Monthly Archives: December 2008

How to get Automatic Agreement in Any Situation

How would you like to easily and effortlessly create instant agreement  with anybody, anywhere, anytime? What happens when you imagine being able to walk up to a complete stranger and get them to say “yes.. yes.. yes..” and hang on your every word? If you are in sales, think of the power of increasing your person to persons sales skills, your telephone sales skills, and you presentation skills.  Is this something you’d like to learn? Is this something you’d like to be able to use at will to quickly and naturally increase your income, and not only make friends easily, but to truly develop lasting relationships?

Well it’s simple to learn, easy to remember, and so natural to use, that when you are able to take this skill that you’ve likely already been using, and use it consciously, you will be amazed at how incredibly effective it is.

Sales professionals of all kinds, door to door, negotiators, telephone sales, refer to this as the “Yes set.” Linguistically, it is commonly called “Tag Questions.”  This is how they work. After you make a statement, they invite the person you are speaking with to almost automatically, without even thinking, agree with you.

Here’s how to make them. Take any statement. Let’s try “It’s raining.”  The first part is “It’s,” which is a contraction of “It is.”  All you do is reverse it, by making it negative. “It is” becomes “It is not”. Then you change the statement, “It is not,” into a question. “Is it not?” And there you have it. Then, when you add it on to your statement, it becomes “It’s raining, is it not?” or “It’s raining, isn’t it?”

Let’s look at some more examples.

Today is sunny, isn’t it?

It sure was cold yesterday, wasn’t it?

You like spaghetti, don’t you? (The ‘do’, in ‘you do like spaghetti’ is usually left out, but you can use it anyways.)

They sure are cute, aren’t they?

This sure is a great blog, isn’t it?

You sure are going to tell are your friends about this site, aren’t you?

Be sure when you say the “question” part, your voice goes down, like you are making a statement. You don’t want to sound unsure of youself, do you?

So, how do you use this? Whenever you want somebody to automatically say “yes.”

You like it when people say yes to you, don’t you? And you can already think of many ways that you can start to use this technique every day, can’t you? And if you imagine now, what it will be like when you develop the confidence that naturally comes from getting quick and easy agreement from people, you really do realize how much easier it will be to make life fun, don’t you?

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Instant Conversation Skills

Who is that over there?  Wow. They look kind of interesting. Should you go talk to them? What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t know what to say?

Have you ever had these thoughts? Evil blobs of mind poison that instantly crippled any short lived hopes you’d had of maybe being able to make a friend?

Well, you are in luck, because I am going to not only show you a foolproof way to start a conversation with a complete stranger, but how you can make them do all the talking, and end up thinking you are the stunning conversationalist.  Ready? Let’s go.

You will need three basic tools.

1) How to form a tag question.

2) How to ask interesting, open ended follow up questions.

3) Basic body language reading skills.

First thing you need to do is approach casually, and stand a few yards from them for a couple of minutes.  Just find any old excuse to go hang out near their “space.” While you are standing there, notice something interesting about the environment. The trees, the weather, anything that makes you think, just a little bit, wow, cool. Let’s say you see a cool leaf on a tree. (This is just an example, if there are no trees in your situation, this probably won’t work out so well). Look at the leaf, imagine out how cool it is. Try and think of all the stuff that’s happened since the big bang, and here this leaf is right here, being all leafy.

Now you make your move. Bust out your brilliant tag question.

“Wow, that is a really cool leaf, isn’t it?”

Be sure when you say the “isn’t it” part, you don’t make it sound like a question. Make it sound like a statement. And smile. Next come your wicked body language skills. If the person responds with “um, yea” and looks like he or she just found a cockroach in their kool aid, then move on, the conversation is over. If they look at the leaf, and then at you, you’re in. Bonus points if they match your smile.

Next you ask your open ended question. About anything that’s easy to talk about, the surroundings, party, bar, study session, whatever.

“So what do you think about….” and insert any old topic. Then as he or she is speaking, watch their face for signs of life.  Whatever they say when their face lights up, grab it.

Watch them talk, watch their face, and ask them for more information about things they seem happy about. Nothing too personal. Some good questions are:

How do you feel about..

What do you like about…

What is your favorite part about…

Just pick out a few words here and there, follow up on them while you speak, and they will think you are the greatest conversationalist since Dale Carnegie. Make sure to throw your name out in there someplace, don’t wait for them to ask. They’re probably nervous. It’s not everyday people get approached by a wicked word master like you!

Make sure to come back often, and tell your friends, as I will be posting several “How To..” articles that can easily improve your life in many ways.

Instant Charisma

How would you like to be able to develop such powerful charisma that you naturally and automatically turn people’s heads when you walk into a room? How good would it feel to realize that people can’t wait to see you, talk to you, just hang around you? What happens when you imagine, now, all the reasons why having such incredible charisma can easily lead you to not only be able to achieve your goals more quickly, but almost unconsciously enlist the support of others in doing so?

Yea, yea, I know. Just about now, you’re probably wondering what it is that I might be trying to sell you. Or perhaps your are hoping that I have something to sell, so you can buy it, and immediately use it to create such powerfully wonderful feelings that you can’t help but to imagine how fantastic the world will change once you realize these largely overlooked truths.

Well, I have good news, and I have good news, depending on how you look at it. (Yea, I know, that doesn’t make any sense).

The first thing you might want to do is take a deep breath. Slowly. And another. And one more. Good. Now ask yourself.  What do I want? Got it? Ok. Now ask yourself again, what is important about that? Wait, it’ll come. Got it? Good.  Now one more time. Relax, no hurry. Take a deep breath if you need it. Ok. Ready? Ask yourself one more time, what is important about that?  These are called your values. And guess what, pretty much everbody can see the same values inside. Love. Respect. Safety. Recognition for a job well done. Acceptance. Peace.

And since you can now fully understand not only what other people want, but realize that it’s the same thing that you do, how many ways do you think you might look at people differently now? When you know, really know, that deep down, despite all of our differences, we share much more that we are even capable of imagining. And when you breath into that perspective, and look at people from that source of wisdom, what happens when you become aware that as you discover similarities in strangers that you’d never even noticed before, you will automatically be able to share an unconcious bond that can cut through all mistakenly percieved differences?

Not only will people wonder just exactly why you stand out, if only a little bit, but they will feel compelled to feel a desire to start a conversation with you just to see what you are all about.

So I’ll leave the choice up to you. Will you consciously take on this new perspective, and see how many ways you will discover it already making your life easier and smoother, or will you just stand back, and simply notice the obvious results?

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Blind Crow Lullaby

So I was walking up the steps to the Shinto Shrine in my neighborhood, when I heard this whoosh above my head. I looked up, and saw this big black crow gliding up in front of me, and then coming to rest on the branch of a large tree. I looked up, and saw two more crows sitting just beyond. Watching. Waiting. Images of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds flashed in my minds, along with an old Viking movie whose name I can’t remember where a guy got his eyes gouged out by some angry bird. Were they mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Did I anger the Shinto Gods? Lord have mercy, I hope not. I tried my crow call, (caw caw caw) which usually scares them away, but they don’t budge. They look at me. I’m certain ther’re deciding which eye to pluck out first before they send me plunging down the steps to a painful death.

I remember the first time I killed a crow. I was on my first ever hunting trip. Actually it was the only time I’d ever killed a crow. We went looking for doves, and a bunch of crows started flying overhead. Or a herd of crows or whatever you call a large number of crows flying in formation. I looked at my dad, and he gave me the go-ahead. So I closed my eyes, pointed my shotgun in the sky, and pulled the trigger. Naturally, because the crows were so thick, I hit one. I felt kind of bad. It’s not like the crow did anything to me. But from a skill standpoint, it was pretty easy. Close your eyes and shoot. Not nearly as a hard as I thought it would be.

It’s wierd when you think about it. That is how some people live their lives. You just go through, not giving much thought, and just close your eyes and shoot. I’m sure that most people, like you, have been able to consider at one time or another what would happen if you were to design your life. Instead of pulling the trigger and hoping to get something, you were able to develop a foolproof plan  that would make it almost impossible to not get what you want. Luckily, once you start to realize, now, how easy it is to set your sights on what you want, when you pull the trigger, you naturally can enjoy the benefits. And you know how to enjoy the benefits, do you not?

So after I got home, I looked up crows on google. Of course the first article that came up was how crows that hang out at shinto shrines have a tendency to eat peoples eyeballs when you least expect it. Go figure. Actually, that’s not what it said at all. It said that crows like to nest in places like small hills with lots of tall trees. And in when they have baby crows hatching, they suddenly become very aggressive and protective of their babies. I checked my watch, and sure enough, it was crow hatching season, not eyeball eating season. And here I was thinking the crows were gunning for my eyes, and they were thinking I had come to eat their children.  Now me and crows get along just great.

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Slumbering Thoughts on Self Reflexiveness

I wasn’t sure how we were going to manage. Or to be more specific, how I was going to manage. Because If I didn’t manage, we would likely die. We were on some windy road on the way up to some trailhead from which we were going to go on a multi day hike. Unless I fell asleep, which was fast becoming an inevitability, we would go a multi story crash to the earth. The only consolation was that we most likely not only not see it coming, as it was pitch black, but we would also die quickly and painlessly.  At least that’s what I’d hoped, or at least that’s what I probably had been planning on hoping had I fell asleep at the wrong moment. My friends of course were no help. All sleeping. The only company I had was the quickly lulling tones of In a Gadda Da Vida. It was way past the lyrics, and into the repetitive sleep inducing riff. No other stations came in. And I didn’t dare drive in silence.

There is an interesting story behind that song. I heard from an old roomate that one of the band members came home drunk one night, with a great idea for a song. And he said that because he was drunk, he slurred his words, and the song came out with the the words slurred. Funny how that works. If somebody does something, and they made a mistake while they were doing it, but they keep the mistake to themselves, nobody knows it’s a mistake, and they just keep repeating it over and over and over.

Like that one scene in Fight Club, where one of the characters was trying to get across the point that some dead guy was a real person, and they misunderstood and repeated his name over and over again. Now there was a movie based on a misunderstanding.  It was like a misunderstanding inside of a misunderstanding. 

It’s wierd when you have thoughts like that. Like you’re sitting there, now, reading all these letters put together to make words. And you can feel the feeling of yourself sitting in your chair. And you can see all the things on the outside of this particular column of words with your peripheral vision. And that, of course, leads you to think those thoughts. And thinking those thoughts, naturally, means that you have more thoughts about those thoughts, and even maybe about the thought before that. Until you can forget, now, the original thought that led to this one. Which is strange because just by choosing to point your thoughts in a direction that can lead you to realize that, most people, like you, can understand that thoughts produce results. And when you just take a breath, and feel the air going in and out of your lungs, you can choose good results that you want to be able to achieve easily, and by breathing that certain way, you can realize it’s not so hard after all. It actually can make it natural to live life easily.

But, yea, I was totally surprised when Ed Norton’s character and Brad Pitts’ were the same guy. When they were fighting after that part of the movie, I wasn’t really sure who to root for. I guessed it all worked out in the end, though.

And the views on the way back after our hike were incredible.  The cliffs were really high. Had I actually fallen asleep and crashed off the side, I might have woken up from fear for a little bit, and then probably fallen back asleep on the way down. My friends probably never would have noticed until after we were all dead. Then they would’ve probably been really mad at me.  All that planning, and we wouldn’t have been able to go hiking.

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Pools of Magic

So my plane, or rather the plane I was riding in, was coming down for what I hoped was going to be a routine landing.  I had never flown in a plane this small, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t just a tad bit nervous. It was only a 8 seater, and I happened to be the last aboard, so I was sitting up front, next to the pilot. While it was really exciting while we were flying above the island.  Gliding around clouds. Able to look down and see the water as it looks really different from this angle. You can see all the way through. 

Kind of like when you fly on a commerical airline. Like when you are flying over a city, the residential part. And you can look down, and see how everything is really well organized. Especially if you compare the experience you can remember, now, of when you drove to your friends house for the first time and when you looked around. Everything seemed strange and out of place. Were you supposed to turn right at the gas station, or left? Everything seemed so difficult back before they were putting talking GPS maps in all the cars. How were we able to find your way around?

Another thing I think is really cool when you fly on a commerical plane, at least when you remeber to ask for  window seat. It sometimes is frustrating when you forget to ask for what you want, you know? But the interesting thing to me is how many people have swimming pools. When you look down, they are obvious. Which is another wierd thing. If you are still confused, and driving around looking for your friends house (assuming you took the right turn back at the gas station), you can’t tell who has a pool, and who doesn’t. You can’t even tell who has lawn furniture. But from a different perspective, things you wouldn’t have noticed before turn into things that you can’t miss.

It’s like when you meet somebody for the first time.  You can’t help but to look at the outside. Thier clothes, their speech patterns, they way they gesture with their hands.  I had a friend who told me that it was really important to keep an open mind when meeting people. She always said that although it’s really easy to judge by looks, its much more useful, if you want to be resourceful to kind of withhold judgement for a while. Give the person time to get comfortable, you know, like when you are able to express yourself without worrying about what other people think. She said that this was the best way. If you do this, you can really develop good relationships with people.  And that is important, right?

Of course the plane landed safely, and we all got off, and unpacked our bags. I had probably the most enlightening vacations of my life. At least up until now. How about you? What insights did you discover on the most enlightening vacation of your life?

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Stopping Traffic or Wandering Minds?

“Oops, sorry,” I mumble, apologizing to the woman that I’m pretty sure was out of ear shot by the time I realized I’d bumped into her. People everywhere, walking in groups, in pairs, alone. Heads busily scanning the environment searching for something, anything. Like me. Except I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. But I was supposed to get six of them. Or was it seven? Maybe in there? No, too expensive. Over there? Nope, would never fly. Wait, what’s that? I push through the crowd. Oh, no. That’s not at all I expected.

Like when I was driving down the freeway, jamming along. Radio up high. Light traffic. I’m in the number two lane. Doing about seventy. Saturday afternoon. Warm. Clear. All day to play. Good mood. I see a truck in my peripheral vision coming up slowly on my left. Dog in the back. Probably feeling the same as me about now. Able to just let go, and relax. Everything is in it’s place. Except that’s not a dog in the back of that truck.

Does that ever happen to you? You see something, you’re pretty sure you know that, and you don’t even bother to double check, you just kind of assume it’s there, the way you think it is. But it never really is, is it?Those things that you were pretty sure that you had a handle on, once you allow yourself to see from a different perspective, you begin to imagine different things. And it’s not like when you are reading something, and just following along as your mind is wandering. It’s when you see something, but you don’t really notice it. I imagine that if you recall, now, the times that has happened to you, you might begin to understand what I’m talking about.

Like when I was watching this psychologist give a lecture about the reason that thoughts which come in dreams are different from the normal order. Something with the way the lattice structure of the brain is connected. Certain thoughts are resting on top of other thoughts, and the way the brain organizes it self, sometimes things that are right next to each other, they don’t even communicate well. Like when you pull up to your house, and see your neighbor, and you think to yourself, do I really even know that guy?

So I’m dead even with the truck, and I’m about ready to look over at the previosly assumed canine in the back, complete with it’s assumed tongue wagging out of it’s mouth, and even an imagined name on his hallucinated dog collar. It is a bit of an understatement to say I was shocked when I looked to see that it was a pig. Without a collar. I didn’t think to ask what it’s name was. And it didn’t seem to be at all concerned with mine.

And my eyes must have really been getting tired, because that day in the mall what I thought were some kind of new age toys, were really decorations laying around the christmas trees waiting their turn to get put up. I guess my blood sugar was lower that I had planned for it to be. But I did turn into a Sharper Image, and some shop based on the Discovery Channel, and was able to take care of everything there. And when I left, it seemed that all those people were still wandering around looking for what I assumed they would find eventually.

When this happens to you, how long does it take to realize that something really strange is going on?

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Grazing Cows or Gazing Anxiety

I was getting more and more worried. Stress was increasing with every 18 wheeler that blew past my 4 cylinder rice burner, going a bit more slowly than I should have been. HONK! Sorry, I mumble under my breath. I should see the turnoff by now, where is it? I check my watch. Still ten minutes. Look around. No turnoff. What if I missed it? I don’t know where the next one is. I’m in the middle of about a million rolling hills populated by grazing cows. They sure don’t seem stressed. Don’t they know what they’re in for? I try to peek up ahead above the speeding traffic. Is that a turn off up there? Could that be me?

Not completely unlike when I was sitting across from Cheryl. Nervous. Shaky. Eyes briefly making contact then quickly escaping into the many available distractions around us.

“So, uh, what do you like to do?”

“Um, play tennis, and uh,” deep breath, “uh, you, know, stuff.”

“Wow. That sounds cool.”

I don’t remember leaving my brain at home. I was able to talk to her ok over the phone. Can’t the waiter come any quicker? Maybe I can spend an hour pretending to thoughtfully think of something interesting, while I’m looking at the menu, or maybe he will spill something on me so I can think of a reason to bail out. It’s not like this is my first time. Why is asking one person a simple question seem so much more difficult than asking somebody else the exact same thing? It works the same way, right? Brain makes thought, thought goes to vocal cords, mouth and lips and tongue move, sound comes out. It’s not like I’m going to do something different this time, am I?

My friend never has this problem. Of course he is a firefighter, and everybody knows that firefighters attract girls like Bill Gates can attract money. He was telling me the other day about this training exercise, where they have this old building set up, and they practice going in and putting out the fire. And I asked him, “why don’t you practice on different buildings?” He told me that most buildings basically have the same structure. They might look different on the outside, but on the inside they are similar enough. And when you train frequently, you start to to realize that what something looks like on the outside doesn’t really matter. All you really need to do is be able to notice the structure. And sometimes I ask  him why he doesn’t always have girls surrounding him. He told me he was tired of having the same conversations over and over and over.  He says that he learned that when you stay with something long enough, you really start to notice the small things that make you realize that this person stands out from the rest.

So anyways, after we ordered, it got a bit easier to talk, because she asked me if I was as nervous as she was. When I gladly said yes, that kind of broke the ice a little bit. I guess we both agreed on some level that it’s ok to embrace being nervous. We actually ended up not having that much in common, but it was an enjoyable conversation anyhow. And after I arrived at my destination on time, (actually five minutes early, because I hit all the green lights after I realized the exit was indeed mine) I was able to have another enjoyable chit chat with the suprisingly cute girl that was working there.

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The Blackrock Pass of Logic

“This one!”

“What’s it about?”

“Some guy that does some crazy stuff.”

“Oh, wait dude, look, that one is here!”

 

There were three of us. At the new multiplex. Thirty screens. 6 new releases, and two blockbusters (after only one weekend) all starting within 40 minutes of each other.  If we had another two hours, maybe we could come to a decision. Too many choices. We hadn’t even gotten in line yet. I had a pretty good idea, what I’d though we’d all enjoy, but…

Kind of like when me and two of my other buddies were backpacking. We had a four day trip planned, and we were on our second day in. We had three possible routes to take, all big loops, depending on the weather and the fishing. The only problem was, we’d only agreed that those two things would determine our choices. We didn’t take the time to consider how they would affect our choices.

“If we go left, we can fish some more.”

“Dude, I only caught three small ones, I’m done fishing.”

“Yea, but look at the map, these lakes are bigger, there’s bound to be bigger fish here.”

“Yea, but if we go this way, we can go over Blackrock pass. It says it’s the highest in the area. Think of the views, man!”

I didn’t really care either way. I only know that I didn’t beg and plead for two extra days off over the holiday weekend so I could listen to these two fools argue.

“Just make up your minds for pete’s sake!” I exhorted.

They reminded me of a buddy I used to have in law school.  He told me that once he was in a lecture, given by this professor that was famous for never losing an argument with his students. I mean never.  And this guy was going on and on, and my friend was certain that he’d made a logical mistake in his arguement. Not a big one mind you, but a small and noticeable one that might have a big impact the outcome of his arguement. Kind of like how Amelia Earhart is widely thought to have gotten lost by a mere fraction of a degree mistake, which added up.  Amazing what happens when you can make a small change and then just stand back and watch it grow. But the funny thing is, my friend, who is normally kind of shy, and doesn’t speak out much in class, somehow was able to tap into some magical source of confidence, like when you really know exactly what it is that you want, and you know exactly how you are going to get it. How many times have you been able to experience that knowing?  So anyways, my friend waited until just the right moment when he was able to exploit the advantage, and needless to say, the class was shocked. The professor was dumbstruck. He stood there for what my friend said was almost 5 minutes, which is a long time for a law professor to stand there and not say anything. A mime, yea, but not a law professor. Then someting funny happened. When my friend spoke, up, he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. He was able to just say it, and allow for whatever result. After the five minutes (which in reality was probably more like thirty seconds), the professor started to clap. And then so did the rest of the class. The professor said it was a pleasure and a wonderful surprise to be so skillfully out argued by an undergraduate. It does feel really good to out argue somebody, when you really know your stuff, doesn’t it?

So I made up my mind, and took the trail to the left. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t give any reason. I just made my choice. If they followed me, great. If they didn’t, well, I drove so I had the car keys.  Funny thing was, we took the path to the pass, which did have some fantastically spectacular views, AND on the other wise were some great lakes, which had some pretty decent sized trout.

And as far as which movie we picked, we decided to decide over a couple of drinks, and we met some people, and, well, that’s another story.

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The Girl and the Physics Experiment

So I was at the beach last week with a friend of mine.  It was a beach with a strange wave phenomenom. The waves come in at an angle, and then they bounce off the jetty, and then remerge with themselves. Its kind of like an interference pattern in physics.  The cool part is that the beach comes up really fast under the water, and when the waves rejoin themselves, they double in size, and at the same time, they come up on a beach that gets really shallow, really quickly, so the waves are able to transform their energy to produce this instantly huge and rideable wave.  Most people there don’t surf with boards, rather, they body surf. Because the waves come up and crash onto sand so quickly, it’s too hard to bail out if you have too much junk tied around your ankle. And we were watching this one guy, bobbing around in the water, and it didn’t really look like he knew what he was doing. Suddenly a wave pulled him up, and it looked like he was going to be pitched onto the sand. I looked around to see if there were any ambulances on hand, as people have been known to break their necks here.

Then my friend starts telling about this guy that he knows. It seems he really likes this girl, but he just can’t get up the nerve to go and talk to her.  He said that whenever he sees her, he can think of good things that he wants to say, but when he gets close, he starts to imagine all the bad things that might happen, and those overpower the good things. In his mind, at least. So I say, “Well, next time you see this guy, why don’t you..” and then my friend interrupts me, and says that he hasn’t seen this guy in like two months. And I say “Oh, so he’s one of THOSE kinds of friends.” And my friend nods and says “Yea. Low maintenance.”

Like the kind of person that you can go for three or four years with out seeing this person, and then next time you happen to bump into them, you are able to instantly remember good times, like you just got off the phone, chatting and talking about remembering good experiences. And then when you see them, you can just pick up where you left off, and everything is cool. And my friend said, “yea, just like that.”  So I asked him if he knew or had met the girl, and he said he did, and I said “so is she cool?” And he said “Yea, she’s totally cool.” “So it’s all in his head?” “Yea, it’s all in his head.” And I suggested that maybe he should just relax. Because I’m sure you know that good things happen when you stay out of your own way.

So anyways, the guy takes off on the wave, and it instantly becomes clear that not only does the guy know what he’s doing, because he expertly barrel rolled himself out just at the right moment, but it turned out he was the guy we’d been talking about. And right after a great ride, he came up to his spot on the beach where his girlfriend, apparantly, was waiting. “Is that her?” “Wow, yea it is,” he said with a chuckle. He waved, she waved, then I waved. Then we went and got some tacos, which is another story.

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