Your body language may shape who you are-Amy Cuddy-A Review
The entire talk revolves around this pseudo concept of English aphorism, “Fake it till you make it” .
You can view the talk on TED.COM
There is just one problem in all these claims, You just cannot fake your way through. There is this old proverbial statement which we quote here, “you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people, all of the time, but you can never fool all of the people all of the time.
Imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic outlook can never be an alternate to knowledge accumulation or neither can it be a substitute for hard work.
Of course, you can exhibit all of the body confident moves and postures that you perceive would increase your chances of lifting those 200 pounds of weight at the bench press station, go ahead.
We call these as Affirmation, it will appear to work until you hit the gym. But it would totally be a different ball game when you actually ought to lift the 200 pounds at the bench press station.
The reason, merely affirming something will only work so long you are in the virtual world. You may affirm that you are a top NBA player, but all these affirmations will not make you an NBA player until you put in the hard work, hours of practice, dedication, sacrifice, and patience into the goal.
Remarking to a reporter’s question, “hey MJ, how does all your shots hits the hole”, the famous star Michael Jordan, replied, “that is because, you never saw those 9999 shots that actually missed”. In other words, it goes to show the number of tries the player had tried and missed.
Here Action speaks louder than words. If you haven’t put in the hard work, no matter how much you positive body language you adorn or alpha you claim to be, it just wouldn’t work.
The speaker portrays the pictures of some of the most accomplished personalities in life and pushes her point to justification. What she fails to see here is that, these postures of power that the speaker is talking about is the consequence of hard work, dedication and perseverance that had gone in.
Take for example, Hussein Bolt, it is reported that Mr. Bolt, trains 8 to 10 hours every day, before and during an event. In other words the work required goes in first, along with the sacrifice, the pain, the disappointments and the never say die attitude. The price is paid first, the result follows instantly.
You can see this in at the start of any 100 m races that Mr. Bolt had participate, specially the Olympics.
Look at the body language of Mr. Bolt and compare them to the others. Most of the times, you will see that the body language of others are too intimidating, often portraying the lie of competencies, courage and valor.
But the prospective winner, Mr. Bolt is involved in the language of the Mind, he plans his phase, his acceleration, his strategies all quietly in solace and solitude.
When the race ends, Mr. Bolt exalts with thankfulness. That is the true sign of the Real Winner. No amount of faking will help past the faker across and over the finish line.
You can see the same behavioral pattern with others. The body language that they exhibit is merely the result of their hard work and dedication that had gone in first.
Fundamentals
The fundamental shaping factor of oneself is not the body language but Discipline. If you have Discipline, then all things will fall in place.
Acting intelligent will not make you Intelligent, acting like a leader will not make you leader, but apparently the entire talk by the speaker who claims to be from an elite university, involves around this, faking behaviors, faking competencies and faking everybody.
In adequate claims by the Speaker
The speaker makes a comparison with regard to hormonal changes that power poses bring about, but fails to take note that hormonal changes may increase the individual’s propensity to take risks, but that does not mean that these hormonal changes will be a replacement to dedication and years of hard work that usually what is required to achieve success.
The Speaker claims that “bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes”. The speaker fails to mention the cases where these behaviors determine outcomes.
The speaker cleverly uses the word “can”, but fails to mention that the Marketplace will test all the “can and the could” with a rod of scrutiny and all fakes will turn up their true colors.
Zukerbergs and Bill Gates
The speaker then makes the following suggestion, “fake it till you make it”. If this is what an Ivy university professor suggests then we all now know the research that Ivy universities produce.
No wonder, why likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates left their education to pursue their career.
No wonder, why Mr. Henry Ford, with no tertiary education became the single most successful Car manufacturer that America has seen thus far.
No wonder why Mr. Andrew Carnegie with less than 3 years of schooling became the Steel Tycoon.
We are no theologians, but the Bible gives the most profound truth, that is, “what you sow, so shall you reap”. If you sow, deception, you shall reap deception, if you sow hard work, you shall reap the fruits of hard work, It is that simple, and we do not need Rocket science to understand the principle that governs life.
It is indeed a pity to see the depths to which Ivy Universities works had fallen. Even more alarming would be that the none of Research readings cited provides substantial evidences for the work claimed by Amy Cuddy.
In short, the talk should be titled as “how to Manipulate others into thinking that you are truly competent “
