Re: Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self To Your Biggest Challenges
Olaf Pinette
Cuddy recounted her story in a TED Talk in 2012. The video, which has received over 30 million views, made her world famous. Her new book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, covers much of the same content and refers to the talk repeatedly. In it, she links impostor syndrome and her own experience of it to her research as a social psychologist, which has thrown up a truly surprising discovery.
Throughout the day, we should avoid hunching over our phones as this posture makes us feel less confident. It is a good idea to bring power posing into daily routines, such as brushing your teeth. Cuddy also suggests organising personal spaces in a way that encourages expansive postures, such as placing happy pictures high up on a wall to make yourself extend up to look. Standing, rather than sitting, at a desk is preferable, and so are walking meetings.
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
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Presence is intended for a general readership. It goes without saying that the book covers crucial findings. Cuddy has already improved many lives, and will likely improve many more. Her voice, as a writer and a speaker, is friendly and sympathetic. However, the book is oddly structured as though Cuddy struggled with defining its purpose. Is it a self-help book? A psychology book with practical implications? An accompaniment to her TED Talk? She goes for a little bit of all three. As a result, Presence is scattered and uneven, bringing together content as disparate as in-depth psychology theory and extracts of emails sent to the author in response to the talk (the latter making up a whole chapter).
In addition, Cuddy faces another challenge. While the central premise of Presence is striking, it is very simple. This helps to make the idea contagious, but becomes an obstacle for expanding it into book-length content. In some sense, there is no need for 300 pages when the central ideas could have easily been dealt with in 50.
Yet, what is perhaps most disappointing is that the author dodges other related disciplines, rather than finding a way to connect her ideas to them. For instance, Cuddy dismisses mindfulness and meditation as something different early on in the book. There is no shortage of scientific research on their efficacy, and it would have been interesting to see the author attempt to resolve them with her idea of presence or, at the very least, identify their similarities.
Fragile high self-esteem. Seemingly positive view of themselves depends on continuous external validation. Intolerant of people or feedback that challenges them. Quickly become defensive and dismissive of people they perceive as threatening.
Secure high self-esteem. The source is internal. Does not need external validation to thrive. A truly confident person does not require arrogance, which is nothing more than a smokescreen for insecurity. A confident person does not need to one-up anyone else.
Emotion is authentic, negative or positive.
Lying or being inauthentic is hard work.
Truth reveals itself more clearly through our actions than through our words.
The body says what words cannot.
Presence stems from believing our own stories.
Self Affirmation
Reminding ourselves what matters most to us.
Examine a list of common core values.
Select the one or two closest to the core of who they are, then write a short essay about why the value is important and a particular time it was important.
Example affirmation of a person who deeply values service: serving others is the most important thing to me, I am passionate about it and I believe we all would be better off if we focused on taking care of each other. It also deeply satisfies me and fills me up, I enjoy doing it and feel that it comes easily to me.
Exercise with new employees to think and write about what they can uniquely bring to the job, then share answers with the group.
Results were superior to those of other groups given a basic orientation or a company culture based orientation.
Acting with Presence
Closer solid definition of presence: by finding, believing, expressing and then engaging our authentic best selves, especially if we do it right before our biggest challenges, we reduce our anxiety about social rejections and increase our openness to others, and that allows us to be fully present.
When a musician is present we are moved, transported, and convinced. They bring us with them to the present.
Technical mastery is not enough to become the principal dancer.
When you find your true presence, it is the strength to be there, to be there in a state of balance because you are not trying to protect yourself, you just are.
Article describing Julianne Moore.
She is present in the moment of performance: enters without fear, performs without anxiety, leaves without regret.
Approaching others with kindness instead of toughness.
Often our default behavior when approaching people is trying to demonstrate our own power and control.
Story of Jeffery Brown, Baptist minister.
The author refers to these dimensions as warmth and competence.
We usually think a person we have just meant is either more warm than competent, or more competent than warm, but not both in equal measure.
We classify new acquaintances into types.
When the author asked people if they would rather be seen as trustworthy or competent, most choose competent.
We want others to be warm and trustworthy but we want them to see us as competent and strong.
Employment study results. Your chance of being seen as an unlikeable but effective leader is about 1 in 2,000.
Trust is the conduit of influence.
The only way to establish real trust is by being present.
Presence is the medium through which trust develops and ideas travel.
Without trust your great ideas are impotent.
When you listen to someone it is the most profound act of human respect. William Yuri
Impostor syndrome.
We cannot be present when we feel like a fraud.
High perfectionism is associated with impostor syndrome.
Low self-acceptance, low self-esteem, introversion.
Fear of failure is often considered the root cause.
People who have achieved something dread failure the most.
Neil Gaiman experiences this.
Personal Power versus Social Power
Social Power is characterized by:
Ability to exert dominance.
To influence or control the behavior of others.
Earned and expressed through disproportionate control over valued resources.
Social power is limited, requires some kind of control over others.
Personal Power
Freedom from the dominance of others.
Infinite instead of zero sum.
Access to and control over limitless inner resources.
Makes us more open, optimistic and risk tolerant.
Ability to control our own states and behaviors.
Powerful people think and act in a way that leads to retention and acquisition of power.
Power can often activate at a non-conscious level.
Reflect on a time you felt powerful.
Briefly saying words that connote power like control, command and authority and make you feel present and powerful.
The feeling of power can be summoned by little nudges.
Feeling powerless impairs thought.
Powerlessness impairs planning.
Powerlessness induces goal neglect. General phenomenon of failing to remain focused on a goal, which prevents you from executing the necessary task.
Powerlessness makes us self-absorbed.
Power seems to improve cognitive function.
Power can synchronize us. Thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Power incites action.
I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change; I am changing the things I cannot accept. Angela Davis.
The decisiveness of power is rooted in knowing that we will always have access to the resources we need.
The feeling of personal power is: The effortless feeling of being in control: lucid, calm and not dependent on the behavior of others.
Power can make our actions more effective.
At some point you just have to decide to stay on the board.
Decisions create confidence.
Bodily experiences can cause emotions.
Does smiling make us happy?
Facial feedback hypothesis.
Several scientific experiments lead them to believe that smiling does impact emotions and make a person happier.
Expanding your body expands your mind and allows you to be present.
We pose in a powerless way much more often than we think.
High power poses are expansive and open.
Low power poses are constricted and clenched.
In tests performed, adopting power poses increased testosterone and decreased cortisol.
Powerful people speak more slowly.
Slow speech demonstrates a kind of openness.
In speaking slowly one indicates that he or she has no fear of interruption.
Speaking slowly allows us time to communicate clearly.
Your body shapes your mind, your mind shapes your behavior, and your behavior shapes your future.
Let your body tell you that you are powerful and deserving and you become more present, enthusiastic and authentically yourself.
Notice situations and people that trigger powerless body language.
Prepare with big poses.
In the morning practice your favorite poses for a couple of minutes to start the day.
Lists specific tips on preparation before public speaking.
Stand at work instead of sitting when you can.
Consider having walking meetings instead of sitting.
Individuals can nudge their own behavior towards more productive helpful habits.
Incremental changes, based on tiny nudges, will eventually lead not only to professional success, but also to confidence, comfort and improved self-efficacy, relationships, health and well-being.
Tiny tweaks with the potential to, over time, lead to big changes.
Why resolutions can be bad.
Most of the big goals we set require us to make hundreds of small changes along the way to achieve them.
Resolutions can kill intrinsic motivation.
By focusing on the outcome we ignore the process.
What we wear can change how we see, feel, think and behave.
Change your future by slowly, incrementally changing how you interact with the present.
Power builds upon power, presence builds upon presence.