How your posture impacts the mind

an article in The New York Times explores how smartphones are bad prop posture and our mood Amy Cuddy argues that hunching over devices leads to physical and psychological problems right 9 is the times most email story and her 2012 TED talk is among the most watched with nearly 30 million views Cudi explains how posture can affect some of the basic and the biggest moments of our lives the social scientists have spent a lot of time looking at the effects of our body language or other people's body language on judgments and we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language and those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes like who we hire or promote who we ask out on a date the Harvard professor and researcher coined the term power pose she says privately standing like Wonder Woman for just two minutes before a big challenge can provide a surge of confidence i'ma cut his new book is called presence bringing your bold itself to your biggest challenges welcome thank you so the idea here is the body leads the mind it absolutely so the body is like the minds easy button what we do with our body shakes what we do with our mind but we forget about that because we're stuck in our heads all the time how does posture influence our behavior so posture makes us more assertive if we open up and expand and take up space because that's what we do when we feel powerful and dominant and so if we tell ourselves that we feel that way by expanding it makes us more assertive it makes us more open to challenges we see them as opportunities instead of threats we approach instead of avoid we perform our best you know many people always say Amy fake it until you make it you say fake it until you become it what's the difference between the two for you well I think of faking it until you make it as tricking other people into believing that you're something that you're not fake it till you become it means you fool yourself into being your best self so you trick yourself into feeling confident enough to bring forth your best self and you give examples of people before they go into a big presentation they go in the mirror and they do what I say what do they do what well there are a couple of things you can do I mean I would say expand you know stand like wonder woman stand like a starfish make yourself as big as you can in private yes before you walk into these situations and that will basically optimize your brain to deal well in a really challenging situation another thing that you can do my colleague Allison wood Brooks has research showing this you can say instead of I'm anxious you say I'm excited you can't say I'm calm when you're already on a high arousal mode but you can tell yourself that you're excited and there's science and research behind this yes absolutely you talk about - being in postures that many people will come to you and say you know I'm very successful because you say being accomplished doesn't take away the imposter feeling including you you told a story about you felt like you were an imposter yeah I said oh oh I mean ah well I felt like an imposter many times you know I had a really serious head injury and I I never wanted to be found out and you know I was sure that if I was people would say oh you know we're taking these credentials away but my son said to me one day you're the luckiest person in the world and I said why and he said because you're you get paid to do what you love do it you you study people and you try to make the world better and I thought when he said that oh I'm gonna be found out someone's gonna take this job away this is too good to be true but the imposter syndrome that you talk about you spend a lot of time in this book that's not something just that you have experience Sheryl Sandberg writes about it Meryl Streep writes about it Don Cheadle has written about it the idea that they're not really supposed to be where they are what is the basis of that is it a lack of confidence what is it I think the basis is that we're in our heads with these doubts and we don't realize that other people are also in their heads with these doubts so we look around at everybody else and we think they're fine and I'm not fine so there's obviously something wrong here I'm an imposter but they actually did that illusion someday they can discover me that's exactly right that's examining right now at this moment yes and what you thought about before you came out here um uh yeah I thought about wanting to sort of open myself up but you're sitting back yes think back in the chair yeah your knees hurt yeah I think I think legs crossed our mind you mean women cross their legs I think that's fine when women do this thing that I call twisty legs where they all to wrap their ankles that's no good I'm trying to keep my elbows on the arms of the chair because that keeps me open instead of doing something like this this is super powerless this is super powerless anytime we're wrapping ourselves up touching our necks or our faces rubbing their neck you go okay there what you nervous it's like as soon as you see that happening you know that somebody's feeling powerless or nervous you talk about the gender differences I thought this was fascinating with a bit of kids little boys and little girls just see men is more powerful talk about that well we did a series of studies with four-year-olds and six year olds we showed them pictures of dolls that were gender neutral but there were an expansive postures like this or contractive postures like this even by age four the kids thought that these dolls were boys and these dolls were girls by age six the effect was even stronger so kids are learning those cultural stereotypes very very early I like your picture of the power post why is that a power pose oh well it's so much nor at her death and why is that the power play so it's so expansive I mean you said it's not a position that you would normally adopt but what if you look at pictures of presidents yeah they're often in that position in the Oval Office they've got their feet on their desk in the hands behind the heads have you noticed wait Donald Trump speaks it's always like this he's always gesturing like that there is a lot of gesturing from from Donald Trump it also seems not super controlled so that takes away from the the sort of so you analyze they get gestures of presidential candidates oh well that's always it slippery slippery slope no one's ever happy when I do that but talk about you said some things we were talking earlier you said something sometimes your presence it's more important than what you say in a presentation and that's really interesting to think about so if someone is giving a presentation or going in for interview what are the things they should do well I mean so what what you need to do is believe your story before you go in and the funny thing is that we might believe our story but we get to the door and we're filled with self-doubt and all of a sudden we no longer believe it and that comes through no one else is gonna believe your story if you don't believe your story that is really the key that's the the manifestation of presence is going in and just showing people who you actually are so even if it's awkward and kind of strange who you are is better than something that seems scripted and choreographed that you don't believe authenticity it's only yeah your focus was and called present present there you go thank you there's so much good stuff in this Bank you so much for having good job really appreciate it and presence goes on sale next Tuesday December 22nd that's the power pose charlie yeah

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 84,886

Keywords: amy cuddy, power pose, fake it, til you make it, confidence, posture, new york times article, harvard, professor, ted talk, video, cbs, news

Id: yWWGRXsKHZc

Length: 7min 6sec (426 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2015