Category Archives: Congruence

Peel Back The Onion Layers

Interpersonal Glue

A long time ago I used to sell cars.

It was an eye opening experience, from a lot of perspectives.

One is I was amazed how happy people were once they’d decided to buy a car.

When they came in, they were fearful, anxious and weren’t sure.

But after an hour or so of going back and forth, when they finally made the decision, they transformed.

I mean literally, before my very eyes.

Before they signed a contract, they were defensive. Closed off. Crossed arms. Unhappy faces.

But after they signed the contract, they looked like little kids on their birthdays.

Before the contract, they acted like I was their arch-nemesis.

After the contract, I was their best friend, and they couldn’t thank me enough.

Most people see sales, seduction, or any kind of persuasion through the lens of trickery.

Like you’ve got to come in “under the radar.” Many people believe the only way they can convince somebody to do what they want is to use some kind of Jedi ninja patterns.

But in reality, but BEST salespeople, and the most NATURAL seducers don’t see it that way.

They see persuasion as HELPING people get what they want.

Nobody is unhappy when they go home with a new purchase. Quite the opposite.

Nobody is unhappy at the beginnings of a new relationship. In fact, that is one of the best feelings we humans can feel.

So why do so many people approach sales and dating as if they were a confrontation?

One reason is people fear rejection. We’re so nervous we’ll get rejected we start to treat the other person as the enemy.

But one thing that will most certainly AVOID rejection is simply taking the time to find out what they want.

That’s why it’s best to start with small talk. Create rapport. Give each other time to get comfortable.

Then slowly peel back the onion layers.

Find out what they want.

THEN you’ll realize how easy it is.

Why is it so easy?

Because on a deep level, all of our wants and needs are very similar.

Sure, if you’re buying a car, you’ve got certain criteria. Make, model, color.

But you also want good value, safety, comfort, security, and validation.

When you’re talking to people socially, or even in a business situation, those vague desires are incredibly easy to leverage.

What does this mean?

It means that you simply talk to them about the things they want, then talk to them about what you’ve got.

If you do this in the right way, meaning relaxed and conversationally, you’ll almost never get rejected.

And when you use these language patterns, it’s pretty simple.

These are the “interpersonal glue” that connects what THEY want, with what YOU’VE got.

Which makes doing what you suggest the most natural thing in the world.

Learn How:

Covert Hypnosis

What Do You Assume?

How To Make Others Feel Good Around You

Once I was walking around downtown. I saw this poster for a movie.

It had an actor who’s been in a lot of other movies I’ve watched and enjoyed.

So without knowing anything about the movie, I bought a ticket.

As I was sitting there in the theater, my big bucket of popcorn on my lap, the lights dimmed.

So excited. One of my favorite actors.

In a movie I knew nothing about.

Now, when I watch a movie, I always buy popcorn. But I don’t start eating until the movie actually starts.

Kind of a “delayed gratification” trick I play on myself.

So as the lights dimmed, I waited for the first scene to start shoveling popcorn in my mouth and…

…they started singing.

WTF?

Turned out it was a musical. Not my favorite type of movie.

Another time I was in Taiwan. There had just been a movie released called “Red Eye,” some thriller movie that took place aboard a plane.

I saw the title at my local theater. Same story. Bough the popcorn, waited for the lights to dim.

And….

…it was a Korean movie called “Red Eye.” Some sort of horror. No idea what it was about since it was in Korean with Taiwanese subtitles.

This is what happens when we make assumptions.

Most of the time they are true. But when we’re wrong, it can be funny, like in those movies, or you can upset people, or embarrass yourself.

But there ARE some assumptions that most people may disagree with that people will be GLAD to accept.

Within the Covert Hypnosis training course, there’re these things called “Linguistic Presuppositions.”

They are sentence structures that PRESUPPOSE things to be true, in order to make sense of and respond to the sentence.

When we use this naturally, it’s when we’re trying to unconsciously assert something that we really don’t want questioned.

Usually this is some kind of insult, or some form of “I’m right and you’re wrong” type of thing.

Like when you’re arguing with your friend, and you think they’re being dense, because they won’t accept your argument.

You don’t come right out and say, “Since you don’t accept my argument, you are being dense.” Because they could argue with that.

Instead, we tend to say things like, “Why are you being so dense?” Which is a question that PRESUPPOSES the density if your friend.

When you start to use these consciously, you can use them much more effectively. Not to make other people feel bad or stupid, but to make them feel really good.

You can start to “Presuppose” good things about them. Good things about their ideas. Good things about their future.

What effect will this have?

They’ll start to feel really good about themselves. But since you’re covertly hiding these “compliments” in the middle of a complex sentence structure, they won’t really know why.

All they’ll know is that around you, they feel pretty good.

Think you can use this to your benefit?

Get Started:

Covert Hypnosis

Mother Nature Always Wins - She Is Persistent

Become A Social Super Hero

I had this friend that was into making jewelry.

She would buy these rocks, and put them in this tumbler.

(not the blog, and actual tumbler).

And had a really rough surface on the inside. The rock would go in, tumble around for a couple days, and come out smooth.

Kind of like how ocean waves relentlessly pound rocks into sand, only a lot quicker.

It’s also why rocks at the bottom of streams are smooth, while rocks out in the wind are rough.

The thing about Nature is she is relentless. She never gives up. She always wins.

There’s an ancient Chinese Proverb that says, “If you wait by the river long enough, you can see the bodies of your enemies floating by.”

Which means patience, above all, will win. If you are rash, and take action, you may win, but you may end up biting off more than you can chew.

I know, we only have one life, right? We don’t have eons of time to slowly wear down our rough spots into smooth edges.

But think about this. What if you started FIVE YEARS ago, doing some kind of skill improvement, for ONLY ten minutes a day.

What kind of skills would you have now?

What if you start now, what will you be like a year from now?

One of the paradoxes of human life is we don’t want to do things unless we are GUARANTEED to see an IMMEDIATE result.

Nobody buys books on how to get rich slowly, or lose one pound a week for two years.

We keep trying these goofy plans time after time, and NEVER get anywhere.

Meanwhile, those slow and steady tortoises are kicking our ass!

Here’s one way you can DRAMATICALLY improve yourself over the next year.

There’s a whole section in the Covert Hypnosis book on practice drills.

Where you take each pattern, and write out a bunch of examples.

A fantastic way to do that, while boosting your own self confidence and social skills at the same time, is take those exercises and write to yourself.

Instead of some imaginary person sitting in front of you that you are selling to or trying to seduce, write the patterns to yourself.

And use the patterns to persuade yourself that you are ultra confident. Super intelligent. Powerfully attractive. Socially outgoing. Massive self esteem.

If you do that, not only will you become a ninja with the patterns, but you’ll also SLOWLY transform yourself into a social skills super hero.

Able to sell anything to anybody, and sweep anybody off their feet.

Get Started:

Covert Hypnosis

Animal Magnetism

Generate Attractive Magnetism

One way to become an incredibly compelling speaker is to create something called “response potential.”

Most people, when they stories, or jokes, are in a hurry to finish.

Then when they finish, they look around, usually hoping for approval.

Sure, if they’ve got a good story, or something interesting happened, this can work.

But it’s HIGHLY content dependent.

Like if you were walking to the dry cleaners and you saw a bank robbery, you wouldn’t have to do much to be the center of attention.

“Hey, I saw a bank robbery this morning!” Would be all you needed to say. And everybody would be DYING to hear more.

Most people are always on the lookout for CONTENT. They even think that because they don’t have good CONTENT, then they can’t be a good conversationalist.

“I never have anything to talk about.”

But the GOOD NEWS is while people like content on a conscious level, we are DRAWN to structure on a subconscious level.

Meaning if you tell a story with good structure, you don’t need decent content.

What kind of structure?

Pause in the middle of sentences, where they don’t usually belong. Where people will SUBCONSCIOUSLY want to hear you “finish the thought.”

Break your stories up, get just up to the climax of one story, and start telling another one.

This is why world famous comedians can tell stories about waiting in line at the supermarket and get paid millions of dollars.

It’s not the CONTENT of their stories, it’s the STRUCTURE.

So long as your stories and anecdotes have an emotionally compelling theme, you’ll be fine.

But the BIGGEST ingredient of telling a compelling story, and holding roomfuls of people in the palm of your hand is having a strong frame.

If you have even a basic story, like when you couldn’t find your shoes this morning, but tell it in a good structure AND with a strong frame, people will think you are incredibly charismatic.

What is a strong frame? It’s the meaning you put on the interaction. Of you telling that story.

If your frame is “I hope they don’t interrupt me and I hope somebody laughs,” then you won’t do so well.

But if your frame is “This is the funniest thing in the world, and I’m going to enjoy talking about it,” then YOUR frame will override everybody else’s frame.

This takes practice. It’s not some easy mental switch you can flip and call it good.

It is a skill. And like any other skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

But most people don’t even know this skill exists, let alone how to practice it.

But you do.

Get Started:

Frame Control

False Fears

Going Swimming With Snakes?

Imagine going on a diet.

You read a couple of books and came up with a plan.

You went shopping and carefully bought the right foods.

So you knew that when you ate the right things, in the right amounts, it would be physically impossible to not lose weight.

Only when you ate your food, you didn’t do it at home.

You ate it at the food court in the mall. Or at your favorite restaurant.

Surrounded by friends who were chowing down like no tomorrow.

Could you do it?

I know I couldn’t!

This is the problem with a lot of our instincts. When they are fired up, it’s pretty impossible to ignore them.

That’s why humans have survived all these years.

If our instincts were super easy to ignore (meaning that losing weight was super easy and didn’t require a lot of willpower) then we would have died out a long time ago.

There’s even a few disease that somehow “turn off” the eating instinct.

They don’t feel compelled to eat, so they don’t. And they starve to death. Or they would without medical intervention.

Quickly pulling back from pain is another instinct. Yet there are a few unlucky people who don’t feel pain. Which means they can get an infection, and die before they know something’s wrong.

One of the drawbacks to our instincts is that societies evolve MUCH FASTER than our instincts do.

It’s like we’ve got this caveman brain that still thinks we need to chase after food, and eat as much as we can whenever we see some.

This is one of the primary causes of “self sabotage,” the mis-match between our conscious desires, chosen by living rationally in a modern society, and our primitive instincts.

Social fear is a prime example of this.

You want to walk over there and start a conversation, but your caveman brain thinks you’re about to go wrestle a dinosaur or something.

You’d like to give a speech, but you feel like you’re about to jump into a pit of piranhas.

You want to pitch an idea to your boss, one you’re sure will make you a lot of money, but you feel like you’re sticking your head in a tiger’s mouth.

Now, some say you should “feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Some say the only way is to FORCE yourself through those situations.

Sure, that will work. But it takes a LOT of willpower, and some very uncomfortable feelings.

Or you could use some mental techniques.

Practice doing it while FORCING your brain to think good thoughts.

Re-Training that ancient part of you that thinks there’s danger behind every shadow.

When you do that, you’ll notice how much easier life becomes.

Get Started:

Fearless

Pull Yourself Together

All Together Now...

Stroke!

​Sometimes in the movies, they’ll have these rowing races.

Usually they involve some guys or gals in some expensive ivy league school.

If you’ve seen that movie about Facebook (The Social Network) then you know what I mean.

Two long rowboats, with six or seven guys. All rowing.

At first glance, it would seem to be a competition of strength, and endurance.

While that’s part of the equation, it’s not the main part.

They’ve got this guy at the front, with a bullhorn.

He’s shouting, “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

The MAIN contest is who can work together the best.

If you’ve got team A, for example, that are really strong but aren’t quite “together” when they take each stroke, they’ll be easily beaten by team B, who might be weaker, but are VERY “tight” when they row.

Like one entity, instead of a bunch of different guys.

I had a buddy once I worked with. He saw this band. He said they were AWESOME. But he didn’t say anything about the kind of music, whether it was original or cover stuff.

He only said they were “as tight as a mosquito’s butthole.” Meaning they played together VERY well.

That was more important than the music they played, or even the instruments they used.

You know how when those ultra professional singers can break a glass or a mirror with their voice?

It’s not because their voice is ultra powerful. It’s because they can hold a note that is the EXACT same frequency as the vibrational frequency of the glass or the mirror. It’s their ability to hold a note ultra steady, not sing really, really powerfully, that allows them to do that.

This is the power of congruence.

When you’ve got ALL your internal parts working together. Just like that band, it won’t matter WHAT you are talking about. People will only find it amazing and won’t be able to stop listening to you.

What’s even more, when you can elicit the frequency of even the shyest person, so the TWO of you can resonate together, that will be a connection like no other.

How do you do that?

First, get congruent yourself. This takes time. This takes plenty of mental practice. This takes some uncomfortable digging through those emotions most people would rather not face.

But the rewards are ENORMOUS.

Once you get congruent yourself, your mere presence will awaken a desire in others. One they’ll share with you like they’ve never shared before.

What can you DO with such power?

A lot.

Learn More:

Awaken Your Natural Learner

Your Brain Is The Same As It Was

Your Brain Is The Same

I remember a long while ago my company was merging with another company.

A lot of us were getting the boot, so we were pretty worried.

The good news was that we got to take any “approved” training to make it easier to find a new job.

I thought that was kind of cool, but I was also kind of worried.

I’d been working in the same lab for the last ten years, and my knowledge was VERY specialized.

I was afraid of stepping into a classroom and learning something new.

After all, I’d heard all those stories about how the older you get, the harder it is to learn, etc.

But what I found was totally the opposite.

At least it can be.

When you think about it, it makes total sense. It’s not like our brain structure, biology and chemistry suddenly changes as we get older. It’s the same brain in your head now that was in there however many years ago you were born. Just a bit bigger, and just a LOT more stuff in there.

Which turns out, is the problem.

When we go through school, we learn a lot of stuff. But we also learn that learning is hard. Difficult. Frustrating. Scary even.

I don’t know about you, but I had some pretty scary teachers in elementary school!

The truth is that you ARE a natural learner. You were when you were born, you are now, and you will be right up until you take your very last breath.

All you’ve got to do is ditch all those “unhelpful” things you learned going through the meat grinder they call an educational system.

Things like “failure is bad,” or “if you don’t get it right the first time, you’re wrong,” or “if you mess up everybody’s going to think less of you.”

All that is total crap. You used to know it. You used to not care if you messed up, or did the wrong thing, or called attention to yourself.

In fact, you thought it was pretty fun.

And you can discover that it still can be pretty fun.

Just learn how to get rid of all that useless junk.

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

Are You Pulling Yourself Apart?

Keep Everything While Moving Forward

Keep Everything And Move Forward

There’s a lot of squishy words that people throw around, and many of them are kind of hard to pin down.

One thing you learn in NLP is something called the “meta model.”

Basically, it’s asking questions to get more specific information.

Like if I said I had a delicious meal, that may seem pretty specific, but it’s really not.

What did I eat? How did I eat? Who did I eat with? Where did I eat? How often do I eat whatever it was I ate?

Now, if you were at some party and you started throwing these questions around, you’d find yourself alone in a hurry.

We humans LIKE using vague words, for many, many reasons. Feeling somebody ask you all these “meta model” questions feels like somebody’s digging through your brain, which these days is one of the few places we can be alone.

However, the meta model DOES have its place. Like if somebody is giving us directions. If they just said, “go up this street turn left a couple of times,” that wouldn’t help us much. We’d need to know exactly WHERE to turn and what to look for to let us know it’s the turning place.

(My buddy in high school wanted to design a residential neighborhood where all the streets were named things like, “The Big Rock,” or “The Ugly Tree,” just to make directions sound pretty funny.)

One of the ways the meta model can help is when we run into some meta-physical sounding terms.

Take “congruence” for example. Most people will agree that it’s a good thing, and that having more is better than having less.

But what specifically is it? And how specifically can you get more of it?

That’s the part they usually leave out.

It’s based on the idea from NLP that we all have “parts,” which of course, is a metaphor.

But we act as if there are separate parts in our heads. Part of us wants to lose weight, but part of us wants to eat ice cream. Part of us wants to make money, but part of us is terrified of rejection. Part of us would love a relationship, but part of us is terrified expressing our sexual desires, even subtly.

The process of becoming more congruent is when you take out all your “parts” and take a look at them.

That way, you can figure out what’s holding you back. For example, if you’d like to lose weight, but don’t want to give up eating ice cream, you can figure out what you like so much about eating ice cream.

Then it’s matter of finding something else, that satisfies those deeper desires, that’s more congruent with losing weight.

So instead of having two parts going in different directions, you’ll have ALL your parts going the same direction. Making it much easier to create what you want.

You’ll learn that, and more, in this course:

Are You Happy With What You See?

Look Below The Surface

Peer Beneath The Surface

Very often we humans use metaphors to describe things. Usually to make it easier on the brain.

I read this fascinating book a while back called “Metaphors We Live By.” by George Lakoff, one of Chomsky’s original students.

It wasn’t quite what I expected. I was thinking it would be about some kind of mystical metaphysics or something. Maybe the deep meaning of life.

But it was something far more profound, and illustrates how pretty much ALL of our thinking is based on metaphors for what lies beneath the seemingly normal surface of reality.

Basically, whenever we use a noun that’s not a real object, (sometimes in NLP these are called nominalizations), we have to use them AS IF they are a real object.

And the preposition (the word that comes before them in the sentence) we use WITH THEM describes what kind of noun our subconscious minds think they are.

I know, this sounds kind of confusing.

But think of the noun, “meeting.” It’s not a physical thing. Sure, there’s the meeting room, the table, the chairs, the people. But the meeting itself is an abstract concept.

What KIND of noun do our brains think it is?

A container. How do we know this? Because we say “I’m IN a meeting.” We don’t say “on” a meeting, or “under” a meeting. We say “in” a meeting. And we are “in” containers.

How about a train, plane, or boat? We say “on.” Like it’s a vehicle.

How about a team? We also say “on.” Because we travel with a team, to meet other teams. Also like a vehicle. Compared to a club, which is more like a container. “In” the club.

There’s basically five or six different basic categories we put these abstract nouns in (containers, barriers, passages, buildings, companions, etc).

Which means in our most basic, fundamental every day language, we’re describing these abstract concepts in a way that we can pretend to make sense of them.

Most people imagine that reality is pretty simple. That what you see is what you get.

But you know there’s much more. The surface is just what’s on top.

What if all you thought about the ocean was what it looked like on top?

You know that there’s MUCH MORE to this “reality” than meets the eye. Much more underneath the surface. 

Stuff most people don’t even know exists, let alone go looking for.

How about you?

Are you willing to dig through the false surface, to see what’s REALLY inside?

Get Started:

Kundalini Activator

Unleash Your Super Powers

Embrace Your True Nature

Resonate With Your Nature

I’ve always been fascinated by resonance.

As a kid, I’d always like to slosh the water back in forth at the bathtub, at just the right frequency, to splash as much of it all over the floor as possible.

Later, me and my buddies applied this to street signs. If you pushed on them with just the right frequency, you could get them swinging back and forth in some pretty big arcs. Not bad for a metal pole stuck in concrete.

Even soldiers learned the hard way that they need to break cadence, how they march in time, when crossing a bridge.

Once a bunch of soldiers crossed a bridge, all marching in step. Unfortunately, the frequency of their gate was the same frequency that swung the bridge, and it collapsed.

If you take any system, and apply force in the same frequency that system naturally resonates at, you can get some pretty cool effects.

This is the reason why the sky is blue. Of all the colors in the spectrum, the ones that resonate the most in the molecules of the upper atmosphere, blue light does it the best. It’s the light that’s most naturally passed through.

Human stories are another example. Joseph Campbell showed us a long time ago that the same basic structure shows up in myths in cultures all over the world.

This “Hero’s Journey” is in Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, Spiderman, Harry Potter, and on and on.

To be sure, every story structure was likely thought up and told since the dawn of time. But the structure that resonated the most, the kind the seemed the truest to most listeners, was the Hero’s Journey.

Why?

Because it represents the structure of our lives. We are called to a journey much greater than the one we are currently on.

We are given a huge range of skills, learning abilities,and capabilities. Ones that are almost never put to use in a modern society.

If you do what most people do, which is do what you’re told, stay out of trouble, and make just enough to pay the bills, you’ll never come close to even scratching the surface of what you’re capable of.

But since you want more, you’re not content to simply follow orders like most people are. You aren’t satisfied to just “not get in trouble.”

You  know you’ve got many skills yet to discover, and many journeys to go on.

Get Started:

Kundalini Activator