How To Make Eye Contact - Bill Clinton Charisma Breakdown

What's up, everybody? This is Charlie from Charisma on Command. And I'm gonna have today for you a video breakdown of charismatic eye contact. And the person I'm choosing to demonstrate this is potentially the guy with the best eye contact in the entire world, and that's Bill Clinton. He's world renowned for making people feel like even when he speaks to them down the line, as he shakes their hand, he makes them feel like they're the only person in the room, like they're the person that he cares most about. And people always question what it is that creates this effect. My hypothesis, my thesis, if you will, is that it's his eye contact. So what I want to do in this video of the 1992 presidential debates is go through and analyze specifically the mechanics of his eye contact so that it doesn't remain in this mystical thing that Bill Clinton has, but that you can actually learn to practice as well. So right here, Bill, I'm sorry. George Sr. Has just answered a question about how the national debt has personally affected him. Bill Clinton stands up now and is about to answer the question. The first thing you'll see that he does is he quickly closes the distance between him and the individual speaker. So that allows him to get right up in there to make this eye contact even more powerful.

Tell me how it's affected you again, you know, people who lost their job and lost their homes. Well, I've been governor of a small state for 12 years. I'll tell you how it's affected me. Every year, Congress and the president sign laws that make us.

So the first thing you'll notice, and throughout this, is that probably 90 to 95% of the time that Bill Clinton is speaking, he is looking directly at this woman. He holds eye contact with her. A lot of people struggle to do this when they're listening. They have no problem looking someone in the eyes. But when it comes time to speak, they get very, very, very uncomfortable with it. They can't think straight. So the first thing that you can do to just become literally top 10 percentile in the world is to look people in the eyes while you speak to them. At first, it might make you feel uncomfortable. It might make it difficult to think. But as you start to get used to it, it enables you to do a lot of the other interesting things that you're gonna see Bill Clinton do. And just to call some of those out, you'll notice he has tight, narrow eyes throughout the duration of this. So just look at the shape of his eyes compared to Some other people do more things.

It gives us less money to do it with. I see people in my state, middle class people, their taxes have gone up in Washington and their services have gone down while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts.

So you'll notice here, like I said, he's got very, very narrow eye contact, that actually one of the reasons that this is especially powerful in men is because a heavy brow is associated with those sort of slitty eyes, that narrow eye contact, as I'm calling it, and heavy brow is associated with increased testosterone. It actually affects the shape of your skull. So while you can't change the shape of your skull, you can certainly change the degree to which you open your eyes. Some people, you might know, a few stare bug eyed at you when they talk. And that is incredibly unnerving. Bill Clinton keeps his eye contact tight. What he does though, is he's very expressive with his eyebrows and the muscles around his eyes. So while his eyes never go super bug eyed on the person that he's speaking to, he has a lot of ways to express himself without opening them. So he'll tilt his head, he'll sort of flex the muscles under his eyes, he'll make his eyebrows bob up and down. So just keep an eye on that as he continues to speak.

I have seen what's happened in this last four years when in my state, when people lose their jobs, there's a good chance I'll know them by their names. When a factory closes, I know the people who ran it. When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them. And I've been out here for 13 months.

So you can see sort of the intensity that that tight eye contact communicates from him. He never goes bug eyed, like I said, but he does use the way that he tilts his head and how he moves his eyebrows to create an entire range of emotions that he's able to communicate. So one thing that you can do, and I highly recommend, is record yourself in front of a camera. You can do it on your computer, tell a story and notice, hold the camera at eye level, look into it the whole time, and then watch it back and notice how you feel when you're on the receiving end of your own eye contact. And I personally found that I had these crazy bug eyes going on. When I'd get excited, my eyes would open super, super big and I'd try to communicate my, you know, the intensity that I felt by doing that. And really it just made people very uncomfortable. So I can't diagnose you from afar, but using a Video you can diagnose yourself. Is your eye contact tight? Do you have a range of facial expressions surrounding your eye, including the eyebrows, the muscles around your eye, the way you tilt your head. That enables you to communicate a whole host of different things with just, you know, the muscles on your face meeting.

In meetings just like this, ever since October with people like you all over America, people that have lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their health insurance. What I want you to understand is the national debt is not the only cause of that.

So you can see this woman is nodding her head there as he speaks. She's completely hypnotized by him. What I want to do right now is fast forward towards the end of this and see one of the things that Bill Clinton does very well is when he breaks eye contact. It's not an abrupt thing. In fact, as he walks away from this woman, he signifies with his body first that he's about to leave by shifting his weight, continues to speak for a few more seconds, and only then does he look away. So that way the eye contact is not immediately broken. There's a sense that he's about to wrap up what he says, and it's almost like saying goodbye. So she knows that it's over. So just take a look.

Most people are working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago. It is because we are in the grip of a failed economic theory. And this decision you're about to make better be about what kind of economic theory you want. Not just people saying, I want to go fix it, but what are we going to do? What I think we have to do is invest in America.

So he starts shifting his body right here. You can see he's about to walk away.

American jobs, American education, control American health care costs and bring the American people together again.

And then he breaks eye contact. So hopefully those tips have been helpful. The first one, the most important, look people in the eye when you're speaking. It's tough at first, but make sure you're doing it. Two, narrow eyes are going to be much better, especially with men. You can open them to communicate sort of different feelings, but never go bug eyed. Three, be expressive with your eyebrows, your head tilts, all the muscles around your eyes. And then four, say goodbye, metaphorically, before you walk away. So before you break eye contact, you sort of turn your body out and then walk away. That is going to make people feel like you are fully paying attention to them. And the truth is, you can't do any of this without being present in the moment, so hopefully you found that helpful. I have a couple more videos on specific things like tonality, gesticulations, so if you've enjoyed this, check those videos out as well.