Act As If

“Our bodies change our minds, and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes."

-- Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy

What does this mean?
How can our bodies change our minds?

We all know how our body slumps and our head hangs when we’re depressed and going through life challenges.

But did you know that we can quickly improve how we feel even if none of our life circumstances improves at all?

That if you simply stand up straight, take some deep breaths and put your hands in the air for two minutes, your ability to cope with literally anything will instantly improve?

What flamenco has to do with this

After 25 years as a flamenco dancer (you’ll see me pictured in the photo that accompanies this post), and 20 years of teaching thousands of women to express their power through flamenco dance, it turns out I'd been adept at something called "power posing" without ever knowing it.

I found this out when one of my students sent me a link to what is now the second-most-viewed TED Talk of all time, "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are."

I started to think about taking what I had learned about transforming women through flamenco dance and transferring that experience to my work as a magical coach.

And here’s the science behind it.

Your body language shapes who you are

Even though I’d already been working on body-centered concepts in my dance teaching and magical coaching, "power poses" as described in Amy Cuddy's TED Talk were so direct, so simple, and results so immediate, that I couldn't wait to try them with my clients. 

(And, of course, I flamenco-ized and witchified them!)

If you haven't see the TED Talk, here's some background from an article in the April 2, 2014 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly:

"When Amy Cuddy *05 walked into her classroom at Harvard Business School a few years ago to teach about power and influence, she found herself watching the body language of her students.

Some of them — mostly men — were going straight to the middle of the room before class, leaning back, and generally occupying a lot of space.

Others, mainly women, seemed to make themselves small — they hunched over, wrapped their arms around their bodies, and crossed their legs. These students also tended to participate less in class discussions and seemed less confident.

When raising their hands, men were more likely to thrust them high in the air, while women seemed more tentative.

"Studying the postures of the women, Cuddy, who is a social psychologist, wondered: 'If I could change the way they sat, would that make them feel more powerful?' Cuddy took her hunch to the lab.

With Dana Carney, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral associate Andy Yap, she came up with a study to examine how your body language affects not only how others perceive you, but how you perceive yourself.

Their hypothesis was that pretending to be powerful, by striking a power pose, would make people feel more powerful — and, as a result, make them act more powerful."

Faking it actually allows you to become it — in just two minutes

Cuddy says that faking the body language of a powerful person goes far beyond the old adage "fake it 'til you make it."  Faking it actually allows you to become it, to instantly embody the qualities that you're modeling.

Want to feel better right now? Try this. (It’s so easy.)

1.  Assume a power pose (e.g., the Wonder Woman pose, with legs spread hip-width apart and hands on hips, or the Pride Pose with legs hip-width apart and arms stretched overhead in a V)

2.  Hold it for 2 minutes

3.  Check in with how you feel — different, right?

Taking this a step farther: Acting As If

My twist on all of this is that having an actual experience of feeling bodily confidence puts us into a magical place where we start to believe and act as a confident person.

Inside you, there’s a woman who has all the answers (or most of them), and knows how to get the answers she doesn’t have at the moment.

She’s the strong, powerful, intensely beautiful, magical version of you. And she exists at this very moment. You can call her into being at this very moment.

She’s not a fairy tale. She’s real.

If you want her, she’ll show up. And you might feel a little bit shocked at how much she knows about you, and how much she can help you get what you want in your life.

One way we can find her is by using the “acting as if” technique.

What is “acting as if”?

Can you conjure up a picture of who you want to be? How do you want to handle tough situations with your partner or ex, with your family, with your kids, with your boss, with your co-workers?

How do you want to be treated? What is (and always has been) totally unacceptable?

Pick a muse . . . pick an inspiration

Do you have someone in your life who never seems to be unduly stressed out, and who seems to be able to step out of the way of any catastrophe — but she still handles it?

If you can imagine yourself as having all of the qualities you want (but don’t feel you’re embodying right now), or, if you have a someone in your life that you can use as a role model (even if she doesn’t know that you’re drawing on her example), you are ready to try acting as if.

How to create her (which is really you, except you don’t know it yet):

Come up with the most fabulous image you can of a powerful, charismatic, super-magnetic woman who’s your age, your size, your personality (introvert or extravert — let her be you).

Make her someone who’s so sure of herself that she can’t be bothered with the goings on of people who don’t treat her right. She knows when to stand up for herself, as well as when to let it go because it’s not worth the agony.

What does she wear? What does she do when she wakes up in the morning? What does she like to eat that makes her feel energetic, healthy, and amazing?

What kinds of boundaries does she set for the people in her life? How does she fight for herself when necessary? What’s her style of communicating?

All of the above are the qualities that the “as if” you possesses. (Psst: You have all this inside of you already and just need to let it out.)

What your “as if” self does not do

She does not:

• Catastrophize. She does not worry about what she’ll do when this or that horrible thing happens (none of which has happened yet, or is likely to happen).

• Build problematic people or situations into monsters. She doesn’t imagine the average, garden-variety difficulties are immovable obstacles just because they seem scary.

• Believe that because someone she loves rejects her, she is unlovable and without value for the rest of her life. She doesn’t transfer her power to other people.

In short, she does not give away her power and her self-belief to anyone else.

Just try it.
This will surprise you.

If nothing else, you’ll have fun creating your super hero personality. You can talk to her and ask her advice, and take as much of her advice as you choose. It will be fun.

You can even journal by writing a question to her, sitting still for a moment to hear her answer come to your mind, and writing that down, too.

If you’re like most of the women I work with, the same mental tapes play in your head day after day, so having the internal guidance coming from your stronger, “as if” self can be something to return to whenever you need it.

Go back to your journal and you’ll see her previous answers to the same things you may still be worrying about. You’ll have her answers and advice on how to handle the issues you’re going through — today and tomorrow.