Happy High Status: How to Be Effortlessly Confident

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So many of us have had negative messages about confidence from childhood, whether it is, "Oh, you're too confident, why don't you pipe down? And when I dig into that, they're very often talking about somebody who is a narcissist of some kind. In this refreshing, no-nonsense masterclass, Viv Groskop will introduce you to a new way of thinking about confidence, as detailed in her new book Happy High Status. So, anything that means something to you and is very specific and is something that you can actually do… I find for some people something like clarity is actually really useful. Dr Julia Samuel, a psychotherapist and the author of Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving, is a self-confessed robust person, with hard-fought reserves of resilience, yet she admits that even she felt “used up” by the end of the third lockdown.

It's also about really judging the level of self-criticism that you're bringing to that interaction. And Groskop’s point is that when you have it, no inappropriate, ‘lowly’ request or misstep will take it away from you. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think in a world where it's very easy to get overwhelmed, Keep It Simple Stupid is pretty much always good advice most days.Viv Groskop: I wonder if I'm repeating myself because I haven't listened to that episode in a while, but I'll take the risk of repeating myself because -- Sarah Ellis: That just means you're consistent. I believe that social status is not good or bad, it’s just a tool you can use to help achieve your goals. You will know at the end, this is a really crucial thing actually, you will know at the end if you did that thing or not. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the moment during the pandemic where I felt as if something in me had changed, maybe for good.

This week was the Emotion Women’s Day in Hamburg, Germany, where I was speaking about the German edition of How to Own the Room . But beneath the surface – almost as a sort of inner twitch of the eye – I can feel the pandemic in the rear-view mirror.The emotional historian Thomas Dixon talks about “a more resilient and perhaps more reserved, emotional style”. But if you know for yourself that you did the thing, whether it's optimism, show your knowledge, be concise, be succinct. That now is a conservative estimate, we're all going to have many different careers in our lifetimes.

When I first started doing stand-up, I thought to myself, "Well, what if I did this every night for 100 nights; what if?

Viv Groskop: It is a great privilege and I feel like I'm a very squiggly person, so I'm always happy to squiggle again. Our latest series will feature masterclasses on key topics like confidence, imposter syndrome and nerves as explored through our archive of over 150 guests. So, I started to do stand-up thinking, "This could fit in somewhere, or maybe it won't, or maybe I can't do it, or maybe I can do it, but I can't make any money at it", and I wanted to fast-track the process. I’ll be writing about confidence in all walks of life over the next month in the Guardian as part of a five-part series on finding our sense of self.

But the Covid-era me is still hanging around, biting her fingernails, glancing nervously and resentfully at the deflating helium balloons.

But it’s all the more important that you project confidence in your writing, and signal that you’ve got something interesting to say. It’s about accepting that people might disagree with you – and still being happy to put yourself out there. And leaps are so useful, just making yourself do things and have an accountability buddy to make you do it. Finally, have fun with it – feel free to refer to yourself as Clooney or Obama to help the process of course.