Lessons
Course Introduction
05:46 2Provide Health & Safety Info Easily
05:08 3Assess Your Digital Assets
00:58 4Power Of First Impression
06:37 5Power Of The Face
15:05 6Power Of The Gaze
10:39 7Power Of Video
11:52 8Power Of Personality
17:18Lesson Info
Power Of Confidence
Let's talk about confidence cues. So very basically, when we're looking at confidence, we gauge someone's confidence very simply by how much space they take up. And this is extremely clear in a video or in a profile picture, how much space you take up on your picture dictates how confident you come across. If your head is bowed or your shoulders are contracted, your torso is folded in, you have your arms tightly pinned to your sides that shows less confidence always. And this can be by the way, both in your profile pictures, in your stock images in your websites, in your videos, how much space you take up? Absolutely. Is a queue for someone's first impression for how confident or how dependable you are, by the way. In real life. A lot of us think that we don't do this, but every time you check your phone, you actually go into low power body language. So it's very important that when you're going into an important meeting, we're at a networking event, you keep your body language nice an...
d broad. High power is the opposite. The more space you take up, the more expansive you are mm the more confident and competent you come across as so arms wide, head, high shoulders, back and chest open. So uh Karen asked on our forms. Most of the time, I appear to be neutral even though inside I'm not, I observed that many times in social and group situations, I feel more sensitive to anxiety and nervousness and due to which I couldn't react and react late. Any suggestions to improve? Definitely. I don't know if I have a miss. So let me ask, let me address your question, Karen. So I don't have the slide in this presentation but very briefly, I want to explain that not only does high power make you seem more confident to others, it also helps you be more confident to yourself. So when you're in high power body language you actually begin to release more testosterone, which is the strength hormone, it makes us feel very powerful. We also decrease our cortisol, which is a stress hormone. So if you're neutral in groups and you're you're feeling anxious in social group situations, standing more broadly putting your arm on on the table next to you, holding a drink out, reaching and shaking people's hands, keeping your arms nice and loose by your side and not crossed in front of you and not crossing your legs. You actually begin to pump testosterone which makes you perform better. Makes you think faster. It calmed you down, lowers your cortisol in your stress and then you actually begin to feel less anxious. So high power is not just for the benefit of others, it's also for your benefit as well. So I hope that helps a little bit. I have a lot more on confidence in my free influence course. So my free influence course, if you just go to science dot com slash influence, uh I have a bunch more stuff in there about how to interact to be more confident and have more influence in social situations. It's all my favorite tips on influence. So you can also check that out as well. So in pictures, if you have a brand or profile picture and you want to show high confidence, high competence and dependability, you want to take up more space. Your body wants to be as broad as possible. On the far left hand side of these photos you see I'm taking up a little bit of space so I look more timid, more shy and maybe a little more anxious. The middle picture I'm showing a little bit but my arms are quite close to my body and the last time taking up as much space as possible or a lot of things with my arms. And so that makes me look, gives my first impression to be more confident. I also want you to be aware of the angles. So the angle in which you take your photo also affects people's perception of you. I know this sounds very small but it's very much like a golf swing. So you think about a golf swing. People will make these tiny tiny level micro adjustments and that little micro adjustment greatly affects the impact of their hit. The same thing happens with body language and your digital first impression. The angle of your photo affects people's perceptions of you in that photo um University of brussels, they found that if people view you from a below, So when pictures are taken slightly from below, those people are viewed as more self confident, sociable and attractive. We think this is because when you were a child you looked up at adults and you admired them and you idolize them. So the same thing happens in photos, it triggers in our brain. Ah This person is older and wiser and take care of us. They're a cool adult even if we are ourselves in adults. So just even that slight angle can help. Also in your photos, an interesting study by Cornell University, they looked at cereal boxes. This is an incredible study. So they found 57 out of 86 cereal boxes. The cartoon characters are looking downwards why two reasons. One because of the fact we just learned is that it makes the box that makes the rabbit and the lucky charms guy look more attractive and sociable and confident and kids love looking up to things. Also, kids, when they walk down the cereal aisle, they are usually looking up at the products because they're tiny. So they noticed that if they made the eyes looking down on the cereal box and kids looked up at the at the box and that looked more appealing to them. Crazy, crazy marketing tricks. Look at this. So here all the different top ones and it has its Children products or not, if it has a character and if it's glancing downward, every single one except raisin brand, which is not a Children's product, no Children, every single one has a character on it and they're all glancing downwards. So if it has a character, that character is always looking down always. That was like a fascinating, fascinating study. So a little fact here. So when researchers digitally altered my gaze, they found that downward gazing characters always garnered increased eye contact attention and higher ratings and trust. So the researchers took cereal boxes, manipulated the cartoon characters and found that whenever they were looking down that Children liked them more, they had longer eye contact with those characters, longer attention to those boxes. And they raided, they trusted that brand. More Participants were asked to choose between two boxes. The kids always chose, they were more likely to choose the box of the character looking down on them. Just that just changing the eggs. So if that doesn't hammer home those little tiny micro level adjustments, I don't know what does. Just an example. You can see that here's two pictures on the left. These are from President Obama's campaign. What's happening? You're looking at him slightly from below. So you're looking up at him, you can idolise him and see him as attractive and confident and he's showing a genuine smile, look at that smile reaching all the way up in his eyes. His competitors put out pictures like this when you're looking down on him. So you see him as weak or vulnerable in one of them, he's showing anger micro expressions. So he's slightly clenching his eyebrows together. So you see those two vertical lines appear or he has a neutral sort of slightly negative face. All of those are ways that the big brands of big political agencies manipulate us. Just buy the photos they put out just that those memorable cues send out different things to us. Yeah. Um I think the frosted flakes is like literally the perfect cereal box. I actually love frosted flakes as well. Maybe that's why. Um, but it's the perfect example. If you if you walk away from this seminar in a few weeks from now, you're like, what was it, what was the Vanessa talked about? And you, you tell your friend about this awesome webinar. All you have to do is show them the frosted flakes cover and you can say look at the frosted flakes cover, They use blue, a nice credible, dependable color and orange, high energy, exciting. They have power, body language, Tony, the tiger is reaching up, he's big and broad. He has a genuine smile. His smile is so big that it almost actually literally reaches up to his eyes. He's gesturing towards the name, he's pointing towards the title. So you look at it, he's angling down so that you're slightly looking up at him, he's looking down at us, he's fronting, which means he's showing us his full body, which is a great way to show respect. We see credibility things with vitamin D. So good source of vitamin T. Right up top. That's a credibility or authenticity queue for parents. And he's also looking towards the serial, which is exactly where they want you to look because you want they want you to eat the cereal. We got a question on our forums, how can you be credible credible when you have no credentials? So here's frosted flakes now, they're not a doctor. You know, they're I'm sure they're on the media but they didn't put it, but they're sort of credibility was vitamin D. So credibility doesn't have to come from social proof or logos, although that's the best way to do it right. It's always great to have those. You can also add credibility with um aspects of your product. So or aspects of who you are, it doesn't have to be necessarily media logos or social proof. You can use lots of things to add credibility. So here, my challenge for you is to eliminate distancing or weak body language. So when you're pulling your body away from the camera, you're making your body small or defeated poses, you want to add in confidence and power, body language and proper angles.