Shadowing Practice: how to be so magnetic it feels illegal - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

We spend $450 billion on beauty products every single year,

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We spend $450 billion on beauty products every single year,

endlessly scrolling through filtered faces on Instagram and trying to match a beauty standard that's literally physically impossible to reach.

And yet some of the most magnetic people in history didn't fit the conventional beauty standards of their time at all.

Think of people like Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, Maya Angelou.

And instead it was down to them mastering a few simple psychological shifts.

And science tells us that actually these traits are completely trainable and you can actually learn to become more magnetic.

If you're new here, my name's Izzy.

I'm a mum, a tech founder,

and Cambridge Train Doctor, and on this channel,

we explore the mindsets and strategies to help you create a life that you love.

When it comes to being magnetic,

the people who have truly masked this art usually make others around them feel both seen and also more alive.

So today, we're walking through the psychology behind real magnetism

and six simple shifts in each category that make you instantly more attractive from the inside out.

And these are shifts that I've experimented with in my own life,

and honestly for me, number five really changed the game.

And to accompany this video,

I've created a completely free set of exercises for each section,

so if you'd like to check it out,

I've left a link in my description down below.

Without further ado, let's dive in.

So what exactly is magnetism?

I like to think of it this way.

Magnetism is the felt experience of being in the presence of someone who makes your nervous system feel safe,

your sense of self feel significant,

and your spirit feel more alive.

And we naturally want to be around people who make us feel this way

because it feels great to feel seen and to feel alive.

When we make someone feel seen we make them feel witnessed,

accepted and like they matter.

And the alive piece is this contagious spirit and joy and connection.

So now let's get into the first shift.

Before you can be magnetic and present with others you actually have to be present with yourself.

And that's because presence is physical, psychological and spiritual.

And so this is all about how you inhabit your body and mind and move through space.

And this stems from the fact that any connection with others needs to start with actually you being connected to yourself.

Present in your body, relaxed,

comfortable, unhurried, confident, no rushing here.

This means that we're starting from a place that we're here for ourselves,

not to manage how others perceive us.

Marilyn Monroe is one of the most studied examples of physical presence.

At the time she wasn't considered conventionally beautiful,

but she redefined what beauty meant just by the way that she held herself.

She was known for entering rooms slowly, deliberately, with complete ease.

No rushing, no performance anxiety.

Director Billy Wilder once said

that she had the ability to make the camera feel like it was the only thing in the room.

And that doesn't come from your face or the way that you look,

it actually comes from the quality of your presence.

One story that I love is the potato sack story,

where a journalist described one of her dresses as tacky

and vulgar and that she would have been better served wearing a potato sack.

And so instead of getting defensive or embarrassed by the criticism,

She actually leaned into it with humour and self-assurance,

where she actually wore a potato sack and did a photo shoot with it,

and she looked incredible.

The way that she held herself,

the way that she responded to the situation,

actually turned this into a huge win for her.

And so through doing this,

she literally proved that she could look great wearing literally a potato sack.

And if you look at the pictures of her photo shoot,

her posture, the way that she holds herself,

hands on hips, shoulders back,

head high, smiling, confident, comfortable,

relaxed, open body language, this is exactly embodying presence.

And so next time that you enter a room,

take a breath before you go in and enter it with presence and intention.

And this realization actually really helped me when I was struggling with social anxiety when entering a room,

feeling a little bit nervous coming into a room.

I would just stop, pause,

take a deep breath into my belly,

and then remind myself that I can actually move slowly.

There is no rush.

Shoulders back, head up, and take a moment to actually take in the room when you enter it and look around,

see okay who is where,

and really knowing that you you are here for yourself.

You're not here to put on a show for others or perform for anybody else.

In the biggest meta-analysis ever done on power poses,

including around 10,000 people, researchers found that whenever participants took power or upright postures,

they didn't only feel better,

but they were actually more confident than if they shrunk themselves or were hunched over.

And it didn't matter whether you were a 50 year old man in the US

or a woman in her 20s in Hong Kong,

because these findings were true for both men and women of all ages,

literally across the world, across cultures.

In the definitive book of body language,

communication experts Alan and Barbara Pease painstakingly trawled through literally thousands of recorded sales negotiations from the and 70s and 80s.

And they found that in these face-to-face business deals,

body language made up between 60 to 80% of the communication that was happening.

They also found that it only takes four minutes for someone to form about 80% of their opinion of you.

And so much of this comes from this sense of presence.

And the second shift is attunement.

Attunement is the skill of tuning your attention to another person in real time so that they feel accurately seen,

heard, and emotionally met through your presence.

And so only from a place of being truly present in yourself Can you then actually attune to somebody else?

And there are a few behaviors that help you to embody this sense of attunement.

Firstly, no rushing to fill awkward moments.

It's not your responsibility to manage the emotions of others.

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The next thing is to make eye contact.

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Psychologists found that whenever a stranger actually looks directly at you in the eye,

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you actually tend to feel closer and more similar to them.

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Just a note here, this is not meant to be a scary, like, murderer stare.

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This is meant to be a warm gaze where you're really seeing them.

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The third shift is to be interested, not just interesting.

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The most magnetic people aren't trying to impress you just by being interesting.

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They're actually genuinely interested in you too.

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This is the central insight from Dale Carnegie's classic book,

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How to Win Friends and Influence People,

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which completely changed the way that I view relationships and communication when I first read it.

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And it's backed by everything in the warmth, competence literature.

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And speaking of books and literature,

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even if you've read a book like,

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let's say, How to Win Friends and Influence People,

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you don't always remember the bits that you actually want when you need them.

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And so, for example, when prepping for this video,

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even though I've read Dale Carnegie's original book at least two times from cover to cover,

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to refresh my memory on the key points,

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I actually turned to this guide from Shortform,

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who are kindly sponsoring today's video.

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If you want to check them out,

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I've put a link in the description down below where you can get a free trial and $50 off the annual plan.

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Essentially, Shortform is a digital library of super-powered guides to thousands of non-fiction books,

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and one way that I use it is that if I'm about to create content,

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film, or I'm writing an outline,

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I can super easily search up a book in Shortform,

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and within seconds, I've already got the quickfire summary right in front of me.

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As you can see here,

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there's a one pager which gives you the big picture of Carnegie's book in under 10 minutes.

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And then if you want the specifics,

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you can go in chapter by chapter with extra content,

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commentary, and even exercises to really consolidate those concepts and hammer them home.

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All of the content on Shortform is curated by their team of human editors and writers.

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So it's quite a significant step up from your average AI generated summary.

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And I'm someone who loves having a great structure,

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which you might have noticed if you've seen some of my videos.

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And every guide in short form is very well organized.

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And so here it's sectioned by fundamentals,

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likability, arguments, feedback, which meant that I was able to dive right into the exact parts that I needed.

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And I ended up saving a whole bunch of time versus

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if I had had to go back to the original book and tried to find any of my notes on that.

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Essentially, I love short form and what they do.

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And so if you'd like to try them out,

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I've left a link in the description down below.

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And that will give you a free trial and $50 off of the annual plan.

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So now let's get back into the video.

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And this was one of my key takeaways from Dale Carnegie's book.

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Imagine that everyone you meet has an invisible sign above their head that says make me feel important,

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and not through flattery but through genuine attention and curiosity.

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And Carnegie wrote

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that you can make more friends in two months by becoming

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interested in other people than you can make in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

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Another way to show that someone is important to you is to use their name.

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Carnegie wrote that a person's name is the sweetest sound in any language to them,

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and so if you repeat it when you first hear it and then use it naturally in conversation,

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that signals to them that you matter.

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And the neuroscience behind this is whenever you actually address someone by their first name,

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their brain's cortico-subcortical auditory attention network gets activated.

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Cortico-subcortical auditory attention network isn't the most catchy name that rolls off the tongue super easily,

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but essentially what that means is

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that part of our brain is dedicated to filtering any sound inputs and raising a little flag of,

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pay attention this is interesting and so

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when you use someone's first name then it raises this flag

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of like oh pay attention this this is something about me this is something to do with me

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and so it makes them feel seen

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and it also grabs their attention the next thing is to remember small details about people follow up on things

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that people mentioned weeks ago if you remember that oh so

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and so actually has this event that they were planning this birthday party for one of their family members Oh,

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maybe check in on, oh,

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how was the birthday party?

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And this is the highest leveraged social behavior that most people actually neglect entirely because it proves your interest was real,

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not just performed.

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And this proof is the difference between something that is a performed signal versus an honest signal.

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The concept of an honest signal is something I learned about

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when I was doing an intercalated year in biological anthropology during my Cambridge medical degree.

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Honest signaling can be defined as when somebody's actions can honestly communicate a real trait

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or intent because the signal is hard to fake or costly so it really reliably predicts what they actually are like.

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A historical example of one of the most magnetic and influential women is Cleopatra.

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And actually, Cleopatra wasn't conventionally beautiful.

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Coins from during her reign show that she had sharp features and a long nose,

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which at the time was not the beauty standard.

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And I know beauty standards are changing all the time and they're a little bit arbitrary,

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but yet two of the most powerful men at the time,

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Julius Caesar and Mark Antony,

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were both captivated by her and fell in love with her.

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And beyond that, she held political power for decades through her charisma and intelligence.

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Cleopatra spoke nine languages, and this wasn't because she had to,

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but because she chose to speak to every foreign dignitary in their own language.

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This is the ultimate honor signal of saying,

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I see you, and I'm going to meet you where you are.

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Plutarch, who was a Greek philosopher,

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said that conversing with Cleopatra had an irresistible charm,

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and the way that she interacted with others was naturally engaging.

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She wasn't performing interests, she was actually educated,

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curious, and genuinely deeply invested in the people around her,

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and her real superpower was making people feel seen and understood and important and like they truly matter.

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And that was the exact same insight that Carnegie had only 2,000 years earlier.

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And there's a Chinese proverb about this,

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which I think about a lot.

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And it goes like this.

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This proverb translates to when three people walk together,

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there must be one who can be my teacher.

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And essentially, it means that whenever you're with other people,

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there's always something that you can learn from them.

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And so whenever I think of this phrase,

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it reminds me to have that beginner's mind when speaking to someone and recognizing that,

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oh, this person has had a whole life worth of experiences and things that they've done and memories,

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which I have almost no idea about.

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And there is always something interesting and important about other people.

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The second section is about making people feel alive.

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The first shift here is to lead with warmth,

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because most people wait to see if someone likes them before opening up.

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But magnetic people flip the script and turn it on its head because they lead with warmth.

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They assume connection and then they let the other person catch up.

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So walk into a room assuming that people like you and leading with liking them back.

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And this isn't actually naive,

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it's a strategic emotional choice to lead and influence that dynamic.

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Studies have found that warmth is the primary dimension that people assess you on.

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Before they evaluate your competence,

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your intelligence, or your status,

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they're asking one key question,

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is this person's intent towards me good?

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And so one experiment that I ran was shifting my interactions with people from just a like polite acknowledgement,

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which was my previous, to actively giving warm energy a smile and greeting them.

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And I noticed that people immediately responded to warmth with more warmth.

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And actually they want to be friendly and have connection.

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You just have to go first.

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Something that really helped me to train this muscle was having a regular compassion and loving kindness meditation practice.

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And this is backed up by research where even just a

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couple of minutes of loving kindness meditation can boost your feelings of social connection,

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empathy, and positivity towards others.

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It helps to rewire your default orientation towards warmth, compassion, and goodwill.

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And that internal shift actually shows up subtly in your face,

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your body language, your voice, without you even trying.

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And this changed the game massively for me.

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The second thing here is to be vulnerable and imperfect.

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Because I used to think that if only I was flawless and perfect,

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then people would like me and accept me.

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Until I realized that this actually wasn't the case at all and is actually the opposite.

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Times where I have tried to pretend like I had it all together ended up feeling more distant than

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when I shared my imperfect, messy humanity and mistakes.

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Because while perfection is impressive,

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it can also either be intimidating or just keep people distant.

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So remember when Jennifer Lawrence famously fell up the stairs

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while accepting her Best Actress Oscar back in 2013 and that became an internet moment?

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This is an example of the pratfall effect in action,

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where they found that making small mistakes like spilling a coffee makes competent people appear more attractive precisely

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because it shows that they are human.

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And another thing here is that vulnerability signals security,

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because only someone who truly feels safe and secure in themselves can afford to show those imperfections.

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And that paradox is part of what makes it magnetic.

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This doesn't mean oversharing or trauma dumping or being self-deprecating all the time or intentionally falling and spilling your coffee everywhere.

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It actually just means being authentic and human in the small moments.

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The third piece of aliveness is passion.

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So in case you didn't know,

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my husband, Ali, is absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter fanfiction.

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And people kind of love this and find this interesting.

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People who are genuinely lit up by something are more compelling to be around and actually just make us feel alive.

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Because this passion is contagious.

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And as humans, we love to feel brought to life.

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Maya Angelou once said that people will forget what you said,

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people will forget what you did,

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but people will never forget how you made them feel.

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And this is what aliveness actually looks like.

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It's not about just having a hobby for a day,

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but it's the accumulated energy of a life fully lived.

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And you actually can't fake that.

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Biographer Alex Haley once wrote about Maya Angelou that when she walks into the room,

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you know she's there.

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It's a palpable thing.

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And that wasn't about how she looked.

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It was actually about the life force and passion that she carried.

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Once when she was interviewed on Oprah,

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she was asked about this presence with which she walks into a room,

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which she has become famous for.

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And she responded, yes, all of my history as an African-American woman,

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as a Jewish woman, as a Muslim woman,

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I'm bringing everything that I ever knew,

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everything good, strong, kind, and powerful.

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I bring it all with me into every situation.

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And so when I walk into a room,

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people know that somebody has come in.

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They just don't know that it's 2,000 people.

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And there was a blog post that I once read which beautifully paraphrased Angelou's approach.

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When you walk into the room with every positive word that anybody's ever said to you,

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with every gentle hand that's ever laid rest on your body,

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you walk into the room with every piece of art that has ever inspired you,

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you walk into the room with every song that you love.

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You walk into the room with your great-grandma's hands and your great-grandpa's determination.

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You walk into a room with all of that and people will say that you have charisma.

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Because it's this reminder that each one of us sitting here right now,

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we are the product of an entire life.

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So many people and interactions who have built us into the person that we are today.

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And every time we walk into a room,

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whether we recognize it or not,

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we are walking into that room,

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carrying all of this, bringing all of this with us.

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And so this redefines charisma as not just a trick or a technique,

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it's actually something accumulated through a life fully lived and a presence built from everything that you've absorbed,

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suffered, loved, learned, and decided for yourself.

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So it almost doesn't matter what the passion specifically is.

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Someone who talks about their passion for 14th century ceramics with

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genuine excitement is more magnetic than someone who doesn't have anything that brings them alive at all.

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And so having these genuine interests,

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intellectual pursuits, or other things like hobbies give you this texture and depth and conversational energy.

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I actually made a whole video about hobbies if you wanna check it out,

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I'll leave a link somewhere over here.

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And so this aliveness dimension of magnetism is actually about the vitality that makes being around you feel activating rather than draining.

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And so now that we've gone through these six shifts to make you the most magnetic version of yourself,

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the next step is to take action.

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So at the end of every single video,

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I always invite you to choose at least two action points that you'd like to take forward and write them down somewhere,

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whether that's on a notepad or in your journal or in the comments below or in an email to a friend,

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the most important thing is execution.

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And if you liked this video,

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I think you'll enjoy this one right here where I share eight game-changing habits of top performers.

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And since you've made it this far,

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feel free to hit subscribe for more self-development videos every week to create a life that you love.

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As always, thank you for watching,

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take care of yourselves, and remember that the journey is the destination.

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I'll see you in the next video.

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Bye!

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Shadowing Practice: how to be so magnetic it feels illegal - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: how to be so magnetic it feels *illegal* - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: how to be so magnetic it feels illegal - Learn English Speaking with YouTube