Allie Morgan – Writer & Cancer Survivor

Your body language is so important – you might not even realise just HOW important.

Let me tell you how vital your body language is when you want to show you that you’re an assertive person: 93% of your communication is non verbal. 93% of your communication is made up of things that you might not even be saying. 

Of that 93%, 55% is coming from your body language and 38% is coming through your tone of voice.

That might be a lot of figures to get your head around but the big one is that 93% of your communication is non verbal. 

So it’s pretty damn important and I want to give you 3 big tips today that will help you enormously in getting your point across.

Pay attention to your tone of voice

Your tone of voice can have a huge impact on what you’re trying to say to someone.

If your voice tends to go up at the end of sentences, you may not sound as assertive as you’d like. That’s because you sound like you’re asking a question, which makes you sound uncertain of what you’re saying.

So pay attention to your voice – try and keep your tone low and calm, not high and hyper. Slow down your speech too. 38% of what you say is coming across in your tone of voice so you need to pay attention to it. It’s important.

Think about the way you’re holding yourself

If you’re sitting or standing with your shoulders slouched forward, you’re going to come across as uncertain and unsure of yourself. Instead, roll your shoulders back and try to relax them.

If you’re sitting near a table, rest your arms on the table in front of you or on the armrests of the chair. You don’t want to have your hands down in your lap – you want to be open and able to express yourself.

Keep eye contact with the other person too – this is a really important factor. You don’t want to stare them out and intimidate them but just keeping eye contact and leaning in to listen to them can make a huge difference. It can help them to feel heard.

Try to keep your hands still, instead of fidgeting and try not to look down – keep your head up and relaxed.

Use power poses to boost your confidence

I learned about power poses when I was studying my ILM course with a wonderful group of women. 

If you’ve never heard of a power pose, think of how Wonder Woman stands with her hands on her hips and her feet shoulder width apart.

The Wonder Woman pose is a really popular power pose because it helps so much – it even alters your hormones, increasing your testosterone and decreasing cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

So before you go into something which is making you stressed – a presentation you’re giving or a big family gathering you’ve been dreading – go into the toilets and stand there like Wonder Woman for 2 minutes. That’s it. Now you might feel a bit ridiculous, you might feel a bit stupid but stick with it.

You might even want to run through some affirmations while you’re there, just to give you that extra boost.

Let me know if you try any of these tips & how it goes,

Allie x