How To Improve Eye Contact And Appear More Confident

Three Exercises To Improve Eye Contact And Appear More Confident

For someone who struggles with shyness or social anxieties, or just wishes to get better at meeting and connecting with people, the power of good eye contact can not be underestimated.

Good eye contact is an important factor in peoples first impression of you. It can make you come across as likeable, positive, strong, confident, or shifty, creepy, insecure. Just pay attention to how you react to peoples (lack of) eye contact the next time you're out and meet people.

The purpose of this article is to outline a few exercises that will particularly help you if you have problems establishing or holding eye contact, or just feel you want to learn to appear more confident and approachable.

Improving eye contact is best done through "gradual exposure", where you attempt to improve bit by bit, and get used to the change over time. Going "all out" and forcing yourself to do things perfectly from day one is not helpful, as it is likely to be extremely hard to sustain if you feel anxious about it, and may instead create an aversion.

These exercises are meant to allow you to start gently, and work your way up to better and stronger eye contact over time without getting too intense.

If you find giving eye contact particularly hard, for example if you find yourself generally jerking your head away to break eye contact immediately when you notice, and find it particularly difficult, you may want to set fixed times when you practice initially. Do try to improve your eye contact at all times, but keep these fixed times in your diary and set an alarm. Give yourself no way of forgetting or otherwise making an excuse for not going outside to practice, or chances are you will create avoidance patterns - ways of justifying to yourself why you are not dealing with this problem.

Exercise 1: On the street

To begin with, simply walk around with just one goal: Try to meet the eyes of as many people as possible over whatever amount of time you set aside for your initial exercise - 30 minutes to an hour is a suitable time to start with.

Consider your "audience": Areas where most people are rushing to/from work are not great. A shopping street, or a park is a better bet.

Don't worry about how long you manage to keep eye contact. Allow yourself to look away as soon as you feel uncomfortable.

Make a note of how many you manage to meet the eyes of, and more importantly: what you feel. Pay special attention to how strong your resistance is to keeping eye contact longer, and roughly how long you manage to keep it. Don't force it.

Determine a minimum number of people you might be able to get eye contact with in the time allotted, and how long you expect to be able to keep eye contact consistently (don't exaggerate).

Second and subsequent times, go out and get eye contact with roughly the number of people in question for the amount of time you have decided you can handle each.

Of course there will be variations - the weather might be worse and there might be fewer people around etc. But do your best not to make excuses.

Keep notes as before, and try to exceed the amount of time you keep eye contact with at least one second per person (of course assuming they don't break eye contact first).

A common objection to this is "but if I keep eye contact for X seconds" it will seem creepy. This is an excuse created by your fears. Remember that if you keep eye contact for whatever amount of time, they are keeping eye contact for the same amount of time.

Shy or anxious people often forget this, and it comes across as nervous and insecure at best. Shifty and unreliable at worst.

Do, of course, pay attention to situation - don't force eye contact with someone who seems angry or scared, or who scare you. There's no need to antagonize people. But be aware of when you have a genuine reason to think you need to break eye contact and when it is driven by your anxieties.

When you feel you cant hold eye contact any more, aim to move your eyes slowly to the side, rather than quickly jerking your head away. Pay attention to any "nervous ticks". E.g. a common behavior is to jerk your head to the side, and then quickly make some hand or shoulder movement while moving the head all the way to the other side, as if you've been "caught" doing something wrong and is looking nervously around to pretend you're looking at something else (picture a cartoon villain suddenly studying all their surroundings intently while whistling and pretending to be innocent).

Once you can do this fairly regularly, repeat, but with people of the opposite sex, when he/she looks away, look away slightly too, but keep an eye on them peripherally, and see if you can "catch them looking". If they look back at you, catch their eye again and smile. Hold eye contact again.

Repeat this exercise until you can hold eye contact on the second time for at least 10 seconds when you catch the other person looking. Remember to soften your facial expression and pull into a smile.

Keep in mind that often it can take as long as 30-60 seconds after you break eye contact before someone will look back at you. Once you are more confident, you may keep looking straight at him/her to see if you can regain eye contact. But don't persist if the person does not look back at you after a minute or so, or you will start to seem intimidating.

Exercise 2: Shop assistants

This is an easy one: Whenever you go to a till, have the money ready so that you can keep eye contact instead of fumbling with your wallet. If you can make yourself do it, say at least "How are you?" and pause, to make it clear you care about the response rather than is just making a pleasantry. Hold eye contact and smile.

Break eye contact briefly as needed, but make a point to always look up and get eye contact again when you can. E.g. while your card is being authorized, or after you've put your stuff in the bag.

Get eye contact before leaving and say "have a nice day" or similar. Avoid "you too" in response if the person says "have a nice day" to you first. Instead repeat it.

You may wonder what this has to do with eye contact. The reason for focusing on this type of exchange is that we often "automate them" entirely and don't pay attention to the other person.

If you carry this out, and pay attention to the feeling you put behind the words, and the pacing, and look carefully at the other person, you will notice a profound change in your daily interactions if you previously have not given great eye contact.

Most people working tills at shops get ignored. People stare at their bags or the till, or their wallet, and generally mostly ignore them.

When you give these people eye contact, a smiler, and the opportunity for a tiny little exchange, you are in many cases brightening their day up far more than you would imagine, and if you pay attention to the eye contact it will be extremely obvious. You'll get beaming smiles of the kind that light up peoples eyes rather than just fake, forced smiles with just the lips, and you will get bright, happy responses. And often, you will reap the benefit that they will fall over themselves to assist you.

Sometimes you will also find that it will drive them to start conversations with you, and share personal details. If you have social anxieties or are just shy, you may find this to be quite a revelation in that it is a very low pressure way to increase your confidence about talking to strangers: You can walk away at any time, and in fact you will walk away shortly or the customers behind you will get annoyed. You will also often have a physical barrier that will make the situation seem less intimidating.

You are giving them a lot by treating them as humans rather than robots, and they will give back in the form of boosting your self confidence, as well as a great feeling of seeing the happiness you are spreading.

In terms of getting confident about strong eye contact, this is a gold mine: It gives you extremely positive feedback. Just don't get complacent and let this be the only situation you improve in (this is why this is not the first exercise, though you can certainly do it in parallel with the first one).

Exercise 3: Flirt by signalling a shared conspiracy

First, some of the suggestions in this exercise may come across as cheesy or cartoonish. Keep in mind that the purpose is not particularly to seduce anyone, but to become more flexible and confident about experimenting with eye contact and associated body language.

Secondly, it is all in the delivery and this is a major takeaway. The suggestions below can be carried out in ways ranging from creepy, to hilariously comical, to seductive and flirty. You'll likely miscalibrate to begin with. No matter. At worst a stranger will think you're an idiot, and part of what you need to come to terms with is that this does not matter. What are the consequences?

They may tell a friend about you, or shake their head as they leave. That's pretty much it. The barrier for getting publicly humiliated or called out on something is extremely high.

And the potential reward is high. Escalating eye contact in a flirty way can be a killer skill.

This exercise is based on the assumption that you have problems approaching a stranger you may find attractive and starting a conversation. If you are able to do that, then do that (while holding eye contact!) instead of this exercise. But you have problems with basic eye contact and have read this far, chances are you have problems with this too.

Silent body language signals are a key component of flirting, and both men and women are horribly bad at it. You may find as you get better at reading people, that women flirt or think they flirt with men all the time, even when it means nothing. But most men are totally oblivious to womens attempts at flirting until they get really blatant. As such, it may come as a revelation just how far you can take these before the other person even signals that they've noticed.

Flirting through body language is a playful way both of having fun even when nothing will ever come of it, and of creating increasing attraction that you will benefit from as your confidence increases. For women there's the unfortunate caveat that you may want to be somewhat more careful in what signals you send to men to avoid unwanted further attention.

Flirting often centers around creating a "shared secret" or "conspiracy" between you and another person, that creates excitement and that implies clandestine communication.

Think of the ways you'd communicate quietly with a friend at a time when you had a shared secret and were almost bursting while you were around others because of your conspiracy. Strive to recreate that fun with body language.

Try the following:

Follow the recipe from the end of exercise 1 to get repeat eye contact. When you catch the other persons eyes, attempt to make yourself do one of the following (rotate between the ones you are able to make yourself do, and try to incorporate more as you go along):

• Just smile normally for a few seconds before looking away

• Tilt your head slightly and smirk. See how obvious you dare make this (both the head tilt and smirk).

• Smile, and give a little wink.

• Smile, then gently bite your lips a little bit

• Smile, bite your lips, then tilt your head and smirk

• Bring a couple of fingers up to your face and slide them slowly over your chin while looking at the other person as if trying to make your mind up about something, and smirk.

• Flash a huge grin at the other person.

• Make up your own

Practice these in front of a mirror. Again, remember that these are not intended to be enough for you to seduce the other person, or even to be seductive - feel free to try some of them in a comical or exaggerated way, to gauge the responses you get. And more importantly: To pay attention to the responses you're NOT getting. Namely, no outcry or public shaming. Nothing bad happens.

Over time you will find your confidence increasing, and you can focus more on adjusting what you do in order to elicit more positive responses, but remember that this is not a replacement for actually trying to push yourself into going over and talking to a person that seems interesting to you. It is just a stepping stone.

As for the other exercises, write down how long you could do it, what you managed to do, the reaction you got, how it made you feel etc. Also write down your feelings if you failed to do any of these. Re-read your notes and use them as a basis for aiming to do a bit better each time.

Keep doing this until you can elicit reactions from other people on a regular basis. E.g. smiles, making the other person look embarrassed enough to go red and look down, or copy what you are doing, etc.

In closing

Regular practice is more important than pushing too hard. Pushing too hard is counter-productive, as you want to be at a level where you feel good about yourself at the end of it, to ensure you keep it up.

You will rapidly see benefits, such as more positive reactions from other people, and generally improved confidence. With better eye contact it also becomes easier to maintain a better overall body language - opening your body and not cowering and "hiding", for example.

Writing notes is essential to this process. Shy and introvert people have a tendency to substantially misinterpret other peoples reactions and remember them as far more negative than they actually are. As such, writing them down when they are fresh in your memory, and focusing on objective facts about your experiences and re-reading them later may in itself be very enlightening and help realign your interpretation of events with peoples actual responses and see them in a more positive light.

Keep at it, and your improved eye contact will soon make other people see you in a totally different light.