How To Look (and feel!) Confident

Confidence is alluring.

Giovanna Battaglia in New York with Fendi bag

It walks hand in hand with success. Confident people are considered to be more desirable, happier, whether true or not they are thought to have more friends and lead more fulfilling lives.

Confidence has nothing to do with income or beauty or perceived success. After nearly 30 years as a makeup artist working with actors and models I can tell you that behind closed doors the exquisitely beautiful, body perfect, wealthy people that we think have it all are often wracked with self doubt and totally lacking in self confidence.

Giovanna Battaglia, fabulous with a Fendi Baguette

Wherever you are in life, no matter what you think you are lacking, you can learn to project confidence, develop the habits, and after exercising these habits everyday become someone who without even thinking about it, just exudes confidence.

How To look And Feel Confident

Posture

Walking with your head down, your shoulders slumped, with your body language reading threatened, defeated, humbled, tired or overwhelmed is synonymous with a lack of confidence.

Confident people stand tall.

They square their shoulders and their hips, and instead of letting their chin drop, they hold it parallel to the ground.

When they sit down, they don't slump over (in the position of the defeated) they maintain great posture, leaning back but sitting tall.

Take notice of your own posture, and get into the habit of adjusting it and mimicking the posture of a confident person.

Eyes Up

Rather than dropping their gaze, which again is a symptom of the humbled or the defeated, and can be seen as a mark of deference to those you consider to be above you, confident people keep their eyes up, looking forward at the world as if everything is going as expected, projecting a sense of knowing where they are going - both in terms of the street they are walking along, and where they are going in life.

Make an effort to look straight ahead instead of looking down. If your shoulders are squared and you are making an effort to keep your chin up, it's pretty easy to keep your gaze up and forward.

Walk With Purpose

image via Stockholm-Streetstyle.com

You don't realize how much you shuffle around and walk indecisively until you start making a concerted effort to walk with purpose. Even if you're lost, or walking into a meeting with an irate boss, or into a situation you are uncertain of, square your shoulders, keep your eyes and chin up, and walk as if you are going exactly where you are planning to go.

Walking with purpose makes you look like a leader, makes you look like you are in charge of your own being, and of course, makes you look confident.

Develop A Firm Handshake.

Whether you are a guy or a girl an insipid, flimsy handshake makes you look like a pushover. It speaks to timidity, wishy washy character, indecisiveness and lack of mental strength.

A bone crushing handshake makes you look arrogant and like a bully.

But a good, firm handshake says that you know who you are, you know your abilities and have full faith in them, you are completely comfortable in your own skin and are not even remotely intimidated.

Subliminally a firm handshake paired with winning posture, raised eyes and a purposeful gait tells people you are at least an equal, if not someone to be deferred to. It also implies honesty and strength of character.

Make Eye Contact.

Confident people look everyone in the eye. People who divert their gaze or look down or away appear either dishonest, disinterested or intimidated. You don't want to develop some kind of blink-free serial killer stare, but learn to look everyone in the eye when you are speaking to them.

It implies that you are fully engaged in the conversation, you are listening, paying attention, attaching relevance to the conversation, and it also makes you incredibly likeable. If you start paying attention to eye contact in the conversations you are having you will be surprised at how few people actually concentrate on you when they are speaking to you. They are always looking here, there and everywhere.

Resting Happy Face.

We all are familiar with resting b*%ch face, where someone looks anywhere from dissatisfied to angry while in repose, when in all likelihood they are actually probably relatively happy underneath that sour expression.

Confident people have mastered the art of maintaining a resting happy face. Not some dopey, giddy grin, but a resting facial expression that resonates a feeling that they are content with life.
Again it takes some work to develop this trait, but it is well worth doing on many levels. Yes, obviously you will look confident, but also you will find that it becomes increasingly difficult to be feeling discontent, irritation, boredom, anger, confused, jealous - any negative emotion, when your face is looking happy. You become a happier person. 
Win/win.

The images in this story are of Italian style icon and fashion editor Giovanna Battaglia.
The first image has been on a mood board of mine for a couple of years because I was coveting her Fendi Baguette, but after a while I started noticing how much confidence and self awareness just oozes out of the very essence of her being, so now I keep the picture there as a constant reminder of how to carry myself.
Career and fabulous wardrobe not withstanding, Giovanna Battaglia is the perfect example of a confident woman, embodying each of the traits in this post.