Somebody put a link to Amy Cuddy's talk on Ted.com, titled Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are, in an internet forum I visit almost daily, and I decided to click it.
Of course I like her mantra: "fake it till you make it", and "no, fake it till you become it", and I love that the usual "sit up straight and never, ever slouch" got scientific backing. I love how her research shows that by taking "power poses" for two minutes, your brain will be calmer, your testosterone will increase while your stress hormone decreases. I love the idea that asana, or yoga poses, help people dealing with problems in their lives. I even go as far as contemplating whether praying poses have more significant impacts on our psychological states than we ever imagine. It's not hard for me to buy the idea that "power poses" can help you ace a job interview.
The other thing that also rings true to me is when she mentions her struggles of not belonging in her university, after a car accident that lowered her IQ by 2 standard deviations. Her mentor urged her to fake it, and continue to fake it until.. you guess it: she made it.
Well.
To this day I roam the university feeling unvalidated, feeling like I don't belong. I have colleagues with great minds (admittedly there are also ones with small minds which I prefer not to write about), and I feel a growing fear everyday for having to read yet another complicated textbook or academic paper..understanding yet another highly complex mathematical equation.
There are so many proofs that I don't belong in the academic world, particularly in my field: I don't speak computer languages fluently. I am not inclined to spend hours tweaking maths formulas, not anymore. I absolutely hate long meetings where we talk about curriculum. What I love is reading, and researching at my own pace, and writing..at my own pace. This might mean I'm not cut out for the publish or perish nature of a faculty life.
Still, however, being with my students make me happy. Now that I have been teaching for more than 8 years in this university, I suspect that "I like being with my students" is not a strong enough reason to stay in this job. And, and: being so rational, so logical, I looked at Amy Cuddy's examples of power poses and thought to myself - heck, why not try them?
Let's see: higher testosterone level? I certainly want that, if that will help me conquer my problems and insecurities effectively. Lower cortisol level? Want that, no, I crave that. After all, an article about Cuddy's research in Harvard Business School website says "(cortisol is) the "stress" hormone that can, over time, cause impaired immune functioning, hypertension, and memory loss". Whoa, right?
And the same article points out that "In addition to causing the desired hormonal shift, the power poses led to increased feelings of power and a greater tolerance for risk."
Very convincing. I have seen the charts and graphs and numbers. There are words like "standard deviations", "ECG electrodes" and I am impressed. Here are the numbers, if you'd like to see:
"Controlling for subjects' baseline levels of both hormones, Cuddy and her coauthors found that high-power poses decreased cortisol by about 25 percent and increased testosterone by about 19 percent for both men and women. In contrast, low-power poses increased cortisol about 17 percent and decreased testosterone about 10 percent."
I timidly (!) tried one of the poses earlier today. It was..well..the Wonder Woman pose. I didn't choose it because I longed to be a superhero with sexy attire, no, although perhaps some 25 years ago that idea wouldn't seem so bizarre to me. I chose it because it was the easiest to do, unlike other poses which requires one to sit back in a chair, feet on the desk.
"Lowering cortisol by 25 percent!" I told myself, hands in hips. (And feet apart). "For only two minutes!"
A few seconds passed. (Did I tell you this happened in the shower? I still haven't got the courage to do the Wonder Woman pose where another human being might see me). Okay, this is getting awkward, I later told myself. Before it was even close to 1 minute, I gave up. Not only that - I started thinking about a paper I had to thoroughly read for a student's research project, the problems with the journal I am managing -
all the reasons why I needed to panic and felt powerless.
Dang. Fake it, I told myself, fake it fake it fake it. Now sitting upright at the desk, I promise myself that it wasn't my last Wonder Woman pose. We'll see.
We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment