The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism Read Online Free PDF

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    I often see brilliant engineers described by others, and by themselves, as possessing high technical, medium external, and low internal skills. CEOs tend to self-report medium technical and internal skills but high external skills. And highly charismatic people often rate themselves low in technical skills but high in external and internal skills.
    While charismatic people may report fewer technical skills than their peers, their internal and external skills give them a far greater advantage overall. The internal skills necessary for charisma include both the awareness of your internal state and the tools to effectively manage it. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu reportedly said: “To know others is knowledge. To know oneself is wisdom.”
    What Your Mind Believes, Your Body Manifests
    Knowing your internal world starts with one key insight upon which all charisma is built: your mind can’t tell fact from fiction. This is the one dimension of your internal world that can help you get into the right charismatic mental state at will, and almost instantly.
    Have you ever felt your heart pounding during a horror movie? Consciously, you know it’s just a movie. You realize you are watching actors who are delighted to pretend they’re being murdered in exchange for a nice paycheck. Yet your brain sees blood and guts on the screen, so it sends you straight into fight-or-flight mode, releasing adrenaline into your system. Here’s how it works in practice:
    Think of your favorite piece of music.
    Now imagine dragging your fingernails across a chalkboard.
    Now imagine plunging your hand into a bucket of sand and feeling the grains crunch between your fingers.
    And now taste the difference between lemon and lime—which is more sour?
    There was no sand; there was no lemon. And yet, in response to a set of completely imaginary events, your mind produced very real physical reactions. Because your brain cannot distinguish imagination from reality, imaginary situations cause your brain to send your body the same commands as it would for a real situation. Whatever your mindbelieves, your body will manifest. Just by getting into a charismatic mental state, your body will manifest a charismatic body language.
    In medicine, the mind’s powerfully positive effect on the body is known as the
placebo effect
. A placebo is a simulated medical procedure: patients given “pretend” pills are told they’re receiving real ones; or people are told they’ve received a medical intervention when in fact nothing has been done. In a surprising number of cases, patients given these inert treatments still experience a real improvement in their medical condition.
    The placebo effect was discovered during World War I when medicine stores had run out and doctors found they could sometimes still ease their patients’ suffering by telling them that they had administered pain-relieving treatments. It became widely acknowledged during the 1950s as the medical community began running controlled clinical studies. Through much of human history, most of medicine was in fact pure placebo: doctors would prescribe potions or interventions that we now know to be fundamentally ineffective. Yet people’s conditions still often improved, thanks to the mind’s impressive ability to affect the body.
    The placebo effect can sometimes be remarkably powerful. Ellen Langer, a Harvard University professor of psychology, gathered a group of elderly patients in a nursing-home-like environment and surrounded them with the decor, clothing, food, and music that was popular when they were in their twenties. In the following weeks, physical exams showed tighter skin, better eyesight, increased muscle strength, and even higher bone density than before.
    The placebo effect is the basis for many of the best charisma-enhancing techniques, and we’ll refer to it often throughout the book. In fact, this is probably something you already do naturally, and many of the practices will