How To Be Popular Without Being Fake

Shia LaBeouf has had some incredible swings of popularity in his life, from child actor to blockbuster megastar to outcast, and now to indie hitmaker, all while providing some great memes.

So just do it. Make your dreams come true.

In this video, we're gonna learn how Shia has gone from those low points to regaining popularity, all without being fake. And we're going to cover both the specific behaviors and the mindsets that make it simple for you to be more popular without compromising who you are. The first thing that's gonna help you with your popularity and your charisma in any situation is conv. Conviction is the strong belief in what you say and do, and other people pick it up in your sub communication. That's your eye contact, your vocal tonality, and your gestures. Typically when those things are firm and unwavering. Now, in this next clip, you can notice the firmness of Shai's gestures, how he doesn't rely on filler words like or, and how he leans in and nods to make his points. Each one of those being a sub communication that he believes firmly in what he's saying.

Yeah, that's me, like trying to find my competence. When you start meeting the Michael Jordans, the people you look up to, insecurity washes like a wave.

Additionally, it's sometimes the case that cutting through details and getting to your point quickly conveys conviction. Now, this is typically the case in a debate, and you see it often in those juicy Destroy style videos where someone mic drops with a one liner. But that doesn't mean that you want to speed through everything in your life. In fact, slowing down, savoring the details can be an excellent way to show conviction, particularly when you're storytelling. Now, the whole thing is incredibly well told and worth a watch in itself, but Shia telling the story of his arrest on Jimmy Kimmel is a prime example. He has the conviction that what he is saying is worth listening to, and it allows him to go on several tangents, all of which are funny but don't directly contribute to the story. For instance, in the one case of a homeless man that he was talking to while in New York.

I'm trying to calm this homeless man down in the middle of Times Square and he don't want nothing to do with me, but I'm not giving up. So I chase him for a while. I'm trying to calm down. Hey, it's me. We were just talking. Relax.

So if you're concerned that you might not be conveying conviction, a simple thing to practice the next Time you're telling a story is to add just one tangent, even if it's just the story of what you did today. This gets you in the habit of slowing down and it gives you the opportunity to build in extra jokes. Now, one last noticeable element of conviction is your eye contact. I spoke about this in our video on Don Draper. And it's not that you have to make eye contact all the time, just when you are making your main points.

What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.

You can check out the whole video if you want a nuanced breakdown. And of course, you can practice all of these things. Storytelling, gestures, eye contact. But the thing about conviction is that it is sub communicated, meaning that it's mostly occurring from gestures you're not usually in direct control over. You feel it in someone without really knowing why. And that means you can get 90% of the results with 10% of the effort. If you don't focus on all of the gestures, but instead on developing a high conviction mindset that makes those gestures effortless. And a huge mindset that will give you more conviction is being more honest. You see, when you have something to hide, your sub communications naturally convey self doubt. Take a look at Conor McGregor. When asked about his altercation with a man in a bar, either for personal or for legal reasons, he does not want to answer the question. And it makes a guy who is usually very eloquent, super high conviction come across as evasive and unsure.

How did you break your hand? Sparring. We scheduled a spar. Like I said. I came back from Miami. I had scheduled a charity boxing bout in my old club, Crumlin Boxing Club. Many people couldn't fly, can't fly to Vegas, you know.

Shia, on the other hand, reveals exactly what got him in trouble with the law. And his casual nature has a way of making it seem like less of an issue.

They put a Hannibal mask on me and a lead jacket and it was just really rough.

You must have done something very, very bad.

I spit on a cop. It's a no. No. It's a big no no. I'm sorry if you're watching, dude, I'm sorry, man. That was crazy, man.

Now, this more honest approach doesn't just extend to things that Shia has messed up. And it shouldn't do that with you either. To have complete faith in everything you say, to really maximize your conviction, you have to know that no part of the truth is unspeakable. And while it might seem extreme, Shia says a whole lot of Things that many of us might consider too embarrassing to let other.

Well, I'll say look like. For a person who's not extremely well endowed, who's kind of insecure about my own junk, there's something about. Is your headphones up? Cool. I noticed you keep. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. Just trying to be cool. Hello. Hello.

What's incredible here is that his willingness to be honest doesn't just convey conviction and of course, courage. It makes you like him more. And that's because Shia is vulnerable in a non attention seeking way. Meaning that he's opening up, but he's not sub communicating that he needs your approval. He'll say something revealing, but then move on without waiting for you to approve or to comfort him. Now the opposite would be someone who shares how hard things are so that they can solicit your sympathy. And now this seemed more to be the case earlier in Shia's career when his vulnerability might have been more that attention seeking variety. Though of course it comes down to interpretation he was emotionally pouring out the whole time. Yeah, non stop.

Non stop.

On the contrary, Shia's more recent non attention seeking vulnerability communicates that he values telling the truth and just refuses to hide it, which is incredibly attractive. Watch Shia do that here. Where were you at when this came around? Like, what did you. Did you need this? As much as you think the community.

Needs, I also need friends, man. I'm lonely, as you know. So part of me was like, yes, I wanted to build this thing, but it was also me and Bobbly fell in love with each other. Dude became my best friend.

And watch here how he maintains the same strong body language in a vulnerable moment.

Yeah, you know, I was a scared actor who thought he was. The world thought I was. It was sort of like, hey, he's the Transformers kid trying to be a real actor over here. Right? So I was bucking against my insecurity. I was desperate to prove myself.

Plus, comfortably sharing a fact that might be embarrassing or not paint you in the most desirable light is an excellent way to spice up a story.

As soon as he's done with the last dude who comes out, he'll pivot. Uh huh. And he'll eat it. And so you gotta be quick with it. You gotta get the out of his mouth.

Now if you're being honest, you will develop an awareness of your flaws, which is of course easier to do when you are honest. And you're gonna realize that the problems in the world aren't just coming from other people, they're coming from you. The Same things that you struggle to master in yourself are creating a lot of those issues. And tempting as it may be to talk smack on someone else, Shia has learned that he's more like the people who are unkind to him than different from them. So he's able to remain relatively non judgmental. Watch people.

It's really just you want to make a mark. So people who are online doing the comments really just want to make a mark. They want to have an effect. So I think we suffer from the same thing, which is just a lack of attention and love, Right? Yeah. Well said.

These moments of non judgmentalness mark Shia as a leader. And paradoxically, if you're unwilling to completely condemn someone who's been unkind to you, it makes you someone that the entire audience is more drawn to. So take someone, for instance, that you maybe hate or that you at least look down on when you can see that you have more in common with them than you first thought. Your life will change because you'll see that in your own way, even when you are doing wrong, you are both doing your best. And it's not always the easiest. But when you resist demonizing other people that you don't like or joining in on a hate braid, you get branded as a leader. Now, the last mindset to be popular without being fake is most evident in Shia's actions. You might not have seen him for a while since he's been working on lower profile indie projects. In fact, last year he created a theater group in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

The goals for this. The goals for this is really to change theater. Right. We tried to build a theater for people who don't with theater. Yeah. And if you look at like people who go to see theater now, they're old and white, right? Yeah. Trying to create connection between people who don't with theater and people who go to theater now. And that's what we're trying to build.

This is particularly interesting because that's not where you would expect to find someone who could be making millions of dollars in Hollywood blockbusters or hanging at parties with other A list celebrities. And you expect those things of him because you know that most people move towards power. For instance, when you chose your career, or if you're choosing one now, it's likely to be pretty heavily influenced by how much prestige it carries or how much money you stand to make compared to. To the amount of passion that you feel on that topic. Or if that's not the case with you, perhaps you feel the urge to join the most glamorous social circle, to spend time with more beautiful people and the most socially plugged in. All of those things are moves towards increased power. But if you pursue those things in and of themselves, like Shia, you're going to find out that it always doesn't have the best outcome for you.

I was doing studio films for a while and lost my sensibilities and my connection to the material. Studio films in general. When you have to make a movie for a big general audience, you have to be less specific, Right. And the less specific you are, the less meat you have to chew on. Right? Let's meet. You have to chew on, the less interesting it is for the actor. Right? I need the Transformers.

I need.

And I ran from it because it was not serving me, it was destroying me. That's when I was getting really drunk and fucked up. That was all during that time when I just felt like I was becoming soulless. I couldn't navigate myself anymore. I just felt like. Like I was. I was dissipating.

That's not to say that you can't connect with people who are well liked. That would just be more judgmental. Ness. What it does mean though is that you need to shift your criteria for connection from power and prestige to humanity and quality of connection. This is the critical mindset so many of us want to associate with people who can get us ahead. We want to be with the coolest, hottest, richest, most popular crowd. But real long term popularity, not to mention happiness, comes from focusing on the human side of connections. And you see that in some of Hollywood's longest lasting stuff stars. When you focus on connection instead of power, you wind up getting what you need in unexpected ways. Like Shia did, for example, with Zack Gottsagen. Now Zack is a co star in Peanut Butter Falcon and he was born with down syndrome.

Zach's life. But you said this changed your life as well. Yeah. How was that? Well, he saw for me, he's magnetic. You know, he became like brothers quite quick. There's no like lead time to his love, it's just instant.

And the volunteering and altruism that went into creating Shia's theater group actually wound up helping him tremendously.

And so, yes, I'm building a theater group, but I'm also building that group of people that I need in my life. It's a family.

While it might not be glamorous, ask yourself, who have you not been connecting with? Perhaps because you're nervous or perhaps because they don't offer a power advantage, the service people the neighbors, the stranger in the elevator. If you make it a point to speak just one extra sentence to those people, you're going to find that you quickly become popular in a way that brings more happiness to you without having to compromise who you are. And if you're thinking, well, what's the point of that? I can't necessarily get ahead. Shia makes a compelling case.

I don't even think it's about quality of friends. I think it's about quantity. You literally didn't have the numbers. You didn't have the numbers that I needed. Listen, man, we're tribal creatures and if you look like domestic marriages, you know, it's three people, four people. That's not the way humans were built to live. Yeah, we were built to have like groups of 60, 70. Yeah. So that's how we were. That's how we've survived since the caveman days.

And that sense of community of 50 people you love and feel close to, it's something that a lot of people today don't have. And if that's something that you would like, help with, I think the fastest way to get good at meeting new people and connecting on a meaningful level is with our program, Charisma University. It's a step by step, video guided program that is guaranteed to give you more charisma and confidence in 30 days. Now, you can read all about the details in the link below, but I think that the strongest way to let you know what it's all about is just to let the members speak for themselves. So here are a few of the things that our CU members have written in. The first is from a guy who was interviewing for new jobs. He says, I interviewed at dozens of places for jobs after medical school. At the end of one of my interview days, the doctor pulled me aside and said that I, hands down, had the best interview out of everybody and they would love to have me at their program. They ranked me number one and it's my current job. Another person wrote about their social life saying, it has been truly incredible. I've instantly had results that seem insane. So many more meaningful connections. My friendships have improved and my interactions with total strangers are new. Exciting, fulfilling thing. I want to recommend this to everyone. This should in our basic education system. And this last one is from someone who says that the course has been life changing. And he says, your course has been life changing to the point where I wake up in the mornings feeling like I've been transferred to a new person's body. The person I kept dreaming about becoming before I found charisma on command. It is incredible. I found myself and I found what makes me happy and you can see more success stories like these in the comments if you decide to join the course. If you do so it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee which is 100% for any reason at all and I make it 60 days even though the course is only 30 because I I want to make sure that every single member truly feels like they're getting a ton of value out of the course otherwise you can just refund. So if you want to check the course out go ahead click the link on screen now or below in the description. We've had thousands of members go through this course get a ton out of it, introverts, extroverts, men and women from all over the globe and I would love for you to do the same either way I hope that you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.