166. What does your posture say about your confidence?

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Have you ever noticed how your posture changes when you’re feeling confident… or when you’re not?

In this episode, I’m exploring the powerful link between posture and confidence — how the way you sit, stand, and move can reflect what’s really going on inside. Your body language tells a story about your self-belief, and understanding it can help you build calm, grounded, embodied confidence.

This isn’t about forcing yourself to stand up straight or fake confidence. It’s about learning to listen to your body and notice how posture changes when you feel safe, capable, or seen. When you’ve spent years trying to make yourself smaller, it’s easy to carry that story in your shoulders, your stance, even your breath.

We’ll talk about how posture affects confidence and self-esteem, what it means to take up space without apology, and why true confidence isn’t something you perform — it’s something you feel.

You’ll leave this episode with a deeper awareness of your mind-body connection and a new respect for how your body supports your confidence, presence, and power.

In this episode, we cover:

• The connection between posture and confidence
• How body language reflects self-esteem and self-trust
• Why we subconsciously shrink ourselves and how awareness begins change
• What embodied confidence really feels like
• The subtle shift that happens when you allow yourself to take up space

Transcript

0:18

Hello, hello. um Well, it's been a couple of weeks. It's been a couple of weeks. I had a bit of a mare. So I came on, gave you an intro episode all about the new format of the podcast and how great it was going to be. And then I had a problem with my mic. I had a big problem with my mic. Actually, I had a big problem with my laptop. I won't bore you with the technical issues, but basically what happened is my laptop decided to do a firmware update and that broke my microphone. Well, it didn't break the mic, but some genius on the internet who's experienced in podcast audio told me that what I needed was an audio interface. So I ordered an audio interface and it took longer than expected to arrive. When it got here, it all got set up and everything was working beautifully. But do you know what wasn't working beautifully? My voice. Because I have got this stupid lurky that's going around. it for a couple of weeks now. I'm blooming sick of it. Absolutely fed up of it. So I thought I can't leave it any further before I bring you an episode. I got you all excited for the new format and then two weeks down the line I'm only just getting to record one for you. That's not okay. I don't like that. So I'm gonna try and croak my way through an episode, okay? So I apologize. My voice is not up to par this week. Not at all. But I wanted to give you something. I wanted to bring something out. Especially after you'd given me such lovely feedback as well after my reintroduction episode. That's what I'll call it. the reintroduction episode. I had some really, really nice messages, really lovely comments, really lovely emails saying that basically you were looking forward to the change and that I was potentially going to fill a hole that you didn't really know how to fill. I had an email from Rose, lovely Rose, thank you. Oh, it was the best email because I opened it and in great big letters it says, Positive, positive, positive. And I was like, yes, that's brilliant, Rose, thank you. Anyway, she apologized to me for the big letters. It turns out it was unintentional, but I'm going to pretend that it was intentional and that she was just very excited. So thank you, Rose. Thank you very much. But as a part of Rose's email, she did say that she feels like there's a part that's missing. and she doesn't really know what it is. So hopefully this new information is going to help fill those holes and will compliment what we've done already on the podcast. I mean, that's not going anywhere. All the previous episodes are going to stay there. And yeah, we're just going to build on it. We're just going to do really good things and build on it. So that is where we're at. So should we just get on with it? Because let's... hope that my voice can get through it, but I don't want to waffle for hours before getting into the substance of the episode because what if my voice goes completely? What will happen then? Oh, actually, one more thing before I do get into it. I would really, really, really like to get to know you as a listener, habits wise. I would really like to know about how you listen to your podcasts. I'd like to know when you listen, where you listen, know, what you're doing when you listen. And then that will help me to shape what I do for you. And hopefully just make it the best it can be really. Now, the only way I can do this is if you can give me a little bit of feedback on that. So I'm not asking you if it's a... Lots of information about what you think of the podcast and what your favorite episodes have been and all that. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking you to just answer a couple of questions in a really quick survey to tell me about your listening habits. I promise this is not a long survey. It will take you just a couple of minutes maximum. Promise. So the link is in the show notes. And if you're an email subscriber, you'll see that the email that comes out to tell you about this episode, the link is also in there. But if you can please, please, please, please click on the link and tell me the ways you listen to your podcasts, I would really, really, really appreciate it. So please, please click the link. Especially if you're sat here not doing very much while you're listening to the podcast, you could just click that and do that while you're listening, couldn't you? That would be awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Let's get into the actual content of the episode then. So we are going to talk about what your posture says about your confidence. So basically your body tells a story in its appearance, in the way you carry yourself, whether you realize it or not. Let me give you some scenarios. So imagine you're standing in a queue in the supermarket and that queue is really, really long. The longer you stand there, the more you fed up you get and you start shuffling from side to side. And maybe you will started the queue, stood up straight, all lovely and happy and ready to get to the checkout and have a nice conversation with the cashier. By the time you've got to the front though, the queue has been that long that you are slumped and you are fed up and you can barely manage a smile. If you're anything like me, you can barely manage a smile anyway, because you're in the supermarket. But your posture can change that quickly based on your energy and what you're feeling. So another example would be um if you go into a meeting. you're at work or you're going to an online networking meeting or something like that. And you start the call or you start the meeting, sat up in your chair, keen, excited, well, maybe not excited, but keen, interested, and you sit up straight and you're paying attention and you're giving the eye contact. And then three hours in, you're still there. and you're not feeling so positive. You are fed up, you are annoyed, you are bored, you are tired, whatever it is you are. And you are slumped in your chair a little bit. Maybe you're not paying attention, you're not maintaining that focus. You're shifting from side to side, you're looking around, you're leaning on the table or you're leaning on your arm of your chair and your posture has completely changed because your vibe is very different. So that's how you can see from somebody's body language what they're feeling and people will pick up on that from you. So notice how you're sitting or standing right now. Not because I'm asking you to correct it. I'm not going to be like, right, pick yourself up now, just as a matter of interest. How do you look right now? I am quite relaxed. So I'm sat at my desk. I'm leaning forward on my desk. I'm talking in the mic. I've got one hand that's kind of wafting around in midair as I'm talking, because I do gesticulate quite a lot. Sometimes I will lean on my hand, but I'm quite engaged and I'm talking to you and I'm encouraged. If I was bored and didn't know what I was going to be talking about, or I was worried about joining a meeting, or I was nervous because I didn't know who was going to be on this Zoom call, or... you know, something like that, my body language and my posture would be very different. Now, the old narrative is the old kind of posture advice has always been about the appearance, hasn't it? Stand up straight. Did you get that when you were little? used to well, I didn't used to get it all the time, but you know, it's the thing you hear, isn't it? Stand up straight, stand up straight, stand up straight, shoulders back, head up, all that sort of thing. It never ever is about how you feel inside when somebody's talking about your posture, is it? When somebody says to you when you're younger, stand up straight, shoulders back. They are correcting your posture. They're correcting the outward appearance. But I'm willing to bet that nobody ever looked at you and kind of questioned, why are you not stood up straight? Are you okay? Do you know what I mean? What if your posture wasn't something to actually fix, but actually something to listen to instead? What if it's actually your body's way of communicating how safe and confident and visible it feels? Your confidence starts in your body before it ever reaches your conscious mind. Your body is already reflecting how confident you're feeling before you've had a chance to think about how confident you're feeling, right? So let's talk about what your posture might be saying about your confidence and how tuning into that can change the way you show up in all parts of your life. Confidence is not just a mental thing, Emotions live in the body and they come out visibly from the body. So in the same way as you might laugh or you might cry, your other kind of energies, your other emotions will come out slightly differently. So you're, specifically talking about confidence today, aren't we? That will come out in your body. And when you feel anxious and when you feel scared, that sort of thing, it all comes out through your body, even if you're not releasing your emotion as an actual display of emotion, like laughing and crying. So when you feel anxious, for example, you might curl inwards. If you are sitting or you're lying down, you might bring yourself into more of a fetal position. If you are scared, you might do similar. It's almost like if you are scared and you curl up into a ball, it makes you untouchable because they can't really see you because you're very, very small. You know, whatever the situation is, it can't touch you if you're as small as you can possibly be. Now, if you compare that to feeling proud, for example, you naturally expand. Or if you're super confident, you naturally expand. body opens up, you stand taller, you take up more space. Many, many women have learned over the years to make themselves smaller, right? Diet culture tells us to shrink ourselves. We're told to have smaller voices. We are criticized for the way we look, our shape, our size, the clothes we wear, the makeup we wear, the hair style that we've gone for. And these are all experiences of being judged. So your response to situations where you are not going to feel comfortable, your response is protective. To shrink yourself down, to hide yourself a bit, it's all protective. If you feel like you're going to be judged for your body size or your body shape, you might try to shrink that and hide it. If you think you're going to be criticized, for something you say, you might say it more quietly or you might say it more quickly because just get it done and get it done quietly and then, you know, it's done, isn't it? When actually the confidence of saying things louder and taking your time and meaning every word you say, it's all part of that picture of confidence that you put on, isn't it? So that shrinking, that being smaller, it's all protective. It's trying to protect you from harm, essentially. The body really remembers moments of shame and fear, and your mind does, obviously, but you remember moments of shame and fear. Anytime you've been criticized or judged in the past, you're gonna remember that. It's gonna be held on in your subconscious, if not your conscious. So... the physical act of shrinking can start to become habitual. It can be something you do automatically. Think about walking into a room, right? You're gonna walk into a room and you know that everybody in there is gonna judge you. What's gonna happen to your body? Your shoulders are gonna tighten, your chest is gonna cave slightly, your body is gonna slump, and you are going to... Basically, shrink yourself down and try and protect yourself before you've even walked through the door. Now imagine walking into that space when you feel confident and you are going to walk into that room and everybody is just waiting to see what you've got to say. They love the way you look. They love that you're there saying what you're saying. Now what? You walk in, your head is held high, your shoulders are back. You walk in with this air of, yes, people, I am here. You breathe easier, your body opens up. You can see it. You can see the way that somebody feels the way they're walking into a room. So where in your life are you noticing yourself shrinking? Where in your life, where in your day-to-day habits and behaviors, where in the routines that you have, are you making yourself small? And when in those days, when in those times, are you opening your body and being more relaxed? This isn't about fault and posture correction, right? It's about awareness, because you can't change what you don't notice. So if you can take the time to think about this, you can start to change the things that you want to improve. A lot of people talk about this kind of confidence as presence. You ever heard that? People talk about somebody who's got real presence in the room. They can command a crowd without even trying. They draw somebody's attention. without trying, people like being around them. They just have a presence. You hear that all the time. Well, that presence comes with a posture. Your body will look a certain way and will give off a certain vibe when you have that presence. And it doesn't need to be loud and powerful and brash. If you're not the kind of person that walks into a room and goes, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am here. and you will listen. That's absolutely fine. You do not need to be that person. You don't have to be loud and powerful. You can be quietly powerful. You can have a presence that is quiet and grounded and steady and reassuring and calming and all those things. So don't for a minute think that you have to be big and bold and loud and brash and aggressive to have a presence and to show people that you're confident. It doesn't have to be like that in the slightest. A confident posture feels like alignment. Feet feeling really grounded, comfortable on the floor, you know, not shuffling from side to side, but stood firm. Long, tall spine. shoulders soft, breathing steady. It just feels natural and comfortable. That's what real confidence feels like. And it is true, someone can look perfectly confident, but still feel tense and disconnected. That is true, of course, but true confidence comes out of the ease of all of those quiet parts that I said about. You can tell, for example, if you're, I'm trying to, let me think of an excuse. No, not an excuse. Let me think of an example. So have you been in a training session? You sat in a training session and the trainer at the front is going to be either somebody that you want to listen to or not, but they will have an air of confidence, whatever level of confidence that is. For some, for some tutors, for some teachers, they might look like an absolute bag of nerves. They're all a little bit jittery. They don't really know what they're doing. They're shuffling around. They're trying to find the things that they need and, and, and, know, that kind of energy. And if they didn't say a word, you would feel that through their behaviors and through their presence, through the way they're stood. And if you've got a teacher who's confident and grounded in their approach and calm and just knows what they're going to say and they know that they're interesting and they know that you're going to listen and you want to learn, you can feel that, right? You can feel that from somebody before they've even opened their mouth. And then there's the other end of the spectrum where you've got somebody who is teaching a class and they are loud and they're aggressive and they're throwing the white... Oh, hang on a minute. I was just going to give you a really bad old example. I was just about to say that throws the blackboard rubber across the room to get your attention. But do you even know what a blackboard is? Are you of an age where you know what a blackboard is? Please tell me you do, because otherwise I feel really old right now. But um there are teachers that are very loud and very aggressive in their style in order to try and get you to listen. Now, is that also a confidence thing? Do they not have faith in themselves as teachers able to deliver and command your attention? Is that a confidence thing too? That middle ground where you've got that calm confidence. That's the best, isn't it? Don't you just love being around people like that? So wouldn't you love that for yourself? And you can apply this to many, many different areas of life. Walking into a meeting, walking into an office full of people you don't know, walking into a networking meeting. speaking up in a meeting, in general life, walking into a room where you've got family and friends. There's lots of different ways that you can bring this confidence into your life and have it be impactful for you. But notice, if you think about putting yourselves in these positions, then notice what your body's doing. Notice how you see yourself in those situations. What do you feel like your confidence levels in your body are doing when you imagine yourself in those different situations? Notice how your body shifts when you feel grounded versus when you feel anxious. And also notice the internal voice that's saying to you, don't be seen, just be quiet, get it over and done with, don't draw attention to yourself, just go in, don't talk to anybody, um or in family situations, friends situations, just be quiet, everybody else will do the talking for you. You know, these internal cues, often shape what your body then does. without you even realizing it. What if that was the other way around though? What would it feel like to give your body permission to take up space? What if your body could lead the way? What if you could switch on this confidence and then have your brain follow? Wouldn't that be amazing? The thing is, confidence doesn't have to be performed, okay? This is not like we're trying to put on some massive act, but it is something you have to embody. You don't have to hold yourself up. You can let yourself rise up naturally in your thoughts and your beliefs and your feelings about the situation and your opinions of yourself, because this is always driven. by a lack of confidence in the self. Now there might be a degree of putting it on before it's realized in real life, but that's okay because you have to actually learn, your body and your mind have to learn that it's perfectly safe to do these things and to behave like that and to be the confident person that you want to be. So when you enter a room, remember that your energy communicates confidence long before you open your mouth. There is a real difference between walking into a meeting room, slightly folded, hunched over, huddling yourself up versus being grounded and confident and comfortable and open. It changes how others read your authority. It changes how others perceive you. The same principle applies when you show up in photos, when you eat comfortably in public, when you walk through a space without adjusting your clothes. These are often subtle cues of self-trust. When you show up in photos, when you eat in front of people, the food that you're choosing to eat, when you are walking through a space and you know that you chose those clothes and you are comfortable in those clothes and to hell with whatever anybody else says about your clothes, that air that you carry with you then, that is you showing the world that this is how you will be treated. That posture is a mirror of your self-worth, essentially. Your self-worth on the whole, I think, but definitely your self-worth in that moment. So it might be that on the whole, you feel really good about yourself, you feel confident in general, you are self-assured and you know what you're talking about and you know what you can offer. And so on the whole, Your posture reflects that and it's confident and it's, um, assuring and it's, and it's just tall, essentially. That is how you are on the whole. However, if one day you turn up and you don't feel very well, or you don't have faith in what you're about to talk about, or you don't like the people you're going to be spending time with or, or whatever it is for you. Your self-worth diminishes in that moment and your posture will reflect that. That's why I say on the whole, can be self-confident, but in that moment, it can mirror your self-worth. So expanding and taking up that space is about giving yourself self-permission. It's not about arrogance. It's not about thinking you're the finest thing to ever walk the earth. Although, may I say, you are very entitled to think that. It is not about ego. It is about self-permission and self-worth and knowing that you are entitled. and worthy of being in that room talking to the people you're talking to without needing to make yourself smaller in order to fit in. Try and get aware of this stuff as well. Try and notice it in your day to day. Hopefully just by having listened to this, you will start to think, oh, I wonder how I am today, or I wonder how I am when I do this. I wonder how I am when I'm with those people. Awareness alone is progress, right? Every time you notice your body language shift, You are strengthening the connection that you have between your body and your confidence. So start to ask yourself, when do I feel most naturally confident? When do I notice myself trying to disappear a bit? What situations make me feel like I am too much and that I have to dim down or not enough? And then I shrink because I don't feel good enough to be in that space. Start questioning. Start questioning the way you feel and the way you carry yourself. Confidence can be a surface act, but it's also not a surface act because it's something that rises from within you when you feel safe, when you feel seen, when you feel self-respecting, when you feel worthy and valuable, when you feel like you've got something to contribute. confidence just oozes out of you then. When you learn to trust your body, whether that's through intuitive eating or self-compassion or just being kind to yourself, your posture will start to change naturally because that trust is building, your body trust is building. The body no longer needs to protect itself or hide itself anymore. So it starts to expand and it starts to take up space and that's That's brilliant. To have that body trust is absolutely brilliant. And remember, you don't have to hold yourself rigidly. Okay, it's not about that. Stand up straight, shoulders back, head up. It's not about that. It's not about that. It's a relaxed confidence. When you feel worthy, you do not have to remind yourself to stand tall. You do not have to remind yourself to stand up straight and put your shoulders back. Your body already knows how to do that. It already feels it. It knows. And it does it. So what does that look like for you? What would it look like to live in a body that feels that safe and that powerful? I do this work all the time with women and it is the best thing to have a session with somebody and do some of this work and for them to come back to me the next session and go, guess what I did this week and I bloody owned it. You know, just somebody walking through a door to a room where they don't necessarily know what's inside and feel comfortable doing that. I hosted or I co-hosted a networking event last week, set up a new networking group with a friend of mine. And it's for women, it's for women only. And it was lovely. We had a launch night. I stood by the door quite a bit while people were coming in because I know it can be nerve wracking to walk into a room full of people you don't know. I totally get that. But you know what? The confidence of the women in that room was just oozing out of them by the end of it. It started by women in there kind of milling around and meeting people they didn't know. There weren't many of them that came with other people. So it was really nice to see people mingling and meeting each other. And by the end of the evening, we had bigged those women up. And we had made them feel so good about the stuff that's happened to them this last year. And by the time they left, these women were louder and more confident. I don't mean louder as in loud and Larry, but there was definitely a buzz about the room and there was an air of confidence in that room and these women felt good and they felt powerful and they felt like they were part of community. This is the stuff. This is the work. This is the transformation. This is the stuff that I get to do with clients all the time. I get to help you to reconnect with your body. I get to help you trust yourself and then show up in room full of people that you don't even know. It's just brilliant. It's just such a good thing to see. I love, love, love to see people like you just transforming and being more confident in life. because of all the changes that you're made, you're making uh based on your self-worth. I love it. So remember, how you hold yourself tells the world how you hold your self-worth, right? You are just learning to reconnect with yourself. If you don't feel confident all the time and if you don't stand tall all the time, that's fine. You don't need to fix how you stand. You need to feel worthy of standing up fully in yourself. So next time you leave the house, I want you to try something. Before you walk through that door, I want you to stand tall, relax your shoulders, lift your head, take a deep breath and step out into the world like you are a force to be reckoned with. And you do that every day because at the beginning it might feel like something forced, but the more you do it, the more your body and your brain knows it's safe to do it. And then it just does it. And every day act of quiet confidence. That's what you're to do. And then stand tall, not because you should, but because you bloody well can. Have an absolutely fabulous, confident, wonderful week. And I'll speak to you next week.