charisma, or focus?

As a self-aware non-charismatic individual, I find it painfully frustrating when others tell me that I should smile. #noneofyourbusiness. But because of this, the concept of “charisma” eludes me.

Charisma as a quality has a history of being divinely inspired & has often been used in religious contexts, so it makes sense to think that charisma has a deity-like, magical element to it. It belongs only to those that are somehow separated from us lay people, those that have been singled out for greatness. Charisma Carpenter is an actress, isn’t she?

While this is what we have been led to believe, a recent study shows that others’ perception of our charisma is based on one quality: mental agility. Did you ever notice how those witty people that can always quickly throw out a pun or a quip just seem more, oh, I don’t know…charismatic? Yeah. This correlation has now been proven by science.

Rather than intellectual genius or off-the-charts IQ scores, focus & speed of acuity create the illusion of charisma. Whomever is most focused on a topic of discussion in a more engaging way than those around them, wit and quips result, & therefore, we get charisma.

Emotional charisma is an additional facet to this concept. We have evolved & been trained to focus on powerful emotion, believing that it it might signal something important to our survival. But when this kind of emotional store is absent or unprovoked, we must learn how to channel this characteristic by eliminating the perpetual mental chatter in our heads, & replacing it with strong emotion. Focus on your emotional history, & channel it into your own personal brand of charisma.

Charisma is focus, be it intellectual or emotional. Speeding up your response time allows you to hone in on a particular situation or emotion. That’s from where the power of charisma comes. The charismatic, out-of-this-world figures that we know are aware of these qualities & effectively play on these characteristics in order to convince us to perceive them in a particular way.

So really what you should gather from this is that charisma is something that we can develop & work toward. Maybe all you other self-aware non-charismatic individuals out there can become self-aware charismatic individuals!

Let me know how that goes.

“first days project.”

Assistant Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies, Michelle Caswell (my professor, to be exact), is changing the immigration game.

As co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) and author of Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia, Dr. Caswell is bringing the issue of immigration to the fore, and changing the mass’ perspective on émigrés living in America.

But quite possibly her most important contribution to the information age is her “First Days Project,” an endeavour in which SAADA, the community-based online archive, solicits & compiles short audio & video segments & written narratives detailing immigrants’ first days & experiences in the United States. While originally intended to record the first days of South Asian American immigrants, the success of this project has led to the inclusion of all immigrants. To date, approximately 250 narratives have been collected and made available to the public.

These stories, in a way, balance out the official records of the immigration process of these individuals. The tales of travels and stresses of entering a new country cannot be recorded in official immigration records, so by obtaining narratives from perspective of immigrants is adding a groundbreaking comparison & crucial addition to creating & expanding native voices in American archival repositories.

This project in indescribably important to the continually developing “salad bowl” culture for which the United States is known. Dr. Caswell & the entire team at SAADA are creating an archival repository that is desperately needed in the United States. The addition of native voices & the sharing of immigration experiences will only bring those living in the United States closer together & aid in bringing about the realisation that we are all just people.

If you have a “First Day,” please visit the link below & share your story.

http://www.firstdaysproject.org/faq