I stopped drinking recently, and although my health, your weight, your checkbook and alcoholism that for generations accompanies to the grave the men in my family was a good thing for my skills in the conversation It did not work the same.

Do not you realize because you're drunk, but there is a special moment, sparkling, between the first and third beer, in which the rusty gears that regulate the daytime chat are lubricated and softened, and everyone and everything, they get a minimal, and the exhausting "so ... so ... what do you do this weekend?"
switching to an honest and open dialogue.
Without the alcohol, the social gear is as if glued with a chewing gum.
The paradise of the chatter is at the top of a mountain inaccessible when you only have to get water and lemon.
So when a press office asked me if I wanted to learn how to be charismatic with a lesson in an hour and a half with Richard Reid, I answered, "Yes."
Charisma is hard to define because it is an ethereal quality, an electricity that some people have naturally, and other normal-people-no.
You know when you meet someone and you wonder if it is known, or should be, or maybe it famous in a certain circle tight and you're too far out from the righteous laps to know?
You know when you meet a person and at the end you feel you have been the crux of the conversation-you, for a moment, you were at the center of his world?
The charisma makes people feel good, open doors, moves mountains and elevates people who have it.
Many political leaders have it-we had Obama, Clinton had it, and it is useless to ostriches, have it Farage and Trump.
"Hitler had it," Richard repeated to me several times.
"Hitler was very charismatic," he never ceases to tell.
The charisma is not always used with good intentions, this is what I learned from the question Hitler-charisma.
The most fascinating are the same people who probably stab you behind when the time comes.
The charisma allows you to get almost always frank.
The brain is very easy to convince, I have discovered, and this is what matters.
It is simple, so simple that it seems too simple, but try: see yourself, ideally during a holiday, with the sun shining on your face, no internet, lots of relaxation, perhaps maybe you drank no-not judge you not I who will tell you how to spend the holidays and live the life.
The crucial thing here is the feeling, the feeling of holiday, you have to imagine you're back on the beach, in water, in that place.
Ok: close your eyes and count to ten.
This is enough to trick your brain and convince him not to worry about for a few seconds.
Now we do an exercise in which we learn to shake hands.
The only time that I was careful a handshake was when my first girlfriend introduced me to his father, and before doing so he warned me that his father took very seriously the handshakes, so I practiced with family and friends and I laid on with a close in three movements, intense eye contact, average grip strength.
Later, I shook hands very superficially.
But Richard wants to change me, because the handshakes are very important, and the way you present yourself is critical to your charisma.
"Many of the things we do every day depend on the so-called 'safety behavior'," he explains.
"For example, the handshake is born from the need to feel safe.
When we give a hand to someone, we manifest our power and our intentions towards him ... yet others show their hand against us.
Many think that a strong handshake is the best choice, but if it is not balanced with that of the other person can be interpreted as a power play and then feel uncomfortable.
And in this case the other person will not give the best of themselves.
And it is less likely to go away with a positive impression of you and of your experience together. "
First by a door and shake Richard's hand (you can try at home: since that day I taught to shake hands with a lot of people).
"Have you looked at my hand too," explains Richard.
"Next time, reaches out and I will find him, fear not.
I walk out the door and do the exercise of the above imagination is the sea, swimming, the sky is blue and clear water, I am relaxed, I eat pineapple skewers, drink my cocktails.
The photographer who accompanied me, Ruchira, says the difference is obvious.
I'm beginning to think that Richard is a magician, or at least a sorcerer.
The next level of handshake is this: when our hands meet I have too extended arm, so to balance it I will have to keep the elbow attached to the body and extend your arm at an angle of 90 degrees, and this magnifies 10 times the power of the whole handshake, because it drags the receiver in my personal space, and this makes a big difference in terms of success.
"You are very high," he says, "maybe you should also calibrarti on that, but still ...
In three minutes, I learned how to shake hands.
The author runs a perfect handshake.
Now, we must speak of the Human Brain and the Reptilian Brain, and we will talk about why it is important to understand what the charisma, why do you have not the means by which you can get it.
The reptilian brain controls impulses-survival and safety-and is the part of the brain that takes the field in the first few seconds of any situation to understand what we're safe.
That's why the handshake is so important is the signal that allows us to frame a person or a situation in a few seconds, because from an evolutionary point of view, we always had to be pretty quick to do so.
So the reptilian brain has its function, only that it is often activated in inappropriate situations. "
This is because the reptilian brain has four million years and is confused by things like the language and the iPhone.
"We are all day in the office, and the reptilian brain does not understand the relationship, the reptiles have no family, they do not go around with friends, maybe they are side by side but do not interact.
The reptilian brain does not include the higher emotions, it does not understand the complex thinking and creativity, nor any of the other things that make us human.
When we are in stressful situations hijacks human-namely that of rational thinking brain, creativity, joint-verbal and sends you into a tailspin.
It happens in all kinds of situations: for game shows, where despite the questions very easy contestants remain silent, but as soon as the time is up the answer he remembers, because that part of the brain is activated again.
So yes, the reptilian brain often puts his feet, makes you think less and talk more, so in these situations you have to try to work with the human brain-and have control of your reactions, rather than acting on instinct . "
But how do we silence our stupid lizard brain and ascend to universal human brain?
Richard works with its clients on techniques that have their roots in mindfulness ( "who is the antithesis of the way the brain works reptilian") to restart the rational thinking and focus on the situation, which is particularly important on occasions where the reptilian brain is conducting the games.
Show the holidays does just that: to pass from one brain to another, from darkness to light, relying on memory.
"Many of us do not think the way you speak to others can not be ok, and that the other person is too polite to point it out," he says.
"When you put instead of running the human brain, you realize these things, and you can either choose to talk about it or to change your attitude accordingly."
And this will cause the other party, going, do you think you are the most charismatic, because you're just a boy-lizard hopes to avoid being surprised by the hawks.
Who is the customer of the type of charisma lessons?
The building has a reception and a too heavy door to push it gracefully.
So much money to be able to live and save fluid enough to pay one to teach you to shake hands.
Employees returning to the psychological profile of what 1) is successful enough to afford to handshakes lessons and 2) still require handshake lessons?
Who's got so high on the social ladder and work without even knowing how hard look in the eyes of the people around him?
More people than you'd think, says Richard, because everyone is afraid that others understand that they are inept.
"Over the years I realized that many people come to me when they have to make a career shooting, especially from the world of finance: they must have a certain influence on other people, be able to handle conflict and make deal with the so-called 'impostor syndrome'. "
You know very well what the impostor syndrome, because you have it: the constant fear, they feel especially the big boys but it is not unknown even to the dregs like me, that one day someone will point out to everyone that you're really a bluff.
"There are many people who work histories of success, and external eye seem to do exactly what they should," said Richard, "but they do not feeling that person, inside."
His job is to help them build a self-confidence, to be stronger than their positive qualities rather than any negative ones, in view to be more present with the human brain with reptilian, and in general not to constantly give and crazy to think he does not deserve anything.
So, charisma, charm and security can be developed by anyone: Richard has taught me that you can blow up like a bomb ego of anyone sneaking his side just after the lunch break, when you have a lot to do:
"Stop pretending that you'll make it."
Now is the time to exercise ourselves in the conversation, and this makes me feel a bit 'a pick-up artist at his first experience with a fedora on his head in a crowded bar on Saturday night.
One of the facets of the charism is, according to Richard, which often goes unnoticed, because the charismatic people listen more than talk: it's fucked up that the most charismatic person is the one who speaks the most.
A person who pampers our ego leaving alone any shit you can think of we seem fascinating because it left us speak, and then we project our love for ourselves to people who prove cooperative in letting resonate, infinite echo .
There is a part of the charisma that has nothing real, factual: it is just creating a space where other people can talk.
However, to get people to open up you have to use open-ended questions, not yes-no questions (why yes-no throw off the cliff a conversation, or makes this conversation ends with you, the one who asked the question, you get control of speech and speak only of yourself, something very very charismatic).
Here is a video of Marco Pierre White that cuts angrily fungi, and is one of my favorite videos to the world.
It was turned back when Marco was kind of a sex god, unruffled, angry, beautiful, and then comes Keith Floyd, pissed in his eccentric and fascinating way, and they make the puree, and Marco a little 'let go because Keith Floyd She is so kind, and for me the video is very relaxing (it's so nice to imagine to be a lunch with Keith Floyd, with him making little drunk noises of satisfaction, eating mashed with your finger, RIP) except for the piece where Marco Pierre White is responding to real asshole to the questions that are made [0: 30-2: 06] with the classic yes-no, from which we have to-if we want to become charismatic together-learning:
The lesson is: pretend that it's all the people you talk to are Marco Pierre White in the nineties, and not give them any hook on which to answer only "yes" or "no" while cutting the mushrooms with the aggressiveness of a Viking .
Here, then, is the time to do exercise with open questions.
Open questions include all those that begin with "how," "where," "when" and "what" -astenendosi the "why" that can be seen as judgmental ( "Why did toppled the buffet table?
and it should be replaced with more cautious circumlocutions and cuddly ( "How come all those sausage roll on the ground?
that require longer answers and complex.
To decide what to do next question, listen carefully to what the other person is saying, and even more carefully to what to them by the way they formulate the answer seems to matter (this also switches in the first action plan the brain human of reptilian).
I know it sounds a manual for beginners, but also in a controlled environment like the one we were in was hard not to lose focus on open questions.
Richard: Imagine that you have just asked me where I was on vacation.
A: We started from Normandy, then we went to Bordeaux, we spent ten days there and then we moved to the Somme for three days.
J: Oh, so you had a machine-no shit, it was a closed question.
J: Ok anyway, why you decided to spend ten days at Bordeaux?
[Richard sadly shakes his head because I'm an idiot] Closed?
This master's degree in by 799 pounds charisma does not work because I still judge the people who go on holiday in France.
Before I left, I asked Richard what are the three golden rules of the charism, to communicate to you, readers devoid of charisma.
"First we must have a pattern," he said, referring to those little visualization exercises (like being on the beach, or in another place where you felt very cool and very much in control of the situation), "shows a situation where you were at your best.
And the third rule is very easy: look in the eye.
If you're uncomfortable it makes you look in the corners, so from now on every time you shake hands with someone schedule by a fraction of a second longer than you normally would.
That week I did the trick of open questions to three people.
I was struggling to force a friend to open up to me in front of a post-office drink, when I decided to throw us there a little 'how, where and when, for 20 minutes until he has told me about his shitty job.
A conversation with open questions with my girlfriend's mother gave the fruit a giant question that she had not slept well the night and the day was so lousy.
To be charismatic, I said, just let people complain and nod occasionally.
Shooting an interview frankly too long with this story of the open questions, and I do not feel like writing it all.
But I guess it's the price to pay to be charismatic to superhuman levels.
That's the moral: the charisma is as much a blessing as a curse.

From Vice