What up guys, it's Lisa here and another Banger episode of Women of Impact today. We have the most famous body language expert and TED Talk speaker with over 24 million views. Dr Amy Curry is here to drop her knowledge on the simple tricks you can use to stand up for yourself in any situation without even saying a word. I know guys, I know it sounds like it's a superpower and if only we could stand up for ourselves without saying a word. But today you actually can learn how because Amy is giving us so many nuggets of wisdom based on a ton of research into how a body language affects the way others see us and how we actually see ourselves. So my home, if you're ready to start conveying your words, and show up more confidence in your life

without actually having to say anything, then I suggest you get pen, you get a paper, you get notes because of these episodes is filled with actionable advice from Amy and it's exactly what you need to hear in order to give you the tools so that you can show up that awesome confidence. Guys,, I'm Ysabini, and welcome to Women of Impact. Whether you're going on a date, walking into a ballroom, being disrespected to your face, how do you stand up for yourself and show your worth without saying a word? What you want to do is adopt body language before you go in that makes you feel more powerful. So we know that powerful animals adopt really expansive big body language, right? Non-human primates will pound their chest cause they can make their hair stand on end to make themselves look bigger. Chimps will hold sticks out like this. They also occupy like higher spots, like they'll sit at the top of the hill, they'll spread out more.

All animals do this. Peacocks, you know, raising and fanning the tail feathers, a cobra. You see it across the animal kingdom, but humans do the same thing. So when they want to convey power and status, when they feel it, that's what they do. If you look at people winning in athletics, the moment they win, what do they do? this. And they're opening their chest, their arms are up in the air, they lift their chin, they open their mouth, they are making themselves in a way fully vulnerable, but only because they feel so strong that they can do that. So think this is a vulnerable position. Especially like you're so with the neck, you're doing that. Exactly, opening your mouth, you know, your gut, your heart, all of those things are accessible to a potential predator, but we're feeling powerful and strong and we know that we've got it. So not only do they reflect how we feel, they also cause how we feel. And so when we adopt powerful, expansive body language, it changes how we feel. It improves our confidence, our sense of power, our sense of agency, and self-efficacy. It even makes us happier. But there's a difference between what you do before you go in and what you do when you're in the room, right? So I had a couple of people after my tent hug came out, right to me and say, I went into a job interview and I adopted a power pose and it didn't go well and I'm like, yeah, I probably should have made that more clear. Don't go in with your hands on your hips and your arms in the air, right? Like that is off putting. And because in interactions, people don't actually like shows of dominance. Focus on intimacy, not intimidation. We can come back to that. But before you go in though, in privacy, you can do whatever you want. If you're in your house, your car, you're a bathroom stall, your, you know, your own office, make yourself big, put your feet up on the table, stretch out, yell, take long strides. You can do all of those things. You're preparing your mindset for that situation. You've already prepared your content. At that point, you gotta stop preparing your content. What you're gonna say, you don't know what they're gonna even ask in any interaction. So go in feeling powerful and that translates in how you interact in that situation. People pick up on that feeling of power when you're in the actual interaction, you want your body language to be strong and open, but not intimidating, not off-putting. What we find is that people used to come up to me after talks, well, they still do. And one of the most common questions I would get is I've got this person that I interact with at work and they're always using super alpha body language. What do I do? What's super alpha body language? Just like really, really, you know, hands on the hips, they're in your space. They're, it's aggressive kind of. And the funny thing is that the question itself is revealing. People don't like that kind of body language. They're not saying, you know, I have this guy at work who's using down a body language. How can I enjoy this interaction? They're saying like, how do I deal with this guy? And so, and that's telling. And we've done research using what we call eye tracking, where you can actually track a person's gaze, and you know exactly what they're looking at. And in a way, it tells us a bit about what they're thinking. So we had them look at pictures of people who were in powerful or powerless postures. We know in the animal kingdom that animals avert their gaze from individuals of their own species that are showing dominance. But humans do the same thing. So somebody's behavior has a dominant posture. People don't look at their faces. And it's partly out of fear, but it's partly out of dislike, right? It's just, it's a turnoff. And so in the interaction, you, again, you want that body language that shows I'm confident, right? You want good posture. You want to be standing up straight, you know, arms out, but maybe palms up and leaning forward in a way that says, I'm interested in you, you know, as opposed to, I'm going to get you. So yeah, intimacy, not intimidation. With that intimidation pose that you just laid out, if you, you know, like in your space, is there a difference between if a man does it versus if a woman does it? Men are far more expensive in their body language than women. So when a woman does it, she is much more likely to experience what we call stereotype backlash, which means she's deviated from the prescribed stereotype of how women should be and people don't like that. And so she's much more likely to be sort of punished for that. People will, you know, those are the kinds of like heads of state, female heads of state who do things like that. It gets played over and over again, right? We talk about it when it happens all the time with men. So the gender differences as adults, I think are really interesting because they're not innate. They are learned. And what I noticed is that around the age of 11, girls start to collapse. So their body language changes. Think about little kids. Girls and boys both are running with their arms up in the air, they're flopping around, they're doing cartwheels, they're jumping, they're not afraid to be messy and loud. And then all of a sudden, middle school hits, and you see these changes. The girls are pulling their sleeves down, holding their hands over their sleeves, touching their neck and their face, playing with their jewelry. They're shrinking. All of that is low power body language. It increases for girls when they get to that age, that middle school age. And so we wanted to know, knowing that there's a difference for adults in body language, what's happening? Why is that changing at that age and is it learned or is it innate? Is it something about puberty? And so what we did is we asked four- olds and six year olds to look at pictures of actually this doll, but in expansive poses like that or contractive postures. They looked at 16 pairs on an iPad and we just said point to the boy, point to the girl. It's the same doll. It's a gender neutral. Totally gender neutral. Yeah. And in fact, we thought they'd think, you know, they wouldn't be able to answer it because they'd go, well, but it's the same, what do you mean? It's the same dog. But at age four, about 70% thought more of the expense of one to four boys than girls. By age six, six. That goes up to 85%. But I think more alarming at age four, only 13% thought that every expansive one was a boy by age six, almost 50% thought every expansive one out of 16 pairs, every expansive one was a boy. So they're learning this. We know that because kids learn stereotypes around the age of five. And so if you see that difference, you know they're learning that. We are teaching them that. And so we need to get in there early because they don't start expressing it until that age, like 10, 11. And I think we need to get in there earlier when they're still expanding and make sure that we are not even implicitly or unintentionally signaling to them that they should make themselves smaller. But we are. And I've talked to parents who say, I don't want my daughter to feel powerless, but I'm afraid that if she is expansive or takes up a lot of space, she'll be bullied or people will be angry at her. And so they feel that they're protecting their kids, but they're not protecting their kids. So I think we need to teach our daughters that it's okay to take up space, to share their ideas, to speak up. They want to do that. We're the ones kind of shutting it down and we have to learn not to do that. Yeah, God, when I heard you talk about that study, it was so, like, eye-opening of how us women as adults end up showing up accidentally without us realizing because it, because we've adopted this behavior as a kid. And then I also heard you say that around, when we walk into a room, seem for the first time, we're basically judged 50% by our body language immediately. And so when I take that all together, and I really put it together, no matter what us women are trying to achieve in life, when I think about us being behind the April, because we've been taught this, because we have adopted these small demeaness type postures. And now you get judged, 50% of it, you know, you say don't judge a robust cover, at least 50%. Then no wonder when we walk into a room, we already feel a little low self-esteem, low confidence, compared to, And again, I love men, so I'm never trying to put men down, but compared to them a man who hasn't been taught that, who can walk into the room with that kind of bravado, and then you immediately perceive him as more confident, which unfortunately sometimes you perceive them as more competent. Exactly, and that's not, we also complete those two things. Confidence and confidence, which are not the same. Someone can be very confident and not competent, but they're not, they're not the same thing. But yes, our body language is like layer upon layer is a domino effect. Right? So we start to make ourselves small when we're kids. I mean, when we're, like I said around age 11, that makes us feel small, that we get that reinforcement through how other people treat us, and over time it just becomes reinforced, reinforced, reinforced. So by the time we're adults, and it's very hard for us to snap ourselves out of how we are used to carrying ourselves, you have to show your worth to yourself. So if you feel valuable, if you feel worthy, that is what you project. And I'm not saying that it's just that simple. But I think one of the things people focus on when they're thinking about how do I convey that I'm worthy is impression making. So they're thinking already about the other person and not thinking about what the other person needs, but how the other person sees them. And that's a problem because you're no longer present. So backing up, the thing that makes people feel good about themselves is to understand who they are, what they value. And we call that self-affirmation. When we talk about being like your authentic self and the value of that, a lot of people, for a lot of them, it's not just not knowing how to show their authentic self, they actually don't know who their authentic self is. Like, who is your authentic best self? And so the exercise I have people do is one that's been studied in hundreds of psychological experiments and it is called self-information. What people do is they write a list of the things that make them who they are. So if I said Lisa, what makes you you? So if I were to take this thing away, you would no longer be yourself. What would you say? You could just list a few things. Things that are just core to who you are. Strong, kind, empathetic, relentless. Okay. So what you would do, so you'd list those, you might rank them and then take the top two, one or two, write a paragraph about why it matters to you and write a paragraph about a time when you really were able to express that part of yourself and how it felt. That's called self-affirmation. And what psychological studies show is that when people do that, not only do they feel better, but they perform better on unrelated tasks like a math test or midterm exams, their stress goes down, their circulating levels of epinephrine go down. And why is that? It's because they've anchored themselves in who they actually are. And so they know that however this interaction goes

or this test goes, they will still be,

you will still be kind, strong, relentless Lisa

when that's over.

It doesn't matter if you fail.

So the funny thing is that it takes your focus off

of this stressful thing in front of you,

which in turn causes you to perform better on it and to know that in the end you are who you are, no matter what that person thinks of you, you're still going to be you. So I feel like that is the first step. Like before we even think about what we project to others, we think about ourselves. And I often say how you tell your story to yourself matters. It matters. much more than how you tell it to other people because if you don't believe your story, who else would believe your story? Like if you don't buy what you're selling, who else would buy what you're selling? And so I feel like it does start with knowing who you are and feeling grounded in that person and knowing that whatever the weather is, your roots are strong. That's, I didn't expect that answer. And I love that. How does that then echo into how you walk into the room? What's the difference in between someone who's done that exercise and actually has built their self-worth? And then somebody who hasn't done the exercise and actually has low self-esteem. Somebody who's done that and does feel good about themselves is going to walk into an interaction in a way that conveys confidence without arrogance. That is harmonious. And what I mean by that is the emotions conveyed with their words match the emotions conveyed with their body language. So they're synchronized. And like I said, it's very clear that they're convicted and they buy what they're selling. And those are the traits that come across. They come across as calmly confident. And I think confidence is interesting because a lot of people, women in particular are afraid of seeming too confident that it will be off-putting, and that's just not true. Errogance is off-putting, confidence is not, and in fact true confidence is grounded in strong self-esteem and the ability to take negative feedback and actually hear it, right? If it's constructive. And so I think all of those qualities, harmonious communication, confidence without arrogance and buying what you're selling, those are also the kind of the components of presence. And when we are present, we are so much more effective. People are much more likely to hire us, to ask us out on a date, to invest in us. And those qualities also have long-term predictive value. So people who show up like that aren't just good investments for a day. They actually stick with it longer. They say at the job longer, they inspire their co-workers, the people that they're around. They are more innovative. They're more likely to be promoted, etc. And that's true for your work life and your non-work life. So those are the qualities that you give off. They are really appealing to people. You know, we convince by our presence. We convince ourselves and we convince other people. What's the difference between then the confidence and the arrogance in the way it shows up? Confidence and arrogance, I think, are often conflated, but they're very different. Errogance is actually grounded in what we call fragile high self-esteem. So fragile high self-esteem is self-esteem that looks good on a survey, like a person would answer 10 out of 10 on all these things, but it's not actually high. And so what happens is, you know, if you put a pin in it, they, they, it pops very easily and makes them defensive. So arrogance is sort of like a weapon that people use to prevent people from challenging them because they know there's nothing behind it. And so they've got to keep up that wall. And it does prevent people from challenging us, but not because they trust us, because they want to get rid of us. Confidence is a tool. It invites others in. It's welcoming. People want to be around confident people. It's reassuring.

And it's reassuring not just in the workplace, not just with your boss. You want your employees to be confident, but you also want your friends, the people that you date. You want them to feel confident. It reassures you. We feel safer around people who are genuinely confident. They're not trying to want us. They just, they know who they are and that makes them much easier

to be around.

Yeah. And that's why I so love that, you know, for people whom you mentioned earlier about your TED talk, it's like, your TED talk is like the second largest TED talk of all time. It is insane. The amount of views, it's like 50 million views or something. It just passed 70 million. or something like that.

Just past 70 minutes.

70 minutes by night.

Like I can't even get my head around that.

That's insane.

And you coined the phrase power pose.

And of course. like 50 million views or something like that. It just passed 70 million. 70 million views. I can't even get my head around that.

That's insane.

And you coined the phrase power pose. And of course now everybody does it. You know, we're like, wonder woman. Of course I'm a massive fan of wonder woman. So really having that kind of idea of making it kind of fun, I actually really like. And I really want to start like digging deep. and I may ask questions that may seem silly,

but there was a really came to mind that I was fascinated

...