The Body Language Expert: 4 Body Language Tricks That Will Make Them Love You And Respect You! - Doctor Amy Cuddy

0:00Is body language really the important? Yes, for example, when you change the posture of people who are depressed, it reduces their symptoms. Tiny tweaks lead to big changes. Dr. Amy Cutty expert on the behavioral science of power The Harvard professor coined the term power pose The second most watched head talkable time A posture can affect some of the biggest moments of our lives Your body language is betraying you 50 % of our first impression is based around body language So the way that we carry ourselves really affects your life Because if people feel utterly powerless, they see challenges as threats instead of opportunities They are less creative, less authentic So that's my mission To help people feel more powerful and become more socially brave And there's all kinds of ways in which we can fix it Is there a relationship there as well between our body language and attractiveness?

0:55Yes, there's research showing that if you... That body language is more effective both in the workplace and in dating situations How we tell our stories to ourselves matters As I've read through your story, that was believing in you life It's the worst thing that ever happened to me I had to leave my job after I'd worked so hard to get there I almost decided to die Like I'm so afraid of them still Um...

1:36Amy, there's lots of myths around body language And how important it is And you hear all these phrases about 80 % of our communication is nonverbal 90 % I can't remember the numbers but you hear all of this stuff Is body language really that important? Yes, it is important, absolutely And it probably affects about half of our impression of others Our first impression is based around body language I'm not... maybe it's higher than that but I would say it's at least 50 % Body language isn't just us speaking to others We're also speaking to ourselves The way that we carry ourselves is sending messages back to our brain about whether we're safe or unsafe Are we threatened or not threatened?

2:27Are we confident or not confident? And so... How do we know that? Well, the sort of earliest studies looking at this idea about body -mind feedback were focused on facial expressions And so we know that there are some mostly universal expressions of emotion that are facial And when I say mostly there is some debate about whether they're entirely universal to every single culture And exactly which emotions they are But you have things like happiness and smiling, sadness and crying, you know, widened eyes and surprise Those things are universal regardless of where you grew up and what you were exposed to So if they're universal, that indicates that they are hardwired, that we're born with some association in our brains So if they're hardwired, can you reverse the direction of that wiring?

3:28Can you tell people to smile and will it make them happier? And so the facial feedback studies showed that yes indeed you can And the first ones were smiling and mood So they had people, some people, hold a pencil between their teeth in a way that made them smile And others hold a pencil between their teeth in a way that didn't make them smile The people who were in this forced smile, which did cause the contraction of the muscles around the eyes Which is a real smile, even though it was a fake smile It's not just your mouth, it's your mouth and your eyes They were in a better mood, their mood lifted, they liked the experimenter better They liked anything put in front of them better, they felt happier than the people who were not in this forced smile It was then expanded to look at some of these other universal facial expressions like crying and sadness And then people started to look at things like movement, posture I would say the earliest work really was on breathing When we get anxious, we breathe quickly and shallowly And if you think about, and I'm not sure that you ever had this experience But if you were called on in class, say in high school and you weren't prepared Or the first time you had to give a speech in front of class A lot of students speak very quickly and you can tell that their breathing is shallow And they're breathing quickly That's a fight or flight response And so can you turn that around?

5:11And so the people who started studying this called this the relaxation response Where they got people to change their breathing And I'm oversimplifying this But in essence, you're breathing more slowly and deeply And that triggers a nervous system response That makes people feel much more relaxed and more confident and safe Which impacts performance of their speech, whatever they're doing Yes, or the context in which it was first studied was medicine And trying to get patients to feel calmer before stressful procedures Her Benson at Harvard Medical School did some of that early work I think going back to the 60s and 70s But it wasn't linked quite to psychology because it was coming from medicine When you have a person who is suffering from major depressive disorder Open up, open their posture just for a couple of minutes And then have them fill out a depression scale afterwards They are less depressed When you treat people with PTSD By teaching them yoga poses that open them up It reduces their PTSD symptoms So this is coming from all different fields of study Not just from social psychology So there's a clear two way relationship between my posture And how I'm feeling And then also how I'm feeling in my posture Which communicates outwardly to the world about who I am and all those things I don't know if you know the answer to this question but it made me wonder as you were talking Do you know how old language is?

6:54I actually don't know the answer to that I don't know How old is language? It's 250 to 200 ,000 years old And how old are humans? 200 ,000 years About 50 ,000 years of people not having sophisticated language And having to read each other's body language Which a lot of non -human animals are doing all the time Yeah, exactly You know it's funny we have these squirrels in our front yard And they're really active And there are all kinds of body language signals But also these different kinds of chirps that they make And of course I was curious, I looked this up You know, are they Do these different chirps mean different things Like certain bird calls really clearly mean certain things And the ethylogists, the animal behavior specialists Say that with squirrels they don't mean specific things But it's a body language signal So it's not formal language But they still get the sense that there's something threatening happening Or not Or you know sometimes it's mating related But they're not as specific as bird calls which are closer to our language than say these squirrel chirps When you did that Ted talk some 10 years ago I think from what I read it became the most viewed Ted talk of all time in its moment It became second most viewed And it has remained there for a long time So it was never the most viewed But it certainly went viral quickly Why?

8:39Why do you think people can't so much about this subject matter? It's funny because you know it still gets 5 or 10 ,000 views a day And it's 10 years old And I still get 10 emails a day from strangers Who've just seen it for the first time thanking me Saying they felt that I was speaking to them And so there must be something timeless about it That I didn't know I was tapping into But I think there was some universal truth that resonated across people, across cultures And a lot of it was about feeling like an imposter I mean I talked about imposter syndrome and feeling like you don't belong there And it turns out almost everyone has this imposter experience And in fact the woman who originally studied imposter syndrome Says she wishes she had called it the imposter experience Because syndrome indicates that it's pathological and it's not It's so common So what I found, you know I was getting emails from First generation, you know Black college students, I was getting emails from white males, literally Swiss bankers All of these different people, retired people 12 year old kids who felt that they didn't belong there What I think resonated was first it's okay You're not the only one who feels that way, it's normal But also there are some things that you can do to get out of feeling that way And so it very much is about to me People feeling understood, I feel like it's when you, you know, you love a song It speaks to you, it evokes a certain emotional response Because something about that song makes you feel connected And I think something about the talk did the same thing It made people feel understood And not alone in their feelings of powerlessness and not belonging And it gave them a blueprint as such to be more To feel more powerful Yes, and something that was, you know, didn't require technology That didn't really require much of anything To change the way they felt, yes What is not blueprint?

11:21I feel like there's, we know so much more now than we knew then Then we were having people adopt these expansive, you know, what we call power poses For a couple of minutes and looking at how it changed the way they felt You know, standing with their hands on their hips for example Or in the victory pose with their arms up as if they had just crossed the finish line And one, you know, you say in bold for example And it changed the way they felt So that was the blueprint was before you go into this stressful situation You know, find a private space It's funny, I said a bathroom stall I had not scripted that, that's just what came out And so many people say, it's didn't a bathroom stall And power pose before the job interviewer Before pitching an idea or something like that And it changed the way I felt And so that was the blueprint, but I feel like the idea of being expansive is so much more expansive than that It's the way we walk, it's taking longer strides Swinging our arms more It's talking more slowly It is, which is taking up temporal space It's that breathing, breathing more deeply and more slowly It's all, there are all kinds of ways in which we can expand That will change our feeling of agency, of power Not power over others, but power over ourselves or power too And when that happens, it activates what psychologists call the behavioral approach system And the approach system causes us to see challenges not as threats but as opportunities It causes us to see other people not as potential predators or competitors but as possible allies and friends It makes us more creative because we're not feeling cognitively limited We have more of an abundance mindset than a scarcity mindset We don't feel as defensive, we're more able to trust And I think maybe most important we're more likely to act So when we feel powerful, we are more likely to take action not just on behalf of ourselves but also on behalf of others So when you look at research on, say, bystander intervention You know, when do people step in and help in emergencies?

13:48One of the best predictors is personal feeling personally powerful When people feel personally powerful, they step in and help They go, hey, something's wrong, they don't second -guess themselves and think, well, maybe I'm not the right person to help They just do it, they step in and help So, you know, it has, it has so, that that feeling of power is linked to so many other feelings and sort of aspects of our mindset That change how we approach life So as we expand and step forward, the world expands So many people listening to this now will be unaware that they've been going through their lives signaling to themselves and to others a sense of their own powerlessness Yes Which is one of the first things that I was thinking about when I was reading through your work and watching the videos Was that most people don't even know, these are all unknown and knowns So they're feeling a certain way, they're showing up in a certain way, they're on stage hiding behind the lectern in a certain way And they have no idea the profundity of that signal that they're sending to themselves and others Right How do I know that I'm signaling that to myself and to others?

15:03What are the signs? I think I ask people to do a kind of audit of their body, of how they're holding themselves And it's funny when I'm giving a talk and speaking to a big group of people and I say, you know, now check your posture I can hear everyone immediately moving in their chairs, even if the lights are low But I say, no, don't move yet, check your posture because what you think, you think that when you're not the one performing Your body language doesn't matter Because you, again, we're thinking we think of body language as just one direction, what we're saying to others But our body language is always speaking to us as well So I ask them to pay attention to what is their default even just seated position Are they holding their shoulders up and forward, collapsing their chest?

15:51Are they wrapping their hands or arms around their torso or... What are the whole minds of powerlessness? So like, what's the... It really is, you know, your limbs are pulled in, your shoulders are pulled forward, your chest is collapsed Legs might be crossed and ankles wrapped I think the wrapping of the ankles matters more than the crossing of the legs If you watch sports and watch what's happening, what is the winning team doing versus the losing team? You really see it. I mean, you see, you know, these big basketball players who are holding their heads in their hands And, you know, leaning forward and they look absolutely defeated Even though they're just as physically strong as they were five minutes earlier when things were going well So watching the body language of athletes, for example, and then paying attention to what you're doing yourself I think helps us to become much more aware of how we're carrying ourselves But you can do little things like just when you get up in the morning You know, if you wake up all curled up in the fetal position, which is the most common sleeping position 40 % of people sleep in the fetal position And we know that when people wake up in the fetal position, they are more anxious than people who don't That is obviously correlational.

17:18We don't know the causal direction Because it might be that you're anxious and that's why you're sleeping in the fetal position Nonetheless, say you wake up in the fetal position, stretch out, you know, into a starfish pose You know, be you sane bold in bed before you put your feet on the ground One of my research assistants said that he would hold one of his hands on his hip while he brushed his teeth Like little things that like that that sort of forced him to spend a little bit of time expanding Really helped and I hear so many stories like this people rearrange their desks So that they have to stretch out a bit more when they're working instead of, you know, working like this over their phone You know, how are you sitting in your car?

18:05Are you, you know, really close to the steering wheel and kind of collapse or more open? Little things like that can really change the way you feel So I think it starts with just noticing how we carry ourselves How we carry ourselves physically, how we speak, how we breathe It's so interesting because I've got a guy friend of mine who is, would be the first to say that he's very low self -esteem He's very disparaging of himself so when he walks into a room he'll insult himself Say he'll say, sorry I smell or sorry he'll apologise for himself Take up very little room sit on the floor all the time and all of these things which we've always kind of noticed it But when you say all of these things about people contracting when they feel powerless and taking up less space And being sort of self -dispiraging I've always looked at that behaviour in him and thought I don't know, it's something deeper I don't know what we can do to or he can do to help himself What would you say to someone like that who feels like a, you know Like I was saying if you look at the clinical studies the research is pretty clear The body -mind feedback has significant benefits to people who are feeling Because that sounds like sort of unusually low self -esteem I would say that's several standard deviations below the mean If that's how he carries himself and speaks about himself that is something Perhaps the legs, yes so...

19:41Everything you described was I just saw him I would say, you know, I think I'm not a clinical psychologist but if you look at the clinical psychology literature It very clearly shows that if you get people to change the way they carry themselves they feel better They feel different I think to me some of the most compelling work is the work on combat veterans with post -traumatic stress disorder Who feel utterly broken and often feel that their bodies betrayed them And you know, our living at home are unable to keep a job or keep a relationship going And the researchers who have worked with them and taught them these, you know, expansive yoga poses And the effects are dramatic It just makes, it restores their sense of personal power, their sense of agency And, you know, these are self -reports When I talk about the behaviors, they're self -reports But the researcher who did a lot of these studies, Emma Cepala, who is at Yale, says that she would hear from these people a year later Saying, I no longer live at home, I have a job, I'm so much happier, I'm dating, and it's because of this Because just of the expansive yoga poses?

21:06Yeah, breathing, the expansive breathing, expansive yoga poses But getting into the practice of doing that changes their lives You know, I feel strongly that encouraging people to open up even if it's when they're alone Because sometimes people close up in social situations because they have, you know, complex PTSD They have experienced trauma and they've, or they've been assaulted, they've been harassed And they feel that they're protecting themselves So, I think you start at home alone, you start in the privacy of your own home where you don't feel threatened And then maybe you build it into these more social situations So instead of worrying about the impression you're making on others, you think about the impression you're making on yourself first That's what matters, how we tell our stories to ourselves matters A hundred percent agree I've been really compelled by this idea of what I've been calling the self -story, which is kind of what you're describing there Which is we all have this kind of story about who we are and how valuable we are and what we're good at And what we're capable of that governs our lives Yes And it's written in every small thing we do that I sat here with a bit of a different example But I sat here with a championship boxer and he was telling me that when he's on the treadmill at home, it's a very different example When he's on the treadmill at home, if he's told himself he's going to do seven miles and he gets to six and a half miles and gets cramp in his leg He will limp the remaining half a mile because he doesn't want to let in his own words the demons in And what he's really saying there is this idea that even though I'm alone and no one's going to know or see, I'm going to know And I'm going to write into my self -story just a new paragraph about who I am when things get tough And I thought so much about this because lying kind of links to this in many ways because lying is this kind of decay of trust but also lying to yourself So like making a commitment to yourself that I'm going to do something and continually breaking the commitment to yourself Even if nobody knows, I think it's just so detrimental to our perception of ourselves Like it's a downward spiral of the perception of ourselves Absolutely We own our narratives and there's research even on looking at older people and physical health outcomes, mortality And the researchers found that older people who had more positive personal narratives about how they got to where they are in life Live significantly longer than people who had these negative narratives Even if they had the same job, the same kind of sort of on the surface they looked the same They controlled for all those differences and still found that these older people with these more positive personal narratives live longer Again, that's correlational but it's powerful and one of the things that happens when people feel powerless is that they are less able to be authentic So when they present themselves, say they are in a job interview, they don't come across as authentic as somebody who feels more powerful And what's interesting is that the body language associated with sort of lower authenticity is sort of on the same spectrum with the body language that's associated with outright deception So when people are lying to somebody else, knowingly lying, the body language that matters the most is not eye contact That's what people focus, that they think eye contact is the most important signal It's not because people learn very different things in different households and cultures, personality differences that change how people choose to make eye contact in different situations What matters is the asynchrony between the emotions conveyed with the words and the emotions conveyed with the body language So if you're telling a happy story but you do not look happy, your body language doesn't look happy You know, you don't come across as authentic If you think about being a kid and maybe you lied to get out of going to school and you told your parents that you were sick and you really weren't You're telling a story that's not true, that's supposed to be sad So you're trying to get the emotions right with your words but your body language is probably betraying you Because you're actually excited that you're going to sit at home on the couch and eat chips and watch reruns Or at night, reruns probably a word that nobody uses anymore, but TV, YouTube, TikTok, whatever So those asynchronies are the same as the asynchronous that you see when people aren't able to be authentic And of course, in those cases, the intention is not bad They're not in any way trying to lie to the other person in a way they're kind of lying to themselves And then that spills over into not being able to show an honest expression of themselves to the other And the funny thing is that people can't quite articulate, so if you're an interviewer say in that situation It's very hard to articulate what was off but they know something was off and they'll say the person didn't seem authentic But they're not going to say, well, their words didn't match their body language Yeah, they wouldn't know that No, because when people are lying, they can choreograph, they can script the words but it's very hard to choreograph all of the body language to go along with it It takes up too much cognitive bandwidth But it does come across to other people I think one of the fun places to watch for this is on Shark Tank is to watch the body language of these people pitching And sometimes you'll have people who come across at first as super confident But something about the way they tell their story does not match their body language And the sharks feel that You see them, you see them almost cringe, there's something off and they don't get the money And then you might have somebody who is, you know, let's say doesn't have a business school education, doesn't have as much experience But really believes in what they're doing and knows what they're doing You know, I'm not saying that you can be incompetent, you have to be at a certain level of competence But they're able to convey their authentic conviction and passion about this project, about what they're doing And the sharks warm toward them, you see them lean in toward those people And those people are more likely to be, to find investors And the thing is those signals aren't just short -term signals Those people are also more likely to stick with it, to inspire other people, to be promoted, to be successful in the long run It's a real signal that you're picking up on that you just can't fake And it really starts with how you tell your story to yourself The Dioveseos brought to you by Progressive Insurance Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

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29:32Is there a relationship there as well between our body language and our attractiveness? Is there a certain body language that's associated with me being attractive? If I'm single and I want to increase my chances of finding a mate? Yeah, it's interesting because people, I think, there are skepticism about whether women would be punished for using more dominant body language Which I thought was kind of sad because it just reinforces the stereotype But there's recent research showing that first of all, they're not And I'm not talking about super alpha body language. I'm talking about body language that's confident and warm That shows I feel good about myself and I want to be here and I'm interested in you That body language is more effective both in the workplace and in dating situations So people, there was a study that looked at dating profile pictures on dating apps And both men and women with more open body language, more confident body language were seen as more attractive So I thought that was very reassuring and also suggested to me that we're making some progress If that was true for, you know, across genders That's so interesting So yeah, people want to be with somebody who is confident but not arrogant Who is comfortable in their skin and your body language conveys that even in a still picture it conveys that Wow If I am the type of person that is feels powerless inside of myself, I'm suffering with a variety of different reasons I know that there's as you've described there's things that I can do to tell a different story to myself Publicly and privately, is this a form of practice that one has to do?

31:34Is there a assist like a go to the gym? Some of my favorite work in social psychology is on what's called self -affirmation theory When people think of self -affirmation, they think of someone looking at a mirror saying, I'm awesome. I'm, you know, I'm the best. I'm going to win. I'm a winner. We kind of know that when we feel bad about ourselves, saying, I'm great doesn't help because now we just feel like relying to ourselves. So we feel bad already and now we're like, well, I feel bad animal -yere. Self -assetment. Exactly. So self -affirmation is not that. Self -affirmation is this. What these experiments, hundreds of experiments sound self -affirmation.

32:20They have people list the top two or three values or qualities that make them who they are. Like, if I took that value or quality away from you, you would say, I'm just no longer myself. Like, you are just taking a piece of me away. They then have them kind of rank them and then take the top one and write a couple of paragraphs, one paragraph about, you know, a time when they expressed it and another maybe about how it felt to express it. That is it. That's the exercise. They then have them do difficult things like take a difficult math test, for example, or do a debate, be in a debate competition or whatever.

33:08Something challenging. That's unrelated. So if, say I said, I value music. If you took the experience of music away from me, I just would not feel like myself. And then I did a math test. I would do better on the math test. After doing that self -affirmation exercise, likely, I would be likely to, on average people perform better. They also even showed decreases in levels of stress hormones like epinephrine. So the idea is that you're anchoring yourself in who you are and what you're doing is reminding yourself that no matter what happens on that math test, you're still going to be that person when you walk out.

33:56And so that math test becomes less important, which ironically or paradoxically makes you do better on it. And so I think that's a really good start. Is to just spend time, you know, kind of journaling about who are you? What do you value? But really, what are those qualities that make you who you are? To you, not to others. Not how would others describe you? What removes you? Like, what really moves you? It's not so interesting. I've never heard that before because a lot of the time you kind of have the two camps where one campus says, look in the mirror and tell yourself a bunch of lies. And there's a whole industry about lying to yourself in the mirror.

34:37I don't like it. Yeah. And then there's the other camp, which is maybe, I don't know if this is the other camp necessarily, but it's probably the school of thought I've always lived in, which is you need to go and build evidence somehow, new evidence about yourself. Right. You like counteracting the evidence, the limiting evidence with the limiting beliefs that are standing in your way. Yeah, it's like self -perception theory, right? Is that what it's called? If you see yourself doing it, you become it. Yeah. And that's just a reflection on the theories in my life where I was like very low confidence and how I got from that place to being higher confidence came from, starting outside of my comfort zone and going and doing the thing more, building evidence that I wasn't going to die.

35:14I feel, and that works too. I'm not saying that self -affirmation is the only way to do it. I'm much more, by the way, in your camp, I get really frustrated with. It's all your mindset and you just got to tell yourself that you can create your life, you know, like how? Yeah. You know, there's so much of that and I feel like it's so confusing and discouraging for people because they watch people who they think are doing that in short clips and they're like, well, they did it. Why can't I do it? But a lot of those people didn't get to where they are by doing that. Lots of people help them get to where they are.

36:01Yeah. Or, you know, they did other work, but it's just, or maybe they're not where, they aren't even where you believe they are. Yeah. They're actually really unhappy and just putting on this brave face. Because simple cells, right? Simple cells. Simple cells and, you know, simple inspiration cells. So just to close off that point about, because I feel like there's going to be people listening right now that identify with feeling powerless in their everyday lives and their working lives and relationships, they can spot all the symptoms you described if that's sort of like contracted posture. The self -affirmation, please, loved it.

36:42I've heard that before. What else to get me out of that situation? I'm thinking in terms of things that I can like either practice or, you know, how do I get from there to there? Well, it's funny because I talk a lot about how tiny tweaks lead to big changes. And I call, you know, there was a whole sort of nudge movement. Like how do you change people's behavior through these little nudges? And I talk about self -nudging. I'm not a big believer in New Year's resolutions because they're too, they're grandiose, they require a million steps, you're going to fail somewhere along the way and then quit.

37:20I believe in just doing a little bit better than next time. So the next time you go into give a talk, for example, to anyone to use somebody is afraid of public speaking, but has to do to lead team meetings, for example. I want you to focus on changing one thing. Maybe it's your breathing. You breathe more slowly and deeply. Maybe you make sure that you're not wrapping your hands around your body by holding a bottle of water or a slide advance or something that forces you to keep your hands away from your body. Each time you get a little bit better and eventually you find that you're there. And my advisor, my grad school advisor, Susan Fescu, I just adore taught me that because I almost quit grad school the night before my first year talk, which is where you present the first year of research you've done.

38:17Just to the people in your department, I was so scared that I called her and I said, I can't do this, I'm going to quit. And she said, you're not quitting. She said, you're going to do it. And even if it doesn't go perfectly, which it won't, you will have done it and learned something and gotten a little better. And each time it's going to get better, she said, and I want you to give every talk you're asked to give. Take every opportunity that's given to you to improve. And eventually you won't notice the moment when suddenly you've gotten there, you'll just look back and go, oh my gosh, I'm here.

38:59How did I get here through these tiny nudges? So go easy on yourself. Focus on only one change in that next challenge. Focus on the situations that you approach with dread, that you execute with anxiety and distraction, and that you tend to leave with a sense of regret. Those challenges vary across people. You know, for some people, it's public speaking, for some people, it's giving negative feedback, for some people, it's having a difficult discussion with a family member. Whatever that challenge is for you, I want you to change one little thing each time you go into it so that you can, in the end, approach it with confidence, execute with this calm confidence, and leave it with a sense of satisfaction that you showed up, that you did what you could do.

39:52A lot of things that you can't control, but it's much easier to accept a negative outcome if you controlled the things you could. If you know how often do people walk away from the situations and go, oh, I feel like they didn't see who I am. You want to walk away and say, they saw who I am, and now they get to make the decision, and I can't control whether they, you know, how they evaluate me beyond this. I did my best. That's where you want to get to. I always think of confidence and self -esteem, and now powerlessness or powerfulness, the feeling of it, as an upward or a downward spiral that we're all kind of on, like a self -reinforcing upward or downward spiral, if you, if that kind of makes sense.

40:34I think it is. So, if I, just to kind of, I think that say something I'm confident at, public speaking on stage, for example, I will show up better, which means I'm likely to get a better reaction, I'm likely to feel better after, which means next time I show up better, which means and the spiral goes up, or conversely it can go the opposite way downwards. And the people that are on that downward, so there's many areas of my life that I think come on an upward spiral. I'm like I'm building positive evidence that's all going well and everyone's glad. And then there's some areas of my life that I might be on a downward spiral.

41:04I've got some good friends that I think are so far down that downward spiral that even telling them what your lovely professor, she was a... My invite, yeah, she was a professor, my graduate school advisor. There's so far down the bottom of that spiral that they would have quit. Yeah. A lot of people are living in a state of survival, which I actually think of like self -preservation or defense. Yes. They're like just remove all chance of threat from my life. And in that situation you never do get to go upwards on that spiral. No. How could I? So many people are at the bottom of that spiral in their lives.

41:38I know. And they don't know what to do about it. I, it's, you know, I... I got it as my responsibility, but I just think I've always been able to do it. No, it's not. But, but also I do think that more people are in that state now than they, compared to three and a half years ago. How come? I do, I think the pandemic really took a toll on people's mental sort of stability, their sense of self. And I think we're going to be grappling with that for quite a while. I mean, people who we... Why did it, why did it have that impact? Because we are wired to deal with a crisis that lasts like a couple months, not one that lasts three years.

42:24And not one that is yanking us around back and forth like, oh, we're emerging. Oh, Delta, we're emerging. Omicron, you know, like it was just this constant back and forth. And we were living in this liminal state where we had one foot on the safe side and one foot on the threatened side. We get through crises using what's called surge capacity, which is, you know, it's a network of physical and psychological resources that help us survive. But that runs out pretty quickly. And a lot of people say for the first two months of the pandemic, they felt very productive. That was surge capacity. And it's studied in the context of combat soldiers.

43:09So like the first battle, it's the emergency phase and they are focused. The goal is clear. It's shared teams operated their best, good leaders operated their best. Then they go into this regression in between where they don't know what's going to happen next. They lose a sense of purpose. They become disconnected from each other. They withdraw. Then they're back in battle. That's how this has gone. It's going to take a little while to put the pieces back together again. But I think that we have to have some grace and, I mean, toward each other with each other, with ourselves. I don't think it's going to be fixed by if we're too hard on ourselves.

43:54I think we do have to let ourselves off the hook a bit and go, oh, we've never lived through something like this. Early when we were talking about the things that make you feel powerless in your body language and the way you conduct yourselves and all these things, the things that make someone look and feel powerful, I imagine, is the opposite in many respects. But specifically, if I want to, because I really want to leave people with actionable things that they can do in their lives, if I want to become a better speaker, present myself better, show up better for my employees, or be a better podcast host.

44:32I think about this. I've never said this before. People, I spend so long thinking about how I'm sitting when I'm speaking to someone. Really? Because when I'm not thinking, I might fall into a certain posture. I've been thinking about these bloody arms on this chair. Sometimes I'm like this, and this is my favourite situation to be in, so my body's open. And then sometimes I go like this and sometimes I crunch over into a ball and stuff. And when I'm having these kind of conversations with people, I think that the best approach to take is to be open with my body language. Yes. And then hopefully they'll open up with me.

45:04That's exactly right. So I think to really simplify it. And again, as I said, I don't love like choreographing. But the body language that is, I think, the most effective is to be open, to be kind of leaning forward, you know, palms up, not wrapping yourself up, not the whole time. But what you want to be showing is I'm comfortable, I'm relaxed with you, I'm interested in you. Yeah. And so I think that's the posture that you want to take on. And people will mirror that. One thing that people, in general, people mirror each other's body language, right? That's a way that we sync up. But there's one exception, and that's when there's a power differential.

45:48So if a powerful person is interacting with somebody that's clearly less powerful, the powerful person tends to become more dominant in their body language, and the powerless person becomes more powerless. And we call that complementarity. So I think it's very important for people in leadership positions to be aware that when one of their, you know, employees comes to talk to them, they're probably a little nervous and to be very mindful of their body language. Because you don't, you don't want them to shut down. You want them to feel comfortable and tell you what's going on. Share their interests with their problem or their challenge.

46:28Penguin arms. I never heard that expression until chapter nine of your book. What's penguin arms? It's when people, people don't know what to do with their hair. A lot of people don't know what to do with their hands when they're speaking. And so they kind of like pin, they pin their wrist to their like around their hips and their hands kind of stick out. Oh, okay. Go be. Okay. You don't look like a penguin. Yeah, it's, it's really common for people who are afraid of public speaking. You'll see like they're like kind of moving their hands, but they're afraid to move their arms away from their body.