24 Dec TEF: Cuddy on “Presence,” The Palm, 12/28
Harvard social psychologist, bestselling author, and brain injury survivor Dr. Amy Cuddy will speak (for one hour) at Telluride’s Palm Theatre on December 28, 5:30 p.m. Cuddy’s TED Talk is the second-most watched in TED’s history, with more than 44 million views. All proceeds will be donated to the Telluride Education Foundation in support of the Telluride schools.
Advance Tickets: $20-Adults;$10-Students/Children or Door Tickets $25-Adults; $15-Students/Children and can be purchased online at TelluridePalm.com, or in advance at Telluride’s indie Between the Covers Bookstore.
“…Unlike so many similar books aimed at ushering us to our best lives, ‘Presence’ feels at once concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious — above all, truly powerful…,” raved The New York Times.
Go here for a full schedule of Palm events.
Named one of the BBC’s 100 Women of 2017, a Game Changer by TIME, one of “50 Women Who Are Changing the World” by Business Insider, and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Amy Cuddy shares evidence-based techniques to tackle life’s biggest challenges with confidence and perform at your best.
Amy Cuddy photographed at Harvard Business School.
Cuddy will speak about her New York Times bestselling book, Presence, which features evidence-based psychological and nonverbal techniques that help us to bring our boldest, most compelling selves to our most challenging, high-stakes interactions.
“The research I’ve been doing for years now joins a large body of inquiry into a quality I call presence. Presence stems from believing in and trusting yourself—your real, honest feelings, values, and abilities. That’s important, because if you don’t trust yourself, how can others trust you? Whether we are talking in front of two people or five thousand, interviewing for a job, negotiating for a raise, or pitching a business idea to potential investors, speaking up for ourselves or speaking up for someone else, we all face daunting moments that must be met with poise if we want to feel good about ourselves and make progress in our lives. ‘Presence’ gives us the power to rise to these moments.”
—Amy Cuddy (from, “Presence”)
Focusing on the power of nonverbal behavior, prejudice and stereotyping, the delicate balance of trustworthiness and strength and the ways in which people can affect their own thoughts, feelings, performance, and psychological and physical well-being, Cuddy writes and speaks about how we can become more present influential, compassionate, and satisfied in our professional and personal lives.
Here’s a review of Presence written by Heather Havrilesky for the New York Times:
Success doesn’t equal happiness. That’s the message coming in loud and clear in this dawning era of transparency, whether it’s embodied in enraged emails from a powerful movie producer or depressive tweets from a wealthy celebrity. But success without popularity doesn’t count, either. Slipping into the shadows in the wake of an achievement is no longer an option; you must re-enact your value in real time, on a world stage, via conferences, TED talks, panels, festivals, radio appearances and podcasts, all the while conjuring a level of poise and grace that was once the sole purview of news anchors and talk-show hosts. This is the paradox of the modern digital world: It demands broadcast-quality demonstrations of social value, even as it steadily erodes our ability to deliver them.
Enter: a brand new era of self-help books in which happiness not only takes precedence over success, but poise and popularity sometimes seem to take precedence over skill or originality or productivity. If the Gilded Age celebrated the inventor and the innovator, our modern age wants to transform us all, no matter what we do, into some combination of expert, pop star and beneficent guru. We are all meant to be as charismatic as Steve Jobs or Oprah, with our creations always secondary to the spectacle of our passionate, unfailingly genuine personalities.
No wonder such books toggle unnervingly between awkward confession and ephemeral vision quest. Exemplifying this potent mix are Amy Cuddy’s “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges” and Shonda Rhimes’s “Year of Yes.” Both books begin with the specter of success without happiness, success without camera-ready poise, success haunted by “impostor syndrome” and flop sweats and panic attacks. And both books resolve in a triumph of rousing speechifying and charming talk-show-circuit shenanigans — the new, truest measure of postmodern, high-capitalist victory.
Here’s a review from Goodreads:
Have you ever left a nerve-racking challenge and immediately wished for a do over? Maybe after a job interview, a performance, or a difficult conversation? The very moments that require us to be genuine and commanding can instead cause us to feel phony and powerless. Too often we approach our lives’ biggest hurdles with dread, execute them with anxiety, and leave them with regret.
By accessing our personal power, we can achieve “presence,” the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we’re making on others and instead adjust the impression we’ve been making on ourselves. As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s revolutionary book reveals, we don’t need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence. Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.
Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about “power poses.” Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.
Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret.
Amy Cuddy teaches leadership at Harvard University and is currently writing a book about bravery, bullying, and bystanders.
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