I’ve talked about tapping into your personal power via your posture and why that’s important for showing up as your best.
Feelings of authentic personal power are fundamental for being your best self. These feelings help us present first impressions of genuine enthusiasm, passion, and confidence. When we are authentically presenting ourselves, our nonverbal displays follow suit. Enthusiasm, confidence, and passion are hard to fake. So, when you present this way, it’s because you’re actually feeling this way.
Self-assured enthusiasm is a strong barometer of future success. In studies of entrepreneurs, this quality predicts drive, willingness to work hard, initiative, persistence, creativity, and the ability to identify good opportunities and novel ideas. (Cardon, M. S., Wincent, J., Singh, J., & Drnovsek, M., 2009)
Additionally, embodied enthusiasm is contagious and has shown to influence a high level of commitment, confidence, passion, and better performance in the people you work with. (Levine, S. P., & Feldman, R. S., 2002)
However, posture isn’t the only cue we give of our own personal power. Our facial expressions, vocal prosody, and physical gestures also communicate important information. For example, when you feel confident, you sound expressive and relaxed.
Graduate researcher at Harvard University, Lakshmi Balachandra, performed studies on the way entrepreneurs make pitches to potential investors and how, in turn, those investors respond. Her findings found that the strongest predictors of who was awarded money were based on traits of confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.
Most notably, these qualities came through in nonverbal ways – vocalizations, physical gestures, facial expressions, posture, etc. These qualities are so important because faking embodied alignment with what you’re saying is virtually impossible.
An embodied trait is when your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are in alignment with how you present yourself. When we are genuine in expressing ourselves, when we are authentic, our nonverbal communication tends to follow. (Amy Cuddy, Presence)
True belief in yourself and your ideas is grounding, both for you and for those you are communicating with. It disarms people because they no longer need to question your authenticity. They trust you.
I’ll be going into nonverbal communication and other bodily cues in the future. But for now, when you meet someone who comes across as passionate with grounded enthusiasm, know that you can trust that first impression, because they believe it too.
Cheers to better living -
Shannon
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