Sleight of Mouth language powers are among the most useful language patterns you can learn to affect personal change in others as well as easily overcome objections and obstacles. They have been used from anything from therapy to seduction.

Today’s pattern is the “Decision Frame.” This is based on the idea that when we state a belief or objection, we somehow think that the idea is “out there” somewhere, and it exists independent of us and our thinking.

However, once you delve into some of your own personal beliefs, and take an inventory of the beliefs you hold today compared to five or ten, or even twenty years ago, it becomes clear that all beliefs exist only in our heads.

To use this particular conversational reframe, all you need to do is speak of the belief as if it were a conscious decision made by the person you are speaking with. You don’t to suggest any alternatives, or judgment regarding their belief, as merely playing with the idea that their belief or objection is a result of their own decision making process, a whole new world of possibility will open up to them.

If you are familiar with some of the other sleight of mouth patterns, any one or combination will be much more effective when used immediately after this particular pattern.

Let’s look at some examples

I can’t wake up early because it’s too difficult.

How exactly did you come to this conclusion? Was there ever a time when it was difficult and you still got up on time? How exactly do you measure the difficulty,and make a decision regarding it’s impact on your ability to wake up?

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Did you do a statistically sound study to determine this? Or did somebody you trust and respect tell you this? Are there any published numbers regarding ability to get a job compared to level of education? How many jobs did you apply for and get turned down solely due to your lack of education before you came up with your theory?

I can’t find a girlfriend because I can’t talk to girls.

How many girls did you talk to before you decided that was the reason? When exactly did you come to this conclusion? Do you imagine ever changing your mind any time in the future?

I can’t buy your product, it’s too expensive.

And how exactly did you decide that? It’s important, because our product may very well be over priced. Was there a certain range you had in mind before you left your house today? Or do you base the price on how you feel when you are introduced to a new product or service? How do you feel when you know the time is right to buy something?

I can’t study all these patterns, because they are too difficult.

I’m interested how you came to the conclusion that they are too difficult if you haven’t studied them yet. Did you study one or two of them, and figure the rest were the same? How long do you generally look at something before making the determination that it’s too difficult?

I could never use these patterns in a normal conversation, I would feel too awkward and strange.

Since you’ve never used them before, I’m guessing you’ve felt awkward and strange before, and you think maybe these will produce the same feeling of awkwardness? How did you come to that conclusion? How do you imagine people reacting when you use these particular patterns?

(end examples)

Just by reading the naked text, these patterns can certainly be used without any kindness or obvious concern for the other person’s resourcefulness. It’s important to remember these patterns, and this one in particular, that you aren’t coming from a place of superiority, bent on proving the other person wrong.

It’s much more effective to become purely curious and interested in the other person, and how they formed their beliefs. Then once you get them speaking in terms of decisions and options, you can leave the belief change up to them. People are generally pretty skilled at changing their minds for the better when given an adequate opportunity.

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Without question, Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns are the easiest way to covertly sneak your ideas inside somebody else’s head without any detection whatsoever. When used correctly, they will take your ideas and suggestions as their own, thereby offering no resistance at all. These patterns have been used for everything from sales and seduction to therapeutic belief change and drastically increasing personal resources.

Today’s pattern is a fun one to play with, and is called the “What If Frame.” In this particular reframe, you accept your listeners’s beliefs, and then ask them to imagine what would happen if things were different. Simply by imagining an alternative reality (or what we think of as reality) we can discover untold resources that we didn’t even know existed before.

Before getting into this reframe, a little bit about conditional grammatical structures. (huh?)

Basically there are two types. The first type (first conditionals for all you grammar nerds) is when speaking about an event that is likely to happen, or has a decent chance of happening. This pattern uses “if,” present tense verbs, and the auxiliary verb “will.”

If it rains tonight, I will wear my raincoat.

If I run out of money, I will go to the ATM.

If I eat too much past, I will get gas.

The second type (second conditional for the aforementioned grammar fans) is when something has very little chance of actually happening, or is impossible. This uses “if,” past tense verbs, and the auxiliary verb “would.”

If I saw a UFO, I would grab my camera.

If I ate one million hamburgers, I would be very sick.

If I could slam dunk, I would be very famous.

The reason for bringing this up, is that sometimes using the second conditional is better. Even though few people will consciously discriminate between the first and second conditionals in casual conversation, we pick up on it subconsciously.

When speaking in a “What If” frame mind, using the second conditional can help your listener to fantasize about how things would be if they were different. They will subconsciously pick up that you’re speaking in terms of things that can’t really happen anyway, and they’ll be much more likely go to along with it.

And when they start imagining a different reality, one with much more possibility and resources, their mind will automatically start thinking of ways to get there.

To construct this pattern, simply accept their belief (stated as X causes Y, or X means Y), without arguing, and then playfully talk about how things would be if they were different.

If what things were different? Anything you want. If they didn’t believe that X causes Y, if X caused something else, If X only caused Y in certain circumstances, anything and everything is fine for this. So long as they go along with you in their imagination, this will work like a charm.

Make sure when doing this, not to take on the tone “Yea, if things were different, but they’re not, so we’re stuck.” Try and take on the tone of a little kid who can pretend that some box is a space ship fighting against aliens.

Some examples.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Yea, I can see how that’s one way to look at things. But what if you could? What if there were some way that you could start at a job without a college degree, and then work your way up through the system? What if there really were companies that based their promotions and management positions on the actual work that you did? If those companies did exist, how would you find them?

I can’t get a date because I’m overweight.

Yea, lots of people would reject you for that, that’s for sure. But what if there were some people out there who were more concerned with your personality and your ability to communicate and really connect with people? (Notice the presuppositions?) If there were people like that out there, how would you find them, and start a conversation with them? How would you know them if you met them?

I can’t make money because I don’t have very good skills.

Yea, I’m sure it seems that way. But what if you could? What if you already had the skills to make money in some market? If that were true, how would you go about finding them?

I can’t buy your product because it is too expensive.

Yea, a lot of people say that, and I can’t disagree. But what if there were something about this particular product that made you want to buy it regardless of the cost? What if you were to realize that this product/service could help you out so much, it would be worth twice what we’re asking for it? How would you know if that were true?

I can’t learn these patterns because they are too complicated.

Yea, there certainly are a lot of them. But what if there was a way to learn them that made them fun and interesting, some way to imagine how your future would be if you mastered these patterns? How would that make you feel?

I could never use these patterns in real conversation. They’d feel too strange and awkward.

Yea, some of these patterns do sound pretty off the wall. But what if you could use these in a conversation, and nobody would know? What if these were so powerful, that they would send people on an internal search for various new meanings, and they wouldn’t even notice that you said anything strange or different? How cool would that be? How much extra money could you make?

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Sleight of Mouth Language patterns are incredibly useful for not only covertly dismantling limiting beliefs and objections, but also for drastically increasing the resourcefulness of both yourself and whoever you happen to be using them with.

Today’s pattern is called “Have To Framing.” This particular pattern applies some Cartesian logic and invites the holder of the belief or objection to consider other alternatives.

Cartesian logic was created (or so people say) by some super smart French guy named Rene Descartes a few hundred years ago. You might have heard of him. It basically takes a cause/effect statement, or relationship, and expands on it, like so:

Statement: Doing X causes Y

Applying Cartesian mumbo jumbo gets you these questions:

• What else does X cause?
• What else causes Y?
• What doesn’t cause Y?
• Does X ever not cause Y?
• Does X ever cause the opposite of Y?
• Does Y ever happen without X?
• What would happen if you did X?
• What wouldn’t happen if you did X?
• What would happen if you didn’t do X?
• What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t do X?

When you conversationally bring up these questions about a belief or an objection, it’s almost impossible for your listener to maintain that the belief is some set in concrete law of reality from Heaven.

A great way to introduce these questions is by way of presuppositions. You can presuppose that there are other alternatives by asking what evidence they would see if one of the other Cartesian mumbo jumbo logic phrases were correct.

For example, somebody says “Being stressed makes me angry.”

So you have Stress causes anger.

Some Cartesian statements could be:

What else causes you to get angry?
What doesn’t cause you to get angry?
What else does stress cause you to do?
Does stress ever not make you not angry?

And then you could stick them in some presuppositions by asking something like follows:

How do you know when stress doesn’t make you angry?

Even if they look at you with a completely blank or confused look, in order to make sense of that sentence, they’ve got to search through their history and see if there actually are any memories of stress not causing anger. Just by searching, they will subconsciously realize that

stress causes anger

is only true sometimes, not all of the time. When they come to that realization, the belief loosens up a bit, and they’ll realize that there are other things to consider.

To generate this pattern, mull over some questions like:

• Do you have to feel that way?
• What would happen if you didn’t believe that?
• How would you know if that wasn’t true?
• What’s it like when that isn’t true?
• What stops you from believing otherwise?
• What would it look like, sound like, feel like, if the opposite were true?

Merely by asking some well phrased questions will send them into a quick trance as they search their memory. They will likely come up with some contradictory evidence of the belief or objection. This would be a great time to hit them with some other patterns to really fry their circuits, er I mean, share with them some other language patterns to help them become more resourceful.

(And naturally, once their previously held beliefs are swirling around their mind like wisps of imaginary smoke, you can lay on some heavy Milton Model patterns and really have some fun.)

Some more examples you say? Sure. I thought you’d never ask.

I can’t get a good job without a college degree.

How would you know if you really didn’t need a college degree to get a good job?

I can’t find somebody special because I’m overweight.

What’s stopping you from finding somebody special despite your concern with your weight?
What would you feel like if you really could find somebody that would accept you just the way you are?
How would you know if you could find somebody that would accept you just the way you are?

I can’t buy your product because it’s too expensive.

What would have to happen in order for you to be convinced that it really was worth the price?
How would you know once you decided that the high price meant it had exceptional value?
Have you ever bought something specifically because it had a high price?

I can’t learn these language patterns because they are too difficult.

How do you know that you don’t already know most of them?
What will feel like if you did master them?
What’s stopping you from thinking they are easy and fun to learn?

I could never use these patterns in a normal conversation.

What would it feel like if you did, and they worked tremendously?
What’s stopping you?
How would you know if that was gone? (Whatever is stopping them)
How would you know if it was actually really easy to use these in a conversation?

(end examples)

The best way, in my experience, is to be as playful as possible when using these particular patterns. If you try and come across as some super smart person sage your wisdom of enlightenment, it usually doesn’t work. If you come across like some amateur psychotherapist trying to help them discover their hidden power, that usually doesn’t work either.

But if you act like a little kid who just discovered that by twisting the handle on the drugstore gumball machine just right gets you a free gumball, and you’re anxious to try and find other ways to get free gumballs, people will usually play along.

Remember, your job, when people whine, ”But what if doesn’t work,” is to say,

“yea, but what if it does work???”

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When you use Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns, those powerful set of linguistic judo that come from NLP, you avail yourself to an incredibly powerful set of skills with which you can quickly and easily overcome any objection, obliterate any limiting belief, and drastically increase the resourcefulness of both yourself and your listener.

The pattern for today is called “Allness Framing,” and is very useful to quickly kill the idea that the belief or objection is “out there,” like some unbreakable law of reality delivered from heaven. In a round about way, it forces the listener to consider that their belief is completely subjective, and therefore malleable.

Basically, you take their belief, apply it to everybody and everything that ever lived, is living, and will live, and ask them if it really makes sense. They will naturally find that others in their same situation or circumstances have a different take on the same events. Since others have come to the same conclusion they have, perhaps their own belief isn’t as true as they once thought it was.

For example, somebody says they can’t get a date because they are overweight. They likely have an idea in their head that overweight people can’t be found attractive by others. You then casually ask them if all the other overweight people share that same belief. Since they obviously don’t, they are forced to reconsider their reason for not finding a date.

Since losing weight is pretty difficult, it can be a huge barrier to success if you feel that your weight is holding you back. Once you realize it’s not your weight, but something else, then that “whatever else” can be a much easier obstacle to overcome.

In some cases, shifting this one belief can be enough.

For example, if they walked into a social gathering, and had the belief “people don’t find overweight people attractive,” they wouldn’t likely be very sociable, and would have difficulty starting conversations.

But if they walked into a social gathering without that belief, or even the opposite, “plenty of people find overweight people attractive,” it could be much easier for them to start a conversation.

You can also apply the Allness Frame to your listener, but throughout their own lives.

For example, somebody says, “I can’t buy this product, it’s too expensive.”

You can ask them if they’d ever bought something before that was “too expensive,” but as it turned out, that particular thing, whatever it was, was well worth the money.

It may not get you the sale right away, but it will likely bring out what may be the “real objection,” such as product features or something else that you can more easily work with.

Some more examples.

I can’t get a college degree because I didn’t get a scholarship.

You mean nobody who gets a scholarship ever gets a scholarship? Wow, that’s pretty rough. I didn’t know that. Wait a minute, I didn’t get a scholarship and I’m getting a college degree. What exactly are you talking about?

Being stressed forces me to eat a pint of ice cream every night.

Ever since you were a kid you’ve been eating ice cream every single time you get stressed? You mean you have a portable freezer in your car, and every time there’s too much traffic, and you may be late to wherever you are going, you pull out the ice cream and start munching away? That’s pretty ingenious of you! But what happens when you are stressed because there is no more ice cream? What do you do then?

It’s too difficult to lose weight.

Really? Nobody who ever lived has ever lost weight? I wasn’t aware of that. I guess I’d better be careful.

I can’t learn these language patterns, they are too difficult.

If they are too difficult to learn, how did so many books get written about them? Surely those people had to learn them enough to write the books? Maybe they were born knowing all these patterns?

I’ll never be able to use these patterns in a normal conversation, it would seem to weird and unnatural.

So nobody has ever learned a new way to talk? Nobody has ever taken a risk in public or in a social situation? The words that you know now, you knew them right when you were born, and you never went through the natural language learning curve, where you used words incorrectly or strangely? You are a fascinating person. What other talents were you born with?

(end examples)

Be a bit careful with these, as often times when you take away the “out there” hallucination that people hold with their beliefs, they are sometimes forced to confront their own shortcomings.  It can be difficult to accept that other people can do certain things, but you can’t. So people tend to fight tooth and nail to hold on to their “out there” hallucinations about their beliefs.

As with all the other patterns, introduce these conversationally, spaced out enough over time, and allow them to slowly come to their own conclusion about their beliefs.

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Conversational reframes are great way to covertly invite your listener to “think outside the box” when facing an objection or limiting belief.

The Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns are specific verbal strategies to use conversational reframes skillfully so any objection, obstacle, or limiting belief you come across doesn’t stand a chance.

The pattern for today is “Model Of The World Framing.” This is based on the idea that “The Map Is Not The Territory.” This truism from NLP holds a lot of weight, and deserves some attention.

We humans move through the world, and collect information through our five senses. Every idea, every thought, every fear about the future or feelings of the past are created with memories involving these five senses.

However, something happens in between the world “outside” and our representation of that world that is constructed in our brains from that sense information.

The data is distorted, deleted, and generalized. This is necessary, since our conscious minds can only handle a few bytes of information a second, but the amount of information constantly being presented to our fives senses runs in the millions or even billions of bytes per second. Our brain has to make some hard choices, and make them in real time.

So what happens?

Our brains are filled up with interpretations of what we really think is “out there.” And these interpretations are often generated by the meaning we give to events. However, most of us don’t see things that way. We don’t feel as if we give meaning to events, we feel as if we discover meaning in events.

By using this particular pattern, the Model of The World Pattern, we invite the listener to question their interpretation of certain events.

Simply by labeling their belief, which they likely assume is absolute set in stone truth, as merely a “model of the world,” it gives them some mental wiggle room to come up with some different interpretations of the same events.

Some ways to help them along these lines is to give some examples of others who see the same events, but don’t draw the same conclusions. Another way is to carefully find out how long they’ve held that particular model. Yet another way is to ask who they learned that particular model from. Speaking in these terms, it makes their belief or objection seem much more pliable and easy to shift around until they find something more resourceful.

Other ways are to use words like “seem, appear, feels like, etc.” to give the belief or objection a subjective frame, rather than a frame of absolute truth.

Some examples.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I’m sure it seems like that right now. Do other people believe the same thing? Do most people that don’t have good jobs that have college degrees believe that? How about people that have good jobs, but don’t have a college degree, what about them? What do you suppose they believe?

I’ll never fall in love because I’m too fat.

You feel like you won’t ever meet somebody if you are overweight? Have you always believed that? Can you remember a time when you didn’t believe that? Do you remember who you learned that from? There are plenty people that are overweight, and happily married. What do you think they feel about finding a partner while being overweight?

My friend is angry at me because she didn’t return my phone call.

Yea, it sucks when somebody doesn’t call you right back. Has that always meant that she was angry with you? Can you remember a time when you knew she wasn’t angry and she still didn’t call you back? What about others? Do other people’s friends not calling them back mean they are angry with them, or could it mean something else? What if you called somebody you didn’t know, and they didn’t call you back, would that mean they were angry with you?

Learning these patterns is difficult. I’ll never be able to use these conversationally.

I met this guy who happens to be a sales rep other night at my Toastmasters club. He said he learned these patterns several years ago, and he’s been easily making six figures ever since. He said this was the best time investment he’d ever made, even more so that his formal college degree. I wonder if he thinks these patterns are difficult and too complicated to use conversationally.

An easy way to practice this pattern is to simply look at things, and practice giving them different meanings. Or find something you think is absolutely true (like ‘math is hard,’ or ‘it’s tough to make money in a down economy’), and find three or four different people (as different from you as possible) and try and guess what they believe regarding this.

Another way is to practice is on Internet forums, where the topics of discussion are easily flammable, like politics, religion, etc. Find some beliefs that people state relatively clearly, and practice using this pattern, either on paper, or actually posting to that particular forum.

Practicing this pattern on your own beliefs will give you an incredible amount of mental flexibility that can serve you very well throughout your entire life, so take some time to get familiar with this.

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When sufficient skills in Sleight of Mouth Language patterns, you can easily obliterate objections and limiting beliefs without even losing a step in your conversation. Unlike other objection dismantling procedures, these don’t steamroll your listener, using strong arm tactics. Rather, they covertly invite your listener to consider other points of view.

When they do change their mind, and come to the obvious conclusion that their previous belief or objection doesn’t really make much sense, no one will be the wiser.

Today’s pattern is called “Outcome of Outcome Framing.” It’s a step further than the previous pattern, “First Outcome Framing,” as it goes further out into the future.

Kind of like when George Bailey, in the Christmas favorite, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” was invited into a world where he didn’t exist, and decided that jumping off that bridge wasn’t such a good idea after all. He saw how worse off people were for him not having involved himself in their lives.

Similarly, you can conversationally paint a future for your listener, taking their belief as a starting point, and extrapolating out five or ten years into the future.

Sometimes we are comfortable with our beliefs in the present, even if at some level we realize they are limiting, but when we see how our lives will be five or ten years, often enough that is enough to shock us out of our complacency.

The basic structure of this pattern is to simply accept their belief or objection at face value, and then wonder, out loud, where that will lead them in a few years. It can also help if the future you extrapolate to will give them the exact opposite of what they think the belief or objection is doing for them in the present.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

I can’t help eating ice cream when I’m stressed. (X causes Y, Stress causes me to eat ice cream)

Yea, that’s one way to deal with stress. I suppose if you keep it up, eating ice cream like that every other night, you’re going to be a lot heavier in five years. Imagine how stressful that will be, what with all your extra blood pressure and cholesterol that you’ll be carrying around with you along with all that stress.

I can’t talk to girls/boys because I don’t know what to say.

Yea, I totally understand. I think so too sometimes. It’s gonna be embarrassing, ten years from now if somebody sets you up on a blind date, and they ask you when was the last time you dated somebody. They’ll probably think you a bit strange if you say you haven’t been on a date in ten years.

My friend didn’t return my phone call. That means she’s angry with me. (X means Y).

So you aren’t going to call her back? You’re call, man. But just think what it will be like if everybody who doesn’t call you back right away is your enemy all of a sudden. It’s gonna be a lonely world.

I can’t buy your product, it’s too expensive.

Yea, lots of people say that. I wonder about the people that didn’t decide to buy this product if they even realize how much continues value that this product provides for several years, that they’re missing out on, after only making one payment in the beginning.

or

Yea, that’s true. Some of my customers who bought this a few years ago, and are locked into all the free upgrades for life, are really happy they made the decision, before the price went up, just like it does every year.

(Note that in sales situations, it tough to build enough rapport to use this pattern directly, so telling stories about other people along the same lines is often times a good approach.)

Learning these patterns is too hard and complicated.

Yea, most people feel that way. That’s why I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet a couple years ago and really dig into them. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I feel sorry for people who’ve known about these patterns for years, but never took the time to learn them. Their lives could be so much better now.

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With Sleight of Mouth Language patterns you can easily overcome objections and dismantle limiting beliefs with a few carefully crafted phrases.

Today’s pattern is called “First Outcome Framing,” and invites your listener or conversation partner to think of the results, or eventual outcome, of their particular belief or objection.

Just speaking about it in these terms is sometimes enough to shake it loose. When people express a belief or an objection, they are usually “set in stone,” at least in their mind.

But when we speak in terms of consequences, it somehow allows them to think of their belief or objection that they have a measure of control over.

The structure is fairly simple. You accept their belief at face value, and merely extrapolate out into the future, and get a less than desirable outcome of this particular belief. One that they would likely not want to experience.

This causes them to do a quick, mental double take on their original belief, oftentimes rethinking it. This works great when you follow it up with a couple of other patterns. You can either do this right away, or depending on the conversation and the relationship with the person, you can steer the conversation somewhere else, and then occasionally come back to the belief or objection, and throw another pattern at them.

They’ll have no idea why their objection or limiting belief went up in smoke. They’ll likely feel like they had some kind of divine inspiration or remembered something incredibly important that they didn’t know before.

To make this pattern, just take the belief, and casually wonder out loud what it will lead to, and let them come to their own conclusions. Just make sure that when you are wondering out loud, that the outcome it leads to isn’t all that great. You don’t want to support any objections or limiting beliefs.

A couple examples.

I can’t get a date because I’m no good at talking to boys/girls.

Wow, that’s pretty tough. I suppose just thinking that will keep you from going and talking to somebody that is really cool, and maybe starting a good friendship. I would kind of suck if somebody was waiting for you to go and talk to them, but you decided not to because you think you’re no good at talking to people.

My friend didn’t respond when I said “hi,” so she must be mad at me.

Wow. That’s pretty rough.So how do you treat people that are made at you? I usually get mad right back at them. So are you going to yell at your friend the next time you see her? That wouldn’t be very nice if she just had lots of things on her mind.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Maybe. But I’m sure that you won’t apply to many place if you believe that. And I’m pretty sure you can’t get a good job if you don’t apply anywhere. So I guess you’re right on track. That cool with you?

I can’t learn all these patterns, they’re too many, and they are too difficult.

Wow, that sounds pretty bad. Whenever I think something is too hard, I usually quit to. Do you know how many people are using these patterns to make tons of money in sales? I guess you don’t want that, right?

(end examples)

These particular patterns can sound a bit harsh if said without any judgment whatsoever. It’s important to remember that when you use these, you aren’t looking for an ego boost, or the person to say something like:

“Wow! I never thought of that! You’re so smart! Thanks for convincing me!’

Rather, you are simply throwing some ideas out there, and making it sound as if you are wondering about them yourself. Then leave it up to the listener to come to their own conclusion. (Which happens to be the exact conclusion you want them to.)

So long as you have no problems with your listener keeping their belief or objection, and you are throwing these out in a “Hey, cool if it works for you…” frame, then you should be OK.

Just make sure when they do decide to buy into your idea, you stick around to reap the benefits.

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Sleight of Mouth language patterns have been used in everything from therapy and sales, to seduction and getting elected (even to President). You can use them in any situation where you find yourself up against a verbal objection, or an expression of limitation based on some model of the world.

Today’s pattern is called “Positive Prior Intention Framing,” and is a bit of a doozy. It may seem a bit presumptuous, as you are assuming you know something about why a person is saying or believing something. But in this case, you are assuming a positive intention, and most people don’t get offended when somebody assumes something about them that’s positive.

The basic structure is like this. Somebody has got this objection, or limitation. That means in their mind, the way they are thinking about something, there is a problem preventing them from getting what they want. Maybe they think they can’t afford a product, or maybe they don’t think they can successfully convince their boss to give them a raise. In their mind, on that particular topic, there is something out of reach, and some big hairy (imaginary) monster keeping them from getting it. Not the best state to be in.

Then you come along, and listen to and understand their (imagined) predicament and come up with a positive reason they have constructed their own predicament. They can mentally step back from the situation, feel more resourceful (as most people will generally agree, at least in part, with the positive assumptions others express about them) and have a much higher likelihood of figuring out their limitation, or coming up with a way around their objection.

Underlying this particular reframes is one of the presuppositions of NLP, namely, that behind every behavior or belief lies a positive intention. People don’t eat too much because they want to get fat, it’s because the food gives them comfort, and seeking comfort is a positive intention. People don’t drop out of college because they want to limit their options, it’s because they fear failure, and avoiding pain is one of the oldest positive intentions of human nature.

To use this conversationally, you’ll need to think of some positive intention, or some possible positive intention behind their stated belief or objection.

• What are they really after?
• What are they protecting themselves from?
• How has this helped them in the past?
• How can this help them now?

Then you phrase in a positive, complimentary way, and carefully show them that they are much more resourceful than they think. Their mood will improve, their outlook will become brighter, and they will discover resources and ideas they hadn’t thought of before (either on their own or with your covert help), and may very well convince themselves of another way around their imagined obstacle or limitation.

Some examples.

Stated limitation:

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Possible positive intentions:

They want to maintain their safety. They don’t want to compete with others they consider “out of their league.” They want to stay with what’s familiar and known. They don’t want to get in over their head. They don’t want to try, and fail.

Possible conversational reframes:

So you want to get a job that’s stable, I can totally understand that. With today’s economy, focusing on maintaining a stable job is an extremely valuable trait to have. Many employers, in fact, are starting to shift their focus on from people with specific qualifications to those that can really focus and learn on the job, in order to create that stability both for the employee, and the employer. You might consider that when sending out your resumes.

Stated limitation:

I can’t find a romantic partner because I’m overweight.

Positive intentions:

Safety, security, emotional stability.

Reframe:

Sure, I can understand that. Nobody likes being rejected. It seems like more and more people these days are looking for somebody with exactly those characteristics. Somebody that is going to commit to something long term, rather than a short time fling.

Stated limitation:

I can’t learn all these language patterns, they are too difficult and time consuming.

Reframe:

Yea, I can relate. I hate studying all kinds of esoteric knowledge that has very little application. There’s only twenty four hours in the day, and you’ve simply got to decide what’s important and what isn’t. It’s good that you recognize that. Most people don’t. One of the reasons I like these patterns so much is that they make your communication so much more efficient, you don’t have to spend all day trying to convince somebody to do something. Just a few minutes is all you need.

(end examples)

A really good way to practice this pattern is to simply observe people you see. You don’t have to look very hard to see people that are engaged in behaviors and conversations that don’t appear to be very useful or healthy. Instead of judging, simply take a step back and imagine three or four different positive intentions behind their behavior.

Just doing this one exercise, even if you don’t bring it to the level of conversational reframes, has the interesting effect of making the world seem a lot less hostile.

And that can brighten your mood considerably.

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Sleight of Mouth patterns are incredibly useful linguistic tools to defeat any argument, overcome any limiting belief, or quickly smash any verbal objection that comes your way.

These patterns, when used together (there are 24 of them) will make you a linguistic ninja with a variety of tools to assassinate any argument that comes your way. (Nice metaphor, huh?)

Today’s pattern is called “Counter Example Framing”, and is pretty logical and straightforward. It is powerful enough to be used by itself, but when combined with one or two other patterns, you will virtually unstoppable.

In Counter Example Framing, you take the belief or the objection, and simply find examples where it doesn’t hold up. Frequently when people express beliefs or objections, they are framed in a “All or Nothing” structure, as if they are true for everybody all the time.

When you use a couple of counter examples, it can give them a bit of pause, as they start to realize that it’s really their map that is less than useful, and not reality itself.

Like the other patterns, be very careful when using this one, as you need to be careful of proving the other person “wrong.” Carefully suggest some other alternatives, and let your listener mull them over on their own, and come to their own conclusion (the exact conclusion you want them to come to).

Some examples

I can’t find a date because I’m too fat.

Being fat causes no date. (X causes Y)

So simply show some examples in your life, in their life, in other people’s lives where being overweight didn’t cause any problems.

That boy/girl in biology class likes you.
That big girl who works at the ice cream shop has three or four boyfriends/girlfriends.
So nobody who is over a certain weight can ever get a boyfriend/girlfriend?

I don’t have a college degree, so I can’t get a good job.

Yea, just like Bill Gates.
What about all the rich people that lived before they invented colleges, how did they get good jobs?
You had that awesome job in high school, and you didn’t have a college degree then.
Wait, doesn’t your boss not have a college degree?

Going on a diet and losing weight is hard. (X = Y)

Did you hear about that girl who lost 200 pound to win the love of her crush? She said it was the easiest thing she ever did.
People that exercise say that the endorphins created give them the most incredible feelings of pleasure you could ever experience.

Talking to girls is scary and terrifying. (X = Y)

I know this guy that can’t stop talking to girls. In fact, that’s the main reason he can’t keep a girlfriend for very long. He just loves talking to new people. Do you think it’s hard for him?

Your product is too expensive.

I know what you mean. I actually thought the same thing myself, and got a lot of grief from my wife when I first brought it home. But after we realized just how valuable it was, we were very happy that we decided to buy this.

Learning all these language patterns is difficult and tedious.

I read this book from this guy and he said when he realized how much more money he could make in his business with these patterns, he couldn’t wait to finish work so he could go home and practice. He said all he could think about was money and lots of time off from work as he studied these patterns. Now he’s the company president, and he only works about four months out of the year.

(end examples)

A couple of things may happen when you use these patterns. You might destroy their belief altogether, or you may uncover a deeper belief.

For example, the objection “I can’t meet people because I’m overweight” might not really be about being overweight. Being overweight is likely an excuse, and once you destroy the excuse with these patterns, you’ll uncover the real issue.

The other thing that may come up is you may encounter a belief about the world in general, but after reframing it with this particular pattern, the belief may shift to a belief about the person and his or her capabilities.

“Talking to girls is scary,” a global belief, or a belief about talking to girls in general, may shift to “I can’t talk to girls because I’m too scared.” Which is definitely a step in the right direction, because as long as somebody believes something is “out there” in the world, it can’t be changed.

Once you shift something to the personal level, it can easily be overcome with various other techniques. And often enough, when somebody else can do something, it’s a good enough model to work from to increase personal skill.

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This article is one in a series of training modules on Sleight of Mouth, an extraordinarily powerful set of linguistic tools that you can easily use to quickly defeat any argument, destroy any limiting belief in yourself or others, and overcome any imagined obstacle or objection that you come across.

In short, these language pattern will give you a tenth degree black belt in verbal Judo.

There are 24 patterns in all, and today’s pattern is called “Specificity,” or “Chunking Down.” This pattern won’t usually work on its own (although it does on occasion), but it is very powerful in ‘loosening up’ the mind of your listener, and give you some mental wiggle room to get in their and move ideas and beliefs around.

The basic structure is to ask questions in order to elicit more specific elements of the belief. Recall that these need to be in the form of “X causes Y,” or “X means Y” in order for these patterns to be most effective. It can sometimes be tricky to tease these out of your listener, especially if you are covertly or conversationally changing their beliefs.

Let’s look at some examples. Say a friend of yours says something like, “I don’t have a college degree. I’ll never get good job.” Or more likely, you will on the subject of high paying jobs, and they’ll simply say “Yea, but I don’t have a college degree.”

The implied complex equivalent, (X means Y) is:

Not having a college degree means ( = ) getting a decent job is impossible.

First of all, notice that the statement is framed as an established truth , and not only for the individual(e.g. getting a job is impossible, vs. I can’t get a job). This takes the pressure of him or her, and makes it a little bit easier to look at this belief more objectively.

In order to get more specific, (or to “chunk down” to use NLP lingo) simply ask questions for more details. Questions like:

• What degrees do you need?
• What jobs require what degrees?
• What kind of degrees? (Bachelors, Masters, PhD)
• What exactly is a decent job?
• How exactly do you know this?
• What information did you use to come to this conclusion?
• If I had to come up with the same belief, what would I have to imagine? What part of my past would I have to remember?
• Did somebody tell you this?
• Did you read about this somewhere?
• How exactly did you come to believe this?
• What age group does this hold true for?
• How do you know this is true? What pictures, sounds, feelings do you generate?
• Could you teach me how to reproduce those same exact sounds, feelings, etc?

This sounds like you’d be giving the person the third degree, so it’s best to ask these from a frame of genuine curiosity. As if you find the idea intriguing, but you haven’t made up your mind yet.

If you sound at all confrontational, or as if you’ve already made up your mind, the other person will shut down and go into defensive mode fairly quickly. To see this in action, go to any online forum, and hunt around until you find somebody expressing a limiting belief like this.

If you show up unannounced, and start firing off questions like the above, you’ll make an enemy real quick.

The trick is to ask the questions, and show no indication that you think the answers are right or wrong, or silly. Remain neutral, and curious. The idea is to expand the other persons idea of their own belief while feeling safe enough to talk about it.

Sometimes, if you can develop enough rapport, and refrain from ‘proving the person wrong,’ this can go to great lengths to weaken the belief so that it dies a natural death later on.

The most fundamental thing to keep in mind when using these patterns is to let go of any need to “take credit” for changing the persons belief. Your goal should be to covertly convince them to change their belief on their own, and honestly believe it was due to their own skills of introspection.

Your mission, then, if you choose to accept it, is to find some heavily trafficked forums regarding touchy issues (loveshack is a great one) and get some practice getting people to get more specific about their beliefs.

Just realize that more often than not, you’ll get a “Who the HELL are YOU?!” response. That’s OK. In this stage of your learning, it’s sufficient to just get a handle on the operational use of these patterns. Once you are more fluent with them, you can go back and practice using them with more elegance and finesse.

Have fun.

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This is an article in a series on linguistic presuppositions, those powerfully effective language patterns that you can use conversationally to persuade your listeners and readers.

Today’s pattern is called the “Spurious Not,” and is similar in structure to both the rhetorical question pattern and the negative question pattern.

You can use it as follows. Take any negative question, separate the contraction (e.g. aren’t you à are you not) and simply make the question. When you separate the “not” out like that, it takes a little bit more brain processor time to make sense of the question.

If you’ve ever see a TV show when the lawyer had some poor witness on the stand, and kept firing away with questions like:

“Were you not there that night that…”
“Did you not see the defendant…”
“Are you not aware that you are under oath?”

These are intended to throw the witness off guard, and make them more susceptible to tell the truth, (or less resistant to cover something up) or in the case of les than ethical attorney’s, answer the questions in a way that throws their client in a better light, or confuses the jury, so that they will have a harder time coming back with a verdict against the attorney’s client.

In order to persuade, it’s best to phrase these like you are asking a question of yourself, and then follow up with a more “leading” statement.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight

I wonder if you are not already aware that exercise is the best way to lose weight, because when you realize that you can save a lot of money by not buying all those diet pills and mail order meal plans.

I wonder if you are not already aware that many people have already discovered that exercise is not only the best way to lose weight, but also a great way to improve the quality of your sleep and boost your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market

I wonder if you are not already aware that dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market, and can save you lots of time and worry.

I wonder if you are not already aware of many people who are now happily retired simply because they decided before that the simplest and most effective way to consistently make money in the stock market is through simple, dollar cost averaging.

Idea = presuppositions are a great way to persuade people

I wonder if you are not becoming more and more aware that with these simple language patterns, you can easily persuade your friends and family to vastly improve their lives by opening up a world of possibility around them.

I wonder if you are not starting to realize that presuppositions are not only a powerfully effective way to conversationally persuade others, but they will make it virtually impossible for others to manipulate you, as you will be able to clearly see their intentions beneath their language.

I wonder if you are not already seeing the benefit of not only reading this blog on a daily basis, but also of emailing a link to all your friends, so they too can benefit from these powerful language patterns?

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Here we go with another article on linguistic presuppositions, the powerful language patterns that you can use to easily, naturally, and covertly persuade others through everyday conversation.

Today’s pattern is the “comparative as” and is very powerful. The structure of a comparative as is as follows: Take two things, and find something about them that is similar. I am as tall as my brother. It is as cold in Alaska as it is in Hokkaido. It is as hot in Arizona as it is in Okinawa.

There are a couple of powerful ways to use this pattern for persuasion. The first is to turn into a question. Let’s say you want to persuade somebody that exercise is the best way to lose weight. You ask the question:

Do you know of any method that is as effective as daily exercise to lose weight?

If they answer “no,” then they admit that exercise is the best way to lose weight. If they answer “yes,” then they admit that exercise and something else are equally good for losing weight. In effect they are admitting they exercise, and something else, are tied for first place when it comes to the best way to lose weight.

Let’s look at some more examples.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is the best way to consistently make money in the stock market.

Do you know of any way that is as effective as dollar cost averaging to make money consistently in the stock market?

Again, if they answer “no,” they are tacitly agreeing to your idea. If they answer “yes,” they are admitting that whatever other method they are thinking of, it is only as good as dollar cost averaging, not better.

Another way to use this pattern, is make it a statement of a question that you asked yourself:

I don’t know of any method that is as effective as exercise to lose weight.

I can’t think of any investing strategy that is as effective as dollar cost averaging that will consistently build wealth in the stock market.

If you have any kind of credentials, or client, you can quote them.

I’ve been a personal trainer for many years, and I haven’t found any method that is as effective as simple daily exercise for weight loss.

I’ve been an investment advisor for two decades, and none of my clients have found a method that is as effective as dollar cost averaging to consistently make money in the stock market.

You can also quote a group of experts.

Leading nutritionists who have been studying various ways of weight loss over the years haven’t found anything as effective and long lasting as consistent, daily exercise.

Financial experts who have consistently outperformed the markets have never really found anything as effective as simple dollar cost averaging for generating a huge amount of wealth over time.

Leading salespeople who have consistently been at the top of their field have never found any other method that is as effective as linguistic presuppositions to easily persuade their clients to buy their products.

Now I don’t know about you, and how advanced you are in your persuasion skills, but if you ever find any other method that is as effective, as easy to learn, and as covert as linguistic presuppositions, I’d sure like to know about them!

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This is another article in a series on linguistic presuppositions, those powerful language patterns that can easily give you the persuasive power of a Jedi Knight.

Today’s pattern is stressed sentences, or stressed words within a sentence. Although they can be used in written form, with boldface type, they are much more powerful in person.

Here’s how they work. You take your idea that you’d like to persuade the other person, and place a commentary adjective in front of it, and simply say the sentence. When you combine a commentary adjective, (amazing, wonderful, fantastic) with some voice stress, and some obviously happy facial expressions, the rest of the sentence has a much better chance of being wholly accepted as true.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Sentence:

I think it’s AMAZING that exercise is the best way to lose weight because all you really need is a few minutes every morning.

The results you get from just a little bit of exercise are truly AMAZING.

You can get some really AMAZING weight loss results form just a few minutes of exercise every day.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is a simple way to consistently grow wealth in the stock market.

Sentence:

I just read this AMAZING article that showed how much money you can make by this AWESOME technique called dollar cost averaging.

My friend showed me ASTOUNDING proof of how he made tons of money through dollar cost averaging.

Idea = presuppositions will skyrocket your persuasion skills

Sentence:

The AMAZING thing about presuppositions is not how powerful they are, but how simple they are to learn.

I’ve gotten such FANTASTIC sales results once I started using these simple things called linguistic presuppositions.

Now, I don’t know how many AMAZING discoveries you’ll find regarding these POWERFUL patterns, perhaps you’ll drop in a comment to let us know of the FANTASTIC things you can imagine doing with them in the future.

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This is another article in a series on how you can use linguistic presuppositions to easily and naturally persuade others to your way of thinking. Linguistic presuppositions are sentences that on a logical level are very hard to argue with. When you combine several of them together, their persuasive power can be extremely difficult to resist, so be careful not to make anybody think or do something they will later regret.

Today’s topic is the pseudo cleft sentence. Similar to the cleft sentence, but slightly more powerful. The basic pattern is this:

What (idea1) is (idea2)

Where idea1 and idea2 are phrases of varying lengths. The best way to use these is to set it up so idea1 is a positive outcome that your listener or reader will likely enjoy, and idea2 is the cause of idea1, of which you are trying to persuade your audience.

A couple examples

Idea1 = nice, slim, sexy body, drawing the attraction of members of the opposite sex

Idea1 = daily exercise

Sentence:

What will give you an incredibly slim body that will get you more attention than you’ve ever thought possible is simple daily exercise of only a few minutes.

Idea1 = money, (lots and lots of it)

Idea2 = dollar cost averaging

Sentence:

What will get you wealth that consistently grows on its own is the simple practice of dollar cost averaging.

Idea1 = powerful persuasion skills

Idea2 = linguistic presuppositions

Sentence:

What will absolutely skyrocket your persuasion skills so that you can pretty much sell anything to anybody are linguistic presuppositions.

You can juice these up a little bit by prefacing the beginning “What” with some commentary adjectives or adjective phrases:

It’s amazing that what will create a stunning body is simple daily exercise.

It’s funny that most people don’t know that what gives most expert salespeople their massive closing ratios are these simple things called linguistic presuppositions.

It’s absolutely incredible that what can set you up for a comfortable retirement is simple dollar cost averaging.

It’s amazing that what will give you incredible insight into human language, so that you can not only persuade others with ease, but also know when other people are using these powerful skills to try and manipulate you, is reading this blog on a daily basis for more and more information.

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This article is part three in a series on using presuppositions to covert persuasion and influence. Presuppositions are one of the most powerful yet least known about methods of influence. They work by constructing a sentence that pre supposes certain things (of your choice) to be true, things that your listener or reader will not question.

Today’s topic is in the category of simple presuppositions, and is another form of noun. If you recall previous examples, we’ve covered simple nouns, names, and pronouns. Today’s nouns are of the “generic noun phrases,” or noun phrases (two or more words describing a noun) that stand for a whole class, usually people.

Like the previous examples, this won’t do you much good on it’s own, but it’s usually a good idea to take it slow when learning something new, to make sure you get the fundamentals down, so later on you can use more complex patterns much more easier and more natural.

OK, lets see some examples:

Leading doctors agree that exercise is good for health.

Top Financial Advisers recommend investing the same amount of money in the stock market every month to achieve the best long-term results.

Great companies have always known that continually developing new products is key to consistent profits.

In the above examples, “leading doctors,” “top financial advisers,” and “great companies,” are all examples of a generic noun phrase. Of course you could say “convicted felons,” “successful dictators,” or “top rated snipers,” but that might give your listeners or readers the wrong impression about your message, unless you were trying to persuade somebody NOT to do something.

Convicted felons know that once you successfully commit your first crime, it’s almost impossible to stop until you end up in jail.

You might say that to a group of high-risk kids, for example.

Usually, however, you are trying to persuade somebody to do something, rather than not do something. In this case, it’s best to choose a class that sounds somewhat authoritative on whatever topic it is you are persuading, to give your ideas some kind of “social proof,” or “authority.”

Later, when we get into more advanced, complex presuppositions, you’ll see how this one technique can be a powerful “anchor” on which to hang other techniques in your speech or copywriting that can greatly enhance your persuasive efforts.

So the pattern for generic noun phrases is:

(Adjective) + (group of authoritative sounding people)

Top scientists
Leading financial advisors
Highly regarded personal trainers
Weight loss specialists
Leading dieticians

Etc.

Next we’ll talk about one more “simple” kind of presuppositions before moving into the more powerful (and fun) “complex” kind.

The more techniques we learn, the more interesting and powerful combinations we can come up with.

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I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, and I noticed something interesting about her speech. She had always spoken like that, but I hadn’t talked to her in quite a while. Last time we spoke was before I had become interested in language, having read several books on linguistics and other interesting tricks of language, most notably books by Pinker, Lakoff, and Grinder/Bandler.

The thing I noticed now, that I didn’t notice before was her heavy use of indirect speech. For example, I would say “A,” and she would then think “Because of A, then B,” with “B” being something that didn’t sound like such a good thing. But because she didn’t want to (either consciously or unconsciously) blurt right out “B!” She would always hide it behind layers of presuppositions and vague references.

For example, she would mention wanting more money at work, and I would suggest asking her boss for a raise. Instead of saying the obvious “If I ask for a raise, he’ll say no, and think less of me for asking.”

Which is a common enough fear, and generally the immediate reaction of most people when thinking about asking for a raise. But instead of blurting that right out, she’d say something like:

“I’m not sure if I have the presence of mind right now to think of what would happen if I were to do that.”

Which sounds innocent enough, until you unpack that seemingly simple statement and see what she’s really saying:

She is assuming that “presence of mind,” (whatever that is) is something that is difficult to identify, as she’s not sure if she has it or not.

Something called “presence of mind,” is required to understand the result of a request for more money.

“If I were to do that,” is stated as a second conditional. A first conditional is an “if..then” statement using the present tense, which presumes it is something that is likely to occur.

If it rains, I will get wet.
If I spend my money, I won’t have any.
If I drive too fast, I may get a ticket.

While the second conditional, with the past tense, is used for things that we don’t expect will happen, or are impossible.

If I asked my boss for a raise, he would say no.
If I saw a UFO, I would run.

So in response to a suggestion to ask for more money, she hides her “no, I’m too afraid” behind about three layers of linguistic protection.

If you’ve ever listened to a politician speak, you can tell right away that there speech is usually filled with layers and layers of vague ambiguity, so nobody can ever pin them down on what they said, if things go wrong, and if things go right, they can claim they had something to do with it.

It’s no wonder the joke, “how do you tell a politician is lying – when his lips are moving,” is so funny.

In one of the aforementioned books, Pinker was talking about how in societies where they have a history of class distinction, where upper class people could legally kill lower class people, (or other upper class people if they situation warranted it) they have developed a very polite level of speech, which can exist hundreds of years after the threat of violence.

If you were talking to some guy that was carrying weapons, and by offending him you risked getting your head slice off, you’d quickly learn to speak politely. It doesn’t take long for such a society to develop polite language. The American South is one such example. If you said the wrong thing to the wrong person, he would demand “Satisfaction,” and you’d have a gunfight at twenty paces on your hands.

Those that study linguistics on a much deeper evolutionary level suggest that all indirect speech has its roots in ancient fears of immediate reprisals. It doesn’t sound dangerous in the least to ask your boss for a raise, at least not from the standpoint of physical violence, but nevertheless, those feelings of fear cause us to hide our real feelings beneath several layers of “politeness” and vague ambiguity.

There is a fascinating book called “Mean Genes,” which illustrates all the ways that our automatic impulses that helped us immensely in our evolutionary past can be a real pain in the you-know-what in modern society. Stuffing our face until we can’t move when we are in the presence of food is one example that you can see everywhere you look in modern western society.

In the past, the several thousand year ago past, that impulse was beneficial. People would go several days without food, and when they finally got some, all other concerns were put on the back burner, and it was time to eat until the food was gone.

Not so helpful when you pass by three McDonalds, two Dunkin Donuts and a Bakery on the way to work every morning.

Of course, the great hope of modern humankind is to rise above our evolutionary based fears, and the ability to use our rational, conscious minds to think our ways around those pesky impulses to plan our future, instead of letting our impulses plan it for us.

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I remember once I played a game with a group of highly educated, professional ESL students I was teaching. I’ve heard this game called “Chinese whispers,” or the “telephone game,” or other things. I even remember playing it once or twice as a kid. And even with a group of kids that are fluent in the language in which this game is being played, it is still funny to see.

Basically you get the group into a circle, and choose a simple enough phrase, and whisper it into the ear of the person on one end. The rules are that they can’t speak the phrase out loud, and they have to repeat it to the person next to them as soon as they hear it. You usually start out with a phrase like “banana ice cream,” and end up with something like “purple gorilla.”

It’s really fun to play with ESL students (English as a second language) because the end result often times doesn’t even qualify as an English word or phrase. But as a teaching tool, it helps to give students an opportunity to really practice their listening skills. The goal, the ultimate goal is to develop listening skills so that even passive listening will yield some understanding. I’ve you’ve ever studied a foreign language, and have listened to a dialogue or conversation that was even slightly above your comprehension level, you know how quickly you can get tired.

On this particular group, I started out with the phrase “blue truck.” Everybody got a kick out of the final answer, and it proved an interesting point.

Moving something from conscious competence to unconscious competence can take time, and come in stages, so doing this particular exercise is one drill, out of many, that can help to speed this process up.

I remember once I was at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, a friend of mine and I had just seen what we thought was going to be a Pink Floyd laser show, where they play a bunch of cool music, while you sit back and look at light show performed up above on a special dome. Only we misread the newspaper, and it was a classical music show instead. It was still worth the money, as a combination of good music through a really fantastic sound system, coupled with some skilled laser “shapes” that move around in sync with the music is pretty mesmerizing.

But afterward we noticed outside, on the grass they had some sort of meeting of a local astronomers club. There were several telescopes set up, all pointed at different celestial bodies. I’m pretty sure that was the only time I’d actually seen the rings of Saturn firsthand. After I looked, I had a question, something to do with the rings, and when they are visible. They owner of the telescope gave us a well informed and easy enough to understand answer (although I can’t remember exactly what it was.)

Later on that evening, as we were still wandering around, I heard somebody else ask the same question that I had asked a few minutes ago. With the answer still fresh in my short-term memory, I spit it out as if it were common knowledge. After we were out of earshot, my friend gave me a hard time for pretending to know something that I just learned only moments before. Bu then he made an interesting point.

“Isn’t that all knowledge is anyway, passing on information from one person to the next, in some long chain of people?”

You can spend a lot of time digging into that idea. When we are born, none of us know anything, other than our pre wired instincts, one of which is to learn as much as we can. Obviously, that comes second to survival, getting food and staying safe, but most of us are fortunate enough to grow up where our life doesn’t hang by a thread, so we have the luxury of motoring around and figuring out as much stuff as we can. (Which is really cute to our parents, until we learn to walk, but then it’s a completely different story).

But most of the stuff that we know today as adults came from others. Mathematics, science, history, rules of grammar, most of us didn’t invent these independently in our garage laboratory as children. We were taught these by other people. Who in turn were taught by others. I guess it’s lucky for most of us that ever generation, there are a few brilliant people like Einstein and Edison and Curie that spend their lives trying to figure out new stuff, instead of figuring out how to apply the old stuff.

I had a friend pose an interesting thought experiment to me once. He was giving a toastmasters speech on the illusion of civilization that we live in. None of the stuff we have is inherently known, as discussed before. Each generation passes on information it learned, and that information is filtered through the education system loosely made up of teachers and books and libraries.

But what would happen if all that were destroyed? What would happen to the human race if the only way we could transmit information was by word of mouth? No writing, no video, no audio. Only word of mouth. We still had all the same technology, but everything had to be built according to information passed on only face-to-face.

His theory was that we are really only a generation or two, at most, away from a complete and utter breakdown of society. With no books to refer to, most of the information we take for granted would quickly be lost. I think his underlying point was that people were completely evil, and we would quickly revert to the futuristic world of “Escape from New York” or any other futuristic movie where society breaks down and only the most barbaric can survive. I’m not so sure, but I am sure that we do depend on information passed down from generation to generation. So much so that some believe this has as much effect on human development as the day-to-day survival pressures that shaped human evolution thousands of years ago.

And the interesting concept that my ESL group illustrated was how much quicker digital information is passed than analogue information. Once one of them latched onto a phrase that she not only understood, but could easily repeat well enough to be understood, that phrase quickly passed unchanged to the last person. It was interesting to watch the spread of information. Before that moment of recognition it was slow, and unsure. But as soon as she latched onto that one phrase (which of course had nothing to do with the original phrase) it flowed like water.

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Here’s an interesting mind experiment. Ready? Here is the situation; you have four cards, with the following faces showing. D, 7, 3, F. You are told that each card has a number on one side, and a letter on the other. Now you are given a statement:

On every card that shows a “D” on one side, there is a “3″ on the other side.

Here is the challenge: How many cards do you need to turn over, and which cards, to conclusively prove or disprove the following statement, and which cards do you turn over?

While you may find this easy (I didn’t I had to cheat and read the logic behind the explanation to get it,) most people don’t. In face, when this study was first concocted by a couple of professors at Stanford (where you’d think there’s be some smart people) only about one out of four got the answer right.

Now here’s the same question, presented another way:

You are a bouncer at a bar. The rules are that you can’t drink unless you are twenty-one. Now the cards are “drinking coke, drinking beer, 16 years old, 25 years old.” Or if you prefer, there are four people sitting at the bar. One is drinking beer (you don’t know how old they are) one is drinking coke (you don’t know how old they are) one is 25 (you don’t know what they are drinking) and one is sixteen (you don’t know what they are drinking).

From a logical standpoint, the problem is identical, yet when presented the second way, most people quickly realize that in order to figure out if anybody is breaking any laws, all you do is card the person drinking beer, and quickly check what the sixteen year old is drinking. In effect, turning over two cards to see what is on the other side.

As in the case above, you turn over the “D” to verify it if has a three on the other side, and you turn over the “7″ to make sure it doesn’t have a “D” on the other side. If the D has a 3, and the 7 doesn’t have a D, then the statement is correct. If the D doesn’t have a three, and the 7 has a D, then the statement is incorrect.

The underlying problem is why, when the logic is identical, do so many people have a hard time (as I did) with the first question, and a much easier time (as I did) with the second question?

One answer could be that we aren’t as logically thinking as we’d like to believe. It may be that our brains aren’t designed to think in terms of Vulcan logic like Mr. Spock, but to think only in terms of social interactions, specifically to uncover social “cheats,” those that would break unwritten social contracts.

The thinking behind this idea goes like this. Humans lived in small groups for a couple hundred thousand years. That’s when we developed our “humanness” so to speak. One thing that evolutionary biologists think is one of the major driving forces behind the massive growth of the human brain during our history was social pressure from within the group. Our brains, our language, our thinking was all developed to outsmart each other within that small group of wandering nomads all those years ago.

Numerous studies of chimps and various apes have shown this to be a major portion for the need for their large brains as well. Most of them have plenty of food where they live, don’t need to organize sophisticated hunting parties, or come with complex methods of evading predators. Most of their thinking power, many believe, is so they can outsmart each other and rise as high in the social order as possible.

When humans developed language many, many years ago, we just took it a couple notches higher (to say the least) and developed all kinds of conscious and unconscious social skills. We learned to read facial expressions and body language, learned how to tell when somebody is cheating or lying, and be able to cheat and lie ourselves.

Many species have a specific feature, which is there solely for sexual competition within the species. The most often given example is the peacock’s tail. When peahens get together to choose their mate, they choose the male with the most flamboyant tail. Interestingly, the more flamboyant the tail, the dangerous it is for the peacock, as he is a much easier prey for predators, as well as having to lug that huge thing around should he have to run away.

In other species, they have other aspects. Bull seals have their size and strength, gorilla’s have their silver stripe of hair on their back, different birds have various ways to strut their stuff, from colored feathers to singing ability.

In humans, it is our brains, more specifically our verbal and social skills that became the driving force of sexual selection. Those that were the most eloquent, and the most persuasive, were the most prolific, and left the most offspring. Those offspring, having inherited slightly higher skills for eloquence and social prowess, in turn competed with each other. Continue that process for a few hundred thousand years, and you’ve got these big-brained humans walking around.

Us.

Something to think about yet next time you’re at a bar or club or other social gathering, and watching the vast throng trying to talk their genes into eternity.

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The other night, I decided to go out for a walk. I recently moved to new part of town, and decided to go and check things out. The sun has been setting later and later recently, and I had gotten off a little earlier than normal from work, so I figured I’d just go wandering about and see if anything interesting happened.

The first thing I noticed was this big park on the other side of my apartment building. Bunch of kids playing, lots of toys based on animals. Big gorillas, zebras, elephants that were made into slides and other playground equipment. I stopped to watch, as there were a few benches, and there was this huge grass area adjacent to the playground, so it was a pretty good spot to chill for a bit.

One thing about kids is when they play, they really play. They don’t play, but at the same time worry about their homework or whether or not their shoes really match the rest of their outfit, and if not will anybody notice. They seem to be pre set for a couple things, which seem to be completely opposite, at first glance.

On the one hand, they are pre wired to be automatic learning machines. The amount of things a kid learns between the age of two and ten is simply staggering. If you tried to learn the same amount of information in the same amount of time, you’d be a nervous wreck. They learn an entire language, complete with tens of thousands of new vocabulary words, in about five years. Any that has attempted to learn a foreign language as an adult would be lucky to retain five new words a week.

But on the other hand, they completely forget everything they are “supposed” to learn when it’s time to play. When they see a cool slide or a gorilla swing set, proper subject-verb agreement is the furthest thing from their minds. You’d think that as adults, the extra stress and worry we put into learning new things would help. But it doesn’t seem to. It seems to have the opposite effect.

They say that a kids learning capacity is different simply because they are a kid. That learning a language is easy for kids, but hard for adults, due to some pre wired brain structure due to millions of years of evolution. Some window of opportunity that once is closed, is closed for good. While that’s interesting from an objective biological point of view, it doesn’t sound too promising from a human potential point of view.

This is observable in other animals. Birds will “imprint” to their “mother” within a certain time frame, and they can be tricked into “imprinting” on an imposter if done at the right time. Certain birds learn to sing, but only between two weeks and two months old, and only if they hear another one of their kind singing. If they aren’t exposed to another one of their kind singing during that critical time period, they’ll never learn to sing properly. (Of course when I say, “sing properly” I mean sing well enough to attract a mate.) As for myself, I can only sing properly after sufficient alcohol, and a high-end voice synthesizer, but I digress.

The Jesuits used to say, (and probably still do) that if you give them a child when he is born, he will be a soldier for Christ for life by the time he’s seven. What this really means is that kids can be taught any number of beliefs when they are young, and can take a lifetime of effort to “unlearn” them. It takes a significantly life altering event, to cause an appreciable change in religious beliefs in most people. Not too many people who grow up in strong fundamentalist Christian households decide later in life to worship Zeus.

If I had my druthers, I’d like to conduct a language learning experiment. They say kids can learn languages much better than adults. Two, three, even four languages are a snap for kids so long as they are exposed to them early enough. It is assumed there is some kind of genetic “switch” that makes it harder to learn as adults, but I’m not so sure. Enter my experiment.

Take a bunch of adults, and separate them in three different groups. The first group has to learn the new language the regular way. After they finish their day job, they go to their once or twice a week at some local junior college, and then study the language whenever they have free time. Weekends, during commercials, whenever. These people are only exposed to the target language when they are in class, or they are listening to language tapes, or when (if) they bravely seek out native speakers of their target language.

The second group gets a free pass from work for a year. They are told they still have the obligations as an adult, they have to cook for themselves and maintain their household, but they get a stipend that will allow them to study on their own, along with the use of whatever material they think will help them. They of course, are only exposed to their target language when they organize their environment accordingly. Language tapes, private tutors, whatever they can afford. But when they go shopping, or watch TV, everything is in English.

The third group, I think, would be the most interesting. They are surrounded only by their target language. They never hear English (which in this case is assumed to be their native tongue.) They are surrounded by helpful speakers of the target language who buy and cook all their food (and whatever they want provided they know how to say it), drive them everywhere they want to go (provided they know how to say it), and give them massive amounts of happy praise, including generous physical, non-sexual touching and caressing (like quick back massages and what-not) whenever they speak the target language correctly. They never criticize for mistakes; only give continued encouragement to keep you going. Their only job is to learn the target language, and follow their “keepers” around whenever they go out to buy food and take care of normal, everyday housekeeping matters. And plenty of time for playing, so long as it’s in the target language (video games and what-not).

I think these “experiments” would show that there is a lot more to the change in environment, from child to adult, which makes learning harder rather than some genetic switch that makes it mentally impossible.

Obviously, as adults, unless you are super rich, you can’t really afford to learn things as described in group number three. But you’ll notice some similar advice given by various gurus who teach learning to be successful in any endeavor as an adult.

Surround yourself with people that are already proficient in what you want to learn. Give yourself rewards for every little success, no matter how small. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, and go easy on yourself when you make the “mistakes” that are absolutely necessary for growth and improvement. And give yourself time to play. The only real difference in being an adult rather than a kid is you’ve got to nurture yourself. Try it and what happens.

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So the other day I was out riding my bike, and I took a wrong turn. I was in my old neighborhood, but it had been a while, so I was busy kind of looking around and not really paying attention to where I was going. I saw these kids jumping rope, and they stopped and looked at me when I rode past, so I slowed down to get a look at them. They acted as if they’d seen me before, or knew me from somewhere, but I didn’t recognize them at all. I waited for them to say something to indicate why they were looking at me with such familiarity. That’s when I heard that creepy voice from behind me. I almost fell off my bike when I made out the words, he/she didn’t really mean that, did they?

It was like the other day when I was sitting in one of those government offices to get some government paperwork down. You can always tell you are in a government office (in case you happen to suddenly appear inside of one and you aren’t sure where you are) because the people seem to have a certain “aura” about them, and the office furniture and equipment is usually a couple steps behind the times.

If you strolled into some modern research facility, or the office of a successful construction company, you’d likely find plenty of modern up to date people wearing modern, up to date clothes using modern, up to date equipment. But government office building people and equipment look like they only get upgraded once a decade or so.

So there I was, looking at all the government office people with all the forms scattered about their desks. I zeroed in on this one guy (I was waiting for my number to be called, like it I was a deli or something) and I watched him work for a bit. He’d pick up a piece of paper, read over it for a minute or so, check something on his computer screen, then scribble something on the paper, then put the paper off to one side. Then he’d pick up another piece and do the same thing. He didn’t appear to be doing this in any sort of predetermined order, it seemed completely random. And the place the put the papers down were never the exact same place from where he picked it up. There didn’t seem to be any progression of movement, either. It wasn’t like the finished papers were somehow migrating to some predestined spot on his desk. It seemed to be a pile of randomness that was turning into more randomness.

Of course I’m sure he knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly where everything was, and exactly how far he’d progressed on all of his various tasks that were scattered about his desk. One thing that is always satisfying is having a heap of randomness, and being accused of not having any idea where anything is, and then pulling out exactly what somebody asked for without even a second thought. That’s always a good trick.

Scientists that study randomness tell us that everything is random, and only because we live inside of familiarity do we convince ourselves that there is some order. Of course, everything in the universe follows certain laws (though not of course to some) and everything that exists now, however it exists, from your desk to your brainwaves are due only to what happened before.

The problem is that many times the “what happened before” is sometimes so complex and unknowable that things can appear to happen for no reason at all. Mathematical chaos theory tries to explain this. If you knew everything about the current state of affairs (down to every last movement of every last molecule) you could theoretically predict exactly what would unfold. But knowing everything of the current state of affairs is absolutely impossible. So when things happen, things we don’t expect, it can seem like they just popped out of nowhere.

I read some book once that talked about planning for randomness like a skilled surfer can handle any wave that comes in. If you are expecting a certain wave that will break a certain way, you aren’t likely to have much fun. But if you stay flexible, and learn enough skills to ride whatever wave comes in, for as long as it lasts, you can maximize your enjoyment, and minimize any frustration of wiping out.

This requires knowing what the bottom looks like, so you know exactly when you bail out. It’s probably a better idea to bail out before you get to the jagged coral on the bottom, lest you bash your skull in and suddenly wake up in some government office in a parallel universe.

Many frustrations occur because people try and ride a wave longer than they should. They have a couple of good moves, a few moments of bliss, and stay on too long. While they seldom wipe out from staying on too long, it just takes a long time to paddle out to where the waves are breaking, wasting valuable time. If you only have a couple hours of surfing time, it’s best to make the most of it.

Finally my number was called, and luckily I had all the paperwork filled out in the correct way. Sometimes, especially in government offices, they make you fill out all the paperwork again if you make even one mistake.

“I told you, I can’t eat the spicy stuff. My doctor says I have ulcers.”

I had to stop and process that before I turned around. The old man that was behind me (it was thought to tell from his voice) started telling me that the last time I brought him a pizza, there was too much Portuguese sausage on it. I guess that’s why those kids had stopped jumping rope and were looking at me funny. Just as I was about to respond to he strange old guy, the pizza delivery guy showed up. He looked a lot like me, and he waved at everybody like he knew them. He then proceeded to tell the old guy that he went easy on the sausage this time.

So, he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

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I had this friend once that was really into juggling. He wasn’t that good, but for some reason he had always wanted to become a really good juggler. The kind of guy that would be able to pick up any three or four objects and juggle them for an amount of time without any problem. He’d bought several DVDs on how to juggle, and even took a workshop once at some juggling school. I hadn’t been aware that there even was juggling schools.

He studied for several weeks, and finally he was comfortable enough to start juggling in front of strangers. He usually got a pretty good reception, and for a while he even went downtown where they allowed various performers to do their thing on the street in hopes for a few spare coins. On some nights, he developed a pretty big crowd. But most of the time, there were only a few people that would stay and watch for more than a few minutes.

After a while he noticed the same people would pass by, make a comment like “oh, there’s that juggler, he’s pretty good,’ and then they’d keep walking. It got to the point where most of the people that went downtown on a regular basis got to know him, and acknowledged that he was a highly skilled juggler, but didn’t hang around to watch him. He thought about traveling to neighboring cities, where they hadn’t yet been exposed to his juggling skills, but then he began to question his whole reason for becoming a skilled juggler.

At first he just wanted to juggle, and he had some vague imagination of juggling in front of people. Then when he got a taste of how good it felt to actually do that, he wanted to juggle in front of bigger and bigger crowds. But when it go to the point where he was thinking of actively seeking out bigger and bigger crowds, rather than just spontaneously juggling wherever he happened to be, it became more of a chore, or a job, than fun hobby. Soon he went back to only juggling whenever he happened to think about it, instead of purposely setting out to juggle in front of weekend crowds.

It reminds me a little bit of the law of diminishing returns. When you first put in a little bit of effort, you get a lot of results. But as you start to put in more and more effort, you start to get less and less results. If you’ve ever gone on a diet you know what I’m talking about. It’s pretty easy to lose that first couple of pounds, but after that it just keeps getting harder and harder. Eventually you hit a plateau, and if you keep at it, your successes are really a serious of longer and longer plateaus, with intermittent jumps in success levels.

There’s even been books written about how the plateau is really where all your skills and abilities are forged. If you look at life a series of long plateaus, with intermittent jumps in skill level, it makes I easier to keep on moving forward when it often appears as though you aren’t making any progress.

This structure may have some kind of biological origin. Evolution is thought to be a series of plateaus, with intermittent jumps in mutations that over time significantly change a particular species. Even the evolution of language is thought to follow this same pattern. There are certain points in the growth of a language where it changes significantly in a relatively short amount of time, due to a variety of circumstances.

For example, English underwent a huge change around the 1400′s, known as the great tonal shift. The way English vowels are pronounced changed significantly in a couple generations. It is said that somebody speaking English after this tonal shift would not be able to communicate with someone speaking English before this tonal shift.

Even at the quantum level, the energy levels of electrons don’t change from gradually from one energy state to another. There is huge jump (the word “quantum” simply means “discrete”) from one energy level to the next. There is no in between.

It’s as if the whole basis of physical reality follows the model of plateaus in energy levels or states of matter punctuated by large intermittent changes in state. The reason behind all of this is of course a mystery, to even the smartest theoretical physicists. It just seems completely strange, and pretty cool, how whatever law that makes an electron follow the discreet energy level model lead to somebody being on a plateau punctuated by intermittent successes in weight loss.

They say that the universe is a hologram of itself. If you take any small piece of matter, and look at it, it will be of the same structure and makeup as the whole system. Electrons orbiting atomic nuclei behave the same way as planets orbiting a sun. Just like there are discreet energy levels of electrons in a hydrogen atom, there are discreet elliptical orbital paths of the planets in our solar system.

So next time you feel “stuck” on a plateau, know that you are in good company.

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So the other day I was waiting in line at the movies, which was surprising. Not that I was at the movies, but that I was waiting in line. I don’t particularly like crowded movie theaters, so I usually try and go during off peak hours. One reason is I always seem to time leaving my apartment, so after I take the train, walk to the theater, buy my ticket and my popcorn, and get to my seat, the trailers have just finished, and the main feature is starting.

When I show up and there’s a bunch of people, it throws off my schedule. Of course I can’t get too angry, because if nobody ever went to the movies, they’d close down the theater and put up some huge karaoke bar or bowling alley or something. And because I thoroughly suck at both karaoke and bowling, I wouldn’t likely participate in either of those two activities, leaving me with a blank space in my mental entertainment schedule where the movie used to be. Or would have used to have been. Or whatever. So while I appreciate the need for a steady stream of customers, I try to avoid them at all costs. Which is why I was surprised that so many people were waiting on such an off peak time.

I think there was some school related activity or something, as they all had on their school uniforms, and I overheard people talking about some project or something. I seem to remember once in high school when we were studying “Heart of Darkness,” by Conrad, we all watched the movie “Apocalypse Now,” which was based on the story. So perhaps that is what they were doing.

I overheard two guys behind me talking about grammar, and I wondered what movie they were seeing that had anything to do with grammar. Most movies are about car chases and bank robberies, and metaphorical aliens, but not dangling participles or split infinitives. So I asked them what they were talking about.

They said they were talking about their teacher, who is kind of a language zealot. Now I’ve heard about self-professed language “mavens,” those guys that like to write articles about how famous people misuse grammar, but I’ve never heard of a language zealot before. So naturally, I asked them to please elaborate on this.

I turns out this guy is part of the anti “be verb” movement. Some of the crowd he runs with would like to remove the “be” verb from our vocabulary all-together. Others say that it does have its uses, like when describing static things like an address or a phone number. Since I have no idea what this means, I asked them to please elaborate further, seeing as how the line didn’t seem to be moving at all. Somebody must have been making a special popcorn order or something.

Whenever you use a be word, you’re basically using the linguistic equivalent of an equals sign. Like if you say “I am hungry,” then mentally, you are saying that your entire entity, collection of molecules and atoms and beliefs and experiences are all collectively equal to the state of wanting to eat something. Now I didn’t know that people did so much thinking when they made simple statements like this, but according to this professor, it all happens subconsciously in a split second or so.

Since the brain is based on a categorical representational system, it immediately goes off on a search for everything else that could be considered “hungry,” since you are saying “I am hungry,” your brain figures that it had better equate you with anything else it can find in your history that “is hungry.”

The reason this is a bad thing is that it creates a lot of static labels that clog up our neural pathways. Like a bunch of sticky notes all stuck inside your brain that never get cleaned out. Like if you said “I’m hungry” and then a couple minutes later said “I’m angry,” that would set up another equal sign in your head that “hungry” = “angry.” So maybe two weeks later, if you said “I’m hungry,” your brain would remember the “angry = hungry” definition you gave it a couple weeks ago. If you weren’t really angry, it might look around to find something for you to be angry at.

To make it even more confusing. If one day you said “I’m angry,” and then a minute later said “I’m angry,” but then two days later you said “I’m hungry,” and then said “I’m happy” you brain would go into a never ending tail spin, trying to figure out how “angry = happy” which would likely make you feel very confused, at least on a subconscious level. It’s basically like having about a hundred adware programs running on your computer simultaneously, clogging up your resources and making your computer run really slow. If you run some anti-adware software, your computer will run much faster.

This guy was trying to teach his students to say things more accurately, that way you can slowly get rid of those linguistic equals signs clogging up your mental processing speed. So instead of saying “I’m hungry,” say “I feel hungry,” because everybody knows feelings change all the time. So even if you said “I feel hungry,” and right after that said “I feel angry” your brain would see them as mere coincidences, rather than trying to force them into the same category in your brain.

Some other examples that they gave me.

I’m angry à I feel angry
I’m tall à My height measures 89 inches.
I’m fat à The scale reads 250 pounds when I step on it.
I’m broke à My bank account contains $2.45
I’m shy à I don’t feel like talking to people right now

And so on. Notice the verb changes? From a “be” verb to feel, measures, reads, contains, feel. All these verbs can easily change state based on the situation, and won’t clog your brain with useless equivalencies.

And just as they finished explaining all this too me, I turned out that all those high school students were in line for a different movie, and I was able to watch my movie in a relatively empty theater, just how I like it.

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I used to have this neighbor that was quite eccentric. She had all these different hats that she would wear for all different kinds of occasions. I don’t think I ever saw her wear the same hat twice. I never saw the inside of her apartment, but I suspect that it was filled with hats. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever bought hat before. Maybe a couple baseball hats, and some ski hats for skiing, hiking, and robbing banks, but those don’t really count.

These were hardcore, fashion-oriented hats. The kind that you would see on some French aristocrat at a horserace. Assuming of course that French aristocrats have horses races. I’m not sure that they do, but it would seem logical. I never really thought about the psychology of hats until I lived next door to this lady. I never saw any kids or grandkids, so I assumed she lived alone.

I remember reading an essay once that destroyed the urban legend and often repeated myth that Americans stopped wearing hats when JFK was president. The common belief is that before he was president, everybody wore hats. Then when he, as president, went everywhere without a hat, the trend quickly caught on.

The truth of the matter, however, is far less interesting. Hats, gloves, other clothing items that are purely ornamental had been falling out of fashion steadily since the turn of the century. Hats were just another example of this. When Kennedy was not wearing his hat, he was just one example of the growing trend of hatless men.

Of course, the human brain comes pre wired to find cause effect relationships. Something like suddenly noticing people aren’t wearing hats, and then noticing a prominent figure like JFK isn’t wearing one, the easiest conclusion is that one thing caused the other. More often than not, they are merely related, and some other factor is causing them both.

Now I’m not particularly qualified nor well read enough to comment on the reason for the decline in hats, gloves etc. There are several theories, some make sense, and some don’t, depending on your social philosophy. Whatever that means.

They’ve done some pretty interesting experiments to study the brains propensity to find cause and effect relationships between random objects. They show random objects moving around on a computer screen to a baby, and the baby quickly assumes that one “shape” is chasing the other. They suspect this because they show one shape moving around by itself, and then stop it. They babies interest doesn’t change much. One object stopping and starting by itself is no big deal.

But then they show two objects moving around, and pretty soon the baby assumes there is a cause/effect relationship between the two objects. They stop one of the objects from moving, and the baby gets confused and looks back and forth between the stopped object and the moving object as if something is wrong. Why did one stop and the other didn’t? They suppose that if there weren’t any assumed cause/effect relationship between the shapes, then the reaction of two moving objects with one stopping would be the same as one moving object and then stopping. It isn’t.

One explanation for this is that back in the old days, when daily living was a life and death struggle against the environment, humans didn’t have time to sit around and do double blind studies every time they saw a tiger coming at them.

The cause/effect relationship was simple:

Tiger = Danger

Those who needed to learn that every time didn’t live long enough to pass on the need to scrutinize every decision. Those that had the capability to make snap cause/effect judgments on the world around them lived long enough to reproduce.

So here we are, thousands of years later, with that circuitry still firmly wired into our brains. We see two events, and immediately come to the conclusion that one is causing the other, or one has an impact on the other.

In the book “Fooled By Randomness,” by Taleb, he shows how often completely random events with no statistical causal relationships are often mistaken to be linked somehow.

In the book “Mind Lines,” Dr. Hall illustrates how we have a capacity to witness or experience an event, and quickly give it meaning. That event causes this, or this event means that. We then react not to the event itself, but the meaning we give it. In the language of NLP, that’s called a complex equivalent. Something that we think is a simple cause/effect relationship, but in reality has several layers of subconscious thought and judgment between the event (the cause) and the perceived outcome (the effect).

So what does this all mean? Just be careful when you assume any cause/effect relationship. We live in big cities now, and we don’t have to hunt for our food anymore. It’s ok to take a few moments to use your brain to make a decision, instead of reacting right away.

And if you bump into some lady that is wearing a different hat every time you see her, tell her I want my can opener back.

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Recently I’ve been reading this fascinating book by Steven Pinker, called “The Language Instinct.” If you are at all interested in language, psychology, or how the human brain is structured, you can’t go wrong with this book. In it he treats language as an instinct, rather than a learned ability. One of his supporting arguments is the existence of what seems to be a universal grammar that is common throughout all languages. There is an underlying structure that all languages follow, regardless of how isolated the culture is, how advanced or how archaic. This suggests that we have some kind of structure pre-wired into our brains for learning language.

There have been many scientists and psychologists who maintained that the human mind was a relatively blank slate, and it could be filled in depending on the environment and the surrounding adults. This argument holds that children need to be explicitly taught things like grammar and word order, and how to correctly identify dogs and trees. What Pinker argues very successfully in “The Language Instinct,” is that there is a structure that already exists, a structure that already has the blueprint for nouns, verbs adjectives and so out.

While there are about a billion different tangents I could go off on, there is one thing in particular that I’d like to talk about in today’s post. Chomsky is a linguist who made fantastic advanced in linguistic theory. He was the one that first suggested that if an alien came to Earth, and analyzed all the world’s languages, they would determine that we all speak the same language, just many different dialects. The structure of all of the world’s languages can easily described as on similarly structured language.

Other scientists have studied various cultures, with the intent to find, or uncover a “universal culture” like the “universal grammar” described by Chomsky and others. The results are striking. If you’ve ever traveled to another country, especially one where English wasn’t the primary language, perhaps you’ve experienced some kind of “culture shock.” Or even if you’ve watched documentaries on TV of some guys running around in loincloths in the jungle, still living like they did hundreds of generations ago. You might come to the conclusion that those cultures can’t be more different than modern western culture.

In Pinker’s book, he lists two full pages of elements of the “universal culture” on Earth (determined by anthropologist Donald E. Brown), and here are some highlights (purely chosen at random):

Language

Value placed on articulateness, gossip, lying, manipulation, humor, humorous insults, poetry with respective words of similar nature (e.g. rhymes).

Non Verbal Communication

Meaningless sounds used to convey meaning (e.g. cries, squeals, etc), generalized facial expressions communicating basic emotions (fear, happiness etc), guessing intent from actions, flirtation with the eyes, use of smiles as a friendly greeting.

Sex

Huge interest in sex, various methods of expressing sexual attraction, sexual jealousy.

Family

Families centered around the mother and the children, and one or more men.

Fears

Fear of loud noises, fear of snakes, fear of strangers.

Status

Social status based on age, and economic achievement. A fair amount of economic inequality, division of labor by sex and age. Domination of men in the public sphere.

Government

Coalitions, reasoning, generally non dictatorial leaders, (usually temporary, e.g. new leaders every so often), a common agreement of right and wrong, laws, retaliation, punishment, the existence of conflict (which is usually avoided at all costs). Property, inheritance of property.

Etiquette/Beliefs

Hospitality, special feast days, sexual modesty (e.g. sex in private), discrete elimination of bodily wastes, supernatural beliefs, magic to sustain and increase life, and to attract the opposite sex, rituals, rites of passage, dream interpretation.

I’m reminded of a story (passed around on the Internet, sourced to some book on sociology) of a strange culture that practiced a particularly odd custom. It was described in great detail and sounded very strange and out there. Until the end, when you read the punch line. It was a description of the procedure westerners use when we go to the bathroom to take a dump. But the way it was described sounded like supremely spiritual and superstitions custom that only some goofball tribesmen do in National Geographic.

The takeaway, at least for me, is that no matter who you compare yourself to, some guy chasing his dinner with a poison blow dart gun in some South American jungle, or some uptight trader on Wall Street wearing a five thousand dollar suit, you can’t help but to realize that we humans are much, much more similar that we are different.

As Joseph Campbell concluded after his life’s work studying the world’s various mythological stories, we all come from the same factory. We all have the same hopes, fears, dreams and obstacles to overcome in our daily life. In every chest, beats the same heart. At the end of the day, we all just want some peace and safety, and hopefully a few people to share it with. Something to think about when you bump into that weird guy on the street that you swear is from another planet.

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I was riding my bike downtown yesterday when I bumped into a friend. Not quite a friend, but an acquaintance. Some people have hundreds of people that they could consider friends, but I have a clear distinction in my mind between a friend and an acquaintance. Certainly acquaintanceships can grow into friendships, that’s how all friendships start, when you think about it. You meet somebody, you either share enough in common, sometimes a location or common goal, like at school or at work.

Then you make the all-important break from your commonalities. If you see somebody at work every day for several months, and you get on with them pretty well this can happen. Maybe they’ll be some after work party, or maybe you’ll get together for a game of basketball after work, and slowly move your relationship away from areas of commonality.

When you can have obvious differences, especially religious, moral or political views, and maintain a solid friendship that transcends all that, then you know you’ve got a winner

I was listening to this guy giving a lecture once on the power of a contrarian opinion. He said that most people surround themselves with people that share their same viewpoints. Most people easily fall into this trap. He was saying this is very dangerous, because if you only expose yourself to one viewpoint, you effectively shut yourself off from the flexibility of thinking if you were to expose yourself to other viewpoints. This works two ways. The first is that you may hear another point of view that actually makes more sense that yours. Another is that you will have to actually defend your point of view rather than just say “Yea!” to each other when you’re hanging out with like-minded friends.

Going through the process of defending and arguing for your point of view other than simply saying “Well, that’s just how I feel. We’ll have to agree to disagree.” Can be a profound learning experience. Saying that you’ll just agree to disagree only makes you and whoever you are disagreeing with dig into your own respective positions a little deeper.

Of course, this can be extremely difficult to do, as many times we have strong emotional connections and investments in our viewpoints. It can be hard to discuss them objectively without feeling we are in a personal battle to see who has the stronger emotional fortitude. Many times, if you break down the arguments from a linguistic and logical standpoint, they don’t differ very much from second grade schoolyard arguments:

“Nuh uhh!”
“Yea Huh!”
“Well, you’re stupid!”
“And your fat!”

And so on. If you remove the emotions from many discussions, debates and arguments, and look at them objectively, you’ll find that almost all arguments will fall into the above structure. Sure they will be much more eloquently stated, and much more long-winded, but the logic boils down the same. To really understand this, it can help to read them on paper, rather than listening to verbal exchanges.

Those that have a depth of understand and a really wide view of the world have the ability to make friends with people of varying viewpoints. Not only that but those that can accept their friends’ opposing viewpoints objectively, and respectfully, without thinking they are somehow morally or intellectually deficient in need to “fixing” are the true winners.

But the guy I ran into had yet cross that level of familiarity. He was an acquaintance that I’d met at a few seminars. We are both in the same line of work, so we attend the same kind of seminars.

So after I stopped and talked to him, we realized that we really don’t have that much in common. After exchanging pleasantries, how ya been, etc, and talked about the latest “news” in our particular industry, we really weren’t left with much to talk about. It was an interesting part of our conversation, that only lasted a few seconds. It was subtle, but I think we both understood what was going on.

I’d stopped my bike and got off, but not completely. I was still straddling it so I could easily start peddling again. He stopped in the street, and only half turned to face me. Both of us had only about half a commitment to the conversation. After the normal “how ya doin,” we moved onto the “what are you doing, where are you going.” Neither of us wanted to give up much, we each gave the perfunctory “oh nothing much, just hanging out.” Then the moment of truth came. There we were, on a Sunday afternoon. We knew each other on a first name basis, and if we kept our discussion to our respective jobs, we could probably fill a couple hours of conversation. Both had acknowledged we didn’t have any particular plans for that day. But neither of us had committed fully to the conversation, from a body language perspective.

So after our exchange, we stood there. Waiting for the other, or perhaps giving the other a chance to suggest doing something together. Grab a bite to eat, get a beer, whatever. But neither of us was interested enough to being the first to initiate it. But we both felt kind of obliged to allow the other person to chance. Neither of us did, and we said our “see ya around’s” and left.

The same kind of interaction that happens every day, hundreds of millions of times. The way humans kind of “sniff” each other out to determine each other’s intentions.

Now normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to such a non-event, but I’ve been reading a lot of Steven Pinker’s books lately, which focus on linguistics and how they effect psychology. There is a lot going on to our daily communications that are below the surface, and many times have much more influence on our relationships that the actual words that we use. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

I guess the moral of the story, or the take away, is realize that we humans communicate on many, many different levels, and we are always reading others and projecting things about ourselves to all of those around us, all the time.

So we got that going for us. Which is nice, I think.

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There was once a pretty interesting promotion an airline had a few years back. This was before September 11, and there were fewer restrictions. Also this was only a domestic airline, so they didn’t have to worry about any international laws. Here’s what the promotion was. You showed up at the airport and paid a pretty cheap price, I think it was fifty or a hundred dollars. And in return, you’d get two round trip tickets and two nights in a hotel somewhere.

The only rub was that you didn’t know where you were going until about thirty minutes before you flight left. Kind of a travel lottery. They did have a list of about 30 different cities that you may fly into. From New York, to some town in North Dakota, you could pretty much end up anywhere in the United States for the weekend. It seemed to be a fun thing to do for a weekend for an adventurous couple.

The other day a friend of mine and I, who both are avid fans of NLP, were talking about manipulation, and how a strongly manipulative person makes heavy use of what are called linguistic presuppositions. These are sentence patterns that kind of force the listener, through some really twisted word logic, to accept an underlying assertion by the manipulator without really being able to defend against it. What the manipulator is hoping for is that the person being manipulated will do is take the underlying assertion (usually something very strong and very childish, like you don’t love me, you don’t care about me, and something they would not usually say outright) and respond to it, giving the manipulator the satisfaction of getting their needs met in a roundabout way.

My friend said a good analogy would be training animals with negative reinforcement. Whenever they screw up, you punish them, until their entire behavior is motivated by avoiding punishment. A person who is in a relationship with strong manipulator usually feels the same way.

While there are specific language patterns you can learn to dismantle manipulative statements that can be extremely tedious, and can get confrontational in a hurry if you don’t have a complete handle on your own emotions.

So my friend and I started talking about an inoculation of sorts that would completely shield someone from manipulation from others. Not that others wouldn’t try, just that their attempts wouldn’t have any effect.

We decided that the best defensive would be a good offense. When they are getting ready to say something manipulative, punch them in the face.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

In order to inoculate yourself from being manipulated, you must make your emotions impervious to their underlying assertions. Meaning you cannot fear their truth. While this can be difficult to do once you are already in a relationship, it can be fairly easy to set your mindset up this way, so that any relationships you do create, with coworkers, friends, etc will be programmed from the start to be manipulation free.

How do you do this?

First of all, realize that humans come preprogrammed with a set of intentions. The are vague, but they are there. Get food, get sex, stay safe. These are programmed into us by evolution, or God, or aliens, so that we have the base programming to live long enough to make more people.

If you don’t do anything but follow the crowd your whole life, and not do one bit of thinking for yourself, you have a high probability of achieving all three.

However, without choosing specific ways with specific strategies to achieve various aspects of all three, you leave yourself open to be manipulated. Because if you don’t have specific targets to fulfill your base needs, you’ll always be a little bit worried about not achieving them. And because the thought of not achieving them can create the most horrible feelings imaginable, we do anything to avoid those thoughts.

Enter the manipulator. When we have fuzzy ways to achieve our prime directives, and a manipulator throws some covert mind poison at us, it triggers those fears of not achieving our prime directives, usually with a strong sense of impending rejection, so we do whatever we can to avoid that pain. Just like the animals that are trained by negative reinforcement, we learn to live by avoiding pain rather than finding new and interesting ways to satisfy our prime directives.

The simple way to inoculate yourself then, is to create several different specific goals, which satisfy all three of your prime directives. And for each goal, figure several different strategies for achieving them.

This collection of goals, and strategies to achieve them can act as filter through which you experience the world. You only accept those things and situations and relationships into your life that have a good chance of satisfying your particular goals.

When people drift through life with only vague ideas of what they want, they usually end up taking whatever they can get, which opens them up to be terribly afraid of losing what little they have. This can be a huge motivating factor.

By setting up your filters properly, and screening the world through them, you will create an environment rich with opportunities and relationships that are designed to fulfill your goals in many different ways, so any manipulative mind poison thrown your will have little effect.

Of course, this is easier said that done. Which is why so many of us are in relationships where we have a sinking feeling that maybe we could do better, if we tried, but since we are afraid to try, we don’t.

Simply through examining your goals and ways to get them, you’ll open up some breathing room in your mind for all the possibilities that are around you. And once you start to see them, the fear will slowly go away.

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I’m not sure where they printed it, because the office was pretty small. Maybe they outsourced it somehow, and used some other printer, much like a lot of micro brewed beers use the facilities of larger breweries.

The route I had wasn’t that large; it only encompassed my own neighborhood. There were maybe fifty houses I would have to go to every week. It was only a weekly newspaper, so it wasn’t like I had to get up at four in the morning every day so I could have stories to tell my grandkids about how I used to have to get up in the morning to trudge through the snow eight hundred miles to school every day.

Every once in a while we would have a subscription drive. I’m not sure how that worked, being as how the newspaper was free, but I think they had two different levels of service, or something like that. People that paid to subscribe, rather than get the free version got some kind of benefit. Our boss explained it to us, but I wasn’t really sure I understood then, which means I’m almost certain I don’t understand now.

Something that is foggy and vague when it happens can only get foggier and more vague with the passage of time. Except for those that are capable of re-writing history, in which case the past can get clearer and clearer despite the events and the eye witness accounts getting further and further away.

I think that happens with some aspects of history. There is no way they really know what all those old times Greek scholars were really up to. There are all kinds of stories about what Socrates said before his death, and what his intentions were and all that. But they didn’t have any video cameras back then, so I doubt anything that is attributed to him is any way remotely accurate.

When you think about how events from the distant past have been squeezed and distorted through the lens’ of various cultures throughout history, it’s amazing that we even remember their names, let alone their intentions and the social pressures of the day that influenced them and there decisions.

Kind of like that telephone game. Where you get a bunch of kids in a large circle. And you whisper something in the ear of one, and he or she whispers it to the kid next to them, and so on. You may start with something like “I like red fire engines,” and end up with something like “Let’s go to Nigeria.” Which of course is always good for a laugh (playing the game, not going to Nigeria, but then again, I’ve never been to Nigeria, so I wouldn’t know. I imagine it’s pretty hot.)

So what we would do is we would knock on peoples doors, and say:

“You really need to subscribe to this,”

To which people would usually say something like,

“Why do I need to subscribe, I get it for free already,”

To which we would say,

“Yea, I know but when you subscribe, you get all kinds of extra stuff,”

And then they would say something like,

“What kind of extra stuff?”

And we would explain, and they would quickly realize that by subscribing you get all kinds of wonderful benefits, such as extra stuff, and secret stuff, and other go straight to the front of the line kind of stuff. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me.

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As a kid growing up in LA, I remember the Olympics in the 80′s, but without any of the massive campaigning that went on recently. One thing that struck me was how Ishihara, the Mayor (or sometimes called the governor) of Tokyo responded. He used the classic political “reframe.” When used correctly, this can be a powerful tool of persuasion that can gain compliance and behaviors in you favor. When used with less that adroitness, it can come across as ineffectual.

Ishihara said the reason the Olympic Committee didn’t choose Tokyo was because the Japanese delegates (or representatives, or whatever they are called) are “not good at behind the scenes activities,” to paraphrase, meaning that in order to get the Olympics in your city, one has to be skilled in backroom, under the table dealings.

In saying that, Ishihara was saying that Rio, who got the Olympics, was in some way deceitful and manipulative, while the poor Japanese, who are incapable of such dealings, missed out. In other words, he was claiming that because the Japanese delegates were too honest and upfront. That is why they didn’t get chosen for the Olympics.

Now, here in Japan, the response from the foreigner community was one of “sour grapes.” I haven’t spoken to enough locals lately to get their read on his response.

But the point of this article today is to not to point out this particular reframe, but to illustrate how powerful it can be when used correctly. In my opinion, Ishihara’s attempted reframe was less than effective.

Ideally, reframes are most effective before a decision is made by your target, not as an excuse after. Politicians that use them effectively before an election, to somehow present their weaknesses as strengths, usually have a habit of getting elected.

My personal favorite reframe was by Ronald Reagan in the debate with Mondale. Going into the debate, Reagan was fairly old, and Mondale was much younger. The underlying, unspoken concern was that Reagan was too old to be an effective president. Reagan, being the great communicator, knew this and used it to his advantage.

What he did was illustrate two things. One is that by effectively reframing your weaknesses into strengths, you take the air out of your opponent’s objections. If you are a salesperson, and you have a list of your products likely drawbacks, and can figure out a way to make them into strengths, you can usually sell a lot of products.

The second thing that Reagan did was not only reframe, but also pre-frame. He voiced the objection he knew his opponent had, and not only reframe it, but he did it before his opponent even brought it up. When you can reach into our opponents mind, and reframe his objection before he even voices it, you can be pretty much unstoppable.

You can watch it here:

Another great example comes from the movies. There is a scene in 8 mile, with Eminem, when he has to do a “rap battle” with somebody that is better known, bigger, stronger, better respected, and even who stole his girlfriend. Eminem’s character, “Rabbit,” has to go first in the rap battle, and effectively takes all the “dirt” his opponent is likely to bring up during his “turn” in the rap battle, and effectively deflates them, one by one, leaving his opponent with nothing to say, speechless. Granted, this is a movie that is written, shot and re shot with many takes, but it illustrates the powers you can achieve when you not only know what objections your opponent has, but dismantle them before they object them.

Check it out here (right around :48 the reframing starts, language is NSFW)

Of course, all this was first illustrated by conversational hypnotist Milton Erickson. When you can take your targets objections, and reframe them into positive aspects, before you target even voices them, you will gain powerful authority in their world, and they will be much more likely to take your suggestions.

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One thing they did have that was surprising was four penguins. On the advertisement it had pictures of all kinds of exotic sea creatures, and it had a picture of a penguin in the middle. I was certain that the penguin was only for advertising, so I was surprised to see actual penguins at the exhibit.

The were in a relatively small room, maybe twenty or thirty square meters at most. In the center was a make shift pool, the surface was maybe four or five square meters. It was only half a meter deep or so. When I arrived, there were many people pushing up against the Plexiglas with their cell phone snapping away. When I got there the penguins were swimming around in a circle in their small pool.

Shortly after I made my way to the Plexiglas, they had climbed out of the pool and were walking around it. They were incredibly cute, I have to admit. Following each other, as if they were afraid to make a decision on their own. Every time one would pause and look at the water, the rest would copy him. When one started walking, they others started as well. When one veered off form their path from around the pool, the rest followed.

Pretty soon you could tell the crowd was hoping for them to dive back into the water, as watching them walking around in circles was getting a little bit boring. Every time they would pause, an almost jump in, but hold back, you feel the small crowd express its disappointment.

Finally, one of them slipped, and fell into the pool. Before he even had broken the surface of the water, his three friends immediatley followed suit, to the immediate pleasure of the crowd.

It reminded me of a sales seminar I went to a few years ago. The speaker was talking about how important it was to develop rapport before trying to persuade anybody of anything. Rapport is that unconscious feeling you get when you feel comfortable with somebody.

For example, if you were in a strange city, and you saw somebody in shopping mall wearing a t-shirt the bore symbol identifying them as part of a small group that you belonged to, like a high school, or a hometown charity group, you would immediately feel a connection to this person. If you went up and introduced yourself, and identified yourself a as member of the same group of them, you would immediately feel a connection.

Another example. Imagine you are taking a long flight home from somewhere. You finally get to your airport; get off the go down to the baggage claim. As you are waiting, you notice somebody the same gender and age as you. And pretty soon you realize that both of your bags have not come out of the shoot yet. You both finally go to the service desk, only to find that both of your bags have been accidentally transferred to Miami. They are safe, and they will be returned within one week. You share a unique experience with this person, and you suddenly feel a certain connection. You have developed rapport.

There are many ways to develop rapport. The easiest is to match body langue, match the rate of speech, the words that they use. Another way that people try is to find as many shared past experiences, or shared likes and dislikes. Like you both played baseball as a kid, or you both hate the Bee Gees, or anything else you can find.

What the guy at this seminar said, was interesting. He said it’s much easier to develop rapport than most people think. The reason behind this is that people, from a biological perspective, are pack animals. We move in herds, or large groups. It’s almost automatic for us to get into rapport with people. It’s as if we are always subconsciously on the lookout for people that are similar to us, to get clues on how to behave.

This guys said that the easiest way to get rapport with anybody, be it a potential boss during a job interview, a client or a potential lover, is to simply relax, and allow the inevitable similarities to come to the surface. We have in us wonderful mechanism given to us by God or Evolution (whichever you believe) which makes this natural if you just relax and allow it to happen. Of course, if you look for differences, you will find them. But when you relax and allow the similarities to surface naturally, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to develop bonds with people that you don’t even know.

How to maintain those bonds is a subject of another article.

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Many arguments that are usually given can also be used for other primates, and their brains are nowhere near the size of ours. Most scientists believe it is a combination of many factors to say the least. One of the most prominent is sexual selection within a species.

Imagine a group of cave people, fifty girls, and fifty guys. For the guys, they want to have sex with as many girls as possible. (Obviously). For the girls, they need to be extremely selective with who they choose to have sex with, because the consequences could be disastrous if they choose the wrong guy. Their offspring will not only carry his DNA, but his cooperation will have a direct impact on that offspring to survive.

So how do they manage this? The men try their hardest to convince the women that they are upstanding men capable of providing for the family. One way to do this is to simply pretend to be. They only need to pretend long enough and good enough to get into her cave-panties for the couple minutes it will take to get his cave-men rocks off. Then off to the next cave girl.

So an arm’s race of sorts developed over time. In men, the ability to deceive. In women, the ability to detect deception. Of course, men would pass on their skills of deception to their offspring, be they girls or boys. And women would also pass on their skills of deception detection onto their offspring, be they boys or girls.

So as man evolved, there was a contest, in both men and women, between skills of deception, and skills to detect deception. As mankind grew, this required a bigger and bigger brain.

The reason for this is congruity. In order to detect deception, you must be able to detect incongruity. This requires massive attention to subtle clues of body language, facial expression, and voice tone. Too much for the conscious mind to handle. Many believe the unconscious mind was developed to detect deception without having to spend too much conscious bandwidth, so to speak.

So we developed an “intuition” to tell when somebody is lying or not. Our subconscious minds developed the ability to quickly scan somebody’s body language, facial expressions, and voice tone, and then deliver a gut reaction, or a “feeling” to our conscious minds. And those that have learned to pay attention to this “feeling” or “gut reaction” can spot a liar a mile away.

Conversely, those that can present a very congruent image can be some of the best salespeople and manipulators around. Of course, the best way to be a great salesperson is to really believe in what you are selling. There’s a reason that many companies require their salespeople to actually own and use the product they are selling.

Of course, when you are presenting yourself, either to a potential lover or to a potential boss, it is essential that you believe in yourself. If you have any self-doubts, you will be dead before you even open your mouth.

The moral of this essay is twofold. One, take some time to get in tune with your intuition. It can serve you well against making bad decisions. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and is there for a reason. Use it, respect it, and listen to it.

Secondly, in order to present a believable image to the world, you must believe in yourself. Self-confidence and self-esteem stem from a belief that you are a good and worthy person with something of real value to offer the world. Don’t sell yourself short.

Believe in yourself, and trust your intuition, and you will go a long way.

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