One of my primary goals right now is to increase my charisma / personal magnetism, one because its an invaluable skill to have and two because i cannot see myself achieving my dreams if im not charismatic. So i'm going to use this thread not only to introduce myself (first post! wooho) but to also write down experiences (good and bad) epiphanies, and things i need to work on during the learning process of cultivating charisma. By reiterating my thoughts i'll reinforce them for myself and hopefully pass on something useful to anyone else reading! Any advice would be great and feel free to share anything of your own if you are on a similar quest!
a bit about me... I was always a very shy and anti social kid, i had a very bad social phobia as a teenager which meant i would just sit in the corner and shutup in fear that i might say something stupid, if i was to go to a party (rare) i would need alcohol as a social lubricant but regret it the next day because i would no doubt do something stupid. Pretty much my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ life consisted of playing video games like Unreal Tournament 10+ hours a day and with all that practice i was exceptionally good at playing it and highly respected on the games online community but i forsook more and more of my personal life where i only felt sorry for myself and commanded no respect. (ps. people who develop addictive games are evil
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It came to the point where i was so despondent and depressed that i realised life is not worth living if you're living like this - so i made the decision to change, it might take 2 years, maybe 5, 10, 20, i didnt care I just knew that one day i would become the person i fantasized about being. I uninstalled every game on my computer and spent the spare time devouring a tonne of self help and slowly but surely applied it to my life. Its been five years since then and people i knew back then dont even recognise me anymore
I spent the last year travelling solo through South America, now that i am back i felt i needed a career change from network engineering (computers) to something more people focused so I found work as a door to door salesman (selling subscriptions to charities) which has given me some experience in sales and the chance to model myself on the charismatic people i work with. By knocking on 80 doors a day ive really gotten over the fear of rejection and its helped me fine tune a can fine tune elements of my game.
One thing I noticed while working is that the people who answered some doors would just drain all of my energy leaving me to think how much i hated the job, how im not going to make any sales today, how i will never learn to be a good salesman etc. Other people would leave me feeling great (irrespective if they registered for the charity or not) just by talking to them, maybe they invited me into their house for a coffee or they just had a bubbly personality.
This led me think about this psychic transfer of positive and negative energy that happens all around us all the time. An epiphany came to me when I was in a busy supermarket in the city at the 12 items or less lane where checkout chicks serve hundreds of customers every day who are normally in a rush, rude, or indifferent.
The middle aged lady who was to serve me looked tired, bored, sad, and fed up with her job and i went up to her and said "Hi how you going today?!" beaming, focusing all of my energy on her like we we're the only two people in the room and she beamed back at me and said "I'm great! How are you?" to which I replied "I'm great!" and then I gave her the money and said "have a great day!" and she said "You too!"
I looked back over my shoulder and saw her servicing the next customer with renewed energy and a big smile on her face like she loved her job which consequently bought a smile to the apathetic sleepwalking drone she next serviced which ultimately made me feel even better and ready to use more of this energy on the next unsuspecting person mwahaha
I think the trick is you cannot seem cheesy or condescending and you cannot seem like you are being overly nice because you want something out of it or some other covert cause. It has to be completely genuine. In this case i did have the hidden intention to practice on her but it came with a genuine interest to brighten the poor womans day.
Everyone you relate to on any given day will effect you in some way, there is a feedback loop which is either negative or positive depending on your perspective and the person you are dealing with. In my experiences the more i have given the more i have received and i believe that the paradox of charisma is that in order to build up this positive energy you are going to have to first spend what little you may have by enriching the life of someone else in some small way.