PNTV: The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane (#338)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, the Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cobain. The Charisma Myth Subtitle How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism Cover is pretty awesome. It's got a turkey with peacock feathers. How Anyone Can Master the Art of Charisma. It's a fantastic book. Quick reading, enjoyable, and super practical. Look at how we can cultivate the skills we need in order to be charismatic, which, of course, we're going to talk about in this episode. Philosopher's Note. Bunch of my favorite big ideas. Five of them here. I read this as preparation for my Leadership 101 class. I'm excited to integrate some of these ideas into that class. So the Charisma myth. What's the myth? Well, the primary myth, there are a few of them, but the primary myth is the idea that you either have it or you don't. Some people just have that amazing ability, that amazing personal magnetism to draw people in and to kind of light up the room. Right. She says that is false. Whether they do it or not, charismatic individuals are. Whether they do it consciously or not, charismatic individuals are simply engaging in a few specific behaviors which we're going to talk about next. These three behaviors. But it's a myth to think that you don't have the ability to cultivate your charisma. It's kind of like what we talked about with Anders Ericsson in his great book, what Makes Great People Great. He says we all have the same gift. That's our adaptability. The ability to put in the effort and. And change your mind and your body. Great individuals have simply put in more effort. Well, we need to put in the effort if we want to cultivate our charisma. Just like learning a musical instrument or learning a foreign language or any skill requires effort and practice. Other myths that we want to bust here. You don't need to be outgoing. There are certain types of charisma that Olivia talks about that introverts excel at. Right. An Elon Musk or a Bill Gates focus. Charisma, she calls it. So you don't need to be extroverted in order to be charismatic. You don't need to be attractive in order to be charismatic. She mentions a number of individuals. Winston Churchill, for example, super charismatic. But no one considered him particularly handsome. But he had really, really strong charisma. Right. And you also don't need to change your personality in order to be charismatic. You don't need to become A different kind of person. You, you just need to engage again in certain skills. So what are those skills? Well, there are three primary things facets to having charisma. Here they are. One, presence. We'll talk about each of these in a little bit more depth. Two, power. And three, warmth. Charismatic individuals exude or they're super present, they exude power and they exude warmth. So starting with presence, she says one of the quickest ways to boost your charisma is to simply be present with people. Charismatic individuals are there, they're 100% focused. They're not sitting there wandering around in their mind thinking about other things. They're there. They're making you feel important because they're present. We can all cultivate that ability. Right. Then there's power. Power is associated with a number of different things from appearance, physical strength, intellectual strength, et cetera, but it's primarily communicated via body language. So we talked about some of these types of ideas in our episode on Amy Cuddy's great book Presence. Body language is a huge underlying theme throughout the book. We want to get that right because there are evolutionary kind of ways that we're constantly interpreting people based on nonverbal body language. Exuding power is an important thing. We're going to talk about how to increase your power more in a moment and then warmth. Charismatic people are not just present and powerful. You could be kind of a authoritative non charismatic individual unless you bring warmth. Warmth is basically the desire, like goodwill. We're going to talk about how to build your warmth as well. But it's having a sense of goodwill that you actually want when you what's best for the individual. So you're going to use your power to benefit them. When an individual has presence, they have power and they have warmth, they have charisma. And the whole point of the book is you can work on each of these and you'd be wise to do so because Kara's charisma has a lot of positive impacts and benefits in your life. Third, big idea. So if we know that presence and power and warmth are the key to charisma, what gets in the way after establishing the fact that we all have the gift, these are the three elements, then the next chapter, I think it's the third chapter, is these are the obstacles. What gets in the way of us consistently being present, powerful and warm? Well, Olivia tells us it's primarily our internal mental state. So what's going on inside our heads that dictates whether we're actually going to show up powerfully? In these dimensions, she gives us. So whether you're feeling self doubt, if you were feeling self doubt, anxiety, insecurity, irritation, impatience, whatever, you're not going to be charismatic. So she gives us three things we can do in order to deal with the obstacles that get in the way of embodying these three facets. Here they are. First, we need to destigmatize discomfort. So most of us have a very low threshold for experiencing any levels of discomfort. Right? So if I'm feeling stressed out, I get stressed about my stress. Right. We need to destigmatize our discomfort. We need to get comfortable being uncomfortable, which is the theme we talk about a lot. And if you don't do that, then your resistance to the pain that naturally arises, your resistance is going to multiply that pain into more suffering than is necessary. We've talked about this with Kristin Neff in Self Compassion, Ross Harris in the Happiness Trap, he describes it like quicksand. When you feel discomfort, the more you struggle against it, the faster you sink. Just like quicksand, Right? Kristin Neff says that suffering equals pain times resistance. If you reduce your resistance, the pain can be clean. But if you resist it and struggle with it, your suffering is going to go up. So you want to destigmatize discomfort, be comfortable being uncomfortable. Charismatic people are. That's how they're able to stay present. They don't constantly judge themselves, oh, I said something wrong. And then get uncomfortable with that and lose the presence. Right. And diminish their power and their warmth at the same time. They're comfortable with being uncomfortable. Then she says, we need to neutralize the negative thoughts. When you have a negative thought come up in your mind, that internal state is going to diminish your charisma unless you can neutralize it. She has a bunch of cool ways to do that. Imagine a negative thought floating in your mind. Well, first you want to be able to see it. And she says, look at it like it's graffiti in your mind. The negative thought says nothing about who you are as a person. It's just some spray paint on the wall of your mind. Or it's just an electrical impulse racing through your mind. You don't need to get all caught up in it. You can label it, which we talked about in your brain at work. Simply labeling fear, anxiety, judgment. Yep. Judging myself. Just labeling it moves you into your prefrontal cortex, out of your limbic amygdala. Right. And all the anxious thoughts you're going to have that will compound if you resist it that's how you neutralize some ideas on how to neutralize negativity. And then she says, you want to rewrite reality. She's got a lot of cool stuff on the fact that your brain can't tell the difference between what you imagine vividly, reality. So using that to our advantage, we want to rewrite reality. When you're telling yourself a story about something that's going on in your life, a particular stress or whatever, you can challenge that through cognitive reappraisal. A theme we come back to again and again and again. She calls it rewriting reality. You've got this one perspective that's stressing you out, reducing your charisma. What if you rewrote your reality and you said, okay, well, I could also interpret the situation this way. And she says, what do we write it down? She's all about writing this stuff down to really impress it upon your mind. And your mind can't tell the difference between reality that's imagined or that's actually experienced. Therefore, you want to rewrite it as positively in an empowering stance as you possibly can. That's a quick look at how to deal with some of the obstacles. But the main point here is that your body language is communicating a ton of your presence, power, and warmth. And it's your internal mental state that if that isn't right, you're not going to come across with as much charisma as you could. So get that right. Fourth big idea is how to increase our power. So how do you increase your power? Well, the number one tip she gives here, and she says, if you only took one tool out of this book that you use consistently, let this one be. It visualizes. And she walks us through a number of exercises, but here's one. For example, if you want to boost your power now, do this. If you can safely close your eyes, take a deep breath or two, and relax and think back to a time in your life where you were most triumphant. Remember, in an event in your life where you're just super fired up, things just went really well. Maybe it was an event, you received an award, or you just crushed it, whatever it is for you, or you just felt triumphant with your eyes closed, recreate that scene in your mind. Visualize it. Hear the sounds in the rooms, the congratulations, feel the handshakes, see what was going on, and feel within you, your own body and your being, the pride that you felt in having performed so well. Feel that sense of triumph. That is a very quick way to boost your power. How do you feel when you do that. She says, the more you practice it, the better you get at it. But that's a really, really powerful way to boost your power in the moment, which is going to increase your charisma and get a really powerful internal mental state going. And your body language is going to cohere, be integrated with that vision you just created. I like to combine that. We talk about this visualization all the time and peak performance, et cetera. But imagine combining that vision of yourself being most triumphant in the past with whatever your ideal aspirations are for the future. So when you imagine yourself in five years and you wave your magic wand, this is what my life looks like in five years. I work hard, things go right, I get a little lucky. This is what my life looks like. Take that feeling of past triumph and connect it to that feeling of who. How will you feel when you achieve that? You bring that into your life and then be that. Now walk around with that sense of power, that sense of grounded confidence. Today, visualize to boost your power. Fifth big idea is to boost your warmth. How do you boost your warmth? She gives us three tips on how to do that. The first one is gratitude. If you are not grateful, you're not going to be as warm and enthusiastic as you would be if you were focusing on the things that are going right in your life. If you're constantly thinking about things that are not going well and criticizing and complaining, those people don't have a lot of charisma. And you, when you are doing those things, don't have a ton of charisma. Charismatic people are powerful and warm. So a really easy, quick way to boost your warmth is to boost your gratitude. Count your blessings. Think of all the awesome things in your life today. The second facet of boosting your warmth is goodwill. So as I mentioned before, goodwill is basically your desire to see other people experience joy to flourish in their lives. One little thing that I do before I ever do one of these episodes is I think one person. I want to help one person improve their life. It's not about me. I want to. I wasn't thinking. I was trying to cultivate my warmth. That was just my way to get out of my head and to make this about something other than me. If one person gets one big idea that can change their life, even just a little bit, awesome, I've won. This is great. That's just a little visualization I do before I do this work. But goodwill is huge. We want to have that. That's how we're going to exude more warmth, to go with our power, to go with our presence, and to have a higher level of charisma. A third facet of boosting your warmth, in addition to the gratitude and the goodwill, is compassion. To have compassion for other people and the challenges they might be facing, but also very importantly, compassion for yourself. If you don't have warmth for yourself, if you don't have a level of self compassion and acceptance of yourself, you're going to have a really, really hard time giving that to other people. She shares a lot of great ideas that echo the wisdom we talk about in Kristin Neff's Self Compassion. Check that out or work on that. I'll put a link to that below. But basically cultivate compassion for yourself. We talked about it in the Obstacles but destigmatizing discomfort. Quit making yourself wrong for facing challenges in your life. Allow yourself to be okay just the way you are. Give yourself that level of compassion. Give it to other people. Cultivate that sense of goodwill. Be grateful for things in your life as you boost your warmth. Visualize yourself in your most triumphant in the past and who you are becoming. Feel that moment to moment to moment. Bring that power with you to your interactions. Deal with your obstacles by dealing with the discomfort, getting comfortable with that, neutralizing the negativity, and then rewriting reality. Anytime you're faced with a challenge, step back. Challenge your negative thoughts. Write down a more empowered story perspective about what's happening. Know that that's super powerful. Then we've got our three skills. Remember, they're skills. Presence, power, warmth, little presence idea. We talk about the iPhone effect and she talks about the fact that people are so distracted that if you simply sit down and you actually give someone your presence for a minute or two or three or four or five, that's hugely charismatic. Just to be present and to not be distracted in thinking about your response while someone else is talking. But to actually be there and engage with someone for any period of time, she says, is a quick way to boost your presence. I love the whole iPhone effect thing. Just having your iPhone out on a table or a desk when you're meeting with someone else, even if you don't pick it up, diminishes the quality of the interaction. It diminishes your presence, right? There's less intimacy in that interaction if you just have a smartphone out. And if you're the one who's picking it up and checking it out, well, guess what? You have very low charisma. You're demonstrating disrespect and a lack of presence. That's not helping your charisma meter. So put your iPhone in airplane mode, put it away and check in and lock in and be present and know it's a myth to think that you can't be present. It's not about having it or not having it. It's about cultivating very learnable skills. That's a quick look and at this great book. Thank you Olivia and look forward to chatting, having a little interview about this, discussing the ideas more, and for now, what was your favorite big idea? What jumped out? What landed for you? Think about that and think about how you can make it a more applied, embodied, practical part of your life starting today and make today another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more soon. See you. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up. Yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books in helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do as something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101. That sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.