In her Ted Talk, Amy Cuddy overviews her essential principle of “Fake it Til You Make it� which focuses on her theory that, if person can take charge of his or her physical presentation, that person will become internally what that stance/walk/posture has communicated. Amy Cuddy speaks to business people, psychologists, and researchers. She encourages us to take the pose, create a stance, or focus on posture as we navigate through interactions with others. What better way to present oneself than to first take the physicality of the role we wish to assume then allow the external to lead the internal?
Michael Chekhov in To the Actor discusses a similar procedure which culminates in what he names “the psychological gesture,� which is something the actor can do to create a role. Chekhov encourages the actor to find one all-encompassing physicality, take that shape, and then allow the stance/walk/pose to inform the role. It’s the same notion, but instead of preparing a life performance, the actor is preparing a stage one.
For this activity, you will be discovering a stance/pose/walk of the person you would like to be and then allowing what you hope to be to color what you currently are like. For example, if you discover that you stand with your head down and your body with chest and stomach curled in, you decide to change that by leading with your chest with your head up looking straight in front of you.
For this activity, you must be brutally honest with yourself—you need to find what you often don’t want to know: the statement you are making with your body that could stand in the way of what you want to present in a particular situation, like in an interview or while standing in front of a group. If you have difficulty figuring out what you do that may be not what you want to communicate (you’ve been doing this for so long), you may have to ask for assistance from a trusted friend or relative to help you figure it out.
Once you have discovered what you want to correct, try to change your posture. Make a conscious effort to try to be conscious of what you are doing and how different you feel now that you are focusing on and attempting to modify. Of course, change doesn’t come in a quick flash (although Cuddy suggests that a mere change in the way you sit can make an enormous difference.)
You must complete this activity in two different forms: first, photograph/ video yourself before and after. Then, write about how you feel before and after. You can stage the scenes you photograph or video or write about or you can use real life situations. What’s important is not that you show what really happened but that you are beginning to focus on the change.
When you take photos or create a video, you may wish to exaggerate what you do to capture the before/after. When you write about your change, you may also exaggerate and even fabricate how different you feel. Change takes time but this change is compressed. But faking the changes and how you feel about them be the beginning of the new you.
Grading:
5 points for the set of photos (at least 5 “before” photos and 5 “after” photos) that show elements of change. You may take the photos yourself or have someone take the photos for you. You may include other people in the photos.
plus
5 points for what you write, about 4 pages (2 about the before and 2 about the after) that describe how you feel and how others interacted with you.
I want you to in-depth about my body posture change and why it changing . In the first 2 pages describe how i feel in the first 5 pictures. In the last two pages describe how i am in the last 5 pictures. I’m going to send the pictures separately. In the first 5 pictures I’m slouching and in the second 5 pictures I’m standing up right with a big chest. Talk about the emotions going into that.