Charisma Myth - by Olivia Fox Cabane

ISBN: 9781101560303
Date read: 2025-12-01
How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
(See my list of 430+ books, for more.)

Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.

Your body language, mannerisms, speaking habits, listening habits, all affect how you’re perceived. Many tips in here sound manipulative (to convey power, take up more space) - but are ultimately about helping your outside match your inside, for the desired effect including helping people feel more comfortable around you, more seen and understood. Empathetic advice like making sure you’re sitting at a 90° angle instead of directly across from someone, and making sure their back is not to an open space with people moving behind them, which makes us feel uncomfortable. I use these tips when meeting with strangers.

my notes

When we first meet someone, we instinctively assess whether that person is a potential friend or foe and whether they have the power to enact those intentions.
Power and intentions are what we’re aiming to assess.
“Could you move mountains for me? And would you care to do so?”
To answer the first question, we try to assess how much power he or she has.
To answer the second question, we try to assess how much he or she likes us.
When you meet a charismatic person, you get the impression that they have a lot of power and they like you.

Show high power, high warmth, and presence: completely here with you, in this moment.

Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences.
Reduce how quickly and how often you nod.
Pause for two full seconds before you speak.

Someone who possesses warmth without power can come across as overeager, subservient, or desperate to please.

Just by getting into a charismatic mental state, your body will manifest a charismatic body language.

Michelangelo insisted that he never created his glorious statues - he simply revealed them.
His only talent, he said, was in looking at the block of marble and discerning the statue within.
All he then needed was the skill to chip away the excess, letting the statue emerge.
Identify the obstacles that are holding back your charismatic self.

Physical discomfort affects your body language.
Plan ahead to prevent the discomfort from occurring - to ensure you’re physically comfortable.
Temperature and noise level.
Clothing is loose enough for you to breathe well, makes you feel both comfortable and highly confident in your appearance.
Arrive at the venue early so that you can get comfortable with the space.
Assess the room before sitting down to make sure you won’t be facing the sun.
Your face: notice if it is tense.

Our inability to tolerate uncertainty can cause us to make premature decisions - can lead us to feel anxious.
People go to great lengths to get rid of the anxiety produced by uncertainty, from making premature decisions to forcing bad outcomes to numbing their anxiety with mind-altering substances.
Envision a variety of ways it could play out, and you strategize how to best deal with each.
Once you’ve thought through each scenario, the rational, reasonable, logical thing to do would be to put the situation out of your mind and go about your day until action is actually required.
Get comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity - and being uncomfortable.

To alleviate the discomfort of uncertainty: RESPONSIBILITY TRANSFER.
In uncertain situations, we want to know that things are somehow going to work out fine.
If we could be certain that things will work out - that everything will be taken care of - the uncertainty would produce much less anxiety.
Take the weight of everything you’re concerned about off your shoulders and place it on the shoulders of another entity or spirit.
They’re in charge now.
Lift everything off your shoulders and feel the difference as you are now no longer responsible for the outcome of any of these things.
Everything is taken care of.
You can sit back, relax, and enjoy whatever good you can find along the way.
Perform a quick visualization to transfer responsibility.
Feel the instant sense of relief and the warmth, calm, and serenity rising.
Feel your whole body relax.

Impostor syndrome: more than 70 percent of the population has experienced this.
Impostor syndrome is worst among high performers.

Delve into those very sensations of discomfort.
Give your full attention to the very sensations you’d instinctively want to push away.
Focus on the minute sensations of your physical discomfort.

Humans are the most empathetic species on the planet.

Everyone you meet has stories to tell.
Everyone has a few that would break your heart.
Imagine their past.
What if you had been born in their circumstances, with their family and upbringing?

Kindness charisma when you want to create an emotional bond or make people feel safe and comfortable.
Radiate warmth and complete acceptance.
People who may have never felt completely, wholeheartedly accepted suddenly feel truly seen and enveloped in acceptance.
Kindness charisma is primarily based on warmth.
It connects with people’s hearts, and makes them feel welcomed, cherished, embraced, and, most of all, completely accepted.
Kindness charisma comes entirely from body language - specifically your face, and even more specifically your eyes.

One of the downsides of kindness charisma: it can lead to adulation and overattachment.
She suffers when people, having become enchanted, feel hurt or resentful when she can’t make room for them in her life.

Clothing is one of our first and strongest clues in evaluating status, thus potential power, and thus authority charisma.
If you want to make others feel comfortable, adapt to their tribal wear.

Authority charisma:
To project power and confidence in your body language, you’ll need to learn how to “take up space” with your posture.
Reduce nonverbal reassurances (such as excessive nodding), and avoid fidgeting.
Speak less, to speak more slowly, to know how and when to pause.
Warmth reduces the risk of your being perceived as arrogant or intimidating, it will also be more highly valued because you’re now seen as high-status.

Authority charisma disadvantages:
It can inhibit critical thinking in others.
It doesn’t invite feedback, so you risk not receiving information you actually need.
It can easily make you appear arrogant.

Once we’ve made a judgment about someone, we spend the rest of our acquaintanceship seeking to prove ourselves correct.
Everything we see and hear gets filtered through this initial impression.
People were able to accurately judge nine out of ten personality traits by looking at a single photograph.
Overall appearance is evaluated before demeanor and body language.

What’s the story?
Asking for a story sends them straight into storytelling mode.
Never interrupt - not even if the impulse to do so comes from excitement about something the other person just said.
No matter how congratulatory and warm your input, it will always result in their feeling at least a twinge of resentment or frustration at not having been allowed to complete their sentence.
They finish their sentence.
Your face absorbs.
Your face reacts.
Then, and only then, you answer.

The longer you speak, the higher the price you’re making them pay.

When you consciously mirror someone’s body language, you activate deep instincts of trust and liking.
People open up, and instinctively start sharing more.

Cases in which the other person is exhibiting negative body language?
First mirror their body language, then gradually lead it in a more positive direction.

Carefully observe her posture - the way she’s sitting, holding her head, what her shoulders are like - and gradually move into the same position.
Look for rhythms.
Is she nodding her head periodically? Tapping her knee? Fidgeting with a button? You can find a way to loosely mirror that, too.
And, of course, match your voice to hers: adopt a similar cadence, tempo, and volume.
Once you’re in a mirrored position, spend your entire listening time in that mode: as long as you’re listening, match your body language to hers.
Only when it’s your turn to speak should you start infusing the interaction with warmth, caring, and compassion through your voice, face, and eyes.
As you speak, gradually shift into a more relaxed, calm, and, eventually, confident posture.
There’s a good chance that she’ll follow.
Mirror-then-lead is a smart strategy when the person you’re interacting with needs reassurance, when they’re feeling nervous or timid, anxious or awkward, stiff or withdrawn.
With any of these emotional states, mirror them to establish comfort and rapport, and then gradually draw them out.

To establish warm rapport with someone, avoid a confrontational seating arrangement and instead sit either next to or at a 90-degree angle from them.
These are the positions in which we feel most comfortable.
If you want someone to feel comfortable, avoid seating them with their back to an open space, particularly if others are moving behind them.

Find a busy, crowded space.
As you walk around, try to get other people to move aside for you.
Not allowed to step aside to make way for others.
Your subconscious mind is constantly scanning your surroundings as you move through your environment to glean the information you need to keep moving forward.
Your eyes scan and assess potential obstacles, including other people in your way.
To determine whether you need to modify your route to avoid them, you read their body language without even realizing it.
If they’re broadcasting a body language that says, “You better move aside, baby,” you will most likely pick up on it and make way for them.
Conversely, if you feel that you’re the bigger gorilla, you’ll stay your course and expect them to deviate.
Imagine a very large gorilla.
We read confidence the same way: how much space people are willing to take up.
Powerful people sit sideways on chairs, drape their arms over the back, or appropriate two chairs by placing an arm across the back of an adjacent chair.
They put their feet on the desk or sit on the desk.
All of these behaviors are ways of claiming space.
Assume expansive poses (taking up more space).

Regal Posture: cool, calm, and collected
This kind of high-status, high-confidence body language is characterized by how few movements are made.
Composed people exhibit a level of stillness, which is sometimes described as poise.
They avoid extraneous, superfluous gestures like incessantly nodding their heads.

Excessive or rapid nodding.
Excessive verbal reassurance: making a sound, such as “uh-huh.”
Restlessness or fidgeting.
Gestures, which behavior experts identify as low-status, are often signs used by someone wanting to convey reassurance to the person they’re interacting with.
Empathy: wanting to ensure that the other person feels heard and understood and knows you’re paying attention
Insecurity: wanting to please or appease the person you’re interacting with
In contrast, people who come across as powerful, confident, or high-status are usually more contained.
They don’t feel the urge to give so much reassurance because they’re not as worried about what their counterpart is thinking.

Broadcasting too much power can come across as either arrogant or intimidating

To help a shy colleague or subordinate feel comfortable and open up, punctuate with both nonverbal (nodding) and verbal (uh-huh) reassurance.

Asking for someone’s opinion is a better strategy than asking for their advice, because giving advice feels like more effort, as they have to tailor a recommendation to your situation, whereas with an opinion, they can just spout whatever is on their mind.

Bill Clinton was known to go around asking everyone, from his chef to his janitor, for their opinion on foreign policy.
He’d listen intently, and in subsequent conversations would refer back to the opinion they’d offered.