Posture And Confidence: The Benefits Of Good Posture

Did you ever take a good hard look at your posture?

Did you ever consider, that the position you hold your body in while doing everyday activities like working, studying, while enjoying a good movie or just looking at “meaningless” stuff on your smartphone could influence the way you feel about yourself?

To really pique your interest, I would like you to imagine a wide range of possible postures that you or anyone could have.

Farthest away on one side, you have a sad and depressed or highly stressed out hunched-over person, and on the complete opposite side, you have a triumphant posture of someone who just achieved something very extraordinary like winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

The Importance of Good Posture

Here comes the question:

Where does your average posture fall under in this imaginary range and do you think it is helping you achieving great things or not?

Proper Body Alignment

In this article, I am going to focus on how posture affects your level of self-confidence.

But to be crystal clear, I am not leaving out good posture and how it affects muscles, joints and bones because it is not important. I am leaving it out to fully focus on this more controversial topic.

Make no mistake, proper body alignment is extremely important for optimal body functioning while also creating the least amount of wear and tear.

If you want to be able to sustain long hours of hard work and focus (also when you are in the better half of your life), then you need good posture!

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Body And Mind – Brief History Lesson

Taking a step back and looking at this whole idea from a more general perspective, you will find that there is nothing really special or original about it.

There is nothing new about posture affecting thoughts and emotions.

In ancient meditation practices from the Far East, a great deal of importance was and still is put on having a balanced, relaxed and upright posture.

E.g. in some old writings from a Japanese Zen master who lived 1290-1366 it is explained that good posture is the essence of Zen meditation practice.

This can perhaps date the concept more than 700 years old.

But then again take a look at the ancient Indian practice of yoga and it can be argued that the concept is several thousands of years old.

The history of yoga is still debated, but the suggested origins dates anywhere from more than 5000 years ago to 2500 years ago.

Negative Posture, Negative Mind

Getting back to the topic, think about your posture when you are feeling sad and depressed.

If you are in agreement with what the scientists say, you will be thinking about a hunched-over posture with shoulders rounding forwards and a head looking down.

Obviously, this body posture is a reaction to negative emotions. But there is also some truth to having these negative emotions because of the body posture.

It is really a two-way street.

Your thoughts and emotions affect your body, and your body affects your emotions and thoughts.

You can get up right now and stand tall with an open chest and see for yourself if you feel more confident.

But for an even easier example with effects harder to deny, just try to smile and laugh for 30 seconds and see if your mood and the positivity of your thoughts were not affected.

But It Is Not “Real”

Trying to distinguish what confidence comes from the act of manipulating the body from “real” confidence can be interesting and a cool thought experiment.

But what you might find is that it is hard to make any sense of the circularity. Confident posture leads to confidence, and confidence leads to a confident posture.

Not to mention how it is even possible to quantify such a thing?

Another thing is that neuroscience teaches us that different parts of the brain will reflect different kind of emotions when the neurons are triggered. Once they are triggered it does no longer matter how since the results are the same.

An increasing amount of research some of it very recent is clearly showing how indeed posture affects our self-confidence and emotions which can indirectly affect performance levels.

Some interesting studies on students performing tests show a difference in scores between students who slouch while taking the test and students sitting up-right with relaxed shoulders.

There seems to be an even bigger difference if the test subject is one that the students worry about.

How Posture Affects Self-Confidence

Like I just elaborated on above, confidence gives you a confident posture and confident posture gives you confidence.

But there is more to it than that.

Social psychologist and lecturer at Harvard University Amy Cuddy became very popular for her concept of “power poses” first presented in a 2012 TED talk.

The idea was backed up by a good amount of evidence showing that people adopting certain postures would feel more powerful, do better in mock-interviews and even have positive changes in hormone levels detectable a short time after.

These hormone changes were 1) decrease in the stress hormone cortisol well-known for affecting emotions negatively when levels are high over a longer period and 2) increases in testosterone which among others is linked to feelings of self-confidence and motivation.

The research was later heavily criticized and it is controversial whether there is any effect on hormones at all.

However, I would argue it does not matter that much because there are two other important aspects of how posture might affect your self-confidence which can be described as:

1. How your body appears (physique)
2. Non-verbal communication

Your Physique And Body Language

Call me superficial if you like, but you can’t deny that how your body looks and is presented can have a tremendous effect on how other people perceive and respond to you.

It is not necessarily about whether your physical appearance is in line with what the current trend deem very attractive, but more about how you carry your body and if it well-aligned or not.

Maintaining a good posture makes you stand taller compared to when slouching. It also helps make your body features more visible. It basically makes you look more fit and attractive.

It is known that how powerful and confident we feel is strongly associated with standing or being tall. E.g. if someone is sitting above others looking down I bet you automatically associate that person with being powerful.

There is also some subtle communication both to others and yourself that:“I am confident and powerful because I not afraid of putting my guard down”.

Honestly, did ever see an idealized image of a leader or hero figure with poor posture? Did you ever see an ancient Greek statue with poor posture?

Standing with an upright and open-chested posture with shoulders back and relaxed will make other people more likely to associate you with being powerful and confident.

All this means that people will probably think highly of you and pay attention when you speak. Appearing fit and attractive also helps.

Since we are constantly assessing ourselves based on how other people respond to us whether be it with body language or subtle cues within the words being used or how they are used, it is going to make you feel more confident if people respond well to you.

I would say that this even truer if you are in a new environment.

There is a lot of non-verbal communication going on when we are talking face-to-face, and for this, your body posture is extremely important.

I am not saying that you will feel like Superman if you have a good posture, but it is a very good start if you avoid looking like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.

But Is Self-confidence Really That Important?

The answer should be obvious to you!

But I bet you have heard at least one tragic story about some guy who ended up ruining himself because of greatly overestimating his own abilities and being overly confident.

It is a good lesson, but I think the vast majority of us would benefit greatly from being more confident in our own abilities.

I find that when it comes to most, the tendency is that the person himself/herself is often the first one to doubt own qualifications.

I suspect that there is something with our modern lifestyles and/or how we are constantly bombarded with marketing imagery of people living or looking better than us that simply diminishes self-confidence.

You need that self-confidence back and to be brave to trust in your own abilities to accomplish whatever you want to accomplish.

Therefore it is much more than just about feeling powerful and good about yourself.

Self-confidence is a resource you need to push yourself out of comfort zones again and again in order to achieve great things in life.

What Next?

By now I hope you are convinced that you need good posture and that it will help you be more self-confident.

I would suggest you take an honest assessment of your own posture and try to figure out where you might have an issue.

Here are three common ones:

1. Rounded shoulders
2. Forward head posture
3. Tight hip flexors

Essentially, these are all more or less caused by the many hours spent sitting down typically leaning forward and focusing on things in front of us eventually leading to slouching.

To improve your posture there are the three main things you need to focus on:

1. Improve the ergonomics of your surroundings, especially the setup at your desk and other places you spend a lot of time e.g. sitting in the car
2. Improve “postural awareness” – in order to get good posture you need to familiar with what it looks and feels like. A lot of people find that products known as posture correctors are helpful in doing so.
3. Reverse the effects that maintaining poor posture have had by stretching shortened and tight muscles and strengthen elongated and weak muscles. I have written a small guide with a list of exercises you can use to fix forward head posture and rounded shoulders

Start doing this now and you should gradually experience improvements. Additionally, pay close attention to your posture whenever you are in a tense and stressed situation.

Author: Marcus

Marcus runs the site Strengthery where he writes about weight training, weight loss, and other health-related topics. After injuring both his shoulders and realizing that his posture sucked, he became obsessed with learning everything he could about how to improve and maintain good posture and now likes to share what he learned.