Week 30 - learning the art of persuasion

Its official, we’re all loving and taking care of ourselves a whole lot more these days. We’re consciously uncoupling, eating our quinoa and kale mindfully, drinking kombacha and “omming” at every opportunity.  Health, wellness and self-discovery are rife and we have never explored our own capabilities as much as we do. Wow, I'm so on trend with this blog. I mean I'm learning and discovering and hopefully developing my technology-ridden brain with something other than what's on the internet. Gasp and breath.

So, in my eternal quest for self-improvement I went to a workshop at Soho House entitled "Learn to Persuade" - insert endless gags here depending on who you are and your relationship to me.  The talk was led by Gary Amers, a clinical hypnotherapist, life coach and NLP practitioner, so I had a fair idea of what the session was going to be about as I've done an NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) course before. But, there's always more to learn and plus, I'm not sure that my persuasion techniques are particularly shit hot!  (Yes they are, yes they are........(in soothing calm voice: "read all of my blog every week and pass it on to at least 100 people.....you know you want to..........GO!")

Ok I can dream.  Anyway, that soothing voice when one lingers on every word in a very calm but pronounced way was exactly what Gary used at the beginning of the class with some mild hypnosis, to put us in a lovely, relaxed state.  Its all about turning down the volume on our inner thoughts, scrubbing away the current pictures in our mind and focusing on the present.  This is of course, a state that is always available to any of us and why meditation and mindfulness are so prevalent now - we all need to be a lot more present and less anxious, worried and restless.  

Gary began by telling us that when you think about mastering your persuasion technique, you need to think about the fact that everything you want comes through people.  Everything we always want, we need to elicit from others, whether it be love, money or success.  Everything flows through people and to extract it you have to be able to sell yourself.  Essentially, that is what the art of persuasion is isn't it?  Its just being able to sell, regardless of whether the product is a bottle of bleach, a business idea or you.

What is it that we all need to be able to sell ourselves effectively?  Harvard did a recent study into what makes the best leader.  Apparently what came out on top was charisma and confidence. Yep. Well, clearly its not intelligence, common sense or humility if the US is anything to go by.  God help us all.  But, as a useful example here, old ginger wig, micro-prick Trump, does have charisma and confidence in abundance.  But that doesn't mean that a whole lot of people like him.  He lacks humility and warmth and is too concerned with the power.  Its clearly all gone to his big, fat head.

Confidence and charisma are about three things, power, presence and warmth.  People don't invest in you if you don't have these things.  But they aren't innate qualities - we can all learn them and put ourselves into a powerful, emotional state when we want to.  We can do this by the technique of anchoring.  Ah yes, I remember this from NLP.  You can change your state of mind and stay calm and relaxed by firing your anchor.  Its almost like Pavlovian conditioning.  I remember that too from my Psychology elective at University.  

In human terms, essentially our sub-conscious attaches a stimulus to a state of mind: thoughts and emotions.  So at a very basic level a piece of music could remind you of someone, or the smell of candy floss might take you back to your childhood.  These are involuntary anchors.  We can establish our own when we're in the desired state.  If we are going to persuade others to invest in us in whatever capacity, we have to be in these powerful, confident, emotional states.   

Gary took us through an exercise in order to give us our own anchors - its basically about imagining yourself in the very best position you can be in, confident, successful, happy and relaxed.  Its hard work, I found it difficult to concentrate, partly because I was verging on nodding off but also because I was inwardly giggling at Gary's muddled Geordie accent.  

But, the point is you have to believe in yourself and whatever it is you're selling. People only believe it when you believe it.  We have to feel good about ourselves and move past our worthless and helplessness patterns.  But what about influencing the people that are buying into us?  People make decisions with their instinct, their emotional gut and not their logic, so if you can elicit their deepest needs, you can attach yourself and what you have to offer to those needs.

This is when the power of questions arrises.  Gary talked to us about the importance of asking certain questions to elicit responses from people. So for example, "whats most important to you about....."  You're asking a person what their subconscious need is and you can continue the line of questioning until you really discover what it is they want and then you can offer them something.  Its all about matching with that other person.  You can also ask "what aren't you getting out of life that you feel you deserve to be getting?"  Granted, this a bit of a deep and meaningful and if you ask it in those words, the person you're talking to will probably think you're a complete loon but asked in the right way, you can really discover their needs and then give it to them.  Humans are simple really.  

But, what Gary was clear about and something that NLP is very focused on, is that you should only give people exactly what they want unless that is really you.  Its not a case of constantly pleasing people because then you get nothing in return.  You need to be able to receive the love as well as give it.

Gary told a silly anecdote about a strawberry and a lemon but essentially what he was saying is that you have to love yourself and be exactly who you are.  Its utterly exhausting trying to be someone else and giving in to their needs.  We all have the power to be strong, confident and charismatic, its just a case of accessing those good feelings, asking the right questions and creating that positive, emotional state.  I feel better already.