Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

By Nana Zheng

This is a famous speech on Ted Talks by Amy Cuddy, and the speaker tried to convince us that we can shape who we are by body language. First of all, Cuddy said that we all are fascinated with body language, especially the communication and interaction about body language. As an illustration, how our nonverbal behaviors influence to others, and how others’ nonverbals influence us. Secondly, she mentioned we are also influenced by our nonvervals, our thoughts, our feelings, and our physiology. Thirdly, the speaker asked us two questions, one is “Our nonverbals govern how other people think and feel about us, but do our nonverbal govern how we think and feel about ourselves?” The other question is “Our minds change our bodies, so do our bodies change our mind?” Focus on these two questions, Amy described a story happened to her, and gave us her personal answers to those two questions. That is “Our bodies change our minds, our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes.”

According to Cuddy’s small story, I know that there was a car accident happened to her when she was 19, and that accident influenced her IQ seriously, so Cuddy wasn’t supposed to become a successful scientist even she wasn’t even supposed to finish her undergraduate degree. Doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree, however, she did it. She proved them wrong. Today, Cuddy is a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School. And, she is encouraging more and more people to believe themselves until they did it.

In my opinion, I agree with her. Nonverbal behavior can influence in lots of different ways. Some good nonverbals can help us  build an optimistic attitude, and an optimistic attitude is good for our life. Thereby, good body language can improve our life. On the other hand, bad body language might result in our negative feelings, so that we lose our heart and lack of passion. It is hard to do anything if you lack of confidence. Actually, I think not only good body language can help us, also a lot of other factors can improve us, such as confidence, courage, optimism, calmness, etc. We can call all of these good factors as positive energy. Not only other people can give you positive energy, but also can you support yourself positive energy. It depend on you how to look at others. Sometimes, maybe you know it is not fine but you still tell yourself it is ok. It is not cheating, but a persuasion. In other words, it is a kind of psychological suggestion. You can make you are more strong and optimistic by this psychological suggestion. As Cuddy said “Don’t fake if till you make it. Fake if till you become it.”

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html