On charisma

‘I am afraid’, he uttered while trembling in front of the opponent he would face in a boxing match the following day.

Charisma is often sought after as a mechanism for getting more money, higher social rank, admiration, love, and more. By having charisma, you can attract people, appear trustworthy, and feel in control, you think. Yet charisma seems elusive, evaporating through your fingers as soon as it is touched.

You build charisma—a quality of existential confidence in your ability to weather any situation—by experiencing many daily events and observing your place in them. Who is there throughout the experience? What remains, and what changes?

Then any situation becomes a game of observing and allowing it to unfold with some playfulness. You develop an ability to see and speak the objective and subjective reality as it appears, without collapsing into (be carried away with) anger, shame, guilt, pride, and other emotional states.

As a consequence of such a desirable yet frightening demeanor, you are calm and connected, which draws people’s interest and attention.

You never cared about charisma itself, yet it arose as a consequence of your being busy researching, exploring, and understanding.