We are talking about seriously changing your life by changing your posture.

Does it sound like a task to trivial to have much effect? Well I tell you that you are wrong. The greatest thing is that working on your posture is really easy, yet you gain amazing benefits.

Changing your posture to a more ‘correct’ upright one has the following effects:

• Better health
• Increased perceived confidence
• Better ability to break habits
• Increased ability to overcome fear
• Actual self-confidence

How could this be the case? Let me explain.

Why Changing Posture has Awesome Benefits

Posture is something that is ingrained into your life. Every moment, sitting or standing, posture is involved. So in order to change your posture you need.

1. Constant vigilance
2. Constant effort

By working all the time on your posture you build both your ability to observe yourself and to create change in your habits. So you are practicing all the time:

• Breaking habits
• Overcoming fear

Let me elaborate on how changing your posture involves overcoming fear.

How it Helps you Beat Fear

Whenever you start to get afraid you generally do some combination of, closing your chest, slumping your shoulders and dropping your head. Posture deals with all those things, so when you notice a change in your posture and you fix it, you are actually fighting against your fear response.

The more you deal with the minute effects of fear on your posture you slowly come to realise the root causes of your fears. It is just the natural effect of catching fear earlier and earlier and as such you get a better feel for the cause and effect.

Why is Changing your Posture such an Effective Tool

Your posture is such an effective tool because:

• You can pay attention to it anytime
• When it goes wrong it is often quite noticeable

It is worth elaborating on how easy changes in posture are to notice, as a few examples always help.

Take walking down a street. Correct posture dictates shoulders back, chin up and eyes forward. Do not look at the ground. Focus on the horizon. Most of us when crossing strangers on the street look down at the ground to avoid them (due to fear). Looking at the ground is very different to looking at the horizon and after the first few times noticing it you will begin to pick it up very quickly. This enables you to force yourself to have correct posture and look forward, even while the fear is present. Great for breaking out of fear.

I think walking around is the most effective exercise to first learn correct posture and maintain it. Once you understand how it works, bringing it into the rest of life is not too difficult.

Consider that you are out at dinner with people you don’t know very well. It’s common for people to keep their heads down and focus on the food. Because you are used to checking your posture whenever you look down, you can correct your posture anytime you are not eating. This forces you to look up and with a little added pressure you can even look at people and smile. You just have to break that first habit that you would normally fall into.

Putting Posture into Action

So for one week I want you to focus on always having correct posture. Particularly focus on this while you are walking around. It is a great activity to learn it and see the real benefits. Forcing yourself to confront some fears.

Just one week, that’s all I ask. You won’t regret it. Embrace your new posture and come out a more confident person.

What did it do for you?