How to be confident (even if you’re not) | Montana von Fliss | TEDxBellevueWomen

Adopting an expansive 'superhero' posture changes your facial expression and eye contact and creates body-language cues that observers read as confidence, so your stance directly shapes how confident you appear.

People infer your internal state from visible signals, so deliberately changing posture, expression, and tone causes them to conclude you're confident because they rely on observable cues when they can't read your mind.

Practicing with specific goals and adding one new technique per rehearsal builds focused repetition, which makes confident behaviors more automatic through progressive improvement.

Recording and watching yourself reveals mismatches between the techniques you intend and the behaviors you actually produce, so video review lets you correct gestures, tone, and timing before performing live.

Framing the audience as collaborators shifts your appraisal from threat to partnership, which lowers defensive anxiety and encourages more natural, welcoming behavior on stage.

Rehearsing in the same physical and technical conditions you'll perform in (standing, saying lines aloud, clicking slides) trains the body and memory on the exact cues you'll have, which improves retrieval and execution under pressure.

Replacing perfectionist self-talk with a concise, positively framed 'silent sentence' shifts your priority from impossible standards to a helping-centered goal, which reduces anxious rumination and redirects focus to action.

Slightly raising your vocal energy makes you seem more confident because listeners use tone and volume as cues of preparedness and positivity, so a small boost changes their interpretation even if you don't feel confident.