The Power Pose - fake it until you become it

In her 2012 TED Talk, a social psychologist Amy Cuddy shared her research  about how body language affects how other people see us, and how it may also change how we see ourselves. I was fascinated by the findings - if you do the Power Pose (which could look like the victory pose in the header photo) for 2 minutes before an 'evaluative' event (e.g. job interview, giving a speech or a presentation in front of a large audience, etc.), it will have a positive impact on your performance.

Your body language may shape who you are

Although there are ongoing debate among social scientists about robustness and reproducibility of some of the findings presented in this talk, I applied the method myself in order to improve my confidence level as well as my performance at important work events. I believe it helped me. So I am sharing this TED Talk and my experience here, with this small disclaimer.

In this TED Talk video, at around 10:15, you can see a range of high power poses and low power poses. All you need is to do one of the high power poses (the victory pose was my favorite) for 2 minutes, just before you walk into 'the event' - like a job interview, public speaking, presentation, etc. According to the mock interview experiment that Cuddy shared in her TED Talk, the group which did high power poses for 2 minutes before the interview scored higher than those who did the low power pose (e.g. crossing arms and legs, looking down on your mobile phone, etc.). Also, the high power pose group left positive impressions to the interviewers. 

I have been using this simple method of doing the Power Pose before high profile presentations at work for some time, until I became confident enough that I no longer needed to do them. Of course there were more than just Power Pose that I did to prepare for these important presentations, but it helped me to control my mind. I faked it until I made it - and I realized that I became it. So I resonated with Cuddy's personal story of overcoming an imposter syndrome which she shared at the end of her talk. 

If you have a tendency to feel very nervous before a presentation, speech or even a large meeting, I would recommend trying the Power Pose. It only takes 2 minutes, and you can even do it in toilet if there is no private space.

Fake it until you make it  =>  Fake it till you become it.