The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (5 page)

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In fact, Stanford researchers conducted experiments showing that when people try to hide their real feelings, they provoke a threat-response arousal in others.
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MICHELANGELO INSISTED THAT
he never
created
 his glorious statues—he simply
revealed
 them. His only talent, he said, was in looking at the block of marble and discerning the statue within. All he then needed was the skill to chip away the excess, letting the statue emerge. That is what this chapter will help you do: identify the obstacles that are holding back your charismatic self.

As you now know, your mental state is critical to your ability to project charismatic body language. However, there are a number of things that can—and often do—get in the way of having the right mental state to project presence, power, or warmth. Increasing your charisma requires first knowing which internal obstacles are currently inhibiting your personal charisma potential. In this chapter we’ll take a look at the different kinds of physical and mental discomfort that can stand in the way of your charismatic self.

Physical Discomfort

It was a $4 million deal, and it was nearly lost because of a black wool suit.

On a hot, sunny day in Manhattan, traffic is humming and people are rushing along the busy streets. Sitting at the terrace of a restaurant, wearing his very best black wool suit, Tom is studying the menu. Across the table, studying his own menu, is Paul, CEO of a company Tom has been courting for months. As they make their choices, the waiter jots down their orders, whisks the menus off the table, and departs.

For months, Tom and his team have obsessively run the numbers and tested all possible scenarios. They know for sure that their system would save Paul both time and money. But for Paul, this would be a big gamble. Implementing a new system company-wide could go catastrophically wrong. What if it stops working on Christmas morning, when stores need to be operating flawlessly? Would Tom and his team be there for him if a crisis hits?

Paul has decided to give Tom one final shot at convincing him. For Tom, this could be a turning point in his career. He’s confident that his system is solid and that he and his team can deliver. It’s now up to him to communicate this complete confidence to Paul.

When Paul asks about crisis situations, Tom has a ready answer. But as he details contingency plans, he starts fidgeting with his suit, running his fingers inside the rim of his collar, and Paul can see Tom’s eyes narrowing.
Is that tension in his eyes?
Paul wonders. Tom’s expression looks tight and uncomfortable, and Paul starts to get a bad gut feeling.
What’s going on?

Paul was right in seeing tension in Tom’s eyes and face, but that tension had nothing to do with the business matter at hand. Wearing a black woolen suit on a hot, sunny day, Tom was simply feeling
physically
uncomfortable.

What if you had been in Tom’s place? Even without the itchy suit, imagine being on a sunny terrace in the middle of an important conversation, and suddenly the sun starts hitting your eyes. When
human eyes are hit by sunlight, they automatically tighten or narrow in reaction. Our eye muscles react in the exact same way to this kind of external stimuli as they do to internal stimuli. To the outside world, your face will show the same reaction to discomfort from the sun as it would to feelings of anger or disapproval. This reaction will be seen by the person facing you, and he or she may not know about your physical discomfort. All they know is that they’ve been speaking with you. It would be natural to misinterpret your tension as a reaction to what they’ve just said.

In fact, that’s probably exactly what will happen, because most of us tend to interpret events—whether they’re personal or impersonal—as relating to us. Traffic on the way to an important meeting can lead us to wonder,
Why did this have to happen to
me
today?

Any physical discomfort that affects your visible, external state—your body language—even slightly may affect how charismatic you are perceived to be. When interacting with someone, assume that he or she will feel (at least on a subconscious level) that whatever you do relates to him or to her.

Physical discomfort doesn’t just affect your external state; it also affects your internal state. Some forms of it, such as hunger, can impair your performance in multiple ways. You may already know that you think less clearly when you’re hungry, or at least less clearly about anything that isn’t food-related. Numerous studies confirm that low blood glucose levels lead to impaired attention as well as to difficulties regulating emotions and behavior.
¹
This means that you might have a harder time getting into the specific mental state required for the charismatic behavior you would like to exhibit.

Counteracting charisma-impairing physical discomfort is simple:

1. Prevent
   
2. Recognize
   
3. Remedy or explain
   

The first, and optimal, step is to plan ahead to prevent the discomfort from occurring. The classic adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” holds true here. As much as you can, plan
ahead to ensure you’re physically comfortable. Keeping this in mind as you make your choices every day is a simple way to make charisma easier to attain.

When you’re choosing a location for a meeting, take comfort into consideration. Ask yourself what the temperature and noise level will be like. Ensure that you’ll be well fed; don’t let yourself (or your guests if you’re hosting) get too hungry. Think about your energy level, and the energy level of the people with whom you’ll be interacting. Is the meeting very early or very late? Signs of fatigue can easily show up in people’s body language as lack of enthusiasm.

Be sure to choose clothing that will make you neither too hot nor too cold. Avoid clothing that is itchy, ill fitting, or in any way distracting. Though you may not realize it, any physical distraction will use up part of your mental focus and impair your performance. It’s particularly important to ensure that your clothing is loose enough for you to breathe well and fully (this means you can take deep belly breaths, not shallow chest breaths). How well you breathe affects how much oxygen gets to your brain, and therefore how well you perform mentally.

Admittedly, people may gain valuable confidence, and therefore charisma, from feeling that they look impressive even if their clothing is not comfortable. It’s really up to you to decide: is the discomfort worth the gain in confidence? Ideally, you should wear clothing that makes you feel both comfortable and highly confident in your appearance. Make sure you’re not sacrificing comfort in small ways that might actually be holding you back. You’re looking to get every advantage you can, right?

One young man told me his eyes are so sensitive to sunlight that even when he explains the real cause of his facial tension, the people he’s with often seem to doubt his explanation. On a gut level, they still feel there’s a problem between them. His solution is to assess the room before sitting down to make sure he won’t be facing the sun or to ask to change positions as soon as the sun becomes a problem. Because he is aware of this problem, he can take action before it affects the way he’s perceived.

Awareness is the second step in dealing with physical discomfort.
Check in with your face from time to time; notice if it is tense. This is where the ability to stay present will help you yet again: the more present you are, the better your chances of noticing if your body language is showing tension.

The third step is to take action. If you realize that something has created tension in your face,
do something about it.
Before others misinterpret it, try to remedy both the discomfort as well as the misinterpretation.

Let’s go back to that conversation on the terrace, when the sun was in Tom’s eyes. Now you know that he shouldn’t try to ignore his discomfort. Instead, he could act to explain and remedy the situation. When it’s his turn to speak, he could pause for a second, hold up a hand (the visual cue helps), and say something like: “Would you mind if we move just a bit? My eyes are having a hard time with the sunlight.”

When the physical discomfort can’t be alleviated, it’s even more important to prevent other people from taking your tension personally. Take a moment to explain that you’re in discomfort due to a particular issue. For instance, if you’re feeling irritated by constant nearby construction noise, explain the problem. Giving voice to something will generally allow both of you to move on from it.

Mental Discomfort

Though it originates entirely in the mind, psychological discomfort can play out through our bodies as well as through our minds. It affects both how we feel and how we’re perceived. Mental discomfort can result from anxiety, dissatisfaction, self-criticism, or self-doubt, all of which are forms of internal negativity, and each of which can handicap our personal charisma potential.

Knowing how to skillfully handle mental discomfort is even more important than knowing how to handle physical discomfort. This is both one of the most challenging sections of the book and one of the most important. It may be difficult to process, but I promise you will benefit in the end. In fact, you’ll be much more powerful. You will have gained insights to put you ahead of the game, and you will have
laid a foundation of understanding upon which the next sections will build. So brace yourself, take a deep breath, and read on.

Anxiety Caused by Uncertainty

Have you ever had the awful feeling that you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and finding sometimes that you’d rather hear bad news than be left in suspense? Let’s say you’ve recently become romantically involved with someone, and all of a sudden they stop returning your calls. Your brain goes into all sorts of possible explanations, obsessing about why they’ve gone silent. Haven’t you ever felt that you’d rather get a definite “It’s over” than never know the cause of their silence? Even though the answer would be a rejection,
at least then you’d know
.

For many of us, a state of doubt or uncertainty is an uncomfortable place to be. Robert Leahy, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, says his patients often report they would rather receive a negative diagnosis than be left in suspense, even though the uncertainty would still allow hope of a positive outcome.

Our inability to tolerate uncertainty carries multiple costs. It can cause us to make premature decisions. It can handicap us in negotiations, leading us to reveal more than we should as we scramble to fill the silence, unable to bear the uncertainty of not knowing what the other person is thinking. And most important, it can lead us to feel anxious. Anxiety is a serious drawback to charisma. First, it impacts our internal state: quite obviously, it’s hard to be fully present while you’re feeling anxious. Anxiety can also lower our confidence. Anxiety, low presence, and low confidence can show up directly in our body language, as well as reduce our ability to emanate warmth.

Yet if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that uncertainty isn’t going away. Considering the ever-increasing pace of business and technological advances as well as unforeseeable economic upheavals, uncertainty and ambiguity will be an increasingly present factor of our daily lives. Those who are better at handling it will gain a distinctive advantage over others.

Imagine you’re dealing with a difficult situation whose outcome is
uncertain. You envision a variety of ways it could play out, and you strategize how to best deal with each. So far, so good. Once you’ve thought through each scenario, the rational, reasonable, logical thing to do would be to put the situation out of your mind and go about your day until action is actually required.

But how many of us have felt our minds going over the different outcomes again and again, rehashing the various plans we’ve made, replaying possible scenarios, mentally rehearsing the upcoming conversations not just once or twice but ad nauseam?

In the weeks leading up to his meeting with Paul, Tom’s mind started spinning out different possibilities. First, he imagined a positive outcome and explored all the ramifications this would have. He thought about whom he’d want to call, and in what order, to bring them into the project. But what if the answer was negative? His mind started to unfold the sequence of actions that would follow: how he would explain the verdict to his boss, how he would tell his team, and so on.

For the next three days, Tom realized both scenarios kept popping up in his mind, his brain replaying the strategies he’d planned for each eventuality. As he drove to work, he caught himself rehearsing the conversation he’d have with his boss to explain the rejection. During work, he would suddenly realize he’d been aimlessly staring out the window, daydreaming about how he’d announce the win to his team. Tom knew he was ignoring other pressing matters. He tried to stop thinking about the situation, but his mind just kept returning to the possibilities again and again.

The reason Tom couldn’t let go is that our minds are fundamentally uncomfortable with uncertainty. The minute our brain registers ambiguity, it flashes an error signal. Uncertainty registers as a tension: something that must be corrected before we can feel comfortable again.

Our natural discomfort with uncertainty is yet another legacy of our survival instincts. We tend to be more comfortable with what is familiar, which obviously hasn’t killed us yet, than with what is unknown or uncertain, which could turn out to be dangerous.

It’s worth learning how to handle uncertainty, not just because it increases charisma but also because the ability to be comfortable with
uncertainty and ambiguity turns out to be one of the strongest predictors of success in business. This is what Adam Berman, the executive director of UC Berkeley’s Business School Center for Innovation, concluded after tracking his MBA students in their career progression.