"Dressing" for Success

Earlier we discussed how to become less stressed at a situation at work – by using thought challenging to break down the worst case scenarios and by coming up with contingencies. You’ve changed your perception of the situation by applying a little logic and in doing that, you’ve become much more calm and composed. We’ve also seen how we can change our response to new social situations, making ourselves incredibly calm and relaxed when talking to new people so that we come across as fearless.

This is where things start to change.

In the introduction, I mentioned very briefly the ‘law of attraction’. We saw how simply changing the way you feel about yourself would also change the way that others react to you. Let’s take a look at that in some more detail… 

What is the Law of Attraction?

It might seem strange but most of us will buy more expensive gifts for our wealthier friends. This is proven by statistics and surveys and it’s surprising seeing as you’d think we’d want to buy more expensive items for the people who couldn’t afford them on their own.

But the reality is that wealthier people have more things and have a more expensive quality of item on display. To get them something they’ll like and to get them something that will fit in, we need to spend more on them. That and they probably spend more on us than our poorer friends, so we feel obliged to reciprocate.

This is an incredibly simple example of the law of attraction working. When you have more nice things, you actually attract even more nice things to you.

The same happens with money – you have to spend to accumulate and simply having more money means you’ll make more investment.

But it also works with what you believe about yourself and how you act. If you believe you’re highly capable at your job, if you genuinely aren’t stressed by things going wrong and if you act accordingly; then you’ll quickly find yourself rising through the ranks and getting to the top. When you have belief in yourself, so do other people.

One reason for this is that confident people tend to look more confident thanks to the way they dress and act. If you are very confident you might walk with a straight back and chest puffed out and you’ll probably buy nicer clothes and spend more time on your hair.

Simply doing this will make you look like someone who is more important and who is more successful. Now other people will assume you are more important and more successful and unconsciously your bosses will be more inclined to want to give you more responsibility.

They’ll also feel more confident sending you out to meet clients, while your colleagues might start turning to you for advice – because you look like you know what you’re doing. It doesn’t take long until doing all these things will make you the ideal candidate for that raise or promotion and then you become more successful.

The same is true for a guy approaching a woman in a bar. If he doesn’t believe in himself and hasn’t trained himself to be calm and relaxed, then he’s going to be sweaty, nervous and unattractive as a result. If he comes over and he believes in himself though and can control his stress response, he’s going to seem fun, confident and therefore attractive.

On an unconscious level, he is sending a signal to the woman that he is a good genetic bet for her offspring – he must be or why would he be so confident around her? There’s obviously something about him that makes him confident, whether that is wealth, strength, health or intelligence. This makes him more attractive and the woman’s neurotransmitters do the rest. Hello oxytocin, hello testosterone! 

Change from the Outside In

We’ve focused a lot so far on how to change your mindset from the inside out but you can also change it from the outside in. How? By simply treating yourself a little better – dressing better, looking after your health and investing some cash in your own happiness and your own development – you can help yourself to feel more confident and look more confident to others.

There’s an old saying that you should ‘dress for the job you want’. Likewise, it they say that the amount you spend on your haircut directly correlates with the money an employer is likely to entrust you with.

So spend that bit of time in the morning to make sure you’re looking your best. Exercise. And take care of your health. Women – try wearing a bold shade of lipstick to show that you’re not shy and not content to shrink into the corner. Guys – don’t go into work without bothering to iron your shirt, it just sends a signal that you don’t respect yourself enough to bother – or that you’re so disorganized that you couldn’t find the time or the energy to do it.

Changing from the outside in is never enough on its own. But when you change both inside out and outside in, then you’ll find the change is even more astonishing.

Next week we'll talk about healthy failure and risk.