Tag Archives: NLP

How To Use Your Unconscious Mind To Automatically Attract Money, Sex, and Love

If you’ve ever doubted the power of your subconscious mind, this article may be reminder of the massive amounts of untapped power you likely have sitting between your ears.

It’s no secret that several best selling books have been written on the subject, and perhaps you may have even read a few of them. Sometimes it can seem like they are talking about “somebody else” in those books. It can be easy reading about all those wonderful things happening to “other people” in the examples presented in those books, and somehow feel they don’t apply to you.

A quick way to banish this erroneous thought is to simply find experiences where you have been well served by your unconscious. Anytime you’ve acted on intuition, or what you may have called a gut instinct has been due to your unconscious.

Or anytime you were trying to think of something, a name of somebody, or a name of a band or dessert, and it was “just on the tip of your tongue,” and then you forgot about it, only to have it magically pop into your mind when you least expected it. That was your unconscious mind presenting you with the information you were requesting earlier.

One useful way to think of your subconscious is like a giant computer that contains all the information you’ve ever experienced. And when I say experienced, I mean stuff you’ve read, things you’ve seen, emotions you’ve felt, or anything else that has been filtered from the outside world, through any one of you five senses, and into your brain.

But wait, there’s more.

The unconscious is not merely a gigantic billion gigabyte hard drive in you brain. It is also jillion-gigahertz multi-parallel processor as well. It takes all the raw data, in the form of pictures, emotions, tastes, snippets of old conversations, and runs them through several algorithms so complicated it would make the best programmers at Google look like cavemen just learning to paint on their cave walls.

And the great thing about your unconscious is that it never stops working. It is always sorting through your data to present you with the best possible information to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.

If you don’t program your brain with a specific direction, it will default to it’s factory installed programming, which is to point you in the direction of safety, being well fed, and sexually satisfaction. The order in which these appear is based on whatever threat might be present at the moment. Many times, there is perceived threats which interfere with your ability to achieve on or all of the above.

For example. You see a really attractive member of the opposite sex, and you’d really like to stroll on over and copulate, but something holds you back. What is holding you back of course, is fear. Fear is the big stopper of action.

Fear is a good thing though, it has kept mankind safe for hundreds of thousands of years, and will likely keep you from getting slapped if you walk over to that girl or guy and suggest some copulation over in the corner.

But I digress.

The big power of the subconscious is when you give it programming in additional to it’s factory installed programming. When you choose a specific goal, and charge that goal with enough energy so that your unconscious starts to find ways to make it happen.

Example.

Let’s say you are really hungry. A base need for humans. Everybody knows it is a horrible idea to go shopping at the grocery store when you are hungry. You have this strong desire for food, and everything looks good. Because of your strong desire, your unconscious is sorting through the environment and finding all those things that will satisfy this deep craving.

You ignore the sexy blond standing next to you, you ignore the sale they are having in Wii’s, you pretty much only see the food.

Another example. (The old new car stand by example.)

You buy a new car. It is very important to you. Suddenly you see the same car everywhere. You swear they weren’t there before. But because you have given your brain the temporary message that a purple Toyota Corolla (or whatever car you want for this example) is super important, you see them everywhere.

When you take something that you really want, like money, or a relationship, or a new house, and charge it strong enough, your unconscious will start to point out all kinds of things to you that will help you make it happen.

And the way to charge your subconscious is with pictures, feelings, sounds, tastes, and smells of what your desire will be like when you get it. When you make as many as you want, and charge them with powerful emotions on a daily basis, you’ll start to see all kinds of opportunities pop up.

It seems like magic, and to hear some of the people from “The Secret,” it sounds like magic. But I reality, all those opportunities were there before, just like all those purple Corolla’s were there before, it’s just that you didn’t notice them.

And the thing about opportunities is that they can be a double-edged sword. They are a little bit more complicated to spot that a purple Toyota. You might need to see a couple things, and thing of a creative way to combine to create something useful. Like maybe you’ll run into two different people within a week, and think of a creative way to combine everybody’s skills to create a really cool product that will make you millions.

If you hadn’t’ charged your brain to look for opportunities, you might have missed out. But when you program your brain through regular practice, and emotional visualizations, you’ll start to see opportunities of a lifetime on a regular basis.

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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 Sort The World For Maximum Benefit

The other day I was having a chat with an ex colleague of mine. We were talking about various things that we used to be involved with together, that we no longer are, and the different things we are doing now and how we’ve kind of drifted in separate directions. One of the more interesting things we discussed was how people tend to categorize things. Even when I referred to this person, you’ll notice I referred to him as an ex colleague. Not an old friend, or an old co-worker, or an old boss, but an ex colleague.

What does that imply? Other than our actual relationship, it is an example of how we are constantly looking out at the world and sorting everything into categories and compartments. I was playing poker the other day with a couple of buddies (notice I used a different word there to describe these people) and noticed they each stacked their chips differently.

We weren’t playing for money, or anything, just pretend. We were using different colored chips, but they were all the same value. If you aren’t familiar with poker or gambling with chips, usually different colored chips have different monetary value. In this case they were all worth the same thing.

One guy had his all neatly stacked accordingly to color, even though we had agreed that the value didn’t depend on color. Even he would make a bet; he would make sure that each chip was the same color. And many times, the amount that he would bet was dependent on how many of each color chips he had.

The other guy had a seemingly opposite approach. When he made bets, he made sure there was an equal amount of colored chips in each bet. Since we had four different colors (red, blue, green and yellow) he always made his bets in increments of four.

While we were playing and shooting the breeze (notice how with buddies you shoot the breeze, but with colleagues you have discussions) I started thinking about categories that people carry around in their heads, and how we are always sorting things we encounter in the world and putting them into different categories.

I suppose this tendency served us well in our evolutionary past, as it made life or death decisions more or less automatic. Safe or unsafe, delicious or poisonous, familiar territory or far away from home. But sometimes it can be very limiting.

My two buddies are a good example of this. They were both completely limited on how much they could bet based on how they chose to sort their chips. When an opportunity came up that called for a different sized bet (like sometimes in poker you want to call without raising) they didn’t seem able to break from their pre set strategies.

It’s interesting when you examine how you sort things, experiences, even people. Friend? Enemy? Helper? Detractor? There’s that old saying that you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, but I think the deeper truth is to be able to notice the enemy and the friend in all people. While I’m not advocating walking around like Richard Nixon thinking that everybody is out to get you, I think it helps to keep people and their behavior in context.

One very useful and powerful skill to have is to be able to rearrange your own categories that you place people and things into, and be able to routinely examine what you’ve placed in those categories and determine if they don’t deserve an upgrade or a downgrade.

Everybody knows somebody that is completely trusting and gullible, and is always being taken advantage of (a salesperson’s dream customer). This is an example of somebody that is unable or unwilling to put people into the “not to be trusted until further notice” category. Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum are the always paranoid and “Trust No One” crowd.

When you get down to it, people are a collection of their behaviors and capabilities. And as people grow and learn, many times their behaviors and capabilities change over time. Some for the better, some for the worse. There’s no reason why shouldn’t always be updating your categories, so you can better use the resources that are always around you.

Covert Charisma For Influence, Sales, And Seduction

Here’s a neat trick that you can use to covertly create really good feelings in other people. When you can do this covertly, people will feel good without knowing that you are consciously trying to do this. All they will realize is that whenever you are around, they feel really good about themselves. They will start to see you as a really charismatic person. Whenever they hear your voice, or see your face, they will immediately begin to think happy thoughts.

When you aren’t around, and they start to think about you, they will begin to automatically think and feel happy thoughts and feelings. Is this something you think you might have some uses for?

The trick is to make some really positive assumptions about them, and then allow them to prove you correct. There is something strange about this; the mechanism is something deep and subconscious. When you assigning a positive trait to another person, and really assign it in a deep and meaningful way, they have an almost unconscious drive to live up to that label, so long as it is a good and positive one.

Of course, if you do this with manipulative attempt, people will see your fakeness from a mile away. Do this genuinely and people will be their best around you.

For example, if your boss comes in and starts telling you what a great and hard worker you are, on a Friday afternoon, you know something is up. You will naturally feel some resistance, but he’s your boss, so you can’t really tell him how you really feel.

If on the other hand, if you are sitting in a meeting, and they are discussing who to send to meet with a potential client that could mean big money for your company, and after a few moments thought, he looks at you and says”

“You’re the best we’ve got. If anybody can land this contract, you can. If you can’t do it, then it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Then you know she’s being totally honest, and you will feel inspired beyond belief to land that contract, whatever it is.

When you speak to people on a social level, you can still inspire those same good feelings in others. The trick is to assume positive things about them, and then talk to them as if those positive things you assume about them are already obvious to everyone.

Linguistic presuppositions can come in really handy here. Linguistic presuppositions are sentence structures that assume one or more things to be true in order for the sentence to make sense.

If I say that my cat is really smart because she can run to the door two minutes before the mailman comes, that presupposes many things:

I have a cat.
My cat can run.
It’s possible to measure the intelligence of a cat.
My cat is really smart.
My cat can predict when the mailman will come.

Another example based on making people feel good about themselves. Say you are talking to somebody you’ve just met. You’ve talked to them for a few minutes, and learn that they are a kindergarten teacher. If you say:

Wow, kids must really like you. How long have you been able to use your communication skills to inspire people to learn?

What does this presuppose?

They have good communication skills.
They inspire people.
They help people learn.
They have been doing it for a while.

Now, the specific structure of the above example is a question that starts off with “How long…” The important thing to remember is that any answer they give, even if they shrug their shoulders, indicates that they’ve accepted your presuppositions as true. They would have to be extremely suspicious, or have extremely low self-esteem, if they took each element of the sentence and overtly disagreed with it.

When you can take some good assumptions about another person, hide them inside a sentence that only requires a yes, no, or one word answer, you are doing pretty good.

Another sneaky way to do this is to give them a quick, sly compliment, and then follow it up with an easy to answer, and seemingly obvious question.

Example:

Wow, you must be really good with kids. I think that people that are good with kids are the most important people in society. We would be completely lost without them. When did you know that you wanted to be a kindergarten teacher?

The important part is to not allow him or her any time to respond to your compliment, and then ask a question that most people would ask by itself.

The problem many people have with giving compliments is that they have an ulterior motive, and they give the compliment, and then wait for the thank you. This is an indication that on some level, they are really fishing for a “Thank you,” rather than giving an honest compliment.

When you give somebody a compliment like this, without giving them a chance to respond, then quickly focus their attention on some normal, often asked and easy to answer question, the compliment really sinks down deep, and makes them feel really good.

These are just two techniques you can use in your daily conversation that will really boost your charisma, and your ability to make people around you feel really good about themselves. And when you have high charisma, and are surrounded by people that feel good about themselves, you’re doing pretty good.

Embedded Commands for Powerful Persuasion

One powerful tool that you can use in your toolkit of persuasion and influence is the embedded command. An embedded command is likely the most popular, easiest to learn, hardest to detect (and therefore one of the most powerful) ways to influence others.

They do take some time to learn, but once you have them down, you’ll notice that you are using them in your everyday speech. When you combine an unconscious skill of embedded commands with a strong win/win intention or outcome, you can be a powerfully unstoppable and charismatic force.

It’s no secret that most people would rather rally around a strong, charismatic leader than step up the plate themselves. Humans are designed to follow one leader in every group of people. Many studies of psychology and sociology have been done that illustrate this simple point. If you’ve every been in a business meeting, you know that most people would happily submit to a powerful, authoritative leader than take responsibility for themselves.

When you develop the use of embedded commands, you will be tapping into peoples deep evolutionarily based need to follow directions, and become incredibly influential. And the great thing is that they are very simple to use and apply.

First, take a short sentence, which is in the imperative form. A short command. Some examples.

Eat sushi.
Drink CC Lemon.
Watch Television
Add water.
Buy my product.
The structure is the first word is a verb in its basic present tense form. Then you have two or three words after it, that go along with the verb.

Next, you need to say them with the right tonality. Pretend you have your own personal robot. They will do everything you ask, and their feelings won’t get hurt. Say each of the above sentences with a slight downward tonality.

Ok? Ok. Next, take the above small snippets of speech, and put them into a larger sentence. This is where it gets tricky. You’ll need to say the command part a little bit different from the rest of the sentence. But make sure not to linger too long when you say the command, otherwise the people you are talking to will know that something is up. Pause just a little bit before the command, and a little bit afterwards, and then continue on with your sentence as if nothing happened.

This way, even if the person you are speaking with suspects something is up, by continuing on as if nothing happened, they’ll quickly forget their suspicions. Even if they notice something is up, they likely won’t know exactly what it is (other than maybe, you are talking funny, but this rarely happens.)

For example, let say you want to convince your girlfriend to eat sushi. You could try looking at her like Rasputin, and say EAT SUSHI! But she’ll likely think you are a nutcase. Or you could say something like this:

The other day, I was listening to this doctor on a radio talk show. He was discussing a study about people who eat sushi, and how they are healthier. He says that when you eat sushi, you get lots of good monounsaturated fats, and people that eat sushi on a regular basis tend to live longer. Hey, I’m getting kind of hungry by the way; do you want to get something to eat?

I remember when I was a kid; I went to some amusement park. In the amusement park they had this animal show, where they had a dog and a cat do a bunch of tricks. They had a sort of joke trick, where they would pull a kid out of the audience, and the trainer would tell him to whisper an article of clothing in the dog’s ear, and then he would go and get it.

Every time they kid would whisper women’s underwear, and the dog would come back with a bra, and you could hear a woman scream from backstage. They called me up on stage, and sure enough, I chose to whisper in the dog’s ear a woman’s bra. I thought it was my own choice to choose a woman’s bra, but my brother later explained what was up.

He would describe all the things I could choose, but he always used embedded commands (although at the time I had no idea what they were) when he mentioned to “choose a woman’s bra,” so inevitable, all the kids that went up on stage would choose that. And that was the only thing the dog was trained to go and get from back stage. It was a pretty good way to set up an easy trick.

These are great to use over the phone if you are in sales, or are talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend. They are particularly powerful if you start with a command that is easy to accept, and slowly lead to a more powerful command that you’d like your listener to perform.

For example

Become interested.
Get curious.
Get excited about this.
Want this.
Make a decision
Get this.
Buy this.
Do this.
Choose now.
Be happy.
Share with your friends.

Whatever it is you are talking about, if you start slow, and work your way up to a big finish, this can be very powerful. At first you’ll have to think these through before you deliver them, but after a while (with practice) you’ll be able to choose a destination and then automatically give people easy steps to get there by following your commands.

Of course, like any other powerful persuasion techniques, these should be used with caution. The quickest way to make a bad name for yourself is to convince somebody to commit money or emotions to something that isn’t in their best interests. The reasons powerful leaders are so powerful, and that people trust them is because they truly have the people’s interest at heart. You don’t have to look back through history to find reviled, hated and despised dictator that took advantage of their leadership.

When you use these ethically, they can be a lot of fun, and make a lot of people (including yourself) very happy.

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.

The Crow Massacre

Once upon a time there was a group of crows. They were numerous, and had been established in their community for quite a while. They had a fairly well developed relationship with the surrounding farmers. They would refrain from picking the crops while they were growing, and hunt for food elsewhere. The when harvest time came, they were allowed to pick up all they could eat so long as they didn’t interfere with the harvesting process.

In turn for their cooperation, the farmers agreed not to shoot the crows for sport while they were getting close to harvest time. Crows are very easily hypnotized, and when the season is getting close to harvest time, there is something in the air that transfixed the crows. They begin to gather in mass hordes just outside the crops and wait for the harvest. This makes them easy targets for farmers with shotguns.

Once in early fall, before this rule had been established, several farmers, decided after a night of heavy drinking to have some fun with the waiting crows. They loaded up their shotguns and went out one night, and had a contest to see who could kill the most crows.

What happened after was disastrous. Very few people recalled exactly what had happened, but they all agreed that it was so horrible they should never repeat it. After several rounds of negotiations, they agreed that the crows would be protected during their hypnotic waiting for the harvest, and they would restrain themselves during their furious scavenging after the harvest.

This went on for several generations. The crows would hunt for squirrels and small rodents, and they could steer clear of the farmer’s crops. Then the weeks leading up to the harvest, the crows would slowly gather and watch, transfixed as the farmers prepared their instruments of harvest. The farmers learned to regard the gathering crows with a detached disinterest, not unlike a stronger predator barely acknowledging a lesser animal, waiting in the background for scraps.

Then one day disaster struck. There was a solar eclipse, which sent down a strange combination of solar radiation, and the strange feeling of night during the day. And few people know that the feeling of night during the day is one thing that can send the crows from a lazy feeling of desire into a ravenous blood lust for flesh.

Which is exactly what happened. Nobody knows why, but the solar eclipse was not predicted by any meteorologist, nor written about the much relied upon farmers almanac. It came completely without warning. It didn’t help matters that the frequency of the accompanying solar radiation was similar to that of the brainwave frequency of the crows.

What happened next was unimaginable. Crows swept down upon the harvesting farmers as one, instinctively plucking out there eyes, creating immediate and deadly fear and panic. With the farmers suddenly running around in a chaotic frenzy, the crows began plucking at their throats with almost surgical precision, ripping open carotid artery after carotid artery. Soon all fields were running with the blood of the slowly dying blind farmers.

When all the farmers were dead, the crows turned on each other. Before long, crows and farmer alike lay in the yet to be harvested fields, dead.

It took several days for the neighboring communities to realize there was a problem, as they weren’t expecting any harvested corn or wheat for some time. By the time a delivery truck happened through the community, the site was completely void of life.

No one has ever been to those fields since.

Social Proof and Authority – Powerfully Persuasive, Or Horribly Evil?

Two of the most powerful and effective means of persuasion are social proof and authority. Social proof and authority are responsible or some of the greatest marketing stories of all time and some of the most horrible acts of cruelty perpetrated by societies led by evil and charismatic leaders.

Due to hundreds of thousand of years of evolution, the human brain has developed several “short cuts” in thinking. If you were a caveman living a hundred thousand years ago, it wouldn’t have served you very well to sit back and contemplate all your options when your whole tribe was on the move. Those that had a compulsion to follow the crowd generally lived long enough to reproduce, and pass on this compulsion to their offspring. Rebels didn’t.

Despite our tendency to fancy ourselves as independent thinkers and individuals, we are very strongly influenced by group thinking. Fashion, movies, bestsellers, product endorsements all make it much easier for us to make decisions. Our modern thinking brains are the same brains that kept us alive and thriving on the plains of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, and they still operate on the same principles, despite what modern science may try and lead us to believe.

The other factor, authority, is as equally as powerful, for the same reason. Most ancient tribes had a single leader, or small group of leaders. When they made a decision, you followed it, or you were banished or shunned by the tribe. Those that had the compulsion to follow orders from those that had demonstrable authority usually did better than the rebels.

The most famous experiment that demonstrated this was one you’ve likely heard of if you’ve studied psychology. Researchers set up an experiment where they would ask a test subject questions, and then have another test subject give him an electric shock if he got the answer wrong. (This test was performed several years ago. Today if any scientist even proposed such an experiment he would be shunned from the scientific community.) The inside scoop of the experiment was that the leader, dressed in a doctors white coat, and the person receiving the “shocks” were both in on the experiment. No actual shocks were given, and the receiver only pretended to be in pain.

The person giving the shocks, however, didn’t know this. The test was to determine just how far they’d go in listening to an “authority” figure. Much to the horror of the testers, the test subjects (the people giving what they thought were real electric shocks) went much further than anybody expected.

A huge percentage of the test subjects continued to give “shocks” despite the receiver begging them to stop. Only a small percentage refused to do so. At one point, the receiver even pretended to be having heart difficulties. Even so, shocks were still obediently delivered.

If the shocks had actually been real, and not pretend, the voltages would have been enough to kill the test subjects.

Let’s recap, just so you understand the significance. Normal, everyday people, just like you and me, were persuaded to give a potentially lethal electrical shock to a complete stranger, despite his pleadings against it, simply on the word of an authority figure.

The test designers were so horrified by the results, they made sure an experiment of this nature was never performed again.

When you combine social proof, described above, and authority, you get a persuasive message that is virtually impossible to resist. Cult leaders, dictators, and unscrupulous marketers have known this, and have used this.

Jim Jones persuaded people, mothers with their children, to kill themselves. Adolf Hitler persuaded a whole country to willingly murder six million Jews.

These two can be used together to persuade people powerfully. If you are a salesperson, or somebody that persuades others for a living, these two tools can be extremely useful, if used ethically.

When you persuade using these to influence factors in a win-win situation, you will be unstoppable. You can make more money, and attract more lovers than you ever thought possible.

However, be careful. Just the slightest bit of unethical behavior can quickly turn against you. If you use these two techniques to persuade or manipulate people against their best interests, you will soon find yourself as hated as Adolf Hitler.

Be careful.

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.

How to Use Language to Persuade Others

I remember when I was a kid, I was in boy scouts. Our troop went to a beach for a weekend campout. The campgrounds were up on a bluff overlooking the beach, with fire rings and places to set up tents.

One thing I remember the most was that there was this new kid. And the poor kid seemed to be desperate to make friends. He would ask one of the other kids to do something, and would always promise things like “I’ll be your best friend,” or “I’ll buy you a soda,” and other stuff. At the time, most of the kids didn’t want anything to do with him, because it seemed creepy to have a kid promising us all kinds of stuff just to hang around him. Looking back, I feel kind of sorry for the kid. It can be tough being a new kid in a group when friendships and relationships have already been formed.

If you can imagine how difficult it can be to make friends as an adult, you can perhaps also sympathize with him. Being an adult, you have more confidence in yourself (hopefully!) so you can relax and be yourself, and be sure that friendships will develop gradually over time, like they should.

But what if you are in a situation, and you need to quicken the process? What if you need to make a good first impression on a boss, or a potential business partner? What then? Does it still work to promise to “be someone’s best friend?” Probably not.

If you are a salesperson, and you’ve ever tried to sell something to somebody, you now difficult it can be to get past resistance. If you give them a compliment, they can easily see it for what it is if it is not one hundred percent genuine.

So what do you do? One powerful way is to use linguistic presuppositions. Linguistic presuppositions are carefully constructed sentences that presuppose something to be true in order for the sentence to be understood.

An example is the following sentence:

One of the reasons that so many people have bought his product is that it’s lifetime warranty makes it much more valuable than the competition.

Take a look at what is being presupposed in the sentence:

– Many people have bought this product
– This product has a lifetime warranty
– It is much more valuable than the competition
– There are other reasons people have bought it

Even if you blatantly disagree with any of the above statements, you are tacitly accepting the others as truth.

So how do you use this technique to get someone’s good favor? Simple. Use sentences that presuppose good things about the other person. Even if you have never met them before, and don’t know anything about their history, you can still do this. Just think of something that is generally true of everybody.

For example, everybody has made decisions in their lives. Some good, some bad. Everybody has done good things in their life. Everybody has achieved accomplishments in their life.

So you can say,

“Well Mr. Customer, obviously, because you’ve made several good decisions before that have invariably led to substantial accomplishments, you can appreciate the fact that choices always present an opportunity for further achievement.”

That is a simple sentence, which doesn’t really say anything specific, but it presupposes something about the person that they can feel good about.

Another example:

“I’m sure that you’ve avoided temptation in the past due to your willpower and dedication to personal achievement, which is exactly why you are somebody that can really benefit from this product.”

Again, a fairly vague sentence, but it presupposes something good about the person, and uses that presupposition to convince them to consider your product or service.

These are but a few of the many ways that you can use linguistic presuppositions to promote yourself or your product. There are several resources to learn these. They were originally described in the book “The Structure of Magic,” by Bandler and Grinder. You can get it from Amazon.

Although these patterns can take some time to learn, they can be very powerful in promoting yourself, and making others feel really fantastic. You do like to make people feel fantastic, right?