Brian Johnson’s PhilosophersNotesTM More Wisdom in Less Time THE BIG IDEAS Presence Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges Presence Attuned + expressing your power. BY AMY CUDDY · LITTLE BROWN © 2015 · 344 PAGES Self-Affirmation Theory Gosh darnit, you’re awesome! Priming + Nudges To build your personal power. “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 Expand Your Body To expand your power. 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, iHunch How’s yours? because if you don’t trust yourself, how can others trust you? Whether we are “I’m Excited!” talking in front of two people or five thousand, interviewing for a job, negotiating You? for a raise, or pitching a business idea to potential investors, speaking up for Boldest Version of You ourselves or speaking up for someone else, we all face daunting moments that Move like that. Today. 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. (#1 = 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 “But if power reveals, then wisdom to use and changed their lives in the process. we can only know the truly It’s also one of those books you read and say to yourself, “This author is a really good person.” powerful, because they are bold enough to show who All of which is a fantastic combo. I HIGHLY recommend it. (Get a copy here.) they are without subterfuge I’m excited to explore some of my favorite Big Ideas and help you apply them to your life NOW and without apology. They so let’s jump straight in! have the courage and the confidence to open PRESENCE themselves to the gaze of “Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to others. In that way, the path comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. That’s it. It is not to personal power is also the a permanent, transcendent mode of being. It comes and goes. It is a moment-to-moment path to presence. It’s how phenomenon. we, and others, discover and Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our set free who we truly are.” most sincere selves. In this psychological state, we are able to maintain presence even in the very ~ Amy Cuddy 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 1 PhilosophersNotes | Presence 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 “The strongest predictors studied—doesn’t have anything to do with reciting generic one-liners in the mirror, nor does it of [the entrepreneurs] involve boasting or self-aggrandizement. Instead it’s about reminding ourselves what matters who got the money [from most to us and, by extension, who we are. In effect, it’s a way of grounding ourselves in the truth venture capitalists] were of our own stories. It makes us feel less dependent on the approval of others and even more these traits: confidence, comfortable with their disapproval, if that’s what we get.” comfort level, and passionate Self-affirmation is a Big Idea. enthusiasm. Those who succeeded did not spend But not, as Cuddy tells us, in the Stuart Smalley cheesy “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, their precious moments in and, doggone it, people like me!” kinda way. the spotlight worrying about Get this: Social psychologists have created a little test to stress you out and then measure your how they were doing or what response. It’s called the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). others thought of them.” Imagine being asked to give an impromptu 5-minute speech in front of a panel of judges who ~ Amy Cuddy 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: 1. _________________ 2. _________________ 3. _________________ 2 PhilosophersNotes | Presence 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! :) PRIMING, NUDGES AND YOUR PERSONAL POWER “That’s how it works. In “Recall a moment when you felt personally powerful. A time when you felt fully in control of each challenging situation, your own psychological state—when you had the confidence to act based on your boldest, most we nudge ourselves: we 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 encourage ourselves to feel reflect on that experience of your personal power, on how it felt. a little more courageous, to act a bit more boldly— It felt good, right? Whether you know it or not, you’ve just been primed. Thanks to that little to step outside the walls exercise, your psychological state was, and likely still is, infused with feelings of confidence and of our own fear, anxiety strength. I could just have easily asked you to remember a time when you felt powerless and and powerlessness. To be 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 a bit more present. And sensation of being at someone’s mercy would have come flooding back into the hidden recesses incrementally, over time, we of your brain.” end up where we want to be... even if we couldn’t have First, know this: We can be either powerful or powerless. said where that was when we When we’re powerful we APPROACH challenges. We dare to express our BOLDEST selves. started.” When we’re powerless, we *avoid* challenges. We shrink from life and fail to dare greatly. ~ Amy Cuddy 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.