Strike a Power Pose

Research into the effects of body posture on confidence, conducted at Harvard and Columbia Business Schools, has shown that simply holding your body in expansive, high power poses (leaning back with hands behind the head and feet up on a desk, or standing with legs and arms stretched wide open) for as little as two minutes stimulates higher levels of testosterone the hormone linked to power and dominance and lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.Try this before your next important business meeting, and I guarantee you will look and feel more confident and certain. In addition to causing hormonal shifts in both males and females, these poses lead to increased feelings of power and a higher tolerance for risk. The study also corroborated my observation that people are more often influenced by how they feel about you than by what youre saying.