Ten things I know now, that I didn't know a week ago

I've been writing this blog for a week now, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to look back over the last few days. It's quite a scary thing starting a blog, not knowing if anybody will want to read it or be interested in what you're going to say, but we're now closing in on 1,500 hits so thank you to everyone who's visited, read, commented and shared the blog so far. I want to be sure I'm posting on subjects that are relevant and interesting, so please do get in touch in the comments section below to say hello and let me know what you want to read more about.

(By the way, I'm told there might be a problem posting comments in Safari, so if you have something you want to say, please try a different browser. I'd love to hear from you so please don't be put off!)

It's been an interesting few days - I've thought about things I'd never considered before and let off a bit of steam on issues I've been raging about for years. Here are a few of the things I've learnt this week:

1. Standing out from the crowd, in all areas of life, is often just a case of following a few simple rules, and is sometimes as easy as doing things right.

2. I'm almost certainly not the only person in my office who sometimes feels they shouldn't be there.

3. Confidence is all in the mind, but the mind can be tricked by something as simple as changing how you stand for two minutes.

4. Interviews for jobs in teaching sound seriously scary.
5. It's possible to spend three weeks locked in a shop window with 300 poisonous spiders and live to tell the tale (although this does not mean I'll be trying it any time soon).

6. Quoting Voltaire in a job interview is a good thing.
7. Practising the 'power pose' in the work kitchen is not a good thing. People will laugh.
8. High street charity collectors are not, on the whole, very popular people.
9. Hiring a billboard costs £500 (you never know when that knowledge might come in handy).
10. And an interesting fact that I just read - apparently when trying out a new pen, 97% of people write their own name (this information is courtesy of the weekly newsletter from Innocent Drinks - definitely recommended, it'll brighten up your Fridays and you'll learn all kinds of random trivia).

Have a great weekend everyone!

When in doubt... fake it.

Setting up this blog has got me thinking about confidence. Even when drafting my first post, I was already apologising for it not being very good (my sister had to point out the irony there). It's not because I necessarily didn't think it was any good; I just wanted to cover myself in advance and lower everyone's expectations. Just in case.

Which brings me to today's words of wisdom - if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. This is a cliché that gets thrown about all over the place, from self-help books to The X Factor. But it's true. When you're marketing a product, if you're not convinced it's worth buying, then you're not going to persuade anyone else. And the same goes for yourself. Why would someone give you a job, go out with you or do anything else you ask them to if you don't even think that they should?

So what can you do? Some people just aren't that confident. I know I'm not. I'm constantly surprised when someone laughs at my joke, likes something I've done at work or tells me I look nice today. I've always been that way and it seems unlikely that now, at the grand old age of 30, I'm going to have a complete personality transplant. So how do I convince people I believe in myself, and in turn, make them believe in me?

And the answer, apparently, is - fake it.

Or so says Amy Cuddy in this video from TED.com. Her theory is that our body language has an impact not only on how other people see us, but also on how we see ourselves.

Amy's conducted experiments which prove that by taking a confident, relaxed and open body position for just two minutes, we're more likely to feel powerful and successful, because it affects the hormone levels in our brain that affect dominance and stress. She then goes on to look at how the result of those experiments can be applied to real life situations like job interviews.

Her point is that in fact we can change, but it won't happen overnight; first we have to fake it. If we can use our bodies to convince our minds that we're confident and we belong, no matter what stressful situation we find ourselves in, over time we'll forget that we're faking and we'll end up believing. In Amy's words: 'not fake it till you make it, but fake it till you become it'.

I'm not completely convinced, although there's no arguing with the science - at least not by me! - and Amy Cuddy herself is a pretty inspiring lady (check out her story towards the end of the talk or read her bio). But she does make it sound a little bit too easy. Still, in that case maybe I've nothing to lose by trying it out. Who's with me? ;)

PS A friend recently sent me this cartoon. Maybe there's something in all this after all...?