Are you struggling to build your self-esteem and self-confidence?
We all want to feel good about ourselves and to be able to hold our heads up high. But sometimes there are moments when we feel down about ourselves for one reason or another. Maybe we don’t feel attractive, smart, or successful enough. It can be really tough to deal with these negative thoughts and feelings, especially if they persist for a long time. If you’re struggling with low self-esteem and confidence, don’t worry — you’re not alone. There are things you can do to improve how you feel about yourself.
Friends, welcome back to The School of Greatness. Our guest today is Amy Cuddy. She is a social psychologist and an award-winning Harvard lecturer. In this episode, we dove in on what it means to have personal power and how to develop it, why it’s important to overcome trauma from the past, how to stop being afraid of going after your dreams, and so much more.
Who Is Amy Cuddy?
Dr. Amy Cuddy is an expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice. She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005. Dr. Amy was also a professor at Rutgers University from 2005 to 2006, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management from 2006 to 2008, and at Harvard Business School from 2008 to 2017. She still continues to teach at Harvard Business School in executive education.
Amy Cuddy is also a bestselling author, and her first book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, is a Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, Publisher’s Weekly, USA Today, and New York Times bestseller and has been published in 35 languages.
It was also selected as the “Spotlight Pick of December 2015” by Amazon and has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Dr. Amy shared through this book how to tap our inner power to achieve the greatest challenges with great confidence, and in this episode, she showed us what it means to have that power and how to develop it, so we can get the life we want to have.
How to Develop Personal Power
The world is a beautiful place, but it can be difficult to find our own personal power in the midst of all this beauty. Whether you are struggling with your happiness or finding yourself lost in the chaos that life throws at us, there are ways for you to overcome these obstacles and gain strength from them.
We all have the power to make a difference in our world. Sometimes, we lose sight of this because it’s hard work or because things are not going well. But you can’t give up hope! There are always opportunities for us to show our personal power and make changes in our lives.
“[Personal power] is the feeling that you are entitled to your best self, … but that also involves knowing who your best self is, and that’s difficult too. … I think so often we don’t even feel that we sort of deserved to be there, and so we can’t fully show up. So personal power is the feeling of being in control of our internal resources, or to bring our skills and abilities forward, to be the most sort of generous open-minded version of ourselves. That’s personal power.” – Amy Cuddy
People often think of power as something that they can’t attain, but in reality, it’s the feeling that you are entitled to your best self, and that’s something anyone can have. This is the reason why some people feel like they’re not in control of their lives and others don’t. You may not feel like you have power over your life, but in truth, there are many ways to get it. The world is waiting for your best self, so what’s stopping you?
“I don’t think personal power is not a substitute for skills and knowledge. For me, personal power is about revealing the skills that you already have, but it also gives you more bandwidth to build more skills. So it’s self-enforcing as well.” – Amy Cuddy
You are the CEO of your life. You get to set the priorities, you can change how much time you want to spend on each thing, and if something is not working for you anymore, you can try something else. This means that it’s up to YOU what happens next in your life. When you focus on your own development and enhancing your skills, you become more confident and less stressed out about what might happen next. So focus on your strengths and abilities, and at the same time overcome the trauma from your past that’s holding you back.
