Embrace your superpower

What are you good at? What are your most valued strengths? Are you patient, witty, artistic, self-disciplined, adventurous? Studies show that reminding yourself of your strengths before a stressful or challenging event helps you cope.

Amy Cuddy in her book Presence writes that “before heading into a situation where we may be challenged, we can reduce our anxiety by reaffirming the parts of our authentic best selves we value most. When we feel safe with ourselves, we become significantly less defensive and more open to feedback, making us better problem solvers, too.”

This week experiment with self-affirmations to remind yourself of your “superpower.”

HOW TO: Whenever you get ready to deal with a potentially difficult or challenging task, take a moment to remind yourself of your superpower. What is your most valued strength? It doesn’t matter if this superpower has anything to do with the task at hand–you are not trying to psyche yourself up. Instead, you want to become grounded in your authentic best self so that you could act and make decisions out of that place.