possible not to get involved with you.
One of the most admirable qualities of leaders, which lends a person charisma in the
perception of others, is the capacity to step forward and take charge. The leader
accepts complete responsibility for getting the job done, without making excuses and
blaming anyone. When you become completely self-reliant, you experience a
tremendous sense of control and power that enhances your feeling of well-being and
that generates the charisma that is so important to you in attracting the help of others.
The seventh personality power is image. There is both interpersonal image and
intrapersonal image. Intrapersonal image, or self-image, is the way you see yourself
and think about yourself in any situation. This self-image has an inordinate impact on
the way you perform and on the way others see you and think about you. Your self-
image plays an important part in your charisma.
The other type of image is interpersonal. This is the image or appearance that you
convey to others. The way you look on the outside has an inordinate impact on the way
people treat you and respond to you. Successful men and women are very aware of
how they are coming across to others. They take a good deal of time to think through
every aspect of their external appearance to assure that it is helping them rather than
hurting them.
Remember that everything counts. If an element of your image is not building your
charisma and your respect in the eyes of another person, it is lowering your charisma
and your respect. Nothing is neutral. Everything is taken into the equation. Everything
counts.
The three primary factors in personal appearance are clothes, grooming and
accessories. Select your clothes with care. Before you go to an important meeting,
stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself, “Do I look like one of the best people in
my field?” If you don’t feel that you look like one of the best people in your business,
go back to the closet and change.
Look at the most successful people in your area of endeavor. What do they wear?
How do they dress? How do they wear their hair? What kind of accessories do they
use? Pattern yourself after the winners in your field, the people who already have
personal magnetism and charisma. If you do what they do, over and over, you will
eventually get the same results that they get.
The eighth form of personal power is character, or integrity. Men and women who
possess the kind of charisma that arouses the enthusiastic support of others are
invariably men and women with high values and principles. They are extremely realistic
and honest with themselves and others. They have very clear ideals, and they
continually aspire to live up to the highest that is in them. They speak well of people,
and they guard their conversation, knowing that everything that they say is being
remembered and recorded. They are aware that everything they do is contributing to
the formation of their perception by others. Everything about their character is adding
to or detracting from their level of charisma.
When you think of the most important men and women of any time, you think of
men and women who aspired to greatness and who had high values for themselves and
high expectations of others. When you make the decision to act consistent with the
highest principles that you know, you begin to develop charisma. You begin to become
the kind of person others admire and respect and want to emulate. You begin to attract
into your life the help and support and encouragement of the kind of people you
admire. You activate the law of attraction in the very best way.
The ninth power of personality is self-discipline, or self-mastery. Men and women of
charisma are highly controlled. They have a tremendous sense of inner calm and outer
resolve. They are well-organized, and they demonstrate willpower and determination in
everything they do.
The very act of being well-organized, of having clear objectives and of having set
clear priorities on your activities before beginning, gives you a sense of discipline and
control. It causes people to respect and admire you. When you then exert your self-
discipline by persisting in the face of difficulties, your charisma rating goes up.
Men and women who achieve leadership positions, who develop the perception of
charisma in others, are invariably those who possess indomitable willpower and the
ability to persist in a good cause until success is achieved. The more you persist when
the going gets rough, the more self-discipline and resolve you develop, and the more
charisma you tend to have.
The tenth power that you can develop, which underlies all of the other powers that
lead to charisma, is result-orientation. In the final analysis, people ascribe charisma to
those men and women who they feel can most enable them to achieve important goals
or objectives.
We develop great perceptions of those men and women we can count on to help us
achieve what is important to us. Men and women who make great sales, or who
establish admirable sales records, develop charisma in the minds and hearts of their
coworkers and superiors. They are spoken about in the most positive way. Men and
women who are responsible for companies or departments that achieve high levels of
profitability also develop charisma. They develop what is called the “halo effect.” They
are perceived by others to be extraordinary men and women who are capable of great
things. Their shortcomings are often overlooked, while their strong points are
overemphasized. They become charismatic.
Charisma actually comes from working on yourself. It comes from liking and
accepting yourself unconditionally as you do and say the specific things that develop
within you a powerful, charismatic personality.
When you set clear goals and become determined and purposeful, backing those
goals with unshakable self-confidence, you develop charisma. When you are
enthusiastic and excited about what you are doing, when you are totally committed to
achieving something worthwhile, you radiate charisma. When you take the time to
study and become an expert at what you do, and then prepare thoroughly for any
opportunity to use your knowledge, skill or experience, the perception that others have
of you goes straight up. When you take complete responsibility and accept ownership,
without making excuses or blaming others, you experience a sense of control that leads
to the personal power that is the foundation of charisma. When you look like a winner
in every respect, when you have the kind of external image that others admire, you
build your charisma. When you develop your character by setting high standards and
then disciplining yourself to live consistent with the highest principles you know, you
become the kind of person who is admired and respected everywhere. You become the
kind of person who radiates charisma to others. Finally, when you concentrate your
energies on achieving the results that you have been hired to accomplish, the results
that others expect of you, you develop the reputation for performance and achievement
that inevitably leads to the perception of charisma.
You can develop the kind of charisma that opens doors for you by going to work on
yourself, consistently and persistently, and becoming the kind of person everyone can
admire and look up to. That’s what charisma is all about.
The Power of Positive Self-Talk
By: Brian Tracy
Perhaps the most powerful influence on your attitude and personality is what you
say to yourself, and believe. It is not what happens to you, but how you respond
internally to what happens to you, that determines your thoughts and felling and,
ultimately, your actions. By controlling your inner dialogue, or “self-talk,” you can
begin to assert control over every other dimension of your life.
Your self-talk.the words that you use to describe what is happening to you, and
to discuss how you feel about external events.determines the quality and tone of
your emotional life. When you see things positively and constructively and look for
the good in each situation and each person, you have a tendency to remain naturally
positive and optimistic. Since the quality of your life is determined by how you feel,
moment to moment, one of your most important goals should be to use every
psychological technique available to keep yourself thinking about what you want and
to keep your mind off of what you don’t want, or what you fear.
Arnold Toynbee, the historian, developed what he called the “challenge-response
theory” of history. In studying the rise and fall of 20 major world civilizations,
Toynbee concluded that each civilization started out as a small group of people — as
a village, as a tribe or in the case of the Mongol empire, as just three people who
had survived the destruction of their small community.
Toynbee concluded that each of these small groups faced external challenges,
such as hostile tribes. In order to survive, much less thrive, these small groups had
to reorganize themselves to deal positively and constructively with these challenges.
By meeting each of these challenges successfully, the village or tribe would grow.
Even greater challenges would be triggered as a result. And if this group of people
continued to meet each challenge by drawing upon its resources and winning out, it
would continue to grow until ultimately it became a nation-state and then a
civilization covering a large geographical area.
Toynbee looked at the 21 great civilizations of human history, ending with the
American civilization, and concluded that these civilizations began to decline and fall
apart when their citizens and leaders lost the will or ability to rise to the inevitable
external challenges occasioned by their very size and power.
Toynbee’s theory of civilizations can be applicable to our life as well.
You are continually faced with challenges and difficulties, with problems and
disappointments, with temporary setbacks and defeats. They are an unavoidable
and inevitable part of being human. But, as you draw upon your resources to
respond effectively to each challenge, you grow and become a stronger and better
person. In fact, without those setbacks, you could not have learned what you needed
to know and developed the qualities of your character to where they are today.
Much of your ability to succeed comes from the way you deal with life. One of
the characteristics of superior men and women is that they recognize the inevitability
of temporary disappointments and defeats, and they accept them as a normal and
natural part of life. They do everything possible to avoid problems, but when
problems come, superior people learn from them, rise above the, and continue
onward in the direction of their dreams.
Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania has written a fascinating
book based on his 25 years of research into this subject. It’s titled Learned
Optimism. In this book, Dr. Seligman explains the basic response patterns of both
positive and negative people. As a result of his many years of work in cognitive
therapy, and the use of exhaustive testing, he finds, quite simply, that optimistic
people tend to interpret events in such a way that they keep their minds positive and
their emotions under control.
Optimists develop the habit of talking to themselves in constructive ways.
Whenever they experience an adversity, they immediately describe it to themselves
in such a way that it loses its ability to trigger negative emotions and feelings of
helplessness.
Dr. Seligman says that are three basic differences in the reactions of optimists
and pessimists. The first difference is that the optimist sees a setback as temporary,
while the pessimist sees it as permanent. The optimist sees an unfortunate event,
such as an order that falls through or a sales call that fails, as a temporary event,
something that is limited in time and that has no real impact on the future. The
pessimist, on the other hand, sees negative events as permanent, as part of life and
destiny.
For example, let’s say that the optimistic salesperson makes 10 calls on likely
prospects, and every one of those calls is unsuccessful. The optimist simply
interprets this as a temporary event and a matter of averages or probabilities. The
optimist concludes that, with every temporary failure, he is moving closer to the
prospect who will turn into a sale. The optimist dismisses the event and goes on
cheerfully to the 11th and 12th prospects.
The pessimist sees the same situation differently. The pessimist has a tendency
to conclude that 10 unsuccessful sales calls is an indication that the economy is
terrible and that there is no market for his product. The pessimist generalizes and
begins to see the situation and his career as hopeless. While the optimist just shrugs
it off and gets on with the next call, the pessimist becomes discouraged and loses
heart and enthusiasm for the hard work of prospecting.
The second difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the optimist
sees difficulties as specific, while the pessimist sees them as pervasive. This means
that when things go wrong for the optimist, he looks at the event as an isolated
incident largely disconnected from other things that are going on in his life.
For example, if something you were counting on failed to materialize and you
interpreted it to yourself as being an unfortunate event, but something that happens
in the course of life and business, you would be reacting like an optimist. The
pessimist, on the other hand, sees disappointments as being pervasive. That is, to
him they are indications of a problem or shortcoming that pervades every area of
life.
If a pessimist worked hard to put together a business deal and it collapsed, he
would tend to assume that the deal did not work out was because the product or the
company or the economy was in poor shape and the whole business was hopeless.
The pessimist would tend to feel helpless, unable to make a difference and out of
