Calmness and confidence are traits that will make you both more attractive and respected in your social circle. To be calm and confident, you may have to put in some work, but it will be worth it.
In this article, I’ll share with you some tips and techniques so you can do all that. I’m also going to call out one of the biggest problems in this kind of self-improvement, and how you can avoid it, so stay tuned my friend! Let’s start.
Why being calm and confident is important
Let’s start with confidence. Confidence is a trait that you will need in pretty much everything you do. You’ll find it easier to achieve anything in life since you have the guts to try new things and take risks.
On top of that, being confident will have a massive positive effect on your mental health. When you’re confident, other people will sense that and start respecting you more, which leads to even more confidence. That’s a good situation to pursue. Just like any skill, confidence is something you can learn.
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What about calmness? When you can stay calm under pressure, you’ll find it easier to do pretty much anything in your life. Imagine all the different situations that could scare the shit out of someone: first dates, job interviews, verbal battles… Then imagine if you could deal with these situations easily.
On top of this, people will respect people why are calm and unreactive. When you don’t get freaked out by every little thing, others will see that you’re a grounded, mentally strong person. For example, one of the reasons people find James Bond so attractive is his ability to act calmly and think clearly under pressure.
Alright, enough chit-chat. I’m sure you want to learn how to be calm and confident yourself!
Learning to handle pressure
There are many things out there that will make it hard to be calm and confident. These things can be anything from social embarrassment to brutal rejections. One thing that they all have in common is that they require the ability to stay calm under pressure.
This means you’ll have to know how to be calm and confident in different situations and how to display that. On top of that, you must get comfortable with intimidating situations. Sounds hard? Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how to make it easier.
Tips to be calm and confident
1 Strong body language
Some studies say that 55% of your communication is carried out by your body language. This means that you can have the smartest pick-up line or greatest comeback for any insult, but they are useless if your non-verbal communication is bad.
You can find a more specific guide by reading this article, but I’ll give you the basics here. You must stand up straight, and not show any signs of weakness by standing back or watching down.
When having eye contact, don’t avoid it. That signals that you’re too shy to face pressure. Maintain it and speak with a calm, unaffected, authoritative voice.
Don’t mess around with your hands by snapping your fingers or doing anything useless. That’s a sign of being nervous. And don’t lose your temper. Rather than raising your voice, improve your argument.
When people see that your non-verbal communication and spoken words match, they will see that you know how to be calm and confident. You may feel an urge to look away or fidget, but recognize it and stay calm. That will teach you how to resist it and display strong non-verbal communication.
I know, this sounds weird, but trust me. Your non-verbal communication is important as hell. You can speak almost whatever comes to your mind if you can be congruent and match it with your body language.
2 Don’t react with emotion
I remember a scene from Skyfall where Bond has gotten caught by the bad guys. They drag him to an abandoned building, tie him up in a chair, and the main villain starts to interrogate him.
He behaves in a threatening way, but Bond remains calm. He maintains an eye-contact, doesn’t show any signs of fear, or freak out.
These characteristics are something you should consider implementing in your life. Chances are you’re not going to get caught by some mega villain, but you will face intimidating situations sometimes.
People who don’t reach with strong emotions are instantly considered more confident and respected because it displays that it’s hard to distract them.
Think about it. Who are you going to find more confident? A guy who starts yelling at you with a high-pitched voice when something negative happens, or a guy who stays calm and starts to come up with solutions? Obviously the second one.
Next time when someone teases you or causes some kind of inconvenience, don’t freak out or show any emotional reaction. Just stay calm, maintain good non-verbal communication and deal with them.
When you do this right, you’ll gain numerous social benefits. Benefits like being more attractive, commanding respect, and haters will get frustrated when they don’t get that emotional reaction from you.
3 Frame control
Your frame means the way you see yourself, other people, and the world around you. It can be the determining factor when it comes to being calm and confident. People with good frames will find stressful situations less stressful because they see know that there’s no reason to feel bad about themselves, even if someone says so.
You should always see yourself as a valuable person, who has no reason to take anything personally. You’re no better or worse than anyone else, and you have your strengths and weaknesses. Just like everyone else.
When in a stressful situation, you can ask yourself questions like “Am I going to die?” Probably not. Also remember that whatever outcome you end up with, you’ll be fine. It’s OK to make mistakes and so on.
Learning to see the world like this may be hard for some people, but learning and implementing the other tips into your life gets you well started.
Why do so many people fail to do this? And how you won’t.
Many guys who want to learn to be calm and confident or anything like that, will find different tips on the internet. Tips like stand straight, speak with a lower voice, maintain an eye-contact… Lots of stuff that displays a strong, confident body language.
All this is correct, but many people will implement those tips incorrectly. Next time they’re handling pressure from someone, they start to overthink different techniques, and simply overdo it and end up looking nervous and inauthentic.
Yes, you’ll have to master those tips, but if you constantly overthink and you’re faking your confidence, people will see through that eventually.
Imagine someone who tries to stand up straights and lower their voice, but keeps sweating and breaking eye contact due to the intense stress. This is a disaster because people will see if you’re not authentic and you’re faking confidence. It may work for a while, but not for long.
The key is to pay attention to your behavior, but also to train your mind to make it natural. It’s like burning a candle from both ends.
Training yourself for mastery
Just like any skill, this will improve when you do it more and more. A great place to practice is any kind of situation where you need to be calm and confident.
However, these kinds of situations don’t occur all the time and it may be intimidating to deal with them with little experience. This is why I came up with some exercises you can do to train yourself.
These exercises will help you to stay calm under pressure, build mental strength, and face your fears.
1 Cold shower
Yeah, total madness but there’s some science behind it. The U.S Navy SEALs spend a lot of time in cold water. This is because it has tons of health benefits and it builds mental strength.
Taking cold showers is a great way to train your mind to stay calm under intense stress. When the ice-cold water runs on your skin, you’re forced to handle that stress and you’ll eventually get better at it.
Sometimes stressful social situations can feel like cold water running on your head, and this is why an ice-cold shower is so good. If you can remain calm under the freezing water, it’s way easier to be calm and confident in different situations.
Start by doing whatever you do in the shower, and ending it with as cold as possible. Force yourself to be there for five seconds, and start increasing that time. Once you’re capable of staying there for a minute or two, you’ve done well. To get even more effective training, try not to gasp or do anything like that.
2 Mindfulness
Doing mindfulness or meditation doesn’t mean finding a cave in Asia and staying there with orange clothes. It can be as simple as breathing deeply and letting your thoughts flow.
When you practice mindfulness, your mind becomes less reactive to negative thoughts, and you’ll deal with repressed emotions and insecurities. This is also a great way to build your frame by accepting your weaknesses and becoming secure with your flaws and negative experiences.
Here’s how to do it. First, pick a location where no one will distract you. This is important. Then, take a good, relaxed position, close your eyes, and breathe deep. At this point, different thoughts will start to come up.
There will be both positive and negative, but whatever they are, do not try to block them or amplify them. Let them flow like clouds in the sky, no matter how great or horrible they are.
Doing this has some great benefits for your mental health and resilience. You may face some negative memories and insecurities and you’ll learn to accept them since you don’t block any thoughts. You’ll also learn to keep your mind calm under negative experiences due to the negative thoughts that come up.
This may be hard if you suffer from negative thinking, but trust me, it will get better. If you try to block your lurking insecurities and repress emotions, they’ll become worse and worse.
But when you’re comfortable with your thoughts, you’ll be 100% present in different situations and you don’t have anything that prevents you from being calm and confident.
I know, it sucks to face all kinds of horrible thoughts, but they don’t affect reality, and you don’t have to convince yourself that you don’t mean them. Just like in anything, you’ll have to face discomfort to achieve great results.
3 The Samurai technique
There’s a certain technique that according to some people, was used by Samurais. Samurais were Japanese elite warriors who could get brutally killed on the battlefield. Yet, they were considered fearless and super skilled.
One technique that I discovered in another blog, was a way to deal with their fears. This technique is a little bit like mindfulness, but you just summon those negative thoughts and visualize any possible scary scenario.
You can do this to prepare yourself to be calm and confident in different situations that you find scary. Just close your eyes, imagine the situation, and visualize every outcome that you could face. The bad ones, the good ones, even the worst-case scenario.
When you go through this in your mind, you’ll become more confident because you’re more prepared for anything. When you visualize a negative outcome, you’ll become more comfortable with it, and it won’t feel as scary as it used to be.
This is a great technique to try if you know that you’ll face a situation where you find it hard to remain calm and unaffected. In my opinion, one of the best exercises to build confidence.
Summary
There you have it guys. My article to help you to be calm and confident. Before finishing this post, here’s a quick reminder. When practicing this pay attention to your behavior but also train your mind so that behavior will come up naturally.
You should pay attention to your body language and so on, but remember that faking it is a bad idea. Don’t just act confident, BECOME confident and be like that. If that’s something you struggle with, I have more articles about that topic.
With this said, I hope you enjoyed this post. See you next time.