Growing up I always thought Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock was kind of a lame actor I couldn’t care less about. Perhaps a fascination for how huge this dude was, but that’s it. But, since I a while back adopted a charisma perspective when analyzing and shaping opinions about people, I can’t help but to admit that this guy ranks as a bromance quality. So last night when I accidently saw the Charisma break down video of The rock for the tenth time, I had to throw my original weekly challenge a side in exchange for a Charisma focused week. Centered around a rock.

let him who is without sin cast the first stone

Jesus – ( What does that have to do with anything? Nothing, I just like putting in nice quotes to make the text breath a bit. Plus it did have a rock in it.)

Listening to a very charismatic person makes me feel two things – fascination for being so drawn into what the person is saying, but also a longing to be able to do that too. But to be charismatic and a good storyteller we need to practice. A lot. And we need to dare to act, give it that extra energy and live the words we are saying. But don’t listen to me, I’m no expert, quite the opposite. As I said – I want to become that. But I’m eager, hungry and dying to be more charismatic, hence I try to constantly work on developing these skills. And this video shows us HOW to do all that.

Although I’ve gotten better at it, most of the time I don’t believe in myself as a storyteller, and I don’t believe in the value of the content that I’d like to share with people. As soon as I start telling something I’ve subconsciously already given up on myself, making me rush through what I have to say. But once and a while I dare to live it, I dare to be animated and use my body and facial expression. I dare to play around with my voice, and I dare to go into character. I dare. I’m going to dare this week. And I dare you likewise.

So, the challenge of the week is to practice being a bit more charismatic (like 4-5 rocks ~1,5 kg). Easier said than done. Yes, that’s usually how I work. Deception. Muhaha. Evil Face. Anyways, how are we doing this? Start with checking out my video, where I’ve borrowed the essential parts (for this week) from Charisma On Command’s Dwayne Johnson breakdown video. However, I strongly express a wish for your dopamine thriving brain to indulge in the marvellous piece of charisma candy you’ll get from the full video (link). The Charismatic traits we’ll be practicing are:

“THERE ARE THREE TOOLS THE ROCK USES AMAZINGLY WELL:
HIS SPEAKING VOLUME
HIS BODY AND THE SPACE IT TAKES UP
AND HIS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ”

So the objectives are:

• Practice applying these techniques in the conversations you’ll be having this week. If you have any recurrent social meetings, make these your focused sessions where you really give it an extra effort. For me it’s going to be the coffer beaks we have at work two times a day. Think habit; Que (when), Routine (what), Reward (treat yourself with some proudness. Or a fruit).
• Also, try to – once a day – have a conversation with at least one random person you’ll never talked to before. It can be easier to break your regular low-key self with people that doesn’t know you. Personally – subconsciously it makes me think that people think I’m fake when I’m trying to be more charismatic, just because I’m not behaving like I usually do. All in my head. And if not – don’t care (conscious me speaking. Yeah!).

 Bonus: A secondary focus for me this week will be to understand the decision-making process better, and try so slim down the number of decisions I have to make every day to a bare minimum. By that, not wasting willpower on stuff that isn’t of real importance. But instead saving if tor the touch conversations, actions or whatever things that actually impacts my life in a meaningful way. Not weather I should read another advertising email more or not. I’ll properly wright a blog post or two about this in the week! Started doing this last week, and have had some GREAT results.

Well that’s it for me! Good luck with the challenges, and enjoy your week?

/Alexander