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Walk tall and be considerate
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onfidence gets knocked out of you many times. Sometimes you
have to fake confidence by walking tall. It’s a game. Good posture
runs in my family. My mother was a dancer, my father was a
chiropractor, and his mother was one of the first chiropractors in
Canada. My siblings and I learned good posture early, and continued
with my sisters, who became dancing teachers, and my brother Scott,
who became a chiropractor. We all walk upright.
My father hosted annual walking competitions in our front yard.
I’ve never heard of anybody else hosting a competition like that. He
was a great marketer! He would invite all his patients and their
friends to the big garden in the front yard of his clinic. My mom
would bake a lot of pies and freeze them. We had a huge freezer, big
enough that she could feed pies to a thousand people. She also served
coffee and tea. When all the guests were seated in the garden, the
competition would start, with certificates offered for the best
posture. Everyone looked confident and happy.
• • •
People have remarked on my posture all my life. Nowadays, people
assume it comes from modeling, but that isn’t it at all. It’s from my
family. If you see someone walking tall, don’t you wish you could also
walk like that? Yes, you can, if you practice. When you slouch, you
look sad and insecure. When you walk tall, you look strong and
confident. If you want to look and feel more confident, start with
better posture. Stand up straight. Put your shoulders back, have a
pleasant expression on your face, and look at people when they talk
to you; don’t look away. Call this your confidence game.
• • •
Besides posture, manners matter, too. I grew up with parents who
were very quiet-spoken and well-mannered, maybe because they
were Canadian. They were always polite and considerate of others. At
modeling school, there was an etiquette class. And there, they taught
us how to order at a restaurant and which knives and forks to use.
I’ve used what I learned about table manners all my life. When I
taught students in my modeling school in Bloemfontein, South
Africa, I had an etiquette class, too. It wasn’t only for models; all the
parents at the university and at the schools were sending their kids to
me to teach them how to have good manners.
For all my models, part of my teaching was about showing up on
time, speaking clearly, and not being shy. When you have good
manners, you are definitely more confident. You also appear more
confident to other people. When I see someone with good manners, I
appreciate him or her. And it’s so easy to have good manners.
I’ve always wanted my children and my grandchildren to carry
themselves proudly and politely, to have good posture and good
manners, and I hope I set a good example for them, the way my
parents did for me.
My son Elon has five boys. When I moved to LA, we would have
family dinners, and it was just chaotic. You can imagine how noisy it
got with everyone talking.
I said, “From now on, I’m going to spend thirty minutes alone with
each boy each week.” Friday afternoons, I went to their home. We sat
and talked about their schoolwork and what they want to do and
what they are interested in. Sometimes I just played a game with
them or read them a book.
Then I took them to the table. I showed them how to eat politely.
How to speak politely. How to wait until there is a time to speak and
not shout over the other boys. “Eat with your mouth closed.” “Don’t
talk with your mouth full.” How to use their knife and fork properly.
And they learned!
I said to them, “And when you’re finished, you take your plate to
the kitchen, but you also take your dad’s plate and my plate. And
instead of telling Dad what you’ve done for the day, ask him how his
day was.”
We all got together for dinner, and the kids behaved very nicely.
Elon came in and sat down, and one of the boys said, “How was your
day?”
He looked puzzled.
Another of his sons said, “I wanted to ask first!”
And the other one said, “No, I wanted to ask first!”
So that was quite funny.
Then they argued about taking his plate to the kitchen. I said it
meant they have to take turns.
Today, years later, they are very polite kids, and I’m proud of
them.
People are more receptive to you when you behave properly, and
it’s more impressive than being loud and rambunctious and jumping
all around. It makes other people appreciate your company.
Even if you are a very confident person naturally, you will still gain
and lose your confidence many times in your life. Hopefully, as you
get older, you lose your confidence for a shorter time. In my
seventies, you would think I would have less confidence. But my
confidence is better than ever, because I am not worried about
rejection or insults. As a model, I get rejected nine times out of ten. If
you are losing confidence, you have to find a reason why you are
losing your confidence. Many women aren’t confident. They feel they
have to be good at everything, they have been beaten down by people
criticizing them, or they’re taking on too much and cannot succeed at
everything. Practice doing what you’re good at, and don’t try to be
the best at everything.
As a child, I was good at schoolwork and terrible at sports,
although I’ve tried every kind of sporting activity. My twin sister,
Kaye, was not good at schoolwork but was a natural sports person.
We were proud of each other and appreciated each other’s
accomplishments. We certainly didn’t lose our confidence because
we weren’t good at both.
If you are usually confident, and then it goes away on a bad day,
analyze why it’s a bad day. What knocked the confidence out of you?
Did someone make a remark that really hurt? Did they realize it
hurt? Why are you so affected by that comment? Sometimes at work,
you see other people are better at some aspects of the job that you
would like to be good at. You should work harder at your talents and
learn from those who are more experienced and better.
After my divorce, I regained confidence by having a happy home,
raising happy children, making new friends who were kind to me,
and becoming successful as a dietitian and a model.
You may need to make a big change to gain your confidence after
you’ve lost it. Feeling down all the time is not a way to live. You need
to surround yourself with family, friends, and colleagues who
appreciate you for who you are. That will make you walk really tall
and with confidence.
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