Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges Hardcover – Illustrated, December 22, 2015

What would you say if I told you that there was an essential life skill that could make you a better speaker, help you nail job interviews, get you better dates, improve your performance, and make you a better partner and parent? What if I told you that no one has ever bothered to teach you this skill, mostly because we didn't even know what it was? That secret skill is presence, "the state of feeling connected with our own thoughts, values, abilities, and emotions, so that we can better connect with the thoughts, values, abilities, and emotions of others." And Amy Cuddy's book can teach this state of "self-assured enthusiasm" to you and a whole lot more.For example, just last month, my professional singer friend Valerie was terrified of her upcoming auditions because of crippling stage fright. Right about that time, I was fortunate to attend a talk by Amy Cuddy on her new book. Valerie couldn't attend, so I gave her an advance copy of "Presence" that Amy had kindly given us. Valerie watched Amy's TED talk, read half of the book, executed the "power pose" (i.e. expansive body postures like the 'Wonder Woman' and the 'Usain Bolt' held for 2min) and "self-affirmation of core values" techniques right before her auditions, and nailed 'em: three auditions, three jobs booked. And it all worked *that* fast.People -- this is life-changing stuff.As a therapist and speaking coach, I've been teaching Amy's material to to students and clients for a few years, so I was thrilled to hear that she's putting her knowledge into book form. If there were a central premise to the book, it would be this: "The lesson is clear: focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself. The latter serves the former, a phenomenon that should become clearer and clearer throughout this book." Here are some of the things I like about it:-- Ample illustration of the concepts with real-life stories of folks from all over the world who have overcome huge challenges using the "Presence" techniques -- all the way from grade-school kids, to people stuck in bad relationships, to Icelandic show horses (really)-- The author's generosity and vulnerability in sharing of her own stories, e.g her painfully slow recovery from a brain-damaging college car accident and her own struggle with Impostor Syndrome-- It's a fantastic compendium of the relevant science on how the body affects the mind, all in jargon-free, highly accessible form, from the leading scientists of the day.Of course, the main reason I read a book is to learn cool new useful stuff. And even though this book is smack-dab in my own field of work, I still learned a ton (took 19 pages of notes!). Here are some tidbits I particularly appreciated:-- The cortisol-testosterone dual hormone hypothesis: you're most effective when you have high testosterone and low cortisol-- We usually think that confidence leads to decisions and thoughts drive behavior. But a surprising amount of the time, it's the other way around: decisions create confidence and behavior creates thoughts.-- 80% of all fibers from the vagus nerve go from the body to the brain, not the other way around. Body changes mind!-- The more people use the word "I", the less powerful and sure of themselves they are likely to be.-- "Ultimately, participants’ speaking rate had an inverse relationship with how powerful they felt. That is, the more slowly they read the sentences, the more powerful, confident, and effective they felt afterward." Speak slowly to feel powerful!-- Hunched over posture of staring at smartphones ("iPosture") kills both your mood and your productivity.-- Why new year’s resolutions don’t work-- Loved the section on self-nudges: little, incremental ways to change our behavior for the better.-- "The three most important things to understand about the self, particularly as it relates to presence. The self is: 1. Multifaceted, not singular. 2. Expressed and reflected through our thoughts, feelings, values, and behaviors. 3. Dynamic and flexible, not static and rigid."But wait: there's a bonus to Valerie's story. Now that she's back home for Christmas, Valerie's newfound adoption of more empowering posture is transforming her relationship with her sometimes difficult mother (which I'm sure none of you have, but just in case). Applying the teachings of this book can directly affect your relationships, performances, credibility, work, interviews, impostor syndrome, lie detection abilities, and overall mood. That's some important stuff, and "Presence" offers simple, practical, effective solutions to challenges in those areas of life. That's why I'm telling everyone about this book and buying a stack of 'em to press into the hands of my friends. It's quite possible that you, too, will feel compelled to give your friends the gift of a core skill for success after reading "Presence."-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer, author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon for 4+ years

I found it. I found the book that I have been searching for over the years. Practically written upon the base of sound academic research and knowledge, Cuddy manages to clearly and succinctly lead the reader into the world of "Presence"; so much so that it is becoming an entity in its own right.The book that so inspired myself, lead me to mind-map it, study it, and then continually share the learnings with my team. I have found that the knowledge in this book does not only improve myself, but so too my team. The entity of Presence has become our theme against which we manage our company of over 200 people with an annual turnover of USD30 million. Driving Cuddy's exhortation on self-affirmation, we have found a proverbial tool to up the motivation levels, build confidence and create a team of engaged people. Something that is in need in today's economies.Using Cuddy's description of "fake till you make it", or "fake it till you become it", has resonated well with my team leaders and managers. It has become a "saying", an exhortation that is driven with new recruits or those new in management or leadership positions, and those who clearly lack confidence. But "fake it till you become it" is cemented with self-affirmation enablers. As Cuddy explains, those enablers where people have internalised their signature strengths, abilities and positive attributes about themselves. This has built the managers and leader's confidence levels to such an extent that the way in which they manage and lead their people has evolved in a very positive way. In fact, through body language, their postures have even improved! People are starting to have fun at work now that they have connected with their authentic best selves. I have seen passive aggression towards others subside, disengagement migrate to engagement and team work improve.Those who are pondering how to improve themselves, increase success, engage their teams, or to increase individual work engagement must read this book. We share the learnings and knowledge of Cuddy generously throughout our company and the results are surprising and very positive.

Great book

Me encanta este libro el material es muy duradero

It doesn't just repeat the TED Talk. An incredibly huge amount of studies make this book delve much deeper than just "pose for power". It reaches various different psychological approaches to different situations – such as the power of self-affirmation, how to establish confidence with other people, impostor syndrome, social vs personal power, body language from an evolutionary perspective, scientifically proven connections between body and mind, how disabled people can strike power poses within their minds, and finally, how posing can improve our well-being. All those chapters before the final conclusion managed to add something to how I saw myself and my life. And thankfully, questions I had from the TED Talk were answered: such as "does maintaining a better posture during work time affects my mood?" or "does the position I sleep in/wake up in make a difference?". If you are wondering the answer: it is yes. Incorporating those small changes such as no longer sitting in an "ankles wrapped" position or stretching a power pose upon waking up made big changes in my day, since I tended to fall into powerless poses very often.I have some very light criticisms about the book, though. One of them is how the author is skeptical of mindfulness, which is a missed opportunity. Recent books such as Brewer's Unwinding Anxiety scientifically show how mindfulness meditation is very effective for anxiety and other disorders. Cuddy's perspective on presence is, at least from my experience, very closely related to mindfulness. But instead of working on this relation, Cuddy argues that in order to reach a mindful state, one would have to "turn off thoughts". However, according to the actual description of Mindfulness from books such as Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness for Beginners, the technique is about relating differently to your thoughts, not shutting them down. While Cuddy gives mindfulness advice such as "looking at thoughts/anxiety, realizing it is there and then moving on", she dismisses the relation to mindfulness by judging it as a "transcendental eternal now". I think her philosophy and science would benefit a lot from a less biased view towards mindfulness - which is ironic, since in the last chapters she advocates for yoga, a practice that heavily incorporates mindfulness.Another biased view, perhaps wrapped in good intentions, is how she describes the difference between men's and women's body language as "almost entirely a social phenomenon". This of course has to do with the current bias of social sciences to label everything as "social" and ignore everything "biological". For instance, other primate societies, such as the ones described in Robert Ardrey's famous book African Genesis, also deal with less power-posing females. The reason is simply that they don't have to fight for territory nor display dominance - while monkey males fight to dominate and protect territories, females take care of children. Of course, in the nowadays human world, everything is drastically different: females have the same roles as men and should empower themselves to do big things - but it's kind of not scientific to dismiss our well-documented monkey-like tendency, namely the male tendency to aggressiveness and dominance, just because it is not at all pleasant.But leaving out these and other small flaws which derive from the sad current reality of the social sciences, it is an incredible, life-changing book, which proves itself as a great tool to deal with lots of mental issues.

Pour tous. Une lumière dans la nuit. Un guide. Simple et efficace. Vraiment puissant. À mettre entre toutes les mains.

How often have you felt powerless in a situation – be it a personal matter, a work challenge, or even a situation that simply demands your attention.Powerlessness engulfs us, and along with it all that we believe, know and feel. It makes us feel invisible and, in the process, alienates us from ourselves.To overcome this, Amy Cuddy - Professor and Researcher of Social Psychology at Harvard Business School - introduced in her 2012 TEDTalk* the global phenomenon she calls Power-Posing.Her study shows that the act of power-posing before an important appearance helps in synchronizing our body, mind and behavior. It builds Presence (the subject of this book) –a state of mind where individuals stop thinking about the impression they make on the other person and, instead, change their impression of themselves by being confident, comfortable, and passionate in their enthusiasm.In her book, Cuddy explains how behaviour can be altered subconsciously by tweaking the mind and nudging your body language. She takes you through a step-by-step process of inculcating easy and simple changes in your routine; how power posing and believing in your story can help create a more honest and meaningful impact, or presence, on your audience. As she famously says in her TEDTalk: ‘Don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.’She also shares various fields of research that back the science behind her theories and the many stories of individuals who have overcome their fears and inhibitions by applying the methods described in this book.You'll see it doesn't take much to feel strong and confident. Just pretend you're wonder woman and watch the magic happen.