If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” -Tom Waits

Reality has to do as much with the structure that is defined as it does with the assumptions that we make about that structure. That’s a pretty dense sentence. Read it over a few times.

Reality is made up as much with the structure that’s defined as it does with the assumptions we make about that structure.

With this one sentence, if you can get it and use it, your ability to persuade will skyrocket forward as it begins to come out into your behaviors and language.

This is even more powerful when it comes to words, what they imply, what they presuppose. The following truism about persuasion is something that has formed the basis of my work, even before I was able to articulate it in exactly this way: people might believe what they are told, but they’ll always believe their own conclusions.

Think about it. This is important: People might believe what they are told, but they will always believe their own conclusions.

You may be able to tell someone something and they may go along with you, but they will believe what they conclude on their own. And part two of that is, and they will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say, as what you do.

This is worth reading over and over and memorizing: People might believe what they are told, but they will always believe their own conclusions and they will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say, as what you do.

Learning how to structure what you say so that what you aren’t saying communicates powerfully is a major key to making people come to your conclusions on their own.

The following example falls into a linguistic category called Spoonerisms which illustrate the idea that people might believe what they are told but they will always believe their own conclusions. A Spoonerism may be thought of as a ’slip of the tongue’ but often they’re a play on words. The example of ‘Go and shake a tower’ might be a funny and more subtle way of telling someone they stink. When you hear ‘go and shake a tower’ your brain (most likely) will automatically fill in the statement with, ‘Go and take a shower.’

You hear the actual words I’m saying, but your brain reverses them to make sense of it.

When you heard the statement, you did it on your own. So when I say people might believe what you tell them, but they’ll always believe their own conclusions, this is what I’m talking about. They will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say, as what you do.

Tags: NLP

Popularity: 30% [?]

Share This