I recently saw a humorous bumper sticker that read, “Don’t believe everything you think.” I liked it because it made me ponder thought and how at times, I find thinking to be somewhat overrated.

Wikipedia defines thought or thinking as: a mental process that allows beings to model the world and to deal with it effectively according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires.

Writer C.S. Lewis (most notably the author of The Chronicles of Narnia but also a very active writer of non-fiction) believed that there are three levels of human thought. The first level is ‘the will’ and contains everything that is tangible and factual. These are the thoughts that rule your day-to-day activities and influence incredibly your other than conscious thoughts.

Level two is the intellect. This consists of your consciousness and the thoughts and decisions we consciously make. This includes things we’ve studied, academics, true and verifiable information.

And the third level of thought is fantasy. It’s the most random and often makes very little sense at all. It is most active in children and artists but even non-artistic adults have the potential for rich fantasy lives. For persuasion purposes, we are most likely to have the best advantage dealing with the will and fantasy aspects of our prospects and clients as these are the most malleable and less entrenched in “reason”. For example, with the fantasy level, we can create pictures for our prospects which they will internally experience of what their life will be like once they are involved with our product or service.

By giving them a “fantasy” so to speak, we’ve got them already partially invested in having, owning, or being involved with, what we have to offer them. It’s as easy as saying, “I’d like you to picture this. . . ” or, “Think about what it will be like to have ________ (fill in the blank with whatever their highest criteria might be).” This puts them in the mental position of feeling like they’ve had their highest criteria met. And when you follow it up, depending on whether your prospect has an away from or towards orientation, you will show how your service can achieve that in “real life” or how your product can help them to avoid not having what they want.

‘The will’ is another interesting arena that we can explore in terms of persuasion. Everyone believes they have strong wills, and for some of us, that may be true. I believe I am not someone who is easily influenced and my clients and students have exceptionally strong wills, however, we are constantly working on learning persuasion and can notice when someone is attempting to influence us the second it starts. Most of the world doesn’t have the information we have and that’s our advantage as we learn to unlock our our affluent prospect’s and client’s minds.

Tags: NLP

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