Secrets Of Reality
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
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.