in your everyday life instead of taking them for granted. 5. Interrupt your thought pattern You might be feeling down or you are procrastinating. Maybe nothing is working out for you today. You just want to go home and go to bed. Heres where you might want to interrupt your thought pattern. And you do that simply by doing something unexpected and totally different from what you are doing now. Some suggestions; take a glass of water, throw it in own your face. Or jump up and down ten times singing the chorus from We are the champions by Queen at the top of you lungs. Or imagine your negative inner voice sounding like Goofy. Do something that totally breaks your thought pattern. Something humours is nice because its often the opposite to a depressed or anxious state that you would like to break out of. And laughter and smiles breaks tension too. When you have done that you might not be able to able to find your way back to that previous train of thought. Much like when you have a conversation, someone comes up to you and asks a question and then when you turn around again back to you friend you cant remember what the two of you were talking about. You feel confused and your state has changed. Make up five things to do that really breaks your pattern and try them out. You may also want to try and find a couple that you can do among other people too without being labelled as crazy. 6. Use an external stateboost On one of his audiotapes Tony Robbins mentions that before one of his guest-speakers or coaches goes up on stage they watch videos with Eddie Murphy. It puts them in a great state before performing. As you might have guessed, that tape wasnt recorded this year or even this century. Eddies been in a slump for a while. This is a great idea and you probably already using it to some degree. Anyways, here are some suggestions. Change and boost your emotional state with some of your favourite music, maybe a couple of YouTube-clips, an episode of the Simpsons (or your favourite

sitcom), personal development-cds, -books or websites. Or perhaps Eddie Murphys Delirious or Raw. Thats some side-splittingly funny stand-up. 7. Eat. But not too much. Or too little If you feel tired and frustrated maybe you just need to eat to get your energy back and your blood sugar up to a more healthy level. But dont eat too much or youll feel tired and lazy. Dont eat to little either or pretty soon youll feel just as bad as you did before you ate. Also, it youre sitting most of the day, take it a bit easy on the carbs and the size of your portions. You may have been raised to eat large and healthy meals, but maybe your father and mother had more physical jobs 8. Create a physical anchor Ok, this one might take a while but it seems to work for many people. Basically you stand up, close your eyes and imagine an emotional state that you want to able to snap into on command. As an example I imagined a time when I felt really powerful and confident. I stood, I breathed and I moved the way I did that one time. Then while I was back in that state both physically and mentally I snapped the fingers of my right hand. Over and over. Over and over and over again. The theory is that you link up that emotion with the physical act of snapping your fingers. Did it work? Yeah, actually it kinda does. When I snap my fingers I get an emotional boost and go into that state again. However, the effect is not 100%. It doesnt feel as good as it did that one time. But its my first anchor and by practicing more, I think especially by trying to visualize and feel that state even more intensely, the anchors are likely to become more and more accurate. Anchoring is based on Ivan Pavlov and his experiments with dogs and bells but has been developed by people in the field of NLP (neurolinguistic programming). 9. Open yourself up to other possibilities that are more beneficial to you Have some faith that the way you view work, relationships, money, exercise, life and those other things are not the only way to see them. Having the feeling that you are right about something and know how things work can feel really good. Its instant gratification and gives you security and comfort. But it also limits you by closing your mind to other avenues of thought and personal development. Seek out a couple of experts advice in the area that you are having problems with. Use google and amazon, just dive in to the subject for a while to get a basic understanding. Most likely there are things you can do both to remedy the problem and to change you perspective on this trouble area. There are often more solutions than one or two to a problem. 10. Recall your positive experiences and memories Its easy to be overcome by negative internal chatter. I cant do this, what if they think Im incompetent, God Im gonna fail, Im gonna fail and this why did I take this shirt, its so ugly. And so on.

When preparing for a meeting, a job interview, a presentation, asking someone for a date or anything that makes you really nervous recall your positive memories from similar experiences. Think back to when you were funny and charming in the bar. Remember the times when you were confident and relaxed during previous meetings and interviews. Let a few of your best memories wash over you. Let them drown out your negative thoughts. This will make you remember the positive and wonderful sides of yourself. The qualities and your inner possibilities that are always there but we often forget about them when we get caught up in a cloud of negative thoughts and feelings. Focusing on these positive experiences instead of those negative ones that always seem to be closer at hand can make a big difference. Learning to direct you feelings more and more have implications beyond feeling better. By feeling better you will more constantly start to see the world in another way and you will start to see other, more beneficial options. And your feelings will start to work for you instead of stopping you when you want to take action. And try to use these suggestions from the perspective of yourself when you were a kid trying to learn to ride that bike. If at first you dont succeed, dust yourself of and try again.

Take a couple of these body language bits to work on every day for three to four weeks. By then they should have developed into new habits and something youll do without even thinking about it. If not, keep on until it sticks. Then take another couple of things youd like to change and work on them.