Presence: Bringing your boldest self to your biggest challenges
Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to your Biggest Challengesby Amy Cuddy
Amy Cuddy's 2012 TED talk on power posing is the second-most viewed talk in TED’s history. A Harvard business school professor and social psychologist, she studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments influence people. Although she has published numerous articles as well, this is her first book which tells a familiar story if you have watched her TED Talk.
Her definition of presence which she defines as “the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. It is not a permanent, transcendent mode of being. Rather it is a moment-to-moment phenomenon" helped me understand why doing so is so important and requires constant attention. What I also really like about this book is how she makes herself vulnerable to the reader by sharing her struggles to become a fully functioning human being after suffering a serious brain injury from a car accident in college. Having been a top honors student, she devastatingly lost 30 IQ points and was told that she might never finish college. Yet determined to finish college, Amy relearn how to learn, taking her four years longer after her pre-accident classmates. She felt like an imposter as she struggled to read, gain mental clarity, and find herself again. It was a step-by-step slow process, teaching her that making tiny tweaks in how you stand for example can help you feel more powerful even if your feelings may not match your potent nonverbals.
Research she has conducted demonstrates how standing in a Wonder Woman stance for 2 minutes before a job interview can increase your testosterone and reduce cortisone which makes you feel more confident and relaxed at the same time. With practical tips and drawings as to what distinguishes a power pose from a powerless one, full of stories of how people from all walks of life have benefited from her approaches, ranging from a college dropout who slowly taught herself through small incremental changes to express her worthiness to world-class musicians who prepared to play at Carnegie hall, I too felt ready to bring my peak performance while preparing to pitch some new business.
Hope this book helps you bring your best self to every situation, especially the ones that scare us the most!