Want to learn an effective shortcut to making a lasting change in your self, your beliefs, behaviors, and the perceptions others have of you?

The traditional method involves an honest introspection of who you are and how you want to be different. Using this method, eventually the ‘outside’ you matches your inside attitudes and beliefs as you manage to change yourself, and eventually others will begin perceive you as you truly ‘are’. As an example, once you stop feeling shy, you will no longer appear shy to others, and they will treat you as though you are confident. This way can be described as ‘from the inside, out’.

The shortcut method involves acting on the outside the way you want to perceive yourself on the inside. Moving confidently leads to others reacting to you as if you were confident, leading to confidence. This way can be described as from ‘the outside, in’.

The outside in method is particularly effective when used to change how one communicates through body language and movement.

A six-week course in how to walk as though you shouldn’t be messed with has been shown to have a longer lasting effect on predator’s perceptions of vulnerability in potential victims than a six-week course in self-defense. (Book, Costello and Camiller 2013)

This maybe is because a six week course in self defense is not of long enough duration to change a person’s deep perceptions of their own ability to defend themselves, where as just learning to change one’s walking style doesn’t require a fundamental change in who one thinks they are.

You walk ‘as if’, not as ‘really are’.

In the following short clip a group of students are practicing stride lengthening in our Thinking Self Defense training.