Your adventure at the Waters of Love starts here, by claiming a power that all humans are gifted with, but rarely use. Let’s start with an observation.

Have you noticed that some people always find a way to be negative, be it feeling angry, jealous, or sad, even about the smallest things? In fact, such people can bring down the energy of their surroundings as well. Now that is some talent! But it is not so easy to realize when you are such a person yourself. In fact, let’s be honest, we are all guilty of this behavior sometimes. And this is where your power proves useful!

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy) started his presidential campaign speech in Milwaukee with the famous line, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” Hahaha not impressive, but you cannot deny that this line is not famous! 😉 But what followed next was certainly impressive.

As Teddy reached out into his coat pocket for the speech, he told the audience that he had just been shot. The audience was left horrified when they saw his bloodstained shirt inside the vest. Thanks to his steel eyeglass case and 50-pages of speech, the bullet was slowed down enough to pass into his lungs, but a hole was still left on the right side of his chest. He gave his signature grin, and then went ahead to deliver a 90-minute speech!

Had this happened to you, how would you have reacted?

Home Sweet Home

Home emotion is the common term for our dominant emotion, which we always return to. If your home emotion is happiness, you will always find a way to be happy, just the way some people always find a way to be sad. And as you might be suspecting, this is indeed a mind game.

Our brain is an association machine. It links one thing to another, an event, a memory, or an emotion. This is the reason why sometimes things like a scent or a sound can take us down the memory lane, maybe because you associate a certain smell with your mother or a sound with a danger. Reasons could be many, but it all boils down to association. And this is the case with home emotion as well.

If you associate your being with a certain emotion, all the other emotions will feel alien to you. Your home emotion becomes your place of comfort. This explains even extreme cases like how women who have been abused their whole life are likely to end up in more abusive relationships, again and again. And there is no hope unless they train their minds to not treat a loving relationship as alien. Rewiring the associations formed over the years requires a huge effort.

The Pose and the Power

While permanently undoing your lifelong brain wirings will need many more missions, for now, we have an immediate fix, especially to change your emotions.

In Teddy’s case, a major source of his confidence lied in his grin and the way he used to keep an upright posture. This made confidence and fearlessness his default state. And posture is the power you are going to master in this mission.

Have you noticed how winners usually raise their arms up and stand in a straight dominant posture? In moments of victory, people experience a spike in testosterone and a drop in cortisol levels. Now, a higher level of testosterone boosts our confidence whereas higher cortisol levels make us stressed. It’s due to this change in emotions that we see a change in the posture of winners and losers. And researchers have noticed the same trends in social hierarchies as well, with leaders having higher testosterone and lower cortisol levels just like the winners. On the other hand, lower-status people have lower testosterone and higher cortisol levels, which show up in their posture as well.

Ok, so this must be the reason why Teddy always stood upright and had a smile on his face. But why are we discussing all this?

The best part is that we can reverse engineer this effect using “Power Pose.” Scientists have discovered that if you copy a winner’s pose of standing straight with arms raised high up, you can immediately increase the testosterone and lower the cortisol levels. So, it’s not just that your emotions control your posture, but also your posture can control your emotions. This is huge!