Recently I was playing the question game with a friend of mine and he challenged me with this question: "what are the ten most important things you've learned?"
The first thing I said is this:
Paying attention to the words someone uses is often less important than paying attention to their body language. Body language is very difficult to lie with.
To say this is a truism, a cliche. But if you pay attention to it during conversations and you learn to use your own, you will be halfway toward what people describe as charisma.
Just ask Barack Obama.
The first thing I said is this:
Paying attention to the words someone uses is often less important than paying attention to their body language. Body language is very difficult to lie with.
To say this is a truism, a cliche. But if you pay attention to it during conversations and you learn to use your own, you will be halfway toward what people describe as charisma.
Just ask Barack Obama.
Stuff I Think Is Important: 2
The thing is. I tend to get screwed in business deals. Why? Because taking great pride in being easy to please puts me in a tough spot when it comes to negotiating.
I'm just not the sort of person to fight over small details.
However, if you do want to understand business persuasion, the tactics salesmen will use on you, the tactics friends will use to manipulate you, the tactics your parents have been using on your your entire life, you will be amazed when you read Robert Cialdini's work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
When you read him, it will sound obvious, but if you try to use a few of these things, you will realize that these principles are subconscious. They influence people far, far more than they know.
I'm just not the sort of person to fight over small details.
However, if you do want to understand business persuasion, the tactics salesmen will use on you, the tactics friends will use to manipulate you, the tactics your parents have been using on your your entire life, you will be amazed when you read Robert Cialdini's work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
When you read him, it will sound obvious, but if you try to use a few of these things, you will realize that these principles are subconscious. They influence people far, far more than they know.
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Stuff I Think Is Important: 3
Ok. The first two things covered body language and common persuasion tactics. So I think I'll give a little bit of background about my overall thought process.
I used to be very, very interested in this question, "how do you convince someone to do what needs to be done?"
As a teacher, the relevance of this is obvious. In everyday life, perhaps it is less so. However, just today I learned of a good friend who is messing around with this shallow bitch that he supposedly has stopped talking to. This friend has a chronic problem: he puts sex with questionable women above other commitments in his life. The world is full of selfish, unreasonable people like that. So how do you deal with them?
Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything that you can do to reason with a guy like that. However, some skilled therapists disagree.
Here are some of the tactics they use to try to break through verbal defenses with their patients. These verbal defenses are always related to some irrational or dangerous behavior.
These verbal tricks to distract the subject and change the topic, sometimes help people get out of their mental habits. These are tools for trying to change irrational beliefs.
What Cialdini is to business, Sleight of Mouth is to conversational therapy.
So I give you, Sleight of Mouth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_mouth
As always, reading it is of little use in itself. Practice will reveal results. I find it incredibly effective with my grandparents and parents. Just look at the examples!
I used to be very, very interested in this question, "how do you convince someone to do what needs to be done?"
As a teacher, the relevance of this is obvious. In everyday life, perhaps it is less so. However, just today I learned of a good friend who is messing around with this shallow bitch that he supposedly has stopped talking to. This friend has a chronic problem: he puts sex with questionable women above other commitments in his life. The world is full of selfish, unreasonable people like that. So how do you deal with them?
Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything that you can do to reason with a guy like that. However, some skilled therapists disagree.
Here are some of the tactics they use to try to break through verbal defenses with their patients. These verbal defenses are always related to some irrational or dangerous behavior.
These verbal tricks to distract the subject and change the topic, sometimes help people get out of their mental habits. These are tools for trying to change irrational beliefs.
What Cialdini is to business, Sleight of Mouth is to conversational therapy.
So I give you, Sleight of Mouth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_mouth
As always, reading it is of little use in itself. Practice will reveal results. I find it incredibly effective with my grandparents and parents. Just look at the examples!
STUFF I THINK IS IMPORTANT 4
I have this friend who is a nice guy on some levels.
However, he is a total lunatic. He is an ok guitar player (a 3-4 on a 1-10 scale) and a poor singer (2-3 on a 1-10 scale).
However, he is a total lunatic. He is an ok guitar player (a 3-4 on a 1-10 scale) and a poor singer (2-3 on a 1-10 scale).
He would tell you that he is really close to being able to go out and play shows around town for cash. He thinks he is a good singer and a good guitar player. He is sadly, hilariously, wrong.
This stupid belief leads him to hardly practice his guitar playing. When he does practice, he is always "performing," playing a song from start to finish, never doing the work of practicing one lick over and over until he gets it right.
This means that he often partially screws up parts of songs while playing. Of course, he doesn't think the audience minds, but they do.
And he will not play a show and get the audience to clap anytime soon.
He is an example of a cognitive bias. They are common. They are real. And they are probably, some of the biggest reasons you made crappy decisions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
(These biases and limiting beliefs are just the sort of things meant to be addressed by Sleight of Mouth. However, I'm not up to the challenge is this case. When I deal with unreasonable people, I get frustrated, and Sleight of Mouth only works when you maintain an inner calm.)
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