Category Archives: Influence

Why Words Only Get You So Far

Deep Structure Of Charisma and Personal Magnetism

One mistake we tend to make is when we model other people.

Since humans have been around, we’ve learned much of what we can do by copying others.

When we were young, we copied our parents and those around us.

When we were in school, we learned by paying attention to social triggers.

I remember once in third grade, there was this brief but intense “yo-yo” fad.

At the end of second grade, nobody had a yo-yo. But by the first couple months of third grade, EVERYBODY had a yo-yo, and everybody was trying to outdo each other with all the different tricks.

Since this was WAAAAY before the internet, the only way we could learn new tricks was by watching and copying others. It’s not like that they had a book of yo-yo tricks in the local library.

With yo-yo tricks, what you see is what you get. You can either do the trick, or you can’t. You have feedback right then and there that tells you if you are doing it right or not. (My big trick was “around the world”).

It gets pretty complicated, pretty quickly, when the skills we are “copying” from others involve human interaction and communication.

In sales, they try to make this as simple as possible. I’ve had a couple of face to face, in-home sales jobs where they wouldn’t let you go out into the field unless you had a complete, 20 minute presentation fully memorized.

Funny thing was, that even though everybody was going out and spitting out the same memorized pitch, some people sold a lot, some people didn’t sell anything.

I’m sure you know that communication is only about 7% verbal. The rest of the 93%, all the body language, facial expressions, indications of confidence or lack of confidence, that accounts for the sales, and the non-sales.

So even if you take a perfectly written script, and memorize it line for line, it will only take you 7% of the way.

(This is one reason why really good actors get paid so much, they can “fake” most of that 93% where “bad” actors can’t).

How do you get that other 93%?

It’s all about your inner game. The energy you carry with you, and subconsciously project everywhere you go.

Funny thing is, when somebody comes along that is REALLY solid in that 93%, the words won’t really matter much.

They just show up, and everybody knows.

The good news is that building up that “inner game” is pretty easy. You just need to know HOW to practice, and be willing to spend the 5-10 minutes a day that will get you there.

To learn how, check this out:

Frame Control

Secrets Of Massive Social Power

Are You Really The Captain Of Your Ship?

Leverage Your Instincts – Don’t Fight Them

I read this amazing book several years ago.

It was called “Chimpanzee Politics,” and it was about this group of chimps in this huge compound somewhere in Europe. These scientists studied them for a couple years, recording their every move and social interaction.

They behaved very, very much like humans, hence the title.

The leader, or the alpha male, got most of the sex, and most of the food.

And when you consider that chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor over two million years ago, meaning that we’ve had that same programming in us for AT LEAST that long, it’s pretty mind boggling.

How long have our conscious minds been around? Scientists figure that language is a key. And they figure that language, besides grunts and hand signals, popped up maybe 30,000 years ago.

Which means our deeper instincts, that get us to organize into these “tribal hierarchies” have been the driving force of our existence for the majority of the time.

Even today, underneath the very recent, and very thin layer of our conscious brains (the neo-cortex) is that incredibly powerful subconscious, our collection of vast instincts.

Who do you think wins when the subconscious battles the conscious?

Try making the conscious decision to hold your breath for five minutes and see what happens!

Or try going on a diet of nothing but boiled chicken breasts for a month and see what happens!

Whether we like it or not, our subconscious minds are VERY powerful, and usually in control.

I know it sounds cool to use metaphors like “our conscious minds are the captain of the ship, and our subconscious is the engine room,” but it really isn’t like that.

Otherwise dieting would be easy. Talking to strangers would be easy. Standing up in front of people and giving speeches would be easy.

Any time we try and do something and feel a flood of conflicting emotions, it’s because our feeble conscious minds are saying, “But I want to do this!” while our subconscious minds are saying, “Um…no.”

Sometimes we recognize this, sometimes we don’t.

Most of the time we don’t go along with our subconscious instincts. We fight them, wish they didn’t exist, or think we are somehow “self-sabotaging” ourselves.

The secret is to not overpower your subconscious, or even control your subconscious. That would be like trying to swim against the tide.

Our caveman brains have taken us far. Why not act in congruence with them? Why not choose goals that are congruent with our deep instincts? Why not get the tide on our side?

One way to do that is to leverage the powers of social authority.

This is one of those thing that’s incredibly powerful, that we don’t usually notice.

When you can claim your rightful place at the top of the social food chain, everything will fall into place.

Just like our distant cousins, the chimps, whoever’s at the top gets most of the stuff.

It’s GOT to be somebody.

Why not you?

Learn how:

Frame Control

How To Double Tap Social Charisma

Secrets Of Reality

One thing that’s tough to wrap our minds around is structure vs. content.

We are always focused on content, and we always think that content is the driving force of our actions, but it rarely is.

I recently finished this dense book about the nature of human consciousness, which described that more and more of our decision making process is not what we think it is.

The content, or the reason we think we do stuff, is just an “after the fact” story, made up that “sounds good.”

It’s like our subconscious is doing all the decision making, and our poor conscious minds are following behind, trying to think up reasons why we’re doing stuff.

Consider the idea of social proof. This is widely known, and very powerful.

Let’s say you’re walking down the street, and you see a big crowd. They all look like you (at least close enough, same demographic, etc) so now you’re REALLY interested.

So you walk up and you see they’re buying some electronic gizmo. You aren’t sure what it is, but everybody looks pretty excited. There are even reporters there. You see a couple of friends, who offer to let you join their group.

So you get in line, buy the gizmo, and get home. Your roommate, spouse, whoever, asks why you bought it.

What do you tell them?

“Everybody else was buying it, so I thought I’d buy it too! I don’t even know what it does!”

Probably not.

By the time you got home, you’d have come up with some “logical” reasons why you bought it. Some “logical” purpose that you’d use it for.

If you were walking down the street, and saw that NOBODY was waiting in line, would you still have bought it?

Not likely.

Now, this is easy to see when other people do it, but pretty difficult to see when it happens to us. After all, we’re in charge of our lives, right? We make rational decisions, right? We always know why we’re doing what we’re doing, right?

Not as much as we’d like to think.

But once you understand how these subconscious “structures” work, and how they pre-frame pretty much ALL “content,” you can leverage them to your advantage.

How?

Generate Massive Authority

Humans are social animals. Which means we’re driven by socially based systems.

Social proof is one. Another very POWERFUL one is leadership, or authority.

We are just likely to “follow the leader” as we are to “follow the crowd.”

How do you use this to your advantage?

Easy.

Just become the leader. When you develop the inner beliefs and mindset of a natural leader, people will follow you. And just like in the social proof example, they’ll make up their own reasons. Which means you won’t have to convince them.

And once a few people start to do THAT, you’ll not only have AUTHORTY but a lot of social proof as well.

To learn how, check this out:

Frame Control

Are You Deceiving Yourself?

The Easiest Person To Lie to Is Yourself

Why Self Deception Is Hard To See

What’s the difference between real effort and pretend effort?

Most of us engage ourselves in pretend effort, not real effort.

I know, sounds harsh, but it’s very common, and very hard to see in yourself.

If you can, you’ll be miles ahead of everybody else.

One reason it’s hard is because it “feels” the same.

For example, let’s say you just joined some business group. And you’ve got to find ten live customers in order to meet your income objectives for the month. (Just an example, feel free to fill in your own information based on your own life).

Now, actually walking outside in the harsh unforgiving world, walking up and talking to strangers, giving a quick pitch about your business, and then handing them your business card and asking them for their contact information can be pretty darn terrifying.

So instead of doing that, you go to the bookstore. You buy a couple books on marketing and communication. You buy yourself a large cup of coffee and plant yourself in your favorite coffee shop.

Sure, it takes effort to read that material, take notes, and work through it.

But is it REAL effort? Not really.

How can you tell the difference?

Taking Risks Is The Only Way To Achieve Mad Success

No Risk Means Fake Action

Because REAL effort involves risk. Real effort will ALWAYS involve risk.

Why?

Because NOBODY can predict the future. NOBODY can predict how other people will behave.

So whenever you take ANY action (especially action that involves other people) there’s really no telling what’s going to happen. Something good may happen, something bad may happen.

Since most of us are terrified of something bad happening, we minimize risk.

Buying a bunch of books and studying them certainly reduces risks. But will it get you what you want?

Not likely. At least not on their own.

The ONLY thing that will get you closer to what you want, is doing something when you DON’T KNOW what’s going to happen.

At least the first time. The beauty of this is when you get into the habit of taking risks, you WILL find some things that don’t work.

And believe me, nothing sucks more than thinking something is going to work fantastically, only to have it fizzle and burn.

But guess what?

Sure, some things will suck. But many things won’t. In fact, many things will work MUCH BETTER than you’d hoped.

But you’ll never know until you get into the habit of taking action. Risky action. Scary action.

When you accept both the good AND the bad, which means you FULLY EMBRACE all feedback, you simply cannot fail. The more action you take, the more successes you’ll create.

Like a law of nature.

Learn the inside scoop:

Mind Persuasion

Live In Congruence With Your Nature For Max Prosperity

Don’t Fight The Tape

You know the story of the frog and the scorpion, right?

There’s this frog and a scorpion on one side of a river, which is rising rapidly.

They both have to get to the other side to safety, or else they’ll drown.

The frog jumps in the water and starts to swim, but the scorpion asks him to stop.

The scorpion asks for a ride, but the frog protests that he’ll sting him.

The scorpion promises that he won’t. The frog believes him, so the scorpion climbs on.

They get halfway across the river, the scorpion starts to sting him. The frog asks why. It’s my nature, says the scorpion, right before they both drown.

Now, the money question. What’s the moral of this story? There are many to choose from.

One is that evil people will do evil things even if they promise they won’t. People that hold to this say you can’t trust anybody.

Another is that you can’t act contrary to your nature. Even if you try.

If you’re a scorpion, you sting people. That’s what you do. Even if it will end up killing you.

How About Humans?

What about humans, what is our nature?

When talking about human nature, there’s two ways to look at it.

One is to listen to religious leaders, politicians, marketers, gurus, etc. They’ll all tell us what we SHOULD do. (Which, most of the time, we DON’T).

Another is to simply look back across human history to see what we HAVE been doing.

It seems that human nature is wide. There’s a lot of stuff that we do, do well, and have been doing since we started living in large societies.

War is certainly one of them. War, however, tends to destroy stuff. If war truly WAS our strongest nature, there wouldn’t be anything left.

But since there’s TONS of stuff, it seems there’s something we’re BETTER at than killing each other and blowing stuff up.

Building. Creating. Inventing.

Despite all the wars that have been raging since the dawn of time, there’s been an even BIGGER drive to create more stuff. Wealth. Ideas. Products. Services.

Look at how much stuff we’ve got now compared to only ten years ago.

Sure, there are good times and bad. But regardless of what horrible things we do to each other, the net wealth of society is ALWAYS going up.

So, what is the nature of humans? Many. But the strongest one is creation.
Humans are creators.

What would you like to create?

Get Started:

http://mindpersuasion.com/loa/

Are You Trying To Save The World?

How To Save Your World

The world is a mysterious place.

The second you think you’ve got it figured out, suddenly you don’t.

I remember a long time ago, when I was a kid. I was interested in science, and I figured if I read a few science books, I’d have the world figured out.

I took this mindset all through college, where I got a degree in physics. But the more I knew, the less I knew.

All along I figured physicists would be able to definitively say what was what. But in reality, they really don’t know. Sure, sometimes they’ve got a theory that can be proven in a laboratory, or in the skies, but often times this isn’t the case.

Most people have an idea that they’d like to “change the world.” But if you can barely grasp how the world operates, how in the heck are you going to “save it?”

The answer is “one step at a time.”

OK, but which steps?

Who decides what they are?

The Invisible Hand

There’s this fantastic theory in economics called “Spontaneous Order.” It basically means that when you put a bunch of humans together, even if they don’t know each other, they’ll start or organize themselves, from the bottom up.

This happens without any goof in charge telling people what to do. This is just people, on their own, figuring out what they need, and what they can contribute.

There’s plenty of examples of this in prisons, especially POW camps. This is a place where the guards definitely DON’T want people to organize themselves, but they do anyhow.

In WWII for example, where they had POW camps filled with soldiers for years at a time, entire economies sprung up out of nothing. Some guys became barbers, some guys grew vegetables, some guys became laundry cleaners.

Now, this can only happen if it’s programmed into us. Deep into our DNA. Part of the human mind is hard wired to get in the game, and interact with others.

Helping others get what they want, so you can get what you want. WHATEVER that is.

And since we’re living in a GLOBAL economy, with BILLIONS of people, there’s really no limit.

None.

All you’ve got to do is get in the game.

Get Started:

http://mindpersuasion.com/loa/

The LOA Scam

Con Artists Are Everywhere

I saw this interesting sales video the other day for another “Law of Attraction” course.

As someone who loves NLP, persuasion, instinctive triggers, I LOVE reverse engineering those things, just to see what they’re structure is.

This particular sales vid followed the same pattern:

Promise (Good feeling)
+
Take Away (Bad feeling if you don’t buy the product)
+
Benefits of the product

This is a classic strategy as old as the hills. Hit the customer with negatives and positives, and associate the positives with the product, and the negatives with NOT buying the product.

As most of us have TONS of negatives and positives inside our heads, this is pretty easy.

But what I found interesting was how little information there was about the product, other that it sounded WAY too good to be true.

Things like “quit your job within a month, and buy houses and cars with cash,” etc.

Pure snake oil nonsense.

Interestingly enough, if you push the benefits of your product to EXTREME LEVELS (lose weight while you eat ice cream, make money while watching soap operas, get girls to beg you for sex by wearing a certain cologne) people will buy it.

Why?

What If I Miss Out?

Because most of us are TERRIFIED of missing out on something. It’s a very deep trigger that we’ve had for millions of years.

So when people decide to buy the “instant cash while drinking whiskey on the beach” training courses, they do so not because they actually think it will work.

They do so because the sales message has triggered the “What if this DOES work and I miss out on it?”

In reality, so long as the sales message BOOSTS this fear (of missing out) GREATER than the cost of the product, people will buy it.

Trust me, I know. I’ve bought many idiotic products for that very same reason!

And then I told myself the same lie that we always tell ourselves:

“Well, at least I tried.”

Now, it took me a LONG TIME to realize that this was a LIE. Spending money on something you KNOW probably won’t work isn’t really trying. In fact, it’s to cover up what REAL TRYING is.

Real Trying (as opposed to buying snake oil) involves getting out there, and doing things just to see what happens.

Nobody’s going to hold your hand and show you the step by step path to riches, or weight loss, or finding the partner of your dreams.

That takes effort. That takes time. And yes, that takes risk.

But risk doesn’t have to be bad. In fact, it can be pretty fun. Especially when you train your mind into LOVING doing things, just to see what will happen.

Learn how:

http://mindpersuasion.com/loa/

How To Guarantee Success In Any Area

Is It Really So Easy?

What’s the secret to life?

It’s pretty simple, at least from a strategic standpoint.

First, choose something that you want.

Next, try something to get it.

After that, measure your results.

If you got closer, do more of whatever you did.

If you didn’t get closer, do something different.

So, if this is so easy, then why do many of us struggle?

Like many things, this is MUCH easier said than done.

First of all most people have NO CLUE what they want. Just some kind of vague idea, like “happiness,” or “romance” or “income.”

Second, most people are paralyzed by fear. Except most of us are too scared to admit we’re afraid. We say things like “paralysis by analysis” or “taking it all in” or “steep learning curve.” But if you only just TOOK ACTION, and then saw what happened, you’d be light years ahead of everybody else.

Thirdly, it’s very hard for humans to objectively measure feedback. If we get positive feedback, we think we’re the bomb, and the universe loves us. We brag to our friends, and think we’re on easy street.

If we get negative feedback, we blame everybody else, and we think the universe hates us.

We tie BOTH positive AND negative feedback into our ego. We think they say something about our value, or our nature.

But in reality, it’s just information.

Make Life Profitable

Think of it from a pure business standpoint. Any business takes some kind of raw material, and transforms it into something else. It can be information, shoes, food, whatever.

If you get paid MORE than what it cost you to make it, that’s a profit. That is a SIGNAL, nothing else. A SIGNAL that says DO MORE.

If you lose money, that’s a loss. That’s a SIGNAL, nothing else. It just means DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

If it costs you ten dollars and an hour to buy some lemons and make lemonade, which you end up selling for $20, then you just keep doing it again and again.

But if you spend ten bucks on some onions and tried and sell some onion juice, you’d stop after a couple hours, realizing that this isn’t the best business model.

Life is the EXACT same way.

So long as you have a clear idea of what you want, and you are committed to trying things and OBJECTIVELY measuring the results, you simply CAN NOT FAIL.

This Will Help:

mindpersuasion.com/loa/

How To Manipulate People

The Tool Of Manipulation

What, you think this is something evil? All of us do it, all the time. Ever since you realized that by crying you could get somebody to change your diapers, you’ve been manipulating people.

And if you have kids, you know how well easily you can be manipulated. Manipulation is hardwired into our nature.

Why?

Because Mother Nature knows we are a bunch of lazy clods who can’t think for ourselves. If we had to remember to go to the toilet, or eat, or get excited when some sexy cave lady or guy came walking our way, we’d have died out long, long time ago.

Instead, she (Mother Nature) gave us these instincts. Subconscious drivers. Hot buttons. Whatever you call them. When they are pushed, we act without thinking.

Now, some of these triggers are obvious. Like eating and running away from dinosaurs.

But some of these triggers are very subtle, and deal with interpersonal relationships. They were put there to help us survive. Like a mom picking up her kid when it cries.

Just like when the doctor hits your knee with that rubber mallet, the response is unconscious. Driven by your subconscious mind.

You have no choice but to kick your leg. Mothers have no choice but to feel that deep desperate pang of worry when junior cries out in the night.

Most of us have no idea these triggers exist. So we stumble through life and get our buttons pushed and our chains pulled in all kinds of different directions.

Who Does This?

A lot of times, it’s nobody. Just a randomness that coalesces to make you go one way or the other.

You weren’t planning on eating, but you see some guy macking on some delicious roast beef sandwich. Now you want one. Then you buy one.

Did that guy plan on manipulating you? Nope. But it still happened.

Sometimes, though, entities to conspire to manipulate us.

So in learning how to manipulate people, you can see it like Karate. You’re not learning it to kill unsuspecting people while they sleep and take their money.

You are, however, learning it so you don’t get your ass handed to while walking down that dark alley. (BTW, why the f*** are you walking down dark alleys?)

Now you don’t feel do bad about learning how to manipulate people, are you?

How do you do it? Learn these principles, and apply them however you like.

Social Proof

This is the granddaddy of all hot buttons. When you convince somebody that everybody else is doing something, they’ll go along with it without much thought.

To make it even stronger, make the “group” as much like your target as you can. If your target is a male in his twenties that likes grunge rock, then convince him that the group is comprised mostly of mid twenties males who love grunge rock.

Authority

If some homeless guy comes up and starts talking about some police conspiracy, you’ll laugh at him.

But if some respected news reporter starts talking about the very same thing, you’ll sit up and take notice.

Why? Humans are hard wired to turn off our brains, and listen to an authority figure. It helped us back in the caveman days.

You can leverage this to a great extent. Just make phrase your message so it sounds like it’s coming from an authority, as respected by your target.

Combination I – Authority And Social Proof

If you can get both of these on board, you’ll be doing fine. Often times this is all you need. Advertisers, politicians and cult leaders have been using this con for years.

First, choose any kind of authority your target will respect. Then find a group of people as similar to your target as you can. Then combine the message as coming from the authority, and from the reference group.

If they believe you, there’s really not much they won’t do.

Seriously.

Entire nations have gone absolutely bat shit crazy because of this simple one two punch.

The What If – Missing Out Con

Sometimes people will take action simply to find out what will happen. Other times people will take action because they are afraid they will lose out if they don’t.

This is where scarcity comes in. Scarcity makes everything seem more valuable. So present your idea, and make sure it’s going to be leaving soon. If you combine this with an over the top promise, that sounds too good to be true it will work.

Most people won’t believe it, but they’ll take action anyway.

Why?

Part of them will think that it may work, and if it doesn’t, they’ll feel bad for not trying.

This is where the next con comes in.

Self Deception

People hate to feel like idiots. So we are hard wired to lie to ourselves. Scientists tell us this evolved after we grew larger and larger as societies.

In hunter gather groups, there’s only about 200 folks you’ve got to keep track of.

But in large agricultural based communities, there’s tons more. So you have to trust your gut when it comes to trusting people.

This left the door wide open for con artists. So people evolved a sixth sense to tell when people were lying.

Then the con artists evolved one step further. They first learned how to lie to themselves, so they could lie to others. That worked out so well, everybody jumped on the bandwagon.

Now we’ve got societies filled with goofs who can lie to themselves like a champ.

You can use this to your advantage. Promise the moon, and convince them they’ll miss out if they don’t take action. Then throw in some kind of booby prize if it doesn’t work out.

This way, when they do take action, and it doesn’t work out, they won’t kill you for conning them.

They’ll tell themselves the oldest con in the book, “Well, I knew it wasn’t going to work, and at least I…” and then whatever you told them the booby prize was.

Social Status

Here’s the best way and easiest way to manipulate people. Since the stone age, all of us have been hard wired to get as much social status as we could, any way we could.

Why?

More social status meant more sex and food.

Less social status meant no sex and no food.

Now, nobody will outright say, “I want more social status!”

Because in modern society, an open desire for social status is the biggest way to lose social status.

Combine this with our propensity to lie to ourselves, and what do we get?

A bunch of goofs who convince ourselves we DON’T want social status, but do everything in the book to GET social status, all the while PRETENDING that it wasn’t what we wanted.

(Damn we are fucked up!)

So, if you allude that somebody will gain social status, in a very covert way, but at the same time give them a completely different conscious reason for taking action, they’ll move heaven and Earth to get there.

People give to charity, go to church, wear ugly ass clothes, all because it gets them imagined social status. But at the same time, they NEVER say they are doing that because of social status.

Summary and Conclusion

The bottom line is that we humans are vain, scared, and lazy creatures that are incredibly easy to manipulate.

That means you’d better learn how to manipulate people, so you don’t get manipulated yourself.

AND if you find yourself running for political office, or deciding to start your own cult, you’ll be WAY ahead of everybody!

I’ve put together an entire course on influence, covert persuasion, and a lot more of these powerful triggers that can get you more money, love, and attention that you’d ever thought possible.

A combination of conscious training and hours of unconscious hypnotic programming that will make you a Jedi Ninja of mind manipulation and influence!

Learn More

Natural Influence

What Is The Collective Unconscious?

To Be Or Not To Be

A few years ago, I was in the habit of taking acting classes.

They’re a great way to meet interesting and outgoing people. You get to practice all kinds of “expression games” that blow public speaking out of the water when it comes to getting rid of fears and anxiety.

You get to stretch your limits of imagination, and what you think is possible.

One of the classes I took was an improv class. It was recommended by one of my teachers. At the time, the only thing I knew about improv was stand up comedy. Boy was I wrong.

Making Stuff Up

Improv was really all about coming up with ideas and behaviors “on the spot.” Regular acting class is geared toward learning lines from plays, and then practicing them and getting into character.

Improve is all about just getting up on stage with a bunch of people you don’t know, and basically just making stuff up as you go along, and making it seem like it’s all some kind of a congruent story.

In a sense, it’s very much like life.

I remember when we did this one exercise, with about twenty people, and the synergy was absolutely amazing. We used our bodies and motions to create all these shapes. The teacher took the opportunity to throw out various structure names, and then all twenty of us would automatically get into position.

All without speaking, and all very quickly.

And the structures were complicated things like buildings, ships, bicycles, etc.

Unconscious

Being part of a large group of people, with zero conscious communication, yet acting together quickly and effectively to create things was a wonderful experience.

So is life. Because life is the same.

There really is no rules. Sure, there are people who try their hardest to be “in charge” and tell everybody else what to do, but those types are much less important than we realize.

When you can juts let go, trust your unconscious, and more importantly trust the unconscious of others, you really can create some absolutely amazing things with your life.

Relationships, situations, families, huge piles of wealth. Anything you want.

Only instead of waiting for some professor telling you what shape to make, you get to choose on your own.

Are you ready?

Get Started:

http://mindpersuasion.com/loa/