The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (9 page)

In most situations, we don’t know for certain what motivates a person’s actions, so we might as well choose the explanation that is most helpful to us and create a version of events that gets us into the specific mental state we need for charisma.

Though this suggestion may sound outlandish at first, choosing to rewrite your perception of reality is actually the rational and smart thing to do. It can help you get back into the right mental state to emanate charismatic body language and can improve your performance, too.

I first learned about the rewriting reality technique during a business school course,
^**
and it has served me brilliantly in the years since. I always think of one night in Bogotá, when I got a direct experience of how powerful this technique could be.

It was four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. My mind was filled with apprehension. In a few hours I would be addressing the three hundred senior executives of a large multinational corporation. The CEO, who had asked me to address his top management, expected his people to come out of my session with both a mindset shift and a practical toolkit. I had ninety minutes to make them more confident, influential, persuasive, and inspiring. And all this, in Spanish. The pressure was high.

I had already tossed and turned for hours, paced around the soulless hotel room, and stared out the window at the blinking city lights, desperately trying to find sleep. I felt nauseated, exhausted, and emotionally spent. My mind was churning, and I dreaded the hours of insomnia I felt were ahead of me.

Suddenly, the rewriting reality exercise floated through my mind. Though it seemed far-fetched, I realized that at this point I’d tried everything else, and had nothing to lose by giving the technique a try. I sat down at the desk, pulled out pen and paper and asked myself:
What if this unfortunate, unpleasant experience is absolutely perfect just as it is—the insomnia, the nausea, the fact that this is happening the very night before a high-profile assignment? In what way can this turn out to be absolutely perfect for me?

It took a few minutes, but eventually answers began to arise. And I wrote: “Maybe I’ll somehow do well tomorrow and come to know that even sleep-deprived, and in a foreign language, I can still do all right. Maybe this knowledge will be key someday when I’m faced with an even more important assignment. And I’ll be grateful for having had the uncomfortable experience I’m living through now.”

At first, these statements felt like sheer delusion. But writing them down (you’ll learn why this is important) opened up a little window of possibility in my mind. I continued to write all the possible upsides of this unfortunate experience. I made this new reality as detailed and sensory-rich as possible: describing what I said, what the audience looked like, when and how they nodded and laughed throughout my speech. As the list grew longer, I felt my anxiety subside. Eventually, my calm turned into drowsiness, and—hallelujah—I headed back to bed, albeit for less than an hour of sleep.

And you know what? Every bit of the slightly delusional, impossibly good version of reality that I’d dreamed up the night before came true. The speech went brilliantly, the audience of senior executives was enthusiastic, and the CEO was thrilled. Nowadays, whenever my mind starts to worry because things aren’t quite perfect before an important speech, I remind myself:
Remember Bogotá.

Since then, I’ve often used the rewriting reality technique to get into a better-performing mental state, and I now give it to all my coaching clients. Not only does it work for them, but I’ve met many other highly successful people over the years who’ve told me they use similar techniques. One charismatic entrepreneur told me: “I
decide
to interpret everything favorably toward myself. It’s not just that I’m optimistic, I’m actually conveniently deluded.”

Why does this work? Once again, we can thank the brain’s tendency to accept imagination as reality. A study conducted by the Harvard Medical School suggests that deception may not be necessary for the placebo effect to take hold; it may work its wonders even when people know full well that they’re taking a placebo.
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So when a difficult experience arises and risks impairing your charisma levels, rather than trying to suppress or ignore your internal difficulties, consider a few alternate versions of reality. Conjure a few different scenarios that would induce you into a more useful mental state.

Of course, the most useful alternate reality is not necessarily the most pleasant. When my publishers gave me a year to write the book you’re now holding, I wanted to progress as efficiently as possible, avoiding the procrastination pitfalls that ensnare so many first-time authors. One author friend reminded me of a maxim called Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” He challenged me: “Rather than letting the writing process fill the entire year, try to write the entire book in one month. At the end of a month, what you have will certainly not be a finished book, but it’ll be more than you would have without this self-imposed deadline.”

This seemed sensible, so I decided to give it a try. I imagined—as vividly as possible, with sensory-rich details—that my publisher had somehow given me an insane one-month deadline to write the entire book. And I was amazed at how fast this completely imaginary deadline became emotionally real. I even felt a knot in the pit of my stomach, a physical reminder that the clock was ticking.

Was this pleasant? Definitely not. Effective? Absolutely. Within one month, I was able to send one-third of the rough draft to my editor. Though this was far less than a full book, it was indeed far more than I would have produced without the imaginary deadline.

The key questions are: Which mental state would be most useful in this situation? And which version of reality would help you get there? For charisma, you can use this technique whenever a situation threatens your level of warmth or confidence. For minor events, simply imagining an alternative explanation is often enough to reduce anger or impatience and generate compassion instead.

One of my clients describes using the rewriting reality technique as follows: “A colleague sent me a rather sarcastic message. This immediately brought up a host of negative feelings, and I realized this was just getting me into a negative thought spiral. So I tried the rewriting reality tool. I imagined that this person was really lonely at the moment. They didn’t know how to reach out, so they were trying the best they could to connect. This helped me stay in a positive mindset (good for me) and send a positive response (good for both of us!).”

There may be times when you need to be charismatic toward
someone you resent. As you can imagine, resentment is a very uncharismatic mental state that causes high negativity both in your mind and in your body language. In addition, it’s
your
body that suffers the consequences of carrying around this negativity. To quote one of my favorite adages: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

No matter what the circumstances of your resentment, you can indeed prevent your internal discomfort from interfering with your charisma. But getting relief from resentment isn’t easy. This is when rewriting your reality can be invaluable. The exercise below will give you one good way to alleviate resentment. You may find this to be simultaneously the most uncomfortable and the most rewarding of all the reality rewriting you do.

This exercise may feel alien, awkward, or unreal at first—that’s the case for many people. And you may not feel an immediate internal shift. However, over the next few days you may be amazed to feel
this “new reality” gradually taking hold. You may feel that you
did
get the closure you needed. To accelerate the process, simply reread the apology letter nightly for a few days. You’ll appreciate the results.

One of my clients told me that persevering through this exercise lifted a ten-year burden off her shoulders more effectively than years of therapy. Another told me that his interactions with his business partner, which had become increasingly difficult, benefited greatly from this technique. He said:

By using these two exercises, rewriting reality and getting satisfaction, you can choose your perception of the situation—one that allows you to be both effective and charismatic.

Putting It All Together

Now that you’ve learned the three-step process to overcoming internal obstacles to charisma, let’s put it all together. The following real-life scenario will help you see the sequence in action. It includes instructions you can use anytime to destigmatize discomfort, neutralize negativity, and rewrite reality.

Up until now, it had been a good day. Michael had put the finishing touches on an exciting project, showed it to his team, and everyone was enthusiastic. As he walked back to his office, he was riding high. He noticed the blinking light on his answering machine, sat down, and pressed
PLAY
. It was his biggest client, John, sounding tense, and asking Michael to call back as soon as possible.

With those few words, Michael’s stomach dropped. “I just had this visceral certainty that John was about to pull the plug. Terminate our engagement. I knew I was about to lose my biggest client. It felt so inevitable. I mean, I could
hear
the tension in John’s voice.”

Michael felt certain that something had gone wrong. But rather than reaching for the phone with dread filling his mind and affecting his voice, he stopped.
You know how to handle this,
he reassured himself. Then he followed this checklist:

1. Take a deep breath and shake out your body to ensure that no physical discomfort is adding to your tense mental state.
   
2. Dedramatize. Remind yourself that these are just physical sensations. Right now, nothing serious is actually happening. This only
   feels
   uncomfortable because of the way your brain is wired. Zoom out your focus to see yourself as one little person sitting in a room with certain chemicals flooding his system. Nothing more.
   
3. Destigmatize. Remind yourself that what you’re experiencing is normal and everyone goes through it from time to time. Imagine countless people all over the world feeling the exact same thing.
   
4. Neutralize. Remind yourself that thoughts are not necessarily real. There have been many times when you’ve been certain that a client was disappointed, only to discover that the exact opposite was true.
   
5. Consider a few alternate realities. Michael considered:
   

   Maybe the tension in John’s voice had nothing to do with me. Maybe he felt harried because he’s running late on that project he mentioned last week.
   

   Maybe he fears that
   I
   might terminate our engagement. Maybe he’s worried that he’s not as important to me as my other clients. Maybe
   he’s
   afraid of losing
   me
   .
   

6. Visualize a transfer of responsibility. Feel the weight of responsibility for the outcome of this situation lifting off your shoulders. Tell yourself it’s all taken care of.