Introduction

This book is about practical, actionable steps you can take to drastically improve your life, our financial situation, your leadership skills, and your emotional and financial freedom.

Software engineering requires discipline. You see, in order to function as a software professional, you might have learned some abstract concepts. Then you might have spent a lot of time with a computer, that did exactly what you told it to do. Even if this task was to format itself. As designing and implementing software solutions is a complex riddle, skilled developers tend to derive a lot of pleasure out of solving problems in practice. For many of us, coding is playtime.

Unfortunately, in social situations, we tend to lose our safe environment. For this reason, at some point in our lives, many of us, myself included, suffered from shyness, anxiety, emotional numbness, we felt uncomfortable in social situations, and we were afraid of initiating contact with people we perceived as higher status than us.

If you have the same struggles, I fully understand your situation. I have been there myself. More importantly, I have found a way out, so I can show you what you can do to create new life experiences.

Even though I came from a pit of self-judgement, low self-esteem, today, I am grateful for everything that happened to me. These experiences made me look for answers beyond what most people never experience in their lives.

My Story

You may already know me from my career blog, devcareermastery.com, from my tech blog zsoltnagy.eu, or from one of the many courses I have authored with Packt Publishing or Sitepoint. Indeed, I went through an interesting journey of improving my communication and presentation skills.

During that time, I focused on improving my leadership skills, as I started with leading just one person, and today I am leading a department of thirty people.

My salary has also skyrocketed throughout these years. Currently, I am getting multiple offers a week to my LinkedIn inbox and email addresses, and have the opportunity to work with excellent professionals.

I have participated in more than 500 tech interviews as an interviewer, and know the ins and outs of what developers do to get hired.

Based on these accomplishments, you may think, it is easy for me to write about how to be charismatic in your career. After all, I have all the reference experiences I need to feel charismatic, right? Wrong. In reality, nothing is further from the truth.

I have not always been the person I am today. In fact, I grew up as a very shy, somewhat antisocial person. My father left us when I was two. For this reason, I went to school as an insecure child, and my parasidic classmates picked up on it very well. So they bullied me on a daily basis, making my school years a horrible experience.

On top of that, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, but she refused to have it treated. Doctors claimed, they could have saved her, had she acted on time. Even though I kept telling her that she should go back to the hospital, she refused. So my unconscious mind registered, I was not man enough to save her from certain death. I thought of myself as a low status person who does not have any inner strength to accomplish anything. As a fallout of this experience, during the early years of my professional career, I was physically shaking in the presence of secure people, because I compared myself to them and concluded that I was not good enough.

I knew one thing that caused me some relief from everyday life: studying. I literally achieved my way to success. When it came to securing my skills, people wanted to team up with me. When it came to partying and fun, they chose others to mingle with. Back then my reaction was that I would build the cornerstones of an extraordinary life by devoting every energy I had to studying.

While I was building my life through getting good grades and studying, I realized people who were less skilled than me sometimes moved ahead faster. They were better risk takers, because they were not burdened by the same fears that I had. They had better social skills, as they enjoyed being around other people instead of being afraid of them. I admit, I hated their guts because of this. My rationalization was that they didn’t deserve succeeding as I worked harder. Now I know that my unconscious hated the idea of success through social skills, because I didn’t have these skills back then.

During my first years as a software engineer, when it was my turn to talk, I had a hesitant, high-pitched, monotonous voice, and I flooded people with facts. My monotonous voice accompanied me for a long time. I became a leader, because I was the only person in the team capable of taking responsibility. Thanks to leadership, I confronted some of my fears, and I improved in communication and assertiveness.

My insecurities still surfaced from time to time. A couple of years ago, I had to present some good news in front of more than a hundred people in my company. As we started gathering, I felt nervous. While calming myself down by feeding my body with a big dose of sugar, the anticipation of me having to talk didn’t feel that real anymore.

The marketing representatives delivered an excellent speech. But wait a minute, I am a software developer with an analytical mind. How am I supposed to entertain a wide audience? I felt a ball growing in my throat.

After each new speaker finished, I felt fear that it was going to be my turn. And indeed, there it came. I heard, “Next up is Zsolt”. I moved towards the stand energetically and confidently. Unfortunately, this act didn’t last long, because I managed to lose balance on the stairs. Once I regained balance, I was out of breath.

The whole message I had prepared got distorted, because I kept talking fast, and I kept grasping for air. At the same time, one of the founders in the background kept moving his hand horizontally from left to right. I though, he is thinking, “Oh no, I can’t believe how bad he is”.

Eventually it turned out, the founder was dissatisfied, because my voice simply did not reach him. Given I had no idea how to do diaphragmic breathing, and I had no idea how to project my voice, he simply did not hear me. So I paused for a moment, regained my breath, and finished the presentation literally shouting a summary of what I had talked about.

The message itself was not that bad, although it was not as funny as I expected. After the presentation, I went online, and purchased a few public speaking courses to ease my guilt, because back then, I was pretty hard on myself. To this day, I have not finished watching all the content.

This was me. Now I am happy and grateful that I went through all these events. Just think about it. What would your life be like if you never had to face a challenge? You would have nothing to be proud of.

Life offers limitless opportunities. This book will show you how to unlock these opportunities one by one. Because the process I went through can help anyone with moving towards emotional and social freedom.

First I accepted myself as I was, including my flaws and insecurities. Then through years of personal development, I slowly understood that all that happened to me was not my fault. I slowly understood that the highest intent behind my past behavior and my insecurities were to protect me. I thanked my unconscious for protecting me and enabling me to develop skills that help me earn an excellent living most likely for the rest of my life. As I let go of these insecurities, I realized that I had a hypnotic effect on people when I was just myself. My charismatic self was always shining like a sun. It was just covered by a thick layer of clouds.

I worked with small startups of size 5 to 20, a small traditional corporate business, and a 2500 people organization. I have seen consulting companies, tech companies, and software houses. As I opened up, people started showing more and more interest in me.

Fast forward to the present. I am in charge of more than thirty people, sometimes mentoring them on communication. I can cheer a lot of people up just by being myself. During networking events, I can start a conversation with anyone at any time. Oh and speeches: when I feel fear, I breathe deep, and get connected with my core. From the place of certainty, a lot of good things tend to happen.

There is nothing more satisfying than facing your fears, getting out of your comfort zone. I strongly believe that everyone needs this experience.

As I became more and more socially free, responsibility at work followed faster than I ever imagined. My team grew from three to six, then I became a lead of two teams, then I got a whole department.

I want you to experience the same transformation that made it possible for me to enjoy my life and set myself free. That’s my mission.

Your Journey

My promise to you is, I will deliver everything in my power to make a positive impact on your life. The question is, will you follow the steps outlined in this book to experience breakthrough after breakthrough? Or, would you rather settle for a comfortable life and the compromises that come with it?

If you choose to go on a journey with me, congratulations! The journey will be a lot of fun. Sometimes you will experience some challenges. These are part of life. Once you start overcoming challenges, your world view will change about what’s possible.

This book is all about actionable advice, because in today’s world, personal development has become toxic. It is easier to market simple solutions than the truth. You see, people often pay for simple solutions to their problems, even where simple solutions do not exist. You have to take consistent and continuous action to improve your situation.

I know this is symbolic, but by the end of chapter 6, you will have earned back the price of this book with some exercises that are rewarded with money in the real world.

You will go through seven stages to build a charismatic character from the ground up as a software developer. By the end of this book, you will get everything you need to experience emotional and social freedom.

1. You will discover your values and character traits that make you a valuable and naturally charismatic person.
2. You will learn how to demonstrate your values in real life via courage, vulnerability, integrity, and having clear boundaries.
3. You will then solve the charisma-paradox by experiencing emotional states that make you effortlessly charismatic. You will be charismatic without trying.
4. Building on effortless charisma, you will start building some habits that let you experience moments in your life effortlessly that help you be charismatic in any situations. You will train your mind and body to make your naturally charismatic self better defined.
5. You will reclaim your emotional freedom by calling out and eliminating your limiting beliefs. These beliefs act like an inner critic that trick you into believing that you are not charismatic. This is your chance to let go of them.
6. With your reclaimed emotional freedom, you will go out to the real world and do some exercises that make you a better communicator both at work and outside of work. This is where you will reap immediate rewards from taking action, and you will also get a chance to earn back the price of this book.
7. Your career vision will be the culmination of this experience of building your charismatic self.

Each lesson contains some exercises that will unlock some new skills and emotional transformation for you. Together with the knowledge you gain and action you take while going through this book, you will learn how to be naturally charismatic to

- increase your influence at your job,
- gain leadership skills,
- increase your success rate at tech interviews,
- negotiate a higher salary for yourself,
- start a side-business,
- become a more rounded person in all areas of your life.

Who is this book for?

Above all, this book is for anyone who thinks that progress in our professional and personal life does not only depend on learning more facts, technologies, programming languages, or concepts.

Most of us are forced to have developed an analytical mind. As funny as it may sound, I strongly believe, the easiest way to finish a tech university is to repress your emotions. Otherwise, how could you tolerate getting to know so many abstract concepts?

These abstract concepts, computer games, lack of socialization all tax our ability to be socially free.

I hear many of my readers say, Zsolt, come on, I am an introvert, this is who I am! You know what? I am one of the biggest introverts out there. Just look at all the books and courses I have authored. Not only here, but also on PacktPub and on SitePoint. I literally regain my energy when I am alone.

There is no real difference between extroverts and introverts from the perspective of reaching social freedom. You can have the same amount of fun. Being an introvert does not cap your ability to be social.

Introverts recharge by being alone. Extroverts recharge by being surrounded with people. Once you are recharged, you have energy, and social freedom determines how much fun you can experience.

If you feel a bit anxious, a bit stressed, a bit shy around people or challenges, this book is for you.

If you feel you continuously block your emotions around people, and you have to fall back to facts instead of feelings, this book is for you.

There is only one constraint. In order to experience lasting change, you have to go out to the world and do the exercises I describe in this book. Once you gain traction, even exercises that were initially hard will become a piece of cake.

What you can expect from this book

You may ask the question what qualifies me to give you advice on improving your emotional and social freedom.

I was tempted to become a PhD, but I turned it down. I am not a psychologist, bodyworker, method acting coach, or professional therapist.

I could talk to you about my professional history in IT engineering, describing the roles I got promoted to, and describing the things I achieved in my career. Ask yourself, is this what you want to hear?

I believe, if you are reading this book, you are looking for some answers. These answers go beyond career coaching, psychotherapy, or communication coaching. Addressing your situation goes beyond citing some great quotes from excellent authors.

You can get more than ten years of advice from this book, written by someone who experienced hell on Earth on a daily basis, and more importantly, managed to find a way out.

If you went through similar life events, based on my experience, I cannot promise you that this book will be enough for you to eliminate all your insecurities without the help of qualified professionals. I also needed years of therapy. However, if you got better cards than me during your childhood, you may probably feel by now that if I made it, you can make it too. Maybe you just haven’t experienced on a regular basis what your charismatic self is like.

Let the journey begin.