Category Archives: Conversation Skills

Clear Intentions Leaves no Room for Mistakes

I was waiting at the train station the other day. It was a Saturday afternoon, and there were a many people. Mostly out shopping, a few kids that had to go to school on Saturday, as that is fairly common here. I started talking to this woman sitting next to me. She had an interesting book that was about baseball. It turns out her son is in university and plays baseball for the university baseball team, and she because she never really knew anything about the game, she decide to buy a book to figure it out. It turns out that her son had always been interested in baseball before, but he never felt comfortable expressing an interesting, because when he was a kid his parents had always placed so much importance on studying, getting good grades, and getting into a good university. Only when he went away to university did he find the persona l freedom to explore his desires. And he found out he was really good.

The funny thing was that his mom told me that had he said something about baseball earlier, like in junior high school, she would have loved to help him explore that option. So there she was, reading this book about baseball. The particular chapter she was reading was all about signals and signs and secret messages inside other pieces of random communication. In baseball strategy is very important, but sometimes communicating changes in strategy to players on the field is difficult. So they devised a complex set of signals and hidden messages. And because both teams are doing this, it can become very complicated to send signals that the other team can’t understand. Otherwise they would intercept their strategy and know what they are planning to do. They go to great lengths to conceal the intention behind their communication.

While I was talking to her this guy started walking behind us, mumbling something incoherently. He was holding some map of some sort, which looked to be a local train map. A few people looked like they wanted to help him, but he wasn’t really making any sense, so people just kind backed off. He stopped a few times, looked at his map, and then looked at the large map they have of all the different lines and their stops and intersections and times. They have it written in three different languages, so that all travelers can understand the sign.

When I asked the woman if she had ever talked to her son about why he didn’t express his interest in baseball earlier, it turned out that he had, she just didn’t understand, or maybe he didn’t communicate it very clearly. He would always watch baseball on TV, and when his parents asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, a couple of times he said a baseball player. His parents, of course, didn’t know that he was serious, as he never showed any interest in signing up for the local team. Of course, when he went to find out about it, they required a form signed by his parents, and the very day he brought the form home for his parents to sign, his father had decided that was the time to give him a lecture about choosing a career path, as he was soon entering high school. His father, of course, didn’t know anything about his desire to play baseball, and the son didn’t know that it would have been allright had he of asked.

When he finally told his parents how much he was enjoying playing on the University Team, they were both very happy. I asked the lady what she thought was interesting about reading about baseball signs, and she said she never realized that before the games they spend a considerable amount of time going over the signals so there is no miscommunication. Not communicating properly can lose a game. And when the lady went over and asked the man where he was going, it turned out he was going where most everybody else was. The reason nobody could understand him was because he was from a prefecture that is out in the countryside where they speak a different dialect. When the lady figured out what dialect he was speaking, everybody could understand what he wanted. It turns out he was a visiting professor that was going to give a lecture on communication.

How Other People’s Criteria Can Get You Everything You Want

I was sitting in a bookshop the other day, like I like to do, as those of you that read this blog on a daily basis have noticed. And I saw some guy walking around the shop giving out his business cards. He was very bold. He would just walk up to somebody, introduce himself, and give a quick introduction, and then before his mark knew it, they were holding one of his business cards. I wasn’t near enough to listen to what he was saying to people, because I was sitting in the coffee shop section of the bookshop.

I was reading this interesting book on metaphor. The book was talking about how all word are really metaphors for things that, with our limited capacities of understanding, can only approximate through our language. The best we can do as communicators is share our metaphors with each other, and hope that our underlying understanding of what it is that we are talking about overlaps enough so that we can communicate our ideas and feelings to each other. Sometimes though, when people communicate, there are several different meanings on several different levels, and you can never be quite sure what it is that this person is saying, even if you can lip read and have a clear view of their mouth.

But as this guy kept handing out his business cards, and judging by the expressions on the faces of the people that were on the receiving end, I got the sinking suspicion he was trying to sells something. I don’t think he was giving out free information like how to keep your car in tip top shape or how to make sure that when you bake your thanksgiving turkey it comes out with a moist juicy inside, and a crunchy delicious outside. I got the sinking suspicion he was a network marketer of some sort.

And judging by his approach, he seemed to be going for the shotgun marketing technique, or what is sometimes called the spaghetti marketing technique. This, as you are well aware, is when you throw your pitch to as many people as possible, and inevitably you will get a few that buy into your ideas. If you do this enough, you will likely be successful, so long as you follow the old ABC rule of sales: Always Be Closing.

“That works, but it takes a lot of energy. And the thing is, for every sale you get; you are going to have a few people that are angry that you approached them. Which is fine, you have a thick skin. But some people starting out, that’s not the best way to go.”

I heard a voice from behind me say. I looked, and I guess it was obvious that I was watching this guy.

“Oh?” I said.
“What do you recommend?”

“Well, the best way is to have a business card with a website on it. Then just give out the business card to as many people as possible, but without asking for a sale. Just tell them to visit the website if they are interested in the general kind of products you are offering. The on the website you have information about your product, and an email form to fill out if you are interested in more information. The people that fill in the information are called warm leads. These are much easier to convert to sales than cold leads, like that poor fellow is trying to do.”

“Hmm, sound interesting.” I said.

“What do you do when they say they want more information?”

“It’s all about criteria. All you need to do, is to find out what’s important to them. Once they tell you what’s important to them, all you have to do is show them how they will satisfy that need in buying your product.”

“Interesting. You are in sales, I take it?” I asked him.

“Oh, no,” he said.
“I’m an architect. I just like studying human behavior as a hobby.”

“So where did you learn this?” I asked him.

“I took a seminar from a guy a few years back, and he said that selling things to people, ideas, products, new behaviors is all really part of the same structure. People are a walking set of unmet needs. And these needs go very deep. He said that when you can elicit just one or two of these needs, and show them how it can be satisfied by one of your products or ideas, or new behaviors, they will not only eagerly accept it, but they will thank you afterwards.”

Hmm, interesting, I thought, turning back to my book on metaphors. In case you’re interested, the book is “Metaphors We Live By,” by George Lakoff. It’s fascinating, and I highly recommend it.

They are Waiting for Your Ideas

I was in this bar the other night, hanging out with some friends. My friends left, but there was an interesting match on TV, so I decided to stay and see how it turned out. I didn’t even know that team was playing but that quickly turned into one of the more important things that night. As I was watching the game, I couldn’t help but notice all the other people that were paying really close attention to this. Most people could find this very fascinating. Of course, the game eventually ended, and everybody’s interest quickly fractionated into various splinters of interests. I started talking to a guy that I happened to be sitting next to at the bar. Funny that I didn’t notice him before.

We started talking about various things, sports, work, etc. He started telling me about his friend whose roommate just got this massive promotion at work. Massive promotions are pretty good when you can come across things like this. What had happened was this guy used to be a production worker in a factory that produced highly technical products that are used in various high-end electronics. Because of the nature of the work, and the small degree of error tolerances allowed in the manufacturing process, the work was sometimes a bit anxiety causing. One the one hand they had extremely tight technical specifications inside which they had to build a certain amount of products. On the other hand they had very important production thresholds they had to achieve on a consistent basis in order for the company to remain profitable. It was a business that had a very slim profit margin. And in today’s economy, I’m sure you can appreciate how important something like this is.

This guy had been working there for a while, and the management was a bit interesting. The production facility itself used to be part of another company, and they produced elements of a similar product. Then they initial company split up into different smaller groups, to try and maintain their profit, and the production factory was sold off completely to yet another company. Because the production process was very similar, the incoming management company didn’t change much.

While this didn’t present a problem to most of the workers, this guys friend had a bit of a problem. Just before the new management team took over, he had some ideas on how to promote the efficiency and consequently the profitability of the production line. He was just getting enough courage and confidence to suggest these to upper management when they made the change. At first he thought that he was just going to wait until things settled down, and then present these ideas to them. But then something interesting happened. Upper management just kept their hands off approach and was content to let the workers continue to produce, just like they had before. They didn’t have any meetings, or offer any insight or suggestions. It seemed to most of them that they were happy with the way things were. Which of course was fine for most people, because keeping things the way they were is very comforting to most people. Change is very scary to some. But this guys friend had an idea, and now he not only was unsure of whether or not his idea was going to be accepted, he wasn’t sure if his idea was even in line with what the new management team wanted to do. This was all very confusing. He had an idea, but wasn’t quite sure they would be open to hearing it.

For a while, this caused him some anxiety. He had all these ideas on how to make things better, but he didn’t know if he was supposed to voice them, or even if they would be accepted. He wasn’t content though, to keep things the way they were, because there’s no fun in that. He wanted to take things in a new direction, but the wanted to make sure that it was safe to suggest this new direction to management.

So after waiting several weeks, hemming and hawing, he finally thought to himself:
“You know what, what’s the worse that can happen? You have good ideas, you have an idea of what can make things better, if they don’t like your ideas, at least you will let them know that you want to make things better than they are. Because if one thing is certain in all this confusion, you can always improve things. And the more you improve things, the easier they become.”

So he finally strode into the management office, and whey they learned that he had some ideas of how to increase productivity, and therefore profits, they were all ears. What he thought was going to be a brief five or ten minute meeting turned into a three hour brainstorming session, with him at the controls. After the meeting, he got a good idea of where they wanted to take the company, and then gave some very good ideas on how they could easily get there. Soon he was promoted to a manager position, with his salary almost doubled. Now he is the new managing director of manufacturing engineering and design, something pretty good for a guy with only a high school education. And because of his ideas, the company is now extremely profitable, and they seek this guys opinions on all major decisions that upper management makes. Pretty good if you ask me.

People Skills are Money Skills

The other day I was sitting in an airport waiting for a friend of mine. As soon as I realized that I’d forgotten to bring the scrap of paper on which I wrote down her flight number and arrival gate, I had a flash of insight. I used to do something a certain way, and then after that I did something else. But then I realized that if I could organize things a little bit differently, I would be able to actually do them both better, as one was a natural extension of the other. I was doing them in the opposite order, not because I thought they naturally went that way, but because I was doing the first thing because although I recognized that it was necessary, I also realized, on some level, that it was uncomfortable, and I wanted to get it out of the way.

I don’t know why I had this flash of insight while I was sitting there in the airport, but I took out my notebook and scribbled it down, hoping that I’d remember to look at my notebook later so I could reverse the order of the way I was doing things in hopes of doing them better.

I read this in a book by about developing creativity. Always keep as small notebook with you, that way when you have a flash of insight, you’ll be able to remember it later, and use it to help yourself get whatever it was you wanted to get.

After I wrote this down, I couldn’t help but notice all the people milling about in the airport, waiting for people. Some looked happy, some looked a little sad. You could tell which people were separating, and which were reuniting. It is always nice to see people get together and express an open appreciation for each other, and it always makes me a little sad when is I see people saying goodbye.

It reminded me of a book I was reading the other day, which was about job relocation. The author was talking about how when people change jobs, which in this day and age should be a given, considering that the average person has at least five careers in their life. When you change jobs, the skills that are the most important are not the technical skills that change with every job, but your people skills. Those that have the best people skills will always be in demand, and always make the most money. So the bottom line, according to this book I was reading was that you need to always be working on and improving your people skills.

One way to do this is to always make it a habit of talking to strangers. I think it is an exercise that was inspired by Ben Franklin, who said to “Always look for the virtue in others.” The exercise is to start an innocent conversation with a complete stranger, and try to covertly extract a virtue or two from them, and then share their own positive qualities with them. This will greatly increase your self-confidence and ability to interact with others to get what you want and to promote yourself.

And when my friend finally showed up, I was surprised that I had remembered the correct gate. Imagine that.

How to be a Jedi Master of Conversation

So the other day I was hanging out with this new set of friends I had met previously. I had run into them a few nights ago in a local bar, and we started talking about various things that you usually talk about in bars with strangers. The conversation steered it’s way around to baseball, and I turned out the had an extra ticket to a game last weekend. They offered, and I accepted. So there we were hanging out in the parking lot, having a few and cooking some bbq like most people do before a baseball game.

It’s interesting when you pay attention to the way a conversation flows. It’s a highly dynamic and interesting phenomenon. It’s like it has a mind of its own. One interesting thing you can do next time you find yourself in a conversation that is kind of wandering around aimlessly without any intended direction is to do some experimentation. I wouldn’t recommend doing this when the conversation is somewhat important, like if you happen to be testifying before congress or anything. In that case you might want have your game face on.

But if you think of the topic of conversation as a separate, living, breathing organism, it can be fun to experiment with it and see how many different ways you can stretch it. Sometimes it’s like when you chase a chicken. You can delude yourself into thinking that you are controlling it, but in reality, a chicken has very limited intelligence, and is operating on pure panic and fleeing in any direction possible, sometimes completely irrelevant of the noises you are making to communicate to the poor chicken that you really aren’t going to chop off its head and eat it.

Try this experiment: Next time you find yourself in the middle of a conversation of little global economic importance, choose a topic, completely at random, and as completely far removed from the current topic as possible. Then try and slowly steer the conversation towards your selected topic, but try and do it in such a way that the other people bring up the new items of the conversation. To do this you’ll have to introduce little intermediate transitional breadcrumbs and hopefully covertly help people to think of the connection on their own. The more you practice this, the sooner you’ll realize you can steer a conversation any way you want, including towards things to your immediate benefit. Which will pretty much make you a Jedi master.

The Art of War

The other day I was having lunch with a couple of friends of mine. They are both very successful businessmen, but they both come from a very different background. We went to the restaurant around three in the afternoon, as we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and we suspected, well my two friends suspected, that they were going to get into a long discussion. Not only do they have completely different business backgrounds, but also they have different beliefs in business and even their political views are at the complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

After we made our small talk, catching up on our personal lives, it appeared as though they were going to get into it. There has been a lot of political activity lately, as I’m sure you’re well aware, and I was expecting a long protracted discussion on at least one of the major issues. It’s interesting the way my friends argue. They argue verbally like guys fight in those old martial arts movies. When the two enemies see each other from across the room, they slowly approach each other, and circle each other, trying to judge the other’s potential strengths and weaknesses. You don’t want to attack too soon, because if you put all your energy into the opening move, you risk exposing yourself if it doesn’t turn out well.

Of course many football coaches would disagree with me. There are several very famous football coaches that have built their reputation on a strong, up the middle, running game. Football games like this are pure muscle versus muscle. Some people find these games incredibly exciting, especially when a running back breaks through and gains several yards on one carry.

Other forms of conflict are more strategic. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese Military strategist who wrote “The Art of War,” but many of his techniques are based on using the enemy’s weakness against him.

This is generally how my friend will get into an argument. It usually starts out with one person letting slip an opinion, and the other person noticing that it is one they’d like to argue with. But the trick is to not let on that you disagree with it. The trick is to say something like “Oh, really? How do you mean?” with sincere interest in the others opinion. Then through causal conversation, lead the other person out enough so that they reveal sufficient information upon which to base your argument.

Of course both of them, having known each other for quite some time, both are very adept at this strategy, so often they use all kinds of strategy that would make a CIA interrogator proud. They let slip some information, hoping to bait the other person into responding. It becomes a rather beautiful conversational chess game to watch. It definitely takes a lot of focus and concentration to keep up with the conversation, because there is always a lot of subtlety going on below the surface. You never really know what is the surface structure of the argument and what is the underlying deep structure of what they are really trying to say.

But just like watching a highly anticipated boxing match, after watching a few rounds where the fighters are feeling each other out, you can’t help but start to really want to see some heavy combinations thrown. Personally, I think one of the greatest artists in this regard, at least in the boxing ring, was Sugar Ray Leonard. Watching him fight was like watching an artist create release a beautiful sculpture that has been trapped inside a stone for thousands of years.

Unfortunately, when watching a protracted intellectual discussion, it’s difficult to know when “it’s on like Donkey Kong.” You have to really pay attention to things to know who is getting the upper hand and who has overextended their argument beyond the realm of logical support and into the realm of pure, unsubstantiated opinion. It would certainly help if people like my friends would take breaks every now and then and some scorekeeper would let me know who was ahead on points.

Sometimes they’ll be talking about the merits of one political candidate, and because I know my friends respective political leanings, I kind of have an idea of who is on the offensive and who is on the defensive, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. They’ll be talking about the Supreme Court, and then a few minutes later they’ll be talking about bond derivatives or something else completely baffling to me. Sometimes I don’t know who won until we all get up to leave. The “loser” usually has an expression of “you got me today, but I’ll get you next time” as he pays the bill.

Watching people like that speak sure is an education. Both in patience and in subtle communication skills. Bruce Lee would be proud.

How to Speak the Local Language for Powerful Success

I was hanging out in a coffee shop the other night. It was one of those coffee shops that is attached to a large bookstore. The large bookstore is inside of a large mall. So the area of the coffe shop kind of bleeds into the bookshop area, which in turn melts into the mall area. I happened to be sitting at a table near the back, facing outward, so I had a fairly good view of the bookstore, and coffee shop table area, and the area just out in front of the book shop inside the mall. As I was sitting there, watching people walk by and read their various magazines and drink their various coffee drinks and other things, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I motioned for her to come and sit down, as she was alone and seemed to be wandering around aimlessly, as people like to do during their free time.

She had just come back from a trip to Europe. She had bought on of those multi-country rail passes, and had traveled through various countries. She spent lots of time telling me about the different food and culture she’d experienced, as well as some of the new words in various languages that she’d picked up. She said that people really reacted well to her when she spoke the local language. She also said that the words “Please” and “Thank you” were very powerful. She mentioned that a few times she ran across some tourist that seemed to have a condescending attitude, which didn’t get them very far. She even was able to secure a table in a restaurant that had been refused to two tourists just in front of her.

We started talking about how important it is to speak to others in their own language. It would seem that this would be obvious to most people, but apparently her experience says otherwise. Some people when they speak to others assume that everybody has same experience and frames of reference as they do. This can be extremely unhelpful, and the person listening has to work twice as hard. One to figure out exactly what frame of reference the person is coming from, and two to try and figure out exactly what the message is.

It reminded me of a lecture I saw on a memory expert. She was saying that everybody has a different “memory map” inside their brains, and we all operate from different memory maps. Even people that grew up in the same family in the same circumstances can have very different memory maps. The lecturer explained that one of the biggest failures of western style education is that it is assumed that every student that enters school has the same memory map, as they are all taught the same way. Teachers can become frustrated when they are trying to teach students that have vastly different maps than they do. I guess it’s not so bad when teaching something as straightforward as mathematics or hard science. Even then you have to be careful and make sure the person you are talking to is at least one the same level as you, and not higher or lower.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having an argument with somebody, and you were both arguing about two completely different things, for two completely different reasons. I can remember several heated engineering discussions I’ve had in the past with an engineering manager of mine. On the surface, it would seem that something as cut and dried as engineering would be simple to talk about. But when you add in two different egos, expectations, and experiences into the mix, and you suddenly find yourself in a heap of trouble.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. The biggest hurdle to overcome is getting over your need to be right. Getting over your need to get your opinion heard so that you can maybe get some recognition and ego gratification out of the deal. The paradox is that by focusing on imposing your opinion, you actually get less validation and ego gratification. By stepping back enough to make you sure you understand the other person enough to more effectively present your opinion, so that it is actually heard rather than argued with, you will be much more successful. And you actually might learn something.

Free Your Expression

I was out for my morning walk this morning, and I passed by an elementary school on my way. They were having a band practice, but it looked like the only people that were practicing were the clarinet players. They were all lined up against the fence, facing out towards the street. It sounded like they were warming up. I don’t know if somebody told them they had to go and practice where they wouldn’t bother anybody, but maybe that’s why they were aiming their clarinet sounds out towards the street, where it wouldn’t interfere with the students inside the school studying something important like plate tectonics or home economics.

I remembered I took a summer school class in fourth grade in home economics. My friend convinced me it would be a good idea, because we basically would be able to cook simple things (like a fourth grader could) like grilled cheeses and stuff. I remember that my friend and me were the only two guys in the class. It was a pity that we hadn’t discovered yet how cool girls were. We did learn how easy it was to cook a grilled cheese, so we wouldn’t have to bother our moms again. Except to yell at us to clean up our grilled cheese mess.

So as I was walking past this school, I looked over and thought I recognized one of the girls that was practicing clarinet. It was one of those times where you see somebody, and you can’t really place them immediately. But the circumstances don’t allow for you to go over and ask them where you know them from, either because you are too shy or they are on a bus going in the opposite direction. That is what it was like this morning. And I’m pretty sure she felt the same thing, because she was looking at me like she knew me.

As I kept turning my head back toward the group of girls, she raised her hand, but only about halfway. Like she wanted to wave, but she either didn’t know if I would reciprocate, or if her friends would think she was strange for waving at some weird guy walking by on the other side of the street. When she waved, I smiled and mimicked playing the clarinet, to signal my approval. Her friends all giggled at the exchange.

As I walked away, I realized that people go through three stages in life. The first stage, as children, we are outgoing and expressive and don’t hold anything back. Then when we go through those uncomfortable years, we learn that sometimes expressing ourselves is dangerous, scary, and brings much more emotional pain that pleasure. So we learn to have to choose when it’s safe to express ourselves, and when we’d better just stay silent. Then by the time we turn into adults, we have pretty much given up on freely expressing ourselves. We reserve that only for times we are with close friends, or inebriated, or both.

When you realize that everybody feels the same way, it can make it easier to be the first one. That young girl this morning, flanked by her clarinet-wielding friends, was the first to make a move, and look what happened. It turned into a positive, happy exchange. When you start to understand that all exchanges require that somebody make the first move, you can realize the power that comes from being that person. When you go first, and give the other person the wonderful gift of feeling the safety of self-expression, you will notice wonderful things happen. Your confidence will soar, your self-esteem will rise, and you happiness will skyrocket.

Whether you realize it or not, that little kid that wants to scream in pleasure whenever he or she sees something cool still lives inside you. When you remember to forget all those times it seemed like expressing yourself was emotionally painful, you can experience the joy of being totally and completely human. You will be able to let that little kid out again. And there is no fear in that.

The Wisdom of the Dove

Once upon at time there was a dove. He lived in on the outskirts of a rural farming community. Well, he lived in a tree on the outskirts of a rural farming community. It was a farming community that grew wheat that was primarily used in industrial sized bread factories. Because the fields were so large, there was plenty of opportunities for the birds to come and have their fill of wheat without really worrying about putting in a dent in the farmers income. Most people don’t know that doves are actually fairly concerned with the symbiotic relationship they have with their environment. They are really concerned that they don’t over consume, because they know that if they do that, they will damage the area they live in, and they will have to move. While there are still many areas that doves can move to in order to find resources, they are concerned that future generations won’t have enough, so they are careful. But I digress.

This particular dove was starting to have strange feelings about other doves. Not all doves, mind you, only young, lady doves. It was really strange the way it was happening to him. At first, he felt kind of funny, and he didn’t know if he should tell anybody. Maybe they would think he was strange, or different. Maybe they would laugh at him, or even worse. So for a while he didn’t anybody. But then the feeling became too powerful to ignore. Pretty soon it was all that he could think about. When he was with his friends, it didn’t bother him so much. But whenever he found himself near a girl dove that was about the same age as him, the feeling was impossible to ignore. He couldn’t take his mind off of her. He wanted to talk to her. Sometimes he would imagine how wonderful it would be if she were feeling the same things about him as he was feeling about her.

But try as he might, he just couldn’t get up the courage to hop over, and start up a conversation. As much as he had an incredible desire to do so, he kept imagining what would happen if she laughed at him. Or screamed, or called over the adults. What if he really was different? What if this feeling wasn’t normal, and people found out about it, what then? They might even banish him for their town, and he’d have to fly to another town. How would he explain himself? He noticed that the same thing happened every time. He’d see this girl dove, and feel an almost overwhelming desire to go and talk with her, and then his desire would suddenly turn into horrible fears and imaginations of what would happen if something went wrong.

Finally, he decided to share his predicament with somebody. But not just anybody. He decided to talk with his grandfather. His grandfather was the kind of bird that didn’t talk much. But when he did talk, he spoke with incredible wisdom and kindness. Almost everybody regarded him as a very knowledgeable fellow that knew a lot about life. It was said that he had been around since the before times, when it wasn’t so easy to get food. When he spoke, people listened.

So this young dove went to see his grandfather.

“You seem to have a problem.” The grandfather noted, before the young dove even spoke. The young dove was awestruck.
“Let me guess. Girl troubles? You see a girl you like?” the young dove continued to be amazed at his grandfathers insight. He finally spoke up.
“How can I talk to her?” He asked.
“Just like you are talking to me.” He responded.
“But…” The young dove said, trailing off.
“Let me guess. You want to talk to her, but you are afraid of what will happen if you do. ”
“Yes, that’s right.” The young dove said meekly.
The old dove paused, and then spoke.

“Your mind is young, and inexperienced. It is natural. When you focus too much on your fears, they can overcome you. Practice focusing on the good things that might happen. This is what I want you to do. Do not talk to her. Only go near her, and imagine for one minute, one good thing that will happen if you do speak with her. One minute, then go someplace else and occupy your mind with other things. No more than one minute, do you understand?”
The young dove nodded.
“But how many times do I…” The old dove silenced him, and smiled.
“Go! But remember this lesson. You will soon give it to another.” The young dove didn’t know what he meant by that, but he left anyways.

By the time spring came again, this young dove was now the leader of a large family of his own, who adored him greatly.

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The Power of Congruence

I used to work sometimes in this building that belonged to a local broadcaster of TV. The building also served as a resource for various community groups. They had different cultural classes, from modern expressionist art to a how to class on making traditional Japanese slippers. In the entrance of the building were several pictures of different newscasters and TV personalities. Some very attractive people, as being on TV, that has traditionally been a requirement.

I used to teach a class in the building on Monday nights. Every time I’d walk past that bank of TV personalities, there was one lady that I thought was exceptionally cute. For some reason, however, she didn’t have a “traditional” sense of beauty. So whenever I inwardly admired her picture, I realized that she wasn’t a traditional beauty. There was something about her smile, I guess.

One night, the entire class was leaving together. When we passed the bank of pictures, one of the students asked me which I thought was the cutest. At first I hesitated, because for some reason I thought my opinion might be met with disbelief, as there were certainly other faces that were more beautiful, at least according to TV standards. What happened kind of surprised me. After a brief period of reluctance, I said whom I liked. There was pause, as obviously my choice was different than expected. What came next was interesting. Instead of question my choice, why I liked what I did, everybody immediatley looked at this TV personality in new light. As if they thought maybe I saw something that they didn’t.

It kind of reminded me of a story I heard a long time ago. While I’m not exactly sure of the content of the story, the moral, or the punch line, was that people are not moved by the content of your desires, rather than the congruence of them. If you have kind of a wishy-washy expression of desire for something, even if it is somewhat generally popular, people will tend try to pick apart your opinion, and tell you why their ideas are better. But if you express a congruent expression of opinion, desire, or interest, people will generally respect your expressed desires, regardless of the content. And if you are congruent enough, they will go to great lengths to try and learn exactly what it is that you find so intriguing about this.

It is not the content of the message that is expressed that sways the minds of people; it is the congruence with which it is expressed. With enough congruence, any content can be persuasive and influential. I think that sometimes people miss the forest for the trees. Because most people are unaware of the underlying congruence, we tend to put too much effort on the content, when it is really the congruence that we find so intriguing.

You don’t have to look to hard into the annals of history to find evil men that had enough conviction and belief in their message to persuade whole countries to buy into and follow them in their destructive intentions.

When you can come up with a plan that is beneficial to other people, and present it to them with full congruence and belief, you will be an unstoppable force, with the ability and support to achieve almost anything that you can imagine.

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