CONVERSATIONS WITH AMY CUDDY
BY KELLY HEITZ
Win a copy of Cuddy ’ s best-selling book , Presence ! Post a photo of you with this issue of Pulse on Instagram with # ISPAdoyou
PULSE : One of before Sept . 1 . your most popular quotes is “ don ’ t fake it until you make it , fake it until you become .” How should people use this advice ? Cuddy : The idea is that sometimes we need to fake being our best selves until we feel confident enough to truly reveal who we are . You ’ re not tricking anyone else ; you ’ re tricking yourself into believing you can fully be you . After we ’ ve practiced doing this enough over time , we become the best version of ourselves that we can be .
P : How can we convince ourselves to be confident , even when we know we are faking it ? C : That ’ s where the body-mind connection becomes so important . When we get stuck in our heads trying to tell ourselves that we are confident when we don ’ t feel confident ,
Amy Cuddy isn ’ t supposed to be where she is today . Early in her college career , Cuddy suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident , and doctors said she would struggle to finish school . But she proved them wrong , and now she ’ s a successful social psychologist , professor at Harvard Business School , best-selling author of Presence : Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges , and keynote speaker at this year ’ s ISPA Conference & Expo .
How did Cuddy overcome such incredible challenges to get where she is today ? By learning to forget her fears and insecurities and project confidence , even when she didn ’ t feel it . Her book and TED Talk , which is one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time with over 41 million views , explain in detail her research on posture and body language and how we can use both to trick ourselves into feeling confident , even when we aren ’ t . In this month ’ s Conversations , we asked Cuddy about her book , her methods , and “ faking it until you become .”
we ’ re facing a very daunting challenge . But , the relationship between certain body language and confidence is so hardwired that it works in both directions and it doesn ’ t involve a lot of mental gymnastics . By adopting powerful and confident postures , we ’ re allowing our bodies to do the work of telling our minds that we actually are confident . It may seem primitive , but that ’ s why it works .
P : In your book Presence , you say that little nudges can help push us past our fears . Other than tweaking our body language , what nudges can we do on a daily basis ? C : One of my favorites , and maybe this isn ’ t something that everyone faces every day , is to reappraise your anxiety as excitement . The idea of keeping calm when we ’ re feeling anxious is actually very hard to do . Because anxiety is a high-arousal emotion and calmness is a low-arousal emotion , our bodies find
30 PULSE ■ August 2017