Two Minutes to a More Powerful You

Social scientists are constantly engaged in the overlapping questions of how our environments affect us, and how we affect our environments.

Amy Cuddy, researcher and professor at Harvard, specializes in the area of non-verbal communication — what our facial expressions, gestures, and body positions say even when we don’t utter a word. And of course, we can easily think of a variety of social situations where certain non-verbals could affect the outcome of a situation: job interviews, first dates, boardrooms, classrooms, client meetings.

But Cuddy, in her groundbreaking 2012 TEDTalk, posed a most interesting question: Does the way we hold our bodies affect more than just how others perceive and judge us?“When we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others,” she said. “We tend to forget, though, the other audience that's influenced by our nonverbals: ourselves.”

Her research studied how the body affects the mind, and how the mind then affects actual situational outcomes. Those who adopted “power poses” for two minutes prior to intense and stressful job interviews performed better, were more confident, and were more open to taking risks. A power pose is one where you literally make yourself bigger — you stand tall, take up space, hands confidently on your hips or even up in the air. (Dr. Cuddy even recommends that people do this in a bathroom stall for a few minutes prior to entering a meeting!)

In addition, there was a significant difference in tested hormone levels associated with power (or lack of). Those who had taken open, “big” body positions had significantly higher levels of testosterone (the power hormone) and significantly lower levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). Those who were given “weak” poses — curled in, arms and legs crossed, lowered head, generally making oneself smaller — before the experiment had a noticeable decrease in testosterone and an increase in cortisol.

Even more amazing? When people adopt a regular habit of “power posing” — even when there’s no job interview or date on the horizon — the positive benefits become more engrained, and the brain actually begins to believe what the body is telling it.

Here is what we know: the lower brain (the amygdala) is a sameness-seeking safety machine. It does not want big change — or change of any kind, really. It wants you to stay safe, small, and quiet. When you practice being big and bold, you are chemically telling your brain that it is okay to take risks, to be yourself, to go into a room or a situation with confidence and strength. You’re bringing the higher brain into the game more. Power posing helps encourage the activity in the higher brain that your Higher Brain Living® sessions are energizing.

You can learn more about the details of this fascinating and inspiring research by clicking here. At the very least, it will change how you think about your posture. And maybe more importantly, it will bring some awareness about how you feel about yourself and the ways you hold your body in various spaces, where and with whom you feel stressed, small, and powerless — or bold, big, and empowered.

Do you have an upcoming meeting or event? Would you be willing to try two minutes of power posing in the days leading up to it?

Cheers to Evolution of Humanity,

Sunny Nason