Monthly Archives: October 2009

Coffee Shop Courage and Why You Should Talk To Strangers

Yesterday I was sitting in my local Starbucks, minding my own business when this girl started talking to me. She was a strange mix of friendly and forward. She wanted to practice her English, and she saw that I was sitting alone at one of those small tables with two really comfortable chairs facing each other.

So I guess after gathering up her courage, she came over and sat right and started firing away the same questions that foreigners usually get in Japan.
“Where are you from?”
“Where do you live?”

Etc. These are basically the only questions they get to practice out loud in school, so it’s pretty much all most Japanese can say in English. Despite spending a large amount of time studying English in school, most of it is writing and reading, and grammar rules. They don’t get much practice speaking, let alone speaking to an actual native speaker of English, despite a desire to do so.

What was interesting about this particular conversation was the courage this young girl showed. (She said she was eighteen, and a student a local university). She first came, and sat down, and asked the normal questions, and I tried my best to make her feel comfortable, with slow easy answers, and as much Japanese as I could muster, to give her a feeling it was a group effort at communication, rather than her being on the spot.

After she ran out of things to say, she abruptly, stopped and said she’d be back. I guess she wanted to go and talk to her friends and think up some more questions. So, naturally, I went back to reading my book.

The book I was reading was “The Stuff of Thought,” by Pinker. He’s written quite a few books on the subject, language and how it affects our thought, and vice versa. I never knew how complicated language was. Some verbs behave much differently, and how they are used can show a great deal of insight into the thoughts underlying the deep structure of the language.

He’s also quite an interesting speaker. I think he has a few videos on TED should you feel compelled to go and have a look.

It kind of reminds me once when I was in this ice cream store. I was trying to decide not only what kind of ice cream to buy, but how many scoops. I hadn’t set out that day to buy any ice cream, I just kind of wandered into the shop to see what was in there.

While I was waiting this guy behind me started talking about his neighbor. I think me might have thought I was somebody else, but I listened anyways, because this seemed like something that was really interesting. His neighbor use to be a dispatch driver for this delivery company that delivered stuff to people around this big city. And he was driving once to a call, and there was a herd of goats crossing the road, so he had to stop.

So while he was waiting, he pulled out a novel he’d been reading. Maybe you’ve read this, but maybe you haven’t. It’s a pretty popular novel, and the main character was on some kind of spiritual journey, and he was discovering all these insights and secrets of life through the story.

Kind of like when you read something like this, you start to think there is some kind of deeper meaning here, and you’re not sure what it is. Of course other times when you read this you might be under the impression that the guy who wrote this was making it up as he went along. But for some compelling reason, you can’t help but to come back here again and again to find out what was going to happen next.

Finally, the goats, passed by, and the traffic opened up. I’ve never really seen a herd of goats before, so it must have been an interesting sight. I suppose you could always go back and look if you are interested in that sort of thing.

And by the time this guy was done telling this really weird story, I had decided on a double cone with rocky road. I’ve liked rocky road ever since I was a kid, and it never fails to impress with its delicious chocolaty flavor, and nutty crunch.

I just when I was starting to wrap my mind around this deep philosophical point that Pinker was making his compellingly thought provoking book, this girl came and sat down again. I guess she’d thought up some more questions.

So had a nice little chat, and she seemed to be pretty pleased with herself for starting a conversation with a random stranger in a coffee shop. Like I said, it’s one thing to go up and speak with a random stranger in a coffee shop, but it adds about twenty different aspects of courage if you are to do that in a language that you are just starting to learn.

I never thought I’d be taught a lesson in courage by an eighteen-year-old Japanese college girl, but there you go. The world is filled with good examples like this.

Make sure to sign up to the email list so you can get updates and secret information not found anyplace else.

How To Use Your Unconscious Mind To Automatically Attract Money, Sex, and Love

If you’ve ever doubted the power of your subconscious mind, this article may be reminder of the massive amounts of untapped power you likely have sitting between your ears.

It’s no secret that several best selling books have been written on the subject, and perhaps you may have even read a few of them. Sometimes it can seem like they are talking about “somebody else” in those books. It can be easy reading about all those wonderful things happening to “other people” in the examples presented in those books, and somehow feel they don’t apply to you.

A quick way to banish this erroneous thought is to simply find experiences where you have been well served by your unconscious. Anytime you’ve acted on intuition, or what you may have called a gut instinct has been due to your unconscious.

Or anytime you were trying to think of something, a name of somebody, or a name of a band or dessert, and it was “just on the tip of your tongue,” and then you forgot about it, only to have it magically pop into your mind when you least expected it. That was your unconscious mind presenting you with the information you were requesting earlier.

One useful way to think of your subconscious is like a giant computer that contains all the information you’ve ever experienced. And when I say experienced, I mean stuff you’ve read, things you’ve seen, emotions you’ve felt, or anything else that has been filtered from the outside world, through any one of you five senses, and into your brain.

But wait, there’s more.

The unconscious is not merely a gigantic billion gigabyte hard drive in you brain. It is also jillion-gigahertz multi-parallel processor as well. It takes all the raw data, in the form of pictures, emotions, tastes, snippets of old conversations, and runs them through several algorithms so complicated it would make the best programmers at Google look like cavemen just learning to paint on their cave walls.

And the great thing about your unconscious is that it never stops working. It is always sorting through your data to present you with the best possible information to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.

If you don’t program your brain with a specific direction, it will default to it’s factory installed programming, which is to point you in the direction of safety, being well fed, and sexually satisfaction. The order in which these appear is based on whatever threat might be present at the moment. Many times, there is perceived threats which interfere with your ability to achieve on or all of the above.

For example. You see a really attractive member of the opposite sex, and you’d really like to stroll on over and copulate, but something holds you back. What is holding you back of course, is fear. Fear is the big stopper of action.

Fear is a good thing though, it has kept mankind safe for hundreds of thousands of years, and will likely keep you from getting slapped if you walk over to that girl or guy and suggest some copulation over in the corner.

But I digress.

The big power of the subconscious is when you give it programming in additional to it’s factory installed programming. When you choose a specific goal, and charge that goal with enough energy so that your unconscious starts to find ways to make it happen.

Example.

Let’s say you are really hungry. A base need for humans. Everybody knows it is a horrible idea to go shopping at the grocery store when you are hungry. You have this strong desire for food, and everything looks good. Because of your strong desire, your unconscious is sorting through the environment and finding all those things that will satisfy this deep craving.

You ignore the sexy blond standing next to you, you ignore the sale they are having in Wii’s, you pretty much only see the food.

Another example. (The old new car stand by example.)

You buy a new car. It is very important to you. Suddenly you see the same car everywhere. You swear they weren’t there before. But because you have given your brain the temporary message that a purple Toyota Corolla (or whatever car you want for this example) is super important, you see them everywhere.

When you take something that you really want, like money, or a relationship, or a new house, and charge it strong enough, your unconscious will start to point out all kinds of things to you that will help you make it happen.

And the way to charge your subconscious is with pictures, feelings, sounds, tastes, and smells of what your desire will be like when you get it. When you make as many as you want, and charge them with powerful emotions on a daily basis, you’ll start to see all kinds of opportunities pop up.

It seems like magic, and to hear some of the people from “The Secret,” it sounds like magic. But I reality, all those opportunities were there before, just like all those purple Corolla’s were there before, it’s just that you didn’t notice them.

And the thing about opportunities is that they can be a double-edged sword. They are a little bit more complicated to spot that a purple Toyota. You might need to see a couple things, and thing of a creative way to combine to create something useful. Like maybe you’ll run into two different people within a week, and think of a creative way to combine everybody’s skills to create a really cool product that will make you millions.

If you hadn’t’ charged your brain to look for opportunities, you might have missed out. But when you program your brain through regular practice, and emotional visualizations, you’ll start to see opportunities of a lifetime on a regular basis.

Get updates by email and access to information not available here by joing our exclusive list. Sign up below!

How To Attract Customers To Any Shop

The other day I was walking down the street, minding my own business, like I usually do. Of course, I don’t always mind my own business, there’s times when you just can’t help but to involve yourself in the affairs of others. This almost always goes well, and people don’t generally object to me imposing on their situation, because it’s usually with a helpful comment of appreciation.

But in this particular case, I was just focusing on the thoughts that were in the forefront of my mind, which were rather jumbled, which made this a little more difficult than normal. Sometimes I have such clarity of thought and purpose that I go after and achieve my daily objection with incredible focus. This was not one of those days.

So there I was, staggering down the street, and suddenly I bumped into a rather festively dressed circus clown. He was doing an advertisement for some grand opening of a shop of some sort. When I happened across him, he was on his break, as he was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette. I sat down, suddenly changing my plans to not involve myself in the business of others.

This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. I had never spoken to a circus clown before, especially one that was on his break taking drag after drag on an unfiltered cigarette.

I asked if he was always a clown, and he replied that most of the time, he was. He didn’t do kids parties, because those were too dangerous. He did mostly advertising, marketing gimmicks, and the occasional rodeo when they needed somebody to fill in. The particular job that he’d been assigned on that particular day was to simply stand outside a shop (which turned out to be a furniture store) and wave to customers to draw them inside the store.

Now there’s a couple of conversations I’d like to at least listen in on. One is the person who goes out, maybe to pick up his laundry, or drop off their kids at day care, or whatever. The last thing they want to do is buy some furniture. But lo and behold, there is this funny clown standing there on the sidewalk, and they can’t help but to go inside and see what’s what. And before they know it, they’ve purchased an entire dining room set.

The conversation I’d like to hear is when their friends come over, and ask them how or why they decided to buy a new set of furniture. I’d like to hear them explain that a voiceless cigarette-smoking clown convinced them.

The other conversation I’d like to hear is the furniture shop owners deciding how they were planning on promoting their grand opening, or sale, or whatever. And how exactly they decided on hiring a clown. Did they have three or four choices, and they clown was there best one? Personally, I’d choose a couple of bikini models, but that’s just me.

There was a story in the news a while back about a sandwich shop that had a bikini model, not even a real one, the kind that model clothes in department store windows, out front during lunch time. It was a fantastic success, and drew a large lunch crowed. Until somebody complained to the city council. It seems that having a bikini mannequin is against some city ordinance or something, so they had to put a t-shirt on her.

So maybe they wanted to put a couple of bikini models out front, but they got out-voted by the pro-clown faction of their marketing division, perhaps due to fears of repercussions from the community. Who knows?

When I asked Mr. Clown (I never did get his name) how long he’d been doing his, he said he was in his third year as a clown. He found out about it from an ad on craigslist. He didn’t tell me how much he got paid, but he did say that the benefits were pretty good. He got paid extra if he could juggle several balls at once.

So after a few minutes of pleasant conversation, I went on my way, sure I’d see the clown again somewhere.

How to Add Subscribers Through The Fog of History

When I was a kid I had a newspaper route, like a lot of kids did in my neighborhood. It wasn’t for a large newspaper; it was only for our local town newspaper. I think it was free, and they made money off the advertisements only, which were only for local businesses. It wasn’t a very large operation. They had an office downtown, with about five people working.

I’m not sure where they printed it, because the office was pretty small. Maybe they outsourced it somehow, and used some other printer, much like a lot of micro brewed beers use the facilities of larger breweries.

The route I had wasn’t that large; it only encompassed my own neighborhood. There were maybe fifty houses I would have to go to every week. It was only a weekly newspaper, so it wasn’t like I had to get up at four in the morning every day so I could have stories to tell my grandkids about how I used to have to get up in the morning to trudge through the snow eight hundred miles to school every day.

Every once in a while we would have a subscription drive. I’m not sure how that worked, being as how the newspaper was free, but I think they had two different levels of service, or something like that. People that paid to subscribe, rather than get the free version got some kind of benefit. Our boss explained it to us, but I wasn’t really sure I understood then, which means I’m almost certain I don’t understand now.

Something that is foggy and vague when it happens can only get foggier and more vague with the passage of time. Except for those that are capable of re-writing history, in which case the past can get clearer and clearer despite the events and the eye witness accounts getting further and further away.

I think that happens with some aspects of history. There is no way they really know what all those old times Greek scholars were really up to. There are all kinds of stories about what Socrates said before his death, and what his intentions were and all that. But they didn’t have any video cameras back then, so I doubt anything that is attributed to him is any way remotely accurate.

When you think about how events from the distant past have been squeezed and distorted through the lens’ of various cultures throughout history, it’s amazing that we even remember their names, let alone their intentions and the social pressures of the day that influenced them and there decisions.

Kind of like that telephone game. Where you get a bunch of kids in a large circle. And you whisper something in the ear of one, and he or she whispers it to the kid next to them, and so on. You may start with something like “I like red fire engines,” and end up with something like “Let’s go to Nigeria.” Which of course is always good for a laugh (playing the game, not going to Nigeria, but then again, I’ve never been to Nigeria, so I wouldn’t know. I imagine it’s pretty hot.)

So what we would do is we would knock on peoples doors, and say:

“You really need to subscribe to this,”

To which people would usually say something like,

“Why do I need to subscribe, I get it for free already,”

To which we would say,

“Yea, I know but when you subscribe, you get all kinds of extra stuff,”

And then they would say something like,

“What kind of extra stuff?”

And we would explain, and they would quickly realize that by subscribing you get all kinds of wonderful benefits, such as extra stuff, and secret stuff, and other go straight to the front of the line kind of stuff. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me.

How To Get To The Bottom of Vague, Manipulative Communication For Instant Emotional Rewards

When humans communicate we rarely are upfront and clear about our intentions. Many times, most times in my opinion, we don’t even know the full extent of our intentions. How many times have you gotten into a fight with somebody, and after wards you were wondering why in the world you said what you said?

It’s hard enough to clear air after a particularly nasty fight, even harder when you aren’t sure why you were fighting to begin with. Underneath our words and sentences are emotions so deep and complex many are afraid to even acknowledge their existence.

It’s no wonder that communication can sometimes be difficult. Sometimes the words themselves with are seemingly impossible to argue with, even though they give you a deep “icky” feeling inside. Many times we unconsciously try eliciting an emotion in somebody else through manipulative tactics because we aren’t willing to address, or even understand our true needs.

For example. Lets say your girlfriend or boyfriend says to you:

“If you loved me, you’d know when I was angry.”

If you address this accusation at any logical level, you are doomed from the start. Simply by engaging in the conversation, you will be at an emotional disadvantage.

If you disagree, and try to assert that you do indeed love them, you are admitting you don’t know when they are angry. There’s just another reason. So you are admitting that you can’t read the emotions of your partner.

If you disagree, and say you know when they are angry, you are tacitly admitting that you aren’t being clear, because they don’t feel that you know. Another defensive position.

If you agree, then you are tacitly admitting that you don’t love them, because the “If you loved me..” is in the second conditional, meaning a description of an event that isn’t likely true. Yet another defensive position.

No matter how you respond to the actual words or logic in the sentence above, you are doomed to fail. The sentence is constructed to elicit a defensive emotional position, no matter how answer it. Of course, you will feel obligated to apologize for your horrible actions, thereby making this an extremely useful manipulative tactic to solicit an apology or admission of wrongdoing, or an admission of responsibility for your partner’s cruddy emotions.

However, there is another way. Ideally, you want to let your partner know that while you acknowledge their emotions, you are not responsible for them. They are. To do this in the above example, you need to keep your cool, and not get drawn into an argument, no matter how covertly it has been set up.

There are a couple ways of doing this. One is to simply be vague, and not give credence to what they say. This is good for dealing with people that you don’t really have a vested interest in creating a lasting emotional relationship with (like a coworker or somebody else you are kind of forced into dealing with.)

In this case you just pause, as if you are thinking and say:

“Hmm, maybe you’re right.” And then go on about your business. Because the above claim (if you loved me, or cared about me you’d..whatever) has many different levels of meaning, it puts the ball back in their court to explain exactly what they mean.

If you are interested in keeping a health relationship, you’ll need to ignore the surface language, and address the likely underlying emotions. In this case they are either feeling unloved, or they are feeling angry. Just pick, and carefully ask for more information. Be sure to keep an even keel, and not get drawn into an argument.

“What is it about me that makes you think I don’t love you?”
“And why does that (whatever that is) mean that I don’t love you?
“What is it about me that makes you feel angry?”
“Why does that (whatever that is) make you feel angry?”

The trick is to let them know you are interested in them feeling better, while at the same time making them aware that they are responsible for their own emotions.

This can take some practice, but it is very powerful in getting to the bottom of difficult emotions and feelings that can clutter up an otherwise health and rewarding relationship.

For more tips and updates, sign up for our email list.

How To Be Assertive And Get What You Want

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he was telling me about this problem he had with a neighbor of his. His neighbor is an old widower, and kind of a lonely guy. I guess his loneliness has caused him to be less polite than you’d normally expect, as he is always imposing himself on my friend.

He’ll come over several times a week, many times without any reason, and just to have somebody to talk to. On the one hand, my friend can appreciate his situation, his kids and grandkids all live in a different state, and the old guy apparently doesn’t like to leave the apartment complex. So it’s easy to have sympathy for somebody like that, but lets be honest. Sympathy can only go so far. Pretty soon your good manners wear thin, and you start to think of reasons to get rid of the guy.

It’s gotten to the point where my friend feels anxious when he goes to do laundry in the shared laundry room. I guess he’s been caught a couple of times loading and unloading clothes, and dragged into some lengthy conversation about times past.

Then his girlfriend suggested he read a book called “When I Say No I Feel Guilty” by Smith. I checked the book out, because my friend really said it helped him. It is a book filled with helpful advice, and strategies to become more assertive. It was written during the seventies, so it’s filled with some references that don’t really work anymore, but the underlying concepts are just as powerful.

Not only can you effectively say “no” to people and reclaim your time, but you can avoid manipulation, and stay out of arguments with no end in sight you’d otherwise get dragged into. The great thing is that the concepts are really easy to understand and apply.

Here is one of my favorites.

One is called the broken record. This is for when you are talking to a salesperson, or a clerk at a store, and they are being less than helpful. Basically it works so well because it effectively defeats any argument somebody throws at you for not being able to do what you are requesting. It’s pretty simple, and works like this.

You figure out what you want, let’s say you want to return or exchange a book you bought at a private bookstore. (Most large chains have a pretty good return policy, so you likely won’t need these skills there.)

So you figure how to word your request, for example:

“I’d like to return this book.”

So far so good, right? Likely, you’ll get some reason why you can’t, especially if it is a family owned store. Even if they have a big sign stating “NO REFUNDS,” this will still work. Small stores (even huge international chains) can pretty much do what they want, despite the seemingly rigidness of their policies. Its’ not like the refund police is going to pop in out of thin air and arrest everybody.

So you say:

“I’d like to return this book.”

And they say:

“We can’t because of blah blah blah…”

The great part is that it doesn’t matter at all what they say for the “blah blah blah” part. You just say:

“I understand that, and I’d like to return this book.”

And just keep repeating this until they cave in, which they usually do pretty quickly when they realize what they are up again. Can you see why this is called the broken record technique? It’s important to stay as calm as possible, and not get angry. It helps to even try not to listen to their excuse at all. Just imagine they are on of those teachers on those old Charlie Brown cartoons.

There are many other techniques in this book, which can do wonders for all your relationships. It’s considered one of the classics of assertiveness, and has helped millions of people since it’s publication. I strongly suggest you pick it up; you can probably buy a used on Amazon for a couple bucks. It’ s great to have a couple copies around to refer to whenever you wish you would have handled a situation a little bit better, so you can study up and improve for the next time.

How To Reframe Objections Before They Come Up

Here in Japan, Tokyo suffered an embarrassing defeat recently in not getting the 2016 Olympics, which by now you undoubtedly know went to Rio. While I understand how having the Olympics can be a huge financial and political windfall to any city, I never really understood the fervor with which cities and politicians campaigned for the win.

As a kid growing up in LA, I remember the Olympics in the 80’s, but without any of the massive campaigning that went on recently. One thing that struck me was how Ishihara, the Mayor (or sometimes called the governor) of Tokyo responded. He used the classic political “reframe.” When used correctly, this can be a powerful tool of persuasion that can gain compliance and behaviors in you favor. When used with less that adroitness, it can come across as ineffectual.

Ishihara said the reason the Olympic Committee didn’t choose Tokyo was because the Japanese delegates (or representatives, or whatever they are called) are “not good at behind the scenes activities,” to paraphrase, meaning that in order to get the Olympics in your city, one has to be skilled in backroom, under the table dealings.

In saying that, Ishihara was saying that Rio, who got the Olympics, was in some way deceitful and manipulative, while the poor Japanese, who are incapable of such dealings, missed out. In other words, he was claiming that because the Japanese delegates were too honest and upfront. That is why they didn’t get chosen for the Olympics.

Now, here in Japan, the response from the foreigner community was one of “sour grapes.” I haven’t spoken to enough locals lately to get their read on his response.

But the point of this article today is to not to point out this particular reframe, but to illustrate how powerful it can be when used correctly. In my opinion, Ishihara’s attempted reframe was less than effective.

Ideally, reframes are most effective before a decision is made by your target, not as an excuse after. Politicians that use them effectively before an election, to somehow present their weaknesses as strengths, usually have a habit of getting elected.

My personal favorite reframe was by Ronald Reagan in the debate with Mondale. Going into the debate, Reagan was fairly old, and Mondale was much younger. The underlying, unspoken concern was that Reagan was too old to be an effective president. Reagan, being the great communicator, knew this and used it to his advantage.

What he did was illustrate two things. One is that by effectively reframing your weaknesses into strengths, you take the air out of your opponent’s objections. If you are a salesperson, and you have a list of your products likely drawbacks, and can figure out a way to make them into strengths, you can usually sell a lot of products.

The second thing that Reagan did was not only reframe, but also pre-frame. He voiced the objection he knew his opponent had, and not only reframe it, but he did it before his opponent even brought it up. When you can reach into our opponents mind, and reframe his objection before he even voices it, you can be pretty much unstoppable.

You can watch it here:

Another great example comes from the movies. There is a scene in 8 mile, with Eminem, when he has to do a “rap battle” with somebody that is better known, bigger, stronger, better respected, and even who stole his girlfriend. Eminem’s character, “Rabbit,” has to go first in the rap battle, and effectively takes all the “dirt” his opponent is likely to bring up during his “turn” in the rap battle, and effectively deflates them, one by one, leaving his opponent with nothing to say, speechless. Granted, this is a movie that is written, shot and re shot with many takes, but it illustrates the powers you can achieve when you not only know what objections your opponent has, but dismantle them before they object them.

Check it out here (right around :48 the reframing starts, language is NSFW)

Of course, all this was first illustrated by conversational hypnotist Milton Erickson. When you can take your targets objections, and reframe them into positive aspects, before you target even voices them, you will gain powerful authority in their world, and they will be much more likely to take your suggestions.

How To Sort The World For Maximum Benefit

The other day I was having a chat with an ex colleague of mine. We were talking about various things that we used to be involved with together, that we no longer are, and the different things we are doing now and how we’ve kind of drifted in separate directions. One of the more interesting things we discussed was how people tend to categorize things. Even when I referred to this person, you’ll notice I referred to him as an ex colleague. Not an old friend, or an old co-worker, or an old boss, but an ex colleague.

What does that imply? Other than our actual relationship, it is an example of how we are constantly looking out at the world and sorting everything into categories and compartments. I was playing poker the other day with a couple of buddies (notice I used a different word there to describe these people) and noticed they each stacked their chips differently.

We weren’t playing for money, or anything, just pretend. We were using different colored chips, but they were all the same value. If you aren’t familiar with poker or gambling with chips, usually different colored chips have different monetary value. In this case they were all worth the same thing.

One guy had his all neatly stacked accordingly to color, even though we had agreed that the value didn’t depend on color. Even he would make a bet; he would make sure that each chip was the same color. And many times, the amount that he would bet was dependent on how many of each color chips he had.

The other guy had a seemingly opposite approach. When he made bets, he made sure there was an equal amount of colored chips in each bet. Since we had four different colors (red, blue, green and yellow) he always made his bets in increments of four.

While we were playing and shooting the breeze (notice how with buddies you shoot the breeze, but with colleagues you have discussions) I started thinking about categories that people carry around in their heads, and how we are always sorting things we encounter in the world and putting them into different categories.

I suppose this tendency served us well in our evolutionary past, as it made life or death decisions more or less automatic. Safe or unsafe, delicious or poisonous, familiar territory or far away from home. But sometimes it can be very limiting.

My two buddies are a good example of this. They were both completely limited on how much they could bet based on how they chose to sort their chips. When an opportunity came up that called for a different sized bet (like sometimes in poker you want to call without raising) they didn’t seem able to break from their pre set strategies.

It’s interesting when you examine how you sort things, experiences, even people. Friend? Enemy? Helper? Detractor? There’s that old saying that you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, but I think the deeper truth is to be able to notice the enemy and the friend in all people. While I’m not advocating walking around like Richard Nixon thinking that everybody is out to get you, I think it helps to keep people and their behavior in context.

One very useful and powerful skill to have is to be able to rearrange your own categories that you place people and things into, and be able to routinely examine what you’ve placed in those categories and determine if they don’t deserve an upgrade or a downgrade.

Everybody knows somebody that is completely trusting and gullible, and is always being taken advantage of (a salesperson’s dream customer). This is an example of somebody that is unable or unwilling to put people into the “not to be trusted until further notice” category. Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum are the always paranoid and “Trust No One” crowd.

When you get down to it, people are a collection of their behaviors and capabilities. And as people grow and learn, many times their behaviors and capabilities change over time. Some for the better, some for the worse. There’s no reason why shouldn’t always be updating your categories, so you can better use the resources that are always around you.

Are You Committed To Powerful Persuasion And Influence?

To those of you who have emailed me privately asking for more tips on how to easily persuade others, this article is for you. If this is your first time here, you will find a great and easy to apply tip to use in your persuasive endeavors, be they job interviews, first dates, sales calls or any other instance where you’d like to covertly influence somebody.

The human mind comes pre programmed with various “hot buttons” that were extremely beneficial to humans in the days before agriculture. Decisions had to be made quickly and effectively. Whoever happened to feel a need to sit around and analyze every situation before acting usually didn’t live long enough to pass on that characteristic, so we are left with a predisposition for quick thinking.

If you were a caveman, and took three hours to decide weather or not to throw your spear at a wooly mammoth, you would never eat. If it took you several minutes to contemplate which direction to run if a tiger started chasing you, you wouldn’t last very long.

If you are ever conflicted in a decision, it’s only because today’s society presents us with a multitude of element that push those few “hot buttons” that we have built into our thinking process.

These “hot buttons” have been demonstrated beautifully by Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence – Science and Practice.” It is likely the most referred to book on influence and persuasion.

The topic of today is something called commitment and consistency. Basically, you tend to do things the same way you’ve done them before, or you tend to choose things the same way you’ve chosen them before.

Brand loyalty, staying in relationships or jobs that seem contrary to our best interests, and taking the same route to and from work area all based on this principle. Humans like what is comfortable. And when we do something, and it works, we usually do it over and over again.

Sometimes this can have a negative effect. If you try something, and get a little bit of a benefit, but not quite the benefit you were after, it can be hard to try something new, as we want to hang on, sometimes subconsciously, to that small benefit that we got, whatever it was. It may even be something that we are completely unaware of.

There are a couple of interesting experiments presented in Cialdini’s book. One is that they went through a neighborhood, and asked people to put up a huge sign in their front yard. Most, of course, said not.

Then they went through another similar neighborhood, and asked neighbors to put up a very small sign in their yard. A few said yes. They came back later, and the people that had allowed a small sign in their yard (no big deal) overwhelmingly said yes to a large sign. Because they had already committed to putting a sign up, agreeing to put up a much larger sign was simply behaving in a way that they had behaved in the past.

So how can you use this to influence others? There are two. One is similar to the sign experiment. You simply get the person to do something that seems no big deal, on a small scale. Then later, you ask them to do something much bigger, but seems to be similar to the smaller thing they did.

Salespeople do this all the time. They get small commitments to follow them from prospective customers. (Follow me, sit here, etc) and then slowly build up the level of compliance, until signing a contract is simply the next step in the process.

Seducers use a similar strategy. They meet a girl, buy her a drink, convince her to go to a different area of the bar or club, where they can “talk.” Then they go to another bar in the same neighborhood. Then they go to a small café somewhere closer to the guy’s apartment. Before you know it, they are in bed together. A string of small commitments, slowly growing in size and importance until going home with some guy she just met only three hours ago seems like no big deal.

Another, trickier way to do this is to find things in the persons past that they have already done, and convince them that their previous behavior is very similar to the behavior you want them to perform. This has to be done very carefully, and not blatantly. It takes practice, but once you get this down, you can be powerfully persuasive.

One way to do this (As described beautifully by Cialdini, Goldstein, and Martin in “Yes,” the follow up to “Influence”) is to assigning a positive label to your “target” because of their previous behavior. Then simply imply that if they choose not to comply with your request, they will lose that label.

Again, this can be tricky, and takes some practice to do conversationally, but it can be extremely powerful. Once you convince somebody that they will lose something they like (the positive label you gave them) they will do almost anything to keep it.

One extremely important caveat. Although these techniques are very powerful, if you use them without the other person’s interests in mind, they will backfire horribly. You will be despised more than the most unethical car salesman there is. But when you do this with the utmost sincerity in helping the other person achieve their underlying needs, you can’t go wrong.

Two Powerful But Little Known Secets Of Persuasion That You Can Use Today

There are two powerful and almost irresistible elements of persuasion that when used correctly, can have a profound effect on the target of your influence. Without these two items, you will have to put a gun to somebody’s head, or implicitly promise some kind of sexual or monetary reward in order to move their thinking towards what you want them to do.

The fact that many advertisements you see today blatantly (and some very covertly) use sex in any way possible to promote products and services shows that even huge marketing and advertising companies are unaware of the power of these two elements.

Because you’ve come across this blog today, you are about to learn them. When you finish reading this, you’ll have a firm understanding of how and why they work, and some sneaky tricks that will allow you to use them starting today to get other people to do what you want.

So what are they?

Social Proof, and Authority.

Humans are hard wired to make decisions quickly. Back in the old days, before agriculture, people lived in small groups of around 200 people. If you made a wrong decision, you usually didn’t last long. Because the environment and living conditions were extremely dangerous, you couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

Imagine going out chasing a woolly mammoth, and you always had the fear that if you twisted your ankle, or tripped over a rock, or got an infection from a small cut on branch, you were done. Game over. You’d likely be left behind, and probably wouldn’t last long. That’s hard to imagine today when almost any kind of medical ailment is easily treatable.

So humans developed a few shortcuts in decision making. One was social proof. Social proof is a powerful influential factor that causes people to get rid of logic and rational thinking and simply follow the crowd.

This worked beautifully on a woolly mammoth hunt. It kept everybody together and safe from predators. It worked terribly in Nazi Germany when everybody agreed it was ok to murder Jews. It is still working everywhere you look today, from fashion trends, to car styles, to popular restaurants. People don’t like to admit it, but at our core, humans are pack animals.

The second “shortcut” in thinking is authority. Whoever is recognized as the authority in the group will usually be obeyed without question. This goes hand in hand with social proof. The more people follow a leader, the more authority he will have, which of course gives him or her more social proof as a leader.

If you were walking down the street and some homeless guy that reeked of alcohol asked you for your drivers license, you’d laugh. But if a well built police officer with two smaller officers following obediently behind him asked for your drivers license, you probably couldn’t get it out quick enough.

If the man that collects your garbage told you that eating three raw onions a day is the secret to a hundred and fifty years of good health, you’d think he was a nut case. But if you heard a famous doctor, who has written several best selling, and well regarded books on health, say the same thing, you’d likely head straight over to the onion shop. And if you saw many others buying onions by the cartload, that would cement your decision even further to eat three raw onions a day.

The same message from two different sources can have a widely different effect, based only on the source. Shortcuts in thinking.

So how do you apply this to your own persuasion? Simply suggest that some kind of authority agrees with whatever you are saying. And suggest or imply that many people have already done what you are suggesting your target (or mark) do.

For example, if you are selling cars, which do you think is more persuasive:

This is a great car. It gets great gas mileage and will fit nicely in your garage. It’s got many safety features that will keep you and your family safe. It’s red, and red is a good color. I think you should buy this car. Whatta ya say?

Or

Car and Driver is just one of many leading consumer magazines that has given this car a five star rating, based on many factors. When this model first came out it won three awards at the International Car Show in Italy. And of all the thousands of people that have bought this car already, two of the reasons they like it is the great gas mileage, and the incredible safety features. Of course it’s red, which is a very popular color. Many people have found that when they drive a red car, for some crazy reason they feel a boost in self-confidence. Leading Psychological experts have shown that driving a red car boosts your sex appeal as well. Of course, because this model is so popular, you’ll have to make a decision pretty quickly. I have three more appointments today that want to take a look at this car.

Which do you think is more persuasive?

Many experts in the science of persuasion have shown time and time again that the leading sales people who use these two powerful techniques of social proof and authority have quickly become the leaders in their field. Not only that but they get a lot more money and sex. And when you begin to use these powerful techniques in your daily conversation, you’ll be amazed how effective you will be.

Have fun.