Building Your Confidence with Effective Verbal Communication

You must have heard people say ‘be confident’ to someone who seems nervous before performing a task. They say this because they know that confidence will magnify their performance significantly. Similarly, looking confident while speaking is extremely crucial. It helps you engage your audience throughout your conversation. However, confidence cannot be attained overnight; you need to work on it. Let's hear from Rakesh as he provides some valuable tips and tricks to boost your confidence.

Well, these tips are certainly worth remembering. Confidence is the key to tackling stage fear. If you are not confident, your audience will lose interest in your performance, which will make lower your confidence further. And, you definitely don't want that to happen, do you? 

Some of the key learnings from this segment on confidence can be summarised as follows: 

• Confidence is a state of mind and can be built over time.
• Self-confidence and self-esteem are essential for boosting your confidence.
• Do not fear failure and rejections, as it would only shatter your confidence.
• Your body language is the first impression of your confidence.
• You can expand yourself to feel more confident.
• The four main hacks that can help you portray yourself as a confident person are as follows: 
  • Keep your shoulders straight, chest out and chin up
  • Maintain eye contact with the audience
  • Keep a smiling face
  • Speak loudly and clearly
• You can work on your self-confidence and self-esteem until you have them in place.

It is important to practise public speaking once you have built the desired level of confidence. In the next segment, you will learn about some general practices that you can follow to enhance your public speaking skills.

Additional Resources

• Amy Adkins: Three tips to boost self-confidence 
• 6 ways to look more confident during a presentation
• How to build confidence