Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to Be Confident in Any Situation | Vanessa Van Edwards #295

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 254 of the podcast with Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert in body language, facial expressions, and non-verbal communication. Now Vanessa calls herself a recovering awkward person, but she definitely does not come across like that. She's someone who exudes confidence and charisma. In this clip, she reveals some of the techniques that helped her to transform and that you can start using today.

Starting point is 00:01:51 One thing that I think many people struggle with these days is confidence. And I wonder if you could share some of the psychological tricks that we can all use to, I guess, feel more confident, but also come across as more confident to other people. Yeah. And it's actually a cycle, right? Like the more confident we feel, the better we come across. And even like if we start on the outside, it also works in. I know this quite personally, confidence always eluded me for many, many years. I have a problem where I'm a social overthinker. And so the very first thing I want people to think about is what is your perfect flavor of confidence? I think that when we think about people skills, we often idolize the extrovert, right? We think we all have to

Starting point is 00:02:36 fake it till you make it. You have to fake being outgoing. You have to pretend to be an extrovert. I do not believe you have to be an extrovert to be confident or to be likable. I mean, that's very powerful because I think a lot of people will probably say, Vanessa, look, I see people around me all the time who they're confident, right? I can feel it when they come in the room. Yet that's not me. Like, I can't be that. And I guess what I hear you saying there is that it's not about us necessarily being that other person. It's trying to figure out what's our unique approach or, as you say, flavor to that confidence. Yes. So, for example, I think, and this is a really big myth, that we think that the life of the party, the bubbly extrovert, they're the people who are confident and likable. And yes, that is one flavor of charisma. But if you think about the most charismatic person you know, or the most confident person you know, or the most confident person you know, just think about that person for a second, think about a couple of people you can think of in your mind.

Starting point is 00:03:29 We also have the quiet, powerful introvert who's very confident. We also have a nurturing, empathetic healer who's also very confident. And so I think that if we can broaden our definition of what confidence means, we have more permission to feel authentically ourselves. And here's the biggest problem. We can feel inauthentic confidence. And this is actually proven. So Dr. Barbara Wild, she had a very simple experiment. She took photos of people. In one photo, she had them authentically smiling. They were actually thinking about something that made them happy. Their puppy, their dog, their child, right? They were thinking it was something that actually made them happy.

Starting point is 00:04:07 In the second picture, she had the same people doing a fake smile. So not thinking about anything that made them happy, just smiling on the bottom half of their face. So she took these photos and she had participants look at the photos one at a time. She found that when people looked at the real smile, they caught the smile. They actually felt happier and more confident in themselves. When they looked at the fake smile, they had no mood change, no behavior change at all. In other words, when you are truly confident, you actually infect other

Starting point is 00:04:38 people positively. When you are faking it, when you're trying to pretend to be an extrovert, you are less memorable. You are literally less impactful. Most communication is not really with our words, is it? It's that non-verbal communication. So maybe can you speak to non-verbal communication a little bit? Explain how important is it? How much of communication is that and why our words don't always tell the full story? Yes. Okay. So you said it exactly right, that when we think about communicating with others, we tend to put all of our energy in the verbal basket, right? We think I want to have the perfect answer, or I want to script the perfect presentation, or I want to answer the perfect way. And words is only one portion.

Starting point is 00:05:21 Non-verbal is about, and it's really hard to measure this exactly, but about 65 to 90% of our communication is nonverbal. And by the way, that's a huge range, but it's still the majority, right? So if you only focus on your words, it's like showing up with 40% of your ability. It's like leaving 65% of your abilities at home. And so what I want to think about is, and by the way, let's put this into practical terms. So when I say, oh, nonverbal matters, here's what I mean. If I were to show up to a business meeting and say, hey, everyone, so happy to be here. You would know, you can't even necessarily see what my face is doing or my body. Even if you just were to close your eyes and listen, you'd be like, she doesn't sound so happy to be here. But I guess we're also looking for cues. It's not just our ears, is it? It's all our senses.

Starting point is 00:06:11 We're trying to pick up everything we can to, I guess, ask that basic human question, can I trust this person? Yes. Well, actually, I think there's two basic human questions. This was research that was done for Princeton University. And what they found is when humans meet or interact, and this could be on video, on the phone, in person, professionally, romantically, socially, they're trying to answer two basic questions about every human they meet. Can I trust you? And then can I rely on you? But actually, it's a chronological order here. but actually it's a chronological order here. So what we're looking for in those first few seconds of interaction are trust cues, right? Can I, are you, do you have good intention? And then are you smart? Can I rely on you? So those being able to very quickly answer those two questions, I think that that's why we're drawn to certain people. We are drawn to people who very quickly signal trust, trust, trust, and then reliance. We're like, yes, those questions are answered. Now I don't have to worry about it anymore. So in a weird way, the more clear we

Starting point is 00:07:10 are with our cues, the more magnetic we become because we're just providing clarity for people. We're giving them less work to do in their brains. In your book, you write about charisma being a blend of warmth and competence. And then I hear those two fundamental questions that you just mentioned. And I'm drawn to that idea that charisma is warmth and competence. And the two questions are, can I trust you? And can I rely on you? Which kind of neatly fits into that. Can I trust you is, I guess, warmth. I mean, you're the expert on this, but presumably warmth signals trust and then competence answers. The second question says, hey, you know what you're doing. I can rely on you. Is that how you see it as well? Yes. So when we think about warmth, warmth is a

Starting point is 00:07:59 basic human instinct for survival, right? So warmth is friendliness, likability, trust, openness, collaboration. So that is when a, when a doctor or a business partner or a partner walks into a room, we want to know, do you like me? Are you a threat to me? Are you friendly? Right? So we're looking for warmth. Like just, are we safe? Are we going to be accepted by this person? The next question, exactly what you said. I'll even take it a step further, which is competence is capability. It's efficiency. It's productivity. It's knowing that this person, that they will do what they say they're going to do. We love being around people who both are friendly to us and do what they say they're going to do. That is, I think, the definition of highly charismatic magnetic people is we are drawn to people who are like, yeah, I like you. And yeah, I'm going to get it done. Ooh, that's like a secret magic cocktail that we want so bad.

Starting point is 00:08:51 So I think that when we are confident in our warmth and competence and our abilities, that is like that true, deep charisma. Those people who walk into a room and you are drawn to them, those folks who speak and you're like, I want to both have a coffee with you and pick your brain for my business, right? Both at the very same time. What can we do to help us come across as more confident, as more charismatic? You know, to make it super practical. What are these things that we can think about utilising? Competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. So most people who have really good ideas and so much competence, if they're missing a couple of the warm cues, even though they know they are authentically likable, they know they are trustworthy.

Starting point is 00:09:37 If they don't know how to deliver their competence, people won't believe it. So a couple of very practical things that we can talk about. So I want you to think about your charisma, like a dial, like a thermostat. So we can dial up our competence with the specific cues and we can dial up our warmth specific cues. If you are high in competence and you've ever been told you're cold, intimidating, or hard to talk to, warmth will help literally warm people up to you. Here are a couple of my favorite warmth cues. So the slow triple nod.

Starting point is 00:10:07 So a slow triple nod, one, two, three. Research has found that that helps the other person speak three to four times longer. So that is a very simple, easy warmth cue. Second is a head tilt. So if I were to say, can you hear that? We tilt our head up to the side. They've actually found that when someone just head tilts while they're listening to someone,

Starting point is 00:10:28 it encourages the other person to feel more engaged. So the nod and a tilt are very easy ways to just dial up warmth. So if you're really high in warmth and you want to dial up competence, you want to be taken more seriously, you want your ideas to be heard. You want to actually show competence cues of being a winner. And what I mean by this, I don't mean it in a judgmental way. I mean it like physically as a winner. So researchers from University of British Columbia, they found that athletes, when they literally win a race, they typically take up as much space as possible. They tilt their head towards the sky. They open up their body. They typically open up their hands.

Starting point is 00:11:08 It is a way that they're signaling to the world an innate sense of pride. So a couple of things we can learn from those athletes. One is open palm, open hand. So I love an open palm. I start all of my video calls with a good morning. How are you? Good to see you. That little cue kind of shows someone I'm open. I'm not hiding anything.

Starting point is 00:11:24 I'm not concealing anything. We also love the distance between this, a really weird measurement, the distance between our earlobes and our shoulder. I know that's a very, very weird measurement, but we can sense that someone is anxious or nervous when they roll their shoulders up to their ears and they tilt their chin down and they look like they're trying to protect their jugular, right? It's literally an instinctive protective gesture. If you see people who are really nervous, they'll try to take up as little space as possible. So when you hop on video, when you, in your profile pictures, when you're in a room, see if you can maximize the space in your ear and

Starting point is 00:11:58 your shoulder. Those are some, they seem like micro movements and that's the point. These are small but impactful ways that we can actually dial up people's impression of ourselves. What I love about your approach is that pretty much all the cues, you've got scientific research to back them up. And these cues weren't invented in the last 20, 30 years, right? These are basic, innate human cues that we have used for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to answer those two questions. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? These are sending messages to other people,

Starting point is 00:12:36 whether we want them to or not. Vanessa, honestly, it's been such a joy talking to you. Your work is just so helpful and so practical for anyone. Can you maybe leave my audience with some of your top tips, your final words of wisdom to inspire them to kind of take their cues seriously? Yes. So here's the good news. You're already using cues. We just want to leverage them. We just want to make them work for you. So a little final exercise to think about is what cues are you naturally using? What cues make you feel like your best self? What cues make you feel good when other people do them? The more we can start with the cues we naturally use, the cues that already make us feel good and that we can hone and leverage those the better. So my challenge for you is what cues do

Starting point is 00:13:21 you love? What cues are you already using that you like? And what cues from your highly charismatic people? The very beginning of the show, I asked, you know, who's the most charismatic person you know? Think of that person. When you observe them, when you watch them talk and speak, what cues do they use

Starting point is 00:13:35 that you might also want to try on? And the more that we can leverage our natural abilities, the better we feel, the more authentic we feel, and the more confident we come across. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday, and the latest episode of Bite Science

Starting point is 00:13:58 next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to Be Confident in Any Situation | Vanessa Van Edwards #295

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