Monthly Archives: March 2009

What is a Meta For?

This morning I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about metaphor, and how it effects our language. We were arguing over the level of metaphor that exists in everyday English, he was saying that it is really only sporadically used in poetry and music. I argued that it is actually more widespread than that. For example, the whole slew of sci fi movies that came out in the fifties and sixties were really metaphors about impending nuclear destruction.

Which brings up another point. If a metaphor exists, meaning that it can be structurally determined to be a metaphor but it was not created as a metaphor, is it still a metaphor? In the example above, all those sci fi movies are looked at in retrospect as metaphors for the U.S. Soviet conflict, with the evil aliens representing the imminent destruction of nuclear weapons. But what if some of the film makers didn’t have the desire to convey any message of the necessity of global peace and harmony? What if they just wanted to tell a good story about evil aliens that you could watch on a Friday afternoon? Would it still be considered a metaphor?

There are some that believe that language itself is a metaphor for reality itself. Reality itself is completely out our reach. Our eyes can only perceive a small percentage of bandwidth that is electromagnetic radiation. Our ears can only hear a sliver of the sound waves out bouncing around. And several experiments have shown that tactile sensations around our body are dependent on the area of skin under investigation.

In this model, language itself is just a shared approximation of what we think we are experiencing. That fact that so many people agree on the same thing says nothing about the accuracy of what they agree upon. We all can agree on the color red, but it is only read to our particular set of sensing organs. Two different objects that both appear red to us might appear totally different to creatures with differently evolved sensing organs.

I participated in a seminar once. In the seminar we were all told to think of a duck. A simple noun that we all knew. Four letters. No chance of somebody mistaking the word for dog, or rhino or antidisestablishmentarianism. But guess what? When we shared our answers, we all had a different duck on our minds. One guy even thought of a rubber duck, and some other guy thought of the Aflac duck.

So if the seminar speaker hadn’t had us share all of our ducks, and she’d kept talking about ducks, we would have followed her as long as our ducks fit into her story. The guy that thought of the rubber duck would have been lost if she said to imagine our ducks flying.

Now that I think of it, metaphors are a lot more prevalent in our everyday conversations and thoughts that I’d imagined. Perhaps the best way to leverage this simple realization is to appreciate he breadth and beauty of language for what it is. An expression of that which cannot be expressed, because that which is being expressed is inextricably connected to the expresser. As the expresser changes his experience of his expression, he changes that of which he is expressing.

Permalink

Beware the Seduction of Perfection

I remember once when I went to the beach with a friend of mine. It was the first time we’d been to that particular beach. We were both avid body surfers, and were always looking for new beaches that had waves that were shaped well enough for a nice ride. Everybody knows how fun a nice ride is, right? So we came up to this beach, and it wasn’t very crowded, and the waves had a very slow rolling break that looked like it would support our average skills in body surfing. We couldn’t really do a lot of tricks like barrel rolls or anything like that, but it was fun, and we enjoyed it.

We approached the beach with high expectations, because as the nice shaped waves kept rolling in, we suspected they were the norm, rather than the exception. We’d been to many beaches before where the waves were generally pretty lousy, and good sets came in only once in a great while. But this beach, however, was seemingly unlike that. This beach seemed to offer a fairly consistent supply of ridable waves. We both walked into the water, it was late spring so we weren’t wearing any wet suits, as this story takes place in San Diego. After putting on our flippers, we backed out until we were deep enough where we could swim without dragging on the bottom. It’s hard to walk out wearing flippers, you see.

We suddenly realized why this beach was so sparsely populated. There was a huge amount of kelp just below the surface that you couldn’t see. The more we tried to fight our way through it, hoping it would ease up eventually, the more we realized that it just got worse and worse. Pretty soon it became clear that not only was it a nuisance, but it was dangerous as well. For anyone that has body surfed before will know what I’m talking about. When you wipe out, you are plunged under the surface of the water, in what my friend refers to as the “spin cycle,” like in a washing machine. Because of the rotating motion of the wave, when you are plunged into the water, your body continues with the spinning motion. Sometimes it can take a while to figure out which way is up. What makes it even more difficult is when you are struggling for breath. Add in the possibility of being tangled up in kelp, and drowning suddenly becomes a likely outcome of a wipe out.

No thank you.

We exited the water as quickly as possible, realizing the danger of this beach. The waves no longer looked like inviting sources of fun and pleasure, venus fly traps of death beckoning us, only to swallow us and kill us.

It’s amazing how the surface of something changes when you realize that just underneath are things that will grab you and cling to you and never let you go. It is lucky we found the kept when we did, and not on our first wipe out. That would have been quite dangerous.

We both learned that day to be very careful. Sometimes it’s important to tread carefully below the surface. What might appear to be enticing, may actually harbor deeper things that you can’t see that can grab you and pull you under. Never to let you see the light of day or take another breath of life sustaining fresh air.

I’m glad we decided to proceed cautiously. While it’s imporant to actively search for things in life that you can enjoy this, now, it is also important to check below the surface a little bit sometimes before you dive in.

Permalink

Attract Sex and Money Like Magic

Have you ever noticed that the richest guys are the ones that seem to attract the most money? The guy that doesn’t care whether or not he gets the girl is the one they are all flocking around? Has the opposite every happened to you? The more you need money, the harder it seems to come by? The more you like a girl or a guy, the less they seem to want to have anything to do with you? Is there any reason behind this? Well, believe it or not, there is.

While it is important to set clear goals and know what it is you want in life, it’s also important to detach from results at the same time. If that sounds a little bit too esoteric, let me explain. When I say detach from results, I mean be excessively needy. Think about somebody that you know is needy, or clingy. Are they a pleasure to be around? Do you enjoy their company? Have you ever been on a date with somebody, and their whole world seemed to depend on your approval, so much that they even became a little bit angry when you didn’t constantly tell them how much you cared for them? If you have, then you know what I’m talking about. 

The same goes true for money. Imagine you are the hiring manager. Somebody comes in for an interview. Instead of giving you their qualifications, they spend the whole interview telling you how much they really need the job. Their car is in danger of being repossessed, they are behind on their mortgage payments, their world is in shambles. Would you rather hire this person, or hire the other guy who has several other companies that are interested in hiring him?

While it is extremely helpful to cultivate a burning desire, if you focus that desire on one specific thing, it can lead to trouble, and will shun people and opportunities rather than attract them. The secret is to create a general burning desire, but with a sort of vague hole for the specific thing itself. Allow me to explain.

Let’s say you have a burning desire to start a business. You really want it. You visualize it every night. You meditate on it every morning. You think, live and breath business. You read business ideas. Then an opportunity comes along. If you shift all of your desire on to this particular opportunity too quickly, you will lose sight of your overall objective. You need to have a clear objective, so that you can measure each opportunity against your objective to see if it matches up. Instead of thinking “this is it! This is my dream!” it might be better to be thinking “Let’s see if this matches up, if not, I’ll move on.” It is essential to develop a belief that you will succeed no matter what, so that you can objectively evaluate each opportunity.

The same goes for creating a new relationship. If you have a fairly good idea of the kind of person you’d like to get together with, combined with a solid belief of being successful in the long run, you’ll be unstoppable. Instead of having the “I hope she’s the one” attitude that so many people unfortunately have, you can have the “Let’s see if she is the one” attitude, knowing full well that if she isn’t you can easily move on to somebody else.

The key is to have a burning desire for the condition that you want, be it a solid business, a healthy relationship, or anything else you’d like to create in your life. Then you combine that with a laid back, let’s see approach to each individual “candidate” for the position, and you will easily achieve what you want in life.

Permalink

Sneaky ways to Persuade

If you’ve ever tried to convince somebody to come over to your side of thinking, you know how difficult it can be. No matter how hard you try, some people just seem to be set in their ways, their opinions, their beliefs. Imagine that you have a great idea that you want to tell your boss. One that you are completely sure that if your boss would take this idea, he could quickly and easily use this idea to make money, become more successful, and attract more customers.

And try as you might, you just can’t get the other person to see things this way. No amount of arguing, convincing, masterly designed powerpoint presentations can sway them. You may as well be banging your head against a brick wall, for all the good you are doing.

But what happens when you stop, now, and consider that there may be a whole new level of communication that you are forgetting about? What if you could realize that there is a layer of communication that supersedes mere logic and cause effect language? When you realize that exists another set of language skills at a completely different plane of thought, you can begin to leverage that to your advantage. When you do this, you will naturally begin to persuade people at will.

What I’m talking about is the language of structure. Language structure is very difficult to wrap your mind around because it is designed to take place outside of conscious awareness. Linguists have known for years, thanks to Noam Chomsky, that there is a ‘deep structure’ to language that children pick up automatically, without any conscious thought whatsoever. In other words, children consciously how to say words like ‘horse,’ television,’ ‘hot,’ ‘cold,’ and so on. But when they begin to string words together, the grammar rules of how to do this is completely unknown. Many scientists agree that we have some kind of ‘grammar structure’ organ in our brain, that is preprogrammed to learn grammar at a completely unconscious level.

Because people learn and use the structure of language at a deeply unconscious level, you can use this to your advantage. For example, it has become widely known, due to the work of Richard Bandler and John Grinder, that people take in, and express information through three main channels. Eyes, ears, and touch. Or to use the technical terms, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. We also use words that are based on these senses in our speech and our writing.

Some people rely heavily on visual words: See what I mean? I can’t get a clear picture of what you are talking about. That idea is not clear to me.

Others are use more auditory words: Nice to hear from you again. I hear what you’re saying. Mexican food? Sounds great! Have you heard the latest news?

Still others use mainly kinesthetic words: I haven’t been feeling myself lately. I feel you, I really do. I feel uncomfortable with that idea.

Most people use a combination of all three. The trick is to listen to the person you are trying to convince, and pay attention to which category they rely on most. Then just simply use words from that same category when you are convincing them how great your idea is. You’ll be amazed not only how well this works, but how incredibly sneaky it is, because nobody will have any clue that you are doing it.

Permalink

What Would Spock Do?

Have you ever been having an argument with somebody, and they came out of left field with some point they were trying to make? No matter how hard you tried your best to see their point of view, you were completely baffled with what it was they were trying to get across?

Have you ever worked for somebody, or been in a relationship with somebody, and you just never figured out the reasoning behind their thinking? Perhaps you thought that they were a big daft, and they had no idea what was going on in the real world?

Maybe you thought they were being illogical. Despite your impeccable logic, they still failed to see your point. Despite how well you flawlessly presented your arguments, they still held fast to their opinion, regardless of how blatantly obvious that they were incorrect. Well guess what? You actually may have been wrong.

More and more neural scientists are starting to believe that logic is a mere illusion of our thinking process.  Study after study has shown that humans are severely limited with certain kinds of decisions which are seemingly logical based, but under different conditions, the same choices yield different answers. One study, involving cards and probabilities yields only a correct answer around twenty five percent. Yet the exact same study, but with the choices described not as black or white or even or odd, but instead as people in social situations, people score correct answers much higher.

Neural surgeons have reported that when the so called “emotional centers” of the brain, generally thought to be the interferers of logic, are disconnected, it is almost impossible to make a decision. Brian Tracy reports that ALL decisions are made from an emotional perspective, and then a split second later the “logical” outcome is calculated by the preconscious processor, and only later delivered to the conscious brain and so we think of it as a ‘logical’ choice.

Most people won’t like to admit that a great deal of human choices are made subconsciously and then only later defended as a conscious, rational, logical choice. Color and model of your car, type of clothes that you wear. Your partner in life. The things that you eat every day, the movies and music that you like. All these are decisions that are made emotionally.

Problems can arise when you make a decision, and believe that it is a logical decision. Especially if the decision is publicly made. You will stick to your choice, because you think it is a logically sound outcome. By admitting to yourself that at least it may be possible that it was driven by emotion, you may open yourself up for reconsideration. And that can help you drastically improve your relationships, both at home and work. And it can improve your decision making ability overall.

Something to think about next time you are about to accuse somebody of being an illogical boob.
Permalink

How to Insult the Buddha

One of the things that most people strive for in life, yet never achieve is that sense of being in a place where you are completely independent of the opinions and ideas of others. No matter how rock solid your self confidence and self esteem is, we seem to always be vulnerable to some stray comment from somebody whom we don’t’ even expect has that kind of power over you.

I’m sure you’ve had that experience. You are going through your life, cruising right alone. Everything is pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good. Then out of the blue somebody makes a comment. Not a mean comment, not really. They’re not a person who has any power over your life, they aren’t your boss or a decision maker, but yet, somehow that comment slips in and wriggles through your confidence self defense and festers. And the more you think about it, the more it festers and causes you to remember other incidents that are similar, creating similar emotional responses.

What’s the answer? Remove yourself completely from society? Stare straight ahead with your thickest skin and refuse to allow anyone’s comments to affect you one way or the other? That is the default defense for many, but it doesn’t allow you to let in all the comments and things people say to you that can help you feel really good.

A good way around this is to develop a state of uninsultability. No matter what you say, you can accept the good things and reject the bad things. It’s like you have a pre conscious defense shield that can acting as a sorting mechanisms for incoming information. True information that makes you feel good is let in completely. True information that doesn’t make you feel so good is split into it’s logical, data components, which are accepted for you to decide what action to take, and the emotionally charged component which is summarily rejected. Information coming in that is not true is rejected altogether.

This can be difficult to maintain, but it is possible. The secret lies in choosing to evaluate any incoming informational stimulus before your automatic emotional response has a chance to react. The more you choose to consciously practice this on a regular basis, the more space you will create between the initial external event, and the emotional reaction. Your goal in this is to insert a quick but effective moment of rational choice between the external event and the corresponding emotional response.

Most people walk around through life as biological automatons. Reacting without thinking, seemingly at the mercy of the events and opinions of others. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can choose to live your life differently. With choice, with control with power. There is an old Buddhist story I’m reminded of.

The Buddha, and two of his young disciples were walking along the river. Suddenly a distraught man jumped out, who had apparently heard the Buddha’s last sermon, and began hurling insult after insult at him. His disciples were shocked, while the Buddha stood and only smiled. Afterwards, they asked him,

“Master, aren’t you hurt by his mean insults?”

to which the Buddha replied:

“If somebody gives you a present, and you refuse to accept it, who does it belong to?”

Permalink

Manipulating Minds can lead to Creating Happiness

So if you’ve read the previous article about manipulation, and you’ve decided, like most people, that you’d like to be a really good manipulator of people, or if you prefer, a persuader of people, how do you go about doing it? There are several methods. Some of which I’ll discuss here, others which I’ll discuss in other articles for your reading pleasure.

First, lets review. What we are after here is win/win manipulation (or persuasion or influence.) Which means that you want to convince somebody to do or feel something and have them be happy that you did. Before we go further, lets find an experience where somebody did this to you. Think of something you bought at least three years ago, that you still use and enjoy. There was a time in your life where you didn’t know that thing existed, or that particular model or brand. And you were in a state of mind where you were thinking about buying this, maybe not.

But then you walked in, and saw this sitting there. And you interacted with somebody that was involved in selling you this item. And you paid for it, either by check or credit card or cash or payment plan. And then you came into possession of this thing. With me so far? The salesman that persuaded you to buy this, at least in respects was happy. You are happy, because here it is, so many years later, and you still are using and enjoying thing. Aren’t you glad that they persuaded you to do something? What do you think of now, when you think of the person that you interacted with. Were they friendly? Helpful? Wasn’t it odd that you’d never met them before, yet you had such a positive interaction with this person that you can still remember them fondly so many years later?

This is the natural result of a successful outcome of a win/win manipulation. Everybody is happy. So lets explore the different methods of doing this.

Brute Force

This is the simplest, the oldest, and the most common. This doesn’t necessarily mean physical force. It can be peer pressure, social pressure, or other pressure where you are in a situation where you feel you experience emotional discomfort if you didn’t do what was asked of you. Surprisingly enough, many of these appear as win/win, at least in the short term, because the relief due to relieving the stress of even an imagined negative outcome can feel like a win. Once you give in to the pressure, the pain goes away. Unfortunately, the win can be deceptive, and short term.

Covertly Harnessed Natural Desires

This where most advertising gets its juice. Everybody wants safety, sex, money, love, affection. And to be free from pain. Advertisers usually use these in a unique way to get you to buy their product. They ingeniously hook their advertisement into your base human desires, making you feel as if you just have to have what it is that they are selling. Politicians use this method when they convince you that by voting for them, you will be safer, richer, have more opportunity, and freer from debt. Usually the best politicians are the ones that do the best job of doing this. 

CriteriaWhen someone you use this in a skillful and respectful manner, everybody gets a good long term win. This is when you find out what is important to a person, and craft your message so that it fits to what they think is important. This requires a personal, one on one approach, and only the most skilled and advanced salespeople and persuaders know how to do this. When done on a large scale, it is difficult to match each individuals criteria other than in a vague sense, and is almost impossible to follow through. 

 

So now you know three basic ways to influence people. Remember, when you sincerely have a desire to find out what is important to somebody, and you find these things out in a respectful way, you are more than halfway there to having them happily do whatever it is that you want.

Permalink

Manipulation: Give First – Receive Later

Manipulation. What do you think when you hear that word? Evil, bad, wrong, secret, selfish. Do any of these come to mind? If you so you are not alone. People that use other people to get only what they want are considered to be manipulative, and should be avoided. Suppose you met a friend, and thought they were an ok, person. You ask around to see what other people say about them. What would you think if they only said that they were ‘manipulative?” Would that impress you? Would that want you to stay away from them? What if you were at a party, and some people came up to you and asked to speak to you alone. It was really important, they said. It was about your reputation, they said. They take you aside, and tell you that other people have been talking. They have been saying that you are a manipulative person. How would you make that feel? Proud? Happy? Sticky?

The truth is, humans learn to be manipulative since the day we learn to cry. We cry, not because there are any rational thoughts in our brain, only because we know that when we make certain contractions in our throats and force air out, it makes a loud sound. We don’t know emotions, or feelings, or thoughts, we are still at the very early stages of the discovery period of our lives. We scream, and then something cool  happens. Those big people come and pick us up. Wow. Then they put us down, and leave. We take in a deep breath (although we don’t know yet what breath is) and do it again, and they return. Wow. We have discovered a new power within us. We can control parts of our bodies, and other people will respond. When we grow older and begin to learn to use words and phrases, we also discover how certain words, phrased certain ways, can get people to do what we want.

Evolutionary Biologists are starting to wonder if the purpose of language itself is for persuasion rather than simple data transfer. Think of the things you’ve said to people recently. Although they may have been factually based messages, wasn’t there underlying purpose to persuade somebody to think a certain thought or to feel a certain emotion? Isn’t a pure transfer of data anyway a persuasive effort to get somebody else to think the same thoughts that you are thinking? When you call your husband or wife to say you are running late, aren’t you using your language to persuade her to remain calm? When you write the correct answers on an exam, aren’t you using a specific form of persuasion to get the professor to give you a good grade? Isn’t television, radio and the recent explosion of the internet merely other means of grabbing your attention in an attempt to persuade you to buy the advertised products?

One of the forgotten elements of persuasion and manipulation is the win/win concept. Everyone persuades, everyone manipulates, all the time. The only times that it sticks out is when somebody selfishly disregards the win/win model and reverts to the win/lose, or the more popular win/i don’t care.  And when you think about it, the different kinds of manipulation are not good or bad, they are just effective and ineffective. Suppose you were to realize that the most effective form of persuasion and manipulation model is the win/win model? And suppose you took it a step further, and discovered that the easiest, friendliest way to manipulate and persuade somebody was figure out a way to let them win first, and then by winning, they would in turn feel compelled to help you get what you want, since you’ve already helped them get what they want? Imagine if you could let go of any expectation long enough to help somebody get what they wanted, with the full knowledge that the laws of karma would reciprocate, somehow, someway? What would happen if everybody lived according to this model? What kind of world would it be?

Permalink

Bite into Interest to Create New Friends

I was riding the train home from the mall this evening. The weather was kind of dreary, and the digital camera I was looking for wasn’t in the electronic store that I thought it would be in. I want to buy a video camera so I can start posting video logs. I think that will be fun. Also, table I usually sit at in my favorite coffee shop inside the bookstore in the mall had been taken, so I had to sit someplace else. Of course, that didn’t stop me from making my usual observations and journal ideas as I sipped my black iced tea. But on the train, I was sitting across from this woman, who’d I put in her mid fifties, that was very bored. She looked like I felt. So I wondered what would happen if I started a conversation.

Conversations can be tricky sometimes. Like Forest Gump says, you really don’t know what’s inside unless you bite into it. Sometimes you’ll see a really mean looking person, and when you start to talk to them, they turn into the friendliest person you could ever meet. Other times, somebody seems to projecting an aura of friendliness and kindness, but once you start to talk to them, they look at you as if you’d just ran over their puppy. People can be extremely interesting.

I was reading this book, and it was saying that you really do have the power to find this interesting. It’s like a movie. Sometimes you don’t find this movie very compelling, other times you just have to keep your eyes focused on this. He said that the more you can choose to feel interested, the easier it gets. It was kind of a strange concept, purposely turning up your interest level so you can find something very intriguing that you wouldn’t normally do. I guess like everything else, it takes practice. He compared it to a situation when you meet a new boss that you will be working closely with. At first blush, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to spend more than five minutes or so in a bar, but since you are in a situation where you have to interact with this person, you somehow find a way to find interest in the same things he does. It’s almost as if by pretending, you actually generate strong interest. I know more than a few marriages where the wife will say at first she wasn’t interested, but this guy kind of grew on her. Persistence pays.

So I asked the woman where she was going this evening, and she said she was going to the airport to see her daughter who was away at university. The reason she looked so bored was that she just hates to travel. She said that she would much rather use those devices on star trek, where you just disappear one place, and then reappear in another place. That kicked off a great conversation about high tech electronic gadgets and where we’d be without them. Which just goes to show you, you never know until you bite right into it and see what’s inside.

Permalink

What’s the Main Course of Your Mind?

I was out shopping this morning, and I bumped into a friend of mine. She is the kind of friend that you can catch right back up with after along absence without missing  beat. It’s great when you can make friends like that. She was shopping for a dinner party is planning on having next weekend. She belongs to a book club, and they get together to read different books and discuss them. The group only has six members, but she says they are a tight group because they all share the same interests as far as books go, and they can discuss the latest novel for hours on end.  They usually meet in a bookstore or a coffee shop, but once every couple of months they meet at one of the members house, and this is her turn. When I bumped into her, she was having trouble finding what she was looking for. She’d found this really interesting recipe, but she neglected to bring it with her to the supermarket, so she couldn’t really remember what was in it, as she’d never cooked it before. She was on the fence between guessing, and going home to get it.

Sometimes when you have a difficult decision to make, it can be frustrating. You think about going one way, and then you suddenly change your mind and think about going the other way. Sometimes it seems that the more you think about it, the more difficult the decision can become. What can even make things worse is when you have several people involved and everybody wants to go in different directions. It can be absolutely maddening. I was on a hiking trip, and we didn’t take the time to plan ahead, so when difficulties came up, we had to spend a long time discussing which way to go. Once we came upon a trail that was closed due to maintenance, and we stood there and argued for what seemed like an hour trying to figure out what alternative route to take.

And when you think about it, there are always alternative routes to take. Even if there is only one road, there are different times you can travel this road and find things of value here. I took a seminar once, shortly after new years, on goal setting. The guy said that setting goals is much better than making resolutions. He said that the more clear you are when you choose your desire, the more flexible you can be with how you get there. The problem most people have, he said, was that their desire that they’ve chosen is kind of vague, so when they think they are making progress, they are actually going in the wrong direction. Because they weren’t able to set a clear goal, they aren’t able to see the results they achieve when they get there.

As it turns out, while we were standing their arguing, a couple came walking up from one of our two choices. We asked where’d they came from, and they said that down this trail was a fantastic lake, and a big meadow with many wildflowers. And we decided to take this way, in part because they seemed to describe it so enthusiastically. And when other people describe things enthusiastically, you know there is something good here.

So I asked my friend if she was having some old friends over for dinner, or trying to impress a first date. She knew where I was going with this and realized the recipe wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was having a group of close friends over to discuss this really good book they’d all separately had the experience of reading and enjoying this, and were going to share it. The dinner was just a side dish, not the main course of the evening.

Permalink