2 minutes is all it takes

I came across a Ted Talks recently with Amy Cuddy social psychologist who is interested in non verbal expressions of power and dominance. Amy asks us to  take a look at how you may be sitting whilst reading this or take an audit of your body now because according to Amy if we tweak our body a bit it can definitely alter how our lives will unfold.

   Live life with your arms reached out, eye to eye when speaking. Enter rooms with great joy shouts, happy to be meeting. Bright as yellow. Warm as yellow.” – Amy Cuddy

Amy Cuddy  is convinced we only need to spend two minutes before important meetings, tasks and interviews to transform our outcomes. This simple easy technique of power posing and being aware of our body language to promote power within is based on scientific studies. Although we know that our minds are influenced by our bodies and people can see how we feel by our body language we are also influenced by our minds. In other words we can fake it if we don’t feel powerful and confident we can stand in a private environment and practise power posing before an interview and our mind will take it on board so to speak and we can feel more confident, lower our stress levels and boost the hormones that promote confidence.

By looking at  animal behaviour  ( primates)  Amy concluded that dominant power play is all about expansion, stretching wide and taking up a lot of space or opening up. We also do a similar thing for example the winning pose arms outstretched head tilted up. A universal expression of power or pride. When we feel powerless we seem exactly the opposite, we close up and try to make ourselves smaller so as not to bump into anyone else. We don’t however mirror each others poses but tend to complement the other so we get high and low power  So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller. We do the opposite of them.

There’s some evidence that they do for example we smile when we feel happy, but if we fake smile the effect on our nervous system is the same . So it goes both ways.  Real or fake same difference so I am told.  When you pretend to be powerful, you are more likely to actually feel powerful.Amy found correlations in her work as a teacher of MBA students that the ones that participated more were more successful so she then wondered  if it were possible for people to fake it and would it lead them to take part more? In other words can you behave in a powerful dominant way even if its fake, can you do it for a bit and experience the outcome until it sticks? So the question do  our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about not just others that we love to observe but ourselves?

We know that our minds change our bodies, but is it also true that our bodies change our minds?  The minds of the powerful tend to be  more assertive and more confident, more optimistic.  Winners who think more abstractly take more risks and have higher levels of  testosterone and low levels of cortisol so are less stressed.

Amy asked a groups of students to run a little experiment . We decided to bring people into the lab and the people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses making one self expansive or smaller either sitting or standing.  They di the power or opposite poses for two minutes and then they were asked  ”How powerful do you feel?” on a series of items, and they were then given  an opportunity to gamble, and then they took another saliva sample.

The outcome was the risk tolerance level was 20% higher in people in the power pose than lower pose and just with 2 minutes taken to change ones posture. High power pose reported 25% drop in cortisol and low power pose 15% drop. So just two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and, you know, feeling sort of shut down.

We all are aware of this feeling so it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it’s not just others, but it’s also ourselves and our bodies that can change our minds.

What does it all mean ? I think what I take from these simple experiments is to use it as Amy suggests in readiness for any highly evaluative situation where you are being critiqued or accessed like my job interviews. Or maybe it is helpful for a range of threatening situations such as public speaking, giving a pitch, or answering a panel or other difficult social interactions.

Our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes even if it feels fake you just keep doing it  but  don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it. 

Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes. So this is two minutes. Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation, for two minutes go into in the elevator,  bathroom or at your desk behind closed doors. Put yourself in the expanded winning pose for two minutes.

That’s it. Configure your brain to cope the best in that situation. Get your testosterone up. Get your cortisol down. Don’t leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn’t show them who I am. Leave that situation feeling like, oh, I really feel like I got to say who I am and show who I am.

Try power posing, and also share the science, because this is so easy and simple. There is no ego involved in this. Give it away. Share it with people, because the people who can use it the most are the ones with no resources and no technology and no status and no power. Give it to them because they can do it in private.

All you need is your body, privacy and two minutes, and it can significantly change the outcomes of a  life.

I will keep you posted on the results.

Cheers