Category Archives: Communication Skills

Scary Times Up Ahead

Destroy Fear Before It Exists

Way back in the day, Teddy Roosevelt had an interesting foreign policy.

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

Which basically means be as nice as possible, but when somebody crosses a line, you respond as quickly and viciously as possible.

Imagine two different guys, trained as martial artists.

To one guy, it’s important everybody knows he’s a martial artist.

He always acts as tough as possible.

Then there’s another guy, who wants to project as kind a personality as he can.

Which guy do you think is more confident?

Clearly, the first guy has issues.

He is perhaps so worried about getting into a fight, in his mind, he probably feels like there are enemies around every corner.

While the second guy is so confident in his skills, he only worries if somebody is actually in his face and getting ready to punch him.

But even then he knows he can easily defend himself.

The more confident you are with your skills, the less you’ll think about using them.

This is where that stereotypical movie line comes from:

“You learn martial arts so you don’t have to get into fights.”

One of the strange paradoxes of human behavior is we tend to attract what we fear most.

People who are always worried about getting mugged walk around with closed off body language, walking while staring at the ground.

Project the EXACT body language muggers, pickpockets and purse snatchers look for.

The people least likely to fight back, give chase, or even call the cops.

Or the stereotypical guy who secretly think the world hates him.

So he walks around with a scowl on his face.

Which causes everybody to keep their distance.

His fears create his reality.

But when you plan for the worst, the opposite happens.

The more daily action you take to prepare for the worst, the more confident you’ll be able to handle it.

And the less likely it will actually happen, since you’ll be projecting more confident energy.

One of the biggest things that cause people anxiety is what to say when dealing with strangers.

Especially when it comes to asking for what we want.

We imagine all the potential responses, imagine our worst fears coming true, so we don’t ask.

Or if we do ask, we do through fearful and protective body language which virtually guarantees we get what we most fear.

But by practicing all the different ways to ask, and handle any objections, you’ll be asking with much different energy.

Very much like sales objections.

The more you practice handling them, the less likely they ever come up.

The more confident you are with your language skills, the less likely you’ll need them.

Start Practicing:

Weaponized Hypnosis

Behold The Mighty Language

How The Ends Can Justify The Means

Ends and means are easy to confuse.

I never really quite understood the problem with “the ends justify the means.”

It’s something you talk about in high school.

It’s generally frowned up to accept that any ends is justified by any means.

But I was never one to go along with how we were “supposed” to think about things.

Our teacher would say, “suppose you have an end to get money. Does robbing a bank justify getting money? No, it does not, therefore, the end doesn’t always justify the means.”

I would always argue.

I would say that the “end” was poorly defined.

That having a well defined end is justified by any means.

In the above example, you just re-define your “end” as “legally getting money.”

Of course, I was never one for blindly obeying authority.

When you tell somebody that the ends doesn’t always justify the means, it also presupposes that there is some entity that is capable of which “means” are acceptable, and which are unacceptable.

Even in my high school days, I was arguing against authority any way I could.

My idea then, and my idea now is that if you create a well enough defined end, which precludes any immoral, unethical or otherwise negative behavior, then any means you use is perfectly fine.

And perfectly justified.

In fact, you might say our entire lives are based around satisfying our never ending “ends” with as simple and effective “means” as possible.

But people who like having any authority will sneak that authority in any way they can.

And unless you know how to linguistically stand your ground, it’s very easy to get taken advantage of.

Humans are goal setting machines.

We cannot NOT set goals.

Most of the time, these are unconscious and automatic.

Getting up to use the toilet.

Getting something to eat.

Talking to friends.

But that inner structure is always there. And it happens hundreds of times a day.

You feel a desire, and you satisfy that desire.

This is why people LOVE taking advantage of others.

They can very carefully and covertly take over your natural goal setting ability.

So you’re not getting outcomes for YOU, you’re getting them for them.

Usually this is fine.

This is the conscious and unconscious “tit for tat” that makes relationships work.

They become a problem when one person is benefiting at the expense of somebody else.

You don’t need to get defensive.

You don’t even need to be assertive.

Just learn how to ask some very simple questions.

Questions that will force them to rethink their strategy.

Very powerful.

Very subtle.

Very effective.

Learn How:

Weaponized Hypnosis

Mutual Benefits Are Everywhere

Mechanics Of Relationships

One of our biggest human issues is an instinct mismatch.

The easiest to see is hunger.

Way back in the day, we had to hunt for food.

And hunting for food was dangerous.

So only those that were ALWAYS hungry were the most motivated to get out and hunt every day.

Or spend all day foraging.

Today, that never ending hunger instinct gets in the way.

Which is why most people (70%) are overweight.

Unfortunately, this is only ONE of the instincts that can get us into trouble.

There are plenty of others.

However, once you understand that hunger will never go away, you can learn to manage it.

It’s not easy by any means.

But through consistent effort, you CAN get into decent physical shape if that’s important to you.

Luckily, all of our other goals can be made much easier by managing all of our various instincts.

The first step is understanding what those instincts are.

Think of when you fell in love with somebody.

In the very beginning.

When you had “one-itis” for them.

You liked them, but you weren’t sure if they liked you.

In that situation, it’s very hard to NOT contact them.

But if you know anything about relationship building, contacting somebody TOO OFTEN in the early stages is the last thing you want to do.

Making yourself TOO available will kill attraction.

Fortunately, this desire to contact them is JUST LIKE our hunger instinct.

If we are OBEDIENT to our instincts, they won’t help us much.

Imagine if you ate all you could, whenever you were hungry.

If you learn about all your other instincts, and how to manage them, you can CREATE a wonderful relationship JUST LIKE you can create a healthy body.

Sure, it’s not easy and automatic.

But nothing worth doing is.

But just as sure as you can create a healthy body, you can create a healthy relationship.

All you need to do is understand the mechanics, the underlying instincts that you need to manage, and get busy.

Learn How:

Love Hypnosis

The Infinite Loop

The Exchange Model of Communication

There’s a pretty interesting procedure in NLP called “Integration of Parts.”

Basically it’s a hallucination where you create a “dialogue” between two “parts.”

Like if “part of you” wants to get out and meet people, but another “part of you” wants to stay home and watch TV.

You bring them both out, and literally talk to them (and hear their responses) as if you were having a negotiation between two physical entities.

The idea is to keep “going up the logical level” of each of their “desires” (going out and staying in) until they both realize they want the same thing.

Then you can work on coming up with a better strategy to get that need met, rather than having inner conflict.

The reason it works is if you take any “criteria” for why we want to do something, and you’ll end up with a hard to describe “feeling” that can be equated pretty easily with any other hard to describe “feeling.”

Like you buy a car because you want to get to point A to point B. But you buy a certain car for certain reasons (safety, looking cool, feeling good, etc).

Good salespeople know to respectfully find these “higher order criteria” so that they more easily fulfill them.

If you want car that has a 350 cc engine and gets 22 MPG, that’s going to be harder to satisfy than a car that makes you “feel safe.”

When talking to people for personal reasons (e.g. not selling them anything). The same strategies apply.

You don’t exactly walk up to a stranger and ask them what they’re looking for in a new acquaintance.

But knowing those criteria are ALWAYS there will help a lot.

Whenever people are meeting each other socially, we all have pretty much the same criteria.

We want our ideas to be heard and respected. We want our wants, needs, and fears validated.

We don’t want to be told our ideas are silly or foolish.

We’d all rather talk about things we want, rather than we don’t want.

Looking at social interactions as negotiations is a bit strange.

But if you keep it on the down low, and always give them something before you expect something back, you’ll have a lot more success.

AND you’ll find that talking to people is a lot easier, when you’re using the “give first” mindset.

You’ll be remembered more, and you’ll be thought of in a much better light.

Doesn’t matter if you’re making friends, looking for lovers, finding new business contacts, or just passing the time.

See every conversation as some kind of “exchange,” and give before you get.

You can learn how, and a lot more here:

Interpersonal Resonance

Eliminate Social Anxiety

Eliminate Social Anxiety

One of the ideas from NLP is something called “meta programs.”

These are these semi-rigid filters we all have in place through which we see the world.

For example, one of them is how we are motivated. On one end of the spectrum are people who are motivated externally. Other people. Praise, validation, etc. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who are motivated internally.

They don’t really care what others think or do. They only do something if it “feels” right to them.

Of course, most of us are a mix of both. Few people are completely one or the other.

Another “meta program” filter is “sameness or difference.” When you look into an unfamiliar situation, do you automatically find things that are the same as what you are used to, or different?

Again, most of us are a mix of both.

And while these do operate largely unconsciously, you can bring them up to the conscious level.

For example, when meeting new people, some of us automatically feel nervous, shy, anxious. So we see others as somehow “better” than us. Otherwise it would be impossible for them to “reject” us if we approached them to start a conversation.

One thing that can help is to consciously look at them, before you approach, through the filter of “sameness” rather than “difference.”

Meaning force your monkey brain to think of all the ways you two are similar, rather than different.

If you were walking up to somebody that was TOTALLY the same as you, rejection wouldn’t even come up.

The more you can practice this, the more the fear of rejection will vanish.

Another powerful way to do this is to imagine all of your similar “fears.”

Since ALL HUMANS have a HUGE collection of irrational fears, this is pretty easy.

And since most of our fears are similar, it won’t be much of a stretch.

EVERYBODY doesn’t like to be put on the spot. EVERYBDOY fears rejection. EVERYBODY has deep fears of social exclusion.

Just take a few minutes to think of “that person” (whoever they are, boss, lover, friend, business partner) as having the SAME FEARS that you do, and hold THAT in mind when you think about talking to them.

You don’t even have to approach them. You can do this sitting at the mall watching people walk by.

Just choose people you’d LIKE to approach, but would otherwise be too nervous to.

And then do this exercise. Imagine them being terrified of public speaking, or getting left behind, or anything.

This is one of DOZENS of exercises in the Interpersonal Resonance book.

Do them daily and you’ll be a social magnet in no time.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance

Avoid The Kill Shot

Expand Their Desires

I used to play a lot of racquetball a few years ago.

There as a gym that had a “challenge court” with a glass back wall.

You’d write your name on a list, and play whoever won the current game.

The most I ever won in one night was three games in a row. Meaning I beat the next two guys that had “next.”

One particular game (that I lost) was memorable. I was very young, in my early twenties.

The guy I was playing was older, in his sixties. And he absolutely killed me.

I would run all over the place, and try to make a “kill shot” with pretty much every shot.

But he took his time, and used “placement” as his weapon. He would pretty much stay in the center of the court, and hit the ball so it would bounce all over the place, and end up EXACTLY where he wanted.

I would run around chasing them like a dumb jackrabbit on meth.

I was only thinking ONE SHOT ahead (kill shot), while he was content to just keep rallying until I eventually couldn’t catch up.

I did score a couple points, but in the end, it wasn’t even close. At the end, he summed it up nicely:

“Youth and speed vs. experience and patience.”

Many people try to speak conversationally like I tried playing. Slam the other person with witty remarks, genius openers, and reframes that ostensibly show how awesome they are. Or think they are.

If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by a high-pressure salesperson, you know what I mean.

They don’t pause even for a second to find out what’s important, or what you want, or what you’re even interested in. They just slam you over and over with “kill shot” statements about themselves, their product or their services.

On the other hand, if the “patient” approach, it works a lot better.

Hold back on the conversational “kill shots.”

Ask them what’s important. Ask them what kinds of things they’re interested in, and NOT interested in.

Find out about what they’d like to be doing in the future. A week, a year, ten years.

All without mentioning your ideas or your products AT ALL.

Just relax, and let them come to you, in their own way, in their own time.

When they do, it will be THEIR IDEA. Not yours.

Which means they’ll be very little (if any) resistance.

Doesn’t matter if you’re making friends, looking for business partners, or talking to strangers while waiting in line at the supermarket.

This will open them up, so they see YOU through THEIR desires.

Making YOU seem much more DESIERABLE than anybody else they’ve ever met.

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

Develop Deep Connections

Develop Deep Connections

If you’ve even watched “romantic” movies, or movies that have a romantic theme to them, there’s a common thread.

And that is two people meet each other, and they “get” each other.

They feel that nobody understands them like their new partner does.

People use the same term to talk about non-Hollywood style movies.

They say that people who don’t appreciate them don’t “get” them.

It reminds me of those 3-D pictures. Where you have to look at them in a special way to “get” them.

If you “get” them, you see the hidden picture. If you don’t “get” them, then it’s a bunch of fuzzy noise.

If you tell a joke, and somebody doesn’t laugh, they don’t “get” it.

What does it mean when two people meet, and they really “get” each other?

Do they share common backgrounds? Common beliefs? Common goals? Or is it something deeper, something more profound?

One way to enhance this is by talking about things other than what they call “fluff talk.”

Talking about the weather, politics, sports, who’s hot on social media, doesn’t really let you know if you “get” somebody or not.

What does?

This is what happens when you go “meta.” When you talk about experiences, in the abstract. When you talk about the structure of your own desires.

For example, say you learned how to play a song on the guitar. You practiced over and over, and wanted to show off to your friends.

Then when you finally played, they didn’t act like it was a big deal. So you felt a little let down.

You can share that experience with somebody, so they “get” you, without them having to have played any instrument.

Just find some situation where they did the same thing, from a structural standpoint.

Find some experience where they wanted to share something with their friends, that they thought was pretty cool, but ended up being a little under-whelming.

So even though the two of you have two “different” experiences, (content wise) they are the same, structure wise.

When you can find similar structures, you can significantly increase the chances you’ll “get” each other.

And when they think about you, they’ll feel that YOU are somebody that KNOWS them on a deep level, and they’ll feel they know YOU on a deep level.

Doesn’t matter if you’re making friends, looking for dates, or trying to get a foot in the door in a job interview.

By looking for overlapping STRUCTURES rather than content, you’ll connect on a much deeper level.

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

Charisma Explosion

Explode Your Charisma

One of the rules of “polite language” is to never put anybody on the spot.

This is the reason we use the second conditional when making polite requests.

In case you forgot grammar school, the “second conditional” is an “if-then” form of a question that uses the past tense, and “would,” as it only speaks to hypothetical situations.

Like, “If I saw a UFO, I would take a picture,” meaning that it’s not likely, but if it DID happen, I’d take a picture.

When we talk about things that are likely, we use the first conditional. Present tense and “will.”

If it rains, I will get wet.

The reason we use hypothetical language when asking polite questions, is because it puts it off into “pretend land.”

For example, if I wanted to ask a coworker to open the window, I could say it not politely, “will you open the window?” or politely, “Would you open the window?”

If it’s in the “will” form, it feels a lot more “on the spot.”

When starting conversations with strangers, it’s important to start off with simple statements and questions that also don’t make them feel “on the spot.”

An easy way to do this is with “pacing statements.” Say something about the environment that is verifiably true. Something that they have to agree with. Something that’s easy to agree with.

The main purpose of any ice breaker is to ease into a conversation. Not to show off how clever you are or to impress them with your wit.

Once you get them talking, and used to you, you can then begin to peel back the onion layers and ask more penetrating questions.

Questions that will get them excited to talk to you. Questions that will get them thinking in terms of their ideal future.

Start off easy, go slowly and within ten or twenty minutes they’ll be sharing with you their biggest dreams and goals and visions.

Not only that, but they’ll also be seeing YOU through that filter you’ll be helping them create.

Of course, this does take practice, but if you start practicing today, pretty soon you’ll be a social super star, making everybody feel fantastic whenever you’re around.

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

How To Match Their Wavelength

Get On Their Wavelength

A lot of scientific principles are intuitive.

Not that we know the equations and underlying theory, but as operational humans, we “get” how things work.

Like throwing a baseball, for example.

Physics tells us that the optimum angle is 45 degrees if we want to get the maximum distance.

But kids know this intuitively, by trial and error.

Another one is the idea of resonance.

All systems have a certain “frequency” about which they normally vibrate.

And if you “behave” in this same “frequency” you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Like little kids on swings. They learn quickly to swing their legs at the same frequency as the swing, and they get some pretty high amplitudes.

Sometimes this is not appropriately understood, with horrible results.

A group of solders were marching across a bridge, in cadence, and their marching cadence was the same frequency as the bridge. And it collapsed.

When you’re having a conversation with somebody, getting “in tune” with them feels fantastic. Like you are on the same page, or even the same “wavelength.”

Most people think that this happens randomly. Haphazardly. Talk to enough people, and a small enough percentage will have that “in synch” feeling.

Of course, if you approach others with this mindset, it WILL be a numbers game.

Meaning if you go up and blurt out a bunch of stuff, and hope it “works.”

But if you do the opposite, you’ll have a much HIGHER chance of creating that feeling of resonance.

Instead of blurting out a bunch of stuff, you ask them some questions. Easy to answer questions. Simple questions. Then slowly expand.

Once you get enough information, about what makes them tick, then the “stuff” that you “blurt out” will be much more “in tune” with them.

And you’ll be able to create that feeling of resonance with almost anybody.

What would you be able to do then?

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

Powerful Communication Skills

Increase Your People Skills

The other night I watched “Castaway” on Netflix.

It had been a while since I’d seen it.

Partly a study of how a normal guy keeps from going nuts all alone.

If you haven’t seen it, he gets stuck on an island, and forms a relationship with a volleyball.

Then when he builds a raft to escape, he brings the volleyball (Wilson) with him. But then it gets swept out to sea, and the hero breaks down.

Even though it’s “just” a volleyball, it was his best friend the past few years.

The worst thing they do to prisoners is put them in solitary confinement. Separate from other prisoners. Nobody to talk to.

Clearly, one absolutely VITAL ingredient for human happiness, WHATEVER plans you’ve got for your life, is other people.

Business relationships, personal relationships, family relationships, romantic relationships.

We humans are pretty pathetic on our own. But if we get hooked in with the right crowd of people and there’s no stopping us.

This is the meaning behind Napoleon Hill’s “Mastermind Group.”

A grew of experts, diverse backgrounds, to collectively come up with a genius idea to solve the problems at hand.

To the extent that you can easily build relationships with anybody, anywhere, any time, you’ll be able to accomplish ANYTHING.

To the extent that you are inhibited, due to erroneous beliefs, internal limitations, or even social anxiety, you’ll be held back from living to your fullest.

Luckily, getting “better” at people-skills is pretty simple.

All humans are hard wired to be social super stars. It’s in our DNA. We are social animals.

So it’s not really a matter of learning “how,” it’s more a matter of unlearning all those false beliefs you may have picked up along the way.

What’s even better is as soon as you start working on those false beliefs, you’ll notice that EVERYBODY has the same ones, to an extent.

Everybody is afraid of rejection. Everybody feels nervous when they are suddenly the center of attention.

So when you come to others with the experience of OVERCOMING those common limiting beliefs, they’ll notice something about you.

They’ll feel “better” when you’re around. Happier. More enthusiastic about life in general.

If you’re just out to have a good time, you’ll have a better time.

If you’re looking to make friends, you’ll make good friends.

If you’re looking to start a business relationship, you’ll be on your way.

Tons of exercises, practice routines, and journaling techniques, this guide will show you how.

Learn More:

Interpersonal Resonance