Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s revolutionary book reveals, we don’t need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence.
By accessing our personal power, we can achieve “presence,” the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we’re making on others and instead adjust the impression we’ve been making on ourselves.
Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.
She presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.
Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are
Amy Cuddy & Productivity Game
Free 1-Page PDF Summary
Key Takeaways
Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing”—standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident—can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.
When we think of nonverbal behavior, it’s language so we think about communication. When we think about communication, we think about interactions. What is your body language communicating to me and vice versa. We make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language. Those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes.
When we think of nonverbal we tend to think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the outcomes are. We forget to think about ourselves. We are also influenced by our non-verbals- thoughts, feelings, and physiology.
Our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves. Our bodies can change our minds.
Only two minutes spent in specific expressions can lead to hormonal changes that configure your brain to be either assertive, confident and comfortable or really stress reactive and sort of shut down. Spending only two minutes in a power pose position will increase testosterone levels and decrease cortisol levels, while spending two minutes in submissive, small and hunched over positions will do the opposite.
“Don’t fake it ’til you make it. Fake it ’til you become it. Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize. Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.”
PRESENCE: Optimizing Mental Performance
Amy Cuddy
Your body position, at every moment of the day, influences your mind to feel empowered and disempowered. You can leverage the power of your body to influence your mind. The mind is always looking at the body for signals for how it should think & feel.
“Your body shapes your mind. Your mind shapes your behavior. And your behavior shapes your future.”
- The Effects of Feeling Empowered enhances creativity, resourceful, focused, decisive, assertive, high resiliency, confident, compassionate
- The Effects of Feeling Disempowered forgetful & narrowly focused, fearful & anxious, loss of confidence, self-absorbed, make more mistakes, highly impulsive & easily distracted, neglect our goals
Power Posing to Enhance Feelings of Empowerment
- Victory Pose Stand-up and raise your hands above your head like Johnny Drama in Entourage
- Superman Pose put your arms on your hips, chest out and look powerful, like Superman
- Stand up & Stretch stand and do wide stretches, opening up your chest and shoulders.
- Lean Back Chair Pose while sitting lean back and open up your chest, put your hands behind your head or on the chair next to you
- Walking & Exercising
