WRONG.

You can achieve confidence through some very simple, but weird feeling methods,

in which you consciously hold your mind and your body in a different way.

First of all, you gotta trick yourself.

"Fake it until you make it."

There's a reason why everybody says this,

and it's because eventually, you'll start believing in your own lie.

Now, the second part,

and the most awkward feeling is changing your body language.

No hands in pockets.

No wandering crazy eyes.

No fidgeting.

Stand up straight.

Pull your shoulders back.

Eyes ahead.

We have a tendency to go inward.

What you need to do is very consciously go outward.

I highly recommend reading "What Every Body is Saying."

It's a book by a former FBI agent about body language.

And he teaches you "power poses"

that they typically teach to authority figures to demonstrate dominance,

and, you guessed it, confidence!

Eye contact. It's incredibly uncomfortable,

but it can be a lot of fun.

Challenge yourself!

Every time you and a stranger make eye contact,

force yourself not to be the one who looks away first.

I've gotten into a LOT of fun staring contests,

trying to challenge myself to do this.

Also, smile!

Say hi to strangers.

Talk to people in line.

It's so simple.

But the more you do this, the more you realize you have nothing to be afraid of!

So as long as these strangers aren't offering you candy that you're inclined to accept,

keep talking to them.

Most importantly, get out of your own head.

Just get outta there! I do this by focusing on the other person.

So when I'm in a conversation with someone and I feel self-conscious,

I put ALL of my focus on them.

What are they trying to say to me?

What are they trying to actually communicate?

And if you can put 100% of your attention on the person in front of you,

then there's none left to think about yourself.

Finally, when you talk, (slowed) Slow. Down.

Not that slow. But when we get excited, when we're performing,

or when we're nervous, our voices tend to go higher and faster,

which is interpreted as nerves.

You know, when you see confident people,

they walk and they talk and they act like they have all the time in the world.

And there's power in taking your time.

There's no big secret to achieving confidence.

There are actual steps that you can take to get there.

It's like any other skill.

You practice, you work at it, and eventually,

you've got the hang of it!

And no one knows what you're thinking.

If you just walk and talk and act like you're comfortable in your own skin,

the rest of us will believe it.

And you'll be a better person for it. So good luck!

Afflicted, Inc., my second short film, should be out next week! Aah!

I know I put a behind the scenes video out for Emergency Call,

which is our third short film,

and everyone was like "Where's Afflicted?"

And it's been in post-production,

but it is finally almost done, it should be here next week,

I really hope you like it.

I'm super proud of everything I'm doing so far,

and I feel like I'm getting better and I feel like I'm learning,

and if I keep doing this for just 10 years you know, I'll just be amazing!

So, I'm having the time of my life. Honestly.

And I could just..jizz. Everywhere. Like, "Thank you. Oscar. Oscar. Yes."

But speaking of how I can even afford to do any of these creative dreams of mine,

thank you so much to Audible for sponsoring today's episode.

You can go to audible.com/anna for a free audiobook of your choice.

They have over 150,000 titles to choose from,

12 of which are karma sutra books.

They have 12. Audio. Karma sutra books!

So how can you not go?

One thing I'm listening to right now is The Tommyknockers by Stephen King,

which I LOVE because I'm just fascinated with aliens, like, fascinated with aliens.

But yeah, you can get that, or another free audiobook of your choice

at audible.com/anna. That's audible.com/anna.

Thank you so much for listening, guys.

And watching, and supporting me,

I appreciate it, like, so much. Have a good week.

Stay awesome, Gotham! CONFIDENCE!

Hi, I'm Anna Akana, I have a YouTube channel, currently.

I initially started getting into YouTube because I wanted more opportunities to act.

As an actor, you wait around a lot for auditions, for your agent to call,

and I wanted to do something more, and get better at storytelling.

So that's how I ended up on the internet.

So Afflicted, Inc. is the second short of the year,

it's about a company whose employees are actually personified afflictions.

So they visually look like monsters.