BookYol

Concept

Internal State Leaks

Internal state leaks is the idea, central to The Charisma Myth, that what you feel inside shows in your face, voice and posture whether you want it to or not, so the reliable way to change how you come across is to change the inner state rather than police each gesture.

Body-language advice usually works from the outside in: stand like this, hold your hands like that. Cabane points out the flaw. You cannot control dozens of small signals at once, and the ones you forget, a tightness around the eyes, a voice that rises, give away the anxiety you are hiding. Others pick up the mismatch and trust you less. So she works from the inside out. If you feel confident and well disposed toward the person, most of the right signals appear by themselves. Her main tool is imagination: the mind and body respond to a vividly imagined scene in many of the same ways they respond to a real one. Before a hard moment, recalling in detail a time you felt capable and at ease, the place, the sounds, the sensations, shifts your state enough to change what leaks. The gestures then follow the feeling instead of fighting it.

A real-life example

Kaan, a doctoral student in Ankara, rehearses his thesis defence posture in the mirror and still looks stiff. Before the real defence he sits in the corridor for two minutes and replays, in detail, the afternoon his first paper was accepted: the email, the call to his mother, the walk outside. He walks in looser. The committee comments on how relaxed he seems.

How to use it

  1. 1Write down one moment when you felt capable and at ease, with as many sensory details as you can recall.
  2. 2Before your next high-stakes conversation, spend two minutes replaying that moment as vividly as possible.
  3. 3Afterwards, note whether you thought less about your gestures; that is the sign the inner state did the work.