How to meet and chat up more girls- Becoming Mr Charisma

This week the Direct Seduction team met up interviewed and went rolling with Marcus, London’s very own Mr Charisma. He was a great guy and the girls seemed to love him! He runs bootcamps all over Europe and if you get a chance I would definitely recommend taking a session with him if you want to improve your inner game, here is his site  www.yourcharismacoach.com .

So Marcus, tell us a bit about what you do?

I teach charisma skills, which add up to a way to behave that makes you more confident in and happy with yourself, and makes you the kind of person that makes the people around you feel good about themselves and have fun. To my knowledge, it is the only program of its kind.

What’s at the core of charisma training?

Leaving everyone you meet better off and getting used to being yourself, not worrying what people think about you. I’m a geek and I don’t pretend I’m not, and people love me for being a geek!

Oh? What’s geeky about you?

I love old, retro computer games, top trumps, comic books, 80s cartoons and TV shows like Transformers. I like making bows and arrows and building little dams over streams. I like geography and how landscapes are shaped. People have been know to roll their eyes when I talk about how rivers mould the surface of the Earth or how the tectonic plates are rebounding following the last ice age. I like fancy dress parties; I love dressing up in daft costumes such as Mexicans, Werewolves and other daft themes. I especially love Fireworks on fireworks night – I’m just a big kid!

How did you get into this kind of thing?

I’m just a regular guy who was gloomy one day when I was sat at work. All the girls were talking about a really charismatic guy who worked there. This guy was nothing special in the looks department, but boy, when people talked to him he’d make them light up and feel good about themselves, and I couldn’t work out what it was that he’d say to them that was so different to what I was saying.

So you decided to find out what it was?

Yes. It was something subtle in the way he was acting, he connected with people really quickly. He was making people smile. I decided from that point, perhaps six or seven years ago, to try and distil what he was doing because I wasn’t happy in my life in the way I connected with others. I mean, I had friends and had fun but the way I acted didn’t always fit with how I felt in my head. For instance I might see a beautiful girl in a bar and want to talk to her, but would be so afraid she wouldn’t like me I never even tried.

That’s pretty common though, isn’t it?

Yeah, though sometimes I tried but got shot down by her reaction. At the end of my second year in university I was looking at this girl in the bar, and my friend bet me a pint I wouldn’t ask her for her number. For some reason, I couldn’t resist the challenge even though it terrified me, so I plucked up all my courage and I walked over to her – I can see her right now. As I walked up to her I knocked my drink on the floor and it smashed, which didn’t help!

“Hey, let me get your telephone number.” She looked at me and said “No.”

I was absolutely devastated and I turned bright red and walked away. My friend just shook my hand and laughed. He still owes me the pint actually!

Ouch!

So anyway, I found myself on the dating scene and met a lot of girls who I’d have a great time with when I finally plucked up the courage to talk to them but they always saw me just as a friend. I was getting fed up and frustrated, all these people coming into my life, and although I felt like a great guy they weren’t seeing me as a great guy. I’d be in conversations with people but be left out of them, especially when someone else joined, or I’d be uncomfortable at parties and get this knot in my stomach. And I think this affects a lot of people.

But remember, there’s this charming guy from before who didn’t have these problems, he had this glow, this quality about him. He would talk to people about all manner of things, right of the bat! So I decided to investigate, to find out what makes some guys normal and other guys able to just connect with people.

So what did you do?

I dived right into it! I met people from all around the world and heard lots of different theories. Psychologist, hypnotists, people who learnt behavioural mannerisms, body language experts; they all had different ideas about what this spark was that allowed you to connect with someone, but it kept coming back to the same thing, it kept coming back to charisma.

And what did you learn about charisma?

I started to talk to people anywhere and everywhere. I began to hang around charismatic people themselves. Over time I found I could break down all the behaviours and attitudes I saw in charismatic people, and I found that charisma was about five core traits: attitude; spontaneity; charm; stillness and the ability to bond with people.

Tell me us little about those.

Having the right attitude is really important as without it you’ll never be sexy or exciting, you’ll never be a leader. Spontaneity helps you and other people around you to enjoy  living in the moment and have fun. Charm is about making the people you meet feel comfortable just being themselves with you. Stillness is the idea that you should be emotionally unreactive to the moods of others and bonding gives you a real connection with other people, and lets them feel that they can trust you.

How do you teach all this to a person?

Well, each of these things can be implemented by picking up the right habits. Its all about habit. I firmly believe that you can’t change who you are, your essence, but you can change your habits and behaviours. When I started to learn I made myself get into the habit of smiling at strangers, just at everyone I met. Little habits like that go a long way.

Is it hard to learn?

Teaching yourself new habits sounds tough, but that’s usually because most habits you try to learn for your own good are mundane and aren’t much fun. I look for ways to make the habits I teach fun – although smiling at and talking to strangers sounds daunting at first, after a little while it gets really enjoyable; the more you do it, the more you start to get out of it. The secret to being charismatic is finding things you love and filling your life with them. The more you do this the stronger your identity and your belief in yourself becomes.

Why do you choose to teach charisma?

There are two main reasons. Firstly, the most fun I ever had was meeting new people and having adventures with them, and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t have the confidence to go up to and talk to them them, and have fun with them. Secondly I see a lot of pain and frustration in people who aren’t happy because they’re so shy or uncomfortable dealing with people, and I know what that’s like. It doesn’t have to be that way,  and I know that if I can do it, anyone can.