Amy Cuddy Quotes

Of that first decade, Neil said
I would have this recurring fantasy in which there would be a knock on the door, and I would go down, and there would be somebody wearing a suit – not an expensive suit, just the kind of suit that showed they had a job – and they would be holding a clipboard, and they'd have a paper on the clipboard, and I'd open the door and they'd say, „Hello, excuse me, I'm afraid I am here on official business. Are you Neil Gaiman?" And I would say yes. „Well, it says here that you are a writer and that you don't have to get up in the morning at any particular time, that you just write each day as much you want." And I'd go „That's right." "And that you enjoy writing. And it says here that all the books you want – they are just sent to you and you don't have to buy them. And films: it says here that you just go to see films. If you want to see them you just call up the person who runs the films." And I say, „Yes, that's right." And that people like what you do and they give you money for just writing things down." And I'd say yes. And he'd say, „Well, I'm afraid we are on to you. We've caught up with you. And I'm afraid you are now going to have to go out and get a proper job." At which point in my fantasy my heart would always sink, and I'd go, „Okay," and I'd go and buy a cheap suit and I'd start applying to real jobs. Because once they've caught up with you, you can't argue with this: they've caught up with you. So that was the thing in my head.

A truly confident person does not require arrogance, which is nothing more than a smoke screen for insecurity.

preparation is obviously important, but at some point, you must stop preparing content and start preparing mind-set. You have to shift from what you'll say to how you'll say it.

the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person's credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.

Politicians are very experienced - maybe too experienced - at using body language to signal power and competence. But what these politicians are much more likely to struggle with, or just neglect to do altogether, is communicate warmth and trustworthiness.

When you're excited, Brooks explained, "it primes an opportunity mindset, so you think of all of the good things that can happen. You're more likely to make decisions and take actions that will make [good results] likely to occur."16

Trust is the conduit for influence; it's the medium through which ideas travel.

you execute with comfortable confidence and synchrony, and you leave with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, regardless of the measurable outcome.

I hear from so many women who really started to pay attention to it at all times and stopped, you know, touching their faces and necks and playing with their hair and twisting their legs. I think women become more aware of it when they learn about this stuff, and you see their body language change.

A lot of politicians, not surprisingly, hire consultants to help them with their nonverbals, presence, generally how they come across.

Our nonverbals govern how other people think and feel about us.

Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton has shown us that judgments of political candidates' faces in just one second predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes, and even, let's go digital, emoticons used well in online negotiations can lead to you claim more value from that negotiation. If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right? So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the outcomes are. We tend to forget, though, the other audience that's influenced by our nonverbals, and that's ourselves.

When our body language is confident and open, other people respond in kind, unconsciously reinforcing not only their perception of us but also our perception of ourselves.

we can certainly understand and identify with one. And the more vivid that one, the better.

It's not uncommon for people to overvalue the importance of demonstrating their competence and power, often at the expense of demonstrating their warmth.

She worked many jobs, many hours a day, for many years, and at thirty-four, she graduated from college. She then slowly taught herself, through small, incremental changes, to treat "even the most difficult interactions as opportunities for me to reveal what I'm capable of and to express my worthiness." Imagine that. That sounds like presence. The

Power is generally defined as control over resources and control over access to resources, which often means control over other people because we're thinking about things like financial resources or shelter, or even love and affection, but we also possess resources that we sometimes can't access.

We convince by our presence," and to convince others we need to convince ourselves.

Powerful people initiate speech more often, talk more overall, and make more eye contact while they're speaking than powerless people do. 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.

Everyone is walking around with these self doubts, so there's something reassuring about that. And self-doubt in one or a few areas doesn't mean that you have generally low self-esteem. And you have the power to get yourself out of feeling that way.

Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves.

Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

A confident person - knowing and believing in her identity - carries tools, not weapons.

All changes have their melancholy

I've been studying sexism for many years, and it's much easier to document the existence of sexism than it is to document the existence of interventions that reduce it. It's really hard to find ways to change the way people see people in different groups. It should be our goal, and we're working for that, but it's hard.

Pleasure built upon pleasure, the certainty of my ability amplifying with each new trial.