Presence
Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
Amy Cuddy is awesome. Her TED talk is the 2nd most popular ever. This book is just as good. Learn the science of cultivating your personal power to bring your boldest self to your biggest challenges. Big Ideas we explore: self-affirmation theory, priming + nudges, the magic of expanding your body to increase your power, iHunch (how’s yours?), and the boldest you.
Big Ideas
- PresenceAttuned + expressing your power.
- Self-affirmation theoryGosh darnit, you’re awesome!
- Priming, nudges and your Personal PowerTo build your personal power.
- Expand your body to expand your powerTo expand your power.
- iHunchingHow’s yours?
- I’m excited! You?You?
- Move like the best, boldest version of youMove like that. Today.
“The opposite of powerlessness must be power, right? In a sense, that’s true, but it’s not quite that simple. The research I’ve been doing for years now joins a large body of inquiry into a quality I call presence. Presence stems from believing in and trusting yourself—your real, honest feelings, values, and abilities. That’s important, because if you don’t trust yourself, how can others trust you? Whether we are talking in front of two people or five thousand, interviewing for a job, negotiating for a raise, or pitching a business idea to potential investors, speaking up for ourselves or speaking up for someone else, we all face daunting moments that must be met with poise if we want to feel good about ourselves and make progress in our lives. Presence gives us the power to rise to these moments.”
~ Amy Cuddy from Presence
Amy Cuddy is awesome.
Her TED talk on “Your Body Shapes Who You Are” is the second-most-watched TED talk in history. If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out.
(#2 = Sir Ken Robinson’s on Creativity. Check that out + Note on The Element!)
This book is *really* *really* good.
It’s packed with a ton of fascinating research studies proving the power of creating presence via mind and body practices along with some uber-inspiring stories of people who have put the wisdom to use and changed their lives in the process.
It’s also one of those books you read and say to yourself, “This author is a really good person.”
All of which is a fantastic combo. I HIGHLY recommend it. (Get a copy here.)
I’m excited to explore some of my favorite Big Ideas and help you apply them to your life NOW so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFBut if power reveals, then we can only know the truly powerful, because they are bold enough to show who they are without subterfuge and without apology. They have the courage and the confidence to open themselves to the gaze of others. In that way, the path to personal power is also the path to presence. It’s how we, and others, discover and set free who we truly are.
Get the Book
Listen to the PodcastPresence
“Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. That’s it. It is not a permanent, transcendent mode of being. It comes and goes. It is a moment-to-moment phenomenon.
Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves. In this psychological state, we are able to maintain presence even in the very stressful situations that typically make us feel distracted and powerless. When we feel present, our speech, facial expressions, postures, and movements align. They synchronize and focus. And that internal convergence, that harmony, is palpable and resonant—because it’s real. It’s what makes us compelling. We are no longer fighting ourselves; we are being ourselves. Our search for presence isn’t about finding charisma or extraversion or carefully managing the impression we’re making on other people. It’s about the honest, powerful connection that we create internally, with ourselves.
Presence = “the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential.”
Note: That’s not a *permanent* state of nirvanic bliss. It’s a moment-to-moment experience in which “We are no longer fighting ourselves; we are being ourselves.”
The trick is learning how to experience more and more of those moments more and more consistently. And, of course, helping us do that is what this book is all about.
Let’s explore some of my favorite Ideas on how to go about making that happen!
Self-affirmation theory
“The kind of self-affirmation I’m talking about—the kind whose effects Steele and others have studied—doesn’t have anything to do with reciting generic one-liners in the mirror, nor does it involve boasting or self-aggrandizement. Instead it’s about reminding ourselves what matters most to us and, by extension, who we are. In effect, it’s a way of grounding ourselves in the truth of our own stories. It makes us feel less dependent on the approval of others and even more comfortable with their disapproval, if that’s what we get.”
Self-affirmation is a Big Idea.
But not, as Cuddy tells us, in the Stuart Smalley cheesy “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!” kinda way.
Get this: Social psychologists have created a little test to stress you out and then measure your response. It’s called the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST).
Imagine being asked to give an impromptu 5-minute speech in front of a panel of judges who are told to simply look at you sternly and offer no positive feedback. THEN, while still in front of those judges, you need to count backwards from 2,083 by 13 with the judges telling you to go faster. (Hah!)
Enough to stress you out just thinking about it, eh?
Well, here’s what’s fascinating: Usually, when people go through that experience, their cortisol levels spike. BUT, if they first reflect on a core value that is very important to them and write a brief description of WHY it’s important to them, they can go through that stress test WITHOUT the typical spikes in cortisol.
That’s awesome. It’s the power of Self-Affirmation Theory. When we are aware of and living consistent with our values, we’re more powerful.
Which, of course, begs the question: What are your core values?
Cuddy tells us that one way to arrive at that is to ask ourselves what three words best describe us.
So, what three words best describe YOU?
Think about that for a moment. And capture it.
These three words best describe me:
_________________
_________________
_________________
Now, which one is most essential to who you are? Briefly reflect on WHY it’s important to you and a specific time in which you demonstrated that value.
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Fantastic.
(Gosh darnit, you’re awesome! In a scientifically rigorous way, of course! :)
The strongest predictors of [the entrepreneurs] who got the money [from venture capitalists] were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm. Those who succeeded did not spend their precious moments in the spotlight worrying about how they were doing or what others thought of them.
Priming, nudges and your Personal Power
“Recall a moment when you felt personally powerful. A time when you felt fully in control of your own psychological state—when you had the confidence to act based on your boldest, most sincere self, with the sense that your actions would be effective. Maybe it was at work, at school, at home, or in some other part of your life. Take a few minutes right now to remember and reflect on that experience of your personal power, on how it felt.
It felt good, right? Whether you know it or not, you’ve just been primed. Thanks to that little exercise, your psychological state was, and likely still is, infused with feelings of confidence and strength. I could just have easily asked you to remember a time when you felt powerless and stress-ridden, but of course I don’t want to bring you down. Had you done that, however, it, too, would have changed your psychological state, at least temporarily—for the worse. That unhappy sensation of being at someone’s mercy would have come flooding back into the hidden recesses of your brain.”
First, know this: We can be either powerful or powerless.
When we’re powerful we APPROACH challenges. We dare to express our BOLDEST selves. When we’re powerless, we *avoid* challenges. We shrink from life and fail to dare greatly.
Power is an essential component to presence. And, helping us more and more consistently cultivate our personal power is a huge part of what this book is all about.
Now, let’s talk about priming.
Did you know that researchers can quickly prime you to be either more or less powerful and then watch you perform either more or less powerfully?
It’s nuts. Little things like having us recall a powerful (or powerless) moment or assigning us to a role of either boss or employee or even flashing words associated with power (control, authority) vs. those without (obey, yield) elicit more or less power from us in subsequent behaviors.
Short story: When you’re primed into a state of powerlessness you significantly underperform those who are primed into power. On basically every test imaginable.
Most importantly: We need to know that we’re priming and nudging OURSELVES all day every day. The good news is that we can become master primers and cultivate our power via little “self-nudges”—via both our mind and our bodies.
Mindset-wise: How do YOU prime yourself all day long? Are you reminding yourself of all the times you were powerfully awesome or all the times you were powerless?
Science says: IT MATTERS.
Focus on your values to create more power.
Recall your greatest moments if you want to create more of them.
That’s how it works. In each challenging situation, we nudge ourselves: we encourage ourselves to feel a little more courageous, to act a bit more boldly—to step outside the walls of our own fear, anxiety and powerlessness. To be a bit more present. And incrementally, over time, we end up where we want to be... even if we couldn’t have said where that was when we started.
Expand your body to expand your power
“As scientists, the first thing we needed was a clear hypothesis.
This was our thinking: if nonverbal expressions of power are so hardwired that we instinctively throw our arms up in a V when we win a race—regardless of cultural background, gender, or whether we’ve seen anyone else do it—and if William James was right that our emotions are as much a result as they are a cause of our physical expressions, then what would happen if we adopt expansive postures even when we are feeling powerless? Since we naturally expand our bodies when we feel powerful, do we also naturally feel powerful when we expand our bodies?”
In the first part of the book, Cuddy shares mindset nudges we can use to boost our power + presence. In the second half of the book she walks us through the FASCINATING research on how to use our *bodies* to boost our power and thereby boost our presence.
We’ll start with her primary investigative question: “Since we naturally expand our bodies when we feel powerful, do we also naturally feel powerful when we expand our bodies?”
Spoiler alert: YES!
The relationship is what researchers call “bidirectional.” When you feel powerful, you tend to expand. AND, when you expand, you tend to feel more powerful. In short: Simply holding your body in an expansive, powerful way actually MAKES you feel more powerful.
Get this: In one study, individuals were split into two groups. One group assumed “low-power” poses in which they, essentially, took up less space (sitting = slouching + hands close to body; standing = legs close together, arms close to body and head down). The other group assumed “high-power” poses in which they EXPANDED and took up more space (sitting in a relaxed, confident manner with legs out and hands behind head; standing like Wonder Woman with hands on hips, chin up and feet wide apart).
After only TWO minutes of posing, here’s what happened: “In our sample of women and men, the high-power posers showed a 19 percent increase in testosterone and a 25 percent decrease in cortisol. Low-power posers showed the opposite pattern—a 10 percent decrease in testosterone and a 17 percent increase in cortisol, the exact pattern we predicted.”
That pattern is known as the dual hormone hypothesis. High testosterone + low cortisol = HIGH power. Low testosterone + high cortisol = LOW power.
Think about that: Two minutes of posing produced those dramatic shifts in biology. Simply moving our bodies in a more expansive way significantly boosts our confidence and power.
Got something challenging coming up? Strike a power pose before rockin’ it!
P.S. Imagine winning an important event (or even watching your favorite sports team win). How do you respond? If you’re like most people, odds are you EXPAND—perhaps into the universal expression of victory with your arms up in a triumphant V, your head high w/chin up and a big “YES!” throughout your being. THAT’s a power pose. (btw: Did you know blind athletes—who have never seen anyone do that move—expand in precisely that way when they win?)
P.P.S. Have you ever heard of the All Blacks? Cuddy uses the New Zealand rugby team’s “haka” as an example of cultivating power. Check out this video. (Wow.) And, remember: They’re not just psyching out their opponents, they’re (literally!) building their own power! #powerpose
Taking control of your body language is not just about posing in a powerful way. It’s also about the fact that we pose in a powerless way much more often than we think—and we need to change that.
The way you carry yourself is a source of personal power—the kind of power that is the key to presence. It’s the key that allows you to unlock yourself—your abilities, your creativity, your courage, and even your generosity. It doesn’t give you skills or talents you don’t have; it helps you to share the ones you do have. It doesn’t make you smarter or better informed; it makes you more resilient and open. It doesn’t change who you are; it allows you to be who you are.
iHunching
“As expected, device size significantly affected whether subjects felt comfortable seeking out the experimenter. In the ten minutes before the experimenter returned, only 50 percent of the smartphone users came out to tell experimenters they wanted to leave.
By contrast, 94 percent of the desktop users went to fetch the experimenter. … the bigger the device, the more likely subjects were to assert themselves. In fact, not only were the big-device users more likely to interrupt, those who did interrupt did so sooner. We concluded that the smaller the device, the more we must contract our bodies to use it, and the more time we spend in these shrunken, inward postures, the more powerless we feel.
Our findings uncover a cruel irony: while many of us spend hours ever day working on small mobile devices, often with the goal of increasing our productivity and efficiency, interacting with these tiny objects, even for short periods of time, might reduce assertiveness, potentially undermining our productivity and efficiency.
If you must spend long stretches in front of a screen, which many of us do, be sure to choose a device carefully and configure your space to allow for the most upright and expansive posture.”
We’ve talked about the iPhone effect before—research that reveals the fact that simply having your iPhone in sight while hanging out with someone diminishes the quality of that interaction Now, it’s time for the iHunch effect. All that hunching over a tiny screen is diminishing your power! (D’oh!)
Want to reduce your ability to connect with people? Have your iPhone out and visible in interactions. Want to reduce your effectiveness in general? Crumple into a little ball as you poke away at your tiny device all day long. (Hah.) Otherwise, put the phone away more often, expand and be present!
I’m excited! You?
“As most of us know, stage fright can feel like a paralyzing overdose of anxiety. And what do people tell us to do when we’re anxious? They tell us, with good intentions, to calm down. As it turns out, that might just be the very worst thing they can say. You see, anxiety is what psychologists describe as a high-arousal emotion. As I’ve explained, when we’re anxious, we occupy a heightened state of psychological vigilance. We’re hyperalert. Our hearts race, we break out into a sweat, our cortisol may spike—all of these reactions are controlled automatically by our nervous system. And it’s virtually impossible for most people to shut off that kind of automatic arousal, to abruptly de-escalate it. Not only can we not calm it down, but when someone tells us to calm down, it also reminds us of how calm we are not, which stokes our anxiety even more.
But there’s another high-arousal emotion that’s not so negative. In fact, it’s quite positive—excitement. Brooks predicted that we may not be able to extinguish arousal, but we should be able to change the way we interpret it. So rather than fruitlessly trying to change the arousal level of our emotional states from high to low, what if we try to change them from negative to positive? From anxiety to excitement?”
This is one of my favorite Ideas EVER. As a guy who used to get anxious about pretty much *everything* (I laugh now but it’s painfully true!), I really wish I’d heard about this decades ago. But, alas, here we are. :)
So, Cuddy’s office at Harvard is about 20 yards away from another brilliant researcher named Alison Wood Brooks. Brooks conducted the research we talked about in our Notes on Kelly McGonigal’s The Upside of Stress. In short: When you feel yourself getting all stressed out before doing something, research says you’re MUCH better off saying to yourself, “I’m excited!!” rather than “Calm down, calm down, calm down!” :)
As Cuddy brilliantly advises, don’t try to change your arousal state from super high to super low. Instead, change your *experience* of that arousal from negative (“Oh, no! Something’s wrong.”) to positive (“Yayuh! My body’s giving me all the resources I need to crush it. I’m EXCITED! Let’s do this!” :)
So… What do YOU say to yourself when your heart starts racing before doing something that matters to you? (Me? “I’m excited!”)
The link between anxiety and self-absorption is bidirectional; they cause each other. In a review of more than two hundred studies, researchers concluded that the more self-focused we are, the more anxious—and also the more depressed and generally negative—we become.
Move like the best, boldest version of you
“In the first month after my TED talk posted, I heard from an Olympic swimming coach who explained how he’d been using a power posing-type strategy—with great success—for years: encouraging some of his swimmers, beginning on the morning of the race, to physically behave as if they’d won their events. Swimmers, as he pointed out, are notorious for their use of dominant body language in the moments before races, not only to signal their power to their competitors but also to loosen their muscles and pump themselves up. Sometimes they will literally pound their chests, like gorillas. But the approach this coach used—encouraging swimmers to adopt ‘alpha’ nonverbal postures from the minute they wake up on race days—was most helpful to swimmers who’d been thrown off by a poor performance or who were feeling a wave of insecurity and self-doubt.”
I love that. Imagine a swimmer on the morning of her event acting as if she’d already won (and getting the benefit of all that extra power).
As Cuddy tells us: We need to fake it until we become it. Not to manipulate others and gain power over them but to slightly trick ourselves for the moment so we can gain personal power to express the best, boldest, most authentic version of ourselves.
But why limit it to the day of a swimming event?
How does the best, boldest, most authentic version of YOU think and breathe and walk and talk?
Let’s bring that wonderfully bold version of ourselves to our lives TODAY!
Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over circumstances.
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