The secret to becoming more charismatic in just 2 minutes a day for 21 days - (Slatcher & Pennebaker, 2006)

Would you like to become more charismatic and a better leader in 21 days by doing a 2 minute exercise a day? Here is a great talk by Shawn Achor on how to do that. Fascinating, inspiring and empowering.



This is the one that is least adopted especially at the senior leadership level. It's the most powerful intervention we have on record right now for raising other people's perception of your positive charisma that is compared to any leadership training that we've seen so far. The reason is that this is so successful is what we have you do is over the past 24 hours you think about one meaningful experience you've had, just one and it could be very small, a conversation you had with a client, with a child,  seeing a sunset, watching snowfall in London, maybe it was a book you were reading, whatever, for 2 minutes that is it, into a blank word document you just write down every detail you can remember about the experience and done. You don't talk about your whole day. Just for 2 minutes just write down every detail you can remember. The reason you are doing that is that you are actually getting your brain to relive that experience because if I hold my hand in front of my face, area 17 of my visual cortex lights up and says hand. Close my eyes and think about my hand in front of my face and area 17 of  my visual cortex lights up and says hand. My brain can't tell the difference between visualisation and actual experience.  So when you do this you've just doubled the most meaningful experience of  your past 24 hours. You do this for 21 days in  a row and your brain connects the cognitive dots for you, creating a trajectory of meaning running throughout your life. So now those emails that you have, those meetings,  the commute you have actually wrap around the trajectory of meaning, which raises your authenticity. Authenticity is just ajudged by how meaning connects to the actual activities you are doing within your life. When authenticity rises, if we take videos of you guys speaking, and  show it to naive raters, 21 days after doing a journaling exercise like this. Even though those raters don't know you or know that you are doing the journaling exercise, they judge you as having significantly higher levels of  positivity and charisma as a leader. It is remarkable.