This is the second episode in a series that examines reinventing yourself as a single person. Peter McGraw talks to Kimmy Seltzer, a professional who helps people develop confidence and charisma. Kimmy takes an “outside-in” approach, where she helps people improve their look first and then move onto more social, emotional, and psychological issues. In particular, look out for her “Red Dress moment.”
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Listen to Episode #58 here
The Remarkable Reinventing Kimmy Seltzer
In Solo Thoughts Episode 5, I talk about how single people need a new story, a new narrative, a new way to think about their life. I present the three Rs, recognize, rebel, and reinvent as a way to think about living single in a world that pushes you towards marriage. This episode is part of a miniseries that investigates the reinvention step, how to structure life in order to live it remarkably as a single person. I speak to Kimmy Seltzer. She helps people develop confidence and charisma and what I like about her approach is that it has similarities to my reinvention step. Kimmy takes an outside-in approach where she helps her clients improve their looks first and then move on to more social, emotional, and psychological issues. In particular, look out for her “red dress moment.” You might find it inspirational. It’s a fun conversation where we also cover what makes someone charismatic and you can find out if George Clooney is that charismatic in real life. Bonus materials back for the Solo community. In this one, Kimmy gives you some tips on how to flirt. You can access the bonus material by joining the community Slack channel via the Solo page at PeterMcGraw.org. As always, please rate and review. Tell your friends and family about the show. I hope you enjoy the episode. Let’s get started.—
Our guest is Kimmy Seltzer. She is a confident therapist and an authentic dating strategist. An LA-based expert. She helps people discover confidence, charisma, and connection as a speaker at National Matchmaking Conferences, eHarmony, Neutrogena, UCLA, and iDate. She’s also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, AskMen, and Fox News Magazine, among many others. You can also find Kimmy as the love expert on the traveling live dating show The Great Love Debate and the cable reality dating show, The Romance. Finally find her on her podcast, which I’m going to be a guest, The Charisma Quotient, welcome Kimmy.
It’s good to be here. I’m out of my cocoon.
We are socially distancing. Kimmy, this is an episode that’s part of a miniseries that I’m doing on reinvention. I’ve been experimenting with these miniseries. If I may recap, this is from a previous episode in which I do what I call Solo Thoughts where I don’t subject my guest to my ideas. I only subject my readers to them. I put forth this idea that singles need a narrative. They need a story especially if they are celebrating their singlehood and if they think that their singlehood is going to last a long time, maybe forever. We tell ourselves stories and the world doesn’t give single people a good story about their life. I want to put forth a way for people and a model. I’m a behavioral scientist so I want to put this stuff down.
I call it the three Rs. The first R is to Recognize, to see the arbitrariness and the mythology related to marriage. That is that this is a social construct. It was made up for reasons that aren’t necessarily there to make anyone individual happy, healthy, or better off. The second is to Rebel. This is an act of defiance to recognize that marriage might not be for you. It might not be a good fit. I may not be good at this time of life and that the world can’t tell you what’s good for you. The last one which I want to talk about is this act of Reinvention.
Once you realize there’s this false narrative in the world that you are going to move against it, you have an opportunity to play by a whole new set of rules and you get to recreate yourself in the world. That’s where you come in in part because you help people reinvent themselves among other things and you’ve had your own reinvention. I’m going to tee this up by asking you to tell the world about your “red dress moment.”
I’m glad you asked because I’m like, “We cannot go into this without telling my story,” because I have a story. I always chuckle when people read my bio, it’s been great having all this professional experience and helping people, but the reason why I’m passionate about doing what I’m doing is because of my own transformation, my own reinvention. It was funny because if you were to ask me years ago, when I was practicing as a therapist in Chicago, living my traditional life in my traditional home with my traditional picket fence, I would never have thought that I was going to be here. That was my life. If we could rewind several years ago and there I was. I had a fairly good life. We as a family picked up and we moved across the country to here in La La Land. We land here. You haven’t seen it yet, but there were other issues going on in this fairytale. Do you have a question?
I do. Why the move?
My ex at the time had an opportunity here and I had a family. I’ve always wanted to be in a warm climate. I wanted Palm trees. I was sick of the snow. We took the opportunity and when that happened, it was like the record stopped. Everything that I knew in a traditional sense was collapsing before me. I had no idea what I was going to do with my new life. Here I was a therapist and I should know better. I should know how to get out of my own way, but there I was stuck in this new castle with no friends, a little bit of family and not knowing what I was going to do with my new life.
You know when you look ahead of you and there’s a fork in the road and you could go down one path, and you have a choice to make. The path that I was going down was a dark path and my clothes reflected it. If you were to see me back then, I did not look like how I do. I was this sad, frumpy mom with ginormous black clothes. I still had my nursing bras on and I was not nursing any longer. That shows you how stuck I was in my clothes and in my mindset.
You are wearing fabulous shoes. I noticed them immediately.
Thank you. Men notice shoes, ladies, and vice versa. Here I was, I did all this inner work. I used to work from the inside out. I believe that we had to do that inner work and that’s what I help people with as a therapist. Here I was. I got counseling myself. I had my family and friends rally around me and I still couldn’t get out of my own way. I’ll never forget one day I got out of bed and I looked in the mirror and I was horrified. I said, “I can’t do this anymore. I have to do something.”
I looked at my closet and all I saw were black clothes and a little splash of beige. I said, “I’m going shopping. I’m going to do a little retail therapy. I’m going to get out of this.” I go shopping and what do I do? I pick all the same clothes again. I think I’m up-leveling myself by getting new clothes, but no, they were black and they were three sizes too big. This personal shopper, she was watching me and she comes up and she’s like, “Ma’am, I have been watching you and I think that you should try this one.” She holds up lo and beholds, the red dress. It looked like three sizes too small. I said, “Ma’am, that’s sweet of you, but that’s not my size.”
Was she young and hip?
I don’t even remember. I remember in my mind, the figure of her holding off that red dress. All the department store people always wear black anyway, which I thought was funny because she’s holding up a red dress and she’s in black. I said to her it’s too small and it’s red. That’s not me. She said, “That is you. That is your size. Try it on.” That was my “red dress moment.” She hit me over the head with that red dress and I collapsed. I came to and I said, “She’s right. I’m going to try that dress on.” I remember trying it on begrudgingly and putting it on. I twirl around like Cinderella and I looked in the mirror.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. I saw almost a princess before me and I haven’t seen that woman in a long time. I bought that dress as a costume almost because I still don’t believe it, but I was going to go out into the world and wear it and marinate in it and see what happened. I walked out into the world in the red dress and all this magic that you heard in my bio started happening to me. New suitors began to come my way. I started getting noticed, my confidence started growing and I realized there was a symbiotic relationship between the outer and the inner and that this wasn’t superficial stuff. I had to viscerally feel something in my body and see myself differently in order to create change and movement for me. I realized that the black clothes that I look back on were a cloak. It was to keep me invisible from what I used to call aliens.
I was scared of you guys. I’m not going to lie. My black clothes was a way to keep me invisible. Putting myself in a red dress and getting used to being seen, complimented, embracing that, and seeing myself as a sexy woman again was huge. From that moment on, I realized that I think people need to take action and do things in action in order to create change. Now, I work from the outside-in. How my Charisma Quotient Formula was born was looking at people’s outside first, starting with what I call “style intelligence.” We’re going to be intelligent here. I’m going to bring intelligence right to the table.
The style intelligence is your first impressions, how you market yourself, your body language and your clothes. I then go inward and work on emotional intelligence, how we express ourselves, vulnerability and authenticity. How we express our feelings so that we connect with one another. The third pillar is social intelligence. That’s how we manage interpersonal communication. That’s how we interact with the world. Before COVID had, I used to do these wing girl sessions where I go out and help people and that includes flirting. How we give signals and how we connect with others. I now look at people as a ginormous puzzle and it’s looking at those three pillars and saying, “Where are the pieces that are missing to plug in to make it whole and to create new patterns for people?”
We’re going to return to the flirting with the bonus material.
Do you like how I flirted with that to tease people about that?
Indeed. We’re going to return to that at the end for folks from the Solo community. You have these three pillars, the first is style intelligence. The second one is emotional intelligence and the last one is social intelligence. This is not stepwise. Do you have style on the foundation and then emotional and social? Do you start with one?
I start from the outside. I start with style because if you think about the other two and when we work on the inside, it takes time to create new habits and patterns.
It may take years.
Sometimes beyond years and sometimes never, but there is a thing about style.
It happens in an instant.
Which happened to me in my “red dress moment,” which happens to endless clients that I’ve worked with when they walk out of the dressing room and suddenly they walk out a little taller and feel a little sexier. There’s a lot of research out there. I know you do research on humor. I do the same thing with images. Image, if you look at the definition is how people perceive you and that determines how people treat you.
It determines how you feel about yourself.
It is symbiotic. I love that because there are not too many things in life that you get that instant gratification other than Bumble and Tinder, but you get my point. That is something that is workable and it also increases your confidence big time.
For the regular readers, some of what Kimmy is saying has been reflected in some previous episodes. We had an episode called Clothing The Solo where these topics have come up a little bit. The idea is that not only does it when you dress well, you feel more confident, but then people treat you better, which then has this feedback loop, which I think is good. It also is related. What got me excited about your red dress moment when I read about it was that it’s related to our The Solo’s Promise episode, where we talk about this alternative narrative that is fairytale-based, that’s not hero-based. Kim Hudson wrote this book called The Virgin’s Promise. It’s about internal change, which allows people to break out from human domestication from the world that they live in, that they don’t quite fit in. One of those beats in the narrative is dressing the part. She uses Cinderella putting on the dress as an example of that moment where Cinderella captures a taste of what this other life might look like.
I didn’t even know that she uses Cinderella in the story.
I agree with you about how it can be done quickly. As part of this reinvention, as I’m imagining it, I have this what I call you’re tidying up process. How do you tidy up your life? Many of those steps in tidying up your life are external steps and they exist for the same reasons that you’ve identified. One is they’re fast, effective, noticeable and you get a feeling of accomplishment. That might be tidying up your workspace and your living space, getting rid of things and the things that you’ve outgrown in your life. One of those things might be tidying up your hair and your clothing in part because those things can be so profound. This keeps coming up as a theme. It’s wonderful to not only hear your own personal story and how this set you on this entirely different path in terms of career approach and not that you’re getting compliments, but you’re your entire path, a fork in the road that you’ve taken a different fork.
I learned that when I turned around and I went to the other yellow brick road that I kept collecting tools in my little basket-like Dorothy along the way. With each life experience and with each client that I’ve served, there’s more and more information that I’ve gathered and how to help people both outside and in. To me, empowerment comes from when people have that confidence. I call myself a confidence therapist and an authentic dating strategist. I used to call myself a dating coach like everybody else but I think it’s beyond that. People are ready for strategies and an action plan because at some point, everything can be in your head and analysis paralysis kicks in. At what point do you put down something like a blueprint for yourself so that you create that change?
Let’s talk through these pillars. The style intelligence, my guess is you’re not only pushing people to make these changes, try new clothes, tidy up their look, but you’re also teaching them how that they can do that moving forward so they can make those decisions in the future. What would that look like?
It looks different for everybody. There’s a formula that I call the three Cs. It’s an easy thing that everybody can do even in their own closet. It’s a good way for them to understand what their body type is and what looks good on them so that they can. My whole thing is I want people to learn how to shop on their own, how to feel good and empower them to do it on their own. The first C is what I call Confidence clothing. Everybody has something in their wardrobe that they feel confident in. If they have a date or they have an interview. It’s something they grab that is their usual outfit. Take a look at that outfit and determine what do you do about that? Is it something that you feel comfortable in? Do you get complimented on it? What’s the cut? Does it flatter your figure?
The second C is the Cut of the clothes. I’m scientific in the way I approach clothes. It’s not me being a stylist from LA and say, “This is where this is fabulous.” I like to teach people about their body type. If you’re a woman, there are five. If you’re a man, there are three body types. You measure yourself if you’re a woman, your shoulders, waist, and hips, and determine what body type you are. My guide goes over what clothes flatter that figure and what clothes to stay away from. That makes a huge difference in the way that you look and that creates confidence in your clothing.
The third C is your Colors. Color is huge when it comes to attraction, when it comes to power or when it comes to sales. There’s a lot of psychology with colors. I love teaching people those three Cs first and from there understand what’s missing in their first impression. What’s interesting about first impressions is that when you do studies on this inside the brain, what happens, first impressions are only seven seconds.
It’s fast where people come to these judgments. They don’t even know they’re making the judgments.
No. The two things that happen in the brain are they’re making their judgments and assumptions based on the clothes that people wear and the attitude. That’s it. People get caught up like, “What do I say?” It’s not even as important as what to say, but how you show up. Ninety-three percent of communication is nonverbal. That’s the exciting part. I love working with body language and close at the same time in ways of improving their attraction factor, their approachability and how they’re marketing themselves. I like to come at it as at a marketing angle because that also includes online photos. I do a lot of work with people’s online photos, and it can make a huge difference by changing up people’s positioning, clothing, and lighting and who will find them. It’s not about changing who you are. It’s about marketing yourself so that people get to know who you are. That’s a big thing that a lot of people don’t get.
They don’t think of dating like a sales funnel. You’re feeding prospects into this thing that eventually you’re hoping some good ones pop out at the end that you can convert.
That’s an algorithm. When you change your pictures, you’re going to change the inventory that you attract. It’s that simple. Also, you’re only as good as your worst picture, you could have great pictures and there’s that one picture that’s killing your first impression and you may get passed up from your soulmate because you marketed yourself poorly.
A good date, you don’t have to put too much pressure on it. Confidence, cut, colors and you have some resources for folks on this?
I’m happy to give your readers my free guides.
I like the idea of starting with the external. This reminds me of a powerful book that I read when I was making my own reinvention in my late 30s. It’s called The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. It feels like Dale Carnegie-esque. It’s an older book. It’s a little out of touch with the modern-day, but nonetheless, it’s very uplifting and motivating. He talks about the importance of setting big goals and believing that you can do these things in order to set yourself in motion. One of the things he talks about is the way we move through the world and the way we behave in the world and thus how it makes you feel about yourself and how it makes people treat you and think about you.
I remember this correctly because I walk fast. I’m a fast walker. I’ve got places to go. I’ve got long legs and I like to move. I sometimes felt a little self-conscious about that, but he encourages people to walk faster. He says, “Walk 25% faster.” It says to the world, “That person has some to be,” versus the person who’s moving along slowly. It’s an energizing activity in a sense. I’m not prescribing that per se. I’m already pumped up.
Can I add something to that fast walk? As long as you’re making eye contact while you’re doing it. This pertains to the flirting piece and creating opportunities to meet people. I’ve worked with many people who are fast walkers and they are missing all these people who are checking them out and opportunities to connect with people. Women are notorious for that because they’ll be looking down and walking fast. I was coaching this one woman and she’s a badass in the financial world. She was ready for her next board meeting. I’m like, “Where are you going so fast?” She’s like, “We’ve got to get to the bar to go flirt.” I said, “Do you realize that from here to the bar are still opportunities to flirt?” I think the movement and energy are super important, and also being mindful of your body language that’s matching that too, as part of the attraction factor.
You work on this process, the external stuff. You make this change and it can be relatively fast. You start to dive internally with your clients. What does that look like? How do you help someone work on their emotional intelligence or social intelligence?
This is where being a therapist for many years comes in. I can’t imagine doing what I do without being a therapist because, for me, we all have a different story. We all have different journeys that shape us. I like to sit down and get a good history from people from the time they were an embryo all the way up to now. Understanding their family dynamics, their ascribed roles growing up, and their experiences in school. Everything that has shaped them because if they’re not happy with their dating life or they have attracted a certain pattern of people, maybe they’re attracting narcissists or emotionally unavailable people. It’s backtracking and being a detective and saying, “Where did it come from?”
It’s not to dwell on it, but it’s to have an understanding of it to help people push forward and make some changes. I like to teach people hands-on stuff. I have a lot of formulas and a lot of role-playing that I like to do with people. I have a formula called the social engagement formula and it helps with the social intelligence too, but it’s moving conversations from factually-based conversations that are dry and boring. That’s where people come back and say, “That was the most boring date. It felt like an interview,” to something that’s more fun and storytelling and emotive. Emotions and feelings are a big piece of my work. I drive that home. It’s one of the first things that I like to do with people and teaching emotional intelligence and the way that they use feeling words as they’re even talking and telling stories because it’s a big switch from how you connect with people to describing something.
Not all of my readers are interested in dating. I understand many of the people who work with you as clients, dating is their pain point in life, but the stuff that I hear you talk about seems it can help people in their friendships, family relationships, and professional life. This idea of moving from facts to feelings can be useful with a sales prospect with your boss and with your direct reports. To bring it back to you for a moment, your red dress moment, it may have changed your dating life, but it also sounds like it changed your professional life primarily. As you work through this internal stuff, what are the kinds of applications in these other areas?
I’m glad you mentioned that because I straddle both worlds of love and business. I do a lot of work with people who are not single and helping them with their life overall. It’s funny, no matter where people come from, everyone says that when they start working on this stuff, it improves their life overall dramatically. Their friendships start changing for the better. People have made drastic moves in their life. It’s a realization. That’s why I like to work more holistically than that because I tell people all the time, even though you’re hiring me as the dating coach lady or a confidence coach lady, I want you to know that this is more about your life. It’s more about making these changes.
Even if it’s the customer service agent is going to give you better customer service as a result of this. Let’s talk a little bit more about these formulas and things that you work with for this emotional and social intelligence. What’s another example of something that you might work with someone? They’re dressing the part and they’re starting to recognize the opportunities that exist from brief interactions to deep ones. What are the other things that you see that people struggle with? How do you help them?
A lot of the people that I work with tend to be these wonderful, warm caretakers, but almost to a fault where they lose themselves. They’re not demanding enough for themselves. They are having a hard time setting boundaries, being vulnerable and authentic. A lot of shapeshifting occurs where they’re morphing into something else that they know that others want to see of them to be liked. Understanding where people are having trouble in this emotional and social intelligence and how it’s showing up and working with that.
This is counterintuitive, what you’re talking about. First of all, the world wants you to behave in certain ways. People will conform because they want to be liked and they don’t want conflict and anything, but the world doesn’t like people who don’t have a backbone, who will say yes to everything and will become the thing that you want them to become. People like authenticity even if it makes them uncomfortable at times. I like that you are honing in on this tendency for people to be pleasers at the cost. If you try to please everyone else, you can’t make yourself happy. I believe that because you get pulled in too many directions. In that way, you’re no longer an authentic person. If you’re reinventing yourself, you ought to reinvent yourself into the best person that you can be.
When I asked the question like, “Who are you?” This is where the reinvention is. Many times, people are like, “I don’t know.” They’ve been conforming, shifting, and shaping themselves into something that other people want of them that they never formed their own identity. That’s where the reinvention comes in. It’s like, “Who are you separate from your partner, your coworkers and your friends?” It’s almost a time of pulling in. I call it a selfish time. When people work with me, they know this. I say, “While you’re working with me, I want you to get selfish.” For caretakers, that is a hard word to hear. It’s crucial and in your efforts to be nice and avoid conflict, you’re creating more conflict.
You’re going to disappoint people.
That’s where passive aggression comes in. That’s where all of those dynamics. It’s hard for people, I like giving homework assignments to people where they’re saying no throughout the day when there’s something that they don’t like. I’ll never forget. There was a woman I was working with and we were up in the Bay Area and I was coaching her. On one side of the sidewalk, it was shaded, on the other side, it was sunny. We were walking on the shady side and she’s shivering. I was wondering when she was going to say something. She’s like, “Kim, do you think maybe you want to go to the sunny side? Would you enjoy the sun?” I stopped her and I said, “Would you like to go to the sunny side? Would you enjoy being warmer?” She looked at me and her eyes filled with tears.
It’s such a powerful moment.
It was. She’s like, “I don’t think I ever tell people how I feel and what I want.” I said, “What if you started now?”
I have a saying on the podcast and I hope people never get sick of hearing it which is “ask for what you want.” The world does not want you to ask for what you want because then they have to react to versus you to react to them. It’s a powerful thing to identify. You changed that woman’s life with that observation.
It was interesting because from that moment on, she caught herself as she was doing that and how that had this ripple effect on who she was even attracting. I see this also happening a lot in my practice where people who are caretakers who don’t express their needs or set boundaries and express their feelings often attract takers or narcissists or fixer-uppers because that’s where their confidence lives. Their confidence lives in taking care of others. If they are stripped from that and have to take care of themselves, it’s almost they don’t know who they are. It’s getting comfortable with that discomfort.
I have to point out, the worst form of shapeshifting would be for someone to pursue a relationship because the world says you should be in a relationship. “Everybody else is partnering up, everybody else is having kids, I guess it’s what I’m supposed to do,” and not, “I want this thing.” It so happens that other people happen to want it. That’s why I talk about this. I want to use powerful language. It’s an act of rebellion to be able to say, “This is not right for me.”
I love that you caught me earlier about not putting so much pressure on the soulmate or the partnership. One of the things that I do with people, especially if somebody has been more of a relationship person, is I tell them they’re not allowed to get in a relationship until they have had the experience to get to know themselves and almost date themselves is to embrace it. I talked to someone before I came here and he’s been a relationship person his whole life. I said, “What would it be like to taste all the candy? You’ve only tasted a Hershey bar and a Gobstopper. You have no idea what else is out there.” He’s like, “There are other flavors out there?” I said, “Yes, but you don’t know that yet.” What would it be like to date without getting attached? That’s foreign for people, but it’s a huge part of people’s journey.
I want to ask you about charisma. This is one of those words that everybody knows. I know charisma when I see it. It’s the Supreme Court definition of pornography. You know it when you see it. We know that this is a highly valued trait, but I don’t get the sense that people, may seek to get fit. They may seek to build wealth. They may seek to build confidence, but I don’t get the sense that many people seek to build charisma. The initial step is to know what charisma is if you want to do it. What is charisma? Do I have it?
I’m glad you asked. More importantly, do you have it?
Less importantly, but I am curious. How do I develop it?
I love the word charisma because it summarizes a lot of what I teach. I was trying to think about what is it that I’m doing with people? When the word charisma came up and that’s how my podcast name came about, The Charisma Quotient. There’s some intelligence to charisma. What research says is that no one is born with charisma, which I thought was fascinating too. It’s something that’s learned. That is why I like it because I believe that it’s never too late to learn and everybody can get it. It’s a magnetism that draws people to one another. When you create that magnetism, that’s what creates attraction, confidence and connection. It’s all of those things that we all inherently crave yet we make it more complicated than it is and we think we’re doomed.
I believe that charisma and confidence are closely intertwined and the way that I see confidence, I define confidence as experience. I don’t believe there’s one person out there that’s not confident. Why? There’s always a place in somebody’s life where they are confident in and it’s looking at that area and saying, “How did you get more confident?” It’s because you’ve had positive exposure to it and practice around it. When you have practice and it builds your confidence and you can become charismatic, people like you, you become attractive, but more importantly, you like you. That’s what attracts people.
It’s counterintuitive, but I see that to be the case. Let’s say I want to improve my charisma. How do I do it?
I think charisma is also personal. It’s to the eye of the beholder, but it’s about when you look in the mirror, do you like yourself? Those three areas, style, emotional and social IQ are the ingredients to charisma. It’s looking at how do I like my style. Your style is great, for instance. You can’t see him, but he has these great red pants. I think that takes confidence to have maroon, red pants as a guy. I love that. He’s well dressed.
I’ve got two colors. I’m a gray and blue color-guy.
Yes, because you have blue eyes, the gray-blue brings out some of the blue-ish in your eyes and you’re well-groomed which women appreciate. We don’t ask for much but trim the nose hairs. It helps. These things matter. Looking at your emotional intelligence, how do you express yourself? How do you show vulnerability and authenticity? You know the answer to that question, people will have a sense about that in themselves because I think of a lot of people when they come to me, they say, “I know that I’m a little slow to warm up. I know I’m a little bit guarded. I don’t let people in until I trust them.” The work is what if you let people know who you are right away? What’s scary about that?
I’ve experienced this analogy in Asia and Australia and it’s are you an egg or are you an avocado? People will say, the Japanese culture is an egg-like, hard shell, but once you breakthrough, you get everything. The other one is the Australian culture is like an avocado. It’s soft, but you’re never getting into deep, into the pit. It has a different feel to it. I’m speaking in big cultural generalities, but you can apply the egg-avocado idea to an individual. Are you one of those people, slow to warm up, but once you get in, you get everything? I recognize it’s imperfect. There are other foods that you can use for this. I want to ask this question as an extrovert and that is I don’t get the sense that extroversion is necessary for charisma.
No, it is not. In fact, 80% of my clients call themselves introverts. What’s funny is that all these people who come in saying, “I’m such an introvert,” when they leave my coaching program, they look like an extrovert. Sometimes they falsely identify themselves even as introverts simply because their fears are defined as introversion. When people get past those fears, they realize, “I can do this.” I have a term for what happens to people, extroverts, and introverts. I call it the charisma glow. It happens to people who experienced this process. They’ll say, “Kim, my family, and friends are saying that I’m glowing. They’re asking me if I lost weight or did I get a facial.” I said, “You’ve got the charisma glow.” They’re like, “I can’t believe it.” It’s not me. I’m putting a flashlight and showing them the light or where to go. It takes people who want to do the work and start shifting in their life to create that for themselves.
Let’s give some people some examples of charismatic people. I did not give you this homework assignment. I’m putting you on the spot. Who are some people that you would consider to be charismatic especially ones who might not fit the exemplar charisma? I think of George Clooney.
I met George Clooney and this was fascinating. It was an amazing experience. When I walked into the room, all these A-listers are there. I was in awe and I saw George Clooney in the corner. I was saying to myself, “I wonder if he is charismatic in person as he portrays himself on camera.” I have to back him up, he is that guy.
I get the sense he’s acting when he’s acting. That’s what makes George Clooney such a good actor.
He is. Here’s what I saw that made him charismatic to me is that no matter who he spoke to, he was focused on that person. It didn’t matter if it was a little old lady or the hottest model in the room. He made everyone feel they mattered and because of that, you could see the body language of the people receiving that from him feeling good. You could see how close he would talk to people, how he would look at them and how he would make people laugh. It’s exemplified not by what people say, but how they make people feel and the body language that is surrounding them and the way he would float through the room and moves. It was powerful. You see a lot of politicians doing that.
They are obvious candidates.
A lot of people then would argue, is that authentic? Actors and politicians, people who are good speakers. You can be charismatic and unauthentic and you can be charismatic and authentic. I don’t think it’s one and the same, but charisma is magnetism. It’s that pole that people have on one another.
Who’s the female side?
Sandra Bullock. I think she’s charismatic.
She’s is quite authentic.
She’s funny and she has that magnetism. It seems people like her. She’s likable. I think the likability factor is huge in charisma.
It’s not a surprise that she was the lead in Miss Congeniality. We’re going to wrap up here and for people in the community, if you want to learn more from Kimmy, we’re going to talk a little bit about flirting. How to do it should you want to flirt or should you want to teach your friends who need to learn to flirt because you’re tired of listening to them complain about how they are suffering in the world of dating? This is part of a series that I’m going to do on reinvention and hearing you talk about this stuff and listening to your approach, especially one that you’ve helped people reinvent themselves has me excited. I’m in the ballpark with these ideas. Do you have any parting advice, especially for people who are single for now or forever, who are celebrating their singlehood? They’re looking at this as a special time in their life, a time for opportunity and they’re looking to kickstart this reinvention process.
Yes, and what I would say is that people love people who love themselves. When you are in reinvention, it’s about self-love without being esoteric. When you get to the place where you look in the mirror and you love what you see both outside and in, that’s when you know you got to that point where you could have anything whether it’s a partnership or relationship or remaining single. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about you. When you learn how to be alone, separate from a partner, that’s a huge transition.
When I went through my rites of passage, there were so many beautiful things that had to happen. It’s like you go back to being an adolescent all over again, getting your mojo back and doing the dances late at night as an adult. It almost feels crazy, but it’s an important time to pull in and reinvent yourself. This is a time also where people get a health kick start. They get a new style. They start dating people they never dreamed they would date before. It’s an all-important process of being happy with you.
That’s well said and I think people should be unapologetic about being selfish in the sense that if you want to be selfless, you need to first be selfish. I used the safety cards and the safety briefings on an airplane, you put on your oxygen mask first before helping others. Kimmy, this was fantastic. I appreciate you doing this. I want to say thank you. I appreciate you.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you too. I feel we can go on and on with this.
Important Links
- Solo Thoughts Episode 5 – Previous episode
- The Charisma Quotient
- Clothing The Solo – Previous Episode
- The Solo’s Promise – Previous Episode
- The Virgin’s Promise
- The Magic of Thinking Big
- https://EliteImageMakeovers.com/
- https://www.Instagram.com/kimmyseltzer/?hl=en
- https://Twitter.com/kimmyseltzer?lang=en
- https://Podcasts.Apple.com/us/podcast/charisma-quotient-build-confidence-make-connections/id1269595477
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/kimmyseltzer/
About Kimmy Seltzer
Kimmy Seltzer is a Confidence Therapist and Authentic Dating Strategist. An LA-based expert, she helps people discover confidence, charisma and connection as a speaker at National Matchmaking Conferences, eHarmony, Neutrogena, UCLA and iDate. She is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, AskMen, and Fox News Magazine. You can also find Kimmy as the love expert on the traveling live dating show The Great Love Debate and the cable reality dating show, The Romance. Also, find her on her podcast, The Charisma Quotient.
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