Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Cuddy is an American social psychologist working at Harvard Business School, whose research includes stereotyping and discrimination, power and nonverbal behavior. She also knows personally what it's like to feel powerless and what it takes to restore your sense of presence. When she was an undergraduate, she suffered a brain injury in a car crash. The doctors told her she probably wouldn't graduate, and they didn't know when, how, or even if she would ever recover.

As she began the process of healing, her IQ dropped 30 points and her confidence fell along with it. Her intelligence was part of her self-image, so she had to start looking at herself in a whole new way. What she learned through her recovery forms part of this stimulating, thought-provoking and inspiring book. It's full of interesting research, personal stories, and interviews that make you want to keep reading.

So keep listening to hear how a preacher reduced neighborhood violence with presence, how listening can make you powerful, and how posing like Superman can help you nail a job interview.

So what is presence? For some people it's associated with charm and charisma. For example, if a leader "has presence," he or she commands attention. For others, it's about being present in the moment, focusing your thoughts on the here and now.

For Cuddy, it's both these things but, most importantly for her, it's about believing in yourself. When you behave in a way that reflects your honest thoughts, feelings, values, and abilities, you can trust yourself. And this makes it easier for others to trust you, too. When you have presence, by this definition, you focus less on how others see you, and more on how you see yourself.

How does this help? When you're true to yourself, you're less dependent on others' approval. So when someone disapproves of something you do or say, you no longer see it as a threat to your survival. Your self-reliance gives you the power to rise to life's challenges.

Cuddy talks a lot about power, but she doesn't mean the kind of authoritarian power that controls or dominates others. When she uses this word, she's really talking about confidence. It's about knowing and accepting yourself, and having the self-assurance to act on your own beliefs. When we have genuine confidence in ourselves and our abilities, we have a calm, attentive presence that helps us succeed.

Conversely, when we feel anxious and worry about what others think of us, we make ourselves powerless. We defeat our efforts before we've even begun, because our own self-doubt stops us from properly engaging with what we're doing. Likewise, when we're inauthentic or just pretending to be confident, our words don't match our expressions, we start to forget things, and become nervous. Lying is hard work, Cuddy says, and it takes all our resources to keep it up. There are much better ways to make progress, and developing our presence is a good place to start.

Presence is important because it helps us face difficult situations with confidence, and to feel good about our performance afterwards. But presence also helps us get along with other people. How we communicate leads others to decide whether or not they can trust us. When we have presence, we come across as confident, believable and effective, and this builds trust, Cuddy says.

As you heard earlier, being true to yourself is the key to presence. When we know who we are, it's much easier for us to be authentic, aware and calm in each moment. This "in the moment" presence is the kind of thing we see when we watch musicians or dancers performing live. It's entrancing because they're fully focused on what they're doing. They're present in the moment, and are totally themselves.

Cuddy refers to lots of research supporting the theory that self-belief can calm the mind. One of these studies, by psychologists David Creswell and David Sherman, found that people who wrote about their personal values before a stress test showed no increase in the stress hormone cortisol during the test. Since anxiety stops us from being present, the more we focus on what's important to us and who we really are, the more present we can be.

Being true to ourselves doesn't mean we need to do all the talking. In fact, it's better if we don't. In Chapter Three, Cuddy tells the story of a preacher, Reverend Jeffrey Brown, who was working in a tough Boston neighborhood.

He was worried about the amount of violence in the area, but no one was able to curb it, despite efforts to do so. Instead of using force or threats to stop the young perpetrators, he decided to use presence. He didn't assert his authority or issue commands. He didn't even talk about what he thought was right. He just walked around the gangs' territories and listened to them, with calmness, kindness and genuine interest.

The preacher's presence gave him the power to deal with the situation, but it also gave him the ability to help others in their most challenging moments. The gang members trusted him because he came across as genuine. Brown shared his idea with other community leaders and soon violence levels dropped.

This story shows the power of listening, but it's not always easy to listen with presence. According to Cuddy, that's because we often want to take charge of a conversation and make our own points. Or we're scared that others won't take us seriously if we don't assert an opinion. But when you stop talking and start focusing on what other people are saying, they'll begin to trust you. They'll share information with you and let their guard down.

When you're paying attention to what someone is saying, instead of fighting to express yourself, you can hear opportunities for cooperation and resolution. Listening with presence is hard, and it may mean surrendering control of the conversation, but this can actually make you more powerful, not less.

The author sees a difference between "personal power" and "social power." While social power is about dominating others by asserting control, personal power is the feeling of being in control without controlling others. It's being aware of what we are, and accepting that. So we become more open and optimistic, and more likely to take advantage of opportunities, instead of fleeing from self-perceived threats.

Yet when we have personal power, we can actually improve our social power, or our influence over others, without even trying. We can't always control the outcome of our experiences but, when we act with presence, we can enter into situations with confidence and walk away knowing we've been true to ourselves.

This kind of power often develops unconsciously, affecting our thoughts and behavior even when we're unaware of it. Cuddy cites a study showing that words can affect people's mental state, with some words making the participants feel stronger and others weakening their resolve. So when we see words such as "control" and "authority," we often feel more powerful and confident, and words like "obey" and "subordinate" make us feel powerless and anxious. If you want a quick hit of confidence, she says, just say the words that trigger that feeling.

In the book, Cuddy describes The New Zealand national rugby union team, the All Blacks, famous for a haka. The force of the players' power is clearly visible in their movements, gaze, and facial expressions.

We all communicate our power through nonverbal displays every day. The way we walk, sit and move our eyes tells others what we think and feel about them and about ourselves. Some of these expressions are universal. Around the world, people will wrinkle their nose in disgust and raise their eyebrows in surprise.

The tone of our voices also communicates power. Threat and anxiety make us speak at a higher pitch, while confidence helps us speak more slowly, at a lower pitch. When we feel powerless, we try to make ourselves smaller – we slouch, slump our shoulders, lower our heads, and talk hesitantly, as if we're trying to disappear.

When we feel powerful, we often raise our hands in the air, or make ourselves look bigger, like the All Blacks during a haka. This kind of expansiveness conveys that we feel comfortable with ourselves and we believe we deserve to take up space. We look relaxed and confident, not dominant. So you can create a presence by the way you move your body

The way you think of yourself affects the way you move, and this in turn triggers certain emotions. It's a circular relationship between mind and body that can be used for therapeutic purposes. Trauma or stress can leave us unsure of what we feel or how to act, and this condition is often treated with pharmaceutical drugs or traditional psychotherapy treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. But some experts believe changing the way you move your body is the best way to remind your brain the world is a safe place.

For example, in 2012, Stanford University professor Emma Seppala treated 21 American war veterans with yoga exercises for one week. Yoga emphasizes controlled breathing, which lowers anxiety. One week later, the vets showed noticeable improvement.

Short, regular sessions of controlled breathing can be built into most people's daily lives. This can lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety and depression, and has been shown to decrease feelings of aggression and improve school and work performance.

Cuddy discussed the importance of body language and presence in her popular TED Talk, and she explores this theme further in the book. Since we expand ourselves physically when we feel powerful, she figured we'd also feel powerful if we expanded ourselves physically.

In an experiment, she found that people who did "power poses," such as standing with their hands on their hips like Superman, felt more powerful – and their hormone levels changed positively too, in line with their feelings of power. Sitting up straight can make us feel more assertive and less stressed. And when people adopt these poses before events like job interviews or presentations, they're more likely to perform well.

Among her other tips, Cuddy says slowing down, speaking more slowly, and taking your time can increase your sense of personal power. Rushing to respond makes you feel pressured and powerless.

Instead of jumping into big changes, Cuddy suggests nudging yourself forward, one small step at a time. Breathe deeply, sit up straight, and focus on the process instead of the goal.

And if you feel stressed before giving a big presentation, use your mind to turn this around. Tell yourself your heart is beating faster because you're excited, not because you hate giving presentations, and you can change a negative feeling into a positive one.

Cuddy doesn't claim that this book will change your life, but it will probably leave you feeling inspired. All her assertions are thoroughly researched and backed up by science, and it's written in a clear, comprehensible way that makes you realize your future really is in your own hands, mind and body.

Filled with stories of people who learned how to develop their confidence and be present during life's most stressful moments, the book offers a brilliant new way of taking charge of your life. We heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to approach challenges with confidence, experience them with passion, and walk away with pride.

"Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges," by Amy Cuddy, is published by Little, Brown and Company.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.