Your External Appearance Impacts Your Internal Feelings

Alright, so I’m not gonna lie. This is kind of embarrassing to admit, and I pray that you do not judge me for this. But I have noticed over the years that there is a direct correlation between my mood, between how confident I feel, between how energetic I feel, there’s a direct correlation between that feeling and how long it’s been since my last haircut or the last time I shaved. And it’s so, so petty that our external appearance should have such an impact on our internal state. And yet it’s true. It does. When you look a certain way, you tend to feel a certain way to reflect that. Amy Cuddy is this psychologist who years ago, gave a TED talk about the idea of the power pose.

What she found was people who went into a situation that required them to be at their best. Maybe a stakes negotiation or something like that. If they just took, I think it was like 30 seconds before going into that room to stand with their arms out to the side, almost like Superman, you know, when he comes out of the phone booth and he puts his hands on his hips and he looks up to this guy with his chest puffed up and he’s like, looks confident. They call this the power pose. And they would have people hold that pose. I think it was like for 30 seconds, and then go into the, into the meeting or the thing that they had to go do. And what they found is that the people who held that power pose performed better. They were more confident.

And this is very simple action of standing in a particular way influence their internal state. And it’s the same with your external appearance. For me, what I’ve noticed is that if I wake up in the morning, and because I’m an entrepreneur, I have the ability to wake up when I want and to wear what I want. Nobody can tell me what to do. I could wear sweatpants out, I could wear a t shirt out. I can do all that. I don’t need to shave, I don’t need to get my hair cut. I can do all that.

And I have in the past. If you actually go look back in 2017 through 2020, I was doing a lot of video content with escape climbing. That was one of my companies. And you can see I had this beard that I never shaved. I had shaggy hair. I was so deep in the weeds of building the business, I didn’t care about that other stuff. But during that time, I was also very lethargic, very tired. And how I felt generally about myself was very low.

And it wasn’t until I started taking care of how I dressed. And part of the reason I was that way was because the people that we were working with were dirtbag rock climbers, people that were working in our manufacturing line, in our shipping department. And so they just generally are young kids that don’t care a lot about money and status, and they were more interested in and going out and rock climbing. So they’re the dirtbag lifestyle, and I wanted to connect with them. I didn’t want to be the guy in a suit who created this disconnect between the ownership and management and the workers. Right. I wanted them to see me and them. But the problem with that was that it made me feel worse about myself.

It made me feel less confident, less ready to go and do the things that were needed to really excel in that business. And what I noticed was that when I started taking my dress more seriously, my appearances, and I started taking care of that every day, even on the days when I wasn’t necessarily going out into the world, but I was just staying at home, working on my computer. Even on those days when I would take the time to get myself together, I felt better. I was more productive overall. My mood was more elevated. And at the end of the day, I typically felt better as well. And so I wanted to share this with you because it is such an easy way to influence the internal states that we have is just by simply changing your external. Put on that suit, put on, you know, that makeup, if that’s what you’re all about, shave, do your hair, go take a shower.

Like, whatever it is that helps you feel like your best self. Like, you feel, you look and feel like a million bucks that will pay dividends into the rest of your work. And I’m just continually reinforced by this because I just got my hair cut today. But I was reflecting on this last week. I was like, man, I’m starting to feel like when I look, I don’t like looking in the mirror. I’m like, I feel shaggy. And I was up in the mountains, and so I let my beard grow a little bit, and I was like, man, I just, I feel I started to notice the way that I felt in the mornings was more lethargic. I felt lazier.

I felt less confident in life. And then as soon as I shaved, I hadn’t even got my hair cut at that point. As soon as I shaved, I was like, oh, I feel much better. Such an interesting change. So I wanted to share that with you because that is a very simple hack, a little simple tip that you can use and be cognizant of. Because when you start to get into the weeds, the mind field of entrepreneurship, it’s really easy to put your own self care to the side and not to worry about that so much, but because nobody’s going to be coming to you and saying, hey, you can’t dress like this at work, right? Like, you get to make the rules. So I just encourage you to think through how you could use and exploit this idea to its maximum effect in your own life. So that’s going to do it for me, guys and gals, we’ll catch you in the next episode.

Until then, stay hyper focus, my friends.