Author Archives: mindpersuasion

Do You Prefer Checkers Or Chess?

How To Think A Few Moves Ahead

Ditch The Caveman Brain

There’s an old joke whenever two politicians get together.

This is usually when one guy is thought to be “smart” while the other is thought to be “stupid.”

Of course, we all think our guy is smart, and the “other people’s guy” is stupid.

This can apply to any two politicians, from any point in time.

Anyhow, the way the joke goes is “guy A is playing chess, while guy B is playing checkers.”

Meaning one guy is only thinking in the short term, while the other guy is thinking many, many moves ahead.

Being able to plan far out into the future is a very good trait to have. This requires that you not think of ONLY what’s in it for you now, but what might happen tomorrow or a week or even a month from now.

The problem is our instincts are designed to look only a few moments into the future.

It’s been said that “being civilized” simply means planning on a more distant future, rather than relying on our instincts, which can only think of the future right in front of our faces.

This isn’t easy, it isn’t natural and it definitely takes practice.

This is thinking behind Benjamin Franklin’s famous statement, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Our instincts our telling us to stay up late and sleep in. But if we can overcome our instincts with conscious planning, (sleeping and waking up early) we’ll be much more likely to make something of ourselves.

Here’s another way of looking at it.

If you’re only focused on the near term future, you have a kind of tunnel vision. But if you are focused FAR out into the future, you can see a lot more things. A lot more paths. A lot more opportunities. A lot more options that you might have otherwise missed.

But here’s the cool thing.

Part of you is ALWAYS looking WAY out in the future. That super genius part of you that operates BELOW your conscious  awareness. That part of you that is ALWAYS playing a VERY LONG RANGE game of chess, while our conscious minds are always playing checkers.

Unfortunately, that super genius part of us can ONLY speak to us in intuition. Feelings. A gut level hunch that tells us we should maybe choose option B when our short term checkers brain is telling us option A is best.

When you tune into this part of you, magic will happen.

There Is Treasure Everywhere

Dig For Treasure

Start Digging

There’s two ways to look at “luck.”

The “real” way, and the “magic” way.

Of course, these are two extremes and any event that can be considered “lucky” has elements of both.

One standard definition of “luck” is when preparation meets opportunity.

Which sounds pretty good, but it’s also pretty vague. For example, luck usually happens when you aren’t really expecting it. And if you aren’t expecting it, how exactly can you prepare?

One way is to develop some “meta” skills. Like learning the piano is a specific skill. But learning how to learn is a “meta” skill.

Walking over to a particular person is a specific skill, while being comfortable around people is a “meta” skill.

Doing a particular job for the first time is a specific skill, while feeling comfortable in unknown situations, knowing you’ll eventually figure it out is a “meta” skill.

What about opportunities?

It’s easy to get caught in the “short term” thinking trap. Like if you were hungry, and you were expecting to see a big flashing sign that said “Food Here!” that would certainly be an opportunity.

But if you were walking down a main street, and you came across a side street that “looked like” it “might” have a few interesting restaurants to try out, that would be an opportunity as well.

And if you recall some of the greatest experiences of your life, they probably weren’t delivered gift wrapped, with you only needing to stick your hands out to receive them.

They likely took action, a little bit of uncertainty, and whole bunch of things that happened in ways you NEVER could have predicted.

Most people, when they think about getting “lucky” they imagine winning the lottery, or “being discovered” by some Hollywood producer.

In reality, lucky people have a certain mindset. A certain attitude. They don’t wait around to be given stuff, they have the self confidence and an open mind to realize that things are meant to be DISCOVERED.

After all, if it wasn’t “hidden” it wouldn’t be treasure!

But with a slight shift in mind, and an willingness to go down those side streets that “might” have something interesting, something AMAZING will happen.

You’ll notice that there is TREASURE.

EVERYWHERE!

Social Charisma Super Hero

Picture

Structure Is Crucial

Many people believe they need to have some really interesting stories to talk about to be interesting.

Sounds kind of logical, but it’s not.

If you’ve ever seen a stand up comedian, they usually talk about pretty everyday stuff, right?

But it’s how they talk about it that’s funny.

If you want to become a powerfully mesmerizing speaker, either in one on one situations, or in front of groups, all you need is the stories you’ve got in your head right now.

To start, speak with bigger gestures. Congruent gestures. Don’t be afraid to show emotions on your face. It seems pretty scary at first, but when you really show a wide range of emotions that exaggerate the stories you’re telling,  you’ll turn a normal incident at a stop light into something people will remember for days or even weeks.

The second thing is to break the stories up. If you’re halfway through a story, suddenly switch into a similar story without really finishing the first one.

If you do these a few times, you’ll be creating “open loops.” The brain HATES unfinished business, so every time you “open a new loop” it will create a more desire and attention in your listener.

To make yourself even more persuasive and magnetic, take some time to think of the “emotional flavor” of all your stories. Sad, happy, exciting, surprising, discovery, etc.

Ultimately, these are the three things you’re aiming for:

1) Use a wide range of facial expressions and gestures

2) Create and leave many open loops

3) Take your listeners through several different emotions in a few minutes time

Now, this does take practice, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty fun. You’ll show up at a party or something, and start talking about random, everyday stuff, and people will think you are some social charisma super hero.

There’s another way to generate massive magnetism, and it’s pretty easy.

All you’ve got to do is simply pay attention to, and become interested in the person you are talking to.

After all, the most interesting thing to anybody are things about themselves. If you can get them talking about things they are interested in, and ask the right questions at the right time to get them even MORE fired up, this will also put you in the “social charisma super hero” category in their mind.

All it takes is getting out there, getting social, and having fun.

This Can Help:

Charisma Generator

Two Sides Of The Paradox Coin

How To Flip The Paradox Coin

How To Jack The System

There’s a lot of paradoxes in life.

For example, the easiest way to get a loan from the bank is to prove you don’t need the money.

The easiest way to attract a partner is to be completely happy on your own.

One way to lose weight is to increase your metabolism, which you can do by eating more food. Which will make you gain weight. 

Most of us have heard that we make our impressions of people within the first few seconds. After that, it’s hard to overcome that first impression.

On the other hand, most of us only feel comfortable with somebody after we’ve known them for a little bit, and the  more we hang out, the more we let our guard down and let them know who we REALLY are.

Which means almost always, somebody’s first impression (which is hard to change) comes when we are the most reserved and closed off.

There’s a lot of strategies to overcome this paradox. One is where you go out in public and do crazy things, like buy one grape at the supermarket, go into a burger joint and order a pizza, or walk around town with absolutely ridiculous clothing.

Do this long enough, and you’ll just stop worrying too much about what people think.

Then you can relax and be yourself right away, no matter who you meet.

Of course, not a lot of people are willing to go the supermarket and buy one grape!

Another way around this is to develop a deep appreciation for yourself. Take some time every day really settling into your own brain, accepting yourself just the way you are.

This also takes time and consistent effort. 

Whichever path you choose, consider making it a goal. Once you are able to feel comfortable around anybody, anywhere, any time, you will have an incredibly magnetic energy.

People will feel better just hanging around you.

Another thing you’ve likely heard is that communication is only 7% verbal. Meaning before you even open your mouth, your sending out MASSIVE amounts of information through facial expressions, body language, and your movements.

Which means once you feel comfortable in your own skin, people will feel it from across the room.

People will naturally gravitate toward you and want to talk to you and get to know you.

Just by showing up, you’ll magnetize an entire crowd.

Learn More:

Charisma Generator

Who Do You Hang Out With?

Choose Wisely

Choose Your Friends Wisely

I used to work with this guy who was an ultra machine shop wizard.

He could take a hunk of metal and turn it into anything, provided he had specific details.

Even without specific details, if I told him what I needed it for, he could figure it out, through a couple runs of trial and error, until it was right.

I never really thought about his line of work until I got to know him.

One thing that surprised me was that top notch machine shop guys have their own sets of tools. Meaning if they leave one company and go work for another, they bring all their tools with them.

Sure, those huge machines that are several hundred thousands of dollars stay put, but their huge toolbox filled with every tool imaginable goes wherever they go.

There’s a few games where you imagine you’re stranded on a desert island, and you’ve got to pick three or four things from a list to take with you. Sometimes it’s supposed to tell you something about your personality, sometimes there are actually things that’d make a difference. (Like a parachute to use to make some kind of shelter).

Linguistics tell us that when we speak of tools, we think of them subconsciously as companions.

Based on the prepositions we use with nouns, it gives us an idea of how we think of those nouns.

“I went to the mall with my friends.” 

“I cut the bread with a knife.”

Since both use the word “with,” it suggests we think of them as the same thing.

A companion. A helper. A friend.

Skills are also the same way.

I got the job “with” my conversational skills.

I got her number “with” my friendly demeanor.

I finished the project on time “with” my attention to detail.

They say the friends you keep determines the life you have. If you surround yourself with decent friends, you’ll always be motivated to keep up your game.

If you surround yourself with lazy bums who play video games and eat microwave food all day, you might not ever get that corner office.

Which “friends” do you bring with you everywhere you go? Helpful ones, or ones that hold you back?

Inhibitions or strengths?

If you always carry top notch skills with you, these “friends” will help you achieve anything you want.

Learn More:

Charisma Generator

Inside Out Confidence

Don't Miss Out

Get The Big Picture

It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.

Even that statement is used so often that it can be easy to misunderstand it.

People tend to focus on little details (the trees) so they don’t have to address the big picture (the forest).

Often times, when there’s some big task at hand, we easily get caught up in the little things to avoid facing it.

Like if you need to do your taxes, you might spend a couple hours clearing up your desk. That’s easier, emotionally, than doing all the uncomfortable financial calculations.

It’s been said that one of the reasons Victorian England was so “Victorian,” meaning so focused on sexual behavior and etiquette is because they didn’t want to address a larger issue of their crumbling empire.

We humans don’t like big confrontations, so we avoid them whenever possible. These can come across as lies we tell ourselves.

I won’t try to create a relationship until I lose ten pounds. I don’t want to look for a job until I finish this project. I don’t want to have that conversation with my partner until I’ve cleaned out the garage. And on and on.

One of the ways we do this is when we focus on our external behavior, when we should be focusing on our internal state.

For example, if you’ve ever given a speech, you may have been told to, “maintain eye contact,” or “don’t memorize,” or “don’t shift your body weight back and forth,” or “use gestures when you speak.”

These are all good advice, but guess what?

Somebody who had a strong internal state would do these things naturally, without even thinking about it.

To be sure, you can “fake it till you make it.” Meaning if you started to pretend to be confident and self assured, you’d eventually become confident and self assured.

But that’s kind of a roundabout, and emotionally unpleasant way of doing it.

Why not start from the inside?

After all, those reasons for discomfort are based on what you “perceive” to be “out there,” now what’s really out there.

One way is to simply FORCE your brain to recall feelings of confidence, before and WHILE you’re speaking (in this particular example) instead of letting it run all over the place, like most people do.

Another way is to practice meditation. Strengthen your ability to quiet your mind at will, so you can more easily turn off those doubts and worries, and be much more centered.

Then you’ll open whole new range of behavior and energy most people never experience.

Easy Mind Shift For Elegant Persuasion

There's A Whole World Out There

Get Out Of Your Head

Few skills are more important than communication.

Mark Twain was fond of saying that there was no difference between somebody who can’t read, and somebody who doesn’t read.

Similarly, it doesn’t matter how many great ideas and insights you have, if you can’t get them out so that people will hear them, there’s really no difference between somebody who doesn’t have ANY ideas.

Speaking up is one thing most people have a hard time with, let alone speaking up eloquently and passionately.

All you need to do is listen to a few best man speeches to see that!

One of most people’s biggest fears is public speaking, for this very reason. Being on the spot, in the center of attention is cause for massive anxiety in most of us.

This is that invisible barrier that stops almost everybody from sharing their brilliance with the world.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that, “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration,” right?

Well, plenty of that “perspiration” is getting your ideas out of your brain and into the brains of those who can make a difference.

If communicating openly, congruently, and confidently isn’t something that comes easy to you, you aren’t alone.

Most people have a few half baked ideas, which come out sounding even less than half baked.

Those that get heard are the ones make it obvious that they believe in their own ideas. They don’t speak them timidly or half-heartedly.

One of the surest ways to get your ideas heard is to present them so they are framed in the interests of the person you are speaking with, or the group you are speaking to.

This is precisely why the best salespeople ALWAYS elicit criteria BEFORE they start their pitch. If they just spit out a bunch of random features and benefits, they may get lucky, they may not.

But when they tailor their communication so that it makes the most sense to the listener, that’s when ideas and desires cross from one brain into another.

The easiest way to do this is to slightly shift your thinking from talking about you, to finding out about them.

Since most people are running around blasting their own ideas regardless of who they’re talking to, you’ll come across like a tall glass of ice water in the desert.

And the more you find out about them, the more you get them talking about things they care about, the less work you’ve got to do.

You’ll find that most of the time, you won’t have to do ANY work at all. After you get them fired up, anything you say will seem like the greatest idea ever.

Learn More:

Charisma Generator

The Power Of Slow And Steady Movements

Not So Fast Jack!

Not So Fast!

Stability is an often valuable trait.

A stable job is much better than one that may end any time. A stable relationship is preferred to one where everybody’s cheating on everybody. A stable economy is preferred to one that has booms and busts every few years.

Even if chemistry and physics they talk of stable systems in positive terms.

On the other hand, flexibility is often a desired trait. Being able to roll with the punches, change with the times, or respond quickly to market forces is the sign of a healthy individual.

It’s also good to know when to be stable, and when to be flexible.

Long, long ago, there were a bunch of horse and buggy companies. Then the car was invented. They chose stability, and quickly vanished from existence.

Coke chose flexibility over stability when they conjured up “new coke” and it almost ruined them.

Not so easy to choose which is best, even for some of the biggest and most established companies.

One area when it’s generally better to be stable, rather than flexible, is in your mannerisms and movements.

I once saw a movie about old England, and one of the characters was Walter Raleigh, the guy who discovered tobacco and brought it back to England. He was supposed to be this ultra-bold, ultra-confident explorer upon whom the Queen depended in times of crisis.

Only there was this one scene where he was on this ship, and somebody behind him (A romantic interest) called his name. He whipped his head around so fast, he suddenly looked like a schoolboy responding to the call of his crush.

Suddenly, he no longer seemed like a bold explorer. For me at least, that one quick movement ruined it.

I don’t know if that’s what the director was going for, but I don’t think so, as it seemed wholly incongruent with the rest of the character’s actions.

This is what happens when you are in a social setting, and your eyes are darting around, head turning right and left, like some jackrabbit on crack desperate for attention.

On the other hand, those that are ultra charismatic and confident have a very slow, very steady gaze. Very measured movements. Even there speech is slow and conscious. Not ultra conscious like a politician, but slow enough so they don’t spit out the first thing that pops into their brain.

They use their words and actions like a well honed tool, to get a consciously chosen outcome, which is generally an increase in the happiness of those around them.

They enjoy themselves, they enjoy their environment, and they enjoy whomever they happen to be talking to.

If you’re interested in becoming more charismatic, check this out:

How To Eliminate Social Friction

Slip On Down Into Their Minds

Slippery Skills

When I was a kid we went to this small amusement park.

It had these long slides that required piece of cloth.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t slide very fast, and if you were wearing shorts and caught your skin on the plastic, it didn’t feel so good.

If you’ve ever been on a big water slide, you know much faster you can go when much of the friction (between you and the slide) is removed.

When I was in Junior High School, they talked about a frictionless puck (which was quickly transformed into bathroom humor by all the kids), because talking about friction made everything more complicated.

Air hockey is so much fun because you can hit that puck pretty fast, due to the small cushion of air it’s resting on.

In Japan, they have the mag-lev trains, which can go really, really quickly as there’s no friction between the train and the track. And the front of the “bullet trains” actually look like bullets, as they are designed for minimum air resistance.

Friction is everywhere. And billions are spent trying to minimize it. In games, in amusement parks, in transportation, inside every single engine.

Humans have friction between each other as well. (And I’m not talking about THAT kind of friction that only happens when the clothes come off!)

There’s that social friction that is ALWAYS there. That uncomfortable tension, the small gaps in conversations that seem to last forever. That invisible but powerful force field between you and your boss, or you and that attractive person across the room.

How do you reduce THAT kind of friction?

One way is how you start the conversation. Start off by making it easy on them. Use simple statements that are easy to agree with. Pacing statements, as they are called in hypnosis.

Just mention a few things that MUST be true. Get them thinking in terms of “uh-huh, uh-huh…”

Ease your way into the conversation, making it easy for them to see your perspective.

Spend some time building rapport.

Another way is to simply get rid of all your inner fears and anxieties. No matter how well you hide them (and hide from them) they are there.

And they send off a subtle signal that others can pick up on, subconsciously.

This is why some people seem really friendly, and some people don’t, yet nobody can really put there finger on why.

When you eliminate all that inner chit chat and doubt that often comes up before any social interaction, you’ll also remove a lot of that friction.

This is the definition of charisma. Somebody who just shows up, and the work is done.

People already feel in rapport with them. People have already decided they are friendly and interesting.

People have already decided, on a deep subconscious level, that whatever they are going to say is likely going to be pretty interesting.

YOU can be that person.

Ditch Your Hidden Fears

Clear Your Head

Delete Brain Spam

Most people have a few hidden secrets.

None of them are true, but they are things about ourselves are hope that nobody finds out.

This is why a friendly conversation can sometimes turn adversarial, when one or both parties feels like the other person is getting close to that “secret” part of us.

This can sometimes come across as feeling on some level that we are “faking it” or that we are somehow an imposter and people knew the truth they’d kick us out.

This is one of the main reasons behind self-sabotage. Whenever you start becoming successful, you start to feel like you’re “playing above your skill level.” Maybe you start making some money, start losing weight, or start doing social things you didn’t do before.

But part of you is terrified of being found out. Of people looking at you and saying something like, “What are YOU doing here? You don’t belong!”

This is common, no matter who you are, or what you’ve accomplished.

Paradoxically, for many ultra-successful people, the more successful they become, the worse this fear gets. It’s as if they are always running away from an invisible demon always right behind them. 

Of course, this is just a mental construct. Everybody has a hard time understanding themselves, let alone being able to look into your soul with x-ray vision.

Which is why when you accept others, you will be like a super hero.

When you radiate an aura that says, “I like you, and I accept you JUST the way you are,” people will be drawn to you like bees to honey.

Of course, in order to first accept others, you’ve got to completely accept yourself.

Some daily quiet time inside your mind is PERFECT for this. Just sit and accept yourself. Appreciate yourself. All of yourself. The good parts AND the “bad” parts.

When you get pretty good at this, you can do this little exercise when you’re out among others. As you appreciate yourself, appreciate others as well. 

This simple exercise can open up a whole new world of possibilities, one you may have never seen before.

Learn More:

Charisma Generator