Vanessa Van Edwards breaks down how your posture signals confidence or defeat. Winners take up space with head up and shoulders back; losers collapse inward with chin down and arms crossed. Small shifts like rolling shoulders back and keeping your arms away from your body instantly read as more confident.
We like people who feel proud because usually proud people are confident, they know their stuff, and they're trustworthy. So we're always trying to gauge, do you look more like a winner or do you look more like a loser? That's a very hard way of saying that, but the way that this works is the amount of space that I take up dictates how confident I feel. University of British Columbia, they researched athletes across cultures and they found that when losers win a race, they take up a lot of space. They tilt their head towards the sky, they roll their shoulders back, they often might even have their arms out, and they keep their torso nice and open. Losing athletes do the opposite. They typically tilt their chin down, they roll their shoulders in, they tightly press their arms their side or even cross their arms in front as if they're showing defeat. The problem is when we are starting a meeting, checking our phone literally looks like a losing athlete. When someone pops on video or you walk on stage or you're walking into a room, do not be checking your phone. I want you to maximize the distance between your earlobe and your shoulder. We see that they are proud enough to leave this down, to not protect themselves. And the second distance is the distance between your torso and your arm. They're gesturing, they're open, they're free. It's a very quick way that we judge if someone looks confident or not.
