Vanessa Van Edwards shows how word choice shapes confidence and influence. Powerful people use more activation and positive language, while everyday speech drains confidence with phrases like "I can't" and "it's impossible." Audit your emails to count negative language, then swap them for confident alternatives like "I will" and "I'm confident."
One really easy way to spark just a little bit of confidence is to use more positive, powerful language. In fact, studies have found that powerful people tend to use more activation words, more positive words. What we don't realize is we are constantly throwing away and using negative or neutral words. All of those words take away our confidence. So what I want you to actually do is start to identify when you are accidentally being negative. This happens with phrases like this: I can't, I don't believe, I'm bad at, I'm afraid of, it's impossible. I want you to begin to use phrases as much as possible, especially in email and in writing, because we can think those through, ways you can use more empowering language like I can, I know, I will, I'm confident, anything is possible. I highly recommend opening up your email sent folder and counting all the negative words and phrases you use, all the times you take confidence away from yourself, and then count up all the times where you had little moments of confidence, where you said, "I can, I will, I'm on top of it. Let's be productive. Let's be efficient. I can handle it." All those confidence-building phrases.
