PNTV: Presence by Amy Cuddy (#281)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book, Presence by Amy Cuddy. Presence subtitle Bringing your boldest self to your biggest challenges. It's an awesome book. Amy Cuddy is a person, professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, and she also created the second most popular TED talk in history, Sir Ken Robinson, who created the most popular talk. We feature his great book the Element in one of these episodes as well. But for now presents great, great, great book Philosopher's Note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas. And we're going to look at five of them now. But first, presence, loosely defined. Amy tells us, paraphrasing her it is basically being attuned to your thoughts and feelings and behaviors and able to express the most authentic, best and boldest version of yourself. When you're able to do that, you have personal power and you have presence. Of course, the book is all about helping us cultivate that. And she has great research showing us how to do what she calls self nudges, both a mindset level and a body level. So kind of mind, body and how they both impact one another. We'll start with one of my favorite big ideas on the mind side of things, Self affirmation theory. Amy jokingly says self affirmation theory is not like Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live who used to look in the mirror and say, gosh darn it, I'm good enough and people like me or whatever it is that he said, right? Kind of that cheesy canned one line affirmation. She says that's actually not effective. But self affirmation is effective in a different context. And she shares with us a fascinating experiment about how self affirmation theory can be powerful. So get this, you need to have a sense of who you are if you want to be powerful, personally powerful and present right, you have to know your story, which is one of the first chapters, and just own it and be willing to express it. That's self affirmation. And one of the ways that we arrive at having a clear sense of self that we can affirm is to get clear on our values. And one of the clearest ways to do that is to think about what three words best describe you. So if you had to think of three words that best describe you at your best, what are they? It's worth pressing pause and thinking about what three words capture you at your most essential best. Think about that and then pick one of them and reflect on that one personal value. Out of this three, that means the Most to you. And then think about a time in your life when you demonstrated that value, when you brought it to life. That's affirming yourself. That's the essence of self affirmation theory. Now what's fascinating is that, that if you do that and then you enter a psychological stress test, your performance will be way better than if you didn't do that. And get this, they have people come into a lab, right? And they literally try to stress them out as much as they can. Call something like the Trier stress test or whatever, right? And people come into a lab, they're split into two groups. One group does the values exercise like this, the other group doesn't. They just write about random things. And then they go in and they have to give a five minute impromptu talk to a panel of judges who have been taught and instructed to simply look at you sternly, to offer no positive feedback, and listen to you give a five minute impromptu speech, which by the way, is being videotaped so other people can watch it and judge you on your performance. Would that stress you out?

Right.

That's like one of the most stressful things we could imagine doing, right? Then after that, they're asked in front of the same judges to start at the number 2083 and count back by 13. And those judges who just stared at you when you were presenting your impromptu speech tell you to go faster. You're trying as hard as you can being videotaped, counting back from 2083 by 13, and these judges tell you to go faster. That's what psychologists came up with to stress people out, you to see what happens in that scenario. And what they wanted to see was what happens if we primed people with their deepest values and had them focus on that right before they go into a super stressful test like that. Guess what? Usually when people go into that type of test, their cortisol spikes, right? Their stress hormone goes way up. And in this experiment, it did for the people who didn't do that, but the people who identified their number one value and wrote about it, their cortisol levels did not go up in the face of that stress. They handled it with poise and with grace and with presence. Self affirmation theory is a really powerful way to nudge ourselves toward a deeper level of coherence and attunement to our boldest selves and to deal with challenges and risks powerfully. So self affirmation theory, think about your values, Reflect on them every single day. And particularly before you go into something stressful, remind yourself of who you are at your deepest essence. And science says that's going to help boost your performance and deal with that stress more gracefully. Second, big idea. That's a mindset idea. The self affirmation, the body idea is fascinating. So one of the most fascinating research studies that she's done was based on the idea that, look, there's a universal expression of power. When people are feeling powerful, they tend to expand their bodies. So think about your favorite athlete winning an event. What do they do? What do you do when you win? Something important. You expand. There's a universal voice. Yes. Expression.

Right.

That's what fans are doing when they're cheering on their teams or the athletes are doing when they crush it.

Right.

They're expanding and they're being powerful. So her question was, if you naturally expand when you experience victory. And by the way, that's universal. Blind athletes who have never seen anyone do that, do that when they win. They do the universal V of celebration kind of posture.

Right.

Which is a sign of power. The research question was, would when you're powerful, you do this movement. If you do this movement, does that make you more powerful? Right. Is it bidirectional? Does it work both ways? Fascinating question. The spoiler alert is it does. Simply assuming a powerful pose and posture increases your power, as measured in research studies that I'll talk to you about in a moment. So what are power poses? If you want to see the most powerful demonstration of power poses, Google All Blacks New Zealand Rugby haka. H A K A. The All Blacks perform a haka before every single one of the rugby matches. They've been doing it for like 100 years. That is the embodiment, Amy tells us, of powerful posturing power poses. And in her research, she basically brought people into her lab again, split them into two groups. One group she had assume what she called high power poses, and the other group assumed low power poses. High power poses were things like this. So standing with your arms on your waist, you're taking up a lot of space, you're expanding. That's a power pose. And again, her question was, if you assumed this pose, would it change your underlying sense of power as measured by your physiology?

Right.

And she had other ways. If you're sitting down, you're sitting down with your hands behind your back. Very confident power pose.

Right.

Then the question was, okay, what about a powerless pose? What if you kind of, rather than taking up space, you kind of recoiled, Right. You just, you took up as little space as possible. You were all stressed out. And touching yourself and bringing your arms close together rather than expanding. Low power pose, high power pose, like this, right? She had them hold those poses for two minutes and then she took their blood and looked at the levels of testosterone and cortisol. When you're feeling powerful, something interesting happens. Your testosterone goes up, whether you're a man or a woman, and your cortisol goes down. That's called the dual hormone theory or hypothesis, right? Power is associated with high levels of testosterone, low levels of cortisol. They predicted that people in high power poses, testosterone would go up, their cortisol would go down. And that's exactly what they found in just two minutes of assuming this high power pose, their testosterone went up something like 17% and their cortisol went down a significant amount. Whereas the, the people in the low power pose, right, Powerless posing, did the exact opposite. Their testosterone went down and their cortisol went up. They were more stressful, more power less. Whereas the other group was more powerful. Moral of the story is strike a power pose. It will do crazy great things. She talks in the book about not doing that in public and freaking people out. But before you go into something where, where you need your boldest self, do that and do it consistently throughout your day. And she says you need to realize that you're unconsciously priming yourself in powerless posing all the time. Here's one way we do it, which is fascinating. Ihunch more research that's fascinating involves iPhones and how people interact with their iPhones. When you look at it, she calls it the I hunch. So when you're looking at an iPhone, what do you do? You tend to go like this. You tend to take up less space, you tend to assume a less powerful power, less posture. So they ran this unbelievable experiment, creative experiment, where they brought people into the lab and they split them up into different groups. One group looked at an iPhone, one group looked at an iPad, One group looked at a notebook computer, and the other group looked at a big old Mac desktop, right? Tiny, big. And then at the end of the experiment, they did whatever they did on those things for a couple minutes. Then at the end of the experiment, the experimenter came in and said, okay, look, I just need you to wait for five minutes. At the end of that time, if I'm not back yet, come get me and I'll give you your money and all that, because you're done after five minutes. The whole test was how many people based on whether they looked at a super small screen or a big screen. After the five minutes was up and the experimenter hadn't come back yet. He didn't come back for 10 minutes. So there's a five minute gap there. And the researchers wanted to know whether the size of the screen, small or big, would influence the initiative of the individuals. And their theory was the smaller the screen, the less initiative they're going to have. They'll just sit there because they were powerless while they were hunching, whereas the desktop viewers would, after the five minutes, say, hey, where's the guy? I'm going to go get him. I'm done with the experiment. I'm going to collect my money and go home. Sense of power, assertiveness.

Right?

And that's exactly what they found. Only 50% of the iPhone ihunch people got up after the five minutes and took initiative. 94% of the desktop users who had a more powerful posture.

Right.

Than the eye hunters, went out and found the experimenter. That's huge. Your posture is dictating your power, your initiative. And she says, there's a cruel irony here because people are poking away on these tiny devices, trying to be more productive, but in many ways it's actually doing the opposite. It's making them less powerful. So check into your posture and see if you're eye hunching. Fourth Big Idea is one of my favorites of all time. Fascinating. So it's how to deal with stress. We talked about this in Kelly McGonigal's great book, the Upside of Stress, where she references a researcher who again, brought people into a lab and taught them how to respond to stress before they gave a presentation. Now, the researcher who did that research, her name is, I think, Alison Wood Brooks, she happens to be 20 yards away from Amy Cuddy at Harvard. So they've spent a lot of time talking about this research, and Amy talks about it in this book. Basic idea is this. When you're feeling stressed and your heart is starting to race, most people tell you to try to calm down. Hey, calm down. Jesus, settle down. Right? And what Brooks, the researcher, discovered is that that's not a very good strategy. If your arousal is really high, very few people can turn that arousal off and calm themselves immediately. It's really hard to do because it's an automatic response to whatever's going on. But what you can do when your arousal is high, you can go from a negative kind of interpretation of why your arousal is high to a positive one. So what you do is, rather than say, calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down. You say, I'm Excited you quit telling yourself that you're going to choke. Oh my gosh, I'm nervous. So that means that I'm going to totally choke. And you say to yourself, I'm excited. You stay at a high arousal, right? Rather than try to drop to a low arousal. But you shift to a positive interpretation of it and you use that energy positively and powerfully. I used to be anxious about nearly everything. I wish I heard about this research decades ago. It is awesome. When you feel your nerves come up, don't try to psych yourself out or tell yourself something's wrong with you. Say, wow, I'm excited right now. I care about whatever it is I'm about ready to do, whether it's give a presentation or send an email or ask someone out or whatever it is. Have a challenging conversation. Tell yourself you're excited. That's all you need to do. And you'll see. Research has shown that your power and your presence goes up by simply having that shift in interpretation of what that energy is doing to you. Fifth big idea is the boldest you. Amy shares a story that an Olympic swimming coach, a month after her TED Talk went up, sent her a note and said, hey, I've been doing these power posing ideas with my athletes and this is the way I do it before a swimming meet. I actually have them think when the moment they wake up to act as if to move their body as if they already won the event they're going to compete in later that day. Every single moment leading up to that event, they move and they act as if they already won that event. It's an unbelievably cool idea. And he did it most in particular with the ones who had the most stress. Maybe they had a poor performance or whatever. Act as if you already won the event you're going to swim in later that day. Huge. So why wait though? What's the boldest version of you look like? Think about these values. Embody them. See yourself fully expressed. How would that person think? Self affirmation, right? What would the mindset be? How would you talk? How would you walk? How would you hold your body? Move like that, talk like that, breathe like that, act like that. Now, the boldest version of you. Prime yourself with that mindset and with the high power poses and experience, more personal power and more presence in the process. It's a super quick look at this book again. I highly recommend it. One of my favorite books, period. It's great. The boldest you. You're excited. You don't need to calm down. You just need to channel that energy positively. Remember your eye hunch. We talked about the iPhone effect recently as well. When you have an iPhone in sight when you're communicating with someone, it diminishes the quality of the experience. Now we know constantly tapping on your iPhone creates more powerlessness. That's not what we're looking for. Be more powerful. Get your posture right. Create your environment so such you're not constantly hunching. Expand in general. Go check out the All Blacks haka to see power pose. Remember, high power poses increases your testosterone, which is a good thing for power, and decreases your cortisol, which is a very good thing for power and stress management. Hold yourself powerfully and you experience power. And then our Self Affirmation Theory Identify your key values and think about them. Prime yourself with them and you will experience, at least in the context of this research study, less stress in the most stressful events or times in your life. So bring the boldest version of you to your most challenging moments via presence. Thank you Amy Cuddy for an awesome book. I hope you enjoyed. Think about your favorite idea, reflect on them to drive it in more deeply. Make it stick style right. And most importantly, think about how you're going to embody that wisdom in your life more Starting today. Have another awesome day.

I look forward to sharing more.

See you. Hi, this is Brian.

I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube, so I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living Membership Program. You get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes on some of the best Optimal Living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, mindfulness, Peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, etc.

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