Amy Cuddy Quotes

preparation is obviously important, but at some point, you must stop preparing content and start preparing mind-set. You have to shift from what you’ll say to how you’ll say it.

Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become

focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself.

A truly confident person does not require arrogance, which is nothing more than a smoke screen for insecurity.

We convince by our presence,” and to convince others we need to convince ourselves.

A confident person — knowing and believing in her identity — carries tools, not weapons.

All changes… have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Powerful people initiate speech more often, talk more overall, and make more eye contact while they’re speaking than powerless people do. When we feel powerful, we speak more slowly and take more time. We don’t rush. We’re not afraid to pause. We feel entitled to the time we’re using.

When our body language is confident and open, other people respond in kind, unconsciously reinforcing not only their perception of us but also our perception of ourselves.

I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.

Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves.

This is how self-fulfilling prophecies work: we have an expectation about who someone is and how she’s likely to behave, then we treat her in a way that is likely to elicit those behaviors, thus confirming our initial expectations… and so on.

Entrepreneurs’ grounded enthusiasm is contagious, stimulating a high level of commitment, confidence, passion, and performance in the people who work for and with them.

Movement, like posture, tells the brain how it feels and even manages what it remembers. As walking becomes more open, upright, and buoyant, our memories about ourselves follow suit.

All changes have their melancholy

You never figure out how to write a novel; you just learn how to write the novel that you’re on.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

trust is the conduit of influence, and the only way to establish real trust is by being present.

the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person’s credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.

If you’re protecting yourself against harm—emotional harm or humiliation—you can’t be present, because you’re too protected.

Power… transforms individual psychology such that the powerful think and act in ways that lead to the retention and acquisition of power,

Expanding your body language—through posture, movement, and speech—makes you feel more confident and powerful, less anxious and self-absorbed, and generally more positive.

We don’t rush our words. We’re not afraid to pause. We feel deserving of the time we’re using. We even make more direct eye contact while we’re speaking.

In a sense, speaking in an unhurried way allows us time to communicate clearly, without runaway social anxieties inhibiting us from presenting our true selves.

It was divine because it was exactly you. It was the very best you—the strongest most generous you.

You are not quitting, because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. You are going to fake it. You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You're just going to do it and do it and do it, even if you're terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience, until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'" (..)Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

He speaks in a deep, calm, resonant voice. He is honest and humble yet confident and strong. He never rushes. He does not fear pauses, and because he doesn’t fear them, neither do we. That’s how presence begets presence.

After meticulously analyzing videos of 185 venture capital presentations — looking at both verbal and nonverbal behavior — Lakshmi ended up with results that surprised her: the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person’s credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.

In short, our body language, which is often based on prejudices, shapes the body language of the people we’re interacting with.

Power makes us fearless, independent, and less susceptible to outside pressures and expectations, allowing us to be more creative.

When we feel powerful, we’re less self-conscious about expressing our feelings and beliefs, and that frees us to think and do great things.

Expanding your body physiologically prepares you to be present; it overrides your instinct to fight or flee, allowing you to be grounded, open, and engaged.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

Presence stems from believing our own stories.

Virtually everyone can recall a moment when they felt they were being true to themselves, but few can say they always feel that way.

As we let our own light shine, we… give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. —MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The way you carry yourself is a source of personal power—the kind of power that is the key to presence. It’s the key that allows you to unlock yourself—your abilities, your creativity, your courage, and even your generosity. It doesn’t give you skills or talents you don’t have; it helps you to share the ones you do have. It doesn’t make you smarter or better informed; it makes you more resilient and open. It doesn’t change who you are; it allows you to be who you are.

True confidence stems from real love and leads to long-term commitment to growth. False confidence comes from desperate passion and leads to dysfunctional relationships, disappointment, and frustration. The

Carrying yourself in a powerful way directs your feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and body to feel powerful and be present (and even perform better) in situations ranging from the mundane to the most challenging.

When people lie, they are juggling multiple narratives: what they know to be true, what they want to be true, what they are presenting as true, and all the emotions that go along with each—fear, anger, guilt, hope. All the while, they are trying to project a credible image of themselves, which suddenly becomes very, very difficult. Their beliefs and feelings are in conflict with themselves and each other.29 Managing all this conflict—conscious and unconscious, psychological and physiological—removes people from the moment.

first impressions based on the qualities of enthusiasm, passion, and confidence might actually be quite sound—precisely because they’re so hard to fake. When you are not present, people can tell. When you are, people respond.

Impostorism causes us to overthink and second-guess. It makes us fixate on how we think others are judging us (in these fixations, we’re usually wrong), then fixate some more on how those judgments might poison our interactions. We’re scattered—worrying that we underprepared, obsessing about what we should be doing, mentally reviewing what we said five seconds earlier, fretting about what people think of us and what that will mean for us tomorrow.

Anxiety gets sticky and destructive when we start becoming anxious about being anxious. Paradoxically, anxiety also makes us more self-centered, since when we’re acutely anxious, we obsess over ourselves and what others think of us.23

It’s only after living through a decade of these three attacks, watching these other journalists get attacked, watching the 2016 presidential election, and reading the work of philosopher Kate Manne and social psychologist Amy Cuddy that I began to see how simple, universal, and effective it is to destroy a woman’s credibility. Incompetent → Slut → Corrupt. Sometimes all those at once. One of the three will almost always stick. The three can be used to reinforce one another as well.

Presence isn’t about pretending to be competent; it’s about believing in and revealing the abilities you truly have. It’s about shedding whatever is blocking you from expressing who you are. It’s about tricking yourself into accepting that you are indeed capable. Sometimes

When you are present and available, people have a desire to offer you their authentic self. All you have to do is ask. No one keeps a secret. No one. And they might be resistant initially to telling you something, but eventually they’ll give you their whole life story,” Julianne said. “And it’s because of people’s desire to be seen.

When we are truly present in a challenging moment, our verbal and nonverbal communication flows. We are no longer occupying a discombobulated mental state — as I was on that ill-fated elevator ride — simultaneously analyzing what we think others think of us, what we said a minute earlier, and what we think they will think of us after we leave, all while frantically trying to adjust what we’re saying and doing to create the impression we think they want to see. Usually our words are relatively easy to

it, “Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Ideally,

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.

A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you’ve established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat. I’m

that sometimes you just hit a wall. And it’s okay. Even if it feels bad, it’s okay to let it feel bad. Because eventually you’ll stop feeling bad, because feelings just don’t last very long.

Those who succeeded did not spend their precious moments in the spotlight worrying about how they were doing or what others thought of them. No spirit under the stairs awaited them, because they knew they were doing their best. In other words, those who succeeded were fully present, and their presence was palpable. It came through mostly in nonverbal ways—vocal qualities, gestures, facial expressions, and so on.

When we meet someone new, we quickly answer two questions: “Can I trust this person?” and “Can I respect this person?” In our research, my colleagues and I have referred to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively. Usually we think that a person we’ve just met is either more warm than competent or more competent than warm, but not both in equal measure. We like our distinctions to be clear—it’s a human bias. So we classify new acquaintances into types. Tiziana Casciaro, in her research into organizations, refers to these types as lovable fools or competent jerks.2 Occasionally we see people as incompetent and cold—foolish jerks—or as warm and competent—lovable stars. The latter is the golden quadrant, because receiving trust and respect from other people allows you to interact well and get things done. But we don’t value the two traits equally. First we judge warmth or trustworthiness, which we consider to be the more important of the two dimensions. Oscar Ybarra and his colleagues found, for instance, that people process words related to warmth and morality (friendly, honest, and others) faster than words related to competence (creative, skillful, and others).3 Why do we prioritize warmth over competence? Because from an evolutionary perspective, it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust. If he doesn’t, we’d better keep our distance, because he’s potentially dangerous, especially if he’s competent. We do value people who are capable, especially in circumstances where that trait is necessary, but we only notice that after we’ve judged their trustworthiness. Recalling

We should be able to attend and respond to others, but focusing on them too much isn’t just counterproductive, it’s also destructive, undermining our self-confidence and interfering with our ability to notice what’s being exchanged in the moment. Even in the imagined power pose condition, people were able to fully inhabit the moment—noticing without judging their environment, feeling neither threatened by nor dominant over the strangers coming in and out of the room.

In an early study on power and management, supervisors who felt powerless used more coercive power — threats of punishment or even being fired — when dealing with a “problem worker,” whereas supervisors who felt powerful used more personal persuasion approaches, such as praise or admonishment.26 In another study, managers who felt powerless were more ego-defensive, causing them to solicit less input. In fact, managers who felt powerless judged employees who voiced opinions more negatively.27

social power is power over—the capacity to control others’ states and behaviors. Personal power is power to—the ability to control our own states and behaviors. This is the kind of power Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was referring to when he wrote, “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Ideally, we want both kinds of power, but, as Wiesel suggests, personal power—the state of being in command of our most precious and authentic inner resources—is uniquely essential. Unless and until we feel personally powerful, we cannot achieve presence, and all the social power in the world won’t compensate for its absence.

You are not quitting, because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. You are going to fake it. You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You're just going to do it and do it and do it, even if you're terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience, until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.' (..) Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

You are not quitting, because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. You are going to fake it. You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You're just going to do it and do it and do it, even if you're terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience, until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'" (..) Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

Of that first decade, Neil said I would have this recurring fantasy in which there would be a knock on the door, and I would go down, and there would be somebody wearing a suit – not an expensive suit, just the kind of suit that showed they had a job – and they would be holding a clipboard, and they'd have a paper on the clipboard, and I'd open the door and they'd say, „Hello, excuse me, I'm afraid I am here on official business. Are you Neil Gaiman?” And I would say yes. „Well, it says here that you are a writer and that you don't have to get up in the morning at any particular time, that you just write each day as much you want.” And I'd go „That's right.” "And that you enjoy writing. And it says here that all the books you want – they are just sent to you and you don't have to buy them. And films: it says here that you just go to see films. If you want to see them you just call up the person who runs the films." And I say, „Yes, that's right.” And that people like what you do and they give you money for just writing things down." And I'd say yes. And he'd say, „Well, I'm afraid we are on to you. We've caught up with you. And I'm afraid you are now going to have to go out and get a proper job.” At which point in my fantasy my heart would always sink, and I'd go, „Okay,” and I'd go and buy a cheap suit and I'd start applying to real jobs. Because once they've caught up with you, you can't argue with this: they've caught up with you. So that was the thing in my head.

Etcoff decided to look at a population of people who can’t attend to language: people with aphasia, a language-processing disorder that profoundly impairs the brain’s ability to comprehend words.34

Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. That’s it. It is not a permanent, transcendent mode of being. It comes and goes. It is a moment-to-moment phenomenon. Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves. In this psychological state, we are able to maintain presence even in the very 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 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.

The kind of presence I’m talking about comes through incremental change.

If you’re protecting yourself against harm — emotional harm or humiliation — you can’t be present, because you’re too protected.

when you become present, you allow others to be present. Presence doesn’t make you dominant in an alpha sense; it actually allows you to hear other people. And for them to feel heard.

it’s about reminding ourselves what matters most to us and, by extension, who we are. In effect, it’s a way of grounding ourselves in the truth of our own stories. It makes us feel less dependent on the approval of others and even comfortable with their disapproval, if that’s

Presence and impostorism are opposing sides of the same coin — and we are the coin.

Presence with others is first about showing up. Literally, physically, showing up.

while our trustworthiness and warmth benefit other people, we believe that our competence and strength directly benefit us.4 So we want others to be warm and trustworthy, but we want them to see us as competent and strong.

The paradox of listening is that by relinquishing power — the temporary power of speaking, asserting, knowing — we become more powerful. When

part of presence is accepting the possibility of disappointment and not allowing that to knock you off course or cause you to doubt. What appears at first to be failure may actually be something else altogether — an opportunity to grow in an unanticipated way.

if we start with personal power, we may increase our social power without even trying.

Feeling alone is, for most of us, worse than feeling harassed.24

you deserve to adopt open, comfortable postures and to take up your fair share of space regardless of your gender.

Remember, we want power to, not power over. We want to look confident and relaxed, not as though we’re trying our best to dominate. The goal is intimacy, not intimidation.

Given the well-documented resistance of PTS to treatment, Seppälä was surprised by the results: a month after completing the intervention, veterans who took part in the weeklong yoga program showed reductions on all measures of PTS.

Susan Cain, Harvard Law School graduate and author of the culture-shifting bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, explains, “By their nature, introverts tend to get passionate about one, two or three things in their life . . . [a]nd in the service of their passion for an idea they will go out and build alliances and networks and acquire expertise and do whatever it takes to make it happen.” One need not be loud or gregarious to be passionate and effective. In fact, a bit of quiet seems to go a long way toward being present.18 They

Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy has demonstrated that standing for two minutes in a ‘power pose’ – a stance in which we expand our body and take up space – has the benefit of increasing testosterone (a hormone that makes us feel powerful) and decreasing cortisol (a hormone released during the fight, flight, or freeze response that makes us feel anxious).

we focus on one of two things: either the possible benefits of the action (e.g., a new relationship, expressing ourselves, or the gratification of having helped someone) or the possible costs of the action (e.g., having our hearts broken, sounding foolish, or looking foolish).

personal power — the state of being in command of our most precious and authentic inner resources —

We can lose our sense of personal power, for example, as a result of a blow to our social power. I

This is called the spotlight effect, and it’s one of the most enduring and widespread egocentric human biases — to feel that people are paying more attention to us than they actually are .

In fact, the self-affirmation group experienced no increase in cortisol at all. Affirming what we might call their authentic best selves — reminding themselves of their most valued strengths — protected them from anxiety.

In these interviews, four narrative themes emerged from the way people told their life stories: agency (people felt they were in control of their lives), communion (people described their lives as being about relationships), redemption (people felt that challenges had improved their attitudes or conferred wisdom in some way), and contamination (people felt that positive beginnings had turned toward negative endings). Those whose narratives fell into the three positive categories — agency, communion, and redemption — experienced significant positive mental health trajectories in the following years. But people who described their lives in terms of contamination experienced poorer mental health. And the relationships between the narratives and the health outcomes were even stronger for people who were facing significant challenges, such as major illness, divorce, or losing a loved one.18

Si bien la autoestima no es sinónimo de autoconfianza, ambas comparten ciertos rasgos. Una persona que confíe en sí misma no tiene por qué ser arrogante. En realidad, la arrogancia no es más que una cortina de humo para ocultar la inseguridad. Un individuo seguro —que conoce su identidad y cree en ella—, lleva consigo herramientas en lugar de armas. No necesita quedar por encima de los demás. Está presente al interactuar con ellos, escucha sus puntos de vista y los integra de un modo que hace que todo el mundo se sienta valorado. Cuando crees de verdad —en ti, en tus ideas—, no te sientes amenazado, sino seguro.

Power walk and power pose. You may have heard about Sara Snodgrass’s power walking to increase your self-esteem, but fifty-five studies have recently confirmed that striking a “power pose” (think Wonder Woman)—as made popular by Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy—can increase your self-esteem and boost your confidence.77 How we hold our body does indeed affect our mind.

The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.

Presence is removing judgment, walls, and masks so as to create a true and deep connection with people or experiences. —Pam,

Presence is removing judgment, walls, and masks so as to create a true and deep connection with people or experiences. —Pam, Washington State, USA

In a TEDx talk,9 Dweck said: I heard about a high school in Chicago where students had to pass a certain number of courses to graduate, and if they didn’t pass a course, they got the grade “Not Yet.” And I thought that was fantastic, because if you get a failing grade, you think, I’m nothing, I’m nowhere. But if you get the grade “Not Yet” you understand that you’re on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future.

Posture not only shapes the way we feel, it also shapes the way we think about ourselves—from our self-descriptions to the certainty and comfort with which we hold them. And those self-concepts can either facilitate or hinder our ability to connect with others, to perform our jobs, and, more simply, to be present.

you execute with comfortable confidence and synchrony, and you leave with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, regardless of the measurable outcome.

Our challenges give us insights and experiences that only we have had. And—I don’t want to be glib about this—they are things we need to not only accept but also embrace and even see as strengths. While we may not have chosen to include them in our concepts of ourselves, they are there.

Physical and psychological adversity shape us. Our challenges give us insights and experiences that only we have had, and I don't want to be glib about this. There are things we need to not only accept, but also embrace and also see as strengths. While we may not have chosen to include them as concepts of ourselves, they are there. And what more can we do but own them?

Power affects our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even physiology in fundamental ways that directly facilitate or obstruct our presence, our performance, and the very course of our lives.

Let the horse be taught… to hold his head high and arch his neck.… By training him to adopt the very airs and graces which he naturally assumes when showing off to best advantage, you have… a splendid and showy animal, the joy of all beholders.… Under the pleasurable sense of freedom… with stately bearing and legs pliantly moving he dashes forward in his pride, in every respect imitating the airs and graces of a horse approaching other horses.

But if power reveals, then we can only know the truly powerful, because only they are bold enough to show who they are without subterfuge and without apology. They have the courage and the confidence to open themselves to the gaze of others. In that way, the path to personal power is also the path to presence. It’s how we, and others, discover and set free who we truly are.

Expanding your body toughens you to physical pain.

When we stop looking after our own posture, we are abandoning ourselves.

expanding our bodies changes the way we feel about ourselves, creating a virtuous cycle. So what matters to me is that you find the techniques that best suit you. If you don’t, you’re squandering a precious opportunity.