Perform It Until It Stops Being a Performance#
“But I’m not good-looking enough”#
Casanova, by his own description, was ugly, poor and lazy. Two things he did anyway:
Compliment the thing they’re insecure about. Not the obvious feature — the one they’d flinch at. Someone self-conscious about their braces, you say something nice about their smile. It lands differently because it goes somewhere nobody usually goes.
The confidence flip. Lower your eyes, come back up slowly with a slightly appraising look, then break into a warm smile — as though they’ve just passed something. We apparently like people more when they move from seeming unimpressed to liking us, compared with liking us from the start. Approval you had to arrive at counts more than approval that was always there.
“But I’m not confident”#
The idea here is predator calm — slow, deliberate movement. A lion moves like it has time. An antelope moves like it doesn’t.
Two levers:
- Voice. Speak from your chest rather than your throat. Grab your nose and talk, and you’ll hear the difference immediately. Then watch what you do with the back half of a sentence — most people speed up, worried about losing the room. Slow down instead. “I like history, so I watch a lot of documentaries.”
- Eyes. Staring into both eyes at once is unnerving. Breaking away fast reads as nervous. Moving between one eye and the other sits comfortably in the middle. In romantic contexts, the lips join the rotation.
“But I’m boring”#
- Reframe the ordinary. “I want to lose weight” and “I want to feel better in my own life” are the same fact with different reach. Not a lie, just a bigger frame.
- Don’t be relentlessly nice. Constant pleasantness quietly forces other people to perform back at you. Someone who shows a less generous side occasionally gives everyone permission to stop being on their best behaviour. Contradictory is more human than uniformly warm.
- Reflect, but keep your own views. Listening well and playing back what people think is powerful. Agreeing with all of it isn’t — it hollows the whole thing out. You need positions, including a few nobody likes.
“But I’m awkward”#
This is the reassuring bit. Small uncharismatic moments seem to make charismatic people more charismatic overall, not less. Perfect is alienating — there’s nowhere to get a grip on it.
Self-deprecation does the same work. Lincoln’s line when accused of being two-faced: “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” You remind people you’re a person with flaws, and it buys trust and warmth simultaneously.
The thread through all of it#
Every one of these is really about lowering the stakes — for you and for whoever you’re talking to.
The compliment aimed at an insecurity says I saw the thing and it’s fine. The slower voice says I’m not worried about being interrupted. The visible flaw says you don’t have to be perfect here either. That’s likely why the individual tricks work at all; on their own they’d just be technique.
A few small things to try#
- Slow the second half of your next sentence instead of speeding it up
- Compliment one person on something you suspect they’re unsure about
- Move between one eye and the other instead of holding a stare
- Let one awkward moment stand without covering it
