How communicating with confidence and being mindful can enhance your life and help in many situations.
How you communicate and react to situations can affect your life, relationships and success. In this article, I’m going to look at mindful communication and confidence. Thinking about how we can use each of them to better our lives.
Communicating with confidence
You might think of confidence as something you feel. But being confident in your communication means displaying a certain set of behaviours. You can learn these behaviours and strengthen them over time. Not being confident can leave us feeling anxious or fearful. Which in turn can lead to missed opportunities, mixed messages and regret.
Imagine you’re on an interview panel. The first candidate walks in, looks you in the eye, smiles and shakes your hand. They sit back in their chair with their head held high. Using hand gestures whilst giving you their answers with confidence. Candidate two walks in and looks at you for a second then begins to avoid your gaze. They sit forward in their chair with their legs shaking and twiddle their thumbs. Their voice trembles as they struggle to give you shaky answers. Who do you choose?
The way you communicate not only affects how others perceive you but how you feel about yourself. Learn the right behaviours and take on a confident persona. You will soon notice that how people treat you begins to change. Being confident will become a part of who you are. This is where self-acceptance of how you look and how your voice sounds is so important.
Mindful Communication
Being mindful means keeping your attention on the present moment. Taking the time to appreciate your experiences as they happen. Without judging or getting distracted. This allows you to be present in the moment and less receptive to reactive thoughts and feelings.
Imagine you’re in a rush but decide to pull into the drive-thru for a coffee. There are ten cars in front of you. After a couple of minutes, you realise the cue hasn’t moved. But it’s too late to change your mind as there are another 5 cars behind you. Now, this is a time when some may get stressed or annoyed, letting those emotions take control of them. But someone who is mindful might stop and take a breath. Acknowledging the situation is stressful but deciding not to react.
Being mindful allows you to choose how you react in adverse situations. You won’t end negative emotions but you will be able to stop and take note of them. It doesn’t mean you will stop feeling emotions such as anger. But it does give you the opportunity to acknowledge them and then choose how to act and communicate.
Conclusion
Don’t think of confidence as a feeling but something you can learn. Taking the time to adopt the right behaviours will become a part of who you are. Add this newfound confidence to the process of being mindful. Then you will have better control over your emotions. Harnessing both of these techniques will give you self-worth and self-belief. Whilst allowing you to have better relationships with others at home, in the workplace and more.
If you would like further guidance on mindful communication or building confidence then contact me at sonal@sonaldave.com
Learn more at www.sonaldave.com/courses and watch my videos at https://www.youtube.com/c/SonalDave68/
I look forward to hearing from you.
