Author Archives: mindpersuasion

Anchor On Your Desires

Why Now Always Beats Later

There are two reasons we human do anything.

Either to move toward pleasure, or to move away from pain.

Anything you want or don’t want can be broken down into those components.

However, it’s usually not so simple.

Take the ubiquitous goal of weight loss.

Most people would LOVE to be skinnier.

Otherwise the “lose weight” section on Amazon wouldn’t have zillions of best sellers.

But this simple and common idea involves a TON of confusing “good things” and “bad things.”

Eating feels good.

But having to strain to button your pants doesn’t feel good.

So we want make it easier to put on our pants.

In order to achieve that “good” we need to reduce another “good,” namely the pleasure we get from eating.

Problem is that eating pleasure happens right NOW.

While the pleasure of loose fitting pants is WAY out into the future.

And we’re supposed to “live in the moment,” right?

So it’s “good thing” to eat ice cream, NOW.

But then later the next morning, when we have to lie on the floor to zip up our pants, we are still “living in the moment.”

Only that particular “living in the moment” of squirming around trying to zip up our pants is a different “living in the moment” than when we ate a quart of ice cream the night before.

How the heck are we supposed to know what to do?

Even when we DO know what to do, how the heck we do it?

I doubt you’d find anybody that thinks eating a quart of ice cream is more than a “guilty pleasure.”

Yet somehow, that ice cream magically gets from the grocery store to our freezer.

And despite our promises to ourselves in the grocery store, it’s hard to ONLY eat a small bowl.

In case you hadn’t noticed, another theme in all of these confusing ideas is the idea of TIME.

When we choose to eat or not eat the ice cream, we are comparing NOW vs. the FUTURE.

When we buy the ice cream in the store, we are comparing NOW vs. THE FUTURE.

For most people, NOW wins over the FUTURE every time.

But you can “go meta.”

Most people try to battle on a surface level.

They focus on the content of the NOW vs. the content of the FUTURE.

Buying the ice cream (and promising to only eat a little bit) or NOT buying the ice cream.

Every time we choose, it’s always a matter of pleasure NOW vs. pleasure in the FUTURE.

The good news is you can ignore the content.

Meaning you can slowly build up your FUTURE thinking muscle, so that starts to win over the NOW.

It’s easier than you think.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

Who's Doing Your Thinking?

Whose Thoughts Are You Thinking?

Once I went to a bar with a friend.

As soon as I walked in, I noticed that the walls were covered with Corona flags.

We sat at our table, I ordered my drink, and he studied the menu.

After a little bit of thought, he ordered a Corona.

He acted like he’d decided on Corona ONLY after reading the menu.

I laughed, and he asked why.

I pointed out all the Corona signs and he looked stunned.

When I was a kid I saw this stage show at an amusement park.

The trick was that I was supposed to whisper something to a dog, and the dog would go and retrieve it.

I did, and the dog retrieved it.

Since I was a kid, I really thought the dog could understand me.

But my brother explained that the trainer had carefully slipped that idea into my mind, so I thought it was mine.

Every show, the dog would always get the same thing.

And every time, the kid thought it was HIS choice that he told the dog.

Just like my Corona ordering friend, the thought had been carefully implanted in there.

Had my brother not explained the trick to me, or had I not shown my friend all the Corona signs, we would have thought it really WAS our thought.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

How do you know your thoughts are really yours?

Grocery stores are laid out to alter our buying choices.

TV ads are carefully designed to alter our thinking choices.

And since most people think the same thoughts every day, what does it mean if those same thoughts (that people think every day) are really put there by others?

Whose thoughts are we REALLY thinking all day long?

Our lives are built from our behaviors.

Our behaviors are a result of our thinking.

But if our thinking is secretly controlled by others, WHOSE lives are we living?

On a big scale, this sounds terrifying.

But on a much smaller scale, it’s not so bad.

If you’ve got a massive garden that is overrun by weeds, it’s not a very happy thought.

But if you just took out ONE weed per day, and replaced with a seed for a flower, pretty soon you’d transform your garden.

Your thoughts, and the behaviors that create, are the same way.

Even if ALL of your thoughts are really somebody else’s, you can start small.

And slowly replace them with YOUR thoughts that will build the life that YOU want.

Not anybody else.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

What's That Buzzing Sound?

Waiting For Magic Corn

Imagine you were out driving around.

And in this hallucination (which will require a bit of suspended disbelief) you were thinking about a new career.

Let’s say you passed by a guy who was harvesting corn.

In this metaphor, you don’t really know much about anything.

In fact, you don’t really know where food comes from.

(other than on the shelf at the supermarket).

So you drive onto the farmer’s land, pull up, and get out.

“Where does all this corn come from?” you ask, absolutely flabbergasted.

“The ground,” the farmer says, smiling.

“But how?” You ask.

The farmer smiles. Let’s suppose, for the sake of this story, that he’s a church going farmer.

“Have patience, and Lord will provide,” he answers, not quite sure he understands the question.

“But it just comes up out of the ground like that?” You ask, still trying to wrap your mind around this mysterious concept.

Food coming straight out of the dirt? That’s crazy!

“Like, every day?” you ask. The farmer smiles and shakes his head.

“No, not every day. You must be patient, and the Lord will provide,” he answers.

You get back in your car and think about it.

If you could get food out of the ground, you could sell it!

When you buy corn at the store, it’s a dollar an ear.

And that farmer had HUNDREDS, maybe THOUSANDS of ears!

You’re going to be rich!

So you find some land.

And you sit in the middle.

“OK, Lord,” you say, looking up to the sky.

“I’m ready for my corn!”

And you wait patiently for it to spring forth.

But you’re waiting a while.

The only thing that grows are weeds.

You think maybe you didn’t ask correctly. Or maybe you weren’t thinking correctly.

So you ask again, only with more enthusiasm.

“Lord, I promise. I’m really ready to receive this time,” you say.

After another few weeks pass by, the weeds are over your head.

How in the heck did that farmer get corn out of the ground, when you only got weeds?

The farmer, however, misunderstood you. He just assumed you know about farming, and planting seeds, and taking care of the soil.

But all you saw was the end result.

Not the daily consistent behaviors that were REQUIRED to get the result.

And in just sitting there, staring at the sky and asking for magic corn, you looked kind of silly.

Hopefully you’re seeing some parallels in this metaphor and how people go about getting (or trying to get) good things.

Most people focus on the outcome, rather than the required daily behaviors.

But the required daily behaviors to get anything are pretty simple.

So simple you could get started today.

Whatever seeds you plant, they will grow.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines

Jigsaws Of Time

Three Operator Mindset

Long time ago, I got a job selling cars.

I was running out of money, and jobs were hard to come by.

Plenty of places like retail sales, especially if you don’t need a license, will more or less hire anybody.

They hire people based on the number theory.

The same kind of statistics some guys use when approaching girls.

If you chat up ten girls a day, you’ll eventually run into a few you click with.

And among those you click with, you’ll eventually find a pretty good one.

It is a very common sales strategy, referred to as the funnel.

A bunch of prospects go into the top, and a few sales come out the bottom.

Sales places hire people this way.

They hire about twenty new salespeople a month.

Every month.

They figure even if 19 of them eventually quit, they’ll end up with a team of skilled sellers.

On the other side of the equation is that once these skilled sellers realize that they are, indeed, skilled sellers, they go somewhere else.

If you are good at selling things, a car lot is the LAST place you want to be.

Stand up all day, usually outside. Really long hours.

But one thing that surprised me the most is the transition people make.

They come in terrified of the salespeople.

Most customers give of a dangerous kind of body language.

The kind that says, “Don’t you DARE come near me!”

This is why so many people quit.

But once you get past that “defense zone,” they open up pretty easily.

Talk about what they want, show them what you’ve got, and one out of ten or so will end up buying something.

What always got me was their internal transition.

From when they walked onto the lot, to the time they bought something.

They went from looking like they wanted to kill me, to acting like I was their best friend.

Since they’d overcome all their internal objections, all they had was pure desire.

Everybody loves buying stuff.

When we want it and can afford it, it’s a pretty good feeling.

Even if you’re buying lunch, that feeling when the waitress sets down your plate is a pretty good one.

One way to look at sales, (and all persuasion) is by imagining three operators.

There’s you, and the part of your target who wants to get something, and the part of your target who’s afraid to get that same thing.

Most people look at persuasion and sales as “one on one” battle.

But EVERYBODY is conflicted when buying something.

Even when ordering food in a restaurant, most of us have to think about it.

So when persuading, (or selling or seducing) think about the three operator mindset.

You, the part of them that wants what you want, and the part of them that isn’t so sure.

Three things will happen.

One is it will now be two against one.

Two is you can use plenty of sneaky patterns to HELP the good guys win.

Three is when you DO help the good guys when, there will only be two of you left.

You and your grateful friend.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

Become A Super Hero Persuader

How To Disappear Hidden Objections

It’s very hard to do something when we are afraid to do it.

Most of the time, we think of this from our own perspective.

But it can be very helpful to see this from others as well.

We all have the experience of trying to convince somebody to do something.

And they “sort of want to” but they are a little scared at the same time.

Maybe you want to go out and be social, but your buddy wants to play video games.

They’ll never say, “Yeah, going out and meeting people sounds fantastic. But I’m kid of scared of rejection or saying something stupid and looking like an idiot, so I’d rather stay here and play video games.”

Instead they say, “Dude, that’s lame, let’s just chill here.”

One of the common tactics of avoid unpleasant situations is to condemn that which we fear.

It’s kind of an internal reframe.

I don’t want to go out because I’m afraid of rejection, I don’t want to go out because going out is lame.

They may give a few supporting arguments for the “lame” part, making their argument sound logical.

Cover charges, waiting in line, traffic, etc.

But the REAL reason is the same.

Carefully hidden beneath all of their surface structure “logic.”

The common response is to argue with their surface structure logic.

But since that’s just a cover for the REAL issue (in this metaphor social anxiety) it will only REINFORCE that the REAL issue is the surface level.

You could try and “prove” you are right by forcing them to admit they’re really scared, so you could tell them there’s nothing to be scared about.

But that would make them dig even deeper.

“Dude, what the hell are you talking about? I just don’t to wait in line so I can spend $20 for a gin and tonic!”

A much BETTER strategy would be to acknowledge the real issue, and just leave it be.

Sometimes you NEED the objection to overcome it.

But often times this isn’t the case.

You just need to do the opposite.

Frame your idea so that it’s so compelling, they’ll overcome their own objection.

This way, even if you’re wrong about the objection, it won’t matter.

Luckily, pretty much any idea can be presented so it’s MORE powerful than any internal objections they may have.

Which is even better, since in overcoming their own objections (usually subconsciously) they’ll convince themselves it was THEIR idea all along.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

Free Yourself From Unenlightened Persuasion

Secret Pac Man Magic

When I was a kid me and my buddies loved to play Pac Man.

There were lots of old school video games.

But Pac Man was unique.

In that there was allegedly some secret “pattern” that once you learned it, it would allow you to easily escape the dudes trying to eat Pac Man.

Lots of video games have “cheats,” but for Pac Man it was a little different.

It was like a secret system.

Of course, nobody knew what that system was.

Everybody knew somebody who saw somebody use it.

It seems we humans love to think along these lines.

Of some secret shortcut that exists, and only those “in the know” have access to it.

Once I was told by a professor in college that companies had secretly invented tires that never wear down and nylons that never run.

But if they released them to the public, they wouldn’t make nearly as much money.

Maybe it’s true, maybe not, but it seems that with some clever marketing, if you DID have a tire that never wore down, you’d make a ton of money.

On the other hand, there ARE some things that do seem like shortcuts.

But they only appear to be shortcuts to others who don’t know the “system.”

If you work any system long enough, you’ll figure out all the angles.

Kind of like that movie, “Groundhog Day.”

Poor guy lived the same day over and over and over.

But by the end, he had everything down PERFECTLY.

The good news is that we don’t need to relive every day, or take a bunch of time to learn all the angles.

Because there really IS a set of “shortcuts.”

Shortcuts in human thinking and behaving.

The people that know about these shortcuts, and more importantly, how to deliver them, make TONS of money.

And they have been for a LONG time.

And many of the folks that are naturally persuasive use these also.

They just don’t know it.

So when you learn these, and find out just how effective they are, it’s up to you whether you want to share them or not.

But it IS pretty cool to let others think you’ve discovered some kind of magic trick.

Learn How:
Seven Laws

Angels In The Hallway

The Either Or Pattern

We humans like choice, but not too much.

Choosing between 3 or maybe 4 things is pretty easy.

Which makes sense.

They say we can hold between 5 and 9 (7 +/- 2) things in mind at once.

So looking at three kinds and choosing one means we’re really thinking of six things at once.

The pros and cons of each choice (pro and con times 3).

When we get up to four, it’s kind of stretching our brains.

Looking at five things, it starts to get difficult.

This is what marketers have found when experimenting with different choices on supermarket shelves.

Three variations seems to be the sweet spot.

But there’s another way to look at choice.

How we compare things to one another.

Students were asked to put their hands in a bucket of water, and guess the temperature.

The “test bucket” was always the same temperature.

But their “guess temperature” was dependent on what their OTHER HAND was doing.

If their other hand was in warm water, they under-estimated the test bucket.

If their other hand was in cold water, they over-estimated the test bucket.

So when offering a choice to somebody, how you present that choice will have a HUGE impact on how they choose.

Example:

A marketer was trying to sell a kitchen gadget. It had a few features and was $150.

People would look at it on the shelf, all by it’s lonesome, and only a few people would buy it.

All he did was take a much more expensive gadget ($400 or so) and put it next to the $150 gadget.

The $400 gadget had only a few more features.

So the $150 looked CHEAP by comparison.

Simply by rearranging his shelves, he sold WAY more stuff.

There are tons of ways to leverage this.

Especially if you already have two choices, and there is ONE that you prefer.

Just present the costs of the other choice (the one you don’t want them to choose) as being disproportionately higher than the associated benefits.

Then when they choose, it will be THEIR choice.

Even though you “helped” them make it.

Luckily, this is pretty easy to do conversationally.

Just take a little bit of thought before presenting your ideas, and present them accordingly.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

Magic Ball Of Fame

How He Faked Fame

Once there was a student who did an experiment.

It was for his psychology class in college.

He wanted to see if he could “fake” being famous.

Or what would happen if he could.

So he got a crew together.

They each had a “role.”

One guy was a cameraman.

Another two guys pretended to be his bodyguards.

And another two females were his publicists.

He went to a local mall, and everybody played their part.

He even made up his name.

His publicists referred to this fake name as if it were a household name.

And said something vague like, “Fake Name is doing research for a future project.”

Pretty soon the whole mall was buzzing.

A crowd was following him, people were filming him, tweeting him and posting about him.

And they were all posting his name as if it were a famous, household name.

A name that had been made up from thin air only a couple hours ago.

The punch line, of course, is we humans pay MUCH more attention to structure than we like to believe.

So when we see the structure of fame, (a crew of people, bodyguards, pretty girls acting as publicists) we assume that he’s famous.

Even if we nor our friends have ever heard of the guy.

Because of the STRUCTURE of his behavior, we treat him (or would treat him) like a rock star.

So what’s the deeper punch line?

If you want to be important, you need to look important?

That’s one way.

But hiring a fake crew to follow you everywhere is kind of expensive.

But talking is free.

And you can talk in a way that can IMPLY social proof and authority.

So even if you’re all by your lonesome, you can carefully drop some presuppositions into your language.

So your listener will naturally ASSUME you’ve got massive social proof and authority.

But since it will be subconscious, it will feel like they discovered it on their own.

They’ll even think it’s their secret.

Even better is it will have the SAME EFFECT of having a crew of people around you all the time.

Learn How:

Seven Laws

All People Obey

Stanford Prison Experiment

One of the more infamous psychological experiments is the Stanford Experiment.

It was done back in the seventies, and the results were horrifying.

So much so that a few movies have been made about it.

It all started with a professor who wanted to see how people “get into” assigned roles.

He recruited several students from Stanford (hence the study name).

They were going to pretend to be in a prison.

They were going to be randomly assigned roles.

Some prisoners, some guards.

He wanted to see how much (or little) they “got into” their roles.

But they got into it so much, they had to stop the experiment before they’d planned.

Guards become evil.

Prisoners started to have nervous breakdowns.

Only a few days before, they were all students.

They got SO MUCH into their roles, they actually lost themselves.

The “guards” started to get close to torture.

Most of the time, we don’t realize how much “authority” has an effect on us.

Even when both “pretend guards” and “pretend prisoners” KNEW that their authority was fake, it still worked.

So much that a lot of the “prisoners” had to undergo counseling after the experiment was finished.

Of course, this experiment was set up in a horrific way to begin with.

Authority inside of a prison, where there is no escape.

Authority in and of itself is neutral.

If you assume the authority of a prison guard, you’re going to act like a prison guard.

But you can assume any authority you want.

An authority on excitement, for example.

Or an authority on the best clubs in town.

But you don’t need a huge experimental set up.

You can do it linguistically.

Hypnotically.

And YOU don’t need to “be” the authority.

You only need to reference one.

Which is incredibly easy.

And when you attach an authority to any of your ideas (or to you, if you like) they will seem much more compelling.

Just be careful not to abuse it.

Because it is VERY easy to.

Learn More:

Seven Laws

Treachery Is Everywhere

The Ultimate Origin Story

Lately there have been a lot of comic book characters getting a lot of attention.

Both “Universes” (DC and Marvel) have their own big plans.

And many lesser known comic book characters have been popping up.

If they look back on Western Culture in a couple thousand years, they’ll see our comic book heroes the same way we view Greek Mythology.

They share essentially the same archetypes.

Even non-superhero movies share a similar archetype.

That of the “Hero’s Journey.”

Even movies that don’t have anything to do with heroes of any kind follow this main template.

Something “non-normal” happens to a “normal” guy or gal, they have to step up their game and take care of business.

Whether it’s a coming of age story of a junior high school girl or a farm boy going out into space to blow up the Death Star, the structure is the same.

Funny thing is that most people focus on the hero, or the his or her journey.

After all, that’s where all the action takes place.

That’s the reason for the story in the first place.

But the interesting thing is that in nearly every single hero’s journey, the hero is CALLED.

And most of the time, they don’t have a choice.

Even then, they are often called, they refuse the call, and then they are put into a position where they HAVE to take the journey.

In fact, this “call and refusal” is in most hero’s journey stories.

It’s an essential element.

Some say this is an echo of being born.

We were safely in the womb, and the birth contractions started.

As if we said, “NO F-ing way! I’m not going out there!”

But then we HAD to.

Boom.

Welcome to Earth.

The cool thing about being a grown up is you can play both sides.

You can still be “called” to go on journeys.

And you can call others.

At the same time, everybody wants to BE a hero, but we all NEED a hero to help us along.

You can be both.

Learn How:

Cult Leader