Week 1: Believe in yourself - power posing can really change us.

So, our class of LITDY started from handshakes and this week, we've come through several readings and videos on "Interpersonal Communication".

Power posing can give others credible impressions of us.Power posing can in fact lead us to better performance of ourselves.

("Strike a Powerful Pose" / "Amy Cuddy Power Posing on TED")

When I first got this message from the text, I really felt "Yes, exactly it's true." since I immediately came up with my personal experience of doing debate. 

I belong to Debating Society and there, we do "parliamentary debate", which is one of the styles of debate. There, you have to make 7 minutes speech with having only 15 to 30 minutes of preparation time. (The theme of debate and your position, either "Government (=Affirmative)" or "Opposition (=Negative)" will only be disclosed 15 to 30 minutes before the round.) 

Just few days after the entrance ceremony of ICU, I was making my very first speech at the club. Actually, that "speech" was merely about 1 minutes or so. That is first of all, of course because of my poor english skill but more than that, that poor performance was because of I being so afraid and nervous of just standing in front of people that my mind went blank when I put papers on the hustings and looked up. The only thing I could do then was just read the sentences on the paper (which Senpai almost made all).

Ever since that embarrassing moment, I tried to improve both my English skill AND skill of public speech. I first tried to pretend that I'm feeling confident or tried to acquire the manner that looks credible to judges, such as standing straight up and do not walk around, do not shake hands so much, do not stare off...etc.

These are all, as you know, "power posing"

For me, these tactics of practicing went pretty much well and now, more than one and a half years since my first speech, I really enjoy making my speech seeing the faces of audience and even feel that 7 minutes are too short!

As for this experience, the message from the text sound real to me and also, I very much sympathized with the message from Amy Cuddy in her TED talk:

Yes, if we fake it till we make it, and continue, then we can finally become ourselves, that we first thought impossible to become:)