Mental Posture: A Case for Your Health and Happiness
Today, I’m going to talk about power posing and how it can change your life. I’m going to power pose for two minutes, then we’re going to come back to this. Power posing is where you open yourself up and make yourself, super, big and strong. Take up, space control it.
I’m sure you’ve noticed some people that you know that you know generally aren’t as happy, and they probably don’t have great posture. For many years, decades people have been commenting on how poor posture represents a poor self-image, poor attitude, a poor character. Napoleon Hill, my favorite author said it many years ago in his book Think and Grow Rich, which is an Incredible Book. You should read it. Anyways, when someone feels less powerful they take a less powerful posture, those who take a more powerful posture, feel more powerful.
I’m sure you could imagine a dog,your dog, you know, when your dog is in trouble. They take different posture. They hunch up, they get upset. They put their ears back and they’re taking a posture that feels less powerful. There’s submitting to that accident or whatever they did, emotionally, and people do the same thing. When kids get in trouble, their posture changes, adults who are upset, angry, their posture changes. So your mind changes your posture, but does your posture change your mind?
Amy Cuddy, who did some really great research about that. It is the second most watched Ted Talk and has over 60 million views. She found that power posing for two minutes, changing your posture will change your hormone make up. So people that power posed for two minutes mouth swabbed for 20% more testosterone and 15% less cortisol, and people who weren’t power posing, who were making themselves small and less powerful. They experienced a drop in testosterone and an increase in cortisol.
So, simply by making your body take a shape. Two minutes, you can change your homemone makeup. Her research was so groundbreaking that some people tried to disprove her. She was heavily attacked,some people said they redid her research and that it was fake. They couldn’t reproduce it. Then she came back and reproved it again. What a hero. There’s a Forbes article about how she reproved that power posing can change your life and the way you feel, her research shows that.
People performed better in high-stress social situations after power posing. In one study she created an interview situation where people were interviewed by people that were trained to show no emotional response, we’re very stressful to talk to. Shehad a second group of people review videos of the interviews and select candidates, and they overwhelmingly selected the candidates that have been power posing. So her research showed twice that if you’re having stressful social event or need to perform, be confident, anything like that – You can power pose for two minutes and increase your performance significantly, measurably which is insanely awesome.
One thing that her research did not show and it says this on the PDF which will be linked in article. It says that it did not outwardly change their posture. So they performed better their hormone makeup changed, but their posture wasn’t generally improved during the interview. So that shows that you can obviously use power posing for a preparatory event or you know, anytime you want to change your mood and your hormone makeup, which is amazing, an incredible Biohack, you can change your life with that every day in a consistently temporary way.
Consider managing your posture every day. If you’re just taking a few minutes to help your body stay in the right shape you’re going to probably get some of the benefits of that hormone improvement/control all the time, and people have reported symptoms of this to me many times. If you just generally have good posture, you’re going to exude confidence. You’re going to feel good. Your hormones are going to be more balanced. Think about how many people are struggling with anxiety. Hormones disregulation, depression, lack of discipline. You can power pose for two minutes, you can get hyped. You can use that as a tool. You could also manage your posture so that you can feel a little more hyped a hundred percent of the time. It just takes a few minutes. It’s super easy. I feel like it’s taking a vitamin for your body, brushing your teeth. Managing your posture, with all the benefits that it brings and creates for you, is a no brainer.
Consider the possibility of curating, your mood and you know, performing your best whenever you want not just like hoping you’re going to do or stressing about your performance for days. You can be confident that you can give your body a stimulus that’s going to make it deliver for you in the best way that I can. That’s so freeing when I think about it. I did it for you just now, and I feel super hyped talking to you about it. Posture is incredible. You can check out the research from Amy. Cuddy, I’ll link it here below. Thanks so much for reading. Definitely manage your posture. Like, subscribe, send this to anybody, put your feet up, spread out, and squeeze your butt everyday. Thanks. See you later.
Links mentioned Amy Cuddy REFUTES criticism
Amy Cuddy mid term refuting
PDF warning – Amy’s research
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9547823/13-027.pdf
TED TALK
https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are
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