The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (10 page)

As Michael went through the checklist, putting each of the techniques to good use, he felt his tension gradually ease. Going through this sequence helped him put his initial pessimistic prediction into perspective as just one of many possible explanations for the tone of John’s message. With a newfound calm, Michael picked up the phone ready to talk to his client with charismatic confidence.

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort

You’ve come a long way already. Since the beginning of this chapter you’ve gained an arsenal of techniques to help you overcome the most common obstacles to charisma. But there’s one more thing you need to learn. If you want to reach advanced charisma levels, where the masters operate, the next tool is what will take you there. This technique helps you get back into charisma no matter how difficult your internal state. It’s a bit like having an ace up your sleeve. Just knowing it’s there for you when and if you need it will give you a solid foundation of confidence.

This technique will give you the edge in negotiations, presentations, social situations—anytime your performance matters. It is, however, not an easy tool to acquire, as it requires going against your most primal instincts. So what’s this secret weapon?

Being comfortable with discomfort.

Sounds simple? It is. Simple, but not easy.

Imagine that you’re sitting in an airplane that’s stuck on the
ground, waiting in line for takeoff. You’re trapped in a tiny, cramped seat. The air-conditioning has broken down, the temperature is rising, the air is growing stale, and you can feel sweat start to trickle down the back of your neck. Just when you think things can’t get worse, an infant starts to howl in the row right behind you. You can feel the discomfort building, tension rising through your body, irritation taking hold of your mind. Your carry-on bag with all of your reading materials has been whisked away by the flight crew and stowed out of reach, so you have nothing with which to distract yourself.
And you have no idea how long this will last.
You do know that your mounting tension serves no useful purpose. But how can you stop it?

The answer, surprisingly, is to
delve into
those very sensations of discomfort. That’s right. Though it sounds counterintuitive, rather than trying to suppress, ignore, or power through them, your goal is to give your full attention to the very sensations you’d instinctively want to push away.

Focusing on the minute sensations of your physical discomfort serves a dual purpose: it gives your mind something concrete to focus on other than its growing conviction that this situation is unbearable. It also has the advantage of bringing you instantly into full presence, a key component of charisma. In fact, this technique, called
delving into sensations,
can help you access charismatic presence even during highly uncomfortable situations.

* * *

Robert, one of my favorite clients, is a brilliant, quick-witted, highly effective, and highly creative executive. He’s incredibly fast on his feet. He also has very limited patience. For Robert, daylong company meetings were pure torture. He would feel the rising tide of impatience but felt powerless to stem it. He would desperately fight against the “I cannot bear this a minute longer” feeling, coming out of these experiences with his body tied up in knots.

As far as his charisma was concerned, the energy he was using to try to suppress his impatience was only making things worse. Waging this kind of internal war is not good for charisma. Nor is zoning out, which would only decrease his presence and make him appear at best uncharismatic and at worst uncaring. So I suggested he give the delving into sensations practice a try.

Robert took this practice to heart to such a degree that it became second nature to him. Nowadays, whenever he feels the first glimmers of impatience, he instinctively and immediately delves into his physical sensations. He says he describes them to himself “as a sommelier would describe a fine vintage.” Doing this, he says, “is a very useful technique, simultaneously distracting me from the impatience while still keeping me fully present in the moment.”

The ability to handle discomfort is a highly valuable skill. The less discomfort affects you, the fewer the situations that can impair your
charisma potential. When you know how to handle discomfort, no situation can shake you; whether business or personal, there is no feeling that can make you run away.

One CEO told me that “the most effective thing you can do for your career is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.” Think of the plethora of discomforts that come with leadership, from having to fire employees to taking the heat for a team failure, or simply enduring painful meetings. Think of how critical it can be to handle the discomfort of silence during negotiations. I’ve often heard professional negotiators tell me that they could accurately predict the outcome of negotiations fairly early on using one simple clue: whoever has less endurance for silence loses.

Try the exercise in the box below to increase your resilience. To make things easier, consider this a new skill you’re practicing, rather than tests with which to evaluate your performance. Imagine that you’re learning a new piece of music or a new way of tossing a ball. Just as you lift weights at the gym to increase your physical strength, here you’re growing and strengthening your resilience muscles.

These exercises may feel acutely uncomfortable and perhaps a bit embarrassing the first few times you do them. Remind yourself that you’re not doing anything illegal! The only thing that’s holding you back is social customs. You can also remind yourself that you’re doing important personal work, increasing your skills and expanding the boundaries of your comfort zone. And remind yourself that, like every other experience, this one, too, will pass. However uncomfortable it feels, it will fade as completely as all the previous experiences you’ve ever had. You will also get better and more comfortable with practice. So if you can bring yourself to talk to strangers whenever you’re waiting around in lines, or on buses or trains, do it. Grab every opportunity, and you’ll improve fast.

You can practice this technique with any discomfort, physical or mental. Whether you’re too hot, too cold, angry, impatient, annoyed, or fearful, you may be surprised to find that some feelings you usually don’t welcome can even become mildly pleasant.

You now have all the tools you need to get into charismatic mental states, no matter what the obstacle. The three-step process of destigmatizing, detaching, and rewriting is one you can use anytime a difficult experience arises. Come back to this chapter whenever a situation in your life calls for these tools until they become second nature.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

To be charismatic, you must first learn to overcome the primary obstacle to charisma: internal discomfort.

Skillfully handle internal discomfort with a three-step process: destigmatize your discomfort, neutralize your negative thoughts, and rewrite your perception of reality.

Destigmatize and dedramatize uncomfortable feelings by remembering that they are survival instincts and a natural part of the human experience. Think of others who’ve gone through this before—especially people you admire—and see yourself as part of a community of human beings experiencing the same feeling at the same moment.

Neutralize unhelpful negative thoughts by remembering that the mind often distorts reality and filters your environment to highlight the negative. Think of your negative thoughts as graffiti on a wall—you may find it an ugly sight, but just because you see an ugly sight doesn’t mean you’re an ugly person.