Your body under pressure

- Imagine you're an investment banker. You've got this hot new start up that's comin' in to ask you for money. CEO shows up and you ask him this question. How do you know that the product is going to work? The CEO looks down, starts rockin' back and forth, and ringing his hands. Do you invest? Now if that CEO knew that that was how he was showing up, he would absolutely change things. You can change things. If you know how your body responds under pressure, and with stress and nerves. My favorite exercise to use to help you understand how your body's going to react to these moments, is called the five things exercise. And I have someone here who's going to do this with me so I can show you how it works. Terrence? How's it going? - Good how you doing? - Good, now you remind me, you're in sales right? - That's right. - Awesome, cool. So these are the instructions for the five things exercise. I'm going to give you a topic, and you're going to list five things regarding that topic. Pretty easy, right? - Right. - Here are the rules. You cannot break eye contact with me, even for a fraction of a second. And you can't say um, ah, you know, kind of, any of those filler words. Got it? - Got it. - Okay. So it's like for you to list off five of the seven dwarfs please. - Sleeps, Dopey. - And you looked up, all right you almost got through it. All right, let's give you another on. Okay so I'd love you to list five cities in Europe. Okay you looked up. - Immediately. - Good, a couple good examples. All right, so thank you so much Terrence. - Of course. - All right, I'm also going to have now, Hillary come up and join us so we can try out this exercise with her. Hillary? Great, okay so we're going to do the five things exercise. So you tell me what you do again? - I'm a contact producer. - Okay perfect. So imagine as a contact producer, you've got one of these moments where somebody's asking you a really tough question. You know know how you're going to respond, physically to that moment. So this exercise helps with that. - Okay. - So I'm going to give you the topic, and you're going to list five things. Here are the rules. Don't break eye contact, even for a fraction of a second. - Okay. - No ums, no ahs, no I love that question, nothing in between. - Okay. - You got it? - Yup. - Okay, five of your favorite television shows. - Friends, I got nothin'. (laughs) - I like the little dance there too. That was great. Let's try it again. Wan to try it one more time? Okay, five places where you can get coffee. - Starbucks, Peet's, McDonald's, 7-Eleven, Prospect. - Awesome, that was great, high five. - Thank you. - Thank you so much Hillary, thanks for doin' this. Okay so we just had two examples up here, of Terrence and then Hillary trying' this out. What do we see goin' on physically? So with Terrence, his hands are by his side. He had like this robot posture. He wasn't using his hands at all. His face seemed a little bit robotic too. Is that how he talks on the weekends? Probably not. He probably smiles more. He probably uses his hands. So it's interesting to see that. And with Hillary, she was pausing, and she had a little dance. And then she had this look on her face, of I'm a little scared. She needs to know that that's how she might show up in a high stakes moment. Here's why this exercise works. It simulates that feeling of being put on the spot. It is not natural to have somebody staring at you. And having to be comfortable with silence is hard work. It's not natural for us. You have to practice these skills. So look at the exercise file called five things. Download it. Now try it. Record yourself. Try the five things exercise. Hold yourself accountable to not say um, and to not break eye contact. Then watch it. Watch it without sound. Do you come across natural? Do you come across like you're talking to your friends on the weekends? A soft face, natural hand gestures, a relaxed and open posture? If you don't, try it again, and again and again, until you can come across really comfortable in that high stakes environment. Knowing how your body shows up to others, under pressure, is the first step to success when the stakes are high.