Today, we're going to talk about how to develop charisma, even if you're unattractive. Most people are of average attractiveness or even below average attractiveness. And what do you do if you're one of those people? And this is one of the things that bothers me the most, because when I talk to people who are of average attractiveness, or even somewhat unattractive, it is such a struggle.
to engage with other human beings. You have to work so much harder than someone who's attractive. And what this sort of ends up in is you engaging in all kinds of techniques to get other people to like you.
And in fact, there's even a whole industry that is designed to teach you these techniques so that you can try to level the playing field with people who are naturally attractive. The experience that I'm talking about here is someone who like, you're always texting your friends, but they never really text you back. that when they need something, you're going to drop everything and you're going to do whatever they need, but they never reciprocate. So what ends up happening is that you're kind of chasing these friendships and you're putting in more time and more effort.
And sometimes you even have to resort to special kinds of manipulative techniques like, okay, I'm going to do this, or I'm going to do negging, or I'm going to do this other kind of crap to get this person to engage with me. And you deserve better than that. I want you to have better than that.
I want you to be in a situation where by virtue of who you are, your charisma is so developed that you naturally attract people to you because you absolutely deserve that. And I'm going to help you get there. So the first thing that we've got to understand is what is charisma? Now, a lot of people think that charisma is simply physical attractiveness.
But as the modern research shows, physical attractiveness is just one of the six dimensions of charisma. And on top of that, it's not even one of the most important ones. There are actually three attributes of charisma that are worth more when it comes to charisma than physical attractiveness. Now, y'all may not believe that, right?
Because we all kind of know, for example, that like clearly charisma means physically being hot, right? Well, let's actually take a look at the research because I think it's really fascinating. So to begin with, we're going to take a quick look at this paper called Generic Charisma, Conceptualization and Measurement. So these two people, bless them, I can't pronounce these names because they're from Croatia and Slovenia.
They sort of sat down and tried to figure out, okay, like what is charisma actually composed of? And here's what they found, which is really staggering. So the first is that attractive is a part of charisma, but it accounts for 10.5% of the variance between people who are charismatic and not charismatic.
The really interesting thing is if we actually look at the components of charisma, what we discover is the most important aspect of charisma is communication skills. Someone who attracts admiration and inspires, right? So that's not the same as physically attractive. And someone who's honest and reliable.
And if we look at the cumulative variance, what that sort of means is what percentage of charisma is embodied by these three things? What we tend to see is, first of all, these three are all worth more than physical attractiveness. And about half of the charisma that you exude or that most people exude is actually like made up of these three things. And it has nothing to do with physical attractiveness.
In fact, physical attractiveness is only responsible for 10.5% of the variance when it comes to charisma. Now, that's just one paper. And I'm not saying that this one paper, you know, explains everything. There are other papers that we'll kind of dig into.
But the first thing to understand is that people have researched charisma. And physical attractiveness accounts for only about 10.5% of it. And so then the question is, what is the rest of charisma and how do I develop it?
So we're going to focus on three attributes because these are the things that you can actually learn how to do. And as you improve these, what you will naturally find is that people are more interested in spending time with you, even if you're physically unattractive. So the three things that we're going to talk about are vision and vision implementation, authenticity, and communication.
Okay? So let's start with vision and vision implementation. So the first thing to understand is that in our current society, we don't have a whole lot of vision. So what does vision mean?
So companies will have things like targets, right? We want to sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of flowers this year. And that's like a really solid, like that's a business metric, baby.
Like this is a goal that I want to accomplish. And if you look at your life, chances are you will have all kinds of goals for yourself. And you think that accomplishing these goals will make people like you, right?
Like I need to get one foot taller. My dick needs to get a couple inches bigger. Maybe my tits need to get a couple inches bigger.
You know, maybe I need to make more money and if I hit these targets, then people will like me. But it turns out that vision is not hitting targets. In fact, it's the opposite. So vision is the quality of we don't sell flowers, we sell beauty.
It's this weird abstract kind of thinking. It's vision, right? It's not a concrete thing.
It's some kind of idea that you have about your life and the direction that your life is going in. Now, why is it hard for us to develop this floofy, floofy idea? Like, what is your vision of your life?
If I ask you that question, you're like, I don't know. Right? You can give me a goal, but you don't have some weird aesthetic idea of what you want your life to aspire to be. You're not some like Greek philosopher who's like, oh yes, like I would pursue beauty because I'm Epicurean. Like, uh, we don't know how to do that crap, right?
And the question is why? It's because that instinct of vision is actually conditioned out of us through things like school. So if you look at something like school, what is school actually for?
Do we take a group of a hundred? kids and try to enhance their understanding and help them develop their sense of vision between the formative years of like literally five and 22 when most people are in school for 17 years of the basic most formative part of their life we actually try to get rid of vision schools are not places to help you cultivate a vision of life there's their factories their factory is designed to create a particular kind of person So we have standardized classes with standardized competencies that we measure in standardized ways. And when you get, let's say, a degree in finance, everyone who's employing you expects you to have a minimum level of competence. So the reason that it's hard for us to develop vision is because we have a society that doesn't care about vision and actually actively conditions us to no longer have a vision. And you all may have noticed this because at some point in life, you probably had these tiny little inklings of vision.
And you're like, I want to do this thing. And everyone else is like, no, you cannot do that thing. You need to become doctor.
How dare you try to do something to change the world and make it a better place. And you want to live a life of art and beauty? Arre, Alok, who will marry you if you are living a life of art and beauty? You need to become doctor. Then you will find a good wife.
The second reason why it's really hard to have vision right now is because the world is falling apart. So vision is about the future, right? It's like, hey.
I want to accomplish this thing, or not even accomplish, it's like I want to live in service to this thing over the next 20 years of my life, 30 years of life. We don't even know what state the world is going to be in like two years from now. We've had about three or four once-in-a-lifetime crises in like five years.
I've heard that the crab population is cratering. It's 25% of what it was like four years ago, something insane like that. If you're under the age of 30, it's impossible to buy a house. It's like impossible to date, whether you're a man or a woman.
Whether you're a dude, it's like 90% of people ignore you. And if you're a woman, it's like if you message someone, you're going to get a dick pic. So the fundamentals of life and the future can't be counted on. And so psychologically, what do we do when we can't count on a future?
There's no point in having a vision because vision means disappointment. Now, here's the problem with that. Even though it's really hard.
I still want y'all to try to cultivate it. It's been beaten out of you and it's not a good idea. But literally, if you look at the science of charisma and you want to become a more charismatic individual, developing a vision is a key part of it. Okay.
And let's understand why. Because in this world where everything is falling apart, if you occasionally meet a human being who has vision about their life in the future, holy shit, that's so inspiring, right? So let's focus on vision. So let's understand a couple of fundamentals.
The first is that vision is not a goal. So when you're trying to develop your vision of life, anything in your mind that is a goal, which is by the way, how you've been conditioned to think, right? Promotion, this percentage of, you know, increase in salary, this kind of certification, this kind of award, this kind of achievement, this kind of whatever, like it's always goals, goals, goals, goals, goals. I want to lose five pounds. That's different from I want to live a life of health, right?
My body is a temple. What does that mean? Those are those vision kinds of statements that then you move towards in a particular way.
And when you have a solid vision of your life, then people will sort of notice that in all of the actions that you do. Because in pursuing that vision, you will start to align different parts of your life and people will be like, wow, that person is so organized. So how do we develop this vision?
First thing that we do is we get rid of goals because there's nothing to do with goals. Second thing. is that we want to really think about what are the ideals that you want to live your life towards and be as floofy and uncalculated as possible.
All those thoughts that you've let go by the wayside because they're not useful and you can't achieve them in this world is something that you need to start to develop. Now, vision also gets coupled with vision implementation. And if we look at the research on charisma, these two things are really important. It's not enough to have an ideal in life.
You also need to be able to implement it. And the implementation of your vision involves three steps. The first is clarification.
And this is kind of also step one, because, you know, we kind of say, I say, like, develop a vision. You're like, at this point in the video, you haven't done that yet, right? So what you really want to do is really start to think about what do I want my life to look like when I...
look back on it. What do I want my life to be perceived as by other people? What would make me happy on my deathbed if my life was this way?
And I can guarantee you that if you kind of like, I guess I'm not guarantee you, but it's not going to be a particular target, right? Like when you're 80 years old and you're thinking back to your life and you're like, man, the one thing that makes me really happy is that when I was 28 years old and I applied for that promotion, I got that particular promotion at that particular company. And thank God I achieved that goal because.
That has made my life worthwhile. No, it doesn't work like that, right? When you look back on your life, what are the ideals that you were shooting for? What was the direction that you wanted your life to go?
These are concepts like, you know, I want to create a story that inspires people. Or I see that there's a lot of suffering in this world, and I want to capture that suffering and share it with other people in the form of like a story or something like that. These are kind of more floofy sort of ideas, right?
I want my body to be a temple. I want to live a life that I can be proud of. I know it sounds kind of bizarre, but that's all vision stuff.
And the next thing is to just simply clarify that idea and ask yourself a little bit about why do I want this? What's important to me? And the more you do that kind of introspective work, the more that you will develop vision. The second thing about vision implementation is structure.
So now that we have some kind of ideal, and it doesn't have to be a fully fleshed out, it can be a work over time, right? Is there's a big part that people who are goal focused and not vision focused kind of focus on, which is... The what. So I want to accomplish this thing.
It's all about the target, right? What's the target we're shooting for? We want to increase sales. We want to lose 10 pounds.
It's all these targets. And we love targets because they're easy to measure. And the other thing is that everybody else loves targets because it's a quick way to reduce us to a number. It's a way to rank a mass of human beings. So we want to abandon that way of thinking when it comes to vision.
So vision implementation is about structure. And what we mean by that is where, when, and how. So for whatever ideal you have, don't focus on what the goal is.
Focus on when you're going to do it, where you're going to do it, and how you're going to do it. So it's not even about the goal, it's really about the process. And the more that you focus on the process of it, the where, the when, the how, and if you say to yourself, okay, I want to live a life of beauty. What the hell does that mean?
So then ask yourself, where am I going to live a life of beauty? When am I going to live a life of beauty? How am I going to live a life of beauty? What does that mean?
That means that, okay, I'm going to make some kind of artwork and present it on March 27th, 2024 at this particular community of local artists or whatever, right? So as you tunnel down into the when, where, and how, it's not about the what or whether you achieve your goal or not achieve your goal. It's when are you going to do it, where are you going to do it, and how are you going to do it? Whatever appeals to you. There's no right or wrong, okay?
The next part of vision implementation is strategic thinking. So this may sound like kind of common sense, right? Like, oh, I should like think strategically about my life, but that's not actually what happens.
So let me give you all an example. So let's say that I have some kind of setback in life. Let's say I get dumped.
And what is our experience of being dumped? We usually don't think about our life in a strategic way, right? The setback hurts us so much. We start to develop all these views about the opposite sex or maybe the same sex.
We start to lose our faith and love and humanity and all this kind of stuff. We let these events around us shape our future. So what strategic thinking means is when it comes to your life and you have a vision that you want to move towards and you figured out a where, a when, and a how, inevitably things ain't going to go your way because you're just learning how to do this stuff. And how do we respond when things don't go our way? This is where human beings are very good at strategic thinking when it comes to work, but they're...
very bad at strategic thinking when it comes to their own lives. Because at work, there's no emotions involved. There's no ego involved. There's no like usually parents involved, right? But when it comes to our own lives, we can't think about our life strategically because when things don't go our way, we feel bad.
And then we want to drink or we want to get high or we want to play video games or whatever. We don't think about things strategically. So what does it mean to think strategically? So that's where when you have a vision, or a particular direction that you want to go, and you've sort of figured out the where, when, how, anytime you have a setback, you think about, okay, how can I move past this, right?
How can I circumvent whatever has just happened and continue moving towards my vision? It's about sort of a strategic approach to always moving forward. It's not about a goal. It's not about achieving a particular thing, although you can let a goal roll in.
It's no big deal. But to really think about for any setback you have in life, what can I do about this? How can I move past that? And what we sort of know from the science of charisma is it's when human beings start to do this, that other people around them are like, wow, look at that person. They're attracted to this, right?
Because what does this look like from the outside? Wow, that person did not let a setback hold them back. This person persevered through success. Man, they're moving relentlessly towards a particular goal. It's not a goal, it's actually a vision, right?
And the when, where, how means that they're actually doing stuff. So this is a huge part of charisma. The next thing that we're going to talk a little bit about is communication style and authenticity. And we're going to kind of roll these together, even though they're separate factors.
So the main thing that we can do to boost our charisma is to be more authentic. Now, what does that mean? So if we sort of think about, let's say, things that are naturally attractive. So let's say like there's a campfire, okay? And if you sort of think about a campfire, it's very inviting, right?
It's like warm, it's cheery, it's crackly, it looks cool, it's like fire, bro. And it's also like it feels good to like sit next to it, right? So we're sort of naturally attracted to campfires. So how do we have other people be naturally drawn towards us?
We have to be authentic. And why is that? It's because when people can't trust us, they will not be attracted to us.
So we currently have a society that is built on distrust. So dating profiles are very calculated methods of distrust, right? You're trying to advertise some of this stuff.
Oh, yeah, the person never mentioned that they've got kids or they never mentioned that they're actually in jail or like, you know, there's all kinds of stuff. There's so much deception going on in the world today with employees, employers, with each other, with relationships. And y'all know what I'm talking about because if you've tried to exist in this world, you've realized that being authentic is like kind of stupid and you get punished for it. And at the same time, the more that you can develop that authenticity, the more people will be drawn towards you, right? Because they know what they're going to get.
And the primary concern that so many people have in the world right now is that you can't trust people. So if you are one of the people that people can actually trust, that's going to be a huge chunk of charisma. And we've already looked at some of the data, and there's a lot of data that shows that, you know, authenticity is very, very important.
Now, there are a couple of caveats to authenticity, because we don't want to be authentically like negative and spewing all that crap, right? So what we really want to be authentic about is our sense of vision, our sense of direction, who we aspire to be. You can share some negativity, there's no problem in that, but what we really want you to do is try to be your authentic best self.
And if there's a chunk of negativity in there, that's actually okay, because that shows you as being more authentic. The problem right now is that a lot of people confuse authenticity of self as verbal diarrhea for all of my trauma. And those are not the same two things. I mean, sure, that's one version of authenticity, but that's the kind of authenticity that you should have with a therapist, right? Not people that you met five minutes ago on the internet.
And then the third thing that we're going to focus on is a particular kind of communication style, which is the most important part of charisma. Now, this communication style, it's not just that you can do these three or four tips, and then you're going to be charismatic. There's absolutely pieces of that.
But this communication style is built on the other two. So the next thing about authenticity is if you're trying to figure out what is too authentic, what is not authentic, I would encourage you to temper your authenticity with compassion. So in Asia, like East Asia, like India, China, some of these areas that have like Buddhist and Hindu roots.
They have this really interesting approach to truthfulness. So they say that there's this thing called satya, which is something you should aspire to. You should try to be truthful all the time. But they say that satya is subject to ahimsa, which means nonviolence.
And so when they're trying to figure out how honest should I be or should I share this or not share this, it's not that I'm radically honest. And so I'm going to be an asshole to you because this is my authenticity. No, what they mean is that. Your truthfulness should be subject to compassion. So compassion should be your number one goal, and truthfulness should be in service to that.
So if you're trying to figure out, should I share this, should I not share this, is this part of my authentic being, think about letting compassion temper that. What will this authenticity do to the people around me? And this is where you say, well, doesn't that mean you're not being authentic because you're starting to hide things?
No, you don't want to fake. positive stuff. So you want to let stuff out that is absolutely authentic, but you want to temper it with compassion as much as possible.
Now we're going to get to the third part, which is communication style. And communication style is absolutely like certain techniques that you can do, but these are subject to number one and number two. So as you develop a vision, as you clarify a vision, as you start implementing a vision, as you start practicing authenticity and compassion, this is where we get to communication.
And so what we want to... communicate is number one and number two, right? So you want to share authentic things. You want to share what your vision is with people.
You don't want to brag about it. I did this. I did this.
My body's a temple. I'm doing this. I'm so cool. Look at me. I'm so alpha.
But what we really want you to do is clarify your communication. And the way that we do this, so when people, when you ask people, you know, what is the key aspect of like communication for someone who's charismatic? And it's that they're very clear with their communication. And there's a very easy technique to develop that, which is actually to practice writing. So with whatever you end up talking about or communicating with other people, write about it first.
Now, a lot of people are super surprised by that, but I'll give you all a simple example. So people will look at me and arguably... I'm somewhat charismatic, right?
And let's, let's, let's use the Dr. K test. So if you think I'm charismatic, great. If you don't think I'm charismatic, well, I don't know.
So maybe I'll still fail the test and I'll fail these dimensions. So when y'all kind of like look at me, right? What do y'all see? Do you think that I'm authentic? Do you think I'm transparent?
Do I communicate things in a clear way? Do I have a vision of what I'm trying to accomplish? So as we check those boxes, cause it's not that I'm like particularly sexy, right? Like I know that some people think that and, oh my God, Dr. K is such a thirst trap.
I don't think so, bro. Like you're not. I'm a 41-year-old dad of two who exercises intermittently. I'm not that attractive, right?
Got a decent head of hair. I'll give you that. But at the end of the day, these are the qualities that I try to aspire to, right? It's having a clear vision of what we're doing.
It's trying to be as authentic as possible with y'all. And at the end of the day, it's communicating things in a clear way. So let's focus on that number three. So when I started streaming on Twitch, everyone was like, oh my God, this guy is so good at talking about stuff. Oh my God, he's so brilliant.
Oh my God, right? And I... Believe me, I love it, but I'm going to give you all the little hack that I use to pretend to be smart, which is that I write about everything before I open my fucking mouth. So before I did my first stream on Twitch, around the time I did my first stream, I was writing a book on video game addiction. I was writing a book or I wrote a book about the neuroscience and psychology of technology.
It is this 160 page mammoth tome that is absolute garbage. Right. So everyone's like, oh, my God, Dr. K, can I read it?
No, it sucks. Trust me, you don't want to read it. But what that process of writing, when I wrote 160 pages and like 88,000 words, it clarified all of my ideas so that when I opened my mouth, it made me sound like I was a smart person.
I'm not actually that smart. I just figured this piece out about clear communication, and that's why I'm sharing it with you. So when it comes to clearly communicating, the most important thing that you can do is write out your thoughts.
You don't have to stick with them. You don't have to repeat them or memorize them or anything like that. But if you look at the neuroscience of writing and speaking, when we go through the process of verbalization and sort of writing this stuff out, this is when we actually clarify our thinking. And now the cool thing is when you open your dumb mouth, all of the thinking has already been done so that when you start speaking, it comes out super clear.
Because most people, when they communicate, they're thinking at the same time, right? So just think about this for a second. When you're having a conversation and you formulate some kind of response to a question, that's the first time you're thinking about it.
So if it's the first time you're thinking about it, how clear do you think it's going to be? And this is why most conversations are not filled with brilliant revelations. But if you want to have conversations that are filled with brilliant revelations, start writing about it. The simple act of writing will clarify the thoughts, and then when you speak, you will sound much, much clearer.
much more competent. So I know it sounds kind of crazy, but it turns out that physical attractiveness is a small percentage of charisma, accounts for 10.5% of the variance of charisma. And there are other things that are absolutely in your control that you can use to level up your charisma.
Plus three to charisma, baby. Look at that racial bonus from D&D. Hell yeah, dude.
Make you a strong paladin, make you a strong bard. It's going to be lit. Plus three to charisma, baby. How do we do this? Vision, vision implementation, authenticity, and communication.
If you can do these four things, all of the literature about the science of charisma from business to psychology suggests that you will improve your charisma by about 44%, right? That's the variance of these three categories, roughly. Actually, that's not correct, but it'll go up quite a bit. I'm confident of that. And the coolest thing is that this is something that is not based on the jawline that you were born with, or the way that your face looks.
And especially in a world where everyone is trying to survive, a single human being who can speak clearly, has a vision that they're implementing, and is someone that you can trust, well, wouldn't you be attracted to them? So give it a shot and level up your charisma and you will be thanking me for it. No, that's dumb. See, I didn't think through this yet.
So now I don't know how to close it because now I sound like an idiot. Do you all see how different it is? when I haven't thought, I didn't think through how I was going to end this video, and now I sound like a dumbass.
So maybe that's the best proof I can give you. So now go and do it. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health.
It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today.