The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (7 page)

There are times when the discomfort of full-blown fear is highly appropriate. If we were in life-threatening physical danger, then we
would surely appreciate our body focusing all of its resources toward ensuring our short-term survival. However, in today’s world, few situations merit a full fight-or-flight response. In these cases, our instinctive reactions actually work against us.

Have you ever become paralyzed in the middle of an exam or had the experience of stage fright? Like a deer in headlights, you freeze, your heart races, your palms get sweaty. You’re desperately trying to remember what you’d planned to say or do, but your mind is blank. Your higher cognitive functions have shut down.

Sometimes, under the effect of stress, the mind thinks we’re in a fight-or-flight situation, declares a state of emergency, and shuts down what it deems to be superfluous functions. Unfortunately, that means the body is reducing our cognitive abilities just when we need them most. Though it may be hard to remember this in the midst of an anxiety attack, rest assured that this reaction is an entirely normal, natural one that was intended for your well-being.

Of course, some degree of self-doubt can be helpful in spurring us to action. For instance, the impostor syndrome can be a great motivating tool, getting us to work harder than anyone else. But at what cost? Considering that this kind of internal negativity impairs our body language, and thus our interactions, not to mention our ability to actually enjoy life, might it not be better to learn how to handle the impostor syndrome and be motivated instead by confidence in our abilities and the joy of accomplishment?

Knowing how to handle the impostor syndrome and the inner critic is essential to unleashing your charisma potential. With practice, by using techniques such as the ones you’ll learn in the next chapter, you can achieve some distance from internal negativity, and even get to a place where the inner critic’s voice evokes in you only a smile or a chuckle. I promise.

So far you’ve gained key insights about internal negativity, how to recognize it, and how it plays out in your mind and in your body. In the next chapter, you’ll acquire the tools to put these insights into practice.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Any internal discomfort—either physical or mental—can impair how you feel, how you perform, and how others perceive you.

Physical tension caused by something as simple as the sun in your eyes produces the same changes in body language as a more serious discomfort, like anxiety or irritation.

Prevention is optimal: plan ahead to ensure comfort in clothing, location, and timing.

Aim to stay aware of any physical sensation of discomfort. If physical discomfort arises during an interaction, act promptly to alleviate or explain it.

Use techniques such as the responsibility transfer to reduce the feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction that play out in your body language and inhibit your charisma.

Understand that mental negativity such as anxiety, dissatisfaction, self-criticism, or self-doubt is normal and something that everyone experiences.

YOU’VE ALREADY ACQUIRED
important insights about the way physical and mental discomfort can handicap your personal charisma potential. In this chapter, you’ll gain the tools to put these insights into practice, surmount the obstacles, and successfully handle almost any internal discomfort. No matter what difficult feelings arise—self-doubt, impatience, annoyance, irritation—you’ll be able to confidently handle them.

Skillfully handling any difficult experience is a three-step process: destigmatize discomfort, neutralize negativity, and rewrite reality. Let’s get started.

Step One: Destigmatize Discomfort

Destigmatizing an experience means reducing its power simply by understanding that it’s normal, common, and nothing to be anxious
about or ashamed of. Feeling internal discomfort and negativity is a natural part of life. Everyone experiences it.

We all feel the whole spectrum of emotions, no matter how good we are. Even Thich Nhat Hanh, a monk, lifelong practitioner of Buddhism, and the very symbol of enlightened peace in the world, once got so angry at someone, he wanted to stand up and slug him.

And yet somehow, in our culture, we’ve gotten into the habit of viewing any physical or mental discomfort as a sign of something gone awry, perhaps even the sign of something wrong within us. Even during unsettling life events—a major job change, a divorce, death of a loved one—when we accept a certain amount of sadness or discomfort, we often put a time limit on the acceptability of our feelings, after which point we believe that continuing to feel this way would be inappropriate.

This mindset is one of the main reasons that negative thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences are difficult to handle: we feel they “shouldn’t” be happening. So not only do we feel bad, we then also feel bad
about
feeling bad.

To destigmatize, remind yourself that this internal discomfort, whatever it might be, is a normal part of the human experience and a by-product of one of our brain’s survival mechanisms. It helps to think of others who have experienced what you’re going through, especially if you can think of a person who is like you, but maybe just a step or two ahead—a person you both relate to and admire.

If you’ve just lost a key client, for instance, think of someone you know—a mentor you have a high regard for, or a colleague you respect—who suffered a similar setback. Imagine them going through this experience. Of course, hearing them tell you their tale of woe in person would be ideal, but even simply imagining them going through this experience and telling you about it can be very helpful. (Remember, your brain won’t know the difference.)

Another way to destigmatize discomfort is to remind yourself that you’re not alone in this experience. With about 7 billion people on the planet, I can absolutely guarantee you that not just one but scores of people are going through the same thing at this very moment. Rather than seeing it as one big emotion felt by one person, see a
community of people struggling with it—one difficult burden shared by many. Rather than being
yours
alone to bear, see the issue as
the
depression,
the
shame,
the
sadness that is being felt by a multitude of people right now.

One of my clients told me that connecting himself to others in this way is helpful and gives him the same calming effect as the responsibility transfer. He likes to look around wherever he is and imagine thought bubbles streaming out of people’s heads while they’re going about their day. And he says, “It’s relieving to realize that it’s not ‘wrong’ to be thinking or feeling whatever it is that I’m thinking or feeling. That it’s normal.”

In both my personal experience and in coaching clients, I’ve found that simply adapting this new mindset and learning how to allievate anxiety or shame can make internal turmoil much easier to bear.

You see, shame is the real killer. Of all the emotions that human beings can feel, it is one of the most toxic to health and happiness. Shame researcher Brené Brown defines it as “the fear of being unlovable: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Shame hits us so powerfully because it conveys a message about our fundamental acceptability as human beings. And in basic survival terms, if the tribe rejects you, you die. It
is
a life-and-death situation. The brain equates social needs with survival; being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses.
¹
Somewhere in the back of our minds is the fear of being so disapproved-of that we’d be excluded by those who matter to our survival.

Because it’s easily triggered and fast to escalate, shame can quickly grow out of proportion and show up in ways that are not helpful to us. I’ve heard clients express a level of shame for having eaten a candy bar that would have been more appropriate for third-degree murder.

Chade-Meng Tan, Google’s Jolly Good Fellow
^*
and a devoted practitioner of mindfulness meditation, believes that the tendency to feel bad about feeling bad is especially true for good people. We start
thinking,
If I’m a good person, why am I feeling this shame? Surely if I were really good I wouldn’t feel this way.