How to Optimize Social Interactions: A Lesson on Presence From Amy Cuddy | Big Think

Presence is the state of being attuned to, and able to comfortably express, your true self — so your best qualities, your core values, your personality — and really to do so under stressful circumstances. Because when you can do that, you’re then able to kind of let your guard down and hear what’s actually happening in the situation rather than what you fear might be happening.

Presence comes from knowing your story, you know, really knowing who you are — so knowing what your core values are, what makes you you. What’s one of the things about you that can’t be changed, no matter how you perform in this negotiation or on this math test? So it comes from knowing who you are, accepting who you are, believing your story and then being able to access those things.

And sometimes people have all of that but they can’t access it. So when they get into that stressful situation, they go into fight-or-flight mode, and they basically shut down, and a wall comes up, and now they can’t access the very tools that they actually possess to do well in those situations. So they can’t be present. It’s just not possible.

Everyone has these biggest challenges and they are situations that we approach with a sense of dread that we execute with anxiety and distraction. We’re thinking about what they might be thinking of us, what we should have said two minutes ago, what’s going to happen in the future. And then we leave them with a sense of regret, feel that we weren’t seen.

Now these big challenges vary dramatically across people. So for some people, it might be a job interview. For a lot of people, it’s a job interview. For some people, it might be relationship conflict at home. For other people, it might be going to see the doctor and, you know, making sure that you’re getting all the information you need.

So it varies dramatically, but I think there are sort of two key elements. One is that it feels very high stakes, so it feels like whatever happens in that situation is going to dramatically affect your life. And the other is that there’s some element of social judgment, so if somebody is judging you on a dimension that really matters to you: are you a good person, are you a smart person, are you a healthy person?

So the stakes are high and there’s social judgment. Now what happens when you put these things together is that people feel as if they are in a really threatening situation. And so their nervous system sort of goes into this fight-or-flight mode, which might be adapted if you’re being chased by a tiger, but you’re not being chased by a tiger in a job interview. You’re just in a job interview.

And you’re either going to get the job or you’re not going to get the job, that’s it. It’s not adaptive in the situations in which you see it happen in today’s world. So I kind of think that it’s evolution not catching up with what the real challenges are that we’re dealing with today.

The most important thing I think is to know: "what are your biggest challenges?" Now you probably can come up with some off the top of your head, but there might be some that you’re not even really aware of until you’re in them. So I think one way to get at that is to really pay attention to your body: what’s happening in the moments when you tend to slouch and wrap yourself up? What’s happening when you start to breathe shallowly and quickly? What’s happening when you start to sweat?

What are the things that are happening in the situation at those moments when you’re showing physical signs of stress, anxiety, depression, and powerlessness? So once you’ve sort of identified what’s happening in the situation when those things happen, you start to become much more attuned to those bodily cues.

And so when they happen in the future, you can sort of course correct earlier. When people are present in a social interaction, you can tell. Now you may not be conscious of what it is you’re noticing, but you’re picking up on some things. The first is that they clearly believe their story. So they buy what t...