Category Archives: Conversation Skills

Quickly And Effortlessly Overcome Objections

Oh Yea? Says You!

So the other day I was having an argument with a friend of mine. Not really an argument, although it could have easily turned into one if either one of us had a hugely vested interested in our opinions, which we both agreed were merely opinions. We’d argued/discusses several issues at length enough times to know that pretty much either issue we choose, it’s fairly easy to shoot holes in each others arguments, and we almost always end up agreeing to disagree.

One of the things we do sometimes is to play devils advocate one each other, if that’s even the right term. We pick an issue, an issue that we disagree on, and which is highly controversial, such as gun control, or abortion, or animal rights, and argue the opposite that we normally would.

I actually met this guy several years ago in a sales seminar, and that was one of the ways they taught us to overcome objections, was to put yourself in the customers shoes, and come up with as many objections as possible. The seminar itself was based on the overcoming objections part of the sales process. One of the things we learned was that the best way to overcome an objection is to not only defeat it, but to bring it up before the other person even thinks about it. In technical terms this is called “pre framing” as opposed to “re framing.” When you reframe something, you take an already stated objection, and try to twist it around so it’s not such a big objection. The problem with this is that many times, by the time the person has formulated the though well enough to present a coherent objection, they’ve usually been thinking about it for a while, and it’s pretty well entrenched in their mind.

So a great way to get rid of objections is to simply reframe them before they come up, or preframe them. That way when the client starts to formulate the thought that would have otherwise turned into an objection, instead they’ll think what you want them to think.

Here’s a great example that I witnessed in real time, several years ago. While you may object to the content of my example, the structure of how the particular objection in question was handled before it came up was particularly elegant. I was eating dinner at a restaurant with a group of guys. One of the guys, who was around 40 years old at the time, liked the younger ladies. He wouldn’t date anyone older than mid twenties. (If you find this distasteful, please press on. The example lies in the structure, not the content.)

At the time of this incident, the TV show ER was really popular, and starred George Clooney, who was the latest heartthrob. I believe at the time Clooney was late thirties. So my friend was flirting with this young waitress. I don’t think he intended to actually follow throw, he was just practicing his “game,” so to speak.

They were flirting back and forth, with eye contact, and conversations that lasted jut a tad bit longer than your normal waitress/customer interaction. He asked what she did when she wasn’t waitressing. She mentioned that she was in nursing school. He smiled and said, “Oh, you want to be like on ER, right?” And she blushed, as it was obvious that she liked that show, and at least entertained the idea of being a glamorous nurse like on TV.

So my friend, noticed a golden opportunity to preframe the “how old are you” question, that younger girls sometimes ask seemingly older guys. While she was still smiling about the thought of being a nurse “like” on ER, my friend says:

“Me and George Clooney have the same birthday.”

Now if she fantasized at all about being a nurse on ER, she surely fantasized, at least a little bit, about George Clooney. And my friend put himself in that same category in her mind. If he decided to pursue this girl (he didn’t,) and the age question ever began to arise in her mind, she would remember him having the same age as George Clooney, and of course she wouldn’t have a problem with George Clooney, so the age question was deflected and dismantled before it ever came up.

When I asked him later on how he was able to think in the moment like that, and preframe a pretty powerful objection right there on the spot, in real time, he told me it was simply through practice. He had dated quite few younger girls, and they would inevitably come up with the same questions. So what he did was to write out all the questions he got over and over, on some business size cards. And everyday, while he was taking the train to work, he would flip through the cards, look at the questions, and think of the best way to answer them that would respect the questioner, and also put himself in the best possible light.

He said that after he did that for a while, he began to see the questions coming long before they were ever actually expressed verbally, and easily preframe them. After a while, they never, ever came up again, and he enjoyed much more success (take that however you will) with his pursuit of dating younger girls.

In that sales seminar I went to, they taught us the same thing. To make a list of all the objections you get on a regular basis, and figure out the best way to answer so that you’re not disregarding or disrespecting your client, but you’re also putting your product or your service in the best possible light.

If you take the time to actually write down the objections you get the most, and practice going over some possible answers, you’ll find that they begin to come up more and more, and you’ll even be preframing them conversationally without even realizing it. To the untrained eye, they will seem to have magically disappeared.

Another thing we learned at the seminar was a way to increase mental flexibility and open mindedness. And that was through purposely arguing a point that you don’t believe in, with a willing partner. Take an issue, like some of the ones I’ve listed above, find a willing partner, and choose opposite sides that you’d normally take, and let the battle begin.

Use all your skills of persuasion and sales to convince the other person, while resisting their argument (which is the way you really feel). Do this few times and you’ll never look at the same old issues again.

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Visualize Yourself To Victory

How To Change The Playing Field In Your Favor

I remember once, a long time ago, way back when I was in Junior High school, I was playing golf with a couple of friends after school. There was one hole that I always had trouble with. The first 80 yards or so, you had to hit your ball over part of a lake. The part of the lake that you had to hit over ended on the left edge of where the fairway would be, and to the right it only got bigger. Being a habitual slicer, I usually sliced off to the right, and into the water.

In order to get over the water hazard, I only had to hit a normal shot. My normal shot didn’t start to fade until about fifty to a hundred yards or so, which gave me enough distance to get over the water if I could ever hit a normal shot. My problem was that on that particular hole, I never hit a normal shot. My drive was rarely more then ten yards or so off the ground and sliced a lot earlier and more pronounced than normal, sending my ball straight into the large area of the lake.

From a pure physics standpoint this is easy to understand. If you flinch even slightly in the direction of lifting your head to see where the ball went, you’ll hit the ball just a little bit higher than normal, giving you less height, and in my case, more slice, as I twisted the club head just a little bit more than I normally would have.

The funny thing is that I lifted my head because I was unconsciously worried about slicing into the lake. And because I lifted my head, I sliced into the lake. My unconscious actions, (e.g. lifting my head up and turning the club head more than normal,) which were based on my fears, actually caused my fears to come true, rather than preventing them.

From a structural standpoint, it went like this: I had this fear about an outcome based on a planned action. My anxiety going into the action changed the action slightly, and became the direct cause of my fears coming true.

In this particular case, it was one off shot, so to speak. I hit it in the water; walked about halfway up the fairway, about even where my ball went into the lake (next to all my other balls) dropped a ball, took a penalty and went on my way. This was a one-time event, which in the end only increased my score by two. The rest of the course was wide and open, so I could slice all over the place and be OK.

Naturally, every time I teed up on that particular hole, I remembered all the other slices into he water, which of course increased my anxiety, and made it much more likely to repeat the error. But only being a golf game, and only being in Junior high school, I figured that was normal. Until my friend shared with me a powerful secret that I still use today, and you can to, to break out whatever rut you happened to be in.

This problem, often called a self fulfilling prophecy, can present itself in many ways, and the feedback loop can be much more debilitating that a couple of strokes on an afternoon golf game.

Suppose you are a single guy, and you see a girl you like. You walk up to her, introduce yourself, and she blows you off. Happens all the time right? Only next time you walk up to a girl, you remember the last one that blew you off, and it makes our approach less effective. You are nervous, can’t hold eye contact, and basically come across as kind of creepy. This makes you get rejected even more harshly, which in turns makes approaching another girl too scary to even contemplate. You have effectively locked yourself into a vicious circle of defeat, by using your worst possible past in order to hallucinate a likely outcome. The likely outcome terrifies you so much; it cripples your behavior, and virtually guarantees itself.

Another example. You go ask your boss for a raise. He turns you down. You become depressed, and your motivation to work hard decreases slightly, which in turn decreases your productivity a little bit. Next time you ask for a raise, your boss is even less likely to give you one, based on your productivity. If you get locked into this horrible tailspin, you may very well find yourself on the list of people who are expendable when budget cuts are mentioned.

One of the insidious things about these self-defeating cycles is that it is incredibly easy to blame others for your predicament. The guy who is approaching girls can blame women for being stuck up and not having the ability to see his true worth. Maybe they think he’s too short, or doesn’t make enough money. This can lead to a belief that all women are shallow and materialistic

The guy who never gets a raise can blame his boss, the economy, his coworkers for talking about him when he’s not around, and so on.

As difficult as it sounds, only when you take responsibility for your lot in life do you have a shot at bootstrapping yourself up and out of any vicious cycle of defeat you may find yourself in. Even though that often times others are culpable, some bosses do play favorites, and many people, both men and women, are shallow and materialistic, that doesn’t help you a bit. You can’t change the world, but you can change how you interpret it and react to it. That is completely in your control.

So one day, just as I was teeing up, my friend, says “Hey wait, before you hit, just close your eyes and pretend there is nothing but a huge patch of green grass in front of you.” I tried it, and it worked. I don’t think I ever hit another ball in the water after that.

The funny thing is that he didn’t tell me to visualize my ball bouncing on the other side of the lake, like most sports psychologists would have you do, or visualize how I’d feel when I hit it over the water. The advice my friend told me was to imagine the playing field, the course, was physically different than it really was. By imagining a different playing field, my actions changed automatically.

It’s so easy to argue until we’re blue in the face that “the playing field isn’t equal” and that others have advantages and opportunities that we don’t have. But what if you could simply hallucinate a more helpful playing field, and allow your actions to naturally respond to your hallucination?

What if before approaching some cute girl in a bookstore, instead of going through the difficult procedure of imagining a positive outcome, and planning his various openers, he simply imagined that all girls were irresistibly attracted to his type? There’s no rule that says your imaginations have to be true or accurate, only that they lead to behaviors that get you what you want.

And what if the guy in the office imagined he was the boss’s nephew, or that he’d pulled him out of a burning care a week earlier, or something else as ludicrous? Sure, it’s completely false, but what if it works?

Something to think about next time you’re gearing up to imagine yourself into a positive outcome.

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Success with NLP

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Are You An Eloquent Speaker?

Ideas To Words

The other day I attended this rather interesting lecture. It was downtown at the Learning Annex, where they have pretty interesting talks from time to time. Sometimes they sound pretty interesting, but the speaker is not quite as energetic and charismatic as you’d hope.

Once I went to see a lecture that was about Greek history and politics that surrounded the era of Plato, and how it led to his various philosophies. It sounded great on paper, and they must’ve had some pretty decent writer come up with the marketing material, but the speaker just didn’t give the topic justice. Most agreed that he was uninspiring, to say the least.

It’s amazing the difference between knowledge that’s in your head, and the knowledge that comes out of your mouth. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of getting ready to say something, and when you think about saying it inside your head, maybe even hear yourself saying it in your own voice, it sounds really fantastic and persuasive and eloquent. Then when you open your mouth and spit it out, you sound like a complete dufus. People look at you as if you’d just announced you discovered mustard for the first time.

Then maybe you backtrack, thinking maybe you didn’t set it up enough, and your point didn’t quite fall on ears that were ready to accept your magnificent insight. So you begin to give your background preamble, only to feel the bored stares of your friends and colleagues. Suddenly that brilliant doesn’t seem that brilliant any more.

It’s like that old skit that Jim Carrey did, way before he was famous, on the old show “In Living Color.” In the skit he played some rich snobby guy, on a date with his girl to see a hypnotist. The hypnotist called him up on stage, and put him in a trance. While in a trance, he’d only be able to cluck like a chicken, no matter how hard tried otherwise. So he did, and everybody got a good laugh. Only the hypnotist had a heart attack and died while Carrey’s character was still under a hypnotic trance.

Then the scene flashed forward twenty years, and the once pompous rich guy was a homeless bum on the street, still only able to cluck like a chicken. They showed him begging for money, and somebody gave me a dollar. So he went to the nearest fast food place to buy a hamburger. You could hear him practicing in his head:

“Ok, take it slow. Just say one hamburger please. One hamburger please.”

Then when he opened his mouth, all the came out was a cluck.

It makes you wonder how many brilliant minds are out there, wandering around, with brilliant, perhaps world changing and enhancing thoughts in their heads, but without the skills to persuasively verbalize them.

And I’m sure you’ve known a few people that had powerful skills of persuasion, and magnificently eloquent speaking skills, only their ideas were crap, or worse.

Adolph Hitler is considered one of the greatest public speakers of the twentieth century. You don’t have to understand a word of German to watch videos of his speeches and see how charismatic and persuasive he was, and how he could powerfully move a crowd. Of course, his ideas were poison, and it’s a tragic shame nobody put a bullet in his brain before he had a chance to do the horrible damage that he did.

I don’t know if you’ve ever read a powerfully moving book, only to find the author speaking either in person, or on TV. Many times it’s a disappointment, as effective writers are seldom as eloquent in real time as they are in print.

It’s been long believed by evolutionary psychologists that after language became part of the human repertoire, the leaders of the various tribes around the world weren’t the biggest, and the most aggressive, as in our non language using cousins, but the most eloquent and verbally persuasive. Even tribal chiefs today in various areas of the world where Stone Age life styles are still practiced are the most persuasive with words and other speaking skills.

It’s no secret that in order to become a leader of any of the world democracies today, you need to be a fairly persuasive and charismatic speaker. Even if your ideas aren’t all that great, you can sometimes get yourself elected if you can talk a good game.

It would make sense then that developing powerful verbal skills could give you a leg up in almost any field. The more you can persuasively convince others of your thoughts and ideas, the more you’d be worth to whomever you work for. For salespeople this concept is a no brainer.

As I realized in the lecture I attended recently on Greek history and the development of Plato’s ideas, you have to have a strong pre-set intention to learn in order to get through a less than effective speaker. If you are on the fence, if your neutral about any of the ideas being presented, then a speaker is obligated to not only grab your attention, but effectively lead you to naturally come to the conclusion that he or she wants you to come to.

This can be difficult, but there are plenty of ways to learn how to do this. Toastmasters has long been recognized as a great place to practice your speaking and persuasion skills. Many of the public speaking skills you’ll learn at toastmasters will easily translate into one on one skills of salesmanship.

Of course, many people are deathly afraid of getting up to speak, let alone committing to doing it on a regular basis in order to improve themselves. But in a competitive world, every edge can help. There are plenty of ways to get over you fear of public speaking. Some of the audio programs available through the link below can go a long way to eliminate your fear of public speaking altogether. If you’re interested in improving that area of your life, give it a go and see how it works out. They have a 30-day money back guarantee, so there’s no risk. You owe it to yourself to try it out for a couple weeks just to see if it can help.

Powerful Metaphysics

Powerful Metaphysics

Lunar or Solar?

Change Perspective

The other day I was talking to one of my neighbors, one of them that I don’t talk to very often. It seems that there is a local festival happening this weekend, and she was trying to explain its significance. Something to do with the lunar New Year. Every year the lunar New Year comes at a different time, and the length of winter is thought to be dependent on the arrival of this day.

It got me thinking about the overlapping of the two calendars, the solar and the lunar. The seasons are based on the earth’s rotation around the sun, and the lunar New Year is based obviously on the moon. The revolution of the moon around the earth has nothing to do with the revolution of the earth around the sun. They are two completely different physical systems, although they are nested. The moon/earth system is nested within the earth/sun system.

When you take the larger scale of time, based on the seasons and the sun, and compare it to the smaller system, it can seem entirely random. Some years the lunar New Year comes early, while other years it comes later. And over the years, humans have developed a rich mythology to describe the relationship between the two.

Of course, from an external and much longer perspective, they are simply two oscillating systems, one inside the other, and behave according to fairly simple physical laws. But within the system, you have all these stories and mythologies about dragons and spirits and whether or not you’re going to have a good crop based on how much moon you can see at a certain time of night.

Being able to switch in and out of an objective/subjective experience is beneficial helpful and a lot of fun. If humans were always stuck inside the subjective experience, of watching the moon dance across the sky, we would never have evolved past human sacrifices to ensure the crops would grow every year.

Advances in science continue to give us an objective, outside perspective so we can do away with hoping and praying to the gods, and to not only understand our natural environment, but to decipher it and plan accordingly. It makes life a lot easier if you know it’s going to rain with a certain degree of expectation.

On a personal level, this can be just as useful, but it can prove to be a little bit more difficult. If we look at our behavior from an objective viewpoint, some of our behavior that gets us into trouble can be pretty obvious. But it can be hard to do that. It’s very easy to stay within our own subjective experience and only see things as they show up in our own experience, without planning how to react.

One model in NLP is the ability to switch between the objective and subjective experience. One exercise I did at a seminar was particularly eye opening. It can help greatly if you ever feel yourself getting sucked into an argument that you suspect might not end well.

The exercise goes like this. You can do this with a willing partner, or completely covert.

While talking to somebody, try switching in and out of your “self.” During the conversation, imagine that you are above the both of you, and objectively watching the discussion, as if you are watching a debate between two unknown candidates on TV. Then switch into the other persons perspective, and watch yourself talking, and take the opposing viewpoint. Then switch back to an objective viewpoint, and then switch back into your own viewpoint.

This can be tricky and confusing to say the least, so it’s best to try this with a conversation that will allow for several pauses while you collect your thinking. Don’t do this while talking to your boss, or an important client at work.

It can be particularly useful to free yourself from a subjective viewpoint that isn’t as supportive as you think it is. You may even get a better perspective, and a few different ideas.

The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at it. I’ve known several sales people who perfected this technique, and were able to change their approach with clients during a conversation that resulted in them getting a sale, where before they wouldn’t have been able to.

They report that when they switched into their clients viewpoint, they got some ideas on how to better present their product or services, as well as some interesting insights into how to overcome some objections, many times even before they came up.

I’m sure you can think of many different areas where it would be good to be able to flip in and out of your own subjective experience. Try this and have fun.

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Powerful Metaphysics

Powerful Metaphysics

How To Remember Names Easily And Automatically

Mrs. Big Hair

Once I was at this party, and I was with a friend of mine, actually a date. I saw some guy that I’d met before; at least I think I’d met him before. We did that bit of recognition when you make eye contact with somebody that you know. An almost instantaneous acknowledgment of who they are. As soon as we did that, he came over. Then, to my horror, I realized that I not only didn’t remember where I knew this guy from, but that I also couldn’t recall his name. Not even a first letter.

For a few seconds, I hoped he was the kind of guy that just walks up and introduces himself, regardless of the situation, like some politician running for office, or the host of the party, or something. No dice. He walked, greeted me, (using my name of course) and then stood there waiting for me to introduce him to my date. Of course, my date, not knowing anyone at the party, was patiently waiting for me to introduce her to him.

One of the most common complaints that people have about their memories is an inability to remember names. The trick (that I didn’t learn until after that embarrassing moment at party) is two fold. One is an understanding of how memory works, and the other is a simple trick that you easily learn and put into place so you’ll never have trouble remembering names again.

The way memory works is that it’s not passive, unless it is for life or death information. Let’s say you’re walking through the jungle (back during our evolutionary past), and happen to look up at a banana tree. All of a sudden a group of ferocious monkeys swing down, beat you up, and chase you away. You’ll likely have no trouble remembering that spot, aided by the presence of the banana tree, as a no no in the future. You wouldn’t have to go back to your cave, and review you notes of the day and drill yourself so you’d remember where the safe places were, and where the dangerous place were. It would be automatic.

Likewise, if you were huffing it across the desert, and saw strange looking tree, and upon arrival at the tree found a source of an underground stream, you wouldn’t have any problems remembering where the stream was. Remembering where a hidden source of water in the desert is much easier than remembering where you parked at the airport.

So our memory is only passive when it comes to life and death. We somehow know that when we take classes in school. We listen attentively to the boring lecture, and know we have to study and drill the information into our brain before a test. We can’t just sit there passively listening to the lecture and soak it all up without a problem (at least most of us can’t). So why do we think we can remember names without putting in any effort? Who knows. The key is to realize that we need to remember names just like we’d study and remember information for a test. We have to consciously input the information into our brains in a specific way so it will make it easier to find them later.

When we listen to a lecture, we usually take notes, and then study for our notes later. You’d look kind of silly at a party walking around with a pencil and a small notebook writing down everything people said to you. They would think you were some kind of reporter or something. Since writing the information down is out, we need a better trick to remember names.

The trick is to apply a mnemonic device, like “all good boys eat cows”, or however it goes for remembering the musical scales. That reason I can’t really remember that is because it’s lacking an emotional component. Remember the deadly banana tree and the hidden water source? Both those came pre filled with a strong emotional component. We need to use those when creating our mnemonic devices. Here’s how you construct an emotionally laden mnemonic for remembering names:

A visualization of the person + a visualization of their name + a funny picture connecting them together = remembered name.

When you first meet somebody, you need to think of one visual thing about them that stands out. This is only private, so it can be as goofy or as derogatory as you can imagine. You won’t be sharing this with anybody, and it’s only to help you remember their name, so whatever you come up with is OK. Let’s say you meet somebody, and the first thing you notice about them is that they have big hair. So before you hear their name, you can think of them as Mr. Or Ms big hair. Now when you hear their name, simply think of a picture to associate with their name. Let’s say their name is Lynne. So you run “Lynne” through your mind until you can think of an easily to visualize item that will help you recall “Lynne.”

Lets’ see… Lynne… Lynne… Lint! Lint from the dryer, all over your clothes. Now you simply attach “lint” and “big hair,” and what do you have? Some poor woman whose hair is filled with lint. So now every time you see this woman, you’ll immediately think of “big hair,” and “lint,” and you’ll have her name in a heartbeat. The funny thing about this is that you only have to go through this process of remembering all the pictures (which really only takes a couple seconds) once or twice. After that, their names will be automatic.

The best time to do this is within a few moments after you meet them, whenever you get a second. Picture associated with the person, picture associated with their name, and hook them together somehow. The crazier, the funnier, the more derogatory, and more sexual you can make either picture, will make it much more easy to remember. If you make your pictures boring, like “all cows eat grass,” it won’t be so easy to remember.

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Success with NLP

Success with NLP

Oh, and at the party, I suddenly remembered where I knew the guy from. His name was Mike, and I’d met him a couple weeks earlier at a toastmasters meeting.

How To Maximize Your Most Valuable Resource

The Master Key

One of the advantages of being human, and not some other animal is that we have the ability to imagine different scenarios in our minds. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that was one of the driving forces that led to human, rather than some other animal developing a big brain.

In all animals, there are basically two driving forces, which propel them forward through evolution. Between species, and within species. Between species is a fight with other animals for resources, namely food, and shelter if that’s the kind of animal we’re talking about. Many times a food source is linked closely with a location, so an animal can develop a strong sense of territoriality.

Within species, it’s a whole different ballgame. Within species, the competition is largely between the males for the females. Generally speaking, the females choose the males best suited to provide the best DNA. They don’t consciously decide, rather their instincts and impulses are shaped over many generations, so that the ones who have the impulses to mate with the fittest males are selected for survival, and others who happen to be driven to mate with unhealthy males are naturally selected out.

Different animals have different methods to determine who is the fittest male. Usually it is based somehow on aggression, and physical dominance. In gorilla’s, the silver back is the biggest. In elephant seals, the dominant male is the most aggressive. In peacocks, the ones with the most colorful tales are deemed the most fit. Scientists suspect there is a correlation between colorfulness of tail feathers, and resistance to parasites and disease. So when females use colorfulness of tail feathers as their deciding factor, they’re also giving their future offspring genes with strong resistance to disease and parasites.

So what was the inter-species driving force in humans? Apparently it was brain size. Language, imagination and creativity are highly desirable traits in males, according to anthropologists. They say that in parts of the world where tribes still live according to ancient ways, the tribal leaders, who usually have many wives, are extremely eloquent, persuasive, and charismatic speakers. The driving force with which humans were selected over the last million years was our ability to use words. And not just putting a couple of words together, like “give me a banana,” but to string them together in such a way as to evoke powerful emotions in others.

Think of this scenario. Millions of year ago, there were several tribes. The women naturally fell for the guys that had serious game, meaning they could woo the women with only their words. They could use their words to organize and lead hunting parties, so they were instrumental in the survival of the group. They could use their words to form coalitions and defuse potentially dangerous situations between rivals. They naturally had more kids that the not so eloquent, and every successive generation produce more and more eloquent people. This in turn creates evolutionary pressure to build bigger and bigger brains to accommodate this need.

There is another reason for the ever-increasing brain of man. Humans were nomadic for the bulk of our human history. Humans had to think and plan and to imagine different scenarios, and weigh the probable outcomes, and then decide which would be the best course of action. Even throwing a spear at a gazelle that was running at an odd angle required a quick calculation and projection into the future of a couple seconds, so the spear thrower in question would know where to point he spear, how hard to throw it, and what angle. This was all done unconsciously, without any thought of the thrower. He just knew. This required immense computational power, involving delicate visualization skills.

Your brain is the result of millions of years of evolution that created a computer with such power that we will likely never create a machine that can even come close to its abilities. You can think into the future, imagine hundreds of different scenarios, judging each one by it probable effect on your future, and come back with a decision on what to do. All within a split second, and all out of your conscious awareness.

Your brain can think of desire, a goal, an intention, and through the powerful use of language, enlist the help of others to make your imagination about the future come true. Your brain can take thought, and turn it into reality.

In the last twenty years or so, there has been a huge leap in understanding in how the brain works. There have been several different strategies designed and codified to take the mystery out of how some people are wildly successful, while others struggle. Experts have been modeled, and their unconscious methods have been uncovered and described in precise detail, so that the rest of us can emulate them, and achieve exactly the same success as them.

That is the promise of NLP. With NLP you have an operators manual for your brain, perhaps the most complicated thing ever created in the history of the universe. You have the keys to unlocking exactly how achieve whatever it is you want. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have already discovered how NLP can powerfully enhance your life in as many ways as you can imagine.

With NLP, there is no more need for hoping, or wishing, or disappointment. There only desires, planning, and achieving. To find out how you can start uncovering your magnificently powerful potential today, click on the banner below.

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Success with NLP

How To Use Gestures For Powerful Influence And Persuasion

Anchors Away!

There used to be this Russian guy. Some kind of scientist. He was studying dogs; maybe you’ve heard of him, his name is Pavlov. While many people understand on a basic level what it is that he discovered, most aren’t aware of the potential this simple principle presents to use in your daily conversation for powerful influence and persuasion.

He was studying something about dogs and their saliva. I’m not exactly sure why he was studying saliva, perhaps it was some new blend of vodka or something. Who knows. (I’m sure many people do, just not me.) But he discovered something accidentally along with his study of saliva.

He would ring this bell, and bring the dogs their dinner, and then he would take some of their saliva samples, as their mouths would start watering when the food came. Just like the rest of mammals do, including people. To say something is “mouth watering,” means it smells and looks good to eat. It is simply the body’s way of preparing for what is coming, much like any automatic responses of our physiology to our changing environment.

But then he noticed something very interesting. He would ring the bell, but wouldn’t bring any food. And the dogs would still salivate. Their mouths would still water. Now obviously, there is no reason that any animal should have an automatic mouth watering response to a bell, so what happened?

What he did was to “train” the dogs to respond to a different stimulus than the food. At first, the dogs smelled food, and their mouths watered. Then he would ring the bell at the same time as the food, and their doggie brains made the automatic association with the sound of the bell, and the good. Pretty soon, the sound of the bell was all it took. It seems that dogs, as well as humans, have a function in our mammalian brain that makes it easy to adapt to our environment, by learning new automatic responses to outside stimuli.
Those of you that have ever fallen in love know the massive rush of endorphins that comes when your lover or partner says your name. Had you met the same person anytime before, while they were still a stranger to you, them saying your name wouldn’t nearly have as profound an effect.

So how do we use this automatic response characteristic for covert persuasion and influence?

First, you’ll need to carry around a plate of food, and a bell.

Just kidding.

Seriously, this is very easy to do, and once you understand this simple concept, you’ll have lots of fun watching politicians give speeches, and you’ll be able tell who understands this simple concept, and who doesn’t really have a clue. (Hint: President Obama, despite having a commanding presence and being a charismatic communicator, doesn’t have a clue when it comes to this simple technique, while president Clinton understood this very well.)

First, you’ll need to think of some things that most people will think of as being very good. Money, sex, going on vacation, winning the lotto, falling in love, etc. Just keep a mental list of universal experiences that you would have to be a psycho not to thoroughly enjoy.

Next, you’ll need to develop a list of a bunch of things, universal experiences, that you’re pretty sure people would rather avoid. A meeting with the I.R.S., alimony payments, an angry boss at work, telemarketers, etc. You shouldn’t really go to negative, as you can easily ruin somebody’s mood, and destroy any chance of persuasion if you bring up things like rape, genocide, murder, etc.

Now you’ve got your mental list, you’re ready to start training your mark, or target of persuasion, just like Pavlov trained his dogs.

Whenever you mention something that people will generally get good feelings about, motion off to the side with your right hand. Whenever you mention something (briefly) that generates unpleasant feelings, motion off to the left with your left hand. The more you can set up these “triggers” the better. It’s also better to space them out through a conversation. Hit a few good ones, then a few bad ones.

Another way to do this is to just listen to the other person talking, and pay attention to when they bring up something that makes them feel good. Just describe it back to them, while motioning off to the side with your right hand. Likewise, if they mention anything that causes them stress or anxiety, simply describe that back to them (sympathetically, of course) and motion off to the side with your left hand.

Ideally, you’ll want to use both universal experiences (good and bad) and their own unique set of good and bad experiences. If you don’t this properly (and don’t worry, this is really easy) you’ll have “set” your right hand to be good things, and your left hand to be unpleasant things.

If you are sales person, use your right hand when describing your products, and use your left hand when describing your competition. Whatever you want your client to attach good feelings to, emphasize it with your right hand. Whatever you want your client to feel aversion to, emphasize it with your left hand.

When you watch politicians speak, you can quickly tell who gets this and who doesn’t. Sometimes, it’s clear they are using their gestures congruent with their words, but usually they aren’t. A great example is the Clinton-Dole presidential debate from a ways back. Whenever Clinton mentioned something positive (good economy, peace, lower taxes, etc) he would quickly point to himself, by touching himself briefly on the chest. Whenever he mentioned something negative (war, taxes, etc) he would quickly, but clearly motion towards Dole.

This method of setting and using “anchors” comes from NLP. NLP is a set of strategies for powerful influence, and powerful self-development. If you at all interested in either of these, then have a look at the program below. Many people have discovered this is a great starting point to a life filled with personal development and achievement.

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

What’s Black And White and Can’t Fly?

I Really Have No Idea

Last week I was at the grocery store, waiting in line. It was one of those times when you have to make a split decision on which line is going to be moving the fastest, if you take too long, somebody will get in front of you, but if you make the decision too quickly, you may inadvertently get behind some old lady that is paying with a specific combination of pennies and food stamps depending on that days horoscope.

There are several factors that go into making this quick decision, and they must be considered properly. If you are lucky, and you are familiar with the people that work there, you may discover a cashier operator who is particularly skilled. That make the decision easy, as no matter how long the line is, you can be sure that he or she will process any amount of customers faster than her next nearest competitors.

Unfortunately, on this particular day, there wasn’t any such identifiable checker, and all I had to go on were the amounts of food that people had. Usually, you look for items that have a clear bar code. Somebody that has a basket full of boxes and cans is usually going to be faster than somebody that has an odd assortment of fruits. But then sometimes, if you judge how quickly somebody will get through the line based on their contents alone, you might end up behind somebody that will decide to engage in a heated cell phone discussion just before it’s time to pay the tab, and try to count out the exact change while in the middle of their conversation.

Then there’s always the possibility that a new line will open up when you are halfway to the register in your current line. If the new checker is professional and conscientious, then they will personally come over and choose the next customer. More often than not, however, the new checker will merely shout out

“I can help whoever is next!”
And leave it up to those waiting to fight for the newly opened first in line position.

So as I was standing there, pondering my choice, I heard a voice behind me speak.

“Penguins.”

Huh?

“Penguins.”

I turned around, and didn’t see anybody. As I tried my best to ignore the seemingly imagined voice, I chose my line. As I shuffled to the front, the checker looked at me and started ringing up my things. When she came to the total, she looked at me and said:

“Penguins.”

What the hell? Had everybody gone stark raving insane? I ignored her, and looked to the register fro the total. Sixteen dollars and forty-seven cents. I laid a twenty on the counter.

She dutifully snatched it away, and quickly counted out m change.

“Penguins, penguins, and penguins.” She smiled, handing me my three fifty three.

Um, yea.

I walked out to the parking log, trying to remember where I’d parked. Oh, yes, that’s right. I don’t have a car. So I got onto my bicycle and put my groceries into the basket. As I was riding home, I saw one of those huge billboards that flash the news across.

“Several deadly penguins escape from the insane asylum. Caution is warranted.”

What was going on? Since when are penguins deadly, and since when do they put them in the insane asylum? You’d think they’d just keep them in a different section of the zoo if they had a problem with them. The light up ahead was red, so I stopped, and waited.

I looked to my right, and standing on the corner was some strange guy that I seemed to recognize, but couldn’t quite place. Maybe we belong to the same penguin club.

Wait, what the hell did I just type?

OK, full stop. Something is happening, and I’m not sure what it is. Deep breathe. Stand up. Stretch. Sit down again. Flex the fingers.

Think something, and try to type it. Ok, I’m thinking about a peanut butter sandwich on toasted sourdough bread. Let me try and type and see what comes out.

Penguins.

Crap! What is going on? Maybe I need a break. Lets try this again. Think something different. Beach. South America. Margarita. Shade. Music.

Penguins.

NO!

Forget it, I give up.

Please check back tomorrow for future updates. We are experiencing technical difficulties. All penguins are penguining for further penguination. Crud.

Leverage Criteria For Ultimate Power

One of the most powerful ways to easily persuade somebody to your way of thinking is elicit and leverage criteria. Everyone you will ever meet is a walking talking collection of unmet wants and needs. And for most people, most of these unmet wants and needs are sufficiently vague so that you can easily leverage them to your benefit.

Be careful though, you can easily misuse this power to trick them into doing something or buying a product that is against their interests. If you do this, then woe be unto you.

So how do you elicit criteria? Simple. Once you establish rapport, and generate a sufficient level of comfort, just ask them what’s important about something. Be sure to ask respectfully, and with genuine interest. Most people are a little bit shy about talking about their deep desires and criteria, and will quickly close themselves off to you if they smell any amount of incongruity.

For example, let’s say you are on a first date with a girl. Or maybe not even a first date. Maybe you are just talking to her at a party or a bar. You look around, comment on all the single people. Say something about how hard it is to find the right person for a relationship. If she agrees, then that’s good. It’s usually good to go first, and reveal a little bit about yourself first.

So you mention something about your relationship (make sure not to say anything bad about anybody) mention some of the good things, and mention something more that you were looking for. For example, you could say that your last boyfriend or girlfriend was a good friend, and a good conversationalist, but they really didn’t like to travel. They were a great guy/gal, but they weren’t as adventurous. So you needed to move on. Being adventurous is important to you.

Then you ask the person you are talking to about what is important to them in a relationship. It’s key to make sure to agree that whatever they say is important.

Then ask what is important about that? For example, if they said they want to meet somebody with a good sense of humor, casually ask what they find important about that. They may say that they want somebody that can laugh at themselves. Somebody that doesn’t take themselves too seriously.

One of the great things about this is that just by talking to somebody about what is important to them, they will subconsciously start to think of you in those terms, provided you have enough rapport. If you do this several different times, they will really start to develop deep feelings for you.

Another example.

Let’s say you are selling long distance plans. You get somebody on the line, get them talking, and ask them what long distance they are currently using. Instead of jumping right into switching them, like most people do, ask them what they like about their current plan. Ask them what is important about those things that they like. Be sure to agree with whatever they say.

Lets say they mention they like that it is part of their current bill. And you ask them what is important about that (make sure not to sound like you are going to convince them that it shouldn’t be important, agree with whatever they say). They will say something like they don’t have to worry about two separate bills. It’s easier that way. They don’t have to worry.

Then simply convince them that with your new plan, it is totally simple, and they won’t have to worry. Just let them know that it will fulfill their existing criteria, and will save them money.

This can take some time to get down, so that you can use it conversationally, but when you do you will realize how powerful this is. You will notice a significant increase in your sales and your ability to conversationally persuade and influence others.

The Dangers Of Your Comfort Zone

How To Expand Your Limits

I had this fish once a few years ago. Actually, I had several fishes. I don’t know what go into me, but I got the idea that I wanted to have a tropical fish tank in my apartment. And as luck would have it, there was a tropical fish store in the mini mall just behind where my apartment was located. I suppose there is a connection there; as the tropical fish store was right next door to the cleaners I took my shirts to. (Marketers take note.)

So I went in one Saturday afternoon, not sure what I wanted, and started looking around. I priced difference size tanks, equipment, shapes that would best fit in my apartment, etc. Finally I settled on size and a price, and now was time to pick the fish.

“I need some fish,” I asked the guy. He explained to me how the shop was set up. On the left, were fighting fish. Fish that can’t live with other fish or else they’ll kick the crap out of each other. On the right were passive fish, or fish that just stare at you bug eyed from inside the tank. Since I had in mind a tank with a bunch of different fish swimming around, I decided on the passive fish.

I remember once I took this public speaking class. The guy who taught it started it off with some story, which of course was a metaphor for personal growth. The story was told to him by his original teacher at this public speaking course. It was a famous course, and most of the instructors are former members who realized incredible personal growth through the course and wanted to continue their growth by teach others.

I’m not sure if they actually designed the course that way, or if it just naturally grew that way, but it seems to be a pretty good way to build your business. The people that teach others are people that were successful in it to start, so they really know the ins and outs. And the instructors are always being created, as more and more people join the course.

That way, they really only need to worry about getting new people to sign up for the course, rather than always be on the lookout or new instructors. It is kind of self-feeding business. Just put people into the funnel and they will either spread the word to other potential members, or become instructors themselves.

This particular public speaking class has been around for many years, at least fifty or so, and has slowly grown through this method. Unless you know somebody who’s gone through the course, you likely haven’t heard of it. Of course, if you are looking for one of the best public speaking courses around, you’ll likely find this one, if you do any kind of searching.

Anyway, this guy went into a fish store, and noticed that there were several different sharks. Some sharks were pretty big, while other sharks were kind of small. At first the guy thought maybe they were different breeds or species or whatever the word is that they use to classify sharks, but then he noticed that they were all very similar in appearance. They only differed by size.

So he then assumed that maybe some were younger, and some were older. But when he asked the shopkeeper, he was surprised.

These sharks only grow as big as their cage. It has something to do with their swimming patterns. They don’t have air buoys like other fish, so they can’t just sit and float. They need to keep moving. If they are confined to a relatively small area, they won’t grow very big. They have evolved this as a way to not out strip their resources. If they are in bigger tank, or a bigger area, then they grow bigger.

Of course, the sharks really have no idea that they are in a container; they just swim around and are automatically constrained by their boundaries. Those with larger boundaries expand to meet them, and those with smaller boundaries stay small.

He asked what would happen if you took a small fish and put it into a larger area. The shopkeeper told him that they would naturally adjust, and grow bigger. He said that’s the interesting thing about sharks, is that they are like people in this regard. They are always growing to match their boundaries. If they want to grow bigger, all they need to do is increase the limits of their boundaries, and they will naturally expand to meet them.

But like most people, sharks sit around and wait for somebody else to put them into a bigger container. They expect some outside force or entity to change the shape of their cage. Some people have figured out the secret. That our cages are really only a figment of our imagination. All we really need to do is imagine that our cages are bigger, and we will expand accordingly. Most people never figure this out, and are always waiting for somebody else to guide them by the hand to bigger and better cages.

Once you know the secret, you can just re-imagine our limits until they are big enough to contain all the goals and things you want to achieve in life.

That’s when this guy realized he was at the first day of a public speaking seminar, and the instructor was giving them a kind of pep talk. Over the next twelve weeks, they would be expanding their comfort zones considerably through the practice of public speaking. And they would learn the best secret of all.

All of your boundaries are set by your fears of what you think is on the other side. When you face those fears, and realize they are only figments of your imagination, you boundaries or comfort zone will expand immeasurably. Which is exactly what they learned at this public speaking seminar.

The funny thing is that I think the shopkeeper made a mistake. Because even though I picked all passive fish, from the passive fish side of the store, it didn’t take long for one fish to eat all the rest. I started out with about six fish. Every other day or so there would be one more fish missing.

And all I had left was one fighting fish that had been mistaken for a passive fish, which was now proudly the only fish in his tank.