Name: How to be confident (even if you’re not) | Montana von Fliss | TEDxBellevueWomen
Uploaded: 2025-03-17T11:30:03.000Z
Duration: 16 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Picture this, you're going on a boat trip, and you get on board with your family, and you got your bags, and the captain comes out to greet you and says, Hi, my name's Montana Von Fliss, I'll be your captain for this journey.

Present continuous

So, oh boy, let's just have a great trip, sorry.

The imperative

What we want in that moment is for the captain to walk out and say, Hi, my name is Montana Von Fliss, I'll be your captain for this journey, let's have a great trip.

The point is, when you are the speaker, you are the captain for that journey, and how you show up really matters.

For the last 17 years, I've coached thousands of speakers all over the world, from big tech companies to small startups, and everyone, from new hires to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies want to know, how do you show up and look confident?

So I'd like to share my top five tips for how to be confident, even if you're not.

What was the difference between those two captains?

And not just, you know, one seemed nervous, one seemed confident, but what was I doing differently to make you think that?

Different volume, different words, certainly different body language, but the truth is, I wasn't actually feeling particularly confident, I was just making certain physical and vocal choices to make you think that.

So what are those confident looking choices?

Number one, turn up the energy and speak up.

When you speak up, even just a little bit, it reads as confident.

Yes, it goes to 11, but you can just aim for a five.

I can bring it back down to a three down here, nervous captain was down here, and then we bring it back up to a five, and it sounds prepared, positive, and confident.

Nervous speakers tend to talk really fast, right?

And then when they do have a pause, they fill it in with verbal filler, likes and ums.

However, if you try to speak more slowly, it just sounds like this, right?

Let that bring a smile to your face and have some better eye contact.

All of that reads as confident, and pretending to be a superhero is just a super quick way to have confident-looking body language.

But you can just aim for a five, and that will be great.

And you can stand in superhero backstage to boost your confidence, but I'm saying bring that superhero stance on stage so that your audience sees you as confident.

And if you need an easy shortcut, just make the shape.

Just make the shape of a confident person.

They don't know how you're feeling, so just make the shape, and they will go with it.

Like if you came over to my house for dinner, and I opened up the door, and I was like, Hi, come on in.

You know, you've got to make the shape of a good host.

If you're not sure if you're making confident-looking choices, you can just video yourself and watch it back.

I feel like I just saw you say, not doing that one.

Most people don't like to watch themselves.

But wouldn't you rather make that adjustment before you're in front of your audience?

Videoing yourself is a great way to check in to see that you're doing the techniques, but also to see that it's still authentically you, your version of confident captain.

Now, how can you do all of these things on performance day?

You can give yourself a little treat when you do a run-through, and make it practice with purpose by giving yourself a specific goal or layering in one new confident captain technique each day.

If it's a week before your event, aim to run it all the way through at least once a day.

And if you don't have time for a full run-through, just take the opening, closing, run that three times in a row from anywhere.

When you're in the shower, when you're walking your dog, when you're making a meal for your kids.

I know my kids are very used to me walking around the house talking to myself.

Whatever you need to do to get in those repetitions.

You can just let go of your verbatim script if it's starting to sound robotic.

And you can still use bullet point speaker notes to remind yourself of what you would like to say and to invite you to say it a little bit differently each time to keep it fresh.

By practice, I mean standing up, saying it out loud, imagining your audience and inviting them in, clicking through your slides, doing it as much like it will be on the day, whether it's virtual or in person.

And I know it might feel a little funny saying it out loud to yourself.

But think about when you learn a new sport or when you practice a musical instrument.

If you had a piano concert on Friday and you got new music on Monday, would you only read your music every day and then play it for the very first time at the concert on Friday?

And yet I see speakers do this all the time.

And it can really boost your confidence to practice with purpose by layering in one new technique each day.

Those first four techniques, they're all about how to appear confident regardless of how you're feeling.

It's the one that makes all the others shine.

This is about what you choose to tell yourself.

I've been a professional actor since I was a kid.

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

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