Not feeling confident? Here are six ways to fake it

From adjusting your body language, to dressing in a way that makes you feel good, here's our guide to projecting the best version of yourself

"Fake it til you make it" - the concept that if you act more confident than you feel, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy - is widely proposed as a way to boost self-esteem.

Rachel Davis, a 21-year-old linguistics student at University College London, has tried this technique in new situations with unfamiliar people. "I try and become a cool, cynical, full-of-quips persona - an extra lively can-do exaggerated caricature of myself," she says. But Davis feels this behaviour can be problematic as when she confides in new friends about social anxiety, they don't believe her.