You can be quiet and “introvertish” in nature, at the same time extremely charismatic. Below are the 8 Habits you can adopt to build your confidence and instantly command more respect from people around you, even if you’re quiet.
All the psychologies covered in this article will apply to your actual life.
HABIT 1: Have a Slow, Relaxed Movement
Learn never to be in a rush, no matter what the situation seems like, especially when you feel intimated by something or a person. Your slow movement instantly gives people the sense that you’re above feeling intimidated.
When you move slowly and comfortably in a situation where most people would be stressed, it shows that you don’t feel scared or pressured.
HABIT 2: Hold Eye Contact, Even During Conflict
The second habit body language is being able to hold eye contact. This habit helps you appear confident. You should learn to comfortably hold eye contacts even during conflict.
Now, one mistake you could make with this habit is trying to hold eye contact all the time. Holding eye contact during conflict can escalate the tension if neither of you is willing to break.
The goal is not to never break eye contact. It’s just to know what your behavior signals to other people.
Hold if you want to show you aren’t intimidated
Look down if your priority is to de-escalate
And if you want to diffuse the situation without showing fear or discomfort, you can hold eye contact for 3-5 seconds and then break to the side instead of down
HABIT 3: Be Non-reactive To Hostility
At high level, your ability to command respect in moments of conflict will come from the fact that you’re not reactive to hostility. You should be able to project so much confidence without even speaking.
Being non-reactive shows you feel confident in your ability to handle whatever is happening. It’s hard not to respect someone who keeps their cool in situations where most people would lose it.
The goal here isn’t to fake that you’re okay while freaking out on the inside. The goal is to cultivate a genuine deep internal confidence
HABIT 4: Be As Big As Your Audience
This is one body language you should learn if you want to command attention specifically in large groups. Increase your hand gestures when you’re speaking to more people
HABIT 5: Focus On How You Speak, Show Conviction With Your Words
The next body language habit to command more respect is by focusing on how you speak by showing conviction with your words specifically when you talk about things that matter, either in career, in marriage, while selling, or about plans for the future or life generally. You shouldn’t’t usually say “I hope to” or “I want to”, but “I will”.
HABIT 6: Show Conviction With Your Tone
Beyond word choice you can show conviction with your tone. Many people do the opposite, ending in upward inflection and making statements sound like questions. This would give an impression that you’re likely unsure of yourself.
So…if you want to show conviction with just your tone, end your statement in a downward inflection
HABIT 7: Speak Slowly And Use Pauses Between Words
In addition to slow relaxed body language is speaking and using pauses between words to hols attention.
The pause is the moment you’re not speaking but in the real sense it’s the moment you can pull people in. You should do this when someone really wants to hear what you have to say.
You may worry that speaking slowly and pausing a lot may lead to people cutting you off. The way you can prevent this is not by rushing to finish or not ending your statement, but by continuing to speak in that same slow speaking manner until you at least finish your sentence
HABIT 8: Use The Carrot-Stick Motivation
This is the one last thing to talk about if you really want to command so much respect. You don’t have to shout or raise your voice. Either, you should understand what the other person desperately want and can give it to them, or what they desperately fear and can prevent it. So your quiet word should carry massive weight.
I know someone is wondering what carrot-stick motivation is.
I’ll illustrate with an example….
Let’s say you want a promotion from work. A lot of people would just go in and say “hey boss, I’ve been working here a long time and I would really like a raise. Can I have more money?” Very focused on ‘I’, not very persuasive. Instead, you apply carrot-stick thinking.
You can say..
“hey boss, I feel I can add more value to the company and play at higher level. What would you need to see from me in the next 3 months to promote me?”.
You should work with your boss to create a concrete list, then nail everything on that list, but at the same time, be on the look out for other job offers. In three months, you can show all the values you’ve created for your boss — CARROT — and if they back out from the agreement you can tell them that you want to stay but you have other offers that pay more if they are unwilling to give you a raise — that’s the STICK.
So…while this plan is extremely likely to work, most people don’t have the confidence to do it. You might think building this kind of confidence would take you a long time or maybe you even think that it’s impossible for you, that you could never actually build deep internal confidence.
But building confidence is way easier than you think. With the right game plan, you can become significantly more confident in just a few weeks of practice
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