Being present means simply having a moment-to-moment awareness of what’s happening. It means paying attention to what’s going on rather than being caught up in your own thoughts.

Artur Schnabel once said, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”2

When you’re with a charismatic master—take Bill Clinton, for example—you not only feel his power and a sense of warm engagement, you also feel that he’s completely here with you, in this moment. Present.

The equation that produces charisma is actually fairly simple. All you have to do is give the impression that you possess both high power and high warmth, since charismatic behaviors project a combination of these two qualities. “Fight or flight?” is the power question. “Friend or foe?” is the warmth question.

It’s worth learning how to handle uncertainty, not just because it increases charisma but also because the ability to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity turns out to be one of the strongest predictors of success in business.

The act of committing things to writing has been shown to be critical both in changing a person’s mind 7 and in making imagined stories feel more real. 8 Write in the present tense: “The speech is going well…” Or, even better, in the past tense: “The speech was a complete triumph…”

To paraphrase Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince: perfection is not when there is no more to add, but when there is no more to subtract.

Warmth, simply put, is goodwill toward others. Warmth tells us whether or not people will want to use whatever power they have in our favor. Being seen as warm means being perceived as any of the following: benevolent, altruistic, caring, or willing to impact our world in a positive way. Warmth is assessed almost entirely through body language and

One of the main reasons we’re so affected by our negative thoughts is that we think our mind has an accurate grasp on reality, and that its conclusions are generally valid. This, however, is a fallacy. Our mind’s view of reality can be, and often is, completely distorted.