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Next time you’re faced with one of these tense moments, imagine approaching it with confidence and excitement instead of doubt and dread. Imagine feeling energized and at ease while you’re there, liberated from your fears about how others might be judging you. And imagine leaving it without regret, satisfied that you did your best, regardless of the measurable outcome. No phantom to be chased; no spirit under the stairs.
Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential.
Presence isn’t about pretending to be competent; it’s about believing in and revealing the abilities you truly have. It’s about shedding whatever is blocking you from expressing who you are. It’s about tricking yourself into accepting that you are indeed capable. Sometimes you have to get out of the way of yourself so you can be yourself.
focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself.
Who fears failure most? People who have achieved something — people who are demonstrably anything but frauds.
And just as we understate our successes, we exaggerate our failures. One disappointment gives us all the evidence we need to support our belief that we are phonies. We assume that a single low test score reflects our overall lack of intelligence and skill.18 We overgeneralize because we grasp at anything that reinforces our secret knowledge that we are unworthy. If we succeed, we were lucky. If we fail, we were incompetent.
Research shows that in pressure-filled situations, when we are distracted by thinking about possible outcomes of our performance, our skills are measurably diminished. When we explicitly monitor ourselves, second by second, any task that requires memory and focused attention will suffer.23 We don’t have enough intellectual bandwidth to perform at our best and simultaneously critique our performance.
But the more we are aware of our anxieties, the more we communicate about them,26 and the smarter we are about how they operate, the easier they’ll be to shrug off the next time they pop up.
When we feel powerful, we speak more slowly and take more time. We don’t rush. We’re not afraid to pause. We feel entitled to the time we’re using.
One particularly telling gesture of powerlessness may not look dramatic at first glance: wrapping a hand around the neck. We do this when we feel especially uncomfortable, insecure, and unsafe, physically or psychologically, and we are clearly signaling fear and the sensation of being under threat. Why do we make this gesture? To protect ourselves from the jaws of a predator by literally covering the carotid artery.
people who had a hand on their faces were seen as less powerful and more distressed, embarrassed, and shocked than those with uncovered faces.
Remember, we want power to, not power over.
slowing down is a power move.
presence is not about winning. It cannot be motivated by desire for a certain outcome — although the outcome is likely to be better when you are present. It’s about approaching your biggest challenges without dread, executing them without anxiety, and leaving them without regret. We don’t get there by deciding to change right now. We do it gently, incrementally, by nudging ourselves — a bit further every time.
Nudges are effective for several reasons. First, nudges are small and require minimal psychological and physical commitment.
Second, nudges operate via psychological shortcuts.
Third, contrary to most people’s assumption that our behaviors follow from our attitudes (e.g., we buy a certain product because we have a positive attitude toward it), the causality between attitudes and behaviors is just as likely to work in the opposite direction — our attitudes follow from our behaviors
So rather than fruitlessly trying to change the arousal level of our emotional states from high to low, what if we try to change them from negative to positive? From anxiety to excitement?
