Tag Archives: Confidence

Sweet Dreams

The Cake and Ice Cream Strategy

Most people get nervous, at least a little bit, when talking in public.

Of course, there are many different spectrums with different endpoints.

In a one on one situation, there’s people we talk to that we like and hope like us.

Those situations can be tough to be relaxed and conversationally “entertaining.”

Whenever we’re around people we like and admire, there is always the fear of rejection.

One way that fear manifests itself by worrying that we’ll run out of stuff to say.

Or we’ll run out of stuff the other person finds “interesting.”

If you’re in a group, and you’re hanging out with friends, and there are a couple of new people in the group, this can also happen.

You suddenly find yourself in the center of the “conversational spotlight.”

It’s almost worse than giving a speech.

At least if you’re giving a speech, they more or less have to listen.

But if you find yourself talking in a group, there’s the ever present danger of getting interrupted by somebody.

And if that somebody has a MORE interesting story than yours, it can feel pretty crappy.

Especially if you were hoping to “impress” one of those new people in your group.

Luckily, there’s a VERY EASY way to take even the shortest, plainest story and tell in a way they will HAVE to pay attention.

Our brains don’t like unfinished business.

That’s why whenever something bad happens, we NEED closure.

Otherwise, there’s a painful “open loop.”

Having a bunch of painful open loops sucks.

But you can do the opposite.

Purposely leave open loops, but not the painful kind.

The cliffhanger kind, that they put near the end of your favorite TV show.

You can do this on a sentence level, a story level and a conversation level.

The better you are at creating these open loops, the more they will be DESPERTATE to pay attention.

Putting out a bunch of open loops in a regular conversation is like showing up to a kid’s birthday party with a bunch of cake and ice cream.

They won’t be able to resist.

Learn How:

Hypnotic Storytelling

Dig For Truth

Stop Clucking Like A Chicken

There’re a lot of clever movies involving hypnosis.

Some of them involve a hypnotist giving somebody a suggestion, but then the hypnotist dies, leaving the poor subject unable to snap out it.

One particularly funny one involved Jim Carrey before he became a superstar.

He played the part of the subject. He, an ultra rich guy, was at a club with his girlfriend.

They were at a hypnosis show, and they hypnotist hypnotized him into talking like a chicken.

Then the hypnotist dropped dead from a heart attack.

Three years later, Jim Carrey’s character was no longer rich. He was broke, homeless, and still clucking like a chicken.

This is both unrealistic, but also terrifying realistic.

Unrealistic in that you can’t really hypnotize somebody against their will, especially to the extent that they’d cluck like a chicken for three years.

On the other hand, most people spend their ENTIRE LIVES under some kind of hypnotic trance.

Trances they’ve learned when they were kids.

We’ve all accepted suggestions like, “speaking in front of others is scary.” Or “making money is difficult.”

The reason it doesn’t seem like hypnosis is BECAUSE these seem so real.

But unlike hypnosis in the movies, real hypnosis (the limiting kind) happens slowly.

Technically, it’s a lot more like brainwashing than hypnosis.

We didn’t go into a trance and somebody said, “From now on, every time you get up in front of others to speak, you’ll get nervous!”

We learn from plenty of experiences, and once that belief is set, it’s hard to undo, since it SEEMS so real.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to undo our own hypnosis, and undo the debilitating trances on those around us.

The truth is that all of us go in and out of trances all the time.

In fact, you can look at one of the main purposes of our brains as “trance machines.”

It’s VERY DIFFICULT (and uses a lot of energy) to keep our brains a hundred percent focused on all of the technical details around us.

We NEED to slip into trances to maintain our sanity.

This means if you are the one CREATING those trances, you can have a lot of fun.

Most of the time our trances (TV, social media, etc) are just situations where we turn our brains off.

But if you learn to lead people’s minds during their daily trances, you can make them feel a lot better.

And help them to make MUCH BETTER choices.

What will you help them choose?

Learn How:

Hypnotic Storytelling

Epic Journeys

Lead Them on Epic Journeys

I watched an interesting “documentary” the other night on Netflix.

It was made by Frank Capra, and it was a world war II propaganda movie, made specifically against the Japanese.

Studying it from a persuasion standpoint was interesting. Propaganda movies are usually well made.

It made the Japanese look both beatable, and a formidable enemy at the same time.

It was designed to generate hatred and fear for the Japanese during WWII, and at the same time build a massive amount of confidence in the American military.

It’s no secret why they chose Capra. Regardless of which way you want to move emotions, movies are IDEAL tools of persuasion.

But since most movies we have experience with today persuade us to feel certain emotions, we don’t see how powerful of a propaganda tool they once were.

Why are movies such powerful tools of persuasion?

Why do they move us to tears or action?

Because they do what traditional “persuasion” can’t.

Traditional sales and persuasion involves somebody telling us what we SHOULD do.

And even if it’s a good idea, it feels like we’re following orders.

And few people enjoy following orders.

But movies, on the other hand, they invite us to go along willingly.

We see the hero’s and the bad guys, and we imagine ourselves right in there in the mix.

Nobody’s making us do it. Nobody even knows we’re doing it.

But deep in our mind, we are. It’s hard NOT to. To imagine that YOU are the hero, YOU are the one killing the bad guys and saving the people.

(And getting the girls!)

And just like you can drive an ambulance or a getaway car, this tool can be used for wartime propaganda, or for making people feel wonderful.

Think of all the things you WISH you could “tell people” to do.

Things you want them to do, and things you KNOW they’d benefit from.

If you learn how to wrap those ideas up in a story, they will GLADLY take your advice.

Because stories are a way to INVITE them to IMAGINE taking your advice through the story.

Only they won’t think it’s advice.

They’ll imagine it as a fantastic adventure.

If you tell it right, it will be an adventure they imagine taking together, with you.

Learn How:

Hypnotic Storytelling

Happy Emotions

Covert Emotional Implanting

Once I was reading a book on pickup.

How to talk to girls.

One of the “ideas” the guy kept repeating was “dump the emotions and keep the data.”

Meaning to try out a bunch of different techniques, and look at it from an objective viewpoint.

Of course, that tiny part about “ditching the emotions” is kind of difficult.

If it WERE easy to “ditch the emotions” and “keep the data” then nobody (girls and guys) would have any issues in meeting other people.

Those emotions, especially the UNCOMFORTABLE ones (like rejection, social exposure, feeling like an idiot while everybody watches) are the MAIN REASON “pickup” (or meeting people in general) is such a problem.

The advice to “ditch the emotions and keep the data” is kind of like an old joke by Steve Martin, back when he was doing standup.

“How to get a million dollars and NOT pay taxes. First, get a million dollars… Then, say “I forgot’.”

The joke of course, is how the heck are you supposed to “get” a million dollars?

It’s like that meme with the guy from Lord of the Rings:

“One does not simply, GET, a million dollars…”

Luckily if you do the OPPOSITE, it’s not only easy, but it works like crazy.

(not the opposite of getting a million dollars!)

Meaning instead of “ditching the emotions and keeping the data” you do the opposite.

And further (or more opposite-er) you don’t do it with your emotions, you do it with THEIR emotions.

Tell a bunch of stories with carefully chosen “themes.” Put the stories in a specific order.

Use specific techniques WITHIN the stories.

That way, they’ll KEEP the emotions, but they won’t have much of an idea of the DATA (the actual stuff the stories were about).

But here’s the cool thing.

People NEED to have reasons for those emotions.

And since they’ve forgotten what you were just talking about (they’ve ditched the data) they HAVE TO come up with THEIR OWN REASONS for those wonderful emotions.

Since they’ve been talking to you, they’ll just ASSUME that YOU make them FEEL “that way.”

And by choosing the right stories, with the right themes, in the right order, you can get them to FEEL anything.

How much fun can you have?

Learn More:

Hypnotic Storytelling

Metaphorical Power Punch

How To Become a Jedi Master

Most people are familiar with Joseph Campbell.

He studied mythology from around the world, and found some interesting things.

Namely, that all myths and their characters are very similar.

He called it the “Hero’s Journey,” as the stories are very similar.

A young kid, bored, safe, longing for adventure.

But at the same time not quite brave enough to set out on his own.

Then some tragedy happens and FORCES him on his journey.

And along the way he makes friends, learns skills and eventually has to fight the bad guy.

Why do we love this story so much?

Why, out of all the stories that were told around all the campfires since humans learned to speak, do we remember and retell this same structure over and over?

Why does this structure RESONATE with us so much?

Because the hero is us.

Every time we start a new grade in school, or start a new job, or begin a new relationship, or begin a large project, we are repeating the same steps of the hero’s journey.

Usually we don’t start because we want to, we either have to (school, job, etc.) or it just kind of happens (relationships, family, etc).

And since there’s not really a “how to” guide to do any of the important things in life (fall in love, build a career, etc.) we’re always bumbling our way through.

So “Hero’s Journey” stories are VERY compelling.

The represent the IDEAL to which we all strive.

But there’s something even BETTER than listening to (or watching or reading) hero’s journey stories.

What’s that?

Telling them.

We all love hero’s journey stories because we are always on SOME kind of hero’s journey.

But every hero’s journey has the wise old helper.

Spiderman’s Uncle, Dumbledore, Obi Won Kenobi, Morpheus, etc.

But guess what?

When you take whatever you want to say to other people, and wrap it in a hero’s journey type tale, YOU can be the wise helper.

The sage, guru, wizard, or Jedi Master.

And when you mix in all the tools from conversational hypnosis, you’ll be better than any mythological character.

Imagine the fun you can have!

Learn More:

Hypnotic Storytelling

Wrap Their Minds In Magic

Mesmerize The Entire Room

One time I was hanging out with a group of friends one night in a hotel lobby.

One of us mentioned he would like to be more socially outgoing.

Another one of us asked him a couple of questions, and then started talking.

For a few minutes, we just listened to this guy talk.

I had not clue what was going on.

Later I realized he was using Ericksonian Hypnosis.

Using NLP and bunch of other patterns to rearrange the guys fears.

Flipping them back on themselves.

The evening was pretty interesting after that.

When people think of being a charismatic conversationalist, there are two extremes to achieve this.

One is to forget yourself completely, and ask directed questions to your listener.

To expand the things they like, and get them talking in specific detail about things that light up their imagination.

Of course, there are limitations to this.

Make no mistake, it is an INCREDIBLY powerful way to get somebody SUPER EXCITED in a very short amount of time.

But the main drawback is you can only use it on ONE person at a time.

AND you have to be talking about things that are “OK” to talk about.

Which makes it PERFECT for sales.

But if you’re in any kind of social situation, where it’s not really appropriate to focus ONLY on one person, (and you might want to ask them things you’re not supposed to ask them about), what then?

Then you shift to the OTHER END of the spectrum.

Where you talk, and they listen.

Luckily, there is a systematic way to build up the things you talk about.

You’ll still be talking about normal things, but you’ll be talking about them in a way that will have everybody on the edge of their seat.

Hanging on every word.

What’s even better is you don’t HAVE to use this “system” on groups.

You can use it on individuals with just as must effect.

People you know, people you don’t.

All of it, or some of it.

And once you see the world through this communication model, nothing will ever look the same.

Learn How:

Hypnotic Storytelling

What Is She Waiting For?

Give Them The Gift Of Interpreting You

There’s a saying in seduction circles that’s meant to keep guys from texting or calling too much.

(But it works both ways).

It’s based on a mistake so common you’ll see it in plenty romantic comedies.

If you make yourself too available, the other person will lose interest.

This, of course, is based on the law of scarcity.

If we think something is NOT scarce, (e.g. abundant and always available) we’ll value it less.

If we think something IS scarce, we’ll value it more, assuming we have some affinity for it in the first place.

The saying is to, “give her the gift of missing you.”

The idea being when a girl likes a guy, she likes thinking and wondering about him.

When she is “missing” and “thinking about” him, it will make seeing him much more valuable.

On the other hand, if he’s TOO available, it will kill her feelings.

You can apply this theory to your language.

If you are always extremely clear and specific about everything you talk about, you won’t give them anything to wonder about.

You’ll be known as “detail man” since you are always going into huge amounts of detail.

While this is nice, they’ll have very little reason to think about what you are saying.

You’ll be conditioning them to “turn off” their brains when they see you.

Since you speak in so much specific detail, they don’t need to think.

To them, you’ll be like a TED talk on YouTube.

You don’t require ANY amount of interactivity on their part.

This is fantastic if you just want to give speeches about interesting topics.

But it won’t let them wonder about you.

One of the cool things about many movies and literature is we can discuss what it MEANS.

Everybody can have their own interpretation.

But this isn’t possible when you speak with such specificity there is no way to “interpret” what you are saying.

Nobody gets together to talk about what TED talks “mean.”

The implications, yeah. But not the meaning.

But we LOVE talking about the “meaning” of characters and stories and ideas.

When you can make “specific vagueness” part of your natural communication style, you will give people the GIFT of “interpreting you.”

Or wondering about what you really “mean.”

You’ll also develop the “aura” that most people like, but have zero idea how to CREATE.

Of somebody who is intensely interesting, but nobody is quite sure why.

Street Hypnosis

Beware The Flying Brains

Disengage Their Brains

A punctuation ambiguity is something that is VERY powerful in its “mind-fading” ability.

On it’s own, it will cause people to think their brains went offline for a second.

Which happens to us all the time anyway.

We’re listening to somebody talking, and our brains take a quick holiday without telling us.

Then they come back and we have to ask the person to repeat themselves.

This is pretty funny when you’re with friends, but kind of embarrassing if you’re in a meeting at work.

So when you use the punctuation ambiguity, your listener will think that’s what happened.

So you can have fun, gently pushing their brain offline over and over, or you can use it to build some REAL confusion, and slip in all kinds of ideas and commands.

The punctuation ambiguity is pretty simple. The trick is to deliver it like you are saying something perfectly normal.

If you smirk or smile, they’ll KNOW you’re the one playing with their brains.

The first couple of times you may be a bit nervous. So it’s a good idea to practice these on bartenders or waiters.

(Just be careful, a friend of mine tried this on a waitress and she messed up his order…)

But once you get comfortable with this, you can use one of these every couple of minutes, and by the end of a regular conversation, whoever you are talking to will wonder if they tripped and fell inside of a wormhole or something.

Anyhow, here’s how you make one.

Just take any regular sentence, and take the LAST WORD in the first sentence, and make it the FIRST WORD in the next sentence. Ideally the conversation should flow into the first sentence, past the ambiguity, and then on after the next sentence.

Example:

The other day I was shopping for shoe stores are starting to disappear since everybody is buying things online. I wonder what they’ll do with all that empty space?

They will feel a “topic change” since you’re talking about something different, but they won’t remember HOW you changed.

So they’ll try and “replay” what you just said, WHILE trying to listen to you talk.

Eventually they’ll say, “Wait, what?” with an embarrassed look on their face.

What happens next is up to you.

You can pretend you didn’t know, and keep talking about the SECOND TOPIC (empty malls in the example above).

If you keep dropping these in every couple of minutes, it will have a powerful effect on their brain.

And if you can work in some of the other patterns, so much the better.

Street Hypnosis

The Rainbow Of Your Brain

Confusing Brains and Tall Flowers

Language has a lot of vagueness.

But most of the time, when something is vague, we can figure stuff out from the context.

Occasionally, though, it’s kind of funny.

Once I was talking to this elderly Japanese woman.

She was telling me about the upcoming (at the time) prime minister election.

And since it was a pretty significant event, her face took on the facial expressions one does when talking about a significant upcoming event.

Only she sort of “mispronounced” the word election.

She got the look of “something is coming,” and said:

“This weekend there will be a prime minister erection.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. She asked why and I explained.

She thought it was pretty funny as well.

The picture of some old prime minister sitting there with all the press, hoping to get a boner.

Then when Prime Minister Jr. stands up, everybody politely claps.

“Prime Minister Erection Successful!”

You’ll see this technique used in comedy all the time.

But humor is not the ONLY way to leverage vagueness.

You can use it to “burn up” brain processor time.

For example, if I said, “Yesterday I went to the park and there were a lot of tall trees and flowers.”

What EXACTLY does this mean?

Tall trees and tall flowers?

Or tall trees and normally sized flowers?

Both make sense grammatically.

But what if I said:

“Yesterday I went to the park and there were some tall trees and flowers, but not all of the flowers were as tall as they used to be.”

This is like taking a selfie with your back to a mirror.

Your attention wants to keep swirling around those words to find out what the heck it really means.

And while your friend’s brain is doing that, you can KEEP slamming them with equally confusing sentences.

And one of the interesting things about confusing brains is they tend to look for ANYTHING to that makes sense.

A command, for example, in a sea of verbal confusion, is something the brain will grab hold of for dear life.

What command?

Whatever you want!

A few well-placed sentences, with secret commands side, can keep everybody’s brains spinning around for hours.

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In My Pajamas

Singing Clowns and Zombie Moths

I saw this pretty funny comedy a few weeks ago on Netflix.

Called “Punching the Clown.”

About this comedian who had a weird style.

He would play these goofy songs on stage, and in the songs would be his routine.

The story was a parody of sorts, and it was about his “rise and fall” in Hollywood.

It started with him living in his car, and ended the same.

One of the funniest parts was when he was pitching his routine to some big shot media executive.

The exec kept interrupting him.

The hero would start one of his “joke songs” but before he got a couple of lines out, the exec would stop him.

“Ok, how about your FUNNIEST joke then?” he would say.

The joke was that jokes are usually only funny if you don’t see them coming.

Even stand up comedians have to keep the jokes coming so fast it’s hard to keep up.

This is how humor works.

Our brains HAVE to be off balance.

The media exec was treating jokes as a physical thing. As if the “funniness” of a joke was objective and could be measured.

As if you could take out all your jokes, lay them on the table, and line them up on order of funniness.

But if you’ve ever successfully told a joke, you know that sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.

The the best way to tell a joke isn’t to wait for a lull in the conversation, and then say, “OK, everybody, I just learned this new joke, pay close attention!”

That would almost GUARANTEE nobody would laugh.

So we instinctively know that we keep our jokes on ice until the right time to spring them.

If you’ve got a lot of witty one liners, you aren’t in any rush to get them out.

You wait until a relevant point in the conversation, say them and BECAUSE they are unexpected, they will have the biggest impact.

Example:

I was sitting around with my friends once. We were talking about life after death. Serious subject! Everybody was trying to outdo each other with our deep metaphysical insight.

Then my friend says, (totally seriously), “I hear we become moths after we die.”

We all looked at him.

What?

“Yeah, that’s why people that come back say they kept going toward a big light…”

Now, this is likely one of the lamest jokes you’ll ever hear. But said at JUST the right moment, it will make people laugh.

Which is EXACTLY how hypnosis works.

Sure, there’s DIRECT hypnosis, where you TELL the person you are hypnotizing them.

Then there is INDIRECT, or covert hypnosis.

The problem is many people treat “covert hypnosis” like the Punching the Clown Executive.

They tell everybody they are about to DO hypnosis.

Which kills the effect.

But when you USE HYPNOSIS like the moth joke (spring it when people least expect it) it will spin their minds around like crazy.

And unlike jokes, which are short, you can make hypnosis as LONG as you want.

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