Category Archives: Language

How Many Levels Is Your Communication?

The Depth Of Perception

I was riding my bike downtown yesterday when I bumped into a friend. Not quite a friend, but an acquaintance. Some people have hundreds of people that they could consider friends, but I have a clear distinction in my mind between a friend and an acquaintance. Certainly acquaintanceships can grow into friendships, that’s how all friendships start, when you think about it. You meet somebody, you either share enough in common, sometimes a location or common goal, like at school or at work.

Then you make the all-important break from your commonalities. If you see somebody at work every day for several months, and you get on with them pretty well this can happen. Maybe they’ll be some after work party, or maybe you’ll get together for a game of basketball after work, and slowly move your relationship away from areas of commonality.

When you can have obvious differences, especially religious, moral or political views, and maintain a solid friendship that transcends all that, then you know you’ve got a winner

I was listening to this guy giving a lecture once on the power of a contrarian opinion. He said that most people surround themselves with people that share their same viewpoints. Most people easily fall into this trap. He was saying this is very dangerous, because if you only expose yourself to one viewpoint, you effectively shut yourself off from the flexibility of thinking if you were to expose yourself to other viewpoints. This works two ways. The first is that you may hear another point of view that actually makes more sense that yours. Another is that you will have to actually defend your point of view rather than just say “Yea!” to each other when you’re hanging out with like-minded friends.

Going through the process of defending and arguing for your point of view other than simply saying “Well, that’s just how I feel. We’ll have to agree to disagree.” Can be a profound learning experience. Saying that you’ll just agree to disagree only makes you and whoever you are disagreeing with dig into your own respective positions a little deeper.

Of course, this can be extremely difficult to do, as many times we have strong emotional connections and investments in our viewpoints. It can be hard to discuss them objectively without feeling we are in a personal battle to see who has the stronger emotional fortitude. Many times, if you break down the arguments from a linguistic and logical standpoint, they don’t differ very much from second grade schoolyard arguments:

“Nuh uhh!”
“Yea Huh!”
“Well, you’re stupid!”
“And your fat!”

And so on. If you remove the emotions from many discussions, debates and arguments, and look at them objectively, you’ll find that almost all arguments will fall into the above structure. Sure they will be much more eloquently stated, and much more long-winded, but the logic boils down the same. To really understand this, it can help to read them on paper, rather than listening to verbal exchanges.

Those that have a depth of understand and a really wide view of the world have the ability to make friends with people of varying viewpoints. Not only that but those that can accept their friends’ opposing viewpoints objectively, and respectfully, without thinking they are somehow morally or intellectually deficient in need to “fixing” are the true winners.

But the guy I ran into had yet cross that level of familiarity. He was an acquaintance that I’d met at a few seminars. We are both in the same line of work, so we attend the same kind of seminars.

So after I stopped and talked to him, we realized that we really don’t have that much in common. After exchanging pleasantries, how ya been, etc, and talked about the latest “news” in our particular industry, we really weren’t left with much to talk about. It was an interesting part of our conversation, that only lasted a few seconds. It was subtle, but I think we both understood what was going on.

I’d stopped my bike and got off, but not completely. I was still straddling it so I could easily start peddling again. He stopped in the street, and only half turned to face me. Both of us had only about half a commitment to the conversation. After the normal “how ya doin,” we moved onto the “what are you doing, where are you going.” Neither of us wanted to give up much, we each gave the perfunctory “oh nothing much, just hanging out.” Then the moment of truth came. There we were, on a Sunday afternoon. We knew each other on a first name basis, and if we kept our discussion to our respective jobs, we could probably fill a couple hours of conversation. Both had acknowledged we didn’t have any particular plans for that day. But neither of us had committed fully to the conversation, from a body language perspective.

So after our exchange, we stood there. Waiting for the other, or perhaps giving the other a chance to suggest doing something together. Grab a bite to eat, get a beer, whatever. But neither of us was interested enough to being the first to initiate it. But we both felt kind of obliged to allow the other person to chance. Neither of us did, and we said our “see ya around’s” and left.

The same kind of interaction that happens every day, hundreds of millions of times. The way humans kind of “sniff” each other out to determine each other’s intentions.

Now normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to such a non-event, but I’ve been reading a lot of Steven Pinker’s books lately, which focus on linguistics and how they effect psychology. There is a lot going on to our daily communications that are below the surface, and many times have much more influence on our relationships that the actual words that we use. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

I guess the moral of the story, or the take away, is realize that we humans communicate on many, many different levels, and we are always reading others and projecting things about ourselves to all of those around us, all the time.

So we got that going for us. Which is nice, I think.

Beware Of Mind Poison

How To Inoculate Yourself Against Manipulation

There was once a pretty interesting promotion an airline had a few years back. This was before September 11, and there were fewer restrictions. Also this was only a domestic airline, so they didn’t have to worry about any international laws. Here’s what the promotion was. You showed up at the airport and paid a pretty cheap price, I think it was fifty or a hundred dollars. And in return, you’d get two round trip tickets and two nights in a hotel somewhere.

The only rub was that you didn’t know where you were going until about thirty minutes before you flight left. Kind of a travel lottery. They did have a list of about 30 different cities that you may fly into. From New York, to some town in North Dakota, you could pretty much end up anywhere in the United States for the weekend. It seemed to be a fun thing to do for a weekend for an adventurous couple.

The other day a friend of mine and I, who both are avid fans of NLP, were talking about manipulation, and how a strongly manipulative person makes heavy use of what are called linguistic presuppositions. These are sentence patterns that kind of force the listener, through some really twisted word logic, to accept an underlying assertion by the manipulator without really being able to defend against it. What the manipulator is hoping for is that the person being manipulated will do is take the underlying assertion (usually something very strong and very childish, like you don’t love me, you don’t care about me, and something they would not usually say outright) and respond to it, giving the manipulator the satisfaction of getting their needs met in a roundabout way.

My friend said a good analogy would be training animals with negative reinforcement. Whenever they screw up, you punish them, until their entire behavior is motivated by avoiding punishment. A person who is in a relationship with strong manipulator usually feels the same way.

While there are specific language patterns you can learn to dismantle manipulative statements that can be extremely tedious, and can get confrontational in a hurry if you don’t have a complete handle on your own emotions.

So my friend and I started talking about an inoculation of sorts that would completely shield someone from manipulation from others. Not that others wouldn’t try, just that their attempts wouldn’t have any effect.

We decided that the best defensive would be a good offense. When they are getting ready to say something manipulative, punch them in the face.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

In order to inoculate yourself from being manipulated, you must make your emotions impervious to their underlying assertions. Meaning you cannot fear their truth. While this can be difficult to do once you are already in a relationship, it can be fairly easy to set your mindset up this way, so that any relationships you do create, with coworkers, friends, etc will be programmed from the start to be manipulation free.

How do you do this?

First of all, realize that humans come preprogrammed with a set of intentions. The are vague, but they are there. Get food, get sex, stay safe. These are programmed into us by evolution, or God, or aliens, so that we have the base programming to live long enough to make more people.

If you don’t do anything but follow the crowd your whole life, and not do one bit of thinking for yourself, you have a high probability of achieving all three.

However, without choosing specific ways with specific strategies to achieve various aspects of all three, you leave yourself open to be manipulated. Because if you don’t have specific targets to fulfill your base needs, you’ll always be a little bit worried about not achieving them. And because the thought of not achieving them can create the most horrible feelings imaginable, we do anything to avoid those thoughts.

Enter the manipulator. When we have fuzzy ways to achieve our prime directives, and a manipulator throws some covert mind poison at us, it triggers those fears of not achieving our prime directives, usually with a strong sense of impending rejection, so we do whatever we can to avoid that pain. Just like the animals that are trained by negative reinforcement, we learn to live by avoiding pain rather than finding new and interesting ways to satisfy our prime directives.

The simple way to inoculate yourself then, is to create several different specific goals, which satisfy all three of your prime directives. And for each goal, figure several different strategies for achieving them.

This collection of goals, and strategies to achieve them can act as filter through which you experience the world. You only accept those things and situations and relationships into your life that have a good chance of satisfying your particular goals.

When people drift through life with only vague ideas of what they want, they usually end up taking whatever they can get, which opens them up to be terribly afraid of losing what little they have. This can be a huge motivating factor.

By setting up your filters properly, and screening the world through them, you will create an environment rich with opportunities and relationships that are designed to fulfill your goals in many different ways, so any manipulative mind poison thrown your will have little effect.

Of course, this is easier said that done. Which is why so many of us are in relationships where we have a sinking feeling that maybe we could do better, if we tried, but since we are afraid to try, we don’t.

Simply through examining your goals and ways to get them, you’ll open up some breathing room in your mind for all the possibilities that are around you. And once you start to see them, the fear will slowly go away.

How to Add Subscribers Through The Fog of History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You really need to subscribe to this,”

To which people would usually say something like,

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

To which we would say,

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

And then they would say something like,

“What kind of extra stuff?”

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

How To Reframe Objections Before They Come Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can watch it here:

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

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

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

Why Deep Rapport is Much Easier Than You Think

Couple of weeks ago, I went to an aquarium. It wasn’t a very large aquarium, it was a “traveling aquarium” if you can believe that. It wasn’t really anything more than an oversized tropical fish store, and it seemed to be set up mostly for kids. I’m not sure if it was something that travels around the country, or if it just a local thing that might have been on loan from the local zoo.

One thing they did have that was surprising was four penguins. On the advertisement it had pictures of all kinds of exotic sea creatures, and it had a picture of a penguin in the middle. I was certain that the penguin was only for advertising, so I was surprised to see actual penguins at the exhibit.

The were in a relatively small room, maybe twenty or thirty square meters at most. In the center was a make shift pool, the surface was maybe four or five square meters. It was only half a meter deep or so. When I arrived, there were many people pushing up against the Plexiglas with their cell phone snapping away. When I got there the penguins were swimming around in a circle in their small pool.

Shortly after I made my way to the Plexiglas, they had climbed out of the pool and were walking around it. They were incredibly cute, I have to admit. Following each other, as if they were afraid to make a decision on their own. Every time one would pause and look at the water, the rest would copy him. When one started walking, they others started as well. When one veered off form their path from around the pool, the rest followed.

Pretty soon you could tell the crowd was hoping for them to dive back into the water, as watching them walking around in circles was getting a little bit boring. Every time they would pause, an almost jump in, but hold back, you feel the small crowd express its disappointment.

Finally, one of them slipped, and fell into the pool. Before he even had broken the surface of the water, his three friends immediatley followed suit, to the immediate pleasure of the crowd.

It reminded me of a sales seminar I went to a few years ago. The speaker was talking about how important it was to develop rapport before trying to persuade anybody of anything. Rapport is that unconscious feeling you get when you feel comfortable with somebody.

For example, if you were in a strange city, and you saw somebody in shopping mall wearing a t-shirt the bore symbol identifying them as part of a small group that you belonged to, like a high school, or a hometown charity group, you would immediately feel a connection to this person. If you went up and introduced yourself, and identified yourself a as member of the same group of them, you would immediately feel a connection.

Another example. Imagine you are taking a long flight home from somewhere. You finally get to your airport; get off the go down to the baggage claim. As you are waiting, you notice somebody the same gender and age as you. And pretty soon you realize that both of your bags have not come out of the shoot yet. You both finally go to the service desk, only to find that both of your bags have been accidentally transferred to Miami. They are safe, and they will be returned within one week. You share a unique experience with this person, and you suddenly feel a certain connection. You have developed rapport.

There are many ways to develop rapport. The easiest is to match body langue, match the rate of speech, the words that they use. Another way that people try is to find as many shared past experiences, or shared likes and dislikes. Like you both played baseball as a kid, or you both hate the Bee Gees, or anything else you can find.

What the guy at this seminar said, was interesting. He said it’s much easier to develop rapport than most people think. The reason behind this is that people, from a biological perspective, are pack animals. We move in herds, or large groups. It’s almost automatic for us to get into rapport with people. It’s as if we are always subconsciously on the lookout for people that are similar to us, to get clues on how to behave.

This guys said that the easiest way to get rapport with anybody, be it a potential boss during a job interview, a client or a potential lover, is to simply relax, and allow the inevitable similarities to come to the surface. We have in us wonderful mechanism given to us by God or Evolution (whichever you believe) which makes this natural if you just relax and allow it to happen. Of course, if you look for differences, you will find them. But when you relax and allow the similarities to surface naturally, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to develop bonds with people that you don’t even know.

How to maintain those bonds is a subject of another article.

Intuition and Congruence – Two Powerful Gifts From Evolution

I was reading this really interesting book the other day, The Red Queen, by Matt Ridley. A fascinating study of human sexuality through the lens of evolution. One of the various topics was the reasons behind the growth of the human brain. When compared to all other mammals, humans have the largest brain. The question is why? What was the driving force behind the massive growth of the human thinking machine?

Many arguments that are usually given can also be used for other primates, and their brains are nowhere near the size of ours. Most scientists believe it is a combination of many factors to say the least. One of the most prominent is sexual selection within a species.

Imagine a group of cave people, fifty girls, and fifty guys. For the guys, they want to have sex with as many girls as possible. (Obviously). For the girls, they need to be extremely selective with who they choose to have sex with, because the consequences could be disastrous if they choose the wrong guy. Their offspring will not only carry his DNA, but his cooperation will have a direct impact on that offspring to survive.

So how do they manage this? The men try their hardest to convince the women that they are upstanding men capable of providing for the family. One way to do this is to simply pretend to be. They only need to pretend long enough and good enough to get into her cave-panties for the couple minutes it will take to get his cave-men rocks off. Then off to the next cave girl.

So an arm’s race of sorts developed over time. In men, the ability to deceive. In women, the ability to detect deception. Of course, men would pass on their skills of deception to their offspring, be they girls or boys. And women would also pass on their skills of deception detection onto their offspring, be they boys or girls.

So as man evolved, there was a contest, in both men and women, between skills of deception, and skills to detect deception. As mankind grew, this required a bigger and bigger brain.

The reason for this is congruity. In order to detect deception, you must be able to detect incongruity. This requires massive attention to subtle clues of body language, facial expression, and voice tone. Too much for the conscious mind to handle. Many believe the unconscious mind was developed to detect deception without having to spend too much conscious bandwidth, so to speak.

So we developed an “intuition” to tell when somebody is lying or not. Our subconscious minds developed the ability to quickly scan somebody’s body language, facial expressions, and voice tone, and then deliver a gut reaction, or a “feeling” to our conscious minds. And those that have learned to pay attention to this “feeling” or “gut reaction” can spot a liar a mile away.

Conversely, those that can present a very congruent image can be some of the best salespeople and manipulators around. Of course, the best way to be a great salesperson is to really believe in what you are selling. There’s a reason that many companies require their salespeople to actually own and use the product they are selling.

Of course, when you are presenting yourself, either to a potential lover or to a potential boss, it is essential that you believe in yourself. If you have any self-doubts, you will be dead before you even open your mouth.

The moral of this essay is twofold. One, take some time to get in tune with your intuition. It can serve you well against making bad decisions. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and is there for a reason. Use it, respect it, and listen to it.

Secondly, in order to present a believable image to the world, you must believe in yourself. Self-confidence and self-esteem stem from a belief that you are a good and worthy person with something of real value to offer the world. Don’t sell yourself short.

Believe in yourself, and trust your intuition, and you will go a long way.

The Structure of the Modern Musical Experience

Yesterday I went to a grand opening of a huge electronics superstore. It is only a couple stops up the line from my station, so it’s very convenient. I didn’t really have anything specific I was looking for, perhaps a new iPod, or maybe even a new laptop. My laptop is fairly new, a little over two years, but I could use some more memory. I’m not sure if I want to upgrade, or buy a new machine. Either way is fine, or my machine will likely keep me satisfied for a while longer.

What was really amazing to me was how brand new everything was. I know when you go shopping at an electronics store, you expect everything to be new, but I was surprised anyway. I mean super clean, like the whole place had been sterilized or something. The whole place had that fresh out of the box feeling to it. Like when you buy something, and it has that protective plastic film over the display, and you don’t want to take it off because you want to keep that brand new feeling.

I wandered over into the mp3 section, and was impressed with how much those things have changed over the years. I have an iPod I bought a few years ago, and it is completely outdated. Compared to the one they had on sale there, mine looks like it was made in the sixties.

When I was a kid, they were still making eight track tapes. I had a stereo that played both vinyl records and eight track tapes. And that was fairly advanced for the day. Today I routinely see people on the trains listening to mp3 players that are smaller than my credit card.

What is truly intriguing, at least to me, is that despite the drastic changes in the delivery of music, the music itself hasn’t changed much. Sure there are different bands with different songs and music, but the overall structure of music hasn’t really changed. They still play with the same instruments, the songs are about the same length, and the same chords are used. The songs are still about the same things. But the way music is delivered is completely different. You can buy all your music online, and download it straight to your mp3 player or iPod, without ever needing to handle anything physical, other than your musical storage device.

The musicians, on the other hand, still play with the same instruments, using the same notes, and the same recording equipment. The message is the same, but the method of delivery has been completely changed.

Like if you were sending smoke signals using Morse code versus sending a text on your cell phone. The origin of the message, the thoughts in your brain are the same, and the receiver of your message will still respond in the same way. Despite the structure, the content remains the same. In other ways, it’s the opposite. The content changes, but the structure remains the same. I’m a big movie fan, and despite different characters, and writers, and actors, and even wildly different plots, the story structure of modern movies really hasn’t changed much.

It’s been said that there are really only seven different kinds of stories, and every story you will ever read or see or hear about will fall into one of those categories. In that respect, it’s as if we are completely unaware of structure, and only pay attention to content.

In the end I decided not to buy a new mp3 player, as the one I have I really only use as an alarm clock, and to listen to when I exercise in the mornings. For some reason, I really don’t enjoy listening to music when I’m out walking around or riding on the train. I either like taking a book, or starting up a conversation with a random stranger. That always seems to be more interesting. At least to me, anyways.

How to Persuade Others to Give You What You Want

There has been much debate over the last several years as to why the human brain became so large. Compared to our body weight, it is much larger than our nearest relatives, the other apes. Some of the leading theories are that we need large amount of brainpower for spatial processing. It has been argued, notably in Howard Bloom’s “The Lucifer Principle,” that the need to hunt via action at a distance (e.g. throwing a spear and hitting moving target) required quite a bit of mental development.

Others have argued that our brains developed such large size due to our need to communicate. But why so large? Scientists have known for years that other mammals communicate through verbal interaction. Dolphins, whales, wolves. This is certainly not related to humans. But why did human’s language become so much more complex than others?

It might be easier to understand when you change your paradigm of the purpose of language. Most assume that the purpose of language is merely to exchange information. Researchers are beginning to wonder if this is a foregone conclusion. Some argue that the entire purpose, the entire driving force of language is not to communicate information, but to persuade. Even when a simple communication of information is the apparent goal, the underlying intent, even if it’s subconscious, is to persuade. Persuasion with statistics is but one of the many ways to convince others of your way of thinking.

If you could remember back to when you made your first sound, you would probably recall being under a great deal of stress. You had just come out from the safety and protection of your mothers womb, and were thrust, painfully so, into a harsh and unfamiliar environment. You had to breath for the first time. It was cold. You couldn’t feel the familiar thump-thump-thump of your mother’s heart. Naturally, your first response wasn’t to shout for joy to the skies, or voice your appreciation for your new discovery, but more likely to curse the gods for your predicament.

Then a funny thing happened. The more you cried, the more attention you got. Attention that brought you back to what you were missing. Comfort, attention, protection. The more you cried, the more you learned that you were cause, and the new world in which you lived was effect.

As you grew up, that repeated over and over again, thousands of times. You had a feeling; you expressed that feeling through your voice and actions, in attempt to manipulate your environment. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it doesn’t. Many people go through their whole lives frustrated because it is not as simple as it was when you were a baby. When we all reach the age of two or so, suddenly a simple cry doesn’t bring with it the immediate and comforting response we expect. And that is both frustration and worrisome. Does that mean that our world doesn’t care that much about us any more? Or does that simply mean we need to change our strategy? To formulate a new way of expressing our desires with a greater probability to getting them realized by others?

Luckily, there has been a whole lot of study in that area. There are specific ways to structure your communication to persuade others to give you what you want. Good ways and bad ways. Ways that will leave a good taste in the mouth of those that help you, and those that leave them with a funny feeling that they’ve been had. Ways to help you out in the short term, and ways to ensure your long-term success.

Just as surely as you expected your mother to pick you up when you cried, you can be sure of others actions based on your communication. It’s not that the world doesn’t care any more, it’s just that you need to be more specific with your requests, and frame them in such a way that the person fulfilling your requests will be happy for doing so. There are numerous strategies and methods I will share with you over the next several weeks that will give you incredible power over others, so much so that they will enjoy doing that.

Stay tuned.

The Power and Danger of Persuasive Language

There’s been a lot written lately about persuasion. When I say lately, I mean the last thirty years or so. Before then, whenever somebody wanted to sell somebody something, they usually came up with some snappy advertising jingle, and put the product, along with the jingle or some slogan in front of as many people as possible, in hopes that they would be convinced to buy this product. Advertising agencies were the ones that generated the jingles and the slogans. Company execs would pay a huge amount of money to these advertising firms in hopes of creating a memorable meme, or what Mark Twain called “Ear Worms.”

That way the product would be magically attached to this earworm and when people decided to buy a product, that would be the first one on their minds.
Because most people have inherent experience being persuaded to do things, clean your room, finish your vegetables, and everything else humans get conned into doing, they felt that learning persuasion, as a science wasn’t something that needed to be done.

Enter NLP.

In the seventies, a group of guys discovered some incredible language patterns that some therapists had learned to use on their clients with almost magical success. They modeled these patterns and found that when string words together in a certain way, they would have a certain effect. If this sounds similar to coming up with a jingle or a slogan, you are absolutely correct. The difference between them and a jingle or a slogan is that these new patterns had more of a scientific basis them. Jingles or slogans were generated largely by how the ad executives felt about them. How they thought they would work based on their feelings.

These new patterns had a certain degree of structure and repeatability. Meaning that a message structured the same way would generate the same effect in various individuals on consistent basis.

With jingles, they sort of “hoped” that they would work and just threw them out there. Many times when they didn’t work, they would blame the market, or the economy, or the product. They never really sat back and said “Jeeze, this jingle really sucked ass.”

Language patterns on the other hand, had a consistent effect, regardless of the market, or the product or the economy.

But with this new language technology, another problem exists. Before, people had to really focus on creating a good product that many people would get real value from. With these new patterns, it became possible to create the illusion of short-term value that would slowly fade over time, leaving a bad taste in the consumer’s mouth. It became easier for people to focus less on the steak, and more on the sizzle.

The thing the many of these persuasive language-using salesmen don’t understand is that when they say, “sell the sizzle, not the steak,” the underlying presupposition is that the steak is a quality steak, not some old leathery piece of meat that has been in the freezer for six months.

With this new language technology, it has been possible to sell the sizzle, when the steak is really not worth your chewing effort.

If you can combine a decent product that will provide long term value for your customers, with some of these persuasive language patterns, your success is virtually guaranteed. Not only will people be convinced to buy your product over all of your competitors, but also their appreciation of your product will generate sales and referrals and additional income for you.

That is what they mean when they say “Win-Win.”

Expectations

This morning I was out on my normal walk. The weather was a little hotter, and a little drier than normal, and there had been a bit of a wind last night, so the visibility was extraordinary. You could see details on the mountains that you normally could only guess at. And they looked a lot differently than I usually imagine. Not that I spend a lot of time contemplating what the mountains appear through the normal haze that surrounds my small town in the mornings, but nonetheless it was interesting to see the detail and outlines that you don’t normally see.

Once I was supposed to meet a regional supervisor at this company where I used to work. Nobody that I’d spoken to had met her before, although they all had an idea of the kind of person that she was. Most had heard stories from other people who knew somebody that talked to somebody that had met her, and had the real inside scoop, if you know what I mean. One of the more interesting things about getting the inside scoop is you are never really sure if the scoop is actual information, or somebody’s secret interpretation of someone else’s imagination.

Like sometimes when you read a movie review in the newspaper, and it somehow colors your perception of the movie that you want to see. Maybe you only kind of wanted to see this movie, and the reviewer said it was the best thing to come out since “The Sound of Music,” and of course because you love musicals, you really got excited. Then when you saw the movie you were a little bit let down because the singing and the cinematography wasn’t exactly up to your standards. Or maybe you have the pleasurable experience of having a so-so expectation of a movie, and then a review you happen to accidentally glance over describes the movie as only slightly more entertaining that having a root canal by a monkey without any anesthesia for you, or the monkey. Then when you see the actual movie, it is not so bad. Of course, in light of the horrible review you read, perhaps because the reviewer wrote it after having said root canal, you are completely blown away as the movie in question beats all your expectations.

Sometimes when a company will release its earnings report, at first it seems like they are doing pretty good. Like they may say they earned fourteen dollars per share, which is pretty fantastic in today’s market. But when you realize that they were expected to earn fourteen dollars and three cents per share, and only earned fourteen, you can understand why their stock dropped seventy five percent in the first twelve minutes of trading.

I don’t know if you’ve ever met somebody before without any notice whatsoever, but it is kind of an unnerving experience. It’s like you are sitting there minding your own business, and then this person walks into your office and says “Hi I’m your new boss,” or something like that. After you spend a few seconds searching through your brain on how you are supposed to respond to this person, and you come up completely blank, sometimes the best thing to do is just simply pretend they are an old friend. Because more than likely, the other person is going through the same transderivational search in their own brain, so when you act like you are best friends, instead of imposing your reality on them, you are actually doing them a favor by filling in the blanks. And since they are your new boss, it can’t help to have been best friends with them before you’ve even met them. It can be tricky of course, but the benefits are fabulous.

So when I finally met my boss, she turned out to be pretty nice. It seems that everybody I talked to had her confused with somebody else. Maybe a character from mythology or from TV, I’m not sure. And I don’t know how long the mountains will stay as clear as they are, but I kind of like looking at them through the fog of vagueness, as it seems more romantic that way to imagine some mystical mountain creatures living there, even though nobody has ever seen them before.