When I was a kid I loved reading Mad Magazine.

Once they got into trouble because they had a very realistic looking $3 bill.

And supposedly, some kids were using them in change machines.

There was one bit I remember reading as a kid.

It’s pretty popular, I’ve heard it in a lot of places.

It was a letter written from a student at college to her parents.

She went on for a few paragraphs about how her life had completely changed.

She’d dropped out of college.

Gotten a bunch of tattoos and piercings.

(This was back in the day when that was still pretty “out there.”)

She was living with her new boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison.

She was also pregnant.

And she was pretty sure it was his.

But then the letter ended with the following:

“Just kidding. School is fine, my GPA is still 4.0, but I need a couple hundred dollars. Could you send it?”

The idea being that the parents would be so relieved that their little angle wasn’t tatted up and pregnant by an ex-con, that they’d gladly send her the cash.

Whereas, if she started out saying, “Dear dad, can I have some money?” she wouldn’t have gotten the same result.

This clearly shows that when we frame our suggestion or recommendation, we can have a much better chance of getting it accepted.

Instead of just blurting out what we want, if we think a bit, and put it in the proper context, it will be much more likely to be accepted.

What context?

Think in terms of cost and benefits.

Everything we do has costs and benefits.

Everything we think about doing has costs and benefits.

So when we present our ideas to others, they are going to IMMEDIATELY and usually unconsciously think of our ideas terms of costs and benefits.

The idea is to make your suggestion have a much better cost-benefit ratio (many benefits per cost) compared to the alternative.

Just choose something similar to your suggestion, but make sure it is MUCH costlier (in terms of time, money, or inconvenience) and only has a little bit more benefits.

Compared to THAT, your choice will be the most logical.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to do this.

And the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

And this law, (Comparison and Contrast) is only ONE of the seven.

Learn Them ALL:

Seven Laws