Category Archives: Congruence

Social Conditioning Skills

The other night I watched a sci fi movie on Netflix

Maybe you’ve seen it.

It’s called, “Paycheck,” with Ben Affleck.

He was an engineer, and he and his partner had an interesting way for him to take lucrative freelance jobs.

He’d go to a company, help them invent some new product, and they’d pay him.

And then his partner would erase the portion of his memory, so he couldn’t divulge the secret information to other companies.

But in the beginning, they showed him practicing some kind of martial art.

Even though he wasn’t a fighter, and the movie hadn’t gotten to the part where he had to USE any kind of “fighting,” it made sense.

If you are going to be a scientist and have portions of your brain wiped periodically, you need to stay in “fighting shape.”

Most people recognize that “staying in shape” is important.

Most sports can be improved if you have more endurance.

Boxing, basketball, tennis, even bowling or golf are easier if you’re in good shape.

Any lots of endurance-heavy sports like boxing or basketball sometimes come down to which athlete is in better shape.

Once you are too tired to lift your arms to block a punch, your boxing skills won’t count for much.

Kind of like Mark Twain’s truism about reading.

The difference between somebody who CAN’T read and the difference between somebody who WON’T read is NOTHING.

The difference between a boxer who CAN’T lift his arms due to fatigue, and a boxer who doesn’t KNOW HOW to lift his arms is nothing.

Both are going to get punched in the face.

What’s the best “conditioning” for “life skills?”

Social confidence.

Public speaking, debating, even acting skills can often boil down to who’s got the most confidence, not the best skills.

Even before George Clooney became world famous, and had to go to auditions like other struggling actors, he said confidence was WAY more important than skill.

Robin Williams started out in a TV show called “Mork and Mindy.”

(About an alien named Mork).

How did he get the part?

He showed up at the audition and ACTED like an “alien” the whole time.

When he was waiting, he actually sat in his chair upside down.

That’s not an advanced acting trick.

That’s advanced CONFIDENCE.

The more CONFIDENCE you have, the easier life is.

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How To Click With Anybody

You know a relationship (either with a friend or a lover) is in a good place when you can sit in silence without needing to say anything.

A long time ago, a buddy of mine and I went to Vegas, driving from LA.

We took two cars, he took his girlfriend, and she brought a friend.

Her friend rode with me, and it was kind of awkward.

Sometimes you click with people, and sometimes you don’t.

Having to sit with somebody you don’t click with for a four hour drive through the desert is not the ideal way to pass the time.

Being able to click with more people is certainly a benefit.

Job interviews, parties where you don’t know a lot of people, new coworkers, etc.

All of these situations will go a lot smoother if you click more easily with other people.

Luckily, this is pretty easy.

Most people get nervous, try talking about themselves, and HOPE that they have something in common with the other person.

But it’s much easier just to sit back and let the other person talk.

Of course, most people won’t do this on their own.

They need encouragement.

But once you get them going, it’s easy to find plenty in common.

You can think of it for looking for two specific things.

One is something they enjoy talking about.

Hobbies, their job (if they like it) any big plans they have for their future.

The second is things that you have in common.

Now, most people when they are looking for things in common, they look for “content” things.

Like the same music, the same movies, the same favorite restaurants, etc.

But if you go up one logical level, you’ll have a LOT more in common with a LOT more people.

Say they were a political science major, and they’re talking about how they made a huge mistake when giving a speech in class.

Even if you’ve never been to college, you can find a similar “structural event” in your past.

Any kind of goof you made in front of other people.

That way, even though you have different educational backgrounds, different interests, you’ll have created a connection based on similar experiences.

This requires that you are relaxed and confident enough to sit back and ask the right questions in the right order.

But once you get the hang of it, you can “click” with pretty much anybody.

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Best State for Effortless Persuasion

Regardless of your reason for talking to somebody, rapport is essential.

With a lot of rapport there’s not much else you need to do.

For example, let’s say you’re thinking about buying a computer.

You’ve got a couple in mind, and you want to go see one up close, so you wander down to your local computer shop.

And you are standing there looking at the three computers you’re thinking off, all sitting next to each other.

And up comes a good buddy who you haven’t seen in a while. And he works at the shop.

You forget that you’re shopping for computers, and talk to your buddy and catch up on old times. Maybe you exchange pictures of your kids or something. You find out he lives nearby and turns out you know his wife from back in the day as well. You’re excited, he’s excited.

Then he asks what you’re interested in, computer wise. (He does work there after all.)

You tell him you’re thinking of model A, B or C.

Without even thinking, he says C is the best and he gives you a couple reasons why.

Now, most people would buy C.

This is because you would have MASSIVE rapport with your buddy.

He doesn’t need to use any goofy language patterns, or NLP tricks.

With ENOUGH rapport, all you really need to say is, “C is best,” and then give them a couple reasons.

Unfortunately rapport is one of those things where people hear about it and say, “Oh rapport, yeah, I already know about that stuff. Tell me the super-ninja secret stuff!”

But with enough rapport, you don’t really need the super ninja complicated stuff.

Sure it will help, it will make them feel much better about whatever they are doing, but it’s really just icing on the cake.

There are a lot of ways to develop deep rapport very quickly with strangers.

Match body language, match movements, match rate of speech. Monitor and adjust accordingly. Move and make sure they follow you.

But under all of that external behavior, you HAVE to be relaxed and laid back on the inside.

Creating rapport on the outside, when you are anxious and nervous on the inside is pretty difficult.

In fact, if you are anxious and nervous on the inside, you’ll FORGET to even create rapport. You’ll be too busy trying to memorize all those ninja language patterns.

But if you are relaxed and confident ENOUGH, they will AUTOMATICALLY not only get into rapport with you, but they’ll naturally follow you as well.

Making everything else very easy.
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Satisfy Your Inner Caveman

I saw this weird competition once on TV.

A group of high school kids, about fifty of them, side by side, with their legs tied together.

So wherever you were in the line, your legs were tied to the guys on either side of you.

They were all on one side of a big field.

And they had a run a 100 yards.

Each school had a team, and they saw how fast it was.

Clearly, these kids practiced, because they were VERY tight.

If you’ve ever been in a “three legged race” where there’s only TWO people like this, it’s pretty tough.

Especially if you haven’t practiced.

Whenever you have two opposing forces, you can create A LOT if they are in sync, but you can be held back just as much if they are going in different directions.

Humans are goal seeking machines.

We can’t exist for more than a couple seconds without acting. Just shifting in your seat is an example.

And all action is for a purpose. None of it is random. It may not seem that way, but consider what happens when you shift in your seat.

Certain muscles get tired, and they need a rest. Muscles that are more rested decide to take on more weight, and take off weight of the muscles (or muscle angles). The shift has a PURPOSE of increasing comfort, and decreasing discomfort.

Every single goal you have, whether conscious or unconscious has this INTENTION.

Sure, if you completely misunderstand the situation, you may do something that makes everything worse.

But this INTENTION (increase comfort and decrease discomfort) is always there.

Now sometimes we realize that to increase comfort in the LONG TERM, we have to experience intermediate periods of DISCOMFORT.

Like when a caveman sees a tiger. Running away screaming with huge amounts of fear is not exactly more comfortable than just standing there.

But your brain is also MASSIVELY quick. So it CALCULATES all the possible outcomes in the near and medium term future.

In microseconds.

It chooses what will give you the BEST possible outcome given all your options.

Humans have a lot of PRE-PROGRAMMED desires.

Food, companionship, safety, sex, esteem, social status, recognition and validation.

If you try and ignore these, meaning if you try and OVERRULE your caveman instincts with your conscious mind, you won’t usually get very far.

That’s precisely why willpower based diets NEVER work very long.

But when you carefully CHOOSE YOUR GOALS that are congruent with your caveman goals, or at the very least, figure out a way to take your CHOSEN GOALS and put them in the context so your CAVEMAN will ALSO be happy, you’ll have a much better chance.

You can learn and do anything you want, so long the skills you are building are CONGRUENT with your deepest instincts.

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Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Don’t Fight The Caveman

When I was a kid there was a TV show called, “Wide World of Sports.”

One of the taglines was that it showed the “thrill of victory” and the “agony of defeat.”

When they showed the “agony of defeat” part, they showed some guy coming down a ski jump ramp and crashing horribly just as he got to the take off point.

Sports have been around for a long, long time.

All cultures from all times have some kind of sports in their ancient history.

Some suspect that as humans slowly made the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers, they still had that “competitive spirit.”

To be sure, on the battlefield or on the playing field, winning is awesome, and losing sucks.

But that’s where it ends.

Or, rather, that’s where it SHOULD end.

The trouble with our instincts, especially the ones for competition, is we can really just “shut them off.”

This is easy to understand with something like hunger.

Feeling hungry sucks. Eating feels good. It’s VERY DIFFICULT to simply “not eat” when you’re hungry AND there’s plenty of food around.

This is kind of how it feels when you get into an argument over something really tiny, but you simply CAN NOT just let it go.

You HAVE to win at all costs.

That’s that ancient instinct rearing it’s ugly head.

We’ve got a lot of them.

We tend to follow authority figures, even when they’re clearly idiots.

We tend to follow the crowd, even when they’re running right off a cliff.

We tend to eat WAY more calories than we need, even though we keep buying bigger pants.

Caveman 1, Human 0 !

Of course, if you try and “battle” your instincts with sheer willpower, you’ll lose most of the time.

This is precisely why diets fail. You’re trying to battle your ancient drive to eat, which resides in your VERY POWERFUL reptilian cortex, with your conscious mind.

However, instead of CONTROLLING your instincts, consider learning to manage them.

Like not going shopping when you’re hungry.

Or being able to step back and see the “big picture” when you find yourself in a heated argument over which culture invented the bacon cheeseburger.

One thing that can help is having a CLEAR set of goals.

This makes it easy to step back and see if what you’re doing is to satisfy your inner caveman, or your rational human.

Rational humans choose and pursue goals, while cavemen and cavewomen follow their instincts.

There are a lot of ways to overcome those instincts.

Daily journaling can help.

Meditation can help.

Doing visualizations can help.

These can also help:

Mind Persuasion Ebooks

Get Them To Do Anything

When I was a kid I learned this neat trick.

You take a bunch of salt and pepper and put it in a shallow pan of water, so it floats on the top.

Then you dip your finger in soap, and stick it in the center.

All the pepper magically goes to the outside of the pan.

I’m sure you know a lot of people that are like that.

Usually a boss or somebody of authority.

Sometimes it’s one of the “those” bosses that thinks everybody likes him or her.

But they are only nice because they are the boss.

So if you were to ever see them about in public, you’d quickly hide your face so they didn’t see you.

In truth, a lot of us are like that to a lot of people.

Like it or not, most of us just rub people the wrong way.

Of course, we don’t see it like that.

We see them as the problem.

Obviously, we are perfect. There’s NOTHING wrong with us.

So when people don’t go along with our ideas, or don’t laugh at our jokes, they must have some kind of mental problem, right?

The funny thing is that EVERYBODY (no matter how crazy their ideas are) can find people who agree with them.

But if you are going to ONLY look for people who ALREADY agree with you, you’re going to be limiting yourself to a very small slice of the population.

Wouldn’t it be better to simply find a better METHOD of getting people to agree with you? So you wouldn’t be forced to sort through so many people?

Luckily, there is.

All you’ve got to do is amplify THEIR criteria first.

The secret of human nature is EVERYBODY always has a huge collection of unmet needs and wants.

If you start talking about YOUR wants and needs first, you’re hoping to get lucky.

But if you start talking about THEIR wants and needs first, you’ll be doing something completely different.

By talking about their wants, and expanding on them, they’ll start to see YOU through THEIR lens of unique desires.

So before you even talk about what you want, you’ve already made it much easier on them.

This is what advertisers have been doing since it was invented.

Taking a product and framing it in the best possible way.

Well, the BEST possible to frame ANYTHING is through somebody’s OWN DESIRES.

And when they start to look at YOU through THEIR desires, they’ll be eager to agree with pretty much anything.

(Yes, ANYTHING!)

Learn How:

Interpersonal Resonance

How To Become Irresistibly Attractive

I was at this seminar a long time ago where we did this weird exercise.

The instructor had us look around the room, and choose two people, based only on first impressions BEFORE we had a conversation with anybody.

We did it twice.

Once to choose two people we would want to have our backs.

A second time to choose two people we didn’t want ANYTHING to do with.

Both times, we were to raise our hands when we were finished.

It was a VERY difficult exercise!

Most people had no problems choosing people they wanted to have their backs.

And at the same time, it felt good thinking that maybe somebody else was choosing us.

The second time around was much harder. Most people couldn’t do it.

The reason was to elevate to conscious thinking what we do subconsciously, all the time.

A LOT of that isn’t stuff we like to think about. So we pretend it doesn’t exist.

But it’s there. It’s human nature. It’s a survival instinct.

You can either ignore it, and hope it isn’t important.

Or accept it. And work it in your advantage.

How?

One is to be as congruent as possible.

One thing that spends out a “weird” or “creepy” vibe is if you are incongruent.

Like if somebody is sitting next to you on the train, and they are sort of trying to start a conversation with you, but they’re super nervous. Part of them wants to, part of them doesn’t. They are incongruent.

If YOU are the one that’s incongruent, THAT’S the vibe you’re sending out.

But if you understand this, you can fix it. Become more congruent.

What happens when you become more congruent?

You’ll become naturally attractive. Charismatic. Magnetic.

Know which “class” of people are SUPER congruent? That don’t have any lying in them? That aren’t half in and half out?

KIDS!

That’s why they are so frikking adorable. When they’re happy, they let everybody know.

When they’re sad or angry, they don’t hide it.

They sit right there in the middle of a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon and ball their eyes out!

They don’t care who sees them!

Same when they’re happy. And you KNOW when you see a happy kid running around, few things are cuter.

Once upon a time, YOU were that kid.

YOU were that ultra charismatic person.

Imagine if you could be THAT charismatic, but as an adult!

What could you do?

Who would you talk to?

What kind of life would you lead?

You can. All of that.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Become Cause Instead of Effect

When I was in college many moons ago, my roommate had one of those 3D pictures.

The kind that looks like noise, but when you stare at it the right way, a 3D image emerges.

For a while, I couldn’t “get it.” While all my friends did so easily.

But once you “get it” a couple of time, it’s pretty easy.

Once I was playing a game of flag football with some friends.

I was on defense, and my job was to rush in and pressure the QB.

Only on one play, I kind of froze. Not really froze, something just seemed “off” right after the snap.

Instead of running in, like I normally did, I stepped back a bit.

It turned out the other team was running a double reverse, and were counting on me rushing in, which would leave open a big hole.

As I was standing there wondering what the heck was going on, they ran the play and the guy with the ball ran right into me.

One of my teammates looked at me and asked, “you read that pretty well!”

To which I responded, “Huh?”

I suppose as often is the case, my subconscious knew what was up, but my conscious was clueless.

Being able to accurately “read” events to predict the outcomes is a pretty good skill.

There’s a saying that a small minority of people make things happen.

A slightly larger group watches things happen.

Then there’s the vast majority who stand around saying, “What happened?”

Of course, if you spend all your free time with your brain turned off staring at the pretend people in pretend situations on TV, it’s hard to be able to “read” events as they unfold.

I’ve read a few books on history, and things in real life are WAY more complicated than on TV.

Over the last couple decades, the world has changed A LOT, and will continue to do so.

If you’re planning on just coasting and hoping things work out, you may be surprised.

On the other hand, it really doesn’t take a lot of time, or effort, to increase your “people reading” skills.

This can help you move from the “what happened?” group to the “watch what happens” group.

And when you start to see things playing out, you can position yourself to either benefit, or not get pounded, like a lot of people.

Fortunately, the same exercise that will increase your “people reading” skills can ALSO significantly improve your communication skills, as well as your overall self-development.

Even if you ONLY do these exercises during commercial breaks!

If you make the commitment today, to spend only ten minutes a day, soon you’ll have skills most people don’t even know exist.

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Covert Hypnosis

Get X-Ray Vision Into Their Minds

In Japan they have an expression called “reading the air.”

It means to understand the subtext of a conversation.

Here’s a pretty common one. Guy and his girl are at a party.

Some other girl comes up and starts talking to him. He thinks it’s just a normal conversation.

His girlfriend, on the other hand, sees it as direct threat against their relationship.

Since females are much better at “reading” body language than guys are, she can see all the subtle cues of flirtation.

To her, this “other woman” is completely throwing herself at him.

Later on, they get into a fight. She says, “How could you do that?!”

He says, “Wha??”

And she later complains with her friends about men being so dense.

Maybe you’ve been in this situation before (on one side or the other).

The truth is that in ALL human communication, there are MANY levels. Most we ourselves don’t even know about.

One of my favorite lines is from a Tom Clancy book, “The Sum of All Fears.”

About a third of the way through the book, he explained what it meant. When you get a group of experts around a table, you don’t get the sum of their experience. You get the sum of their fears.

Think about that next time you’re in a meeting. Everybody tends to be most concerned with keeping bad things from happening AS MUCH as trying to make something good happen. (Bigger profits, more market share, etc.)

One of the big breakthroughs of NLP was that it leveraged Noam Chomsky’s theory of “transformational grammar.”

Meaning you could look beyond the “surface structure” of what people were saying, and see what they REALLY mean.

Their fears, their desires, what they are going to do next, etc.

If all you do is pay attention to the surface structure, you can easily run into trouble.

But when you can not only see what the other person really means, as well as communicate on that level, it’s like getting conversational super powers.

Even if you never want to do any persuading or influencing, it makes social situations a LOT more enjoyable.

Like putting on X-Ray glasses and seeing into people’s brains.

This is exactly what happens when you start writing out the Covert Hypnosis language patterns.

After a while you’ll see a whole new world that few people know exist.

And since you’ll be able to read people a lot better, you’ll be much more likely to create fantastic relationships, for WHATEVER reason you want.

Learn More:

Covert Hypnosis

How To Make Lemonade

One time I got a blender for Christmas.

At the time, I didn’t really have any use for a blender, so I never took it out of the box.

I put it in a closet, and forgot about it.

Then a year later, to save time, I wrapped it up and gave it to somebody else.

This is pretty common.

Some companies have these goofy parties where you give each other presents and then trade them with each other.

Sometimes they call them “white elephant” parties. The “white elephant” being the gift that nobody really wants, so they keep giving it to other people.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” right?

How exactly do you do that?

It revolves around how flexible you are with “meaning.”

If you say “hi” to somebody, and they don’t say “hi” back, what does it “mean”?

To some, it’s PROOF that they suck and nobody likes them.

To others, it’s an opportunity to try something different.

Meaning that while they didn’t say “hi” back to you, they didn’t call the cops.

Maybe they didn’t hear you. Maybe they are too shy. Maybe they really like you and are frozen.

It’s hard to “switch” these meanings around on the spot, simply because our brains are hard wired to AUTOMATICALLY go to the “worst” meaning for ancient survival reasons.

But since overcoming your survival instincts is what it means to be a rational human, this is just another skill you can practice.

Playing around with different meanings “in the moment.”

Like any skill, it takes time. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

But once you get yourself up to speed, you’ll be able to use a POWERFUL tool from your Covert Hypnosis tool kit.

Utilization.

It’s a technique where you take ANYTHING that you get, from the world or other people, and simply figure out a way to USE it.

Instead of judging it right away, get into the habit of thinking, “hmm, how can I use this?”

The inventor of Covert Hypnosis, Milton Erickson, used this to hypnotize people.

He didn’t care if they closed their eyes or not. Sat down or know. Kept talking or not.

He simply UTILIZED whatever they were doing to DEEPEN their trance.

Since trance was his intention, he took WHATEVER happened, and UTILIZED it to fulfill his intention.

What is YOUR intention?

Whatever it is, you can take WHATEVER the world gives you, and use it to fulfill your intention.

This will turn every experience, every conversation, every person you meet into a once in a lifetime opportunity to get what you want out of life.

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Covert Hypnosis