Your body starts talking before you open your mouth. Slumped shoulders already said something.

Posture arrives before speech and is read faster. Shoulders, hands, and where your eyes go transmit interest or reluctance long before the first sentence, and people respond to that reading whether or not they notice doing it. None of this is about performing confidence you do not feel. It is about knowing a signal went out and you did not choose it.

Before something that matters, take ten seconds to set yourself: feet planted, shoulders down, head up, phone away. Notice how the room meets you differently. The aim is simply that your body and your words say the same thing.